by Dan Abnett
We approached the great monument, crunching up the black, frost-coated steps.
I halted. Where are the tomb's custodians?'
'Making their rounds,' I was told.
I glanced at Vibben and shook my head. She slid her hand into her fur-edged robes.
'Knowing we approach?' I urged, addressing the custodian again. 'Knowing we expect to meet them?'
'I will check,' said the custodian, the one who had circulated the slate. He pushed on up the steps, the phosphor light on his pole bobbing.
The other two seemed ill at ease.
I beckoned to Vibben, so she would follow me up after the leader.
We found him on a lower terrace, gazing at the strewn bodies of four custodians, their light poles fizzling out around them.
'H-how?' he stammered.
'Stay back/ Vibben told him and drew her weapon. Its tiny amber Armed rune glowed in the darkness.
I took out my blade, igniting it. It hummed.
The south entry of the tombs was open. Shafts of golden light shone out. All my fears were rapidly being confirmed.
We entered, Vibben sweeping the place from side to side with her handgun. The hall was narrow and high, lit by chemical glow-globes. Intruding frost was beginning to mark the polished basalt walls.
A few metres inside, another custodian lay dead in a stiffening mirror of blood. We stepped over him. To each side, hallways opened up, admitting us to the hibernation stacks. In every direction, rows and rows of ice-berths ranged down the smoothed basalt chambers.
It was like walking into the Imperium's grandest morgue.
Vibben swept soundlessly to the right and I went left.
I admit I was excited by now, eager to close and conclude a business that had lasted six years. Eyclone had evaded me for six whole years! I studied his methods every day and dreamed of him every night.
Now I could smell him.
I raised my visor.
Water was pattering from the roof. Thaw water. It was growing warmer in here. In their ice-berths, some of the dim figures were stirring.
Too early! Far too early!
Eyclone's first man came at me from the west as I crossed a trunk-junction corridor. I spun, the power sword in my hand, and cut through his neck before his ice-axe could land.
The second came from the south, the third from the east. And then more. More.
A blur.
As I fought, I heard furious shooting from the vaults away to my right. Vibben was in trouble.
I could hear her over the vox-link in our hoods: 'Eisenhorn! Eisenhorn!'
I wheeled and cut. My opponents were all dressed in heat-gowns, and carried ice-tools that made proficient weapons. Their eyes were dark and unforthcoming. Though they were fast, there was something in them that suggested diey were doing this mindlessly, by order.
The power sword, an antique and graceful weapon, blessed by the Provost of Inx himself, spun in my hand. With five abrupt moves I made corpses out of them and left their blood vapour drifting in the air.
'Eisenhorn!'
I turned and ran. I splashed heavily down a corridor sluiced with melt water. More shots from ahead. A sucking cry.
I found Vibben face down across a freezer tube, frozen blood gluing her to the sub-zero plastic. Eight of Eyclone's servants lay sprawled around her. Her weapon lay just out of reach of her clawing hand, the spent cell ejected from the grip.
I am forty-two standard years old, in my prime by Imperial standards, young by those of the Inquisition. All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel.
I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess – and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue – a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.
Lores Vibben had served with me for five and a half years. In that period she had saved my life twice. She saw herself as my aide and my bodyguard, yet in truth she was more a companion and a fellow warrior. When I recruited her from the clan-slums of Tornish, it was for her combat skills and brutal vigour. But I came to value her just as much for her sharp mind, soft wit and clear head.
I stared down at her body for a moment. I believe I may have uttered her name.
I extinguished my power sword and, sliding it into its scabbard, moved back into the shadows on the far side of the hibernation gallery. I could hear nothing except the increasingly persistent thaw-drip. Freeing my sidearm from its leather rig under my left armpit, I checked its load and opened a vox link. Eyclone was undoubtedly monitoring all traffic in and out of Processional Two-Twelve, so I used Glossia, an informal verbal cipher known only to myself and my immediate colleagues. Most inquisitors develop their own private languages for confidential communication, some more sophisticated than others. Glossia, the basics of which I had designed ten years before, was reasonably complex and had evolved, organically, with use.
