Ascension, page 18
‘What is this?’ he said, looking suspiciously at the ape.
The ape nodded to one of the rubbish-strewn shapes looming over them, and Daedalosus realised it was a landing hatch. It was closed, but from the lights blinking at its corners he deduced that it was still active. The four of them pressed closer.
‘This is the ship?’ asked Daedalosus, frowning. It looked like the landing hatch had just been welded onto a mound of salvage. Whatever lay behind it was shrouded in steam and impossible to make out.
The ape nodded, rummaging beneath its shaggy chest hair for something. Daedalosus approached the lights, looking for a way to announce their presence. The ape grabbed him by the wrist, shook its head and held a single finger up to its mouth.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Daedalosus. ‘I have not come here to steal a ship. I’m not a thief.’
The ape revealed its canines in a terrifying snarl and leant towards him. Daedalosus was about to defend himself when he realised that the animal was trying to smile. As Daedalosus stared, baffled by its behaviour, the ape held up a tiny metal cone, no bigger than a fingernail, and pressed a button on its underside.
There was a whoosh of hydraulics as the hatch slid open. Daedalosus whirled around and pointed his pistol into the antechamber that had just been revealed. It was a mess, heaped with pieces of medical equipment, broken weapons and engine parts.
‘Is this your ship?’ he asked, looking back at the ape.
The creature shook its head and bounded up the ramp on all fours, sniffing at the mounds of junk. Daedalosus hesitated, but Lees and Tukh marched into the ship, clearly intrigued.
‘We’re not here to steal, magos,’ said Lees. ‘All we’re doing is making sure the captain of this vessel knows what’s happening down on the Blackstone.’
Daedalosus frowned but realised he had little option. Precipice was shaking so violently he could hardly stand. He would need to leave here very soon. If he was going to convince anyone to join him he would have to do it quickly. He climbed the ramp.
As he entered the ship, he tried to categorise its origin, but the bulkheads and companionways were so badly lit and heaped with scrap that he could not make out any clear details. It did not appear to be of Martian manufacture, but beyond that he found it hard to hypothesise. He paused to examine a piece of equipment that was blocking his way but before he could turn it over, the landing hatch slammed shut behind them and the lumens clicked off, plunging them into darkness.
He whirled around, pistol raised, trying to find a target, but something was badly wrong. His legs gave way beneath him, and he clattered to the floor.
19
A shattered face watched Draik through the darkness. The pieces turned around each other like a monochrome kaleidoscope, then flashed in a hundred faceted planes and vanished from view, leaving just a spiral of jewel-like shards. As he watched the pieces rotate and shimmer, Draik felt the same shocking sense of urgency he had felt before. There was something desperately important he had to do. Something that was meant to happen. His life before this had been meaningless. He had to reach this face. This was why he had been born.
He watched the face for what seemed an eternity and he began to think he might have died. He tried to cast his mind back over recent events to understand how he had come to this point. At first it was difficult. He remembered crossing the galaxy’s Western Reaches, determined to find out if the rumours were true – determined to know if a Blackstone Fortress really had been found at the edge of the known galaxy, uncovered by warp storms after long ages unseen. Then he recalled the letter from his father. The letter that made him a pariah; the letter that had cut him loose. Above it all, he remembered his pain at the thought of losing Isola. It was not an infatuation. He did not desire her. He admired her, but he was not some besotted youth. The pain went deeper than that. He was convinced she had some vital role to play in his life.
As he watched the spinning shapes, he wondered if he might have made a mistake. Perhaps he should have agreed to her request for a business partnership. She belonged to a lower class, of course, but what had his own class done for him? They had turned their backs and banished him to obscurity. The more Draik watched the prismatic display, the more he felt he was in error. His future depended on Isola. She was critical.
