by Dan Abnett
‘What’s your name?’
‘Alpharius.’
Peto Soneka started to laughed. It was a ragged, painful sound. ‘Lies, lies, more lies. I know for a fact that Lord Alpharius is in the grand pavilion right now, meeting with Lord Commander Namatjira. You’re lying to me, so you might as well kill me now and get it over with.’
‘Give me your blade, Thaner,’ said the Astartes.
‘FOR THE PROSECUTION of Mon Lo, I will require full access to, and use of, your astrotelepaths, sir,’ said Alpharius. ‘Why?’ asked Lord Namatjira.
The assembly was seated at the low couches, as servants brought in the feast. Namatjira marvelled at the nimble finesse with which the Astartes manoeuvred food into their mouths using their huge gauntlets. Despite their bulk and crude size, these beings were dextrous and refined.
‘Psychic power is a key weapon in denying the Nurthene menace,’ said Pech.
‘This menace…’ Namatjira said. ‘You have spoken already of this force of Chaos, but I fear it sounds like dark age nonsense and superstition.’
Alpharius smiled, expertly shucking a piece of shellfish that was dwarfed by his motorised glove. He slid the pink flesh into his mouth. ‘You have seen it at work, my lord. How do you account for it? Lord Wilde insists on referring to it as magick.’
‘It’s not magick,’ said Herzog.
‘And yet it is,’ said Pech. ‘It is the very quantity that mankind has called magick since the very start of his history.’
‘What Ingo and Thias mean,’ said Alpharius, ‘is that there is a primal power in our galaxy that defies comprehension. It is foul and it is powerful, and it exists sidelong to our frame of reference. It resides in the warp.’
‘And this, you say, is Chaos?’ asked Namatjira.
‘We use the word Chaos, but that term is very imprecise. It is a primordial force, and may be used by those who have fallen under its influence.’
‘You’ve seen it before?’
‘Yes, my lord, once or twice. It is a cosmic bane, a toxic effect that flows freely in some places. It subverts the mind and the will, it corrupts.’
‘Will it corrupt us?’ asked Namatjira.
‘Of course not!’ Alpharius laughed, shelling another piece of seafood. ‘It is not some kind of plague. But it is deeply ingrown in the Nurthene society. It gives them access to many skills that we would consider occult. Psykers are our best defence against Chaos. They will allow us to extinguish the enemy’s advantage here. For the same reason, I would like the Geno Chiliad to be deployed at the front of our assault when it comes.’
‘For what same reason?’ asked Namatjira.
‘The Chiliad uxors are rudimentary psykers. That will lend us an advantage.’
‘So be it,’ said Namatjira. He looked at Alpharius. ‘I’m trusting you, lord primarch. I’m trusting you to make a clean fist of this debacle.’
‘Your trust is not misplaced, sir,’ replied Alpharius.
Dinas Chayne appeared behind Lord Namatjira, and whispered in his ear.
Namatjira nodded. ‘My apologies, lord primarch. Much as I find this conversation fascinating, I must withdraw now. There are matters to attend to.’
Alpharius nodded. ‘I understand. I too, must go. Omegon has signalled me. Thank you for this feast, sir. It was a true and warm welcome.’
They rose. A hush fell.
‘Everyone,’ Namatjira called out, ‘everyone, please continue to enjoy this evening. Let nothing spoil your hard-won relaxation. My Lord Alpharius and I must withdraw to consider the days ahead. Eat and drink to your surfeit!’
Approval ran around the vast tent.
‘It has been my pleasure to meet you all,’ said Alpharius. ‘I am convinced that, together, we will finish this compliance in under a week. Ladies, gentlemen, feast well.’
He raised his cup and drank deeply.
A servant took Alpharius’s empty cup from him. ‘Lord Commander?’ Alpharius nodded graciously to Namatjira.
‘I have learned a great deal tonight, Lord Alpharius. My view of the cosmic order has been altered. I hope we may speak further on this subject.’
‘Of course.’
‘Terra rest you and the Emperor protect you,’ said Namatjira.
They left the pavilion in opposite directions. The carousing continued behind them.
By the south porch, Namatjira exited into the cold night. His Lucifers were waiting for him.
‘Report,’ said Namatjira. ‘Have you uncovered anything on Uxor Rukhsana?’
