Grynner nodded, ignoring the discourtesy. “Master Castafiore is our Navigator,” he said to Vex and Horst, as though making introductions at a social function. “And quite exceptionally gifted, even by the standards of his peers.”
The little man preened visibly, making minute, and completely unnecessary, adjustments to the points of his waxed moustache. “It has been said,” he agreed complacently.
Navigators were notoriously difficult to work with, Vex recalled, and clearly the key to getting this one to cooperate was copious amounts of flattery.
“Then we’re most fortunate to be able to consult him,” Vex said, calculating that something of the sort was expected.
“Of course you are,” Castafiore said, looking directly at the two Angelae for the first time. “I assume you’re the Mechanicus drone who thinks we should be looking for a myth?”
“Hybris Vex.” The techpriest inclined his head. “And I make no such claim. I have merely been asked to analyse some data, which might provide a clue to the location of some eldar artefacts.” He paused for a moment to allow the idea to register. “If there actually is anything there to find, it will require a Navigator of unparalleled expertise to do so. If you feel the challenge is beyond you, however…”
“Beyond me? Beyond Jaquamo Castafiore?” The little man’s countenance took on something of the colouration of his coat. “Show me this data of yours.” He nodded stiffly to Grynner. “I will have your coordinates within the hour!”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Grynner replied dryly, as the Navigator bustled over to a console bristling with dials, levers and a hololithic projector, its importance clearly signalled by the number of prayer seals attached to it.
Horst lowered his voice. “Nicely done,” he said, with a trace of admiration.
“I’m not sure that I did anything,” Vex replied. “I merely stated the salient facts. I’m hardly responsible for the way Master Castafiore chooses to interpret them.”
“Nevertheless,” Grynner said, with a trace of amusement, “he seems sufficiently motivated.”
“Then let’s hope he can find what we’re looking for,” Horst said, as they began to cross the bridge to where the Navigator was waiting impatiently to begin.
Tarsus High Orbital Docks, Scintilla System
260.993.M41
As Elyra and Voyle hurried through the wind-lashed overgrowth of the violated agridome, she kept her gun at the ready, prepared to fire at the first sign of a threat. Not that she’d be prepared to kill a fellow Inquisition operative, unless the alternative was her own death and the premature curtailment of her mission, but she was a good enough shot to keep their heads down, and inflict a disabling wound if that wasn’t enough. Something moved in the corner of her eye, and she whirled to face it, her finger tightening on the trigger.
“Elyra!” Zusen clawed her way though a tangle of vines, her face pale, and her voice shrill with panic. “The Inquisition’s found us! They’ll kill us all!”
“Not if I can help it,” Elyra said, lowering the weapon. She turned to Voyle. “What’s the quickest way to the tunnels?”
“This way,” Voyle said, his sense of direction apparently unimpeded by the vortex of dust and debris whirling around them.
“We’ll suffocate before we get there,” Zusen said, although she seemed a little calmer, no doubt absorbing some of her companions’ composure. “The air’s leaking out!”
“Not a problem,” Voyle said. “It’s coming in just as quickly.”
Elyra nodded, understanding what he meant. The entire habitat was vast, the size of a hive in its own right; catastrophic as it seemed this close to the rent in the outer hull, it would take days for the atmosphere it contained to leak away through so relatively small a hole. Even if the entire section was sealed off, as it undoubtedly would be before long, they’d still have plenty of time to make it to safety before the air thinned noticeably.
The deck plates shook under her feet, a solid wall of sound making her stagger, and she whirled, staring in astonishment as something which looked like a starship lifepod slammed into the surface at a velocity she was certain would have injured or killed most of its occupants. Voyle had evidently come to the same conclusion, judging by the expression of vindictive satisfaction on his face. Elyra looked at it a little more closely, before turning away hurriedly; it was matt-black, devoid of insignia, and even inert it seemed threatening. She had no idea what that meant, and she had no intention of waiting long enough to find out.
“The Black Ships,” Zusen moaned, in abject terror. “They’ve found us!”
