by Ian Watson
Elsewhere in the mist: such cries and explosions. Some were real. Some might be simulated, the work of Harlequin performers who were both fighting and enacting groundside aspects of the rite.
The las-blasts burning through the mist were actual enough.
THAT RIVAL INQUISITOR and the mimic woman and the abhuman had run off into the drifting vapours without Lexandro himself firing or calling upon his companions to fire. Nor had the Librarian presumed upon Lex’s prerogative.
What was the truth? A captain of the Imperial Fists ached to know.
The battle must certainly continue to a victorious conclusion. Would it be desertion of his men to try to pursue that trio, and the truth? To pursue them at least briefly? To force more information out of them?
Lex imagined snapping that exotic woman’s neck, cracking her skull open with his power gauntlet, and eating some of her brain so as to know her innermost thoughts. His implanted omophagea organ would permit him to know her in this way. She claimed she was an assassin. His second stomach would detoxify poisons. Maybe an assassin’s grey matter might be permeated with some bane which could kill even him or disorientate him so as to protect her secrets. Aye, some passive brain-venom concocted in the laboratories of the fabled Officio Assassinorum.
Better to feed on the inquisitor’s brain instead.
‘Stop them!’ shrilled Firenze. ‘Catch them, destroy them, capture them!’
Schizoid orders, again. Nevertheless, this was what Lex wished to hear, so as to exonerate him.
‘Brother Kempka,’ he transmitted, ‘kindly take command of the sergeants.’
A HALF-DOME canopy made of that wraith-material, decorated with gaudy rune-pennants. Near the entrance, one of the Swooping Hawks lay bloodily dead in a heap of crumpled blue wing-plates. Bolts had torn its armour open, revealing to Lex’s momentarily enhanced gaze the texture of that armour. It was as porous as the bones of a bird. Compared with Lex’s own armour it must weigh so little. Here a fierce bird had fallen from the artificial sky.
To a Space Marine, his powered armour also weighed little. Lex had arrived here at an enhanced swift pace.
Inside the half-dome, a tunnel of wraithbone descended in a curve. A voice came faintly from beyond the camber of the bend, and Lex amplified his hearing.
An anguished grieving voice cried: ‘My friend, my friend, we saw eye to eye!’
Another voice spoke Imperial Gothic with a squattish accent: ‘Oh ancestors, leave him, Azul! Put him down! You can’t lug a corpse around or soon you’ll be hauling half the cosmos with you.’
‘He saw into my secret eye with his blind eye!’
‘Sawed into your eye, did he? That must have hurt a bit. In future I suppose you’ll see the warp all decorated with fretwork.’
‘You deliberately misunderstand me!’
‘Oh, aren’t we all misunderstood! Squats especially, us being shorties. Tell me: when you Navigators want to make a baby Navigator do you and the lady keep your bandannas on? Or do you do it eye to eye?’
Gruff abuse continued, with an apparently therapeutic intent. A third voice belonged to that bearded inquisitor. ‘In the Emperor’s name, come now, or we’ll leave you—’
‘Not necessarily alive,’ warned that exotic assassin creature. Evidently she and the abhuman and the inquisitor had caught up with the Navigator hereabouts. En route, the monkey-man must have met with some fatal accident. Maybe the runt’s heart had failed in terror!
These weirdly assorted people seemed almost as loyal to one another as brother Astartes. Such mutual fidelity from an inquisitor and an Imperial assassin? Lex could hardly imagine a similar fastidiousness in Baal Firenze. Such sentiments might indeed be heretical, a mark of corrupt waywardness. These people seemed to behave almost like brothers – including the female warrior, in her alien armour, with her exquisite alien features, which an artistic Fist could appreciate... and pulverize, if need be.
Lex’s fist itched.
That was on account of the derisive allusion to sawing an eye. Lex imagined bringing his engraving tool to beam not upon bone but upon such an organ.
One heard such tales about Navigator’s warp-eyes. Hard as basalt or vitrodur, those eyes in the forehead were said to be.
