He smiled as the welcome sight of the Ultramarines Thunderhawk gunship roared overhead.
Jenna Sharben led, dragging Mykola Shonai towards the shuttle and safety. The last palace guard helped the struggling Almerz Chanda. The governor’s aide stumbled and fell to his knees as Barzano passed him. He kept going, catching up to Jenna Sharben and helping her with the governor.
A lasbolt fired, shockingly loud, even over the screaming engines of the shuttle. Barzano spun, wondering how the rebels could have caught up so soon. He unslung his rifle and dropped to his knees, trying to make sense of the scene before him.
Almerz Chanda stood over the body of the palace guard, expertly holding a smoking lasgun. He snapped off a shot at Barzano, taking the inquisitor high in the shoulder and slamming him back against the shuttle’s hull.
Barzano yelled in pain and dropped his weapon. Jenna Sharben turned and was punched from her feet by an equally well-placed shot. Governor Shonai stood at the shuttle, staring in horror at Chanda as he strode across towards her.
He raised his rifle and aimed through the pilot’s canopy, making a chopping motion with one hand across his throat. The whine of the engines died as the pilot powered down the engines and unstrapped himself from his bucket seat.
Chanda shot him through the canopy.
Barzano struggled to push himself upright as grey uniformed PDF troopers swarmed onto the landing platform from the palace and Mykola Shonai stood before Chanda, her face a granite mask of fury.
‘Why?’ she asked simply.
‘You are the past,’ replied Chanda. ‘Weak, pathetic, clinging to your outdated loyalty to a withered corpse on a planet you have never even seen.’
‘You disgust me, Almerz. To think I once called you a friend.’
She slapped Chanda hard and spat in his face.
Chanda slammed the butt of his rifle into the governor’s head, dropping her to the ground with blood spurting from her broken nose. But, still she stared at him with defiance and anger.
Barzano tried to ignore the pain of the laser burn on his shoulder. He knew they had failed, but he was determined to take this piece of blasphemous filth with him on the road to hell. He tried to raise his hand, to aim his digital needier, but Chanda knelt beside him and gripped his hair.
‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,’ whispered Chanda, slamming Barzano’s head against the shuttle’s hull.
‘Get on with it and go,’ snapped Barzano, nauseous from the impact.
‘Oh, I’m not going to kill you, Ario. No, there is a… specialist in the service of my employer who I believe you have an appointment with. A surgeon of wondrous skill.’
Barzano coughed blood. ‘Why can’t you say his name? Does the stench of your betrayal stick in your throat? Can your tiny mind comprehend the scale of the mistake you have just made?’
Chanda laughed as PDF troopers surrounded the shuttle.
‘Mistake?’ hissed Chanda so that only Barzano could hear. ‘I think not. You made the mistake of coming here. Soon I will be part of an immortal band of warriors, fighting alongside a reawakened god!’
Now it was Barzano’s turn to laugh, though the act sent jolts of pain across his chest and pounding through his skull.
‘Did de Valtos tell you that?’ he smirked. ‘Then you are a bigger fool than I took you for. I can sense your fear of him. If de Valtos succeeds, you will die. Your life energy will be stripped away to feed the hunger of this creature he calls a god.’
Chanda stood, his face angry, turning away and speaking hurriedly into a hand-held vox-caster he removed from his pocket. Barzano strained to hear the words over the heavy thump of laser fire and shelling, but couldn’t make them out.
He looked up, hoping to see the Thunderhawk gunship hammering down on the platform and disgorging charging Ultramarines, but the aircraft was speeding into the clouds, chased by a fearsome amount of anti-aircraft fire. That explained why the energy shield hadn’t been activated at least. Somehow de Valtos had managed to get one of his people into the defence control staff and prevent it from being raised. He wondered what had become of Learchus and the two Space Marines he had sent to the control centre.
