Duty Calls, page 28
‘You used the Sisters,’ I said, remembering the bolter wounds I’d seen in the bodies of the slain, and the surgical precision of the strike. Despite the calmness of my outer demeanour, my blood ran colder than a Valhallan shower at the sudden realisation. There must have been hundreds of warriors in the convent, all of them unquestioningly loyal to this maniac. If we didn’t tread very carefully indeed, our chances of getting out alive were about as great as teaching an ork to tap-dance.
Killian nodded. ‘The Order of the White Rose has been a loyal ally in our purges and wars of faith for millennia,’ he said. ‘They did all that was asked of them in His glorious name.’
‘Nothing very glorious about gunning down unarmed cogboys if you ask me,’ I said, and Metheius sighed.
‘It was necessary. All traces of my work had to be expunged, if we were to continue it successfully in secret.’
‘In Hell’s Edge,’ I said, and Killian nodded, looking as absurdly pleased as if I’d just performed some minor conjuring trick.
‘So you found our old bolthole. That was remarkably resourceful of you.’
‘Unfortunately,’ I said, ‘by the time I got there the ’nids had found it first.’
‘They had,’ Killian admitted. ‘The Sisters were barely able to extract us in time.’
‘And the miners?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.
Killian shook his head regretfully.
‘We only had room for Metheius and his team. Most unfortunate. We had to shoot a few of the civilians who tried to get their children aboard, and the rest got quite abusive.’
‘How very distressing for you,’ I said dryly. Emperor knows, far better men than me have fallen on the field of battle while I looked after my own miserable skin, on more occasions than I care to count, but the sheer callousness of the man raised my hackles, I don’t mind admitting it. Fortunately he took my remark at face value, seeming as impervious to irony as my aide.
‘“The path of duty is often a stony one”,’ he quoted blithely, as though that excused everything, apparently forgetting the rest of the sentence[91]. I nodded, pouring some fresh recaf into a delicate porcelain cup that held barely a mouthful, grateful for the distraction. Tempting as it was just to draw my chainsword and swipe his misbegotten head from his shoulders, giving into the impulse would be unwise in the extreme. He was an inquisitor, after all, and I would hardly have been the first man to try it. And even if I did succeed it would certainly annoy the sisters, who were bound to react with some petulance, probably involving copious amounts of incoming fire.
‘How did you persuade them to let you set up there in the first place?’ I asked instead. It was becoming more and more clear to me that Killian was one of those megalomaniacs who are absolutely desperate for an audience, so consumed by the delusion of their own cleverness that they need someone else to appreciate it, and I might as well indulge him for as long as possible. The more I let him ramble, the more I’d be able to tell Amberley when I caught up with her again, and at least while we were chatting he was unlikely to make another attempt at killing me.
‘I didn’t have to,’ he said simply. ‘Hell’s Edge was a Gavarronian colony, and the settlers were delighted to have friends of the convent working there.’
‘I see.’ I nodded thoughtfully, sipping recaf, and wishing it was in a proper sized mug. That explained the surprising amount of devotional literature left lying around the place. I wondered how many of the unfortunate colonists had regretted their choice of friends when the holy Sisters had left them to the ’nids. I felt my jaw begin to tighten again at the thought, and threw out another conversational fishing line. ‘I take it you’ve found somewhere to continue your researches?’
‘Most certainly.’ Metheius’s voice was taking on the familiar timbre of someone fanatical about his work, and eager to discuss it. I was beginning to see why he got on so well with Killian. ‘The Sisters have been most accommodating.’
‘I’m sure they have,’ I said, trying to project an air of outward calm. If his words really meant what I thought they did, the key to the whole affair was right here, somewhere in the Convent of the White Rose. The question was, could I find my way to it? The place was vast, and the shadowlight could have been anywhere. Metheius nodded eagerly.
‘Would you care to see for yourself?’ he asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
‘By all means,’ I replied, as calmly as I could, unable to believe this sudden stroke of good fortune. Mindful of the civilised façade we were trying to maintain, I glanced at Killian, who was still stuffing his face. ‘If you have no objection, of course.’
