Deathwing

by Neil

  For a few moments Solonaetz wondered whether he was hallucinating his own desires. Is this what I want, what I’ve always wanted? Then, Shivania reached out a hand to touch him, her fingers flexing, curdled eyes blinking and leaking sluggish tears. She hissed and smiled. ‘I spit your seed into Chaos!’ she cried and lunged forward to throw herself into the blister upon him.

  Acting reflexively, Solonaetz winced back and then, with an extreme spurt of effort and will, pulled himself from his chair and flicked out his leg to kick the access-way shut. He heard an agonized squeal, and an infinity of violent colours smacked against his warp-sight, bringing peals of agony, pain he could not have imagined in the worst of nightmares. His body writhed and his stomach convulsed. The surface of the blister was aswarm with foul shapes, all grinning, all scratching at the plascryst, telling him with sickening gestures of all they planned to do with his body when they reached it.

  Solonaetz tasted salt, knew he was biting his tongue. He slammed his head against the console, screaming, ‘Fiddeus! Gabreus! Anyone!’ but the communications node seemed a million miles away, beyond his reach. Had the ship left its course? His eye was blind to the route, seeing only a tangle of voluptuous shapes that beckoned and tempted, promising eternal pain, eternal ecstasy. He could hear Shivania scratching at the hatch, her voice a hoarse whisper of desire.

  ‘My Lord Emperor!’ Solonaetz screamed. ‘Help me! Help me!’

  And then a pure strain of unadulterated thought forced its way through the melee. ‘Take my hand,’ it said. ‘I am with you, navigator. Take my hand.’

  And he focused on that beam, his consciousness flowing with it, melding with it, following. Although he knew in his heart the Emperor was cocooned within his palace on Earth, his aged, tortured body kept alive by machines, the navigator’s spirit saw a figure walking the astronomican’s beam as if it was a shining path, leading the Dea Brava away from danger, dismissing the effluvia of the warp with the strength and the grief of its soul. A vision of his faith, maybe? But to Solonaetz it was the Emperor himself, spirit-walking in the void.

  Some moments later, he came to a kind of reality, and realized the fluidium outside was quiescent, the warpscreen clear of clots. There was no sound beneath the hatch-way and the fume of lacrymata had left the blister. He was Dea Brava and they swam the wave of the astronomican, embraced by the spiritual essence of a thousand martyrs, swimming home.

  ‘DID YOU CALL me, Solonaetz?’ Back in real space, Graian Fiddeus was at the blister even before Solonaetz had unbuckled his safety harness. ‘I thought I heard a call, but the ship’s mind told me otherwise. Even so, I thought I’d better check. Are you all right?’

  Solonaetz looked terrible, his white face slick with sweat, dark shadows around his eyes. He had not even replaced his bandana; just hanging there in his chair, like a corpse – or someone dragged – the mutant eye staring dully at the warpscreen. Averting his gaze, Graian squeezed into the blister alongside him and gently tied the bandana back in place. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Sol?’ He gave the navigator a shake.

  Solonaetz shuddered, jerked and then gulped air. Ship’s air: faintly metallic, rubbery-sweet and, thankfully, free of perfume.

  He sighed and momentarily leaned against the captain. The instant was of silence, suspended heartbeats. Then he pulled away.

  ‘Many die to keep the astronomican alive, don’t they?’ he said.

  ‘Not unwillingly. You know that,’ Fiddeus had a horrible dread Solonaetz had suffered a further breakdown. ‘What…?’

  Solonaetz shook his head quickly to silence him. ‘No. The cargo; it has been tampered with.’

  ‘What?! Impossible! I would have been informed!’

  ‘Nevertheless, what I say is true.’

  ‘It was protected.’

  Solonaetz looked at him bleakly. ‘Yes, undoubtedly. As I am. Always. Believe me, Graian, I am not mistaken.’

  Fiddeus rubbed his face uncomfortably. ‘You are ill, Solonaetz. Get yourself out of there. I’ll take you to Foss.’

  Solonaetz leaned back in his chair and uttered a low, bitter laugh. ‘Ill, am I? Take me somewhere where I can talk to you, Graian Fiddeus. Play the part of being the good friend you always profess to be. I have a favour to ask of you.’

