Inquisitor, page 3
“You want a lift somewhere?” he bellowed.
Meh'Lindi merely increased her pace. Impulsively, the Squat swung the trike to pull alongside, so that one wheel dragged on the slower strip. The manoeuvre failed. The trike skidded and tumbled, throwing Grimm over the handlebars. Tucking himself into a ball of boots and flak jacket, the Squat bounced and rolled half a dozen times. Briefly, Meh'Lindi broke step.
However, Grimm was already picking himself up, swearing, dusting himself off, retrieving his cap.
Meh'Lindi jerked one hand—in salute, or as a warning to stay away from her?—then she surged ahead.
Casting a disgusted glance at the buckled trike and at the throng pouring past him, south-bound, Grimm trotted northwards after the Assassin.
Jaq surprised Googol—and himself—by chuckling, sympathetically, almost affectionately.
Meh'Lindi was soon way out of sight of the Squat around a wide bend. There she quit the throughway, to race along feeder lanes, dodging through refugees who shrank from the fleeting, faceless, coaly-skinned woman. The spy-fly zipped along in her wake, down narrower, abandoned, grim alleys. Noise of battle grew audible. Shocks jerked at the fabric of the city, rupturing ancient sewage pipes.
Quarter-facet... and Jaq uttered a malediction. “There's one of the fathers of evil.”
A middle-aged man and woman were escorting a purestrain Stealer through aisles lined with crates in some ill-lit claustrophobic warehouse.
How commonplace the human couple looked in their workers' overalls. Apart from the laspistols both held, awkwardly if purposefully. And apart from the glazed doting madness in their eyes. For these two were emotionally fixated on that monster, bonded to it by sentiments which were the cruellest parody of love and of family attachment.
The puissant alien walked crouched over in a permanent posture of attack so that the horns along its spine projected highest. Its long cranium jutting forward, fangs dripping gluey saliva. Its upper set of arms ended in claws which could tear armour open; and its carapace was as tough as armour. Fibrous ligaments corded its limbs. A horny tube of a tongue flicked out: that tongue which could kiss its own gene material into a host.
Momentarily, Jaq flinched at the creature's hypnotic gaze, even seen through the medium of the screen, and although he was psychically immune.
“Father of evil,” he intoned as if in a travesty of prayer, “and grandfather too...”
Yes indeed. The human mother who gave birth to a deformed, bestial hybrid would dote on it blindly, as protective as a tiger of her cub, and as cunning. Offspring of hybrids would seem less alien in appearance. By the fourth generation, save for the charismatic light in their eyes, the spawn would appear human.
Yet the firstborn of such a semblance would be purestrain Stealer again. With appalling, instinctive inevitability the cycle would recommence.
By then a whole family coven numbering thousands of warped persons would be infesting society secretly, a brood keenly alert to each other's alien needs. Somewhere, in deepest luxurious hiding, the overgrown Patriarch which first began the pollution of a world would relish empathetically all the doings of its kin...
Quarter-facet... A Stealer tore a trooper's chest open before darting back into concealment...
For a while, Jaq let all hundred spy-fly images be present at once in mosaic on the eye-screen. Extending his psychic sense of presence, he felt how the battle inside Vasilariov was congealing, slowing and centring desperately about fifteen kilometres north of the hotel. That was where the surviving Purestrains and minions were concentrating. Maybe the Patriarch was already dead. That was where Obispal was heading from one direction. And Meh'Lindi from another.
Quarter-facet once more... A darkened, elevated observation booth overlooked what seemed to be a laboratory. Under flickering emergency lighting, arcane apparatus fumed and sparked, abandoned by its operators. The strobing of the light froze monsters in mid-motion, gathering for some assault.
Jaq willed the spy-fly to see in infra-red.
Inside the booth above that scene, black in syn-skin, Meh'Lindi crouched. She had dogged the plasteel door shut. The observation window was doubtless of armoured glass. And she was crouching over. Hiding? Had she locked herself in a place of comparative safety?
The Assassin was stowing her Jokaero weapons away inside her sash. She sprayed solvent on to a tiny patch of her arm then stuck a needle through the little gap in her syn-skin, injecting herself. She hunched even lower, rabbit-legged as if about to hop.
