by William King
More and more of our troops came into view. Valkyrie troop-carriers were starting to drop storm troopers on the roof of the central step of the ziggurat now that all of the anti-aircraft weapons on the structure had been silenced.
Ahead of us lay the massive ebonwood door of the complex and, beyond it, the ominously silent halls within which the ancient wonder Macharius and Drake sought was said to lie.
There was still resistance within the temple, but it was sporadic and all the heart had gone out of the defenders. I suppose that even they knew it was hopeless now. Their sacred wolf-apes were all slaughtered. Their elite guards had given their lives to no avail. The priests themselves did not appear as keen as their soldiers to go and greet their gods. We caught sight of a number of them scuttling off into the distance as we approached.
Once again Drake had come well prepared. The layout of the temple interior already seemed familiar to him. His spies must have briefed him well or fed records from the local datacores into the technical slate he carried. He strode along confidently with Macharius at his side. They did not appear at all troubled by the thought they might encounter enemies. I wished I shared their confidence. My arm was starting to lose some of its numbness, and I felt the first faint twinges of pain. The shotgun felt heavy and useless on my back, where Anton had helped me strap it.
From different corridors came the sounds of combat, and it began to sink in what was happening. We were moving through a zone that had already been cleared by soldiers of the crusade.
They were creating and expanding a perimeter within the temple, driving back the heretics, taking them prisoner or executing them. As we walked, groups of woebegone unbelievers were herded past us. They had the look I had seen on the faces of the defeated on a hundred worlds. It’s always the same, a compound of fear and sorrow, and just the faintest hope that they might still be allowed to live or might somehow be able to turn things around. Hope is a weed that springs up in the human heart at the slightest opportunity, even in our cruel age.
We entered a vast cathedral nave. In the centre of the room was an enormous altar. A massive metal gauntlet shimmered above it. Ancient technical sorcery made it float in the air. The gauntlet looked as if it had been made for something the size of one of those ape-wolves. It had monstrous articulated fingers with what appeared to be talons at their tips. About it was an air of tremendous antiquity and something else, perhaps holiness. Runes had been etched on its surface that were not like any I had ever seen before.
A glance at Macharius’s face showed keen interest. Drake’s features were a mask, but cold excitement glittered in his eyes.
Under the guns of some of Drake’s storm trooper bodyguards stood a group of ancient-looking men. They were robed in green and purple. Their heads were shaved except for a long topknot, and their beards were bound into two forks. All of them wore torcs on their arms and metal gauntlets on their right hands. One of them, obviously the high priest, carried an incredibly ornate staff, carved with runes in a similar style to those on the gauntlet.
As Macharius strode forwards one of them attempted to break free from the storm troopers and throw himself at the general’s feet. Macharius nodded for the man to be allowed to rise. He was not afraid of some ancient priest. He even helped the man to his feet. It was done with his usual magnanimity.
Macharius put an arm around the man’s shoulders and together they walked towards the great armoured gauntlet. He stood there for a moment looking down on that incomprehensibly ancient artefact.
Macharius said something to the priest in a voice so low that not even I could make out what it was. The priest shook his head. He looked like a confused old man who did not quite understand what was happening. He leaned heavily on his staff. I wondered if he was just the figurehead of the local clergy and whether real power in the temple hierarchy lay elsewhere. I looked at the other priests. There were certainly some sharp-looking characters there. They watched the proceedings with keen eyes. One of them even said something to another in the local language, perhaps a comment on Macharius’s treatment of their superior, before being knocked to his knees by a storm trooper.
Macharius made a chopping gesture to indicate there should be no more of that. The storm trooper’s mirrored faceplate tilted to one side, and I sensed he was looking to Drake for confirmation. The high inquisitor gave the slightest of nods and the storm troopers relaxed a little. I doubt the significance of the exchange was lost on the Lord High Commander, but he gave no sign of taking offence.
Macharius went over and helped the stunned man to his feet. He did not seem bothered by being surrounded by former enemies. I suppose they had already been checked for hidden weapons by Drake’s people, but it was still an impressive display of nonchalance. I could tell the locals were impressed despite themselves. Macharius had that effect on people. He used it as well as he did any other weapon.
Drake was already giving orders to a group of servitors who had entered the chamber with a mechanical trolley, and they began to manhandle the Fist onto it. The priests set up a wailing that would not have been out of place at a bereavement ceremony on Trask.
Macharius raised a hand and stared at them in his best parade ground manner. Slowly they fell silent. ‘I regret we must relieve you of this sacred relic, but it is necessary that we do so. The Imperium of Man has need of it.’
‘But your excellency…’ said the old high priest in his quavering voice. ‘The Fist is a treasure passed down from the time when the Emperor walked among men, left in this temple as part of a sacred trust by Saint Leman Russ himself.’
It was gibberish, of course, but the old man clearly believed it.
‘It may well be that the trust is about to be fulfilled,’ said Macharius. ‘And it shall be returned to its rightful owners.’
‘You will be cursed for this blasphemy,’ said the priest. His voice was cracked and there was a disturbing look of madness in his face. He pointed his finger directly at Macharius and screamed, ‘Cursed!’
