Hero of the Imperium, page 72
‘Fourth squad, report,’ Nallion bellowed, but no answer came, and if he honestly expected one he was the biggest optimist in the system.
‘What do we do, sir?’ Varant asked, and after a moment I realised he was looking at me, ignoring the lieutenant’s voice completely. I assessed the situation rapidly. Retreat, always a good choice in my book, was impossible. Apart from the fact that it would undermine my reputation, it would expose us to Emperor alone knew how much fire from the house as we made our way back across that wide open lawn, and I didn’t intend to become a bit of easy target practice for some civilian tart with a new toy. I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant and speak through a mouth which had suddenly gone as dry as the hotside.
‘We complete the mission,’ I said simply. ‘There’s something foul in this place, and we need to cleanse it.’
It seemed painfully obvious now that my carefully contrived excuse for being here was no more than the truth after all, which I suppose at least proves that the Emperor has a well-developed sense of irony, and I’d seen enough sorcery over the years to know that confronting it straight away is the only chance you’ve got of survival. Not a particularly good chance, I grant you, but trying to run from it only gives it more time to grow in power and come after you on its own terms rather than yours.
‘I do hope that’s not a criticism of the cleaning staff,’ a mellifluous voice chimed in. ‘They do their best, you know, but it’s such a rambling old place it’s hard to keep on top of.’
The woman who spoke smiled easily as she strolled into the room, as though finding a score62 of armed men standing over the bodies of her associates was the most natural thing in the world. I began to bring my laspistol up instinctively, my finger tightening on the trigger, then froze, my heart pounding. I’d come within a hair of shooting Amberley! For a moment I was so startled that I was literally paralysed with astonishment, something which up until then I’d always assumed was merely a figurative cliché in the more undemanding kind of popular fiction.
Her smile widened as she looked at me and the knot of troopers whose lasguns all hung slack in their hands.
‘I know you must be surprised to see me here,’ she purred, the words sounding impossibly sweet and seductive. Something tried to push itself towards the front of my mind, but the vision of her, lovely as the last time we’d parted, the flower I’d plucked impulsively from the hegantha bush on the veranda still tucked behind her ear, filled my senses.
‘Margritta?’ one of the troopers asked, as though he couldn’t believe his own eyes, and the burgeoning thought became clearer. Something definitely wasn’t right…
‘Yes, my love.’ Amberley reached out a hand, caressing him gently on the cheek, and a surge of white-hot jealously erupted through me. Before I could react in any way, however, the trooper screamed, his body contorting, seeming to wither like a dried ploin before dropping to the floor.
‘Commissar?’ Jurgen tugged at my sleeve, an expression of puzzlement on his face. ‘Are you going to let her get away with that?’
‘She’s an inquisitor,’ I started to say. ‘She can do what she likes,’ but when I looked up again Amberley had gone. (Well she hadn’t, of course, because she was never there in the first place, but you know what I mean.) In her place, standing over the crumbling corpse of the fallen soldier, was a dumpy middle-aged woman in an unwise pink gown which would have looked fine on someone ten years younger and as many kilos lighter. She looked directly at me, an expression of surprise and outrage beginning to suffuse her vaguely porcine features.
‘Madame Sejwek,’ I said, savouring the flicker of uncertainty which rose in her eyes, almost losing my aim from the surge of anger which left my hand shaking from its force. Fortunately my augmetic fingers were immune to such an emotional reaction and kept the muzzle of my laspistol centred firmly on her forehead. ‘Impersonating an inquisitor is a capital offence.’
She just had time to look even more startled before I pulled the trigger, and her warp-tainted brain erupted from the back of her skull to ruin a wall hanging which had evidently been chosen for its subject matter rather than its aesthetic qualities.
‘What happened?’ Varant asked, looking slightly stunned. The rest of the troopers were snapping out of it too now, muttering in low tones, making the sign of the aquila and generally looking sheepish.
‘She was a witch,’ I told him, keeping things as simple as I could. ‘She did something to our minds. Made us see…’ I made what I assumed at the time to be the obvious deductive leap, but which Malden later confirmed was a known power of Slaaneshi psykers. ‘Someone we care about.’63
‘I see,’ he said, looking confused. ‘Lucky she didn’t fool you.’
‘Commissars are trained to spot that kind of thing,’ I lied smoothly, not wanting to draw any more attention than necessary to Jurgen. To tell the truth I was more than a little concerned that Sejwek had managed to get inside my head at all while he was so close. (To my relief, I learned later that he’d gone back to the Salamander for his lasgun while I was busy with the vox signals, taking me out of the range of his protective aura. It had belatedly occurred to him that his beloved melta might be a little counterproductive in such a potentially inflammable building; as always his pragmatism couldn’t be faulted, although his timing left a lot to be desired.)
‘Well, I suppose at least we know what happened to first and fourth squad,’ the sergeant said, looking from the body of the witch to the desiccated husk of his erstwhile subordinate.
