by Rob Sanders
Among the filthy rags of the daemon worlders, Czevak fancied that he saw a coat he recognised. Pushing through their hunched, deformed ranks was a figure from his past. The gaudy patterns and the sting of colour; the hood and the mirror mask. Vespasi-Hann was here. The Shadowseer was here. The Harlequins were here – to take him back.
Belphoebe was suddenly at his side, her words and face choppy and unfocussed in the gathering gloom.
‘Rest,’ she whispered gently. Czevak’s head fell back with his eyes pitched at the ghoulish crowds. He searched for the Shadowseer and the silver doom of his mask, but the Harlequin was gone. And with that, Czevak went also.
Exit
Interregna
Grand cabin, Battle cruiser Indomitable, Above Cadia
CHORUS
‘This doesn’t make sense.’
High Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak looked at his new interrogator with ancient and irritable eyes across the scriptorium desk. The cabin was no longer filled with the static of the inquisitor’s scratching stylus – only the accusation of Czevak’s sour gaze.
‘Is it not enough that I have to work with the infernal noise outside? For Throne’s sake child, could we at least not have silence in here?’ Czevak asked Kieras.
‘The positions in these transcripts are diametrically opposed,’ Kieras went on, unperturbed.
Through the blast doors that covered the great cabin’s rear viewport, the thunder of battle intruded. The vessel trembled as Indomitable’s rear void shields soaked up the cannon fire of an enemy vessel crossing its wake.
‘The God-Emperor did not thrust you upon his blessed Imperium to make sense of some grand design,’ the ancient told him. The acolyte knotted his slender brow further, drawing the rings and piercings that decorated his Harakoni features together with a slight jangle. This, among many things, annoyed Czevak about his new apprentice. He had been Klute’s choice, since during the High Inquisitor’s sabbatical in the Black Library, Raimus Klute had attained rank as an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos in his own right. Although Klute had been charged with Czevak’s security, following Czevak’s return to the Holy Ordos, it had made sense to the former interrogator to give Czevak his own interrogator, Ferdan Kieras.
‘You are but one shard in a shattered mirror,’ Czevak told him, grasping his ferrouswood cane and limping across the cabin unaided. His time in the Black Library had been highly restorative, and although the High Inquisitor still felt his four hundred and eight years on his sagging face and racking his ancient bones, he no longer had need of his suspension suit with its body frame and artificial atmosphere. His smock and waistcoat still draped off his sharp bones like sacking and the ornamental fringe of his hanging cummerbund caressed the deck bearing the sinister emblazonry of the Ordo Xenos.
‘One shard in a shattered mirror reflecting a thousand truths, off a thousand other shards. And you ask for the mirror whole.’ Czevak grunted his disdain. ‘The search for a divine truth is a fool’s errand and even if you found it, it would be beyond your comprehension to understand it.’
As though Czevak had said nothing, the interrogator continued.
He read off one transcroll, ‘Address to the Council of Ryanti, ”Only a galaxy pure, purged and free of the filth xenos will be fit for the Emperor’s return. You who have enjoyed freedom, who have done nothing to earn it, your time has come. This time you will stand alone and fight for yourselves. Now you will pay for your freedom in the currency of honest toil and human blood.”’
‘What a pleasure to hear back what I wrote only minutes ago,’ Czevak said acerbically, above the rising din of the naval battle.
‘Then,’ Kieras continued, ‘the Conclave of Har. “There is a terrible darkness descending upon the galaxy, and we shall not see it ended in our lifetimes. A time of inconceivable horror is about to begin. A time that mankind with all the might of the Imperium cannot endure, when the strength of the xenos eldar fails. Even now, our doom stalks us across the stars. The light of that ancient civilisation has run its course. It is humanity’s turn to take up the torch and become an elder race. It is the time of the God-Emperor’s return, time to continue what he started and unite the galaxy under one beneficent cause.”’
‘So?’ Czevak barked as he re-took his throne. ‘So what?’
‘These messages contradict one another.’
‘You think I’ve lost my mind, interrogator?’ Czevak asked him with slow menace. ‘Old and confused? Perhaps polluted?’