Just as Draik settled on this idea, the scene around him began to change. The spinning fragments altered shape. They lost their beautiful, jewel-like simplicity and devolved into misshapen hulks – broken pieces of engines and fuel tanks. A storm of salvage whipped up around him, filling the darkness with rusting, blasted metal and gouts of hissing steam. Some of the larger pieces were entire ships, he saw – Imperial landing craft and haulers, whirling in circles around xenos freighters and combat ships. Draik realised the vehicles were familiar. They were the ships from Precipice, ripped from their moorings and plunging through the void. Then he saw the rest of the orbital platform – the Dromeplatz and the mooring spars that fanned out from it, tumbling through the stars like a comet, leaving a trail of wreckage in its wake.
Precipice rushed past him in a storm of noise and light and raced towards a wall of blackness. It was the Blackstone Fortress. Precipice was hurtling towards its surface. Draik heard hundreds of voices screaming and howling, then Precipice smashed into the surface of the Blackstone and the voices were all silenced.
‘No,’ he said, horrified by the idea of so much death. When he first arrived at Precipice, he had despised most of the scavengers who crowded its walkways and drinking dens. But over time he had seen what a tenacious, courageous breed they were, and had changed his mind. Most of them had arrived with nothing, determined to make their own fortune, just as he now intended to do. They were rogues and gamblers, data-traders and corsairs, but they were also proud souls who knelt to no one. To watch them die, even in a dream, quickened Draik’s pulse.
‘No!’
‘Draik,’ said Grekh, his hawk-like features scattering the vision. The kroot was scorched and bloody and was pulling at something near Draik’s neck.
As Draik’s vision cleared, he saw the cabin of the gunship and remembered that their engines had died. He tried to move but found he was trapped. His harness had jammed. That was why Grekh was stooped over him, hacking furiously with a knife. The air was full of smoke and Draik could hear the crackle of flames nearby. People were howling, and the gunship was on its side.
‘Audus?’ said Draik, turning to his left. She was grappling with Quintus, who was unconscious, perhaps dead. The impact had slammed a piece of control panel into his forehead and his face was a mask of blood.
Lights flashed through the smoke and Taddeus’ servo-skulls hovered over the flames. One of them sprayed foam from a canister fixed to its jaw.
Grekh finally cut through Draik’s harness and he managed to sit, taking in the carnage that surrounded him. More of the priests had died in the crash, ripped apart by the crumpled hull. Others looked close to death as they choked in the thick fumes, but Vorne and Taddeus had risen from their seats and were hammering at the landing hatch as the flames rose higher.
‘Isola?’ gasped Draik, looking back over the seats.
‘Here,’ she said quietly. She was still in her seat and looked to have escaped injury in the crash. She looked dreadful, though. Her face was white with blood loss and she was slumped to one side.
Draik stood, relieved to find he was uninjured, and stepped towards Isola.
‘Wait!’ cried Rein, clambering over a seat and waving furiously at Draik to halt.
It was too late. As Draik moved, the whole gunship rocked backwards, hurling bodies and wreckage across the cabin. Its nose was pointing upwards as though it were taking off. Draik crashed into a seat and pain sliced through his shoulder.
‘Back this way!’ cried Grekh, moving towards the front of the gunship. ‘We’re going to fall.’
Audus stayed where she was, fighting with Quintus’ harness, but the ratlings and the priests followed Grekh’s advice and the gunship rocked back in the other direction, hurling more scrap and stoking the flames so that Draik had to shield his face from the heat. The smell of burned hair and blistering skin filled the air. The ratlings and some of the priests clambered out though the broken viewport onto the nose of the gunship, then leapt into the darkness outside, disappearing from view.
Audus howled as flames licked over her arms and Quintus’ seat. Taddeus and Vorne gave up trying to open the landing ramp and climbed over the seats towards Draik. Grekh had almost dragged Draik out of the gunship when Draik realised what he was doing.
‘No!’ he cried, shrugging the kroot off and leaping back towards Isola.
‘Janus!’ bellowed Taddeus, pausing on the hull to look back at him. ‘The fuel tanks! Get out!’
