Maledictions

by Graham McNeill et al.

  ‘I knew the flagship wouldn’t be much safer,’ she said, ‘but I reasoned it would at least be larger, with more places to hide and more opportunities to escape.’ Her ceramite teeth neatly clipped through the nail she was working on. Rather than spit the clipping into the shrubbery, she wiped it away and gazed absently into the distance.

  ‘Can you describe the colours you saw on the aeldari corsairs?’

  Monika blinked and shook her head, focusing her mind on the present.

  Inquisitor Deidara stared at her. Her countenance held only a quiet patience, waiting for an answer that would come eventually.

  ‘I… I can’t be sure. They bore orange, I think. Orange tabards, with white face masks.’

  Inquisitor Deidara jotted a note with her stylus. Monika hated these meetings as much as she loved them. Seeing her friend and mentor again thrilled her in a way nothing else could, just as it crushed her again to see Deidara leave, knowing she would probably never be allowed outside these walls. Monika hated her own ignorance every time Deidara asked for an answer she couldn’t immediately provide. She knew that her mind was like a spoil pool: broken, tainted and ruined, but still dotted with useful nuggets of ore for a searcher with the patience to sift through it.

  ‘Is that helpful?’ she asked.

  Inquisitor Deidara hailed originally from Baal, and her face was customarily as expressive and emotive as the graven masks of the Blood Angels that protected it. Monika had spent years travelling with her master, and had learned to read the tiniest traces in the inquisitor’s visage, the barest hints of what she truly felt. The inquisitor favoured her with the tiniest upturn of her mouth, an expression Monika knew to be a warm smile. The inquisitor had changed in the years of Monika’s captivity, and incrementally more so in the months of her convalescence, but beneath the strands of hair gone steel-grey, behind the eyes now framed by a few wrinkles more, Deidara remained the same woman that Monika had sworn to follow to the end of her days.

  ‘It is,’ said the inquisitor. She tapped her data-slate and considered for a moment. ‘Your sojourn to the corsair flagship: how many escape attempts had you made before this? How long into your captivity was it?’

  Monika shook her head. ‘It’s hard to recall, precisely. They all blur together. Each time the Ilarch played this game, where she allowed me to believe I’d escaped, she let me go for longer and longer before revealing herself. I wandered the corsair ship for a few hours, so I would have already been a prisoner for over a year. But it would have been before the capture of the Maw; that time lasted days.’ Then, drukhari had fought agents of the Inquisition on the space hulk known as the Maw of Famine, so hopefully the inquisitor would be able to establish an approximate time range. The Ilarch had allowed Monika to escape into the space hulk in the forlorn hope of finding Inquisition forces, although of course Kelaene had recaptured her before she ever got close to rescue. As she had wandered the pitch-black labyrinth of the space hulk, where one wrecked starship melded jarringly into another, amid the damning, oppressive silence of the void, odd auditory hallucinations eating away at her sanity, time itself had begun to bleed away…

  ‘Sister Amalia tells me you’ve been having trouble eating.’

  Monika shook her head, forcing herself back from the siren call of her memories to the safety of the present. She bit down on the inside of her lip, the sharp pain and slight tinge of blood reminding her to say here, here, here; at least long enough to do her duty and be of use to the inquisitor.

  ‘I eat. Just very carefully.’

  Deidara nodded and continued making notes on her data-slate. The water of the Cressidian Sea was clear and blue, but the horizon was marred by a line of thick, black clouds. The storms would be coming, soon. Monika sometimes wondered why they used St. Solangia’s as a sanatorium, given its annual weather and the terror it caused among the patients, but she supposed a few days of disruptive weather was worth a year of peace and tranquillity otherwise.

  ‘There’s something else we need to discuss,’ said the inquisitor.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Sister Rozia.’

