by John French
‘Five warships closing fast,’ shouted the sensor officer. ‘Their weapons are live.’
Cleander acknowledged this with a nod.
‘Shields down across all forward and dorsal volumes!’
‘Hostile frigate will be ready to fire again in ten seconds.’
‘Hold position,’ said Cleander, his eyes not moving from the pict screen above him. ‘Throw everything we have at the frigate. Tell the warships who we are. See if you can get them to fire at our nasty little friend out there rather than us.’
His eyes held on the pict-feed from the inceptors running down the eye of the storm. A burst of las-fire raced after the distant icon of an enemy craft. Further down still, the gunships from the Dionysia were cutting speed and spiralling in around the Reliquary Tower to land.
‘Dionysia, this is Gladius squadron. We are on the target. There is activity on the landing zone. Do we proceed?’
‘This is Dionysia,’ said Viola from behind him. ‘Proceed.’
‘We have an aggressor still in play on our tails.’
A missile kicked free from the enemy interceptor as it fell on the gunships like a hawk on a field bird. Countermeasures burst from the gunships, flares burning red. The missile hit one of the glowing motes. Fire bloomed. Its expanding sphere caught one of the gunship’s wings and flipped it into a spin. Fire burst from its engines and swallowed its fuselage. Its two comrades raced past it.
‘Come on,’ Cleander muttered, then cursed himself for letting his tension show.
The image from the inceptor pivoted and Cleander saw the shape of the enemy fighter dead ahead. He felt his hand reflexively tense on a firing stud that was not his to key.
‘Lock,’ said the pilot. ‘Firing.’ Las reached across the image, and then the enemy was a ball of fire, and the image was plunging past the debris. ‘Kill,’ said the pilot, his voice flat. Cleander could see the gunships descending onto a cluster of platforms attached to the lower reach of the tower.
‘Gladius squadron,’ said Viola into the vox. ‘You have thirteen minutes until you need to be in the air and climbing. Sicaro, hold cover position and escort.’
‘There is a transmission coming from the surface,’ called another officer. ‘It bears the signal cipher of Inquisitor Lord Vult. It orders all Imperial forces to consider the space above the Reliquary Tower quarantined under his authority.’
‘Captain, the hostile frigate is breaking off, and running for open space.’
‘We are being hailed and challenged again, captain. What is our response?’
‘We are seeing engine fires on the tower’s landing pads,’ shouted a gunnery officer who was bent over the surface-directed sensors. ‘There are trans-orbital craft prepping to launch down there.’
‘Who are they?’ asked Cleander.
‘Vult,’ said Viola, and keyed the vox. ‘And whoever else is alive in the tower.
‘Gladius squadron, is Inquisitor Covenant on board?’
‘Negative,’ crackled the reply.
‘Hold until he is, Gladius,’ she said. ‘No matter who is telling you to take off, you wait.’
Cleander looked around at his sister. Tension had pinched her mouth to a thin line.
‘Well,’ he said and gave a grin. ‘At least we aren’t being fired at any more.’
The world stopped: breaths stilled in lungs, fingers frozen on triggers.
The light blinked once, and then failed for the last time. The molten glow of fire and burning gas bubbled up from the depths. The glow showed Covenant kneeling, trying to lift the corpse. Josef took a step to help him.
‘Lord,’ the voice was Severita’s. ‘You must leave her. You must come now.’ She moved past Josef, and gripped Covenant’s shoulder. He twisted free of her grip. A pulse of telekinetic force sent Severita staggering back, and for only the second time in his service Josef felt the fire within slip through the iron of his master’s will.
A burst of bright fire flared in the depths, its light cutting through the smoke. The stairs shook.
‘Lord,’ said Josef, and took a step towards Covenant. ‘If you mean to live, then we need to move.’ He paused, another deep explosion shaking the floor.
Covenant straightened. His boltgun hung loose at his side. The sensor pod on his shoulder was still, its lenses pointing at nothing. He turned, his face a black silhouette barely visible against the fire-stained smoke.
‘Follow,’ he said, and began to run up the stairs, and Josef saw the others obey – just as he did – and run from the roar of fire rising to swallow the dead.
Gunships rose from the launch pads as the storm began to swallow the tower again. Other craft rose with them: shuttles, lighters and other species of machine, their wings and hulls scraped to bare metal by the dust winds. The inceptors holding station above the tower broke from their spiral and fell in beside the flock of craft as it rose like crows from a grave.
Beneath them the stones of the tower shook. Angels and martyrs of stone tumbled from its spire, shattering as they struck the lower walls. A rose of light unfolded from its base, blinding white, buzzing as it vaporised the granite and fused the dust around it. Then the blast wave ripped outwards to meet the storm winds. Dust and earth whipped into the still air. The light flashed again, brighter, growing and blistering upwards.
The tower’s lower levels melted, stone blasting into glowing spray. High above, the statue-topped pinnacle fell down into the white inferno. In the shrine chamber, the few Sisters of the Bloody Rose who had remained were blasted to ash in an instant. They had chosen death as their penance for their failure. Only two lived, bearing the reliquary containing the hand of the Saint to one of the evacuating gunships, and then the storm covered the blaze, and the vast dust cloud glowed red.