The downward tunnel confronted Lex. Eldar were a tall species. He in his power armour loomed quite as tall, though broader. Ample headroom, ample sideroom. Here was hardly a confined space, an armour-scraping space such as he and the owners of those names writ on his fist-bones had manoeuvred their way through in the abhuman warrens of Antro years ago. Lex could be dainty in his approach, and stealthy – to the extent that the impact of his boots would permit. Noise from the amphitheatre should mask his tread.
IT HAD BEEN a stray shuriken disc which sliced into Fennix’s head. Azul had been about to stagger with Fennix into the shelter of the half-dome, having just glimpsed that Harlequin Man beckoning again.
A disc from the mist. A token of random futility tossed in their direction as blindly as Fennix himself was blind. A razor-edged coin from the currency of ruin.
The astropath had lurched, and then sighed – almost in relief.
All the noise of battle had been such a confusing torment. No matter how deeply wadded with wool Fennix’s bat-ears had been, the recurrent hubbub of bolt fire and the eerie skirling music had been an agonizing misery. As for the amplified voice of that armoured knight: cacophony.
Fennix might as well never have bothered to keep his body spry. Despite his nearsense he was so disoriented. Were it not for Azul he wouldn’t have known which way to head. Azul had cradled him. Now Fennix would re-enter the dark womb of disintegration – or the infinite illuminating babel of his own inner creed.
The disc had torn into his brain. Thought and life lingered for a while.
‘I’m dying, Azul,’ he had managed to mouth. ‘Soon I’ll hear all the messages that ever were or will be... all at once... one gigantic blaring utterance, one mega multi-word that is the name of—’
Of destiny? Of cosmic history and futurity? Of arcane mystery?
Then the astropath had died – and either knew momentarily, or did not know.
AZUL HAD CONTINUED to carry the corpse further. He crooned to it. Blood and tissue stained the shoulder of his grey moire damask robe where the astropath’s head rested.
Descending, Petrov had entered an oval chamber. The chamber had three subterranean exits into three passageways which soon became filled with swirling blue mist. Azul’s warp-eye ached at those glimpses into the webway. Would that his warp-eye could weep for Fennix, tears squeezing from its black marble substance.
Three archways were decorated with mosaics of eldar runes – perhaps cryptic instructions for those who were conversant with the webway?
Petrov stared dazedly along one passage. To gaze along an energy-channel through the warp and nowhere glimpse the signatures of distant stars nor the beacon of the Astronomican was vertiginous. All familiar orientations were absent.
It occurred to him that the webway might possess no readily mappable linear structure but rather a quasi-random interconnectedness. To walk unknowingly along such a passage into the blue mist might lead to fearful surprises. Small channels, these ones were, suitable for persons. There would be larger channels, through which spaceships could sail.
The webway was like a haphazard psychic bloodstream. It possessed major highways: arteries. It possessed veins. And thin capillaries such as these.
Blood soaked into Azul’s shoulder as he clutched the limp astropath. He grieved until Draco, Grimm and Meh’lindi arrived.
GOADED BY GRIMM, Azul was at last laying Fennix down upon the floor of wraithbone. A few sparkling spiders oozed from the floor, to scuttle over the corpse. Azul grinned wildly at Jaq, to disavow the horror of bereavement. Grimm was right. Do not seem disabled! Do not seem fragile!
‘Will the spiders spin a shroud for Fennix?’ he enquired.
‘We must hurry,’ insisted Jaq. ‘If the el
dar lose the fight there’ll be such a rush of aspect warriors evacuating the amphitheatre. If we’re in the way they’ll not feel too many scruples. Which way did Zephro Carnelian go? He did come here, didn’t he?’
Which capillary had the Harlequin Man chosen to enter? Azul hadn’t seen.
Just then, yellow armour hove in view. A boltgun was pointing.
UNEXPECTEDLY THE CAPTAIN of the Imperial Fists swept his visor open. ‘I want to talk with you,’ rumbled a bass voice.
An olive skin, scarred neatly by nicks. Lustrous dark eyes and pearly teeth. A ruby ring through the right nostril. A cheek tattoo of a winged fist crushing a skull. Steel studs were inset along the man’s forehead. How startling to behold the man within the intimidating ancient armour.
‘I am risking psychic assault to show myself to you.’
Ah, that snouted helmet must incorporate psychic shielding. It was open to the air now, and to possible mental pollution. The captain held his gun unwaveringly.
