The Inquisition War

by Ian Watson

  An urgent sending assaulted Zephro’s sensitised consciousness – and an image: of a domed abandoned wasteland elsewhere in Ulthwé. Of intrusion through a webway portal – by armoured Chaos Marines! Chaos warriors were spilling forth, attended by deadly daemonettes, the creatures of Slaanesh. Emergency, dire emergency!

  A second attack was underway – conducted by vile perversions of human warriors who had once been so proud and noble, but whom Chaos had subverted ten millennia previously, and who were now the timeless standard-bearers of vicious depravity. The battle-standards rising from the backs of those erstwhile Marines were so grotesquely obscene as to sicken witnesses of the intrusion. And Zephro shared their nausea.

  The profile of the foremost vessel had stabilized. That ship had become rectangular – with razor fins, with pincers at the bows. The following ship was still fluctuating as it descended, wreaking more havoc upon the sacred forest.

  High above the dome, a third raider swam into view. But out there in space a wraithship of Ulthwé was sailing to the attack. The wraithship’s high sails tacked in the thin ether. Ether, ha! To a large degree it was radiant pressure from the Eye of Terror itself which the wraithship used to propel itself and manoeuvre. Upon its deck a fusion cannon opened fire dazzlingly.

  A moment later the third raider ballooned with a light so intense that sudden shadows of trees were like physical blows from great cudgels impacting all across the beloved terrain. After-images wrought bars of darkness and blinding streaks upon Zephro’s vision.

  So much psychic surge! In stroboscopic flashes he was glimpsing that wasteland, elsewhere in Ulthwé.

  ASPECT WARRIORS WERE responding to the invasion. Howling Banshees, in their white and red armour, were advancing. Imbued with the spirit of their shrine, those females would be uttering stunning mind-shrieks. Their masks were screaming feral faces. Energy pulsed from their laspistols. Their power swords would be humming in anticipation.

  Daemonettes rushed at the Banshees. Oh, those daemonettes so desirable as regards the swell of thigh and bosom and curve of loins, so lethal in other respects! How jealous of the Banshees they were. How eager to rip the eldar females apart with the pincers of their hands. How keen to impale a Banshee upon the barbed prongs of their tails.

  Behind came the Chaos warriors. Crustacean codpieces jutted from their armour. They toted such obscenely shaped boltguns. And those banners! Displaying such gross bizarre erotic icons!

  Scorpion warriors of Ulthwé were attacking on the flank. Striking Scorpions! How nimbly they darted. Agility was their defence against the explosive bolts which ejaculated from the boltguns of the Chaos renegades. Agility, and strong green armour banded with funereal black.

  Scorpions fired shuriken stars from their pistols. Stars glanced off Chaos armour. Those Striking Scorpions were so alert for a chance to rush in and deliver their sting. Once they were at close quarters the pods in their helmets would discharge stunning psycho-conductive needles. The final coup would be by chainsword.

  FROM THE GROUNDED vessel, yet other Chaos Marines were emerging accompanied by a mob of beastmen.

  These Marines were burdened with heavy bolters and lascannon. How angular their power armour was. Shoulder pauldrons were rounded, yet as for the rest – such cruel angles! Above their helmets jutted vanes like axe-blades. Their very stance was angular. They sported blasphemous totems which would have wrenched at the mind of any devout Imperial Marine – mockeries of honour, mementos of foul victories over former battle brothers.

  ‘Renegades of Tzeentch!’ cried out Ro-fhessi.

  The beastmen were swifter than the Chaos Marines. Shaggy-legged, they only wore light armour. From their brows twisty horns jutted forward. Clawed paws clutched boltguns. From scabbards at their waists they pulled cutlasses. Their hooves were stamping marks of Chaos upon the bare wraithbone. Oh yes, these were creatures of Tzeentch – of the Power of Mutability, of Change the Destroyer.

  ‘I glimpsed the watch tower,’ Zephro called out by way of extra confirmation.

  Aye, Zephro’s psychic vision had been of the Tower of the Cyclops. Zephro had recognized it from horrific sketches which Ro-fhessi once allowed him to see. That tower stood upon the Planet of the Sorcerers in the Eye of Terror. That planet was the stronghold of magicians dedicated to the Lord of Change. Those had once been true Marines. Nowadays their foul master peered through the warp by means of that cyclops eye. He spied upon the realm of reality, greedy to find arcane trophies... such as sacred rune stones.

