Fire Caste

by Peter Fehervari

  Though you burn my flesh, my spirit shall not waver!

  He took the full force of the fire head on. His armour whined in protest as its cooling systems overloaded and gave out. The breastplate turned red hot, scorching the flesh from his ribs and setting his skin alight. Joyce chewed up the pain and spat it out as sacred fury. With a burst of his rockets he leapt onto the Crisis battlesuit’s broad shoulders and sawed into its stubby head. The machine clattered about, trying to dislodge him, but he sank a blade into its shoulder and clung on while he hacked away with the other.

  ‘I am His will and His word made manifest!’ Joyce sang joyfully as his flesh bubbled inside its iron skin. ‘I am the blade of His wrath…’ The battlesuit’s head came loose in a tangle of fizzing wires and he flung it aside. ‘And I am the shield of His scorn!’

  And then they were rocketing into the sky, propelled by the Crisis battlesuit’s jetpack. With its sensor module gone the machine was flying blind, but it bucked and spun about as the pilot tried to dislodge him. Joyce hung on like a limpet, chopping away with his free hand, hunting for the tainted xenos flesh inside the shell. Something ruptured between the suit’s shoulders and a cascade of small detonations rippled through it. Then the jetpack exploded with a sudden, terrible concussion that catapulted Joyce away like a kite caught in a tornado. Spiralling head-over-heels through the air, he glimpsed his nemesis plummeting towards the shuttle pad.

  ‘Blood for the God-Emperor!’ the preacher thundered, thinking how proud the saint and the Emperor and his old ma would be right now. As his momentum died and he began to fall he ignited his own rocket pack. The battered machinery squawked in protest, chugging impotently as it tried to engage. He cursed and thumped the ornery thing. It exploded like a krak grenade and Audie Joyce rained down from the sky in a thousand broiling pieces.

  Jhi’kaara lay broken and blind inside the ruin of her Crisis battlesuit. The fall had shattered every bone in her body, but her hatred was undimmed, burning dark-bright at the core of her being, calling her back from the bliss of nothingness like a beacon.

  I will… not… let go…

  A crack of light appeared in the black vault above, almost painfully bright after the darkness, then the suit’s chest plate was heaved away and the light became a flood. She tried to avert her gaze, but her neck wouldn’t obey. A wrinkled gue’la appeared against the sky and peered down at her with a wolfish grin. He was missing an eye and an ear and most of his teeth.

  ‘Hey, we got a blueskin alive in here!’ he called to his unseen comrades. He licked his lips as he appraised her facial bionics. ‘You got some real fancy gear going on there, sister,’ he purred, ‘and old Cully, he’s what you’d call a collector, see.’ A dagger appeared in his hand and he leaned inside. ‘Hold still now, gal!’

  He yelped with surprise as someone wrenched him away, then another face appeared above Jhi’kaara. All the gue’la looked alike to her, but this one wore scars like no other. Though it had been many rotaa since their encounter in the Mire she recognised him with shocking clarity.

  ‘Ko’miz’ar,’ she wheezed. His lattice of scars contorted and she knew he recognised her too. ‘Ko’miz’ar…’

  ‘There’s no such thing as chance, is there?’ he said quietly. ‘Or if there is, it’s broken beyond repair.’ She stared at him, uncertain of his meaning. Without a lexical module in play her grasp of the gue’la tongue was limited at best.

  ‘Commissar!’ someone called. ‘Everyone’s on board, sir. We’re good to go!’

  For the first time Jhi’kaara noticed the impatient rumble of the shuttle’s engines. They hadn’t seemed important before and they still didn’t seem important to the scarred man. All his attention was on her.

  ‘You should have killed me,’ he told her, ‘back when you had the chance.’

  ‘Kill you…’ she hissed, understanding this and trying to rise to it. ‘Will… kill…’

  ‘Yes. I think you’re one of the few who still could.’ He paused, as if puzzled by his own words. ‘Next time perhaps.’ And then he was gone.

  Shortly afterwards the shuttle’s rumble burst into brief, explosive thunder, then that too was gone and Jhi’kaara was alone with her hatred.

