Anarch

Twelve: Qimurah

The man who was going to kill him at dawn came to save his life in the middle of the night.

Keys scraped at the locks of the old cell door. It took three keys to release the thick slab of battered metal. Usually, the unlocking routine was methodical and precise, but this sounded hasty and rushed.

Mabbon waited patiently. He could do little else. The iron manacles on his wrists attached him to the floor by a heavy chain. He could stand and walk in a small circle in the tight confines of the filthy cell, or he could sit on the rockcrete block that served as a stool. They always ordered him to sit when they were coming in, and he preferred it that way.

The heavy door opened, groaning on its metal hinges. Zamak looked in at him. Zamak was one of the six guards who watched Mabbon around the clock. He was Urdeshi, a thick-set man from the 17th Heavy Storm Troop cadre that provided all six members of the guard team.

Zamak looked flustered, his face red, sweat on his forehead. His puzzle-pattern jacket was open as if he hadn’t had time to button it properly. He wasn’t wearing his body armour.

He stepped into the cell, producing the set of keys that fit the manacles. No body search first. No thorough pat-down. None of the usual, painstaking protocols.

‘I don’t usually see you at this hour,’ said Mabbon.

‘I’ve got to move you,’ said Zamak. He was trying to find the correct key. His hands were shaking.

‘Is it dawn already?’ Mabbon asked.

‘Shut up,’ said Zamak. He breathed hard. ‘They’re through the yard already. They’re killing everybody.’

Mabbon had been aware of the gunfire for the past ten minutes. Las-fire, sporadic, its whip-crack sound muffled by the cellblock’s thick stone walls.

‘Who?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Your kind!’ Zamak spat. ‘Your filth!’

Mabbon nodded, understanding. It had been inevitable. He had been waiting for it.

‘Sons?’ he asked. ‘Sons of Sek?’

‘I don’t know what they are!’

Mabbon shrugged, as much as the chains would allow.

‘A kill team, I should think,’ he said placidly. ‘Mortuak Nkah. An “extinction force”. I imagine that’s what they’d send.’

Zamak fumbled and released the heavy cuff around Mabbon’s right wrist.

‘I’ve got to move you,’ he said. ‘Get you clear. Get you to a safe location.’

‘Why?’ asked Mabbon.

Zamak stared at him. ‘They’re coming to kill you,’ he said.

Mabbon nodded. ‘I know they are,’ he replied. ‘Zamak, you’re scheduled to shoot me at dawn.’

‘Yeah,’ Zamak said, struggling to fit the key to the other cuff. Garic, the S-troop squad leader, had explained the timetable to Mabbon two days earlier. At dawn, the six man team guarding him would take him from the cell, escort him down to the yard, put him against the wall, and shoot him. Mabbon didn’t know which of them would actually end his life. It might be any of them. All six would fire their lasrifles at once. He would, he had been told, be offered a blindfold.

‘Well, I don’t understand,’ Mabbon said. ‘You want me dead. They want me dead. Stand aside and let them have me.’

‘I can’t do that!’ Zamak exclaimed. He looked horrified at the suggestion. ‘I’ve got to get you clear–’

‘Why?’ asked Mabbon. He was genuinely bemused. ‘The packsons are killing people to get to me. Killing anyone in their way, or so it sounds. If you try to protect me, you will become a target.’

‘So?’

‘Zamak, the logic isn’t hard. Let them have me. Save yourself.’

‘I can’t do that. I’ve got to move you. That’s orders.’

‘If you get me clear, are you still going to execute me at sunrise?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Of course.’

‘Then what–’ Mabbon began.

‘Shut up!’ Zamak snapped. He couldn’t get the key to fit the left cuff.

‘I’m serious,’ said Mabbon. ‘You’re risking your life over a… what? A bureaucratic issue? By dawn, I’ll be dead. Does it matter who does it?’

‘It doesn’t work like that!’ Zamak said.

‘Well, I think it should. There’s a strong chance you’ll die protecting me. If you don’t, you’ll only shoot me yourself. Go. Get out of here. By dawn, I’ll be dead. You don’t have to be dead too.’

‘Shut the hell up!’

‘I really don’t understand the Imperium sometimes,’ Mabbon said. ‘It’s so constrained by administrative nonsense and paradoxical–’

Zamak had become so flustered he dropped the keys. They landed on the floor between Mabbon’s feet.

