Between them, on their backs, the four slave-things carried a trapezoidal casket of black metal, covered with irregularly spaced wart-like protuberances. They came to a halt and sank down onto their bellies.
Dazzo and Malahite moved forward, approaching the casket bearers. A stilted saruthi scuttled around beside them, reached a long limb over to extend his silver calliper, and pressed the point against one of the protuberances.
The casket opened on invisible hinges, like the petals of a malformed flower. I think I had expected light to radiate out, or some other show of power.
There was none. Malahite stepped forward between the kneeling limbs of the slave-things and reached out, but Dazzo pushed him back with a curse and a slap of psychic power that sent him sprawling.
A ripple of response ran through the saruthi, making them scuttle on the spot.
Now Dazzo reached into the casket. He took out a tiny oblong, no bigger than a boltgun's magazine, and held it in trembling hands, gazing at it.
A book. Ancient parchment encased in a sleeve of black saruthi metal, closed with a clasp.
Well, ecclesiarch?' Glaw growled. 'We need confirmation.'
Dazzo unclasped the cover and turned the first antique page.
The true matter is ours,' he stammered, and fell to his knees. The Necroteuch. They had the Necroteuch. It was now or never, I thought.
TWENTY
My ally, confusion.
The wrath of Mandragore.
Against Oberon.
I bellowed, 'Look out! They're attacking!' and slammed myself hard into the two troopers by my side. As we went over in a clumsy, thrashing heap, I fired my hell-gun wildly for good measure.
Tension among the humans gathered around the plateau was intense. The saruthi, I firmly believe, had deliberately used their devices and environment to foment that tension, perhaps intending to weaken and cow the humans they found themselves dealing with. If so, they had done too good a job. Gudranites and troopers alike were at snapping point, their minds and spirits rattled by their location and by what they had seen. A warning voice and a few shots was all it took to spill the tension over.
All around me, men yelled out and weapons crackled. Assuming an attack on their high-born leaders, the troopers still firmly loyal to Glaw and Estram surged forward, firing on the saruthi with their assault guns. Others wavered in confusion and lashed out at those around them. The Gudranites around the rim of the plateau turned their guns on their oppressors, or fired at the vehicles.
From the rim of the plateau, Midas and Bequin led our rearguard in a charge, weapons blazing.
In a second, the air was full of shouts and screams, gunfire and skittering las-bolts. Total confusion reigned.
I could hear Jeruss on the guard vox channel rallying his comrades, calling for them to turn on the navy personnel. The naval security combat channel was riven with orders and countermands, squeals of rage and bellowed curses. I heard Oberon Glaw screaming for order, and the baying howl of Mandragore behind it all.
'Fischig! Twane! Sow confusion! Make for the target!'
Disguised like me, the pair moved forward. The mayhem was too dense and frenzied for there to be any sense of opposing sides. Guards fought naval troopers, or even each other, and indiscriminate fire whipped in all directions.
I shot down a trooper who ran past me, and another nearby who turned in dismay. Past them, I saw the tall, spare form of the rogue captain, Estrum, gazing at me through the smoke wash with incredulity. His eyes bulged more than ever. What the hell are you doing, trooper?' he managed to bark, his pronounced Adam's apple bobbing furiously.
'Performing the ministry of the sacred Inquisition,' I told him and shot him through the head.
The saruthi had been thrown into a state of great agitation. I have no way of knowing what emotions they were experiencing, if they experienced any at all. But they reacted as if horrified by the turn of events, distressed and appalled. Hell-gun fire from troopers who were convinced that the aliens were the aggressors blasted into two of them. One burst open and collapsed onto the tiles in a spreading pool of grey ichor and gristle. The other lost a limb and began to drag itself towards the arches with its remaining stilts.
Over the tumult of gunfire and human voices, the saruthi began to wail. Whether it was a threat, a warning, a call of distress, or an order to retreat I could not tell. They scuttled maniacally, their alien shriek shaking the air.
Two clattered forward suddenly, towards the bewildered trooper escort. Electric-blue discharges fizzled around the saruthi's swaying heads and then spat raking beams of ice-bright energy at their attackers. Two troopers were vaporised, their constituent matter boiling away in searing flashes of light.
