by Ian Watson
HAD IT NOT been for the psychic tracer, they must surely have lost themselves in the labyrinthine entrails of what was not one vessel but many, some of these enormous in their own right.
They traversed sooty halls so crammed with long-dead machinery as to be mazes in themselves. They floated down dismal lift shafts; they mounted crazily angled corridors where friezes showed forgotten battles between impossible ships shaped like butterflies with wings of spectral energy. Other walls were gouged as if claws had ravaged them. Some walls glowed with runes. Their lights picked out the graffiti of long-dead people – prayers, curses, obscenities, threats – and what might have been messages in alien script or in the calligraphy of madness. In one zone a drift of loose bones, kippered limbs, and dehydrated heads suggested cannibalism.
At last, a functioning airlock admitted them into a section where a breathable atmosphere survived, and warmth. Survived? Ah no, thought Jaq. Where air and heat had been restored.
He raised his visor and breathed cautiously. Oxygen enough, a spike of ozone – and a hint of sensuous cloying patchouli, perhaps injected to mask the undertow of smouldering embers, as of charring insulation.
The others copied him, Grimm assisting Moma Parsheen.
‘He’s very close,’ the astropath commented dully.
Through a plascrystal port they gazed upon a vast hazy hangar lit by the occasional glowstrip. Veils of Light was berthed there, tethered magnetically. So were six other starcruisers. One, shaped like a terrestrial shark; another like a rippy-fish; a third like the sting of a scorpion. Jaq looked in vain through a lens for identification marks, badges, or names. All the usual safety runes, of course. Otherwise, so far as he could see, the vessels were anonymous, identities concealed. Servitors – half-human, half-machine – rolled to and fro, stepped like spiders across the hulls on sucker pads. The haze in the hangar was exhaust gas expelled during docking.
That shark ship reminded him—
A speaker crackled to life.
‘Welcome, Jaq Draco!’ That was Carnelian’s voice: part merry, part crazed. ‘Congratulations! You’re everything we hoped for.’
‘Who is we?’ Jaq shouted in response and promptly slammed his visor shut in case of gas attack. Meh’Lindi and Grimm followed his lead, and Meh’Lindi flipped the blind woman’s visor shut too.
Jaq drew his power axe. The assassin and the abhuman both favoured laspistols at this point. In the gravityless environment of the hulk any unexploded bolts or similar projectiles could ricochet unpredictably for a long time within a confined space.
‘All will be explained!’ came the voice, now over their audio pickups. ‘First, you must shed your armour and weapons. Especially, your assassin must divest herself of every tiny hidden trick. Except herself, of course! She’s the funniest trick of all.’ Carnelian giggled. ‘Do it now. You’re being scanned.’
Jaq switched on the magnetics in his boots to give him purchase for possible combat. Grimm and Meh’Lindi didn’t need to be told to do likewise.
‘Ah, you’re rooted to the spot!’ mocked the voice.
Moma Parsheen still floated blindly near the plascrystal port. Jaq gestured urgently ahead, and swung a boot forward.
At that very moment, from the air-gargoyles furthest away, fingers then arms of grey jelly erupted to interlace across the corridor. Behind the little party similar tentacles of hydra burst forth, blocking any retreat.
Jaq activated his power axe and strode forward. Meh’Lindi and Grimm flanked him, firing their lasers, slicing through the impeding arms.
Severed segments writhed and melted. Globules filled the air. Still more tentacles poured into the corridor – from every gargoyle now. The hydra’s substance reformed and repaired itself, recoagulating and stiffening even as Jaq hewed with his power axe and as his companions lasered.
A force greater than magnetism gripped Jaq’s feet. The floor was ankle-deep, knee-deep soon in viscid, melted and disjoined hydra which sought to set like glue, Jaq powered a boot free, then the boot was trapped once more.
Quite quickly the whole corridor filled to the brim with the substance of the hydra. Pressure mounted against Jaq’s armour, and though the armour could withstand far greater stress before crumpling he could hardly move even under full power. Red tell-tales blinked as he exerted himself.
Rather than overload the suit’s resources, he relaxed. The power axe, clenched in his mailed fist, still hewed away at the same small area in front of him, but for the life of him he couldn’t push himself into the space it liquefied, nor could he shift the weapon to left or to right, so firmly was his arm held by the hydra.
