by Various
‘Whatever you say.’
The expanse of the compound spread out below – a loose collection of hangars and rockcrete bunkers, all of which were ugly, dark and scoured by wind-driven sand. Fires had broken out amongst those on the far edge, sparked by the incendiaries planted by the two other teams. Hassan could see the silhouettes of guards crossing the open spaces, their movements hurried and ill-directed. They were still trying to reinforce the northern wall, over where the evidence of infiltration had been made most obvious.
So far, so good.
‘That’s the target,’ said Hassan, moving along the parapet and gesturing to one of the bunkers below. It was a nondescript building, just one of a dozen that were of a similar size and shape.
‘Ugly thing,’ observed Farouk.
‘It’ll be uglier in a minute,’ said Hassan. ‘Keep it quiet.’
One by one they rappelled to the ground. They kept low, running semi-hunched. Three more guards fell before they reached their destination, dropped by single rounds. When they reached the shelter of the bunker entrance they crouched down, as inconspicuous as shadows.
The bunker’s blast doors were sealed and barred. Hassan clamped six hyperacid capsules along the join, then retreated and blew the charges. The thick metal doors dissolved in a steaming, foaming cloud. Hassan heard a cluster of short-lived screams as the guards on the other side inhaled the toxic mix of dissolving plasteel and airborne chem-droplets – otherwise, the breach was almost silent, masked by the continuing explosions and gunfire running along the northern wall.
All that remained afterwards was a steaming, jagged void, its steel edges melted into stretched teardrops.
Hassan got to his feet. The bunker interior beckoned, ink-black and smelling of molten flesh and metal.
‘Now we enter,’ he said, and slipped inside.
‘Now you enter,’ came the voice, as soft and sibilant as he’d imagined it would be.
Hassan stirred out of his memories. He couldn’t see the speaker. He guessed it was the same man who’d shown him into the antechamber.
He looked up, seeing that the second set of doors had opened. He hadn’t noticed them unlock; the mechanism must have been extraordinarily smooth.
He rose awkwardly. He could feel patches of sweat under his arms and around his collar, and hoped they didn’t show. His limbs felt stiff, as though he’d forgotten how to walk and needed reminding.
Once through the doors, he passed into a vast sunlit chamber. One entire wall was given over to a long unbroken expanse of glass. Circling mountains broke up the horizon beyond, glittering white in the sunlight.
The floor was polished parquet. Eclectic items of furniture dotted the cavernous interior – a Louis Canz armoire stood next to a Unity-era ’lith projector, overlooked by a series of Hjuort oils and a cabinet containing priceless Ming and Wejwood ceramics.
It reminded him of a magpie’s nest. A collector’s den. Ostentatious, given the circumstances.
Hassan was alone. The room was silent. The doors closed behind him, moving together as quietly and elegantly as they had opened.
For a moment he stood still, listening to the sound of his own breathing, wondering if the things he saw around him were even real. Perhaps this was a test. Perhaps he was being shown one final glimpse of glory before the end.
Hassan knew they could have pronounced their judgement at any time. He had already given them all the information he could. He had been most careful about it, making sure the details were correct. Even in his failure he had not stinted nor tried to excuse himself. That had always been his way: honesty, even in disgrace. Such, of course, were the values of the Imperium, the basis upon which his loyalty had always been commanded.
Time passed. No one else entered the room. Hassan began to lose his sense of slow foreboding. He walked over to the windows, standing close to the glass and resting his fingertips against it.
The vista spread out before him – a dizzying sweep across the Palace’s western marches.
So much gold. So much of everything.
Vertiginous battlements plunged like cataracts into thickets of bone-thin towers. Colossal buttresses soared up from the bones of the mountains, massive and eternal. Even Lord Dorn’s heavy alterations along the outer walls hadn’t obliterated all of the Palace’s old and innate beauty.
Gazing over such vastness, it was hard not to feel strangely insignificant. The walls had already stood for centuries. They would endure for centuries more – a beacon of splendour amidst an expanding empire of mortal exaltation.