Thorn wishes aegis, rapturous beasts below.'
'Aegis, arising, the colours of space/ Betancore responded immediately and correctly.
'Rose thorn, abundant, by flame light crescent.'
A pause. 'By flame light crescent? Confirm.'
'Confirm/
'Razor delphus pathway! Pattern ivory!'
'Pattern denied. Pattern crucible/
'Aegis, arising/
The link broke. He was on his way. He had taken the news of Vibben's death as hard as I expected. I trusted that would not affect his performance. Midas Betancore was a hot-blooded, impetuous man, which was partly why I liked him. And used him.
I moved out of the shadows again, my sidearm raised. A Scipio-pattern naval pistol, finished in dull chrome with inlaid ivory grips, it felt reassuringly heavy in my gloved hand. Ten rounds, every one a fat, blunt man-stopper, were spring-loaded into the slide inside the grip. I had four more armed slides just like it in my hip pocket.
I forget where I acquired the Scipio. It had been mine for a few years. One night, three years before, Vibben had prised off the ceramite grip plates
with their touch-worn, machined-stamped engravings of the Imperial Aquila and the Navy motto, and replaced them with ivory grips she had etched herself. A common practise on Tornish, she informed me, handing the weapon back the next day. The new grips were like crude scrimshaw, showing on each side a poorly executed human skull through which a thorny rose entwined, emerging through an eye socket, shedding cartoon droplets of blood. She'd inlaid carmine gems into the droplets to emphasise their nature. Below the skull, my name was scratched in a clumsy scroll.
I had laughed. There had been times when I'd almost been too embarrassed to draw the gang-marked weapon in a fight.
Now, now she was dead, I realise what an honour had been paid to me through that devoted work.
I made a promise to myself: I would kill Eyclone with this gun.
As A devoted member of his high majesty the God-Emperor's Inquisition, I find my philosophy bends towards that of the Amalathians. To the outside galaxy, members of our orders appear much alike: an inquisitor is an inquisitor, a being of fear and persecution. It surprises many that internally, we are riven with clashing ideologies.
I know it surprised Vibben. I spent one long afternoon trying to explain the differences. I failed.
To express it in simple terms, some inquisitors are puritans and some are radicals. Puritans believe in and enforce the traditional station of the Inquisition, working to purge our galactic community of any criminal or malevolent element: the triumvirate of evil – alien, mutant and daemon. Anything that clashes with the pure rale of mankind, the preachings of the Ministorium and the letter of Imperial Law is subject to a puritan inquisitor's attention. Hard-line, traditional, merciless… that is the puritan way.
Radicals believe th
at any methods are allowable if they accomplish the Inquisitorial task. Some, as I understand it, actually embrace and use forbidden resources, such as the Warp itself, as weapons against the enemies of mankind.
I have heard the arguments often enough. They appal me. Radical belief is heretical.
I am a puritan by calling and an Amalathian by choice. The ferociously strict ways of the monodominant philosophy oft-times entices me, but there is precious little subtlety in their ways and thus it is not for me.
Amalathians take our name from the conclave at Mount Amalath. Our endeavour is to maintain the status quo of the Imperium, and we work to identify and destroy any persons or agencies that might destabilise the power of the Imperium from without or within. We believe in strength through unity. Change is the greatest enemy. We believe the God-Emperor has a divine plan, and we work to sustain the Imperium in stability until that plan is made known. We deplore factions and in-fighting… Indeed, it is sometimes a painful irony that our beliefs mark us as a faction within the political helix of the Inquisition.
We are the steadfast spine of the Imperium, its antibodies, fighting disease, insanity, injury, invasion.
I can think of no better way to serve, no better way to be an inquisitor.