‘Shit!’ said Zamak. He bent down to pick them up. Outside, close by, a lasgun ripped out three shots. They heard a man cry out in pain. The cry cut short.

Zamak turned in fear. He drew his sidearm and stepped back to the cell door warily. He peered out.

‘Shit,’ he said again. He stepped out of the cell and disappeared from view.

Mabbon looked at the open door. He waited. He looked down at the keys on the floor at his feet. He cleared his throat and sat up straight, his hands resting in his lap.

He stared at the doorway.

He heard a man shouting nearby, then a burst of pistol fire. An auto sidearm, emptying its clip. The double-crack of two las-shots, then a third. Silence.

Zamak reappeared. He leant against the frame of the cell door. His breathing was laboured, and he was struggling to change the clip on his autopistol. He was making a mess of the task because his hands were both slippery with blood. There was a hole in his torso just below the rib line, and his jacket and undershirt were soaked, dark and heavy.

He’d just slammed the fresh clip home when a las-bolt struck him in the centre of his body mass. The impact bounced him off the door frame, and he half-fell, half-slid to the ground outside the cell with his body turned to the right and his legs splayed.

His killer appeared, framed in the doorway. He looked down at Zamak, then fired another shot into him for good measure.

The killer turned, and stared at Mabbon through the open door.

‘Pheguth,’ he said.

‘Qimurah,’ Mabbon said. ‘I’m honoured. I did not expect him to send one of your kind.’

‘More than one,’ said the Qimurah. ‘The vengeance of He whose voice drowns out all others will not be denied this time.’

Mabbon nodded.

‘I am not trying to deny it,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

The Qimurah stepped into the cell. He was fully worked and revealed, towering and skeletally taut. His neon eyes shone. The Anarch did make such beautiful things.

The Qimurah wore dirty, Guard-issue fatigues that didn’t fit well. The old combat boots had bulged and split a little where they failed to contain his elongated, clawed feet. He carried a worn, humble lasrifle. His tangled rows of yellowed teeth, like little tusks, shaped into what was probably a smile.

‘Shadhek,’ said Mabbon.

‘You recognise me.’

‘It’s been a long time. Fefnag Pass. Scouring the archenemy into the sea.’

‘You are the archenemy now,’ said Shadhek.

‘No, not to anyone,’ said Mabbon. ‘And yet, to everyone. My end is sought by everyone under the stars.’

‘Do you want me to pity you?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘I will not understand you, Mabbon,’ said Shadhek. ‘Not in a thousand thousand years. You were etogaur. A great warrior. No soul more loyal, no commander more shrewd. It was an honour to serve at your side. There were the makings of a magister in you. All who knew you said so.’

‘That’s consolation, I suppose,’ said Mabbon.

‘And then,’ Shadhek murmured. He shrugged. ‘Pheguth. Lowest of all. Lower than filth. A traitor. A betrayer of all trust. You turned.’

‘I have turned more than once in my life. Neither path ever took.’

‘Why, Mabbon?’

‘Because no one ever offered me an answer, Shadhek,’ Mabbon replied.

‘An answer? What answer?’

‘To the most simple of all questions. Why.’

‘Why?’

‘Why all of this? Why any of it? Why do we kill with such consuming intent? Why does this galaxy burn? Imperium and Archonate, eternally locked in rage. No one ever asking why. Who is right? Who is wrong? What secret domain of truth lies between those two extremes?’

Shadhek sneered.

‘You have lost your mind,’ he said.

Mabbon smiled.

‘I think I am the only sane soul alive,’ said Mabbon, ‘but that amounts to the same thing.’

‘Well,’ said Shadhek, ‘now you won’t even be that.’

He raised the lasgun until the muzzle was just a hand’s length from Mabbon’s face. Mabbon did not cower. He did not try to shy away from it. He sat in place, back straight, staring into the notched barrel.

‘Vahooth voi sehn,’ Shadhek said.

The sound of the shot boomed in the close confines of the cell.

Mabbon’s head snapped sideways. The las-bolt had scorched his right cheek and torn through the fleshy lump of his right ear before stroking the back wall of the cell. Blood poured down the side of his head.

He blinked.

Shadhek had been wrenched backwards at the last second, enough to swing his aim aside. The tip of a silver warknife protruded from the middle of his chest, neon blood oozing out around it. A man was clinging to him from behind, one arm locked around his throat, bending him back, the other driving the warblade into his back.

