Incarnation - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Lord Covenant, I should inform you that I have completed interface with the basic machine communication methods used in this complex/place of worship/ruin.’ The tech-priest paused and its hooded head twitched like a man trying to shake water from his ear. ‘It is low-grade but the signals are clear. They say that there are false pilgrims within the walls. They say that there is slaughter.’

  ‘Where?’ said the judge, striding forwards.

  ‘I said,’ stammered Sul from where he had stopped. ‘I said. This is it. It’s the end. We must get out. We–’

  ‘I have not created an integrated visualisation of the complex, but the signals list the following names/location designators – Gate of Bells, Western Cloister edge, the Bridge of Penance, Eastern Cloister edge, the twentieth catacomb level.’

  Iacto had reached back and pulled a rolled map from the cart and spread it across the floor. It was inaccurate, made more by reverence than a belief in accuracy, but it showed the large areas of the monastery well enough. He jabbed at areas of the map. The others in the room were gathering around him.

  ‘Here, here, and here… blessing of saints, they are everywhere.’

  His heart was a hammer beat in his chest. What was happening? For the first time in a long time he felt small, a cog turning in a machine rather than the hand which turned it.

  ‘We must go,’ yammered Sul, his voice high and breathless. ‘You have a ship. You can take us, we can–’

  ‘Get control of yourself,’ snapped Bishop Xilita.

  ‘The reports are increasing in intensity and frequency,’ said Glavius-4-Rho, his voice as level and calm as if he had been reading off power fluctuation data. ‘The phrase “red pilgrims” is becoming a notable feature of all communications, potentially reaching persistent-self-replicating-meme status.’

  ‘Visual reports?’ said the judge.

  ‘Minimal, Judge Orsino,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

  ‘It must have been them,’ said Iacto. The charnel cistern in the Western Drift filled his mind. ‘In the Western Drift, it must have been them.’

  Your god is dead…

  ‘What are you talking about, abbot?’ said Xilita.

  ‘There was an atrocity in the Western Drift. There were remains, butchered and mutilated.’

  ‘What is this?’ hissed the bishop, coming closer, her face taut with shock and rage.

  Across the room he could see Sul looking at him, blinking, frozen.

  Oh, you foolish creature, thought a part of Iacto, clear and still in the whirl of his thoughts. You did not tell her.

  ‘The shrine guard knew,’ he said, his voice cold and calm.

  ‘My lord, we have lost contact with Josef and the arbitrators sent to the western pilgrim enclave.’

  ‘What is happening?’ roared Xilita, rounding on Sul. ‘What have you been keeping from me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he blustered. His face was red, his lips pale. ‘There was word of a sect forming in the pilgrims, followers of a prophet. It happens all the time. But–’

  ‘All units on deployment readiness,’ shouted Judge Orsino. ‘We should contain and lock down as much of the complex as we can, Covenant.’

  ‘Contain?’ spluttered Sul. ‘We need to get out! We need to–’

  ‘Archdeacon Sul,’ said Covenant, ‘you will place all of your shrine guards under Judge Orsino’s direct command.’

  ‘You have not seen, have not heard,’ growled Sul. ‘A hundred of my guards went into the Western Drift, where are they now? They are bones and ashes, as we shall be too.’

  Iacto was standing, the map still in his hand. His eyes were fixed on Sul. He could read the terror curdling into panic and rage in the man’s eyes. Covenant and Orsino seemed very still. He was aware that the arbitrators at the edge of the room had shifted, gunstocks tucking into shoulders.

  He has lost control, thought Iacto. He is not seeing; he is not thinking. He is like an animal caught in a river, thrashing as it drowns.

  ‘It’s the end, you see,’ growled Sul, and his hands were gripping the ceremonial mace now, fingers flexing. He took a step towards Xilita. ‘You can feel it. You know it, you stupid jumped-up peasant. Hunger, fire and blood. The lights in the sky. The ships leaving.’

  He took another step. The mace raised in his hands. His eyes were wide and what sanity remained behind them had vanished. Xilita did not move. Iacto could see anger and shock on her face.

