by Andy Hoare
Her hair was black, yet it shimmered with glittering iridescent hues, from pink, to purple, to blue, as scented oil swirls across the surface of dark water. It was cut across her forehead, framing her pale, oval face. Its dark coils tumbled gently down her shoulders and traced the contours of her body, to lie gently against her soft belly and round hips. Her skin was as pale as ivory, and every inch of it glittered as if dusted with the frost of the void.
His gaze finally settled upon her face. It was the face of perfect innocence, of sublime purity. He could scarcely believe he could look upon it and not somehow soil it with his own, inherent imperfection. Her face was turned down, but her eyes looked upwards into his. They sparkled with the violet light from which she had swum. With what he knew might be his last conscious action, Korvane dared to meet those eyes.
‘I can take your pain away,’ she told him, her perfect, rosebud lips barely parting as she spoke. The sound of her voice transcended mere human language, so that Korvane felt tears rising in the yawning silence that followed, mourning their passing as if a loved one had died.
‘I can give you all you desire.’
Korvane sank to his knees, knowing that she spoke the truth. He raised his head, tears flowing freely down his face, to look up into her eyes. She regarded him with an expression of serenity, even love, and Korvane felt his soul wither before its light.
‘How?’ he made himself ask, the mere act of speaking a titanic effort.
The ghost of a smile touched the corner of her perfect mouth, before she lifted herself from the floor as if propelling her body into the non-existent ocean current. She propelled herself over him with a single motion, coming to rest at his back. He was afforded an unhindered view of the glorious light spilling through the launch bay, and he was almost blinded by its beauty. He felt lips pressed to his ear from behind.
‘Come with me,’ she whispered. ‘Come with me and all will be perfect.’
Confusion welled within him. ‘Come with you? But where?’
‘Out there, my love.’ The creature’s lips settled upon the flesh of Korvane’s neck, causing sublime electricity to course through his body. He fought hard to cling to his wits, but knew he was slipping away. Even as he gazed into the light, he felt the creature’s mouth moving down his neck, planting impossibly gentle kisses as they did so.
Then, amidst the light and the sound, the scent of her skin and the touch of her lips, he perceived the faintest insinuation of discord. He turned his head just a fraction, so as to locate the source of the perception. Even as he did so, the creature’s arms snaked around his waist, her fingers working the fastenings on his uniform jacket. Though almost entirely subsumed by the creature’s touch, Korvane felt the disturbance again, and against all his desires, he fought to retain some measure of control. He looked once more to the light blazing through the launch bay doors, some distant part of his mind clinging to reality even as he slipped further and further away from it.
‘Out there,’ he muttered, barely able to concentrate as the creature’s hands slipped inside his open jacket, ‘but it’s not safe out there.’
‘Shhh,’ the creature breathed.
‘But it’s not…’
Korvane felt pain flare across his chest as the creature dug razor sharp nails into his skin. He could not help but cry out.
‘You like that, don’t you my love.’ She withdrew her hands from his jacket, and Korvane caught a glimpse of crimson upon them. He felt her pull back, and an instant later she was before him once more, having flipped as through water in one, graceful motion. She settled on the deck, her legs folded under her body, and leant forward upon her slender arms. She looked up into his eyes, her hair swimming around her and her eyes blazing with violet iridescence. A drop of what he knew to be his own blood was smeared at the corner of her mouth.
‘Come with me, my love, and I shall render unto you such secrets. I shall tell of creation and birth, of incubation and potential unbound. You shall walk at my side, amongst the gods of ancient times and of ages yet to be.’ She reached out her hand, holding it palm upwards. ‘Join me, Korvane Gerrit Arcadius, join us. Come with me.’
Korvane’s mind swam at her words. Yet, a small voice deep within questioned what the creature had said. Did she really expect him to leave his ship, even while it traversed the warp? To do so was madness. Perhaps she had no understanding of such things, perhaps to such as her they were but petty, everyday inconveniences. Yet still, doubt welled up from the centre of his being.
