by Marc
The corpse’s companions – four of them, foot-soldiers making their regular circuit of Reisiger turf, collecting tribute from the businesses under their Haus’s control – reacted with shouts of anger and surprise as they reached for their own concealed weapons.
Kravi and the three men who flanked him cut them down with short, silent bursts from the elegantly-crafted rifles they each held. Their smooth curving lines and long tapering barrels made them look more like pieces of sculpture than weapons; their pistol grips, set behind curved magazines that jutted forward like the teeth of some huge sea-beast, had been designed for slimmer hands, possessed of longer, more delicate fingers. This, combined with their weight – much less than an autogun or bolter – gave Kravi the impression that he might be holding a child’s toy, rather than a firearm, but the bloody chunks that now lay scattered across the depot floor bore mute witness to their deadly capabilities.
Kravi poked the air with a finger, directing his men to take up positions on either side of the open doorway, then ran forward, weapon held at hip-height. As he had expected, two of the Reisiger crew had remained outside the covered warehouse section of the depot, guarding their vehicle. The first appeared in the doorway, pistol drawn, coming to investigate the cries from within. Kravi fired and the thug fell back, his chest a ruin. The second, seeing his comrade fall, ducked to one side, away from the doorway.
‘The wall – there!’ Kravi pointed to the metal wall to one side of the door. His men stared at him for a moment, puzzled. ‘Shoot the damn wall!’ he repeated. According to Graumann, Brek claimed these fragile-looking things could punch through light armour plate.
Kravi’s men each fired a sustained burst at the wall. By the time they released their triggers, the metal hung in shreds and the man behind it lay in pieces. Two of Kravi’s men – Gregor and Rudy – stared down at their rifles, wearing comical expressions of almost religious awe.
The squeal of protesting vulcanite came from outside the warehouse. Kravi ran through the door in time to see the Reisiger crew’s vehicle tearing away from them, on a swerving, barely-controlled course towards the depot gates. Depot workers in the auto’s path scattered to avoid being run down. Those in the clear had turned from the wagons and tractors they were working on to stare at the carnage.
Gregor had followed Kravi through the door. He raised his rifle, sighting after the speeding vehicle. Kravi put out a hand, pressing the barrel down.
‘Let him go.’ Kravi said. ‘He’ll be our messenger. He’s seen what we can do with these.’ Kravi hefted his rifle. In the sunlight, an iridescent sheen swirled just beneath the surface of the weapon’s carapace. The metal of which it was composed – if indeed it was metal – had not been mined on Equus III, or any other world in the Imperium. Looking down at the shifting pattern, Kravi felt a thrill ran through him – a mixture of fear and elation.
‘He’ll tell his Protektor and his Protektor will tell Reisiger: Haus Gaudi is taking over.’
IN THE SANCTUM beneath the family compound, Viktor Gaudi listened to the reports. Haus Volpone was losing its hold on the docks as Protektor Seynitz’s men moved in. Graf Malenko’s men had taken a beating in the smelting districts – it remained to be seen whether they would attempt a reprisal on Gaudi territory. Viktor doubted it – word would already have reached them of the death of Graf Reisiger, gunned down while presiding over a council-of-war in his favourite restaurant. According to that report, there was barely enough left of Reisiger, his closest advisors and their bodyguards to make one of the stews the old Graf loved so much. Since then, large numbers of Reisiger men, protektors as well as foot-soldiers, had been defecting to Haus Gaudi.
An audacious move, the assassination had been planned and led by Graumann’s protege, Mikhail Kravi. Kravi’s hand-picked crew hijacked a pantechnicon on its way to make a delivery to the restaurant and, disguised in the coveralls of the delivery firm, had strode unopposed through the kitchens and into Reisiger’s private dining room. By the time the Graf’s bodyguards realised anything was amiss, the air was thick with high-velocity mono-molecular disks. At a stroke, Graumann’s young lieutenant had torn the heart from Haus Reisiger. Grown soft during the years of the trace, none of Reisiger’s remaining heirs had the experience or the will to rally their house against Haus Gaudi’s annexation of their territory. Viktor had already sent word that Kravi was to be acknowledged as a Protektor in his own right and given control of the depot district that had formerly been under Haus Reisiger protection.