  ‘Night has come,’ gasped Sul, ‘and the only thing to do is to run before it drags us all down.’

  He swung the mace up.

  His chest exploded. The sound of the gunshot filled the space, shockingly loud, echoing on and on. Sul’s corpse blasted backwards and fell in a bloody tangle.

  Iacto stared, unable to move. His ears were ringing, his limbs frozen.

  Judge Orsino lowered her aim. A thread of smoke was curling from the barrel of the silver-and-gold-chased bolt pistol in her hand. The exo-bracing on her arm clicked as a set of recoil locks released with a whir of springs and cogs. Iacto realised he had not even seen her draw the weapon.

  ‘Sentence of execution reached and carried out.’

  ‘God-Emperor…’ gasped Josef. The pain washed through him, jolting up nerves with every movement. His feet were moving, crunching and sliding over snow-covered rubble. Bubbles of colour expanded and burst in his sight. He could see flames and the silhouettes of ruined buildings. Another jolt, another spear of pain up his back. ‘God-Emperor and all His tearful saints,’ he snarled.

  ‘You would add blasphemy to your troubles, priest?’ said a female voice from just next to his head. He blinked, twisting to try to see where the voice had come from. ‘No! Just keep walking. There will be more coming.’

  He recognised the voice then: Agata. She was supporting him under his left shoulder, one power-armoured arm gripping him across the back, the other holding a bolt pistol. She had removed her helm. Snow was catching in her grey hair. Her face was a mask of effort.

  ‘I can walk,’ he said. ‘Let me walk.’

  ‘No,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘No, you can’t. You tried a half a kilometre back and did not make two steps.’ She glanced around, the movement precise. Her eyes moved between the shadows and the still-falling snow. ‘If we stop they have a better chance of gathering in force. We took two waves, but a third would be martyrdom.’

  He took a breath and gritted his teeth. Something, or several things felt like they were broken and torn inside the right of his torso. It was sharp and clear though, what his old comrades in the naval armsmen squadrons called ‘alive for now’ pain.

  He could see now. There were a handful of figures in black arbitrator armour moving with him, guns tracking the flame-lit lean-tos and scrap buildings around them. At a glance he could tell that most of them were injured. The moments before he had blacked out flicked back into his mind. He saw the witch lightning punch the gunships from the sky, saw the wreckage fall. He heard the dying woman in the bronze armour gasp her last warning.

  ‘Red pilgrims…’

  ‘Witches…’ he gasped. ‘They are inside the walls. We have to get back to the monastery.’

  ‘Not if we want to live,’ she said.

  ‘And every Sororitas that I have met always took those kinds of odds as a challenge.’

  ‘This is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of duty,’ she hissed.

  ‘You are not as direct as the others of the sisterhood I have known.’

  ‘Oh, I am,’ she said. ‘I am just old, and have been alone long enough to become weak to the indulgence of petty humour.’

  She winced as they jolted over a fold in the ground. Josef could hear the woman’s pain in the quick breaths she took.

  ‘You are hurt,’ he said.

  ‘Not as badly as you, and we need to keep moving.’

  Josef looked up and then turned his head to look behind him. The lights of the monastery’s windows glinted like weak stars through the falling snow.

&n
bsp; ‘We are going away from the monastery,’ he said.

  ‘I can see why someone so observant might be useful to the Inquisition,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘Most of those they left are strung out close to the monastery wall but there are other… things with them. They will expect us to try to get back, so we go in the other direction.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘We trust in the God-Emperor to gift us with another idea,’ she said.

  ‘You…’ gasped Iacto, his eyes on Sul’s mangled corpse and the blood flowing out across the tiled floor.

  Iacto could not look away from the archdeacon’s blood-spattered face. The man’s eyes were still open, staring up at the domed ceiling without seeing.

  ‘Justice has been done,’ said Judge Orsino, her voice cold iron. ‘For endangerment of the body Imperium through cowardice and manifest incompetence, there are sentences within my power that are less kind.’

  Xilita was staring at the corpse too.