So you have me then, pictured. Gregor Eisenhorn, inquisitor, puritan, Amalathian, forty-two years old standard, an inquisitor for the past eighteen years. I am tall and broad at the shoulders, strong, resolute. I have already told you of my force of will, and you will have noted my prowess with a blade.
What else is there? Am I clean-shaven? Yes! My eyes are dark, my hair darker and thick. These things matter litde.
Come and let me show you how I killed Eyclone.
TWO
The dead awake.
Betancore's temper.
Elucidations by Aemos.
Iclung то the shadows, moving through the great tomb as silendy as I knew how. A terrible sound rolled through the thawing vaults of Processional Two-Twelve. Fists and palms beating at coffin hoods. Wailing. Gurgling.
The sleepers were waking, their frigid bodies, sore with hibernation sickness, trapped in their caskets. No honour guard of trained cryogeneers waited to unlock them, to sluice their organs with warming bio-fluids or inject stimulants or massage paralysed extremities.
Thanks to Eyclone's efforts, twelve thousand one hundred and forty-two members of the planet's ruling class were being roused early into the bitter season of Dormant, and roused without the necessary medical supervision.
I had no doubt that they would all suffocate in minutes.
My mind scrolled back through the details my savant had prepared for me. There was a central control room, where I could disengage the ice-berth locks and at least free them all. But to what good? Without the resuscitation teams, they would fail and perish.
And if I hunted out the control room, Eyclone would have time to escape.
In Glossia code, I communicated this quandary to Betancore, and told him to alert the custodians. He informed me, after a pause, that crash-teams and relief crews were on their way.
But why? The question was still there. Why was Eyclone doing this?
A massed killing was nothing unusual for a follower of Chaos. But there had to be a point, above and beyond the deaths themselves.
I was pondering this as I crossed a hallway deep in the west wing of the Processional. Frantic beating sounds came from the berths all around, and a pungent mix of ice-water and bio-fluid spurted from the drain-taps and cascaded over the floor.
A shot rang out. A las-shot. It missed me by less than a hand's breadth and exploded through the headboard of an ice berth behind me. Immediately, the frantic hammering in that berth stopped, and the waters running out of its ducts were stained pink.
I fired the Scipio down the vault, startled by the noise it made.
Two more las-shots flicked down at me.
Taking cover behind a stone bulkhead, I emptied a clip down the length of the gallery, the spent shell cases smoking in the air as the pumping slide ejected them. A hot vapour of cordite blew back at me.
I swung back into cover, exchanging clips.
A few more spits of laser drizzled past me, then a voice.
'Eisenhorn? Gregor, is that you?'
Eyclone. I knew his thin voice at once. I didn't answer.
'You're dead, you know, Gregor. Dead like mey all are. Dead, dead, dead. Step out and make it quick.'
He was good, I'll give him that. My legs actually twitched, actually started to walk me clear of cover into the open. Eyclone was infamous across a dozen settled systems for his mind powers and mesmeric tone. How else had he managed to get these dark-eyed fools to do his bidding?
But I have similar skills. And I have honed them well.
There is a time to use mind or voice tricks gendy to draw out your target. And there are times to use them like a stub-gun at point blank range.
It was time for the latter.
I pitched my voice, balanced my mind and yelled: 'Show yourself first!'
Eyclone didn't succumb. I didn't expect him to. Like me, he had years of resilience training. But his two gunmen were easy meat.
The first strode directly out into the middle of the gallery hallway, dropping his lasgun with a clatter. The Scipio made a hole in the middle of his forehead and blew his brains out behind him in a grotesque pink mist. The other stumbled out on his heels, realised his mistake, and began firing.
One of his las-bolts scorched the sleeve of my jacket. I squeezed the pistol's trigger and the Scipio bucked and snarled in my tight grip.
The round penetrated his head under his nose, splintered on his upper teeth and blew the sides of his skull out. He staggered and fell, dead fingers firing his lasrifle again and again, blowing the fascias out of the hibernation stalls around him. Putrid water, bio-fluid and plastic fragments poured out, and some screams became louder.
