He asked for Zinkman at two or three tables, and also made inquiries with various groups standing about the place. The viol music had stopped for the moment, and some around were clapping as Carnegi, the composer, clambered up onto a table. Carnegi owned a half-decent baritone voice, and most nights he could be prevailed upon to sing popular opera or take requests.
Karkasy had one.
A squall of laughter burst from nearby, where a small, lively group had gathered on stools and recliners to hear a remembrancer give a reading from his latest work. In one of the wall booths formed by the once golden colonnade, Karkasy saw Ameri Sechloss carefully inscribing her latest remembrance in red ink over a wall she’d washed white with stolen hull paint. She’d masked out an image of the Emperor triumphant at Cyclonis. Someone would complain about that. Parts of the Emperor, beloved by all, poked out from around the corners of her white splash. ‘Zinkman? Anyone? Zinkman?’ he asked. ‘I think he’s over there,’ one of the remembrancers watching Sechloss suggested.
Karkasy turned, and stood on tiptoe to peer across the press. The Retreat was crowded tonight. A figure had just walked in through the chamber’s main entrance. Karkasy frowned. He didn’t need to be on tiptoe to spot this newcomer. Robed and hooded, the figure towered over the rest of the crowd, by far and away the tallest person in the busy room. Not a human’s build at all. The general noise level did not drop, but it was clear the newcomer was attracting attention. People were whispering, and casting sly looks in his direction.
Karkasy edged his way through the crowd, the only person in the chamber bold enough to approach the visitor. The hooded figure was standing just inside the entrance arch, scanning the crowd in search of someone.
‘Captain?’ Karkasy asked, coming forwards and peering up under the cowl. ‘Captain Loken?’
‘Karkasy.’ Loken seemed very uncomfortable.
‘Were you looking for me, sir? I didn’t think we were due to meet until tomorrow.’
‘I was… I was looking for Keeler. Is she here?’
‘Here? Oh no. She doesn’t come here. Please, captain, come with me. You don’t want to be in here.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘I can read the discomfort in your manner, and when we meet, you never step inside the archway. Come on.’
They went back out through the arched entranceway into the cool, gloomy quiet of the corridor outside. A few people passed them by, heading into the Retreat.
‘It must be important,’ Karkasy said, ‘for you to set foot in there.’
‘It is,’ Loken replied. He kept the hood of his robe up, and his manner remained stiff and guarded. ‘I need to find Keeler.’
‘She doesn’t much frequent the common spaces. She’s probably in her quarters.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘You could have asked the watch officer for her billet reference.’
‘I’m asking you, Ignace.’
‘That important, and that private,’ Karkasy remarked. Loken made no reply. Karkasy shrugged. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’
Karkasy led the captain down into the warren of the residential deck where the remembrancers were billeted. The echoing metal companionways were cold, the walls brushed steel and marked with patches of damp. This area had once been a billet for army officers but, like the Retreat, it had ceased to feel anything like the interior of a military vessel. Music echoed from some chambers, often through half-open hatches. The sound of hysterical laughter came from one room, and from another the din of a man and a woman having a ferocious quarrel. Paper notices had been pasted to the walls: slogans and verses and essays on the nature of man and war. Murals had also been daubed in places, some of them magnificent, some of them crude. There was litter on the deck, an odd shoe, an empty bottle, scraps of paper.
‘Here,’ said Karkasy. The shutter of Keeler’s billet was closed. ‘Would you like me to… ?’ Karkasy asked, gesturing to the door.
‘Yes.’
Karkasy rapped his fist against the shutter and listened. After a moment, he rapped again, harder. ‘Euphrati? Euphrati, are you there?’
The shutter slid open, and the scent of body warmth spilled out into the cool corridor. Karkasy was face to face with a lean young man, naked but for a pair of half-buttoned army fatigue pants. The man was sinewy and tough, hard-bodied and hard-faced. He had numerical tattoos on his upper arms, and metal tags on a chain around his neck.
‘What?’ he snapped at Karkasy.
‘I want to see Euphrati.’
‘Piss off,’ the soldier replied. ‘She doesn’t want to see you.’
Karkasy backed away a step. The soldier was physically intimidating.
‘Cool down,’ said Loken, looming behind Karkasy and lowering his hood. He stared down at the soldier. ‘Cool down, and I won’t ask your name and unit.’
The soldier looked up at Loken with wide eyes. ‘She… she’s not here,’ he said.
Loken pushed past him. The soldier tried to block him, but Loken caught his right wrist in one hand and turned it neatly so that the man suddenly found himself contorted in a disabling lock.
‘Don’t do that again,’ Loken advised, and released his hold, adding a tiny shove that dropped the soldier onto his hands and knees.
The room was quite small, and very cluttered. Discarded clothes and rumpled bedding littered the floor space, and the shelves and low table were covered with bottles and unwashed plates.
Keeler stood on the far side of the room, beside the unmade cot. She had pulled a sheet around her slim, naked body and stared at Loken with disdain. She looked weary, unhealthy. Her hair was tangled and there were dark shadows under her eyes.
‘It’s all right, Leef,’ she told the soldier. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Still wary, the soldier pulled on his vest and boots, snatched up his jacket, and left, casting one last murderous look at Loken.