‘I cannot come with you,’ he said. He choked on his words even as he spoke them, tears flooding down his cheeks. That small part of him that rebelled at what was occurring grew stronger, but still, doubt and grief threatened to drown him. ‘Couldn’t you stay here, with me?’ He sobbed, knowing the futility of his words even as they left his mouth.
‘Look upon me, Korvane,’ she breathed. ‘Look upon me and know that you will never again see such perfection should you refuse me. I know you, Korvane, I know you more than you know yourself. I know so much more. I know what she did to you, of the pain you fight everyday, and what you would do, what you have done, to visit justice upon her.’ She pushed back with her arms so that she sat upright on her folded legs. She spread her arms wide, her hair swaying around her on the raging ocean current.
‘I can help you,’ she whispered. ‘Before we depart, together, you and I, I can finish her for you.’
‘But she’s gone!’ Korvane spluttered. ‘For all I know she’s dead!’
‘She is not dead, Korvane. She is nearby. I could draw her here, if you like, and visit upon her such pains, or such pleasures, as I desire. What would you have me do with her, my love?’
Korvane’s mind swam in turmoil. He had believed his bitch of a stepsister dead at the hands of Inquisitor Grand, or at least fled far beyond any capacity to return. But the creature claimed she was not dead, but nearby. Hatred flared within Korvane’s soul, quite at odds with the sublime intoxication that had overwhelmed him since first he had heard the creature’s song. The hatred drove out the bewitchment, the voice of reason begging at the back of his skull, screaming loud and clear.
‘No!’ Korvane bellowed.
The creature froze, her gaze fixed upon him. Though her face was purity and innocence personified and her body soft and curvaceous to the point of sublime luxury, her eyes were impossible wells of unknowable power. The all-encompassing violet light grew sickly, and Korvane caught ghostly motions at the edge of his vision.
With a supreme effort of will, he looked around. The flight deck was populated by half glimpsed apparitions, partly resolved figures growing more and more solid as the violet light dimmed. Even as he watched, the figures became solid. Each was a crewmen or a trooper, and before each stood a form. Before each, Korvane realised, stood the creature the individual most desired to see, to be called away by, to die for.
‘Korvane!’ a rough, male voice called from close at hand. He spun around, to see General Gauge and a group of his staff officers crossing the flight deck towards him. ‘Korvane, down!’
Without thinking, Korvane threw himself to the deck. An instant later, an explosive roar sounded overhead. He rolled over as the sound passed by, to find himself looking straight up at the underside of one of the Rosetta’s shuttles. He lifted his head to see the launch bay, the last of the violet light disintegrating into tendrils of slithering energy. The shuttle, its course erratic and uncertain passed out of the bay, through the bubble of the atmospheric shielding, and out.
In a matter of seconds the shuttle had crossed the small space around the Rosetta within which the laws of the physical universe still prevailed, held in stasis by the all-enveloping gellar field. Korvane saw the blackness of space beyond, stained with swirling violet energies, and realised that the Rosetta was breaking warp, forcing its way back to the real, physical universe.
The shuttle wa
s engulfed in raging energies as it breached the Gellar field. Corposant faces reared from the swirling clouds, claws and tentacles reaching out obscenely to grasp the vessel. Even as its engines flared, straining to escape the clutches of the warp, the vessel was ripped apart. A hideous keening went up, causing every individual on the flight deck to fall to the ground, hands over ears to shut out the wailing of the damned as they were dragged to the deepest infernal regions of the warp.
As Korvane’s voice joined those of the damned, he felt consciousness slip away, his vision fading to blessed oblivion.
‘What were they, general?’ asked Korvane as he stared out of the conference chamber’s viewing port. The lights were turned low, and he welcomed the encroaching shadows. ‘How did they get on my ship?’
‘I have no idea, Korvane,’ General Gauge replied. ‘I have consulted my confessor and his staff, yet none appear able to give me a straight answer.’