‘I take it that our merchandise has met with your approval, Graf.’ The merchant stood before the long table, looking down at Viktor with dark, heavy-lidded eyes. He wore the same bland, neutral expression as he had when Filip had introduced him to Viktor in the salon of the Leather Venus, one of the more salubrious establishments in Praxis’s pleasure district. Using the most polite, convoluted form of High Gothic, he had requested an audience. Viktor, tired from the night’s exertions and more than a little drank, had agreed and left Filip to make the arrangements. He had arrived on the day of the gathering, alone, carrying a long, slim case made from what appeared to be some kind of wood, inlaid with ornate icons. It had reminded Viktor of the case in which his grandfather stored his favourite antique hunting rifle. Its contents, however, could not have been more different.
‘We’d be happier if we knew where those unholy relics came from,’ growled Friedrik Engel, before Viktor had a chance to speak. From his seat on Viktor’s left, Brek shot a look along the table at the old man who sat on the Graf’s right. He opened his mouth to speak, but Viktor held up a hand to quiet him. His grandfather’s Grafsberator, Viktor only kept Engel by his side to appease the old Graf’s retainers – and to make it easier to dispose of him when Viktor’s position was secure. Engel didn’t approve of Viktor’s plans, or the means by which he had set about achieving them, but his sense of loyalty to the family had kept him in line thus far.
‘As I explained to your new Graf,’ the merchant replied smoothly, as if unaware of the sudden tension in the room, ‘I am merely a representative of a larger concern, one that specialises in supplying – shall we say unusual – material to those who might make best use of it.’ Though he was addressing Engel, he was still looking at Viktor. His tone was polite, emollient, but the implication was clear: his business was with the new Graf, not an ageing subordinate. Viktor felt the old man bristle and smiled.
‘Our ships came upon a drifting hulk. Its exact location is of no concern. Within its hold were certain artefacts. When the news reached us of Graf Gaudi’s accession, it occurred to us that others might seek to take advantage of the situation – to move against the family before the new leader had settled into his position – and so we offered our services. From what I have heard, things are going well for Haus Gaudi.’
‘They are indeed,’ Viktor agreed. Though the words of the Divine Emperor rightly teach us to be wary of the work of alien hands, the fact is that a gun is a gun, nothing more. Better that such weapons should be in the hands of our men, rather than those of our rivals.’ Viktor directed his words at Engel and now it was Brek’s turn to smile. The younger man had just repeated, almost verbatim, the reasoning Brek had used to quell Viktor’s misgivings at the sight of the curved, shimmering surface of the shuriken catapult nestling within the merchant’s case.
‘When you contacted me to request this audience, you said that you had more merchandise that would be of use to us?’ Brek addressed the merchant, who nodded.
‘Oh yes.’ the merchant replied. Viktor thought that, for the first time, the flicker of a smile played across his thin lips. ‘There is so much more that we can show you.’
KRAVI HAD BEEN at prayer when he received the summons. Kneeling in the dark, incense-heavy atmosphere of the Ecclesiarchy sub-chapel, he had been giving thanks for his recent elevation to Protektor of the first district he and his crew had wrested from Reisiger control. That it was the Emperor’s will that he should have achieved this was
beyond doubt. Was it not written in the Holy Books of Terra that the Emperor of Man would help those who helped themselves?
Any doubts he did have centred around the means by which he had achieved so much in so short a time. After Graf Reisiger’s death, merely the sight of the shuriken catapults was enough to un-man the Reisiger crews Kravi and his men had faced. He smiled at the memory of the Protektor of a neighbouring district who, upon his first sight of the weapon in Kravi’s hands, immediately pledged his stammering allegiance to the Haus Gaudi without a shot being fired.