I caught sight of Mandragore. The brute had already killed one trooper in an attempt to curtail the mindless wildfire, but now the saruthi had fired on them, the troopers clearly felt justified in their action and redoubled their efforts. An alien beam sliced into Mandragore's arm, and rage consumed him. He attacked the saruthi himself, wielding a massive chain-axe.
I hoped they'd kill him.
I pushed through a jumble of bodies and came out on the other side of the parked vehicles. Ahead I saw Dazzo, still kneeling by the ghastly white slave-beasts as if in a trance. The unholy prize was clenched in his hands.
I ran at him.
Fischig, his helmet missing, appeared alongside me. His borrowed black armour was awash with blood.
'Twane!' he bawled over his shoulder, and the disguised Gudrunite appeared, running after us, firing from the hip. Grenades were now exploding amid the mindless fighting. Bodies and chips of octagonal tiling were hurled into the air. One of the troop carriers was on fire.
The three of us were closest by far to the accursed 'true matter'. A saruthi came ploughing forward, spurring the jostling, frenzied slave-things aside with its stilt-spikes as it made for Dazzo.
With a juddering blow from one stilt, it knocked the kneeling man over and sent the Necroteuch scattering from his hands.
Malahite, on his hands and knees by the slave-things, let out a cry and dived after it. The saruthi jittered around to stop him just as Fischig and Twane blew it apart with hell-gun shots. Stringy grey fluid splashed across the tessellated tiles.
Another saruthi, its skull crackling with electrical power, blasted its kin's murderers. Twane convulsed and exploded in a drizzle of matter. By his side, Fischig was thrown over by the blinding detonation, his armour ripped open.
There was no time to help him. Clutching the book, Malahite was running away across the plateau, away from the straggled, brutal warfare. I severed his left leg at the knee with a round from my hell-gun and he dropped onto his face. When I reached him, he was clawing forward, daubed in blood, reaching for the fallen book.
'Leave it!' I snapped, pulling off my helmet and pointing the hell-gun down at him one handed. He saw my face and cursed. I knelt and picked up the little volume. Even through my armoured gloves, I could feel its heat. For a second, a long hypnotised second, it was all I knew. I understood why Dazzo had remained kneeling there for so long after he first grasped it. The content of the book, that ancient lore, was alive somehow, fidgeting, rustling, calling to me.
Calling me by name.
It knew me. It beckoned to me, telling me to open it and experience its wonders. I didn't even think to resist. What it was showing me was so wondrous, so sublime, so beautiful... the stars themselves, and behind the stars, the mechanisms of reality, the intricate and oh-so perfect workings of a transcendent natural force we misguidedly and dismissively called Chaos.
I undid the wire-like claps that kept the book shut...
Abruptly, a rough, foul psychic force burst into my mind, breaking the spell. I began to turn, to look away from the opening book. That half-turn was just enough to stop me dying.
I was felled by a monumental blow to the shoulder. As I dropped, the book spun helplessly from my yearning hand. The tiles underneath me were awash
with blood.
My blood.
I rolled over as the next blow came. The screaming teeth of the chain axe missed me by a hair's breadth and shattered the bloody tiles.
Mandragore, bastard child of the Emperor.
I scrambled backwards in blind panic. The stinking Chaos warrior was right on me, his lurid armour flecked with human blood and alien ichor. My dazed half-turn at the last moment had spoiled his first blow, but still the back plate of my naval trooper combat armour was shredded; the left shoulder guard was completely ripped away. The glancing shoulder wound was savage and deep. Blood gouted through torn flesh and armour, cascading down my left arm. Writhing backwards, I found my hands slipping on the blood-washed octagons.
I lashed out with my mind. It was no match for his fearsome psychic capacity, but it was enough to put him off his swing. The shrieking chain-blade of the axe sawed through the air over my ducking head.
My fallen hell-gun was out of reach, and I doubted it would have made a dent in the monster anyway. His baying face, its sutured-on skin stretching around the gaping jaws of his skull, was all I could see.
