‘I don’t like the idea that you’re hiding things from me, Orfeo. Who is that?’
Molotch pushed past Culzean and advanced into the dank under pantry. Worna and Slade reluctantly stood back from their captive.
Culzean knew he had to handle Molotch with more care than ever before. He shrugged, changing his approach. ‘All right, Zyg, you got me. It’s Ballack. It was supposed to be a surprise.’
‘Ballack?’ Molotch asked. He peered at the man Slade and Worna had been chaining to a stone block by the pantry’s back wall. ‘Ballack? The interrogator?’
‘It was going to be my gift to you,’ Culzean said.
Molotch ignored the facilitator. He knelt down beside Ballack, peering at him.
‘I was quite sure I’d killed you,’ he said.
Behind him, Culzean shot urgent looks at Worna and Slade. Slade put her hand on the grip of her holstered weapon. Worna drew his bolt pistol quietly. Molotch didn’t seem to notice. He stimulated a pressure point in Ballack’s neck with the tip of his finger.
Ballack woke up with a splutter. He swung his head around and blinked as his eyes focused. Blood seeped out between his shattered teeth.
‘M-Molotch…?’
‘Indeed,’ said Molotch. ‘What are you doing here, Ballack? What possible purpose could have brought you to me?’
‘I wanted...’ Ballack murmured, his words slurred and malformed by his broken mouth. ‘I wanted...’
‘What did you want?’ asked Molotch.
‘Revenge, you bastard. I wanted revenge. You left me to die. We were brothers, Cognitae. I served you in fraternal confidence and you betrayed me.’
Molotch rose to his feet and looked down at Ballack. ‘You are a poor excuse for a Cognitae. Diluted fifth or sixth generation, an affront to our tradition. You were an instrument, and I used you without compunction. I owed you nothing.’
Ballack groaned, and thrust at Molotch, but the chains were too tight.
‘You came all this way to kill me?’ Molotch asked. He looked around at Culzean. ‘It rather begs the question how the hell he found me.’
‘Zygmunt, we’ll work that out in due course,’ said Culzean carefully. ‘For now–’
‘No!’ snapped Molotch. ‘I want to know what’s going on, Culzean! Right now!’
Worna moved forwards rapidly. Molotch made a flicking gesture with his right hand, and Worna’s bolt pistol flew out of his grasp. Molotch caught it, turned, and aimed it at Ballack’s head.
‘Molotch! It’s a matter of the most pleasant fraternal confidence!’ Ballack slurred. ‘Molotch!’
‘Shut up,’ said Molotch, and pulled the trigger.
Ballack’s head exploded. Slade leapt back, spattered with blood. Even Worna flinched.
‘Zygmunt...’ Culzean growled.
Molotch muttered some dark prayer and turned back to face them. He calmly handed the weapon back to Worna. ‘What else are you hiding from me, Orfeo?’
‘Nothing,’ Culzean declared.
‘Let me put it another way,’ said Molotch. ‘How did Ballack find me? Why is it I hear thrusters?’
‘I don’t–’ Culzean began.
Slade and Worna pulled out their links simultaneously. Both of them had started chiming.
‘Incoming vehicle,’ said Slade to Culzean.
‘You see?’ said Molotch. ‘I think it’s time you stopped lying to me Orfeo, and started telling me plainly what in the name of the Undying Eight is going on here.’
Eight
The cutter skimmed in low and fast out of the night towards the high perch of Elmingard. The sensor web of Culzean’s fastness had been set, by the master’s own recent command, to passive, but even that did not explain the way the cutter had come into airspace proximity without any prior detection.
There were three other factors in play. The first was the way the cutter was being flown: ultra fast and ultra low, what Navy pilots called ‘crust kissing’. The flight path had hugged the terrain all the way from the Sarre borders. In places, the craft’s downwash had parted treetops like a comb, or whipped up corn stooks from the harvested fields. The method of flying kept the craft’s profile low and tough to paint. It also required a very experienced and dynamic style of piloting.
The second factor was the way the small craft was obscured. A shield or veil had been employed, its mechanism and type unidentifiable to Tzabo and the other professional experts in Elmingard’s security control centre. The cutter was suddenly just there. They heard its thrusters before they saw it on their scopes.
