Vaults of Terra- The Hollow Mountain - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  Revus looked over at the control column. ‘Of course there is a purpose,’ he said quietly.

  Several of the pict-screens flickered into life. A vid-capture showed the chamber at the base of the stairs outside suddenly filling with ricochets – the automatic gun-turrets had opened fire. From below them, the steady crack of ammo-drums emptying made the floors vibrate. Amid the thundering cycles of ordnance, something bulky and armoured was advancing, sparking with impacts, but coming on all the same.

  ‘Then I think,’ Spinoza said coolly, her eyes turning from the monitors to hold his own, ‘as we are clearly running out of time, that you had better tell me what it is.’

  They did not take the same craft for the outward journey. Aneela had arrived at the Nexus in a Mercatura transit flyer, and it had always been the intention to withdraw in that one if possible. The flyer had been berthed in one of the less prestigious spots within the fortress’ colossal docking innards, all the better for slipping away undetected.

  They were not the only ones, though. Whole ranks of ship-tethers were active, flickering with marker lights and running with electro-pulses. The internal comms were clogged, filled with requests for disembarkation and increasingly strident demands for the lock-claws to be released.

  Aneela took up position in the pilot’s seat, pulling the head-set on and powering up the main console. Crowl settled in beside her, his bones aching. Gorgias spun around somewhere behind them, mumbling repetitive dirges.

  ‘I must apologise for my appearance,’ Crowl said, pulling the restraint straps on. ‘That was an unpleasant place.’

  ‘Noted, lord,’ Aneela said, her fingers dancing across the console. ‘I didn’t like it in there much myself.’

  There was a heavy clank, and the shuttle’s chassis thunked downward. A hiss followed, and then the tinny slide of comms-lines withdrawing.

  Crowl leaned back against the headrest. ‘Everyone’s keen to leave, it seems.’

  ‘There has been considerable turbulence within the last few hours,’ Aneela said, opening up power to the thrusters. ‘A lot of the adepts have opted to get out, if they can.’

  ‘What caused that? The riots?’

  ‘I do not know, lord.’

  The shuttle’s structure trembled as its motive force came up against the hold-claws. Ahead of them, dozens of craft were filtering out of the narrow canyon and towards the narrow sliver of the night sky beyond. One ship – a merchant’s urban skimmer, by its profile – seemed to have got stuck, either because its pilot had powered up too quickly or because the administrators had refused it permission to leave. Its engines had flared up, flooding the metal cliffs behind it with plasma. If that didn’t get resolved quickly, there would be an almighty explosion soon.

  ‘Is that likely to happen to us?’ Crowl asked, watching it calmly.

  The shuttle’s holding claw cracked open, and they floated free of the berth.

  ‘I made sure it wouldn’t,’ Aneela said, concentrating on the press of traffic ahead.

  ‘You really are very good, Aneela,’ said Crowl.

  They fell in amongst the other vessels, slowly drifting along the canyon and further out from under the Nexus’ shadow. The patch of sky ahead steadily grew, although it was darker than before and seething with stormclouds.

  ‘You said there had been transmissions from Courvain,’ Crowl said.

  ‘One, lord.’ Aneela played Revus’ message over the cockpit’s audex.

  Crowl frowned. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. You received nothing more?’

  ‘That was the last I heard. I could not establish a link back, and I could not reach you, either.’

  ‘When we are clear of the perimeter checks, drive this craft as hard as you dare.’

  ‘There was another transmission,’ she said, ducking a little lower to edge past a lumbering atmospheric transporter. The sky ahead was now plainly visible – a mottled patch of ripped clouds, shifting closely like stirred coal-dust. ‘I was unable to open it directly as it came in from the Representative’s office. Do you wish me to shunt it to you now?’

  Crowl frowned. ‘Do it.’

  A lens rose up from a device on the console in front of him, unfolding a bundled ident-reader as it did so. A sigil flickered into ghostly life across it – the skull-inset ‘I’ of the ordos. A scatter of verification runes followed, indicating that the transmission came from the chambers of the Inquisitorial Representative, Kleopatra Arx. Such direct communication was extremely rare – the various fortresses and conclaves operating on Terra were generally expected to go about their business unimpeded.

  Crowl reached forward, taking his rosette out from its cache at his breast and pressing it to the ident-reader. He then leaned forward for a retinal scan. ‘Crowl, Erasmus, Ordo Hereticus,’ he said, letting the logic-engine process his voice-pattern.

  Only then did the screen clear of the sigil, and fill with tracking runes.

  Priority message to all members of the Holy Ordos of the Emperor’s Inquisition operating on Terra or within standard void passage range of Terra, issued by the Office of the Representative to the High Council.

  Following irrefutable evidence obtained from scryers and portenders stationed within the inner observatories of the Ordo Malleus, this world is currently subject to a theta-grade anomaly warning, according to the Karcher scale. All operatives and agents, staff and retainers of the Holy Orders present on the Throneworld are advised to travel immediately to locations within or adjacent to the Outer Palace precincts, where secure communications will be established for subsequent bulletins.

