‘Ban?’ The voice was loud and very clear.
‘Elodie?’ Daur answered.
‘Ban, get us out. Ban? The shadow’s in here. We can’t find the door. Everything… everything’s moving around.’
‘Elodie… we’re trying to–’
‘Everyone’s scattering. Women and children. There was no door. The door just wasn’t there. The shadow came up. The bad shadow. Filling up everything. People – Ban? Are you still there?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘Ban, love,’ said Elodie’s voice, as though she was just on the other side of a curtain. ‘Ban, it’s killing people.’ She started to sob. Tears ran from Onabel’s eyes and more droplets scurried down the wall. ‘I’m so afraid. There’s blood everywhere. It’s cutting through the retinue and– Ban? I think it’s hungry. I think it’s eating to… to get stronger. To grow. It’s filling everything up. Blood levels are rising–’
‘She means flood levels,’ whispered Sancto.
‘No, she doesn’t,’ said Laksheema.
‘Elodie?’ Daur grimaced through his tears. His fists clenched. ‘Elodie, stay put. Hide. We’ll get in there.’
‘Blood levels are rising. The shadow’s in us. It makes the sound I heard. The sound at Low Keen. The butcher sound. Juniper says it smells like a woe machine. I’m so scared. Get me out. Get me fething out. Please. I’m so sorry, Ban. So sorry. I was right. I was right about her, and I should have said before. I should have said. I knew what she was. I should have made someone listen–’
Elodie’s voice dropped to a distant whisper.
‘Oh Throne,’ she breathed. ‘She’s right here.’
‘Elodie?’
‘Ban? I love you. I always will.’
‘I love you, Elodie. I–’
Onabel fell silent. Her lips stopped moving.
‘Elodie?’ Daur murmured, staring at the savant.
Onabel let her hand slip off the wall. It flopped down at her side. She turned very slowly and opened her eyes. She stared right at Daur.
And opened her mouth. And somehow produced a sound it should have been impossible for a human voice to copy.
The howling shriek of a bone saw.
The light globes overhead shattered like autogun rounds.
Onabel coughed, and bloody phlegm sprayed from her lips. She fell down, twitching.
Daur sank to his knees.
‘Holy fething throne,’ murmured Beltayn.
Laksheema knelt beside her stricken savant. Curth ran to Daur, and tried to get him up. He wouldn’t move, so she crouched beside him instead and wrapped her arm around him.
‘Get charges,’ said Gaunt. ‘Viktor? Get charges now. A demolition team. We’re taking this wall down.’
‘My lord, we cannot let it out,’ said Laksheema. ‘Under no circumstances. It’s your regiment, I know. I understand your despair. But we cannot permit this thing to exit the undercroft area.’
Gaunt looked down at her.
‘I think if it wants to come out, it will,’ he replied. ‘I think it can come through that wall, or any wall, as easily as it can seal a door. I think killing the feth out of it is our only option. So kindly, inquisitor, shut the feth up.’
‘I’ll get charges,’ said Hark.
Auerben put a hand on Gaunt’s arm. He looked at her. She nodded her head to the back of the group behind them.
The Beati had been sitting on the floor beside Beltayn’s ruined vox-set the whole time. She hadn’t spoken a word. She hadn’t uttered a sound. She had just sat as if chronic fatigue had finally overcome her entirely.
She rose to her feet.
‘If we leave it in there, it will keep feeding and get stronger,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘I’ve been trying to focus. Trying to… trying to know.’
‘Know?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Know what I should do.’
‘You should leave,’ said Grae. ‘You and the warmaster. All the vital personnel. It’s here to kill, to obliterate the command structure–’
‘It is,’ the Beati nodded. ‘It’s a Heritor weapon. An old one. A rare one. Asphodel made it. His finest and most nightmarish work. A woe machine like no other. It’s been growing this whole time, learning, maturing.’
‘How the feth do you know any of that?’ Curth snapped.
‘He told me,’ said the Beati. ‘Because I asked and I waited and he answered.’
‘Who?’ asked Curth.
The Beati looked at her with a sad smile as though the answer was unambiguous.