A few more priests shoved past Draik, coughing and gasping as they raced for the exit, but he carried on into the smoke, past Audus and back towards the heat, back towards Isola. She looked like a corpse, but as he reached her chair she managed to shake her head.
‘Don’t be a fool. I’m half-gutted. You should–’ She coughed violently. ‘For Throne’s sake.’
The buckle on her harness had melted so he drew his rapier and sliced through the strap, catching her as she slumped sideways, spilling more blood over her uniform. Audus’ howls moved up in pitch as flames washed over her arms, setting her flight suit alight, but she continued hammering and clawing at Quintus’ harness.
‘Janus!’ cried Taddeus, appearing at the shattered viewport. ‘We’re on a ledge! Get out!’
Draik had already planted a foot against one of the chairs so he could lift Isola onto his back. As the seat took his weight, the gunship gave a sickening lurch and he fell, still gripping Isola, towards the cargo hold.
There was a scrape of metal on stone and the gunship rocked with even more violence.
Draik fell again, slamming into a cargo crate and losing hold of Isola. She fell away from him, through the flames, towards a rent at the stern of the gunship. As the ship rocked back he saw that it was suspended over a crevasse studded with the same angular protrusions that lined most of the fortress. Isola bounced off a seat, cried out in pain and plunged towards the hole in the hull.
Draik leapt again, grabbing hold of the cogitator slung around her chest, jolting her to a stop just as she dropped through the hole. He almost plunged through with her but managed to jam his boot against a piece of crumpled armour plate. The two of them snapped to a halt, Draik’s arm trembling as Isola dangled beneath him, suspended over the abyss.
‘Draik!’ howled Taddeus, clambering back into the gunship to stand beside Grekh. ‘Get out! It’s going to drop!’ The flames had now spread right across the cabin and Draik could hardly see Taddeus through the glare.
‘Let me go.’
Anger tightened Draik’s grip as he heard Isola’s calm request. The feeling from his dream was colouring his every thought. He had an overwhelming sense that his future revolved around her. He looked around for a way to help her up, but there was nothing within reach. And if he loosed his hold on the crate they would both fall.
‘Let me help,’ gasped Taddeus, struggling through the fire towards him, shielding his face from the flames.
The priest’s weight was too much. The gunship gave a scream of protest, tilted higher and slid towards the lip of the chasm.
‘Draik!’ cried Grekh.
Taddeus scrambled back the way he had come but the damage was done; the gunship rushed towards the drop.
‘You’re better than the others,’ said Isola, her expression earnest. ‘You’re more than a treasure hunter.’
Draik strained desperately, looking for a way to shift his position and drag her out. Then he cried out as her weight vanished from his grip.
She had unfastened the cogitator’s strap. It dangled in his grip as she fell away from him.
‘No!’ he howled.
‘Draik!’ yelled Taddeus as the gunship slid over the ledge.
As Draik watched Isola fall he was back in his dream. Her expression was calm, and she held his gaze for what seemed like several minutes. Then she collided with one of the projections and her body spun wildly, coming apart as it hit more, disintegrating as it was swallowed by the darkness.
Draik stared in horror, trapped in his nightmare as the gunship flipped over. Then he felt a sharp pain in the side of his head, and the darkness took him.
20
The Emperor flexed her fingers and arched her back. Blood rushed through her veins and ideas bloomed in her mind. As her thoughts cleared, she recalled the scale of the process she had begun. There was messy, dirty work ahead, but what did it matter? What were a few months of bloodshed measured against millennia of peace?
‘Lord Commissar Torgau.’ The voice cut cross an ocean of memory to reach her.
‘Sergeant Falso,’ she managed to say, struggling to move her cracked lips. She opened her eyes and saw that she was in her makeshift quarters, lying on her bunk, her uniform drenched in blood.