  The Last Day: The Shuttle

  Phaedra is behind us. She clung to our shuttle like a spurned lover when we ascended, fighting our escape every step of the way. I believe I felt the precise moment when we broke free of Her atmosphere into the clean void of space. I don’t know what’s waiting for us on the Sky Marshall’s ship, but at least we won’t die in Her embrace.

  There’s a mystery to our escape because I’m not sure who’s actually flying the ship. I thought our pilot was dead or missing, but the witch assured me he was waiting up in the cockpit with Cutler. The edge in her voice told me this was neither quite the truth nor a lie, but something I shouldn’t pursue. By tacit agreement I stayed in the cargo hold when she headed up to the cockpit with her bodyguard. Shortly afterwards we were in the air. For now that is enough.

  We’re due to dock with the Requiem of Virtue within the hour, but we won’t last long if Abel’s revolt has faltered. Truth to tell, we’re not going to be much of a counterweight to the Sky Marshall’s security forces. Our passage through the Diadem has left us battered and diminished.

  Three Zouaves survived intact, but they’re all shell-shocked by the loss of their leader, whoever that really was. I don’t know if they’re grieving for their captain or their adopted preacher, but I’ll have to drum some spirit into them before we dock. Then there’s the Norland cavalryman, ‘Silver’. He’s a skilled rider, but his Sentinel won’t be much use to us on a battleship. Besides these four I have just sixty-three men left, ranging from fine soldiers to near vagabonds like the scum who tried to loot the Crisis battlesuit. The only officer amongst them is Lieutenant Hood, a dour veteran who’s led the elite Burning Eagles for nearly a decade. He’s a good man to have along, even if most of his Eagles have fallen.

  There is another matter I must record. A scout called Valance found something in one of the silo chambers…

  Iverson’s Journal

  ‘I figured you’d want to see it, commissar,’ the black-bearded man said, ‘so I came straight to you.’

  He’s too big to be a scout, Iverson reflected vaguely. His mind was trying to defer the carnage his eyes were sending its way. The precision mutilation in the silo defied comprehension, but it wasn’t the horror that disturbed him so much as the sense that somewhere deep down he did comprehend it. It was nothing more than the tenebrous hint of an intuition, yet he couldn’t shake it.

  I know, or rather I will know what this madness means.

  ‘You did the right thing, scout.’ Iverson slammed the silo hatch shut. ‘Not a word of this to anyone else, you understand?’

  ‘Whatever you say, sir.’ Valance hesitated, looking troubled. Iverson could tell he wasn’t a man much used to fear, but this… The scout spread his hands helplessly. ‘What happened here, commissar?’

  ‘The tau are degenerates,’ Iverson said levelly. ‘Don’t let their superior airs and graces and all their techno heresies deceive you.’

  ‘You’re saying the blueskins did this?’

  ‘Who else?’ Iverson didn’t intend it as a question, but it came out like one. Valance nodded, obviously unconvinced.

  Which makes two of us, Iverson thought grimly.

  ‘This is wrong,’ O’Seishin said. It was the most direct thing Cutler had ever heard him say. The ambassador was huddled in a corner, shivering in the frigid electric air of the cockpit.

  ‘Sometimes a few small wrongs can make a great big right,’ Cutler drawled from the co-pilot’s couch. His face was pale and drawn with the pain of the tainted wounds, but he’d managed to staunch the bleeding for the moment. ‘Didn’t your precious Tau’va ever teach you that, Si?’

  ‘You think this
is a small wrong?’ the xenos hissed.

  ‘I think we need to fly this Emperor-forsaken tug!’ Cutler snapped, his bravado melting away in a moment. ‘Now shut up and let the lady work.’

  Cutler didn’t believe his own bluster for a second. Watching the woman beside him he knew this was one ‘Great Big Wrong’ and then some. Skjoldis’s hands were flitting expertly over the flight controls, but the eyes behind her veil were not her own. The dead pilot, Guido Ortega was in there, flying the shuttle while the witch steered him away from the memory of his recent death. Skjoldis’s roving green eyes watched her body working from the sockets of Ortega’s severed head, which was perched on the drive bay like a grisly totem.

  Necromancy, the foulest of magicks...