  SHE WAS IN her cabin, dressed in her finest robes, brushing out her hair. She wore her mask, the eyes unseeing, staring into nothing. ‘I thought you would come,’ she said, laying down her brush.

  Solonaetz didn’t comment. ‘I have something for you,’ he said. ‘A gift. It is the best I can give you under the circumstances, Shivania. I know you will understand and use it wisely.’

  She accepted the gift, closing her fingers over the small, crystal bottle. Her laugh was shaky. ‘Well, Solonaetz, there goes your bonus, I suspect! Such generosity!’

  ‘Not generosity, Shivania. I loved you in a way. It is compassion. Merely that. A report will be made to the Scholastica when we return. You know what the verdict will be, and its consequences. You are tainted; you must know that. You complained before about your lack of freedom. Well, if you reach Terra, your life aboard this ship will seem like paradise. They will send you to feed the Emperor’s soul. Because of what we shared, I want to spare you that. Thank me. I grant you your dearest wish: a full draught of the maiden of oblivion. If you are lucky, for a moment, you’ll have the sight you craved.’

  He left immediately and, for a while, Shivania sat motionless, the bottle held in her lap. She could not cry, no matter how much she yearned for that release. Her lips shook around the shape of his name. He’d possessed a strength she had not anticipated; to her, a hideous strength.

  Then she opened the bottle.

  A LANGUOROUS, SENSUOUS aroma flooded her cabin, sweet with desire, poignant with loss. Its crescendo was the last damp fires of autumn, before the winter comes, when all is burnt, the rubbish from the fields, the dead wood. She smelled dark earth and sensed a welcoming. Somewhere. With shaking hands, she tipped a little of the essence onto a single finger and anointed her throat. Moonskin, lacrymata, lady of tears, dark sister. Not for the weak, oh no.

  As the siren scent rose around her in a final, embracing cloud, Shivania tilted back her lovely head on her perfect neck and tipped the contents of the bottle down her throat. For a few, fiery seconds, her body sang a maniac dance of unendurable beauty and passion, but for a few seconds only.

  It was a swift death.

  ‘I KNOW IT is hard for you,’ Gabreus said, ‘but you acted in the noblest way, Solonaetz.’ The priest fondly patted the navigator’s shoulder. They were sitting in his chapel-vault, beneath the light of benediction. It had been a difficult confession. ‘Come now, lift your head, young man. Fiddeus is pacing outside like a brooding leopard. Don’t give him cause for concern. Be strong!’

  ‘Why, though?’ Solonaetz asked helplessly. ‘Why her? She was so…’

  ‘Tainted!’ Gabreus interrupted sharply. ‘Believe it, Solonaetz! The lacrymata was merely a catalyst, and a lucky one in the event. Worse could have occurred if you think about it. You bested the powers of Chaos in your own way. No trivial feat, I assure you. No system is infallible. There will always be mistakes. The Adeptus Astra are thorough but their dominion is vast. Because of this, it is inevitable the odd blight slips through their screening net. It is true she might never have succumbed, and that the essence itself was the cause, but that is irrelevant really. Live your life, navigator. Forget her! In scant days, we shall be home and your family awaits you.’ He smiled. ‘And don’t forget the feast Fiddeus has promised us!’

  Solonaetz nodded, kissed the priest’s belt and backed from the vault.

  GRAIAN WAS WAITING outside, as Gabreus had told him. ‘One thing I have to know,’ Solonaetz said. ‘The lacrymata: where is it bound? The Adeptus Terra would never allow such a substance to pass hands in the free market, surely. Who commissioned its purchase?’

  Graian Fiddeus scratched his neck, wrinkled his nose uncomfortably. ‘Wel
l… Guido Palama is indentured to one department back on Terra, just one. The dispersal of the perfume, the true lacrymata, is rigorously controlled.’

  ‘Who bought it, Graian?’

  He sighed. ‘The Inquisition.’

  Solonaetz laughed. ‘I should have known! An instrument of torture!’

  ‘Hardly a matter for humour!’

  ‘You think not? We live in a universe of contradictions, my friend, to our continual delight. Now, I suggest we repair to the camera recreata to toast our fair Terra when she reveals herself in the heavens. The Inquisition!’ He shook his head.

  ‘You look better, Solonaetz,’ Fiddeus said bleakly.

