Baneblade

by Guy Haley

  Only Cortein spoke, only then to give orders or request data. He looked up from his scopes when Bannick came in, the others didn’t.

  ‘That time already?’ said Cortein. ‘The others?’

  ‘Coming,’ said Bannick.

  ‘Fine.’ Cortein peered at his chart desk for a while, a scratchy wire frame holograph of the landscape rolled over it. He pulled up a larger-scale representation of the terrain. The boulder-strewn plateaus and crazed canyons of the badlands round the edge of the Ozymandian Basin were beginning to peter out. ‘We’re coming up to level ground. It’ll take several hours to cross before we reach the next shock ridge. I’ve decided to postpone full crew action until the next sleep cycle. We have to be prepared, all of us, before we go into the Ozymandian Basin proper. I’m moving up your rest period, Meggen.’

  Meggen sagged with visible relief. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Bannick, before you relieve Radden, get down and tell Outlanner I want him asleep inside of half an hour. Ganlick can drive for a while.’

  ‘Yes, honoured lieutenant.’

  Bannick went down the stairs, backing up to let Ralt past, tapping Ganlick’s shoulder before he went up.

  ‘You’re wanted up front,’ he said. Together they went forwards, matching their footfalls to the judder and sway of the tank as it left the badlands.

  Outlanner never came back from his driving position willingly, sleeping only when Cortein ordered him to, his mind wholly on the task of guiding Mars Triumphant blind through the storm. His eyes were intent on his main auspex scope. Smaller screens relayed real-time images from the tank’s augur lenses, several of them dead from battle damage or dust scouring. Outlanner sat back in his driver’s chair, a man at ease with his surroundings, fastidiously making small adjustments to the tank’s heading, jinking it past outcrops and boulders with millimetres to spare. Bannick watched, fascinated, as he did whenever he came up front while Outlanner was driving. He’d not have thought it possible to move such a large machine with such precision.

  ‘You two just going to stand there breathing? You’re distracting me,’ said the driver.

  ‘You’re coming off. Ganlick’s taking over. The honoured lieutenant wants you asleep in half an hour.’

  ‘Or what? ’Lick can’t handle this kind of terrain.’

  ‘Or he’ll come down and read you a bedtime story, then he’ll court-martial your sorry hide,’ growled Ganlick. ‘Move over.’

  ‘This shock ridge is nearly done. We’ve a clear run before we hit the next, the last before we head down into the basin proper,’ said Bannick.

  ‘Move over,’ said Ganlick.

  Outlanner grunted. ‘If you can handle it. Give me a moment.’

  A few more nudges of the tank’s drive levers, minute adjustments. He waited for a short run of clear terrain then locked the levers in position and stood. ‘You’re on.’

  ‘You been drinking, Outlanner?’ said Ganlick as he pushed past.

  ‘Don’t need no gleece.’ He tapped at his temple. ‘Driving keeps this occupied. I only drift when I’m bored. Nothing boring about this.’

  Ganlick gave him a sour look, got into the driving seat and disengaged the drive locks. The motion of the Baneblade changed, becoming less smooth. Small bangs and squeaks sounded as Ganlick clipped rocks.

  ‘Told you,’ said Outlanner to Bannick. ‘Too rough for ’Lick.’

  Bannick put out his lip thoughtfully. Outlanner had a point. ‘You sure you’ll be okay?’ he said.

  ‘Those pips might give you the right to tell me what to do, but I’ve been on this tank for thirteen years. I can drive plenty good enough, don’t listen to Outlanner. Besides, these canyons will give out soon enough, like you say. The Basin’s an old impact crater, see? No, before you say it, not like where we fought the orks at the mine. This is the real deal, big old rock hit this place millions of years gone, hit it so hard it vaporised the planetary crust. These ridges are frozen rock ripples, like on water, you get me? It’ll flatten out soon enough when we go into a trough, they’re all full of sand. Damned dust is good for that, at least.’

  ‘Fine, Ganlick.’ Bannick and Outlanner made to go.

  ‘Hey! Bannick!’