A handful of other fugitive psykers, including Ven and Trosk, had joined them by now, most of them evidently of the same opinion judging by their panicky demeanour and muttered imprecations.
With a resonant clangour of metal against metal, the lifepod suddenly unfolded like a malign flower, its four sides falling away to reveal the interior. Instead of the maimed or dead storm troopers she’d expected to see, other figures were moving in there, very much more dangerous, and very much alive: giants in ceramite armour, carrying heavy-calibre bolters a normal man would hardly have been able to lift, as casually as she hefted her laspistol. As they bounded out onto the deckplates, seeking a target, a storm bolter on a rotating mount above their heads traversed towards the group of fugitives, apparently impelled by a machine-spirit of its own.
“If you want to live, run!” she shouted, taking her own advice, heedless of whether her voice could be heard over the howling wind.
“Good advice,” Voyle agreed at her elbow, as the slowest of the group to react went down in a spray of blood and viscera, torn apart by the first few bolter shells to find their mark. Once again the paradox of her position struck her forcefully; her duty as an agent of the Inquisition was to ensure the capture or death of every single one of the fugitives she fled among, but the demands of her mission made it imperative to help them escape.
“Those are Space Marines!” Zusen shouted, in stunned disbelief. “We can’t fight them!”
“We won’t have to.” Voyle tapped the comm-bead in his ear, his voice confident. “Help’s already on its way.”
“Then it better be quick,” Elyra said, flinging herself flat behind a raised bed of some kind of overgrown squash. The bloated vegetables exploded into fragments, along with the torso of the card player, but the thick bank of earth afforded her a modicum of cover. “Or we’ll never make it to the tunnels without being cut to pieces!”
The shuttle grounded on the clearest space Barda could find, crushing several of the agricultural beds as it settled to the dirt-covered deck plating, and incinerating whatever they’d held in the white-hot torch of its landing thrusters. The smell of smoke, burning vegetables and charred dust punched its way in through the widening gap as the boarding ramp descended, and Keira ran lightly down the metal incline, her sword drawn, disappearing into the swirling murk almost at once.
Drake and Kyrlock followed more slowly, their guns at the ready, pausing at the base of the ramp to secure it with the smooth precision of the Guardsmen they’d both once been. Drake narrowed his eyes against the stinging dust thrown up by the screaming wind, and swung his lasgun, searching for a threat.
“Just like old times,” Kyrlock said, his voice reassuringly confident in Drake’s comm-bead. Drake nodded, although he knew his comrade wouldn’t see him; Kyrlock’s attention would be directed outwards, as his was, searching for any sign of an external threat.
“That’s what worries me,” Drake said, reminded all too vividly of the blizzard in which he and Kyrlock had first encountered Inquisitor Finurbi and his entourage. He looked back into the belly of the shuttle. “We’re secure. No sign of movement.”
“Confirm that,” Keira’s voice agreed, sounding slightly disappointed. “No heretics here.”
“Then let’s go and find them,” Quillem said, jogging down the ramp, his bolt pistol at the ready. Like the two Guardsmen, he was wearing camo
fatigues and body armour, and a bandolier of grenades was slung across his chest. As he came level with Drake, he hesitated, listening to something in his own earpiece, which was evidently tuned to a wider range of frequencies. “Confirm that. Keep them contained. We want as many as possible alive for interrogation.” He smiled grimly, and glanced at Drake, his voice overlapping strangely with the echo of it in the Guardsman’s comm-bead. “The Deathwatch have made contact.”
“Is Elyra all right?” Kyrlock asked, and Quillem nodded.
“Probably. A blonde woman matching the picts Horst gave us is with them, and seems to be unscathed so far.”
“Holding back is a mistake,” Karnaki said, striding down the ramp to join them, his black robe billowing in the wind. His entourage of servo-skulls followed, bobbing uncertainly in the turbulent air as they tried to maintain formation. “Any one of the wyrds could be harbouring an Enslaver. Perhaps all of them. Complete eradication is the only way to be sure.”
