‘Full of questions today aren’t we, Si?’
‘It is–’
‘Your calling! Yeah I already got that part,’ Cutler said. ‘Look, why don’t you just send in the bad xenos and get started on the needles and shockwires or whatever it is you blueskins use to get answers, because I’ve got nothing to say to you.’
‘There are no bad agents of the Greater Good,’ O’Seishin replied primly. ‘Such would be a contradiction.’
‘Well, what about Wintertide then?’ Cutler suggested. ‘Why don’t you send in the big chief and maybe I’ll talk to him, one soldier to another.’
‘Perhaps I am Commander Wintertide.’
‘And I’m the Sky Marshall.’ Abruptly Cutler cast off his brash mask and was all business. ‘Why are we talking, Por’o Dal’yth Seishin?’
The tau considered the question. This was his eleventh interview with the renegade commander, yet they were no closer to a rapport. He reviewed the facts once again: Cutler had been captured almost a month ago, betrayed by a squad of his own men who had grown weary of their piratical existence. For nearly two weeks he had raved in his cell like a savage, throwing himself against the force barrier and refusing food until O’Seishin had indeed doubted his sanity. Then, seemingly from one moment to the next, he had become deadly calm. After that O’Seishin had begun the interviews and the duel for Cutler’s mind had begun.
‘Look, I don’t know where my men are or what they’re up to,’ Cutler said. ‘And I if did, I sure as Hells wouldn’t pass it on to you.’
‘Your comrades are irrelevant,’ the tau murmured, still lost in thought. ‘Since your capture they have caused us no tribulation. We have concluded that their spirit is broken.’
‘Then you’re fools.’
You’ll need strong men who haven’t forgotten how to think, O’Seishin recalled the Sky Marshall telling him. Forget the zealots who’ll die before they dream a new thought, or the fickle rabble who’ll follow anything that promises change, then hanker after another change and another, until they’ve got nowhere left to go. Such folk are the fodder of humanity and all you’ll build with them is a paper castle. But win the heart and mind of a man like Ensor Cutler and you’ll have a true hero by your side. And where such men lead others will follow.
‘What do you want from me, xenos?’ Cutler urged.
O’Seishin’s nostrils twitched in a wry smile. ‘I want you to do what is right, Ensor Cutler.’
Skjoldis frowned as she watched Vendrake’s taskforce depart. The regiment could ill afford to lose any of the precious machines. Despite the devotion of the tech-priests the Sentinels were dying, worn down by the Mire. The remaining eight were running on little more than cannibalised parts and prayer. Risking them on this fool’s errand was insane, yet she couldn’t find it in herself to blame Vendrake.
Tell me the truth about Trinity, the cavalry captain had urged once again. Tell me what really happened there?
The doubts eating him alive had been seeded long ago, but they had lain dormant, waiting for the right catalyst. Skjoldis didn’t know if that catalyst had been his lost protégé or Phaedra Herself, but Vendrake was on the brink of madness. He deserved the truth – about Trinity and about Abel. She would have relented if Machen hadn’t started hammering at the door, demanding his own answers.
The Zouave captain was still storming about the camp now, angry at Vendrake’s snub and frightened by something else. Skjoldis supposed she should talk to him, but she was too weary. Weary and terribly afraid for the Whitecrow…
He has been alone with his daemons too long.
Her telepathic contact had taken the colonel by surprise and for a few brief moments his soul had been unguarded. In those moments she had looked below the surface and his daemons had looked right back and grinned.
Cutler was awoken by an ungodly shriek. Alarmed, he reached for his sabre, then realised the sound was only the wind whistling through the eves of the rickety old barn. The blizzard was still raging, threatening to tear down the shack where the platoon’s survivors had gone to ground after their flight. They were on the outskirts of the tainted town, watching the road for the trailing bulk of the regiment and praying the crazed citizens wouldn’t show up first. The tension in the draft-riddled shack was electric: every one of the greybacks here would have chosen the sane perils of wind and snow over the horrors just a stone’s throw away, but Cutler had ordered them to sit tight.
‘What’s up, Ensor?’ Waite asked. The seams in his walnut face were etched deeper by concern. ‘For a moment there it looked like you weren’t at home.’