‘No,’ said Chayne. ‘But there is definitely a foreign agent at work in our midst. The spy has slain one of my men, right outside the pavilion. He’s too close and too good. We need to purge our ranks at once.’
Namatjira nodded. ‘See to it. You have my full sanction. By the way, what did you make of the Astartes, Dinas?’
Dinas Chayne looked back at his lord and commander coldly. ‘Every single one of them was lying,’ he said.
AT THE WEST porch, Alpharius, Pech and Herzog strode out into the night. Omegon was waiting for them. He had dismissed the perimeter guards so they could be alone. The four hulking armoured figures fell into step and began to cross the open dunes towards their lander in the cool, violet darkness.
‘How was I?’ asked the Astartes who had played the role of Alpharius all night.
‘Imperial,’ Pech replied.
‘Masterful,’ said Herzog. ‘But then, you do have a certain advantage, Omegon. Besides, I think you enjoy playing the part of primarch.’
‘Don’t we all?’ chuckled Pech.
‘So, Sheed,’ said Omegon, glancing at the Astartes who had worn the name Omegon in his place that evening. What’s the story?’
Sheed Ranko, master of the Alpha’s Terminator elite, was an especially large Astartes, who doubled well for both Omegon and Lord Alpharius in diplomatic circumstances. He shrugged his massive, plated shoulders. ‘Grammaticus was here, trying to spy on the meeting. He took out a Lucifer Black.’
‘He’s good, then?’ asked Omegon.
‘He’s very good,’ Herzog assured.
‘But he’s hurt,’ said Ranko, ‘busted up. I typed his blood.’
‘Get a match?’ asked Pech.
‘Yes. Konig Heniker. Apparently, one of the Army spies. Deep cover agent, specialist.’
‘He’s Grammaticus?’
Ranko nodded. ‘I think so. He’s a sly one, and very capable. The Lucifers are scared of him, and very little scares those wily bastards. We have to find him, and before they do. I’ve told Shere to hunt for him.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ asked Herzog.
‘Where’s Alpharius?’ Omegon asked.
‘Out in the dune wastes,’ Sheed Ranko replied. ‘Tidying up another loose end.’
NINE
Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, just before the evening dawn the next day
BY SHEER STRENGTH of will and the straining muscle power of his arms, John Grammaticus forced open the jaws of the dragon that was swallowing him and tumbled out of its furnace maw onto the cold sand.
He was too weak to fight any more, but that was all right. The dragon had gone away, as all dream things do when a person wakes.
Grammaticus lay shivering for a while in the basin behind the lonely tel. The injuries he’d taken the night before were worse than he had realised. His hands were torn raw, and most of his fingers refused to bend, either because they were too swollen, or because they were broken. His forearms were striped with blue bruises from deflecting the Lucifer’s sabre blows, despite his sleeve armour. His face was sore and throbbing, swelling out around the bridge of his shattered nose and half shutting his eyes. His nostrils were black with caked blood and the back of his head was a contusion too tender to be touched.
He’d been in pain the night before, but he’d also been warm, and fuelled by adrenaline. Sleeping rough had reduced his core temperature and robbed him of every sensation except nausea and aching hurt.
Af
ter his confrontation with the Lucifer, Grammaticus had fled into the desert. There had been no sense or safety in heading for the terracotta palace. Grammaticus knew he was now being hunted by at least two formidable enemies, the Alpha Legion and the Lord Commander’s companion retinue. He’d found a place to shelter out in the dune sea, and had gone to sleep speculating on how best to resume his mission.
However, in the freezing dawn, shivering and hurt, Grammaticus was starting to believe his mission was no longer viable. What little chance there might have been to redeem himself and finish his work had probably vanished. He feared he was too hurt and too compromised to risk continuing. Perhaps it was time to abandon the mission and get out. The Cabal would just have to find another way of accomplishing its designs.
He got up, unsteadily. Thin light was beginning to pour over the horizon as dawn sliced its way into the sky. It would be bone-chill for another hour or so, then the sun would rise fully, like a bleach spot on pink blotting paper, and the land would bake. And then he would be dead.
