by Dan Abnett
She walked to the side table beside her desk and poured herself a glass of water from the fluted crystal jug, wishing her mind were as clear as the cool water. She raised the glass to her lips.
‘There really could be anything in that, you know.’
Wienand tried not to react. She maintained her composure with an extraordinary, invisible effort. Without sipping, she set the glass down again and returned to her seat at the desk without making any eye contact, or any outward show that there should be anything troubling in the fact that Drakan Vangorich was suddenly sitting in one of the seats vacated by the interrogators.
‘Such as?’ she asked, moving some papers.
‘Oh, toxins,’ said Vangorich. ‘I hear toxins are very popular. Untraceable, of course. Not necessarily lethal, but certainly mood-altering, or behaviour-modifying. Toxins that make you compliant and suggestible. Toxins that render you open to autohypnotic implanting. All sorts of things.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t you have a taster? An official taster? I thought you would have. A person like you.’
‘I’ll recruit one if it makes you happy,’ she said.
‘I’m only concerned for you. For a friend.’
She looked at him, directly. He was smiling, and the smile did not sit well with his scar.
‘Why? Did you place a toxin in my water, Drakan?’
He shook his head.
‘Throne, no. No, no. Why would I? What an awful thought.’
He paused, and looked her in the eyes.
‘But I could have done. Anyone could have done, that’s my point.’
‘No one could have, Drakan.’
‘Why is that?’ he asked sweetly.
‘Because no one–’
She broke off.
‘Because no one can get in here?’ he asked. ‘Well, I seem to put the lie to that.’
He rose to his feet.
‘You really are the most composed person, Wienand. Applause for that. Not even the courtesy of mild surprise at finding me here.’
‘I should not be surprised,’ she said.
‘Even though your security advisor told you that this suite had a triple-aquila secure rating that nothing short of a primarch could get past?’
She didn’t blink.
‘I was quoting directly from his written report submitted for your approval nine months ago.’
‘I know.’
‘Page eighteen, line twenty-four.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Quite a colourful turn of phrase… “Nothing short of a primarch…” though not terribly technical.’
‘I agree.’
‘And not terribly accurate,’ he said.
‘I noticed.’
‘I’d sack him, if I were you.’
‘Drakan,’ she said, done with his games, ‘I’m impressed. All right? Does that satisfy you? I’m impressed that you got in here without setting off any alarm or countermeasure. It is almost inhumanly chilling that you were able to do so.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘For what it’s worth, when it comes to the private Palace apartments of the High Twelve, this is by far the hardest to get into.’
He looked at her and affected an expression of innocence.
‘So I’m told,’ he said.
‘I presume you came here for a purpose,’ she said.
He sat down again, leaned back and crossed his legs.
‘I presume,’ he echoed, ‘that you read the transcripts this morning?’
‘In particular?’ she asked.
He sighed.
‘You’re really going to make me work for it, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘The first intercepts are back from Heth’s valiant rescue mission. Ardamantua is a mess. Worse than could be imagined. The sheer scale of the loss isn’t yet reckoned, nor is the true nature of the threat. But… it’s bad news.’
‘Yes, I saw that,’ Wienand replied.
‘You’re very calm about it,’ he observed.
‘There’s no point panicking,’ she answered. ‘There’s every point making a considered and rational response. It is a threat. A severe threat.’
‘Just as you originally suggested,’ he said. ‘That’s why I thought I’d come and have a little word with you. You used me slightly, Wienand. You used me to move against Lansung in the Senatorum. That’s fine. I quite enjoyed it. It’s nice to feel wanted. You were concerned about the threat, because no one seemed to be taking it particularly seriously, but you were far more concerned with Lansung and his power bloc of allies, and the way the threat – and others like it – might be mishandled by them. It was a political manoeuvre to realign the High Lords. That’s how you sold it to me.’
‘Agreed. So?’
‘The threat’s very, very real, Wienand. It’s not a valid excuse for brokering, it’s a palpable problem. And I think you knew it was when you co-opted me. What does the Inquisition know that the rest of us don’t?’
‘I was concerned with Lansung’s high-handed attitude towards–’
Vangorich raised a hand.
‘There is a threat to the Imperium that is of far greater magnitude than anyone imagines, but the Inquisition is reluctant to disclose it. Instead, the Inquisition attempts to use political subterfuge to alter Imperial doctrine and policy.’
‘Not so,’ she said.
‘One would hope not, or that might be regarded very badly. The Inquisition taking over effective control of Imperial policy? There’s a word for that.’
‘A word?’
‘The word is “coup”.’
‘Drakan,’ she said, ‘you’re beginning to frustrate me with your paranoia. The Inquisition is not attempting to mount a political coup from within the Senatorum.’
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘it would seem to be one thing or the other. Either the Inquisition is trying to take control because it knows something the rest of us don’t, or you really are very concerned at the fitness of Lansung and his kind to sit at the high table.’
She said nothing.
‘What is the threat, Wienand?’
‘It is what it is.’
‘What is the nature of the threat?’
‘You know as much as I do, Grand Master. It is a xenos threat that requires attention.’
He rose again.
