And the Navigator. Even the memory of her pallid face and her fierce, somehow feverish eyes chilled Ksana. She did not know and did not want to speculate what Domasa Dorel might want, but she did not think that it would stop with taming a rogue trader to a pet run in a favoured subsector or to a certain world. She did not think that at all.
“That prying little rodent of a wife is going to be a problem, too, you mark me,” said Cherrick, hefting his hellgun.
“What makes you think so?” Had they still been back on Gunarvo Domasa would have dismissed the remark out of hand, but even this early in the voyage she was uneasy. The turbulence in the warp was bad—as a Navigator she understood just how bad, and what that might mean for the voyage. She was trying to put it out of her mind: the man who was navigating them was far more accomplished than she, and she had other priorities. Hers was the thumb that the thrown-together syndicate wanted on the pulse of whatever was going on around Varro and that was what she was trying to concentrate on.
With the glimpses her third eye was showing her of what was going on outside the hull, she had a feeling that was going to be hard.
“I don’t like her. I don’t like her at all. She’s got this nasty, ratty, watchful look to her. I bet she’s got it all planned out in her mind, wants the charter for herself. It fits, doesn’t it? And she doesn’t like you.” Cherrick grinned.
“I suppose I see why. She’s smart enough not to trust me, and I think she’s got a good idea of what I want out of her husband.” Domasa shrugged. “Plus, I scare that little brat of hers, so I suppose she dislikes me for that. Rather sweet of her, really. Have you got the conduit covered?”
“What?”
“The crawl-way. There’s meant to be a crawl-way along the roof of this whole corridor.” Domasa’s voice slowed and dropped into an ice talking-to-an-idiot cadence. “So. Do. You. Have. It. Covered?”
Cherrick glowered upwards, trying to think of something smart to come back with. The two of them were standing at the head of the central utility corridor that ran through the Gann-Luctis’ lower decks, whose maps Domasa had spent half a day memorising: it would not be wise to walk about the ship with blueprints under her arm that she was not supposed to possess. She stood patiently as Cherrick muttered into a vox-set and watched as two armsmen came hurrying down the stairwell. She had obtained an amulet-key that could speak to nearly every security plate on the ship, and when she directed it at the hatch above them there was an avalanche of screeches and clatters as it slid aside and a rickety metal ladder unfolded. The two men exchanged a sour look, ignited shoulder-lamps and began climbing.
Domasa closed her eyes and brought up her mental deck plan again. The crawl-way was the last way out of this level. She and Cherrick blocked the corridor, other armsmen were guarding the liftwells off the utility deck and covering the compartments to either side. Domasa had experienced a single small flash of annoyance when they had found their quarry gone from the Psykana dome, but it was something she had been prepared for. It was fine. She had control.
“So, were you listening?”
“Hmm?” She hadn’t been. She needed to concentrate. If they didn’t do this seamlessly things could get messy.
“The wife. She’s going to get in the way. I think we can run him, but we might not be able to run him with the wife around.”
“Leave the diplomacy to me, Cherrick, you’ve already proved that you can’t do it. What you can do is make sure that toy of yours is charged so we can get started.”
“If weapon-handling is something I’m meant to be better at, my lady, then maybe I should just check to make sure you’re properly equipped yourself?”
Domasa glared at him and slipped her sleeve back. A bundle of fine golden rods rested against her forearm and the back of one malformed hand: her long fingers were curled around a trigger-grip and the ammunition tank was anchored at the inside of her wrist. Cherrick sniffed.
“Useless if he’s armoured, of course.”
“He won’t be,” snapped Domasa, “and this is much better for taking him alive but incapacitated, which I’ll thank you to remember is our priority.”
“Fine.” Cherrick tapped the chime-stud on his glove for the teams to start moving and got half a dozen steps down the corridor before he realised Domasa was still behind him. “Are you coming, ma’am? You’re the one with the non-lethal weapon, after all. Are you really going to let me laz him full of holes?” Domasa began to follow, slowly, weaving back and forth to make sure Cherrick was between her and door or alcove they passed. She was confident that Symozon was no fighter, but physical confrontation made her edgy.
