by Dan Abnett
He looked up. Nayl was beckoning to him.
There was a hatch at the end of the hallway. It was clearly Imperial tech, a heavy duty hatch like a shift-ship’s air-gate. It looked incongruous, as if it had been retrofitted into the old, eerie architecture of the building.
Why would you put something that massive and secure into a place where polished wooden doors with silver handles were otherwise sufficient?
And if the answer to that question was security, what did you keep on the other side?
And why would you then leave the hatch wide open?
Drusher joined Nayl, and they peered in through the hatch.
The chamber beyond was vast and cylindrical. Drusher guessed it was the interior of one of the fortress’ main towers. All the original floors and stairways had been removed. The curved walls soared up into darkness above them and dropped away into darkness far below.
The walls had been etched with lines. It was script. Hundreds of thousands of lines of writing, covering every centimetre of the interior walls, in perfect, uniform rows. It must have taken decades for skilled artisans to inscribe it all. Drusher wondered what it said. He was too far away to be able to read any of it.
The hatch led out onto a railed, metal landing inside the hall. The landing hung like a balcony under the hatch. Open metal steps led down to other platform stages below and several further above them. The platforms and connecting steps were all standard template units, Imperial build, the kind seen in manufactories and promethium plants and all manner of workspaces in human habitations across the Imperium. There was something oddly reassuring about their familiarity, but, like the hatch, they seemed uncomfortably out of place in the setting.
Around them, filling the main space of the tower, was vast technology of another sort. This was the source of the constant humming. To Drusher, it looked as if someone had taken all the complex inner mechanisms of an antique mechanical timepiece, enlarged them, then slotted them carefully into the drum of the tower. Cogs, gears, springs and winders whirred and moved in perfect, oiled precision. The crude STC platform sections and steps had been suspended inside the vast brass mechanism, allowing access to it at different levels. On some platforms, powerful cogitator units and workstations had been bolted in place, connected by sheaves of cables and data wires to the Great Machine. Drusher saw their screens and displays flickering with bright lines of changing data: monitor positions from which to study and perhaps even operate the strange and ancient mechanism. The air was dry and smelled of metal filings, oil and warm power systems.
There was a large platform directly below them, a circular gantry fixed in the centre of the tower’s interior. In the middle of it was a square iron cage, crudely heavy and filthy black.
Inside the cage was a man.
He was naked. His skin was dirty, scarred and blistered. His hair was long and ragged, and hung over his face and shoulders. He was kneeling on the floor of the cage, hunched over, trembling.
The guttural, moaning sounds were coming from him.
Nayl glanced at Drusher then led the way out onto the landing. His weapon was up and ready at his cheek. As they moved, he covered each angle and turn.
They edged down the metal steps onto the circular gantry. Drusher could smell the rank stench of the man in the cage. The sounds he was making made Drusher’s skin crawl.
The man heard them approach, or smelled them. It felt to Drusher like an animal response. He looked up at them in terror. Drusher saw his wild eyes staring through the matted fringe of his hair. He murmured something and backed away into the far corner of the cage.
Drusher peered at him.
‘Any idea who that is?’ he whispered to Nayl.
Nayl was watching the hatch and the other platforms for signs of movement.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not a clue. But it looks like the poor bastard’s been in there for a while, magos.’
‘Magos?’
They both looked around. The man in the cage was timidly rising to his feet, hunched, pawing the lank hair out of his eyes so he could stare at them. They saw a dirty, broken face that had been ravaged by years of pain and anguish.
‘M-magos?’ the man said. His mouth moved oddly as he spoke, as if he was working very hard to articulate. A man speaking a language that he had just learned, or which he had forgotten years before.
‘M-magos?’ he said.
‘You can speak?’ said Drusher.
‘Watch yourself,’ Nayl warned.
‘Magos,’ the man said. He edged towards them. ‘Magos,’ he repeated. ‘I am. I am. That is me. I am the magos. You know me?’
‘Do you have a name?’ asked Drusher.
‘Magos,’ the man replied with an anxious nod. ‘I… I am the magos. M-magos Sark.’
