Fire Caste

by Peter Fehervari

  ‘There’s something else,’ she told me.

  And then she gave me a dossier sealed with a scarlet ribbon. She offered no explanations or instructions, but as I took it I understood that she was passing on a curse. Can one more really make any difference to me? How many times can a man be damned?

  Day 2 – The Sargaatha Sea: The Fall of the 19th?

  No, I’ve not touched the scarlet dossier. There are other, more prosaic documents that require my attention first. I have a whole heap of reports on the Arkan 19th and their role in the civil war back home. I never knew there’d been another Arkan uprising, but I won’t say I’m surprised. We’re a reckless, restless folk and this Ensor Cutler reads like the worst of us – an arrogant glory hunter who leads his men on little more than a wing and a prayer. It’s no wonder that his record is such a patchwork mess of distinction and notoriety. The deepest mystery here is why he fought for the Imperium instead of the rebels. But no, that’s not entirely true. There is another mystery – something that doesn’t quite fit with his fast and loose, yet always heroic exploits: the massacre of a backwater town called Trinity. I haven’t found the details yet, but my gut tells me it matters. I must dig deeper. Lomax’s scarlet dossier will have to wait.

  Day 3 – The Sargaatha Sea: A Fourth Shadow

  Lomax didn’t warn me about my shadow. No, I’m not talking about my dead shadows – my ghosts appear to have taken their leave of me for the present – but the living, breathing spy who has attached herself to me. Commissar Cadet Ysabel Reve caught up with us this morning, ferried in by a speeding sea skimmer. The first thing I noticed about the girl was her height. She can’t have been much past twenty, but she was almost a head taller than me and I’m taller than most. Everything about her was hard and brutally efficient, from her lean, muscle-plated build to her square-jawed face and shaven scalp. Her storm coat and boots glistened with polish, complementing the bright silver pin of the Sky Marshall’s chosen. By Providence, the girl was even carrying a gold-plated autopistol!

  I didn’t believe any of it for a moment…

  Iverson’s Journal

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re a first-class shot, Reve, but that won’t be nearly enough in the Mire.’ Iverson shook his head. ‘This isn’t going to be a routine patrol. I won’t be able to look out for you, girl.’

  And I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for you.

  ‘I have done three stints on Dolorosa Azure,’ the girl said in a clipped, guttural accent he couldn’t quite place. ‘I will pull my weight, sir.’

  Iverson didn’t doubt it. The band of her cap might be blue, but this woman was no raw cadet. He wasn’t even convinced she was a commissar. That pristine storm coat and fancy autopistol were a façade to lull him into thinking she was green, but he’d learnt never to trust the obvious. A person’s story was written in their eyes and Ysabel Reve’s were flat and cold. They told an assassin’s tale.

  She’s not here to learn from me or watch my back. She’s here to finish the job if I can’t. Or stab me in the back if I won’t. But who sent her?

  ‘Look, does Lomax know about this?’ Iverson said.

  ‘Indeed yes, the High Commissar approved my appointment personally, sir.’

  ‘I see. Well, we’re only three days out of Antigone,’ Iverson said with a shrug. ‘I’ll get her on the vox to confirm that. For your sake, you understand.’

  ‘I am sorry, sir. Did you not receive the news?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, cadet.’

  ‘Sir, High Commissar Lomax is dead.’

  Iverson stared at her.

  ‘She died the day after you sailed, sir. I assumed you knew.’

  ‘How did she die?’ he asked flatly.

  ‘She fell from the watchtower, sir. The medicae believe she died instantly.’ Reve lowered her eyes. ‘I am sorry. I know that you and she were friends.’

  ‘Friends…’

  ‘Yes, the High Commissar always spoke highly of you, sir. In the training sessions.’

  Did she really? Somehow I doubt that, Reve.

  ‘They say it was suicide.’ The girl hesitated and Iverson could see she was thinking, weighing him up. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ she repeated finally.

  Once again, Reve, I rather doubt that.

  Day 4 – The Sargaatha Sea: The Scarlet Testament

  I am troubled by Lomax’s death. We were never friends but she was a constant in this changing-changeless morass. She was true to her vows to the Emperor and utterly unswerving in her duty. And at the end she chose to trust me.