  Monika nodded, her attention fully on the present again. Although St. Solangia’s was officially a medicae facility, the abbey was still a holy shrine to the Emperor, and warranted His protection. The Adepta Sororitas assigned only a single Battle Sister to it, but her value was immense, certainly to Monika. When her mind began to spin and connect events with no apparent link save her own paranoid imagination, Sister Rozia alone gave her words credence. Where Sister Amalia dismissed her every statement as the twisting creation of a damaged mind, Sister Rozia treated Monika as a fellow warrior. She gave Monika’s words due consideration, and weighed the evidence that Monika presented without bias.

  ‘She’s off-world,’ said Monika. ‘The Order of the Sacred Rose requires her to attend live-fire combat exercises once per solar cycle. She’s currently on Summanus Primaris, set to return by the end of the week.’ She sounded rote when saying it, which she was. Sister Amalia had reminded Monika of Sister Rozia’s absence several times a day for weeks before it came. Sometimes, when Monika’s psychoses grew particularly pronounced, Rozia was the only person in the abbey that could talk Monika down, and Sister Amalia wanted to be sure that Monika didn’t have an episode of paranoia compounded by being unable to remember where the person she trusted most had gone. When the storms reached their peak, plunging the abbey into darkness for a day or more, the hospitallers would have their hands full with patients unable to cope with the stress. During the nights, parts of the abbey would become a screaming madhouse.

  ‘Sister Rozia is dead,’ said the inquisitor.

  Monika’s face went cold. She heard the inquisitor speak on, but she was only half-engaged. Killed during the live-fire exercise. True servant of the Golden Throne. Accidental discharge of a krak grenade.

  She half-listened to Deidara. The inquisitor asked her perfunctory questions, which she gave perfunctory answers to, but Deidara had to realise that her former interrogator had slipped back into the refuge of her own mind. The last thing Monika wanted was to lose herself to paranoia right in front of her old mentor, but she needed time to think. The yearly storms were always the most dangerous time. The typhoons that blew in across the sea would block out communications for a day, sometimes as long as a week. For the last three years, Rozia had always listened to her and been especially alert, but without her, who would keep the abbey safe?

  She couldn’t control the currents of an uncaring universe. Sometimes, Monika knew, you couldn’t even control what happened to your own person. The only thing you could control was your own reactions. She admonished herself over and over to stay calm and controlled. The garden faded away, leaving Deidara’s presence as her only connection to the world. Eventually, even that faded away.

  Monika opened her eyes. This was no time to get lost in delusions. The halls of the corsair vessel were large and arched, echoing every sound within them. The smooth white surface of the floor seemed determined to betray her, and it took every ounce of effort just to take a single step without her boots sending up an echoing warning of her presence.

  She’d come too far to fail now. She had starved herself for weeks to ensure her features were gaunt enough to pass as one of the drukhari. She’d spent several agonising hours with a pilfered blade sharpener, filing her own teeth down to the wicked points that marked the aerial gang members. She kept herself clothed head-to-toe in one of their body-hugging flight suits, which she’d stolen from a dead hellion. She had armed herself with his weapons, and even then kept herself as far back as she could from the other skyboard-riding maniacs that the Ilarch seemed to attract so readily. She was as prepared as she could make herself.

  The Marauder was set to meet a corsair baron to trade supplies for the Imperial captives the corsairs had recently acquired. If they had taken as large a force as the rumours claimed,
then Monika knew there had to be a shuttle or small landing craft among the prizes. The drukhari would have no interest in such primitive technology, but the corsairs would keep such ‘treasures’ to trade with other xenos, or with renegades from the Imperium of Man.

  From behind her, she heard squabbling: the hellions she’d accompanied aboard, arguing vehemently with the corsair reavers they were fraternising with. Each minute Monika had spent among the hellions had been both elation and torment in one. If the squabbling killers realised her deception, they would torture her to death before even considering the consequences of destroying the Ilarch’s favourite pet. Monika didn’t care; an agonising death was preferable to the ceaseless anguish of being Kelaene’s plaything. Her captor had allowed her to attempt an escape several times before, but each time had revealed the opportunity to be nothing more than a trap to taunt her. Never before had she gotten so far, however, nor dared so much. This deep in the bowels of a corsair ship, she was beyond Kelaene’s power. If she was discovered now, at least her death at the hands of the corsairs would be swift.