  ‘This is the House of Concordance, a place of unity and peace in a holy place. This–’

  ‘Is a place of peace no longer,’ said Covenant. ‘This is now a place of war.’ He turned. ‘Every gate and door to the areas under attack is to be sealed immediately.’ He glanced at Orsino. ‘Send squads to hold the key points, main passages and access points.’

  ‘There are countless ways into every part of this place,’ said Iacto. Covenant ignored him.

  ‘My lord,’ said Xilita. ‘The abbot is correct. These… incidents are happening on the edge of the cloister districts, but the ways in and out go from down in the earth to bridges between towers. You can’t shut or close them all.’

  Glavius-4-Rho bent and picked the plan of the monastery Iacto had used off the floor.

  ‘The statement made by the priest/monastic secondary-tier leader seems to be highly likely. The number of variables and resources at our disposal do not make for a pleasing correspondence.’

  ‘But there are places that people would have to come through if they came up or through other areas,’ said Iacto. ‘They are what you need to hold.’

  Covenant did not answer for a second.

  ‘Show me.’ Covenant nodded at Glavius-4-Rho. Iacto turned to obey, only then releasing the breath he had been holding. ‘Then return to the records, abbot.’

  Iacto paused, then bowed his head to hide his surprise. As he looked down his eye caught the dead gaze of Sul, staring up and seeing nothing while his life drained red onto the ground.

  TEN

  The world was black, edge to edge, and so far out that there was no depth to it. Enna turned her head, and then realised that she did not have a head to turn. She did not have a body either, just a viewpoint into black infinity.

  She blinked and suddenly she could feel her limbs and skin.

  ‘Let’s start here, shall we?’

  Enna’s gaze snapped around. A woman sat on a white ivory chair, what seemed like a pace away. The blank dark behind and beneath her made her seem like a portrait painted onto black glass. Her hair was copper red, and fell in a long, smooth spill across her left shoulder and down the side of a dress of green silk and black brocade. She smiled, her slim face barely creasing with the expression. There was something familiar about her, but Enna could not remember…

  She could not remember anything. She knew her name. She knew who she was, but the rest was just a…

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman in green, ‘I had to tie off your memories, most of them anyway. Makes life simpler.’ She yawned as though fighting off a sudden wave of tiredness. ‘And… and simplicity is very much what we need in your case.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Enna.

  The woman in green laughed dryly.

  ‘Funny,’ she said, without humour. ‘But then how are you to know. And of course the question is not who I am, but who are you, Enna Gyrid?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Difficult for you to answer that at the moment, of course,’ said the woman in green. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes, and blinked as though to try and shake off another wave of fatigue. ‘I have done as much digging as I can. Killing you might have let me open up a couple of other portions of your consciousness, but only maybe, and as good an idea as death might be, my hands are tied.’

  The woman in green’s eyes flicked to a point just over Enna’s shoulder. For the first time since the woman had appeared, Enna was aware of a presence just behind her. She turned her head.

  ‘No,’ said the woman in green, and the word snapped Enna’s gaze back around as though yanked by a chain. The woman gave a cold smile. ‘Look at me, Enna, just at me.’

  Enna nodded, though she was not sure why. For an instant when she had turned her head she had caught sight of a figure in black robes in the corner of her eye, its face hidden in the shadow of its caul.

  ‘The thing is, Enna, that you are not as simple as you appear, and no I don’t mean to say you are stupid. You memories, your mind, your life, barely belong to you. Believe me that I know what I am talking about when I say that a lot of work has been done to you. Layers of false belief, grafted memories, cut-outs, recollection oubliettes. Your mind is a maze full of secrets and traps, and the chances are that I have barely scratched the surface. Impressive, really. Loathsome as well, but impressive. The fact that I didn’t spot it when I probed your mind… well that alone says something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

  The woman gave a tired nod, and then looked away.

  ‘You are a lie, Enna Gyrid,’ she said. ‘You are a lie given form and flesh. Someone took you, and willingly or not, re-sculpted your mind. They gave you a name. They gave you a past, and for everything they gave, they took more away. You are not who you believe yourself to be. You are not who we thought you were.’ The woman gave a cold chuckle. ‘Though you are not alone in that.’