‘Possibly,’ I said. It didn’t add up to me. Fourth squad had died quickly, in combat, not held by delusion to be picked off one by one. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’
And find out we did. The mortal remains of our comrades, and there were precious few of them left, were scattered around a ground-floor hallway at the foot of a huge wooden staircase, the banisters of which were carved in the semblance of fornicating couples in a bewildering variety of anatomically improbable positions. Blood and scorch marks spattered the walls, which were decorated with the kind of debauched murals that I’d seen before in the hab dome hidden away on the coldside, and a nagging sense of familiarity fought its way to the surface of my thoughts.
‘The rest of the house is clear,’ Nallion reported, looking slightly green as he took in the carnage, but determined not to throw up in front of the commissar. ‘No sign of anyone else on the premises.’
‘False walls, hidden chambers?’ I asked, the memory of the hab dome still fresh, that strange scent that had flooded the air there still faintly detectable through the more pervasive one of butchery.
Nallion shook his head. ‘No sign of anything like that,’ he said. ‘We can bring in some tech-priests with specialised equipment…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I told him, to his evident relief. ‘The Guard will take care of that. You and your men have done enough, and done it well.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He took the hint and frakked off, with a perfunctory salute and an air of undisguised relief.
‘Jurgen,’ I said, pointing to the staircase. It was large and apparently solid, but we could have parked the Salamander in the space it enclosed. ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
‘Of course not, sir,’ he assured me, and a moment later the familiar roar of the melta and an actinic flash through my tightly-closed eyelids told me he’d done as requested. Despite his fears of accidental arson (which he confided to me later, a little too late to have been much help if they were founded, but with Jurgen following orders always came first) the surrounding wood failed to catch light. A large, smoking hole was punched through the treads, looking uncannily like the entrance to a cave. I borrowed a luminator from one of his ever-present equipment pouches and took a cautious look inside.
‘Emperor on Earth!’ I reeled back, choking from the smell. If anything, it was worse than the chamber we’d found in the hab dome, although the details were depressingly familiar. The pile of twisted corpses, still grinning in infernal rapture, the sanity-blasting sigils on the walls… I backed away until I was on the other side of the hallway and contacted the lord general directly.
‘It seems we were right about this place,’ I told him. ‘It was being put to unholy use.’ I hesitated. ‘And if I’m right,’ I added, the knotting of my guts telling me I was, ‘we got here too late. Whatever they were doing, they’ve already done.’
Editorial Note:
Given the course of subsequent events, the following communication may prove somewhat revealing.
To: The Office of the Commissariat, Departmento Munitorum, Coronus Prime
From: Tomas Beije, Regimental Commissar to the Tallarn 229th
Date: 285 937 M41
Astropathic Path: Blocked at this time. Delivery deferred.
Gentlemen and esteemed colleagues,
It is with a heavy heart I feel I must call into question the competence of a fellow commissar, not least because the officer in question was a classmate of mine at the schola progenium, and as we all know such ties remain strong. However, I would be derelict in my duty not to bring this matter to your attention, and must set aside my personal feelings for the sake of the Guard, the Imperium and the Emperor Himself. Truly our duty to Him must outweigh all else, and after much prayer and fasting I can see no alternative.
The individual in question is none other than Ciaphas Cain, the regimental commissar of the Valhallan 597th. I am aware that he has something of an inflated reputation, which may incline some of you to dismiss my concerns, but nonetheless I feel I have no alternative but to speak out. Indeed, it may be this very reputation which has led to his current sad decline as an effective commissar: how truly has it been said that the glory we gain blinds us first with its lustre.64
I have observed at first hand that discipline and proper order are practically non-existent in the regiment with which Commissar Cain has been charged, his own aide failing to reach the standards expected of a member of His Divine Majesty’s blessed legions, while serious infractions and breaches of discipline are treated as minor matters barely worthy of his attention. Since arriving on Adumbria he has neglected his duties altogether, spending more time in the planetary capital than with the 597th, even going so far as to attach himself to a local PDF company rather than rejoin the Guard unit he should properly have been most concerned with.
It might be claimed that his discovery of not one but two concealed nests of heretic sorcerers vindicates his actions, but consider: in neither case was he in time to prevent their fell purpose, whatever that was, and his interference in a PDF operation in which he had no official interest may well have led to sufficient delay to have ensured such a failure on at least one occasion. I draw no inference from this, of course, but merely suggest the coincidence was fortuitous for our enemies.
May the divine light of His Glorious Majesty illuminate your deliberations.
Your Humble Servant,
Tomas Beije.
Thought for the day: The traitor’s hand lies closer than you think.
ELEVEN
‘I don’t care how bloody sanctioned they are, a psyker’s a psyker, and anything to do with the warp is more trouble than it’s worth.’
