[Rogue Trader 02] - Star of Damocles

by Andy Hoare - (ebook by Undead)

  “How many gave in to their desires? To the… creatures?” Korvane asked, visions of the creature’s glittering body coming unbidden to his mind.

  “It seems that around five thousand congregated on the flight deck, mostly Guard, but not exclusively so.” The general appeared embarrassed, but Korvane nodded that he should continue. “How many would have succumbed once there, I cannot imagine, though we know some attempted to escape via the shuttle.”

  Korvane nodded, a shiver coursing through him as he recalled the soul screams of the deserters as the shuttle they had commandeered was swallowed up by the warp at the instant the Rosetta penetrated the thin skein between the warp and realspace. “Where did they hope to flee to?” He asked, unsure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Where?” replied Gauge. “Well, I’m told we’re only half a dozen astronomical units from a stellar body of some kind. I can only imagine…”

  “How?” Korvane interrupted. “How did we come to exit the warp so near to such a body?”

  “Korvane,” the general continued. “You ordered the Rosetta out of the warp.”

  Korvane was stunned. He had no recollection of issuing such an order. He vividly recalled the creature’s promises, her silky skin, and the touch of her lips upon his neck.

  “Korvane?” General Gauge leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resdng on the polished wooden surface of the conference table. “Korvane, when you issued that order, you saved the life and soul of every man and woman on this vessel. It was only the fact that the Rosetta was exiting the warp at the point where the geller field was breached that stopped… what happened to the shuttle happening to us all. You have my profound thanks, Korvane. You cannot know how much we owe you.”

  Korvane turned back towards the viewing portal. The darkness was all-encompassing, matching the emptiness he felt might consume his soul now that the creature was gone. Somewhere out there, in the utter dark, was a stellar body, and beyond that, the rendezvous point at which the fleet would muster, half way across the Damocles Gulf. Further still, he mused, was an entire empire, but all of that paled into insignificance before one single fact. His stepsister was out there, and, if the creature’s words were to be believed, she was not very far away.

  It occurred to him that hatred had stolen him from the creature’s embrace. His stepsister might have saved him, Korvane mused, but she would pay the very highest price for doing so.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Welcome aboard our vessel,” the tall, robed alien envoy said, addressing Brielle. His face was wide and flat, and he lacked a visible nose, yet Brielle could see that his grey-blue skin was wrinkled and worn with age, just like a human’s. “I trust your voyage has been a comfortable one.”

  Brielle, Naal at her back, stood in the centre of a wide, oval chamber, facing the envoy and his retinue. Long, scroll-like flags hung from the high ceiling, each adorned with the alien lettering of the tau. Having fled the system aboard a stolen tau shuttle, Brielle, Naal and the prisoners they had released had rendezvoused with a vessel of the so-called “Water Caste”, the arm of the Tau Empire responsible, Naal had explained, for diplomacy and trade.

  “I thank you for receiving me,” Brielle replied, as her mind raced with the lessons her father had insisted she undergo years before, lessons in etiquette and courtly manners. She had paid scant attention, reasoning that her native intelligence would see her through any such situations. Ordinarily, it had, but here she was dealing with a representative of an entire xenos race. She knew that the fate of that race and many human worlds besides might hang upon her words.

  “It is an honour,” the tau replied, “to have such an august individual as yourself aboard. I trust your voyage thus far was not overly taxing?”

  Brielle forced her mind to a semblance of order, mentally filtering the alien diplomat’s words for any sign of duplicity. She acknowledged that she lacked the skill in such matters that her father displayed, or even, she hated to admit, that her brother had learned during his upbringing amongst the highest Imperial courts. As a consequence of her uncertainty, she found herself studying the alien’s flat visage, though she had great difficulty in reading his meaning beyond the words he spoke.

  Naal coughed subtly, and she realised that the envoy was waiting for her answer. She felt annoyance at her performance, and her cheeks coloured. Hopefully, she thought, the tau would have little experience at reading human emotions, and she would be able to get through this.