  Cutler recoiled from the truth of the woman. He’d come to accept and even respect her wyrd, but this was something darker and infinitely more dangerous than her scrying and telepathy. Something tainted.

  ‘His spirit still lingers here,’ Skjoldis had said, cradling Ortega’s head in her hands and staring into his murder-stricken eyes. ‘A bad death can chain a soul for days or years or even forever. We are fortunate – his death was very bad.’

  Despite their long separation she’d offered Cutler no greeting. He’d watched her prepare the ritual and strap herself into the pilot’s couch without a glance in his direction. Afterwards she’d appraised his wounds sombrely and spoken without meeting his eyes.

  ‘The daemon’s wrath has cut deep,’ she’d said, as if he didn’t know it already. ‘Your wounds will not heal, Ensor Cutler.’ Afterwards she’d relayed Abel’s final instructions, barely leaving him time to think, let alone speak. Then without a word of warning she’d entered the trance and this new horror had begun.

  She got us into space, Cutler told himself, and she’ll get us to Zebasteyn bloody Kircher. She knows what she’s doing. But he knew it wasn’t that simple. Sorcery of this kind had consequences. She was frightened. That’s why she wouldn’t look me in the eye. She thought I’d stop her.

  Cutler leaned towards the witch, but a restraining hand pulled him back. The weraldur, Frost, was looming over them both. The giant shook his head, though his watchful eyes never left his mistress. That was when Cutler noticed that Skjoldis’s veil had slipped free, offering up her delicate, desiccated face to the stars.

  Only it didn’t slip. She’s opened herself up to the warp.

  Remembering her terror of the stars, Cutler tried to heave himself out of the couch, but Frost held him down.

  It’s too late, Cutler realised. She’s already committed. Whatever the price...

  Standing by a filthy porthole, Iverson watched the hulking battleship blot out the stars as the shuttle drew closer. The Requiem of Virtue: the name was redolent with irony, like almost every other name he’d encountered on his journey.

  Nothing is chance or else chance is broken. The thought came to him again, trailing another: why hadn’t he killed the scarred Fire Warrior on the landing pad? Yes, she had spared him once, but her act had been a mockery rather than a mercy. And who’s to say mine wasn’t? It was a pity Reve wasn’t around to discuss the matter. She might have been a traitor and an assassin, but she’d had a logical mind.

  Why hasn’t she come back?

  The battleship’s hangar bay yawned ahead, black as an unanswerable question.

  A clang reverberated through the shuttle as it touched down. The witch slid back in her couch with a shuddering sigh that seemed to ripple through her entire body.

  ‘Skjoldis?’ Cutler asked. ‘Are you done?’ He tried to get up, but the weraldur would not loosen his grip. ‘Get your hands off me, man! Can’t you see she needs my help?’

  ‘Kill… it…’ The psyker’s voice was little more than a shrivelled exhalation. Cutler gawped at her convulsing body. She was breathing in harsh, rapid gasps, but her lips hadn’t moved.

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘Kill it!’ she hissed with sudden ferocity. Cutler looked round and met her outcast eyes, still glittering in Ortega’s severed head. They were wide with horror and desperation. ‘The pilot was not… the only one… who lingered here…’ she croaked through dead lips.

  She can’t get back inside her body, Cutler realised with horror, because something else is in there now.

  ‘We see you, Whitecrow!’ a hateful chorus wheezed beside him. He swung round to the pilot’s seat just as Skjoldis opened her eyes and looked right at him.

  Black eyes leaking noxious rainbow light...

  ‘We taste you!’ A rictus grin tore the corners her mouth and the hairline fissures ran through her porcelain skin like fault lines, mirroring her tracery of tattoos. She raised an accusing hand and the fingers split open like overripe fruit, revealing black iron barbs. ‘We will be you!’

  The weraldur howled with gut-wrenching grief and hefted his axe… and hesitated, staring at his mistress with tortured eyes.

  ‘Kjordal!’ Skjoldis shrieked from her dead prison. ‘Do not betray me at the last!’

