by Dan Abnett
‘Don’t talk nonsense! Busy doing what?’
+Weaving. Building up power. To put out the fire.+
‘The fire?’ asked Drusher. He brushed away the locustforms flying around his face.
+Gobleka said snuff the fire. Save the Loom.+
‘What? You’re following his orders now? Eisenhorn!’
+It’s almost done.+
‘Why? Why bother? This thing should burn. It’s a heretic engine, right? Right? Eisenhorn?’
+A heretic engine.+
‘Then why are you trying to save it? Stop. Unlock the cage!’
‘What’s happening?’
Drusher glanced up. Voriet was standing beside him, swaying with effort.
‘He won’t come out,’ said Drusher. ‘He’s… he’s trying to put out the fire. Save the Loom.’
‘What?’ replied Voriet. He knelt down beside the cage. ‘Sir! Inquisitor! It’s Darra Voriet. What are you doing?’
+Saving the Loom.+
‘Why?’ asked Voriet.
+Because… I have mastered it. The Cognitae, they… they have shown me how. They have shown me… everything. Darra, I can use this.+
‘Use it? Sir, what are you saying?’
+I need to save the Loom.+
‘He’s gone mad,’ said Drusher.
+I need to save the Loom. I have control. I can use it to annihilate the Archenemy. Finally and forever.+
Voriet looked at Drusher.
‘He’s not mad,’ said Voriet. ‘That’s too small a word. He’s completely insane.’
Nayl slowly got out from under the cogitator bank. He kept his useless Tronsvasse aimed at Davinch.
Davinch had frozen side-on to him, his laspistols raised. He was staring at Nayl out of the corner of his eye.
‘Really don’t move,’ said Nayl.
‘Just shoot me then,’ replied Davinch.
‘Drop the guns. Do it. Toss them over the rail.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Do it,’ snapped Nayl.
‘Why didn’t you shoot?’ asked Davinch, not moving.
‘Toss the guns.’
‘You had the drop. A clear shot,’ said Davinch. ‘But you didn’t take it. No way you want me as a prisoner. Taking me back for trial and punishment? I don’t think so. So why didn’t you shoot?’
Nayl moved closer.
‘Drop the guns over the rail, now,’ he said. ‘This conversation is beginning to bore me.’
‘You can end it any time,’ said Davinch. ‘One shot. Except you didn’t take the shot. You know what I think?’
‘I don’t care what you think.’
‘I don’t think you can,’ said Davinch. ‘You’d have done it by now if you could. I think your gun’s out.’
Nayl edged a little closer. Another step and he’d be able to lunge and finish the business with his hands. He thumbed back the hammer.
‘Toss the guns,’ he said again.
‘A hammer works even on an empty gun,’ said Davinch. Nayl saw him starting to smile slightly. That confident look he’d seen so many times in his bruising life. A barely imperceptible micro-expression. That tell that gave away the fact a man was about to make a move.
Davinch snapped around to shoot. Nayl was already diving. He slammed into Davinch and body-tackled him against the rail. Both laspistols discharged, sending bolts streaming into the air.
Nayl slammed Davinch’s right wrist into the edge of the rail, and the laspistol tumbled away into space. Davinch tried to bring the left-hand pistol around. He fired again, and two shots scorched into the deck. Nayl put his full strength into keeping the man’s left arm back.
Nayl shoulder-barged Davinch in the chest, pinned him against the rail and drove the heel of his right fist into Davinch’s left thumb.
Davinch screamed in pain. His remaining laspistol went flying down the deck. It bounced and slid to a halt four metres away.
Davinch caught Nayl under the left ear with a jab. Nayl stumbled back, clutching his head. Davinch seized him by the front of his jacket with both hands, and threw him into the cogitator banks. Nayl landed badly, fragile cogitators shattering under his weight. Davinch came in fast, driving punches to Nayl’s face and chest. Nayl raised hasty forearm blocks, stopped two and took a fist in the side of his mouth. He swung hard for Davinch, but missed.