All he could see was tough grey jelly plastered across his visor. He felt such a writhing impotence. He was outguessed. Paralysed. Though nothing as yet had touched his flesh, he was a titbit trapped in stiffest aspic.
So were they all.
‘Cease fire, if you can,’ he radioed to his invisible companions. ‘We may only hurt ourselves.’
As he strove to release his grip on the control of the power axe, so the jelly appeared to co-operate. It slackened, then tightened once again as soon as the axe was inactive.
Presently, Jaq felt the fingers of his gauntlet being forced apart; and his axe was lifted away. Soon after, he realised with a chill in his groin that something was opening the clasps of his suit.
Those cold touches of steel! He realised that a servitor was stripping him of his armour and removing all detectable weapons. The robotic thing was working within the substance of the hydra and with its apparent complicity.
Recalling how Meh’Lindi had been violated on that other occasion, Jaq feared for her sanity once her psychic hood was removed. Yet he also hoped that she might retain some weapon, hidden in a hollow tooth perhaps.
When Jaq’s helmet lifted clear, the hydra did not flow up against his face to suffocate him. ‘Can you hear me?’ he cried. Only centimetres from his eyes and mouth, the hydra blurred and soaked up his voice so that he seemed to be shouting underwater.
Yet soon the glutinous entity was withdrawing far from his head, allowing him to see it squeezing portion by portion back into the ventilation system. He still couldn’t move. Burly, fearsome servitors held all four of the intruders inflexibly.
The machines were hideous parodies of the human form, their metal casings and flanges moulded so that the robots seemed to be sculptures made of bones welded together, interspersed with flattened, grimacing skulls. Each sported two flails of sinuous steel tentacles and a crab-like claw. The sensors of their faces were indented into a snarling, tusked daemon mask.
Finally, save for inchoate puddles adhering to the floor and the walls, the hydra was all gone.
‘What a deal of nuisance we could all have saved ourselves,’ remarked Carnelian’s voice. ‘And now, dear guests, it’s party time.’ These disconcerting servitors slid on magnetised feet along the corridor, carrying their prisoners suspended weightlessly. Suits and weapons remained adrift. At least Jaq and the others hadn’t been stripped naked. Only Grimm bothered to wriggle and kick.
IN THE VAULTED auditorium to which they were carried, a score and a half of robed figures sat around a horseshoe of data-desks. The robes were of black or crimson velvet – over body armour – and all of those seated at the desks wore identical long masks. Thirty mock-Emperors regarded the prisoners through tinted lenses; for those masks mimicked the shrivelled features of the Master of Mankind, including some of the tubes and wires which sustained that living corpse.
Only the capering Carnelian showed his true, mischievous face. He was wearing a domino costume of black spots on white on his left side, white spots on black on his right. His high collar was white and fluted. His black half-cloak swirled as he turned to display himself. Magnetic shoes, studded with pearls, were pointy and golden in hue. On his head, a gilded tricorne hat. What a lethal, sly fop the man was.
‘In the Emperor’s name,’ said Jaq. ‘You, who mock the Emperor—’
&nbs
p; ‘Be quiet,’ growled a voice. ‘We are of the Emperor. We do His bidding.’
‘Hiding here in the warp? Manipulating a creature of the warp?’
One of the pretend Emperors hauled off his mask abruptly. That tri-forked ginger beard! Those bristling eyebrows! Shock coursed through Jaq. ‘Harq Obispal!’
Yet of course: that shark ship...
The ruthless inquisitor roared with laughter, steel teeth showing amongst his ivories.
‘Ostentation can be a mask too, Jaq Draco! A brazen display can distract attention from the true purpose. Though you cannot deny that Stalinvast needed cleansing of its parasites! Ah, those convenient genestealers...’
Obispal’s gaze drifted towards Meh’Lindi, and he frowned as if adding the final piece to a puzzle which had been perplexing him, but not liking the pattern that he saw.
Did Obispal’s associates realise that the rashly rampaging inquisitor was only present in this auditorium courtesy of Jaq’s assassin who had plucked him to safety? Jaq smiled at the impassive Meh’Lindi, blessing her impetuous intervention in that arcade in Vasilariov.
