by Henry Zou
‘I’ve got several trunks of field equipment and research I will be needing,’ Madeline called over her shoulder as she twirled away. ‘Have my crew load them onto your vehicles.’
‘We don’t have vehicles, madame. Only sauropods,’ Roth called after her.
She halted, turning slowly. Her lips pursed, her heart-shaped face florid. ‘I cannot ride by sauropod! A lady does not travel by pack beast!’ she implored.
‘You can always walk,’ chuckled Roth.
Chapter Thirteen
Lord Marshal Khmer plucked a pistol from the tiered cabinet. It was a heavy hammerlock pistol of dark wood, as long as his forearm and fluted with a sweeping grip. Acorns and leaves of crisp topaz inlaid the pistol grip while vines of silver filigree chased the barrel. A weapon of its calibre had not been used since the Hadrian Emergency in the Bastion Stars, circa 762.M41.
Khmer had collected this particular hammerlock as the trophy of a duel many years ago. The Navy admiral who had lost his pistol had also lost several fingers to Khmer’s sabre. It was fortunate, Khmer mused, that one of those severed digits had been the officer’s trigger finger.
Inserting a cartridge into the chamber, Khmer sauntered over to his shooting gallery. It was his own gallery, his very own on board the Carthage. The hall had once been a troops barracks, which could have housed two platoons of sixty. Now it was a lead-lined hall, latticed shooting booths facing a target gallery at varying ranges of twenty to two hundred paces. One entire wall of the gallery was devoted to the magnificent vault of Khmer’s antique weapons display. It had glass-paned racks containing fusils, flak muskets, hand-crafted solid sluggers and ancient rifles as long as a man was tall. There was even a sleek assembly of military-grade lasgun variants.
The marshal squared up in a double-handed shooting stance and took aim at a painted canvas target at eighty paces. The canvas was painted with an almost child-like caricature of a daemon, eyes bulging, teeth gnashing. He drilled three rounds into the target, the kinetic impacts whipping the target pad like a kite in high wind. The hammering snap of shots was echoed by the lead-lined acoustics of the hall. For Khmer there could be no better sound.
‘Clean this for me,’ said Khmer as he tossed the pistol into the waiting hands of a junior officer. ‘If I find a lick of carbon in the working parts, I’ll have your hide for guncloth.’
The marshal strode over to his antique arsenal and selected an autogun. The piece was nondescript as far as his collection went, an obsolete rifle of stamped metal and ageing wood. Well over a metre in length, its characteristic iron sights, scythe-shaped magazine and hardwood stock bespoke of its age and previous owners. The autogun was crude but it had history.
Khmer was a great appreciator of history. Each of the weapons had a different tale to tell, a different war front experienced, from the up-armoured lasgun of the Bastion Ward Interior Guard, to the revolving hand cannon plundered from the techno-barbarians of the deeper Shoal Clusters. History was written by those who shot fast, and shot true.
‘Lord marshal! A word, please.’
Khmer placed the autogun back in its velvet cradle and looked up to see Forde Gurion storming into his chambers. Judging by the galloping clank of his augmetic legs, the inquisitor had not come for personal reasons.
‘Forde Gurion,’ Khmer acknowledged with an air of nonchalance. He turned back to inspecting his weapons.
‘I must speak with you, lord marshal, now if you please,’ Gurion said through clenched teeth.
Almost wearily, Marshal Khmer looked at Gurion. The inquisitor lord stood before him, the muscles in his jaw twitching, a document brief viced hard in his mechanical hand. Khmer dismissed his attendee with a wave.
‘Gurion, what seems to be troubling you?’
The inquisitor shook the parchment in front of him. ‘This. This states that as of 06:00 yesterday, Imperial reinforcements from the Lupina chain-worlds were re-routed away from the Medina war zone. Seventy-six thousand riflemen of the Lupinee 102nd were diverted to shore up defences for the Bastion Stars.’
‘I don’t see the problem,’ said Khmer, as he began to polish a flak-musket with the sleeve of his dress uniform.
‘The problem, lord marshal, is that you authorised this diversion.’ Gurion spat the last few words like venom.