The storm troopers beat him down and this time no one intervened. Macharius did not look troubled, but the words seemed to echo eerily around the chamber.
Bored. I am bored. The waiting hangs heavily on my hands. I seek entertainment. It is easy enough to find in its simplest form. I watch the slaves being transhipped to our cattle-carriers and select out a few choice morsels on which to feast. Their obvious terror provides some simple satisfaction in and of itself, but such rustic pleasures cannot long distract me. I find myself brooding on the nature of the gate and what we have found here. The idea that I might be wrong gnaws away at me like a boreworm in the bowels of its victim.
I work upon my symphony using a polytonal synthesiser and an auto-wrack. The screams of the flayed humans mingle with the flurry of notes I improvise on the multiple keyboards, but it remains unsatisfactory.
Sileria comes to my chamber and I while away an hour teaching her the pleasures of obedience. I think in her heart of hearts she really desires to be a slave. It is often the secret fantasy of the strong. I make her confess as much under the pleasure lash. She sounds convincing, but it all may prove to be part of the role she has assumed. Sometimes, I see a look in her eyes that spells out the fact that she believes that one day I will assume her part. In this she is sadly deluded, but it hardly seems sensible to tell her this.
I study the maps of the world and order my warriors to strike almost at random. The idea is to keep the humans guessing, to let them project their own patterns on what they perceive, to make plans based on incorrect information and their own fears and prejudices. It will keep them tied down while my true plan unfolds. And, of course, it keeps my warriors sharp and blooded, and swells my coffers with the flesh of the slaves they take.
How much longer must I wait? The gate should open soon. Then we shall see what we shall see.
Three
Anton looked at the Fist of Demetrius where it lay in pride of place on a great marble slab of a table. He fle
xed his fingers experimentally and held up his hand in front of his face as if measuring its size against that of the ancient gauntlet. I could tell he was thinking about slipping his hand inside it. He was still that kind of idiot.
‘Don’t,’ I said.
He glanced around. We were alone with the Fist, back on the Lux Imperatoris, in the cluster of luxurious chambers surrounding Macharius’s own rooms. Ancient maps of a thousand systems decorated the walls. Captured banners and pennons spoke of hundreds of victories. Magnetic clamps held the Fist in position. Macharius seemed to like to contemplate it.
We were standing guard, just outside the main chamber. Inside, the inquisitor and the general discussed the next stage of the crusade or, for all I know, debated the finer points of Imperial theology. Of late, many small points of conflict had arisen between them. The ship was making its way to the transit point in preparation for the jump to Emperor’s Glory.
Ivan said, ‘You think this thing really dates from when the Emperor walked among men?’
‘How would Leo know?’ said Anton. ‘Even he’s not that old.’
I looked at it. Macharius and Drake had certainly treated it with reverence. It had that strange old-new look of archeotech, that lack of ageing that only the works of the ancients showed. ‘I don’t know. It looks old, though.’
‘You think it really belonged to Russ? That it might have been in the presence of the Emperor himself?’ There was a hunger in his voice that I recognised, a desire to experience the presence of the infinite, a wish to touch that which had once touched the divine. We are told to take so much on faith, but this might be a physical manifestation of that faith, an artefact of ancient times. Certainly Macharius thought so.
‘How would I know?’ I walked around it. It was a power gauntlet of some sort, made for someone larger than a man. I would have struggled to lift it with both hands. How could anyone have worn it? Maybe it had something in it that made it lighter or amplified the wearer’s strength when it was worn. Many of the weapons of the ancients were magical that way.
‘What does Macharius want it for?’ Anton was doing it to needle me, I felt certain, piling one seemingly naive question upon another, trying to provoke an answer.
‘Why don’t you go and ask him?’ I said. ‘Say you’re having trouble sleeping at night and you won’t be able to rest until you know. I am sure he will listen to you.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’
‘There’s every need to be sarcastic,’ I said.
Ivan pinged his metal jaw with his metal finger. His gaze went from his artificial hand to the Fist. He held his hand up, palm towards him, fingers spread. One by one, he moved his fingers; I heard the whine of servo-motors as he did so. He was looking at the moving rods and pistons visible in the joints of his hand. I looked at the Fist and saw that they were there, on a larger scale.
‘He’s been collecting a lot of this stuff,’ said Ivan. He was not looking at either of us. ‘Maybe he wants to start a museum or a collection of relics in the palace back on Emperor’s Glory.’
‘Maybe,’ said Anton. ‘But would he really risk his life just to add one more thing to his collection?’
‘Who knows why he risks his life?’ Ivan said. ‘I think sometimes he does it because he is bored.’
‘The idiot is right,’ I said. ‘He particularly wanted this one, and he wanted it now. He came here personally to supervise the attack on Demetrius. There was no need for that. He could have ordered it just as easily back on Emperor’s Glory.’
‘Maybe it has magical powers,’ Anton said. ‘They say many of these relics do – that they can heal the sick, cure the lame… smite daemons.’
