Incarnation - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘So you did a trade,’ said Iaso.

  Cleander opened his eyes, blinked, felt the memory drain, and nodded tiredly.

  ‘Yes, but that was not enough for me. I wanted the source. I wanted everything they had. So I took one of their ships, and… we did what we needed to find out where the stones came from…’ He smiled. ‘Then we went there. The seken were not expecting us, and… did not like us being there.’

  ‘There was fighting.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘There was fighting all right. Quite competent at defending themselves, it turned out. But they did not have the numbers and they didn’t know we were coming, so… We got a good haul, a very good haul, and the trip back to the bounds of civilisation was a quiet time.’

  ‘Are you trying to impress me?’

  He shrugged. Winced.

  ‘In my condition, I am guessing a drink is out of the question?’

  ‘One hundred per cent correct.’

  ‘Thought so.’ He shifted, closed his eyes for a moment, and wondered what would happen if he did just try to stand up and leave. Iaso was not the kind to bluff. He had not tried to move his legs, but below the neck he could only move his fingers. Part of him wanted to try, but another part did not want to seem a fool.

  ‘The alien stones,’ said Iaso, ‘you sold them?’

  ‘For a tidy sum and then some. Viola did not like it, she had to move credit through some less than reputable people, but by all the saints and their bones, those stones sold.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘So I went back for more. The seken were not going to be happy given our earlier encounter, of course, but I took a bigger household force, brought in a couple of more serious merc-companies, and off we went… Well, it turned out that they were far angrier and a lot less stupid than I thought.

  ‘We came out of the warp near our target and there were these ships, like splintered black arrowheads. They hit us so fast that we didn’t even get a shot before half our engines were slag. When we did shoot back, half of the auspex returns turned out to be ghosts, shadows in the eyes of our guns. They boarded us. There is a species called the aeldari, old creatures of the stars, quick and prideful, and deadly. I had met aeldari, done some trade with a few, even. These creatures were like them, but not like them, you understand, more like their shadows – just as deadly, but infinitely more cruel.

  ‘We fought them as they took the ship. Well I say we fought, we resisted and were massacred. They were just so fast, and once the crew saw them kill some of their friends… I don’t know what happened to them all. I never saw that ship or any of the crew alive again.’

  ‘But you survived?’

  ‘Not really. They kept me alive. The seken had made a bargain with them, you see. Terra alone knows how they knew to find such creatures, but they had, and what they wanted was for me to suffer. They gave me to one of their flesh witches. It cut me open. Flayed the flesh from my spine from buttocks to skull. It had the skill to make sure I was conscious throughout, and once it had me open it showed me what it was going to do. They were threads when it showed them to me, dozens of silver threads like a hank of white hair. It planted them inside and put me back together like nothing had ever happened. Then they sent me on my way.’

  ‘If they are as you described, and did what you say, what possible reason could they have to just let you go?’

  ‘Because I made a deal with them,’ said Cleander. For a moment he held Iaso’s glass gaze and then dropped his eyes. He nodded to himself. ‘Of course I made a deal with them. The seken had paid them in living slaves of their own kind. They had paid for my ship to be taken, and for me to suffer torment, before being handed back to them. But then the creatures that took me found one of the stones. It was in my pocket, just dropped in my coat pocket. How stupid is that? The first time they brought me around there was one of them standing in front of me. It looked like a leader. The skin of its face was like sun-bleached paper…’

  ‘Most sinister,’ said Iaso. ‘They wanted the stones then?’

  ‘Oh, yes, they really, really did. I think they could have forced me to tell them, but once I opened my mouth with a counter-offer they were happy to hear it.’

  ‘What did you offer them?’

  ‘Everything about the seken, about the stones and the planet they came from, and an idea – that they use handing me back to the seken as an opportunity to ambush them in turn, to take them, or kill them, and the take back the stones.’

  ‘They agreed?’

