Durham Red: The Unquiet Grave

by Peter J Evans

  The wheel room was suddenly bright with gunfire. Red twisted wildly, trying to see what was going on—she caught a glimpse of a massive form, clad in multiple layers of black armour, firing a huge weapon bolted over its right forearm. The weapon chugged and flashed and Red heard the unmistakable sound of staking pins slamming into flesh.

  The staking pin was part of the sacred trinity of weapons used by Iconoclast warriors.

  She had been on the receiving end of them before, back on Wodan. The staking pin was a needle-sharp metal bolt the size of a baby's arm. The burner cleansed the staked victim with holy fire and then the silver blade, unfolding like metal origami from its grip, would sever the neck. Stake, burn, behead; the traditional ways of killing a vampire.

  Conveniently, they killed pretty much everything else, too.

  The wheel room had become a battleground. Frag-shells were going everywhere, razor-sharp shrapnel screaming off the walls and the metal workings of the wheel itself. Red felt an impact and a sharp pain as a chunk of steel embedded itself into the vertical part of her frame, and realised just how close she had come to having her spine bisected.

  Stakes were hammering out in return: Durham Red, her view still upside-down, saw a monk get hit by one and go flying back through the air, smacking into the axle and staying there, sagging around the gleaming end of the pin. Impaled.

  The monks fought hard, but they were swiftly overwhelmed. From what Red had been able to gather, overwhelming numbers and superior firepower were what passed for tactics in Iconoclast warfare.

  Within a minute or two it was all over. There were a couple of meaty impacts from somewhere below her—beheadings, she guessed—and then the room fell silent.

  Red kept quite still, waiting.

  Footsteps sounded below her. Two sets, one an easy, leisurely pace, the other an almost silent padding.

  "This is the one." The voice was a woman's and not one that Red knew of. "Take him and bind him. He will spend a long time dying."

  Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke, Red though to herself.

  "Admiral?" That was Major Ketta. "Over here."

  The heavier footsteps returned. "Well, what do we have here?" The first woman again. "Saint Scarlet of Durham, the heretic Matteus Godolkin, and a mutant. Ketta, what a nice present you've given me!"

  "Gift-wrapped, too," said Ketta.

  * * * *

  Admiral Huldah Antonia was a striking-looking woman. Red judged her to be in her mid-thirties, quite tall, very slender with a muted, almost boyish figure. Auburn hair swept back under a tall headdress. Clad entirely in black, body-hugging rubberised armour, her face painted white with a crimson stripe across her eyes.

  Haughty and superior as hell, too. A typical Iconoclast officer.

  The troopers had taken Red and the others down from the wheel, but had been careful not to unchain them. The abbot, still unconscious, had been cuffed securely.

  A lot of the shocktroopers had their guns pointed directly at Durham Red. "Please," one of them said eventually, "let us burn her!"

  "Hold your fire, soldiers." Antonia raised a hand and the troopers lowered their weapons. "Fear not, she'll burn soon enough. But it needs to be public. Slaughtering her here would be satisfying, but half the enemy wouldn't believe she was dead, and the other half would celebrate her martyrdom. This needs to be done carefully and it needs to be done properly."

  "Whatever," Red muttered, glaring. "Better that than having my brain fed to a monster."

  Antonia looked puzzled and glanced at Ketta, but the agent could only shrug. "I see only one monster here," she replied.

  "In the drive chamber. It's what they were feeding the brains to."

  At that, she was interested to notice, Admiral Antonia paled just slightly under her war paint. "I'll have that investigated, Blasphemy," she said quietly.

  "Yeah, why don't you. In fact, why don't you go and investigate it yourself? I'm sure he'd love to meet you!"

  Antonia smiled. "Keep talking, Blasphemy. Every quip from now on earns you another day in the Chapel of Agony." She turned to her soldiers. "Carry the others out, into the courtyard. Fit them with breath-masks too. We don't want them dying before their time."

  Shocktroopers hauled Harrow and Godolkin up, and carried them away, still bolted to their frames. Harrow lolled, seemingly unconscious. Godolkin whispered to her as he was dragged past. "Forgive me, Blasphemy…"

  She wanted to answer him, but he was gone before she could speak.