Presently, bumps arose from her spine. Her head began to elongate. Her fingers were fusing into claws.
“What's happening to her?” cried Googol. “Has she been infected?”
Jaq shuddered. “I must say she does believe in challenging herself!”
“What's happening to her, man?” Googol clutched Jaq's arm, appalled, for Men'Lindi' was becoming a monster.
“She injected Polymorphine.”
“Polymorphine... Sounds like a pain-killer, doesn't it?”
“It isn't.”
Assassins were proofed against pain, but surely Meh'Lindi must be aware of some agonies as her body strained to adopt a new shape in obedience to her will.
Googol cackled hysterically. “Assassins' drug, right? They use it to assume a new appearance. To disguise themselves. Masquerade as someone else. Someone human, Jaq! I've heard of Polymorphine. It can't possibly change someone's body as much as that!” His finger jerked towards the screen. “Nor as quickly, neither!”
“She's in propinquity to other Stealers,” muttered Jaq. “She's concentrating on their body forms, feeling them with her senses...”
“That can't account for it!”
“Well, the syn-skin helps speed the reaction. It's galvanizing her whole metabolism, accelerating her vitality. It's designed to do that as well as protect her.”
“You're lying, Jaq!”
“Control yourself. There is another reason... But you have no right to know, do you understand?”
Googol flinched, and gnawed at the ball of his thumb as if to stifle anguish or panic. But still he persisted, anxiously. “I've heard how Assassins are trained to dislocate their own limbs and even break their own bones so that they can writhe like snakes through narrow tubes...”
“You have no right to ask whatever! Quieta esto, nefanda curiositas, esto quieta!” The resonant hieratic words acted as a slap in the face.
True enough, Jaq had known the secret essence of the matter ever since his application to the Officio Assassinorum was fulfilled—his request for an Assassin with previous experience of a Genestealer-infested world, and one who could pose as a sophisticated mistress.
Meh'Lindi had formerly undergone experimental surgery to implant extrudable, shape-remembering plastiflesh reinforced with carbon fibre and flexicartilage which could toughen hard as horn. Thus she could pose as a Stealer hybrid, could behave as one; and afterwards could suck those implants back into herself, softening, shrinking, reabsorbing them.
Extra glands had been grafted into her to store and synthesize at speed the somatotrophin growth hormone that ordinarily promoted growth of long bones and protein synthesis in a child... and glands to reverse the process. Her artificial implants were a living organic part of her. By the same token her body of flesh and blood and bone was partly artifice and artefact.
This, coupled with the Polymorphine and her own apparently chameleonic talent—perhaps potentiated by the syn-skin, though of this aspect Jaq .was truly unsure—enabled her to undergo a wilder, faster transformation than fellow Assassins: a radical transmutation of her body into, at least, Stealer semblance.
Jaq knew that she was an initiate of the Callidus Shrine of the Assassins—speciality: cunning—and the experiment in the Callidus medical laboratory perhaps marked a perilous, agonizing zenith of dissimulation. This much had been confided to him; and he had deemed it discreet to pry no further—had been persuaded of the wisdom of discretion.
Presumably Meh'Lindi's previous mission had succeeded and the Director of the Callidus Shrine was inclined to field-test her again... Or maybe the mission had failed but she had survived. Maybe the extreme and somewhat specialized experiment had been abandoned? Maybe Meh'Lindi was the lone surviving product of it. Jaq knew not to enquire too deeply into the secrets of the Officio Assassinorum when such particulars were not within his brief.
Jaq had known... intellectually. Yet even so, the rapidity and utterness of her transformation shocked him.
“She's becoming a Genestealer,” babbled Googol. “Well, isn't she? Isn't she? She can't possibly be attempting a perfect copy...”
Indeed she wasn't. Meh'Lindi did not develop the lower set of arms nor the bony, sinuous tail. Too much to expect a new pair of arms to grow out of her ribs, or her coccyx to elongate so enormously. Nor could Jaq imagine that she could attain the full strength of a purestrain Stealer—though her own strength was formidable, even when unenhanced.