  No guarantees can be given that the anomaly level will not rise in subsequent announcements. This message supersedes all previous instructions. Temporal authorities advise that unrest across all districts is significant and rising, with no assurance that protection will continue to be extended beyond the highest-tier assets identified in the standard operational manual’s crisis lists. Warning is duly given; no further broadcast messages on this subject will be given outside of the designated muster precincts.

  The Emperor Protects.

  Crowl’s brow furrowed, and he clasped his hands together. In his long years of service on Terra, no such transmission had ever been made. Unbidden, his mind immediately flashed back to the horror of the tunnels under the Palace itself, the warrens of darkness where that creature had slithered, the pleading face of Rassilo as she tried to persuade him not to intervene.

  They cannot repair the Throne. You understand that? You see what that means?

  Aneela increased the power to the engines slightly, pulling up towards the Nexus’ outer rim. The tormented sky opened up above them. ‘Do you wish to give me fresh orders, lord?’ she asked carefully.

  Crowl didn’t reply immediately. Everything about this was troubling in the extreme. The air of unrest and anger had been growing for weeks. Perhaps it had already been there during Sanguinala itself – you could never have told then, for that was always an occasion of religious frenzy. He had been so caught up in his own hunt since then, unable to sleep, unable to rest, that he had barely given it consideration. Perhaps that was as it should be – his holy calling was not, and never had been, to investigate the structural misalignments of the ether. That was for his esteemed colleagues of the Ordo Malleus.

  But the signs had been there. He had his responsibilities.

  ‘No,’ he said, shutting down the terminal. ‘Maintain course for Courvain. Captain Revus would not have made contact without good reason – I wish to learn what that was.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Yessika huddled in the corner, wrapping her arms around her knees and trying to shrink into the shadows.

  She had always been good at that. There were many shadows in Courvain, and it paid to know how to shrink into them, to merge with them, to avoid being seen, to avoid being heard.

 
Yessika was hardly alone in this. A signal attribute of all the citadel’s menial class was its capacity to dissolve into nothing, to be unnoticeable, to blend into the background like one of the timeworn mottos carved into the lines of steel panels. They went with their heads lowered, with their hands clasped, with their feet pressed softly against the stone. Yessika, however, was particularly good at it. She was tiny, a waif of a girl, with limbs that looked so thin they might snap under a finger’s pressure. She was like a breath of wind, her mother had told her. Like a gust of hot, silt-pocked air from the outside, caught for a moment under the yellow glare of a lumen, before sliding out again towards Throne only knew where.

  It was not that the regime in Courvain was particularly onerous – there was no outright cruelty from the superiors, at least not the abuse that tales said was rife across many other closed Imperial institutions – but all of them knew, to some degree or other, the clandestine nature of what went on in the cells and hidden chambers. It did not pay to hear too much, just in case a stray secret might creep out from under a locked door and attach itself to you. There was always work to do – supplies to carry, surfaces to wash with the caustic blocks of antisep, errands to run for the lords of the Upper Tower – and that made it easier to clear one’s mind of uncomfortable thoughts. At the close of each dark, cloistered day, there was gruel and synth-lactose, and tubs of water to wash in, and hard cots free of lice, and that was a good and fortuitous thing, so best not to ruin it by paying too much attention or being noticed.

  Of course, Yessika had been noticed now, by the new interrogator. She remained in awe of her, in truth. Her armour, her bearing, her speech. She must be infinitely wise, must Spinoza, and infinitely powerful, perhaps only a little less so than the Lord Crowl himself. They had not spoken together for a long time, but Yessika still remembered the single piece of fruit she had been given, and the way it had burst across her chapped lips, and the juice that had trickled into her mouth, and the secret pact that had been sealed. In return, she had only been able to give her tiny snippets, things that most people in the citadel already knew, but she had done as she had been bid, and kept her eyes open. One day, she knew, she would see something truly important, and then she would creep up the levels to the cell where she had been given the fruit, knowing that she had a gift for her mistress now, one that would repay that past kindness.

  ‘Thank you, Yessika,’ Spinoza would say then, smiling at her, lifting up her chin with a finger. ‘You have done me a great service. And, through me, you have done the Throne a great service. Well done.’

  Perhaps this was the time, Yessika thought. Things had been strange for a while. There had been the running, and the shouting, and the orders coming down from Gerog’s people all the time, making them scurry. It had felt as if everything was being made and then re-made, and towards the end of it, the storm troopers had rifled through the menials’ living quarters, looking for anything out of place. They hadn’t found anything, of course, for all were loyal in Courvain.

  But then there had been the bigger noises, the louder shouts, the booms that had made the walls echo and the floors shake. She had kept her head down then even more than usual, hoping it would all pass over.

  It hadn’t. More storm troopers came, only these wore grey, not black. They burst into the dormitories, bringing with them the stink of smoke. They had blank helms and empty eye-slits, and pulled the menials from their cots before throwing them onto the floor. Then they rummaged through the sheets, and tore out the food processors, and kicked in the lockers where they all stored their few private belongings.

  They didn’t ask any questions. They didn’t speak at all. They were rough, and clubbed a few of the older menials with the ends of their lasguns to make them move, but that was the limit of their brutality. They seemed to be a great hurry, wanting to sweep through the lower chambers before heading on up to do whatever they had come to the citadel to do.