‘That is true. I did what would be best for the long-term objectives of the campaign.’
‘Need I remind you that the Council of Conclusions has decreed our objectives? We are to hold the line at the Medina Worlds until such time as the enigma of the Old Kings can be dealt with.’
Finally, Khmer put down his musket and turned to face Gurion. He cleared his throat.
‘Those are your objectives, Gurion. My military objective is simple – to deny Chaos forces the space, coordination and ability to conquer the subsector. In this context, a concentrated defence in the Bastion Stars is how I will achieve this.’
‘That decision is not yours to make. My Conclave has conclusive evidence that suggests the Old Kings myth is of threat-level alpha.’
‘You are not a soldier.’ Khmer said, sincerely lamenting. ‘You do not understand war. We do not win wars by suggestive evidence. We win wars by logic and strategy. Can you not understand that?’
Gurion shook his head, not because he could not understand, but because he realised that Khmer was too hardened in his ways. Peeling aside the lapel of his coat, Gurion let his Inquisitorial rosette tumble from its chain. ‘Lord marshal, the Inquisition works in its own ways.’
If Khmer understood the symbolism, he paid it no heed. Instead the lord marshal wandered down the aisle of gun racks until he found what he was looking for. He took up a lasgun, peered down its scope and balanced the rifle in his hands.
‘Do you see this rifle, Gurion?’ he asked. It was a soft gun-metal grey all over, with a collapsible stock and a shortened muzzle that gave the weapon a squat, brutal profile.
‘Yes. That is a lasgun. Evidently, I am not as well versed in the specifics as you,’ replied Gurion, clearly uninterested.
‘This is not just any lasgun. See this picatinny rail here?’ said Khmer, pointing to the grooved carry handle. ‘And the shorter length of the barrel and handguard? Modified for airborne deployment?’ he continued, indicating towards the polished barrel and the smooth grey polymer of the body.
‘I see it,’ Gurion answered cautiously.
‘This is a Guard-issue weapon of the Bravanda Centennial regiments. But more than that, this weapon saw action during the reclamation of the Bravanda Provincial Palaces. In 870.M41, the elite wealth-barons, a dissident faction known as the Revolutionists, imprisoned the Regent of Bravanda in his own palace. The ruling elite and the landed gentry established their own governance, and the rural masses of Bravanda lamented but could do nothing.’
‘I am familiar with the Revolutionist uprising on Bravanda. Please continue.’
Khmer shouldered the rifle to aim at a phantom enemy in the distance.
‘You have to understand, the Imperial Guard, we represent the people. And the Regent was the people’s Regent. On the first day of the revolution, without specific orders, a small group of loyalist Guardsmen stormed the Provincial Palace.’
Lowering the weapon, Khmer racked the charger bolt and stripped the barrel in one liquid motion.
‘This very gun was in the possession of a Sergeant Natum Quarry, 7/7th Centennial. He held the gates alone for forty-five minutes against Revolutionists. He was one of five brothers, all of them Guardsmen, and the son of a manufactorum father who often worked through his rest shifts in order to feed his boys as they were growing up. Sergeant Quarry cost the dissidents some forty casualties. Do you know what the Revolutionists did to him once they got him? Many of the dissidents were convicts, condemned men that the wealth-barons had freed from the penal colonies. When they finally got him they mutilated him and paraded part
s of him on pict. His posthumous Medal of Valorous Citation was awarded to an empty grave.’
‘That is a stirring tale,’ Gurion admitted. ‘But I fail to see the connection to our issue at hand.’
‘The point I’m trying to make should be self-evident. War is conducted by guns and behind every gun, a man. Medina is of no strategic value and I will not waste the lives of my soldiers here, when we could make a stand on the Bastion Stars, alongside the Lupinee Rifles, the Bastion Ward regiments, Montaigh, Arpadis Mortant.’
Gurion sighed deeply. This was Lord Marshal Khmer at his best. For all his egomania, his political viciousness and his pomp and flair, the man was a brilliant leader of men. He would not be wearing his rank if he were anything less. It wounded Gurion to think that he might have to resort to Inquisitorial authority and dethrone the lord marshal. The Medina Campaign was demoralised as it was without the loss of its highest-ranking officer.