Be not tempted by the works of the Alien, for they are abominations. Equus III was a loyal world and Praxis its most devout city. Like all of its inhabitants, Kravi knew large sections of the Books of the Emperor by heart. Regular chapel attendance was taken for granted by the members of every Haus on the planet. It was not unusual for a Gaudi, Reisiger or Malenko foot-soldier to kneel in prayer beside a member of a rival family, or a judge from the Arbites. Whatever happened on the streets outside, the sacred ground on which Ecclesiarchy buildings stood was neutral territory.
There was no denying that the weapon he had used to carve Graf Reisiger into bloody slivers had been created by alien minds to be used by alien hands, perhaps against the loyal human servants of the Imperium. As he knelt in the chapel, Kravi had taken a breath before offering thanks for their delivery into the hands of Haus Gaudi. Then he waited, head bowed and heart hammering, for judgement, for some sign that he was damned.
Instead, he had felt a hand on his shoulder, followed by a familiar voice, whispering. ‘You’re wanted at the compound.’
As they walked briskly down the chapel steps in the fading evening light, Gregor had told him that every Protektor had been summoned to attend upon the Graf immediately. Gregor had driven to the chapel in Kravi’s personal vehicle – a sleek, powerful two-seater which Kravi had accepted in lieu of tribute from a trader whose depots fell within his newly-acquired territory – so that he might drive out to the compound directly. Before slipping behind the wheel, Kravi had instructed his lieutenant to let Maria Kleist know that he would be late for tonight’s assignation.
As he drove towards the compound, the canyons of the city’s streets giving way to fields and woodland, he laughed at his earlier doubts. There had been no bolt from the chapel’s rafters, sent by the Emperor in retribution for his daring to use the alien weapons. None of the chapel’s priests had denounced him from the high altar as marked by abomination. For all their gleaming strangeness, these ‘works of the Alien’ were no different to a laspistol or a bolter
Equus III’s second sun was setting as he approached the compound, casting a crimson glow across the high wall. Sentries stood atop the battlements; the curving metal stocks and thin, tapering barrels of their weapons glittered in the fading light.
The compound beyond the wall resembled a vehicle bay at the landing fields. Kravi was one of the last of the Gaudi Protektors to arrive. Graumann was already below ground, a sentry informed him as he hurried towards the low, bunker-like structure that was the only part of the sanctum to protrude above ground. As he stepped between the bunker’s heavy doors, Kravi felt – as he had in the frozen heartbeat that preceded the assassination of Reisiger – that he was taking another decisive step towards his destiny.
THE HIGH-PITCHED squealing threatened to burst his skull as he crashed into the bathroom. The side of his head connected with the door-frame and stars shot across his already-blurred vision as he groped his way towards the sink.
He made it just in time. His cramping guts contracted in a spasm that almost dropped him to his knees and shot a column of vomit into the metal bowl. Elbows locked, he supported himself against the sink and gagged for air. He managed a brief glimpse of his reflection in the ornately-engraved mirror set above the sink – long enough to take in blood-shot eyes set in a puffy, blotched face framed by hair that was dishevelled and lank with sweat – before his stomach clenched again and another yellow and green stream splashed into the bowl.
This time he was able to draw enough breath to let out a low, animal moan. The squealing had subsided, but his knees were trembling almost as violently as his guts. If he threw up for a third time, he feared that his arms would give way and he’d end up lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of his own waste.
He retched, then coughed and spat out a last gobbet of bile. Nothing else left, it seemed. Kravi closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.
That must have been some party, he told himself. Wish I could remember some of it.
There was a shape in the star-flecked darkness behind his eyelids. A darker shape against the darkness. Its outline was regular, many-sided. There was something written across its surface…
Kravi’s knees felt strong enough to support him, so he eased himself upright and lifted an experimental hand to the side of his head that had collided with the door-frame. A bruise was already rising, but the skin hadn’t been broken. He took another deep breath and opened his eyes.
The light was like slivers of glass pressed against his eyeballs. Kravi gasped, blinked rapidly and raised a hand to shade them before focusing, with some difficulty, on the image in the mirror.