Davinch turned and ran for the fallen gun. Nayl pounced and brought him down hard on the deck. They grappled. Nayl had mass on his side, but Davinch was quick with his legs. He hooked his right leg and flipped Nayl off him. Nayl got up, only to take another glancing kick to the face. He stumbled sideways.
Davinch bounced his rangy body onto its feet. Like a dancer, he threw a high spin-kick that hit Nayl in the chest and staggered him backwards. Davinch reversed his spin and threw another kick from the opposite direction. Nayl barely blocked it.
Davinch stayed on his toes. He spun around with another kick, almost in pirouette.
Nayl blundered backwards.
Try that shit again, he thought.
Davinch tilted his balance slightly and whirled into another spin-kick.
Nayl caught him squarely by the kicking ankle.
He locked it, twisted his grip and threw with full force. Utterly overbalanced, Davinch sailed backwards with a scream and went over the rail.
Somehow, he held on. White-knuckled, legs swinging, he clung to the cross struts of the handrail and began to haul himself back onto the platform.
He was half over the rail when he saw Nayl facing him, aiming the fallen laspistol.
‘This one isn’t out,’ said Nayl.
He put four las-bolts through Davinch’s head and torso.
Davinch swung backwards, stiffly, like a falling drawbridge, and plunged into the darkness.
Gobleka dragged Macks to her feet. He’d slung his autorifle across his back and drawn Eisenhorn’s Scipio. He pulled her against him, his arm around her throat, and put the muzzle of the pistol against her head.
‘How many more?’ he asked.
‘Go screw yourself,’ she replied. He tightened his grip and made her choke.
‘Let’s walk,’ he said, shoving her along. A shield was useful. ‘You’ve got a friend up here. A bald guy. He’ll be pleased to see you.’
His dry laugh died away.
Ahead of them, an animation was stepping off the connecting staircase and turning to walk along the control deck towards them. It was Blayg. Green light shimmered around his dead flesh. Two more followed it, Cronyl and a halting, slower skeleton.
Gobleka froze.
‘I’m a friend!’ he yelled. ‘Back away!’
They kept coming.
‘Back away!’ Gobleka ordered. He shouted an un-word order of command that stung at Macks’ ear.
The animations did not falter.
Gobleka switched aim from Macks’ head to Blayg. He fired, and the shot dropped Blayg in his tracks.
Macks seized the moment as soon as the gun moved away from her head. She elbowed hard into Gobleka’s gut then lashed out, clamping the top of Gobleka’s right wrist with her left hand and driving her right hand up into his tricep. The force almost bent his elbow the wrong way. Gobleka shrieked, the Scipio flying out of his hand.
Macks tore free from his grip. The Scipio bounced once. She dived for it. It bounced a second time. She grabbed at it, and missed it by a hair’s breadth.
It disappeared over the edge of the deck.
She knew she was done. The animations were right on her. She curled into a ball, her legs tucked under her, her hands over her head, and waited for the horror to end her.
Nothing happened.
She looked up. Cronyl and the lurching skeleton had moved past her, ignoring her. They were making straight for Gobleka.
He stared at them in horror, eyes wide.
‘Back off! Back off!’ he yelled. He tried more un-words as he wrestled to get his rifle off his shoulder.
Macks got down as flat as she could. Still yelling u
n-words, Gobleka hosed Cronyl and the skeleton with bursts of autofire. The furious volley ripped across the control deck stations, but left the advancing animations untouched.
Gobleka turned to run. Macks saw his staring, violet eyes as he broke to flee.
She had never seen terror like it.
‘Why not her?’ he cried. ‘Why not her?’
Gobleka ran to evade the reaching hands of Cronyl and the skeleton thing, and found Audla Jaff, slack and loose-limbed like a hanged man, advancing from the opposite direction.
Her ruined, dead face blank and tilted to one side, Jaff embraced him. A moment later, Cronyl and the skeleton reached him too, their hands on his back, on his shoulders.
Gobleka began a scream, but it faltered and broke. Green sparks, like a raging swarm of insects, whirled around him, spreading from each point of contact, each clasping hand. As the sparks spread, Gobleka vanished. His clothes shredded away and became dust. His living skin turned to paper and withered like powder and ash. Beneath, tissue and muscle and fat rendered down, exposing bones that deformed like melting wax.