  ‘They did. Afterwards, a long time afterwards, when I had time to think about it, I thought that they went with it because it amused them. My desperation and treachery amused them. Anyway, it happened, and I played my part and told them what I knew. They kept their word, which, all things considered, is surprising, don’t you think?’

  He tried a smile. Iaso did not return it.

  ‘And they cut you open…’

  ‘As a gift,’ he said, the words falling cold on his tongue. ‘That was what they called it – a gift.’

  ‘A gift of… what?’

  ‘Life. They said it would keep me alive so that I could appreciate its other qualities one day, when… when I had forgotten that such a day was to come.’

  He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Iaso did not say anything.

  ‘As much as I have enjoyed this conversation,’ he said, after a moment, ‘and if it is all the same with you, I think I will sleep now.’

  Iaso did not reply, but he heard her walk away, her chrome servitors buzzing in her wake.

  Ninkurra watched the officer wake and blink at the dark. The dull throb of his thoughts filled her awareness. She was not much of a telepath; her skills were specific and low on the index that the Imperium used to rate the raw strength of such things. But her skill was enough to sense the rough shape and taste of surface thoughts and emotions if she concentrated. She could not dip into minds and take what she needed, but there were other ways.

  She had brought him back down to the quiet of the lower decks. It had taken an hour of dragging and carrying him through rarely used passages, but she needed quiet for this.

  She waited as the officer stirred. He was lashed to an upright pipe, arms above his head. A single dim glow-globe shone above him. Beyond that circle of light he would be able to see nothing. She watched as his eyes cleared and focused.

  The hawk swept out of the dark, wings spread, claws and beak wide. The man screamed. The bird landed on his chest, wings beating, claws digging into his flesh, shrieking its cry into his face. The sounds rose and echoed in the still dark.

  ‘Be still,’ said Ninkurra, sending the same thought command. The hawk on the man’s chest froze, and then furled its wings. It cocked its head, staring up into the man’s terrified face. Ninkurra stepped forward, the other hawk on her shoulder. The man’s eyes flicked to her and then back to the bird perched in front of his face. She could feel his panic settling into terror now.

  ‘I will ask questions, you will answer,’ she said.

  ‘Who are you?’ His voice was thick with the wound the hawk had bit into his tongue.

  She twitched a thought, and the hawk on his chest opened its beak.

  ‘You will answer, that is all you will do.’

  He nodded once, his eyes fixed on the hawk.

  ‘The inquisitor called Covenant, you know of him?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘And a woman in his circle, or a prisoner, called Enna Gyrid, you know of her?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t know those that he keeps around him. I am a crew officer. I am not part of the household. Mistress von Castellan keeps only household crew close to the inquisitor.’

  Ninkurra felt the truth in his mind. He was very afraid, and not very bright. She was not surprised by his answer; in fact, it was just as she had expected. This man was not the path to finding her target, just a stepping stone. The hawks twitched as her thoughts bled into theirs. The man must have seen the movement, beca
use he started talking without being asked.

  ‘The Mistress of Threads controls it all. It’s all shut and guarded on the upper levels. You have to be household or you can’t get anywhere, and even that lot don’t know much. Anything around the inquisitor’s business, the von Castellans are the only ones to know anything.’

  Ninkurra nodded. She had already decided that the only way to find Gyrid was by getting to one of the von Castellans’ close associates. That or luck, and counting on luck was just damn-fool faith by another name.

  ‘Tell me everything you know about them. Where they eat, where they sleep, who is close to them most of the time?’

  ‘No,’ he said. The hawk twitched its head. ‘No, I mean, I mean I don’t know anything. I only took a commission contract a year ago. I’ve never even met them. I’m on the sump deck watch. I’ve only been into the higher decks once. I don’t know what you want…’

  He trailed off, and she felt the fear form in his mind that he had said just the wrong thing.

  And he was right. Ninkurra reached casually for the shard-blade fastened to the small of her back. The hawk on the ensign’s chest spread its wings to take flight.