But John Grammaticus had not fled blindly into the empty desert quarter. He read charts as well as he read lips. Before immersing himself in the Mon Lo offensive, he’d spent three days reconnoitring the desert edge twenty kilometres south of the palace. He’d methodically dug in contingency bolt holes, each one ready to play its part in whatever exit strategy he might be forced to use.
Yes, he decided, it was time to go now, more than time. He’d done his best, and he’d failed. He’d been a fool to stay on as long as he had, especially after the business with the dragon. His expectations had reduced to three, simple possibilities. He could escape, alive, and attempt to persuade the Cabal his failure on Nurth was not an eliminating offence. He could escape, and hide from the Cabal for as long as his wits held out. Or he could die in the desert. The Cabal was not the forgiving master it may have once been, but the first option seemed the best, nevertheless. He prayed he was still useful enough as a toy to be spared.
He walked west for a kilometre, glanding a little boost to wake himself up and sharpen his senses. The chemical boost helped numb the throb in his arms, his knuckles and his skull. As his mind cleared, he took stock, and verified his position using landmarks that he had patiently memorised during his reconnoitre: a pile of six, flat stones; a pronghorn skull, decades old; a patch of scrub that looked like a map of the Crimea.
In just under fifteen minutes, he found the pool.
It lay at the bottom of an especially deep wadi, a slick of left-over winter rain that the long summer had not yet quite evaporated. The pool was less than a metre deep at its centre, and the water had reduced down to a brackish, brown silt. It was unpotable, but pure enough to clean himself with. He winced as the mineral salts in the water burned and sterilised his wounds.
He groaned through gritted teeth as he sluiced the liquid against the back of his skull with his wounded hands.
The first rays of the rising sun began to stab into the cold blackness of the gulley like laser spears. Grammaticus gingerly traced the wadi wall around to a place marked with two lumps of onyx. He dug the sand away clumsily with his damaged hands and pulled out the kitbag he’d buried there.
It was a standard Army clip-lock satchel, woven from waterproof canvas. Inside were two litre bottles of rehydration fluid, a pack of ration bars which he began to eat immediately, a medicae capsule, a collapsible knife, a laspistol with two spare charge clips, three chemical flares, an autolocator, a clean bodyglove, rolled up around a plastek-wrapped sheaf of documents, and a write-enabled data-slate.
He sat down, munching on one of the ration bars and taking the odd swig of fluid from one of the bottles. He sorted through the documents: two pre-prepared alternate identities, along with two sets of blanks that he could make up quickly using the gene traces loaded into the data-slate.
He ran through one of his exit strategies. The food and fluid would get him as far as his next cache of supplies, eight kilometres south. Then he’d use the autolocator to call in a rescue ship from the fleet. The flares would help the ship find him. They’d be all too keen to pick up a precious Geno Five-Two hetman lost in the desert edge, and that was precisely what one of his pre-prepared documents said he was. He’d been careful to make up a set using the ident of a het missing and lost during the last few weeks. Peto Albari Soneka, het of the Dancers, missing in action since the CR345 raid. Grammaticus idly practised a Feodosiyac accent. He could carry that off, no problem.
By the time anyone realised he wasn’t Peto Soneka, he’d have vanished behind two or three other stolen identities and become lost in the data labyrinth of the fleet. Then, what? A berth on a supply vessel heading towards the core regions? Something simple. Something unfussy. A hundred ships came and went every day, servicing and supplying the huge demands of the advancing 670th Fleet. He’d be gone on one of them before anyone knew it, and on some backwater colony, ninety light years away, he’d step off and disappear forever. Forever.
He thought about using the medicae capsule to tend his injuries, then considered that dirty wounds would reinforce any survivor story he attempted to weave.
Grammaticus sighed and began to repack his bag. He tried not to think about Rukhsana Saiid any more. Gahet, that old bastard, had been quite right. That had been a wrong step. It hadn’t impaired his mission so much as it had impaired her chances of survival. It was likely that she would pay the price for his disappearance. Once again, he despised his own weakness. He had used her so badly, so knowingly, and yet the sad truth of it was that he had genuine feelings for her. Perhaps, once he was back in the fleet and functioning under a new identity, he might arrange to have her recalled. He’d get her out and take her with him. Of course, that risked exposure… perhaps too much exposure.
‘I am a coward,’ he told the desert out loud, tears on his cheeks.