It was no prettier than before. He looked like someone who had just risen from his bed after a week-long fever. As he struggled to recollect the events of the previous night, he peered more closely at his reflection. He noticed what looked like an elongated teardrop, rust-brown in colour, at the corner of one eye. He prodded at it with a finger and it flaked away at his touch. Blood?
There was blood caked around his nostrils too, he noticed. Alarmed, he turned his head to one side. There, running in a thin line from his ear to the corner of his jaw, was more. He turned his head in the opposite direction. His ear-lobe was caked in what looked like an enormous brown scab.
What, in the Emperor’s Name, had happened at the compound last night? Had there been some kind of drunken brawl? Kravi remembered the squealing, the pressure inside his skull, as if something was trying to force its way inside his head.
There had been something in the room. Not the sanctum, but one of its annexes. The furniture had been cleared to make way for it. A solid shape, carved from a single block of black stone: a polyhedron. There had been markings on its surface – shapes, sigils of some kind – but they had been almost impossible to make out because the stone, though highly polished, reflected hardly any of the light cast by the candles that had been set around the room’s perimeter. All of the other Protektors had been there; Graumann had nodded a greeting from the far side of the room. The Graf had been there, too, and Brek, but he didn’t remember seeing Engel, the old Grafsberator. There had been someone else standing beside Gaudi, a face Kravi hadn’t recognised, with hooded eyes and thin lips curled in an unpleasant smile.
Kravi groaned as another cramp rippled through him. Despite their violent evacuation, his guts felt heavy, bloated. It occurred to him that a drink might calm them down – and immediately discounted the idea as they clenched and rolled again.
Looking down into the sink, he saw that the yellow and green vomit was draining slowly and glutinously away. He thumbed the faucet and splashed his face with cold water, cupping his hands over his eyes to ease their aching.
Hangover or not, you’ve got work to do, he told himself. As the new Protektor he had to show his face, prove to his men, and to those who owed him tribute, that he was in control.
He didn’t feel as if he was in control. He didn’t feel as if he had a hangover. His bowels rolled over yet again. It felt as if they were moving of their own accord, settling into a more comfortable position. He looked down at his flat, muscled abdomen and realised for the first time that he was naked. He didn’t remember getting home last night; he didn’t remember undressing. He had jolted awake to find himself sprawled on the couch in his new apartment’s living room, wood-panelled and softly-lit in imitation of the Gaudi sanctum.
As he looked down at himself, he half-exp
ected to see evidence that something was moving beneath his skin.
‘Like it or not, I need a drink.’ he muttered. The first mouthful of liquor came back up almost as quickly as he swallowed it. His guts cramped and twisted, but he persisted. The second mouthful burnt its way down his bruised throat, but didn’t return. By the time he took his fifth and sixth pulls on the bottle, a pleasant numbness had spread through him and he felt ready to face the day. He showered, dressed, then called Gregor to pick him up. When Gregor arrived, Kravi took the half-empty bottle with him.
‘SORRY, MIKHAIL, BUT the old man ain’t takin’ any calls.’ Grisha Volk’s voice came from the vox-unit’s handset. ‘He’s cancelled all his tribute meetings, too. Didn’t say why. He ain’t looking too good, though.’
Sitting in the back of the armoured limousine he had ‘inherited’ from Graf Reisiger, Kravi knew what Volk – his replacement as Graumann’s chief lieutenant, a stolid, loyal soldier – was talking about. He had seen Gregor’s look of surprise when he had opened his apartment’s front door.
‘He really tied one on last night – we all did,’ Kravi replied – the same answer he gave to Gregor’s unspoken question.
‘That’s what I figured.’ Volk said with a chuckle.
‘Tell him I’ll be in touch tomorrow.’ Kravi said, then cut the line and sat in silence for a while, looking out at the city streets – his streets – that flowed past the vehicle’s darkened windows. Something was nagging at his memory: the Graf’s words from the previous evening, about how the shining alien weapons were just the beginning, and that he was going to show the assembled Protektors the means by which Haus Gaudi’s hold over the city would be made secure for years to come.
Then what? There had been chanting, first in High Gothic, then in a language Kravi couldn’t properly recall. Not so much words as noises: clicks and squeals…
