Incarnation - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  Once she had got out of the sealed section, gravity and air had returned. She had stripped her void suit and packed it into the vacuum casket. She had hung a cameleoline-woven cloak over her mesh bodyglove, and strapped her collapsed sword to the small of her back. Then she had strapped the pistols, data gauntlet and pouches of small equipment in place. Last had been an infra-monocle, which turned half her sight into monochrome green dark-sight, or the coloured smudges of heat vision as she required. Her hawks woken, she had stashed the vacuum caskets in a crawl space. A tiny micro-transmitter would lead her back to it when the time came. If the time came. She had yet to work out a proper method of attack, let alone an escape plan for when it was done. The first step, though, was to find out where she was and then build steps to the target.

  Standing in the dark, watching the landscape of machines and pipes glide past her hawk’s eyes, she wondered how long it had been since a living human had trod these decks. Years? Decades? More?

  ‘…at the height of its prosperity, the dynasty controlled a fleet of six vessels…’

  The hawk slid though a gap in a mass of pipes. A black gulf opened beneath. It wheeled, its wings catching an updraught. A shaft soared upwards towards a distant light. She willed the bird to settle on a projecting strut.

  ‘…much of the success of the dynasty rests not in the hands of the titular bearer of the warrant of trade, Cleander von Castellan…’

  Ninkurra paused for a second, the beginning of her next steps forming in her thoughts. She did not have the ability or time to tease information from a starship’s data systems. No, she would have to rely on older, simpler, more human means of finding her prey.

  ‘…but in the surviving younger sister, Viola von Castellan, known to many as the Mistress of Threads, lies much of the dynasty’s remaining power…’

  She would begin at the core of things, at the centre of the web.

  ‘How do you do it?’ asked Bal, from where he waited by her study door.

  Viola paused in scrolling through the data feed, and looked up.

  ‘Keep going, I mean. How do you keep processing and holding on to it all?’

  ‘By not being interrupted,’ she said, and looked back at the glowing flow of numbers and glyphs. Static and distortion filled the cascade – the distortions to vox and communication systems had been getting worse and worse since the storm had cut them off from the surface of Dominicus Prime, as though its winds were billowing inside the machines themselves.

  She blinked, and the flow had changed again. To almost anybody it would look like a screed of random symbols, some not even part of any recognisable Imperial dialect. It was the trade cant of her dynasty, and to her it was as familiar as speech. At least it normally was. For a second when she had looked back it had seemed like nothing, like static on a blown pict screen.

  She put the data-slate down on the desk.

  ‘How did you get so good with guns?’ she asked. Bal looked around, his surprise at the question clear on his face. She shrugged. ‘Well?’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice,’ he said. ‘In the stack archipelagos, you don’t get past walking without knowing how to fight. Sometimes you don’t even get that chance. But I was better than most, useful even, and that had value. So when the burn-famine came my family sold me to the Death Brokers. They did the rest. Day in, day out, hour after hour, drill and fire, and drill, and then testing and more. That’s the way they do it, until the guns are more real to you than your empty hands.’

  Viola nodded.

  ‘And it worked?’

  Bal grinned and raised his hands, fingers open.

  ‘These feel as awkward as hell right now.’

  She smiled, and rubbed her eyes with her palms.

  ‘When I was six I was given to the family savants. I was the third-born, and that was what happened to children fortunate enough to be two steps away from inheritance. Christina was the heir, Cleander the spare. He was destined for the Navy officer corps at Bakka. They already knew this, and what my role would be. I just didn’t get told until I was six. That is when the brain is developed enough to be… trained, but still growing. So that’s when they started. Cognitive conditioning, day in, day out.’

  She felt her mouth twitch into a cold smile, but the sound that came with it was a snort.

  ‘It started with rhymes, children’s rhymes, or that’s what they seemed like anyway – tiny, tiny spider climbed up the water spout… On and on in particular rhythms and tones, sometimes they would change just a word, or the timing of a breath in speaking it, on and on – dec, sire, nova, sire, oct, sire…

  ‘Then there were the games. Patterns and numbers, and the rules never exactly the same twice. Every minute of every day was like that. Even sleep was timed to the second. When I got to play, it was always a game they chose and the game was always a lesson. Things started to happen.

  ‘One day I walked down the corridors that held the ashes of our ancestors, all of them going back to before the Age of Apostasy. Each sepulchre listed the span of their life and the deeds they had done in service of our bloodline. It was a long walk, and I did not think I did more than glance at each of the plaques. But afterwards… afterwards one of my tutors started one of the rhymes, and suddenly it was just pouring out of me, every name, every date. Zartha von Castellan, 672.M38 to 792.M38 – instituted the Treaty of Nevre with the Hierarchs of Sulpon… Castia von Castellan, 710.M38 to 801.M38 – commanded Battlegroup Jove at the Battle of Draco Gulf… even now it’s still there, all of it, written in the fabric of my nerves.’

  She realised that she had placed her hands on the top of the desk, flat, palms down, like a child waiting for a class. She glanced up at Bal, but the bodyguard was just looking at her and frowning.

  She shrugged.