‘What happened, then? To me, to the crew, to you?’
‘That I cannot say either, Korvane. It appears that each man and woman experienced something unique to him or herself. Each was drawn to congregate on the flight deck, but then things got somewhat… confused.’
‘How many gave in to their desires? To the… creatures?’ Korvane asked, visions of the creature’s glittering body coming unbidden to his mind.
‘It seems that around five thousand congregated on the flight deck, mostly Guard, but not exclusively so.’ The general appeared embarrassed, but Korvane nodded that he should continue. ‘How many would have succumbed once there, I cannot imagine, though we know some attempted to escape via the shuttle.’
Korvane nodded, a shiver coursing through him as he recalled the soul screams of the deserters as the shuttle they had commandeered was swallowed up by the warp at the instant the Rosetta penetrated the thin skein between the warp and realspace. ‘Where did they hope to flee to?’ He asked, unsure he wanted to hear the answer.
‘Where?’ replied Gauge. ‘Well, I’m told we’re only half a dozen astronomical units from a stellar body of some kind. I can only imagine…’
‘How?’ Korvane interrupted, ‘how did we come to exit the warp so near to such a body?’
‘Korvane,’ the general continued, ‘you ordered the Rosetta out of the warp.’
Korvane was stunned. He had no recollection of issuing such an order. He vividly recalled the creature’s promises, her silky skin, and the touch of her lips upon his neck.
‘Korvane?’ General Gauge leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on the polished wooden surface of the conference table. ‘Korvane, when you issued that order, you saved the life and soul of every man and woman on this vessel. It was only the fact that the Rosetta was exiting the warp at the point where the Gellar field was breached that stopped… what happened to the shuttle happening to us all. You have my profound thanks, Korvane. You cannot know how much we owe you.’
Korvane turned back towards the viewing portal. The darkness was all-encompassing, matching the emptiness he felt might consume his soul now that the creature was gone. Somewhere out there, in the utter dark, was a stellar body, and beyond that, the rendezvous point at which the fleet would muster, half way across the Damocles Gulf. Further still, he mused, was an entire empire, but all of that paled into insignificance before one single fact. His stepsister was out there, and, if the creature’s words were to be believed, she was not very far away.
It occurred to him that hatred had stolen him from the creature’s embrace. His stepsister might have saved him, Korvane mused, but she would pay the very highest price for doing so.
Chapter Nine
‘Welcome aboard our vessel,’ the tall, robed alien envoy said, addressing Brielle. His face was wide and flat, and he lacked a visible nose, yet Brielle could see that his grey-blue skin was wrinkled and worn with age, just like a human’s. ‘I trust your voyage has been a comfortable one.’
Brielle, Naal at her back, stood in the centre of a wide, oval chamber, facing the envoy and his retinue. Long, scroll-like flags hung from the high ceiling, each adorned with the alien lettering of the tau. Having fled the system aboard a stolen tau shuttle, Brielle, Naal and the prisoners they had released had rendezvoused with a vessel of the so-called ‘Water Caste’, the arm of the Tau Empire responsible, Naal had explained, for diplomacy and trade.
‘I thank you for receiving me,’ Brielle replied, as her mind raced with the lessons her father had insisted she undergo years before, lessons in etiquette and courtly manners. She had paid scant attention, reasoning that her native intelligence would see her through any such situations. Ordinarily, it had, but here she was dealing with a representative of an entire xenos race. She knew that the fate of that race and many human worlds besides might hang upon her words.
‘It is an honour,’ the tau replied, ‘to have such an august individual as yourself aboard. I trust your voyage thus far was not overly taxing?’
Brielle forced her mind to a semblance of order, mentally filtering the alien diplomat’s words for any sign of duplicity. She acknowledged that she lacked the skill in such matters that her father displayed, or even, she hated to admit, that her brother had learned during his upbringing amongst the highest Imperial courts. As a consequence of her uncertainty, she found herself studying the alien’s flat visage, though she had great difficulty in reading his meaning beyond the words he spoke.
