by Dan Abnett
A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL
RAVENOR ROGUE
Ravenor - 03
Dan Abnett
(An Undead Scan v1.0)
For Andy banning,
the "A" of DnA, and about time too
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
"To have faith is to have purpose, and purpose in life is what defines a man, and makes him steadfast and resolute. Faith keeps him true and, even in the darkest hours, illuminates him like a candle flame. Faith guides him surely, from birth to the grave. It shows him the path, and prevents him from straying into the lightless thickets where insanity awaits. To lose faith is to lose purpose, and to be bereft of guidance. For a man without faith will no longer be true, and a mind without purpose will walk in dark places!"
-The Spheres of Longing, II. ix. 31
"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer!"
-Ancient human adage.
THEN
Sleef Outworld, 336.M41
It was all over. Ordion's scheme was in tatters. All that mattered now was survival.
"Don't make me kill you," the bounty hunter ordered. He was standing ten metres away and had a gun aimed at Zygmunt Molotch's face. The bounty hunter was formidably large and shaven-headed. His powerful body was packed into a matt-black bodyglove. He had been sent to watch the back steps into the upper vents.
"Oh, please! Don't!" Molotch cried, and sank to his knees in the sulphurous dust. Loki, he decided instantly. That was the man's accent. Loki, the freeze-world. That meant tough, no quarter. Best of the best.
No surprise that their opponent would employ the best of the best.
Keeping the big handgun aimed at Molotch's head, the bounty hunter came forward. Molotch could hear his approaching footsteps crunching the sand. That's it, close the distance. Ten metres is no use to me. Arm's length will make us equal, gun or no gun.
"Identify yourself," the bounty hunter commanded.
"My name is Satis," Molotch replied. He dropped his voice a tone and a half, and affected the nasal twang of southshore Sameter. "I'm a flier, just a flier, sir!" He whimpered slightly, for effect, trusting that the Fliers' Guild jacket he had dragged off a corpse five minutes earlier would back up his story.
"Are you armed?"
"No, sir, indeed I am not!"
The edge of the bounty hunter's shadow fell across him, cast by the lurid flames spewing up out of the vents. One step closer, just another step.
"Nayl?" a voice called out: a woman's voice, thickly accented.
Molotch tensed. Peering up, he saw a second person approaching. Saw her feet, anyway. Leather armour, tight-lashed. A particular loop-in-loop detailing to the hide work decoration. That and the accent added together to make a Carthaen swordswoman. Best of the best, once again.
"Just kill him," said the woman.
"Wait," replied the bounty hunter. Molotch heard him adjust his vox-link. "Iron wishes Thorn, by heartbeat, dark after dusk. Petals scattered, abundant. Teal sky. Closed shells, whispering dogs adjacent. Pattern delta?"
"Query adjacent dogs. The centre of the ripple, spreading."
"A thaw. Idiot mouths," the bounty hunter replied. "Pattern delta?" he asked again.
"Pattern denied. Pattern silver."
Some informal code. It was fascinating to hear. Molotch divined the principles quickly. He'd always had a talent for languages. His opponent was instructing the bounty hunter to keep Molotch alive, pending interview. The bounty hunter - Nayl, it seemed his name was - was leaning towards Molotch's claim to be just a hapless accomplice to the day's events.
"Pattern confirmed."
"Look at me," the woman said. Molotch eagerly wanted to, but he was in character, and his character was timid and scared. He kept his head bowed and mewed a sob.
The bounty hunter hoisted Molotch back onto his feet. His grip was astonishingly strong. Molotch found himself facing the bounty hunter - Nayl - and the swordswoman. She was typical of her breed: taller than most grown men, almost Astartes height, but slender, her hair tight braided, her body cased in leather armour, a tasselled cloak flapping out like wings in the wind. Every centimetre of her tight armour and her cloak was ritually decorated with scrollwork, knotting and bronze studs.
She was the most beautiful thing Molotch had ever seen, and he instantly decided he had to kill her.
She had a sword in her hands, clenched firmly as if it was feather light and about to fly away on the mountain wind. It was a sabre of extraordinary length, two-thirds as tall as she was. The blue cast of the metal told Molotch it had been folded eighteen or nineteen times, which was typical of ancient Carthaen metalwork, and indicated it was a masterpiece weapon, a priceless antique and, very likely, a psychic blade. The oldest Carthaen steels all were. That meant the woman and the sword were united in sentience. Yes, he could see it quiver ever so slightly in time with her breathing.
"You are a flier?" she asked, staring down at him.
Molotch made sure the fear remained in his eyes, even though all that was really there was desire. He was captivated. She was extraordinary, a goddess. He wanted to possess her. He wanted to hear her cry out his name in that delicious outworld accent as she died.
"I am a flier, indeed," he replied. Tone and accent. Tone and accent.
"You were hired?"
