by Dan Abnett
He looked at himself. Keening, the operetta was reaching the most passionate sequence, the loves lost-and-wronged part that he'd always adored.
He stared. Bio-pack dressing was taped around his right arm at the elbow.
With the tenor howling out a requiem for his fallen Astartes brothers, Thonius reached over with his left hand and began to rip the tapes away. His stare into the mirror didn't waver.
He stripped the dressing off and looked at what was revealed. The wound. The slice. Puckered, dead-looking flesh woven together with a million fibre-stitches. Blood and plasma-product still crusted the stitching. Clouds of bruises stained his bicep and forearm.
Staring at it, staring at it, staring at it, he became aware of the pain again: a dull throb, deep set, welling out from below the elbow. Over and over, he remembered the moment of severance. The wailing chainblade sawing around. Impact. Vibration. Shock. Pain. The astonishing notion that a fundamental part of oneself was no longer part of oneself at all.
Blood, in the air.
The smell of blood, the smell of sawed-through bone.
The pain was too much. He had gladstones in his buckle-bag, and lho in his desk, but that wouldn't do. He wanted release, craved it, begged for it.
Thonius took up the tiny key hanging around his neck on a sliver chain, and opened the top drawer of his bureau. He realised he was breathing hard.
The little package, wrapped tight in red tissue, lay inside.
He took it out, and opened it. For a moment, he paused, wiped a palm across his mouth, thought about it. Then he looked down into the flect.
It was nothing. It was just a piece of broken, coloured glass, It was a-
His feet began to tap. His body rocked back and forth. Wonderful, wonderful things happened inside his head.
Beautiful things. Extraordinary things. Reality chopped back and forth, like an automatic sliding door slamming open and closed. Everything was all right. Everything. He could see forever. He could hear and smell and taste forever.
The fingers of his left hand drummed, like a dancing spider, across the bureau.
The fingers of his right hand twitched.
"Oh my god..." he whispered.
He could see light. A long corridor of golden light. At the end of it was a shape. No, not a shape. He was rushing towards it. A chair. A chair. A chair.
A throne. A golden throne.
The man on the golden throne was smiling. It was a beautiful smile. It made everything all right. The man on the golden throne was smiling and beckoning to him.
For one, perfect moment, one moment of release, Carl Thonius felt immortal.
Bells were ringing.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Frigging ringing.
Thonius snapped up from the flect. He still felt glorious. Blessed. He heard the ringing again. It was the door-chime of his cabin.
"Just a moment!" he called out, and hastily stuffed the fleet and its red tissue wrapper into the drawer.
He shut the drawer. With his right hand. He started at that. Emperor above! All of his last few actions had been made with his right hand. It was alive. It was-
Dead now. Limp. Useless.
The door chime rang again. Thonius got to his feet, pulled on his selpic blue jacket, and - with his left hand - activated the "unlock" stud on his control wand.
The hatch opened. Smiling, perplexed, Kara Swole stepped into his cabin.
"Just came to see how you were doing," she said. "So... how're you doing?"
He smiled at her.
"Kara, I'm doing just fine."
The flyer gunned out of the Hinterlight's main hangar, and skimmed down the body of the hull.
"There," said Nayl. "What do you think of that?"
He kept the speed low, the course steady. In the co-pilot seat beside him, Zael gazed out of the port as the dark substance of the ship flowed past beneath them.
"It's big," was all the boy could really manage.
Nayl took them up the length of the ship and back four times. He could have done it all day. Zael wasn't getting bored.
At length, Nayl said. "Kys told me you'd been having dreams."
"Yeah, some. Some dreams."
"Often?"
"Yeah, most nights. Someone knocking on the door. Trying to get in. They want to tell me something, but I don't want to hear it."
Nayl paused to see if Zael would volunteer anything else. The boy didn't, so Nayl asked: "Who's the someone?"
"My sister, Nove."
Nayl leaned gently on the stick and swung the gig around again to head back to the hangar.
"I want you to talk to The Chair when he gets back," Nayl said.
"Okay. I've been thinking about the game."
