Preest led him in under the massive frames that supported the drive chambers. The architecture of basic was of a cyclopean scale: massive bulkheads, support fairings and cross-members. This part of the ship had to endure particularly extreme pressures and stresses, and was also thickly shielded.
Mathuin glanced back, but the hatch to the machine shop was no longer in sight. If the hunter was in basic with them, then that was just bad luck. He’d probably called in support too.
They went down a short flight of open metal steps onto the chamber’s sub-floor, and Preest brought him over to a circular console station growing out of the deck near the drive vault’s rear wall.
‘This it?’ he asked.
She nodded and began sliding the armoured hoods back from the station’s panels. Mathuin kept watch. They were dreadfully exposed. Apart from the bulky console itself, there was no cover. Hostiles could approach across the main floor above them. Then there were the gantries and walkways higher up around the drive chambers.
‘Hurry up,’ he said.
She inserted her master keys, turned them and woke the console up. It came to power, the screens of the codifiers flickering into life. Data scrolled across the screens. Mathuin heard the cooling fans in the consoles base begin to whir as the powerful cogitation stack, a duplicate of the vessel’s main data processing device, began to get warm.
Preest’s hands clattered over the keypad. She adjusted several brass dials. ‘Here goes,’ she said.
She entered a series of complex numerical sequences. Nothing happened for a moment. Then the cold auxiliary lighting across the vault dimmed and the main lighting blinked back into life. Getting used to the sudden glare, Mathuin realised he could hear the main air scrubbers working again too.
‘Well?’ he said.
Preest peered at the screen. ‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘Interesting…’
Madsen saw the lighting on the bridge flicker and change. She got up and looked at Skoh.
‘That’s not good,’ she said. ‘Kinsky?’
Halstrom’s fingers were repeatedly pressing the same keys. ‘We’re locked out. Bridge stations are dead.’
‘God-Emperor, no…’ Madsen said.
‘See for yourself,’ Halstrom said. ‘The ship just reverted to primary systems. But the helm’s down… engines have just shut down too. We’re drifting. I can’t get her back.’
Madsen sat at the helm position, twisted the main display round so it was facing her, and began to work the instruments in a determined way.
‘What’s going on, Mamzel?’ Skoh asked.
‘Shut up and let me think,’ she said.
The hailing chime sounded. Skoh opened the vox. ‘Hinterlight.’
‘Oktober Country. Skoh, what are you playing at? That hulk of yours just went dead in the vac. Your drives have shut down. You’re not even holding a stabilised course.’
‘Stand by, Oktober Country. Temporary glitch. We’ll have it sorted soon. Out.’
Skoh walked over to Madsen. ‘Well?’
‘Preest. It’s got to be that damn shipmistress. We know she’s loose.’
‘What’s she done?’
‘She must have a… let me see… my guess would be a back-up data stack somewhere. Something not on the specs, something I couldn’t find. That bitch. She’s brought it online and countermanded my countermand.’
‘Beaten you at your own game?’ Skoh said.
‘No,’ Madsen insisted. ‘She may have shut us out of the master control system temporarily, but she hasn’t got control back herself. I’m not that stupid, Skoh. Operators like Preest customise their ships in all sorts of non-standard ways. Redundant back-ups, hidden cogitation caches, sub-written code systems, encrypted high-functions…’
‘Get to the point,’ Skoh said.
‘I knew she’d have something, that’s the point. I didn’t know what, but it was a fair bet. She’s the type. So I wrote reactive clauses into my countermand. The idea being if she tried to undermine my codes in any way, they’d lock everything up. Yes, we don’t have control. But neither does she. Both primary and default secondary systems have closed down and locked.’
‘Well,’ said Skoh, ‘that’s frigging great. We’ll just sit here then…’
‘No, we won’t,’ said Madsen, rising to her feet. ‘All we have to do is find Preest and her back-up stack, shut it down, and my codes will revert control back to us.’
‘So where is she? This is a big ship. Lots of area to cover. It could take hours for my men to find her.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed their efficiency already,’ Madsen sneered. She looked at Halstrom. ‘We do this the quick way. Kinsky?’
