by Dan Abnett
I didn't care. I was glad of it, in truth. The bloodshed in the arena might have broken us out, but without the assault, we'd have never made it out of the Glaw estate and the clutches of the militia alive.
The operation was coded 'Pacification 505', 505 being the topographical signifier for House Glaw. The troops had run in before dawn in four armoured dropships, hugging the rolling terrain of the inland bluffs to avoid the more than competent sensor system of House Glaw.
The ships held off behind the neighbouring hills as the sun rose, about the time we were languishing in the cell, to allow a forward team of naval security troopers to ran ahead on foot and cut holes, electronically, in the perimeter defences of the great house. By then, they were in range of Betancore's personal vox set, and he had fed them logistic information and an insider's view of the militia's deployment.
At approximately the same moment when the first carnodon had lunged up out of its trap, the dropships had spurred forward from behind a long finger of copse and came powering up the vale towards the house. The Imperial Light Intruder Frigate Defence of Stalinvast, retasked by Admiral Spatian on the Lord Militant's instruction to hold geosynchronous orbit above target/Glaw/505, had obliterated the launch hangars behind the yard with pinpoint strikes from its lance batteries.
Two dropships, rocketing smoke charges and antipersonnel grenades, had settled in front of the main house, blowing out all the windows. Forty black-armoured troopers from naval security had then made an assault landing and struck at the main facade. Bewildered, more than seventy men of the house militia had attempted to repel them.
The other two dropships circled behind the house and spilled their troops into a landing yard still lit by the blazing ruins of the launch block. Within three minutes a running gun battle was shuddering down the halls and corridors of House Glaw. The alarms were ringing soundly by then.
House Glaw owned close on four hundred fighting men in its retinue, not to mention another nine hundred staff, many of whom took up weapons. Glaw Militia were all trained men, veterans, well armoured in green ballistic cloth and silver helmets, well equipped with autoguns, heavy stubbers and grenades. An army, by most standards. I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number. And they had the advantage of home soil. They knew the layout, the strengths, the weaknesses, of the old estate.
Naval security took them apart. The elite of Battlefleet Scarus, armed with matt-black hell-guns and iron discipline, they conquered and purged the great house room by room.
Some pockets of resistance were heavy. The troopers lost three men in a virtually point blank firefight around the kitchen area. A suicide run by two Glaw soldiers laden with tube charges vaporised another four and took twenty metres off the end of the east wing
Twenty-two minutes after the assault began, the militia had lost nearly three hundred men.
Numerous householders and low-ranking staff fled into the woods and valleys behind the house. A few made good their escape. Most were rounded up, and more than thirty killed by the tightening circle of Imperial Guard cordoning the estate. These men, two thousand of them, were recruits from the founding, Gudrunite riflemen roused from the barracks and shipped inland to experience a surprise taste of combat before ever leaving their birthworld.
The bloody resistance of the Glaw militia was mainly intended to give their nobles time to flee. The Glaws' off-world cousin and his retinue were cornered by the Gudrunite Rifles on the back path behind the house, arrested, and then massacred when they tried to fight their way out. Other traders and guests from the dinner surrendered to the enclosing forces.
Several orbital craft broke from the tree cover behind the main attack, launching from secret hangars in the woods behind the house. One was hammered out of the air by a trooper with a rocket launcher. Another two made it five kilometres down the valley before they were incinerated from above by the watchful Defence of Stalinvast.
Another, a fast and heavily armoured model, evaded the cover sweep and headed west. The Defence of Stalinvast launched a trio of fighters after it, and they eventually brought it down in the open sea after a lengthy
chase. Only weeks of forensic recovery might reveal who had been aboard any of those craft, and mere was no guarantee that an answer would be forthcoming even then. Smart money was on the likes of Lord Glaw, Lady Fabrina, Gorgone Locke, Dazzo the Ecclesiarch and the nameless pipe-smoking man. Certainly, none of those persons were among the anguished scum rounded up by the guard or by naval security.