"Just for conveyance. It was a legal contract of hire."
"Leave him alone," the bounty hunter said. "There'll be time for that later." He was studying the vents above them, watching the glow of the plasma fires light up the sky.
The woman's brow furrowed. "Barbarisater thirsts," she said. "He is not what he seems."
She was good. She'd seen something, or the sword had smelled something. He longed to know what it was, so he could correct it next time. Accent? Body language? It wasn't the time to ask. The bounty hunter was turning back to face him. Molotch knew he was about to be afforded a one or possibly two-second window of opportunity, and that was all, and if he missed it, he would be dead. He had to swerve the initiative, quickly.
"Who are you?" he asked suddenly. The bounty hunter blinked in surprise.
"I need to know who you are," Molo
tch said, more urgently.
"Shut it!" Nayl said.
"I just don't know what's going on," Molotch whined.
"Better you don't," Nayl replied and glanced at the woman. "Cover him while I search him for weapons, Arianhrod."
Arianhrod. Nayl. Now he had both their names.
The woman nodded, and swept the sword around in a high guard that Molotch was fairly sure was called the ehn kulsar. She held it there. Over her shoulder, the vents boomed again.
Nayl reached forward. When he'd been down on his knees, Molotch had picked one of the heavy brass buttons off the cuff of the flier's coat and palmed it. He fired it with a flick of his index finger up into Nayl's left eye.
Nayl cursed and jerked backwards. Molotch sprang past him, hooking his toe behind the bounty hunter's calf to turn the stagger into an outright fall. The woman was already moving, the sabre lunging.
"Arianhrod," Molotch said, using the tone of command.
She hesitated. A hesitation was all he was ever going to get out of a Carthaen swordswoman, especially as he didn't know her full clan name. But it was enough. A momentary wrong-foot. He chopped the edge of his hand into her neck between the lip of her armour's collar and her braided hair. The muscles in her left shoulder went into involuntary spasm. As she recoiled in surprise, he lifted the sabre out of her hands.
It was like taking hold of the choke chain of an attack dog. The sabre fought him. It didn't want his touch. It pulled like the reins of a bolting steed. Molotch knew he had absolutely no hope of mastering it. Instead, he let it pull away from him like a kite in a gale.
Straight into the bounty hunter.
Nayl had just recovered from his stumble, and was pouncing to snap Molotch's neck. The Carthaen sabre impaled itself through his belly before he even saw it.
The bounty hunter made a soft sound, like a tut of disappointment. There was surprisingly little blood, even when he slid off the blade. It was so sharp that the lips of the wounds it had cut through flesh and bodyglove closed tight again, sealed along perfect incisions.
Nayl hit the dust, and lay there, one knee bent, his back arched. Molotch let go of the sabre and set it free. It flew away as if he'd thrown it. He didn't bother to see where it fell. The woman was a more pressing concern.
She uttered no words or curses as she came at him, which seemed remarkably restrained. Molotch wondered just how many tenets of the Ewl Wyla Scryi he had just dishonoured by taking her blade from her and using it on her comrade. A seven-fold shame, he estimated. He'd spare her the drudge of penance and mortification by killing her.
Someone had trained her well. He barely avoided a two-finger jab that came at him like the blade of a chisel, and deflected the iron-hard edge of her other hand with a brush of his forearm. She pivoted, and swept around with her left leg - so long and shapely! - and he had to swing out with his hips, arms raised like a dancer, in order to miss it. Her weight came over onto her left leg as it landed, and she swung the right leg out after it, backwards, wheeling herself into the air.
This time, the flying right toecap almost connected. Molotch flopped right back at the waist, dropping his chin into his collarbone to minimise the profile of his face, and converted his body's downward progress into a spring off his right hand that flipped him behind her as she landed.
Aware of him, she back-jabbed with her right elbow to crack his jaw. He stopped her elbow with the cup of his right hand - an impact hard enough to sting his palm - and drove his left fist in under her armpit with the middle finger extended like a beak.
She yowled and lurched away. He'd been studying her intricate body armour, the patterns of bronze studs, the leather ridges, the knot work. All designed to deflect a blade. Simple, very effective. When you fought a sword, the last thing you wanted to take was a scratch that would bleed you to weakness or death. All but the truest killing thrusts could be turned by her armour's complex surface.
But a fist wasn't a blade edge. A hand wasn't a sword. A cluster of bronze studs placed perfectly to glance away a cut to the ribs simply provided a target for a beaked fist. They as good as marked out the mid axillery line, and that governed the autonomic supply to the heart.
She tried to turn, but she was hurt and, besides, he was enjoying himself too much. He kicked her in the back of the left knee, and met her falling body with the heel of his left hand, striking the sacral plexus and flaring pain through her pelvis and legs.
She screamed. She was strong, three or four times as strong as him. She tore away and tried to roll clear. Having exploited the disadvantages of her armour, Molotch turned his attention to her cloak. Who but a barbarian fought in a cloak?
