Defender of the Imperium Omnibus, page 66
Besides, it was clear from the first thing I’d overheard that Hoy was either a target, or involved in the conspiracy, and on the whole the former was far more likely. If I could get to him before Kraven, whoever the hell that was, with any luck he’d be able to give me some answers about whatever was going on.
As I approached the Governor’s quarters I slowed my pace, checking the charge in my laspistol’s powerpack, and drawing my chainsword. The golden doors were open, and a cape of chill presentiment settled itself around my shoulders.
On entering, a single glance was all it took to confirm my worst fears. The Governor was dead, most of his torso seared away by an energy bolt of quite staggering power; I’d seen the damage done by plasma weapons often enough to recognise it, and felt an even stronger sense of foreboding than before. Whoever Hanar’s people were, they were well resourced; plasma weapons were rare to say the least, and the vast majority of them firmly in the hands of the Emperor’s faithful servants.
Palms tingling anew, I edged further inside, keeping my back to the wall and an eye on the door. My erstwhile drinking companion had clearly been taken by surprise, but hadn’t gone down without a fight; there was another body sprawled across the carpet, dressed in the plain utilitarian uniform of a member of the ship’s crew, the small, neat hole punched through his forehead confirming the suspicion I’d long harboured that the ornate ring on Hoy’s index finger was a digital weapon of some kind.
I swept the room rapidly, but the mere fact that my head was still attached to my shoulders was enough to confirm that the assassin had been alone. Besides which, if he’d had any companions with him, they would undoubtedly have recovered the weapon he’d dropped when Hoy took his final revenge. (It was actually hard to tell who’d died first, as the final involuntary muscle spasm could have triggered either weapon, but given the manifest accuracy of Hoy’s shot, my money would have been on the Governor beating his assailant to the punch. Just his hard luck that Kraven had been armed in the way he was; a las or autopistol might well have missed Hoy altogether, but the plasma bolt had expanded as it travelled.)
I bent to pick up the assassin’s handgun from the floor, rescabbarding my chainsword to do so, although I’d have kissed an ork before I let go of my laspistol at that point. The handgun’s smooth surface, devoid of devotional icons and the seals of sanctification bestowed by the tech-priests, bespoke its unhallowed origins, and I was unable to suppress a shudder of revulsion as I closed my hand around it. It was of tau origin, I’d seen enough of their xenos tech over the years to be certain of that, and a grim conclusion began to force its way into my thoughts. Hoy’s assassination was almost certainly a decapitation strike, intended to sow confusion and discord in advance of a xenos invasion, which meant that an all-out attack on the Deepwater system must be imminent.
I took a deep breath, forcing down my spiralling fears. I knew where the vox room was from my periodic reports to Zyvan; all I had to do was reach it, and warn the fleet. Of course I’d have to make my way through an indeterminate number of xenos sympathisers to get there, but I’d faced far worse odds than that before, and I was still around to tell the tale.
Despite my misgivings, I tucked the plasma pistol into the sash at my waist before leaving the room, as gingerly as if it was a greech egg.8 It was clear evidence of the xenos’s involvement which would convince even the most sceptical of Zyvan’s underlings, and I was sure Amberley would appreciate the chance to do whatever it is inquisitors do with unhallowed artefacts.9
I was on the point of leaving, when I noticed that the prostrate assassin had a comm-bead in his ear as well, and, struck by an idea, retuned the one I’d confiscated from the late and unlamented Yannis.
‘Kraven. Are you receiving?’ Hanar’s voice came through almost at once, and I smiled grimly to myself as I slipped out of the room. No harm in dividing the opposition up even further, I thought; by the time they responded, I’d be long gone.
