by Nick Kyme
“The probes have been discovered in the memory cores of the Planalto Administratum,” he reported. “There is…” He scanned the data rapidly. “There is a palpable sense of outrage. Security across the Planalto has been raised to level amber six. The canton parliament is calling an emergency session to discuss the incident. There is furious debate in the intelligence communities as to whether the data invasion is the work of a foreign power or industrial espionage.”
“If Sichar is guilty as charged,” said Amon, “he’ll know the probable cause and the probable origin. How long will it take them to analyse and trace the vermicular probes?”
“They were sterile and trace-free until they were launched,” said Haedo, “but they would collect specific particulates during transit. A decent forensic examiner should be able to trace them back to our craft in a few hours.”
“We are already suspected,” Amon said.
“Already?”
“That Lucifer Black knows we’re not what we seem to be. I believe they are just looking for evidential confirmation before they confront us.”
“And we still have no authority,” said Haedo.
Amon nodded, slowly.
“But they don’t know that,” he said.
Haedo didn’t respond. He was studying the cogito-analyser intently.
“What is it?” Amon asked.
“Parliament has initiated a system-wide purge to flush out and destroy the probes,” Haedo replied. “The order was countersigned by Pherom Sichar, presiding over the parliament. But that’s not it… I’m getting feedback from the probes. Seven of them have penetrated the Planalto’s communication archive, and one has sourced Lord Sichar’s archive log for the last seven months.”
“Translations?”
Haedo shook his head. “No, the code is still a wall to us. But the sender and receiver header codes on each message form are not encrypted. They’re stored in binaric. I’m running the entire list against comparative data. Wait… wait…”
Tight lines of script began to flow up the small screen of the compact device.
“Four confirmed matches,” Haedo whispered. “Four, you see? Each one is quite clearly the operative reception code for the Vengeful Spirit.”
The Lupercal’s flagship. Amon nodded. “That’s just cause. That’s all we need. We move.”
Strike teams summoned from the Palace could be in the heart of the Planalto in less than twenty-five minutes, but Amon judged that course to be counterproductive. An open shooting war would just make matters worse. He and Haedo had to secure the person of Sichar immediately, and then let a systematic investigation pick Sichar’s network of conspirators apart.
He took a trigger unit from the pocket of his robes and pressed it.
“Brace for apport,” he said. There was a loud, double-bang of over-stressed air pressure as the site-to-site teleport delivered two heavy, metal caskets into the suite directly from the Hawkwing. They appeared, fuming with vapour, in the centre of the carpet. The overpressure cracked two of the suite’s windows. Alarms, set off by the violent apport and its energy signature, started to pulse.
Haedo and Amon threw open the metal caskets. Inside each one, carefully packed, lay their golden custodes armour and the disengaged segments of their Guardian spears.
Drill teams of the Draco elite, led by Ibn Norn, burst into the holding suite less than four minutes later. The chambers were empty. A fierce wind blew in through a section of reinforced window that had been entirely cut out.
Ibn Norn glanced at the open, empty apport caskets, and the discarded clothes on the floor beside them. He saw the cockerel mask, the decorative sabre, and the wires of a displacer field hastily torn off.
He crossed to the window, and looked down into the streaming wind. The towers and street scheme of the Planalto spread out below him, far away. In the middle distance, on the shore overlooking the wide and gleaming edges of the Winter Fields, he saw Parliament House.
Ibn Norn activated his grav arrestor and leapt through the window.
Parliament House was a splendid structure built from filaments of silvered steel and pylons of a pale stone that looked like buffed ivory. Bells were ringing, urgently advising the delegates, burgraves and grandees to shelter or seek the protection of their bodyguards. Thousands of Dracos were gathering around the building’s various entrances, especially the broad main steps that led in a magnificent sweep up from the state quays of the Winter Fields.
Haedo and Amon landed on the roof of the largest quay house, disturbing ice powder that had been driven in off the fields. They killed their jump packs and surveyed the scene ahead.
“We’ve roused them like a colony of angry ants,” Haedo murmured.
