by Gav Thorpe
Neridiath felt an invitation from the ship and slipped part of her consciousness into the newly awakened sensor arrays. Everything else was blocked off, access to the wider matrix denied. The most immediate phenomenon was the closing webway rift, torn open by the ship itself, something very difficult to accomplish.
Blocking out the waves of unnatural energy that streamed from the sealing portal Asurmen linked his mind to hers, the mental equivalent of taking her hand, and directed her attention to three anomalous, jagged shards in orbit over the third world, close by. They were star vessels, but like nothing Neridiath had seen or heard of before, like gigantic slivers of black ice retro-fitted with plasma engines, the striated hulls pocked with dozens of weapons turrets.
‘What are they?’ asked Neridiath.
Shards. Pieces of something far more deadly, replied Asurmen. They are dangerous, but not so dangerous as they will become if we do not destroy them here. I detect no scanning from them, they appeared focused on the planet’s surface.
‘Is it just me or do they feel… alive?’ There was something about the ships that was, while not organic as such, certainly not entirely inert. A consciousness.
There is an awareness of sorts, but no more than in our vessels. There are crew aboard. The scanning streams focused on the nearest vessel. Hundreds of tiny pinpricks of red illuminated the outline of the enemy ship, labouring at gun decks that had been fastened to the sides of the central structure, and in the bowels of the Shard itself. Neridiath could see a dense cluster of creatures near the jagged prow and concluded that it had to be the control bridge.
The view dimmed and Neridiath felt herself eased out of the ship’s system.
‘You have been placed under my protection, Neridiath and Manyia,’ the ship said in a clipped tone. Its voice was soft but the words abrupt, as though their presence were an inconvenience. ‘I am Stormlance, steed of Asurmen. I am not large but I must guide you to your quarters. I have a very powerful matrix drive and several weapons systems that are dangerous. You must restrict your movements to the chambers I am about to show you.’
The lighting changed, the red brightening to yellow except for a faint scarlet line leading down the passageway to the left, towards the stern of Stormlance. Asurmen moved towards the prow but continued to monitor his visitors through the portion of his spirit that resided in the starship.
‘Your quarters are this way,’ Stormlance told them while they followed the wavering line towards their rooms. Manyia looked around, mouth gaping in amusement.
Nice.
‘Not really,’ said Neridiath, suspicious of the ship’s nature.
‘I have been built to destroy but I can also defend,’ said Stormlance, picking up on her doubts. ‘I am a warship, a weapon. I am blameless for the purpose to which I am put, but rest assured that Asurmen, my master, wields me for a good cause.’
‘What good can come of slaying?’ Neridiath countered. ‘Death is an end, not a beginning. To bring death is to end promise, to destroy potential.’
‘Not always. To kill one while protecting another ensures a different promise, protects a different potential. Your simplistic morality is a luxury we cannot afford. It is an affectation – you cannot surely be this stupid.’
Neridiath bit back a retort as the ship brought them to a door that led to a narrow cabin. Inside, the floor moulded into two couches and a table, and opposite, another door led into a second chamber where there was a berth to either side, shelves and drawers fitted into the wall for the meagre possessions Neridiath had on her during their flight from their former ship.
‘It occurs to me that if you can fly this ship, you could pilot the battleship,’ she said aloud, addressing the Phoenix Lord. ‘Why do you need me?’
‘He cannot pilot the battleship,’ replied Stormlance. ‘His spirit is bound to his armour. He cannot release it to invest a ship’s systems as you do.’
‘Then how does he pilot you?’
There was a welling of humour, like a laugh without sound, edged with cruel humour. ‘I do not have a pilot. I fly myself. I am Asurmen’s steed, a part of the Phoenix Lord but separate. This shell is but the latest of many.’
‘You are part of him?’ Neridiath recoiled as though the walls were suddenly slick with filth. ‘Which part?’