  ‘Wait!’ The man flinched, eyes wide. The terror wrapping his thoughts was white-hot now. ‘I know something. Please!’

  Ninkurra stilled.

  ‘Talk,’ she said.

  ‘After the last transition, something happened on the bridge. The duke and the void mistress were injured.’ He paused, panting as he fought and lost with his panic.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, it was just what I heard, watch-change talk. They said that the duke had been taken to the primary medicae wing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he’s still there… Whatever happened, the word is that he’s still there. The Mistress of Threads is running things, but the duke, he’s still in the primary medicae wing.’ He fell silent, panting, eyes on Ninkurra.

  ‘You have been to this medicae wing? You know where it is?’

  ‘Yes, a household officer had an arm crushed during a gunnery drill. I was one of the ones that got her to the chirurgeons.’

  He was telling the truth, no doubt. More than that, his hope that he had bought his life was bubbling images to the surface of his thoughts. Blurred images of hoists, passages and doors flowed through Ninkurra’s mind.

  ‘Tell me how to get there. Clearly and slowly.’

  ‘And you will let me live?’

  ‘I swear and oath it in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind, and by all I hold holy.’ She flicked out a thread of will, and the hawk released from his chest and rose to perch on a girder above them.

  She watched his eyes flick across her face, saw his thoughts as he tried to decide to believe her. He really, really wanted there to be a way out of this.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said, licking his lips.

  He talked. Ninkurra listened, and watched the images of what he described shimmer across his thoughts. She was not strong enough to pull clearer mental images from him, but it would be enough. She memorised it all, folding it up into a mental space where it would stay, clean and accessible in entirety. Another gift of the Tyrantines, given a long time ago in a place so far away that it might as well have been a dream. When he was done, he hung from his bonds, panting with adrenaline, eyes shining as he waited.

  Ninkurra drew the shard-sword. It unfolded with a rustle like dry leaves stirring in a breath of wind.

  ‘W-What…’ he stammered. ‘You said you would let me live. You swore–’

  ‘By the God-Emperor and all that I hold holy. But if He is a god then He doesn’t care if you die, and I hold nothing holy.’

  He only managed to draw breath to scream before the fractal edge opened his throat.

  Severita watched as the metal of the casket began to glow. She could feel heat on her face. The cryo-machines had begun emitting a high whine, and were venting thick plumes of steam.

  ‘You are not permitted to kill her,’ said Severita, out loud. She had ceased kneeling hours before and now stood a pace to the left of Mylasa and two from the casket containing Enna Gyrid. Severita’s bare sword rested on her left shoulder. She had not moved or spoken since she had risen, just watched as the worms of witch-light formed on the casket’s metal.

  +I am not killing her,+ said Mylasa’s voice in her head. +If it ever comes to it, I will leave that to you.+

  A thick rime of frost covered Mylasa, caking her robes and clotting her eye sockets. Sparks glittered around her head. Severita felt a pain build behind her eyes as she turned her head to look at the psyker.

  +Of course, your best way of helping me not to do something accidentally fatal would be to not make stupid comments that require me to split my attention to reply to you.+

  ‘I have a duty to protect her.’

  +Ah yes, duty. Simple mindless duty, the balm and salve of the guilty and the self-loathing.+

  ‘Don’t you serve from duty?’

  +Habit, I think. Yes, habit more than anything else… Or maybe because, as an abomination in the eyes of the pure and righteous, I have few better options in this galaxy. Or maybe I just enjoy my work – after all, we can’t all be as miserable as you, now can we?+

  Severita turned to stare back at the casket.

  ‘You hate us, don’t you?’

  +Perceptive, but imprecise. To be fair, I hate you and your kind. Everyone else has at least an even chance.+

  Severita thought about not responding to the barb.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, after a second.

  +Because your kind of faith is the kind that does not question, that would run me through with that sword and not think twice, and all you would need was an order from someone you thought could forgive you whatever sin you’d think you’d committed.+

  ‘I am a sinner.’