‘Move your poor savant,’ she said to Laksheema. ‘Captain Daur? I need you to move too. Stand back. Weapons up.’
Laksheema and Grae carried Onabel clear. Daur got up, and allowed Curth to walk him aside. The others raised their weapons in a clatter of charging bolts, released safeties and slotting clips.
The Beati approached the wall.
‘Wait,’ said Gaunt. ‘You’re too valuable.’
‘No one’s too valuable, Ibram,’ she replied, ‘and no life is disposable.’
She put out her hand and touched the spot where Onabel had been tapping. There was no ceremony, no fanfare, no warning. The stone work crumbled. It collapsed around her fingertips. Blocks fell out and bounced across the floor. Some disintegrated into dust. The rupture widened, radiating out from her touch. A section of whitewashed stone three metres wide flexed, folded and fell back into the darkness with a rumble like an avalanche.
Dust billowed around them, glittering the red target beams of the Scions’ aimed weapons.
There was a ragged hole, like the mouth of a cave. Beyond it, the air was a soft blackness tinged with red. They could smell smoke, the stench of waste water. Blood.
The Beati drew her sword. She looked weak and drained, as though collapsing the wall had sapped her fading strength even more, but her voice was strong.
‘We kill it,’ she said. ‘We kill it before it eats its fill and becomes strong enough to kill us.’
Ordinate Jan Jerik checked his timepiece again. Just over an hour until middle night. According to schedule, Corrod’s forces would be at the execution points by now. By sunrise, Urdesh could be a different world, a place of new prospects and possibilities. Indeed, the complexion of the Sabbat Worlds as a whole should have begun to change.
He snapped shut the engraved silver cover of the timepiece and slipped it back into his waistcoat pocket. An hour until middle night. It was quiet. The halls of House Ghentethi were almost silent, with only night staff at their stations. Outside, the rain had eased, and an easterly was spoiling in across the Great Bay, piling steep banks of dark cloud inland across the south-western limits of the city, black against the slate-black sky. Full dark. That, he gathered, is what soldiers called it.
It all seemed too still and silent for such a significant moment. The world, he thought, should be shaking apart as such fundamental changes were made.
There would be difficult and confusing times ahead, of course. He understood that. Existential transitions were painful. But Urdesh had weathered many such transitions in its history. It had grown resilient. His efforts would focus on keeping the house secure, and on ensuring that the Archon and his magisters appreciated and remembered the role of his clave appropriately. It would be an era of renewal, an end to the long conflict that had kept them cowering like starving dogs, an end to the decades of war that had convulsed the Sabbat Worlds. The chokehold of the Cult Mechanicus tyrants would be broken, and the claves would be free to prosper again in the ways they had done generations before. They would be the demiurge masters of the world-forge, and Urdesh would be the precious, beating heart of a new epoch. A new Archonate.
This had been explained and promised to him repeatedly by the intermediaries who had visited frequently over the last two months. Some had been insurgent chieftains, oth
ers rogue tech-shapers from the wasteland zones. Once or twice, Sekkite officers in hooded rain cloaks had appeared on the house loading docks in the dead of night. Some had conversed in Jan Jerik’s tongue, while others had brought servitors as translators. One had channelled a voice which had spoken out of him like the wheeze of ruptured bellows.
The promises had been consistent. In return for assistance and specialist intelligence, Ghentethi would be spared and favoured. In the aftermath, it would have priority access to food supplies and resources, and after that, a pact-bond granting it first pick of contract-projects and commissions of manufacture. Jan Jerik had already made a comprehensive list of the forge assets and industrial facilities he would demand as Ghentethi’s due recompense, as well as acquisition orders for the labour force he would require.
The war was about to end. It would not end all at once, and there would be lean years as the broken forces of the vanquished were prised out of the Sabbat Worlds and driven to flight. But it would be a victory, the victory long imagined, and it would begin in earnest tonight. Ruined and shamed, the crusaders would not attempt to return for generations to come. It would take lifetimes for them to recover from the loss, and gather strength enough to contemplate the prospect of a fresh campaign.