‘Feth me, what are you?’ snarled Varl.

The Qimurah still had his weapon. It fired twice as Varl wrench him backwards. One las-bolt missed Mabbon’s shoulder by a centimetre. The other hit the stone block he was sitting on. Mabbon didn’t flinch. He didn’t even move.

‘Ah,’ he murmured wearily.

Cursing and raging, Varl hauled the Qimurah backwards, trying to turn him away from Mabbon before he fired again.

‘Fething feth-bag shit-stain won’t fething die!’ Varl yelled through gritted teeth.

Shadhek snarled and shoved himself back, mashing Varl between himself and the door frame. Varl barked as all the air was crushed out of him. Shadhek tried to shake him off and turn. Gasping, Varl managed to jerk his straight silver out of the Qimurah’s back before he lost his grip on it completely. As the reworked turned, Varl raked the blade in a frantic slash that opened a diagonal slit across Shadhek’s chest and cut through the strap of his lasgun.

Varl kicked, planting the entire sole of his left boot in the Qimurah’s belly. Shadhek lurched backwards and slammed into the cell wall. The impact forced neon blood from his chest wound. His rifle tumbled out of his grip and clattered across the floor.

Jaws wide, he lunged at Varl.

‘Feth–’ said Varl a second before he was driven into the corner of the cell. He’d been reaching for the lasrifle looped over his shoulder, but Shadhek didn’t give him time to act.

Shadhek’s paws locked around Varl’s throat, squeezing to snap his neck. Thrashing, Varl rammed his warknife into Shadhek’s sternum and shoved with both hands until the blade was buried to the hilt.

An agonised, mangled sound came out of Varl’s mouth as the Qimurah throttled him.

Mabbon looked down at the keys again. He looked at the cuff on his left wrist.

He looked at Varl, as the Ghost sergeant reached the final moments of his life.

With one last burst of near inhuman effort, Varl shoved. Shadhek staggered back, his hands still locked around Varl’s throat. Varl’s hands, soaked with neon blood, were clenched around the grip of the warknife buried in Shadhek’s solar plexus.

Mabbon stood up. He looped the heavy floor chain of his remaining cuff around Shadhek’s neck, took up the slack, and wrenched the Qimurah away from the Ghost.

Shadhek stumbled, the loop of chain biting into his neck. Mabbon kicked the back of his knees and brought him down, then stood on his chest and pulled the chain as tight as he could.

‘Gun,’ he said.

Varl was coughing and retching. He snatched his dangling rifle and aimed it down at the Qimurah.

‘Hurry,’ said Mabbon patiently. ‘I can’t hold him for long.’

Varl roared, and put three rounds into the Qimurah’s grimacing face. Incandescent blood sprayed out across the flagstones and spattered them both. Half of the Qimurah’s face was a smoking ruin of neon gore.

Mabbon kept the chain tight.

‘More,’ he said.

‘I’ve fething–’ Varl gasped.

‘More,’ said Mabbon.

Varl fired again. Four shots, five, six. When he stopped, very little of the reworked’s head remained. Broken tusk fangs stuck at angles in the shapeless, bloody mess.

Mabbon let the chain go slack, and took his foot off the body.

‘They’re hard to kill,’ he said.

‘No shit.’

‘Qimurah. Their tolerances are beyond human.’

‘Uh huh,’ said Varl. He coughed, then turned and threw up on the floor. He stood bent over for a second, heaving and gasping.

‘You had a rifle, sergeant,’ said Mabbon. ‘Why didn’t you use that? Why did you lead with the blade?’

Varl spat on the floor. He straightened up.

‘You were right in the line of fire,’ he replied, his voice hoarse. ‘I might have hit you too.’

‘That seems to bother a surprising number of men today,’ said Mabbon.

Varl saw the keys lying on the floor. He picked them up and reached for Mabbon’s cuff.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘These fethers are all over the place. It’s fething murder outside. Shift your arse.’

‘I am not sure why you’re saving me,’ said Mabbon.

‘Me neither,’ said Varl. ‘Gaunt’s orders.’

‘Ah.’

‘Come on,’ Varl said, stripping off the remaining cuff.