‘My name is Lexandro d’Arquebus. My orders came from the headquarters of the Imperial Inquisition. The orders were accompanied by the correct codes.’
This mighty man harboured doubts! Or at least he was capable of rationality.
‘Imperial Fists are scrupulous thinkers, not just bringers of death,’ he added.
Jaq heaved a painful breath. ‘Are you aware,’ he asked, ‘that the Inquisition is at war with itself? Or that there is a secret Inquisition within the Inquisition?’
Jaq displayed his daemonic palm tattoo. ‘Do you recognize this?’
The captain gaped. Of course he did not know the emblem of the Ordo Malleus – nor even of the existence of such an ordo.
‘Or this?’ Jaq willed the hydra tattoo on his cheek to show. ‘Has Baal Firenze showed you this mark of abomination and conspiracy upon himself?’
Lex blanched. He made a warding sign with his gauntlet. ‘Tell me not of heresies.’ Yet he had demanded conversation. ‘Inquisitor Firenze does not entirely seem to know who he is. Or was,’ he conceded.
‘So I have gathered, Captain d’Arquebus! Once, Firenze was a participant in the direst conspiracy in the galaxy. This knowledge was evidently taken away from him. Firenze forced me into this conspiracy – which is why I wear its secret sign. I rebelled against these heretics and their secret leaders. I even travelled into the Eye of Terror to try to unmask their treasons—’
‘You went where?’ In the captain’s tone there was awe and dread.
‘I encountered a mutated Marine, and we killed him.’ Vitali Googol had been the instrument of that bullman’s death. Now Googol’s soul was a plaything of daemons...
‘I swear this, captain, by the Column of Glory which I have beheld with my own eyes.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Grimm.
‘The Column of Glory...’ breathed the captain. Awe beyond awe...
‘In the Emperor’s palace,’ added the squat helpfully. ‘That column.’
‘Of course an Imperial Fist knows of the Column of Glory! To be able to make a pilgrimage there! So very close to the throne room of our God-Emperor!’
‘Which we entered, and left again,’ said Grimm, plainly. ‘We can hardly be heretics. Or at least not your regular heretic – like Firenze was before he was washed and hung out to dry.’
‘Be quiet, you impious abhuman,’ snapped Jaq. ‘Do you think I trust you especially?’
‘I’m hurt,’ muttered Grimm. Meh’lindi hissed ferally at the stocky quasi-human silencing his grumbles.
With evident reluctance the captain enquired, ‘What manner of conspiracy was Firenze involved in?’
Jaq shook his head.
‘What is its aim?’ repeated the captain. ‘Who are its leaders?’
‘Such knowledge could destroy you.’
‘Aye. Perhaps it could.’
‘Besides...’ Jaq gestured impatiently up the tunnel toward the amphitheatre of war. ‘We need to go into the webway before it becomes crowded. We must find the Harlequin Man.’
‘That was my mission, and my men’s,’ said the captain. ‘To breach the webway. To capture some Harlequins.’ Bitterly he added, ‘And to purge and cleanse because Inquisitor Firenze does not know his own true purpose! Do I know yours? My military allegiance should be to Inquisitor Firenze.’
Meh’lindi’s comment was even more bitter: ‘Just as mine should be to the Callidus shrine of the Officio Assassinorum.’ The captain gazed at her. ‘You are so strange...’
On account of being a woman? Or seeming to be an alien?
‘Huh,’ grunted Grimm. ‘Do we have another potential devotee of our Lady of Death?’
Jaq said firmly, ‘We are about to enter the webway, captain.’
The captain would be obliged to kill Jaq to prevent this.
‘How will you find your way?’ the captain asked slowly.
‘By my Tarot, I hope! By the grace of Him-on-Earth. By the light of the luminous path, if it illumines me.’
‘What is that luminous path? I only know the radiant light of Rogal Dorn.’
Jaq made no reply.
The captain surveyed the three archways leading from the chamber.
‘Which path will you take?’ He did not intend to prevent Jaq’s little group from departing.
Jaq also eyed the three misty blue tunnels. He reached to remove his Tarot pack.
However, the puzzle of which route to follow was about to be simplified. From out of the shimmering mist along the middle passageway came an armoured predatory figure, glowing a bilious green.