  The woman in green stood and suddenly was right in front of Enna’s face.

  ‘There are three of you,’ she said. ‘One is called Enna Gyrid and she believed that she was the loyal servant of an inquisitor called Idris. She is loyal, tough and a bit impulsive. She is the you that is hearing this, that is thinking that it can’t be true.’

  The blackness behind the woman changed. Figures pulled into shape, like statues rising from tar. Enna could see a stone sarcophagi and a ring of figures in cloth masks, and her own face frozen in mid-scream before it was forced down beneath the surface.

  ‘Then there is the you that was made by the Renewed on Iago, the you that is just a membrane of coldness, a killer, a tool to greater ends.’

  Enna was about to shrug when the memories poured into her. She saw the Conclave, and the Renewed coming out of the dust cloud with crystal blades. She saw Idris die. She saw Covenant, and his cadre of followers. She saw Iago, and the shrine of the dead Emperor in the warren beneath its surface. She saw Talicto, their quarry, long dead on his skeleton throne. She saw Idris standing in the flicker of a psychically trapped memory. And she saw herself looking down at a coin.

  ‘And then, last of all…’ The woman nodded over Enna’s shoulder. ‘There is the you that the other two hide.’

  Enna felt herself turning even as she realised that she didn’t want to, that she wanted to do anything but see what had been standing there all this time.

  A figure in black stood in front of her, head bowed, draped in black robes that were a cascade of black sand.

  ‘Your third self,’ said the woman in green.

  ‘What you are saying means nothing to me,’ said Enna, still staring at the grains of black sand flow in the folds of robes. ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘No, you don’t, but I thought it might be better if you knew the truth before I gave you back some of the context.’ She paused, then shivered, the green silk rustling. ‘I am not kind, but I try to avoid cruelty.’

  Lightning crackled through the air, splitting the dark like a knife sawed through cloth. A window f
ormed in mid-air, edged by white sparks. She saw a chamber filled with vibrating machines, and clouds of frost and steam. A woman in a red bodyglove and hessian shift knelt in front of a metal casket, sword clasped in her hands. Nearer to Enna’s viewpoint floated a figure with withered limbs, its head ringed by bulbous, chrome machinery.

  ‘Mylasa,’ said Enna, suddenly knowing who the woman in green must be. Then she looked at the metal casket and saw her own face beyond the frosted view slit.

  She began to shake. She could feel liquid pouring into her lungs, fire filling her thoughts, the cold of a silver coin in her hand.

  Her voice was shaking with terror.

  ‘Mylasa, help me.’

  ‘No,’ said Mylasa. ‘As I said, I am sorry, but I am here for the truth, and whatever that requires will be done.’

  ‘But I am not a heretic. I have served the Emperor. I am Enna Gyrid. I am…’

  Mylasa shook her head.

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ she said.

  ‘Go,’ whispered Ninkurra, and loosed the hawk from her wrist. The bird beat its wings and glided away into the dark of the girder-space. In her mind the hawk’s augmented vison showed her a world of grey edges and black voids. The second hawk shifted on her shoulder, its claws digging into the mesh plates woven into her bodyglove. Around her the dark of the deep hull extended, soft and black and silent.

  In her ear the voice of the von Castellan data file whispered like a ghost.

  ‘…the von Castellan dynasty originates from the planet of Xarxis Plethis, Valrio Subsector, Ghastshrine Sector, Segmentum Tempestus. The brigantine Dionysia is currently the only vessel under the dynasty’s control…’

  The cavern that they had landed the gunship in had been well sealed, but she had found her way out eventually: a small pressure hatch into a maintenance duct, and then a long crawl dragging her vacuum casket behind her. She did not think she had tripped any security measures, or if she had, she had yet to see a response. Even a small ship like this was still vast, and you could not guard every inch of it. The seneschal of the von Castellans was clever though, and subtle, at least according to the files, so it was best to assume nothing.