  ‘They did not start on the surgery or the alchemistry until I was twelve, I think. That was when things really started to become serious. The nursery rhymes and games stopped but the thought patterns they hid continued. The demands and the methods became more intense. Have you heard what a data-deluge is?’

  To her surprise, Bal nodded.

  ‘Some of the high scribes on Serapho used to do that – open themselves up to a load of information until they almost dropped dead.’

  ‘Until all of the mind’s capacity to remember and process is exceeded is more accurate.’ She let out a breath and leaned her head back. The neon ghosts of trade cant symbols rolled over the blackness inside her eyelids. ‘It is… like being drowned. They give you just long enough to come up for air and then they put you back under, again and again.’ She opened her eyes, looking at the document- and data-slate-strewn desk, but seeing the sunlit tower tutor cells and the holo-induction machines sitting on the white floors. ‘And all the time I had to do mental gymnastics – simultaneous pattern and logic analysis, memory sieving and scraping. And more and more information poured in. They beamed most of it into my eyes just below the rate of cognitive comprehension. It wasn’t until I was of age that they took my eye.’

  She brought her finger to her cheek and pulled down the eyelid so that he could see the wet chrome wire bundles in the socket.

  ‘Near flawless, and lets me see the dynasty’s lifeblood of ones and zeroes flow, grow, or run out, all without closing my eyes. Most of the savants used mind interface sockets to access data, but that would have been too uncouth for one of the bloodline, and anyway I didn’t need it. In the end it turned out that I was quite the star student. Father and mother were pleased…’

  She was staring at the desk again, at the auto quills and scrolls.

  …tiny, tiny spider…

  ‘And you?’ said Bal.

  ‘Hmm?’ She blinked and looked up, and blinked again. Suddenly she felt very tired. ‘Oh, I was… I don’t know. I was what I needed to be – the keystone of a dynasty.’

  ‘Isn’t that the Duke von Castellan?’

  She laughed then.

  ‘You have met my brother, haven’t you?’


  He nodded.

  ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What are you now?’

  ‘I…’ she said and stood. ‘I am tired.’

  ‘You have actually reached the point where you are going to want to sleep – I never thought I would see the day. You must be telling the truth.’

  ‘And you are too familiar and ask too many questions for a household lifeward.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I have always thought that most people like to answer the questions that they don’t often get asked.’

  ‘A philosopher and a killer, no wonder you caught Kynortas’ eye. You are just his type.’

  The grin again.

  ‘I will leave you to rest, mistress, and am pleased that you didn’t have me whipped for asking.’ He turned towards the door, then stopped his hand, close to the release. ‘You know, when I was learning gunplay, at first I wished every day that someone would come and take me away, take the gun out of my hand and make me something else, somebody else…’

  He paused, frowned, mouth half-open to speak.

  ‘And here you are,’ she said.

  ‘And here I am,’ he smiled. ‘But you know, now I can’t think of who else I would rather be.’ He keyed the door release and stepped out into the corridor beyond. ‘Good night, mistress.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, as the door shut and sealed after him.

  AND FIND THE GATES TO HOPE CLOSED

  Acia folded back into the darkness of a statue niche as the shrine guard passed. Candlelight shone from the cheeks of their face plates. She had seen them once before when they had come into the drift to find a man who had stolen an icon from one of the shrines inside the cloisters. They had broken his left hand, and left him screaming. Ever since then she had thought of their masks as shouting, not crying.

  She had decided to go back to the drift two days ago, but it had taken her this long to work her way through the cloister levels to the Gate of Bells. Two days of silence and small movements, of taking water from where it leaked down walls, and eking out a piece of bread she had taken from a plate left in a deserted refectory.

  She held her breath, waiting for them to pass, listening to the clink of their iron truncheons against the bronze squares sewn onto their jackets. They were everywhere now, walking the passages and standing guard on doors. They were looking for her, because of what had happened in the Palace of Pillars, because of that silent scream that had reduced the flesh of her grandfather’s killers to dripping blood and tatters – she knew it without needing to be certain.

  ‘Witch…’ The word breathed through the monastery in a thousand whispers. She had heard it spoken by a pair of penitents as they walked within feet of her. There were hunters in the complex and people had been burned in the drifts. Every eye was looking for her and every hand was an enemy. It would be no safer out in the drifts, but that was not why she had come to the Gate of Bells.

  She wanted to go home.

  She leaned slightly out of the statue’s shadow and glanced in the direction of the Gate of Bells. It was open. She could see the sky beyond the arch, and the light of a midday sun.

  Home… Her grandfather was gone, but if she could just get home it would be all right.

  One of the shrine guards twitched their head towards her as they passed. Acia flinched back, but the guard was slowing, turning aside from the column and reaching for the rod of iron hanging from its belt. She felt herself tremble, as the helm’s black eye holes reached into the shadow that held her.

  ‘You, back into ranks,’ called a voice from amongst the shrine guards, and the guard stopped. ‘Yes, you.’ And the guard stepped away and joined the march to the open door. Acia waited until the last of them had passed before looking out again.

  She edged forward out of the shadow. A bell tolled above the gate, its sound harsh and loud in the corridor. She wondered why they had sounded one of the bells. They never did that.

