by Dan Abnett
‘You promised that last time, Goran,’ Sark said, looking reproachfully at Gobleka. ‘You promised I could come out.’
‘The work is important, you know that,’ said Gobleka. ‘But I mean it this time.’
‘Is it time to weave again?’ asked Sark. He put his hand to his forehead and kneaded his brow. ‘I don’t think I’m strong enough. I feel like everything is slipping away. Everything is dark at the edges, Goran. Closing in on me. When I weave, I walk out into the darkness, Goran. Into dark places. It’s very lonely. I don’t want to go back out there any more.’
‘You always say that…’ Gobleka said soothingly.
Sark looked at him sharply through the bars. Anger spiked in him.
‘Because it’s true!’ he cried. ‘How many years have I spent in the dark now? Eh? It feels like centuries. These brief moments of light and wakefulness are too rare. I have sacrificed my life for the King, Gobleka. My life.’
‘Then you won’t want that sacrifice to be in vain, will you?’ asked Gobleka.
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Sark.
‘I haven’t roused you to weave, magos,’ said Gobleka. ‘There’s more weaving to be done, but not today. The hall is under threat.’
‘Threat?’
‘The Inquisition has found us,’ said Gobleka.
‘How the hell could they have done?’ asked Sark, horrified. ‘Keshtre is extimate. It is hidden from all, unless I invite them in. I have taken great pains–’
‘And now you must take greater ones,’ said Gobleka. ‘Gregor Eisenhorn is here. In this tower. He will undo all you have done. Your life’s work. You must start the Loom. You must find him and speak out the means to nullify him.’
‘Eisenhorn,’ said Sark quietly. ‘Really here?’
‘Yes.’
‘I never thought he’d have the guile to get this close,’ said Sark. He glanced at Gobleka. ‘You’re right, of course, Goran. He must be purged. Are there materials to hand?’
‘Some,’ said Gobleka. ‘A few bodies in storage. Failed test subjects, ones we haven’t disposed of yet. Some other corpses too. You’ll find them once you start.’
‘Go open up storage, Goran,’ Sark said. He knelt down and looked at Gobleka through the bars.
‘Do you want him dead, Goran?’ he asked. ‘Or do you want him to suffer first?’
‘Oh, I want him to suffer, magos,’ said Gobleka, ‘but I don’t want him dead. I want him helpless. Deprived of his abilities.’
‘He’s too dangerous to toy with, Goran.’
‘Think how we can use him,’ said Gobleka.
‘Use him?’
‘You want the dreams to end, don’t you?’ Gobleka asked. ‘You want to be free of that cage? This is how.’
A sad smile crossed the magos’ face.
‘Goran,’ he said. ‘You should have led with that. This will be a pleasure.’
He closed his eyes and raised his hands. Quietly at first, the words started to issue from his mouth. Half-words, un-words, formless words. He began to speak them faster and more loudly.
Gobleka watched for a while, until the discomfort became too great. He picked up his assault weapon, left the gantry and walked up two flights of stairs to an upper platform. Below him, the words echoed around the tower.
On the platform, there was a modular container, a metal cargo pod from a commercial shift-ship. It was battered and rusty. He disengaged the lock and swung the door open. The smell of decay that wafted out was sickening.
Gobleka backed away, his hand clamped over his nose and mouth. Organic waste fluid trickled out over the container’s sill. He left the door wide open.
He waited. Then he turned his back on the container and sat down on the platform edge beside the head of the stairs.
Below him, the words grew louder. A light began to glow from the gantry below. It throbbed and grew steadily brighter. The machine hum in the tower grew louder.
After a while, he heard a knock and a scrape as things stirred inside the battered cargo pod. He did not look around.
Nor did he look around, a few minutes later, when the first dragging, shuffling footsteps moved past him towards the stairs.
‘So,’ said Drusher, ‘not that I’m saying I’m unhappy about it or anything, but how come you’re not dead?’
Nayl was leading them up the staircase towards the massive girder frame under the Loom. He glanced back.
‘I got shot, magos, I fell,’ he said. ‘I survived both.’
‘Simple as that?’