‘So you’re sticking to your story. This is all about your concern about power balance and the fitness of Lansung, Udo and the others to rule?’
She nodded.
‘Well, that rather makes it my problem, then, doesn’t it? An issue for my Officio?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, with a slight note of anxiety.
‘Well, if any High Lord is deemed by his peers to be unfit or unworthy, the ultimate sanction has always been the Officio Assassinorum. It’s why we exist. It is our purview. Political subterfuge is entirely a waste of time when you have the Officio to clean house.’
‘Vangorich, don’t be medieval.’
He leaned on her desk and stared into her face.
‘Then I suggest you start trusting me,’ he said. ‘Tell me the nature of this threat. Share it with all of us. Tell me what is so terrible. What scares the Inquisition so much it needs to take control of Imperial policy? What do you know?’
She stared back at him, and hesitated.
Then she said, ‘There’s nothing. Nothing to tell.’
He stood up straight.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I see. If that’s all you’ll say, I see I must take you at your word. I suppose I had better get about my business.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asked. ‘Drakan, what are you suggesting?’
He walked to her side table, picked up the glass of water she had poured, and drank it down.
‘I’m not sugge
sting anything,’ he said. ‘I am going about my business and performing the duties entrusted to me.’
He walked towards the door.
‘Drakan,’ she called after him. ‘Don’t do anything. Don’t do anything foolish. Please. This situation is very sensitive. This moment… You mustn’t act rashly.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ he replied. ‘But if no one tells me where the sensitivities lie, I cannot help but step on them, can I?’
The door opened, and Wienand’s bodyguard Kalthro strode in, a pistol raised. He halted when he saw Vangorich.
‘Far too little,’ Vangorich told him as he strode past, ‘far too late.’
Twenty-Three
Ardamantua
Daylight led the way over the broken ridge and down into the rubble-strewn valley where the lake spread out under a black sky. His armour, and the plate armour of the other three Imperial Fists, was spattered with ichor. No one had made any attempt to clean it off. They had left the field on the other side of the ridge strewn with dead xenos, piled high. It had plainly astonished Major Nyman and the Asmodai troopers, who had moved in towards the end and helped to slay the last few dozen with targeted fire.
Gravity, shifting and flexing like an invisible serpent through earth and air, shattered a distant row of hills with a noise like thunder. The clouds boiled past overhead, on fast-play. Flames of red, green and yellow danced around the ridges of broken rock and upturned, split earth.
‘Once we reach the lake, then what?’ asked Bastion Ledge.
‘From the lake, the nest,’ replied Daylight.
‘Then?’ Bastion Ledge asked.
‘Then we look for survivors,’ replied Daylight. ‘For signs.’
‘And if we find none?’
‘We look elsewhere.’
‘And if more of those things appear?’ Bastion Ledge asked.
‘Then we kill more of those things,’ said Daylight.
They skirted a series of murky pools and crooked ponds that were offshoots of the lake, their trudging figures reflected in the water, the running sky behind them. The wind blew. The noise bursts continued to break the air, howling barks that came from everywhere and nowhere.
The gravity blister popped without any warning except a slight shrug of physical matter. A random anomaly, it opened on the edge of one of the pools about fifty metres from their procession. The physicality of the world, the rocks, the air and the pool altered instantaneously. It went off like a bomb, hurling tonnes of stone and soil into the air sideways, like a blizzard. The ground broke open and water turned to steam. The main volume of the pool surged in the opposite direction in a spontaneous tidal wave three metres tall, and broke across the next ridge with enough force to shatter rock.
Flying rocks and debris, along with mud and water, ripped along the line of Daylight’s party. The Guardsmen were knocked off their feet. One died, his head crushed by a boulder. Only the frail, mind-addled tech-adept, bewildered and confused, remained upright.
Rocks and stones rained off the Imperial Fists, pelting their armour. In that instant, Daylight once again felt the uneasy fear. The Imperial Fists excelled at holding ground, but how did a warrior do that when the ground itself couldn’t be trusted?
The thought barely had time to form before another blister ripped the world open. It was smaller than the first, a gravitic aftershock, but it was right under them. Two of the Asmodai simply atomised, turning into clouds of blood and whizzing armour shreds, their forms lost in the explosive upchuck of rock and bludgeoning concussion.
Bastion Ledge died too.
As the smoke and steam cleared, and the last of the rock debris rained down and skittered around them, as the ground stopped shaking, Daylight saw his wall-brother. Half of Bastion Ledge, most of the left-hand side of his body, was missing. It was folded and compressed in on itself, flesh, bone and armour alike. He looked as though he had been snatched up by a giant and squeezed until he was crushed like a tin cup. Black blood drenched his buckled, ruined wargear.
Zarathustra knelt beside him to check for vitals, but they all knew it was in vain. Bastion was gone, killed by the world, killed by the ground, killed by the forces of nature they ought to have been able to trust.
For a second, Daylight felt hopelessness, but there was no time to consider such luxuries as emotions.
A third gravity blister blew out on the far side of the valley, and the boom rolled around the outcrops. It hardly mattered. There was a more immediate threat.
