Anarch

Ten: Woe

‘Down here?’ asked Curth, dubiously.

‘That’s right,’ said Hark. He led her off the well-lit palace hallway and down a broad flight of steps, Trooper Perday at their heels.

‘They gave us the palace cellars,’ said Hark, walking briskly. ‘The undercroft.’

‘It’s quite cosy, really,’ remarked Perday. ‘Except, you know, in the dark. It really is black when the lights go.’

‘Only the best for the Tanith First,’ said Curth.

‘As usual,’ Hark replied with a nod.

They reached a large and heavy set of doors. The area was bare and whitewashed, with simple rush matting on the floor. Overhead, old lumen globes burned in iron holders.

‘You close the doors when you came up, Perday?’ asked Hark.

‘No, sir.’

‘I thought they were bringing the retinue out?’ said Curth. ‘Where are they?’

‘Maybe they have the problem sorted,’ said Hark.

‘Well, the lights are on,’ said Curth.

‘Up here,’ said Perday quietly.

Hark gripped the door handle and turned it. Then he rattled it hard.

‘Come on, Viktor,’ said Curth wearily.

‘It won’t open,’ said Hark.

‘Stop messing around.’

‘I’m not,’ said Hark, and rattled the door again.

Curth looked at him. She could see the bewilderment on his face.

‘Is it locked?’

‘No. There’s no lock. Bolts on the inside.’

‘Who would draw those and lock us out?’ Curth asked.

Hark shook the doors again. They wouldn’t budge. He hammered his fist against the heavy wooden panels.

‘Hello? Hello in there!’ he yelled.

There was no reply. Hark hammered again.

‘Open the damn door!’ he yelled. ‘This is Hark! Open it up!’

He waited.

‘Can you hear that?’ asked Curth.

‘Hear what?’

‘Viktor, I can hear someone crying. A child…’

Curth stepped to the door and pressed her ear against the wood.

‘It’s really faint. Far away. There’s a child crying down there.’

She tried the handle herself, then yelled. ‘Hello? Hello? Who’s in there? Can you hear me?’

She looked at Hark.

‘We need to break this down,’ she said.

Gaunt and Van Voytz stood watching the Beati. She was standing at the railing, looking down at the seething activity of the palace war room. Then she tilted her head back and gazed up at the high ceiling of the huge chamber.

‘What’s she doing, Ibram?’ Van Voytz asked.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Gaunt. ‘Waiting. Listening…’

‘Listening?’

‘I trust her instincts,’ Gaunt replied. ‘If she thinks there’s something wrong… senses it… then…’

‘Should we go to an alert?’ Van Voytz asked. ‘Inform the warmaster and the others? If an attack is imminent–’

‘She said it was here. Right here.’

‘Then all the more reason,’ Van Voytz began.

They heard voices behind them, and turned. Sancto’s team was letting Beltayn and Gaunt’s tactical cabinet into the gallery room. It was getting crowded in there. Kazader was still present, along with the Beati’s deputies. Inquisitor Laksheema and Colonel Grae had also arrived a few minutes earlier.

‘I’ll go and talk to them,’ said Gaunt. ‘Barthol, I don’t want to cause an uproar. The Beati is mercurial to say the least, and her insight isn’t always true. But let’s play it safe. Alert the Palace Watch. Then round up any high command in the building. Tzara’s here, I think, also Lugo and Urienz.’‘I think everyone else is already in the field,’ said Van Voytz. ‘Grizmund, Blackwood, Cybon, Kelso–’

‘I think you’re right. Just get the seniors assembled and aware. Tell them to get all the strengths they have in the Great Hill zone brought to secondary order. Tell Urienz to take charge of the war room… no. No, scratch that. You take charge of the war room. Lock us down, bring us to order and watch for anything. Anything, Barthol.’

‘Right.’

‘Send Urienz to inform the warmaster we may have a situation on site. He’ll receive Urienz more readily than you.’

Van Voytz nodded.

‘Tell Urienz that comes direct from me,’ said Gaunt.

‘I will.’

‘Good. This could be a chance to demonstrate your mettle again,’ Gaunt said.

‘That had occurred to me, Ibram,’ Van Voytz replied, ‘but I rather hope that it won’t be, for all our sakes.’

He made the sign of the aquila, and strode away.

Gaunt stepped off the gallery walk into the screened glass box of the briefing room.

‘What’s happening?’ Laksheema asked immediately.

‘The Saint has a presentiment of danger,’ Gaunt began.

‘Are our assets compromised?’ the inquisitor asked.

‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘I have strengths moving in to secure them both as we agreed. The Saint’s feeling is that the danger is here.’

‘What sort of danger?’ asked Kazader.

‘She can’t be specific yet,’ said Gaunt.

‘Can’t be specific?’ Kazader asked scornfully.

‘I’ve raised the ready status of the palace, and the garrison is coming to secondary–’ Gaunt began.

‘But she can’t be specific?’ Kazader cut in.

‘Her visions are not always particular,’ said Sariadzi. ‘We must give her time to focus–’

Kazader looked at her, his eyes narrowed.

‘I think this is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘If there’s a threat, we deal with it. If not, this is dangerous foment. Scaremongering. Are we really just going to wait for some peasant girl to–’

Auerben had to hold Sariadzi back.

‘That’s enough!’ Gaunt snapped. ‘Not in here. Not anywhere. Kazader, step out. Go get your men ready. There will be a reprimand on your record for that.’

Kazader glared at Gaunt, then saluted and walked out.

Gaunt looked at the rest. ‘I’ve brought you here to consult and assist. Colonel Grae and the inquisitor are party to the most delicate confidences attached to the Urdesh situation. Biota, you and your staff need to be aware so you can support me.’

Biota nodded. The two tacticians with him were solemn and silent.

‘Where’s Merity?’ Gaunt asked, an afterthought. ‘I thought she was with you?’

‘Mr Biota excused her, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘She’s gone down to the undercroft. Commissar Fazekiel wanted to ask her a few more questions about the Low Keen incident.’

‘She’s down there now?’

‘Went down a little while ago, sir.’

‘Alone?’

‘She has an appointed Scion with her, my lord,’ said Biota.

Gaunt nodded. ‘Right. Let’s run over what we know. Starting with the Beati’s sense that there’s a–’

Gaunt broke off. Through the room’s glass door he saw Ban Daur arrive, and exchange words with Sancto. Sancto gestured to the room. Daur said something else. Sancto turned and looked through the glass at Gaunt.

Gaunt was about to shake his head. Regimental business could wait, and Daur knew it. But there was something in Daur’s body language.

He nodded.

Sancto hesitated for a moment, as if surprised, and then opened the door for Daur.

‘My apologies, Lord Executor,’ Daur said as he stepped in.

‘What do you need, captain?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I…’ Daur hesitated. Everyone was looking at him. ‘I need to report that there seems to be a situation in the Tanith billet. In the undercroft, sir.’

‘An issue?’

‘A power-out, my lord. It–’

Gaunt sighed. His gut had been wrong. Daur was fussing, and he should have known better.

‘That’s a technical issue, Captain Daur. Take it to the palace custodians.’

Daur wavered. ‘I don’t fully understand the circumstances, my lord, but an amber status has been issued. By Commissar Fazekiel.’

‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.

‘I don’t know, my lord. I came straight to you. Commissar Hark has gone to investigate directly.’

He looked at the others in the room.

‘I apologise for interrupting this meeting,’ he said.

Gaunt had risen to his feet.

‘Amber status?’ he asked. His voice was oddly fierce.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Daur replied.

‘Is it in darkness?’

Everyone looked around. Daur blinked in surprise. The Beati had entered through the walkway door and was staring at him.

‘Captain Ban Daur,’ she said. ‘I asked you, is the undercroft in darkness?’

‘It is, my lady. Entirely. So I understand.’

‘Are there children there? Children who might be afraid? Who might be sobbing?’

‘Yes, my lady. There are children. The entire retinue.’

The Beati turned to look directly at Gaunt.

‘Anarch,’ she said.

‘Sound the alarms!’ Gaunt snarled.

Hark took another run at the doors, and bounced off again.

‘You’ll break your fething shoulder,’ said Curth.

He didn’t reply. He pulled out his plasma pistol and adjusted the setting.

‘Stand the feth back, both of you,’ he said. Curth and Perday stepped away. Perday’s eyes were wide.

