‘He?’ said Ravenor via his chair’s voxsponder. ‘Last we met, you called that thing an “it”, my master.’
Eisenhorn shrugged. His augmetics sighed with the gesture. ‘We have reached an understanding. Does that shock you, Gideon?’
‘Nothing shocks me any more,’ said Ravenor.
‘Good,’ said Eisenhorn. He looked at Kara and Kys.
‘We need a moment, Kara. If you and your friend wouldn’t mind.’
‘Patience Kys,’ Kys said, stern and hard.
‘I know who you are,’ said Eisenhorn, and turned away with Ravenor. In a low voice he began to tell his ex-pupil all he knew about the Divine Fratery.
‘Kar… that’s Eisenhorn?’ Kys whispered to Kara as they watched me figures withdraw.
‘Yes,’ replied Kara. She was still rather stunned by the meeting, and Ravenor’s brief waring had left her tired.
‘Everything you and Harlon have said about him… I expected…’
‘What?’
‘Something more intimidating. He’s just a broken old man. And I can’t think why he consorts with a Chaos-filth thing like that host-form.’
Kara shrugged. ‘I don’t know about the daemonhost. He fought it and hated it for so long, and then… I dunno. Maybe he’s become the radical they say. But you’re wrong. About him being a broken old man. Well, he’s broken and he’s old… but I’d rather go up against Ravenor unarmed than ever cross Gregor Eisenhorn.’
MATHUIN’S GRENADE EXPLODED. The aim had been good, but the device had bounced oddly at the last moment and had gone off beneath the striding dreadnought. The machine paced on through the ball of fire, untroubled.
Mathuin dived for cover as the cannons began pumping again.
‘Crap… my turn, I suppose,’ said Nayl. He clicked the setter to four seconds, thumbed the igniter, and ran out into the hallway, bowling the grenade underarm.
Then he threw himself into shelter.
The grenade bounced once, lifted with the spin Nayl had put on it, and smacked bluntly against the front shell of the dreadnought.
It was just rebounding off when it detonated.
The dreadnought vanished in a sheet of flame that boiled down the hallway, compressed and driven by the walls and roof.
As it cleared, Thonius saw the dreadnought. Its front was scorched, but it was far, far from dead.
‘Damn. Just me then,’ he said.
‘YOU’VE DABBLED IN farseeing,’ Eisenhorn said. ‘I know that. Your time spent with the eldar drew you in that direction.’
‘I won’t deny it,’ Ravenor replied.
‘That makes you bright to the Fratery,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘It illuminates you in the interwoven pathways of the future. That’s why they located you in their prospects.’
Ravenor was quiet for a moment. ‘And you’ve come all this way, risked all this danger… to warn me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘Don’t be, Gideon. You’d do the same for me.’
‘I’m sure I would. But what you’re telling me is… crazy.’
Eisenhorn bowed his head and ran the fingers of his right hand up and down the cold grip of his runestaff.
‘Of course it sounds crazy,’ he said. ‘But it’s true. I ask you this… if you don’t believe me, why are these cultist fools trying so hard to prevent our meeting here tonight? They know it’s true. They want you denied of this warning.’
‘That I will trigger this manifestation? This daemon-birth?’
‘You, or one close to you. The trigger point is something that happens on Eustis Majoris.’
Within his force chair, Ravenor was numb. ‘I won’t lie Gregor. My current investigations focus on that world. I was en route to Eustis Majoris when I diverted to meet you here. But I have no knowledge of this Slight. It hasn’t figured in any of my research. I can’t believe that something I will do… or something one of my band will do… will—’ ‘Gideon, I can’t believe my only ally these days is a daemonhost Fate surprises us all.’
‘So what should I do, now you’ve warned me? Abandon my investigations on Eustis? Shy away from that world in the hope that by avoiding it I can also avoid this prophecy?’ Eisenhorn’s face was in shadow. ‘Maybe you should.’ ‘No’ said Ravenor. ‘What I should be is careful. Careful in my own actions, careful to oversee the actions of my team. If there is truth in the Fratery’s prophecy, it is surely bound up in the dire conspiracy I am just now uncovering on Eustis Majoris. But I must prosecute that case. I would be failing in the duty you charged me with if I didn’t. After all, the future is not set. We make it, don’t we?’ ‘I think we do. I hope we do.’
