Ascension, page 10
No one spoke for a moment.
Lees shook her head. ‘So, as well as ruining our chances of plundering the Blackstone, the heretics have polluted the place and filled it with…’ She grimaced. ‘With whatever that thing is.’
Daedalosus was shocked that no one seemed to be making the small intellectual leap required to understand what he was telling them. Yet again, only the weaponsmith seemed to grasp what he was saying. It slumped against the frame of the hagioscope and closed its eyes, clearly moved. It swung down from the ledge and ambled back to its chair, where it picked up its wine, using its foot again, and began drinking in earnest.
‘The heretics have not polluted the Blackstone Fortress,’ explained Daedalosus. ‘They are transforming it. They have created a dimensional shift. They are giving mobility and sentience to a weapon the size of a planet.’ He tapped the canister containing the thrashing limbs, causing them to flail even more violently against the glass. ‘Imagine this, as large as a planet, more heavily armed than the Imperial Navy’s largest capital ships, and capable of warp travel. Imagine what that would mean for this system, and then every other system it reaches.’
Lees paled and flopped into her chair. She did not speak, but Daedalosus could see that she finally understood. Tukh and the other captains looked ashen as they returned slowly to their seats.
Mepsus tapped the cog-shaped blade at the head of his staff and whispered a prayer.
Lees was still staring at the pulsing shape in the canister. She spoke more quietly than before. ‘Can this polarity be switched back?’
‘Possibly,’ replied Daedalosus. ‘The heretics are mostly working in the vaults that lie nearest the surface of the fortress. By the use of Mepsus’ servitor-drones I was able to record pict footage of their progress. In those outlying regions they have built perverted strongholds. However, if another empyric presence, even greater than that of the heretic shrines, were to reach the core of the fortress, it might be able to switch the polarity into a different direction.’
Tukh sat up in his chair and glanced around the room. ‘So, that’s why you wanted to talk to us? To tell us that we need to get to the core of the Blackstone?’
‘No,’ said Mepsus, frowning. ‘Are you wilfully misunderstanding him? He has done everything he can to keep his explanation simple.’
‘I will try to make my meaning less ambiguous,’ said Daedalosus, noticing the angry gleam in Tukh’s eyes. ‘The fortress has already been corrupted beyond recognition. It is under the control of heretics who are antipathetic to everything we hold dear. It is also transforming into a weapon of such power that it will soon be able to annihilate anything the Imperial Navy could deploy against it. Theoretically, the situation could be changed, but we have no method of effecting such change, even if it were possible to reach the core of the fortress, which it is not.’
Tukh threw his hands up in the air and was about to say something, but Lees silenced him with a warning glare.
Daedalosus continued quickly. ‘We have a very small window of opportunity to leave Precipice, pass through the Oort cloud that surrounds the Blackstone and take a communiqué to the nearest Imperial outpost. If we fail to send word of this crisis to the wider Imperium, I theorise that millions, if not billions of lives will be at risk and, if the heretics are able to steer the Blackstone Fortress, the sacred worlds of the Sol System may even be in danger.’
Daedalosus prided himself on logical, methodical thought processes, but as he spoke he found himself picturing the shipyards of Mars consumed by the madness in the jar. ‘We must convince everyone on Precipice to make the attempt. We must strike out for the Oort cloud and attempt to reach the wider galaxy with news of what is happening here. If we do not, the entire Imperium of Man may be at risk.’
‘But we’re trapped,’ said Lees. ‘By the Blackstone’s guns. They would destroy every void ship that attempted to breach the Oort cloud.’
‘Not every ship,’ replied Mepsus.
Daedalosus nodded. ‘If we convinced every able-bodied captain, if we launched every intact ship from the mooring spars, there would be hundreds of void ships leaving Precipice simultaneously. You have seen the Blackstone’s armaments. They are still slow-moving and sporadic. Whatever the heretics are doing, their work is not yet complete.’
Lees nodded. ‘So, if we all launched at the same time, some of us would get through.’