Oafish as Cherrick was most of the time, now he was silent and focused, his steps so controlled that Domasa realised she had to listen hard to hear each footfall. Domasa tried to do the same—her feet were as elongated as her hands, only touching the floor at the balls and toes of her feet, her heels jutting like a big cat’s, and that made it easier.
From Cherrick’s vox-plate she could hear the faint rustle of voices from the other men. The whole formation was moving now, slowly, thoroughly, unstoppably. Domasa almost tripped on the leading edge of her gown, and realised she was walking hunched over. This was stupid. She found herself wanting to straighten up and shout out. How did the man think this would end? Where did he think he was going to go? How long did he think he could hide?
As long as he can, she thought to herself, and when he’s brought out of hiding then we can damn well expect him to want to take a few of us with him. So be careful, Domasa Dorel, and don’t give him the chance.
The Flotilla of Hoyyon Phrax,
in transit
Although he had been expecting it ever since he had properly regained consciousness, Petronas’ heart still gave a lurch when they came filing into the room. He was still in the chair, still nauseous and always tired, but his thoughts were razor-sharp and he could make fists and hold them for a count of seventy-three before the pain made him stop.
He recognised Crewmistress Behaya straight away—he had spoken to her once or twice before, on special occasions when she had toured the lower tables at feasts. And after a moment he was able to place Kyorg as well, the old fool who purported to ran the Office of Envoys. It had been Kyorg’s orders that had led to him going down to Shexia to—to do a thing he didn’t like to think about. He tucked his hands under the blankets so that the masters would not see him making fists.
Halpander he had dealt with a few times, when he had been assigned to run loading of cargoes and provisions. And there were faces he couldn’t quite put names to: the lipless woman in the black and white shawl, the little bald man with the sad-hound face… and the figure in red. Petronas’ eyes locked onto it and did not move.
“I find it difficult to believe that you never knew anything at all about Magos Dyobann.” That was D’Leste, who was dragging a stool over to sit by Petronas’ chair. “He’s a regular associate of mine, of course, but aren’t I right in thinking that the whole fleet knows about the monster-man who lives on board the Gyga VII?
Petronas kept staring. Just like all the other flotilla children, he had listened to, made up, embellished and passed on the myths about the Gyga VII. It was the ship that almost no one travelled to and that anyone who had seen inside was not allowed to discuss. Although he had scoffed at the stories of the red monster-man, those stories had still kept him awake after lights-out, and when Nimmond had made up extravagant fantasies about what lay in that ship he had listened along willingly enough. When he was older he had learned that the ship was something to do with engineering and workshops and had barely given it another thought. The flotilla was full of things it was useless to wonder about.
But now the red-robed monster-man was here, and Petronas was surprised to feel no fear in the presence of the flotilla-children’s favourite bogeyman. He kept staring.
“Time for you to be introduced, I expect,” said the sad-looking little man. “This, Mister Petronas, is an hon
oured member of the flotilla, a member of rather more years of service and standing than yourself if I might say so. As Doctor D’Leste has said, he is Magos Dyobann of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He joined us as a magos errant after the Explorator fleet of Pontifex Mechanis Hvel was disbanded some, what was it, one hundred and twelve years ago, by my count. Near the beginning of my service, in fact.”
“I thought we were supposed to be independent from such as that.” Normally Petronas would have stopped at the thought, but the words were out before he realised. He wondered if the drugs in his system were blunting his edge.
“Our great flotilla could travel the galaxy for a long time on our own resources,” said Gait, the reproach stronger in his voice now although Magos Dyobann had not reacted to the shot at all. “Perhaps a lifetime. But there come times when we must conduct rites of engineering or medicine or other things that are simply beyond us. The Adeptus Mechanicus knows this. And even as we have need of their services, there are things that we offer in turn. We are a rogue trader flotilla, after all.”