The third factor was the night. The storm was a filthy, howling monster, worse than any they’d known. It straddled the mountaintops like a drunken ogre, roaring at the heavens. The storm’s savage electrical pattern flared and sparked and wallowed, creating blinks, false artefacts, phantoms and idiot flashes on the instrumentation. It caused two of the cogitators to short out. Bizarre whines and squeals emerged from the speakers, causing Eldrik, the duty man on station with Tzabo, to tear off his headset.
‘This isn’t natural,’ Eldrik complained.
Tzabo was slow replying. He was staring at his own screen, where the fading after-image of the last lightning ghost had shown an uncanny resemblance to a human skull.
‘What?’ he asked, distractedly.
‘I said this isn’t natural. The storm,’ said Eldrik.
‘No, I don’t think it is,’ said Tzabo. He shook himself. ‘Concentrate on the damn contact. Pull it up for me, sharp.’
‘On it,’ said Eldrik.
Tzabo lifted his handset and pressed the master channel. Culzean answered.
‘Sir,’ said Tzabo, ‘we have an airborne contact two kilometres out, coming in strong. No marker, no registration, no handshake codes.’
‘I can hear it already,’ replied Culzean’s voice. ‘It must be really moving.’
‘It is, as I said, sir. I am about to light the house defences and switch to active, with your permission.’
Down in the clammy gloom of the under pantry, the ghastly stink of Ballack’s detonated skull still clinging to the air, Culzean glanced at Molotch and then nodded.
‘Light them up, Mister Tzabo. Activate all perimeter and surface to air systems. Stand ready to deny them and annihilate them.’
‘Hail them first,’ Molotch said.
‘What?’ asked Culzean.
‘Hail them. Hail them,’ Molotch demanded.
‘Zygmunt, they are coming in unauthorised, no codes. They are not ours.’
‘They want to be here.’
‘Zyg, Zyg, Zyg... it could be an Inquisition raid.’
Molotch laughed. It was a disconcerting sound, because he didn’t do it very often. ‘Orfeo, if the Inquisition had found us, they’d have called in Battlefleet Scarus and wiped us off the map already. Hail them.’
‘No, Zygmunt, this–’
Molotch demonstrated his right arm flick again, and the link sailed out of Culzean’s manicured hand. Culzean cursed.
Molotch caught the device neatly and raised it to his ear. ‘Tzabo, hail the contact.’
There was a long silence.
‘Tzabo?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I only take orders from Master Culzean,’ Tzabo’s voice said.
Molotch sighed and looked back at Culzean. He handed the link back to him. ‘I am ever impressed by the quality of the people you employ, Orfeo.’
Culzean took the link back. ‘Mister Tzabo, hail the contact.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Culzean lowered the link. He glanced at Slade and Worna. ‘Ley, I’d like you up in the centre to take charge.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Slade said, hurrying out.
‘Lucius,’ Culzean said, ‘you’d be useful up on the landing if this goes arse up.’
Worna nodded, and strode away. Culzean looked over at Molotch.
‘We should go up and see what this is.’
Molotch nodded. ‘We should. Just to be clear, Orfeo, we’re not done, you a
nd me.’
‘I know.’
‘We’re not done.’
‘I know.’
Molotch placed a hand on Culzean’s arm and gently prevented him from leaving the under pantry.
‘What I mean, Orfeo, is that there’s a very real possibility that we are about to experience a parting of the ways, and you do not, believe me, want that to happen.’
Culzean looked down and very deliberately took hold of Molotch’s hand and removed it from his sleeve. ‘Zyg, don’t threaten me. I am the last person you should ever threaten.’
Molotch smiled. It was the expression a hyena might wear as it salivated over some newly felled prey.
‘Orfeo, there’s no one anywhere I would ever be afraid of threatening. Understand that, and our relationship might last a little longer.’
Leyla Slade entered Elmingard’s security control centre in time to hear Tzabo say, ‘Approaching vehicle, approaching vehicle, respond and identify yourself. This is private airspace. Identify yourself, or suffer the consequences of trespass.’
Static fuzzled back.
‘Approaching vehicle, approaching vehicle–’ Tzabo began again.