‘No, High Inquisitor. I meant no offence,’ Kieras assured him with submissive syllables.
‘Offence?’ Czevak said as more impacts rumbled through the battle cruiser’s superstructure. ‘That is all you are capable of giving with your incessant, needless questions, you foolish child.’
In the months since his return from the Black Library, Czevak had come to miss the silence. Ask the eldar a question and you would receive three answers – all terrifying and all true. The xenos had long outgrown the need to ask successions of stupid questions, a trait that Czevak had come to greatly appreciate. Back among humankind he was constantly bombarded with simple inquiries from the mouths of simpletons. The grand cabin doors parted to admit an alabaster-faced astropath, who had arrived to take and telepathically transmit the High Inquisitor’s many transcripts. His many unfinished transcripts. The psyker stumbled and a collection of scrolls tumbled from the scriptorium desk as the Indomitable rocked again.
‘How goes the battle?’ Czevak charged the hooded figure.
‘I know nothing of the battle, sire. Only your will,’ the astropath replied solemnly.
Czevak grunted. He despised the questions of others but was and always had been a man of questions himself. More so since Klute had infected him with the voracious meme-virus, just prior to his entry to the Black Library. An inquisitive nature was not a poor attribute in an Imperial inquisitor and he could certainly stomach Kieras’s questions better than uninvolved, blind obedience. He routinely questioned the authority and motives of others and expected no less from his compatriots.
‘Wait outside,’ Czevak told the astropath, to which he received immediate compliance. The High Inquisitor turned to the interrogator.
‘Since my return from the Black Library of Chaos, my name has become... somewhat celebritised,’ Czevak admitted to him. ‘Not at my instigation – I assure you. It was inevitable I suppose. I carry the burden of many secrets and there are many who would like to alleviate me of that burden. To every crooked Radical I am a figurehead – a fount of knowledge. To the Puritans I am more dangerous and contaminated than ever – but they too would have those secrets before burning me atop a heretic hive. And the Chaotics and cultists, they covet my knowledge endlessly.’ Czevak’s face softened in grim contemplation.
‘Only yesterday a report came across this very desk detailing a living autopsy chamber, discovered by Klute’s agents investigating a Tzeentchian cult called the Cryptoclidii on Ingolstadt. It seems their plan was to capture me and extract my brain, in the hope of psycho-slicing the secrets out of it. Madness. This is what the galaxy has come to.’
As the High Inquisitor paused, Kieras went to ask a question, but stopped himself.
‘There is little I can do about the predations of crazed cultists,’ Czevak admitted. ‘Even Imperial ones. My own misguided Cardinal Carodoq heads a citizen crusade in the Spurcia subsector to have me declared a Living Saint of the Creed Imperial. Meanwhile the Witch Hunter, Pavlac razes worlds that would host my conclaves and executes inquisitors that would meet and hear my words on the charge that we are all pawns of the xenos or the Ruinous Powers. The only way to end this insanity is to be all things to all people.’
‘So we’re not going to Har?’
‘Or to Ryanti. Or to the hundred other places I have sent dictats. They are all deadrocks, places to which cultists, witch hunters and false friends will be drawn but cause little harm. Well, apart from to each other. And I will lose little sleep over that.’
&nbs
p; ‘A campaign of misinformation,’ Kieras nodded.
‘Also a little something to keep the more moderate Radicals and Puritans appeased. And the resulting equipoise…’
‘…will abate the Amalathians like Lord Goredon and Grand Master Specht,’ the Harakoni interrogator completed. ‘So where are we going?’
‘If we can break this blockade,’ the High Inquisitor confided, ‘Hydra Cordatus. Klute has organised an actual conclave in the Sentinel Worlds. I am but one man. There I can make my position known to others and put a little of the knowledge I have gained on my travels to good use.’
‘But which of the many positions you have advocated, is actually your own,’ Kieras asked.
‘Get me to Hydra Cordatus and you’ll find out,’ Czevak told the Harakoni.
