Horusian Wars: Resurrection

by John French

  The decisions that Vult and Covenant were about to make would be based on what she was about to say. In a sense the whole of the endeavour rested on her abilities, and the thoroughness of her work.

  She had parsed every piece of information that both Vult and Covenant had on Talicto, both old and knew. To that she had added what they had learned from the Navigator. To that she had added information that might relate to Talicto. To this whole she had applied layers of reason-filters and logic schema. Finally she had woven in the element that separated her analysis from that of a machine; she had used simple instinct.

  It was a task that others might have expected a team of lexmechanics, savants and data-smiths to perform. Viola had completed the analysis alone, locked in her library, holo-data glittering around, her blood and nerves singing with cerebral enhancers.

  She tried to avoid pride; it was part of the discipline that she had learned alongside the cognitive skills that let her run the operations of a trade dynasty. When she had finished the analysis and prepared the findings, she had allowed herself a single smile. Now, faced with the assembly, part of her wanted to go back and punch herself in her own, smiling face.

  ‘The enemy that we will call the Triumvirate are an unknown both in strength, true number and resource,’ she said, ‘but we can make certain inferences from what we know, or have observed.’

  She reached into the pocket of her waistcoat and keyed the holo-wand. A tracked servo-skull rolled to the centre of the floor. The skull tilted back, and projected a cylinder of blue light into the air above. Symbol-clusters and data webs rotated in the hololith.

  ‘This arrangement is factored to high levels of uncertainty, but it is the best that we can do. Lord Inquisitor Vult’s aid and information has reduced the level of uncertainty, but this is still… essentially guesswork.’

  Vult nodded.

  ‘We understand, mistress. The work you have done is exemplary given the circumstances. Please proceed.’

  Viola keyed another control and the view of the projection spun and zoomed close on a constellation of data.

  ‘The area that offers the most potential is the methodology that the Triumvirate have applied in relation to Talicto. They did not simply destroy. They subsumed his resources. The Renewed became a resource that they deployed on Ero, and it seems likely that a number of Talicto’s other projects were similarly taken over.’

  ‘You suggest that the learned and great inquisitors can find these heretics by looking at what the Triumvirate stole from Talicto?’ said one of the grey-uniformed figures who stood behind Vult. It was the first time any of his entourage had spoken since the doors had closed. Viola met the pale woman’s stare with her own.

  ‘I am suggesting that the Triumvirate may be making similar use of Talicto’s other resources. Locate those resources, and we may find them, or find something that leads us closer. Talicto was secretive and clever, but he had to use and trust others. That may have proven his undoing, but it also may be a gift to us.’

  She looked to Cleander. Her brother jerked the chains holding Titus Yeshar, and the Navigator took a stumbling step forward.

  ‘Before betraying his master, this Navigator guided a ship in Talicto’s service across the sector, and beyond. Luckily, he is as willing to share what he knows with us as he was with the Triumvirate.’

  ‘Willing…’ muttered Cleander. ‘If you had to listen to him you might choose a different word.’

  Viola ignored him, and clicked the wand to send amber runes scattering across the projected starfield.

  ‘Of the places that Talicto travelled to, most can be discounted because his presence there was fleeting. Of those that he visited several times, many were sites for esoteric projects that we are already aware of. Some seem likely to be similar locations. That leaves a few at which he had a prolonged presence, or that he journeyed to many times. These are those locations.’

  Another click of the wand and the data projection dissolved into an image of the Caradryad sector and its margins. Three red icons blinked amid the star clusters and swirl of the Storms of Judgement.

  ‘Of those few, I believe that this is the most promising location for our immediate attention.’

  The image zoomed on a single rune, which became a bright sphere of data on the trailing edge of a chain of stars.

  ‘What is there?’ asked Covenant.

  ‘A void facility of some kind,’ said Viola. ‘The details are… less than complete, but the Navigator calls it the Archive. It seems to be where he stored the results of his other endeavours.’

  Titus Yeshar rocked back and forth.

  ‘And you think that the Triumvirate will have kept using it?’ said Enna in a flat voice. Viola looked at her. There was something sharp and intense in Enna’s words, despite their lack of tone.

  ‘Talicto valued it, and used it as a refuge,’ replied Viola. ‘I think it plausible that the Triumvirate would have done the same once it was theirs, and it is…’

  She paused for a second, loath to say why she had decided to recommend starting with the Archive.

  Vult looked at her.

  ‘Yes, Mistress Viola?’ he asked. ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘It would be in character for the Triumvirate to use it.’

  ‘An idiotic inference,’ snorted one of Vult’s grey-clad underlings. ‘We know nothing of the Triumvirate. The fact that you feel that you can ascribe them character undermines your whole analysis.’

  ‘We know they are thieves,’ said Viola, coldly, ‘and that they like to keep what they steal.’

  Vult nodded before his acolyte could reply.

  ‘A most reasonable intuition,’ he said. ‘The Yeshar Navigator can take us to this Archive?’

  Viola nodded.

  ‘Then we go,’ said Vult.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Covenant, stepping forward so that he was looking up into the holo projection from beneath, cold light bright on his unblinking eyes.

