‘I… I don’t know,’ Mathuin said. Something was messing with his inner ear and his kinaesthetic sense, and from the look on Preest’s face, she felt it too. Suddenly, he could smell flowers.
‘Lavender!’ she cried.
Then salt. Then charcoal. Then stagnant water. Then blood.
‘Throne!’ Preest said, covering her nose and coughing. A huge raking split appeared across the length of the deck plating, showering metal shards in all directions.
‘Preest… mistress…’ Mathuin said. ‘You have to concentrate. Shut all this out. Get the system working again.’
She looked at him. ‘But—’
‘Do it!’
She bent down and began working the keyboard. A grazing dent the size of a demipach cratered the far wall of the vault.
‘Ignore all this! Do it!’ Mathuin cried.
Then a las-round missed Mathuin’s head by a few centimetres. More followed.
The hunters had found them.
FOUR
‘SKOH! REPORT YOUR damn status now! My Navigator reads your ship as lousy with psi-force!’
Skoh pressed the ‘live’ stud on the vox console. ‘Stand by, Thekla. We have a few problems, but we’re dealing.’
‘I want that ship burning, Skoh!’ Thekla’s voxed voice crackled. ‘Burning and gone, with all its crew! That was the whole point of this protracted exercise!’
‘Tell him to shut up,’ Madsen said.
Skoh breathed deeply. ‘We’re getting there, Thekla. A few unforeseen set-backs. Please, stand by.’
He cut the channel.
‘Well? This is your plan, Mamzel Madsen. Impress me.’
Madsen was with Ahenobarb, bent over Kinsky’s body. The psyker was jerking and thrashing in his stupor.
‘Gods!’ Ahenobarb said. Ugly red weals like a bite mark had just appeared on Kinsky’s throat. Bright arterial blood began to leak out of the psyker’s lips. His jaw clenched.
‘Rav… en… or…’ he gurgled.
‘Damnation,’ said Madsen.
‘Mamzel,’ Skoh said, ‘it appears this oh-so-perfectly wrought trap of yours is coming apart at the seams.’
‘I—’ Madsen began.
‘Shhh!’ Skoh interrupted. He raised a hand and listened to the voices of his men coming over his microbead earplug. Then he turned and looked at her. ‘I think you should sort things.’
‘What? Kinsky is—’
Skoh slid his long-las out of the leather boot on his back and armed it. He didn’t aim it at her, but the threat was very clear. ‘I’m taking charge, Madsen. You’ve ballsed it up this far. My men report they have the shipmistress and one other cornered at the far stern. Get down there. That’s clearly the location of her back-up. Get down there and make things good so we can resume control, dump this hulk into the star and be gone.’
Madsen drew her autosnub and glanced at Ahenobarb. ‘Eight,’ she said. ‘You’re with me, Ahenobarb.’
‘I think that’s best,’ Skoh replied.
Madsen and the giant hurried away out of the bridge hatch.
LAS-BOLTS AND SOLID slugs were impacting all around them. Preest and Mathuin had to stay low behind the console, parts of which were shattering off under the gunfire. There were at least five of them out there, Mathuin reckoned. Three on the deck, two on the gantries. They had them pinned. He couldn’t raise his head enough to squeeze off a shot, let alone allow Preest to complete her work. They were just waiting to die.
KARA SWITCHED NEATLY out of the doorway and rattled fire from both guns. This time she aced. One of the hunters, approaching over-confident, went over.
But she was down to her last two clips. She looked across at Ravenor’s chair. Battered, holed, it was silent, as if it was empty.
I BECAME A CYCLONE, sweeping away the shoals of his mind-darts like leaves. Kinsky dropped low beneath my storm-force bow-wave and lunged upwards with a mental lance. I changed into a glittering avalanche that fell on him and snapped the lance, but Kinsky slid away like oil and drove the broken-off spearhead into my side. Psi-energy drizzled out, spattering like blood. I shook off the pain, turned and exhaled a gout of pyrokinetic flames that ignited Kinsky like an oily slick.
Flames roared up, pink-hot, sour, fierce. I heard him scream. For a second, I believed I had beaten him.
But then he rose up out of the flames. He wore his human form for a second, laughing at me, arms wide, his hateful eyes becoming little secondary mouths that laughed along. The fire slid off him harmlessly.