Falso was standing in the doorway. He was behind a medic who was hunched over her, working at a wound in the side of her face. Falso looked exhausted, but delighted to see her alive. He saluted and approached the bunk, removing his cap.
Like all of them, he had been deformed by ether-plague. One of his hands had swollen into a grotesque claw, like something one would see on a crustacean, and his face was marred by silver scabs that looked like fish scales. Before her revelation, when she had still believed she was Lord Commissar Torgau, the Emperor would have damned Falso as a monster and executed him for heresy, but her eyes had been opened. Since the fall of the Cadian Gate she had learned where the true monsters were. And it was not in the warp.
Whatever Falso looked like, he was a hero. When the time came to reveal her true identity, it was Falso she would speak to first. But for now, even he might struggle to accept an idea of such magnitude. It was simple for her. She felt the truth in every fibre of her being. She had risen from her Throne on Terra and been born again in this humble flesh and blood. But for Falso, even dear Falso, it would be a huge act of faith to accept that the woman he thought of as Commissar Torgau was actually his immortal Emperor.
She managed to sit up and shoo the medic away. ‘What happened?’ she said, waving Falso closer.
‘Sniper, ma’am. He fired on us from the Red Stair.’ Falso frowned. ‘He fired on you, I should say. A single shot.’
Torgau remembered watching the shot rush towards her head. She touched the side of her skull. When she was completely consumed by divine power, her flesh struggled to contain it. Her mind strained at its physical bonds, warping the surrounding flesh. At the moment, though, her head was unchanged and she could feel the wound, just below her left eye. If she were mortal the shot would have killed her. She glanced at Falso. The regiment would have been without a commander. She was the last senior officer they had. There was far more at stake than a single Astra Militarum regiment, of course, but some worldly attachments were easier to shrug off than others. The thought of her men abandoned in this dreadful place knotted her stomach.
She cast her mind back to the pit and remembered the glimpse of her attacker. He was an officer, Militarum perhaps, though the uniform had been unfamiliar. She remembered the look in his eyes. Such certainty. Such hate. It hurt her to think it might be long years before people would see her for what she was, but she knew this was just a vestigial weakness. She no longer needed the approbation of others.
‘What happened then?’ she asked.
‘Sergeant Mura and his men carried you from the altar and brought you back here while I led a contingent up onto the Red Stair, trying to reach the sniper. We thought you were dead.’
‘Did you find him? The sniper, I mean.’
Falso scratched angrily at his scales. ‘They laid a trap at the far end of the bridge. I was a fool, ma’am. I was so furious and…’
He hesitated, but she understood. She knew how the regiment would feel about the idea that she had been killed. They did not know who she truly was yet but, in a way, she had always been their Emperor. She had brought them all this way, kept them alive when the other regiments were slaughtered. She nodded and he continued.
‘They feigned a retreat and, like an idiot, I took the bait. There were only a few left behind to wait for us but they fought like animals. It was a Ministorum unit, armed with flamers. They killed over fifty men before we could break through.’
The Emperor closed her eyes, picturing the scene. There was not a man in the regiment she did not know by name. They had all fought so hard to get this far, so bravely; to lose fifty in a single ambush was dreadful. She shook her head. She was doing it again: thinking like Commissar Torgau.
‘Once we were through,’ continued Falso, ‘we pursued the sniper and the other priests down towards the wreck of the Gilded Spear. He frowned. ‘They were larger than the usual salvage crews. Over a dozen priests. And some Auxilla troops. And what looked like Imperial Navy officers, or perhaps Militarum, I could not place the uniforms.’
She nodded. ‘I saw. One of them was the sniper.’
Falso sneered. ‘I thought so. But there was an alien creature with them – a gangly thing with a beak and long rifle, I wondered if it might have been him.’
‘No, it was the officer. And he got away?’
Falso nodded. Then he shook his head in disbelief. ‘They launched a gunship.’
She thought she must have misheard. ‘Launched one? What do you mean?’