"The game?" Nayl eased back the thrust as the guide signal for dock-entry began to bleep mutedly.
"I said it looked like an orange rubber ball I'd once owned," said Zael.
"Yeah, you did."
"You didn't think that was very good, but it was. That's what it looks like. I remember the ball. My sister gave it me when I was seven. A birthday present. It got bounced up and down the stack halls, it got all worn and scabby. All scarred, like that place. But it's gone now. Lost somewhere. Like Nove. That's why that world looks like the ball to me."
Nayl sighed. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner."
FIVE
Cynia Preest sighed gently. Save for her chin, her face was shadowed by the loose, fur-trimmed hood over her head, but in that shadow, Nayl could see a smile.
"I rather thought," he whispered, "that smiling was something you hadn't planned on doing out here in Lucky Space."
"Dear Harlon," she muttered, "permit me a moment of nostalgic pleasure. It's been a long time. I'd forgotten the flavour of this place."
Nayl hesitated. Whatever flavour the shipmistress was detecting was entirely lost on him. As far as he was concerned, Bonner's Reach smelled of promethium, dust, ozone leaking from the ancient void-shields, spice-musks and perfumes, and a general humid, noisome odour of air that had been through the atmosphere processors a few million times too many.
"I don't think I'm really quite getting its charms," he decided.
Preest rested a gloved hand on his arm. "It has a certain character, Harlon. A robust vitality. You smell muggy filth, I breathe in vigour, zest, the aroma of a free trade station. I smell the frontier, the challenge of the beyond. I smell a truly neutral place where merchant venturers like myself can gather and do business away from Imperial scrutiny."
She glanced round at her other companion, who flanked her to her left. "No offence," she added.
"None taken," he replied. "When were you last here?"
"An age ago. Decades. But it hasn't changed. I'd forgotten it. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it. Again, no offence."
"Again," said the other companion, "none taken."
They were moving along a stone jetty from the wharf towards the craggy bulk of Bonner's Reach. The jetty was sealed against the void by shimmering, intersected screen-fields projecting between hoops of infinitely old technology that formed archways along the stone walk. A hundred metres behind them, the great mass of the Hinterlight lay at grav anchor in the immense granite basin of a void-dock. A series of mag-baffles and airgates linked the merchantman to the end of the jetty.
Nayl had to admit that what Bonner's Reach lacked in olfactory sophistication, it more than made up for in visual impact. It had taken them seventeen days to reach it from Flint, but the view alone was worth the trip. Bonner's Reach was an airless rock tightly orbiting a feeble, unstable star at the very end of its staggeringly vast lifespan. Long before, before man had begun to walk upright, someone had built a great stone bastion into the rock of its surface. Internal spaces in the bastion were chiselled down into the rock itself. No one could explain its origin, or account for its manner of construction, nor even ascertain its age. Certainly no one could explain why its makers had abandoned the bas
tion and left not a shred of themselves behind.
Early human venturers had found the place empty and open to hard vacuum. Effective installation of power plants, void shielding and atmosphere processors had made it habitable, and it had remained so ever since.
Because the Reach had no atmosphere, visiting star-ships, even those of great tonnage, could come in close and sit at low anchor above the Lagoon, a vast crater-bowl that had been scooped from the rock in front of the bastion. Alternatively - for a higher fee - they could berth in one of the many void-docks and quays hewn into the mountainside out of which the bastion grew.
The view from the jetty was uncompromisingly strange. Looking out through the crackling void-fields that kept in the jetty's atmosphere, Nayl could see the vast, blackened elevation of the bastion, seamless stone cut by a non-human hand. Lights, yellow and tiny, glowed at pinprick windows. He could see ships- giant starships - floating out there in the darkness above the hard-shadowed white expanse of the Lagoon. The crater was full of white dust, but it looked like a snowfield, a sea of unmarked snow, dotted like a snow-leopard's pelt with the shadows of the starship anchored above it. Nearer at hand, bulk freight craft and other merchantmen lay sheathed in their void-docks, umbilically linked to the bastion via the ghostly-lit spurs of landing jetties. The sense of scale was terrifying. He was used to looking down on planets from afar, from orbit. Now he stood on the very threshold of one - and not even a large one - and could look around to see great frigates, clippers and sprint traders suckled against its embracing bulk. With a contrasting point of reference like the Hinterlight in view, Nayl's mind balked a little at the dwarfing size of the world, and by extension any world, and by further extension, the Imperium.