Ninety minutes after it had begun, Pacification 505 was signalled as 'achieved' by Major Joam Joakells of naval security.
Only then did the launch carrying Commodus Yoke move in.
i
TWELVE
In the ruins of the great house.
Murmurings.
Uprising.
It was noon, but the night storm had persisted, and the fitful rain washed the colour out of the sky and doused the burning sections of House Glaw. A terrible, blackened ruin, it stood on the hilltop, its windows burned out, its roofs ragged, tiled lengths of beam, billowing grey and white smoke.
I sat in the yard, leaning back against the mudguard of an Imperial Guard troop carrier, sipping occasionally from a cut-glass decanter of amasec. My head was bowed. I needed medical attention and painkillers, a psychic restorative, a good meal, neural surgery to the hundreds of wounds Locke had inflicted, a bath, clean clothes...
More than anything else, I needed a bed.
Troops marched past, crunching their boots in time on the wet stone. Orders sang back and forth. Occasionally, a fighter ship made a pass overhead and vibrated my diaphragm with the throb of its afterburner.
My head swam. Fragments gathered and conflated in my unconscious and spilled over. Each time, I shook myself awake. The blank-eyed man was there, in the back of my head. I didn't want to think about him, and saw no place in this event for him, but his image lingered. Once, I was certain, he was standing across the yard from me, by the scullery door, smiling at me. I blinked him away.
I was still caked in blood, sweat and filth. Pain and fatigue clung to me like a shroud. A corporal from the naval security detail had recovered our
confiscated possessions from Urisel Glaw's apartment, and I had pulled on a shirt and my button-sleeved leather coat. The trooper had handed me my inquisitorial rosette, and I clutched it now, like a totem.
Eager men of the 50th Gudranite Rifles jostled Glaw House staff through the yard. The prisoners had their hands behind their heads, and some were weeping.
Somebody slid down next to me on the cold flagstones and leaned back against the greasy track assembly of the carrier.
'Long night/ Midas said.
I passed the decanter to him, and he took a long swig.
"Where's Aemos? The girl?'
'Last I saw, the savant was bustling around somewhere, making notes. I haven't seen Alizebeth since we freed them from the pit.'
I nodded.
'You're half-dead, Gregor. Let me call up a launch and get you to Dor-say/
'We're not done here/1 said.
Procurator Madorthene saluted me as he approached. He wasn't wearing his starchy white dress uniform now. In the coal-black armour of naval security, he looked bigger and more commanding.
'We've made a body exam/ he said.
'Oberon Glaw?'
'No trace/
'Gorgone Locke? The churchman Dazzo?'
He shook his head.
I offered him the decanter with a sigh. To my surprise, he took it, sat down with us and drank a mouthful.
They're all probably cinders in the craft that tried to escape/ he said. 'But I'll tell you this. Before it torched the two boats running the valley, the Defence of Stalinvast was sure it read no life signs/
'Decoys/ said Betancore.
The Glavian is right, for my money/ he said. Then he shrugged. 'But good armour can rob away signals. We may
never know/
'We'll know, Madorthene/ I promised him.
He took another tug on the decanter, handed it back to me and rose, brushing down his seamless armour.
'I'm glad naval security could serve you here, Inquisitor Eisenhorn. I hope it's restored your faith in the battlefleet/
I looked up at him with a weak nod. 'I'm impressed you came to oversee yourself, procurator/
'Are you kidding? After what happened on the Essene, the admiral would have had my head!'
He walked away. I liked him. An honest man doing his best amid the conflicting political interests of battlefleet command and the Inquisition. In later years, I would come to value Olm Madorthene's honesty and discretion immeasurably.
A fragile hunched figure clomped across the yard and stood over me. 'Now whose methods seem wise?' Commodus Voke asked, with a sneer. 'You tell me,' I replied, getting up.
Voke had brought a staff of nearly fifty with him, all clad in black robes, many with augmetic implants. They stripped the noble house of every shred of evidence they could find. Crates of papers, books, slates, artefacts and pict-tiles were carried out to waiting transports.