Hark aimed the weapon at the doors, and fired.

The whoop of discharged plasma echoed in the empty hallway, and Curth winced. Smoke drifted up and clouded the air around the hissing lumen globes overhead.

The doors were unmarked.

‘How the hell–’ Hark stammered.

‘Is there something wrong with your gun, Hark?’ Curth asked.

‘What? No. That was a full discharge.’

He examined the door, running his fingers over the wood. Not so much as a blemish.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘I hear alarms,’ Perday said, looking up. ‘That’s the threat alert.’

Klaxons were sounding in the corridors and hallways above them. The bells in the palace campaniles were being rung too.

‘Try it again,’ Curth urged Hark.

Footsteps clattered down the stairs from the hall above. They turned, and saw Gaunt striding towards them, with Daur at his side. Behind them came Gaunt’s Scion guard, Beltayn, some tacticae officers, a woman with an augmetic golden mask, and several individuals who looked like scratch company partisans. Curth didn’t know them at first. Then she saw the face of one of them.

‘Oh feth, Viktor,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the Beati.’

‘Hark?’ Gaunt said as he arrived.

‘The door won’t budge, my lord,’ said Hark. ‘I even took a shot at it.’

Laksheema pushed forward and stared at the door. ‘A las-round will hardly tear down–’

‘Plasma gun, inquisitor,’ Hark said. ‘Full load, point blank.’

‘My lord?’ said Sancto. ‘Shall we?’

‘No disrespect, Sancto, but I don’t think you and your men are going to make a better dent than Hark,’ replied Gaunt.

‘It’s bound shut,’ said Laksheema. She had been stooping to examine the door. ‘The warp is holding it.’

‘You sense that?’ asked the Beati.

‘Don’t you?’ asked Laksheema. ‘My lord, even if we could force it, we have no idea what’s on the other side.’

‘My regiment–’ Gaunt replied.

‘And what else besides?’ asked Laksheema. She adjusted her micro-bead link. ‘I will summon my staff. We need specialist assistance.’

She frowned.

‘My link is dead,’ she said.

‘No response from any vox source below,’ Beltayn called out. He’d set his vox-unit against the wall and was adjusting the settings. ‘Dead air. No microlink. No vox-unit. Just–’

Beltayn jumped in surprise, and pulled the headset away from his ears.

‘What the feth–?’ he gasped.

‘Bel?’ asked Curth, crossing to him.

‘I heard a voice,’ Beltayn said. ‘A child, weeping.’

‘Speaker!’ Gaunt ordered.

Beltayn switched the set to speaker output. There was a hiss of static, then they could all hear the tinny yet distinct sound of sobbing. A young voice, far away, in anguish.

‘Grae?’ said Laksheema over the eerie sound. ‘Go get my team, please.’

Grae nodded.

‘And tell Van Voytz we have a red status location,’ Gaunt added. ‘Biota, you and your team go too. Start briefing on everything we know.’

‘Which is precious little,’ replied Biota.

‘Do it anyway.’

Grae was already running back along the hall. Biota and his aides turned to follow him.

‘Biota?’ Gaunt called.

‘My lord?’ Biota responded, pausing to look back.

‘You said my daughter went down there?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Gaunt cleared his throat. ‘Carry on,’ he said. Biota and his aides hurried after Grae.

Curth looked at Gaunt. She gripped his arm.

‘We’ll get in,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Gaunt replied.

‘The offspring of the Great Master,’ Laksheema muttered.

‘What?’ said Hark.

‘Do you not recall, commissar?’ Laksheema said, glancing at him. ‘The signal from the Archenemy warship that spared the Armaduke so mysteriously. The translation provided by the pheguth spoke of “the offspring of the Great Master”. A child, a daughter. The noun was female.’

‘You remember all that?’ Hark asked.

‘I have reviewed the reports many times,’ Laksheema said. ‘Merity Chass was aboard the Armaduke. She is here now. She is the offspring of a Great Master… a Lord Executor perhaps? Major Kolea’s misfortunes may have been a wilful distraction. A creation of significance. That’s how it translated. All this shall be the will of he whose voice drowns out all others.’

‘The feth are you suggesting?’ Hark asked, stepping forward. Gaunt held up a hand to him in warning.

‘We have been confounded by the Archenemy’s actions,’ said Laksheema. ‘We have many elements that do not fit together. All we agree on is that Sek achieved something after the Eltath raid, and now enters a new phase of attack. It would seem that is here, now, beneath us. Elements begin to connect.’

‘The hell they do,’ said Hark.

The sobbing continued to crackle from Beltayn’s vox-unit.

‘Turn it off,’ said Curth.

‘Should I, my lord?’ asked Beltayn.

Gaunt nodded. Beltayn reached for the speaker switch. Just before he could throw it, the noise of weeping shut off and was replaced by a hellish shrieking roar. The volume was so great, it blew out the vox-caster’s speakers. Smoke wafted from the ruined set.

‘What the Throne was that?’ asked Auerben.

‘It sounded like… a surgical saw,’ Curth said.

‘A bone saw,’ said Daur. ‘That’s what Elodie said. Whatever attacked at Low Keen, it sounded like a bone saw.’

Gaunt took a step towards the undercroft doors and drew his power sword. The blade powered up with a fierce hum.

‘No, my lord!’ Laksheema cried.

‘My daughter’s down there,’ Gaunt said. ‘My daughter and my regiment.’

‘And my fething wife!’ Daur snarled at the inquisitor. ‘Step the hell back!’

‘Please, my lord,’ Laksheema protested.

‘Do it,’ said the Beati quietly. ‘There is death down there. The child is weeping. All the children. Every soul.’

‘Positions!’ Sancto growled. The Scions raised their hellguns and fanned out to flank Gaunt. Auerben and Sariadzi hoisted their assault weapons. Daur had drawn his sidearm.

Gaunt swung the power sword of Heironymo Sondar at the doors with both hands. Wood splintered and billowed out, burning. A bloom of flickering, sickly energy surrounded the blade as it slashed across the panels, as if the blade was biting not just through ancient wood, but through the skin of some subspace membrane. There was a flash, and Gaunt staggered back a few steps.

This time, damage had been done. The centre panels of the ancient, heavy doors were blackened and crumbling. Arcane energy fizzled and spat frothing residue from the collapsing wood.

Sancto and Daur moved in, tearing at the ruined wood, dragging sections of the damaged doors away.

‘Be careful!’ Laksheema warned.

‘Are you all right?’ Curth asked Gaunt. He flexed his grip on the power sword.

‘It nearly overloaded,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never known it fight and buck in my hands like that.’

Stendhal, one of the other Scions, moved in to assist Sancto and Daur. The other two raised their weapons to their cheeks, and sighted the centre section of the door.

Daur, Stendhal and Sancto hauled the doors apart. Both doors fell away in their hands, disintegrating into hot dust and embers that the men threw aside.

‘Something’s awry–’ Beltayn began to say.

‘Oh, Emperor protect us!’ Curth exclaimed, clasping her hands to her mouth.

Behind the burned and shattered doors, there was no doorway. Just the solid, white-washed stone of the wall, perfectly intact, as though no door had ever existed.

By the time the trucks rolled onto the rockcrete apron of Eltath Mechanicore 14, visibility had dropped to thirty metres.

Major Pasha peered out of the cab, then looked down to check the rumpled chart in its plastek sleeve.

‘Grim place,’ murmured Konjic at the wheel.

Pasha nodded and held out her hand. The adjutant passed her the vox handset without hesitation. Pasha held it to her mouth and thumbed it on.

‘R Company lead,’ she said, ‘let’s see who’s home, and make our purpose clear. Elam? Please to do honours.’

She took her thumb off the button.

‘Loud and clear, lead,’ said Elam over the link.

She held the button down again.

‘Convey my respect,’ she said. ‘Everybody else, stand by. This runs according to pattern agreed. Kolosim? Hold the rearguard on the approach road. No one get twitchy until I say they get twitchy.’

Konjic’s vox set, on the seat between them, pipped out a little flutter of vox signal-bursts as each company leader in the convoy behind her acknowledged.

Pasha had the full muscle of the Tanith First with her, packed up in canvas-backed cargo-10s behind her. Only the first three trucks had pulled onto the apron: hers, Elam’s, and a second strength from R Company. They’d come to a halt side by side, their headlamps on. Rain danced like digital static in the beams.