  I must make the time to study the papers she passed into my care… But no, that is sheer prevarication! Time has nothing to do with it! This damnably slow tug has given me all the time I could possibly need, but I cannot bring myself to break the scarlet seal of that dossier. I can feel it bulging with documents and picts, almost certainly hiding the truths that killed her. I know my duty, yet I hesitate. Why?

  Where are my ghosts when I need their counsel?

  Day 7 – The Sargaatha Sea: Shadowplays

  We are due to rendezvous with the Puissance tomorrow. Her reputation precedes her, but this will be the first time I actually set foot on that grim old battleship. Apparently Admiral Karjalan wants to brief me personally. I suspect I’m his last hope of staving off the Sky Marshall’s displeasure so he’ll offer me the best he has. That will be a gunboat and a platoon of his finest men, probably the infamous Penitent Corsairs. From what I’ve heard about those zealots they’re just about the last troops I’d want along on a mission like this. I have enough to worry about with Cadet Ysabel bloody Reve looking over my shoulder all the time. That girl’s playing a sharper game than I first gave her credit for…

  Iverson’s Journal

  ‘Commissar Iverson, may I speak with you? Off the record?’

  ‘You’re a commissar, Reve.’ Aren’t you? ‘You know nothing’s ever off the record.’ He glared at her. ‘Especially something you want off the record. Out with it.’

  ‘Very well,’ she steeled herself visibly. Overacting again… ‘I do not believe the High Commissar killed herself, sir.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Iverson was surprised.

  ‘Sir, High Commissar Lomax was a true hero of the Imperium,’ Reve said passionately. Iverson was impressed – the girl sounded genuinely upset. ‘She had too much steel in her soul to take the easy way out.’

  ‘What are you getting at, cadet?’

  Reve hesitated before looking him straight in the eye.

  ‘Sir, I believe she had enemies amongst High Command. I believe she might have discovered something. Something damaging.’

  ‘That’s a very serious allegation, Cadet Reve,’ Iverson said, watching her closely. ‘What do you think she was on to?’

  ‘I was hoping…’ She paused, returning his intense scrutiny – Testing me as I am testing her – ‘I was hoping that she might have told you, sir.’

  He had to admit she was good. If she hadn’t overplayed her hand with that spotless uniform and ridiculous sidearm he might even have believed her.

  ‘Why would you think that, Cadet Reve?’

  ‘Because she trusted you, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps not as much as you think,’ Iverson said. ‘Look, I’ve got nothing for you, cadet. Lomax was old and worn to the soul with this filthy planet. Maybe it was just plain suicide.’ He turned away from her. ‘Despite what you’ve been led to believe, none of us are unbreakable. Sometimes things are simply what they seem.’

  But not you, Ysabel Reve, most definitely not you...

  Day 8 – The Puissance: Death Ship

  If ever a ship was tainted, it is this ancient Lethean ironclad. I’m no damned psyker but I sensed it the moment I saw her on the horizon, rising like an iron canker on a sea of sludge, vast and dark and spiteful as the Seven He
lls. They say the Puissance hasn’t moved in over a decade – not since old Karjalan took ill and disappeared from sight – and I have no reason to doubt that.

  The water around the ship was encrusted with a rime of glutinous algal scum. Thick tendrils of the stuff had climbed the hull, twining round the corroded battlements and binding the vessel to its floating grave. The morbid tribulation continued on the deck, where corpses hung from the ship’s crane, some of them still fresh, others little more than skeletons. And wherever we wandered I saw the metal glistening with a patina of slime, something excreted rather than acquired, almost as if the iron marrow of the vessel itself was polluted.

  By Providence, even the Mire feels pure beside the Puissance! It appals me to tarry here, but Karjalan was unable to see us until after nightfall due to a shipboard crisis. It seems that a prisoner broke free of the brig shortly after our arrival. I wonder at the man who could manage it and cause the Letheans such vexation. And I admit that I wish him well in his flight from this charnel ship. Whoever he is and whatever he has done, his crime cannot be greater than Karjalan’s own.