  +You are a narrow-minded creature filled with self-loathing.+

  ‘At least we have that in common.’

  Mylasa’s thought voice was silent.

  Severita nodded at the casket.

  ‘I am sure you have also considered that, besides being here to kill her if needed, I am also here to protect you if it comes to that.’

  +I need no protection.+

  ‘Perhaps, but I am here anyway, and here I will stay. It is my duty.’

  +Oh, well done – how very tidy. Now, as delightful as this has been, I must give my full attention to my duty.+

  Severita felt her face become taut. Then she shook her head, and silence fell in her thoughts and in the frost- and heat-filled room.

  The chamber beneath the surface of Iago was brighter than when she had last seen it. Figures in rags filled the spaces around the stone sarcophagi, all held in a frozen tableau. All but three of them were masked. She could see open mouths in the ragged holes in their masks, tongues frozen behind teeth as they sang a song that she could not hear. Of the unmasked figures, the first was Idris, her face impassive. The other was the same wild-eyed hermit they had met on the shore of the poisoned lake of Iago’s underworld. His teeth were bared and ropes of lightning crawled over his scalp. His hands gripped a woman by the hair and neck, pushing her down towards the surface of the liquid. She recognised the woman. It was herself: mouth open to gasp for air, skin blistering with the touch of the toxins in the water. An arc of droplets hung in the air, linking her to the rippled mirror of liquid.

  ‘They remade you,’ said Mylasa, stepping into view. Her green silk dress had morphed into an emerald bodyglove. ‘The Renewed killed you. They drowned you in poison, and brought you back to the living as someone else. They made you one of them, reborn, Renewed.’

  Enna did not reply. She was staring at the scene, at the cold hardness in Idris’ eye.

  ‘From there Idris gave you a new past, a new life to remember and believe in.’

  ‘This is wrong. I don’t remember this. This did not happen.’

  ‘It did, Enna,’ said Mylasa. She reached over the li
p of the sarcophagus and dipped her finger into the still, rippled water. The ripples did not move or change. ‘And you do remember it. This is your memory. It was buried deep, but it was there.’

  ‘Idris would not have done this, she was–’

  ‘A heretic, Enna. She lied and deceived and manipulated. She took the Renewed from Talicto, and used them to steal his secrets and then to kill him. She was not a victim of the massacre at the conclave – she was the orchestrator of that atrocity. She did it. Not Talicto. Not someone else. Her.’

  ‘But Talicto was there. I saw him, we all saw him…’ said Enna, even as she could feel the objection fading into nothing.

  Mylasa had moved to stand next to the frozen image of Idris. She looked up at the inquisitor’s eyes.

  ‘No, Talicto wasn’t there, Enna. He was long dead. What you saw, what everyone saw, was something else. I don’t know for certain, but I would guess that it was another member of the Renewed, shaped to pass for him. Very clever, really. The Triumvirate stole his secrets, then used his identity to cover their own activities. We were tracing what we thought were Talicto’s experiments in warp-craft for years, but now you have to wonder if they weren’t his at all…’

  Enna opened her mouth to object, but the words stopped before they could reach her lips. A different thought formed in their wake instead, cold and hard in her mind.

  ‘She’s alive, isn’t she? I saw her die, but she is alive.’

  Mylasa smiled sorrowfully.

  ‘That seems very likely. What you saw, what everyone saw, was a show of shadows.’

  ‘And she left me, she left me with Covenant…’ She paused, and looked again at the frozen image of herself before she was plunged into the poison-filled sarcophagus.

  You are looking for revelation…

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  Mylasa let out a long breath. The image of the chamber and the rag-clad figures was fading, shape and colour smudging. Only the image of Mylasa remained sharp and clear.

  ‘That, my dear, is a question we are here to answer.’

  Darkness billowed up around the psyker, and Enna was drowning in lightless water again.