Blackstone Fortress

by Darius Hinks

  The last House Draik guard fell, a rusty blade embedded in his chest, and the Bullosus brother carrying the caged singer doubled over as Guardsmen fired repeatedly into his stomach, tearing him down and leaving only Grusel still standing. He howled and spun on his heel, firing as he turned, ripping the Guardsmen to shreds with a hail of gunfire and cutting others down with his scythe.

  ‘Keep moving!’ cried Taddeus, pummelling his way towards the doorway.

  Bullosus had run out of ammunition and hurled his gun at the Guardsmen, but he was still hacking towards Audus with his scythe.

  As Isola fired back over her shoulder, she noticed that Bullosus’ blade did not just cut through the Guardsmen, but sliced through the Blackstone too, leaving great gouges in the floor. The lumbering bounty hunter was quickly catching up with them, flinging corpses aside and howling as he closed in on Audus. The pilot was too busy defending herself from the Guardsmen to do anything about Bullosus, though, firing into the lurching cadavers and trying to follow Taddeus.

  The priest had almost reached the doorway when a dull clanging sound filled the chamber. One by one, each of the doors were slamming shut.

  Taddeus cried out in alarm and powered on through the undead, punching and swinging his mace with even more ferocity, but before he reached the doorway it slammed down, trapping them in the chamber. Taddeus howled and whirled around, his back to the door, smashing corpses aside as they crowded round him.

  Audus and the others made it to the door and stood at his side, firing and punching as the crowd of undead soldiers flooded through the hall towards them. Bullosus was still visible, his pale bulk rearing up over the burnt Guardsmen as he slashed his way towards Audus. He was only a dozen feet away now, but he was trailing a mob of the soldiers – they were hanging from his arms and legs, trying to drag him down, slowing his headlong charge towards the pilot. The bounty hunter was cursing as he fought, glaring at the huge crowds of Guardsmen that now surrounded him.

  ‘Bullosus’ scythe!’ gasped Isola, leaning towards Taddeus as they fought. ‘It cuts through the Blackstone!’

  The priest nodded. ‘Make him a path!’ he cried to Vorne.

  Vorne fired her flamer, ripping a channel through the undead and creating an opening for the bounty hunter.

  ‘This way!’ cried Taddeus, waving Bullosus over.

  The bounty hunter lowered his head and charged, smashing through the flaming ranks and crashing into the door behind Taddeus.

  ‘You’re mine!’ he roared, pointing the blazing scythe at Audus.

  She stepped back and pointed her pistol at his head.

  The Guardsmen surged forwards, forcing Audus and Bullosus to turn their weapons back on the mob.

  ‘We’re all dead if we don’t get through this door!’ cried Isola, looking up at Bullosus. ‘Can you cut it down?’

  Bullosus was too busy fending off the Guardsmen to hear.

  ‘Cut the door down!’ she cried again, grabbing his arm.

  He rounded on her with a snarl, but then seemed to register what she meant. He looked at his scythe, then at the door, then lashed out, nearly taking Isola’s head off in the process. The blade carved straight through the door, cutting a long, narrow channel but not helping them escape the teeming mass of Guardsmen.

  Audus cried out in pain and thudded into Isola, clutching the side of her head, haloed by a shower of blood. Isola gunned down the Guardsman that had shot Audus and several more at the same time.

  ‘Get it down!’ she howled at Bullosus, hammering her fist against the door.

  He lunged again and again, thrusting the scythe back and forth, tearing great chunks from the door. It showed no sign of falling or opening, but Bullosus attacked it with such ferocity that he began to rip through its centre, splintering the thick plate and revealing a worrying glimpse of what lay on the other side.

  Audus was slumped against Isola, clutching her head wound, but Isola managed to twist and look through the hole Bullosus was making. ‘Throne,’ she muttered.