He shook his head, smiling, which as you’ll no doubt appreciate did little to reassure me. ‘None at all,’ he declared, pushing his chair back from the table at last. ‘Quite the reverse, in fact.’ An aura of smug pomposity hung around him like Jurgen’s body odour.
I rose to my feet. As I did so, the faint rumble of the orbital bombardment rolled over us again, like the first presentiment of summer rain, and I glanced at Jurgen, exchanging a brief moment of uneasy understanding. We’d begun our long and inglorious careers together in an artillery unit, and if those years of experience were anything to go by, that barrage was a little closer than the last one had been. That, in turn, implied that a tyranid swarm large enough to attract the attention of the orbiting starships, even in spite of the sandstorms blocking their sensors, was moving in our general direction. There was no reason to believe that we were their target, though. Gavarrone was a lot higher than any of the plateaux the roving scout swarms had scaled before the main bulk of the hive fleet had arrived, so I forced my disquiet to the back of my mind and returned my attention to the immediate problem.
‘Lazurus is a fool,’ Killian said, leading the way across an immaculate lawn shaded by rustling trees, ‘and no threat to anyone, but a man of your well-known sagacity was a challenge of an entirely different order. The moment it was revealed that you were heading the search for hidden enemies, I realised that it would only be a matter of time before you found us. After Lazurus enlisted your aid, and you knew what you were looking for, there was never even the slightest chance that the Covenant of the Blessed would simply be dismissed as another subversive group of little significance.’
‘The Chaos cult,’ I guessed aloud, as though I’d always been aware of the fact, and Killian nodded, leading us through a sacristy cluttered with icons, in the centre of which stood a severely chewed-up suit of power armour. Judging by the number of votive candles surrounding it this was clearly one of the order’s most venerated relics, and I began to take more notice of our surroundings, realising that we were now deep in the convent’s inner sanctum, further than most visitors would ever have been allowed to go.
‘Indeed,’ Killian agreed. ‘Crude tools at best, but easily duped, and the ideal subjects for our work.’ I still had no idea what he was talking about, of course, but nodded as if I did, acutely conscious that only the knowledge he seemed to believe I possessed was keeping me alive.
‘That must have gone against the grain, though,’ I hazarded. Killian looked up from yet another of the fleur de lys motifs decorating the barrel vaulted chamber, doing something to it that I couldn’t see, concealed as it was behind his torso. A section of stonework swung away from the wall, revealing a brightly lit space beyond, and the inquisitor stood aside to usher us through the gap. ‘I thought it was your duty to eliminate heresy wherever you found it.’
‘Blunt and to the point,’ Killian said, the indulgent chuckle back in his voice. ‘Great virtues I’m sure in the military mind, but in the twilight wars we inquisitors must fight, things are rarely so simple.’ He looked at me narrowly, his mood switching instantly to one of intense seriousness. ‘You’re afraid of Chaos, aren’t you? In so far as you fear anything at all, of course. Your valour is far too well known to be in any doubt.’ This last he delivered in a curiously placating tone, as though he might be afraid that he’d hurt my feelings.
The palms of my hands tingled, as I considered the question. Far more hung on it than a simple matter of courage in the face of the enemy, of that I was certain. Somehow, I knew, the answer I gave would either convince Killian he’d been right to change his mind about killing me, or persuade him I was still a potent threat, best eliminated at the earliest opportunity. Mentally cursing the pictcasts for having given him the impression that I was a danger to his deranged plans in the first place, and trying to ignore the growing suspicion that this was precisely why Amberley had drawn their attention to me to begin with[92], I tried to formulate a safe response.
‘It’s not a simple matter of courage or cowardice,’ I temporised, drawing on all the diplomatic skills I’d acquired over the years. ‘I’ve faced the forces of Chaos too often, and in too many different guises, to underestimate them. If you want to equate caution with fear, then you’re perfectly at liberty to do so, but I’ve seen too many overconfident idiots die on the battlefield to make that mistake.’ I shrugged, pretending a casual confidence I didn’t feel. ‘Emperor knows, I’ve killed enough of them myself.’