‘The part he must give up to remain himself.’ A savage joy accompanied these words. There was a pause, no more than a few heartbeats, and the ship spoke again. ‘We are under way.’
‘Are we going to be in danger?’
‘Yes,’ said the ship. Its structure pulsed with the sensation of expectation, almost anticipation. ‘Yes, there will be danger.’
12
Through the internal systems of Stormlance, Asurmen studied the pilot while they approached the moon on which the battleship had crashed, using the celestial body as a mask against the Shards’ detectors.
He harboured doubts about her, particularly Neridiath’s nature. She seemed self-obsessed, or at least self-involved. It was reasonable for her to protect her daughter, but it was not just caution that drove the pilot, there was something else behind her stubbornness, a suppressed fear that could explode at any time. Weighed against that was necessity. She was the only individual anywhere close to getting to the beset battleship in time. Asurmen had failed to prevent the war beginning; he was determined that it would not spiral out of control. Neridiath would pilot the battleship, even if Asurmen had to die again to make it happen.
She was playing with her daughter, Manyia. The infant’s laughter filled the small warship as she moved hesitantly from one foot to the other across the floor of the communal chamber, her arms out wide, copying the mannequin dancing in front of her. The doll was animated by Stormlance, who had quickly discovered that it could use the child’s toy as an avatar of sorts. Intended for Manyia to practise her telekinetic interactions, the psychically blank mannequin made an ideal repository for the spirit of Asurmen’s ship.
‘This was how he used to dance on the Eve of the Fire Ascension,’ the ship told them, changing the movements of the doll to a more sedate twirling and bowing, gyrating around Neridiath where she knelt on the floor. ‘Twenty of them at a time, changing partners with each turn, the whole party moving like the flames that burned the heavens.’
The mannequin extended its fingerless hand and Manyia bent down to grip the appendage between thumb and forefinger. The two circled each other, the doll with its doughy features split in a wide grin, the eldar child chuckling constantly.
‘What are you doing?’ Asurmen demanded of Stormlance. The ship internally flinched at the chastisement.
Trying to remember what it was like to be you, it replied to Asurmen alone.
‘Those are my memories, not yours,’ the Phoenix Lord snarled. ‘Leave the female and the child alone, there is nothing in them to interest you.’
But there is, insisted Stormlance. Her daughter is nothing yet, but you must sense Neridiath’s fear. It fills her, drives her, teeters on overwhelming her. She will break and she will fall headlong into Khaine’s embrace. Quite delicious.
‘I will let nothing harm her, and that will not happen.’
Of course, you are their guardian, their protector… She sees through your lies. She knows what we are and hates us, but she cannot deny your demands. I like her. Perhaps she will like me.
‘You are distracted,’ Asurmen warned. ‘There is no love or kindness in you. Stop these cruel games.’
Stormlance pulsed forth a sensor check and the animated doll suddenly stopped and stepped back, lifting a hand to its ear as though listening.
‘A problem,’ the ship intoned out loud in its sing-song voice. ‘It appears that one of the blockade vessels has moved closer than you had hoped.’
‘Have they found us?’ asked the pilot. Through the ship, Asurmen detected that Neridiath’s heart had started to r
ace at the thought.
‘Not yet, but we have to enter the atmosphere,’ the Phoenix Lord replied, sharing in the data analysed by Stormlance. ‘That will generate far more heat than we can mask. It will attract attention.’
‘Can we not wait until it is safer?’
‘No!’ Asurmen’s conscious thought flowed through the ship. ‘Enough of this dallying. I must concentrate on other matters.’
The doll flopped lifelessly to the floor. Manyia started crying, stooping over the inert mannequin, not understanding why it had stopped playing. Neridiath stood and picked her up, smoothing her daughter’s hair with her free hand.
Share.
‘No, my darling, I’ve told you, we don’t do that any more.’
Share!
The psychic demand was accompanied by a wail so loud that it made Asurmen wince. The child was problematic, but the pilot would never be parted from her.