  The navigator was already striding away up the passageway. He flung a remark over his shoulder. ‘Just a reprieve, my friend. Just a reprieve.’

  THE ALIEN BEAST WITHIN

  Ian Watson

  THE GIANT EXERCISE wheel accelerated yet again while Meh’Lindi raced, caged within it. The machine towered two hundred metres high, under a fan-vaulted roof. Shafts of light, of blood-red and cyanotic blue and bilious green, beamed through tracery windows which themselves revolved kaleidoscopically. Chains of brass amulets dangling from the rotating spokes of the wheel clashed and clanged deafeningly like berserk bells as they whirled around.

  Elsewhere in the gymnasium of the Callidus shrine, high-kicking initiate assassins broke plasteel bars, or else their own tarsal or heel bones. Injury was no excuse to discontinue the exercise – now they must master pain instead. Others dislocated their limbs by muscle tension so as to escape from bonds before crawling through constricted, kinking pipes. A pump sucked blood dazingly from two youths prior to their practising unarmed combat, and from another before he would attempt to run the gauntlet along a corridor of spinning knives. Scarred veteran instructors patrolled, ever willing to demonstrate to the unbelieving.

  Callisthenics machines shrieked and roared and spun so as to disorient their users.

  Meh’Lindi had been running for half an hour, trying to catch a fellow assassin who ran vertically above her, upside-down, wearing an experimental gravity-reverser belt. She ran in a self-induced trance, imagining that she might presently reach such an enlightened state of mind that she could speed up inhumanly and loop the loop, stunning her quarry as she passed by. Whenever she was about to put on such a spurt, the wheel speeded up to frustrate her.

  Suddenly, with a thunderous crash of engaging sprockets and a screaming of its gears, the wheel halted.

  Meh’Lindi was hurled forward violently. Though the event was entirely unexpected, she was already fully alert, and arching herself into a hoop so as to roll. Uncoiling, she somersaulted backwards. She leapt about-face. The wheel was already beginning to turn in the opposite direction. It was picking up speed. High overhead, her quarry was tumbling. She sprinted, up, up, willing the friction of her bare feet and her sheer renewed momentum to stop her from toppling back down the giant curved track.

  Presently a siren wailed, signalling the end of her session – just when she fancied she had a slight chance of succeeding in what was virtually an impossible task.

  Dismissing any temptation to feel annoyed, she skipped about, and ran back down the wheel. A filigree gate opened; she stepped out.

  ‘Director secundus invites your presence in an hour,’ the wheelmeister told her. The bald old man, one of whose eyes was a ruby lens, forbore to comment on her performance. As a seasoned graduate of the Collegia Assassinorum, Meh’Lindi should be able to assess that for herself. If not, she was less than devout.

  ‘Invites?’ she queried. The director secundus was none other than deputy to the supreme director of the Callidus shrine of assassins. Did such a high official invite?

  ‘That was the phrasing.’

  IN A DOMED cubicle in the baptisterium, Meh’Lindi peeled off her clingtight black tunic. As hypersound vibrated sweat and grime loose from her, she gazed at her body in a tall speculum framed with brass bones interwoven and knotted. She permitted herself a certain degree of admiration over and above mere physical assessment. For she was trained as a pedigree courtesan as well as a sleek and cunning killer. A courtesan – even one who largely pretended to fulfil the role of a pleasure-bringer – must be conscious of sensuality.

  Meh’Lindi was tall, long-limbed, with puissant biceps and calf-muscles, though her sheer height diluted the impression of power. Enticing black tattoos concealed her scars. A giant hirsute spider wrapped around her midriff. A snake, baring fangs, climbed her right leg. Scarablike beetles trod the modest swell of her bosom. Her breasts, which no exercise could mould into weapons, were small and unimpeding, though agreeably firm – dainty little beetle-tipped cones. Her coaly hair was cropped short so that no one could seize it. In her courtesan role she might, or might not, opt to wear a lustrous wig. Her eyes were golden, her ivory face oddly anonymous and unmemorable in repose. But then, she could alter her features to those of an enchantress – or equally, of a hag.

  The director secundus did not summon her. He invited her…

  She probed at the word just as the tip of one’s tongue might tease at a hollow tooth loaded with catalepsin for spitting into a victim’s eye to paralyse him.