‘I was just thinking,’ Cutler murmured.
Of doing what’s right…
‘We have to go back,’ he said, his voice growing stronger as reality firmed up around him. ‘We can’t let this stand.’
‘Ensor, that town is warp-touched,’ the captain protested. ‘Listen, Fort Garriot can’t be much more than three days march from here. We can call this mess in from there and let the witch hunters deal with these degenerates. It’s what they’re trained for.’
‘Providence can’t carry this kind of shame, especially not after the uprisings,’ Cutler said. ‘We’re in the Inquisition’s bad books already.’
‘You really think they’d get involved?’
‘Make no mistake about it, those planet-murdering bastards are watching us like hawks.’ Cutler shook his head grimly. ‘They’ve let us put our own house in order so far, but if word gets out that we’re not just ornery, but tainted with it…’
‘But this is just one misbegotten slum in the boondocks!’
‘Maybe that’s how the fall always starts.’ Cutler sighed. ‘We can’t take the chance, Elias. It was providence that led us here and it’s for Providence that we’ll return.’
‘I see ’em!’ Sergeant Hickox called from the upper floor. ‘Our boys is coming up the road now!’ There were brittle cheers from the other survivors gathered in the barn.
‘I need to talk to the witch,’ Cutler said, running a hand through his glossy black hair. ‘Maybe she can give us an angle on this mess. Then we have to go back.’ He squeezed his comrade’s shoulder. ‘It ends here, old friend. With us.’
Day 63 – The Coil: The Scarlet Dossier
Are we nearing the heart of the Coil or just sailing in circles? It is impossible to tell when nothing changes from one day to the next save the diminishing measure of our supplies. The only certainty is this grey-green limbo and the river running through it. That and the black joke the Sky Marshall has worked on us all.
I’ve finished studying Lomax’s Scarlet Dossier and it’s all there, the whole sorry debacle of this war mapped out in a damning geometry of incompetence, negligence and sheer madness. Every shred of evidence was annotated with the High Commissar’s spidery scrawl and focussed into a sharp truth. Taken individually each folly might be dismissed as mere misfortune, but seen together they spelled out nothing less than wilful betrayal.
Consider the High Command of the Phaedran War Group. We are cursed with witless tyrants like General ‘Ironfoot’ Mroffel, who convinced himself that tanks could float and sent an armoured battalion to a watery grave; or aristocratic buffoons like Count Ghilles de Zhegal, who dallies with war like a colour-blind regicide player, confusing blueskins with greenskins and gunboats for gunships. And then there are the madmen like Vyodor Karjalan and Ao-Oleaus (who is known as the Clockwork Butcher for the obsessive timing of his doomed sallies). Of course the Imperium harbours many such fools and monsters in its darker corners, but here they have been nurtured to strangle any hope of victory stillborn.
And then there is the record of perverse strategic decisions that range from the anomalous to the outrageous. Why the blanket embargos on long-range shelling and flights across enemy territory? Why the preferred requisitioning of tanks over amphibious vehicles? And why was the offer of
a brigade of Catachan Jungle Fighters turned down when such men were surely born to tame the Mire? Why… why… why? Question upon question, error upon error and every one of them spiralling back up to the Sky Marshall himself.
For years Lomax had been surreptitiously collating and cross-referencing Zebasteyn Kircher’s follies, building a case she knew she’d never live to make. That’s why she passed the torch on to me, the only person on Phaedra she still trusted. And that’s why she sent me into the Mire after my kinfolk. They were never meant to be my quarry. They were meant to be my allies.
Iverson’s Journal
‘You know your problem, Holt? You think too fragging much,’ Modine pronounced sagely. He laughed at the baleful glare Iverson threw him. ‘What? You got that look again, like you seen a spook or something?’
‘Just answer my question, greyback,’ Iverson said, trying not to gag on the stench wafting from the diseased man. Modine’s condition had worsened steadily over the weeks and his makeshift cabin reeked of decay. In the gloom his face had the look of a crude coral sculpture and his fatigues bulged with something that wasn’t quite muscle anymore.