The rest of the convoy was on the long slope of the approach road, lamps hooded and set to dark-running. They were arranged in a double column, filling both lanes of the road. At the back of the formation, Kolosim deployed four sections to hold the road and form a rear guard. They set up crew-served weapons in the gutters. Bannard, Kolosim’s adjutant, walked down the road a little way and scattered pencil-flares that fizzled in the rain. The flickering green glow of the flares illuminated little except the empty road behind them, and the dead ruins on either side.

The approach road was flanked by sheet-wire fencing. Mkflass eyed the fencing dubiously. Beyond it was just scrub wasteland. It was impenetrably dark. He could smell wet vegetation and rain-swilled earth.

He glanced at Kolosim.

‘Get some cutters,’ Kolosim told him. ‘Get two sections through, one each side.’

Mkflass nodded. The men in his section started to cut the fence and drag it wide enough to let men pass.

Bannard returned.

‘Ugly spot, sir,’ he said. ‘Feels wide open.’

Kolosim knew what he meant. They were boxed in on the road by the fence, the rain and the darkness. It was hard to see anything. But it felt unpleasantly exposed.

‘With luck, we won’t be sitting here long,’ Kolosim replied. He keyed his micro-bead.

‘Rearguard,’ he said. ‘Sit tight but get combat-light. Stow your packs. Exit on my word, not before. And let’s kill the engines, please. If we can’t see, let’s hear at least.’

One by one, the idling engines of the big transports shut down. The low grumble was replaced by the sound of rain, hissing off the strip of road and pattering on the canvas truck-tops. It wasn’t a great improvement. The sound of the rain seemed to magnify the emptiness to an unnatural level that suggested it wasn’t empty at all.

Up on the apron, Pasha saw three figures dismount from Elam’s transport: Captain Elam, Captain Criid and Commissar Ludd. Elam walked through the cold puddles of headlamp light and came up to her side door.

She pulled the window down and handed him the waiver certificate that Daur had sent through. It was a heat-printed flimsy produced by Konjic’s vox-caster. Pasha had slipped it in a clear-plastek chart cover to keep the rain from turning it to mush.

‘Don’t take any shit, Asa,’ she told him.

‘I never do,’ he replied with a smile.

Elam turned and walked across the apron, his rifle strapped across his chest. Criid and Ludd fell in step with him. The row of headlamps bleached the backs of them bone-white and stretched their shadows, long and thin ahead of them.

‘Let’s be confident about this,’ Elam said to his companions. No one liked dealing with the Mechanicus, even when they had the authority of the Lord Executor to back them.

Criid glanced ahead at the ominous bulk of Eltath Mechanicore 14. Air raid regulations had placed it in blackout, like the rest of the city. The only lights came from the fortified gatehouse, a rockcrete bunker at the top of the apron that was protected by huge hornwork demi-bastions. The night was so black and the rain so sheer, she couldn’t make out the main site beyond, but she had the impression of something invisible and vast. It had to be a big place. The scale of the demi-bastions told her that much. She’d seen smaller outworks on Militarum fortresses. Eltath Mechanicore 14 – EM 14 – was one of the many Mechanicus strongholds in the city, occupying a stretch of lowland hillside in Klaythen Quarter on the eastern flank of the Great Hill, surrounded by extensive worker habitats and just below the vast spread of the shipyards. It wasn’t one of the principal forges, the huge structures dominating entire districts she’d seen on her first day on Urdesh. Indeed, even they were minor forge sites, she’d been told. Eltath was the subcontinental capital, an administrative centre. The giant forge complexes within its territory were nothing compared to the mass forge installations elsewhere on the planet. Pasha’s briefing had described EM 14 as a research facility, one of the old tech-dynast manufactories that had been absorbed by the Mechanicus occupation and repurposed with a specific role.

Guard mindset regarded Urdesh as simply a contested world, a battle­ground to be cleared and secured. Criid reminded herself that it was contested because of what it was: a forge world. A place of industry and manufacture, the largest and most important of its kind in forty systems. To her, it was a place to be fought for. To the Priests of Mars, it was holy ground, a precious outpost of their far-flung technomechanical empire.

That’s why it had survived. Other worlds so bitterly disputed would have been obliterated long before by the ultimate sanction of fleet action. Whoever held Urdesh held the most vital munition source in the rimward Sabbat Worlds. She knew that it had been held, lost and retaken by both sides many times in its past. She wondered if any world anywhere had suffered under so many temporary masters. Reign after reign, Archenemy and Imperial, changing hands with each occupation, claimed and reclaimed. No wonder it bred such ferocious warriors. She had often felt that the Urdeshi troops she’d met had been fighting for Urdesh above and before any other cause.

There was a furnace smell in the wet air that reminded her of Verghast, but she knew that Verghast, for all its mighty hives, was a minor industrial world compared to this.

They heard a sudden, throaty rush of air that sounded like the mother of all flamer units. The three of them halted in their tracks, bathed in an infernal glow. Above them, the sky burned for a few seconds, a massive, boiling rush of churning flame-clouds.

Not an attack. EM 14 had just vented a gas plume burn-off from its vapour mill. The burning clouds died back into blackness, but before they did, they briefly revealed EM 14 in red half-light. Criid glimpsed the outlines of vast rockcrete ramparts and cyclopean galvanic halls, heavy casemate defences, and outer thickets of razor-wire. Criid sucked in her breath. She wondered what the hell Gaunt thought was coming that a place like this would not be a sufficient defence.

The massive gatehouse straddled two defensive ditches lined with wire. Inside that was another ring of dead earth sandwiched between a heavy chain fence and the outer wall.

‘What’s that?’ Ludd asked.

‘What?’

‘It sounds like an animal,’ Ludd said.

Criid and Elam listened. They could hear the constant sizzle of the rain, which was dancing silver splashes on the rockcrete around their feet. Beyond that, they heard a bark, a growl somewhere in the night. It was a deep, ugly sound, full of pain and rage.

‘Feth knows,’ said Elam, lowering his hand to the grip of his strung weapon.

The growl died away, then others answered it, yaps and snarls that faded into scraps of noise. They were weird sounds, a blend of deep-throated reverberation and higher pitched whining.

Lights snapped on, blinding the three of them. They had tripped the gatehouse auto-sensors. Automated weapon mounts in the gatehouse’s deep-set embrasures rotated to target them, whirring softly. Criid could see the targeting lasers moving across their soaked battledress like fireflies.

‘Astra Militarum! Tanith First!’ Elam called out. He held up the waiver in its plastek wrap. ‘We require access!’

The laser dots continued to drift. The guns stared, occasionally micro-shifting with the pulsed hums of platform gears. There was a thump, and the gatehouse projected a fierce blue scanning beam. The horizontal blue bar tracked up and down them from head to foot and back. It shut off.

An outer hatch clanked open in the side of the bunker. Two men appeared, large, armed and armoured. They stepped out into the rain and approached. They were Urdeshi Heavy Troops from the infamous Third Brigade, the Steelside Division. They wore full ballistic plate and grilled helmets, all finished in puzzle camo. Each one wielded a .30 ‘short-snout’ hip-mounted on a gyro-stable bodyframe. Fat, armoured feed belts ran from their weapons to auto-delivery hoppers inside the gatehouse. Both of them had stylised Mechanicus emblems fused to their breastplates, denoting their proud secondment to the protective service of the forge.

‘Explain your business,’ said one, his voice amplified by his vox-mask.

Elam held up the waiver again.

‘My business is the business of the Lord Executor,’ he said. ‘Here’s my waiver authority. I have an infantry regiment under transport on the road behind me. My commander seeks access and immediate conference with the facility senior.’

‘Not tonight,’ the Urdeshi said.

‘Oh yes, tonight,’ said Ludd.

‘The seniors of the forge will take no audience with the city on lock-down.’

‘Then I’ll take names,’ said Ludd. He stepped right up to them, eye-to-eye with the massive troopers, and fished out his black pocket book. ‘You wear the sigil of Mars and you do loyal work,’ he said, ‘but you’re Astra Militarum, and I will have your names.’

With a gloved fingertip, Ludd casually wiped raindrops off the name tag bolted to the chest-plate of the man he was facing. He did it with such matter-of-fact calm it made Criid smile.