So be it. The fight was not over. We threw mind-traps at each other, traps of increasing complexity and ingenuity; bright, intricate things that snapped open, bit shut, became spiked, became corrosive. He and I brushed them aside, and the blizzards of thought daggers we launched once the traps had failed. Then we closed again, our non-corporeal forms shifting and changing rapidly as we tried to out-think one another and prepare for the other’s next ploy. Undecided, our ectoplasmic shapes bent and twisted and malformed, rupturing like the skin on boiling milk, puffing out like cysts, spurting like soft lava.
Kinsky suddenly became a bruised, squid-like form that lashed at me with twenty metre-long tentacles. I had already raised overlapping shields of mind-plating, but they buckled under the blows, so I slid the plates apart and then closed them like a vice on the tentacles when they whipped in again. Several snapped. Dark clouds of inky pain and anger squirted from the severed ends. While he was still reeling, I rolled my non-corporeal form into a porcupine ball and launched a shower of quill-shots at Kinsky, pinning the Ministry agent’s mind against the sliding fabric of space-time.
Howling, Kinsky tore free. Reality was so badly damaged where I had pinned him, the noxious, infernal light of the warp shone through the punctures.
Kinsky pulsed, reforming. For a moment, he was humanoid shape again, then that split apart as something vast grew up out of it. A thing of smoke and darkness, beaked, eyeless, a primordial ravager from ancient myth.
Nothing seemed to stop him. He was a monstrously powerful psyker. I had the edge in terms of training and practice, and this gave me real finesse. But I was nothing like as powerful as Kinsky’s crude, unstructured mind. I would not lose to him. I refused to be bested by such a feral mind.
But steadily, he drove me back across the enginarium.
THE HINTERLIGHT SHUDDERED violently. On the bridge, Skoh saw hazard alerts begin to light up all the station displays.
He looked at the nearest one as another thump shook the deck. What was that? Were they being fired on?
The scope said yes. Two hits, amidships. Starboard hangar voided, hull damage. Fire in the real-space drive chambers. Locked open doors had slammed automatically as the emergency safety systems had cut in.
Astounded, Skoh activated the main-beam vox. ‘Thekla? What the hell are you doing?’
‘Firing on you, of course,’ the vox gurgled. ‘I’m tired of waiting, and I’m worried that inquisitor bastard has got loose.’
‘Thekla!’ Skoh snarled. ‘Cease fire!’
The Hinterlight bucked again. ‘Can’t do that, Feaver. Sorry. I have to make sure that ship and its crew are dead, and if you won’t be a sport and dive it into the star for me, what can I do? Nothing personal.’
Another brutal shudder. Klaxons sounded. Skoh could smell smoke now.
‘You bastard, Thekla,’ he said.
‘Whatever. I recommend you get off that death trap, Feaver, my old friend. I’ll be waiting to pick you up. But hurry… I intend to make short work of that ship.’
The vox went dead. As if to prove the shipmaster’s point, the Hinterlight shook again. Skoh picked up his long-las and headed for the exit. There was an escape module compartment close by, at the end of the midships companionway. He was halfway down it, when Harlon Nayl came through the end hatch.
They saw each other at once. Both started to fire and move simultaneously. Firing his long-las from the hip, Skoh hurled himself to his right towards the cover of a b
ulkhead. Nayl’s bolt pistol came up blasting. He threw himself into an almost full-length dive towards a side hatchway.
The two powerful weapons blazed at each other up and down the companionway, raising a veil of smoke and riddling the wall-plating with dents and holes. Neither man had much in the way of cover. Nayl’s bolts chipped and whined against the thick bulkhead concealing Skoh. The hunter’s las-shots fireballed and deflected off the hatch-housing where Nayl was tucked in.
Stalemate… at least until one of them ran out of ammunition. Skoh didn’t believe they had that long anyway. Thekla’s batteries would have the Hinterlight dead in just another few minutes.
He had a better idea. Ignoring the bolt rounds slamming against the bulkhead, he popped the powerclip out of his rifle, and replaced it with another from his belt. Special load, hot-shot, useful for when big game got really big.
Under these circumstances, at this range, the round would go right through the hatch-housing. And the idiot standing behind it.