‘I liked it better before Rogal really got to work.’
The voice came out of nowhere. Hassan spun around, scanning across the chamber.
He was still alone. The voice seemed to rise from the air around him, echoing from the panels and sinking into the fabric of the woven rugs.
It was a strange voice. Mournful in tone, rich in timbre, cracked by age.
‘I do not see you, lord,’ replied Hassan, feeling stiff and stupid.
‘No, not yet. I cannot be in all places at once. We may save some time this way. Does it unsettle you?’
Of course it did.
‘Not at all.’
‘Good. Then keep looking at the view. Remember it. With every passing day it will get a little uglier, a little more worn. Just like us, eh?’
Hassan turned back to the window. He wondered whether the speaker could see him. He assumed that he could, though one could never be sure. Throwing a voice was trivially easy. Such theatrics, as he well knew, were all part of the process.
‘You are not a man given to levity,’ came the voice again. ‘That is what the reports all say – serious-minded, diligent. I can sense that in you myself. You are the embodiment of everything the Emperor aspires to instil in humanity. He would admire you, I think, were He here with us.’
The voice did not sound disdainful. Hassan could hear harshness in it, a harshness bred from long ages of wearying command, but also other things – a grain of sympathy, mostly resignation.
It was all so very unexpected.
‘I have always endeavoured to serve,’ he said.
‘I know you have,’ came the voice. ‘I know you have. But now you are here, with me, in this place. What you have been in the past, what you have done in the past, this is the reckoning for it. Do you know who I am, Captain Khalid Hassan?’
‘I think so, lord.’
‘I am the reckoner. I am the judge. I am the scrivener of the Imperium, the evaluator of its ocean of souls.’
Hassan couldn’t decide why he was being told this. Boastfulness? Possibly. It didn’t sound like boastfulness, though. It sounded almost like sarcasm – a dry, self-aware sarcasm.
‘I am the Sigillite. I am the Regent of Terra. At my command the fate of a million worlds is determined. And yet here I am, conversing with you as you look through my window and disapprove of my collections. Life is full of surprises, is it not?’
Hassan almost found himself nodding in agreement. ‘It is, lord,’ he said.
‘And you know why you are here?’
‘Because of what happened in Gyptus.’
‘That is right,’ came the voice. ‘Think back, Khalid. Think back to what you did there. I will be with you soon – when I come, I will wish to know everything.’
The lights had blown. Hassan blink-adjusted the gain on his helm’s night vision and progressed cautiously.
The bunker extended deep below ground level. A central corridor ran down the length of it – about fifty metres – from which smaller chambers branched off, each sealed by fresh sets of locked doors.
‘Getting anything?’ whispered Farouk over the comm. ‘No life signs here.’
‘Not yet,’ said Hassan, continuing ahead.
The squad inched down the central corridor. Hassan heard nothi
ng but the dim sounds of battle from outside. The other squads were doing a good job of drawing attention away, but they only had a short time in which to operate.
He activated the proximity beacon on his palm-mounted auspex and saw, with some relief, the target locator rune flicker into being.
‘Third on the right,’ he said softly, motioning to a pair of slide-doors some thirty metres ahead.
Two of his troops remained in the bunker entrance, sunk in shadow, their weapons aimed to take out any intruders. Hassan, Farouk and the third operative slunk down the corridor. As Hassan edged forwards he caught a faint hiss, like machine static.
He paused. ‘You getting that?’ he asked.
Farouk looked at him. ‘Getting what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hassan, pressing on. ‘Sensor glitch.’
They reached the chamber. It was locked and barred, just like the others.
‘Stand back,’ ordered Hassan, drawing fresh hyperacid capsules from his belt.
As he moved, he heard a dull thud, followed by a whoosh of stale air. He threw himself around, his gun held one-handed.
‘What in–’ he began, before seeing the motionless form of his squad-mate on the floor.