‘Lord marshal. Let us, for a second, forget about the Old Kings of Medina. Even then, you would be abandoning the Medina Corridor, and leaving billions of Imperial citizens to die at the hands of Chaos.’
‘You may think me a monster. But I do what I must to deny the Archenemy. It takes a monster to do what I do. I am a lord marshal. I command killers in the act of killing. You stick to what you know,’ bellowed Khmer. His introspective persona fell away like a curtain and his face seeped with veiny red. Khmer’s legendary temper was building pressure.
‘I understand. But I have my reasons and I would not be here if I did not think it was crucial. My Conclave is hard at work in achieving the same objectives you do. The forces of Chaos are not irrational, why do they want Medina if you don’t? Why?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t need to know. We choose to fight our battle in the Bastion Stars. Not here!’ snarled Khmer. He threw Sergeant Quarry’s lasgun across the chamber. The gun skipped across the marble floor and crashed into a display stand of long-arms, bringing down a forest of muskets.
Unflappable, Gurion betrayed no emotion. ‘You can rage all you wish, Khmer. But I am the Inquisition. Do not force me to wrest control of the operation and your Canticans away from you. You are a fine general and it would be a tremendous loss to the campaign.’
Teeth bared, his face utterly bestial, Khmer leaned in close on Gurion. The inquisitor lord remained stony faced, his augmetic hand hovering over his Lugos. Gurion knew he could not be complacent: Khmer was far too unpredictable. A raging lord marshal with an arsenal of weapons in arm’s reach made for a volatile combination.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Khmer spat. ‘Your Task Groups on Aridun are finished.’
It was the only thing Khmer had said so far that elicited a tremor of shock in Gurion. No one was supposed to know his Task Groups were on Aridun but the Conclave. Gurion had kept no written data of their status, had discussed their situation with no one. Yet the inquisitor said nothing. Gurion had been at this game too long to betray his emotions. In his time serving the Inquisition, he had lost sixty per cent of his body to conflict. A man so scarred became honed to a rough edge. He had learned to keep his face passive, his mouth shut and his eyes open. He would watch the lord marshal, because that was what he did best.
Recoiling, as if he had said too much, the sudden change in Khmer’s demeanour was startling. Loosening out his shoulders, the lord marshal turned away from Gurion as if they had not spoken at all. He loaded a fresh power cell into the lasgun and drifted almost absent-mindedly towards his gallery booths.
‘Before you go,’ Khmer called to Gurion over his shoulder, ‘I would like to remind you that I am the last piece of sinew holding this entire campaign together. Take me away, and Medina will come crashing down around your ears, inquisitor.’
Night was always a time of calm at the temple. But tonight, an unexpected visitor stalked through its empty corridors.
Ghostly and swathed in shadow, her long limbs moved so fast, so awkwardly, that she seemed to flit between positions. Not really walking, but almost flickering between the alcoves to the columns, from column to underneath the stairs.
The priests had taken their evening supper. The patients had returned to their wards and infirmaries. The arterial corridors were lambent with the monochrome light of the moon. In the central prayer hall, a single shaft of moon slanted from the atrium ceiling, the translucent pillar swimming with motes of dust.
Everything was so utterly still that the spectral shifting of the shadow seemed brutally intrusive. She had entered through the atrium, detaching from the vaulted ceiling like a liquid droplet. Then she had darted her way from shadow to shadow, hugging the inky depths of architecture.
As she skimmed past the light, she revealed glimpses of her form. Sweeping, corded limbs shod in vambraces and greaves of hardened leather binding. The flash and flicker of naked blades.
The intruder scaled the walls with effortless ease, limbs rippling like an arachnid. Vaulting over the lip of a third-storey landing, she prowled down into what appeared to be a temple kitchen.
It was lighter here. Flat stone benches and clay ovens dominated the open space. Cauldrons, copper pots and ranks of clay jugs arranged in neat rows like an army of terracotta.