– General Karis
I was beginning to get heartily sick of the sight of that conference room by now. Every time I entered it, it seemed, my life became more complicated. Even the prospect of a hearty dinner and a comfortable bed, which had been sufficient to keep me in Skitterfall that morning, began to look like scant consolation, receding as they both were into an indefinite future. The damn place was getting steadily more crowded, too. Aside from Zyvan and myself, and a couple of his aides whose names hadn’t stuck if anyone had actually bothered to introduce us, Kolbe, Hekwyn and Vinzand were present, and all had decided to mark the urgency of the situation by bringing a flunkey or two along themselves. Malden was there too, with the far end of the table pretty much to himself as usual, chatting to a woman whose sunken eye sockets would have marked her out as an astropath even without the distinctive robes she wore. The unease most of those present clearly felt at the sight of two spooks in the same room was palpable, although had I but known it the feeling was about to get a whole lot worse.
‘Are you all right, Ciaphas?’ Zyvan asked, and I nodded, trying to dismiss the image of the chamber we’d found from my mind. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you that, and that struck me as slightly odd given the sheer number of horrors I’d faced in my career up to that point. It kept coming back to me, overlaid with the memory of the similar chamber we’d found in the hab dome and that damnable laughter I’d heard as the PDF soldiers died. That had a haunting sense of familiarity about it too, although how or why I couldn’t put my finger on.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, picking up a mug of tanna from the refreshment table. As usual, I was the only one drinking it. I glanced around the conference room, which was filling up (except for the end where the spooks were), and tried to change the subject before he started asking any more questions. ‘If that’s everyone, I suppose we ought to get started.’
‘Nearly everyone,’ Zyvan said, helping himself to a smoked grox sandwich. Before I had a chance to ask what he meant by that, some kind of commotion erupted outside the door. Voices were raised, and I found myself reaching instinctively for my chainsword, but the lord general’s relaxed demeanour forestalled the motion. (Not without an amused glance in my direction as he registered the movement, I might add.)
‘Do I look as though I need to show your underlings my credentials?’ The question was directed at Zyvan, as though there were no other people in the room, and to all intents and purposes there might as well not have been. A young woman, astonishingly petite but somehow managing to fill the entire doorframe with the force of her personality, strode past the quivering woodwork, the ashen faces of a couple of the lord general’s personal bodyguards just visible in the corridor outside. Zyvan dismissed them with a gesture, and they hurried to close the door behind her with remarkable alacrity.
‘Of course not.’ Zyvan bowed formally. ‘You honour us all with your presence.’
‘Of course I do,’ she snapped back irritably. ‘And don’t expect me to make a habit of it.’ Her hair was dark and lustrous, the hue of open space, falling to the shoulders which her simply-cut gown left bare. The dress seemed to have been woven from fibres of pure gold, reflecting the light in a fashion I found almost dazzling, clinging to her pleasingly plump figure in a fashion which left very little of it to the imagination, and setting off the preternaturally pale skin of her décolletage to perfection.
The thing which held my eyes, and every other pair in the room, however, was the bandana around her forehead. It was woven from the same material as her dress, but in the exact centre of it the image of an eye had been embroidered in thread as dark as her hair. Without thinking I made the sign of the aquila, and believe me, I wasn’t the only one.
‘May I present the Lady Gianella Dimarco, navigatrix of the Indestructible,’ Zyvan said, addressing the room in general, as though anyone present could possibly not have realised who she was (well, maybe the astropath, I suppose).
Dimarco sighed. ‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we?’ She dropped into a vacant seat at the spooky end of the table, no doubt feeling she had slightly more in common with Malden and the blind woman than the rest of us.65 Everyone else shuffled awkwardly into their chairs, leaving as wide a gap as possible between the psykers and themselves.
‘By all means.’ Zyvan inclined his head courteously. ‘I’m sure we all appreciate you taking the time to join us in person.’
Well he might. I would have been just as happy with a written report and less of the superior attitude, assuming she had anything useful to contribute at all. (Which of course she had. And if I’d been thinking a little more clearly I would have realised she must have been scared witless to subject herself to the company of scruffy little proles like us in the first place.)
‘Of course you do,’ Dimarco said irritably. Her dark eyes swept the room, and despite knowing intellectually that they couldn’t do me any harm, it was the one the bandana concealed which could kill in an instant, I shuddered, reluctant to meet them. ‘But you’re not going to like what I’ve got to say.’
That would have been true if we were discussing music or the weather, given what I’d seen of her personality (which, to be fair, was bordering on the amiable for a navigator), but even so I felt the familiar premonitory tingling in the palms of my hands.
‘Nevertheless,’ Zyvan said, inclining his head.
Dimarco sighed. ‘I’ll keep this as simple as I can, so even a bunch of blinders66 should be able to grasp it.’
She leaned forward, her elbows on the polished wooden table, and supported her chin on her steepled fingers, revealing an impressive amount of cleavage in the process. ‘The warp currents around Adumbria are strong, but predictable. Usually.’
‘Usually?’ Vinzand asked, a note of alarm evident in his voice.
Dimarco looked at him with the expression of an ecclesiarch who has just heard one of the congregation fart loudly in the middle of the benediction (something you get used to attending services accompanied by Jurgen67).
‘I’m getting to that,’ she snapped. ‘Do I tell you how to count paperclips?’ After a moment of embarrassing silence she continued. ‘They normally form a complex but stable vortex, centred on the planet itself. This, in part, accounts for the system’s position as a major trading port.’