‘Luck is never simple,’ replied Nayl. ‘Jaff got me in the back with a las-shot. My jack armour stopped the worst of it, but the thing with jack armour is that it dissipates the force so it can’t penetrate. The impact knocked me right over the rail.’
‘That’s luck?’ asked Drusher.
‘I fell,’ said Nayl. ‘Quite a long way. But, as you may have noticed, there’s a lot of machinery in this place. I bounced off some gigantic flywheel. Banged up my head and my shoulder. Then I got hooked up. By the strap of my rifle. Wound up just hanging there from a cog, throttled by my own gun-strap.’
‘And that’s luck?’
‘Well, it broke my fall,’ said Nayl. ‘If it hadn’t been for the cog, I’d have gone straight down to the bottom. I waited as long as I could, waited for the cog to cycle around, then cut the strap and climbed down some gears onto a platform.’
‘It’s very interesting what you call “lucky”,’ said Drusher.
‘I’m still alive, aren’t I?’ asked Nayl. ‘That’s the lucky part.’
Drusher was fairly sure Nayl was downplaying the cost of his escape. From the way he was limping, the way he was holding himself, it was clear he was carrying some considerable injuries.
They all were. Once they’d got Voriet out of his cage using another of Drusher’s patent ‘wax charms’, they’d patched him up as best they could, using the old medical supplies in the storage bins. His smashed arm was slung and bound around his torso, the most effective temporary splinting they could muster. He was very pale and very slow, and his pain was constant. Drusher was worried about the damage to Voriet’s throat too. He and Macks were taking turns to support the interrogator so he could manage the steps.
Macks seemed robust enough, but the brawl with Streekal had left her bruised and sore. For his part, Drusher felt like he had been run over by a tank. His hand throbbed, and his chest, back and belly ached so much it made him wince. Macks had put a dressing over the slice Streekal had cut in his cheek.
‘You’re a silly bastard,’ she’d told him gently while she did it.
‘You need to learn some new moves, magos,’ Voriet had said, smiling through his pain. ‘That’s twice you’ve tried to get out of trouble by opening a cage and letting something wild out.’
As they climbed, Drusher told Nayl about Jaff and Eisenhorn. He related everything he could think of.
‘Have you seen Eisenhorn?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Nayl. ‘I haven’t seen anybody. Not until I found you lot.’
‘Do we have a plan?’ asked Macks.
‘Find a way out,’ said Nayl. ‘Maybe try to use your wax charm trick on a door or something. You’re all beaten up. I think Voriet needs serious attention. This is one of those times when we need to escort casualties out of the front line.’
‘No,’ said Drusher. ‘Eisenhorn’s gone up to deal with Sark and Gobleka. He’ll need help. He’s… struggling. Something about this place hurts him.’
‘Oh, screw him,’ said Macks.
‘I told him, once I’d got you out, I’d come back and help him,’ said Drusher.
‘He didn’t come and help you,’ said Macks.
‘No,’ said Drusher. ‘But then, he never said he was going to. In fact, he said he definitely wasn’t going to. I, on the other hand, said I would help him when I could.’
‘So, what, you’re a man of your word now?’ asked Macks.
‘Always have been,
’ said Drusher.
‘With respect,’ said Nayl, stopping so he could turn and look back at them, ‘I admire your spirit, magos, but I don’t know what sort of help you’re going to be. Your expertise is not… not combat-oriented.’
Drusher stared at him.
Nayl looked away, awkwardly.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I said that. I take it back. It takes balls for a man to go into a fight when he knows how to fight. It takes a damn sight more to go in when he doesn’t. Not to have a clue, but to go for it anyway. Balls of steel.’
‘That’s what we’ll call him from now on,’ said Macks. ‘Balls of steel.’
‘Head full of stupid, mind,’ she added.
Nayl smiled.
‘This is a very big deal, isn’t it, Nayl?’ asked Drusher, gesturing at the machine above them. ‘What’s happening here is, uh…’
‘The biggest,’ said Nayl.