AGAINST THE DAZZLING backdrop of the Firetide storm, the Oktober Country closed in, its weapon turrets flashing every few seconds. Neither ship was a military class vessel, and neither possessed the sort of Fleet-grade weaponry that could annihilate a rival instantly. But like most rogue traders, the Oktober Country had enough firepower to take care of itself. Its sustained bombardment would eventually blow Preest’s ship apart.
Drifting, helpless, shieldless, the Hinterlight soaked the damage up. Sections of plating blew out like foil. Scabbed patches of hull crackled with shorting power sources or glowed red-hot.
Inside, significant chunks of the ship were obliterated, holed to space. Others were auto-sealed, ablaze.
Madsen was still heading for the stern.
‘We should just… just take that bulk lifter and go,’ Ahenobarb ventured.
‘Go where?’ Madsen replied. ‘That’s hardly an option. God-Emperor, I can’t believe Thekla could be this insane!’
‘What do we do, then?’ urged Ahenobarb.
‘Carry on. We deal with Preest, shut down her tinkering, then we’ve got control back. I can raise the shields. Stop that madman from blowing us apart.’
Ahenobarb looked doubtful, but he was used to following her orders.
The deck shuddered under another impact. ‘Come on!’ Madsen said.
She had been intending to short-cut down through the real-space drive chambers, cutting a good five minutes off the journey, but the doors to the drive room were sealed.
‘That chamber is blown out!’ Ahenobarb moaned, and started to look for an alternate route.
Madsen looked at the doorpanel display. ‘No, there’s still pressure. But there is fire. It’s worth it.’
She took a multikey out of her hip-pocket, pressed it to the hatch control and overrode the lock. The hatch swung open. Heat and scorching smoke swept out. Fires were blazing through the long, double-storey drive rooms, and alarms were singing all over the place. Coughing, Madsen led the way out along the main gantry walk, ignoring the heat from below.
KYS AND ZAEL had felt the first brutal impact of Thekla’s attack, and quickly found themselves driven back through the drive chambers by the inferno kicked off by a damaged power-capacitor. Attempting to exit, they’d discovered the section hatches had locked automatically.
They retraced their steps, desperate to find a hatch that would open to them. It was getting hard to see, to breathe. They clambered their way up the hot metal of one of the gantry ladders to escape a new wall of flames that had sprung up, but now fires were licking into the upper levels of the chamber too.
‘Back! Back!’ Kys screamed at Zael. ‘We have to go back and—’
‘Behind you!’ Zael yelled suddenly.
Ahenobarb appeared from nowhere, out of the smoke. He swung at her. Kys tried to draw her pistol, but his fist hit too hard, too soon. She went down on the gantry mesh, her gun falling away down into the flames.
Ahenobarb bent down to pick her up. She only had her boline left. She drew it and stabbed it into Ahenobarb’s calf.
He bleated with pain. Tearing out of his hands, Kys punched the blade in under his nose.
Ahenobarb fell backwards, over the rail, into the boiling fire beneath them.
A bullet hit Kys in the left shoulder and spun her back down onto the gantry decking again. Starkly lit by the flamelight, Madsen advanced towards her, gun raised. A section of the gantry behind Madsen folded and toppled away into the inferno.
‘I told you what I’d do if I saw you again,’ Kys said, struggling up to meet her.
‘What? Kill me?’ Madsen answered. She sneered and raised her auto.
Kys turned. She had no weapon. There was a bloody hole in her left shoulder.
Madsen began to fire.
Kys flipped the fish scales off her collar stud telekinetically… one, two, three…
Spinning, whirring, they sliced into Madsen’s windpipe.
Limbs flailing, weapon firing, Madsen fell backwards off the broken gantry and plunged away into the firestorm.
‘Come on,’ Kys yelled, staggering back to Zael. ‘Come on!’ They ran as the drive room began to collapse around them.
THE BRIDGE WAS empty. Kinsky’s body lay in the second helm station. Halstrom lay in the command throne. The display screens and hololiths showed how the Oktober Country’s guns were punishing the Hinterlight.
Kinsky twitched in his coma. A smile twitched on his lips. It had been a hard fight, certainly the hardest psi-duel he’d ever fought in his life. He had to give Ravenor that much. But it was at an end now. Far away in enginarium basic, Ravenor was down, dazed, pinned, and Kinsky’s non-corporeal jaws were closing around the inquisitor’s throat. As a final, artistic flourish, Kinsky’s mind-form sprouted venomous teeth to deliver the coup.