“Our contract with the Adeptus Mechanicus is a simple deed of exchange, with no date of expiry,” said the woman in the shawl, pinching each word off with her lips as though she resented having to expend the energy on it. “We have the right to call upon the services of the Mechanicus to meet what needs our own lay techmen are incapable of meeting. In exchange, the magos errant… travels with us.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” said Petronas. The realisation that he had not been punished for the way he had first spoken was making him bolder. “What is your stake in this, Magos Errant Dyobann?” His voice, he noticed, was still weak, even hoarser than the woman’s had been. Then his gut lurched as suddenly the magos bore down on him with a disturbing, gliding gait.
“There is much all across the cosmos to interest and draw a disciple of the Omnissiah,” came the voice from under the scarlet half-veil that hid the magos’ lower face. It was the voice Petronas remembered from his sickness, simultaneously warm and affectless. “And its charter allows this flotilla to travel in places that might attract attention or be simply forbidden. There are certain discoveries that my ancient and holy order consider are better studied in privacy.” The magos bent over and then, to Petronas’ revulsion, the corner of the man’s right eye bulged and birthed a slender metal worm that stretched from the place where the eyelids joined. It swayed in the air for a moment, then lunged out to meet and snap onto one of the antennae of the butterfly-diagnostor at Petronas’ shoulder. The machine began to quiver as though the magos’ tendril were sucking it dry.
“There will be the occasional need, for example,” Dyobann went on, his face centimetres from the ensign’s, “to ensure that a… setback for the Imperial military does not lead to the loss of rare and consecrated technology. There may be times when a traveller of independent means such as a trader flotilla comes into contact with devices fashioned at xenos hands, or specimens of value to our Order Biologis, which it is prudent to extract and place into Mechanicus custody as a priority. Fortunately the flotilla has permitted the construction of excellent laboratoria aboard the Gyga VII, over which our treaty allows me full control. Or perhaps there is an artefact of our own construction, lost in the way that so much of what the Imperium once was has become lost, rediscovered by our scouts and agents or by purest chance…”
“I think I see,” said Petronas as the worm suddenly uncoupled from the butterfly and snaked back into Dyobann’s face. It did not completely vanish, he noticed now that he knew to look: it still hung at the very corner of the eye like a tiny silver tear. That detour we made out into that dead cluster a couple of years back. Fourteen-month round trip to a world none of us were allowed off the ships to see. “Was that you?” The magos didn’t respond. And that xenos meeting post out in Lucky Space in the Segmentum Obscuras, and the stop at the Wulanjo system forge-world straight after. “Alright.” He suddenly winced, looked down, and could not stifle a cry.
The magos had brought his arm up and the sleeve of his crimson kimono had slipped back to his elbow. His arm was a tangled braid of metal cables, twisting over and around and through one another, of some dark metal that gleamed with scented ceremonial oil. The whole array was in subtle motion, each cable pulsing and shifting against its neighbours. Petronas looked down in panic. At a point a little past where the magos’ hand would have been the cables plaited together and locked into a shining gold collar then splayed out like a hand: the dozen metal dendrites that were its fingers had slid under the thin sheet covering Petronas’ body. The ensign gawped silently into Dyobann’s augmented eyes as each tip slid coolly over his skin, then stopped, pinched and slid a needle home.
“You demonstrate a perceptive and assertive nature, ensign. I approve.” The magos’ tone had not changed in the slightest. “Yes, the missions you have mentioned were performed at my request. The decision to keep the nature of the Gyga VII from the rank and file of the flotilla was made by your own masters, but I admit to occasional curiosity as to what the crews of the other ships made of the errands that my own masters occasionally require us to make.”
Petronas fought to control his breathing and think. Every instinct he had told him that something big was about to happen to him, something big, and that he had to get onto the front foot and be ready for it. With an effort of will he pushed away the sensation of the needles wriggling in his skin.
“And I’m no longer rank and file, am I? They’ve brought you out into the open and introduced you. So you’re about to kill me or about to promote me. Which is it?”