  ‘By order of the archdeacon the doors are to be sealed,’ called one of the guards. ‘Let it be done.’

  The key-keepers bowed their heads and began to drag the doors shut.

  Acia was moving forwards before she could stop herself, running towards the narrowing slit of daylight. She must have cried out because one of the guards turned, and there were no shadows to hide her now.

  ‘Halt!’ came a shout.

  She kept running. The door was almost closed, the daylight drawing a thinning line across the stone floor.

  And now the other guards were turning.

  Please! she screamed in her head. Please!

  The doors shut with a dull boom.

  ‘No!’ she shouted, still not seeing the wall of shrine guards. Then a whip cracked out, and pain exploded in her legs, and she was on the floor gasping, and the masked guards were all around, reaching for her, and she could hear the word that breathed through their thoughts.

  Witch…

  Witch…

  Witch…

  She tried to push herself up but a boot lashed into her skull, and the world…

  Juddered out of time. The guards were moving, but it was like a book she had once seen, where you flicked the pages and a man ran from a hunting beast across the top of the sheets of paper. She did not stop to think what was happening, but pushed herself up and began to run, shoving and ducking past the guards, and sprinting away from the doors. Above her, the candles burned like suns in their iron stands.

  –and then she was not running down a passage under the light of candles. She was running across a desert. Clouds of rust-red dust billowed around her and laughter chuckled with the sound of wind singing in a dried skull’s teeth. She looked behind. Four silent shadows loped through the dust swirl behind her.

  ‘Weakness… weakness…’ they hissed in a voice of running sand. ‘You cannot last…’

  ‘Run you down…’

  ‘Tear you from your false throne…’

  ‘Rot your soul to ash…’

  ‘Eat your screams…’

  ‘Give you to the fire’s hunger…’

  And she knew they were right, that it was only a matter of time and exhaustion…

  –and the edge of a stone caught her toe. She stumbled. Her hands slammed into the stone of the passageway. She gasped, but did not look back at the masked guards or the closed doors. She needed to keep running.

  She was squeezing past a statue plinth and into the crawl space beyond, as the world slammed back into motion. The screams followed her as she scrambled down into the dark.

  ELEVEN

  A tide of figures in rags flooded into the cloister of the Brothers and Sisters of the Emperor’s Word. They found most of the order in the refectory at tables laid for the Feast of Last Light. The Pure and True Order of the Key died at prayer, their pleas falling silent as their blood soaked the blue tiles of their chapels. The Sisters of the Solar Light fought, pulling rusted swords from the sepulchres of their long-dead founders. They killed many of the ragged throng who poured into their halls, but not enough.

  Across the lower reaches of the monastery a few pockets managed to barricade themselves behind doors, or shut themselves off from the red tide. That was when the first fires were set. Slick with blood, and with the fingers, tongues and ears of the dead hanging off them, the pilgrims left those they could not butcher to the flames.

  Beneath the wide Arch of the Nine Sons, the rising tide met their first true resistance. Forty shrine guard, marshalled by an Adeptus Arbites proctor, met the first pilgrims to try to force their way through. Mismatched stubbers and black-powder pistols fired ragged volleys into the charging horde. Dozens fell. Those behind them did not pause, but scrabbled over the dead to die in turn. For a while it looked as though the arch might hold. Then a thing the size of a grox swayed and wobbled to the front of the throng. Bullets plucked at its red shroud. It cried out in dozens of voices, each one a shriek of pain and anger. Some of the shrine guard ran then. Those that stood and fired lived long enough to see t
he bloated thing stop and raise a tiny head on a long neck. It breathed out. Black flies filled the air and poured over the defenders, shredding them with a million bites as the bloated host of the swarm deflated with a final cry.

  On they came, the denied, hopeless and forsaken; and if there was any space for mercy in their hearts they showed none.

  ‘Hold,’ said Covenant. Behind him the arbitrator squads dropped into low firing positions. Koleg saw the wind speed increase in the corner of his visor. Snow was spiralling across the sky, around the bridge and between the towers rising above them. There was no balustrade to the bridge, just a sheer drop down to the lower roofs and tower tops of the monastery. A foot of snow had already covered the stone slabs of the bridge. Koleg holstered his macrostubber pistol and considered the view in front of them.

  It was called the Bridge of Absolution, and it linked a bastion of the Eastern Cloister to a tower that rose from the ruined heap of the Burnt Shrines. According to the lean-faced abbot and his hard-eyed assistant, this bridge would allow access to the main bulk of the inner cloisters without going through the miles of corridors and doors of the monastery itself. Doors could be sealed at the bridge’s end, but doors could be broken, and Covenant had decided to move himself and three squads of arbitrators to it while Orsino oversaw the securing of other key points, staunching the mass of pilgrims that had begun to flow into the cloisters from the drift. The reason was simple, and Koleg knew it with a soldier’s clarity and without needing to be told. The inquisitor wanted to see this enemy, to face it down and break some of its momentum. That was why he had ordered Koleg to come with him. Because this was going to be about killing.

  Koleg pulled his grenade launcher around from the small of his back. The wind speed would make using it difficult.