‘I am resigned to die, Sergeant Varl,’ Mabbon said, not moving. ‘I have been waiting for it. Longing for it, probably. All of this is entirely unnecessary. You’ve risked your life and wasted your time–’

‘Come. The feth. Along,’ said Varl.

Mabbon looked at him.

‘Please, I… I’ve had enough,’ said Mabbon.

‘Yeah? Really?’ asked Varl. ‘Then why did you step in? You sat there like a dozy fether while all of that went down, then at the last moment, bang, in you come. Why do anything if you want to fething die?’

Mabbon hesitated.

‘I don’t care about my life any more,’ he said. He looked at Varl. ‘But you were always decent to me, Sergeant Varl. Fair. One of the very few who were. My submission would have meant your death too.’

‘Oh, gee,’ said Varl. ‘I’m touched. I’m getting a nice warm feeling in my… no, that’s vomit. Move your fething arse now, Mabbon. We are leaving and it’s not going to be pretty.’

They left the cell and headed down the dank blockway, Varl in the lead with his weapon ready. Tatters of gunfire continued to echo.

‘I don’t even know where we are,’ said Mabbon.

‘Camp Xenos,’ said Varl. ‘Used to be a civilian jail, but it got turned Prefectus pen during the occupation.’

‘Where is that?’ asked Mabbon.

Varl glanced back at him with a frown.

‘Plade Parish,’ he said. ‘East Central Eltath.’

Mabbon nodded. ‘They brought me in blindfold,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Eltath looks like. Is it a pleasant city?’

‘Not right now,’ said Varl.

Mabbon looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. ‘I have only known the inside of cells for a long time. I have not been without manacles or leg irons for years–’

‘Just keep it down and keep it tight,’ Varl hissed. They passed through a rolling cage divider into another gloomy bay. Two corpses lay on the stone floor surrounded by puddles of blood that looked as shiny and black as tar in the low light. Their poses were clumsy, as though they had been frozen in the middle of restless sleep. One of them was Garic, the leader of the execution watch.

‘Grab a weapon,’ said Varl. Mabbon didn’t.

The prison was old, just a series of rockcrete blockhouses. Most of the paint-scabbed cell doors were open, and Mabbon saw weeds growing between the floor slabs.

‘Are there other prisoners?’ Mabbon asked.

‘No,’ said Varl. ‘They cleared the place to make it all special for you.’

‘Me and six guards?’

‘No, a garrison of thirty plus a six-man prisoner detail.’

They approached an open yard twenty metres wide. The area was roofed in with chain mesh. Above the high wall, Mabbon could dimly see the stacks of a vapour mill blowing slow, silent columns of pale steam up into the night air.

Varl made Mabbon wait before stepping out into the yard. Rawne appeared at a doorway on the far side.

He gestured, Tanith hand-code.

‘Got him, colonel,’ Varl said, signing back.

‘Colonel?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Yeah, there’s a lot of shit been going on,’ said Varl.

On the far side of the yard, Rawne edged a little way out of the doorway, lasrifle ready, peering up at the rooftops that overlooked the chain mesh layer. Trooper Nomis got in beside him, forming a V cover. They drew no immediate fire.

Apparently satisfied, Rawne signalled to Varl.

‘With me, double time, now,’ Varl told Mabbon.

They started out across the yard. Within seconds, las-bolts slammed down around them, steep plunging fire from above and behind. The shots dug scorch-holes in the yard’s rough ground, and left glowing, broken holes in the mesh above.

Rawne and Nomis both opened up, squirting shots up at the roof, and pinging more molten holes through the mesh. Varl got his arm around Mabbon and bundled him towards the door they had just left by.

Something landed hard on the mesh, making it jingle and undulate like a trampoline. The Qimurah had jumped from above. He turned, balanced in a low, splayed crouch on the wobbling mesh, and fired rapid, angled shots at the retreating Varl and Mabbon.

Rawne and Nomis hailed fire at the exposed figure. Hit multiple times, the Qimurah tumbled forwards, rolling and bouncing on the metal net. It was tearing in places where his weight combined with the heat-tear damage of gunfire. He wasn’t dead. He was trying to regain his balance to shoot again.

Rawne and Nomis stepped out into the open, training their fire at him. Spurts of neon fluid spattered down through the mesh.

Brostin stomped out of the doorway behind Rawne. He was hefting up his flamer’s nozzle.

