Heldane extended his arms wide — too wide for anything but a skeletal giant like Heldane, Flense shuddered — to encompass the chamber. Those present were standing in one of the Absalom’s astropath sanctums, a chamber screened from all intrusion. The walls were null-field dead spaces designed to shut out both the material world and the screaming void of the Immaterium. Sound-proofed, psyker-proofed, wire-proofed, these inviolable cocoons were dedicated and reserved for the astropathic retinue alone. They were prohibited by Imperial law. Only a direct invitation could admit a blunt human such as Flense.
Blunt. Flense didn’t like the word, and hadn’t been aware of it until Lekulanzi had used it. Blunt. A psyker’s word for the non-psychic. Blunt. Flense wished by the Ray of Hope he could be elsewhere. Any elsewhere.
“You are discomforting my cousins,” Heldane said to Flense, indicating the three astropaths, who were fidgeting and murmuring. “They sense your reluctance to be here. They sense their stigma.”
“I have no prejudices, inquisitor.”
“Yes, you have. I can taste them. You detest mind-seers. You despise the gift of the astropath. You are a blunt, Flense. A sense-dead moron. Shall I show you what you are missing?”
Flense shook. “No need, inquisitor!”
“Just a touch? Be a sport.” Heldane sniggered, droplets of spittle flecking off his thick teeth.
Flense shuddered. Heldane turned his gaze away slowly and then snapped back suddenly. Impossible light flooded into Flense’s skull. For one second, he saw eternity. He saw the angles of space, the way they intersected with time. He saw the tides of the Empyrean, and the wasted fringes of the Immaterium, the fluid spasms of the Warp. He saw his mother, his sister, both long dead. He saw light and darkness and nothingness. He saw colours without name. He saw the birth torments of the genestealer whose blood would scar his face. He saw himself on the drill-field of the Schola on Primagenitor. He saw an explosion of blood. Familiar blood. He started to ay. He saw bones buried in rich, black mud. He realised they, too, were his own. He looked into the sockets. He saw maggots. He screamed. He vomited. He saw a red-dark sky and an impossible number of suns. He saw a star overload and collapse. He saw-Too much.
Draker Flense fell to the floor of the sacrosanctorium, soiled himself and started to whimper.
“I’m glad we’ve got that straight,” Inquisitor Heldane said. He raised his cowl again. “Let me start over. I serve Dravere, as you do. For him, I will bend the stars. For him, I will torch planets. For him, I will master the unmasterable.”
Flense moaned.
“Get up. And listen to me. The most priceless artefact in space awaits our lord in the Menazoid Clasp. Its description and circumstance lies with the Commissar Gaunt. We will obtain that secret. I have already expended precious energies trying to reach it. This Gaunt is… resourceful. You will allow yourself to be used in this matter. You and the Patricians. You already have a feud with them.”
“Not this… not this…” Flense rasped from the floor.
“Dravere spoke highly of you. Do you remember what he said?”
“N-no…”
Heldane’s voice changed and became a perfect copy of Dravere’s. “If you win this for me, Flense, I’ll not forget it. There are great possibilities in my future, if I am not tied here. I would share them with you.”
“Now is the time, Flense,” Heldane said in his own voice once more. “Share in the possibilities. Help me to acquire what my Lord Dravere demands. There will be a place for you, a place in glory. A place at the side of the new warmaster.”
“Please!” Flense cried. He could hear the astropaths laughing at him.
“Are you still undecided?” Heldane asked. He stepped towards the curled, foetal Colonel. “Another look?” he suggested.
Flense began to shriek.
NINE
“They’re excluding us,” Feygor said out of the silence.
Rawne snapped an angry glance round at his adjutant, but he knew what the lean man meant. It had been four hours since the rest of the officers had been called into their meeting with Gaunt. How convenient that he and his platoon had been excluded. Of course, if what Corbec said was true and there was trouble aboard, a good picket was essential. But in the natural order of things, it should have been Folore’s platoon, the sixteenth, who took first shift.