And then, in turn, his tiny, inconsequential self.
Patience Kys strolled onto the Hinterlight's main bridge, her eyes on the principal display screen. It showed a view out across the Lagoon as captured by the forward pict-systems.
The bridge was quiet. Most of the primary crew-stations had been vacated. Oliphant Twu, Preest's unnervingly reticent Navigator, had been detached from his socket so he could enjoy a few hours rest in his quarters after the lengthy voyage. Kys was glad he was absent. Twu was always unfailingly polite and courteous to any passengers he encountered, but there was a loathsome aura about him that made most people uncomfortable and Kys positively ill. It was the constant, seething turmoil of his mind. It made her feel seasick. In its way, it was as bad as the blunter, Wystan Frauka.
Frauka himself was present on the bridge, though his limiter was active. He had slumped in the second helmsman's throne, one leg swinging over the arm, smoking as if it was his primary function in life. He nodded to Kys as she came in, and his face curled into an expression that she realised, with horror, was probably his idea of an alluring smile.
She ignored him. A trio of Preest's tech servitors was running standard overhauls on some of the tertiary system consoles on the far side of the bridge. She could hear the hiss and stutter of their gas-powered digits as they unscrewed retaining bolts.
Halstrom occupied the shipmistress' throne, maintaining an intent check on both the ship's engineering turn-around and external activity. He looked to Kys very much the part of a shipmaster, confident and proud of his place. Preest so seldom left the Hinterlight herself, it was rare he got the opportunity to stand in.
Thonius sat at the primary helm console to his left. He was flicking through hololith displays projected to his repeater screen from the main actuality sphere, manipulating the images with his good left hand, his right bound up in a sling. He seemed bored and preoccupied.
A few metres in front of Frauka, Ravenor's chair sat locked to the deck by its mag-clamps. The inquisitor's unit seemed inert. Fat cables spooled out of the chair via opened access points in its surface armour, and connected to four chunky portable units arranged around the chair on the deck. Psi-booster units. More cables ran from the units to an open inspection hatch in the side of Thonius' console, linked directly to the Hinterlight's potent astrocommunication dishes.
Kys walked up to Halstrom and perched her bottom on the edge of his console desk.
"Mistress Preest doesn't approve of people sitting on the bridge stations." Halstrom began.
"Oh dear," said Kys. "Is she on the bridge?"
"You know she's not..." Halstrom began.
"Then I'd say it was up to the acting master who sits where."
Halstrom coloured slightly and then grinned. "Point, Mamzel Kys. This is my watch for a change. You're fine where you are."
She grinned back. She liked Halstrom. Old school, reliable, kinda sexy too, if a girl had a mind to go for distinguished older males. Which she never had. Not after Sameter.
"How are they doing?" she asked.
"They've left the airgate. Heading down the jetty towards the station threshold."
"They're taking their frigging time about it." Thonius complained tersely.
Kys looked over at Thonius. "What's your problem? Got a hot date waiting?"
Frauka sniggered loudly. Halstrom chuckled and made himself busy.
"Screw you, Kys," Thonius said.
And so the banter begins, Kys thought. Since they'd met, she and Carl Thonius had spent their time sparring. It was part of the team spirit. But, she considered, "screw you" lacked a great deal of the expected Thonius finesse.
She slid off Halstrom's console and crossed to Thonius' side.
"What's up?"
He shrugged and glanced up at her. "Sorry," he said.
"Nothing to be sorry for. You're tense."
"I don't know why they're taking so long," he said. He reached out with his left hand and methodically tapped out a control function that would normally have taken him an instant with both hands. The display image dissolved and changed. Now it showed an overview of the docking jetty through one of the Hinterlight's starboard pict-sources.