Tukh raised an eyebrow. ‘Might get through.’
‘Ships would make it,’ insisted Daedalosus. ‘I have monitored the rates of fire and accuracy. I calculate that at least ten per cent of the ships that launched would reach the Oort cloud.’
‘Ten per cent?’ muttered one of the other captains, a low-browed brute called Jettura. He was wearing chipped, sky-blue flak armour that rattled as he leant forward in his seat. ‘Are you insane? Ten per cent? And the rest of us dead? And that’s just to reach the Oort cloud. We all know how hard the going gets from there. Navigating all that drifting scrap is likely to destroy the few ships that make it that far.’
‘Not true,’ replied Daedalosus. ‘By my estimates, any ship that is so skilfully piloted as to reach the Oort cloud will have a fifty per cent chance of making it through to the larger ships waiting beyond the cloud. So, of the ten per cent that reach the Oort cloud, a remaining five per cent should survive to alert the Imperial Fleet.’
His guests stared at him.
‘Life is a series of calculated risks,’ said Mepsus, tapping his staff on the floor. ‘The risks of staying here are plain enough. We would watch from afar as the fortress becomes more corrupted and more heavily armed until it eventually opens fire on Precipice itself. I am amazed that it has not done so already. The risks of landing on the fortress are equally clear – none of the recent expeditions have made it back alive, swamped by the vast numbers of heretics that now control the fortress’ outlying chambers. The risks of fleeing are great but they are measurable and they serve a purpose.’
No one spoke. The ape looked agitated, scratching at its long hair and shifting in its seat. The others looked dazed by what they had heard, staring into the middle distance.
Daedalosus had hoped for a more enthusiastic response. He was about to repeat the percentages when the corrupted shard of noctilith shook with such violence that the canister clicked out of its base. It rolled across his workbench before he managed to grab it.
Everyone in the other chamber backed away. The canister rattled in his grip and a thin whistling sound filled the air.
‘Is that an alarm?’ cried Tukh, putting his hand on the autopistol at his belt.
‘No,’ replied Mepsus, scuttling across the room on his umbrella of limbs and entering the laboratorium, locking the door behind him. ‘Magos?’ he said. ‘Do you need help?’
Daedalosus shook his head, but the canister was shaking in his grip with increasing violence, clanging against the surface of the metal table. ‘The armourglass will hold,’ he said, but then as the whistling grew louder the glass began to slump under his grip, as though melting.
‘Throne!’ cried Tukh, staggering away from the hagioscope with his hands over his ears. ‘Can you shut that off?’ The others all mimicked Tukh’s gesture, clamping their hands over their ears and trying to block out the din.
Daedalosus’ cochleas had been replaced decades ago by superior audio processors and he dampened the sound with a thought. He was about to tell his guests to be calm when the warp entity slithered through his fingers, hurtled across the room and latched around Mepsus’ throat.
Mepsus cursed as blood sprayed from beneath his jaw, washing over the armourglass of the hagioscope. Daedalosus leapt to a shelf and grabbed a gamma pistol, pointing it at Mepsus. The old man collapsed against the bulkhead and his silver tendrils thrashed at the thing attached to his neck.
Daedalosus calculated the likely consequences of firing. The gamma pistol was powerful enough to ionise not just the warp-thing, but also Mepsus and most of the bulkhead.
Mepsus cursed again and arched his back as more blood filled the air, but the other noise drowned him out, growing in volume. It sounded like a knife scraping on porcelain.
‘For Throne’s sake!’ cried Lees, drawing a laspistol. ‘Do something!’ Despite her outrage, she was no more able to target the thing than Daedalosus.
Daedalosus processed Mepsus’ chances of survival and calculated that they were nil. A warp entity had corrupted his flesh. Even if he survived the initial trauma, Daedalosus would be forced to execute him for fear of contaminating the rest of Precipice. However, if he fired now, he would tear a hole in the ship and possibly damage it beyond repair, which would lower the chances of his plan succeeding.