‘He’s a good man,’ Keeler said. ‘He cares for me.’
‘Army?’
‘Yes. It’s called fraternization. Does Ignace have to be here for this?’
Karkasy was hovering in the doorway. Loken turned. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Karkasy nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. Reluctantly, he walked away. Loken closed the shutter. He looked back at Keeler. She was pouring clear liquor from a flask into a shot glass.
‘Can I interest you?’ she asked, gesturing with the flask. ‘In the spirit of hospitality?’
He shook his head.
‘Ah. I suppose you Astartes don’t drink. Another biological flaw ironed out of you.’
‘We drink well enough, under certain circumstances.’
‘And this isn’t one, I suppose?’ Keeler put the flask down and took up her glass. She walked back to the cot, holding the sheet around her with one hand and sipping from the glass held in the other. Holding her drink out steady, she settled herself down on the cot, drawing her legs up and folding the sheet modestly over herself.
‘I can imagine why you’re here, captain,’ she said. ‘I’m just amazed. I expected you weeks ago.’
‘I apologise. I only found the second file tonight. I obviously hadn’t looked carefully enough.’
‘What do you think of my work?’
‘Astonishing. I’m flattered by the picts you shot on the embarkation deck. I meant to send you a note, thanking you for copying them to me. Again, I apologise. The second file, however, is…’
‘Problematic?’ she suggested.
‘At the very least,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she asked. Loken shrugged off his robe and sat carefully on a metal stool beside the cluttered table.
‘I wasn’t aware any picts existed of that incident,’ Loken said.
‘I didn’t know I’d shot them,’ Keeler replied, taking another sip. ‘I’d forgotten, I think. When the first captain asked me at the time, I said no, I hadn’t taken anything. I found them later. I was su
rprised.’
‘Why did you send them to me?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. You have to understand, sir, that I was… traumatised. For a while, I was in a very bad way. The shock of it all. I was a mess, but I got through it. I’m content now, stable, centred. My friends helped me through it. Ignace, Sadie, some others. They were kind to me. They stopped me from hurting myself.’
‘Hurting yourself?’
She fiddled with her glass, her eyes focused on the floor. ‘Nightmares, Captain Loken. Terrible visions, when I was asleep and when I was awake. I found myself crying for no reason. I drank too much. I acquired a small pistol, and spent long hours wondering if I had the strength to use it.’
She looked up at him. ‘It was in that… that pit of despair that I sent you those picts. It was a cry for help, I suppose. I don’t know. I can’t remember. Like I said, I’m past that now. I’m fine, and feel a little foolish for bothering you, especially as my efforts took so long to reach you. You wasted a visit.’
‘I’m glad you feel better,’ Loken said, ‘but I haven’t wasted anything. We need to talk about those images. Who’s seen them?’
‘No one. You and me. No one else.’
‘Did you not think it wise to inform the first captain of their existence?’
Keeler shook her head. ‘No. No, not at all. Not back then. If I’d gone to the authorities, they’d have confiscated them… destroyed them, probably, and told me the same story about a wild beast. The first captain was very certain it was a wild beast, some xenos creature, and he was very certain I should keep my mouth shut. For the sake of morale. The picts were a lifeline for me, back then. They proved I wasn’t going mad. That’s why I sent them to you.’
‘Am I not part of the authorities?’
She laughed. ‘You were there, Loken. You were there. You saw it. I took a chance. I thought you might respond and—’
‘And what?’
‘Tell me the truth of it.’
Loken hesitated.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she admonished, rising to refill her glass. ‘I don’t want to know the truth now. A wild beast. A wild beast. I’ve got over it. This late in the day, captain, I don’t expect you to break loyalty and tell me something you’re sworn not to tell. It was a foolish notion, which I now regret. My turn to apologise to you.’
She looked over at him, tugging up the edge of the sheet to cover her bosom. ‘I’ve deleted my copies. All of them. You have my word. The only ones that exist are the ones I sent to you.’
Loken took out the data-slate and placed it on the table. He had to push dirty crockery aside to make a space for it. Keeler looked at the slate for a long while, and then knocked back her glass and refilled it.
‘Imagine that,’ she said, her hand trembling as it lifted the flask. ‘I’m terrified even to have them back in the room.’
‘I don’t think you’re as over it as you like to pretend,’ Loken said.
‘Really?’ she sneered. She put down her glass and ran the fingers of her free hand through her short blonde hair. ‘Hell with it, then, since you’re here. Hell with it.’
She walked over and snatched up the slate. ‘Wild beast, eh? Wild beast?’
‘Some form of vicious predator indigenous to the mountain region that—’
‘Forgive me, that’s so much shit,’ she said. She snapped the slate into the reader slot of a compact edit engine on the far side of the room. Some of her picters and spare lenses littered the bench beside it. The engine whirred into life, and the screen lit up, cold and white. ‘What did you make of the discrepancies?’
‘Discrepancies?’ Loken asked.
‘Yes.’ She expertly tapped commands into the engine’s controls, and selected the file. With a stab of her index finger, she opened the first image. It bloomed on the screen.