Rawne grunted a response and led his team of five men down to the junction with the next corridor. They’d swept this area six times since they had begun. Just draughty hull-spaces, dark corners, empty stores, dusty floors and locked hatches. He checked the time. A radio message from Lerod twenty minutes earlier had informed him that the shift change would take place on the next hour. He ached. He knew the men with him were tired and cold and in need of stove-warmth, caffeine, relaxation. By extension, all of his platoon, all fifty of them spread out patrolling the perimeter of the Ghosts’ barrack deck in squads of five, would be demoralised and hungry too.
Rawne thought, as he often did, of Gaunt. Of Gaunt’s motives. From the start, back at the bloody hour of the Founding itself, he had shown no loyalty to the commissar. It had astonished him when Gaunt had raised him to major and given him the tertiary command of the regiment. He’d laughed at it at first, then qualified that laughter by imagining Gaunt had recognised his leadership qualities. Sometime later, Feygor, the only man in the regiment he thought of as a friend, and then only barely, had reminded him of the old saying: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
There was no escape from the Guard, so Rawne had got on with making the best of his job. But he always wondered at Gaunt. If he’d been the colonel-commissar, with a danger like himself at his heels, he’d have called up a firing squad long since.
Ahead, Trooper Lonegin was checking the locks on a storage bin. Rawne scanned the length of the corridor they had just advanced through.
Feygor watched his commander slyly. Rawne had been good to him — and they had worked together in the militia of Tanith Attica before the Founding. Quite a tasty racket they had running there until the fething Imperium rolled up and ruined it. Feygor was the bastard son of a black marketeer, and only his sharp mind and formidable physical ability had got him a place in the militia, and then the Imperial Guard. Rawne’s background had been select. He didn’t talk about it much, but Feygor knew enough to know that that Rawne’s family had been rich, merchants, local politicians, local lords. Rawne had always had money, stipends from his father’s empire of timber mills. But as the third son, he was never going to be the one to inherit the fortune. The militia service — and the opportunities for self advancement — had been the best option.
Feygor didn’t trust Rawne. Feygor didn’t trust anyone. But he never thought of the major as evil. Just… bitter. Bitterness was what had ruined him, bitterness was what had scalded his nature early on.
Like Feygor, the men of Rawne’s platoon were the misfits and troublemakers of the surviving Tanith. They gravitated towards Rawne, seeing him as a natural leader, the man who would make the best chances for them. During the draft process, Rawne had selected most of them for his own squads.
One day, Feygor thought, one day Rawne will kill Gaunt and take his place. Gaunt, Corbec, any who opposed. Rawne will kill Gaunt. Or Gaunt will kill Rawne. Whatever, there will be a reckoning. Some said Rawne had already tried.
Feygor was about to suggest they double-back into the storerooms to the left when Trooper Lonegin cried out and span across the deck, hit by something from behind. He curled, convulsing, on the grill-walkway and Feygor could clearly see the short boot-knife jutting from the man’s ribs where it had impacted.
Rawne was already yelling when the attackers emerged around them from all asides. Ten men, dressed in the work uniforms of the Purpure Patricians. They had knives, stakes, clubs made from bunk-legs. A frenzy of close-quarter brutality exploded in the narrow confines of the hallway.
Trooper Colhn was smashed into a wall by a blow to the head and sank without
a murmur before he could even turn. Trooper Freul struck one attacker hard with his shock-pole and knocked him over in a cascade of sparks before three knife jabs from as many assailants ripped into him and dropped him in a bloody mass. Feygor could see two of the Patricians dubbing the wounded, helpless Lonegin repeatedly.
Feygor hurled his shock pole at the nearest Patrician, blasting him backwards and burning through the belly of his uniform with the discharge, and then pulled out his silver Tanith blade. He screamed an obscenity and hurled forward, ripping open a throat with his first attack. With a savage turn, using the moves that had won him respect in the backstreets of Tanith Attica, he wheeled, kicked the legs out from under another and took a knife-wielding hand off at the wrist.
“Rawne! Rawne!” he bellowed, fumbling for his radio bead. He was hit from behind. Stunned, he took two more strikes and dropped, rolling. Feet kicked into him. Something that felt white hot dug into his chest. He bellowed with pain and rage. The sound was diffused by the gout of blood in his mouth.
