Horusian Wars: Resurrection

by John French

  ‘This is going to be delicate,’ said Viola. ‘I would advise that you let me speak first, as agreed.’

  He turned his eyes to the view beyond the canopy as the upper surface of one of the enclaves grew to blank out the vista of planet and space. It had been weeks of travel to reach Bakka, the Dionysia cutting through the edge of storms in the warp. He had tried not to sleep during the passage from Ero, but the stimms had eventually stopped working, and the dreams he had been avoiding had come to claim him. The click of talons and cruel laughter had followed him into the first seconds of his waking, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath. The hours away from sleep had been only a partial relief. His skin and eyes itched, and shadows gathered at the edges of his eyes when he moved. That had not helped him absorb the quantities of information that Viola had tried to go through with him, but he had got more than the gist.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘The nature of what we are doing had somehow escaped my awareness.’

  ‘Your habitual flippancy would best be put aside,’ said Viola. He glanced at her. She sat stiffly in the second seat, high-collared red coat immaculate, ivory hair plaited and dotted with jade-capped pins. The iris of her left eye was silvered over as she reviewed whatever information she thought relevant in the last moments of approach to the stronghold of one of the greatest Navigator bloodlines.

  ‘You are probably right,’ he muttered, but she did not reply.

  An indicator blinked green on the controls, and he looked around to see a tower shaped like a vast bald head loom before them. Gun turrets clustered in its eye sockets, and a rayed disk of gold gleamed on its forehead. Cleander gently fired thrusters, clipping the shuttle’s speed as it arced closer. Light spilled from between the face’s open lips as blast doors withdrew behind gilded teeth. They flew into the mouth. Bright white light washed over them and poured through the shuttle’s canopy. Cleander set the shuttle down, carefully, and powered down the engines. Behind them, the outer blast doors began to close.

  A vast chamber extended away from them. The metal plating of its walls, deck and ceiling gleamed, burnished to a uniform perfection. Stab-lights suspended from the vaulted roof burned with a hard, white brilliance. It was gleaming, bright and echoingly empty.

  Cleander waited for a minute until the outer doors shut with a deep thud that passed from the deck into the shuttle. Hatches irised open on the ceiling and air breathed into the hangar, fuming white with cold. After another minute the external atmosphere monitor flashed green. The auspex had blanked as soon as they had passed through the mouth-framed outer doors, but all the other systems were still working. Viola keyed the vox and external speakers.

  ‘The inheritor of the von Castellan dynasty is honoured to be welcomed to the domain of the Yeshar, and comes in all humility to discuss matters of mutual interest.’

  The words echoed from the gleaming walls, fading, as the static continued to come from the vox.

  Cleander looked at her.

  ‘Let’s get out,’ he said. Viola did not respond for a second, then nodded slowly.

  Cleander released the shuttle’s rear hatch, and squeezed back into the narrow compartment that ran down the length of the fuselage. Koleg pulled himself from his harness as Cleander passed. The specialist wore plain black fatigues and carried a pair of pistols holstered across his chest. His eyes and face were as impassive as ever.

  Cleander stepped into the bright light and moved to the front of the shuttle, blinking, his blue dress coat hanging open over the silk waistcoat beneath. Viola and Koleg followed. The air was cold, and tasted of metal.

  ‘Well,’ said Cleander, ‘this bodes well.’

  A clank echoed through the hangar. Panels of metal slid outwards from the surface of the opposite wall and spun sideways. More panels clanked out and furled aside so that it seemed as though a fifty-metre section of the wall was pushed aside like a sheet of paper folding over and over. The space beyond was black.

  Cleander glanced at Viola, but she was staring directly ahead at the space between the doors. Cleander took a breath and settled his shoulders. The wall stopped folding. A woman stepped from the dark, swathed in dark blue silk. Pearls and chips of jet dotted her embroidered bodice. Silver feathers extended from behind her back, haloing her with bright turquoise eyes. She glided towards them, the long fall of her dress hiding her steps. She stopped five paces from them, and paused, back straight, eyes bright and cold in a sharp face.