  "I take it there's no point saying: 'You can have me if you let them go,' is there?"

  Antonia shook her head. "Not when I can have all of you, no. Ketta?"

  "Het Admiral?"

  "Take the remaining shocktroopers and wait ten minutes outside, then return." She slipped a long, slim knife from a sheath at her wrist. "I wish to have a short conversation with our guest."

  Ketta looked unsure, but nodded. "Thy will be done." Red watched the Iconoclasts file out. She eyed the knife. "Where are you going to stick that?"

  "Back in here," said Antonia, and put the knife in its sheath again. "I'll not tell you why, Blasphemy, but you've done me some favours on this world. The soldiers must continue to believe you are the epitome of all evil. All I see is a mutant with long teeth."

  "So?"

  "So, I'm prepared to deal with you."

  "Deal with me how? You're going to let us go?"

  "No, I'm going to torture you to death live on galaxy-wide holofeed. Your friends will be executed too, but if you cooperate I'll make their ending a swift and painless one."

  Red shifted uncomfortably in the frame. The piece of shrapnel was still digging into her back. "Aren't you committing some kind of terrible crime just by talking to me?"

  The woman shrugged. "I'm not. I'm sticking a knife into you for fun, in all the places it won't show." She glanced quickly over her shoulder. "And anything you say to them will be deemed automatically untrue, oh princess of darkness and mother of lies."

  Red sighed. "Okay, you've got me. What do you want?"

  "I want you to tell me exactly what you mean by 'drive chamber'."

  13

  Scream

  Antonia thought about using some of her shocktroopers to take the monastery room by room, but had decided there was no need. In a short while the entire surface of Lavannos would be molten anyway. No one would remain alive.

  She had one more task to perform before she left this place forever. She needed to see the resting place of Major Gaius.

  Durham Red and her companions were taken into the monastery's courtyard and held under guard there. They were given breath-masks and draped with thermocowls, although Godolkin had refused the latter. Some of the shocktroopers had balked at giving the Blasphemy and her heretic companions any form of succour at all, until Antonia had explained to them that freezing to death was actually quite a painless way to expire.

  While that was being done, she had wandered out of the main gates and stood for a time, watching the great roils of cloud moving slowly across the face of Mandus.

  Ketta joined her a few minutes later. She was wearing battle-armour brought in specially aboard the landing-craft, and breathing comfortably through its integral mask. "Het Admiral? The prisoners are secure."

  "Thank you, Ketta."

  "Some of the shocktroopers are still unsure about letting them live, even for a while. Some of them are, well…"

  "Afraid?" Antonia shivered. "Nothing to be ashamed of there, Ketta. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to put a blade through the neck of that bitch right now. But I saw what happened when she was resurrected. I was at Broteus when the Tenebrae came out of hiding, and as a result I've got two undamaged ships out of forty. If their saint dies in a simple execution, what then?"

  "Can't we just kill and leave her here? The Tenebrae would never find out and she'd just pass into legend again."

  "The idea of Saint Scarlet as legend terrifies me almost as much as she does in reality, Ketta."
Antonia wandered a few paces away. "Rumours of her reappearance are already on the loose. She's too big, too dangerous. You almost don't dare kill her. You know something, major? I don't know what to do with the Blasphemy! The only thing I can do is to deliver her alive to the patriarch, and let him make the decision."

  Ketta was silent for a long time. Then she said: "Admiral, may I speak freely?"

  "Always, my friend."

  "I believe you think more than any Iconoclast I have ever known."

  Antonia smiled grimly. "I shall take that as a compliment, Ketta, even if it was not intended as such."

  She leaned back. Othniel was poised in the sky above them, fifty kilometres up. It held steady, using braking thrusters to keep position between the pull from Mandus and the pitiful gravity of Lavannos. As she watched, flickers of light showed briefly around the vessel's prow. Another correction.

  Swarms of daggerships, super-fast interceptors, darted around it.

  "Everything you said about this place is true, Ketta. The things the Blasphemy told me. If I can give thanks for anything, it is that I do not have to stay here long enough to sleep." She turned back to the agent. "I am going to see Gaius. Will you walk with me?"