Czevak’s stylus bounced off the scriptorium desk as the cabin suffered a sudden judder and the excruciating whine of forced metal quaked through the floor, walls and ceiling.
‘What the hell was that?’ Kieras blurted.
‘That was no cannon blast,’ Czevak said. Bells and klaxons started to echo up the battle cruiser’s corridors. ‘Something hit the ship. And close.’
Keiras was on his feet with the elongated barrel of his autopistol clear of its holster. The two men waited. Listening. Praying. From inside the vessel there was the discharge of weaponry and shouting. From outside, the growing intensity of enemy laser batteries tested the integrity of the void shields.
‘Put that away,’ the High Inquisitor told the interrogator. ‘Naval security can–’
The cabin entrance slid open. The aperture was door to door Naval security. The chamber was suddenly full of cobalt carapace, dark-visored helmets and tactical lascarbines. They were all around Czevak within moments like a shield of bodies, lifting him from his feet.
‘Lieutenant Van Saar, sir,’ the security officer identified himself curtly. ‘High Inquisitor – the ship has been breached and Inquisitor Klute has ordered me to escort you to the aft shuttle bay. Please excuse the informality.’
With that, the security detail hustled the High Inquisitor from the grand cabin and out into the corridor, knocking the alabaster-skinned astropath to the ground as they passed.
‘Are you the High Inquisitor’s pilot?’ Van Saar put to Kieras directly.
‘I’m his interrogator,’ the Harakoni replied, ‘and his pilot.’
Grabbing Kieras by the arm the lieutenant jogged up behind his detail dragging the acolyte beside him. As Kieras passed the downed astropath he called, ‘The High Inquisitor’s messages on the scriptorium desk, send them, now!’
‘As you wish,’ the astropath droned as the two men were bundled out of sight.
The corridors and passageways flashed by Czevak, jostled as he was and taking only one step in ten himself. Between the carapaced bodies the High Inquisitor got the impression of wailing klaxons, scrambled troops and little else. Several times the security detail had to be re-routed by their lieutenant because of blazing firefights or life support failures in battle damaged sections and compartments.
As the detail exploded from the corridor and out into the open space of the small shuttle bay, they fanned out with their lascarbines thrust forward. They assumed a cover formation around the lone Arvus-class lighter, two of the visored detail running the High Inquisitor to the shuttle. Kieras arrived moments later with Lieutenant Van Saar. From another entrance, Inquisitor Raimus Klute strode across the hangar floor, his neatly trimmed moustache and robes at odds with the gore-splattered medicae apron and gloves he was wearing.
As Czevak’s limbs once again became his own he caught sight of his former interrogator, flanked by one of his henchmen, a turbaned Imperial Guard veteran, wearing the colours of the Gurdeshi Colonial Rifles and carrying a grenade launcher.
‘Raimus, what’s happening? Are you all right?’
Klute looked down at the blood.
‘None of it’s mine. The sickbay was hit. Most of the medicae staff incapacitated. I’m just helping out. We’ve been boarded in engineering, starboard. Naval security will hold them off but it’s only a matter of time until our blockade run grinds to a halt. We’ve sustained damage and the Indomitable is already slowing.’
‘Options, inquisitor?’ Czevak put to him.
‘None for the Indomitable, my lord,’ Klute said honestly. ‘Chaos cruisers, escorts and just about everything else is running down on us as we speak. Captain Landau has contacted the Ramilles and the Anatoly Ascendant. They should be able to provide fire support and evacuation within a few hours.’
‘A few hours!’ Czevak burst.
‘No options for the Indomitable, but one for you, my lord,’ Klute said gravely. ‘There is a closer vessel. Landau informs me that we’re passing the moon of Bast. An Inquisitorial Black Ship corvette on a purgation sweep answered our call. The Divine Thunder. She doesn’t have the sort of firepower to aid us in the battle ahead but she’s sleek, fast and more than able to continue the blockade run. I have used Grand Master Specht’s authority to commandeer the vessel for the journey to Hydra Cordatus. Saint Joaqhuine and your security detail await your orders there.’