‘So then,’ said Drusher with a shrug. ‘Eisenhorn was right, really. We’re all expendable. In the face of this. This isn’t Eisenhorn’s private war. The outcome affects everything we know, everything we are. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Nayl.
‘So we should help Eisenhorn in any way we can,’ said Drusher. ‘I mean, we may not be any use at all, but we should try. How did you put it? “To not have a clue, but to go for it anyway”?’
‘Something along those lines,’ said Nayl.
‘I agree with the magos,’ said Voriet.
‘Shut up,’ said Macks. ‘You can barely stand.’
‘Doesn’t stop me agreeing, marshal,’ said Voriet.
‘All right,’ said Nayl. ‘We go up. We take a look. If it’s out of our league, we get the hell out. Find a way out of this place. Least we can do is get to Medea and get a signal sent.’
‘To the ordos?’ asked Macks.
‘Yes,’ said Nayl.
‘The ordos?’ asked Voriet.
‘I think we’re way past hiding now, Darra,’ Nayl said. ‘I think Eisenhorn would reckon so too. We’ve got solid intelligence on the Cognitae here. Old… differences, they don’t matter now. If we can’t help Eisenhorn, we scream for help and bring the Holy frigging Inquisition down on this place, guns blazing.’
‘Even if that means… spending the rest of your life incarcerated?’ asked Drusher. ‘Or being burned as a heretic? They still do that, right?’
‘Even if,’ said Nayl.
‘Well, I agree with that last part,’ said Macks. ‘Call in the ordos. The Magistratum. The Territorial Guard. Anything and everything. But as for the rest of that big-talk pissing contest, I utterly despair of men, sometimes.’
‘Me too,’ said Nayl. ‘We’re hardly packing much kill-power.’
Between them, Nayl had his big Tronsvasse auto, Drusher had his Regit compact, which Macks had recovered and reunited with the clip in Drusher’s pocket, and Macks had Streekal’s laspistol.
‘Let’s go then,’ said Nayl. He turned and started climbing the gantry stairs again. Drusher took a turn supporting Voriet, and Macks went ahead of them, behind Nayl.
‘Thank you,’ said Voriet quietly as Drusher helped him up the stairs. Every step made him wince and sigh.
‘For what?’
‘Not telling Nayl what you know,’ said Voriet. ‘About me, I mean. About what Eisenhorn said about me.’
‘Not my business,’ said Drusher.
‘You blurted it out well enough down at the cages,’ said Voriet.
‘Yeah, well, we’re beyond that now,’ said Drusher. ‘And there’s more than enough trouble to go around as it is.’
They hobbled on together, Drusher’s arm around Voriet’s back.
‘You should tell them, though,’ said Drusher.
‘Who?’
‘The ordos. Your masters,’ said Drusher. ‘If you get out of here, you should go to them and tell them what you know. What you’ve seen. What you believe.’
Voriet nodded.
‘That’s not good,’ said Macks from up ahead. She was looking at the Great Machine above them.
High above, at the very top of the tower, a strange glow was filling the air. It expanded, growing brighter and brighter.
A breeze started to rise. The humming all around them increased.
With a sudden but steady motion that startled them all, the huge wheels and cogs and gears of the Loom began to turn faster, until they were spinning and rattling and whizzing. The slowly cycling machine had suddenly burst into frantic, industrial life.
‘Yeah,’ Nayl yelled back over the clattering roar of the spinning cogs. ‘Not good at all.’
TWENTY
Mindless
Eisenhorn stopped for a moment and crouched in the shadows. The sudden and furious din of the Loom around him was making it hard to focus.
Harder than before. The mere background hum of the cycling machine had worn him down and deadened his mind. It had taken him much longer than he had hoped to clamber up to the high levels of the tower. He was painfully aware of how old and unreliable his body had become. It was held together with augmetics and metal bracing. The slow climb had left him tired and short of breath.
Now his mind, the part of him he’d always been able to trust, seemed as faulty as his body. He felt muffled, swathed in a darkness that limited his gifts. A migraine pain stabbed behind his eyes.
The noise of the suddenly active Loom was intense. It was like being at the heart of a Mechanicus factory plant. Sark, or Gobleka, or both, had begun something. There were various possibilities, but the most obvious was that they were moving against him.
