by Henry Zou
‘Do you think that the natives tried to release the embryonic star? Do you think that is what caused the mass extinction on Aridun?’
‘I’ve never thought of that,’ Madeline admitted. ‘But it would make sense. If the star was still dormant, releasing it from stasis would at least have caused a radioactive flare.’
‘Which would mean…’
‘Which would mean an erosion of the planet’s atmosphere, causing turbulent climate changes.’
Roth breathed out with the weight of revelation. He realised the only difference between the six-thousand-year-old projection before him, and the cartographer’s charts he had studied in his pre-operation briefings, was the absence of those global markings. As the millennia worn on, Cantica and Kholpesh built their cities on cities and the lines were buried under civilisation. The same geodetic lines that the Archenemy were unearthing. It was a matter of filling in the gaps, retracing the zenith, the nadir, the azimuth points. Measuring for elevation and meridian planes and thus rebuilding the schematics of these Early Sentients.
‘These scratchings, these ley-lines, how do they awaken the Old Kings?’ Roth asked.
‘I can only answer in terms of pre-history. It was common amongst the prehistoric tribes of Terra to believe such lines channelled the magnetic energy of planets. There must be some correlation between magnetic equator lines, the alignment of astronomy and the stasis field of the Old Kings. The timing seems key here,’ Madeline surmised. ‘Once the stasis field is disrupted, I’m guessing this violent star can then be transported within its Tomb Bell to wherever the strife is greatest, as this scripture suggests. The Archenemy have timed this well.’
And indeed it was all executed with impeccable timing. According to the orrery of the hololithic map, the constellations were already in perfect alignment. The Old Kings would be active now, roused from their dormant sleep and thrumming with the magnetic sustenance channelled by the conduit ley-lines spanning an entire star system.
But the worst, the very worst was the revelation that they had all deceived themselves. They had underestimated the enemy. Khorsabad Maw’s vanguard assault had not been a blindly roving treasure hunt. It had not been the sporadic plundering of planets. Rather, it had been a methodical process of preparation.
They had not, as Imperial intelligence believed, been using the slaves to excavate in some vain attempt to locate the Old Kings. The quarries, so visible from orbital reconnaissance, had been the geodetic constructs.
What terrified Roth even more, the one thing that was most horrifying, was that the Archenemy had known where the Old Kings slept all along. They had simply chosen not to play their hand too soon and reveal it to the Imperium. Instead they prepared their conduits, leaving the Old Kings on Aridun untouched.
The Archenemy had been waiting until the lines had been laid across Medina from Naga to Tarsis, and the embryonic star was ripe to release from stasis. From there on, the Archenemy could remove the star contained within its vessel, and utilise its destructive potential at any strategic location within the Imperium. Lord Marshal Khmer had been wrong. Very wrong. Chaos had not been irrational. It had been so entirely logical that the Imperium had missed it.
With the revelation of the Old Kings, the Task Force moved quickly. Preparations were made to transit off planet immediately. Mantilla was crumbling and the minor victory at Magdalah, although morale-lifting, did not abate the inevitable. The void shield was stuttering in places, and Ironclad gas artillery was beginning to pound on the city proper. Of Hiam Golias, the collector, Roth made sure to confiscate his cargo-flier for the war effort. The collector, under the auspices of Cantican military provosts, was then sent to the front-line trenches as an auxiliary labourer. Of his fate, Roth knew not.
The inquisitor was already preoccupied with the next phase of his mission and his mind was elsewhere. As pressing as it was to act swiftly on Aridun, Roth was a man of priorities and he could not leave Kholpesh without flushing the traitor from within his ranks.
The scarlet letter was a trap of two folds.
Once the quarry took the bait, it was up to him to reveal himself through error. An error that an innocent man would never have made.
The error here would be Delahunt’s log. The jewel of his signet ring was plugged to a decryption machine like a crumb of food in a spring-loaded rodent trap.