‘Gregor, when have either of us shirked from serving the Throne just because we’re afraid things might go bad? We are inquisitors, we seek. We do not hide.’
Eisenhorn raised his head and let the falling rain drops patter off his upraised palm. ‘Gideon, I came to warn you, nothing else. I never expected you to change your course. Now, at least, you aware of a “might be”. You can be ready for it. That’s all I wanted.’
Far behind them, the sound of rapid cannon-fire and dull explosions echoed through the tower.
‘I think the time for conversation is over,’ said Eisenhorn.
THONIUS’S POCKETS WERE not full of munitions and ordnance like Mathuin’s, but he reached into them anyway. In one, a mini-cogitator, in another, two data-slates. In a third, a clasped leather case in which he had wrapped his tools: files, data-pins, fine brushes, tubes of lubricant, a vial of adhesive, pliers and tweezers. All the bric-a-brac that aided him in conquering and tinkering with cogitators and codifiers. ‘Carl! Get into cover!’ Nayl was yelling. Thonius slid out the vial of adhesive and wiped the drooling nozzle down the side of the grenade ball, waiting a moment for it to get contact-tacky.
Then, taking a deep breath, he leapt out of cover into the face of the dreadnought and lobbed the grenade. It hit the front casing, and adhered there, stuck fast.
Mathuin threw himself out of cover and tackled Thonius, bringing him down behind a pillar. The grenade exploded.
‘You see?’ said Thonius. You see how thinking works?’
But the dreadnought wasn’t finished. The blast had split its belly plates, but it was still moving, still striding still firing. Thonius shrugged. ‘Okay… we’re dead.’ The dreadnought suddenly stopped blasting. It faltered. A chill swept over the chamber.
Ravenor’s chair slid into view, heading towards the killer machine. With the force of his mind, he had momentarily jammed its weapons.
Sudden frost coated the walls, Ravenor’s chair and the dreadnought. The machine tried to move. Cycling mechanisms shuddered as it attempted to clear its guns.
A tall figure strode past Ravenor, heading for the dreadnought. It held a runestaff in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Its robes fluttered out behind it stiff with ice. ‘Holy Terra!’ exclaimed Nayl. ‘Eisenhorn?’ A second before Ravenor’s mental grip failed, a second before the cannons resumed their murderous work, Eisenhorn swung the sword – Barbarisater – and cleft the dreadnought in two. The sword-blade ripped along the fissure Thonius’s cunning grenade had put in it.
Eisenhorn turned aside and shielded his face as the dreadnought combusted.
He looked back at them all, terrible and majestic, back-lit by flames. ‘Shall we?’ he said.
WITH THEIR DREADNOUGHT gone, the remainder of the Fratery force fled. The warband and the two inquisitors slaughtered many as they made their escape into the storm.
Tugging one of her kineblades out of a body with her mind, Kys watched Eisenhorn ripping his way through the faltering hostiles around them.
‘Now I see what you mean,’ she said to Kara Swole.
‘I’M DONE HERE,’ Gregor Eisenhorn said. He looked back across the bridge span to the tower. Screamlight was still dancing around the summit. ‘Cherubael needs my help now. I should go and see how he’s doing.’
‘I wil
l be vigilant,’ Ravenor said.
Eisenhorn knelt and pressed his gnarled hands flat against the side of the chair.
‘The Emperor go with you. I’ve said my piece. It’s up to you now, Gideon.’
Eisenhorn rose and looked at the others. ‘Mamzel Kys. Interrogator. Mr Mathuin. A pleasure meeting you.’ He nodded to each of them. ‘Kara?’
She smiled. ‘Gregor.’
‘Never a hardship seeing you. Look after Gideon for me.’
‘I will.’
Eisenhorn looked at Harlon Nayl and held out a hand. Nayl clasped it with both of his.
‘Harlon. Like old times.’
‘Emperor protect you, Gregor.’
‘I hope so,’ Eisenhorn said, and walked away, back across the bridge span towards the tower where the screamlight still flashed and sparked. They knew they would not see him again. Unless the future was not as set as it seemed.