  It was unthinkable that the secundus dreamed of exploiting this wonderful instrument – herself – which his Collegia had crafted from feralworld flesh, for any private aphrodisiac satisfaction of his own. That would be blasphemous. Had Meh’Lindi not been a sham-courtesan as well as an assassin, this thought would hardly have occurred to her at all.

  Invite. The word hinted at the protocol of the Mors Voluntaria, the permission to commit exemplary suicide which was granted to an assassin who had failed calamitously, though honourably, in some enterprise. Or whose suicide might be required, so as to erase the principal witness of an error on the part of the Officio Assassinorum…

  Meh’Lindi knew that she had in no way failed in her vocation.

  Puzzled, she anointed the soles of her feet with consecrated camphor oil, her loins with oil of frankincense, and the crown of her head with rosemary, then performed a devotion to the Emperor before resuming her tunic.

  AT THE INVITATION of Tarik Ziz, the secundus, Meh’Lindi seated herself in a double lotus position, facing him.

  She bowed her head. The lotus that locked her legs together and the aversion of her gaze were both modes of obeisance towards a superior in his private studium. Thus she signified that she was hampering herself from any assassination bid. True, she could uncoil in an instant and launch herself – nor did a skilled assassin need to be staring at her target. The faint sigh of the man’s lungs, his odour, the mere pressure of air in the room located Ziz for her.

  But nor would any such traitorous, motiveless attack succeed. Tarik Ziz was reputedly omega-dan.

  The black-robed secundus knelt on a brocaded dais, which was also his spartan bed, facing an ancient baroque data-console. His long beringed fingers occasionally tapped a sequence of keys, one side of his mind seemingly involved in other concerns. Tomes bound in skin and data-cubes crowded one wall up to the groin-vaulted ceiling.

  A collection of thousands of tiny, burnished archaic knives, many no larger than fingernails, ornamented another wall, resembling a myriad wings torn from metallic moths, shattering the light from an electro-flambeau into quicksilver fragments. ‘You may look at me, Meh’Lindi.’

  Ziz was swarthy, short, and compact – almost a dwarf, save for his sinuous fingers. The many rune-wrought rings he wore undoubtedly concealed a pharmacy of exotic hallucinogens and paralytic agents, even though the secundus no longer operated in the field. His artificial teeth, alternately of jet and vermilion, were all canines.

  ‘You are one of our finest chameleons,’ Ziz said to her softly.

  Meh’Lindi nodded, for this was the simple truth. An injection of the shape-changing drug polymorphine would allow any trained assassin of her shrine to alter their appearance by effort of will. This was one of the specialities of the Callidus shrine
, the keynote of which was cunning – just as the Vindicare shrine specialized in vengeance, and the Eversor shrine in unstoppable attack.

  Under the stimulus of polymorphine, flesh would flow like heated plastic. Bones would soften, reshape themselves, and harden again. Altering her height, her frame, her features, Meh’Lindi had frequently masqueraded as other women – gorgeous and ugly, noble and common. She had mimicked men. On one occasion she had imitated a tall, hauntingly beautiful alien of the eldar race.

  Always, with the purpose of eradicating someone whose activities imperilled the Imperium; with the aim of destroying a foe physically or – more rarely – psychologically…

  Yet the drug polymorphine on its own was no miracle elixir. The business of shape-shifting demanded a deep and almost poignant sympathy with the person who was to be copied, killed, and replaced. The trick required empathy – deep identification with the target – and inner discipline.

  Inject a non-initiate with polymorphine, and the result would be a protoplasmic chaos of the body, an agonising anarchy of the flesh and bones and organs, an on-going muddled upheaval and meltdown resulting finally in blessed death.

  Meh’Lindi was an excellent, disciplined chameleon, exactly as the secundus said. Though she was no psyker, yet inscribed in the cells of her flesh and in the chambers of her brain was assuredly a wild gene-rune for apeing the appearance and traits of strangers – for metamorphosing herself – which the drug allowed her to express to the utmost.

  If she had been born on a cultured world she might have been an actress. On her own feral home world she might have become a priestess of some cult of mutability. Recruited willy-nilly when a child from her barbarian tribe, she could now – as a Callidus assassin – become virtually any stranger, which was a fine fulfilment for her.

  Ziz leaned forward. ‘Because of your talent, our shrine invites you to participate in an epochal experiment.’