‘Erreton. Captain,’ Ludd said, and wrote the name down. ‘And you?’

The other Steelsider didn’t reply, so Ludd studied his name tag too.

‘Gorsondar,’ he said. ‘I suppose you boys know who the Lord Executor is?’

‘We do,’ replied Erreton. ‘We–’

‘Find yourselves hurtling at near light speed towards a pile of shit for this, captain,’ said Ludd. ‘I’ll give you a moment to reconsider and verify the waiver. Out of courtesy. The Mechanicus is a mighty institution, but it won’t protect either of you from the Prefectus.’

‘In,’ said Erreton, jerking his head at the bunker.

They followed the men inside. The gatehouse command was lit with amber panel lights. A third Urdeshi Heavy manned a control station of multi-level display screens. Each screen showed a different low-light image of the apron outside. The slack of the sentries’ ammo-feed belts retracted into the big autohoppers as the men entered.

Criid stood with Ludd, water dripping off them onto the deck grille. She saw the inside of the automated gun-points, the subhuman forms packed foetally inside tiny turret cages, wired by spine, hand and eye-socket into the weapon systems. Each of the embrasure weapons that had tracked them outside had been guided by a vestigial flicker of human consciousness. Mechanicus gun-slaves, the lowest and most pitiful order of the infamous skitarii.

Erreton took the waiver from Elam and passed it to the Steelsider at the station desk.

‘Check it,’ he said.

The desk officer took the waiver flimsy out of its wrapping, and slid it under the optical scanner. A digital version, instantly verified by the Urdeshic Palace war room, appeared on one of the monitors surrounded by a vermilion frame.

‘My apologies,’ Erreton said to Elam.

‘None taken,’ smiled Elam as though he was responding politely. ‘Get your transport gates open so we can bring the regiment inside. And have a senior of this facility summoned to meet with my commanding officer.’

‘Do that at once,’ Erreton said to the desk officer, who began speaking rapidly into his vox-mic.

‘Follow me,’ Erreton told them.

He walked to the rear hatch of the gatehouse and opened it. The ammo-feed of his rig-weapon buzzed as it played out behind him. When it reached the limit of its tension, the whole hopper, an arma­plas container the size of a fuel drum, detached itself from the wall and scuttled after him on short, thick insectiform legs.

They followed Erreton and his obedient, mobile ammo hopper out of the rear door and onto a caged walkway that ran across the ditches to a blast hatch in the main wall. Flood lights had come on, catching the spark of rain falling through the wire. Beyond the second ditch, the walkway bisected the ring of caged, dead earth outside the wall.

Criid peered through the chain link at it as they walked by, presuming it was a firefield, a boundary margin left deliberately open so that nothing could cross it without becoming a target for the main wall guns. Were the high chain fences and wire roofing just there to slow down an invader’s progress?

A shape slammed into the chain link, making it shiver. Criid recoiled. Something feral was glaring at her, clawing at the chain link separating them.

‘Keep back from the wire,’ Erreton said. ‘We keep shock-dogs in the inner run.’

It wasn’t a dog. It wasn’t even an animal, though it was making the animal growl the three of them had heard outside. It was a form of attack servitor, a grim fusion of cybernetic quadruped and human flesh. It barked and snarled at them, dragging its steel foreclaws across the mesh. Its steel jaws looked like they could bite a man’s arm off. Criid couldn’t see its face. Its scalp and nape were covered with a thick mane of cyber cables that draped across its deep-set eyes like dreadlocks.

Other shock-dogs appeared out of the darkness behind it, drawn by the lights and the smell of unmodified humans. They padded forwards, growling, hackles raised. Some sported spikes, or body-blade vanes, or saw-edge jaw augmetics. They were feral kill-servitors, permanently goaded to madness and hyperaggression by neuro-psychotic implants, most of their humanity long since surgically excised and replaced with biomimetic augmentation. Criid had heard of such inhuman monsters, but she had hoped never to see one.

Erreton waited while the inner blast door opened, then led them through the portal into the inner gatehouse. His hopper scuttled after him diligently. A full squad of Urdeshi Heavies and two towering adept wardens of the Cult Mechanicus Urdeshi were waiting for them. The wardens were robed in embroidered rust-red silk and stood almost two and a half metres tall. They carried ornate stave weapons, and their cowled faces seemed like nightmarish cartoons of Guard-issue gas-hoods: big, round ocular units staring out above pipework rebreather masks. Their duty was the protection and security of the forge facility. They turned to look at the visitors in perfect neurosync unison.

‘This is unorthodox,’ said one. His voice was a modulated arrangement of digital sounds emulating human words.

‘You’ve seen the authority,’ said Erreton.

‘It has been relayed by the manifold,’ said the other warden. ‘Noospheric verification is complete. However–’

‘–this is unorthodox,’ the first finished. One voice, speaking through two bodies. ‘We serve the Omnissiah.’

‘Right now, you serve the Lord Executor,’ said Ludd, ‘who is protecting your interests on this world. My regiment is a Special Task Deployment sent by the Lord Executor himself. You will cooperate fully.’

The adept wardens looked at each other, a perfect mirror of movement, and exchanged a burst of machine code.

‘Signal your commanding human officer–’ said one.

‘–the gates will open now,’ the other finished.

There was a deep rumble of heavy machinery.

‘Move in,’ Elam’s voice crackled over the vox.

‘Understood,’ replied Pasha. A bloom of light appeared through the rain, as the main gate hatches unlocked and yawned open, dragged by immense hydraulics. Outer defence barriers beside the gatehouse retracted into the ground, and a long metal ramp extended across the ditches like a tongue.

‘Pasha to Kolosim,’ she said. ‘Please to hold back one quarter strength and take up a broad defensive position around the access road and surrounding waste-ground, as per pattern. Please also to cut damn fence down and get all transports off the road. I want a clear, unimpeded run when we come out. I’ll want to be moving fast. Do it by book, Ferdy, and keep me advised of anything.’

‘Understood.’

‘I mean anything.’ Pasha looked at Konjic. ‘Start her up,’ she said.

Konjic nodded and woke the big engine of the cargo-10.

‘Engines live,’ Pasha said into the vox handset. ‘Recovery detail, orderly fashion, single file, follow me in, please.’

A voice in the darkness, a whisper barely loud enough to hear, told him, ‘Stay still and don’t make a sound.’

Domor obeyed, dumb. The firm hands that had grabbed him pulled him back against the cellar wall. He could feel the rough brick of it.

‘Who is that?’ he managed to hiss.

‘Shhhhh!’ the whisper replied.

The bone saw sound died away. Near silence settled like a stifling weight in the impenetrable blackness. All Domor could hear was the blood pounding in his ears and the water lapping around his knees. The quiet pressed in on him, robbing him of the ability to fill his lungs.

It wasn’t the quiet doing it, it was fear. He tried to focus. He knew his cortisol levels had ramped right up. He wondered what his heart rate was. Higher than 140, and his motor skills would be eroded. Higher than 160 or thereabouts, he’d have tunnel vision and begin to slide into the decayed, non-rational world of fear.

He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t see to tell if his vision was tunnelling down. But he knew for a fact he’d never been so scared. Ever. And that was saying something, because he’d been through some wicked feth in his time. Domor knew fear. They all did. The story of their lives was punctuated by regular spikes of terror: the threat of death, the insanity of combat, the gnawing in-between times of waiting that whittled away the soul.

Domor had known men, strong men, freeze or panic, or lose the ability to speak, or perform simple motor skills. There was no hierarchy to fear. It bit everyone who came near it. The best of the Ghosts had learned, with only brutal experience as a tutor, to tame it. They had honed intuitive mechanisms to channel the adrenaline and the hindbrain threat responses, to overcome the drastic shifts in blood pressure and biological process, and remain operational. Gaunt was a master at it. Some, like Mkoll and – Domor fancied – Rawne – had been born with the knack. Others, like Baskevyl and Varl, had acquired the skills over time and hard use.

Domor had evolved that way. Most of the veteran Ghosts were only veterans because they could look fear in the eye and remain functional. The crucible of battle did that to a man or woman quickly, and they coped or they died. The initial startle response was still there, but you barged through it and used your heightened state to push on rather than be crippled by it.

Some called it the rush. Hark called it fight time. A good Guardsman turned his own poleaxing biological responses into a weapon.