‘You saying you don’t like hanging out with old Klete no more?’ Modine said with feigned hurt. ‘You ain’t stopped by to see me in days, Holt.’
‘I need to know if Cutler will hear me out,’ Iverson pressed.
‘Well it ain’t like I ever knew the colonel personal like,’ Modine said. ‘The big boys never hung out with grunts like me.’
‘But is he an honourable man?’
‘From what I seen of him I reckon he’d say so.’ Modine shrugged. ‘Look, if he thinks you’re straight up he’ll likely back you, especially if you can clear his name.’ He peered at Iverson suspiciously. ‘Are you on the level about that part, Holt? You really going to wipe the slate clean for the 19th?’
‘I have that authority,’ Iverson said, the lies coming easily these days, ‘but redemption has a price.’
‘And what about me?’ Modine said with sudden vehemence. ‘Are you going to yank that sick frak Karjalan outta his web and haul him over the coals for what he done to me?’
‘It’s complicated…’
‘Yeah, that’s what I figured,’ Modine spat.
‘It’s complicated, but yes. You have my word on it,’ Iverson said, determined that this would be no lie. ‘Vyodor Karjalan is a heretic and I’ll see that he faces the Emperor’s Justice for his crimes.’
Along with all the other monsters that have stalled this war and wasted so many Imperial lives.
Modine held his gaze for a long moment. Finally he nodded. ‘Well then, me and Lady Hellfire’s sweet daughter over there…’ he pointed at the flamer Iverson had requisitioned for him, ‘we’ve got your back all the way.’
Day 65 – The Coil: Modine’s Folly
Despite my warnings Modine got careless this morning. I was on the upper deck with Cadet Reve when a commotion broke out down below. Recognising the stowaway’s furious shouts I guessed what must have happened, but it was too late to stop it. We arrived just as he was dragged up top by a mob of Letheans. He was putting up one hell of a fight, kicking and punching like a cornered beast, but there were too many of them. They must have taken him by surprise, catching him before he’d been able to go for his flamer.
I watched as the Letheans threw him to the deck and surrounded him like jackals, jeering and taunting and cursing him for a mutant freak. In the emerald light he certainly looked the part: his gnarled skin had a reptilian cast and his body seemed to seethe and contort beneath their blows. I admit I almost let them finish their work, but then I caught Modine’s tormented eyes and I knew.
If I stood by he would come back…
Iverson’s Journal
‘That’s enough,’ Iverson said. He yanked a Mariner aside and stepped inside the vicious circle. ‘I said enough! This man works for me!’
Almost as one, the Letheans went quiet, fixing him with hostile stares that ranged from the sullen to the outraged. Cadet Reve looked as angry as the rest.
‘What is this you say?’ Csanad Vaskó demanded. The shaven-headed brute was the Lethean’s ‘zabaton’, a warrior priest they revered and feared in equal measure. He was also the man who had confronted Iverson over the matter of the Arkan flag, an affront he had never forgiven. His rage was a palpable, poisonous charge in the air.
‘Private Modine is a specialist assigned to me for this mission,’ Iverson said. ‘Due to his affliction I requested that he remain in isolation until we reach our target.’
‘He is touched by the hand of Kaosz,’ Vaskó growled. ‘Must be burned.’
‘You are mistaken,’ Iverson said, wondering at the fanatic’s blindness to his own leader. Then again, Karjalan kept himself hidden from all but his most dedicated servants. Vaskó and his crew probably had no idea that they served a monster.
‘Perhaps the zabaton has a point,’ Reve spoke up. ‘This individual is evidently tainted, sir.’
‘Is so. The Emperor condemns!’ Vaskó insisted.
‘And don’t He just love doing it,’ Modine wheezed from the floor. His cackle turned to a cry as the zabaton sent him reeling with a kick to the ribs.
Iverson drew his autopistol slowly, letting them taste the ritual as he levelled it at Vaskó. ‘I have already cautioned you once against obstructing the Emperor’s will,’ he said. There were angry murmurs from the gathered Letheans, but the zabaton himself didn’t even blink. ‘This will be my final warning.’