  Bannick turned back. ‘What?’

  ‘You watch out. You see anything weird, you tell me, okay? This place is full of lorelei, pressure-formed by the impact, denser than the usual crystals, unholy work between the sun and the smash. It’ll start to mess with our heads when we get close in, it’s a psychic tar pit. You think the dreams we were having were bad? This place has much worse to throw at us, so I been told. They’ve tried to mine it plenty of times, always fails. Terra, they even tried building a hive out here, but the fields are too intense, messes up your mind, makes everyone a psyker, so they say! Armour will help, so will these.’ He nodded at lorelei crystals hung round the cabin. ‘Some kind of fracture pattern in the crystal generates the mind-fragging stuff. Having some of it about you interferes with its wavefront, at least some.’

  Bannick smiled, Ganlick never ceased to surprise him. ‘How do you find this stuff out, Ganlick?’

  ‘Like I said, I ask around. You want to get yourself one of these.’ Ganlick picked his sandscum amulet up off his chest and waved it. ‘From what I hear, you’ll start listening to me once we been through the basin.’ He looked back at Bannick. ‘Like looking into the warp, so they say, and there ain’t nobody wants to do that.’

  Outlanner and Bannick left Ganlick to it. Bannick helped the driver into his bunk. He grimaced as he closed it up. Hot-bunking wasn’t pleasant, but at least they had bunks on the Baneblade. Leman Russ crew on forced advances were expected to sleep at their stations, if they slept at all.

  He was about to go back up to the command deck when the clatter of Vorkosigen’s tarot reader caught his attention. He suppressed his irritation. Cortein had told him to leave the little tech-adept alone, so he had, and he would.

  ‘You’re going to get us all killed,’ came a voice from the gloom aft.

  ‘Vorkosigen, leave it be,’ said Bannick. He steadied himself on the tank walls as Ganlick clipped a rock. A deep boom sounded in the tank, like a bell tolling. The charms and fetishes of the aeons dangling from the ceiling and walls jingled nervously.

  ‘You are going to kill us. These cards, the cards come up. They come up every time.’ Another rattle. ‘It’s you, I’m sure of it.’

  Vorkosigen stepped out from the munitions store, a cutting laser in one hand, tarot deck on the other, face lit from below by the light of the screen. ‘Look!’ he thrust the reader at Bannick. It was a cheap thing, fashioned from plastic, non-Paragonian, an unfamiliar design. The reader screen was cracked, scuffed to near opacity. Bannick watched as the the card icons rattled by with a noise like bone dice in a cup. Vorkosigen had it arranged in a standard nine-card ‘H’-spread. The first card stuck. Guilliman’s Wrath. A double-meaning card, for the wrath could be directed either way. The Blind Seer, the Extinguished Star, the Nova, the Lords of Terra, the Young Warrior, the Fortress of Faith, the Dishonoured Scion…

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bannick, holding up his hands, eyes fixed on the cutter the engineer held. ‘I don’t follow the tarot…’

  Vorkosigen jabbed the tool threateningly towards Bannick. It was off, but he could activate it easily enough, and then it’d cut through plasteel. ‘Look at the screen!’

  ‘I said I don’t follow the tarot,’ repeated Bannick slowly. It was simple truth.

  The cards had all locked into place. A grating, malfunctioning machine voice began to recite the card names, a precursor to a reading.

  ‘Never mind! Watch again!’

  Vorkosigen shook the deck. Again the cards rattled past.

  The first card stuck. Guilliman’s Wrath, top of the left stick of the ‘H’.

  ‘What do you see?’

  B
annick shook his head.

  ‘Look closely!’

  Bannick watched the cards rattle into place again. ‘It’s the same reading,’ he said.

  ‘It is. Again.’

  Once more the cards rattled. The first to come up was Guilliman’s Wrath. The others followed suit.

  ‘And again.’ Vorkosigen rattled the card reader in Bannick’s face, stepping closer in towards him. Bannick glanced at the cutter.

  ‘A malfunction,’ Bannick said calmly, although a chill ran down his spine. ‘The reader looks in need of repair.’