But this… this wasn’t a battlefield. There was no whip-crack of passing las to trigger the startle, no visible threat to engage the mind with. Domor had no idea why this was the most terrifying experience of his life.

That puzzled him, and it felt like a weight lifting. His bafflement acted like a sponge, blotting up the fear. His mind became occupied with the question of why he was so uniquely scared rather than the fact of being scared.

He wrested control of his breathing.

‘Are you still there?’ he whispered.

A hand squeezed his arm in affirmation.

Domor sheathed his blade, and fumbled with his optics. There was a fizzle of green light as the augmetics came back on. He glimpsed the chamber, awash with water; his own dripping hands, ghost-white and radiant. Then it went out again.

The reassuring hands gripped his shoulder and guided him backwards. His boots kicked blindly at step risers, and he felt his way up them. A dry floor. His right hand found the wall beside him.

His optics flashed back on.

He saw Zweil ahead of him. The old ayatani was trailing a hand behind him, trying to lead Domor as he groped blindly along the wall.

Domor reached out and tucked Zweil’s arm under his.

‘I can see, father,’ he whispered. ‘Move with me.’

‘There’s something down here,’ Zweil said very quietly, cocking his head and trying to sense Domor in the darkness.

‘It’s just the lights,’ whispered Domor. ‘The lights have failed.’ He knew he was lying. He knew the sound he’d heard.

‘No, son,’ said Zweil. ‘It’s just the darkness.’

The Scion Relf had a stablight slotted on the under-barrel rail of her weapon. When she turned it on, the light made Merity jump.

‘Nice and calm now,’ Relf said. There was a glass-squeak edge to her voice that undermined her reassurance. She brought her weapon up to her cheek, and aimed ahead. The weapon was a short-form lascarbine that had been strapped to her back from the moment Merity met her. It wasn’t a battlefield weapon, but its compact length made it ideal for close-quarter protection duties in interior spaces.

‘Feth nice and calm,’ Merity said. ‘It’s just a power-out.’

Now there was light, the hard stripe beaming from Relf’s weapon, Merity’s anxiety dropped. What had it been about the darkness? The suddenness of it? No. The thickness, the density of it. The lights hadn’t just cut. An airless darkness had swallowed them.

Relf’s beam picked up the waste water extending towards them. In the wobbling oval of light, it looked like blood. Merity could hear it gurgling. It was a sound she’d heard before in the infirmary, and in the aftermath of hot contacts on Salvation’s Reach. Blood leaking from wounds, the steady, hideous trickle of life leaking away. She looked at the black water slopping towards them and swallowed hard. It looked like blood. It looked as though the ancient bowels of the palace were bleeding out.

‘Come on,’ said Relf. She turned, tweaking the stablight in different directions.

Merity heard her curse. It seemed like an odd sign of weakness.

‘Scion?’

‘Where are the stairs?’ Relf asked.

‘What?’

‘The stairs, missy. We just came down the stairs…’

She panned the light right and left. The smooth, whitewashed walls looked like snow-covered ground.

‘And the billets…’ Relf said.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Merity.

Relf swung the light behind them and then forward again fast. Merity glimpsed the encroaching water.

‘We came down the stairs,’ Relf said, as if rationalising it to herself. ‘Came down, turned, walked along. The flood was ahead of us.’

She twitched the stablight back and forth again.

‘Flood there, stairs there. And archways… through to the billets, there.’

The disc of light hovered on glacial whitewash.

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ said Merity. ‘I just don’t understand what you mean.’

Relf snapped around, tilting the light so it underlit their faces. She looked hurt, as if she’d been slapped for no reason.

‘The stairs have gone. The access to the billets has gone. Where have they gone?’

‘You’re mistaken,’ said Merity. ‘We must be confused. The steps were behind us.’

She moved into the darkness, hands raised, expecting to catch her toe on the bottom step. Relf reached to stop her, but there was no need. Merity had come to a halt, her hands pressed flat against stone wall.

‘That’s just fething impossible,’ she said.

Relf grabbed her arm. ‘With me,’ she said, pulling Merity after her. She was heading for the water, the light-beam bobbing.

‘What? Where to? The water’s that way–’

‘I know, I know,’ said Relf. Merity could smell the woman’s sour fear-breath. ‘But somehow we’re in a… in a dead end. The water’s rising fast, so we can’t stay put.’

They were already sloshing into the spilling tide of water. It rose around their boots like a stream that had burst its banks after a rainstorm.

‘Relf? Scion?’

‘Just walk,’ Relf said, pulling her arm. ‘You’re right. We’re just confused. The dark confused us. There will be an exit. Just nearby.’

The water was shin-deep and flowing hard. Merity thought – no, she knew as an awful certainty – that Relf was wrong. Something had happened. Something had changed in the darkness. Things had shifted like the walls and faces in the stress nightmares that had haunted her as a child.

All of which was impossible. She wondered if it was still pitch dark and this was all some imagined nonsense. Maybe her concussion was worse than the medicaes had said. Maybe she was hallucinating. Her head ached. She had a rasping itch in her ears. But the water around her knees, her thighs, was not impossible. It was soberingly cold. In fact, everything had suddenly become much colder.

‘Scion, stop.’

Relf wouldn’t. She pulled at Merity, then she froze. They had both heard it.

A quick, purring buzz. A whine, as though someone nearby was squeeze-testing a drill or a powered saw. It came again, twice, like an insect droning past their ears.

‘What was that?’ Relf asked.

‘Hello?’ Merity called out. They’d heard voices from the billet spaces when they’d first come down. There had to be people close by. Why was it so quiet?

‘Shut up!’ Relf snapped. ‘Shut up, shut up.’

There was a tremor in the light beam. The Scion’s hands were shaking. Merity could hear Relf’s rapid, shallow breathing.

The lights came back on, stark and over-bright. It made them wince. Then they died back down to a filament glow and went out again. While the light lasted, Merity saw the cellar hallway, thigh deep in gleaming black water, and an archway ahead to the left.

‘That way!’ she hissed. ‘That way!’

The lights came back on, along with a brief chirrup of faulty alarms. They lasted two seconds, long enough for Merity to see that there was no archway ahead to the left.

Not any more.

Merity didn’t have time to mentally process that. The cellar lights began to flash on and off like an intermittent strobe. The lights came on for half a second then off for two or three seconds, then back on. The rapid, erratic blinking made Merity feel nauseous. She reached out to hold onto Relf.

But Relf wasn’t there.

In darkness, she gasped the Scion’s name.

The light fluttered on and off again. In the third flash, she saw Relf on the far side of the tunnel, clawing at the wall. In the fourth flash, Relf had vanished.

In the fifth flash, Merity saw a figure standing directly ahead of her, its back to her. A figure standing nearly waist deep in the blood-black water. A figure waiting, still and upright, her hands at her sides. A simple smock dress. Head shaved.

Blackness.

‘Yoncy?’ Merity called out.

A saw buzzed somewhere in the darkness.

In the sixth flash, nothing.

Blackness.

In the seventh, a heartbeat later, the figure was there again, its back to her still. But it was closer. Three metres closer.

Blackness.

In the eighth flash, Yoncy was still there, and she was starting to turn. Starting to turn slowly to face Merity.

Blackness.

An angry warble of damaged alarms.

Abrupt las-fire ripped across the hallway in the dark. Merity flinched. She saw the searing bolts of energy, heard the close-by shriek of the carbine. One shot passed her head so close it crisped the downy hairs on her neck. She could smell the hot ozone as it went by, cooking the chill air. Scalding steam erupted where the las bolts hit the water.

Merity staggered backwards, eyes wide and hungry for light. She saw Relf’s stab-beam moving wildly, reflecting in the water, tracking across the walls. More howling las-shots overlapped it.

‘Go back!’ she heard Relf yelling. ‘Go back!’

Something that sounded like a surgical saw screamed in the tight confines. Merity covered her ears. Water splashed across her chest and face.

Silence. Blackness. The reek of superheated air and brick-dust. The lap and gurgle of the water. Merity moved, blind, hands out, splashing through the flood.

She saw a point of light ahead, a pale blue glow. It bobbed, then drifted down and away from her, foggy and distorted.

It was Relf’s stablight, still attached to the weapon, sinking slowly in the black flood, the beam spearing up through the rippling water.