Slade took his vox-mic away from him. ‘Approaching vehicle,’ she said sternly, ‘this is Elmingard. Speak now, or we’ll hammer you out of the sky with the Emperor’s own righteous fury. Respond.’
Static.
‘Are the systems active?’ Slade asked the duty men.
‘Sentries are live. Missiles armed and ranged,’ Eldrik replied quickly, clicking brass switches on his desk.
‘Approaching vehicle,’ Slade began again. She didn’t get a further word out. The approaching vehicle interrupted her by answering.
It was not a vox squirt, nor a pict-enabled transmission.
It was a psi-blurt.
+Elmingard. Hold your fire. You do not want to destroy me, because I am not your enemy. Not this time.+
Heading up through the Byzantine stairwells of Elmingard, Culzean and Molotch stopped in their tracks.
‘Ow!’ said Culzean. ‘Did you feel that?’
‘Yes,’ said Molotch. ‘It’s him.’
‘Who?’
‘Who the hell do you think? Who else knows us this well? Who else is so powerful a sender?’
‘Ravenor?’
Molotch nodded. ‘It’s Gideon,’ he said.
‘Ravenor’s alive?’
Molotch looked at him in disdain. ‘Of course he is. Did you ever doubt it? Oh, grow up, Orfeo.’
It was dark and cold and wet out in the raw base of the astronomer’s broken tower. The wind shrieked in through the gappy stones, and there was no shelter from the rain.
Carl Thonius moaned, pulling at the wrist chain Leyla Slade had shackled him with. The chain was anchored to the heaviest tumbled block in the heart of the tower.
He had heard the voice. In his head, he had heard the voice, despite the buzzing and the chuckling.
Gideon’s voice. Gideon was alive.
Thonius felt a sudden, soaring sense of hope. There was regret and shame and pain mixed in with it, but hope was the strongest flavour. He pulled himself upright and looked out into the sheeting rain at the approaching lights. He had strength at last, a force of will. Since that afternoon, in Miserimus, in Formal E of Petropolis, when he’d been stupid enough to look into the flect and let the daemon into his soul in the first place, he hadn’t felt this strong. He could do this. He could beat this. He–
He went blind. No, not blind. Deaf. No, not deaf–
Falling. He was falling. There was a pit filled with the darkest smoke of Old Night, and the blemish of forgotten suns, decaying into oblivion, and an ochone moaning that crackled like an untuned vox.
It was there in the darkness, swooping around him as he fell into the infinite, his mouth yelling but making no sound. He knew this. He knew what this was. It had happened before.
The thing in the darkness swooped closer, pale and cold, yet burning. It was anguished and spavined, old and so, so dreadful. It snorted like a beast in Carl’s head.
Terrible pressure pushed his eyes back into their sockets. Claws rammed up into his nostrils, and dragged out his tongue until it was tight and stretched. Molten lead poured into his ears, suffocating all sounds. He toppled over, pulling the chain tight, wailing in distress. Black, stinking blood suddenly welled out of his mouth, nostrils and tear ducts. Cramps viced and wrenched at his intestines. His legs exhibited a sudden, palsied tremor. One by one, the rings he had collected snapped and pinged off the swelling fingers of his right hand.
Carl Thonius screamed. He decided he wanted to die after all, really, properly die, and soon.
He let the buzzing out. The pain had become too much. It had been inside him for so long, wearing him down, wearing him out. A lifetime, so it seemed. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.
His vision returned. For a bare instant, he saw Slyte, face to face. Thonius’s eyeballs burst and jellied matter dribbled down his cheeks.
The rain pelted down on him. It was the last hour of Carl Thonius’s human existence. It would be the most miserable and ghastly sixty minutes anyone would ever endure.
Nine
They walk out into the storm to greet us. Gunmen, hireling guards, weapons ready. I count twenty of them. I taste the old, high wall behind them, and find it full of automated weaponry. I fear I am too weak for this, too slow. A different me, a younger me, might have done this. Not any more. Not after the door. Words are all I have left.
I hope they will be enough.
Below me, amongst the armed men, I see Culzean and Molotch, coming out through the wall’s gate, their hands raised to fend off my cutter’s downwash.
It’s a bad night. I’ve seldom seen a storm this wild.