I was in no mood to argue. Pain and fatigue made my senses swim. Let Voke use his vast retinue and resources to do the painstaking work of recovery.
'Much has been deleted, dumped or burned,' a dour-faced savant called Klysis reported to Voke, as I walked with my fellow inquisitor into the shattered house. 'Much else is encrypted.'
We progressed into the basement system, and I led Voke to the force-shielded chamber where Glaw had trapped me. Kowitz's blood still marked the floor. The artefact from the altar plinth was gone.
'He referred to it as the Pontius/1 told Voke. The room no longer showed signs of being psychically shielded, so logic said the psyker-effects had been generated by the Pontius itself. As had the mental attack that had felled me, I was sure.
I leaned against the chamber wall and patiently told Voke the key points I had learned. 'Eyclone's mission to Hubris, involving the Pontius, was clearly important to them, but Oberon Glaw told me explicitly that said endeavour had been aborted... cancelled because something more vital had come into play. They referred to it as the true matter.'
'It would explain why your foe Eydone was abandoned,' he mused. 'After all his preparations, the Glaws failed to deliver the Pontius as they had promised.'
That fits. Dazzo and the shipmaster Locke were clearly deeply involved in this true matter. We need to establish more facts about them. I'm certain the work that concerned them touched on some archeoxenon material. They mentioned the "saruthi".'
A xenos breed, outlying the sub-sector/ said Voke's savant. 'Little is known of them and contact is forbidden. The Inquisition holds several investigations pending, but their space is uncharted, and while they keep themselves to themselves, more urgent matters have caused investigations to be postponed.'
'But a rogue like Locke may well have established lines of contact with them.'
Klysis and Voke both nodded. 'It will bear further research,' Voke said. 'Ordo Xenos must begin a survey of the saruthi. But for now, the matter is closed.'
'How do you reason that?' I asked with a contemptuous laugh.
Voke fixed me with his beady eyes. 'House Glaw is destroyed, its principal members and co-conspirators are slain. With them are lost the items precious to their cause. Whatever they were planning is finished.'
I didn't even begin to argue with the old man. Voke was sure of his facts. His main failing, in my opinion.
He was wrong, of course. The first hint came ten days later. I had returned to Dorsay with my colleagues, and had spent some time in the care of the Imperial Hospice on the Grand Canal where my many wounds and injuries were treated. Most of the cuts and gashes were superficial, and would heal in time. Locke's work on me had left deeper scars. Multiple neural injuries afflicted my system, many of which would never repair. Augmeticists from the battlefleet's Officio Medicalis conducted microsurgery on shredded nerve transmitters in my spine, thorax, brainstem and throat. They implanted more than sixty sections of artificial nerve fibre and ganglions. I had lost a good deal of sensitivity in my palette and oesophagus, and the reflexes on the left side of my body were dulled. My face they could do nothing with. Neural systems there had been utterly scourged. Locke's promise had been lasting. I would never smile again, nor make much of any expression. My face, impassive, was now just a mask of flesh.
Aemos visited me every day, and brought more and more data-slates and old books to my private room in the Hospice. He had established a working relationship with Voke's savants (Klysis was but one of seventeen employed by Commodus Voke), and was sifting data as it was passed to him. We tried to source information concerning the Glaws' confederates, but there was damnably little, even with Voke's platoon of savants hard at work. Locke was a shadowy, almost mythical figure, his name and reputation well known throughout the Helican sub-sector, but nothing could be found about his origin, career, associates or even the name of his vessel. Dazzo also drew a blank.
The Ecdesiarchy had no record of a churchman of that name. But I remembered what Kowitz had told me during the banquet, that Dazzo had links to a missionary order sponsored by the Glaws on the edgeworld Damask. Damask was a real place, right enough, a harsh frontier planet at the very limit of the Helican sub-sector territory, one of a hundred worthless, seldom-visited places. Astrogeographically it lay just a few months passage spinward of the uncharted regions of the mysterious saruthi.
