by Dan Abnett
‘Thank you, Carl,’ I responded.
We moved through the wasteland. It was one of the few times my state allowed me speedier and quieter access than my able-bodied friends. Nayl and Kara followed, clambering over the dunes of rubble.
‘See anything you like?’ Kara said.
‘I don’t frigging believe we’re doing this,’ Nayl grumbled.
‘Move left. Left!’ Carl’s voice rasped over the vox. ‘I’ve got drones moving now. Gunshots.’
‘I heard them,’ Nayl said, and started away to the left.
‘Flank him wide, Kara,’ I said, and she moved away in the opposite direction.
‘Throne,’ I heard Carl say. ‘I think we were right. I think this is some kind of frigging game.’
I propelled myself forward. Both Kara and Harlon were out of sight now, though I could sense them just fifty metres away, each side of me.
The twisted ruins of the tracts rose up on left and right. I tasted life-signs.
‘Hello?’ I transponded.
The Dolors appeared out of the gloom. Ragged, emaciated, filthy, feral. There were twenty of them.
Blackened teeth bared in wild grins. They raised their cudgels and spears and charged.
‘Your mistake,’ I said.
XIV
The barons were laughing. Most of them were drunk, or out of their heads on lhotas and obscura.
DaRolle looked up from the drone relay.
‘Have we got the bitch yet?’ Boroth demanded.
‘You wish,’ DaRolle said. He walked across the lounge and crouched down beside Loketter.
‘What?’asked the man in red.
‘New players just entered the game,’ DaRolle said.
Loketter sat up. ‘Show me.’
DaRolle held out his data-slate. ‘Three on the ground. A gig too, grounded there.’
‘What the hell is this?’
‘Problem, Loketter?’ asked Vevian.
Loketter rose and smiled. ‘Not a problem, but a bonus element to our game today. Look at your scans. See? Newcomers.’
‘Who the frig are they?’ Gandinsky blurted.
‘Interlopers,’ Loketter said. ‘House will pay two thousand for each one killed. Firearms permitted.’
The intoxicated crowd applauded this energetically.
Loketter looked at DaRolle. ‘The ones on the ground I can get these fools to mess with,’ he whispered. ‘You go and fry up this gig.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Find out who these fools are. Then burn it and every one on it.’
DaRolle nodded. ‘Pleasure,’ he said.
XV
Patience was still running. The Dolors, invisible in the shadows but everywhere now, were jeering and caterwauling, their strangled cries echoing around the ragged walls and shattered windows.
They were calling out to her, taunting her, abusing her with obscene words and suggestions, many of which, thankfully, were so choked by the gang-argot they made no sense.
Occasionally, stones or pieces of trash came flying out of the darkness at her, and she deflected all those she could. Some found her, especially the stinging stone bullets launched from catapults and slings.
Her instinct was to head back towards the colossal city, but no matter how much ground she managed to cover, it seemed not to get any closer. Its sheer scale made the distance hard to judge. It was probably kilometres away still.
She reached the ruins of a manufactory, its ply-steel roof collapsed. Seas of garbage and rubble spread out from its eastern side, and she began to pick her way across the weed-choked waste. Behind her, she could hear the gangers scurrying through the manufactory ruins. A few missiles flew out after her.
A figure suddenly appeared ahead of her, across the sea of trash. A small male, or perhaps a female, who’d been down in cover behind the remains of a yard wall, hidden by a chameleon cloak. Glancing up, Patience cursed as she saw a hunter drone that had obviously been shadowing her for several minutes.
Patience changed course, and began to run away from the figure. She ran wide across the overgrown trash. The figure started to follow, trying to cut her off, running hard, but neither made particularly good going. The trash and rubble was so uneven, so treacherous. Patience kept tripping, stumbling, turning her ankles.
As soon as the hunter appeared, the jeering from the invisible Dolors grew more ferocious. Catapult missiles and even the occasional arrow whipped out from the manufactory at the hunter.