Amon touched his arm and nodded.
A black figure flew in out of the winter sky, rebounded with agile grace off the spire of the gatehouse and landed in the midst of the milling Draco troops on the main steps.
“Scanners!” they heard Ibn Norn order. “They’re right here! Secure this precinct and find them!”
Haedo and Amon leapt down off the quay house roof and walked towards the steps side by side.
Dracos bustled around them, checking handheld monitors or breaking heavier scanning equipment out of carry boxes. Voices were chattering urgently. Gun crews were setting up tripod weapons along the shore to watch the ice fields. Packs of gunships purred low overhead.
The two custodes calmly walked up the steps through the anxious soldiers. They came within three metres of the Lucifer Black. Norn was barking commands, and trying to organise a perimeter.
They entered Parliament House unopposed. The echoey main chamber was emptying. The grandees of Hy Brasil were filing off the banked seating and flowing towards the exits, under the dutiful watch of armed Dracos.
Lord Sichar was still in his seat, a canopied throne of dark wood that presided over the upper and lower houses. He was a noble-looking man in red and green robes, a little younger than Amon had imagined. Sichar’s own Lucifer Black was waiting to hurry his lord to a place of safety, but Sichar was busy signing some last documents brought to him by delegates and scribes, and conferring urgently with the master of parliamentary protocol.
“Try not to harm his person,” Amon instructed Haedo. “We need him viable for interview.”
“We’ll probably have to kill his Lucifer,” Haedo replied.
“Agreed, but only if he resists. One clean shot. I don’t want a fight in here.”
Thirty metres from the canopied throne, they threw aside their falsehoods.
“Sichar of Hy Brasil,” Amon announced. “You are sanctioned by the Adeptus Custodes as an enemy of Terra. Do not attempt to resist us.”
Sichar, the delegates, the scribes and the master of protocol turned and gazed at them in astonishment. One of the scribes broke and ran for the exit in terror. The twin golden giants in their crested armour exuded nothing but ferocious menace.
The Lucifer Black seemed to reach for his weapon.
“One excuse,” Haedo snarled, aiming his spear in the direction of the Lucifer.
Sichar rose to his feet, retaining more composure than the underlings around him. He gazed down from his podium at the two gleaming custodes.
“This is inexcusable,” he began. Despite his defiance, he could not keep a tremor of fear out of his voice. “No one faced the might of the custodes without faltering. This is utterly inexcusable. This dishonours the sovereignty of Hy Brasil. I will demand a full apology from your master when—”
“He’s your master too,” declared Amon.
Sichar blinked. “I… What?”
“He’s supposed to be your master too,” Amon repeated. “You will accompany us now and answer to a list of issues that brand you a traitor. Step down from the podium.”
A bright flash of light burst across the main chamber, swiftly followed by another and another. For a second, Amon thought grenades had been detonated, but he revised that idea quickly. The light blooms were
teleport flares.
There were suddenly seven figures standing between the custodes and their target. Six of them were Adeptus Astartes in full battle armour, instantly recognisable as huscarls of the Imperial Fists. As the teleport flares dissipated, the six Astartes took one step forwards in perfect unison and aimed their bolt-guns at the custodes with a clatter.
The seventh figure stood in their midst, tall and mantled in a cloak of gold thread and red velvet. His hair was white and cropped short, and his noble face seemed weathered and tired.
“My lord,” said Amon, bowing his head to the primarch.
“This must stop,” said Rogal Dorn.
Dorn stepped forwards, through the ranks of his Astartes.
“Put up your weapons,” he said gently.
The Imperial Fists smartly raised the boltguns to their shoulders.
“I meant everyone,” added Dorn, looking at the custodes.
Amon and Haedo kept their spears aimed at the canopied throne.
“My lord, Pherom Sichar is a traitor and spy,” replied Amon carefully. “He is using the networks of his extensive mercantile empire to communicate with the Warmaster and his benighted rebels. We have just cause and evidence enough to hold him and interrogate him. He will come with us.”