Don’t make me shoot you. Your dogs will tear me apart if I do it.
‘A good death bring a man closer to God-Emperor,’ Vaskó said coldly.
‘And is this such a good death?’ Iverson asked.
‘Better than the one you get if you kill me.’
‘Sir, this is not a sound tactical…’ Reve’s words were shredded by a terrified scream from above. She whirled to stare at the upper deck, along with most of the Letheans. Only Iverson and Vaskó remained frozen, each man tacitly challenging the other to break first.
‘Janosz!’ One of the Mariners yelled as the scream was cut short. He headed for the stairway, but Reve shoved him aside and took the steps by twos. Iverson whirled away from the standoff and stalked after her.
‘To your stations, seadogs!’ Vaskó bellowed as he followed with a pair of Corsairs. ‘The Emperor calls!’
They found a broken lasrifle by the ladder to the crow’s nest, but the lookout was gone. Muttering angrily in his native tongue Vaskó started to climb, but Iverson yanked him down. The zabaton snarled at him, baring black teeth. The commissar didn’t remove his hand.
‘Whatever took him could still be up there,’ Iverson said levelly, nodding at the arboreal snarl overhead. Some of the fronds were trailing right through the crow’s nest as the ship drifted along. The zabaton shook him off and glared at the canopy.
‘You think was plant took him?’ Vaskó asked.
‘It could have been anything. There’s no telling in the Coil, but the crow’s nest is off limits for now. And we need a team up here day and night. At least one Corsair among them.’
Vaskó nodded and headed for the steps, but Iverson called after him: ‘Private Modine falls under my authority, zabaton.’ The man froze. ‘Is that understood?’
Vaskó turned and appraised Iverson with a frown.
‘Very well, is so,’ he answered softly, ‘but understand this, commissar. If you prove false, I make new flag from your hide.’
Day 66 – The Coil: Canker Eaters
Sometimes I think I’m dead to horror, but then some new abomination steps up to the challenge and shoves the truth down my throat: horror can never be sated and no man will ever be allowed his fill. There is always more and worse to come.
Iverson’s Journal
The ship bucked violently and Iverson staggered, almost lo
sing his grip on the iron handrail. With a curse he hauled himself along the cramped corridors of the lower deck, reeling about like a drunk as the world tossed and turned around him. Water was gushing through the ceiling and swilling around the floor, almost ankle deep. He threw open the hatch to the main deck and a volley of hard rain hit him like gunfire. Still drowsy with sleep, he tried to make sense of the chaos.
Are we under attack?
It was long after nightfall, but there was no trace of the jungle’s pervasive bioluminescence. In the dim glow of the emergency lights he saw Mariners scurrying about with torches and buckets, harried by their Corsair overlords. Beyond the gunwales there was nothing but inky blackness.
‘Why are the engines dead?’ Iverson yelled over the gale.
‘Seems the river’s jammed up just ahead,’ Modine called back. He was slouching beneath an awning by the steps, nursing his flamer protectively. ‘And this fraggin’ squall sure ain’t helping none!’
‘I told you to keep out of sight.’
‘Hey, I’m just keeping an eye on things for you, Holt.’
A flash of lightning lit the deck and Iverson caught sight of Vaskó up in the wheelhouse. The zealot was cracking his ritual whip and bellowing orders. Old Bierce stood beside him with his hands clasped behind his back, brooding over the mayhem. He caught Iverson’s eye and shook his head.
I don’t like it any better than you do, old man, Iverson thought as he struggled across the heaving deck. The spray coming over the sides was flooding the ship almost as fast as the Letheans could bail it out. Why in the Hells weren’t the pumps working? He hadn’t come this far to drown in the Qalaqexi…
Iverson froze on the steps to the wheelhouse as he caught sight of the threatening shapes surrounding the ship. They loomed out of the gloom like spongy, malformed giants. Then a searchlight flashed across them and he relaxed, recognising the lumpy Saathlaa igloos. Like the natives themselves, the buildings were degenerate and slovenly, just simple timber frames caked in dried mud and thatched with broad leaves. These primitive hovels were an order of magnitude removed from the coral edifices of the ancient Phaedrans.
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