FIFTEEN
Webway
THAT FIGURE WAS an Imperial Fist Marine. The blue fog of the webway had temporarily made his armour appear of a different hue.
In salute to his captain the Space Marine clashed his gauntlet across his plastron. The boltgun in his other gauntlet shifted to and fro. Now it was veering towards the alien guardian, and now towards the squat who was armed with two boltguns. Especially towards the alien female. What in the name of Dorn was the situation here?
Crisply the Marine reported his own situation on the comm-channel.
‘Lord. Sergeant Wagner led us on an exploratory thrust into a portal in the city. These hazy tunnels sometimes branch without the fork being obvious. I became separated, sir. I apologize to our Chapter.’
‘No need, brother,’ said Lex. ‘Your information is valuable. Be at battle-ease. These four people aren’t detainees.’
Stockman regarded his captain’s open visor with respectful wariness. The captain’s explicit order had been for suits to remain sealed until the company regained its boarding torpedoes and until those were well on their way to rendezvous with the troopship. Stockman’s report might have been squeakily audible to the four strangers through the captain’s open visor.
A runty corpse lay on the wraithbone floor. Recently shot – with a shuriken disc, so he judged. Shot, therefore, by the female eldar woman. A human shot by an alien.
Nevertheless, Stockman assumed battle-ease, stifling his impetus to kill.
‘These are agents of the Imperium, Brother Stockman. The female is an impersonator of aliens.’ That open visor... ‘With respect, lord, is theirs a separate mission to ours?’
‘You might say so.’
‘With respect, lord, have they come here through the alien webway?’
If that was so, then what sense did the massive deployment of battleships and Cobras make? All of it so that the Imperial Fists could breach the eldar habitat. What sense, if the Imperium already knew of a more cunning and stealthy route by which to enter? Was the Fists’ brave deployment within the habitat a deliberate diversion – a footnote to the activities of this robed and bearded man and the female impersonator, the Navigator and the abhuman? Was Inquisitor Firenze merely orchestrating an additional diversion which was costing the lives of his battle-brothers as surely as the battle in space was expending thousands of lives of more ordinary mortals?
And had Captain d’Arqu
ebus known this all along?
Misgivings were implicit in Stockman’s dutiful query.
‘You think clearly, Stockman,’ said Lex. ‘But have faith.’
The secret inquisitor spoke up. He must have judged the probable reason for Lex’s words.
‘We came here in a shielded ship, captain, not through the webway. Who but the eldar understand the ramifications of the webway?’
‘Are the other men of Sergeant Wagner’s squad lost in this webway now?’ Lex asked Stockman.
‘My lord, I do not know.’
‘I shall attempt to locate them. Stockman, I have transferred command temporarily to Librarian Kempka. Remain here and hold this place if possible. Try to deny it to the enemy as an evacuation route. If hard pressed, retreat by the way you came. Do not squander yourself. Report my decision to our Librarian. Time presses.’
THE CAPTAIN WAS intending to accompany Jaq’s party. To escort them!
The lone Space Marine stood a fair chance of interdicting this chamber to the eldar. If Stockman heard eldar beginning to descend from the surface he would fire up the tunnel. His bolts would ricochet wildly, lethally. Needless to say, Stockman must also watch his back in case enemies came through the webway. Equally, Sergeant Wagner and his squad might come.
Was a squad of Fists really lost in the webway? A devout captain would do his duty. If he became lost too, this would not be desertion or dereliction...
JAQ HAD TAKEN out his Tarot, unwrapped the mutant skin which swathed it, and removed the Harlequin card. Carnelian’s face was clear enough. His clothing, however, was constantly changing. It underwent a flux of styles and hues. Hectic hilarity was almost audible. The card jerked leftward.
The captain consulted an instrument on his wrist as if loath to be guided by a Tarot card. He shrugged massively. Muttering a prayer, Jaq restored the other cards to his gown.
Almost as soon as they began to make their way along the leftward passage, they heard Stockman opening fire behind them. Eldar must be coming already. The RAAARK of bolts became muffled as glowing blue mist swirled. Then the noise was inaudible. Whatever occurred behind them could have been a world away, in another reality.