I waited, ready to go for my weapons if I had to, but Killian was nodding thoughtfully, a quiet smile on his face, as though my answer was exactly what he’d been hoping to hear.
‘I can see I was right about you,’ he said, as the stone wall slid back into place behind us, and Metheius took the lead, almost trotting down the brightly lit corridor in his eagerness to show off his toys. The stonework here was smooth, uncluttered by icons, statues, or those blasted three-leaved weeds, and Jurgen looked around us with his habitual expression of vague bafflement. (Which, had I not been controlling my features with the ease of the long-practiced dissembler, would undoubtedly have been reflected on my own face.)
‘Where are we?’ he asked, not unreasonably, and Killian gestured around us, taking in a number of closed doors, and the electrosconces between them that illuminated our path more than adequately.
‘The heart of the Order of the White Rose,’ he explained, no doubt delighted to have something else to pontificate about. ‘Prepared as a hidden repository for their holiest reliquaries should an enemy ever be on the verge of taking the convent, in order to preserve them from desecration. Only the canoness and the palatine know of its existence, or have the necessary codes for access.’ He coughed modestly. ‘And the Inquisition, of course. Several representatives of the Ordo Hereticus have found these chambers useful over the millennia.’
‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘So why bother with Hell’s Edge at all?’ Killian laughed.
‘The military mind at work again, I see. I could hardly bring members of the Covenant here for our research, could I?’ He stood aside to usher us through a doorway, no different to my eyes than any of the others, which Metheius had entered a moment or two before. As I stepped across the threshold I was assailed by a momentary twinge of vertigo, and stumbled, until Jurgen reached out a hand to support me. The feeling subsided again, and I sub-vocalised a curse. Of all the times for my concussion to make an unexpected return, this was about the worst one possible. Killian looked at me, with unexpected solicitude. ‘It takes a lot of people like that when they first get close to it,’ he said sympathetically. ‘The feeling will soon pass.’ He laughed. ‘Or if not, you may be more blessed than either of us have bargained for.’
In truth I barely heard this last remark, let alone had the leisure to try puzzling it out, as I’d just got my first good look at the room we were standing in. It was undoubtedly Metheius’s domain, at least in theory, displaying all the usual appurtenances of a techpriest’s workspace: whirring and clicking cogitator banks, piles of equipment that had no discernible function that I could see, but which were clearly drawing power from somewhere, and a scattering of data-lecterns, several of which seemed to be connected to pict screens or hololiths. The usual snakepit of cabling connected it all, with the techpriests’ traditional disregard for the possibility of snagging an unwary ankle, the majority of it appearing to emanate from a metal plinth, supporting something about the size of a data-slate on which I found it difficult to focus.
An icon of the Omnissiah stood on a small polished steel shrine away to one side, making me wonder just how Eglantine would react if it ever came to her attention that one small corner of her holy of holies had been given over to the clockwork Emperor of the techpriests. Rather badly, I suspected.
Although I’d never seen the place before, something about the layout of it sparked a vague sense of formless recognition, which didn’t quite come into focus until Jurgen spoke.
‘It’s like the shrine we found on Perlia,’ he said, and I nodded. There were differences, of course, but most of the equipment looked the same, apart from the absence of bolter holes. The other major difference was the peculiar object on the plinth, and I took a few steps towards it, picking my way carefully through the tangle of cables as I did so, hoping for a better look. Close to, it didn’t seem all that impressive, just a smooth slab of stone about three times as high as it was wide, so black that the light from the electrosconces on the walls seemed to fall gently into it.
‘Careful,’ Metheius said, and I became aware that I’d got a lot closer to the thing than I’d intended. ‘There’s a field of warp energy around it.’ He glanced at his instruments, sounding puzzled for a moment. ‘That’s odd, it seems to be diminishing. No, it’s right back to its usual level.’ He thumped the lectern, and shrugged, while I noticed Jurgen taking a step backwards out of the corner of my eye as I moved cautiously away. ‘Loose connection somewhere, probably. That’s the trouble with these temporary systems.’