MALINTER FELL. AWAY below them, vast and silent. Nayl piloted the transport up into low orbit flashing out signals to their ship.
Once the nav was set and automatics had taken over, he turned his chair on its pivot and looked at Ravenor.
‘He wasn’t the same,’ he said.
+How do you mean?+
‘He seemed so sane I thought he was mad.’
+Yes. I thought that too. It’s hard to know whether I should believe him.+
‘About what?’
+About the dangers ahead, Harlon. The risks we may take.+
‘So… what do we do?’
+We carry on. We do our best. We serve the Emperor of Mankind. If what Gregor said comes to pass, we deal with it. Unless you have a better idea.’
‘Not a one,’ replied Nayl, turning back to study the controls.
+Good.+ sent Ravenor, and wheeled his chair around, returning to the cabin space behind where the others were gathered.
Nayl sighed and looked ahead at the turning starfields.
The future lay ahead, its back to them, saying nothing.
RAVENOR RETURNED
‘Words not deeds’
— Dedication over the main entrance of the Administry Tower, Formal A, Petropolis.
‘In the prosecution of his work, an agent of the Holy Inquisition may display a badge of office, which shall be a rosette bearing a crimson sigil. This may be further inscribed with the mark of his affiliated ordo or the code of his issuing officio planetia. It is his symbol of authority, stark and unequivocal.
‘Under certain circumstances, an agent of the Holy Inquisition may elect instead to carry the mark of Special Condition, which shall be a rosette bearing an azure sigil. This denotes the bearer to be operating alone, beyond the resource or support of any ordo: rogue, driven to independence by extremis, who will act with singular devotion, and recognise no law or master save the God-Emperor himself.’
— from the Inquisition’s Rubric of Protocol.
THEN
Just after Firetide, Bonner’s Reach, Lucky Space, 402.M41
‘YOU.’
The voice was so low, so very, very deep, the single word resounded like a seismic rumble. A curious hush fell across the vast free trade salon. People began to look. Some picked up their drinks and moved away. They knew what this was.
The implanted eyes of all the Vigilants present also turned to stare at the confrontation, green and cold. But they would not intervene. Not unless the Code of the Reach was broken.
‘You,’ the voice repeated.
To his credit, the man in the lizard-skin coat had not turned around. He was sitting at one of the high tables, conducting some business with a pair of far traders. The traders both looked up nervously at the figure standing behind the man in the lizard-skin coat.
‘I… I think you’re being addressed,’ one of them muttered.
‘I’ve no business with anyone here except you two gentlemen,’ the man in the lizard-skin coat said loudly. He picked up one of the napkins on which the traders had just been scribbling cost estimates. ‘Now this figure here seems very high—’
The far traders pushed back their chairs and stood up. ‘Our business is done,’ one of them said stiffly. ‘We don’t want to get involved in… whatever this is.’
The man in the lizard-skin coat tutted and got to his feet. ‘Sit down,’ he told the traders. ‘Order another flask of amasec from the tenders on my account. I’ll just deal with this and we can resume.’
He turned around. Slowly, he lifted his gaze until he was looking up at the face of the man who had interrupted his meeting.
Lucius Worna had been in the bounty game for fifteen decades, and every second of those savage years showed in his face. His head, shaved apart from a bleached stripe, was one big scar. Livid canyons split through his lips and eyebrows, and formed white ridges on his cheeks and jawline. His ears and nose were just eroded stubs of gristle. The blemish of old wounds overlayed one another, scar tissue upon scar tissue. The carapace armour he wore had been polished until it shone like mother-of-pearl. Even without its plated bulk, he would have been a big man.
‘I have a warrant,’ Lucius Worna declared.
‘You must be very pleased,’ the man in the lizard-skin coat said.
‘For you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ the man in the lizard-skin coat said, and began to turn away again.
Lucius Worna raised his left paw and displayed the warrant slate. The hololithic image of a man’s head appeared in front of it and gently revolved.
‘Armand Wessaen. Two hundred seventy-eight counts, including fraud, malpractice, embezzlement, illegal trading, mutilation and mass murder.’