‘Just this once, but this is the last time,’ Neridiath conceded. ‘You must learn to live within your thoughts.’
The child’s lamenting stopped immediately and she looked up at her mother, eyes wide. As their gazes met, Manyia let her spirit free and Neridiath opened up her thoughts to her daughter. There was a moment of connection, of shared love.
Asurmen pulled back, feeling like a voyeur on their affection.
Even as she psychically sheltered Manyia, Neridiath detached a tiny part of herself, trying to latch onto Stormlance’s matrix. The ship gently rebuffed her at first. She tried again and the Phoenix Lord’s ship responded with a much firmer denial, cutting her off abruptly as though a door had slammed in her face. She was about to try again when the ship addressed her.
‘Do not try to share the matrix,’ Asurmen said, the lights turning a blood-red in warning. ‘This is for your protection. You do not want to associate your spirit with the essence of a Phoenix Lord. Remain in your cabin and play with your child.’
Rebuffed, Neridiath embraced Manyia and lay on the bed with her daughter. Pushing thoughts of them aside, Asurmen enmeshed his will with the thoughts of Stormlance.
‘You are not like them. Stop trying to pretend you are what you are not.’
And what of you, noble avenger? What are you pretending?
‘Silence! You are deluding yourself, yearning for something that can never happen. You are what you have become, nothing else. You cannot return to innocence.’
They entered the upper atmosphere of Escatharinesh, the ship becoming an artificial meteor with a long tail of white fire. One of the nearby Shards detected them and its flight bays opened, spewing forth a stream of oddly asymmetrical interceptor craft. Like crescent moons tilted slightly on their axis, spiny protrusions jutting at irregular angles from their hulls, the fighter craft ignited plasma burners with flares of orange and red stark against the darkness of the void.
Their course will intersect with ours before we have reached our objective, the ship told Asurmen.
Stormlance briefly shared an overview of their orbital position and that of the crashed battleship. The projected route of the interceptor cloud crossed that of the Phoenix Lord’s ship about two-thirds of the way to their destination.
‘Is there an evasion course?’ Asurmen enquired.
Why would we want to evade them? Do you not want to fight? You’ve never been cowardly before.
‘I must deliver the pilot safely to the battleship.’
A conflict is unavoidable.
Asurmen reviewed the navigational records since they had left the tradeship. Stormlance had taken a longer route than necessary to reach the planet.
‘You did this on purpose,’ he admonished the ship. ‘Your hunger for battle could destroy us all.’
After the disappointment of the webway chase, I thought a little action would be welcome. I was getting bored.
The ship arrowed down towards the cloud layer, crossing the terminus from night into day.
IV
Illiathin kept his pace even but lengthened his stride slightly, aware of the tread of feet behind him growing closer. He knew he should not have cut through the Starwalk district. He had left the spire race late, but the opportunity to congratulate Naerthakh Windrunner in person had been too great to miss. Even now Illiathin rubbed his fingers together, remembering the smoothness of the feathers of Naerthakh’s wings, a silky blackness like a shroud around the champion racer.
He knew that he could not run. If he ran, it would be weakness, a sign that he was prey. The Starwalk had always revelled in its notoriety, but of late the amusements and distractions promised by its fleshpots and shadowy dens had grown too extreme even for Illiathin’s increasingly exuberant tastes. There were rumours that others had come here, from the core worlds, bringing new pleasures, new sensations to be enjoyed. Not only that, they had come with violence, taking much by force that they could not cajole with promises to the mind and flesh.
Bloodletting, the sharing and shedding of life’s fluid, was commonplace. Illiathin had friends that enjoyed being bled almost to the point of death, teetering between existence and non-existence, savouring various narcotics in the process. The imbibing of blood was odder still, and there were rumours that not all of the participants in recent times were willing subjects.