  ‘Just one question,’ said Cleander, meeting the looks of the room with a frown. ‘If you found us, honoured Lord Vult, and these unknown foes are supposed to be very clever and dangerous people, might they know what we have been doing? Might they know we are coming?’

  Fourteen

  Ghosts followed the Valour’s Flame as it tore back into the embrace of reality. Clawing forms of pale energy scrabbled at its hull, their mist-thin shapes dissolving even as they clung on to the metal, shrieking as they faded. Another craft followed, and then another; each of them punched their way through the skin of space in a whirl of lightning and light. The second to arrive was the Dionysia, a stiletto beside the dagger of the Valour’s Flame; the last was the light cruiser Sixth Hammer. The light of the Storms of Judgement touched the hulls of all three ships as they lay in the asteroid-dotted void. Drifts of dust hung before the ships, glowing as though each mote was a fading ember of a fire. Colours danced between its vast folds like the flash of lightning in a thunderhead. Except that there were no storm clouds in the vacuum of the void.

  On the bridge of the Valour’s Flame, Kade Zecker fought to keep the scream from her lips. Sweat beaded her skin, and she could feel it running down her back. The passage and transit back to reality had been bad enough, but there had been a face looking at her when the blast shields had peeled open from the bridge’s ports: a face looking back at her from the blackness of space. It had been a face that

  she knew.

  ‘Translation…’ she said, the word rasping out of her dry mouth as much from habit as will. ‘Translation complete. All stations confirm status.’

  ‘Tough passage,’ said Josef’s voice from behind her. She glanced at him.

  The preacher had remained on the Valour’s Flame after the inquisitors had concluded their parlay. She had not been told why, but she had a good idea.

  She did not like outside
rs on her bridge at the best of times, and she had tried to treat him with cold formality at first. But he had moved amongst crew like he was one of them, exchanging easy words with an armsmen, nodding respectfully to the watch lieutenant, putting the station officers at ease with a joke and a compliment on their detail. Within a few days he had become part of the fabric of things, woven in like a clever patch to an old jacket. Eventually even Zecker had stopped thinking about him being there to the point that she had not realised that he stood five paces behind her.

  ‘They are all tough passages now,’ she said, listening as the station officers called out readiness. She nodded at the looming dust cloud beyond the viewport. ‘Space should not look like that,’ she said. ‘That is where the light of this Serpent Spine star cluster should be. Fleet charts make no mention of a… dust cloud shrouding it. If it is dust…’

  She blinked; bubbles of light fizzed at the edge of her eyes. She felt bile rising in her throat. The image of the ghost ships rose with the taste, and for a second she remembered again the bridge of the deserted ship.

  Red, still wet, and the eyes…

  ‘I just… what… what is happening to this place? What is happening to this sector?’

  ‘The Serpent Spine is there though?’ said Josef.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes, it’s there… in there.’

  ‘Then take us in, captain,’ he said, his voice low and firm.

  She nodded and called out commands. The Valour’s Flame began to slide towards the charted location of their target.

  ‘Close the shutters,’ she said, as the folds of colour closed over them. The layers of plasteel descended, and she shivered as a flash of impossible light lit the narrowing view of the void.

  ‘Captain,’ called an officer. ‘We are receiving signals from the direction of our travel.’

  ‘Directed at us?’ she asked.

  ‘No, they are broad sweep signals blanketing a large part of the comm-spectrum.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘They are jumbled, but there are parts in clear.’

  ‘Put them on speaker.’

  A second later the vox speakers crackled with static. Chirrups and pops of distortion filled the bridge, rising and falling without rhythm.

  ‘Help us…’ the voice came from the static, and Kade felt the words rip through her, as others came, shouting, sobbing, speaking with the dead numbness of despair.

  ‘Turn back…’

  ‘Dead…

  ‘There is no light….

  ‘Turn back…’

  She felt her muscles begin to shake. How could they be here? How could her dreams have followed her here? She blinked, the images that followed her into sleep filling her head with the sight of silent corridors on silent ships.

  But what if this is the dream still? she thought. What if I have never awoken?

  ‘Captain,’ said Josef’s voice, calm and strong. She shivered, feeling the breath rasping between her teeth. ‘Captain, shut the transmissions off.’

  She breathed, then nodded.

  ‘Shut off the vox speakers,’ she called. ‘Now.’

  She looked around at the preacher.

  ‘I…’ she began. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Like you said, they are all tough passages now.’

  ‘Did the… inquisitors send you to watch me?’

  ‘To watch you all, in fact,’ he replied, kindly. ‘This is not something most are suited for, captain. You have done well. But inquisitors like to be careful.’

  ‘Are you staying with us for the operation?’ she asked, surprised at the question, and the fact that she wanted the answer to be yes. There was something calming about the preacher’s presence, something that she had not realised she needed.

  Josef shook his head.

  ‘My place for this is with my master, but someone will be here with you.’

  ‘To watch?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Do they trust anyone?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not really.’

  She looked away from him to the crew moving to their tasks, and above them the blast shields closed over the curdled space beyond. For a moment she thought of telling him about her dreams, and how they followed her after sleep.