The ragged flock of lighters and gunships soared high above. In the troop bay of a Valkyrie, Enna watched a projected image of the storm. Her eyes held on the glow beneath the cloud until it flared one last time and then was gone. She held her gaze on the grainy image for a last second, then the sensation of the shaking fuselage and the sound of the engines pulled her awareness into herself. She looked away. Soot, blood and dust painted the faces that looked back at her.
‘What now?’ she asked.
Severita looked up, eyes opening from her silent prayer. Beside her the hunched form of the magos stirred. Josef looked around at Covenant. The inquisitor’s gaze was fixed on the back hatch of the gunship, as though looking through its substance to the world vanishing behind them. He looked at her, eyes dark in a face that looked both young and aged beyond its time.
‘Retribution,’ he said.
Part Two
Heretic’s Wake
Six
Josef found Viola waiting outside the inner door to their master’s sanctum. She looked tired, dark smudges under her eyes, pupils wide from stims and cognitive enhancers. He met her gaze and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged, and turned her gaze back to the closed door.
Glow globes hung from the wood-panelled ceiling, soaking the antechamber in amber light and soft shadows. Polished granite gleamed on the walls between heavy tapestries. Angels and beasts fought across the dark red fabric, their halos stitched in gold thread, their eyes beads of jet. The door leading to Covenant’s sanctum was black iron, its surface wrought with patterns of leafless branches parting before a gilt chalice. The weight of silence pressed in on Josef as he stood, and he found himself fidgeting with the collar of his robe.
The ship was still, its engines lay cold, and the vibrations of its other systems did not reach decks this far away from the machine spaces. That put his nerves on edge, always had, as though the stillness and quiet were a threat. The current circumstances did not lessen the feeling.
The iron door opened with a murmur of releasing locks. A hunched servitor in a grey robe opened it wide, and then shuffled aside on clic
king brass legs.
Viola gave Josef a long look, then stepped through. The room within was as dark as the antechamber. Candles hung in the air on suspensor discs. Their low light caught the surfaces of dark wood and sculpted black iron. Thick carpet stole the sound from their footfalls as they approached the desk. Its wood was so dark that its grain was a barely visible ripple in its substance. A workbench sat against the wall behind it. Instruments of brass and silver lay on its top: picters with telescoping magnifiers, burners, articulated arms tipped with fine pincers. Data slates and a scroll reader were stacked to one side. Behind the desk, covering the curved wall, the dead looked down. Most were cast in silver, their expressions frozen in polished detail. Some were grotesque. Some were not human at all. A few – a very few – were cast in red gold, their faces gleaming beside the silver.
One day I will be there, thought Josef, as he stopped before the desk, looking down in gold from beside the faces of slain enemies, and lost comrades.
Covenant looked up at them. His chair sat between the bare desk and the workbench. He wore grey, the cloth cut to resemble the simple robe of an Administratum scribe, but without mark or sign of rank. A brass-sheathed cable ran from the socket in his left temple to the collection of articulated limbs on the desk. His hands were steepled under his chin. On the desk the brass arms moved without cease, spinning around a lump of red wax. Spatulas and microburners cut, melted and scraped, pulling the image of a face into being in the wax.
Josef glanced at the sculpture, then up at the still eyes of his master.
‘Speak,’ said Covenant.
Viola cleared her throat.
‘My sources in the fleet elements are doing what they can,’ she said, ‘but it’s not good. Half of the ships are preparing for immediate deployment. And all of them are now crawling with agents of your peers. Some of them overt, many not. Access to the surface is going to be difficult unless you wish to go personally to oversee a mission. It will take you giving the orders personally to make them stand aside.’
‘They deny the authority of an inquisitor of the Throne?’ growled Josef.
‘They have conflicting orders from the authority of different inquisitors,’ said Viola, looking at him.
‘Vult…’ said Josef.
‘In part, yes, but not only him,’ she said. ‘At least six others survived the… incident. They are all still here, and they all have the same absolute authority. They are currently using that authority to make our lives – and each other’s lives – difficult.’
‘Of course they are,’ said Josef. He was not surprised. Of all Covenant’s servants he the most had seen how inquisitors behaved on the rare occasion their paths crossed. It was rarely easy to deal with them, especially under these circumstances. ‘They want to keep us from examining the remains of the tower,’
Viola gave a mirthless laugh.
‘Some of them want more than that,’ she said. ‘We are tracking ship movements in near-void and across the system that look very much like they are intended to prevent us breaking orbit, and if we do, to stop us reaching the system edge.’
‘They would use force?’ he asked.
‘Difficult to know,’ she said, ‘but you don’t draw a sword unless you have some idea that you might have to use it.’
‘And this containment is aimed at us?’ asked Josef.
‘Not exclusively. Some appears to be directed as much at other surviving inquisitors, but a lot of it is for us, yes.’
‘Because they believe we were responsible for what happened?’
‘Responsible, involved,’ Viola shrugged. ‘I am not sure it matters which.’
‘He denounced Talicto,’ snarled Josef, gesturing at his master. Covenant remained still, listening. On the desk the manipulators spun on fluidly, without cease.