The hunter – and it was clearly a female – stopped in her tracks, and produced an autopistol. She slammed in a clip and fired three times at the manufactory.
The shells must have been high-ex, because each impact went up like a grenade. Sections of the manufactory ruin blew in, and the Dolors went very quiet suddenly.
Patience was still running. The hunter put the gun away and resumed the chase.
A second drone zoomed into view suddenly, circled Patience once and then headed for the hunter. The woman stopped again, looking round frantically as she reached for her sidearm. Patience half-heard her shout a question into her vox-set.
There was a loud crack, a peripheral flash of light, and the female hunter jolted suddenly as a las-round went clean through her torso. She crumpled without a sound.
Her killer appeared, directly ahead of Patience. She skidded to a halt. He was big, and wore segmented plating over a coat of green hide. A glowing augmetic implant covered one eye. He had a las-carbine in his hands.
He stared at Patience for a moment, then put the carbine away in the leather boot over his shoulders. Then he drew a large dagger with a twisted black blade and took a step towards her.
‘Make it easy now, and I promise you won’t feel nothing,’ he said.
Patience was breathing hard from the running. It made it easier somehow to summon up her gift. The man thought the first couple of stones that came flying at him were from the gangers, but then more came, and more, larger rocks, pieces of trash, chunks of garbage. Debris started showering off the ground all around her, whipping at him.
He cried out, shielding his face with his hands, and backed away. She heard him cry again, in pain, as a greasy lump of broken-off machinery hit him in the chest. He staggered, trying to fend the blizzard away. Then a piece of cinder block caromed off the side of his head, and he fell down on his knees, holding his head. Two more large rocks struck his face and forehead, and he slumped over entirely.
Patience sighed, and the rain of trash subsided, pieces bouncing off the ground as they landed. Silence.
She gave the body one last look, and started to run again. Behind her, in the manufactory, and all along the outer fence line, the invisible gangers started to whoop and holler again.
XVI
I had just seen off a second assault by the slum-gangers when I felt the telekinetic burst. Fierce, unfocused, not too far away.
‘Turn west,’ I voxed.
‘Understood,’ Kara responded.
‘I read that,’ came Nayl. ‘I just heard bolter fire from that direction too.’
I slid through the ruins, my mind wide open. There were psi-traces all around me, at least a dozen as close as fifty metres. Most were the feral impulses of the hidden Dolors. But there. One other. Harder.
Two las-rounds struck the front of my chair and fizzled off harmlessly. I found the hunter as he was about to fire again, and picked him up. He yelled in fear as he left the ground, dragged up into the air ten metres, twenty. Then I let him go.
I didn’t even bother to watch him land. The sharp light of his mind went out abruptly.
‘I heard shots,’ Kara voxed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Kara, it is a game. An obscene hunting game. We have to find this girl, whatever she is, before they do.’
‘Understood. Absolutely.’
Kara was about a third of a kilometre away to my right.
‘I’ve got a drone active in your vicinity,’ Carl told her over the
link.
Kara acknowledged, and glanced around. That was when the two hunters, twins clad in silver-grey skin sleeves, pounced. One pinned her arms from behind, the other came at her with a chain-fist. She rolled her body back, using the man pinning her as a back-brace, and bicycle-kicked the other in the face. He went over in the rubble, rolling.
But the man pinning Kara from behind rammed forward and head-butted her in the back of the skull.
+Kara!+
Even at that distance, I felt her pain and sensed that she had blacked out. They’d have her gutted before she could come round.
I knew I had no choice. I had to ware her. It wasn’t something she – or anyone else I knew – enjoyed, but it was necessary. Besides, we had trained for this. Kara Swole was a particularly receptive candidate.
The wraithbone pendant around her neck lit up with psychic-energy. Kara’s body suddenly animated again, but it was me moving her. I had taken her physical form over, put it on like a suit of clothes.
Blank-eyed, Kara’s body twisted hard and broke the pinning hold. She tore clear, landed well, and swept out the legs of the hunter with the chain-fist so he went over on his backside.