  “Please,” the envoy said before Brielle could speak, “forgive me my ill manners. You have travelled a great distance to meet with us, and I have not allowed you to rest now that you are here.”

  “Not at all,” Brielle replied, determined not to let any weakness show. “We have undergone a long journey, but we are eager to meet with our new friends, the tau.”

  The envoy dipped his head at Brielle’s words, and spread his long, spindly arms wide in a gesture that caused the material of his formal robes to sweep backwards as if upon a sudden breeze. Brielle estimated that the fabric would be worth a small fortune on a number of coreward planets, for its decorative simplicity belied the obviously superior quality of its workmanship. Then, as the envoy raised his head once more, she realised that the role of trader was no longer hers, and might never be so again. She had to forge her own course now, wherever that might take her.

  “In addition to welcoming you among us,” the envoy continued, “I must express the gratitude of all the peoples of the Tau Empire for the return of those you released. I have heard only a small portion of the tale, but am given to understand that you have sacrificed a great deal in order to return to us those we believed lost.”

  As one, the tau envoy and his retinue bent almost double, bowing in obviously heartfelt thanks. Silence filled the starkly lit chamber, and, all of a sudden, Brielle felt quite alone in the centre of the bright, white space. She felt too the sheer weight of the events unfolding around her, aware that her actions might ring down the ages in the annals of the Arcadius. If, she mused, her name was ever entered in them again.

  After what felt to Brielle like long, drawn out minutes, the envoy and his retinue straightened. She took a deep breath, seeking to impose some order on her thoughts. Finally, she found what she hoped would be the correct words.

  “I come to you in the hope that my actions might benefit both my people, and yours,” Brielle said, studying the envoy’s implacable features intently. “I am honoured,” she continued, “to be received in such a fashion. I trust that we shall find common cause to the benefit of all.”

  Once more, the envoy dipped his head in obvious approval of Brielle’s words, the simple response filling her with relief. “Indeed, Lady Brielle,” the envoy replied. “I trust that through our actions, the Greater Good might prevail, to the benefit of us all.”

  Lucian awoke with a start, gasping for breath as he sat bolt upright in his bed. Brielle… he had awakened from a nightmare in which his daughter had faced some terrible threat, alone in the dark, and there was nothing he could do to aid her.

  Forcing his breathing to a normal pace, Lucian cast about in the dark for the carafe of water he kept at his bedside. After a moment of fumbling he located the crystal vessel and drank deep. The cold liquid helped his mind clear, the last vestige of the stark nightmare evaporating as he came fully awake.

  The question of his daughter’s fate had been gnawing at Lucian for weeks. As the voyage across the Damocles Gulf had dragged on, he had found himself dwelling upon it more and more. He had spoken of it with Korvane at the last fleet rendezvous point, but his son had appeared sullen and disinterested, as if in the grip of some deeper malaise. As the fleet had moved on, Lucian and his son had parted on bad terms, and that too preyed upon Lucian’s mind.

  Realising sleep would not return anytime soon, Lucian cast off his bed sheet, and stood and donned a plain, informal outfit. At such times as this, Lucian would often walk the long, winding companionways of his vessel, allo
wing his steps to lead him wherever they would as his mind pondered whatever problem was troubling him.

  Not that this problem would withstand much pondering, Lucian mused, for the issue was plain enough. Brielle had assaulted an inquisitor, wounding him almost unto death, and she had fled, he knew not where. Even for a rogue trader, who would ordinarily exist far above the laws of the Imperium, such an action was unpardonable. Lucian counted himself extremely fortunate that Inquisitor Grand had not sought to wreak revenge upon the remaining Arcadius, though it had occurred to him that the inquisitor might yet decide to do so.

  Where was she, Lucian pondered as he stepped out into the passageway? The ancient wood panelling on this deck appeared like the colour of blood under the red lighting of ship’s night, and the brass fittings lining the bulkheads gleamed in the dark. Only the ever-present rumble of the Oceanid’s warp drive disturbed the silence, and few crew were to be seen at this hour. It was Lucian’s favourite time, when the third watch were the only men on duty, the remainder fast asleep, or gambling and whoring in the lower decks.