“Or?” asked Dorn with a soft, almost amused smile.
“He will come with us, my lord,” Amon insisted.
Dorn nodded.
“An object lesson in determination and loyalty, eh, Archamus?” he said.
“Indeed, my lord,” replied the commander of the huscarls.
“They would fight six Astartes and a primarch in order to accomplish their duty,” Dorn said.
“My lord,” Amon said, “please stand aside.”
“I’m half-tempted to let you attempt to go through me,” said Dorn. “I would, of course, hurt you both.”
“You would try,” replied Haedo. “My lord,” he added.
“Enough,” said Dorn. “Archamus?”
The retinue commander stepped forwards.
“Lord Sichar of Hy Brasil is a spy,” he announced, quite matter-of-factly. “Lord Sichar of Hy Brasil has been in regular communication with Horus Lupercal, and has exchanged with the traitor a great deal of intelligence.”
“You admit it?” asked Amon.
“He’s our spy,” said Dorn. The primarch came up to Amon face to face. They were the tallest beings in the room.
“I am fortifying Terra as best I can for the coming war,” said Dorn. “That means more than walls and shields and gun platforms. That means information. Viable, solid data. Proper intelligence. Lord Sichar is as loyal as you or I, but his reputation as an opponent of Imperial policy made him a credible defector to the traitor’s camp. Horus thinks he has friends on Terra, friends and allies, who will rise up and turn to fight with him when his host arrives.”
“I see,” said Amon.
“Sadly,” said Dorn, “this great fuss may have compromised him. I may have to develop other spies now.”
“My lord,” said Amon, “we are custodes. We guard Terra and the Emperor as surely as you. Would it not have made sense to tell us of Lord Sichar’s involvement?”
Dorn exhaled and did not reply.
“Do you know what a blood game is, my lord?” asked Haedo.
“Of course,” replied Dorn. “You hounds play wolves and test the Emperor’s defences for the slightest flaw or vulnerability. I have reviewed many of your reports, and accommodated their findings into my reinforcements.”
“Then perhaps,” suggested Amon, “we could consider this a blood game? The weakness revealed being that all those who seek to serve and protect the Emperor must work with unified purpose and shared information.”
The raker sped away from the landing quay in a blizzard of ice crystals. It was a powerful, two-seater recreational model, painted cobalt-blue, with an upturned nose and hefty ice-blade. Aft of its stabiliser vanes, its ion engines burned with green fury. It lit off across the Winter Fields, making a sound like a knife being dragged across glass.
Cheth, or whatever his real name was, hadn’t even bothered to unslip the mooring lines. He’d gunned down the two wharfmen on the quay who had come to see what the commotion was about, and then leapt into the raker’s cockpit and slammed the sliding canopy.
Amon crashed down onto the quay just as the raker pulled away. The impact of his huge, armoured bulk cracked several flagstones. The mooring lines, dragged tight, were snapping with pistol-shot cracks. Amon managed to seize one of the lines before it parted, and held on as it broke. Dragged by the line, he was whipped off the edge of the quay and hit the ice on his belly, slithering and ripping along like an unseated rider pulled behind his steed. Ice chips blinded him. The vibration and friction was almost too much to bear. As the raker increased its velocity, Amon felt his armour dent and buckle. He was rolling and bouncing, spinning from side to side on the end of the trailing line. His grip was failing.
Amon let go, and slid clear in a long, wide arc across the ice. He dug in his heavy boots to try and arrest his slide, and as he slowed to a halt, he began to rise.
The raker was accelerating away across the fields. Skaters and ice yachts veered in panic to get out of its headlong path. It ploughed through the flag-lines of a speed-skate course.
Behind him, Amon heard another explosion. Another gout of flame and smoke bellied into the sky from Parliament House.
“Amon! Amon!” Haedo’s voice yelled over the vox.
“Go.”
“Where are you?”
“In pursuit. The assassin is heading out across the ice lake. Is the primarch safe?”
“I have confirmation from the Imperial Fists,” Haedo replied. “Primarch Dorn had left Parliament House before the first bomb.”