  There was an apocalypse taking place in the next chamber. Cathedral-sized slabs of wall were crashing into each other, detonating and shattering as they hit, filling the cavernous space with noise and violence. At the far end there was a blinding corona, a sphere of light that threw brutal, dramatic shadows through the mayhem. It looked like the Blackstone was ripping itself apart. It looked like the death throes of a star.

  ‘The Emperor’s flame!’ cried Taddeus, slamming his mace into the surging crowds of Guardsmen. His face and robes were drenched in blood and filth, but he looked like an ecstatic saint, his eyes reflecting the light of the sphere.

  Bullosus hacked at the door a few more times, then stooped and stepped through the gap.

  The priests followed, then Isola, half carrying Audus through the hole.

  23

  There was no need to focus on the pain any more – Draik could feel little else. As he stumbled through chamber after chamber, every inch of his skin howled in complaint. The hall of stars had left his skin blackened and his uniform in tatters. He was in too much pain to examine the rooms that followed. He was vaguely aware of what might have been control panels, banks of raised platforms containing more pools of black liquid, but he made a straight line through every room. His head was bowed and his pistol was hanging loosely in his grip, but even without Taddeus Draik was sure of his route. He felt like a blood cell, racing back towards a heart. Emanating from somewhere up ahead was the grinding, creaking sound of the Blackstone’s core. It was the noise he had been hearing, on and off, since they first landed, but since his revival it had been even louder, making him flinch and twitch as he ran.

  Draik felt like a stranger in his own body. The change he had felt after his resurrection was growing more pronounced. The old certainties no longer seemed so certain. He had come to Precipice to raise himself from the mire – to regain his place at the head of House Draik and rule over lesser men. But now – now there was another will driving him on. He still carried a burning desire to reach the vault, but he was no longer sure it was his desire. He felt as though there were an invisible cord, dragging him through trial after trial, testing him with all the unyielding rigour that his father had done. Gauging his worth, but for what?

  Draik passed through a doorway and cried out in anguish. Ahead of him was the long gallery with the charred corpses and the aqueduct running down its length.

  ‘You’re dead,’ said the same drukhari who had tormented him earlier.

  ‘No,’ he gasped, his voice ragged from his exertions and his head pounding with the Blackstone’s pulse. For a moment, he almost faltered. He was a Draik – accepting defeat was as alien to him as the creature that was sprawled on the floor a few feet away. But this was too much. After everything he had endured, to be back here again, no closer to the vault, the same impassable route ahead of him.

  He could feel the Blackstone in his head, waiting to see his response; waiting to see if he would break.

  ‘Never,’ he breathed.

  He silenced the alien with a headshot, killing it for a second time, then sprinted across the balcony, drawing out the axial interrupter, fastening it to his wrist and setting the timer as he ran.

  With a cry of defiance, he leapt out across the current and triggered the device.

  Pain.

  Darkness.

  The face of his father. The duke was stern and unyielding. This was before he had given up on his son. He was lunging harder and faster, quizzing him on Imperial governance, burying him under history books, reciting martial treatises and the intricacies of galactic trade.

  The face of his sister, bitter and hurt, willing him to fail.

  ‘No!’ he howled, his heart thudding painfully back into life.

  Sparks flashed across his eye, blinding him.

  He rose, jittery and weak, and staggered away from
the sluice into the next chamber.

  His heart had been violently stopped and brutally restarted and, incredibly, for a second time it had endured.

  ‘You’re dead,’ said the drukhari as Draik stumbled into the same chamber for a third time: the charred bodies, the drukhari, the aqueduct – everything exactly as before.

  Draik dropped to his knees and clutched his head. His skull felt like it was being crushed, groaning and straining. His heart was stuttering wildly after being so ill-treated, and his whole body was jerking and twitching as lines of electricity flashed across his tattered uniform. The Blackstone’s presence bore down on him, peeling back the layers of his soul.

  ‘What do you want?’ he demanded, his words little more than a whisper.

  The alien sniggered.

