First and Only

by Dan Abnett

  Ibram would always point, and declare his father was on one.

  His nurse, and the old tutor Benthlay, always corrected him. They had no imagination. Benthlay didn't even have any arms. He would point to the lights with his buzzing prosthetic limbs and patiently explain that if Ibram's father had been coming home, they would have had word in advance.

  But Oric, the cook from the kitchen block, had a broader mind. He would lift the boy in his meaty arms and point his nose to the sky to catch a glimpse of every ship and every shuttle. Ibram had a toy dreadnought that his Uncle Dercius had carved for him from a hunk of plastene. Ibram would swoop it around in his hands as he hung from Oric's arms, dog-fighting the lights in the sky.

  One had a huge lightning flash tattoo on his left forearm that fascinated Ibram. 'Imperial Guard,' he would say, in answer to the child's questions. 'Jantine Third for eight years. Mark of honour.'

  He never said much else. Every time he put the boy down and returned to the kitchens, Ibram wondered about the buzzing noise that came from under his long chefs overalls. It sounded just like the noise his tutor's arms made when they gestured.

  The night Uncle Dercius visited, it was without advance word of his coming.

  Oric had been playing with him on the sundecks, and had carved him a new frigate out of wood. When they heard Uncle Dercius's voice, Ibram had leapt down and run into the parlour. He hit against Dercius's uniformed legs like a meteor and hugged tight.

  'Ibram, Ibram! Such a strong grip! Are you pleased to see your uncle, eh?'

  Dercius looked a thousand metres tall in his mauve Jantine uniform. He smiled down at the boy but there was something sad in his eyes.

  Oric entered the room behind them, making apologies. 'I must get back to the kitchen,' he averred.

  Uncle Dercius did a strange thing: he crossed directly to Oric and embraced him. 'Good to see you, old friend.'

  'And you, sir. Been a long time.'

  'Have you brought me a toy, uncle?' Ibram interrupted, shaking off the hand of his concerned-looking nurse.

  Dercius crossed back to him.

  'Would I let you down?' he chuckled. He pulled a signet ring off his left little finger and hugged Ibram to his side. 'Know what this is?'

  'A ring!'

  'Smart boy! But it's more.' Dercius carefully turned the milled edge of the ring setting and it popped open. A thin, truncated beam of laser light stabbed out. 'Do you know what this is?'

  Ibram shook his head.

  'It's a key. Officers like me need a way to open certain secret dispatches. Secret orders. You know what they are?'

  'My father told me! There are different codes… it's called 'security clearance'.'

  Dercius and the others laughed at the precocity of the little boy. But there was a false note in it.

  'You're right! Codes like Panther, Esculis, Cryptox, or the old colour-code levels: cyan, scarlet, it goes up, magenta, obsidian and vermilion,' Dercius said, taking the ring off. 'Generals like me are given these signet rings to open and decode them.

  'Does my father have one, uncle?'

  A pause. 'Of course.'

  'Is my father coming home? Is he with you?'

  'Listen to me, Ibram, there's—'

  Ibram took the ring and studied it. 'Can really I have this, Uncle Dercius? Is it for me?'

  Ibram looked up suddenly from the ring in his hands and found that everyone was staring at him intently.

  'I didn't steal it!' he announced.

  'Of course you can have it. It's yours…' Dercius said, hunkering down by his side, looking as if he was preoccupied by something.

  'Listen, Ibram: there's something I have to tell you… About your father.'

  PART FIVE

  THE EMPYREAN

  ONE

  Gaunt had been talking to Fereyd. They had sat by a fuel-drum fire in the splintered shadows of a residence in the demilitarised zone of Pashen Nine-Sixty's largest city. Fereyd was disguised as a farm boss, in the thick, red-wool robes common to many on Pashen, and he was talking obliquely about spy work, just the sort of half-complete, enticing remarks he liked to tease his Commissar friend with. An unlikely pair, the Commissar and the Imperial Spy; one tall and lean and blond, the other compact and dark. Thrown together by the circumstances of combat, they were bonded and loyal despite the differences of their backgrounds and duties.