‘Temporary?’ I asked, and Killian nodded.
‘Periremunda’s no longer suitable for our purposes. We need a reasonably sized population, with an organised Chaos cult we can infiltrate and control, to provide us with a steady supply of experimental subjects. How else are we going to find latent psykers in sufficient quantities?’
I felt a chill running down my spine as he spoke, finally getting an inkling of what this was all about. I fought to keep an expression of dumbstruck horror from my face. If I was right, and this maniac guessed my true feelings about his monstrous design, I’d be dead in a second, or worse. Instead I nodded thoughtfully.
‘Quite. The ’nids have made quite a dent in them here.’ I nodded at Metheius, hoping that by addressing my next remark to him I’d be able to keep Killian from reading me too easily. ‘You don’t seem to be having much luck with aliens, all in all. First the orks on Perlia, and now this.’
‘Oh, quite the contrary,’ Metheius said happily. ‘It was the arrival of the orks that put us on the right track at last. The artefact was completely inert until the burst of warp energy that accompanied the arrival of their space hulk activated it.’ I nodded, remembering how the dormant necron portal on Simia Orichalcae had been triggered by a similar phenomenon. ‘Unfortunately they were rather too numerous to be easily discouraged.’
‘I’d noticed,’ I said. In spite of myself I looked at the object that just had to be the shadowlight again, the featureless black slab exerting a horrid fascination. ‘Did you ever find out what it was supposed to do?’
‘Its actual function?’ Metheius shook his head. ‘That still eludes us, but it’s the side effect, so to speak, that we’re most interested in, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ I echoed, hoping that the side effect in question wasn’t the one I’d just deduced. ‘The implications of that alone are quite staggering.’
Killian nodded eagerly, an unhealthy enthusiasm burning behind his eyes again, renewing my already considerable doubts about his sanity. ‘More than just staggering,’ he said. ‘Galaxy shaking! Think about it, Cain, think of the possibilities! If we can reliably enhance the latent psychic powers of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of individuals on every world in the Imperium, what a weapon that would give us against the hordes of Chaos! We could crush them with their own weapons, cleanse the Eye of Terror itself of their foul taint! And once the Ruinous Powers lie prostrate and broken before the Golden Throne, we can sweep the xenos breeds from the stars, until the galaxy belongs to its rightful masters alone: pure, unsullied humankind!’
‘It’s a heady vision,’ I said carefully, certain that he was at least as barmy as the Chaos worshippers he was supposed to hunt down. ‘But there are rather a lot of worlds in the Imperium, and you’ve only got one of those rocks.’
‘At the moment, yes.’ The madman nodded, as though I’d just scored a reasonable debating point. ‘That’s why Metheius’s research is so vital, you see. If he can determine the precise nature and frequency of the warp energy that triggers the transformation from latent to true psyker, we can build devices of our own to do the same thing.’
‘We also have to refine the technique,’ Metheius added, a little diffidently. ‘At the moment it only works on a very small percentage of the latents exposed to it. The rest find it as fatal to the touch as an ordinary untainted human.’
‘I see.’ I nodded again. ‘Must be rather difficult to find volunteers, then.’
‘That’s why we subverted the Covenant of the Blessed,’ Methius explained. ‘They’re insane enough to take the risk, and the ones who survive, and develop useable talents, become tools of the Emperor without even realising who it is they now serve.’
‘Rather a delicious irony, don’t you think?’ Killian was getting carried away again. ‘The foot soldiers of the enemy, duped into defending the very Imperium they sought to destroy.’
‘I can see why you find it so amusing,’ I said, ‘and why you’re so keen to carry on the good work.’ I used the phrase in its colloquial sense, of course, with a fair amount of sarcasm if I’m honest, but Killian pounced on it eagerly.
‘Then you do understand!’ He glanced at Metheius. ‘What did I tell you? It was worth the risk of bringing him here!’