Those last words hung in the air uncomfortably. None of us really wanted to be reminded of the daemons we had seen back on Karsk. And yet once again, I could not help but feel that Anton in his idiot way might have stumbled on something. Macharius had been amassing his trove of holy relics since that time. What he had seen in the Cathedral of the Flame had altered him. He had looked into the eyes of a greater daemon back there, something that would have broken the sanity of a lesser man.
Certainly since then Macharius had been changed inwardly if not outwardly. He had become more driven, and much more fanatical than the man we had followed across the treacherous, rebellious hives of Karsk.
‘You think he wants all these ancient holy artefacts so he can fight daemons when he meets them?’ Anton asked. He was looking from face to face now, like a child afraid of the dark seeking reassurance from his parents. The difference was that Anton knew there really were monsters out there in the night.
‘I don’t think that’s impossible,’ was all I could find to say. The doors to Macharius’s inner sanctum opened. Macharius emerged. ‘Best get ready to depart,’ he said. ‘We will soon be making the jump to Emperor’s Glory.’
I wondered if he somehow knew what we had been talking about.
We were in our stateroom when the signal for the jump was given. Warning lights started to flicker red then blue. Klaxons sounded one long blast then one short blast then one long blast. There was an interval of a few heartbeats before it started again.
‘Here we go,’ said Anton. He looked sickly. He had never liked warp jumps. I could hardly blame him for it, no sane man does. I looked out of the great stained armourglass porthole. Already a massive blast-shield was sliding into place over it, like the black disc that takes a bite out of a sun during a solar eclipse.
‘Interstellar jumps,’ said Ivan. ‘I hate them.’
‘You always say that,’ I said.
‘Because it’s always true,’ said Anton. He sounded nervous. It was the only time you were ever likely to hear him so. More even than Ivan he detested this part of space travel.
‘It never gets any easier,’ Ivan said. ‘How many jumps do you think we’ve made? Two hundred, two hundred and fifty?’
‘I’ve never counted,’ I said.
‘Me neither,’ said Anton.
‘That’s because you can’t count over twenty,’ said Ivan. ‘And if you ever lose a finger or a toe you won’t even be able to count that high.’
‘Ha-bloody-ha!’
He moved towards the couch and was starting to strap himself in. I began to do the same. Even as we did so, the last of the stars and the blackness of space vanished behind the metal transit shutters. The lights stopped flickering and became steady, and yet it felt like we were sitting in the dark, waiting for something terrible to happen. I could remember a similar feeling during my childhood in Belial, when the gangs used to fight outside in the corridors of our building and there was only a thin thermaplas doorway between us and them.
You always hear stories about ships that go missing: ghost ships lost in the warp for centuries, crewed by dead men, and those that have suffered catastrophic, inexplicable disaster in the endless darkness of space. People dismiss such things as mere tales, but they crop up with remarkable regularity anywhere star-sailors gather and the crews of the great interstellar ships come to drink. And there is no one, no one at all I have ever met, who does not sense the sheer wrongness of it when a ship makes the jump into that terrible sub-realm beneath the skin of the ordered universe, where they go in order to travel the vast distances between stars.
I never really know what to expect. All jumps are different. Sometimes they happen so smoothly that you don’t even know they have taken place. Sometimes entering the warp is like being in a shuttle as it hits atmospheric turbulence on its way down. Sometimes it is a lot worse. This time, there was just a weird sensation of falling, a momentary nausea and then nothing much at all for what might have been heartbeats, or might have been millennia.
‘Is that it?’ Anton asked. He sounded shaky but relieved. His words had an odd sound to them, though, as if they were coming from a great distance away and subtly distorted.
‘Well, we’re still here,’ said Ivan. ‘Wherever here is.’
He had put his finger on
it, of course. We had no real idea where we were, and we were not going to have until the ship reached the exit point of its transit. Only the Navigator guiding the ship had any ideas about that. We were cut off from all sight of our surroundings by those huge armoured blast-shields. No one aboard the ship would talk to us about what was taking place, and I suspected that few of them actually knew. It was one of those things we were discouraged from asking questions about when we were common soldiers, and we had never gotten back into the habit of doing so when we became attached to Macharius’s command.
‘How long you think we’re going to be here for?’ The note of worry was back in Anton’s voice. It was one of those things that was strangest and most difficult about warp travel. You never knew how long you were under. The ship existed in a bubble separate from normal time as it passed in the universe above. Your wrist chrono and the ship’s clocks might say one thing, that you had been away for a few days or a few weeks, but when you reached port and consulted with the Imperial Standard timepieces maintained there, you might find that days or months or years had passed instead. There were tales of people who had been gone for centuries and did not look a day older when they returned.
‘Who knows?’ Ivan said. ‘And I mean that most literally. I doubt even our captain and his pet Navigator have the answer.’
Slowly, things started to settle, Anton’s voice sounded normal. It was as though our minds were becoming accustomed to their new surroundings.
We settled down for the journey.
I do not know how long we were in the strange realm but somehow it felt too long. The days seemed stretched. There were odd gaps in my memories. My dreams were troubled. When not on bodyguard duty all of us spent time prowling the endless corridors of the ship, exchanging words with the crew. They were tense, as a crew always is when crossing the warp. They were all too aware of what could go wrong.