Another shuttle swooped low overhead, setting down in a cloud of exhaust fumes on the far edge of the platform. The shuttle’s door slid back and a small group emerged. Clutching a leather case tightly to his chest, the gloating figure of Kasimir de Valtos stepped down onto the platform. Vendare Taloun followed him, and Barzano saw he had the desperate look of a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control. Behind the cartel men came two slim and graceful figures, and Barzano felt a flutter of apprehension as he recognised the sinuous gait of the eldar.
These two aliens were from the darker sects that lived beyond the normal realms of the galaxy and he knew in an instant that it might have been better for them all if they had been killed. The female moved with the grace of a dancer, her every gesture suggesting sensual lethality, while the male walked stiffly, hunched over, as though unused to the daylight. Both had cruel violet eyes and skin as pale as polished ivory.
The woman barely spared him a glance, but the other gave him a look of such emptiness that it chilled even Barzano’s hardened soul.
Almerz Chanda handed his rifle to a nervous looking PDF trooper and Barzano could sense their unease at the sight of the eldar. None of them had expected this.
Kasimir de Valtos stood over the prone governor and smiled, savouring the moment of his triumph.
This has been a long time coming, Shonai,’ he said at last.
Barzano struggled to remain conscious, as Chanda stood before his true master.
‘I have delivered them to you as I promised I would, my lord.’
Kasimir de Valtos turned to face Chanda and nodded.
‘Indeed you have, Almerz. You have proved your treachery is complete.’
Barzano could sense Chanda’s confusion and unease even above that of the PDF troops on the platform.
‘I have done all that you asked of me, my lord.’
De Valtos inclined his head briefly in the direction of the eldar woman.
Her hand flashed to her leather belt in a blur of motion and suddenly there was a black dart embedded in Chanda’s throat.
The man dropped to his knees, the skin around the dart swelling at a horrifying rate.
‘My dear Almerz,’ crooned de Valtos. ‘You betrayed one master, why should I trust you not to betray me also? No, better it ends like this.’
Chanda scrabbled at his throat, fighting for breath. Within seconds his gurgling cries were silent as he slipped into unconsciousness, and collapsed on the ground. De Valtos addressed the eldar male, saying, ‘Do with them as you see fit.’
He tapped his boot against Chanda’s slumped body. ‘But make sure you honour this one first.’
Barzano felt no satisfaction at Chanda’s fate, merely a sickening sense of impending disaster. For if Kasimir de Valtos was truly as insane as he appeared to be, then he was about to unleash a force that not even Barzano knew how to defeat.
De Valtos turned his gaze upon Barzano and the inquisitor felt his empathic senses recoil from the pits of the man’s madness.
‘I know what you are doing, de Valtos,’ croaked Barzano. ‘And so does Captain Ventris. He knows everything I do and I promise you he will not let you succeed. Even now he will be calling for more ships and men to defeat you.’
Kasimir de Valtos shook his head.
‘If you truly understand what I intend, then you know as well as I that more men and ships will achieve nothing.’
Barzano wanted to respond, but the words died in his throat.
Because he knew that Kasimir de Valtos was right.
SIXTEEN
BARZANO LISTENED TO the screams of Almerz Chanda echoing through the prison level, hoping that the torture was as painful as it sounded. It did not matter to him that an alien was torturing a human being. By betraying his oaths of loyalty to the Emperor,
Chanda had given up any right for pity.
The inquisitor had no clear idea of how long they had been incarcerated, having earlier passed out with the pain from his wound. He had awoken in this cell to find himself stripped of his weapons, even the digital one secreted within the ring on his right forefinger, and the lasburn on his shoulder cleaned and bound with surgical dressing. Mykola Shonai’s broken nose had been set as well. Apparently the alien surgeon did not wish to work on damaged subjects.
The prison level they were held in had been incorporated into the groined foundations of the palace, steel bars cemented into each stone archway. Each cell was furnished with a simple bed and ablutions unit bolted to the floor. As far as jails went, it was better than many he’d thrown traitors into.