  Those other Chaos Marines who had invaded the wilderness were blatantly servants of Slaanesh, the lord of Perverse Lust. Was it by coincidence or by malign collusion that both groups had chosen the same occasion to attack?

  Black guardians fired their lasguns at the beastmen and their masters. Marines of Tzeentch responded by discharging lascannons and heavy bolters. Many bolts hit trees. Penetrating deep, the bolts exploded. Mighty trunks quivered from bole to crown. A guardian was blasted apart by a bolt. Another was burnt open by a lightning spear of laser energy...

  The defenders of the wilderness – those Banshees and Scorpions – were all close-range fighters. Where were the airborne Swooping Hawks who could drop grenades from above?

  IN THE WRAITHBONE forest Harlequins shimmered from place to place. Once in motion, they were virtually invisible. Pausing briefly, they fired las-bursts and streams of tiny razor-stars. So few Harlequins!

  Where were the aspect warriors? Where, where? Were they diverted by that other assault far away?

  Where were the anti-grav platforms for scatter-lasers? Terrible though the use of such weapons would be amidst the sacred trees! Where were the shuriken shrieker cannons? Where were the wraith-cannons?

  Harlequins darted. Harlequins vanished and reappeared.

  TZEENTCH YEARNED TO unleash destructive tidal waves of change throughout the cosmos – to unhinge continuity itself. The daemonic lord of the Planet of Sorcerors must have sensed the loss of the Book of Fate. He must have detected earlier divinations carried out by Eldrad Ulthran. His Chaos raiders had certainly been guided in their final approach to Ulthwé by Eldrad’s latest and fiercest effort to locate the Book of Rhana Dandra and its thief. Oh, fate was cruel.

  Those shapeshifting ships had arrived here through the warp. They had emerged into ordinary space very close to Ulthwé indeed, so as to take its defenders by surprise. Wraithships were forever on patrol around Ulthwé. There was no star nearby to bend space so that incoming vessels must emerge billions of kilometres short of their goal. A raider might materialize suddenly above the craftworld itself – especially if guided by such a psychic beacon as Eldrad had been obliged to light.

  Those other Slaaneshi Marines had come by breaking into the webway and following some psychic scent. Upon their world there would be a gateway from long ago. That gateway would have been sealed. What could have weakened the seals? What could have laid the trail of scent?

  An earlier intrusion which had produced that wilderness had come from a Chaos world which tilted crazily to and fro like a rocking plate. Aspect warriors had driven the surviving Chaos Marines back to their roost there. They had witnessed a landscape of lunacy. In the sky of that world they had spied a daemon of malign delight perched upon a low sickle moon.

  Surely the present Slaaneshi invaders came from that selfsame world. An eldar adept had sealed the rupture. What could have reopened the webway to Chaos but an intrusion into their world from this side of the seals?

  The trail led back to Ulthwé. The meddlesome intruder must have been Jaq Draco himself when he had fled away from the craftworld to find the Black Library. Through malice or through stupidity Draco had breached the seals.

  Damn Draco and damn him again. He wouldn’t have lingered long on that world with its daemon-in-the-moon. Just a fleeting visit. Oh, the damage he had caused!

  PRECEDED BY BEASTMEN, the Marines of Tzeentch were making headway through the glades. They were aiming for where the rune stones lay
extinguished under a mat of spiders, the divination aborted. If lascannons had been able to recharge more rapidly, progress might have been even speedier.

  Picked off by Harlequins, beastmen were dying. Spiders were trying to dissolve into those beastly bodies through the fur and hide, distracting the beastmen’s attention. Chaos Marines seemed almost indomitable in their advance. Shuriken stars and laser fire veered off those enchanted angular suits. The Marines’ loudspeakers brayed a hideous skirl of Tzeentch, Tzeentch. And then a roar of Magnus, Magnus, Sons of Magnus!

  Oh yes, Magnus had been their founder and their primarch. Nowadays he was their sorcerer-king in the Tower of the Cyclops. These were some of his self-styled Thousand Sons.