Roth had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he had found something of interest on Delahunt’s log that the previous encryption scan had not relinquished. He’d put it down to poor system function; the device used in the tunnels of the Barbican had been rudimentarily crude.
It was all a ploy.
Now Roth lay in wait, sequestered within the panelled walls of their military billet. His room had been purposefully left in a state of disarray. He had informed the Overwatch Task Group that Major General Cabales had requested his immediate assistance regarding an issue of tactical significance. Roth had ordered the Task Group to prepare their equipment for transit to Aridun in his absence.
Now he, and ten hand-picked Canticans, men he had personally drawn from the trenches with no prior contact to his staff, lay in wait.
He had even left the linen on his pallet bed unmade, and the drawers of his dresser ajar, as if he’d left in haste. The decryptor was in the corner of the room, beneath a glass-shaded lamp, its gilded keys chattering quietly.
The figure padded down the barrack’s billet. It was late in the evening and although the Kholpeshi suns were still searing, the rest shutters had been drawn along the corridor. Slatted bars of fiery amber sun played along the plyboard walls, bending the shadows into exaggerated shapes of black on a canvas of fiery orange. The figure slinked along the shadows, veiled in inky blackness.
Roth’s room was easy to find. It was the only room along the corridor with the door ajar. Evidently, Roth had left in a hurry.
There was no need for stealth. It carried with it unwarranted suspicion. Rather, a hand pushed the door open, brazenly.
‘Roth, Roth are you here?’ called the voice.
The figure stepped into the empty room. Their billets were spartan, the sleeping quarters of a gas mill where the workers were allowed their daily six hours of rest shift. That had been before the war.
Roth’s room contained nothing more than a single iron-framed bed. Gas canisters in rusted cylinders lined the plyboard partition walls, towering over the bed in a way that suggested utility room rather than sleeping quarters. A single ventilation fan stuttered overhead. It squeaked on its wiring, its blades lashing fast-running shadows continuously across the room. These quarters were not known for their comfort.
In a far corner of the room, nestled between a gas cylinder and a sheet-metal spit bucket, a decryptor was at work. The machine looked at odds with its surroundings, its ivory keys tapping, sinking and releasing of their own accord. Mother-of-pearl panelled the casing and a series of whirling gyroscopes timed the rhythm of its work. A golden cherub’s face mounted at the centre of the console released a paper tongue of readouts, its decrypted data collected in a spool of loose parchment.
The figure locked the door and stalked towards the decryptor. Delahunt’s ring was attached to a pulse data link, the cord winking a cold blue light. The figure knelt down before the machine and halted its process with a few deft strokes of its ivory keys. The decryptor gunned down with a reluctant groan of cogs, the paper tongue ceasing to lengthen.
Unfolding a flask from beneath a belt, the figure began to douse the machine with a slick, oily liquid. The stale, humid air of the room was suddenly cut with the sharp sting of naphtha. Particular attention was paid to the signet ring; that had to burn first.
Producing a small book of paper tinders, the figure struck one. A small flame guttered into being, producing a small halo of light around the hand that held it.
Something was not quite right.
Under the light of the teetering little flame, the decryptor’s data slips could be read clearly. They did not say anything of worth. Rather they said nothing at all. The signet ring had been emptied of its data cache and replaced with a sequence of scramble patterns and sequenced nonsense.
Scarlet letter caught – caught scarlet as now – letter spilling scarlet – caught now –
‘Oh Throne,’ said the shadowy figure.
Roth had seen enough.
He laid open the plyboard with a kick of his metal-shod feet, sending the partition board flying in separated parts. Gas canisters toppled, collapsing in a domino chain with hollow metallic rings. Cantican Guardsmen, their lasguns held up to shoulders, came barging in from all sides, kicking down the dormitory partitions.
‘Cease and surrender! Inquisition!’ Roth yelled.
He lined up the target kneeling in front of the decryptor with his pistol. He steadied his aim and stopped.
He froze, his mind stalled as it struggled for rationality.
Celeminé stared back at him. Her eyes were so far open her pupils were surrounded by white.