Nayl and Drusher glanced at each other quickly.
‘Are you Draven Sark?’ Nayl asked sternly. ‘Answer me. Are you Magos Draven Sark?’
The man nodded furiously. He was panting. Drusher saw a weird expression on his face. He was baring his teeth like a dog.
He was trying to smile.
‘W-w-w-will you let me out?’ he asked. ‘P-please. I am Dr-draven Sark. Magos Draven Sark, a-and I would like to c-come out of here now.’
‘It depends,’ replied Nayl. ‘Who put you in there?’
‘He put himself in there,’ said Jaff.
Nayl and Drusher turned around sharply. She was standing on the gantry beside them. She looked scared.
‘The hell did you come from?’ Nayl exclaimed.
Jaff gestured to the chamber around them.
‘I found this place. I’ve been looking around.’
‘Where are the others?’ asked Nayl.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
‘What do you mean he put himself in there?’ asked Drusher.
‘I’ve been trying to access data from the terminals in this chamber,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely a Cognitae facility, and it’s been here a very long time.’
‘How long?’ asked Drusher.
‘Never mind that,’ snapped Nayl. ‘Tell us about Sark.’
‘He didn’t build this place,’ replied Jaff. ‘But he’s run it for the Cognitae for the last century or so. Running its program.’
‘Program for what?’ asked Drusher.
‘I don’t know that yet,’ she replied. ‘But from the notes I found, it seems that Magos Sark was so desperate to get a result, he placed himself in that cage.’
‘Yes, because that’s what scientists do,’ said Drusher.
‘He made himself his own laboratory test subject,’ said Jaff witheringly. ‘He is clearly damaged and obsessive. That cage is a psychometric monitor, and Sark is his own lab rat.’
‘We need to know a lot more than that,’ said Nayl.
‘Well, I was working on it,’ said Jaff. ‘Then I saw you.’
Nayl lowered his rifle and looked around. He walked to the gantry rail.
‘Which terminal were you using, Audla?’ he asked. ‘Where did you get this information from?’
Audla Jaff raised her hand as if to point. But she was holding a compact, snub-nose laspistol.
She fired. The shot hit Nayl in the back. He lurched forwards, toppled over the rail and fell.
Drusher stared, his mouth wide open.
Jaff turned the weapon on him.
‘He was too dangerous to live,’ she said. ‘But you are containable. And new test subjects are always useful.’
SIXTEEN
The Bad Place
Jaff took a step towards Drusher and placed the muzzle of her sidearm against his forehead. Expressionless, she reached forwards with her other hand, and began patting the pockets of his old coat. She stopped, reached in and fished out the gun Nayl had given him.
She stepped back, keeping her weapon trained on him, and put the confiscated gun in the hip pocket of her jacket. Sark had hunched down in the cage, in fear, and was grunting and moaning again.
Over her
shoulder, she called out ‘clear’ in a strong, loud voice. Her aim never wavered.
‘How long?’ Drusher asked her.
‘How long what?’
‘Have you been working against the ordos?’
‘Since the day I was born, magos,’ she said. ‘I am the product of a Cognitae breeding school. I was engineered as a savant… Precisely the sort of exceptional individual a man like Gregor Eisenhorn finds appealing and useful. The sort of person he recruits.’
‘I suppose that explains why you’ve been so unhelpful every step of the way,’ said Drusher. ‘Someone like you should have worked out Keshtre’s location in a matter of hours. But you already knew where it was. You were trying to stop us finding it.’
She smiled.
‘Your face is an open book, Magos Drusher,’ she said. ‘Micro-spasms in your platysma, zygomaticus and levator labii superioris. Involuntary dilation of the pupils. You are terrified. Your composure is a front. Bravado.’
‘My levator labii superioris is doing just fine,’ replied Drusher. ‘Of course I’m terrified. You just killed a man, and you’re aiming a gun at me. You realise your fate will be appalling. I don’t know what it will be precisely, but I doubt the Inquisition treats heretics with much mercy.’