Lowink accompanied Aemos on one of his visits as soon as I was strong enough, and extracted from my mind a likeness of the pipe-smoking man, which he realised psychometrically on an unexposed pict-plate. The image, a little blurred, was good enough, and it was copied and circulated through all branches of the investigating authorities. But no one could identify him.
Lowink recovered an image of the Pontius too, by the same means. This baffled all who viewed it, except Aemos who immediately confirmed that the strange artefact was precisely the correct size and dimensions to fit into the cavity in Eyclone's casket, the one recovered from Processional
Two-Twelve. As we had conjectured, this was what Eyclone had been awaiting, what the mass-murder in the Hubris ice tomb had been for.
'Urisel Glaw referred to Pontius as if he was still alive/ I said to Aemos. 'Certainly something with great psychic force felled me in the chamber where the Pontius was secured. Could he be alive, in some sense, some part of him, perhaps some psychic essence, captured in that device?'
Aemos nodded. 'It is not beyond the highest Imperial technologies to maintain a sentience after great physical injury or even death. But for such technologies to be within the grasp of even a mighty family like the Claws...'
'You told me it resembled something of the mysteries of the Adeptes Mechanicus.'
'I did/ he pondered. 'It is most perturbatory. Could the foul crime of Hubris have been some effort to siphon vulnerable life energies into this artefact? To give the Pontius a massive jolt of power?'
On the third morning, Fischig visited. His own injuries were healed, and he seemed annoyed to have missed the episode at Glaw House. He brought with him a priceless antique slate, a collection of inspirational verse composed by Juris Sathascine, curate-confessor of one of Macharius's generals. It was a gift from Maxilla, from his private collection.
Delayed by the excitement of the Glaw incident, the founding resumed. The new Imperial guardsmen were shipped to troop transports in the orbiting fleet and the final ceremonies were carried out. The Lord Militant Commander was now anxious to begin his expedition into the troubled Ophidian sub-sector, and felt enough time and manpower had been spent on this little local matter.
On the tenth day, it didn't look so much like a local matter any more. Via astropathic link, news came of incidents throughout the sub-sector: a rash of bombings on Thracian Primaris; the seizure and destruction of a passenger vessel bound for Hesperus; a hive decimated by a vi
ral toxin on Messina.
That evening, a brief, bright star suddenly ignited in the sky over Dor-say. The Ultima Victrix, a four hundred thousand tonne ironclad, had exploded at anchor. The blast had crippled four ships nearby.
An hour later, it became clear the incident had grown signally worse. Exactly how was not clear, even to battlefleet intelligence, but the explosion had been identified in error as a sign of an enemy attack by several components of the fleet. A frigate wing commanded by a captain called Estrum had moved to engage, and several destroyers from the advance phalanx had mistaken them for fleet intruders and opened fire. For twenty-seven hideous minutes, Battlefleet Scaras waged war against itself through the anchor lines of navy vessels and troop ships. Six ships were lost. Eventually, apparently heedless of countermands, Estrum broke off and, with a mobile group of fifteen vessels, went to warp to outrun 'the enemy'. Admiral Spatian gave chase with a flotilla of eight heavy cruisers.
The remaining fleet elements straggled to regain control and handle the wanton destruction.
The Lord High Militant, I learned, had a fit of rage so extreme he had to be sedated by his private physician.
That doesn't just happen,' Betancore said. We sat in my private room, by the tall windows, looking out across the city. Ghost-flares of energy and explosion, one trailing down in the sky like a falling star, marked the night.
'Imperial battlefleets are among the most ordered and disciplined organisations in space. Confusion like that doesn't just happen/
'Like deserters don't just get a hold of a ship and uniforms and know the name of the man whose ship they chance to board, you mean? Our unseen foe is making his influence felt. Voke talked about a parent cult, overseeing many small cells and cabals. He reckoned the Glaws were the masters of this conspiracy. I'm not so sure. There could be a yet higher authority at work/
Urisel Glaw was held in the Imperial Basilica. He had undergone hours of intense interrogation and torture since his capture. And he had given up nothing.