  Fereyd's intelligence unit, working the city-farms of Pashen in deep cover, had revealed the foul Chaos cult – and the heretic Navy officers in their thrall. A disastrous fleet action, brought in too hastily in response to Fereyd's discovery, had led to open war on the planet itself and the deployment of the Guard. Chance had led Gaunt's Hyrkans to the raid which had rescued Fereyd from the hands of the Pashen traitors. Together, Gaunt and Fereyd had unveiled and executed the Traitor Baron Sylag.

  They were talking about loyalty and treachery, and Fereyd was saying how the vigilance of the Emperor's spy networks was the only thing that kept the private ambitions of various senior officers in check. But it was difficult for Gaunt to follow Fereyd's words because his face kept changing. Sometimes he was Oktar, and then, in the flame-light, his face would become that of Dercius or Gaunt's father.

  With a grunt, Gaunt realised he was dreaming, bade his friend goodbye and, dissatisfied, he awoke.

  The air was unpleasantly stuffy and stale. His room was small, with a low, curved ceiling and inset lighting plates that he had turned down to their lowest setting before retiring. He got up and pulled on his clothes, scattered where he had left them: breeches, dress shirt, boots, a short leather field-jacket with a high collar embossed with interlocked Imperial eagles. Firearm-screening fields meant there was no bolt pistol in his holster on the door hook, but he took his Tanith knife.

  He opened the door-hatch and stepped out into the long, dark space of the companionway. The air here was hot and stifling too, but it moved, wafted by the circulation systems under the black metal grille of the floor.

  A walk would do him good.

  It was night cycle, and the deck lamps were low. There was the ever-present murmur of the vast power plants and the resulting micro-vibration in every metal surface, even the air itself.

  Gaunt walked for fifteen minutes or more in the silent passageways of the great structure, meeting no one. At a confluence of passageways, he entered the main spinal lift and keyed his pass-code into the rune-pad on the wall. There was an electronic moan as cycles set, and a three-second chant sung by non-human throats to signal the start of the lift. The indicator light flicked slowly up twenty bas-relief glass runes on the polished brass board.

  Another burst of that soft artificial choir. The doors opened.

  Gaunt stepped out into the Glass Bay. A dome of transparent, hyper-dense silica a hundred metres in radius, it was the most serene place the structure offered. Beyond the glass, a magnificent, troubling vista swirled, filtered by special dampening fields. Darkness, striated light, blistering strands and filaments of colours he wasn't sure he could put a name to, bands of light and dark shifting past at an inhuman rate.

  The Empyrean. Warp Space. The dimension beyond reality through which this structure, the Mass Cargo Conveyance Absalom, now moved.

  He had first seen the Absalom through the thick, tinted ports of the shuttle that had brought him up to meet it in orbit. He was in awe of it. One of the ancient transport-ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a veteran vessel. The Tech-Lords of Mars had sent a massive retinue to aid the disaster at Fortis, and now in gratitude for the liberation they subordinated their vessels to the Imperial Guard. It was an honour to travel on the Absalom, Gaunt well knew. To be conveyed by the mysterious, secret carriers of the God-Machine cult.

  From the shuttle, he'd seen sixteen solid kilometres of grey architecture, like a raked, streamlined cathedral, with the tiny lights of the troop transports flickering in and out of its open belly-mouth. The crenellated surfaces and towers of the mighty Mechanicus ship were rich wit
h bas-relief gargoyles, out of whose wide, fanged mouths the turrets of the sentry guns traversed and swung. Green interior light shone from the thousands of slit windows. The pilot tug, obese and blackened with the scorch marks of its multiple attitude thrusters, bellied in the slow solar tides ahead of the transport vessel.

  Gaunt's flagship, the great frigate Navarre, had been seconded for picket duties to the Nubila Reach so Gaunt had chosen to travel with his men on the Absalom. He missed the long, sleek, waspish lines of the Navarre, and he missed the crew, especially Executive Officer Kreff, who had tried so hard to accommodate the commissar and his unruly men.

  The Absalom was a different breed of beast, a behemoth. Its echoing bulk capacity allowed it to carry nine full regiments, including the Tanith, four divisions of the Jantine Patricians, and at least three mechanised battalions, including their many tanks and armoured transport vehicles. Fat lift ships had hefted the numerous war machines up into the hold from the depots on Pyrites.