“None of the ones killed so far were possessed,” Quillem said, “or the creatures inside them would have manifested as they died.”
“One would be more than sufficient to pose a threat,” Karnaki said, evidently disinclined to discuss the matter further. He strode off into the enveloping duststorm, his ragged tail of servo-skulls trailing after him as best they could.
Drake tapped his comm-bead. “Keira,” he said, “Karnaki’s heading in your direction. Can you follow without him noticing?”
“Easily,” the young assassin said, her voice full of confidence. “Do you want me to take him out?”
“No,” Quillem cut in hastily, “just keep an eye on him.” He paused. “At least for now.” He exchanged an uneasy look with Drake, apparently sharing at least some of the Guardsman’s misgivings about the Ordo Malleus inquisitor. Then he, Drake and Kyrlock left the sanctuary of the shuttle, to face the full fury of the gale.
* * *
The Emperor’s Justice, Scintilla System
260.993.M41
“Behold!” Castafiore said, activating the most sophisticated hololith Horst had ever seen. A starfield appeared, wavering slightly, like the night sky seen from an agri-world, rotating gently in the middle of the bridge. None of the crew members looked up from their duty stations, so he assumed they were used to this marvel; either that, or extremely well disciplined. “The Calixis Sector.” The Navigator adjusted the controls a little, and the image shrank, fresh stars appearing at the margins, of the field. “And adjacent regions.”
“These are the locations which appear to be of interest to the Faxlignae,” Vex said, moving swiftly to the control lectern, and making some adjustments of his own. A rash of dots appeared, concentrated for the most part in the Malfian Subsector, Drusus Marches, and spilling over into the adjacent Halo Stars. “As you can see, there seems to be an underlying pattern, but I lack the expertise to refine it further.”
“Of course you do,” Castafiore said, but this time his manner was less brusque and more thoughtful. “Are any of these sightings dated?”
Vex nodded. “For the most part,” he said. “Although many of these timings are conjectural at best, given that the reports are fragmentary, and often filtered through several layers of rumour and hearsay.” He adjusted the display again, and figures appeared next to the illuminated dots. “The most reliable ones are in red, the next most plausible in orange, and so on through the rest of the spectrum.” Most of the ones that Horst could see were coloured blue or violet.
“Most intriguing,” Castafiore said, his tone even more thoughtful. He gestured. “That one’s clearly wrong. The warp currents in that region…” He manipulated the hololith controls, changed the date, and looked at it, nodding in a self-satisfied fashion which made Horst want to punch him.
Not for the first time, he wished he’d gone with the others, but he was the team leader, and the natural choice to liaise with Inquisitor Grynner’s staff. If the man couldn’t be trusted, leaving him unobserved would have been foolish in the extreme. He glanced at the grey-robed man beside him, and wondered what was going on inside his head.
Tarsus High Orbital Docks, Scintilla System
260.993.M41
“They’re coming!” Zusen said, and Elyra raised her head cautiously over the metal rampart and the bank of churned-up soil which had protected her. The storm bolter had ceased firing, but the evidence of its fury was written all around them in shredded metal and shattered vegetation. Nothing else in the vicinity could have afforded her any protection against it, and her reluctant respect for Voyle rose a little more; he’d led them unerringly to the only place they could have found safety. Temporarily, at any rate; her stomach knotted at the sight of the squad of Space Marines advancing against their position.
They were hard to focus on at first, their matt-black silhouettes seeming to fade into existence like phantoms as they emerged out of the dust storm, their bolters held casually, ready for use. They were walking with a precise economy of motion, secure in the knowledge of their invincibility, their heavy tread resonating in unison through the deck beneath her feet.
“You’ve got a gun!” Trosk shouted at her. “Why don’t you use it?”
Before she could reply, one of the pyrokines, goaded by panic, conjured a ball of fire into existence, and flung it at the advancing Astartes. It burst against the chest of one of them; without breaking stride, he levelled his bolter and cracked off a retaliatory round. The pyrokine’s head exploded into crimson mist.