Merity plunged and grabbed at it before it sank out of sight. She pulled the short-form carbine out of the water, and turned it, holding the thing like a massively oversized flashlight rather than a gun.

‘Relf? Relf?’

Debris floated on the choppy, dark water. Scraps of fabric, flecks of foam insulate from a body jacket liner, a few broken rings of armour scale. Small slicks of jelly.

Two human teeth. Some shreds of hair.

Merity gathered the dripping carbine up, and gripped it properly. It felt heavy as feth. Steam smoked from the muzzle as the heat of its recent discharge evaporated the water. She panned around, gripping it tightly with trembling hands.

The lights came back on, first a flutter, then straining half power. In the amber haze, she saw someone up ahead, someone wading through the flood towards her.

‘Relf?’

Luna Fazekiel aimed her sidearm at Merity, then slowly lowered it.

‘Merity?’ she mumbled.

‘Commissar?’

Fazekiel blinked. She looked unsteady and distressed. Her eyes were red and sore, and the expression in them was dull. Merity was shocked. Fazekiel was ordinarily the most immaculate figure in the regiment. Even the tiniest blemish on her uniform would famously irritate her deeply. Now, her clothes were torn and stained, and buttons were missing. Merity saw blood dribbling from Fazekiel’s ears and one nostril.

‘You’re hurt,’ Merity said, wading forward.

Fazekiel shook her head. ‘Heard shots,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘No, Relf. The Scion with me.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know. She–’

‘Did you see anything else?’ Fazekiel asked.

‘I saw Yoncy. I think.’

Fazekiel nodded. ‘We’re in hell,’ she said.

‘What?’

Fazekiel shook her head, gulping for breath. She had the zoned-out look of a soldier who’d been in contact for too long. She was soaked through, and pawed at the blood seeping from her left ear.

‘We’re in…’ she began, then shook her head as if what she wanted to say was too hard to articulate.

‘You’re bleeding,’ said Merity.

‘Where?’ asked Fazekiel, as though it didn’t matter. ‘So are you. Are you hit?’

‘I’m not–’ Merity said.

‘There’s blood on you. Your face and neck.’

Merity looked down and realised that the front of her tunic was soaked, and it wasn’t just water.

‘It’s not my blood,’ she said.

Luna Fazekiel wiped her hand across her mouth.

‘When?’ she asked. ‘When did you come down here?’

‘Just minutes ago,’ replied Merity. ‘Just before the lights went out.’

Fazekiel looked at her sharply. The dead exhaustion in her eyes scared Merity.

‘That’s not right,’ said Fazekiel. ‘The lights have been off for days.’

The undercroft lights had come back on at low power. It was a sickly, wavering light, an ochre glow no brighter than the trickling fizz of a slow fuse.

Gol Kolea sloshed through the shin-deep water of a flooded connecting passage. The cast of the wall lamps caught the moving surface of the water, and lapping reflections trembled along the whitewashed ceiling, creating an illusion that the ceiling was awash too.

The sobbing had stopped. Kolea hadn’t heard anything in a while. At one point, he thought he’d heard Erish somewhere, and just after that, he was sure he’d heard Bask shouting, much further away.

He turned off his stablight to conserve power, but kept his rifle ready. The world was closing down, as though the malice of the under-universe had seized control. This was no longer a matter of technical problems.

It was here. He knew it was. It had followed him all the way from Aigor 991, across a decade and billions of kilometres. Gaunt’s stoical reassurances seemed so flimsy now, Kolea was shocked at how readily he’d believed them. The Ruinous Powers had marked him, and they had come for him.

And they had lied. Everything the voice had said to him in that gloomy supply dump had been a lie. Even the promise that if they delivered the eagle stones it would cease to threaten him and his children.

Kolea hadn’t done its bidding, but he hadn’t denied it either. The Ghosts had brought the eagle stones to Urdesh. But that hadn’t been enough. It had come for them anyway.

‘What did you want?’ he asked the shadows around him. The damp silence made no reply. ‘What did you want us to do? Did we fail? The stones are here. Is here not where you wanted them?’

Nothing answered. That was a relief, in a way, but part of him wanted the voice to speak, so he could challenge it and deny it.

It had broken its promise. That’s what the warp did, so it came as little surprise. The things that dwelt in the shadows that life cast were made of untruths and demented logic. They were lies incarnate and could never be trusted. Their promises meant nothing.

But his did. He didn’t break them. Not his allegiance to the Astra Militarum, not his trench pledges to the brothers in his scratch company at Vervunhive, nor his fealty to Number Seventeen Deep Working that had been his living before that, and certainly not his vows to Livy Kolea. Livy Tarin, as was, bright in his mind as the day he’d met her.

He’d made an oath to protect his children, and all of his comrades, from the bad shadow stalking them. He’d face it down, and he’d kill it. And his promises couldn’t be stronger if they’d been wrought from the metal ore he’d once dug out of the Verghast pits.

‘When are you going to show yourself?’ he asked. ‘When are we going to have this out, you and me? Or are shadows your only trick?’

He knew they weren’t, but he was angry, and taunting the darkness felt good. Maybe he could annoy it, and provoke it into revealing itself.

Give himself a target.

It had played with him all along. It had toyed with him, and its lies had even made him doubt his own kids.

Gol hesitated. His priority was to find Dalin and Yoncy, and anyone else stuck in this hellhole. He had to find them before the shadow did, and stand in its way. It had made an enemy of Gol Kolea, and any bastard could tell you that was a bad idea.

He moved forwards, swilling the flood around his knees.

‘How dare you,’ he murmured. ‘How dare you make me think my kids were part of this. That was just torment, wasn’t it? A way to plague me and make me weak.’

His mind went to the cruel fantasies that had been rattling around his head for months. Stupid, stupid thoughts. What had Gaunt said to him?

A brother would know his sister.

Fething right. It was so ridiculously easy to demolish the warp’s falsehoods. If only he’d had the clarity to do that months ago. Some things just don’t get thought when a man’s head is all of a jumble. Some things just don’t get said. They get left unspoken. Simple things that lasted and held more power than anything the warp had ever conjured. I love you. I care. I’ll walk into hell for you.

Well, this was hell, and he was walking into it. But his mind was clear now, sharp as straight silver. The Ruinous Powers had threatened the wrong man.

At the end of the flooded hall was a flight of brick steps that led to the door of a billet hall. The lights in the stairwell were fluttering out. He thought he could hear voices.

He edged up the steps, shoulder to the wall, lasrifle aimed from the jawline. He peered out.

The billet hall was dry. Forty cots stood in two rows under a low arched roof of whitewashed stone, lit by low-power lamps. There were signs of disarray, of possessions disturbed, of people leaving in a hurry.

He hoped they’d all got out.

From the cover of the archway, he saw two figures sitting side by side on a cot at the far right end of the chamber.

It was Dalin and Yoncy.

Dalin was just staring at the next cot along, his arms in his lap, his rifle on the sheet beside him. Yoncy was snuggled up against his side, whispering quietly in his ear.

He heard Dalin murmur, ‘No, Yoncy.’ Like a denial. A weary refusal to accept.

Kolea took another step.

Yoncy looked up sharply, frowned at him, and then darted away.

‘Yoncy! Come back, girl!’ Kolea yelled, and ran down the chamber between the cot rows. She’d already vanished through an archway at the back.

‘Where’s she going?’ Kolea asked.

Dalin didn’t look up.

‘Dal! What’s she playing at? This isn’t a game.’ He turned back to look at Dalin. ‘Get up, Dal,’ he said. ‘Right now. Help me fetch your sister.’

Dalin looked up at him, his face deadpan.

‘She doesn’t make any sense,’ he said quietly.

Kolea frowned, and sat down beside him. ‘You all right? Dal?’

‘Yeah, yeah. This is all just a bit strange.’

‘You got that right,’ said Kolea. ‘There’s some ugly feth going on down here, Dal. So let’s jump to it. Find your fething sister, and drag her out of here by the skirts.’

‘She’s only playing,’ said Dalin.

‘Well, this isn’t time for games.’

‘She said she was hungry.’

‘Well, we’ll cart her upstairs and get her a meal.’

Dalin nodded.

‘Dal, have you seen anyone else? Bask or–’

‘No.’

‘Not anyone? They got everyone else up out of here? The whole retinue?’

‘I think so. I was just looking for Yonce. She was playing hide-and-seek when the lights went out. Got scared, I think.’