  He will understand, she thought, and she wanted so badly to tell someone: to confess. She opened her mouth.

  ‘Is there something wrong, Captain Zecker?’

  She closed her mouth, and shook her head.

  ‘No, nothing. I would just like… I would just like this to be over.’

  She looked around at him. He gave her a grim smile and a small nod.

  ‘Hold course, captain,’ said Josef from behind her. ‘Hold course.’

  The asteroid turned slowly in the diffuse light of the dust cloud. Cold light washed its face, brushed the summits of crags with silver and poured shadow into craters. The three ships hung in the void around it, their prows sword points levelled above a still corpse. The stars of the Caradryad sector burned with a strange light, close but filmed with a haze, like the lights of a distant city seen through smog. An arc of other stars crossed the murky dark, burning brighter than any others. These were the stars of the Serpent Spine that coiled across the border of the sector. At turns lawless, forgotten and desolate, they marked a vast tract of space that formed the shoreline between the land of Imperial dominion and the sea of lawlessness.

  Viola watched data overlay the image as the asteroid rolled over. It was one of a drift that sat in the deep emptiness between the stars of the Serpent Spine. Tens of thousands of mountain-sized lumps of ice and mineral sat in the drift. To find one rock amongst them would have been an impossible task without knowing where it was. Even with a guide, it had taken them longer than Viola would have liked to find it.

  ‘How long until the Archive is visible?’ asked Covenant from behind her. Glavius-4-Rho and Cleander stood with him. Beside them, Lord Inquisitor Vult stood as a ghost image of holo-light.

  She was about to answer when a door onto the command dais hissed open.

  ‘Your pardon for my lateness, my lords,’ came Josef’s voice from the back of the command deck. Viola tuned to see the preacher walk onto the deck, still red-faced from the journey from the shuttle bay.

  ‘All well on the Valour’s Ashes?’ asked Cleander.

  ‘Valour’s Flame,’ growled Josef, and then shook his head. ‘All of the crew are frayed. The warp storms are scratching at their souls. If we did not need the fire power, I would have said we should not have brought them.’

  ‘They will keep it together?’ asked Cleander. ‘That captain was looking a little like she was down to the last thread holding her up from the drop.’

  ‘They will serve,’ said Josef, ‘and Mylasa is on board with them.’

  ‘Reassuring, I’m sure,’ said Cleander.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Viola. They looked at her, and she redirected their gaze up to the pict screen. Covenant and Vult had not shifted their gaze when Josef entered. ‘The Archive is coming into visual,’ she said, as targeting symbols flowed across the image on the screen.

  ‘There it is…’ breathed Cleander.

  The asteroid turned slowly on the screen. It was the size of a mountain range uprooted from a planet’s crust, grey and jagged. As it turned, the mottled light of the warp storms drained the shadows from the face that had been turned away from the Dionysia. A complex of buildings clung to the vast lump of rock. Rust-pitted towers and grey iron bastions caught the starlight with serrated edges. Transepts branched across the asteroid’s surface and reached into the vacuum.

  ‘The Archive…’ said Cleander. ‘That’s a city’s worth of metal and stone. Do we still think that Talicto built all of this in the decade before he died?’

  ‘What does the Navigator that served hi
m say about this place?’ asked Josef.

  ‘Nothing useful,’ said Cleander, shifting the eye patch over his left eye. ‘“Archive of all the grave’s leavings, all the things lost, all the pages never written waiting…” Just be glad that he held it together enough to lead us here. It does seem very… quiet, though.’

  ‘I can confirm there are no significant energy emissions from the complex bonded to the asteroid,’ said Glavius-4-Rho, his presence a cloud of binaric flowing through a screen set to the side of the main display. The magos had wired himself into the Dionysia’s main sensor cluster. A silent argument with the Dionysia’s tech-priests via data-links had been needed to allow that, but the grey-robed magos had prevailed. Since then, he had been sifting and compiling information from the ship’s auspex and sensor arrays. ‘If there were living personnel within the structure, there would need to be active bio-life sustainers at the least. There would be heat. There would be the sacred music of wave field interference. I have watched, and I see none of these signs.’

  ‘It is basically dead and cold,’ said Cleander, pulling his coat around him as though he was feeling a chill.

  ‘There will be something left,’ said Josef. ‘If the Triumvirate came here there will be something to lead us further.’ The old preacher looked at Covenant. ‘We go in.’

  ‘Someone could be there,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. Everyone turned to look at him.

  ‘You said that you saw no energy emissions,’ said Viola.

  ‘I said that I saw no significant energy emissions, and nothing consistent with the expected life-sustaining systems for a facility of this size. But I have found something.’ The magos shifted forward from his data-cradle, cables trailing from him to the consoles and sensor instruments. ‘There is a very weak heat marker coming from this location.’ The holo-display of the asteroid rotated and zoomed until it was focused on a tiny section of the grounded ship that formed the facility’s core. ‘It is deep in the main superstructure, and the emanation is small enough that it could be nothing more than a still-functioning power sump.’