‘Hello again, Hanar,’ I said. ‘Kraven’s dead. Can I take a message?’ I trotted along the corridor, keeping an eye out for any more insurrectionists, but the whole ship seemed eerily quiet and still. I soon found the reason for that; as I rounded a corner, I almost stumbled over the corpses of a couple of ladies’ maids, evidently gunned down as they tried to flee, and any thoughts I might have had about offering terms of surrender to the pirates evaporated abruptly. Civilian casualties are a sad inevitability of warfare, but any true servant of the Emperor tries to avoid harming His subjects as much as possible. Casual butchery like this was the mark of creatures like the orks, or debased followers of the Ruinous Powers, and for the first time I began to appreciate just how ruthless my foes were in pursuit of their agenda.
The unfortunate women were just the first of many, I discovered, as I made my way though the passageways; servant and plenipotentiary alike had been slaughtered where they stood, or, more frequently, as they ran or tried to make a fight of it. The guest quarters, where most of the local aristocracy and adepts had been sleeping when the insurrectionists began their coup, was a charnel house. I approached my own stateroom with a rising sense of foreboding, fearing to find my aide among the casualties at any moment but to my relief, both my own room and Jurgen’s were empty, only the faint residue of his body odour remaining to confirm that he’d been there at all. Where he’d gone I had no idea, but his lasgun was missing as well, which was a good sign. Like any Guardsman, he’d as soon be parted from his right arm as his weapon, and I was certain he’d be prepared to use it.
As reassured as it was possible to be under the circumstances, I picked up the bottle of amasec from my quarters, and slipped it into my greatcoat pocket after a quick restorative gulp. So fine an example of the distiller’s art undoubtedly deserved better, but I didn’t have time to savour it properly, and I was damned if I was going to leave it for a bunch of murdering brigands. Then, as ready as I was ever going to be, I set off for the vox room.
Having been aboard the Wavecrest for the best part of a month, I had a reasonable idea of the layout, which my innate sense of spatial awareness in enclosed environments had helped to sharpen. Ever since Kari had conducted me through the service passages of the Hand of Vengeance during the ork attack off Perlia, I had cultivated the habit of making a quiet mental note of the hatchways giving access to these areas on every vessel I’d travelled aboard, so I had a rough idea of how they interconnected as well. On a troopship or military vessel these would be guarded by security codes, which I generally found some way to get my hands on, but in the case of the Wavecrest the opportunity hadn’t arisen, so I supposed I’d be stuck in the main corridors. That was irksome, as I was sure Hanar’s people would be searching them diligently by now, but for an old hiver like me playing hunt the sumprat in a maze of passageways was second nature, so I was certain I’d still have the edge.
It all seemed to go fine at first. I knew the vox room was three decks up from the guest quarters, near the bridge, so I headed for the nearest stairwell. There were lifts too, of course, but I’d got far too much sense to box myself in, waiting to be gunned down like a trakki.10 I’d be keeping them covered if I was Hanar, and, from what I’d seen, whoever she was, she was far from stupid.
As I approached the stairwell I heard voices. It seemed I’d read my unseen enemy right, and she had enough manpower spare to cover the stairwells too. Drawing my chainsword again, I flattened myself against the side of the corridor, and peered cautiously around the angle of the walls.
Sure enough, there was a reception committee waiting for me, two more fellows in the livery of servants, another crewman, and a fourth individual whose presence came as a real surprise. I’d last seen him at a cotillion in the ballroom a couple of nights before, where he’d droned on about the economics of fish ranching and the extent of his family estates at tedious length, before asking what I now realised had been a few artfully ingenuous questions about the Imperial Guard regiments embedded in our task force. (Which I’d declined to answer, of course, in favour of embroidering a few of my own past exploits, much to my retrospective relief.) It seemed that the conspiracy included members of the Deepwater aristocracy, as well as the lower orders, and from the easy manner in which the fellow was conversing with his social inferiors, the pernicious notion of egalitarianism held out by the tau had evidently found converts even among those with the most to lose from its adoption.