‘No doubt. Come on, move your arse before she gets too far ahead of us. Dalin?’

Dalin looked at him. It looked like he was trying to process something. Kolea didn’t like the way Dalin seemed so lethargic.

‘She said things,’ said Dalin.

‘What things?’

‘She said… she said word had come. That it was time. She said there was a woe machine here.’

‘A woe machine? What, like–’

‘Yeah,’ said Dalin. ‘It’s one of her games. “There’s a woe machine coming” she’d say, and then she’d hide and you’d have to find her. She’s been doing it for years. But when she said it just now, I thought…’

‘What?’

Dalin shrugged. ‘How does she know about woe machines? I’ve never thought about it before. I mean, I barely remember Vervunhive. I was just a child, and she’s younger than me. How does she remember that?’

Gol scratched his cheek. He remembered woe machines all too well. It was the term Vervunhivers had used to describe the ingeniously grotesque death engines that Heritor Asphodel had launched against the hive. They had come in an inventively murderous range of designs. None of the Verghastites in the regiment, Guard and retinue alike, had ever forgotten their malevolence.

‘She’s just heard talk over the years,’ said Kolea. ‘Gossip in the camp, bad memories.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And made a bogeyman out of it. You know how she is with games.’

‘What, like her bad shadow?’ Dalin asked.

Kolea said nothing.

‘She said I should talk to you about it,’ said Dalin.

‘Me?’

‘She said papa would explain it to me.’

‘She calls everyone papa,’ Kolea replied sadly.

He put his hand to Dalin’s shoulder.

‘What’s the matter with you, Dal?’ he asked. ‘I don’t like this. Are you sick?’

‘I just…’ Dalin stopped and sighed. ‘She said such weird things. She’s always been strange, but–’

‘She’s always been your sister,’ said Kolea.

Dalin looked at him sharply. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Dal, get your fething head in gear. We have to find her, wherever she’s hiding, and get her out of here. There’s bad shit going on and she shouldn’t be down here. We shouldn’t be down here.’

Dalin nodded and got to his feet. He picked up his lasgun.

‘Yeah, of course,’ he said. He seemed a little more together. ‘I’d just spent so long looking for her in the dark, and then I found her, and I tried to calm her down, but she just wanted to play. And then the things she said just got to me.’

He looked at Kolea.

‘You know about that thing that attacked her and Mam Daur down at Low Keen?’

‘I heard,’ said Kolea.

‘What if that was a woe machine? I mean, it took apart a whole pack of enemy troops.’

‘But spared the pair of them? Where’s the logic in that?’

‘Did woe machines ever have any logic?’ Dalin asked. ‘You’d know.’

‘Not much,’ Kolea admitted.

‘And they were made by the Heritor.’

‘Asphodel.’

‘Right.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘I know,’ said Dalin. ‘But there are other heritors. We know that. I mean, Salvation’s Reach was a workshop for their breed. What if this is something made by one of the others? What if it followed us here from the Reach? What if… what if it’s here? In the city. What if it was out there at the old billet, and now it’s got in here?’

Kolea shook his head. ‘A death engine like a woe machine couldn’t get in here. The palace? Dal, it couldn’t get past the guards. The walls. The–’

‘Something has,’ said Dalin quietly.

‘Yes. Something has.’

They looked at each other for a moment.

‘Let’s find her, Dalin,’ said Kolea.

‘Oh, for feth’s sake!’ Baskevyl snapped and lowered his rifle.

Up ahead, in the low light of the bunk hall, Meryn and Banda lowered their weapons too.

‘I nearly fething shot you, you fething idiots,’ Baskevyl said.

‘Likewise,’ snorted Banda. ‘How are you lot fething in front of us?’

‘I’m telling you,’ said Blenner, coming up behind Bask, his voice agitated. ‘I’m telling you, there’s something not right going on down here. How are Meryn’s mob up there when they should be behind us? And where’s everybody else? Hmm? Where is everybody?’

‘There’s definitely something shitty-weird going on,’ growled Meryn. ‘We can’t find anyone and we can’t find the way out.’

‘What?’ snapped Baskevyl. He looked past Meryn at Leyr, one of the regiment’s finest scouts. Leyr looked deeply uncomfortable.

‘I can’t find the main stairs, sir,’ Leyr said.

‘Is everyone a fething idiot today?’ asked Baskevyl. ‘What do you mean you can’t find the stairs?’

‘I just can’t,’ said Leyr. ‘They’re not where they were. It should be back two rooms, and then to the right. But it’s not. It’s freaking me out.’

‘You’re freaking me out,’ said Baskevyl.

‘I’m not joking,’ said Leyr angrily. ‘It’s like everything is shifting around. Doors, walls–’

‘This palace,’ said Baskevyl very calmly, ‘has been standing for centuries. It’s about as solid as anything gets. It’s not fething-well shifting around in the dark. Have you been at the sacra, Leyr?’

‘Feth you. I’m telling you what I know. The plan of the whole undercroft is not stable. Every time it goes dark, things move.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Find me Bonin. Find me a scout who knows what he’s fething doing.’

‘Mach was leading the retinue out,’ said Neskon. He was standing just behind Leyr. His eyes were hard. ‘There’s no sign of him, or the sergeant major. Or the retinue. It was a lot of people, sir. A lot. Women, kids. With the dark and all, and just the one staircase, they should still be filing out. An evac would take half an hour at least. We should still be able to hear them.’

‘And we can’t even find the stairs,’ said Banda.

‘Are you going to tell them what we found?’ Blenner asked.

Baskevyl glared at him.

‘We found the Munitorum work crew,’ said Blenner, looking at Meryn’s squad. ‘What was left of them.’

‘What?’ said Meryn.

‘They were very dead,’ said Blenner. He palmed something from his coat pocket and swallowed it dry.

‘So this is an attack?’ Banda asked.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Baskevyl quietly. ‘We can’t find Shoggy, or Luna, or Dalin, or the girl. We can’t find anybody.’

‘Not just me, then,’ muttered Leyr.

Baskevyl glanced at him. ‘Well, as long as your professional reputation is intact, we’re all good,’ he growled.

‘Have you seen anybody at all?’ Osket asked Meryn.

‘Not a soul until you came along,’ said Meryn.

‘From the wrong direction…’ Blenner whispered.

‘Gol?’ asked Baskevyl.

Meryn shook his head.

‘All right,’ said Baskevyl. ‘We’ll try to finish the section search. At the very least, Gol’s team is down here somewhere. Then we’ll pull back. Meryn, take your squad, circle back and find the fething stairs. Got any pencil flares? Any chalk?’

‘I’ll find a way to mark the route,’ said Leyr.

‘Good. Do it.’

Baskevyl turned and led his team back the way they had come. Meryn glanced at Banda, Leyr, Neskon and Leclan.

‘You heard him,’ he said.

They turned around and moved back down the hallway. The lights were flickering again. Every three metres or so, Neskon paused and scorched a burn-mark on the wall with a quick burst of his flamer.

‘That’ll do the trick,’ said Leyr.

The air began to fill with the stink of burned paint and scorched brick dust. It mixed with the damp reek of burst drains, and caught in their throats. They reached a T-junction that none of them could remember being there before.

‘Right or left?’ asked Neskon.

Leyr paused.

‘Left,’ Meryn decided.

Banda held up her hand.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘It sounded like sobbing,’ she said.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Leyr.

Meryn gestured at Neskon, who damped the ignition flame of his unit. The constant, chugging rasp of the flamer died away.

They listened.

‘That’s sobbing,’ said Banda. ‘Or giggling.’

‘A kid…’ said Leclan.

‘Gol’s brat,’ said Meryn. ‘Gotta be.’

‘Well, we should find her,’ said Neskon. ‘Everyone was looking for her.’

‘That way,’ said Leyr, indicating the left-hand tunnel.

They advanced. Neskon and Leyr took the lead, but Neskon kept his burner dead so they could hear. He roped the nozzle-gun over his shoulder, and drew his sidearm. Banda and Leclan followed them, and Meryn lurked in the rear. He kept glancing behind him.

‘Oh feth,’ Leyr murmured.

Up ahead, every few metres, there were burn patches on the whitewashed wall.

‘Somebody else had the same idea,’ said Neskon.

Leyr shook his head. He touched one of the marks. ‘Still warm,’ he said. ‘You did this.’