‘Hear me, inquisitor ordinary,’ he said.
‘Obey me. I am of the Malleus.’
Obispal grinned. ‘I know full well. What else could you be, snooping on my activities?’
Jaq pressed his advantage, however slim. ‘It’s as well that I was, otherwise you’d be dead now, torn apart by genestealers, wouldn’t you be?’
Several masked figures stirred. One asked, ‘Is this true?’ Even Carnelian registered surprise.
‘It’s accurate enough,’ allowed Obispal, ‘though by that stage my death wouldn’t have made a whit of difference to the outcome. I was merely somewhat incautious at one point. One risks one’s life for the Emperor always, blessed be His name.’ The man’s tone was dismissive, and Jaq had to allow him more credit for flexibility than he would have supposed.
‘Still,’ hissed another mask, ‘it would have been a shame to lose so bold a partner in this enterprise of ours; and of His Supremacy’s. Recruiting suitable candidates is a delicate business. Which brings us to yourself, Jaq Draco—’
Further around the horseshoe, a voice which struck Jaq as familiar asked him: ‘Draco, what is the greatest need in this galaxy?’ Jaq replied immediately: ‘The need for control.’
‘So let me tell you about our Emperor’s hopes for the fullest possible form of control...’ The owner of that voice pulled off his mask.
Jaq felt stunned anew. For the man looking at him through one natural eye and a lens in the socket of his other eye, the silver-haired man with a scar bisecting his cheek, to which he had sewn rubies so that the long-healed wound seemed still to gleam with blood – was none other than Baal Firenze.
‘Proctor!’ Jaq sketched a minor adoration of respect. ‘You sent me to Stalinvast—’
‘And you have been more quick-witted than even I expected.’ Firenze nodded towards Jaq’s companions. ‘Let’s have some total privacy, Zephro.’
Carnelian produced null-sense hoods and proceeded to fit these over Grimm’s head, and Moma Parsheen’s. Dartingly as a lizard’s tongue he kissed Meh’Lindi on the side of the brow before plunging her, too, into silence and blindness.
‘As you know, Draco,’ resumed the proctor, ‘there is an outer order of the Inquisition, and there is an inner order. And then there is the Ordo Malleus – with its Hidden Masters. Within the ranks of those Hidden Masters exists a secret, innermost conclave founded in recent centuries by the Emperor himself, answerable to no one else, and now here in session. This most secret group is the Imperial Order of the Hydra. Its main tool is, of course, the hydra. Its long-term purpose is none other than the total control of all human minds throughout the galaxy.’
And Proctor Firenze proceeded to explain the plan that motivated this cabal of Hidden Masters gathered there in the hulk.
WAS IT AN hour later? Jaq still reeled at the grandeur and abomination of the enterprise.
Some twenty of the cabalists had removed their masks by now, as if in earnest of good faith. Jaq knew none by sight – unless they had been surgically altered; nevertheless he could perceive that they were true-human, no marks of Chaos blemishing their features. He would know those faces again.
Eight others retained their incognitos. Cloaked in crimson, those were the High Masters of the Hydra. Jaq detected psychic strength of the utmost degree, yet no taint of daemonic pollution. This was undoubtedly human business.
Obispal was a member of this very special Ordo. So too had Jaq now sworn to become. He had repeated his oaths dully like a sleeptalked. One of those oaths bound him never to return to Terra, never to revisit the headquarters of the Inquisition, nor the even more elusive bastion of the Ordo Malleus.
In return Jaq had received a new electro-tattoo, imprinted on to his right cheek by Carnelian. The design was of a squirming octopus clinging round a living human head. All of those present who had shed their masks activated their own identical tattoos then willed the image to vanish again.
So it transpired that the elusive Zephro Carnelian was a trusted roving agent for the Ordo Hydra. Not an enemy at all – but an ally in the greatest, most righteous, yet perhaps also the vilest of plans.
Jaq now had custody of portions of the hydra packed in an adamantium stasis-trunk fitted with coded locks. When in future he removed coils of tentacle to seed the guts of the worlds he visited, so – he was assured – the entity would replenish itself, stasis notwithstanding, since the Chaos that underlay the universe connected the hydra together subtly, no matter how scattered its parts. ‘I have no further questions,’ Jaq finally told the conclave.