Rawne struck down one with his pole, wheeling and blocking. He cursed them with every oath in his vocabulary. A blade ripped open his tunic and spilled blood from a long, raw scratch. A heavy blow struck his temple and he went over, vision fogging.
The major tried to move but his body wouldn’t respond. The cold grille of the deck pushed into his cheek and his slack mouth. Wet warmth ran down his neck. His unfocussed eyes looked up at the bulky Patrician who stood over him, a long-armed wrench raised ready to pulp his skull.
“Stay your hand, Brochuss!” a voice said. The wrench lowered, reluctantly.
Immobile, Rawne wished he could see more. Another figure replaced the shape of his wrench-swinging attacker. Rawne’s eyes were dim and filmy. He wished he could see clearly. The man who stooped by him looked like an officer.
Colonel Flense hunkered down beside Rawne, looking sadly at the blood matting the hair and the twisted spread of the limbs.
“See the badge, Brochuss?” Flense said. “He’s the major, Rawne. Don’t kill him. Not yet, at least.”
TEN
“How do you know him?” Gaunt demanded.
Colonel Zoren made a slight, shrugging gesture, the typically unemphatic body language of the Vitrians. “Likely the same way you do. A chance encounter, a carefully established measure of trust, an informal working relationship during a crisis.”
Gaunt rubbed his angular chin and shook his head. “If this conversation is going to get us anywhere, you’ll have to be more specific. If you honestly do appreciate the critical nature of this situation, you’ll understand why I need to be sure and certain of those around me.”
Zoren nodded. He turned, as if to survey the room, but the close confines of Gaunt’s quarters allowed for little contemplation. “It was during the Famine Wars on Idolwilde, perhaps three standard years ago. My Dragoons were sent in as a peacekeeping presence in the main city-state, Kenadie. That was just before the food riots began in earnest and before the fall of the local government. The man you know as Fereyd was masquerading as a local grain broker called Bel Torthute, a trade-banker with a place on the Idolwilde Senate. His cover was perfect. I had no idea he was an offworld operative. No idea he wasn’t a native. He had the language, the customs, the gestures—”
“I know how Fereyd works. Observational perfection is his speciality, and that mimicry thing.”
“Then you’ll know his modus operandi too. To work with what he calls the ‘trustworthy salt’ of the Imperium.”
Gaunt nodded, a half-smile curving his mouth.
“To work in such environments, so alone, so vulnerable, our mutual friend needs to nurture the support of those elements of the Imperium he deems uncorrupted. Rooting out corruption and taint in Imperium-sponsored bureaucracies, he can’t trust the Administratum, the Ministorum, or any ranking officials who might be part of the conspiratorial infrastructure. He told me that he always found his best allies in the Guard in those circumstances, in men drafted into crisis flash-points, plain soldiery who like as not were newcomers to any such event, and thus not part of the problem. That is what he found in me and some of my officer cadre. It took him a long time and much careful investigation to trust me, and just as long to win my trust back. Eventually, in the midst of the food riots, we Vitrians were the only elements he could count on. The Famine Wars had been orchestrated by a government faction with ties into the Departmento Munitorium. They were able to field two regiments of Imperial Guard turned to their purpose. We defeated them.”
“The Battle of Altatha. I have read some of the details. I had no idea Imperial corruption was behind the Famine Wars.”
Zoren smiled sadly. “Such information is often suppressed. For the good of morale. We parted company as allies. I never thought to meet him again.”
Gaunt sat down on his cot. He leaned his elbows onto his knees, deep in thought. “And now you have?”
“I received a message, encrypted, during my disembarkation from shore leave on Pyrites. Shortly after that, a meeting.”
“In person?”
Zoren shook his head. “An intermediary.”
“And how did you know to trust this intermediary?”
“He used certain identifiers. Code words Bel Torthute and I had developed and used on Idolwilde. Cipher syllables from Vitrian combat-cant that only he would have known the significance of. Torthute made a point of studying the cultural heritage of the Vitrian Byhata, our Art of War. Only he could have sent the message and couched it so.”