‘It does not,’ she agreed. ‘But then, you’re not with the Inquisition. The Rot-God-King’s Holy Ordos have no inkling of this affair. Eisenhorn is a rogue, magos. He is extreme and dangerous, even by their standards. They declared him hereticus many years ago, and they hunt him as keenly as they hunt the Cognitae. There – the platysma again. You didn’t know that.’
‘I guessed,’ said Drusher. ‘This whole operation lacked legitimacy. I don’t know him well, but I believe he is determined–’
‘Oh, Eisenhorn believes his cause is just. In his arrogance.’
‘And he hunts for you?’
‘Bringing down the Cognitae is his life’s work,’ she said. ‘The ruthless zeal with which he pursues us is the main reason he was disowned by his ordo masters. Be clear, Magos Drusher. No one is waiting to hear from him. No one is coming to save you. No one knows you’re here. He’s done. You’re all done.’
‘You say that confidently, Mamzel Jaff, but you’re not certain, are you? A twitch of the masseter, a little tremble of the corrugator supercilii. Doubt, plain as day.’
Jaff frowned and shot her free hand to her face, involuntarily.
‘You’re a little shit,’ she said, glaring at him.
Drusher smiled back. He was no reader of micro-expressions. He’d made it up just to rattle her.
He heard footsteps. A man was coming up the metal steps onto the gantry. He was tall and heavyset, with piercing violet eyes that contrasted strangely with his olive skin, jet-black hair and full beard. He wore a leather-jack suit with a mesh-armour jacket. A large autorifle hung across his shoulder. Three people followed him: a hard-faced woman with cropped red hair, a tall, heavily tattooed man and an overweight man with hooded eyes.
‘Why is he alive, Jaff?’ the bearded man asked. His voice was extraordinarily deep.
‘A useable subject, Gobleka,’ she replied. ‘High intelligence quotient.’
The man looked at Drusher as if he were an annoying stain on good carpet. Gobleka. Drusher recognised the name. The heretic Eisenhorn’s interrogator had been hunting on Gershom.
‘Have you questioned him?’ Gobleka asked Jaff.
‘He knows nothing.’
‘Establish that as a fact,’ hissed Gobleka. ‘Thanks to your poor work, the agents of the damn ordos are inside the hall. I want them all found and extinguished, so we’d better know everything they know.’
Drusher saw the look on Jaff’s face. That was a micro-expression he understood. Jaff was terrified of Gobleka. Drusher had no doubt this stemmed from Gobleka’s imposing physicality and charming manners, but he was also sure Jaff had something to prove. She hadn’t sprung the trap and killed them all cleanly at Helter. She’d let them get inside Keshtre. She was clearly keen to demonstrate her competence and make up for the error. Drusher doubted the Cognitae offered much in the way of second chances to those in their service.
‘Where’s Eisenhorn?’ Jaff asked, her weapon still aimed.
‘I don’t know,’ said Drusher.
‘True?’ asked Gobleka.
‘Yes,’ said Jaff. ‘He couldn’t cloak a response to that question.’
Gobleka nodded.
‘Take him down to the cellar cages,’ said Gobleka.
Jaff hesitated.
‘What?’ Gobleka asked.
‘Can’t Blayg or Streekal do it?’ she asked.
‘Do it your bloody self, Jaff,’ sneered the overweight man.
‘I want to get back out,’ said Jaff to Gobleka. ‘Betancore is outside. The remaining loose end. I need to deal with her, and I’m the best choice to get close to her.’
‘Put him away. Then you can go,’ said Gobleka.
Jaff looked at Drusher and gestured with her gun.
He went where she told him to go. Jaff walked behind him, covering him with her weapon. They descended from the gantry and followed a route down the tower, crossing platforms and walking down suspended staircases, the brass wheels and gears of the Great Machine whirring around them. Drusher tried not to feel alarm at the immense drop below them: his good old fear of heights. A gun at his back served to focus his mind.
‘What does it do?’ he asked.
‘Shut up,’ she said.
‘You’re making something. This machine, it’s very old, isn’t it?’