Roth hesitated. His mind tried to invoke some logic into what he saw. He tried to find some way to explain what was happening that did not lead to confrontation. Roth’s mouth was so dry, and his mind was so blank. Fumbling for reasoning, he found none except that it had been Celeminé all along.
The hesitation was all she needed.
An expanding ring of psychic energy fluttered from Celeminé. It was partly powered by her mind, partly driven by her intense instinct to fight back. The wall of solid force hit the Cantican Colonials closing in on her, striking with the impact of a fast-moving freight vehicle. The last of the partition walls and gas banks were bowled over like loose skittles. Guardsmen were poleaxed off their feet, their entire skeletal structures rendered into splintered fragments on impact.
Roth was blown half-way back across the adjoining dormitory, sliding across the floor before his momentum was arrested by a storage locker. His psi-reactive tabard calcified, some of the obsidian panes around the hem turning to a dusty, brittle white. It was a forceful mind blow, but Roth had taken worse. He staggered back onto his knees.
Celeminé stalked towards him. The sudden explosion of psychic force left her weak and off balance. She lurched drunkenly towards him, a thread of blood running down her nose. ‘I should have known, Roth, you can’t work a decryption to save your life.’
‘I just did,’ Roth said. He reached for his pistol and realised it had spun out of his grasp. He bided for time. ‘Why did you betray us?’
Celeminé almost smiled. ‘Come on, Roth, you sound hurt. You should have seen this coming. I’m surprised it took you as long as it did. Aren’t I ambitious enough for you?’
‘What did Khmer give you? How did he turn you?’
‘I am a woman, Roth. The ordos, it’s a patriarchal game. Khmer gave me something you wouldn’t understand. He promised me he had the pull to give me greater authority.’
‘You had authority. You were an inquisitor.’
Celeminé laughed. Even now, Roth found it a pretty laugh; she curled the corners of her lips up like a broken bow.
‘Not like that. He would have given me things you wouldn’t have.’
‘Me? What are you–’ Roth began.
‘You insensitive ass,’ she laughed. Roth flinched at her stinging words. ‘You still don’t understand. I would have the opportunity to advance more rapidly as an inquisitor.’
‘He lied.’
‘Everybody lies,’ Celeminé shrugged.
Roth squeezed the trigger.
She beat him to it. Her psychic form, a rushing bow-wave of tidal energy, surged up and towards him like a tsunami.
Roth’s psychic power could not hope to match her strength for strength. He played the intellect’s game. He shifted his mind into an empty bubble, allowing the crashing tide to carry him.
Celeminé’s attack swept them away, taking them high above the Mantillan skyline within the span of half a second. Roth knew he was in deep now. He was playing her game.
Celeminé attacked hard and furiously. Sea serpents, wide of jaw and many-headed, uncoiled from her mind’s eye. Seven, seventy, eventually seven hundred sea serpents like tendrils of hair writhed and intertwined as they reached out with snapping, translucent maws.
He wasn’t strong enough to counter anything like that. Roth refused to play her game. He curled up into an abstract shape, too many corners to be a triangle, far too multi-dimensional to be a polygon. The lashing serpents hammered him, knocking him about. It hurt Roth, threatened to break him, but it confused Celeminé, denying her a tangible target.
But her intellect directly correlated with her psychic ability. She adapted quickly, fusing her hundreds of serpents into a single horned fish, its grinning maw bristling with spikes. The leviathan engulfed Roth, swallowing him whole. Roth dispersed himself like droplets of water just as the maw snapped shut. He survived, but barely. The fish blew out every shingle of the gas mill roof like a storm of broken teeth in its psychic backlash.
Roth was tiring now. His mind wasn’t sharp. Part of him was still in disbelief, and the doubt had a tangible effect on his psychic ability. Sluggish, he crawled away, seeking escape. He fled in the only direction he could go – out beyond the trenches towards the Archenemy. Taking the form of a streamlined bolt, Roth streaked out across Mantilla. The Imperial trenches, throbbing with small-arms fire blurred beneath him. Celeminé pursued. He could feel her mind-snare, reaching out for him. Several times she almost touched him, the whispering fingers of her pursuant form sending shocks of fright through him.