  ‘Its functions are unimpaired.’ Vorkosigen dropped it, pulled a smaller reader from his belt, higher-tech, better made. ‘Look at this. Look!’ He pressed the button. The screen swirled and cleared, displaying the same reading. He pushed it into his belt, pulled out another. ‘And this.’ A third reader, truly ancient, its cards tiny illustrations on multi-faceted shapes, no backlight. Vorkosigen pumped its trigger lever. The shapes bounced around the box, coming to rest in the shape of an H reading. The same reading.

  Cold sweat trickled down Bannick’s back.

  ‘Need to see more?’ he hissed. ‘I’ve got four more, all ages, all types, all the same reading. That’s not chance. The Emperor is telling me something.’

  ‘Why would the Emperor want to tell you anything?’

  Vorkosigen’s face reddened and he barged into Bannick, pushing him up against the wall. He was surprisingly strong. His bulging eyes looked up into Bannick’s face. ‘You basdack aristocrats are all the same,’ he snarled. ‘“Why would he talk to you?” What makes you so special, you arrogant pig? A-a-a! Make a noise and I’ll cut your warp-cursed throat. Do you know how many wars this machine has fought in? How many lives it has saved? Do you?’

  Vorkosigen’s big eyes darted about, resting on stencilled warnings, piping, charms hung five centuries before his birth. ‘The Emperor is telling us to be careful. You basdacks, think you’re above us all, we who make the machines and do the work…’ he spluttered, spraying Bannick with froth. ‘It’s we clansmen that hold the Imperium together, not you and your rituals and fancy uniforms! While you were up in your feather bed with your cheap sluts, my family was deep in the bowels of your forges, hammering ceramite. What do you know of hard work, of suffering? I bet all this, this stink, the noise, the heat, the shifts, I’ll bet it’s all a nasty shock to you. Me? I was born into it. And you come in here, all stiff sleeves and peaked cap, looking like you own the place… It’s you, you misbegotten fool, the tarot is telling me to be wary of you. The cards, they’re all of destruction, of death, the Fortress of Faith toppled – Mars Triumphant toppled, and at the heart of it the Young Warrior, the Dishonoured Scion, you. The naïve, the highborn, the feted, the man that smashes it down in the name of glory. Sound familiar?’

  Bannick held Vorkosigen’s eyes. What if he were right? The tarot was one of the few levellers in the Imperium. Highborn, lowborn, spacer, planetsider, scum… It did not matter who you were, or where you were, as long as you had a reader, anyone could scry for the Emperor’s will, and sometimes he did communicate with his servants, even the lowliest, or so it was said. Bannick regarded the tarot with deep suspicion. He was too worldly to take it at face value. But he was a man of faith, the saints’ tales were full of proofs of its efficacy, and he had sinned terribly. He was unfit to serve on so potent an instrument of divine will.

  ‘You’re going to get us all killed and I am not going to let that happen. The Emperor does not want it to happen, and by his name I will not let Mars Triumphant die.’ Vorkosigen slid the switch on his cutter. A thin beam of light leapt across the gap between its two prongs. The heat of it curled the hair at Bannick’s throat.

  ‘How?’ Bannick gasped. ‘How do you know? What am I going to do? How can you be sure your interpretation is correct? I would never do anything to harm this tank or its crew, or to endanger our mission.’

  ‘The tarot doesn’t tell me that,’ hissed Vorkosigen, ‘only deals in generalities, doesn’t it? The Emperor has a lot on his mind, as big and as powerful as that is, it’s a bit too much to expect him to come here himself and give me a personal prophecy, isn’t it? That’s why we have the tarot, and thanks to that I know enough. You, this tank, a poor match.’

  Bannick moved quickly, jamming his left hand up under the cutter, turning his head to one side, bringing his right elbow over to knock the tool away from his face. There was a sizzle of flesh and a blossom of hot pain along his ear as the light beam sliced a sliver of it away. Vorkosigen stumbled. Bannick pivoted, shoving hard. The little tech-adept bounced off the wall, kicking the first tarot reader away, setting it off.