“Lord Sichar?”
“Dead, along with eight members of the legislature. Amon, stand by. I’m securing a ’thopter. I’ll be en route to you in—”
“No time,” Amon replied. He rose and triggered his jump pack. The launch impact threw him high into the air. Climbing he saw the raker turning ahead of him, below. It was swinging west over the Winter Fields, cutting through a yacht formation.
Lord Sichar had been murdered by his own Lucifer Black, his bodyguard, a man called Gen Cheth. Ibn Norn had introduced him to Amon. Whoever had been wearing the black armoured suit when Amon had nodded to him, his name hadn’t been Gen Cheth. Or, a darker possibility, Gen Cheth hadn’t ever been the man his closest comrades thought he was.
It seemed that the Lupercal had spies of his own. Hounds were wolves and wolves were hounds. Primarch Dorn had been obliged to compromise Lord Sichar’s position as a double-agent for Amon’s benefit. The Lucifer Black had been right there. Horus’ man had been right there. Lord Sichar’s secret had been revealed. Lord Sichar was suddenly a vulnerability to be expunged and an enemy to be punished.
The concussion bomb had seen to that. It had vaporised the centre of the Parliament chamber, and brought down the roof. Haedo and Amon had been thrown backwards through wooden partitions into the consular voting room. Amon had been first on his feet.
The assassin had run. Leaving at least one more bomb behind him, he had fled for the fields. Amon wondered why. Assassins were focused beings. Execution or suicide was the usual conclusion of their efforts. Did this man think he could escape?
Surely not. Then what was he trying to accomplish?
Amon swooped down at the racing craft. Arms across his face, he struck it like a lightning bolt, shearing the canopy clean away. Glass splinters and pieces of window strut billowed away in the rushing wind. Amon tried to hold on. The black-armoured figure struggled to maintain control of the raker one-handed while he fumbled for his weapon. The craft bucked. Amon slid, and ended up clinging to the raker’s upturned nose.
He dug his fingers into the metal skin of the fuselage, making his own handholds, and dragged himself forwards. The assassin had found his weapon. He fired at Amon over th
e dashboard hump, and a bolt round shrieked past the custodes’ ear. The raker began to approach maximum velocity. Amon clawed on and reached the torn-open cockpit. The assassin fired again, blasting up at the custodes looming over him. The bolt punched through Amon’s left shoulder and blood sprayed into the slipstream.
Amon punched down with his right fist. The blow crushed the black metal helmet and pulped the head inside it.
The raker veered wildly as the assassin’s corpse lolled sideways from the controls. Clinging on, Amon tried to reach in to cut the engines.
He saw what was in the pillion seat behind the driver.
Another bomb, the largest and most destructive of all. Now Amon understood. The assassin had been planning suicide all along. He had been planning to finish his work by riding the raker out into the middle of the Winter Fields and detonating the device. The bomb would take out Hy Brasil’s vast reactors, buried under the fields. The reactors would annihilate the Planalto. Terra would understand, with a sick jolt, the wrath and influence of Horus Lupercal.
Almost shaken off by the savage vibration of the uncontrolled raker, Amon could see a light-beat countdown. There was no way of telling how much longer was left on the timer.
In sheer desperation, Amon tore out his trigger unit. There was no time for complex readjustment or re-calibration, no time to punch in an alternate set of coordinates. Amon simply managed to reset the altitude, adding two kilometres. Then he hit the actuator stud and hurled the unit into the cockpit.
He leapt clear. The site-to-site teleport vanished most of the speeding raker before Amon had even hit the ice. He landed with a bone-jarring crunch, and tumbled for thirty or forty metres in a flurry of ice. A stabiliser vane and part of the raker’s tail assembly, severed by the teleport beam’s tight focus, clattered and cartwheeled past him, shedding debris, the cut edges glowing and molten.
On his back, half-conscious, Amon slid in circles and slowly, slowly, came to a halt. He looked up into the mauve Sud Merican sky.