  Monika heard the corsairs before she saw them. The hallway made a sharp curve, and there they were: two reavers clad in the bright orange armour of the corsair forces. They stood guard before a door that, by Monika’s guess, had to be their secondary cargo bay. If there were captured enemy ships, that’s where they would be. Fortunately for her, it seemed that aeldari troops were lacking in any sort of discipline outside of the craftworlds. The two guards were bickering with themselves over a small cache of intoxicants they’d purchased, won or stolen from their drukhari guests.

  Monika didn’t give them time to formulate an opinion of her. As she passed the guards, she shot the closest one in the back. The hissing splinter pistol discharged a cluster of needles into her victim, who arched his back and collapsed, the poison flooding his system so quickly that it paralysed his lungs before he could even scream. Before he had hit the ground, shaking and foaming at the mouth, she lunged over his collapsing body to stab the other guard with her wychblade. He started to yell, but her blood was up. Two years of drukhari captivity had honed her reflexes to their peak, and her arm moved like lightning, slamming the slim blade into the reaver’s throat, cutting his cry of alarm short. He tried to grab for a weapon, but she bore him to the ground, stabbing him over and over.

  If anyone had heard the noise, she would be discovered in moments. She emptied the small satchel of drugs into her pockets. She tucked the splinter pistol into the combat webbing of her stolen gear, but left the wychblade protruding from the dead reaver. If anyone found the corpses, let them assume they’d died in a fight with a visiting hellion over stolen drugs.

  Monika spun and hit the rune on the bay door. It hissed open, revealing a cargo bay stacked with materiel. Her intuition had been correct: half a dozen escape pods littered the spoils, along with an Aquila lander. Only a single obstacle remained between her and salvation: a mob of aeldari, mixed between the drukhari and corsair crew. At the head stood the twin forms of the Ilarch and the corsair baron. As Monika reeled, the assembled crews burst into laughter.

  ‘You may remove your ludicrous disguise whenever you wish, mon-keigh,’ Kelaene said. ‘Your stolen apparel will need to be burned, I think. My hellions have been complaining of your stench since our wager began, so I doubt anyone will wear it again.’ The Ilarch smiled suddenly, as if cruel inspiration had struck her. ‘However, as reward for your success, I’ll permit you to keep those wicked teeth you’ve fashioned for yourself.’

  The aeldari laughed all the harder. Monika stumbled away, their laughter echoing behind her. She ran, looking for a place to hide, but knew it was futile. The Ilarch would always find her.

  A low metallic squeal woke her. Monika opened her eyes, her heart pounding. The crisscrossed springs of her bed stared back at her. Something was wrong. She listened intently, and a moment later was rewarded with the sound of the window above her bed slowly being opened.

  Monika moved her arm slowly and silently, over to the loose spring. It had taken her days to work it loose with no tools, and still more time to straighten a third of its length and grind the tip of the straight portion to a crude point. The bed groaned as a weight pushed on it from above. Monika smiled. No matter how horrible the prediction, there was, at least, small comfort in knowing that you were right. The agents of the Ilarch had finally come for her. Monika pulled her arm tight to her chest, and waited for her moment as the intruder shifted their weight again, making the springs above her shift and pop.

  When a pale face finally peered beneath the bed, Monika struck, driving her shiv into the enemy’s eye socket. She wrenched her body to the side, hurling herself out into the cell as the would-be assassin howled. Monika leaped to her feet and ran to the door. Before she could throw it open, a pair of pale hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her back.

  Monika threw her head backwards, and the wet crack of a breaking nose told her that the pain blossoming on the back of her skull was nothing compared to her attacker’s. She stamped on their instep and turned, wrenching her arms loose.

  The intruder was slight, his one remaining eye the fathomless black of the drukhari. He wore no uniform or insignia, but his feet and arms were bare, a sure sign of either a wych or a hellion. His features were delicate but drawn, in the feral manner of a drukhari gone too long without inflicting suffering. He reached for her, her shiv still protruding from his face. Monika hissed and yanked the weapon from her assailant’s ruined eye. With a ragged scream, she buried it in his abdomen over and over, in a flurry of vicious strikes. The drukhari grasped his bleeding gut and staggered away and the moment he disengaged, Monika bolted.