Major Nyman was shouting. He’d ripped his helmet off so he could be heard and he was yelling, gasping in the thin air.
Daylight turned.
Chromes were coming out of the stretch of lake behind them, scrambling towards the shore. They were all large, dark, mature and powerful. Flying rocks hurled by the third gravity detonation hammered across the lake, killing several of them and sending up spouts of water, as though heavy-calibre gunfire were peppering the surface. The Chromes churned on regardless, bounding up the stony shore to attack the Imperial party.
Nyman and his men began to fire, though some of the Asmodai were still dazed from the triple hammerblow of the gravity blisters. Zarathustra sprang up and charged down the slope into the water, impaling first one and then a second dark Chrome with his war-spear. He felled a third with a savage back-thrust of the spear’s haft, and then threw himself full-length to tackle a Chrome in the shallows that was bearing down on Major Nyman. Nyman’s repeated shots were not slowing it down. Zarathustra knocked the creature sideways, and then tangled into a wrestling brawl with it, kicking up sprays of froth and water.
Tranquility used his boltgun as he moved down the shore, picking off two more of the Chromes that had come too close to the Asmodai line. His mass-reactive shells stopped them dead in a way that the poor Guardsmen’s las-rounds could not. It took sustained, saturating fire to stop a warrior-form with a lasrifle. Having bought enough time with his shots to get at the Chromes close-quarters, Tranquility holstered his bolter and unslung the power hammer from his backplate. He crushed one Chrome’s skull down into its shoulders and then struck another sideways, into the shallows. Its cranium split and ichor sprayed out. A third, attacking the Imperial Fist furiously, was knocked back with the butt of the haft, leaving it open for a downward smash of the head that ruptured it like a well-cooked piece of shellfish.
Ichor stained the frothing surface of the lake at the shallows.
Daylight met the attack with his gladius in his right hand and his combat knife in his left. He stabbed his sword through a sternum plate, and then slashed a mouth and throat open with his knife. As his second kill fell back, Daylight used the combat knife to block the striking claws of a third Chrome warrior-form, shoved the creature’s limbs up and aside, and ripped his sword through its exposed midriff with a sideways slash.
A fourth Chrome closed. Daylight outstepped its charge and hacked his sword edge into its spine as it passed him, dropping it on its face into the pool. A fifth beast ran onto his extended knife. A sixth died from a cross cut, a double slash of both weapons that ran from shoulders to hips.
A particularly large Chrome seized Daylight from behind, sawing into his armour with its claws, gnawing into his backplate with its mouthparts. It hoisted him off his feet, backwards, tilting.
Daylight inverted his grip on both blades, letting them fall out of his hands so he could catch them again reversed, and then stabbed past either side of his hips with the sword and the knife, impaling the torso that was braced against his. The Chrome burst at the wound points and sprayed ichor. It collapsed, pulling Daylight down with it into the water in a thrashing commotion.
Others rushed at him, trying to rip into the Imperial Fists wall-brother before he could regain his footing. Zarathustra and some of the Asmodai saw this and moved to support. The Guardsmen fired at the thrashing Chromes, and Zarathustra charged them, spear ra
ised.
Gunfire raked the surface of the pool, cutting down dozens of the Chromes. It resembled the fury of spume and spouts that had been kicked up by the rock debris, but it was real gunfire.
Rotor cannons.
Tranquility turned.
Zarathustra reached Daylight and hauled him upright, stabbing at the Chromes that tried to mob and menace them.
Figures moved down the stony shore towards them, a squad of men. Two in the lead carried rotor cannons, firing bursts into the pool as they approached to drive back the xenoforms.
They were Imperial Fists.
Daylight crunched up the shoreline out of the water to meet them, Zarathustra at his heels.
The squad commander faced them, and removed his helm.
‘Severance, captain, Lotus Gate Wall,’ he said. ‘Where did you come from?’
Twenty-Four
Ardamantua
‘We’ve been on the surface six weeks,’ said Severance. ‘At least, I presume it’s about that long. Gravity distortion is so prolific planetside, I feel we can’t trust any other laws. Several suit chronometers are showing significant time variances. This world is not aligned with the natural flow of the cosmos.’
‘Increasingly so,’ Daylight agreed. ‘Six weeks is a reasonable estimate. We’ve been in transit roughly that long, from Terra.’
‘Who’s with you?’ asked Severance.
‘Everything that was left. The Phalanx is emptied and the walls of the Palace are bare. We’ve got a decent fleet support, and a substantial Guard cohort.’
Severance shook his head.
‘I can’t believe we’ve left the walls bare. I can’t. If Mirhen…’
‘Does the beloved Chapter Master still live?’ asked Daylight.
Severance shrugged.
‘My wall made an emergency drop to the surface via teleport when the Amkulon was holed. It was an extreme measure, and I would rather not have abandoned the vessel.’
Daylight saw that Captain Severance carried a battered teleport locator on his harness. A power light showed that it was still, futilely, activated.
‘By the time we were down, we were blind,’ Severance continued. ‘The gravity storm had closed in. We’ve been scouring the surface for survivors or contacts ever since. We saw drop-ships. Stormbirds? That’s what brought us this way.’