‘You are,’ the desert replied.
Grammaticus leapt to his feet, his heart pounding. He fought to get his broken fingers to take hold of the laspistol, and aimed it.
At nothing.
He snatched around, chasing the source of the voice, the pistol braced. +Show yourself!+ he sent. ‘I’m right here, John.’
He looked down at the stained pool. The Cabal was using it as a fleet. It wasn’t Gahet this time. This time, they’d sent Slau Dha.
‘You’ve been quiet a long time,’ Grammaticus said boldly, despite the fact that the vision of Slau Dha terrified him. ‘I called for you, and no one answered. Now you come?’
Slau Dha nodded. His reflection was extraordinarily pure, like a hologram cast up from the pool’s water. The autarch gazed at Grammaticus through the slits of his glinting, bone-white helm. He was as slender as he was tall. The white feathers of his giant wings caught the advancing light. A few metres in front of the towering white figure stood G’Latrro, Slau Dha’s little Xshesian interpolator.
‘What do you want, lord?’ Grammaticus asked.
Slau Dha murmured something.
‘He wants to know why you’re giving up, when we’re so close to our goal,’ G’Latrro translated into Common Gothic, quite unnecessarily. Grammaticus spoke the eldar tongue well enough.
‘I’m compromised. You must understand that. I can’t get any closer. I can’t do what you want me to do.’
Slau Dha did not reply. He continued to stare at Grammaticus.
‘You are terminating your mission?’ asked the little Xshesian in Gothic.
Grammaticus switched to the eldar tongue, ignoring the hunched insectoid and looking directly at the autarch. ‘I said, I can’t—’
‘He knows what you said, John,’ said G’Latrro. The Xshesian had to move its mouthparts rapidly and nimbly to approximate human speech sounds. ‘He thought the Cabal had trained you well. Briefed you fully. Shared its Acuity with you.’
‘You did, but—’
‘He thought you understood how vital this gambit was.’
‘I do, but—’
‘Why are you giving u
p, John?’
Grammaticus shook his head and tossed the laspistol back onto his pack. ‘I’m no good to you. This situation is no longer viable. I’ve tried to get close to the Alpha Legion, and I can’t. They’re too wary. You should deploy another agent, and try elsewhere. Another Legion, perhaps?’
‘Are you planning for us now, John Grammaticus?’ G’Latrro chose not to translate Slau Dha’s question. Instead, he relayed it straight. The question was simple, but framed in the eldar accusative form, it felt like a death threat.
‘I would not presume, lord,’ said Grammaticus, shuddering.
‘Two years, sidereal, that’s all we have before it starts,’ G’Latrro said, relaying Slau Dha’s whispers. ‘A decade, maximum, before it ends. This is our window. Our one chance to turn your feckless race into an instrument of good.’
‘You’ve never liked humans much, have you, “honoured lord”?’ Grammaticus asked.
‘Mon-keigh,’ the autarch said, contemptuously.
‘You are weed-species, afterbirth, runts,’ the Xshesian glossed.
‘No, tell me what you really think,’ Grammaticus said.
Slua Dha muttered. ‘You are the blight of the galaxy, and you will be its doom or its deliverer,’ G’Latrro relayed.
‘I do so love our conversations,’ Grammaticus smiled. ‘It’s so rewarding to speak to a being who perceives my entire species as a momentary aberration in the galaxy’s evolution.’
‘Aren’t you, just?’ asked Slau Dha, in thickly accented Low Gothic.
‘You know what? Fug you, you uptight eldar bastard. Piss off and hide in whatever corner of the cosmos you deem safe. Leave me alone. Stop fleeting up and abusing me.’
Grammaticus spat. His spittle landed in the pool and caused a ripple that spread out and broke around Slau Dha’s armoured shins.
‘John?’ asked G’Latrro. ‘Whatever made you think he was fleeting himself here?’
Grammaticus backed away quickly, stammering. ‘No, no… no!’ The autarch took a step towards him, past the cowed Xshesian, roiling the pool’s sediment with his feet.
Grammaticus lunged for his pack, but the eldar, as had been the case since the start of time, was far too fast. A blur of white, it reached him in a second and seized him by the throat. Long, bone-armoured fingers bit into Grammaticus’s neck and pinned him down.