  The eldar plan involved the dying Emperor’s biological sons, who were unknown to Him-on-Earth. Here came savage sons of another stripe. Oh, the bleak loathsome irony of it! Eldrad Ulthran pointed the Staff of Ulthmar, summoning and focussing its energies. Ketshamine discharged his witchblade once more. Psychically, Ketshamine was messaging for support. Where were the aspect warriors? Where were the anti-grav floaters with heavy weaponry?

  Damn Draco forever. May he go mad and become the plaything of a daemon.

  No, but he must not. He must be found. Yet how, when Ulthwé itself was so assailed?

  Other craftworlds would join in the search. The loss of the Book of Rhana Dandra was a calamity for the whole eldar race. Spies would search. Harlequin players would rove through the webway to human world after human world, risking their lives and staging spectacles as a pretext for their presence.

  Zephro sighted his laspistol at a lumbering beastman who waved a cutlass. Zephro was preparing to kill and to be killed himself. Into view, at last, came an anti-grav platform. The platform jinked its way amidst the soaring trunks. Behind it flew Swooping Hawks. Their wings shrieked through the air, a blur of hues.

  There was hope! Forlorn hope.

  TWO

  Pilgrimage

  A WILD REGION of a southerly continent of the planet Karesh consisted of boulder-strewn goat pastures. Beneath those rugged pastures were limestone caverns. In a certain cavern was an exit from the webway.

  Below ground, phosphorescent lichens flourished. From the other side of the cavern the misty blue glow of the webway might have seemed to the casual eye to be merely a more intense patch of natural luminosity. Thus was the terminus camouflaged.

  In any case, why should anyone have come down from the surface to search? Such caverns were huge and spooky and dark. Idle curiosity was rarely wise.

  Evidently some goatherd had intruded at one time or other. Maybe he had been searching for one of his animals which fell down a shaft or strayed too far into a cave. Facing the opening to the webway was a cairn consisting of three billygoat skulls. The horns poked defensively at the blue tunnel, as though to impale whatever might emerge.

  The skull-cairn implied that the locals were primitive folk. Lex suggested re-entering the webway to find a more advanced world. Jaq was still deep in shock at Meh’lindi’s death, and felt unable to make a decision. Lex and Grimm debated the issue.

  To re-enter the webway would be to take such a random risk. They needed food and drink and rest. They had to hide. They had to think. In their hands was an alien Book of Fate – written in inscrutable script in a language which none of them knew, not now that she was dead.

  The book was a key to so many secrets. This business of the Emperor’s Sons, for instance! Since the book supposedly contained prophesies about the final apocalypse, there must be details about those Sons in this book – if the Sons genuinely existed. One only had a Harlequin’s word for this, and Zephro Carnelian’s too. Both parties could have been lying. This book was the proof. The proof couldn’t be read.

  Nor could they risk contacting any Imperial authorities. The Inquisition numbered in its ranks profound experts upon the eldar race. Those would have sacrificed an arm to be able to scan this book. Alas, the Inquisition was infiltrated by conspirators and at war with itself. Jaq had been branded a heretic and renegade.

  What of the place in the webway where time supposedly could turn backwards? Back to a time when Meh’lindi was still alive? Better not think of that! Not even Great Harlequins knew where that place was – if it existed at all. Only someone supremely illuminated might be able to find such a place. An extraordinary magician...

  Such as... a master of this Book of Fate? Such as... someone who had undergone daemonic possession, and redeemed himself? ‘You’re still in trauma,’ Lex told Jaq sternly at the mere mention of such matters.

  ‘I shall pray for clarity,’ said Jaq numbly. He didn’t pray.

  ‘Listen,’ said Grimm, ‘I once visited a farming moon so superstitious that even wheels were banned. ‘Cos wheels represented godless science. Perils of witchcraft, hmm? Even on that moon there were anti-grav floaters and a swanky capital equipped with a spaceport.’

  KARESH PROVED TO be a similar planet. Not that wheels were prohibited – but the rural peasantry were whelmed in ignorance and dread.

  Finding one’s way out of the cavern took a while. Half an hour after surfacing, they had spotted a goatherd. The fellow fled at sight of the trio. An hour’s trek brought them to a hamlet of dry-stone hovels.