The Bloodwalk, some called it. People disappeared, so the whisperers would have gullible listeners believe. Nonsense, of course, Illiathin told himself. As bad as those that claimed the body-swappers and skinshifters had forgotten what it was like to be a normal flesh-and-blood eldar. There was always someone to disapprove of each new pursuit, each fresh stimulant, pastime or indulgence. It was at times as if the doom-mongers of the Exodite movement had never left.
As much as Illiathin dismissed tales of abductions and blood sacrifices, he was never one to take unnecessary chances. He considered cancelling his appointment in the amorous and adventurous embrace of Astriatha, but he was almost through the worst of the district. The alleys would soon broaden into the boulevards and then he would be in the Park of Starwrought Love and amongst normal folk again.
The people behind him were whispering and giggling amongst themselves. Feigning an itch, Illiathin activated his ear implants to filter out the background of raucous music with its pounding percussion and strident wailing, smoothing away the screams of delight and ecstatic laughter.
‘We’re coming for you, pretty one.’
‘Such a tall one, so long to bleed every last drop.’
‘Every vein and artery, open you up, drain you dry.’
‘Thirsty, pretty one, so, so thirsty. Drink you up, sup, sup.’
Illiathin could hear their excited breathing, the sharp intakes of breath, suppressed moans, the sound of teeth gnashing.
The rasp of blades being drawn.
He tensed, about to run, when light exploded around him from above. It was an airyacht, and behind the blaze of yellow light several figures moved, jumping down into the alley around Illiathin.
The blood devotees hissed and yelped like scalded beasts, retreating into the shadows with arms raised to ward off the blinding illumination. Illiathin’s rescuers stepped past him, lifting staves and cudgels as they advanced on the blood-drinkers with violent purpose. They were dressed in bodysuits and tapering helms, clad with chestplates, vambraces and tall boots.
The stalking eldar turned and fled into the darkness, shrieking threats and curses. Illiathin lifted a hand in thanks as his saviours returned.
‘I must credit you for your sense of timing, friends. Another moment and they would have been upon me. Good fortune is my companion today.’
‘Fortune has abandoned you for some time,’ said one of the armoured eldar. He removed his helm, to reveal himself as Tethesis. His hair was cropped short but for a thin braided topknot that fell across his face. The red paint of fake tears had gone, replaced with a black band across his eyes, runnin
g from temple to temple. Illiathin had seen it before, a symbol of a group that called themselves the True Guardians. Vigilantes, no better than any of the other cults and gangs that had started a hidden but violent war for territory in the city heartland. ‘I have not forgotten you.’
‘What are you doing here? Spying on me?’
‘Come with us,’ said another of the True Guardians. She laid a hand on Illiathin’s arm and gently guided him towards the airyacht as the spotlights dimmed to a more tolerable amber hue. The red shafts of lift-beams sprang into life. Illiathin stepped into the light of one, the True Guardians converging around him. There was a moment of weightlessness and then he found himself on a walkway that ran the length of an outrigger deck along the side of the yacht.
‘We can get you out of here, brother,’ said Tethesis, appearing in front of Illiathin. ‘Passage aboard the Rebirth of Ancient Days. It leaves tomorrow morning.’
‘A long-distance tradeship? You would send me away on a cargo-hauler? To what purpose? Are you still sore that I would not go with you to that primeval hellhole you wanted to call home?’
‘It is not safe here, you must see that.’ Tethesis turned and raised a hand. The yacht lifted higher, taking them away from the star-shaped district of walkways and alleys below.
Illiathin looked down, seeing the haze of burning fires and smoke, still hearing the odd scream and shout, a cry of delirious joy and darker roars from crowds watching arena duels and pit races. It had changed so much, so quickly, but it was still the city he had known for all his long life.
‘This is my home,’ he told his brother. ‘How can you ask me to leave it? Are you going?’
‘No, we will stay and do what we can to resist the encroachment of the dark ones.’