“That’s Fereyd. So you are my ally? I have a feeling you know more about this situation than me, Zoren.”
Zoren watched the tall, powerful man sat on the cot, his chin resting on his hands. He’d come to admire him during the Fortis action, and Fereyd’s message had contained details specific to Gaunt. It was clear the Imperial covert agent trusted Commissar-Colonel Ibram Gaunt more than almost anyone in the sector. More than myself, Zoren thought.
“I know this much, Gaunt. A group of high-ranking conspirators in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade High Command is hunting for something precious. Something so vital they may be prepared to twist the overall purpose of the crusade to achieve it The key that unlocks that something has been deflected out of their waiting hands and diverted to you for safekeeping, as you were the only one of Fereyd’s operatives in range to deal with it.”
Gaunt rose angrily. “I’m no one’s operative!” he snarled.
Zoren waved him back with a deft apologetic gesture to the mouth that indicated a misprision with language. Gaunt reminded himself that Low Gothic was not the colonel’s first tongue. “A trusted partner,” he corrected. “Fereyd has been careful to establish a wide, remote circle of friends on whom he can call at times like this. You were the only one able to intercept to safeguard the key on Pyrites. After some further manipulation, he made sure I was on the same transport as you to assist. How else do you think we Vitrians ended up on the Absalom so conveniently? I imagine Fereyd and his agents in the Warmaster’s command staff risked great exposure arranging for us to be diverted to this ship. It would be about as overt an action as a covert dared.”
“Did he tell you anything else, this intermediary?” Gaunt said.
“That I was to offer you all assistance, up to and beyond countermanding the direct orders of my superiors.”
There was a long quiet space as the enormity of this sunk in. “And then?” Gaunt asked.
“The instructions said that you would make the right choice. That Fereyd, unable to directly intercede here, would trust you to carry this forward until his network was able to involve itself again. That you would assess the situation and act accordingly.”
Gaunt laughed humourlessly. “But I know nothing! I don’t know what this is about, or where it’s going! This shadowplay isn’t what I’m good at!”
“Because you’re a soldier?”
“What?”
Zoren repeated it. “Because you’re a soldier? Like me, you deal i
n orders and commands and direct action. This doesn’t sit easy with any of us that Fereyd employs. Us ‘Imperial salt’ may be trustworthy and able to be recruited to his cause, but we lack the sophistication to understand the war. This isn’t something we solve with flamers and fire-teams.”
Gaunt cursed Fereyd’s name. Zoren echoed him, and they both began to laugh.
“Unless you can,” Zoren said, suddenly serious.
“Why?”
“Why? Because he trusts you. Because you’re a colonel second and a commissar first, a political officer. And this war is all politics. Intrigue. We were both on Pyrites, Gaunt. Why did he divert the key to you and not me? Why am I here to help you, and not the other way around?”
Gaunt cursed Fereyd’s name again, but this time it was low and bitter.
He was about to speak again when there was a fierce hammering at the door to the quarters. Gaunt swept to his feet and pulled the door open. Corbec stood outside, his face flushed and fierce.
“What?” managed Gaunt.
“You’d better come, sir. We’ve got three dead and another critical. The Jantine are playing for keeps.”
ELEVEN
Corbec led Gaunt, Zoren and a gaggle of others into the Infirmary annex where Dorden awaited them.
“Colhn, Freul, Lonegin…” Dorden said, gesturing to three shapes under sheets on the floor. “Feygor’s over there.”
Gaunt looked across at Rawne’s adjutant, who lay, sucking breath through a transparent pipe, on a gurney in the corner.
“Puncture wound. Knife. Lungs are failing. Another hour unless I can get fresh equipment.”
“Rawne?” Gaunt asked.
Corbec edged forward. “Like I said, sir: no sign. It was hit and run. They must have taken him with them. But they left this to let us know.”
Corbec showed the commissar the Jantine cap badge. “Pinned it to Colhn’s forehead,” he said with loathing.
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