‘Target!’ shouted Farouk, opening fire with his rifle. A juddering hail of ice-bright bullets sprayed down the corridor, chinking and splintering from the metal walls.
Hassan joined in, firing into the darkness. The confined space erupted into a storm of gunshots.
‘Ceasefire!’ shouted Hassan.
The last echoes of the volley died. The bunker sank back into darkness. Wisps of smoke rose up from the ravaged floor.
Farouk slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle.
‘What was it?’ demanded Hassan, still seeing nothing on his proximity scan.
‘No idea,’ muttered Farouk. ‘Never got a proper look.’
Hassan glanced down at the downed operative’s body. A single slash had torn clean through his throat. Blood beneath him, thick and dark.
‘Captain?’ came an inquiry from the soldiers stationed at the entrance.
‘Stand by,’ ordered Hassan. ‘Hold position.’
His mind began to race, wondering how anything could have got so close without registering on his sensors. He reached up to his helm and depressed the release catch. ‘Remove your visor.’
‘What?’ asked Farouk, sounding tense. ‘That’s madness.’
‘Do it.’
Hassan’s helm slid open with a smooth hiss. He felt the hot, dusty air brush against his face. Deprived of his false-colour night vision everything was black. He still saw no sign of the thing that had attacked them. He felt vulnerable – nearly blind, stuck underground with something he couldn’t detect.
He heard Farouk’s visor open.
‘Great,’ said Farouk. ‘Now we’re blind.’
‘When all else fails,’ said Hassan, reaching for a low-burn flare and keying it for ignition, ‘use the eyes you were born with.’
He hurled the flare down the long corridor, hearing it bounce from the walls. The torch exploded into life, throwing a dull red bloom across the surfaces around it. In the brief burn-time, Hassan saw something dark and hunched about ten metres further down, pressed tight against the far wall. It was man-shaped and wearing some kind of sensor-reflective armour, veined with silver wires and nodes.
As soon as the flare went off, the figure leapt from the wall and tore towards them.
‘Now shoot!’ ordered Hassan.
The enemy bounded towards them, darting between the spitting lines of fire with uncanny speed. Farouk winged it, blasting through the armour on the left shoulder, but it kept coming.
‘Bring him down!’ shouted Hassan, falling back as he fired, aiming for the figure’s shifting outline.
Farouk screamed. Hassan saw steel talons flash in the darkness, ripping Farouk’s protective carapace as though it were made of paper.
‘Farouk!’ he shouted, swinging back in close, feeling his gun click empty.
The enemy stared right at him then, just for an instant, the masked face caught in the jagged flashes of muzzle discharge. Hassan saw red-rimmed eyes, dilated from combat-stimms, shot deep in stretched skin.
He thrust the hyperacid capsule – still clutched in his left fist – into the man’s face, smashing it open before throwing himself clear.
The screams were unholy, a cacophony of animal shrieks and gurgling, throttled agony. The smell of charred flesh filled the corridor, accompanied by bloody splatters as the acid ate down to the man’s arteries.
Hassan scrabbled away, grabbing hold of Farouk’s reeling body and hauling it clear. The enemy staggered away from them, clutching at his disintegrating face. Then he collapsed, twitching, his savaged head and neck steaming and popping.
Hassan got back to his knees, breathing heavily. The two operatives he’d left at the doors reached his position. They stared down at the twisted body of the enemy warrior, then at Farouk.
Farouk coughed, spraying blood against Hassan’s armour.
‘How bad?’ demanded Hassan, flipping his visor closed.
‘Significant,’ croaked Farouk.
Hassan felt the heavy weight of Farouk’s body in his arms. He wouldn’t do much more fighting.
‘We’re almost done,’ he said, lowering him carefully to the ground and moving over to the sealed doors. ‘Then we’re on our way out.’
Hassan primed a charge, clamped it and withdrew. The four of them shuffled back away from the doors, and the krak grenade went off with a sharp, focused report, blasting a jagged hole in the metal.