“That answer your question?” she said. Trosk nodded, once, his face set.
“Surrender, in the name of the Emperor,” the leading giant said, his voice amplified by a vox-unit set into his helmet. Even above the screaming of the wind, it was deep and resonant, as sure and unwavering as the voice of the Emperor Himself. “Surrender or die.”
“I’ll take the third option,” Voyle said, glancing upwards, and Elyra became aware of a new sound on the edge of her awareness. A dull roar, becoming audible even over the howling of the gale, it grew louder by the second. She tilted her head back, in time to see a strange, rounded vessel swooping low overhead, and a chill gripped her heart. She hadn’t seen the xenos ship which had downed the Angelae’s Aquila on Sepheris Secundus, but Vex had retrieved picts of it from the crippled shuttle’s flight recorder, and she had no doubt at all that what she was seeing was the same craft. Everything about its smooth lines, like a deep-sea predator, seemed wrong to her, completely at odds with the reassuringly solid functionality of the Imperial vessels she was familiar with.
“Is that our pickup?” she asked, as the Astartes turned as one to engage the vessel, their bolters spitting defiance at the looming shape above them. The effort seemed futile, however, the explosive tipped bolts having no discernible effect against the drop-ship’s armoured hull. “Why aren’t they firing back?”
Voyle shook his head. “Because they’d take us out too.” He began to move off, at an oblique angle, keeping behind the banks of earth, and heading in the direction of the descending ship. “Besides, they’ve got other ways of keeping the fleas off our backs.”
* * *
Kyrlock’s first impression of the descending drop-ship was a powerful flash of deja vu, and he flinched in anticipation of another display of the awesome firepower he’d witnessed being unleashed against the Inquisition fortress on his home world. To his relief, though, it merely grounded, floating gently to the surface of the agridome, heedless of the buffeting winds which surrounded it.
“Is that the vessel you saw before?” Quillem asked, and Kyrlock nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “And hoped to the Throne I never would again.”
“It’s tau,” Quillem said, with a touch of awe. “Only the Faxlignae could have obtained a prize like that, or would dare to use it.”
“Why don’t they use the main weapons?” Drake asked. “They could take out the Astartes with a single volley.”
“Along with the rest of this dome,” Quillem said. �
�They didn’t come all this way just to kill their own people.”
“I guess not,” Drake agreed. He pointed to a boarding ramp, which was dropping to the deck even before the strange, rounded spacecraft had fully settled. Figures were moving there, with precision and purpose, and Kyrlock gripped his shotgun with renewed determination. The mercenaries who had attacked the Citadel of the Forsaken on Sepheris Secundus were deploying in battle formation, fanning out to cover the approaches to their ship.
“And talking of killing,” Quillem said, pointing to their leader, the figure with the strange crested helmet Kyrlock had last seen directing the assault in the snowfields of Sepheris Secundus, “that one’s mine.”
“You’re welcome to him,” Kyrlock said, with a sidelong glance at Quillem. He’d never met the man before today, but he could read him well enough to know that standing between him and that particular goal would be very unwise indeed.
* * *
The Emperor’s Justice, Scintilla System
260.993.M41
“Have you reached a conclusion?” Inquisitor Grynner asked, as Castafiore turned away from the hololith. To his faint surprise, the Navigator’s reply was almost courteous.
“Perhaps. In a moment…” He manipulated the controls once again, as he had done several times since they’d started, and a few more of the dates and times appended to the dots in the display shifted and changed. “That pattern would seem to make sense, given what we know of the warp currents in this region of space and time.”
Vex examined the projection in the hololith appraisingly, then glanced at the data-slate in his hand, paging through it with an expression of intense concentration. At length he looked up. “Those timings are generally within the bounds of possibility,” he agreed. “The few instances where the matter is still debatable, or the pattern does not appear to fit, can plausibly be argued to fall within the parameters of unreliable reporting.”
[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing Page 37