He grabbed it, and pulled with both arms as he simultaneously raised his left leg in a sidekick. Arianhrod snapped backwards, throttled by her cloak-clasp, and the back of her head slammed into his kicking foot.
She was done.
The urge to linger and kill her was immense, but there was no time to relish it. No time to explore a truly complex death. Pleasure could wait. All that mattered was survival.
Molotch started up the rock-cut stairs into the cliff. The smell of the vents was pungent. Clouds of miasmal gas fogged the air. It was hot. He began to move more quickly, and took off the borrowed jacket, throwing it aside.
He was already making mental notes and annotations. The Cognitae trained a man to recognise defeat or failure the moment it happened, and to be empowered by that knowledge. Men are often crippled or undone by the prospect of defeat, and that makes them vulnerable. A Cognitae was never vulnerable unless he chose to make himself so.
A defeat was something to be identified, analysed and used. A defeat was a springboard to launch a man onwards. That was what Madam.
Chase had taught them. Schemes failed. Plans came apart. Nothing happened with dead certainty. But men only perished when they allowed themselves the weakness of disappointment or maudlin regret.
A waste of effort, when the effort expended on regret could be put to much better use.
Clinical, precise, his mind calculated. Next time, he would plan scrupulously, because next time, he would be in charge. Ordion had been a flawed choice as leader. Molotch had only gone along with it because there was a matter of seniority to be respected. Ordion was twelve years his senior; Molotch a new, unproven graduate. No matter his extraordinary achievements as a student- extraordinary even in a school of extraordinarily able souls - Molotch was still obliged to wait his turn. He fancied Chase had appointed him to Ordion's team to keep an eye on the venture.
In which case, he had failed. The plan was ruined and Ordion was dead. The others too, as far as Molotch knew. He should have acted the moment Ordion started to lose perspective. Those little decisions, for instance, early on, that Molotch had disagreed with. He should have acted. He should have taken the initiative and confronted Ordion. If necessary, he should have killed Ordion and replaced him.
These things he was now learning. Do not rely on a leader. Be your own leader. And, as leader, do not rely on your subordinates to check your actions, for they may well be guilty of the first sin.
Next time, these things would be corrected.
All that remained to do was to make sure there was a next time.
He reached the upper levels of the crags. The limestone cliffs curved away beneath him like old, yellow bone. Far below, in the gnarled landscape of the lower vents, he could see the smudgy outline of their base camp. The gnosis engines were down there still, unless the inquisitors had smashed them; so tantalisingly within reach, so precious, even though they had barely half-loaded them to capacity. The vents had spoken much more slowly than Ordion had predicted. Two weeks, Ordion had estimated, followed by a return trip to Sarum with at least two if not three engines ripe and ready for use. But they had been on Sleef three months, more than enough time for the agencies of the Throne to track them, corner them, and bring them down.
The pale blue air shimmered with heat haze. The vents erupted periodica
lly, boiling vast tides of super-hot plasmatic flow up from the planet's ugly heart. They'd timed their visit to coincide with an eruptive period. The voices were said to be louder and more talkative at such times. Now, it seemed as if the plasma vents were booming and lighting up the sky in sympathy with the afternoon's violence.
Yellow smoke trickled back across the cliff top. Rock waste from the last surge pattered off the crags and skittered down the steeper drops. He could taste the hot stench in his mouth.
He paused by a large, ovoid boulder and took his link out of his pocket.
"Are you still there?" he asked.
"Who is this? Ordion?"
"It's Molotch. Everyone's dead. It's time to leave, Oktober Country, before they find you in parking orbit."
"We appreciate the tip."
"Don't think you're going without me," Molotch said.
"Of course." A pause. "We'll do our best. Are you near transport?"
"No. Fire up the teleport and lock onto my signal."
"The teleport's too valuable to risk-"
"I'm too valuable to leave here, you bastards. Fire it up."
"Molotch, I'm telling you, the vents are in flare. That activity is going to play hell with the teleport. Maybe even fry it, and that's if we get a fix."
"That's why I headed for high ground, to make it easy for you. I'm right up on the cliffs. Lock onto my signal."
"Move around. Into the open. Hurry."
Molotch moved out from beside the rock. Plasma heat and the sunlight stung his face. The wind caught his hair. Holding the link out, he clambered up the rocks until he was overlooking two of the main vents. He walked to the edge of one. Plasma bloomed in bright clouds from the crags a couple of kilometres west. It would be another five minutes until a surge came here again.
He looked down. The drop was immense. The terror was stimulating. Such a long way down, a long drop, it seemed, into the bowels of hell. The vent was forty metres in diameter, its walls scorched black and smoking, and it fell away for thousands of metres, straight down. Far below, there was a glimmer of light as the flames began to rise again.