  He chose a direction at random and set off along the companionway. As he walked, he considered the problem at hand. Brielle, his daughter whom he loved dearly, had undertaken a course of action that he had no understanding of at all. It appeared that she had taken it upon herself to free the tau prisoners, but why would she do such a thing? Though he loved her, Lucian knew that Brielle could be selfish in the extreme, so he could not fathom what had caused her to attempt to free the tau prisoners. More to the point, what had she hoped to achieve in doing so?

  As he passed through a wide bulkhead door into the Oceanid’s central thoroughfare, a thought occurred to Lucian. Had his daughter hoped to use the prisoners to gain some leverage within the crusade’s command structure? Perhaps she hoped to help him, seeking some advantage that the Arcadius might bring to bear upon their rivals.

  No, Lucian thought with a wry smile. He knew his daughter better than that. Though she would act for the benefit of the Arcadius, he did not believe she would have acted quite so selflessly as to put herself so squarely in harm’s way, not unless she stood to gain enormous benefits from doing so.

  And what of her fate now that she had fled the crusade? She was out there, somewhere, far beyond his capacity to aid her. She had fled in a tau shuttle, not even attempting to regain the Fairlight. That in itself posed yet more questions. How had she piloted the alien vessel—had she coerced the aid of a tau pilot not captured in the initial assault upon the station? Did she intend to return at some point, and if she did, what could Lucian do to protect her against the wrath of Inquisitor Grand?

  The thought of the inquisitor brought a silent shiver of revulsion. Lucian had met with the agents of the Inquisition before, indeed, he had worked closely with the Ordos of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition on several occasions, but Grand somehow stood out amongst its widely individual men and women. There was something deeply… unwholesome about Inquisitor Grand. For a start, he was clearly a political creature where many of his peers considered themselves far above such petty concerns. Grand, it seemed, was content to work within the crusade’s power structures, lending the weight of his authority to its ends without bringing to bear the full power he was entitled to wield. Clearly, Lucian mused, the inquisitor and Cardinal Gurney shared some agenda, had some arrangement, or were perhaps both enamoured of some higher power. There were not many above a cardinal and an inquisitor, but the parent organisations of each man were notoriously complex, so anything might be possible.

  Lucian wandered on, drawn along the central spine of his vessel. The companionways were still deserted, though he did catch sight of the occasional servitor engaged upon the endless tasks the constructs enacted upon his vessel. Many such tasks, routine maintenance of non-essential systems, were best performed at such a late hour, so as not to inconvenience the crew as they went about their duties during ship’s day. Passing the central armoury, Lucian felt a faint tension in the air, and realised that the feeling had been with him for quite some time.

  Lucian halted in the centre of the passageway. He told himself that it was the warp and the Damocles Gulf. He’d seen men driven mad by even the briefest voyage through the weirdling depths of the empyrean, and this journey had been particularly taxing. The entire region still pulsed and writhed with formless energy, entirely beyond the understanding of the fleet’s most learned tech-priests. What effects, both physical and spiritual, those energies might be exerting upon the hundreds of thousands of crusaders none could tell. What Lucian did know, was that he, and others, were growing steadily more concerned as the crossing of the Damocles Gulf proceeded.

  A distant sound drew Lucian’s attention, breaking his chain of thought. From a junction up ahead, one passage from which led to the Oceanid’s cargo decks, he heard an odd chanting. The song was atonal, the voice cracked, but he recognised its owner straight away. He set off in the direction of the sound.

  Turning starboard at the first junction, Lucian climbed down a short ladder, taking him onto the main cargo deck. There was a long corridor before him, which receded into the distance as it ran the length of the vessel. Large blast doors mounted in the bulkhead every twenty metres or so denoted the entrances to the smaller cargo holds. In front of him, the blast door leading to the primary hold was ajar, the wan crimson illumination of ship’s night spilling forth. The chanting was clearly audible; it was coming from the primary hold.