‘Set us down, Master Unwerth,’ I say. His flying has been superlative.
‘With directness,’ he replies.
We drop, thrusters gunning. We settle beside the other lander lashed to the rock-lip landing.
‘Thank you, Sholto,’ I say as I move towards the hatch.
The hatch folds open. Rain sprays in. It’s a really bad night. I hover down outside onto the landing and face Culzean and his waiting troops. Molotch himself hangs back, peering at me. This is a strange moment.
+Hello, Zygmunt.+
‘Gideon.’
+There’s no time to fight each other, Zygmunt. That goes for you too, Culzean. Slyte is here.+
‘Here?’ Molotch echoes me. ‘How could he be here?’
‘That’s enough of that,’ Culzean cries out, walking forwards to take control of the standoff. There’s a small, robed woman beside him. She’s a blunter; not a good one, but the best Culzean could afford, and she’s good enough to keep my mind back.
‘Gideon!’ Culzean cries, as if welcoming an old friend. He approaches across the rain-swept rock, arms wide, accompanied by his gunmen and his blunter. ‘Gideon! So wonderful to see you! I thought I’d killed you!’
‘You came close,’ my voxponder crackles back, ‘very close.’
‘No harm done, then,’ he laughs. ‘What brings you here?’
‘As I said quite plainly, Slyte,’ I reply. I see Molotch take a step forwards. In all our encounters up to this point, I’ve never seen him scared. He’s scared now.
‘Slyte?’ chuckles Culzean. ‘Gideon, he’s not here.’
‘Oh, he most surely is,’ I answer. ‘I can taste him. Turn off your blunter and feel the truth.’
‘Turn off my blunter? Seriously, Gideon, you’re an alpha-plus psyker. What makes you think I’d do something as suicidal as that?’
‘Self preservation,’ I reply. ‘My interrogator, Carl Thonius, is hosting Slyte. If he’s not here already, he will be soon. You’re going to die, Culzean, all of you. The warp is not selective in its predations.’
‘Thonius?’ asks Molotch, pushing forward through the gang of gunmen. ‘Your man, Thonius?’
‘Yes, Zygmunt. Carl Thonius. I don’t know how or why, bu
t he was the one infected.’
Molotch approaches my chair. He crouches down in the fierce rain and embraces it. It is a strange gesture for a mortal enemy to make, but it is earnest. He is friendless and he is scared. ‘Gideon,’ he whispers, ‘Culzean can’t be trusted.’
+Oh, and you can be trusted, can you, Zygmunt?+
He leans back and gazes dully at the hull of my chair. ‘Of course I can’t, Gideon, but this is a different scale of trust. I understand what Slyte means, Culzean doesn’t. We need to... we need to be of one mind and one purpose now.’
+I agree.+
‘Oh, good, good.’
‘Orfeo,’ I venture, ‘can we reach some compact here? Against a mutually destructive foe?’
Culzean shrugs. A woman with a hard face and close-cropped hair walks out onto the landing behind him and hands him a control wand.
‘You sent for this, sir?’ she says.
‘Thank you, Ley.’
‘Last chance, Culzean,’ I say. ‘I’m agreeing with the proposal you made to me.’
‘It’s too late,’ he says. ‘As of about half an hour ago, I got everything I ever wanted.’
He clicks the wand and a void shield suddenly covers him, opaque and fizzling in the rain.
‘Kill them,’ he says. ‘Kill them all. Molotch too.’
The sentry guns clatter. The gunmen raise their weapons.
They open fire.
Culzean, shielded, walks calmly back into the rambling hulk of Elmingard.
Ten
The broadside of automatic fire hammered down on the landing area. The gunfire was deafening, and the strobe of muzzle flashes blinding. Ravenor’s cutter took several punishing hits.
‘Get away! Get away, Sholto!’ Ravenor yelled.
The cutter took off and dropped away out of sight over the lip of the cliff, wounded and pluming smoke. As the firestorm began, Ravenor had desperately raised a force wall with the last of his strength. The hard rounds and las fire laid down by Culzean’s men and the wall defences spanged off it. Ravenor projected the psi barrier wide enough to shield Molotch as well as himself. It seemed odd to be expending precious effort trying to protect a man he had spent a large part of his life trying to kill.