Yet in dark silhouette she seemed almost a Stealer. She was at least the image of an injured Stealer, blackened and fused by fire, one which had lost some appendages, perhaps lasered off, perhaps in an explosion; a Stealer which still remained very much alive and able to use its deadly main claws. Syn-skin still wrapped her, having stretched to accommodate her new shape. The syn-skin sealed her toothy snout shut. Her face, her jaw had been implanted too in the Callidus laboratory...
Injured Stealer... or hybrid shape. One or the other... Hybrids comprised a whole gamut of deformities. If taken for a hybrid, could she really fool a Stealer brood, or their Patriarch, over a period of time? Maybe, thought Jaq, that was where the Callidus experiment had come unstuck... if indeed it had come unstuck.
“That's... the woman we share quarters with?” Googol's voice was filled with black wonder, with a fearful admiration, a certain desolation of the heart, and yes, a horror that nevertheless coursed thrillingly through his nerves. Jaq too felt deeply perturbed.
Already, Meh'Lindi's own skin seemed to be stiffening under that black second skin. It was forming a tough bony carapace as stimulated cells altered their nature, hardening to horn.
“Can any Assassin ever have tried this trick before?” exclaimed the Navigator. “Wrenching her organs, distorting herself so utterly? And tried it in the midst of a combat zone?”
“Curiositas, esto quieta!”
“She did say she needed exercise.” If Googol hoped to sound supercilious, he failed.
The black creature which had been Meh'Lindi undogged the door and darted into a wide corridor, misty with smoke. Several armed hybrids roamed, seeming lost. Was Meh'Lindi thinking any of the alien thoughts of a Stealer? Understanding how it would react? Perhaps even radiating some protective aroma of brood empathy around herself? She bore down on the hybrids and, with her claws, she killed them almost before they realized.
A cloaked man who accompanied them gaped. His mouth opened in mute protest at this perversion of the proper order of affairs. Meh'Lindi snipped his head off.
No-one seeing her on the move, rushing headlong through drear fuming tunnels, would really note the missing arms and absent tail, the sealed face, the scarlet sash. Or at least not note those betraying absences until far too late. She was keeping to the more furtive by-ways of the city and away from loyal troops.
Quarter-facet... Grimm arrived, puffing, at a narrow archway debouching into a domed plaza. Three great avenues radiated away, choked with fighting, reeking with smoke. Explosions flared like novas inside a dust nebula. Shockwaves rippled downward from some higher level of the city which boomed with devastation. Walls and braced ceiling groaned. Drums of architecture were being beaten till they burst.
A fumy miasma masked glow-globes, reddening the scene as if here was the lurid sunset of the heart of this city before final night consumed and extinguished it. A massive detonation shook the plasteel heights. Had a munitions factory exploded? The roofs of the avenues sagged, pillars buckling. Abruptly the dome collapsed, shattering like an eggshell. Whole buildings, vehicles, and machinery came tumbling from above, wearing necklaces of fire.
Grimm scuttled away up a ramp, pursued by debris and clouds of dust.
Half-facet... Obispal spotted a lone purestrain Stealer lurking some way down a dismal arcade lined by shuttered clothing stores. The Stealer loped slowly away as though injured, dodging from one steel column to the next.
Swinging his power sword and shouting to guardsmen, the Inquisitor pounded after the fugitive alien. Was it sheer bravado on Obispal's part that he disdained to fire explosive bolts at that creature which itself could not manipulate a gun? Or was it blood lust? He intended to cut it apart personally with his power sword—sword against claw—and be seen to do so.
The arcade proved to be a cul-de-sac. Twisted steel blocked the far end. As the Inquisitor realized this, he grinned hugely. Though only briefly...
Activated by some unseen hand, a disaster-shutter of woven steel crashed down behind him, cutting him off from his guardsmen.
Obispal whirled.
“Carve through with a power axe, and quickly!” he bellowed.
The Stealer was no longer fleeing but racing towards him, claws outstretched. Swiftly, Obispal confronted it; and now bolts from his hand-tooled, burnished-steel gun hammered at the alien. Many of the explosive-tipped shells missed entirely. Some caromed off its carapace. One detonated successfully, making instant puree within the creature's armoured head.