  Viola inclined her head, just enough to show respect. The woman in blue returned the gesture, but not as deeply. Her eyes moved to Cleander. He smiled.

  ‘Welcome to the Tempest Hold of House Yeshar, scions of the von Castellan dynasty,’ she said, her voice as clear and cold as the air it moved through. ‘I am Yasmin. I speak for the Yeshar.’

  ‘We come to discuss a matter of mutual interest,’ said Viola. ‘And we are grateful to be received by you.’

  ‘You have not been received yet,’ said Yasmin. ‘Your warrant and the introductions you furnished are enough to bring you this far, but as to your business being taken further…’ She smiled with one side of her mouth. ‘That remains to be seen.’

  Viola opened her mouth, but the intermediary held up a silk-gloved hand.

  ‘I will be frank. You are a beggar dynasty,’ said Yasmin. ‘You were great once, for a passing moment, but what do you have now? One ship left of what was once a fleet? And you still have an agreement with those by-blow creatures of House Su-Nen to pilot that craft until the death of your current Navigator. Your guide still lives and serves, or you would not be able to reach us here. You might be here to break your contract with the Su-Nen, but where is the advantage for Yeshar in that? One ship,’ she smiled more broadly, ‘that is as nothing. You could offer us a half-stake in all you found beyond the edge of night, and it would not be worth it. Aside from the amusement of the insult to House Su-Nen, what is there that you can offer us that is not – and let us again be frank – an insult to us, and an embarrassment to you?’

  Cleander laughed, the sound rolling through the hangar space as it echoed from the burnished steel.

  ‘I like her,’ he said, turning to Viola. His sister’s face had become fixed, her eyes focused on Yasmin.

  ‘It seems that it is you that offers insult to us, mamzel,’ she said, her voice flat with control.

  Yasmin spread her hands, still smiling.

  ‘I simply wish all our discussions to be open, and without misunderstanding.’

  Viola smiled back, but there was nothing of warmth or humour in the gesture. Cleander always thought of her as the counterweight to his own tendencies: the careful hand that steered a course around trouble; the diplomat that maintained the peace in the star city that was a void-going ship; the balancer of the thousand facets of a dynasty that even now could call tens of thousands of souls to its service. But as he saw her smile at the intermediary, he was reminded that she was still a von Castellan.

  ‘Then let me be clear in return,’ said Viola, and reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out a small disc of brass. She held it on her palm and a blue hololithic cone sprang from the lens at its centre. An image of the frigate that had engaged them above Ero spun in the centre of the light. Data cascaded beside it in long ribbons. ‘This is the Truth Eternal, a vessel of a battlefleet sent into the Veiled Region twelve years ago. It was assigned to Battle Group Caradryad, but it came from here, from Bakka, from the Prion sub-fleet.’ Yasmin frowned at the projection and data, but Viola continued, her cold smile still in place. ‘Like all of the Prion sub-fleet, its Navigator came from one House, from this House. From House Yeshar.’

  ‘I fail to see how…’

  ‘The ship was part of an atrocity that led to the deaths of members of the Inquisition. A ship that is recorded as being guided by one of your Navigators…’ The holo projection of the ship dissolved to be replaced by the empty eyes of a sku
ll set in a tri-barred ‘I’. ‘So the opportunity that we are here to offer you is the chance to give our master a reason not to condemn the line of Yeshar to being cleansed by fire, right down to your very last deformed broodling.’

  Yasmin had gone very still, her eyes dancing between the projection and the three of them.

  Cleander shrugged at her, and grinned. Beside him, Viola switched off the projection and put the disc back in her pocket.

  ‘Just so that our discussions are open, and without misunderstanding,’ she said.

  Yasmin turned her head, eyes moving off to the edge of the room, as though listening to something that no one else could hear. Then she looked back at them and nodded.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, and turned towards the opening at the far end of the hangar.

  Cleander looked at Viola. His sister’s expression was neutral. He raised an eyebrow. She moved past him without a word, following Yasmin into the waiting dark.