Josef felt a ball of frustration forming in his gut. He could see what Viola was saying, and knew her evaluation was right, but it should not be right.
‘They think he was involved? He identified the enemy within before any of the rest!’
‘According to you, the moment that he denounced Talicto, the massacre began,’ said Viola, her eyes flashing with annoyance. ‘And what if we are not Talicto’s enemies, but his allies? What if what happened was misdirection – a means of putting Lord Covenant beyond suspicion while the board was swept clean of anyone who could oppose him?’
‘The attack was intended to leave no survivors,’ said Josef and shook his head. ‘We would have burned with the rest. Not a great plan.’
‘So it seems, but is that real or a carefully created illusion? From their point of view that is a real possibility.’
‘That is a wilfully perverse way of looking at things.’
‘I will take that as a compliment, Khoriv,’ she said and smiled. ‘Inquisitors are not given to trust…’ She glanced at Covenant. ‘Most of those we are dealing with here do not know each other, and have just been given a very good reason to see each other as enemies.’
Josef snorted and shook his head.
‘This is beyond belief. On the edge of war, they would go to war with each other?’
‘The war has already begun.’ Covenant’s voice was low. Viola and Josef looked at their master. ‘The others will do what they see needs to be done.’ He looked up at them, eyes dark and unblinking. ‘As will I.’
On the workbench behind him the armatures and sculpting tools became still. Josef felt his heart slow in his chest.
‘Talicto,’ said Covenant, weighing the name on his tongue. ‘He is the architect of what has happened and is happening. And he is all that matters at this moment. The conflict we see and the blood that has been spilt is what he intended. He wanted to remove any who could counter him. He failed to kill us all, but now we look at each other with doubt and do not act. Strife is as effective a way of achieving his purpose as murder. As he intended.’ He paused, took a long breath, and released it slowly. He shook his head. ‘And he has succeeded. His peers lie dead, and those of us that remain now turn on each other. He has succeeded.’ He unsteepled his fingers and placed them on the arms of his chair. ‘I will not allow him to keep that victory.’
He stood, pulling the plug of the mind impulse unit from the socket in his temple. On the workbench the articulated spider legs folded together with a soft whirr of fine cogs. The blue flames of the heat torches vanished.
‘We will not find him on Ero, or on any world in this system,’ said Covenant, stepping from behind the desk. ‘This was planned long before we came, and I will not repeat the mistake of underestimating his subtlety again. This was just another step on a path for him.’
‘And that path’s end?’ asked Josef.
‘That is what we must learn.’
‘How do we begin?’ asked Viola.
‘With what we have,’ replied Covenant. ‘The remains on the planet will be difficult to access, and may not tell us anything that is worth the effort. So look at what Talicto would have had to do to accomplish the attack.’
‘The frigate,’ said Viola, frowning more deeply. ‘The frigate that tried to confront us in orbit. It was a Navy vessel. That means that it must have made its presence known to fleet command. There will be a record, signals, orders and ident ciphers.’
‘Most likely false,’ growled Josef. He was not looking at Covenant or Viola, but at the lump of wax on the workbench beside the now silent tools. Cuts and flame had smoothed rises that caught the light, folding shadow into an unfinished face.
‘If Talicto has fled,’ Viola was saying, ‘he would also have needed a way of leaving the surface and the system, and he would have needed to bring in the force he used in the attack. There is no trace of their kind being native to this planet or system, so they came from elsewhere.’
‘And what were they?’ grunted Josef. Viola paused, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her look
at him. He shrugged, and turned back to them. ‘These people in rags succeeded in coming out of a dust hurricane, penetrating a tower defended by warriors of the Sororitas, and killing at least half a dozen inquisitors and their servants. I would think we should find out what they were.’
‘A death cult?’ said Viola, and looked at Covenant. ‘One of Talicto’s warp-marked flocks like the one we found on Modus Aleph?’
‘Like everything else, they remain unknown,’ said Covenant. ‘To speculate is to invite error. We will proceed only with certainty. Viola, you and your brother will find this frigate that seems to have been acting by his will. The void is your domain. Take the Dionysia where you need, do whatever needs to be done.’
Viola bowed her head.
‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Lord Covenant, you are leaving the ship?’
‘I am going to go find where this came from,’ said Covenant, drawing the crystal blade from the folds of his grey robe and turning away as he held it up to the light of the glow-globe, his eyes on the ragged glint of light running down its edge. ‘Make your preparations, Viola. We leave this place in three hours.’
Viola bowed her head again and walked towards the door. She paused before she left, and glanced at Josef. Their eyes met for a second, and she gave the slightest nod, which Josef returned. A second later the door shut behind her with a low click.
Josef took a careful step towards the desk, teeth chewing the inside of his cheek. The half-formed face of red wax looked back from the workbench beneath the silver of enemies and the gold of allies. The features were clear and well defined in places, sketched in crude gouges in others, as though it had been started several times, and then restarted. He recognised the face though.
‘She died facing the enemies of the Emperor,’ said Josef at last. ‘She would have wanted that.’
Covenant lowered the blade, but did not look around.