‘Feth I did,’ Neskon objected.

‘We’re following our own footsteps,’ said Leyr.

‘Shut the feth up,’ Meryn told him.

The lights dimmed suddenly and went off. The darkness lasted about three seconds, then the lamps began to glow again. They barely rose from nothing. There was no more light than an overcast dusk, sallow and yellow.

The Ghosts flipped on their stablights.

‘Door,’ said Leclan, and nodded ahead. There was an archway to their left. A small storage room.

Leclan and Leyr advanced, and came in either side of the door. Leclan had his sidearm out, Leyr had the butt of his lasrifle tight in his shoulder.

They swung in.

The room was a small stone vault. On one side, the wall was lined with old wooden racks that had once held wine casks. Several broken packing crates stood nearby. The stone floor was wet, with a couple of centimetres of rank standing water. Several steady drips were spilling from the bowed ceiling.

Yoncy sat on a crate in the far corner with her back to them. Her head was bowed and her shoulders were shaking.

‘Hey, Yoncy,’ said Leclan. He holstered his sidearm and hurried in, pulling his medicae satchel in front of him. Leyr followed.

Leclan knelt down by the young girl.

‘You all right? Yoncy? It’s me, Leclan. Are you hurt?’

Yoncy glanced at him, her head still down. She had been crying.

‘Papa Leclan,’ she whispered, and sniffed.

‘That’s right. Are you hurt? I’m just going to check you over, and then we’ll get you out of here.’

‘I was hiding,’ she said softly. ‘Because the woe machine is here.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Leyr, moving closer.

‘Something about a woe machine,’ replied Leclan. He was trying to turn Yoncy’s head towards him so he could check her pupil response with his penlight. ‘I think she’s in shock.’

‘Woe machine?’ said Neskon. He and Banda had followed the scout and the corpsman into the room. ‘Tell her there’s no fething woe machine here.’

Meryn stood in the doorway behind them.

‘It’s just a game she plays,’ he said. ‘Hide-and-seek. Stupid little freak.’

Banda glared at him. ‘Feth you, Flyn,’ she warned in a hard whisper. ‘She’s scared.’

Meryn shrugged. ‘We’re all fething scared, sweetie,’ he replied.

‘There’s no woe machine,’ Leclan told the girl gently. He opened her mouth and shone the penlight inside. ‘Have you seen anybody? Yonce? Did you see anybody when you were playing your game? When it went dark?’

Yoncy closed her mouth.

‘I saw Dal. And Papa Gol,’ she said.

‘Where were they?’ Meryn called across from the door.

‘They took a wrong turn,’ Yoncy whispered to Leclan conspiratorially. ‘I’m really hungry.’

‘What’s that mark on your neck here?’ Leclan asked, tilting her head gently to look.

Banda looked back at Meryn.

‘If Gol’s close,’ she said, ‘or Dalin… maybe try your link again?’

Meryn sighed, and adjusted his earpiece. The deep itching in his eardrums was back. It suddenly seemed to have got very cold.

‘Kolea? Dalin?’ he called. ‘Anyone read? Kolea?’

There was a sharp screech, a howl like grinding metal. Meryn started, and yanked the earpiece out, thinking it was the wail of feedback. But the noise continued even with the earpiece gone.

He looked back into the room. Something was happening to Leclan. He was standing with his back to them. His body and out-flung arms were vibrating violently. Meryn stared in utter incomprehension. What the feth was Leclan doing? He couldn’t see Yoncy. Just Leclan, shaking and juddering like some fething ecstatic worshipper.

Leclan began to rise into the air, his arms still wide. Water dripped off his suspended boots. Meryn screwed up his face in disbelief. The screech turned into the excruciating, full-on howl of a bone saw.

Leclan disintegrated. Tissue, shredded clothing and shattered bone fragments blasted out in all directions, splattering the room. A small bone shard caught Meryn under the right eye with the force of a slingshot, even though he was metres away.

There was blood everywhere. A drenching mist of it.

Leyr stumbled backwards. A piece of Leclan’s left clavicle had embedded in his throat. He tried to raise his weapon, arterial blood squirting from his neck.

Darkness, wailing like a cycling saw blade, boiled out of the back of the room. It came on like a wall of shadow, a flash-flood of darkness. Leyr loosed two wild shots. Neskon screamed and reignited his flamer. It took two or three frantic pumps to gun it into life.

By then, the rushing tide of shadow had reached him. The saw howled. Neskon shredded. He came apart where he was standing. It looked as though he had been sliced vertically by four or five separate blades. As the pieces of him toppled in a blizzard of blood, the trigger spoon still clutched in his right hand gouted, engulfing Leyr in a sheet of roaring flame.

Leyr, burning from head to foot, dropped to his knees and toppled forwards.

The entire horror had taken just a second or two. Meryn shrieked, and scrambled backwards out of the doorway. The darkness swept towards him, like black water filling the vault.

He ducked aside, about to run, but something clawed at him, holding his arm and shoulder tightly.

He snarled and fought back.

Banda was clinging to him with both hands. He could only see her head, shoulders and arms. She was folded around the door jamb by the armpits, the rest of her inside the room.

Her eyes were so big.

‘Flyn! Flyn!’ she screamed.

He fought to break her grip. It was like a vice on his arm.

‘Flyn!’ Banda shrieked. ‘It’s got me! It’s fething got me! Pull me out!’

‘Let go!’

‘Pull me out, you fething bastard! Pull me out!’

Meryn thrashed wildly. He refused to look into her staring eyes. His churning elbow mashed her left wrist and her grip broke.

Meryn tumbled backwards into the hallway.

‘You fething bastard!’ she screamed as the room pulled her back in. ‘You toxic fething–’ Her fingers raked along the whitewash, leaving bloody scratches. Then she was gone, snapped back like a whip around the edge of the door.

He heard her final scream, mangled by the screech of the bone saw.

Blood squirted out of the doorway and spattered three slashing lines across the floor and up the opposite wall.

Meryn got up, almost crippled by terror. He was tangled in the sling of his rifle. Shadows began to ooze out of the vault like black silk swirling in a breeze. He could smell blood, promethium and burned flesh.

He opened up, firing from the hip at full auto as he backed away. Brick and whitewashed plaster exploded from the walls and ceiling around the doorway. The air clouded with white dust, and the shadow poured through it like a stain.

Meryn hurled the gun away and started to run. He screamed, sprinting for his life.

The hallway was suddenly very long and very straight. There was no end to it. Every three metres there was a burner scorch on the whitewash.

He kept running. Behind him, one by one, the low-burning lamps went out. He heard the pop and fizzle of each globe chasing him like gunshots.

He tried to run faster. He tried to stay ahead of the darkness. His bladder had gone, and he realised the piercing squeals he could hear were his own.

He fell, skinning his palms. He couldn’t breathe. Terror had closed his windpipe.

He looked up. His vision had tunnelled down to a grey haze.

There were two people standing over him. Merity Chass was looking down at him in utter bewilderment. Luna Fazekiel was staring past him, her eyes narrowed.

‘Stay the feth down, captain,’ Fazakiel said.

Fazekiel and Merity opened fire. Meryn screwed into a foetal position, arms clasped around his ears, as Fazekiel’s autopistol and Merity’s carbine blazed over his head. Hot brass bounced off his cheek and neck.

And then it stopped.

‘Check him,’ he heard Fazekiel say. He felt Merity’s hand on him, trying to turn him, trying to uncoil him. He wrenched away from her with a whimper.

He raised his head. Merity was staring at him.

‘What the Throne happened to you?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer. He looked back at the hallway. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to.

Fazekiel had stepped past him and was staring down the hall, checking the clip of her weapon. The long hallway was empty. The three ceiling lamps closest to them were still lit, fizzling weakly. Beyond them, it was just shadow.

‘I don’t know what we saw,’ said Fazekiel, ‘but it’s gone.’ She turned and looked down at him.

‘What was it, captain?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand what we glimpsed. We drove it off, but I don’t know if we could do it again. I don’t think I can protect you again. I can’t fight what I don’t understand. Captain? Do you hear me? What was it?’

Meryn shook his head. His mouth wouldn’t work.

Fazekiel crouched down.

‘What did you see, Meryn?’ she asked without a scrap of compassion.

‘I saw everybody die,’ he said.