Before anyone could decide how to act, Mepsus slumped to the floor, almost decapitated by the frenzied attack. The squid-like shape leapt from his corpse and slapped across the workbench, rushing at Daedalosus.
He fired his gamma pistol, tore a hole in the chamber wall, and missed the warp creature. He raised his arms to defend himself.
The screeching ceased.
Daedalosus lowered his arms and looked around in confusion. The warp creature was gone, and there was pile of ash on the workbench. He looked over at Lees, but she looked just as confused and her pistol had not been fired. Then Daedalosus noticed that the weaponsmith had plucked one of the small devices from its scruffy mane and was studying it intently. The ape noticed Daedalosus looking and nodded, then hid the thing away again, before picking up the cup of wine and seeming to lose interest in the situation.
Daedalosus backed away from the pile of ash and rushed over to Mepsus. He was dead, and the wound under his chin was already festering, turning black and sprouting growths that looked like strands of grey-black ore.
He stepped back and fired the gamma pistol again, turning Mepsus’ upper half into ash.
Daedalosus stood for a moment, pistol still trained on the remains, thinking of all the wisdom that had just been lost. He recited the lacus-conputant mantra again to steady his breathing. Then he looked through the armourglass at the captains. Their expressions were even bleaker than before, but Lees and Tukh glanced at each other and nodded.
‘Let’s do it.’
The weaponsmith made a low grumbling sound, then downed its wine with a hungry gulp.
11
Quintus touched the swelling at his wrist. The bone was hidden at the moment, sunk back down beneath his artery, but he could feel it, an alien presence in his body, waiting for the Archivist to trigger it. It was horrific. But how could he do what the alien asked? Quintus was a fraud but he was not a killer. Despite everything he had been through, murder was the one low he had always sworn he would not sink to. He thought of the razor in Draik’s cabin, then shuddered and drove it from his mind.
Quintus’ cabin was small, but as beautifully appointed as the rest of the Vanguard. He was strapped into a chair near his bed, listening to the ship groan and scream as it hurtled towards the Blackstone. He had monitored the first part of the journey through a display screen on the wall, but watching the loops and rolls only made him feel sick so he snapped the device off and sat with his eyes closed, clinging to the arms of his chair and whispering prayers to Holy Terra.
Then he felt an old, familiar feeling. The friend who had stayed with him through everything. It was a truculent defiance in the pit of his stomach. He would survive this. He would not let the galaxy grind him down. He would find a way.
Quintus should have died years ago. His life had been a self-made miracle. He had no idea of his parentage, or even his real name; everything about him was an invention. His earliest memories were of escaping a hive world with other, equally skeletal children, leading them into the abandoned companionways of a vast macro transport. It was then that he realised even a nobody like him could still be someone of worth. He had lived like a rat, crawling through miles of empty shadows, competing with grey-skinned wretches over scraps, but he was determined not to sink to the brutality of his peers.
And that determination had never left him. He clung to life until the day he was lucky enough to find a uniform and the courage to pass himself off as part of the ship’s military detail. Since then he had impersonated everything from medicae staff to air support ground crew. He had a mind that could retain facts with peculiar ease, and a gift for forgery and effrontery that let him talk his way into almost any role he liked. Even though he was still only a youth, he had travelled dozens of systems, edging further up the social ladder with each new commission. But with each lie and misadventure, he edged closer to the thing he was determined to avoid: murder.
At the age of eighteen he had found a way to finally escape his past. He had learned enough to successfully masquerade as a colonel’s son, and seemed set for a life of privilege. But his plans had come to a disastrous end when he found himself playing cards with the colonel’s actual son. He fled before being arrested, but impersonating an Astra Militarum officer was far more serious than any of his previous crimes. His offence was discussed at divisional HQ and his image was flashed across several systems. He escaped arrest several times but the net tightened with each day until, in desperation, he had joined a band of deserters flying for Precipice.
Quintus had been approached by the Archivist’s agents almost as soon as he entered the Helmsman. They seemed to know of his particular skills and offered him a chance to transform himself in a permanent way. All he needed to do was gain access to a Terran rogue trader called Draik and pass on information about his plans.