I observed the group of traitors for a few more moments, before concluding that any attempt to get past them to the stairs would be doomed to failure. They had room to scatter in the wide landing, and if I mistimed my attack, they could separate and pick me off. At least one of the group had a comm-bead, too, and I couldn’t see the others clearly enough to be sure that he was the only one; if any of the heretics was able to vox a warning before I killed them all, the net would be closing around me faster than you could say ‘The Emperor protects’.
I was on the verge of slinking away when it suddenly dawned on me that the fellow with the visible earpiece appeared to be engaged in an urgent conversation, although none of his companions seemed to be responding. Intrigued, I tried retuning the set in my ear again, and was almost instantly rewarded with the sound of Hanar’s voice. It seemed she learned fast, and was switching frequencies in an attempt to keep me from listening in.
‘Hold your position,’ she said, sounding a little miffed that no one had reported killing me by now. ‘He can’t get off that deck without using one of the stairways or elevators, and when he tries, we’ll have him.’
‘Can you get another team down here to help sweep the corridors?’ the aristo asked, confirming my suspicion that more than one of the group was in the comm-net. ‘Roxwell says he’s already set the fusion reactors to overload, so his group aren’t needed in the enginarium any more.’
A sliver of ice seemed to enter my spinal cord as he spoke. It seemed that the traitors were preparing to cover their tracks by destroying the Wavecrest entirely, making the loss of the Governor look like a tragic accident. I’d seen spacecraft reactors breech before, although in most cases the catastrophe had been triggered by a lance or torpedo volley. I knew that once they’d carried out their dastardly plan, there would be nothing left of the yacht beyond a cloud of superheated plasma, burning like a brief, miniature sun, consuming everything within a couple of kilometres of the explosion point.
To hell with the vox room, I thought, it was time to start looking for an escape pod. I withdrew carefully round the corner, and considered my options. The launch racks were all on the deck below, on the reasonable assumption that anyone on the upper levels would head for the shuttle hangars in an emergency, which meant I had to get past the pickets after all.
Suppressing the impulse to join in the conversation this time, I listened to Hanar’s reply with considerable interest.
‘No,’ she said, to my immense relief. ‘Roxwell stays put. They’re already welding the doors shut down there. Cain said he’s on his way to retake the place, so he can waste his time trying to get in if he ever makes it that far. Even if he does, they’ll be waiting.’
I digested this with some puzzlement, wondering how they intended getting out before the reactor blew if they were sealing the room, before the full extent of their fanaticism finally dawned on me. They weren’t going to. This was a suicide mission, at least for some of them; and for all I knew, the entire cabal was intending to go down with the ship. Which simply didn’t make sense. They’d achieved their objective, so far as I could see. Why not stick around to enjoy it, and get a pat on the back from their alien masters?
Well, as I’ve remarked on more than one occasion, heretics are all deranged by definition, although this was more the kind of thing I’d expect from Chaos worshippers than the followers of the so-called Greater Good. I gave up trying to understand it in favour of staying alive, which has always been one of my favourite occupations. However you looked at it, things were grim. I was just on the verge of chancing the stairs anyway, and trusting to the Emperor to watch my back in the regrettable absence of Jurgen, when the initiative was abruptly wrested out of my hands.
‘There he is!’ someone shouted, an instant before a las-bolt detonated against the wall, far enough from where I was standing to induce apoplexy in the average Imperial Guard small arms instructor. I spun round, already bringing up my laspistol, to see a trio of crewmen charging towards me with all the finesse of a rabble of gretchin, brandishing handguns of their own as they came. I put a las-bolt through the one who’d shot at me, as he was marginally in front, and to my immense satisfaction he tripped the others as he fell. I was about to pick them off before they could rise again, when a stubber round ricocheted from the wall behind me. I turned, to find the party from the stairwell rounding the corner, the light of murder in their eyes, and brought my pistol up, while looking desperately around for some cover.