There was the jetty, encased in its gleaming sleeve of void-fields, stark against the blackness around and beneath it. She could see the landing party. Preest - in full robes and finery - riding aboard an ornamental floater carriage that she controlled with an actuator wand in her right hand. Two bodyguards- tall, heavyset men - walked with her, one on either side of the carriage. They were clad in long, quilted coats and ornamental full-face helms, and each carried a long pole upright. The two poles supported a small canopy above Preest's head.
Behind them came a train of six cargo-servitors laden with caskets.
The bodyguard at Preest's right hand was Nayl. The one to her left - nominally - was Zeph Mathuin. But to all intents and purposes, it was Ravenor. The inquisitor was waring Mathuin's body.
"They're just making a dramatic entrance." Kys suggested. "You know the mistress. She likes to arrive in style. Regally."
"Maybe," Thonius said.
Kys leaned over and tapped a few keys, swinging the image around to show more of the bastion itself. Mysteries and rumours adhered to Bonner's Reach as they did to all outlandish places. Some said the first venturers to come here found unimaginable treasures deep in the bastion's chambers. Others said there were still corridors and halls cut into the rock down there that no one had yet traced or followed. Many supposed that ancient and profoundly powerful xenos technology, left behind by the builders of the place, had been found. One particular, popular story had it that once in a while, a visitor would go missing... lost forever after taking a wrong turn somewhere, or perhaps taken by the spirit of the place as a payment for continued human use of the structure.
Every few minutes there was a brief flash or fizzle of light. These were photonic flare-patterns, beginning to stutter out from the planet's old and dying star. At this early stage, these emissions were just precursor flashes. In ten or twelve hours' time, they would have matured into a full-blown solar storm that would fill the sky with flame and last for three days. The storms happened every thirty-five months.
That was Firetide, when the ships put in at Bon
ner's Reach and their masters feasted and drank while the heavens blazed.
Kys sighed. Thonius' edginess was infectious. "I don't know why we can't just march in and flash our warrants and-"
"Look out there, Mamzel Kys." Halstrom pointed, indicating the main display. "Look at the ships gathered there over the Lagoon. I see rogue traders, far venturers, merchantmen of all sizes... and that? What's that? And that? And that over there, the disk-shaped vessel? That's two hundred kilometres away, to give you some sense of scale. This is a frontier in both directions, Mamzel. A fair number of the visitors here have never heard of our authority. Those that have care less for it."
"That's what free trade station means," Thonius said. "This is Lucky Space, free space, a gateway. We Imperials are only tolerated visitors here."
"The stuff you know." Kys mocked.
"You wouldn't believe." Thonius replied.
They were approaching the entry gate at the end of the jetty. Its ancient stone form was decorated with interwoven carved figures that symbolised leaping flame. Heaps of votive offerings were piled up either side of the gate pillars. Dolls, figurines, ritual pots, small tied-up sacks, drinking vessels, ribbons, occasionally an icon like an aquila; and those were simply the ones of human origin that Nayl could identify. Any others were alien objects he could make no sense of. It was customary to leave a token offering at the gate on departure, to vouchsafe one's next voyage.
Two Vigilants awaited them at the gate.
"Tou ready with the tribute?" Preest whispered.
"The servitors have been instructed." Ravenor replied through Mathuin's mouth.
The Order of Vigilants administered the Reach. They collected tariffs, saw to the station's smooth running, and to the congress of fair trade. The pair that now approached them were lean and tall, at least as tall as Harlon or Zeph. They walked with an easy, nimble step that told Nayl right off they were consummate close fighters. Each Vigilant wore a sleeveless, antique gown of ribbed armour, marvellously constructed, baggy black pantaloons that were tight-cinched at the ankle, and black felt slippers that were shaped around the big toe. Their exposed arms were either bionic, or encased in some form of skinplant technology. It was a tech-design neither Nayl nor Ravenor had ever seen before. Sheathed over their shoulders they carried ceremonial hand-and-a-half swords.