Celeminé. Why?+
Shut up, Roth. I’m tired of explaining already. Let’s just finish this.+
She chased him far from Mantilla into the battlefields. Out beyond, in the fields of the enemy, the psychic planescape was different. The sky was darker there, the light filtered and silty. The plague of Archenemy minds below him seethed like a pit of violence, aggression and ignorance. The things he could see there, the ambient memories of so many murderers, were strong enough to completely destroy his sanity.
Roth dived in amongst it.
It was akin to plunging into a cauldron of boiling water. The shock almost killed him. His physical body, many kilometres away, convulsed with enough force to cause hair-line fractures in his spine. He tried to shut out the minds of the Archenemy but they were all around him. He suddenly knew what it was like to kill a child. He knew the wild elation of watching others die from slow poisoning. He knew what it was like to slide a razor into the belly of a sleeping man.
Worst still were the ghosts. They were vaguely humanoid shapes, smoke-black and faceless, they clutched onto the Ironclad, hugging their backs, riding on their shoulders, holding their legs with a tortured, vengeful grasp. They were the dead – souls of murder victims, unable to leave the world. The followers of the Ruinous Powers had an ability to blur the line between the warp and the world, allowing the spirits of the dead to manifest in strange ways. Here, they clung to those who wronged them, hanging over them like a dark aura.
Roth tried to shut it out, throwing up layers and layers of mind blank. He reduced his psychic signature and buried his face in the soil.
Celeminé swept in after him, trailing psychic magnificence. She took the form of a radiant avian, wings flared. Her confidence was to be her undoing.
The spirits, if not the resonance of the warp, then the angry ghosts of those the Ironclad had killed followed their armies like an aura of vengeful suffering. They were attracted to Celeminé’s psychic brilliance.
The sudden swarming of despairing spirits snared Celeminé. She fought back, the wild lashes of her psychic will actually haemorrhaged the brains of several Ironclad sentries in a nearby tent. The ghosts leered at her, clawed at her, pulled and pleaded for h
er to stay with them. To join them in their suffering.
Roth seized his moment. He would not have another like it.
He surged back into his body. A fraction of a second before Celeminé realised he had gone.
Roth awoke back in the gas mill. The metaphysical shift was disorientating. The room spun in helical spirals. He staggered and righted himself. The room was covered in a thick crust of frost and the temperature was well below zero. Roth pawed through the ice, clawing at a T20 autogun on the frozen corpse of Guardsman. It dislodged, sleeting panes of thin ice as Roth picked it up.
Celeminé returned to her body as Roth’s bearings returned. Her psychic discipline was good despite the distraction Roth had inflicted upon her. Celeminé’s eyes tore open, immediately ready.
But Roth’s trigger discipline was better. He squeezed the trigger. The first shot hit Celeminé below the ribs, buckling her onto her knees. His next round entered her below the chin, jetting a thin stream of crimson onto the white ice.
Inquisitor Felyce Celeminé lay, face-down in the snow. Strings of blood stained her yellow bodyglove orange.
Roth stared at her. His laboured breathing spiralled up in frosty plumes. A tension headache constricted his cerebellum, sending nerve tingles into his right elbow. He felt intoxicated, his mind dulled in what psychic-duellists termed post-duel stupor. It was his brain trying to recuperate from the confrontation. Blood pounded in his temple, its beat irregular.
As he sat, he thought about the vengeful ghosts that latched onto the Ironclad, following their killers into eternity. It was an unsettling thought. He could still feel the tortured thirst for revenge that those spirits had for their murderers. Roth wondered if Celeminé would follow him, her ghost latched onto his back for all eternity. A part of him hoped she would, to absolve him of guilt. And although he should not have felt guilt, try as he might, he did.