  ‘Your honour…’

  On the wall of Gothar’s Primary Conurbation, Judge Orsino, High Justice of the Veiled Stars, spat. The wad of phlegm splattered grey on the pale stone beneath her feet. The hot wind stirred her robes and set the tassels hanging from her shoulder plates flapping. Her muscles were already aching from the weight of her regalia. It had been a long time since she had been capable of fighting a running battle in full carapace armour, but the traditions of her office did not account for the venerable nature of those who had to uphold them. Swathed in robes of black and surplices of heavy gold and crimson, she bore the seven-foot sceptre of judgement without a tremble. Her lifeguards had advised against coming to the walls, and when that advice was disregarded, they had counselled that she need not make herself a target. She had ignored that advice too. In these times everyone needed to see that the rule of law still stood, that she still stood. The servo bracing, which helped her neck hold the weight of her high-crested helm, clicked as she gave a small shake of her head.

  ‘All to hell…’ she muttered. ‘All to hell…’

  ‘Your honour…’ said Galbus again from just behind her.

  She could hear the edge of frustration in his voice. She could forgive him that. The man had a hard job. As a senior executor of Imperial law, her actions not only needed to be grounded in precedent, they also formed precedent. Everything she did here was an interpretation of dozens, perhaps hundreds of edicts, and by citing them she in turn was adding to the Book of Judgement that was the Emperor’s law. The responsibility of ensuring that the body of law was both followed and fed was hers; she was a judge of the Adeptus Arbites, a high official in the service of the Imperium bound only by the writ of law and the orders of her few superiors. The responsibility for both researching the word of law and cataloguing her judgements fell to Galbus. Hunched beneath purple and black robes, and weighed down by an auto-transcriber and data-siphon, he followed her everywhere, like the shadow of her oaths of duty. It was not that what the Lexarchivist had to say at this moment was unimportant, it was just that whatever he was going to tell her could wait. The reality of what she was seeing, however, could not.

  The ghost-forests were burning. Even from this distance she could feel the heat of the blaze. Orange flames churned across the horizon. Smoke smudged the light of the sun as it set. Light flashed in the grey clouds as tree trunks exploded. The wind smelled of ash and the sweat-scent of burning sap.

  At her feet, the conurbation’s wall plunged down from where she stood before it met the roofs of the slum. The tangle of shacks filled the space between the wall and the ghost-forest. Suspended chain-bridges linked towers of scrap metal. Fire flickered in the shadowed canyons between piles of makeshift buildings. Every few moments the sound of an explosion cracked through the air, and a plume of debris and smoke rose from between the jumble of roofs. There was a sound to anarchy, she had always thought. She heard it now rising from the slum, a low growl of sullen discontent, punctuated by gunfire.

  ‘Your honour, there is a matter that you must–’

  ‘Has Governor Ket sent troops in yet?’ she said.

  ‘No, your honour,’ said Galbus. ‘She is gathering them to the principle palaces of governance. Her aides say that she is concerned that moving them beyond the wall could leave them vulnerable if the situation deteriorates further. But there is another–’

  ‘Leaves her vulnerable more like,’ snorted Judge Orsino, ‘and the situation is going to get worse.’ In the distance a cluster of vine-hung ghost-trees vanished in a roar of superheating wood as the crown fires leapt across the canopy of pale leaves. ‘Set the execution teams on ready alert to take Governor Ket. The command edict is mine, understand? Mine alone, and make sure that Ket’s spies have no idea what is going on. She has yet to move beyond being able to absolve herself, but if she does, the Emperor’s judgement must be swift.’

  ‘Your will be done,’ said Galbus, and then spoke again before she could speak over him. ‘But there is a matter that you must address immediately, your honour.’

  She turned and looked at him, now noticing the sweat on his face, and the twitch of his eyes. He was breathing hard.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘A message, keyed to your personal communication channel.’

  She nodded once. Galbus handled all of her communications, personal or otherwise.