Three priests in their vestments of stark white hospitalier tunics were scrubbing clay platters at a water trough. They were deep in murmurs of conversation and did not see the shadow that crept in behind them.
She slid out three throwing needles and flicked them casually at a distance of fifteen metres. The piercing slivers entered the base of the victim’s skull, between the second and third vertebrae. Two of the priests collapsed, their nervous systems shutting down, their legs folding. The third priest spun around, in time to have a throwing needle enter the hollow beneath his sternum.
As he died the last thing he saw was the face of his murderer, the stylised mask of a grinning jester – its teeth long and leering, its eyes slitted in perpetual laughter.
The assassin whispered away from the murder scene and drifted down a tight, winding ribbon of steps. She emerged in the northern ward. It was a long hall where the mentally infirm would spend their daylight hours, wandering absent-mindedly and conversing in a sporadic fashion.
It was almost empty, the narrow arched windows casting long strips of alternating light and darkness into the hall. At the far end, sunk into a rocking chair, was the still form of a patient who never moved from his perch. A veteran of the Guard, the man now spent his waking hours staring blankly at the wall, his nails digging crescents into the armrests of his chair.
The assassin dispatched him quickly with a narrow blade and moved on.
The northern ward opened into the infirmary. A line of brass-plated doors were set into the clay walls that housed the individual dormitories of the psychiatric patients. The windows that banked the corridor were barred.
Drawing a spine-saw, the assassin entered the dorms in methodical succession. She worked quickly, flickering in and out of the rooms, attending to each patient. Twice, the night-shift priests accidentally came upon her. Twice, she garrotted them, dragging the corpses into the dorms and locking the doors.
The assassin emerged from the last door at the end of the corridor. Her spine-saw was feathered with long strings of blood. The jester’s mask of black and white was now contrasted with perfect droplets of red.
Unlatching a pouch from her utility belt, the assassin checked her chron. She was dead on schedule. Sheathing her spine-saw, she ghosted into the western ward. By dawn, the Temple of the Tooth would be truly empty.
Chapter Fourteen
Roth was awakened by a scream.
Even through the hazy fog of sleep, the cry was unmistakeably chilling. The timbre was shrill, agonised, and almost plaintive. He could recognise the sound of death anywhere.
Kicking himself off the bed in a tangle of linen, Roth groped for his plasma pistol. The candles in his room had
thawed to sludge as he slept, and it was pitch black. His palm grazed the cold, heavy metal of a pistol grip and his frantic heartbeat slowed to a controlled feather. The ascending hum of gas fusion as he powered the Sunfury off safety made him feel secure, like a torch in the night.
Then came another scream, closer this time, a long drawn-out warble that ended abruptly in a hacking gasp.
Roth briefly considered suiting up in the fighting-plate, scattered in pieces across his dormitory floor. Once he steeled his resolve, his realised the idiocy of such a notion. Instead, he slid into the blue silk robe that he had shed at the foot of his bed. He made for the door, but doubled back and donned his tabard of reactive obsidian. Just to be safe.
He burst out of his room, pistol leading, but stopped short at the threshold. Roth was not sure if what he was seeing was real. The scene before him pulsed from his pupils to his retina and into his visual cortex, but part of his brain refused to accept it. It was all too ludicrous.
The door opened into the atrium, an open-air tiled courtyard. From the arched columns and tympanums, several corpses were hung. In the centre of the atrium, where a stone fountain babbled gently, the water was crimson. Propped up around the fountain, four dead priests sat upright. One was missing his hands, another’s mouth gaped without a tongue, the third had no ears and the last one seemed to stare at Roth with raw, empty eye sockets.
The symbolism was not lost on Roth. It was the closing scene from Methuselah’s tragedy The Four Hells of a Heretic King. The fourth act of the piece traditionally involved the hubris of King Messanine and his final punishment in the one hundred and nine layers of damnation. It was, for lack of a better interpretation, a warning against the impious and unfaithful. Back on his home world of Sancti Petri, Roth had seasonal passes to all the local theatre companies, and this piece had been his favourite. But any previous rendition he had seen could not compare to the visceral horror of the vision before him.