He had considered simply sabotaging the Loom. He carried two automatic pistols: the big Hecuter .45, loaded with standard munitions, which was in his hand, and a smaller Scipio compact, loaded with custom rounds, which was strapped in his chest rig. A few shots with the engraved rounds of the Scipio might damage the Loom, possibly even destroy it. They were notoriously volatile devices. And he still had what scraps of his psykana talent remained, and his small but potent vocabulary of Enuncia.
But if he managed to cripple and destroy the Loom, what then? They were in extimate space. He’d die along with it. The Cognitae’s precious Gershom facility would be lost, but so would the vital things he had learned from Jaff about the King in Yellow, Sancour and the Angelus Subsector.
A key threat would be stopped, but the greater threat would remain.
Not for the first time, he focused his mind and tried to reach Betancore outside in the Karanines. It was futile. Either the fold in space would not let his messages through, or his abilities were virtually gone. He feared the latter. The pain in his head was intense. He could barely form a thought, let alone try to send it.
So what were his options? He could push on to face Gobleka and Sark. Or he could get out. A word of Enuncia had unfolded reality, bringing him and the group into Keshtre. Surely another word would allow him to step out?
But the Loom would still be running, and Sark and Gobleka would still be alive. And there was no guarantee that if he got out, he could ever get back in again.
By his reckoning, the cage gantry was not far above him. The light was bright up there, a gold amber radiance that turned all the engine mechanisms above him into silhouettes, and all the shadows below him into stark, hard edges.
He had to go on. He wondered if he could. The etheric dissonance field generated by the Loom had increased considerably when the machine started to run at full rate. It was no longer just dulling him and making him sick, it was actively tearing at his psycho-sensitive mind. He thought ruefully about Medea’s last words to him. She’d been right. He should have brought Cherubael, despite all the handling problems that would have caused. He needed something that hit hard, like the monstrous daemonhost. He was alone and woefully weakened.
He got up and began to move again, limping for the next metal stairwell.
The first shots hit the platform deck beside him. Bright las-bolts buckled the grille an
d punched through it.
Eisenhorn threw himself flat. There was very little cover. He tried to gauge the angle the shots had come from by the holes they had cut in the platform, but his facility for psychometric reading and prediction was as good as gone. The damn Loom. It was neutering his mind.
Another flurry of shots came in. One punched clean through the metal handrail above him. This time, he glimpsed them in the air, glowing bolts, arcing down at him. He had some sense of an angle. He rose on one knee and banged off a series of shots with the heavy Hecuter, spent cases pinging out of the ejector. He saw the shots spark and flash as they struck metalwork above him.
He saw a figure dart for cover along a catwalk: the tattooed man, Davinch, his twin laspistols in his hands.
Eisenhorn fired again. In partial cover behind a flywheel, Davinch blasted back. The las-fire went wide of Eisenhorn, to the left this time. The Cognitae fool was a poor shot. He’d had three decent tries at Eisenhorn and missed by a margin each time.
Eisenhorn crawled back, until he was half-shielded by a spinning cog. He took careful, considered aim on the flywheel above, waiting for Davinch to poke his head out again.
Eisenhorn focused his will.
+Davinch!+
It hurt, like a hot spike between the eyes. Eisenhorn tried again. A mental goad like that, particularly when you knew a man’s name, was usually enough to jerk him out into the open. He got into the hindbrain and gave it a flick the target couldn’t resist. Under optimal circumstances, he could psyke into a man’s head and make him jump to his death or shoot himself, a look of horror on his face as his body turned against him.
But these circumstances were far from optimal. The Loom’s dissonance field was both snuffing out his psionic ability and reflecting what little he could broadcast.
Eisenhorn began to move again, keeping low as he headed along the platform. Another burst of fire chopped at him. Hard rounds this time, an assault weapon from the rate. The metal slugs ripped across the platform and sparked off a brass bearing behind him.
Different weapon. This was someone else. Blayg, or Gobleka, perhaps. Again, the aim had been wide. Were they all terrible shots?