  As I prepare to meet the admiral, one thought gnaws at me: if the web is so foul, then how much worse the Spider?

  Iverson’s Journal

  ‘Forgive the theatrics, Commissar Iverson, but I fear I am not the man I used to be,’ the voice warbled from the darkness, sounding desiccated and damp in the same breath. ‘But despite Her depredations, Phaedra has not yet worn away my vanity.’

  Iverson peered across the chamber, trying to pierce the gloom, but the speaker hadn’t put his trust in shadows alone. A silk screen had been drawn across the furthest recesses of the room, turning the man into a vague silhouette. He could make out little more than a hunched shape swaddled in heavy blankets. Occasionally its arms would wave about loosely, stick thin and oddly frayed, but it was impossible to gauge its height or build. For all he could tell, Admiral Vyodor Karjalan looked exactly as he sounded: a mummified corpse bloated on congealed blood.

  Shaking off the unwelcome image, Iverson tried to focus on the admiral’s words, but his thoughts came slow and muddy. The humidity in Karjalan’s chamber was worse than anything he’d experienced in the Mire, almost like a hydroponic hothouse. The air was hazy with the bittersweet reek of incense, but the smoke couldn’t quite disguise a deeper stench – the promise of something ripe with decay.

  The soporific effect was heightened by the rhythmic gurgle-hiss of an arcane life support array in the far corner. Two Lethean priests attended the machine while a Penitent Corsair in scarlet plate stood watch. A muddle of pipes sprouted from the array like questing, industrial creepers. Some trailed away behind the admiral’s screen, while others coiled around a body lying on a pallet nearby, its waxy flesh pierced by a lattice of needles. Iverson could see the victim’s blood being siphoned away into that greedy snarl of pipes.

  ‘I trust my medication does not disturb you?’ Karjalan wheezed, seeming to read the commissar’s mind.

  ‘I’m long past being troubled by anything I see,’ Iverson lied. He couldn’t help taking some satisfaction in Cadet Reve’s pallor. Perhaps the assassin wasn’t quite as cold as he’d first imagined.

  ‘Nevertheless, I am grateful for your indulgence, commissar.’ The admiral chuckled and his silhouette jerked fitfully. ‘I occasionally toy with making an end of things, but my service to the Emperor prohibits it. And my beloved Letheans would be lost without me. Indeed, they vie with one another to offer up their blood that I may live.’

  ‘Admiral, I am hoping to set out at first light,’ Iverson said, struggling to pull his thoughts into order. ‘I’ll be needing a gunboat and…’

  ‘Do you find my conversation so tiresome, commissar?’ Karjalan hissed. ‘Are you bored with me so soon, Arkan?’

  Iverson ignored Reve’s sidelong warning glance and forged on.

  ‘Admiral, I’m here on the Emperor’s business…’

  ‘As am I! Have you not heard of the Lethean Revelation, commissar?’

  ‘I’ve given it little thought.’

  ‘Ah, but you must! You see the Emperor condemns!’ Karjalan cackled wetly. ‘And I am holy! So damnably holy it hurts!’ Abruptly his humour dried up. ‘Your kinfolk have done me a grave insult and a graver injury, Holt Iverson. Tell me; are all the men of Arkan such savages?’

  Iverson hesitated, taken aback by the insult. To his surprise Reve spoke up: ‘My Lord Admiral, Commissar Iverson has often told me of the shame he feels over the conduct of the Arkan 19th. His blood ties have made the matter personal for him.’

  ‘The matter is personal for me also,’ Karjalan said. ‘These Arkan scum slaughtered fifty of my Letheans in cold blood, together with a man who was like a brother to me!’

  ‘Confessor Yosiv Gurdjief,’ Reve said with a nod. ‘His murder was a heinous crime against the Ecclesiarchy…’

  ‘It was a crime against me!’ Karjalan shrieked, splattering the screen with ichor.