  A new resolve hardened the giant’s features, but it was too late. Cackling gleefully, the proto-daemon lashed out with razor blade claws and tore his throat open. The weraldur tottered on his feet, struggling to do his duty as his life gushed away. Inch by painful inch he raised the axe… and the abomination struck again, punching through his chest with splayed talons and digging deep, gouging and tearing. The giant screamed wordlessly as it wrenched his heart out in a welter of blood and bone. The weapon slipped from his numbed fingers and he pitched over.

  Kjordal, Cutler thought feverishly. His name was Kjordal…

  He dived aside as a claw slashed spastically across his couch. Laughing and chanting its endless litany of malice, the seething monstrosity tore free of its restraints. Cutler heard O’Seishin whimpering and Skjoldis screaming from the drive bay: ‘Kill it before it grows too strong!’

  How many times? How many times does the damned thing have to die? But Cutler already knew the answer, because the ‘damned thing’ was part of him. It’ll keep coming back as long as I live.

  His fingers found the haft of Kjordal’s axe and the killing purity of the weapon thrilled through his body like wildfire. The daemon reared over him, dripping blood from the heart crammed into its lamprey maw, its swarming eyes weeping chromatic Chaos. Laughing at me! With a feral howl, Cutler swung from the ground and lopped off a leg at the knee. The beast screeched and toppled over, flailing out with its iron talons as it fell. Desperately he rammed the weapon’s haft into its face and surged to his feet. The daemon reached after him, its arms dislocating and attenuating like thorny tentacles as it called his name.

  You won’t take me – not today, not ever! Cutler swore as he brought the axe chopping down with the full weight of his body and soul.

  Iverson’s vox-bead buzzed and someone spoke into his ear: ‘Commissar.’

  ‘Colonel,’ Iverson answered, recognising the voice though he’d never spoken to the man before. It was a powerful voice used to command, but it was tight with pain. ‘You’ve been a difficult man to find.’

  There was a long pause, as if Cutler was disturbed by his words, then: ‘I guess that’s just the way it had to be, commissar.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Iverson searched for something else to say to the man he’d been tracking for so long. ‘Colonel–’

  ‘Commissar,’ Cutler interrupted. ‘We don’t have much time. Here’s what you’ve got to do.’ He told Iverson the last part of Abel’s plan.

  ‘Do you trust him?’ Iverson asked afterwards.

  ‘Like the Hells I do,’ Cutler snorted. And then he explained his own plan.

  The Last Day: The Requiem of Virtue

  I believe this will be my final entry. We have infiltrated the Sky Marshall’s eyrie and the remainder of my forces are assembled. My forces? No, that’s not quite correct because I’
ve returned command of the 19th to Colonel Ensor Cutler. He will lead them on their final mission, as is his right. Besides, our paths must diverge here. It’s strange that Cutler and I shall part without ever meeting, but he’s been delayed in the cockpit – ‘attending to a personal matter’ – and I can wait no longer. Neither of us is likely to survive this endeavour, yet I sense that Cutler and I will meet someday.

  I shall conceal this journal on the shuttle. If I fail to do my duty today I trust you will find it and learn from my mistakes. I don’t know your name, your rank or even your calling, yet you have followed me this far so I believe you must be true. Whoever you are, I hope you are a better soldier than I.

  Iverson’s Journal

  ‘Counterweight,’ Iverson said to the trio waiting for him in the hangar bay. Two of them wore padded flak jackets over blue jumpsuits and were armed with stubby shotguns. Their uniforms marked them as naval security officers, but both had torn away the Sky Marshall’s insignia. The third was a cadaverous ancient swathed in a jade habit that arched up into a cowl. His milky white eyes were almost luminous in the shadowed recess of his hood. He was blind, yet Iverson knew he could see further and deeper than any normal man. This was almost certainly Abel’s astropath.

  ‘You the ‘sar?’ the female officer growled in coarse Gothic. Her severe face was topped by a spiky, no-nonsense crewcut and her bare arms were corded with muscles. She was short but there was no mistaking her hard-bitten competence.

  ‘Commissar Iverson,’ he said and peered at her badge. ‘Officer Privitera?’

  ‘You don’t look the part,’ she said dubiously.

  I know it, girl. His peaked cap was long gone and his greatcoat had turned a stale grey that matched his lank hair – hair he hadn’t cut since he’d departed the Antigone months ago. It hadn’t seemed important.