  Draik stood, leant against the wall to steady himself, and shot the drukhari for a third time. Then he tried to run across the room, making for the edge of the balcony and the aqueduct that stretched out from its centre.

  He weaved like a drunk, trembling and blinded by after-images.

  He almost missed the entrance to the aqueduct and toppled into the void below, but managed to correct himself at the last minute. He lacked the strength to jump, but before he fell into the rushing oil he triggered the axial interrupter.

  Killing himself. Again.

  24

  Something was picking at Draik’s skin, clawing and pecking. His eye was closed but he pictured Grekh leaning over him, placing mutilated insects in his mouth, preparing to eat his flesh.

  ‘Get back!’ he cried, sitting up.

  Shapes fluttered away from him – carrion birds, filling the air with noise as they launched, thrashing their wings and screaming. A pale light was coming from somewhere and, as Draik’s vision cleared, he saw that they were not birds, but angular approximations of birds – flat, triangular plates of metal, joined together by blades of the same lustreless ore. Some of them were still on him, jamming their blades into his legs, and he waved his arm weakly, shooing them away.

  He looked down at his body and gasped. He looked worse than any of the wretches he had encountered in the Skeins: bloody, burned and covered in lesions. His heartbeat was less erratic but the grinding pulse in his head was louder, causing his teeth to clatter as though he were freezing.

  He probably was freezing. There was frost all over his exposed patches of skin and his breath escaped in glittering plumes.

  The bird-things had scattered, so he tried to sit up and look around. His arms were weak, but he managed to get upright and even stand, swaying slightly as he looked into the half-light.

  The Blackstone was playing tricks on him again. He was back where he very first started. Ahead of him was the broad, diamond-shaped plateau they had left the Vanguard on. He could not see the shuttle, but he knew that if he walked the half a mile or so to the exit he would see it, waiting patiently on the landing platform, his deck crew inside.

  For a moment, Draik wondered if all of his struggles had led him back to his own ship. Then he laughed in disbelief. On the far side of the chamber, a few hundred feet from where they had first entered the Blackstone, was a tall, narrow aperture. It had not been there when they first landed, he was sure of it. Even in the half-light he would have noticed such a specific design. He shook his head in wonder. The stones arrayed around the doorway were formed into a colourless mosaic, an image of a spherical cage, just like the one on the sketch he was carrying. It was a clear, deliberate signal that this was the route he needed. With more certainty than ever before, he felt the Blackstone speaking to him, guiding him, offering him a way in.

  He was about to rush across the chamber when he remembered what happened last time – his blood had triggered an avalanche of drones. He looked down at his ruined body. He was a wreck, but none of his wounds looked like they would spill much blood – just the small punctures where the winged creatures had been pecking him and the blisters where the electricity had burned through his skin. The more serious injuries, like the hole where Corval had shot him, had already been bound.

  At the thought of Corval his excitement faltered. He still felt shocked and wounded by the betrayal. Even now he could not understand it. What could have driven Corval to such an act? And what was he doing now? What might he do to Isola and the others?

  He shook his head. There was nothing he could do but keep going. The Blackstone had offered him a way to reach the vault and he could not go back. He had to seize this chance. Everything else would have to wait.

  He headed off through the shadows, struggling to walk in a straight line, keeping his gaze locked on the distant door. As he went, Draik noticed that the winged drones had returned in greater numbers, whirling overhead, clattering and screeching. Despite his exhaustion, he picked up his pace, trying to run as they swooped down towards him, letting out shrill scraping noises as he lashed out at them with his rapier. One of them latched on to the back of his neck, stabbing through his coat and tearing his skin.

  He sliced it in two, then fired off a few shots, kicking more of the drones from the air and dispersing the others. Before they recovered enough to attack again he sprinted on, reached the doorway and left the hall.

  The other side of the doorway was a wall of blackness so Draik did not notice the absence of a floor. He plummeted through the air and landed with a splash in another channel of black liquid.