There was silence in the room. The dendrites squirmed and left pale-orange oilstains on the sheet; the needles withdrew and the magos dropped his sleeve over his snakes’ nest of a hand, then straightened up and stood there with his eyes closed. Looking at him, Petronas thought of one of Gait’s sommeliers tasting a wine before pouring it out for a dining-party.
“The diagnostors are correct.” Dyobann announced a moment later. “The preliminary doses have all taken and been absorbed. You did well to recommend this one as the most likely, D’Leste. I approve.”
Petronas fought down another wave of revulsion. He had been right. The magos had been tasting his blood, with whatever inhuman senses he could extend through those cables.
It took a moment for the other word to hit.
Doses.
Under the sheet, his fists were white and aching.
“What do we have to straighten out?” D’Leste asked. “Didn’t he cause a little trouble before we got him?”
“He thought it was the cooks who were behind what was going on and went after them,” said Behaya.
“Killed a couple of them, didn’t he?” asked a tall, stately man Petronas recognised as Captain-at-Arms Trazelli.
“A steward named Pdieo and a junior officer named Gensh,” said Behaya. “Nobody important.”
“More importantly,” put in Kyorg, “how many of the other potential subjects actually survived the dosage anyway?”
“Technically?” D’Leste asked. “Four. To all practical purposes, none. Two are comatose and fading fast, their metabolisms have lost the ability to process nutrients. They won’t last two more days. One will probably be gone by the time we get back. Every single cell in his body seems to want to become a tumour. And there’s one last one, Omya, another young officer. He has developed some rather interesting instabilities. The magos and I are going to keep him on the Gyga as long as we can, out of curiosity.”
“We cut it very fine indeed, then,” rasped the woman in black and white. “You ought to be thankful that this one survived. I didn’t realise we were going to be taking this much of a chance.”
“Omya…” Petronas whispered. “Omya. My friend. He’s not dead?”
D’Leste snorted. “I’d forget him if I were you, my young friend. You’re not going to see him again, and you’re going to have plenty of other things on your mind.”
Petronas stared at him un
til Gait finally stepped forward.
“Spite’s sake, let’s just out with it and tell the man, shall we?” He turned to Petronas. “We have a duty for you, my young ensign. A new office we want you to take on. One that perhaps won’t be pleasant at first, but which is vital to the survival of the flotilla as we know it now and which will reward you in ways you cannot imagine.” He stopped, made to speak again, stopped again and laughed.
“And even I find myself balking at saying it outright,” he said to the rest of them. “You’d think we’d all be a little numbed to the enormity by now.” He turned back to Petronas and took in a deep breath.
“Nils Petronas, how would you like to be the new Rogue Trader Phrax?”
The Sanctioned Liner Gann-Luctis,
in transit
“He was hiding in the winch-wells on the utility decks. He hurt a couple of Cherrick’s troopers but we flushed him out with a microshock grenade and gave him a needling for good measure.” Domasa Dorel’s normally flat, hard eyes were shining and her voice was excited—she looked as though she should have been flushed, but her skin was as pale as ever. Behind her Cherrick, the man in charge of her bully-squads, held a leash whose other end was cinched around the wrists of a kneeling man with the sunken eyes and green robes of an astropath. Behind them, one of Cherrick’s men quietly closed the door of the Gann-Luctis’ ready-room.
“Hurt? How did he hurt them?” Varro looked past her for signs of injury among Cherrick’s men. Domasa waved the question off.
“They’re not here, they’re off resting up. He didn’t have any weapons, nobody but the ship’s own complement is supposed to carry weapons during a warp-voyage,” said Domasa, cheerfully ignoring Cherrick’s hellgun and belt of grenades and the needier whose trigger-grip she was still clasping. “But psykers don’t dare work their wills too hard on a warp voyage either, there’s only the thickness of a Geller field between them and the Worst of Seas.”
[Shira Calpurnia 02] - Legacy Page 10