  "If you wish. I'll arrange a guard."

  Antonia nodded. "Make sure they keep their distance. We have things to discuss."

  When Antonia told Ketta about the origin of Lavannos, she almost fell into the Eye of God. "Admiral, that can't be!"

  "It could just be a lie concocted by the Blasphemy for some foul purpose of her own, but I don't know. A faction within Archaeotech division tried to stay my hand while I was on my way here. Fleet-Admiral Trophimus told me himself."

  "Your father?"

  Antonia gave Ketta a look. "Please don't say that out loud again, major."

  "Forgive me, Het Admiral. But how would Archaeotech know about this place?"

  "I can't imagine." She thought about giving her the warning Trophimus had given her, but decided to keep it to herself for now. "But if this story about Earth's Moon is true, if ancient humans somehow were able to shift an entire world, no wonder those Archaeotech fools wanted me to hold fire."

  She'd never been able to see much point in the Archaeotech division anyway. Many forms of technology had been lost in the Bloodshed, it was true, and perhaps some of them might have a use in the Iconoclasts' continued suppression of the Tenebrae. She had often wondered how many bridge crew she might need if a killship's systems could be run by the fabled artificial intellects of old. Four or five, probably, but where would the joy be in that? A war fought between machines would be no war at all. It was humans that mattered, not cold circuitry.

  To the untutored eye it might seem that the Iconoclasts were a homogenous, united force, all striving towards the common goal, the greater good. To anyone who could see the broader picture, nothing could have been further from the truth. Every officer had his or her own agenda, every division and department their own vision of how things should be. If it wasn't for the holy patriarch, the whole unruly lot of them would dissolve into anarchy, of that Antonia was sure.

  God forbid she ever saw such a day. "How far now?"

  "Just ahead, Het Admiral. This next gully."

  The steps were just as Ketta had described them. Antonia told the guards following them to take up position around the gully and wait until she returned or signalled for assistance.

  Ketta went down the steps first, hugging the wall. Antonia followed close behind, staring down with some shock into the Eye and wishing she had brought a grav-chute.

  The steps were mercifully few. Before long they were into the tunnel, stooping to climb along it. Both their suits of armour contained integral flashlights, turning the gloom in the circular passageway as bright as day.

  As they reached the end of the tunnel, Ketta paused. "Het Admiral, be warned. This place is… foul. It damaged my soul to be here, and I lost no one I was close to."

  Antonia put out a hand and touched the agent's shoulder. "Your soul is in no danger, Major Ketta. Rest assured of that."

  She stepped past her and down into the cavern.

  Gaius lay to one side of the awful space. She crouched next to him, brushed the frost from his eyes. "My poor man," she whispered.

  She would shed no tears for him, not in this frozen hell of a place. She would not dishonour him so—he was an agent of the Accord, who had died doing his holy duties. And, in so doing, had led her to Lavannos. A dangerous cult had been wiped out and the blasphemous Saint Scarlet, the walking disease whose very existence promised such ruin to humanity, had finally been brought to heel.

  "You have done well, my love. So very well. No one could ask more of you." She stood. "Time to sleep." She walked back to the tunnel entrance. Ketta had stayed there, crouched just inside. "Thank you, major. We'll go back now."

  "Are you not taking his body?"

  Antonia shook her head. "I have something else in mind. I think he would have appreciated it."

  It took them the same amount of time to return to the monastery as it had to walk to the cavern, but this way seemed far longer. The journey was conducted in silence. Neither woman felt much like talking.

  When Antonia reached the monastery she took a moment to check the situation in the courtyard hadn't changed. Durham Red and her pet heretics were still under guard, thankfully, and everything seemed as it was.

  She left Ketta in charge for a moment, then went back out through the gates and onto the Serpent Path. When she had walked far enough to get a good view of the Eye, she halted, and took the comm-linker from her belt. "Erastus?"

  The screen lit up, an image of the sub-captain's grizzled face filling it. "Right here, Het Admiral. Your orders?"