Then she turned, raising a forearm block against the other’s attack, following the block with two rapid jabs to his face and a side-stamp that caught and dislocated his right knee.
He howled in pain. Kara/I grabbed his flailing arms and swung him bodily around right into his partner, who was returning to the fight for the second time.
The partner’s forward-thrust chain-fist, which had been sweeping at Kara/me met the ribs of his fellow hunter instead. The whirring bite-blades of the gauntlet weapon punched clean through the man’s side in a shocking welter of blood and torn tissue. He screamed as he died, his whole body quivering in time to the rending vibrations of the glove’s cycling blades.
His partner and accidental killer screamed too: in outrage and horror at what he had just done. He wrenched the glove out, but it was too late. His twin, a huge and awful excavation yawning in the side of his torso, stopped quivering and dropped. A film of blood covered everything in a five metre radius.
Berserk, the remaining hunter hurled himself at Kara/me. We leapt, boosted by a touch of telekinesis, and executed a perfect somersault over his head.
He swung around. But by then Kara/I had grabbed up her fallen riot gun. Her puppet hand racked the slide. A single, booming shot blew the hunter backwards eight metres.
We heard a sound behind us, and turned, bringing the pumpgun up.
‘Steady!’ Nayl warned.
‘What are you doing here?’ Kara/I demanded.
‘You were in trouble, Kara!’ he said. ‘I heard it over the vox. I came as fast as I could.’
‘What about the girl? What about the girl we’re looking for?’
Nayl shrugged. ‘Kara?’
‘No, it’s me, dammit!’ I said with Kara’s voice. ‘Catch her for Throne’s sake, I’m coming out.’
Nayl hurried forward and took Kara’s limp form into his arms as I ceased waring her. She was semiconscious, and the trauma of being a ware subject would leave her disorientated and sick for a good while.
+Guard her, Harlon. In fact, get her back to the transport.+
‘Where are you going?’ he asked the empty air.
+To find the girl.+
XVI
Closed back into the womb-like nowhere of my support chair, I impelled it forward again, trying to reacquire the raw psychic-pulse I’d felt before. I felt edgy. Having to ware someone was a curious thing to deal with, and the feelings always left me conflicted. I was aware that the subject loathed the sensation, and it was also most usually done in moments of extremis, involving violence and furious levels of adrenaline. But for me it was a brief delicious escape, a cruel reminder of what I had lost. I despised myself for deriving pleasure from such painful, demeaning moments.
+Carl?+
‘Yes, sir?’
+Do you have a fix on me?+
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got two more drone tracks about half a kilometre ahead, converging. Please hurry, sir.’
+I’m hurrying.+
Back in the gig, Carl looked up from his scanner displays, fidgeting with his cuffs nervously. He looked at Wystan, who was reading his dataslate again.
‘Don’t you care?’ Carl asked.
The untouchable nodded at his book. ‘It’s just getting interesting.’
Outside, DaRolle scurried forward, keeping low behind a half-fallen wall. He checked the area, unshipped his laspistol, and deactivated his limiter.
Then he began to run, head down, towards the parked transport.
XVIII
Her breathing was coming in short, sharp bursts. Patience had run as hard and as fast as she could. There was at least one person very close to her now, but the psychic-trace was faint and hard to place. She was worn out, exhausted, and her gift was weak from over-use.
She clambered down into a cavity behind a ruined pumping station, crawling into a cave formed by the overhang of the fallen roof. She curled up against the back wall, her arms around her knees. Outside, the Dolors were still jeering and shouting, but it was more distant now.
She’d gone as far as she could. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Waiting for the end.
+Patience.+
She started, and looked around, not daring to speak.
+Patience. Stay calm. Stay where you are. I’m coming to help you. I want to help you.+
‘Where are you?’ she hissed in fear.
+Don’t speak. They’ll hear you. Think your answers.+
‘What do you mean? Where the frig are you?’