  Stone halls were much quieter than corsair ships. Monika fled through the halls of the abbey as silent as a shadow, running on the balls of her feet to reduce her noise nearly entirely. She crouched as she scurried, keeping to the corners and the darkness; she couldn’t be certain how many of the Ilarch’s servants were after her, or, more worryingly, how many of the abbey’s staff were secretly working for the drukhari. The wing of the old abbey that had been given over to guest quarters was close, though. That’s where she would find Deidara.

  ‘Do you think you’ve learned everything she knows?’

  Sister Amalia’s voice brought Monika up short. She pressed herself against the wall outside the inquisitor’s quarters. That an agent of the Imperium as exalted as Amalia could betray her Order for the drukhari was almost unthinkable, but Monika’s paranoia was just deep enough to encompass the notion, and so she listened intently to Amalia’s conversation rather than burst in.

  ‘Not by half.’ Inquisitor Deidara’s voice was tinged with scorn. ‘She spent a decade in the clutches of the drukhari. The intelligence she’s gathered has already proven valuable, and likely will continue to do so.’

  ‘But you worry it takes too long?’

  ‘No,’ said Deidara. ‘Monika withstood her trials with more resilience than most would have, and I’m willing to leave her to her well-earned rest, taking anything she might provide for me as a service beyond what was required of her. Some within the Ordo Xenos disagree, however. The raids in the sector grow bolder each year, and there are some who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to find a weakness among the drukhari, even if it meant putting Monika to the question with the harshest of measures.’

  Satisfied that neither of the women were conspiring against her, Monika rolled around the corner. Deidara and Amalia, sitting on the bed and a stool respectively, leaped to their feet. Monika held her hands up, the blood on them dragging sharp focus from their shock.

  ‘Drukhari,’ she said. ‘Trying to abduct me. The Ilarch wants her pet back.’

  ‘The Ilarch is dead,’ said Sister Amalia. ‘You slew her yourself.’

  ‘The Marauder lives,’ said Monika. She held her hands aloft. ‘Do you need further proof?’

  Amalia star
ted to respond, but Deidara cut her off. ‘Let us see this intruder,’ she said. The inquisitor put up a hand to stave off Amalia’s protests. ‘Blood doesn’t come from nowhere, Sister Amalia.’

  The three of them returned to the cell.

  It was empty.

  ‘He was here!’ Monika protested. She gestured to the bed. ‘He came in through the window, and tried to attack me!’

  There was no trace of the attacker. Not only was there no corpse, there was no blood either. Only Monika’s sharpened bed spring, its metallic point coated with nothing more than a faint patina of rust. The window was closed; securely locked from the outside.

  The world spun rapidly out of control. Monika argued, insistently. Amalia denied, forcefully. Deidara tried to calm her friend, to ask reasonable questions, but Monika knew the truth: Rozia’s death was no accident, and this proved it. The Marauder was coming for her. The worst part was seeing the dwindling trust in Deidara’s face. The less she was believed, the angrier she grew. The orderlies had to be called. It took three of them, plus Amalia and Deidara, to hold her down and administer the injection. She bucked and twisted as Deidara whispered in her ear, swearing to get to the bottom of whatever was happening to her, but it was too late for Monika to respond: darkness rushed up to pull her down.

  The darkness of toxic clouds parted to reveal the sprawling urban hellscape beneath them. The Ilarch’s raiders knifed through the twisting streets below them, gleefully gunning down the panicking civilians. Lines of Astra Militarum troops blocked the thoroughfares only to see wyches vault over their heads, carving their ranks into sprays of blood and gobbets of quivering meat. Many of the manufactoria were in flames, their safety mechanisms disabled and running amok. Roiling chem-smoke turned the sky black, punctuated by the explosions of missiles being traded between Razorwing jets and the scattered remnants of the planet’s aerial defenders.