‘That’ll bring them running,’ Hassan said grimly, getting to his feet and heading for the broken entrance, reloading as he went. ‘Now let’s retrieve the target and get out before they catch us.’
Hassan didn’t notice the Sigillite enter the room. One moment he was alone, the next he was staring directly at a cowled old man clutching a staff.
He collected himself.
‘Forgive me for keeping you waiting, captain,’ said the old man. ‘Lord Dorn is well-meaning but has never mastered brevity.’
Hassan clasped his hands behind his back and stood straight. He could feel his pulse picking up, throbbing through the veins at his neck. Something about the man before him put him on edge. He felt an unaccountable urge to look away.
The Sigillite was slight. His stoop made him short, and his hands gripped his flickering staff as though for support. For all the man’s frailty, Hassan could sense the quiet power radiating from him, as deep and cold as a well-shaft.
He does not hide it. He could destroy everything around us with a gesture.
The Sigillite reached a bony hand up to his hood and pushed the fabric back. An old, old face emerged, deep-lined and ember-dry. Bones jutted under drawn flesh, stark like the profile of famishment. But his eyes were alive – deep, darting eyes that moved with an almost avian sharpness.
Those eyes held Hassan for a moment. He felt his mouth go dry.
Then the Sigillite released him. He walked over to a low couch and lowered himself down. His movements were halting, like one who had once been trained to the peak of physical perfection but had since been terribly wounded. It was a strangely affecting sight.
Malcador leaned back. His grey face smoothed by a fraction; his clenched features relaxed. He put the staff aside and his withered hands rested on his bony lap.
‘Sit.’
Hassan did as he was told, moving over to a leather armchair facing the couch. He felt his hands trembling.
‘Will you drink?’ asked Malcador, glancing at a carafe on the table between them. As soon as he mentioned it, Hassan felt a thirst kindle at the back of his throat.
‘No, thank you.’
Malcador poured himself a glass of what looked like wine. He broug
ht the glass up to his hooked nose and let the aroma linger for a moment.
‘I remember when there were vines in Franc,’ he said. He took a sip, swirled it in his mouth, and swallowed. ‘So much easier now. It even tastes as good. Or does it? How would we know? Who now lives who walked the vineyards of old?’
He pursed his thin lips, pensive.
‘Some of us remember,’ he said. Then his eyes snapped up, as unwavering as a raptor’s. ‘What were you doing in Gyptus?’
Hassan swallowed. ‘Clandestine mission, lord. Orders received from the Palace, maximum secrecy, military priority. We were given coordinates, times, access to an Army lifter. Then we left.’
‘Was that all?’
‘I’d been given the location of a single bunker.’ Hassan paused. ‘I checked it, just as always. Right until the end, I thought we’d got it right.’
Malcador nodded. ‘Right until the end.’
Hassan felt his cheeks flush. The humiliation of it had still not left him. ‘Perhaps, if we’d known what we were looking for…’ he began, then trailed off.
‘But that would have defeated the point, would it not?’ said Malcador. ‘Knowledge is dangerous in your profession. It is dangerous in all professions. If it were up to me, knowledge would be strictly rationed. It would be doled out only to those capable of handling it – a dozen souls, no more. An infinite empire can be run by twelve good men, if only they remain true to their calling.’ His expression darkened. ‘Though that can never be guaranteed, can it? Even the strongest have their flaws. Such is the tragedy of our species.’
Hassan tried to listen, to keep up. Malcador’s mind seemed to roam freely, passing from matters at hand to far-off issues of galactic governance. Hassan began to wonder if the old man were entirely sane.
Unexpectedly, the Sigillite smiled then. Like all his gestures, it was a compromised movement, at once bitter and mirthful.
‘The Emperor and I have a debate,’ he said. ‘It has been running for a long time, and I miss our discussions now that He is gone. Such a powerful intellect. Blunt, but powerful. And, very occasionally, even a sense of humour – of a sort. Would you credit that?’