With a ghastly intake of air, Wystan Frauka sat up. A bubble of blood bulged at his nostril and popped.
Slowly, very slowly, he pulled himself upright and bent over Kinsky.
‘Hey,’ he said. He slapped Kinsky’s cheek. ‘Hey!’
Swaying back, Frauka produced his lho-stick carton and his lighter. He stuck a stick in his mouth and lit it. When he exhaled, smoke puffed out of the hole in his chest too.
‘Frig! These things’ll kill you,’ he said, to no one in particular. Then he leaned over.
‘Hey,’ he said again, kicking at Kinsky’s leg. Kinsky remained still.
Frauka reached up and deactivated his limiter.
Suddenly, shockingly, sucked back into his own skull, Kinsky thrashed and woke up. Feebly, he reached out, and looked up at Frauka’s face.
Frauka took the stick out of his mouth, exhaled, put it back between his lips, and lent down. He took Kinsky’s skull in his hands and wrenched it around. Kinsky’s neck snapped with a pop.
‘And there you go,’ Frauka said. He switched his limiter back on, took the lho-stick out of his mouth, and fell over.
FIVE
SUDDENLY KINSKY WAS gone. His psi-form melted, the ectoplasmic structure of it thawing away like snow. He was dead. I was in no doubt about that, though I had no idea how.
My mind was lacerated, damaged from the fight, but I knew 1 could not submit to unconsciousness yet. I could sense the terrible damage being inflicted on the defenceless ship.
I looked down at enginarium basic around me. Mathuin and Preest were still pinned down behind the stack console by Skoh’s hunters. I stabbed out, and each hunter was felled by a psychic-dagger. Dead or unconscious – I didn’t much care which – they dropped where they were.
+Cynia!+
‘G-Gideon?’
+Get up! You’re clear! There’s no time! Get up and override Madsen’s codes… Quickly, woman!+
She and Mathuin rose. She started working at the console. Struck again, the ship rolled badly.
‘What the bloody hell is happening to my darling?’ Preest wailed.
+Just override the codes! We need to get the shields raised!+
She
did as she was told. But even if she was successful, there needed to be someone on the bridge to get the shields up.
I soared out of enginarium basic and hurtled up through the decks, through bulkheads, through cabins open to hard vacuum, through chambers gutted by fire.
I swept through the light cargo holds, burning out the minds of the hunters about to overwhelm dear Kara as I passed.
+Get my chair to the bridge!+ I left the command ringing in her head as I flew on.
Up through spinal, through the lateral halls, along the midships companion way. There was Nayl. Without even pausing, I slammed Feaver Skoh into the wall as I went by. He fell heavily, unconscious.
I entered the bridge. It was in uproar – klaxons, alarms, red hazard lights and runes on almost every display. There was Kinsky, dead in one seat, Wystan Frauka sprawled across him, dead or dying. In the command throne, Halstrom. He looked dead too.
His breathing was shallow. His mind had been badly abused.
+Halstrom! Halstrom!+
He twitched, but he did not wake.
I had no other option. I had to ware him.
He cried out as I went in, waking with the shock. Using his expertise, I studied the main console. Still locked out. The auspex showed the Oktober Country all but alongside, firing still.
With Halstrom’s fingers, I opened the intercom.
‘Preest! Are you done yet?’ My words sounded strange in Halstrom’s voice.
‘Nearly, she says,’ Mathuin answered. A pause. ‘Try it now.’
Nothing.
‘Correction,’ Mathuin added. ‘Try it now.’
Primary control had just been restored. I hit a series of controls and raised the shields.
Not all ignited. Thekla’s attack had already vaporised some shield nodes and power feeds, and those that did come on were weak. Still, the vibration from the bombardment abated slightly.
I tried to probe Halstrom’s beaten mind, to work out what he would do.
The shields, like most of the ship’s systems, derived their power from the ship’s primary reactor, which drove the real-space drives. But the fire in the real-space chambers had cut that back by about seventy-five per cent, taking the Hinterlight’s motive power away with it. Instead, I woke up the secondary reactor, whose only function was to power the currently deactivated warp drive. I transferred that power into the primaries and immediately boosted their shields by forty per cent. It was unorthodox practice, risky too, but an old and very workable Fleet captain’s trick, courtesy of Halstrom’s experience.