Already, hatches in the ceiling were springing free. A dozen hybrids and another purestrain dropped down into the arcade. Still more hybrids followed. A whole rabid pack was rushing at Obispal, firing a medley of weapons inaccurately, hatred written on all their twisted faces. Lasbeams, gouts of flame, and ordinary bullets ripped and charred his clothes but were deflected by the energy armour he wore beneath. His head was unprotected. With a juggler's dexterity he switched the bolt gun swishingly to full automatic. Ejected cartridges sprayed like grain at harvest time on some granary world. Firing the bolter with one hand he waved the sizzling power sword frantically in front of his face as if fanning wasps away. The explosive clatter in the arcade was ear-splitting. Obispal's cloak caught fire.
As Obispal backed against the front of a store the grille that sheathed it tore open from within. A Stealer claw reached and plucked the Inquisitor through the gap.
Chapter Three
Back through the gap flew his blazing cloak, still weighted with a few grenades. These exploded in the face of the mob. Obispal's power sword sailed out in an arc and danced across the floor, severing several feet. All of a sudden, the point of view shifted into the darkness beyond the torn grille, just as the purestrain leapt over bodies of its kin to force entry.
Claws as mighty as its own batted the purestrain's claws aside and ravaged its head so that the purestrain shrieked and hung incapacitated, blocking the gap. In infra-red the scene was clear. It was the monster-Meh'Lindi who had jerked the Inquisitor to safety. She had disabled the Stealer which tried to follow. Now she was simply restraining Obispal, holding the disarmed man firmly at claw's length.
That high-pitched whine must be the sound of a power axe or two butter-slicing through the disaster shutter outside.
Obispal writhed. “What?” he cried. “Who? You aren't a Stealer. You aren't a hybrid. What are you?”
How clearly could Obispal see? Meh'Lindi didn't reply.
How could she through that snout of teeth sealed with syn-skin, even if she wished to?
Outside, now: gunfire, screams, sizzling. The guards must be through the barrier.
“Aaaah-!” Obispal sounded to be on the verge of deducing the truth.
“Watch out within!” came a call. Laser fire began to slice through the crippled purestrain. The claw released Obispal, thrusting him away. Meh'Lindi turned and raced off up a steel stairway. Obispal stamped his elephantine boots in furious pique before composing himself, locating his discarded bolt gun and preparing to welcome his rescuers.
“Shade ungrateful, ain't he?” drawled Googol.
“He walked into a trap,” said Jaq. “The whole universe is full of traps for the unwary. For a moment Obispal was unwary and he knows it. He knows that someone else knows, which is humiliating. At the eleventh hour, he underestimated the Stealers—as if they had only been his playthings. His campaign went so well up until now.”
“Ah yes, he did so well,” echoed Googol sardonically. He scrutinized the tiny facets of devastation aswirl around the eye-screen. “Whole cities destroyed, millions slaughtered. So splendidly.”
“Stalinvast will very soon be cleansed, Vitali. There can be worse fates for a world.”
“Can there be?”
“Exterminatus” Jaq whispered to himself.
“What?”
“Never mind. Vasilariov won't be totally ruined. The tide of battle won't even reach us here in the hotel.”
“That's consoling to know.”
“No more does the tide of Chaos threaten our Emperor.”
Meh'Lindi in Stealer guise was racing at a crouch through dark ducts and service tunnels. She mounted ancient stairways that spiralled so high around shafts dribbling with condensation as to shrink into their own vanishing points. She crossed gantries bridging delving chasms. She descended other stairways. She popped through hatchways into alleys and back into ducts again. Always she chose the most deserted routes. Only occasionally did she encounter fugitives from the slaughter who had wisely dodged into such hidey holes. These she brushed aside and raced by, to their evident great relief. Still, from the major avenues the rumble and squall of flight reached her constantly, a doleful drum-backing to her own claw-clicking progress.
At one intersection, she paused, senses alert.
Quarter-facet... Grimm trotted along a precarious overhead catwalk above a river of humanity, puffing, “Huh, huh, huh.”
Below, the surge was growing ever denser as if that river had met a dam ahead. Moving pavements must have failed under the weight they bore, otherwise one side of the crowd would surely be pulled to the rear.