Lifetimes, if ever.
Jan Jerik took out his timepiece again, checked it, and put it away. Corrod would be in position. Hadrel would be in position. The future hinged on those uncanny creatures. There was no way to know how they had fared. One unscheduled venting of the thermal network could have ended them already, and no one would know. Dawn would come and the future would be unaltered. The hope of victory would have passed away invisibly.
But things needed to proceed on the assumption that they had prevailed. A data wafer lay beside his glass of amasec on the lacquered side table. On it was a code-burst written in Sekkite cipher, designed to be broadcast via wide-band vox on the lower frequency channel used by the Archonate’s communications network. Corrod had helped him to compose the specifics. A call to arms. An order of uprising to all the insurgent forces in the tattered skirts of the city and beyond. Eltath had been pregnable for months. There were cells embedded everywhere, even in the inner quarters, along with Sekkite combat packs that had gone to ground in the city rather than flowing out with the general retreat a few days earlier. The code-burst commended their mettle and loyalty, promised them spiritual reward and deliverance, and specified critical targets.
They would be no more than noise, a violent disruption intended to fog the situation and draw Imperial attention from the key objectives.
Of course, if Corrod was already dead, the uprising would be a meaningless snarl, swiftly put down by the Militarum divisions for no result. And the code-burst transmission would be tracked, and Ghentethi erased by crusade prosecution.
Jan Jerik thought of Corrod, of the abomination that had revealed itself in the freight elevator. The image made him shudder. He had allied his House with abhuman creatures. It had been a gruelling choice. His doubts over the last few weeks had been many, not least at the sight of Corrod’s apparently worthless wretches when they first arrived at the house door. It was a choice between the continued yoke of slavery to the Omnissiah of the Golden Throne, and the prospect of an age without the privations of chronic war. He still didn’t know if he could trust the warp-words of Sek’s changeling angels. He feared their terrible beauty. But he did know what a lifetime under the scourge of the Mars priesthood felt like.
He knew true monsters when he saw them. He knew where freedom lay. Life was a series of choices, and every choice contained an unknowable risk.
He reached for his timepiece again and stopped himself with a smile. He didn’t need to know the time, for it no longer mattered. He had made his choice an hour earlier when he sent the code-burst.
He sat back and waited for the dawn to bring whatever it would bring.
Van Voytz looked at the ordo rosette again, and then handed it back to the waiting interrogators.
‘This is from the Lord Executor?’ he said.
‘I have repeated his words precisely, lord,’ one of them replied. ‘He insisted on that.’
Van Voytz nodded, and they stepped back. He stood for a moment and surveyed the war room. He’d come down to the main floor, his favourite place, among the strategium tables and the bustle of tactical staff. They’d been on red condition for the best part of an hour. Chevrons still flashed on the alert boards, though he’d had the interminable klaxons muted to allow them space to think.
He went to his station, and quickly wrote down a general command on a signal pad. He tore the sheet off and handed it to a runner.
‘Take this to the watch room,’ he said. He looked at his console, and began to type his authority code in.
‘You have accessed Central Classified Command Notation,’ an adept at the desk beside him said immediately.
‘I know,’ said Van Voytz. He continued to type.
‘This order burst will instruct on the General Band to all stations,’ the adept said.
‘I should hope so,’ Van Voytz replied. ‘I’m not so old I got the damn coding wrong.’
‘You have entered a Priority One Red Condition mandate. This will be an Unconditional and General Order to all personnel in the palace zone.’
‘Yes, it will,’ said Van Voytz.
‘What’s going on, Barthol?’
Van Voytz looked up from the keypad. Urienz had crossed the war room floor to join him.
‘I’m ordering full evacuation.’
‘You’re joking, surely?’ The brows of Urienz’s pugnacious face narrowed.
‘No. Direct instruction from the Lord Executor.’
‘This is an attack, then?’ Urienz asked.
‘There’s something going off in the sub levels,’ said Van Voytz.
‘Well, they haven’t got in there,’ said Urienz.