  ‘Sir, I assure you that Commissar Iverson takes this matter…’

  ‘Be silent you soulless bitch! Does your precious master have no voice of his own? Where’s your tongue now, eh, Iverson? Won’t you speak up for your backwater brothers? Don’t you have the courage to–’

  There was a wet pop and Karjalan’s voice disintegrated into a ragged cough. His form heaved and something raked the curtain spasmodically. One of his attendant priests flitted urgently behind the screen.

  ‘My Blessed Lord, you must not excite yourself so–’

  The priest’s admonishment was choked off as something lashed out and seized him by the throat. Horrified, Iverson and Reve watched the priest’s silhouette shudder to its knees, twitching frantically. The other two attendants watched the mayhem with something like rapture on their faces.

  ‘This is monstrous,’ Reve whispered, beginning to rise.

  Iverson caught her wrist, then her eyes, holding both in an iron grip.

  ‘This is Phaedra,’ he said.

  They heard something rip violently behind the curtain and more fluid splattered the fabric. This time it was dark and viscous.

  Day 9 – The Sargaatha Sea: Penance and Pain

  We sailed from the Puissance at dawn, but my relief at escaping that tainted ship is tempered by shame. The reality of the Sea Spider proved to be much worse than the darkest rumours: Karjalan is an abomination in body and soul. Duty demands that I take his life, yet duty also demands that I keep my own for now. Duty delights in making a man dance on hot coals! But I digress…

  Once Karjalan was done with feasting his reason returned and he remembered that I was his last hope of tracking down the rogues. With ill grace he granted my request for a Triton-pattern transport – an amphibious gunboat capable of negotiating both land and water. They are fine vessels and woefully rare on Phaedra. If we had more such vehicles we might have won this war long ago. I am beginning to wonder if that is why we have so few…

  In typical Lethean fashion my craft is called the Penance and Pain. I won’t deny that it is a fitting name.

  Iverson’s Journal

  ‘I do not trust them,’ Reve growled, indicating the troops in scarlet plate prowling the deck below. ‘They are the creatures of a debased heretic.’

  ‘A heretic who thinks he’s a martyr to the Emperor,’ Iverson said. ‘Look, it’s not a question of trust, cadet. This ship is Lethean. I had to take her crew. Besides, we couldn’t sail her alone.’

  They were standing together on the upper deck, watching the Penitent Corsairs lumber about their duties with brutish determination. There were eight of the hulking zealots on board, every one a tattooed, shaven-headed thug bristling with devotional charms and totems. To Iverson they looked more like steroid-boosted hive gangers than professional soldiers, but their equipment belied it. All of them wore sculpted body armour with jagged shoulder plates and conical helmets
that flanged into fins at the sides, giving them a distinctly marine look. In place of regular issue lasguns they sported high-powered hellguns connected to fluted, shell-like backpacks.

  In a more sober regiment Iverson guessed the Corsairs would be classed as storm troopers, but these elites had a propensity for fevered prayer and self-flagellation. Fortunately they went about the business of war as if the Emperor Himself was breathing down their backs, never slacking on patrol and manning the gun emplacements to port and starboard as if they were holy shrines.

  The more mundane matters of sailing and maintaining the craft fell to the lowly Penitent Mariners. Iverson wasn’t sure how many of the scraggy ratings they had on board, but he guessed there must be at least twenty. They were all filthy, tangle-haired ruffians who revered the Corsairs as holy knights. In turn those worthies treated them as slaves, regularly brutalising and beating them. It was a tried and tested dynamic that Iverson had seen countless times over. It could be as strong as folded steel or as brittle as rotten timber.

  ‘How can they believe that abomination serves the God-Emperor?’ Reve sneered.

  ‘Karjalan believes it himself,’ Iverson said, regarding her curiously. ‘Besides, he’s a creature of the Sky Marshall. Isn’t that enough for you?’

  Reve looked at him sharply: ‘It is not, sir.’

  ‘That mark you’re wearing says otherwise.’

  ‘This?’ She jabbed at the silver icon on her lapel, understanding dawning on her face. ‘This is why you do not trust me?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Cadet Reve.’

  ‘You did not have to,’ she glared at him with what looked like real bitterness. ‘The Skywatch is nothing to me, but with respect sir, you are a starblood.’