  His curiosity piqued, Lucian stepped through the open portal and out onto the vast cargo space. The bay was so large that its ceiling was lost to darkness, and even the outer hull doors were shrouded in distant shadow, several hundred metres away. The hold was virtually empty, the goods that the Oceanid transported kept in the many secondary holds, or held in deeper storage in the stasis chambers. Lucian fully intended the hold to be entirely filled on the return however, whether with trade goods or with booty.

  As the chanting grew clearer, Lucian saw its source. A spindly, emaciated figure sat cross-legged in the very centre of the hold. It was, as Lucian had guessed, his astropath, Adept Karaldi.

  Lucian approached cautiously, wary of the man’s mental state following his encounter, and not entirely certain that Karaldi should even be out of the medicae bay. As he approached, he saw that the astropath still wore the blood-specked surgical gown that he had worn the last time they had met. Furthermore, catheters trailed from his twig-like arms, which were bruised and pinpricked with all the syringes that had impaled them.

  Standing over the cross-legged astropath, Lucian cleared his throat. The man’s chanting ceased, and after a long, drawn out moment, Karaldi craned his neck to look up at his master through empty eye sockets.

  “My master,” the astropath said through dried and cracked lips.

  “Adept. What is occurring? Why are you out of the medicae bay?”

  The astropath’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, before he replied. “Please, my master, sit with me a while.”

  Hesitating to do the bidding of a man obviously pushed way past the boundaries of sanity, Lucian squatted in front of the astropath.

  “Speak, Karaldi. What ever transpires, I am your master, and you are my astropath. This vessel needs us both or all is lost.”

  “Indeed,” Karaldi replied, a smirk creasing his purple lips. “Right now, you need me more than you could know. That’s what I was trying to tell them…”

  “Tell who, adept. Please, speak clearly.” Lucian suppressed a growing impatience, knowing that the astropath could read his surface emotions only too well.

  “The chirurgeon and his sisters of mercy,” Karaldi replied, his cracked voice straining with a fear that Lucian could not place. “Something’s coming, master.”

  “Something’s already here, and I don’t think I can do anything to keep it out.”

  “What’s here, adept? What’s among us?” Lucian fought to keep his voice steady, feeling the strain of the voyage weighing down upon h
is shoulders as never before. “What can I do, adept. How can I help you?”

  At that the astropath merely smiled, though his expression was entirely devoid of mirth. “It is not me you must help, my lord, not me.”

  “What must I do then, who must I help?”

  “You will know, my lord, when the moment is upon you. You will know what you must do.”

  With that, the astropath lowered his head and resumed his chant. Lucian lingered a moment longer, before standing up straight and slowly looking around the vast cargo bay. The shadows appeared all the darker, as if formless horrors lurked within each, ready to snatch at any who passed too near. He shook his head, as if he might shake off the weird feeling that had stolen over him with the astropath’s words. He could not of course, for only when the Oceanid had crossed the Damocles Gulf would he be free of the oppressive taint that enshrouded his very soul.

  In the meantime, he had the astropath’s warning to contend with. Some new threat evidently stalked the corridors of his vessel, or awaited it deeper within the Damocles Gulf.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “May I?” Brielle asked her tau host, indicating the bowl of purple fruit on the low table between them.

  “Please do,” the envoy replied. “The Tau Empire is both bountiful and generous.”

  Brielle smiled demurely, though inside she considered the alien’s words hollow and unsubtle. She took one of the round fruits and bit deep into it, considering her situation as she chewed. She cast her eyes around the chamber. It was the same, stark white she had come to associate with the tau. The lighting was diffuse and the furniture low and typically spartan. The only visible decoration was a round icon dominating one, otherwise plain, white wall; an icon she had seen repeated across the ship, and one she had come to regard as some form of national emblem.