The man in the lizard-skin coat pointed one lean, well-manicured finger at the slate’s image. ‘If you think that looks remotely like me, you’re not very good at your job.’
Behind him, the far traders chuckled. ‘Get on your way, bounty,’ one of them said as his confidence returned. ‘Any fool can see that’s not our friend here.’
Lucius Worna kept staring at the man in the lizard-skin coat. ‘This face is Wessaen’s birth-face. He has changed it many times, in order to evade the authorities. He escaped death row incarceration on Hesperus and absconded from that planet by smuggling himself offworld a piece at a time.’
‘I think you’ve had too much to drink,’ one of the traders laughed.
‘I don’t really care what you think,’ replied Worna. ‘I know what I know. Armand Wessaen had himself physically disassembled by a black market surgeon on Hesperus. His component parts – hands, eyes, limbs, organs – were grafted onto couriers, hired mules, who conveyed them off planet. Wessaen himself, wearing a body made up of all the transplants removed from said mules, followed them. He later slaughtered the mules instead of paying them what he’d promised, and harvested his component parts back, reassembling himself. All except… the face. There’s one mule still to find, isn’t there, Wessaen? That’s why you’re trying to arrange passage to Sarum.’
Worna glanced sideways at the far traders. ‘That’s what’s he’s after, isn’t it? Passage to Sarum?’
The traders looked at each other. One nodded, slowly.
This really is nonsense,’ the man in the lizard-skin coat smirked. ‘My name is Dryn Degemyni, and I’m a legitimate businessman. Your suggestion is… is little short of farce. I cut myself apart, did I? Posted myself offworld, bit by bit, attached to others, and now I’m sewn back together?’ He laughed. Some onlookers sniggered too.
‘Not sewn. Surgically rebonded. A process paid for by the four hundred thousand crowns you embezzled from the Imperial Guard Veterans’ Association on Hesperus while you were acting as their treasurer. They sponsored this bounty, as did the families of the mules you used and killed.’
‘You’re just annoying me now,’ said the man in the lizard-skin coat. ‘Go away.’
Lucius Worna adjusted the setting of the warrant slate. The headshot changed. ‘Just the face left. And this is the face of the mule you used to smuggle your features out.’ r />
The far traders suddenly began to back away. The hololithic image now plainly showed a perfect match for the face of the man in the lizard-skin coat.
The man sighed sadly, as if all the air had drained out of him, and bowed his head.
‘Armand Wessaen,’ Worna intoned. ‘I have a warrant for your—’
The man in the lizard-skin coat flicked out his right arm and stabbed the bounty hunter in the face. Lucius Worna recoiled slightly and dropped the warrant slate. The flesh of his right cheek was sliced open to the bone. There was blood everywhere.
A shocked murmur ran through the onlookers. No one quite understood what had just happened. They’d barely seen the man in the lizard-skin coat move, let alone produce a weapon.
With a resigned shrug, ignoring the terrible wound, Lucius Worna lunged at his quarry.
Wessaen darted aside, easily avoiding his big, clumsy opponent. He moved like quicksilver, and as he ducked under Worna’s reaching arms, he lashed out with a sideways kick.
This should have been as successful as kicking a Baneblade. Wessaen was slender and unarmoured. It seemed insanity for him to try and take on a giant in a suit of powered battle plate in close combat.
But the kick connected, and Lucius Worna was flung sideways, thrown by a force even his suit’s inertial dampers couldn’t deal with. He crashed into the high table, knocking over the drinks and two of the chairs. Then the man in the lizard-skin coat was on his back, right hand raised to strike at the nape of Worna’s neck.
Just for an instant, the onlookers glimpsed that hand and understood. It was folded open, like the petals of a flower, hinged apart between the middle and ring fingers. A double-edged blade poked from the aperture. A graft weapon. An implant. The hideously folded fingers seemed to form a hilt for the blade.
Worna reached around, grabbed the shoulder of the lizard-skin coat, and flung the man over his head.
The man somersaulted in mid-air, controlled his fall, and bounced feet first off the far end of the high table with enough force to slam the table’s opposite edge up into Worna’s chin. Worna staggered back. Wessaen landed on the salon floor and renewed his attack.