  He had reached the source of the noise in his head. He was in an enormous valley – a smooth-sided chasm with a river of oil running down its centre. Up ahead of him, at the far end of the valley, was what looked like a fallen star, turning slowly in the air, spraying lines of silver through the darkness. It would have been a beautiful scene, if not for the ferocity of the destruction smashing through it. Walls and ceilings were collapsing everywhere he looked. It was an apocalypse to match the visions painted on Taddeus’ barge. The noise was no longer in his head, but all around him, tearing the air apart with its violence.

  The sphere of light was the Ascuris Vault, Draik had no doubt. He could see the spherical cage within the blaze. But there was no time to feel exultant. Slabs of the fortress were crashing down all around him, hurling him across the river on great surges of oil. It was clearly not sprung from the same source as the liquid in the canal, because it was harmless, but he was still likely to die if he didn’t find shelter quickly.

  He struck out across the liquid, swimming as fast as he could manage, and reached a column that had toppled into the whirling currents. It looked like a vast arm reaching into the depths. He clambered up onto it using his grappling hooks, then stumbled along its length, struggling not to fall as more tremors jolted through the chamber.

  At the top of the crevasse he turned and raced through the chaos, dodging and ducking as architecture thundered down all around him. He was making for the distant vault when he saw an incongruous flash of colour in the storm of black and grey: red cloth, embroidered with gold sigils. It looked familiar.

  Draik veered off course to investigate. As he got closer, a violent rage boiled up through him. It was Corval’s cloak. It was ripped and scorched but still intact, and it was stretching down into another, smaller chasm that had opened alongside the main one.

  The force of the avalanche was still growing, like a measure of Draik’s rage, as he rushed towards the fissure. He was a few feet away when the floor gave way, sundering with a sound like the crack of brittle bones. He tried to halt but his momentum was too great and he toppled into the crevice.

  Draik bounced painfully off ridges and jagged edges before managing to lash out with his grappling hook and halt his fall.

  He was hanging on to the hook by one hand, his feet dangling over a maelstrom and his head battered by a shower of falling debris. The hook began to slide, carving down through the wall as Draik grasped wildly with his other hand, trying to latch on to something.

  Before he
could find a handhold, the hook gave way and he fell.

  Draik kicked hard against the wall, diving for a narrow ledge on the far side of the drop.

  He slammed hard against it, breath exploding from his lungs, but managed to hang on. He hauled himself up onto the ledge and cursed.

  He had reached Corval. The Navigator was a few feet below him, trapped and bleeding, but still alive. Corval was sitting at an awkward angle, pressed onto a narrow ledge with his legs trapped beneath a shard of fallen wall as more debris crashed down around him. The noise was growing louder all the time and it could not be long before they were both smashed into the abyss.

  Corval recoiled at the sight of Draik and reached for his pistol. His hand bashed uselessly against the slab pinning him to the ground. The pistol was strapped to his thigh, beyond his reach. Draik whipped out his own gun and pointed it at Corval, gripping the shuddering ledge with his other hand.

  His mouth was full of bile as he considered how Corval had brought him to this terrible situation, but before he fired, he cried out over the din: ‘Why?’

  Corval began to shake. Draik thought he was dying, but then he realised he was laughing.

  ‘Did you think you could outrun your past forever, Janus?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Corval stopped laughing and shook his head. He slumped against the ragged wall.

  ‘What do you mean?’ cried Draik again. ‘What do you know of my past?’ The violence in the chamber ebbed slightly, as though the Blackstone were pausing to listen.

  ‘Just kill me.’ Even through the mouth grille of Corval’s helmet, Draik could hear the dejection in his voice. ‘I’m a lie.’

  Corval reached up to his star-shaped helmet and flicked back the catches, pulling the faceplate away.

  Draik almost fell from his perch in shock. The Navigator’s face was gaunt, and unnaturally aged, but he recognised it instantly. ‘Numa?’