‘Drusher, you’re not that useful. Shut up.’
Drusher felt an odd tingling sensation in the base of his skull. He stopped walking and leaned on a handrail.
‘Keep walking,’ she said.
‘Just a minute,’ Drusher said. ‘I feel faint.’
He looked out at the machinery, at the other platforms and walkways. He looked at the shadows, hoping…
The tingle throbbed in the back of his head.
He straightened up.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I feel better now.’
He looked at Jaff and gestured at the Great Machine.
‘Come on, how old?’ he asked.
She jabbed the gun in his ribs.
‘Walk,’ she hissed.
‘You can’t blame me for being fascinated, mamzel. It’s my job to enquire. My life’s work.’
‘As of now, you have no life.’
He looked around, thoughtfully.
‘These… tests. What is my fate going to be, Audla?’
She frowned at him.
‘Painful,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s a shame. I really don’t do pain well. What sort of pain?’
‘Walk,’ she snapped.
‘Seriously, so I can brace myself…’
She put the gun against his forehead again.
‘Be obedient,’ she said. ‘Shut up and walk. You are very annoying.’
‘So I’ve been told,’ said Drusher. ‘You know, I don’t think I will walk any more. I think, on balance, I’d rather die than submit to these tests you mentioned. I’m not good with pain. I’d rather it was quick.’
He closed his eyes.
There was a sharp crack.
Drusher opened his eyes again. Audla Jaff’s limp body lay at his feet.
‘You took your time,’ Drusher said. ‘I didn’t know how much more crap I could come out with to keep her distracted.’
‘You did just fine,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Have you killed her?’ Drusher said.
Eisenhorn hunched over her body.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘She killed Nayl,’ said Drusher.
‘She has betrayed me on every level,’ replied Eisenhorn. He searched Jaff’s pockets, found Drusher’s gun and held it out to him.
‘I was actually quite pleased to see the back of that,’ Drusher said.
‘Take it, magos. You nee
d to be armed. I think we’re the only two left.’
Drusher took the gun reluctantly.
‘I heard you whisper in my head,’ he said. He rubbed the back of his skull. ‘Right in the back there. It was unpleasant.’
‘I had to signal to you without her hearing,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘I had to get you to stop so I could get close. I didn’t want to risk a shot. It wasn’t easy.’
‘Why?’ asked Drusher. ‘What do you mean?’
Eisenhorn let out a long, slow breath. Drusher could see that his flesh was pallid, and he was perspiring.
‘This place,’ he confessed, ‘this… machine. It’s interfering with my mind. It’s radiating a latent power that’s conflicting with my psykana gifts. It’s taking more effort than usual to use them. And when I do, I can manage short range only.’
‘Then don’t,’ said Drusher. ‘You’ll exhaust yourself.’
‘I’ll use what I have to, magos,’ Eisenhorn replied, ‘when I have to. For as long as I can. My gifts are about the only edge we have over the Cognitae.’
‘What is this machine, inquisitor?’
‘I’m not certain,’ replied Eisenhorn, ‘but I think it’s a device called an Immaterium Loom.’
‘Which is?’
‘It spins things out of the warp,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘It binds the etheric with the physical. There have been rumours for centuries that the Cognitae were trying to build one. I didn’t give those rumours much credence, but yet again the Cognitae dismay me.’
He hoisted Jaff’s limp body upright and glanced at Drusher.
‘Can you support her? It’ll only be for a moment.’
Drusher moved forwards to help.
‘Immaterium Looms are volatile things,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘No one’s ever made one before, though many have tried over the millennia. Heretics and Imperial adepts alike. All prototypes have built up interference patterns with the fabric of reality and imploded.’
‘But this place… it isn’t reality?’ asked Drusher, propping Jaff upright.
‘As usual, you’re sharp,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘This place, Keshtre, is a weak point in the fabric between our reality and the warp. I think it always has been… a liminal place of monsters, feared by the ancient Udaric tribes who gave it its ominous name, becoming part of folklore, as all such bad places do. The Cognitae have exploited this weakness in real space fabric and built this place in the in-between.’