  Now they were en route – a six-day jump to a cluster of war-worlds called the Menazoid Clasp, the next denned line of battle in the Sabbat Worlds campaign. Gaunt hoped for deployment with the Ghosts into the main assault on Menazoid Sigma, the capital planet, where a large force of Chaos was holding the line against a heavy Imperial advance.

  But there was also Menazoid Epsilon, the remote, dark deathworld at the edge of the Clasp. Gaunt knew that Warmaster Macaroth's planning staff were assessing the impact of that world. He knew some regimental units would be deployed to take it.

  No one wanted Epsilon. No one wanted to die.

  He looked up into the festering, fluctuating light of the Empyrean beyond the glass and uttered a silent prayer to the Most Blessed Emperor: spare us from Epsilon.

  Other, even gloomier thoughts clouded his mind. Like the infernal, invaluable crystal that had come into his hands on Pyrites. Its very presence, its unlockable secret, burned in the back of his mind like a melta-gun wound. No further word had come from Fereyd, no signal, not even a hint of what was expected of him. Was he to be a courier – and if so, for how long? How would he know who to trust the precious jewel to when the time came? Was something else wanted from him? Had some further, vital instruction failed to reach him? Their long friendship aside, Gaunt cursed the memory of Fereyd. This kind of complication was unwelcome on top of the demands of his commissarial duties.

  He resolved to guard the crystal. Carry it, until Fereyd told him otherwise. But still, he fretted that the matter was of the highest importance, and time was somehow slipping away.

  He crossed to the knurled rail at the edge of the bay and leaned heavily on it. The enormity of the Warp shuffled and spasmed in front of him, milky tendrils of proto-matter licking like ribbons of fluid mist against the outside of the glass. The Glass Bay was one of three Immaterium Observatories on the Absalom, allowing the navigators and the clerics of the Astrographicus Division visual access to the void around. In the centre of the bay's deck, on a vast platform mechanism of oiled cogs and toothed gears, giant sensorium scopes, aura-imagifiers and luminosity evaluators cycled and turned, regarding the maelstrom, charting, cogitating, assessing and transmitting the assembled data via chattering relays and humming crystal stacks to the main bridge eight kilometres away at the top of the Absalom's tallest command spire.

  The observatories were not forbidden areas, but their spaces were not recommended for those new to space crossings. It was said that if the glass wasn't shielded, the view could derange and twist the minds of even hardened astrographers. The elevator's choral chime had been intended to warn Gaunt of this. But he had seen the Empyrean before, countless times on his voyages. It no longer scared him. And, filtered in this way, he found the fluctuations of the Warp somehow easeful, as if its cataclysmic turmoil allowed his own mind to rest. He could think here.

  Around the edge of the dome, the names of militant commanders, lord-generals and master admirals were etched into the polished ironwork of the sill in a roll of honour. Under each name was a short legend indicating the theatres of their victories. Some names he knew, from the history texts and the required reading at the schola back on Ignatius. Some, their inscriptions old and faded, were unknown, ten centuries dead. He worked his way around the edge of the dome, reading the plaques. It took him almost half a circuit before he found the name of the one he had actually known personally: Warmaster Slaydo, Macaroth's predecessor, dead at the infamous triumph of Balhaut in the tenth year of this crusade through the Sabbat Worlds.

  Gaunt glanced around from his study. The elevator doors at the top of the transit shaft hissed open and he caught once more a snatch of the chanted warning chime. A figure stepped onto the deck: a navy rating, carrying a small instrument kit. The rating looked across at the lone figure by the rail for a moment and then turned away and disappeared from view behind the lift assembly. An inspection patrol, Gaunt decided absently.

  He turned back to the inscriptions and read Slaydo's plaque again. He remembered Balhaut, the firestorms that swept the night away and took the forces of Chaos with it. He and his beloved Hyrkans had been at the centre of it, in the mudlakes, struggling through the brimstone atmosphere under the weight of their heavy rebreathers. Slaydo had taken credit for that famous win, rightly enough as warmaster, but in sweat and blood it had been Gaunt's. His finest hour, and he had Slaydo's deathbed decoration to prove it.