  ‘What do you know about the Emperor? What do you know? What do you know of what life is like for the rest of us? Nothing! You know nothing at all!’

  Bannick punched him with the heel of his hand. Vorkosigen fell with a cry, the contents of his belt scattering. Bannick was on him in an instant, pinning his arms with his legs, punching the defenceless head of the tech-adept repeatedly. All the rage, all the pain, the fear, poured out of him. Tuparillio, Kalligen, the war, the suffering he had seen, but most of all that he had been born as he was, son of a clan master, imprisoned by duty and responsibility as surely as if he were bound by chains.

  The tech-adept stopped moving. Bannick’s fist stilled and his shoulders slumped. Vorkosigen was stained and bloody, like his cousin had been.

  ‘No, it is you who knows nothing at all,’ whispered Bannick.

  ‘What in the name of the thrice-blasted apostate is going on here?’ Cortein, shouting from the top of the stairs.

  Bannick looked up, Vorkosigen at his feet, blood on his fists.

  On the floor, amidst spilled tools, three tarot readers clattered to a stop, their inevitable readings clicking into place one after another.

  INTERSTITIAL

  ‘Boys play gladly as men at war. In war, terror reduces men to boys once more.’

  Sayings of Solon

  Chapter 16

  Aronis City, Paragon VI

  2003395.M41

  The door shut behind Bannick with a soft click, yet it reverberated off into the cavernous interior of the church, accentuating the silence by its intrusion.

  The double-headed aquila dominated the wall opposite the doors. Ranks of dark-wood pews, the faces of saints on them worn to nubs, lined a broad aisle leading to the altar. The columns of the nave loomed over him, trees in a forest of stone fruited with carvings, their tops vanishing in the gloom. Hanging from the unseen ceiling was a statue of the Emperor Resplendent, winged and armed with sword and shield, gilt age-darkened, so that the statue glittered only just so, a tiny glimmer in the boundless dark of the rafters, where winged things swooped on the edge of sight, chittering litanies and disturbing the sepulchral air of the place.

  Bannick’s breath rasped in his ears, the rush of the air in and out of his lungs an imposition upon the stillness, and without thinking he held his breath until his body forced him to exhale. His cheek throbbed, his head felt light from the shot the medicae had given him.

  A flurry of cloth and the sound of a book closing, and a priest rose up from a pew far forward of Bannick. His insignificant size by the eagle revealed the true scale of the place.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Loyal servant of the Emperor, may I help you?’ the priest made his way from where he’d been sitting to the central aisle. An object rose off the pew and followed him with the thrum of antigravitic motors.

  Bannick made to go.

  ‘No wait! Stay a while,’ called the priest. ‘All are welcome in the house of the Emperor.’

  ‘… peror … peror … peror,’ echoed the stone.

  Determined to leave, Bannick found that he could not, simply could not lift his legs or turn away. He looked upwards. The Emperor glared down at him.

>   The priest reached him. ‘Good day to you, if there is such thing as one in the Long Winter.’ The priest smiled, his voice was warm, not stern as those of some Bannick had met. His face was round, broader at the bottom than at the top, with a rack of fleshy chins. Dark smudges sat under his eyes, and what little hair he had was cropped close to his skin. He wore the long white surplice, thick with the embroidery of a third-rank confessor. A servo-skull bobbed by his head, motors whirring as its metal eyes zeroed in on Bannick’s face. ‘I do not think I know you, my son. Forgive me, Aronis is a large city, it is hard for me to keep the faces of all our congregation in mind.’ His face became concerned as he took in Bannick’s swollen face, the stick bandage over his cheek.

  Bannick tried to speak, but his mouth was dry, he swallowed, licked his lips and tried again. ‘I have not been to the church for many years,’ he said.

  The priest placed his hands into his broad sleeves. ‘In that case, introductions are in order. I am Confessor Pyke, late of the Zoroman Orbital Habitats in the Vertheni system. And this is my predecessor, Confessor Zumanzi, whose remains have had the singular blessing of being crafted into the device you see accompanying me.’