  Stunted peasants were in awe of Lex’s superhuman stature. Was that mighty chest of his – with the ribs beneath his muscles all fused into solid bone – a human chest? What were those sockets in his spine? (Aye, through which his lost armour had once interfaced with him!) The peasants were leery of abhuman Grimm. They were dismayed by stern Jaq, and by his scaly mesh armour. However, their dialect was comprehensible – so this world could not be too detached from the Imperium.

  Dimly the peasants remembered tales of a team of powerful strangers roving a neighbouring province once upon a time, equipped with dreadful weapons, rooting out deviants.

  Psykers were feared hereabouts. The sign of the horns was used to ward off evil, which must not otherwise be spoken about too much. Offerings must be made to a nameless menace, which was at once terrible – yet also benign, in so far as it kept its distance. Was this menace the Emperor himself, dimly understood? These peasants eased the trio on their way in the direction of “the city” with offerings, including a new beige robe for Jaq, and a great loose homespun vest for Lex, which had been the property of a local prodigy, a farmer of grotesque obesity.

  The “city” proved to be a tatty town, although furnished with a landing field. Peasants would drive surplus goats there for slaughter. Far away across a sea, goats’ brains were much in demand by gourmets. It was in this town that the trio finally discovered the name of the world they were on – a detail which had been beyond the goatherds’ ken.

  Planet Karesh.

  Its capital was Karesh City. Once a fortnight, chilled brains were flown to Karesh City from this province. Otherwise, the region might have been even more isolated. The next such flight was due only a couple of days later. In exchange for bed and board at a hostelry near the landing strip, Grimm reluctantly surrendered a finely tooled silver amulet depicting one of his ancestors.

  With one of the smallest gems prised from the cover of the Book of Rhana Dandra, Lex bribed the pilot of the cargo plane.

  ANOTHER TINY GEM bought them lodgings in Karesh City. There it fell to Lex and Grimm to scrutinize the register of interstellar shipping due to call at this world. Jaq continued to be riven by grief for his dead assassin-courtesan. Was he obsessed by the quest for the luminous path and for truth – or for the supposed occult place where he might snap the spine of time itself and bring Meh’lindi back into existence? Sometimes it seemed to Grimm and Lex that the latter might be the case. Surely this was just the consequence of bereavement. Having encountered an inquisitor of the stripe of Baal Firenze, Lex respected Jaq’s tormented loyalty to truth. Since Meh’lindi had died serving Jaq, some of that loyalty had become symbolised by Meh’lindi for the time being.

  Lex understood all too well how deeply
the death of close comrades could affect a person. Inscribed repetitively upon the bones of his left hand, from which he had once dissolved the flesh in acid, were the names of two fellow Space Marines who had died decades ago.

  Yeremi Valance and Biff Tundrish, from Trazior Hive, upon distant Necromunda.

  The chirurgeons of his fortress-monastery had grafted new nervewires and synthmuscle fibre and pseudoflesh in the aftermath of Lex’s self-imposed penitential ordeal. Decades later, Lex’s hand still itched inwardly with the memory of those names.

  THE INTERSTELLAR MERCHANT and passenger ship Free Enterprise of Vega seemed suitable as a route out of Karesh. According to the register its captain held an ancient hereditary free charter. This captain ought to be a man of honour, unlikely to murder passengers if he suspected that their baggage was valuable. The captain wouldn’t wish to lose his Imperial charter to trade freely where he chose without too much obligation to the merchant fleet administration. An enterprising spirit such as he would surely want a huge ruby such as could buy half a dozen interstellar trips. He would be discreet.

  What clinched the matter, for Jaq, was the destination of the ship: Sabulorb!

  Meh’lindi had once walked upon Sabulorb. Three years prior to meeting Jaq, that very planet was the scene of her bravest and most harrowing feat. In the gruesome guise of a genestealer hybrid Meh’lindi had infiltrated a genestealer nest. She had killed its patriarch. She had escaped alive.

  To walk where she had walked, albeit with horror in her heart. To see what she had seen. To be where she had been!

  IN THEIR HOTEL suite, its windows plasteel-shuttered for privacy, Grimm raised a possible objection.

  ‘Look, boss, I agree it’s over a century since she was there, ‘cos of all the time you spent in stasis. Sabulorb might still be infested.’ Genestealers were furtive. They tried to establish their control by guile. To penetrate society from behind the scenes by using normal-seeming hybrids as a facade was their goal. To prey on society until it could be monstrously transformed.