Lortuen Perjed and his scribes languished in the cell opposite, and Barzano was pleased to see that none of them had been hurt in the coup.
Sharing Barzano’s cell, Mykola Shonai sat in the comer, her face a mask of fury, and Jenna Sharben lay on the bed, her wound untreated. The judge had taken a lasbolt to the belly and though the heat of the shot had cauterised the wound, Barzano suspected she might be bleeding internally. She had not recovered consciousness since Chanda’s treachery at the landing platform, and Barzano knew that without medical attention she would die in a few hours. It seemed she was not worth the attention of the surgeon’s scalpel.
When the governor had come round, she had raged at the cell door, kicking and screaming oaths that would have made a stevedore blush.
Barzano had pulled her away, calming her with promises of rescue and retribution. He was unsure how he was going to fulfil these promises, but knew they still had options open to them.
He returned to the bed and mopped Jenna Sharben’s brow with his sleeve. She was cold to the touch and her skin was grey, already the colour of a corpse.
I promise you won’t die, Judge Sharben,’ whispered Barzano.
‘Another promise you’re not sure you can keep?’ asked Shonai.
‘Not at all, Mykola. I never make promises I can’t keep,’ assured Barzano. He placed a hand across his heart. ‘I promise.’
Despite herself, Mykola Shonai smiled, ‘Do you really think we can get out of here? I mean, there are at least three regiments’ worth of soldiers in the city, probably over two hundred on this level alone, and the Emperor alone knows how many prowling the palace.’
Barzano winked, ‘Do not forget the three Space Marines.’
‘I haven’t, but surely Sergeant Learchus and his men must be dead?’
‘I seriously doubt that, my dear Mykola. I’m sure de Valtos would have enjoyed parading them past us by now if they were. No, I do not believe Sergeant Learchus will be an easy man to kill, and he will have found a way to communicate with the Vae Victus,’
‘And you think Captain Ventris will attempt to rescue us?’
‘I am sure that even the daemons of the warp would not prevent him.’
‘It would be a virtual suicide mission to break us out.’
‘Possibly,’ agreed Barzano, ‘but can you see that stopping Uriel?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ said Mykola, leaning her head back against the stonework of the cell. She closed her eyes and Barzano thought she had fallen asleep. But without opening her eyes, she said, ‘This ship you think de Valtos is after – can he really get it?’
‘I’m not sure. My ordo know that one of an ancient race of beings we know as the C’tan went into a form of stasis somewhere in this sector, but not exactly where. We think that the Nightbringer was once his, for want of a better word, flagship. There are ancient writings and hints about the ship and its master scattered throughout history, but we still know next to nothing about it. It is of a time before the ascendancy of man and little is known for sure.’
‘This… C’tan, what was it like?’
‘No one can say for certain. It has probably been dormant for millions of years and records are unclear to say the least. I’ve read every fragment I could lay my hands on concerning the Bringer of Darkness, but I still know almost nothing about it, save one thing.’
‘And that is?’ asked Mykola hesitantly.
‘The Nightbringer is death incarnate. Its dreams are the stuff of every race’s nightmares, becoming the very image of their doom. Every thought you have ever had regarding the horror of death and mortality comes from this creature. When it walked between the stars in aeons past, it left that legacy in the collective racial psyche of almost every species in the galaxy.’
‘Can we defeat such a creature?’
‘Do you want the truth?’
‘Of course.’
Barzano waited until the echoes of a fresh clutch of screams torn from Almerz Chanda’s throat had died away before answering. ‘No,’ he said softly, ‘I do not think we can.’
THE MAJESTIC FORM of the Vae Victus slowly angled its massive bulk towards the surface of Pavonis, powerful energies building in her forward linear accelerators. Few men knew the awesome power of destruction the captain of a starship possessed: the power to level cities and crack continents. For all that the captains of the Imperial Navy might strut and boast of the capabilities of their ponderous warships, there was nothing that could compete with the sheer destructive speed and efficiency of a Space Marine strike cruiser.