Halstrom’s body shuddered. He went limp and slumped back in the command throne. A bead of blood began to trickle from his left nostril as his head lolled.
‘Find her,’ said Madsen. ‘Get inside her frigging mind, force her to disable her stack, and then kill the old bitch.’
Sprawled in his seat, Kinsky’s body twitched and shivered like a dreaming dog.
Free. Alert. Alive. Kinsky’s mind rushed out from the bridge, surging down hallways, sliding like a wraith between decks. He left a wake of hoar-frost behind him. He was angry now, aching and drawn from the effort of over-mastering Halstrom’s mind.
But this… now this is what he did. Searching, tracking, killing. This is what he liked.
As he sped on, he extended his awareness. He could taste the entire bulk of the Hinterlight, its hollowed metal form, every sub-duct, every cross-spar, every rivet. It was like a three dimensional schematic to him. And inside it, tiny pinpricks of life heat, the feeble mind-fires of the other humans aboard. Puny little dots. A handful on the bridge, a heavier cluster down in the light cargo holds. Others, spread singly or in small groups through the remainder of the big ship… Skoh’s hunters, no doubt.
And two, far down at the stern, in enginarium basic.
Kinsky’s mind began to accelerate. Corridors and downshafts flashed past, hallways blurred by.
He was hungry to kill.
‘Did you feel that?’ Zael asked, his voice tiny.
Kys nodded. They’d reached the entry bay into the real-space drive section of the enginarium. A short way ahead of them, the deep, split-level drive chambers had just suddenly stopped throbbing with power. The real-space assemblies had inexplicably shut down.
But the abrupt silence hadn’t been what Zael was referring too.
‘Yes, I felt it,’ Kys replied. ‘Something’s moving.’ She shuddered and rested a hand on the wall. ‘Really powerful, really raw…’
With total confidence he was correct, Zael said, ‘It’s Kinsky.’
‘Listen!’ Nayl whispered. Kara stopped and cocked her head. She was still getting used to the resumed lighting levels and the elevated noise of the air processors. For a moment, she couldn’t detect anything else.
‘There!’ said Nayl, raising a hand. A sound. A steady, metallic beat, like a hammer on an anvil. It reverberated down the ominously empty corridors.
‘It’s coming from down there,’ Nayl said, and raised his bolt pistol to lead the way. They crossed a junction and entered the bare metal deck space of the light cargo holds. The pair had already dismissed the light cargo area, and agreed to press on towards the bridge. But now the hammering drew them back.
It was getting louder. On either side of the wide hallway, broad hatches stood open, leading into empty sub holds. The hammering was coming from a sub-hold ahead of them on the right. And now they could hear mumbling too. Kara drew both her autos and thumbed off the safeties.
‘Little bastard! Little freak!’ Duboe grunted, chopping the axe down. Sweat was pouring off him, staining his filthy clothes. Parts of the axe head had broken off. He swung it again. The front casing of Ravenor’s chair was pitted and dented, like the hull of a ship after a meteor storm.
‘Little frigging bastard!’ Duboe raged and struck yet again.
At last, the axe head punched a hol
e in the chair’s casing. Duboe had to wrench at it to pull it free. He gazed in sick wonder at the small, raw-edged perforation. He bent down and put his mouth to the hole.
‘Gonna have you out of there soon, bastard. Gonna drag you out and mash you up. You hear me? You hear me?’
Weapons raised, Kara and Nayl crept closer to the hold door. The metal-on-metal slamming had stopped for a moment, but now it began again.
‘Cover me,’ Kara started to say.
Nayl cried out a warning. Two of Skoh’s hunter pack had suddenly appeared in the doorway of another hold forty metres away down the hallway. They began to open fire. Shots sang past the two of them. Nayl raised the bolter and fired back, running into the cover of a hold doorway to his left. Kara was too far over to the right hand side of the hallway to make it too.
‘Get in there!’ Nayl yelled. ‘Before they hit you!’
Duboe heard the sudden exchange of gunfire right outside the hold door. His heart began to race. Axe in hand, he lurched back into the shadows to hide.
Kara fired a couple of shots in the direction of the hunters, and then dived into the sub-hold. Rounds exploded against the deck and wall where she had just been standing.