  He could hear the grind of the enemy assault carriers even now, striding on their long, hydraulic legs through the mud, peppering the air with sharp needle blasts of blood-red light, washing death and fire towards his men. A physical memory of the tension and fatigue ran down his spine, the superhuman effort with which he and his best fire-teams had stormed the Oligarchy Gate ahead of even the glorious forces of the Adeptus Astartes, driving a wedge of las-fire and grenade bursts through the overlapping plates of the enemy's buttress screens.

  He saw Tanhause making his lucky shot, still talked about in the barracks of the Hyrkan: a single las-bolt that penetrated a foul, demented Chaos dreadnought through the visor-slit, detonating the power systems within. He saw Veitch taking six of the foe with his bayonet when his last power cell ran dry. He saw the Tower of the Plutocrat combust and fall under the sustained Hyrkan fire.

  He saw the faces of the unnumbered dead, rising from the mud, from the flames.

  He opened his eyes and the visions fled. The Empyrean lashed and blossomed in front of him, unknowable. He was about to turn and return to his quarters.

  But there was a blade at his throat.

  TWO

  There was no sense of anyone behind him – no shadow, no heat, no sound or smell of breath. It was as if the cold sharpness under his chin had arrived there unaccompanied. He knew at once he was at the mercy of a formidable opponent.

  But that alone gave him a flicker of confidence. If the blade's owner had simply wanted him dead, then he would already be dead and none the wiser. There was something that made him more useful alive. And he was fairly certain what that was.

  'What do you want?' he asked calmly.

  'No games,' a voice said from behind him. The tone was low and even, not a whisper but of a level that was somehow softer and lower still. The pressure of the cold blade increased against the skin of his neck fractionally. 'You are reckoned to be an intelligent man. Dispense with the delaying tactics.'

  Gaunt nodded carefully. If he was going to live even a minute more, he had to play this precisely right. 'This isn't the way to solve this, Brochuss,' he said carefully.

  There was a pause. 'What?'

  'Now who's playing games? I know what this is about. I'm sorry you and your Patrician comrades lost face on Pyrites. Lost a few teeth too, I'll bet. But this won't help.'

  'Don't be a fool! You've got this wrong! This isn't about some stupid regimental rivalry!'

  'I have?'

  'Think hard, fool! Think why this might really be happening! I want you to understand why you are about to die!' The we
ight of the blade against his throat shifted slightly. It didn't lessen its pressure, but there was a momentary alteration in the angle. Gaunt knew his comments had misdirected his adversary for a heartbeat.

  His only chance. He struck backwards hard with his right elbow, simultaneously pulling back from the blade and raising his left hand to fend it off. The knife cut through his cuff, but he pulled clear as his assailant reeled from the elbow jab.

  Gaunt had barely turned when the other countered, striking high. They fell together, limbs twisting to gain a positive hold. The wayward blade ripped Gaunt's jacket open down the seam of the left sleeve.

  Gaunt forced the centre of balance over and threw a sideways punch with his right fist that knocked his assailant off him. A moment later the commissar was on his feet, drawing the silver Tanith blade from his belt.

  He saw his opponent for the first time. The navy rating, a short, lean man of indeterminate age. There was something strange about him. The way his mouth was set in a determined grimace while his wide eyes seemed to be… pleading? The rating flipped up onto his feet with a scissor of his back and legs, and coiled around in a hunched, offensive posture, the knife held blade-uppermost in his right hand.

  How could a deck rating know moves like that? Gaunt worried. The practised movements, the perfect balance, the silent resolve – all betrayed a specialist killer, an adept at the arts of stealth and assassination. But close up, Gaunt saw the man was just an engineer, his naval uniform a little tight around a belly going to fat. Was it just a disguise? The rank pins, insignia and the coded identity seal mandatory for all crew personnel all seemed real.

  The blade was short and leaf-shaped, shorter than the rubberised grip it protruded from. There was a series of geometric holes in the body of the blade itself, reducing the overall weight whilst retaining the structural strength. And it plainly wasn't metal; it was matt blue, ceramic, invisible to the ship's weapon-scan fields.

  Gaunt stared into the other's unblinking eyes, searching for recognition or contact. The gaze which met him was a desperate, piteous look, as if from something trapped inside the menacing body.