In less than ten seconds, Goran Gobleka was reduced to a few misshapen bones and a deformed, stained, screaming skull that fell to the deck between the three animations, and lay smouldering and sparking.
The animations stood over the steaming heap for a moment, then moved on without reaction, disappearing down the curve of the platform.
Macks rose to her feet, shaking.
‘Marshal?’
She turned. Nayl was limping towards her. He looked like he had been kicked and punched repeatedly. He was carrying a laspistol.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
She brushed locusts away from her face.
‘I think the rules just changed, Nayl,’ she replied.
‘You have to stop, sir,’ Voriet said. ‘You have to stop this now.’
He was slumped against the bars of the cage, too tired to do anything except speak, too weary to brush away the locustforms that were settling on him and crawling on his face.
‘Listen to him!’ Drusher yelled through the bars.
+This is a chance. The Cognitae have handed it to me. I won’t waste it.+
‘To do what?’ asked Drusher. ‘Use their machine against them? To achieve what?’
+An ending.+
‘To what?’
+The Long War. The primordial fight.+
‘Wh-what are you intending to do, sir?’ asked Voriet.
+Control the fire. Then… increase the rate of the Loom. Unpick a hole in the warp. Open one space into another. An extimate fold. Between here and… Queen Mab.+
‘What is that?’ asked Voriet.
+The City of Dust. Another… another extimate space, I think. I’m going to open it wide and engulf the King in Yellow. Unmake him on his own Loom. Uncreate him word by word.+
‘Sir, this is a heresy that must end,’ said Voriet. ‘You are employing devices and powers beyond our understanding–’
+I understand.+
‘Do you? Do you really?’ yelled Drusher. ‘Or is this just the obsession coming out again? The old drive? The old desperation? The old craziness that doesn’t recognise when it’s time to stop?’
+You are outspoken, Valentin Drusher. You are ignorant.+
Drusher kicked the bars of the cage.
‘You’re the one locked in a magical frigging cage trying to unpick the fabric of reality,’ he yelled. ‘I’d rather be ignorant than crazy!’
He looked at Voriet.
‘Unpick the fabric of reality, near enough?’ he asked.
Voriet managed a shrug. ‘I think, pretty much. Yeah.’
Drusher knelt down and stared through the bars.
‘I’m not ignorant,’ he said. ‘I’m very knowledgeable. Educated. I’m smart enough to know my own limits. Do you know yours? Do you know when a good idea stops being a good idea? Do you know what “too far” looks like?’
+Enough, magos.+
‘What happens when you do this?’ asked Drusher. ‘Does Keshtre collapse? Do you die? Do we die?’
+Perhaps.+
‘We came back for you!’ Drusher snarled.
+I did not ask you to.+
‘You did, actually. You asked for my help. I asked for yours, but you refused. That’s all right. But I said I’d come and help you. Now you don’t want my help.’
+I don’t need it.+
‘So tell me what happens when you do this?’ said Drusher. ‘Some kind of cataclysmic cosmic event, I shouldn’t wonder. Continental upheaval. Planets imploding. Stars blowing out. Another Long Night. Am I close?’
+The King will die.+
‘Fine, what else?’ Drusher asked. ‘How many people die here on Gershom if you do this? How many people in… What was it called? Queen Mab? How many innocents? How many children?’
Eisenhorn’s mind did not reply.
‘Who is Beta?’ asked Voriet.
‘I don’t know,’ Drusher replied. ‘But the name was just in my head too. Did that feel like sadness? Regret?’
Voriet nodded.
‘Eisenhorn!’ Drusher yelled at the cage. ‘What else happens? You can’t know everything. What are the consequences of a catastrophe like the one you’re trying to create? You’re messing with space and reality, splitting them open. Talk about ignorant! No one knows about that stuff. If you damage the universe that badly, does the damage stop? What if it spreads and you can’t halt it?’