She got up and looked round, guns raised.
‘Oh my Emperor!’ she exclaimed. In the far corner of the hold, Ravenor’s chair was wedged against the wall. It looked like someone had attacked it with a pneumatic hammer.
‘Ravenor?’
She only realised Duboe was there at the very last moment. He came out of the shadows with a bestial roar, hefting his axe. She tried to evade, almost made it, but the haft of Duboe’s axe cracked across her forearms.
Kara went down, diving, wondering if her arms were broken.
They weren’t. Bruised, most certainly. And the impact had smashed both guns out of her hands.
Still on the floor, she rolled violently to her left as Duboe’s axe hacked down at her. It scored the deck plating. Bellowing, he struck again, and she lunged into a forward roll under the scything blade. The roll took her up against the hold wall, and she pushed off from it like a swimmer on the turn, backflipped high in the air onto her feet as Duboe’s murmuring axe kissed empty air. Now she was upright, hunched low, facing him.
‘Duboe. You ninker. Who let you out?’
He sliced the weapon at her again. She danced back. They circled. Another stroke, another sidestep. Round and round. She had to disarm him, put him down hard. He was gone, she realised. He was virtually frothing at the mouth.
He lunged again, with a speed and ferocity that astonished Kara. She tried to duck, but he caught her a resounding blow with his left elbow and she staggered backwards, her feet slipping out. She virtually fell across Ravenor’s chair.
Duboe came at her, howling, axe raised.
She looked round frantically for a weapon, something to throw, anything.
There was a hefty-looking metal unit clamped to the front of Ravenor’s chair. She twisted the dial, wrenched it free and hurled it at Duboe’s face. Instinctively, he chopped with his axe, connecting with the missile in mid air, and sent it banging away across the hold floor. He raised the axe again.
+Kara? Get out of the way.+
She dropped. Blunt as she was, she felt the awesome surge of psi-power unleashing from the battered chair. The walls of the hold were suddenly fuming with ice particles.
Duboe left the ground and flew back ten metres into the far wall. The chipped axe clattered from his hands. He remained pinned there by invisible power, like a specimen insect, two metres off the floor. His mouth opened and closed. His eyes bulged. He gasped.
+Duboe. Who’s the bastard now?+
Duboe screamed. Ravenor’s mind crushed him. Every single bone in Duboe’s body shattered as it flattened into the wall.
Zael grabbed Kys by the arm. ‘God-Emperor!’ he cried out, his voice echoing around the eerily quiet real-space drive chamber.
She’d felt it too. It was so violent, so awful, worse even than the rushing horror of Kinsky’s unleashed psychic power. She crouched down and hugged the boy to her protectively.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered.
‘Yeah?’
Zael nodded. ‘I think someone’s about to have a really bad chair day.’
‘Holy crap,’ mumbled Kara, getting to her feet. The terrible psychic-force had ebbed away. Duboe’s ghastly, formless corpse slid down the hold wall like soaked wallpaper.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked Ravenor.
‘No,’ he said. His voice was strangely distorted. Duboe’s attack had damaged his voxponder. ‘There’s no time, Kara. I’m needed elsewhere.’
‘But –’
‘No buts. We’re all dead if I don’t act. Guard me here.’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. There was no response. She knew he was already gone, his mind running free.
She collected her pistols and went to the hold doorway. Outside, the firefight was thicker than before.
‘Harlon!’
‘I hear you!’ he shouted from the hold doorway opposite. He was cracking bolt rounds down the hall. A heavy return of fire was coming their way.
‘I’ve got the boss in here!’ she yelled over the gunshots. ‘What’s our current?’
‘Frigging awful!’ he bellowed. ‘There’s at least four of the bastards down there now, with good cover. We’re not going that way.’
Kara swung out of her doorway and let rip with bursts from both pistols.
‘I’ve got to guard Ravenor here!’ she cried as she dropped back. ‘I think you should double back and see if you can reach the bridge!’
‘And leave you here?’ he questioned.
‘That was the plan, remember? Let’s stick to it.’
‘But–’
‘Just move your arse! I can deal!’