Naal coughed subtly, and she realised that the envoy was waiting for her answer. She felt annoyance at her performance, and her cheeks coloured. Hopefully, she thought, the tau would have little experience at reading human emotions, and she would be able to get through this.
‘Please,’ the envoy said before Brielle could speak. ‘forgive me my ill manners. You have travelled a great distance to meet with us, and I have not allowed you to rest now that you are here.’
‘Not at all,’ Brielle replied, determined not to let any weakness show. ‘We have undergone a long journey, but we are eager to meet with our new friends, the tau.’
The envoy dipped his head at Brielle’s words, and spread his long, spindly arms wide in a gesture that caused the material of his formal robes to sweep backwards as if upon a sudden breeze. Brielle estimated that the fabric would be worth a small fortune on a number of coreward planets, for its decorative simplicity belied the obviously superior quality of its workmanship. Then, as the envoy raised his head once more, she realised that the role of trader was no longer hers, and might never be so again. She had to forge her own course now, wherever that might take her.
‘In addition to welcoming you among us,’ the envoy continued, ‘I must express the gratitude of all the peoples of the Tau Empire for the return of those you released. I have heard only a small portion of the tale, but am given to understand that you have sacrificed a great deal in order to return to us those we believed lost.’
As one, the tau envoy and his retinue bent almost double, bowing in obviously heartfelt thanks. Silence filled the starkly lit chamber, and, all of a sudden, Brielle felt quite alone in the centre of the bright, white space. She felt too the sheer weight of the events unfolding around her, aware that her actions might ring down the ages in the annals of the Arcadius. If, she mused, her name was ever entered in them again.
After what felt to Brielle like long, drawn out minutes, the envoy and his retinue straightened. She took a deep breath, seeking to impose some order on her thoughts. Finally, she found what she hoped would be the correct words.
‘I come to you in the hope that my actions might benefit both my people, and yours,’ Brielle said, studying the envoy’s implacable features intently. ‘ I am honoured,’ she continued, ‘to be received in such a fashion. I trust that we shall find common cause to the benefit of all.’
Once more, the envoy dipped his head in obvious approval of Brielle’s words, the simple response filling her with relief. ‘Indeed, Lady Brie
lle,’ the envoy replied. ‘I trust that through our actions, the Greater Good might prevail, to the benefit of us all.’
Lucian awoke with a start, gasping for breath as he sat bolt upright in his bed. Brielle… he had awakened from a nightmare in which his daughter had faced some terrible threat, alone in the dark, and there was nothing he could do to aid her.
Forcing his breathing to a normal pace, Lucian cast about in the dark for the carafe of water he kept at his bedside. After a moment of fumbling he located the crystal vessel and drank deep. The cold liquid helped his mind clear, the last vestige of the stark nightmare evaporating as he came fully awake.
The question of his daughter’s fate had been gnawing at Lucian for weeks. As the voyage across the Damocles Gulf had dragged on, he had found himself dwelling upon it more and more. He had spoken of it with Korvane at the last fleet rendezvous point, but his son had appeared sullen and disinterested, as if in the grip of some deeper malaise. As the fleet had moved on, Lucian and his son had parted on bad terms, and that too preyed upon Lucian’s mind.
Realising sleep would not return anytime soon, Lucian cast off his bed sheet, and stood and donned a plain, informal outfit. At such times as this, Lucian would often walk the long, winding companionways of his vessel, allowing his steps to lead him wherever they would as his mind pondered whatever problem was troubling him.
Not that this problem would withstand much pondering, Lucian mused, for the issue was plain enough. Brielle had assaulted an inquisitor, wounding him almost unto death, and she had fled, he knew not where. Even for a rogue trader, who would ordinarily exist far above the laws of the Imperium, such an action was unpardonable. Lucian counted himself extremely fortunate that Inquisitor Grand had not sought to wreak revenge upon the remaining Arcadius, though it had occurred to him that the inquisitor might yet decide to do so.