My left arm was numb and useless. I threw myself to my feet, pulling my sword from my webbing.
The device is a fine weapon, of the old kind. It has no material blade like other, cruder models I have seen. It is a hilt, twenty centimetres long, inlaid and wound with silver thread, enclosing a fusion cell that generates a metre-long blade of coherent light. The Provost of Inx himself blessed it for me, charging it to 'protect our brother Eisenhom always from the spawn of damnation'.
I prayed now that he hadn't been wasting his breath.
I ignited the blade and fended away the next axe swing. Sparks and metal shrapnel flew from the clash, and the beast's huge strength nearly struck it from my hand. I jumped back a pace or two from the next whistling bow. My head was swimming. Was it the loss of blood or the after-effects of that seductive book?
Mandragore was incandescent with fury now. I was proving to be annoy-ingly difficult to slay - for a mere mortal.
I had a dread feeling it wouldn't last.
He rushed me again, towering over me, and I managed to deflect the force of the chain-axe. But immediately he brought the butt of the weapon's long haft around and struck me in the chest, sending me flying. I actually left the ground and cleared several metres.
I landed hard on my injured shoulder. The pain rendered me insensible for a second. That was all he needed.
He crossed the blood-flecked tiles to me in two strides, the axe rising in the air as his growl rose in pitch. With a flailing motion, I kicked the Necroteuch towards him. It struck the toe of one great boot.
'Don't forget what you came for, abomination!' I rasped out.
Mandragore Carrion - son of Fulgrim, worthy of Slaanesh, champion of the Emperor's Children, killer of the living, defiler of the dead, keeper of secrets - paused. With a hacking laugh, his soulless eyes never leaving me, he stooped for the book.
'You counsel well, inquisitor, for... a...'
His fingers were around the Necroteuch, the metal-shod digits dwarfing it. His voice trailed away. Triumph faded from his hideous face; rage drained away; blood-lust dimmed. His mask of skin hung slack from its sutures. The light in his blood-rimmed eyes dulled.
The Necroteuch sang through every fibre and shred of corrupted being, stealing from him all sense of the outside world.
I stood, unsteadily, flexed my grip on the power sword, and sheared his head from his shoulders.
Before it had even struck the ground, the spinning skull combusted and blazed white hot, dripping liquid flame onto the tiles. The fireball bounced and rolled, rocked over, and consumed itself in a ferocious, dirty fire that swiftly left nothing behind but blackened shards of skull in a smouldering scorch mark.
The body remained standing, burning from within the torso, shooting long tongues of sickly green flame up out of the neck cavity. A column of filthy black smoke rose into the still air. The gaudy robes and cloak quickly caught, and thick flames enfolded the headless, metal rain.
At the last moment, I struck off Mandragore's fist with the sword's bright blade, and the Necroteuch it clutched fell clear of the flames. I felt as though it was pleading with me to take it up again, to immerse myself again in the wonders it contained.
Such wonders. I bent down, torn by duty. The thing should be destroyed, but it held such secrets! Could not the Inquisition, and the Imperium as a whole, benefit from the infinite truths it contained? Had I even the right to destroy something so priceless?
The puritan part of me had no doubt. But another part abhorred the idea of wasting it. Knowledge is knowledge, surely? Evil stems from how knowledge is used. And such knowledge was here...
Perhaps if I read a page or two, I could make a better decision.
I shook my head to cast away the insidious thoughts. The noise of the battle came rushing back. I looked back across the plateau, beyond Man-dragore's upright, burning corpse and the sprawled body of Malahite. The last few pockets of fighting were playing out, and the great tiled platform was littered with dead and debris. Both carrier vehicles were ablaze. The saruthi had gone, taking even their corpses with them. It seemed to me the Gudrunites had overwhelmed the troopers by sheer numbers. Few figures were still standing, and I could see none of my companions.
His regal cloak torn and his face bloodied, Oberon Glaw strode towards me, a laspistol clenched in his right hand.
'Throw that down, Glaw. It's over.'