Defence lasers periodically stabbed upwards from armoured silos far below on the planet’s surface. None of the mighty guns could match the speed of the strike cruiser and though their powerful beams pierced the sky with their colossal energies, there was a desperation to the fire. So long as the Vae Victus remained in high orbit, the guns below were impotent.
Closer in, however, the smaller, aerial defence batteries were a different matter. Scores of such silos were scattered around Brandon Gate and incorporated into the planet’s surface. Though these were incapable of harming a starship, even one in low orbit, they could shred any aircraft that came within fifteen kilometres of the city. All were crewed by lobotomised servitors, hard-wired into their weapons, and controlled from the defence control bunker secreted somewhere within the palace grounds.
While the guns cast their protective cover over the city, any airborne assault was doomed to failure.
KASIMIR DE VALTOS Rubbed the bridge of his nose, growling at the image on the vox-holo before him.
‘Lasko, if you don’t give me a straight answer then I will have you buried in one of your precious mines. Now tell me, in words of two syllables or less, have you breached the door yet? I do not have time to waste.’
The flickering image of his mine overseer, Jakob Lasko, appeared furtive even through the heavy distortion of the encrypted signal from Tembra Ridge nearly one hundred kilometres from the palace.
‘Well, the last cutter made it through the door, but we’re having trouble moving it.’
‘And why is that?’ pressed de Valtos, leaning forward, his features predatory.
‘We’re not sure, my lord. The tech-priests say that the density of the door far exceeds what should be possible for
Something of its dimensions. We’ve had to disassemble one of our heaviest rigs and transport it down the main shaft in pieces. The techs are putting the last parts together now, and once they’ve blessed it, we’ll be ready to go.’
‘When?’ hissed de Valtos, incessantly rubbing at his forehead.
‘Later today, I expect.’
‘It had better be,’ said de Valtos snapping off the link and reclining in the ex-governor’s sagging leather chair. He massaged his temples and took a gulping breath before hawking a froth of black phlegm onto the floor. The pain was getting worse and the Surgeon’s specialised facilities and equipment had been destroyed by the Ultramarines. There would be no more stripping his body down to its bare bones and reassembling it in its temporarily healthy form again. He had to succeed, and soon. If that damn fool Lasko could not break into the underground tomb complex soon, then he was a dead man.
But once within, he would know the t
win joys of revenge and immortality.
He remembered the day he had first learned of the C’tan from the scrolls of Corteswain. Most of his fortune had since been ploughed into the search for its resting place, but the final irony was that it had been below him all this time. Surely the hand of fate was at work that it should turn out to be below the mountains of Pavonis.
It had been a revelation the day he had finally discovered the forgotten tomb, buried beneath the world when it was nothing but an uninhabited ball of lifeless rock.
De Valtos chuckled mirthlessly as he realised soon it would be that way again.
Soon he would walk in the halls of a god! Not the pitiful, dust filled corridors of Terra that was home to a rotting corpse masquerading as a god, but a living, breathing creature with the power of creation and eternal life at its fingertips.
When had the Emperor last walked among his people? Ten thousand years ago! Where was the Emperor when the Apostate Cardinal Bucharis plunged whole sectors into war in His name? Where was the Emperor when the tyranids devoured world after world?
Where was the Emperor when the eldar boarded his ship and tortured him to the brink of death? Where was He then?
De Valtos felt his fury growing and struggled to control his rage as blood dripped from where his artificial fingernails had dug into the meat of his palms. He wiped the blood clear and ran a hand through his sweat-streaked hair, fighting down his rapid breathing.
He rose and paced the shattered remains of the room, stepping over the splintered desk, broken chairs and heaped piles of plaster. His foot hit something solid and he looked down.
He smiled, bending down to pick up a cracked bust of white marble, cradling it gently in his scarred hands. He stroked his hand across the stern face of Forlanus Shonai, blood smearing the old man’s patrician features, and strode to the devastated wall of the governor’s private chambers.