The Vanguard lurched again and he grimaced as the ship’s reverse thrusters kicked in, filling him with nausea and the dreadful realisation that this was really going to happen. He was going to set foot on the place everyone else was so desperate to escape.
Warning lights flickered and klaxons barked. The lander banked hard, and then finally settled. Quintus felt his organs trying to sink back into their preferred configuration and attempted to calm himself by breathing deeply. The engines roared one last time and then died.
Quintus sat in silence for a few seconds. Then he unfastened his harness and touched the lump at his wrist, pressing his fingertips against the bone, as the Archivist had instructed. There was a flicker of pain but it was quickly numbed by whatever the bone was coated in.
We made it, he thought. We are on the Blackstone.
He heard that strange, disconcerting chorus of snarls. Then words formed in his mind.
The Stygian Aperture?+
That was Draik’s plan. And I don’t think there have been any problems. The journey actually seemed quite–
‘Quintus,’ snapped Isola’s voice through the emitters in the ceiling. ‘Your presence is required.’
I will let you know more when I can, he thought, pressing the swelling into his wrist again. Then he triggered the blast door and stumbled out into the companionway, still unsteady from the flight.
Stay close to him. He has survived more expeditions than anyone. He will know how to stay alive. If anyone can do this, Draik can. Just follow his orders and make sure you’re still intact when he reaches the Aberration.+
I intend to stay intact, he thought, but the bestial chorus had vanished.
He had not reached the bridge before another blast door whooshed open and he saw Draik leading the others towards him.
‘Keep up,’ snapped Draik as he marched past. ‘And fasten your damned collar. You’re not on a pleasure cruise.’
‘Sir,’ he muttered, falling in behind the lumbering pilot and hastily adjusting his uniform.
Audus winked at him. ‘We could make it a pleasure cruise.’
He bit back a reply. She likes this, he realised. She likes risking her life in this place. He looked around the group, realising that an air of excitement hung over most of them. Even Isola had a gleam in her eyes, though she was trying to hide it, and the ratlings were actually grinning as they scurried towards the door. Draik’s expression was grim, however. He had removed his optical implant and the empty, ragged socket made him look even fiercer than usual. He seemed to be in pain, massaging his head and glowering as he walked. Only the kroot looked calm, his rifle slung over his shoulder as he loped through the ship, looming over everyone else.
They reached the exit hatch and Draik paused, looking back over his shoulder at Quintus with a frown. He struggled to focus on him, blinking and rubbing his empty eye socket.
‘Have you been down here before?’
Quintus lied so instinctively that he almost said yes. He stopped himself just in time, considering how many questions he would need to ask once they left the Vanguard. ‘Never, sir,’ he said.
Annoyance flickered in Draik’s eye. ‘Then stay here. You look like a stiff breeze could kill you. You wouldn’t last five minutes on the Blackstone.’
Do not leave his side.+ The words were accompanied by an echo of pain in Quintus’ wrist.
‘Sir,’ he said to Draik, ‘I have survived several combat zones.’
Audus leant close. ‘Stay here. Make the beds or something.’
He ignored her. ‘I would consider it an honour if you permitted me to accompany you, sir. If you could supply me with a weapon I promise to make myself useful. If everything I have heard about this place is true, you will need all the help you can get.’
Draik closed his eye and grimaced, massaging his temples. Then he nodded. ‘Arm him, Isola.’
Isola stayed where she was.
Draik sighed, then strode past her to a storage cupboard, wrenched it open and hurled a pair of laspistols to Quintus. He caught them and was about to fasten the holsters when he saw how beautiful the guns were. He paused to stare at them. The grips looked like real wood, stained and polished to a deep burgundy and inlaid with strips of a lighter wood worked into the Draik family crest. The barrels were equally stunning, forged of a gleaming, copper-coloured alloy and covered in filigree that spiralled all the way from the sights to the triggers.