'For you, yes.' He raised the weapon. A munitions canister on one of the burning carriers ignited and blew the armoured vehicle apart in a stunning conflagration. Flung out by the blast, broken armour plating and sections of track whizzed through the air like missiles. A chunk of trans-axle impaled Lord Glaw through the back of the head. He fell without a sound.
I grabbed a piece of smoking hull plate, and scooped the Necroteuch up on it. I would heed no more of its soft enticements. I let it slide off the makeshift scoop into Mandragore's upright corpse, so that it fell down through the open neck of the blazing armour into the furnace of the torso.
The flames turned red, then darker still. The blaze grew more intense. Something without a mouth screamed.
I limped away from the pyre. Malahite was alive and awake, calling out, 'Locke, please! Please!' in a hoarse voice.
Across the plateau, one of the naval speeders lifted into the air. Gorgone Locke was at the controls, with Dazzo slumped in the seat beside him. In moments, the racing speeder was disappearing over the ragged peaks, away from the plateau, towards the endless beach.
Midas, Bequin, Aemos and Lowink had survived the ordeal and the battle, though all had minor injuries. Two dozen Gudrunites were also still alive, including Jeruss.
Aemos wanted to see to my wound, but I had bound it tight to stanch the flow of blood and I wanted to waste no more time.
'I think it would be prudent to get out of here/ I told them.
Fischig lay on a makeshift stretcher. The saruthi weapon that had obliterated Twane had cost him an arm and half of his face. Mercifully, he was unconscious. Two Gudrunites bore him up.
'It pains me to say this, but we're taking him too/ I told Midas and Jeruss, indicating the collapsed Malahite.
Are you sure?' Betancore asked.
'The Inquisition will want to plunder his brain/
Our ragged, battered party left the dark uplands and retraced our steps to the hazy levels of the beach. The booming had increased in volume and frequency and the sky was growing dark.
'It is as if/ said Aemos ominously, 'this place is coming to an end/
'We don't want to be here when that happens/1 said.
From the beach, we could see the two Imperial frigates and the merchantman had departed. A wind, thick with an afterburn of ammonia, was picking up. Their vacuum suits more or less intact, Midas and Lowink went ahead to recover the gun-cutter.
My vox link crackled. Maxilla's voice suddenly s
ang out.
'Eisenhorn? For pity's sake, are you there? Are you there? Three ships just left, moving right past me! Conditions are worsening. I cannot stay here much longer. Respond! Please respond!'
'Maxilla! This is Eisenhorn! Can you hear me? We need you to move in and pick us up. We have injuries... Fischig and several others. This whole environment may be collapsing. Repeat, I need you to move the Essene in to my location and pick us up!'
A moment or two of static. Then his answer.
'As you instruct, Gregor, but it's not going to be easy. Say again, what did you say about Fischig?'
'He's hurt, Maxilla! Come and get us!'
'Hurry!' Bequin shouted over my shoulder. We don't want to be here any more!'
More static. Tell Alizebeth, I agree with that! Ha!'
The echoes, delays and dislocations were catching up with themselves. The wrongness was righting itself and, I thought with irony, that made things no better for us.
TWENTY-ONE
A gathering of peers.
Lord Rorken contemplates.
Malahite's secrets.
Two days later, aboard the Essene at anchor beyond the treacherous reaches of system KCX-1288, we made our rendezvous with the Imperial taskforce outbound from Gudrun.
We'd made good our escape from the world of the plateau in less than two hours. As Aemos had predicted, the place seemed to unravel around us, as if that apparently timeless realm of the sea, the beach and the uplands had been nothing but an ingenious construct, a space engineered by the saruthi to accommodate the meeting with their human 'guests'. As we rode the gun-cutter back to the waiting Essene, the hazy radiance had begun to dim and atmospheric pressure dropped. We were beset by turbulence, and natural gravity began to reassert its influence. The impossible cavity had begun to decompose. By the time Maxilla was running the Essene down the dark corridor of arches as fast as he dared, the inner space where we had confronted the aliens was nothing but a dark maelstrom of ammonia and arsenical vapours. Our chronometers and horologiums had begun to run properly again.