He looked across at her. ‘You sure?’
‘Frig, yeah. It’s me, remember.’
He smiled. She’d always liked that smile. ‘Get to the bridge. Kill ’em all,’ she said.
Nayl nodded, changing clips. ‘See you later, Kara Swole.’
‘You know it.’
‘Cover me,’ he said, rising. Kara leant out of the doorway and rained caseless rounds down the hallway with both guns. Behind her, Nayl started to run back down the way they’d come in. The storm of pistol fire made the hunters down the hall duck for cover. Then they started to fire back again with renewed vigour.
‘Here we go,’ Kara said to herself.
‘Shouldn’t we do something?’ Medicae Zarjaran asked. Thonius wanted to shrug, but he knew it would hurt his arm. Outside the doorway of the hold where the crew were imprisoned, their guards were engaged in a blistering exchange of fire with someone. Two or three more of their kind had come to join them. Smoke from the intense weaponsfire was fogging the deck.
Was this salvation, Thonius wondered? Was this death? Should he get up and try to do something? That was what Zarjaran had meant. Not ‘we’… ‘him’. Carl.
He could try and attack the guards from behind while they were occupied with the firefight. Sure he could. Give him a damned Leman Russ tank and a squad of Astartes, and he’d be right on the job.
‘We should just keep our heads down,’ he said.
‘Really?’ Zarjaran asked. He had a look on his face. ‘But I thought–’
‘Thought what?’ Thonius asked.
‘Nothing,’ said the doctor.
Thought I was a hero? A hard-bitten Throne agent? Think again.
Mathuin was getting really edgy. ‘For Terra’s sake, mistress… sort it out!’
‘I can’t!’ she said. ‘Whoever did this has been very canny. We’re blocked. They can’t get into the ship’s master controls any more than I can.’
She looked up from the cogitation stack suddenly. ‘What was that?’
Mathuin looked up too. He hadn’t seen any movement. Was that hunter catching up with them at last…?
‘Like a wind,’ Preest said. ??
?Like a monsoon wind. A rushing noise. I…’
Her voice trailed off. She looked down in horror at the surface of the stack console. Frost coated it. Coated her fingers, her gaudy rings, her velvet sleeves.
‘Oh dear God-Emperor preserve me…’ she stuttered.
+He’s not listening.+ Kinsky’s voice boomed in her head. She looked up into the lofty spaces of the vast enginarium. There was nothing there.
Kinsky, moving like a missile down from the roof, looking into her terrified, blinking eyes. He made his rushing mind-form thorny, the better to gouge through her flimsy mind walls.
Something hard and furious struck Kinsky’s mind from side on, and sent it sparking away across the enginarium vault. In pain, bleeding psi-force, Kinsky recovered, forming into a thought-armoured ball, tendons of razor-string lashing out around it.
+Kinsky.+
His assailant appeared. It took the form of a marine predator, a great saw-toothed fish, shimmering with inner light. It swam down around the material stanchions of the nearest drive chamber, topaz energy shining from its deathless eyes.
+Ravenor.+
With a beat of its tail, the twenty-metre fish swam through the air towards the twitching armoured ball. Kinsky shimmered, re-composing his non-corporeal guise into a giant mantis, shining in a pearlescent light the colour of his psychotic eyes, its massive claws snapping.
+You wanted to go, Kinsky, Let’s go.+
Ravenor’s tail slammed round and he surged at the psi-form, eyes rolling back as his great jaws gaped to bite.
‘What the hell is that?’ Preest stammered. Mathuin looked at what she was pointing at. The air was shimmering, unfocused, above the main space of the enginarium bay. As they watched, a dent appeared in the decking, then another, another two, in the plated wall. Something invisible tore through one of the metal walkways along the flank of the second drive chamber and it disintegrated, shearing apart, cascading sparks as it tumbled the nine metres to the main deck. Gigantic toothmarks hammered into view on one of the side ductings. It tore loose, venting columns of steam, and flew into the air. High up, it seemed to strike something and bounced back onto the floor with a dreadful clang. Stripes of ice tracked across the deck and vanished as quickly as they had been made. Corposant flames erupted along the railings of an upper walkway.