  ‘And? Out with it man. What does it say?’

  ‘It orders you to attend a visitation at the courthouse.’ She began to shake her head. Galbus pressed on. ‘It was enciphered with a key from your archives. I have… I have never seen it before, but it bears the notation of the Inquisition…’

  She froze, eyes narrowing.

  ‘What else did the message say?’

  ‘Just one word,’ said Galbus. ‘Covenant.’

  Judge Orsino closed her eyes.

  ‘Curse it,’ she muttered as she let out a long breath. ‘All right, prepare the lighter for immediate departure.’ Galbus nodded, and began to press keys on his chest-mounted console.

  She looked up as a flight of Marauder bombers passed overhead. Heavy canisters of anti-plant hung from their wings. They curved above the edge of the ghost-forest, engines churning eddies in the smoke. She watched as the canisters fell, and the pale trunks of the ghost-trees began to dissolve into wet sludge ahead of the advancing inferno.

  ‘Curse it all to hell,’ she breathed again.

  They waited in the enclave of the Yeshar for six days. Yasmin had led them from the hangar bay into circular corridors of white marble. The walls were bare of hangings, but crawled with relief carvings. Stories of people, places and worlds that Viola had never heard of: half equine mutants fought with muscled humans; lithe-limbed girls morphed into trees; teams of horses reared from the sea, their manes churning with the surf as the shore cracked under their hooves. Light crept from joins in the stone, so that it seemed that the sun blazed on the other side of the walls.

  Squat figures in thick blue velvet passed them, hooded heads dipping to Yasmin. Viola had looked around at one of the robed figures after it had passed. It had been looking back at her, pale circles of eyes catching the light in the dark hole of its hood. She had walked on after Yasmin, footsteps echoing sharply even in the smallest spaces. Eventually the floor had begun to climb, spiralling like the inside of a sea shell. They had walked on, and come to a set of obsidian doors inlaid with arcs of silver, which had slid into the walls at Yasmin’s approach. Beyond had been a suite of rooms. Black wood furniture sat on seas of white fur. Yasmin had withdrawn, and left them in luxury-wrapped silence.

  ‘Have you noticed?’ Viola had asked. Cleander had looked at her, raised an eyebrow. ‘There are no servitors that I have seen.’

  Viola’s implanted chronometer said that they had been waiting for twenty hours since then. That layer of strangeness had continued, exquisite food arriving in the hands of short, heavy-muscled f
igures in blue and silver tabards, who had answered their requests only with nods, or with silence.

  At last Yasmin returned. Viola thought that the intermediary looked tired under the layer of composure. The visible red of capillaries had crept into the corners of her eyes, and the tips of her fingers were pale from recent stimm use.

  ‘You are who you claim to be,’ said Yasmin, ‘and it seems that your… association with the Inquisition is also likely to be true.’

  ‘That is a relief,’ Cleander muttered, knocking back a flute of dark liquor. ‘I was worried that there had been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘So,’ said Viola ignoring her brother’s words. ‘What have you to tell us?’

  Yasmin had frowned, and Viola thought she saw pain twitch at the edge of the woman’s mouth.

  ‘You need to understand something,’ said Yasmin.

  ‘I think what we need to understand is everything that you can tell us about the renegade frigate Truth Eternal and its movements.’

  Yasmin winced, and shook her head.

  ‘That is something you will have…’ she said, and paused, pink tongue poised on white teeth. Viola thought the woman looked almost embarrassed about what she was about to say.

  Here we go, thought Viola.

  ‘But there are conditions,’ said Yasmin.

  Cleander snorted.

  ‘Of course…’ he said. ‘Of course there are conditions. Can the Navis Nobilite do anything without trying to cut a deal?’

  ‘Can a rogue trader ever not try to take something for nothing?’ snapped Yasmin.

  ‘Fair point,’ said Cleander, with a shrug.

  ‘What are your proposed conditions for cooperation with the Inquisition?’ asked Viola with a smile, making sure that there was acid in with the sweetness.