  "It is almost time, sub-captain. First, I'd like you to practise your precision bombardment techniques." She used the linker's keypad to type in a series of digits. "These are the coordinates of a subterranean cavern some ten metres below the surface. Be so kind as to vaporise it for me."

  Erastus grinned. "Thy will be done." His image vanished.

  The sub-captain probably thought Antonia had a cave full of prisoners she wanted executed in a hurry. Let him think what he wanted. There was no way she could have taken the frozen carcass of Major Gaius back with her, not with his skull the empty goblet it had now become. Cremation seemed an acceptable compromise. Besides, he'd always enjoyed fireworks.

  She looked up at Othniel in time to see one of the forward batteries spit out a stream of antimat fire. Even through the thin atmosphere of Lavannos she heard it coming down, a dry ripping sound, like someone tearing old cloth.

  The energy bolts struck the ground, right over the rim of the Eye. Instantly an area half a kilometre wide bulged upwards, flashed into fire, and blasted up and out in a vast fountain of pulverised rock. Under the awesome power of the shot the body of Gaius and every other unfortunate soul in the chamber would have vaporised in an instant of time too small to measure.

  Raw energy was blowtorching out of the ground. Most of the debris cloud was still in the air. "Resquiat in pace," Antonia murmured.

  A secondary explosion flared upwards, smaller but still awesomely violent. The wheel room, Antonia guessed, connected to the cavern by the drain tunnel. The pressure build-up must have taken it apart. As she watched, a great section of the rim of the Eye fractured away, a thousand tonnes of noisome black Lavannos stone carving off and sliding in a cloud of smoke and fragments down into the crater.

  Antonia could imagine how much Erastus had enjoyed that. In a few minutes she'd let him have some more fun.

  She headed back to the monastery to join the others. Ketta was at the gate, waiting for her. "That was good shooting."

  "Wasn't it?"

  "Admiral, some of the attendants tried to leave the monastery. They had to be dissuaded."

  Antonia shrugged under her armour. "Pay them no heed, major. They are obviously tainted and cannot be allowed to leave this place. Besides, some of them migh
t be monks in disguise. We can't take the risk."

  "Of course. Shall I bring the landing craft in?"

  Antonia's dropship was too big to set down anywhere but the landing field. Her assault against the Church of the Arch had begun from the air, with her and the shocktroopers entering the courtyard in grav-chutes. "I think it is time for that, yes. Tell the pilot to engage the landing spine on the way in so we can get the prisoners up the cargo ramp."

  She went back into the courtyard. The prisoners, three still chained to their frames and the abbot cuffed in Iconoclast restraints, had been lined up against the west wall.

  The abbot's hands were together as if in prayer, but not of his own choice. The restraints had a third ring that went around the neck, and the wrist-cuffs were held a certain distance away from it on a solid bar.

  The shocktroopers were in formation opposite the prisoners, weapons raised and ready. "At ease," Antonia told them. "Get ready to move the captives onto the landing craft."

  The abbot, she noted, had woken up. She wandered over to him. "Hello," she said flatly. "I'm going to hurt you."

  "You might think that," he replied. "But something's going to happen."

  He seemed perfectly calm, quite happy in fact. Antonia had seen defiance before, but this was something else. This was conviction.

  "What do you think will happen, abbot?"

  "Well," he said. "If an insect scratches you, you brush it away, don't you? You might even swat it down…"

  As he spoke, the ground moved.

  It was slight; less than the vibration Antonia had felt on Othniel's bridge, but it went on for longer. At first she thought it might be a seismic quake, some shifting of the ground caused by the cavern's demolition. But it was more than that. Some vast object, deep beneath her feet, was moving past her.

  "Oh crap," said Durham Red.

  Antonia grabbed the abbot by the shoulders. She was suddenly very afraid. "What have you done?" she gasped.

  He grinned. "Wait."

  And horror was born from the ground.

  There was no other way to describe it. It flooded up around her, through her, a titan wave of raw mental anguish. It hammered her down, and she tumbled to her knees, clutching her head as though the pressure inside would blast her apart. She was screaming, but she couldn't hear herself, because something else was screaming too.