‘Unhood those useful iotas, then,’ Firenze instructed Carnelian.
Meh’Lindi, Grimm, Moma Parsheen: iotas, mere jots, tiny ciphers in the vastness of the Imperium and in the huge insidious scheme of the cabalists. Jaq, for his part, wondered whether he too was merely an iota, or had genuinely been promoted to become a moulder of destiny.
Even with rejuvenations it seemed highly unlikely that any of those present could possibly live long enough to experience – to enjoy seemed totally the wrong word – the fruits of the hydra enterprise. Unless those eight masked High Masters were sufficiently confident in their associates to try to journey to the next galaxy and back – in some incredible megaship – to take advantage of time-compression! Or to place themselves in stasis for centuries on end? Unless they dared to absent themselves from the slow unfolding of the plan – would not their keen minds continue to be needed?
Therefore the scheme must indeed be altruistic and unselfish, without personal benefit to those who were currently involved. This must indeed be a scheme for salvation in the long term: salvation through utter enslavement.
Carnelian unhooded Jaq’s companions, re-admitting noise and light to their senses.
Held motionless in zero gravity by the servitors with no input of information whatever, the three had been undergoing sensory deprivation for the past hour. Grimm dribbled like a happy baby. Meh’Lindi wore a mildly blissful smile which vanished as she came alert again. Moma Parsheen cried out as she sensed environment flooding back, the way that sensation needles through a frozen limb. For the first time in her life, perhaps, the astropath had been psychically blind as well as visually so; utterly isolated. ‘It’s great that you arrived here, Jaq,’ enthused Zephro Carnelian as he folded away the hoods. ‘Without wishing to expose myself to obloquy, as you exposed friend Harq before we all became colleagues—’
Obispal guffawed, though there was a sour note to his humour.
‘—would you mind confirming exactly how you distinguished yourself by finding us? Purely for the record?’ Surely the Harlequin man must have guessed?
‘For the record,’ said Jaq, ‘it was an astropath trace. A homer in your mind.’
‘Ah, ah, of course. Inserted when?’
‘Don’t worry, it’ll decay within a few days.’
‘When exactly!’<
br />
Didn’t the man know? Hadn’t Jaq virtually been led here by Carnelian?
‘Why, it was when you transmitted your goading holo into Voronov-Vaux’s sanctum, through the spy-flies you stole from me.’
‘Ah! The biter, bit. The spy, spied on. That would be just after you decided not to declare exterminatus after all... I guess your exterminatus decision was really what clinched my respect for your ability to think on a grand scale, Jaq. Be damned if we didn’t hope you would simply call in the Space Marines and spread our hydra around some more! Yet no, you think in ultimates. And that is excellent. We need ultimate thinking in the Ordo Hydra, Jaq. So: no harm done and no hard feelings.’
‘Except perhaps on the part of the whole population of Stalinvast,’ Jaq commented acidly.
Carnelian froze. ‘You didn’t send the exterminatus message, Jaq. As soon as the hydra began withdrawing, you changed your mind.’
Jaq nodded towards the astropath. ‘She still sent it. Of her own accord.’
For a few brief moments Carnelian’s face might have been that of a polymorphine shape-shifter viewed at speed, passing through absurdly accelerated transformations. For a few instants only, until he laughed.
Carnelian rounded on Moma Parsheen, laughing. And still laughing, he plucked a laspistol from his belt and shot her through one of her blind eyes, boiling her brain.
ELEVEN
‘OH NO, WE can’t tolerate an astropath who puts homers into people’s heads. Not when you consider the calibre of people who are collected here. Oh nil and nunquam and nullity. In a word, no.’ Thus had Carnelian swiftly explained his shooting of the old woman.
REUNITED WITH THEIR space armour and weapons, Jaq and Meh’Lindi and Grimm were escorted through the eerie maze of the hulk by the savage servitors. Grimm towed the Navigator’s weightless empty suit along behind him, and Jaq manoeuvred the adamantium trunk. At the hold where all the alien skulls floated, the automatons left the trio.
Out to Tormentum Malorum they jetted, only to be greeted with scepticism by the Navigator ensconced inside. ‘Come on, open up,’ said Grimm. ‘You’ve locked the airlock.’