+Don’t be scared. Try not to speak aloud. They’ll hear you.+
‘This is another trick. You’re one of them! One of the frigging hunters!’
+No. Patience, my name is Gideon. I swear by the God-Emperor himself I mean you no harm. I’m trying to help you. You’re hearing me because I am speaking directly to your mind, psychically.+
‘You lie!’
+Try me. Think of something I couldn’t know.+
Patience closed her eyes and moaned softly.
+Prudence. And Providence.+
She gasped.
+Your sisters. You’re worried about them. They were taken… wait… yes, they were taken from the scholam. Without your consent.+
‘Just kill me, you bastard, or leave me alone!’
+Please, Patience, don’t speak. They’ll hear you.+
I was moving fast now. The jagged ruins of the slum-tracts slid by me on either side. Rocks and catapult bullets occasionally clattered off my chair’s armour. Where was she? Where was she?
+Patience? Can you still hear me?+
‘Leave me alone!’ she sobbed, crawling deeper into the damp cavity. ‘I can’t do this! I can’t do this any more!’
+Yes, you can! Just keep it together! Focus! Focus on something!+
Patience twisted in panic, clawing at the sides of her head. I was scaring her. My voice. Something about my voice. Not just the fact that it was coming, disembodied, into her mind. Something else.
What?
As I steered my chair out across a long sea of trash and debris, I gently peered into her mind, into the panic and turmoil. Into the fear.
I saw it. It was my voice itself. I sounded like a middle-aged, well-educated male. Reasonable, polite, refined. Exactly the sort of man who had betrayed her entire life, her fellow pupils, her sisters. I saw she had formed a picture of me already. It was part Cyrus, part Ide, part Loketter, part some ginger-haired man. It was all of these, blended into one monster.
Immediately, I switched the focus of my telepathy.
+Kara?+
I found her at once, bleary and sick. Nayl was helping her along a rubble ledge back towards the gig.
‘What?’ she asked.
+I’m sorry, Kara, but I need to ware you again.+
‘Throne, no!’ she whimpered.
‘She’s ha
d enough, boss,’ Nayl said.
+It’s important. Really important. I need her voice.+
Kara looked at Nayl and nodded wearily. He caught her as her wraithbone pendant flashed and she fell.
I left her body limp in Nayl’s arms, and put on her personality like a skin-suit. My psychic-voice became Kara Swole’s soft, reassuring tones.
+Patience?+
‘What? What?’
+Patience, my name is Kara. My good friend Gideon has asked me to talk to you. Time is very short, Patience, and you need to listen to me if you want to stay alive. Trust Gideon. Do exactly as I say.+
I could feel the girl giving way to panic.
+Patience, focus! Hold on! There must be something you can hold onto! Something you can hold onto so you can keep going! Your sisters, maybe? Your mother? Patience?+
She had found it at last. It was something so small and dark and hard in her mind that even my telepathy could not unlock it. She held onto it, tight, tight, as the dark closed in.
Her panic waned. Her breathing slowed. I was close now. I could reach her.
Patience opened her eyes. A skull, eyes bright, hovered at arm’s reach in front of her, gazing at her. A drone.
I was too late. She had made too much noise.
The hunters had found her.
XIX
‘Throne!’ cried Carl, leaning back from his auspex station in alarm. ‘What the hell did you do?’
‘I might have broken wind,’ admitted Wystan Frauka. ‘Sorry.’ He turned back to his book.
‘Check your limiter, dear boy,’ Thonius demanded.
‘Why?’
‘Why? I was just listening in, and Ravenor suddenly went off-line!’
‘The vox?’
‘The vox is still live! I mean his telepathic link just scrambled! Was that you?’
Wystan Frauka frowned and put down his data-slate. He checked his device. ‘No, it’s on. I’m blocked.’
‘Then what?’
‘Relax, Carly. I’ll take a look.’
‘Please–’ Carl began
Frauka patted the handgun in his belt again. ‘I told you, I’ve got your back.’