+The King will be dead.+
‘Oh, well as long as the King’s dead, that’s all right,’ said Drusher. ‘You know what, Eisenhorn? You know what? I don’t think you know anything, or you don’t care. You’re about to execute a dreadful act of destruction, and you have no clue what the consequences will be. What if you break reality forever? Break it so it can’t heal or repair? Rip it open? So what if the King’s dead… That will be it. You’ll have destroyed the very thing you’ve spent your life protecting!’
+I know what I am doing.+
‘I don’t think you do,’ said Drusher.
+Magos. Valentin. I… I will open a door. An exit out of Keshtre. You get out. Take Voriet with you. Macks and Nayl too. They live still. I have done my best to protect them. Get out, and I will try to contain the damage I am about to do. I will… contain it. You will live. Please… get them. Get out.+
Drusher rose to his feet. He flicked insects off his face.
‘He doesn’t understand, does he?’ he asked Voriet. ‘He doesn’t understand people.’
‘I don’t think it’s ever been part of the job description,’ said Voriet. ‘Do as he says, Drusher. Find Macks and Nayl, and get out while you can. I’m a bit tired. I’ll stay here. Sit with him until the end.’
‘Not an option,’ said Drusher. ‘For Throne’s sake! But for a bit of wax and a custom bullet I could open that cage. I’ve still got the bloody gun.’
He produced the empty little Regit snub from his coat.
‘See?’
He stuffed it back in his pocket, despairing. His knuckles touched something else in his pocket. He took the gun back out and reached in.
‘Voriet?’
‘What?’
‘I miscounted,’ said Drusher. ‘I took a bullet out of the gun to open your cages. Macks never put it back in the clip when she reloaded it for me.’
He held out his hand. The bullet lay in his palm.
‘Seven shots,’ he said. ‘Not eight. I miscounted.’
Voriet blinked in surprise.
‘We don’t have any wax, magos,’ he said.
‘Balls to that,’ said Drusher. He did what he’d seen Nayl do. He drew back the Regit’s slide, opened the firing chamber and slipped the bullet in. Then he snapped the slide shut.
‘Step back,’ he said.
Voriet struggled to his feet.
‘Magos? What are you–’
‘Step well back, Voriet. I’m not very good with guns.’
Drusher took careful aim.
TWENTY-SEVEN
How to Let a Wild Thing Out of a Cage,
and What Happens When You Do
The gun Macks had given him all those years ago barked, and sparks blinked off the cage frame.
‘Holy Throne!’ said Voriet. ‘I thought you were aiming at Eisenhorn!’
‘I was,’ said Drusher. He smiled at Voriet. ‘Not really, I was aiming for the cage.’
‘Oh, well… Good shot.’
‘Voriet, it was ten centimetres away.’
Drusher bent down.
‘I think it worked,’ he said.
He pulled at the cage door, and it swung open, groaning on its hinges.
Drusher started to speak, but things began to change rapidly. The light radiating out of Eisenhorn began to diminish. There was a screeching, squealing din as the mechanism of the Loom began to slow down, gears faltering, cogs decelerating. The chirring row of the swarm grew louder. There were insects and smoke everywhere.
Eisenhorn went limp and fell sideways. His mouth stopped moving. The violet glare in his eyes went out. Blood dribbled from the corner of his lips.
‘Get him out!’ Drusher yelled.
‘You’ll have to help me,’ said Voriet.
Between them, they scrabbled and dragged the big, heavy body clear of the cage.
‘Is he dead?’ asked Drusher.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Voriet.
‘I might as well have shot him,’ said Drusher.
He heard someone calling out his name. Nayl and Macks were hurrying across the gantry towards them, waving insects out of their faces.
‘What happened?’ Nayl asked, crouching beside Voriet.
‘Difficult to sum up,’ said Voriet. ‘The magos had an idea, so–’
‘What did you do now?’ asked Macks, turning to Drusher.
‘I’d like to think something good,’ said Drusher. ‘But, who knows?’
She looked at him.
‘You all right?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said.
‘It’s been ten minutes,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I meant…’
She hugged him tight.
‘You silly bastard,’ she whispered.
‘He’s breathing!’ said Voriet.
‘Well, she clamped on quite tight there,’ said Drusher, ‘but I’m fine–’