  Yessika watched them all the while. She did what they wanted, and stayed small and on the edge, watching. She tried to remember the little things – how they moved, what they smelled like, who was in command and if they could be identified by a particular mark or manner. It was hard to keep everything in her head as they were jostled and herded out of the dormitories and down into the big refectory, so she mouthed the facts to herself silently, over and over.

  Once the grey storm troopers had gathered them all up in the main hall, most left, leaving just a few to watch over them all. Yessika saw adepts in that place as well, clad in their finer cowled robes. Some of these, after a little while, jumped up and rushed against the grey guards and tried to disarm them. The fighting was brutal and swift, with predictable results. Once it was over, the leader of the storm troopers killed the instigators and left their bodies lying on the tiled floor. The rest of them, menial and adept alike, hunkered down. Some of them looked scared. A few looked resigned. Yessika merely observed, knowing that Lord Spinoza, by the time she arrived to sort all this out, would want to know the details.

  For a long time, it seemed, the noises of fighting felt very close by, as if there were entire riots going on in the corridors outside. Those gradually moved away, heading upwards, until the refectory was left in an awkward state of near silence. Menials coughed quietly. Adepts sat back against the walls, their eyes closed. Those who had been taken from sickbeds moaned from time to time.

  After a while, it became hard to keep her eyes open. Some of the older ones lay down on the floor, trying to grab some rest. Yessika looked up, straight into the overhead lumens, determined to stay alert.

  As a result, it was possible that, of all of them there, she was the first to notice the narrow vents around the edge of the high ceiling – the ones that she had noticed from time to time in the past but never paid much heed to – activate.

  She narrowed her eyes. This was interesting. They were only little things – circular nozzles, with lenses that were spiralling open – but they were silent, and no one else had seen them.

  She smiled to herself. She was the only one. Perhaps this was part of Spinoza’s plan. Or perhaps she would want to know when it happened, in which case Yessika would be the one to tell her.

  She began to feel strange. Light-headed. The lumens overhead seemed brighter, and hurt her eyes. It also seemed that, for as long as she stared at them, the nozzles were becoming hazier.

  She rubbed her eyes, and looked away from them. Now, it appeared, others were doing similar things. In the far corner of the chamber, a woman suddenly bent over and retched. One of the adepts got to his feet shakily, before tottering and falling over again. The guards became instantly jittery – one trained his weapon at the ceiling, while another started to clutch at his throat.

  Yessika smiled again. She was feeling terribly sick – something to do with the gruel ration she’d had earlier that day, no doubt – and was having great trouble focusing, but something was clearly happening.

  She clasped her hands together, and concentrated on staying alert.

  ‘She will want the details,’ she said to herself, willing the sickness to fade away by remembering how that fruit had tasted. ‘All the details. To do great service to her. To do great service to the Throne.’

  They were still fighting. They were too stupid to stop; too brain-clamped and nerve-numb to anything but their neural-jack-sparked orders.

  Huk found herself inordinately proud of them all. She had lived down here with them for a long time now, and they had been her companions for the entirety of that time. It had become hard to think of them as they were – sacks of vat-grown meat hardwired to slaved cortex implants, destined for a five-year life of perpetually stacking, sorting and retrieving books they would never read for clients they would never see. In principle, they had been delivered for use as identical models, given one of the lowest Mechanicus service-ratings and deployed for a strict subset of monotonous tasks. In practice, Huk had
found ways to make things more interesting. Some years ago she had gained access to some of their basic machine-spirit glyph-patterns through the cogitator-hub at the heart of her domain. Through a long process of tinkering and experimentation – there was little else to do when the lords of the citadel did not demand her expert services – she had found ways to make them a little more variegated. One of them had even been taught to smile at her when it was dragged out of its rest-pit. That smile had been a toothless, black-gummed horror show, but at least it had been a vestige of something like humanity.

  And now they were fighting for her. They didn’t know what they were doing or why they were doing it, but it was possible to imagine that they cared, and imagination was all that she really needed then.

  Of course, they were getting cut apart. Once the shock of their first assault had died away, the grey-armoured interlopers had fought back well enough. They were initially heavily outnumbered, and had to fall back to the archive’s gilt-lined entrance to avoid being torn to pieces, but Huk’s little army had no genuine weapons, and no tactics other than the blanket order she had given them on auto-repeat in their tiny pseudo-minds.

  A few stray las-bolts must have flown into the sea of shelves at some point, setting alight the tinder-dry leaves, so now the fighting took place under the wavering flicker of flames. If she’d had time, she would have shuffled over to the precious cases and activated the dry-chemical dousers, but that was already impossible. Her flesh-puppet army was being driven back towards the central cogitator hub, sliced and burned now by disciplined strikes of las-weaponry.

  Huk had lost contact with Courvain’s main augur-feed, and so had heard nothing over the mainline comms since this thing started. Lasbeams had scythed through one of her main synapse-cables, making it hard to order the few servitors she could still direct. Her own sidearm was nearly out of power, and the flames were only getting stronger.