There was none. By sheer bad luck I was between cross passageways, nothing to my right or left but the burnished metal walls. There was nothing else for it but to trust in the Emperor, and try to keep them rattled enough not to shoot straight, so I bellowed ‘Waaaaaaaaggggghhhhh!’ with all the gusto of an ork, and charged at them, chainsword swinging, and depleting the power pack of my laspistol as rapidly as I could pull the trigger. Of course I didn’t have a hope of accuracy under the circumstances, even a skilled marksman11 finding it all but impossible to hit a moving target while running. But Him on Earth must have been looking over my shoulder after all, because one of my wild lasbolts caught the renegade aristo on the upper arm just as he pulled the trigger of another tau-made plasma pistol, making the shot go wide and punching a molten hole in the wall of the corridor.
I was still a few strides short of being able to bring the chainsword into play, though, and to my chagrin the sight of it wasn’t causing them to falter as I’d hoped. It’s a formidable looking weapon, and generally an untrained opponent doesn’t have the nerve to face one without flinching, being able to picture it shearing through their own tender flesh all too vividly. Untrained they may have been, but they were fanatics, prepared to die for their cause, and they held their ground, bringing their weapons on aim, each one certain that if he fell, one of his friends would kill me an instant later. Not only that, the two survivors behind me would be climbing to their feet by now, preparing to shoot me in the back.
As I’ve remarked before, even the slimmest chance is better than no chance at all, so I did the one thing I hoped they wouldn’t expect, diving forwards into a roll, hoping to close the distance and take the legs out from under them with the humming blade before they could readjust their aim. No sooner had I hit the carpet than a blizzard of lasbolts scorched the air above me, the distinctive overlapping crackle of a lasgun on full auto echoing from the enclosing walls. As I rose to my feet to find my putative targets making a mess of the expensive floor coverings with their bodily fluids, I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief, despite the assault on my nostrils which the act of inhaling now entailed.
‘Well done, Jurgen,’ I said. ‘Timely as ever.’ Warned by the sudden shifting of his aim, I turned and dispatched one of the crewmen behind me, a steward I vaguely remembered handing me a drink at a couple of social gatherings, and who I now found it hard not to resent having tipped, while Jurgen took out the other with a single shot to the head.
‘You’re welcome, sir,’ he said, as phlegmatically as ever, and glanced at me. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Escape pod,’ I said. I’d been in enough of them to know that they all carried vox-sets as a matter of course, and with the Wavecrest about to blow up under our feet, I’d feel far happier warning Zyvan about the imminent tau attack from the relative safety of open space than fighting our way through to the vox room. ‘How did you manage to avoid getting killed with everyone else?’
‘I hid in the service passages,’ Jurgen said, leading the way to an open access hatch in the wall which I’d barely noticed before. ‘I reckoned they wouldn’t expect us to think of that.’ He looked at me a trifle quizzically. ‘I thought you’d be doing the same.’
‘How did you get the access codes?’ I asked, not bothering to waste any more time on being surprised. Jurgen’s ability to scrounge the most unlikely things bordered on the preternatural, and if anyone had been able to get their hands on secure information like that it would have been him.
His expression grew even more puzzled. ‘Access codes?’ he repeated blankly, and it belatedly dawned on me that the locking plate such hatches generally had was missing. Apparently it simply wouldn’t occur to the kind of passenger the Wavecrest usually carried that the utility areas even existed, let alone that they might be entered.
‘Never mind,’ I said, drawing the hatchway closed behind us, and trying not to breathe too deeply in the confined space. ‘How did you find me?’
Jurgen shrugged. ‘They’ve killed everyone else, so I just listened out for more shooting.’ It had evidently never crossed his mind that I wouldn’t have survived, and I found the notion curiously touching.
‘We need to get to the saviour pods,’ I said. ‘They’re overloading the reactor to cover their tracks, and I don’t know how long we’ve got before it blows.’
Most people would have found that little piece of information somewhat disturbing, to say the least, but Jurgen simply nodded, as though I’d been commenting on the weather. ‘Better get a move on then, sir,’ he agreed.