‘Terra, I can’t look at it,’ she said, turning away.
‘Switch it off, Keeler.’
‘No, you look at it. Look at the visual distortion there. Surely you noticed that? It’s like it’s there and yet not there. Like it’s phasing in and out of reality.’
‘A signal error. The conditions and the poor light foxed your picter’s sensors and—’
‘I know how to use a picter, captain, and I know how to recognise poor exposure, lens flare, and digital malformance. That’s not it. Look.’
She punched up the second pict, and half-looked at it, gesturing with her hand. ‘Look at the background. And the droplets of blood in the foreground there. Perfect pict capture. But the thing itself. I’ve never seen anything create that effect on a high-gain instrument. That “wild beast” is out of sync with the physical continuity around it. Which is, captain, exactly as I saw it. You’ve studied these closely, no doubt?’
‘No,’ said Loken.
Keeler pulled up another image. She stared at it fully this time, and then looked away. ‘There, you see? The afterimage? It’s on all of them, but this is the clearest.’
‘I don’t see…’
‘I’ll boost the contrast and lose a little of the motion blurring.’ She fiddled with the engine’s controls. ‘There. See now?’
Loken stared. What had at first seemed to be a frothy, milky ghost blurring across the image of the nightmare thing had resolved clearly thanks to her manipulation. Superimposed on the fuzzy abomination was a semi-human shape, echoing the pose and posture of the creature. Though it was faint, there was no mistaking the shrieking face and wracked body of Xavyer Jubal.
‘Know him?’ she asked. ‘I don’t, but I recognise the physiognomy and build of an Astartes when I see it. Why would my picter register that, unless…’
Loken didn’t reply.
Keeler switched the screen off, popped out the slate and tossed it back to Loken. He caught it neatly. She went back over to the cot and flopped down.
‘That’s what I wanted you to explain to me,’ she said. ‘That’s why I sent you the picts. When I was in my deepest, darkest pits of madness, that’s what I was hoping you’d come and explain to me, but don’t worry. I’m past that now. I’m fine. A wild beast, that’s all it was. A wild beast.’
Loken gazed at the slate in his hand. He could barely imagine what Keeler had been through. It had been bad enough for the rest of them, but he and Nero and Sindermann had all enjoyed the benefit of proper closure. They’d been told the truth. Keeler hadn’t. She was smart and bright and clever, and she’d seen the holes in the story, the awful inconsistencies that proved there had been more to the event than the first captain’s explanation. And she’d managed with that knowledge, coped with it, alone.
‘What did you think it was?’ he asked.
‘Something awful that we should never know about,’ she replied. ‘Throne, Loken. Please don’t take pity on me now. Please don’t decide to tell me.’
‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t. It was a wild beast. Euphrati, how did you deal with it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You say you’re fine now. How are you fine?’
‘My friends helped me through. I told you.’
Loken got up, picked up the flask, and went over to the cot. He sat down on the end of the mattress and refilled the glass she held out.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve found strength. I’ve found—’
For a moment, Loken was certain she had been about to say ‘faith’.
‘What?’
‘Trust. Trust in the Imperium. In the Emperor. In you.’
‘In me?’
‘Not you, personally. In the Astartes, in the Imperial army, in every branch of mankind’s warrior force that is dedicated to the protection of us mere mortals.’ She took a sip and sniggered. ‘The Emperor, you see, protects.’
‘Of course he does,’ said Loken.
‘No, no, you misunderstand,’ said Keeler, folding her arms around her raised, sheet-covered knees. ‘He actually does. He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the martial cor
ps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to protect us from harm. To protect our physical bodies from murder and damage, to protect our minds from madness, to protect our souls. This is what I now understand. This is what this trauma has taught me, and I am thankful for it. There are insane dangers in the cosmos, dangers that mankind is fundamentally unable to comprehend, let alone survive. So he protects us. There are truths out there that would drive us mad by one fleeting glimpse of them. So he chooses not to share them with us. That’s why he made you.’
‘That’s a glorious concept,’ Loken admitted.
‘In the Whisperheads, that day… You saved me, didn’t you? You shot that thing apart. Now you save me again, by keeping the truth to yourself. Does it hurt?’
‘Does what hurt?’
‘The truth you keep hidden?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said.
‘Remember, Garviel. The Emperor is our truth and our light. If we trust in him, he will protect.’
‘Where did you get that from?’ Loken asked.
‘A friend. Garviel, I have only one concern. A lingering thing that will not quit my mind. You Astartes are loyal, through and through. You keep to your own, and never break confidence.’
‘And?’
‘Tonight, I really believe you would have told me something, but for the loyalty you keep with your brothers. I admire that, but answer me this. How far does your loyalty go? Whatever it was happened to us in the Whisperheads, I believe an Astartes brother was part of it. But you close ranks. What has to happen before you forsake your loyalty to the Legion and recognise your loyalty to the rest of us?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.
‘Yes, you do. If a brother turns on his brothers again, will you cover that up too? How many have to turn before you act? One? A squad? A company? How long will you keep your secrets? What will it take for you to cast aside the fraternal bonds of the Legion and cry out “This is wrong!”?’