I could hear footsteps above the screams. Eyclone was running.
I ran too, across the vaults, passing gallery after gallery.
The screaming, the pounding… God-Emperor help me I will never forget that. Thousands of frantic souls waking up to face an agonising death.
Damn Eyclone. Damn him to hell and back.
Crossing the third gallery, I saw him, running parallel to me. He saw me too. He wheeled, and fired.
I ducked back as the blasts of his laspistol shrieked past.
A glimpse was all I'd had: a short, wiry man, dressed in brown heat-robes, his goatee neatly trimmed, his eyes twinkling with malice.
I fired back, but he was running again.
I ran on, glimpsed him down the next gallery and fired again.
At the next gallery, nothing. I waited, and pulled off my outer robe. It was getting hot and damp in Processional Two-Twelve.
When another minute passed and there was still no sign, I began to edge down the gallery towards his last position, gun raised. I'd got ten paces when he swung out of hiding and blazed away at me.
I would have died right there, had not the joker-gods of fate and chance played their hand.
At the moment Eyclone fired, several cryo-tubes finally gave way and yowling, naked, blistered humans staggered out into the corridor, clawing with ice-webbed hands, mewling, vomiting, blind and ice-burned. Eyclone's shots tore three of them apart and hideously wounded a fourth. Had it not been for them, those las-shots would have finished me.
Footsteps, hurried. He was running again.
I pushed on down the gallery, stepping over the blasted ruins of the sleepers who had inadvertently spared me. The wounded one, a middle-aged female, compromised and naked as she lay in the melt-water, clutched at my leg, begging for salvation. Eyclone's gunfire had all but disembowelled her.
I hesitated. A merciful headshot now would spare her everything. But I could not. Once uhey were awake, the hierarchy of Hubris would not understand a mercy killing. I would be trapped here for years, fighting my case through every court
in their legislature.
I shook off her desperate grip and moved on.
Do you think me weak, flawed? Do you hate me for setting my inquisitorial role above the needs of one agonised being?
If you do, I commend you. I think of that woman still, and hate the fact I left her to die slowly. But if you hate me, I know this about you… you are no inquisitor. You don't have the moral strength.
I could have finished her, and my soul might have been relieved. But that would have been an end to my work. And I always think of me thousands… millions perhaps… who would die worse deaths but for my actions.
Is that arrogance?
Perhaps… and perhaps arrogance is therefore a virtue of the Inquisition. I would gladly ignore one life in agony if I could save a hundred, a thousand, more…
Mankind must suffer so that mankind can survive. It's that simple. Ask Aemos. He knows.
Still, I dream of her and her bloody anguish. Pity me for that, at least.
I pressed on through the tomb-vaults, and after another gallery or two, progress became slow. Hundreds of sleepers had now freed themselves, the hallways were josding with their frantic, blind pain. I skirted those I could, staying out of the way of grasping hands, stepping over some who lay twitching and helpless on the floor. The collective sounds of their braying and whimpering were almost intolerable. There was a hot, fetid stench of decay and bio-waste. Several times I had to break free of hands that seized me.
Grotesquely, the horror made it easier to track Eyclone. Every few paces, another sleeper lay dead or dying, callously gunned down by murderers in desperate flight.
I found a service door forced open at the end of the next file, and entered a deep stairwell that wound up through the edifice. Chemical globes suspended in wall brackets lit the way. From far above, I heard shots, and I ascended, my pistol raised and braced, covering each turn of the staircase as Vibben had taught me.
I came up to what a wall-plaque told me was level eight. I could hear machine noise, industrial and heavy. Through another forced service door lay the walkways to the next galleries and a side access hatch of brushed grey adamite, which stencilled runes identified as the entrance to the main cryogenic generators. Smoke coughed and noise rolled from the hatch.