Czevak nodded, impressed with his former interrogator’s strategy and coordination – all the while up to his elbows in the blood and guts of Navy grunts. Klute might have become an Imperial inquisitor but he would always be a member of the Officio Medicae Imperialis.
‘Gather your people,’ Czevak said.
‘No sir, there’s no time for that,’ Klute insisted. ‘In a few minutes I’ll give Captain Landau the order to change our course. You will be off the Indomitable by then and the battle cruiser will slow further to draw the enemy’s fire and continue the chase. That will give you time to get to the Divine Thunder and then time for the Divine Thunder to get away.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Raimus. Get on the shuttle.’
‘Can’t do that, sir. I’m going to finish what I started here. I’ve asked these people to give their lives for you to have a fighting chance to get to the conclave. I choose to share their risk. With the Emperor’s blessing, we shouldn’t be far behind you on the Ascendant.’ Czevak shook his head with a mixture of vague guilt and admiration. Klute put a bloodied glove on Kieras’s shoulder. ‘You’re in good hands here; Ferdan is an excellent pilot.’
Kieras nodded and started climbing the cockpit ladder, up past the shuttle’s nameplate: Bucephalus.
‘Say hello to Joaqhuine for me,’ Klute added, walking backwards across the deck, then, ‘Lieutenant Van Saar, take four of your men and escort the High Inquisitor to the safety of the Divine Thunder.’
‘Yes, inquisitor.’
‘If you’ll step aboard, my lord,’ Van Saar said to Czevak, ‘we appear to be a little pushed for time.’
As Czevak stepped inside the lowered passenger compartment with his Navy security detail he put a hand up to Klute.
‘I’ll see you at Hydra Cordatus.’
‘God-Emperor willing,’ Klute called back as Kieras fired the engines of the Arvus lighter and the belly compartment began to rise into the main body of the shuttle. Czevak watched Klute and his Gurdeshi henchman return to their improvised sickbay before the door on the passenger compartment slammed shut.
By the time the compartment lamps came on, the Navy grunts were already strapped into their seats. The lieutenant directed Czevak to a small throne under an observation window set in the shuttle roof.
Kieras’s Harokoni lilt filled the compartment.
‘Buckle in High Inquisitor, if you will…’
Van Saar swept on – seemingly everywhere – checking the harnesses on his men and then helping the aged inquisitor with his throne. The lieutenant snatched a vox headset and gave it to Czevak, before taking his own seat.
‘…something tells me this won’t be a smooth passage.’
‘They rarely are, child,’ Czevak voxed back. ‘So just to put the good lieutenant and his men at ease, you have done this before young Kieras?’
‘Good, good,’ Czevak mused sardonically. ‘Just didn’t want to raise any pulses.’
‘The Chaotics will see to that, my lord.’
Through the observation window, Czevak watched the hangar vault rotate as the shuttle completed a manoeuvre that the inquisitor only fully appreciated in the pit of his stomach. Kieras was very comfortable at the controls of the shuttle, Czevak soon came to understand as the Harakoni pilot blasted the Arvus craft out of the hangar, around and along the length of the Indomitable.
The damage to the battle cruiser was considerable, the grandeur of gargoyle-encrusted architecture replaced by mangled wreckage and the inferno of internal fires sweeping through the decks. The Indomitable’s void shields were still operating, deflecting the long range sporadic energy blasts of enemy cannon fire. This led Czevak to believe that the battle cruiser had been rammed or at least broadswiped by another colossal vessel.
From out of the Indomitable’s colossal wake, Czevak saw their attacker emerge. It had undoubtedly been a vessel once, but now it was something else, a daemonic fusion of craft and creature. The vessel’s mid-section was a metallic mass of writhing bodies, crude and gargantuan. Obscene orifices and protrusions served as horrific weapon batteries and the Chaos vessel’s bulbous aft trailed a profusion of whip-like tails that gave the daemonically possessed vessel an unnatural manoeuvrability. Breast clusters bled an ichorous substance down the vessel’s length and the prow came apart like a thick, muscular claw, eager to reach out for the Indomitable’s fleeing form.