‘Gaunt says something has. An incursion. Clearly one he considers a credible threat.’
He resumed typing.
Urienz took hold of his wrist, gently but firmly. ‘Macaroth won’t wear this, Barthol,’ he said.
‘Well, he’s not in a position to argue.’
‘I did what Gaunt asked,’ Urienz said. ‘I went to Macaroth. As usual, he was furious about the interruption. I had to weather another of his tirades. I got a little sense out of him when his anger blew out. He’s aware that there’s a situation in the undercroft levels. He believes it’s–’
‘What?’ asked Van Voytz.
‘A misidentification. Perhaps the product of technical problems, perhaps some remote influence by the Archenemy. A distraction, Barthol. Macaroth insists that any significant Archenemy counter assault is a week away at least. There’s nothing of substance within a hundred and twenty kilometres of Eltath. Look, in the last two hours we’ve stepped up from amber status to red condition, plus the secondary order. Macaroth’s livid. The enemy’s poking at us somehow, trying to get us to dance a jig and lose our grip on the game. And we’re dancing, Barthol. Dancing like idiots.’
Van Voytz scowled at him. ‘The Beati supported Gaunt’s concern,’ he said.
‘And praise be to her,’ said Urienz. ‘But she’s a figurehead, a field commander. It’s not her place to direct strategy. An evacuation, Barthol? That would be a disaster. If this is anything solid, it’s a psychological attack intended to spook us into disarray before next week’s assault. An evacuation is exactly the sort of mayhem it’s designed to cause. The Sek packs will roll in across Grizmund’s line in the south west and find high command camping in the streets and shitting in doorways.’
‘I have an order, Vitus,’ said Van Voytz.
‘Well, the warmaster will have your balls in a monogrammed box if you follow it.’
Van Voytz shook his head. ‘I know Gaunt,’ he said. ‘He’s many things. But he’s
no fool. If he says there’s cause, there’s cause. Throne’s sake, Urienz, he’s seen more of this shit first-hand than you or me. And that doesn’t matter anyway. He’s the Lord Executor. This is his order.’
Urienz shrugged. His broad, powerful frame stretched at his tailored blue jacket.
‘Your funeral,’ he said.
‘Better mine than everybody’s,’ replied Van Voytz.
He smiled at his fellow lord.
‘Yours too, actually,’ he added. ‘Gather an escort company and convey the warmaster from the palace.’
‘You bastard,’ Urienz replied, with a sorry shake of his head. ‘Can’t you charge Lugo with that?’
An adept at a nearby station called out and held up a signal form. Marshal Tzara strode across and took it. She brought it through the hustle of the floor to Van Voytz and Urienz.
‘An alert from vox-net oversight,’ she said, frowning. ‘Unauthorised broadcast detected about an hour ago. Code-burst, wide-band, low numbers.’
‘Origin?’ asked Van Voytz.
‘Vapourial or Millgate. They’re working to lock the source.’
‘Could be one of ours, strayed from the line,’ said Van Voytz.
‘Damn Helixid no doubt,’ added Urienz.
‘No,’ said Tzara. ‘It was encrypted. Cipher division is searching for a key. It’s not a Throne pattern. Ciphers grade a seventy-eight per cent likelihood that it’s a Sanguinary code, probably Sekkite.’
‘What are they doing, transmitting from down there?’ Van Voytz asked. ‘That’s under the line.’
‘And they’re painting a target on their backs,’ said Urienz. ‘Twenty minutes, and we’ll have Valks executing gun runs on the position.’
‘Call it in,’ said Van Voytz. ‘As soon as we have a lock.’
‘The issue is not who is sending and how swiftly we can wipe them,’ said Tzara. Her tone was gruff and no-nonsense. ‘The issue is who was listening. Wide-band, a transmitter of that power… it could only be received inside the city bounds.’
Van Voytz glanced up. A section chief at strategium station four had just raised his hand, clutching a signal form. Within seconds, another hand had risen at station six, then two at station eight. Three at tac relay. Two at forward obs. One at vox coordination. Five, all at once, at acoustic track. Still more hands rose, brandishing forms.
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