‘Feth him up!’ Rawne yelled. ‘We’ll be all day killing the fether at this rate!’

Brostin’s flamer belched, and hosed a broad, yellow cone of flame up at the netting. The Qimurah was engulfed. They saw him thrash and twist, fire encasing him.

The damaged security mesh tore with a series of sharp metal whip-cracks. Part of it flopped down, spilling the burning Qimurah down onto the yard.

‘All right,’ said Varl, dragging Mabbon back out of the doorway where they had almost fallen. ‘Brostin’s cooked his–’

‘No!’ Mabbon warned.

The Qimurah got up again, flames still licking and swirling off his body. His clothes had burned off entirely. His flesh, from head to toe, was a bubbling mass of yellow ooze, blistering and dripping.

He raised his lasrifle. His hands and the rifle were swathed in fire. He got off three shots. One hit Brostin, fusing and snapping the buckle of his tank pack and knocking him backwards. The other two hit Nomis in the face and throat and killed him outright. Then the intense heat made the Qimurah’s rifle jam.

The Qimurah tossed it aside like a burning stick and began to limp towards Varl and Mabbon.

‘Shitty shit shit!’ Varl gasped, and started firing. Brostin was trying to wrestle with his now un-anchored tanks so he could let rip again.

‘Trooper Brostin! Tight squirt! Tight squirt!’ yelled Mabbon over Varl’s head. ‘Pull your flames tight!’

Brostin frowned, but obediently screwed the nozzle choke as tight as it would go. Varl had no idea how Brostin wasn’t burning his hands on the metal of the flamer spout. Rawne had run forwards to help brace the heavy tanks swinging off Brostin’s shoulder.

Brostin hosed again. His flamer made a much wilder, higher shriek. He shot a narrow, focused spear of nearly white-hot flame that struck the advancing Qimurah in the back.

The Qimurah staggered, seared from behind by the intense surge. He re-combusted in a rush of furious light, the flesh on his back rippling away in blackened flakes like paint stripping under the tongue of a blow torch. He became a column of fire in which they could see his ribcage and long bones in silhouette as meat and muscle transmuted into billowing clouds of ash and droplets of burning fat.

He collapsed, his remains making a heap like a pile of burning sticks. His skull, black as anthracite and steaming, rolled clear.

Varl pulled Mabbon out of the doorway. Brostin put the tanks down, panting. Rawne crossed to Nomis to check for a pulse, but one look at the man’s wounds told him it was futile.

‘Nice trick,’ said Brostin to Mabbon.

‘Qimurah secrete mucus through their skin,’ said Mabbon. ‘It makes them highly resistant to energy fire and to strong levels of heat. Blanketing them in flame is ineffective, but even they can’t withstand a sustained, focused blast at the very highest temperature.’

‘Good to know,’ said Brostin, trying to cobble a make-do repair on his tank-straps. ‘Because they’re awful fethers.’

‘What did you call them?’ asked Rawne.

‘Qimurah,’ said Mabbon. ‘The Anarch’s chosen ones. Elite and very rare. Hello, colonel. I gather it’s colonel, now. On your way to making etogaur at this rate.’

Rawne looked at him.

‘Not really the time or place for a catch up,’ he said. ‘Varl, get him under cover. There could be more of the fethers up there.’

Varl led Mabbon by the arm towards the door Rawne had emerged from.

‘How many are they, colonel?’ Mabbon asked over his shoulder.

‘We’ve seen six,’ said Rawne.

‘And killed two,’ said Varl.

‘I am flattered they sent more than one,’ said Mabbon. ‘Colonel, there will be eight of them. They either come alone, or in squads of eight.’

‘Eight? You sure?’

‘Please, colonel,’ said Mabbon. ‘It’s the holy number. Only sixty-four Qimurah ever exist at one time. Eight times eight, you see? There will be eight. How many men are with you?’

‘One section,’ said Rawne.

‘One?’

‘Just the Suicide Kings. B Company, first section.’

‘Then, with respect, you are dead,’ said Mabbon. ‘Six remain. It is unprecedented for the Anarch to deploy eight Qimurah together in this day and age.’

‘You’re clearly high on his to-do list,’ said Rawne.

‘But the pheguth’s not the primary target, is he?’ said Varl.

‘What?’ asked Rawne.

Varl shrugged. ‘Their primary target is gonna be the same as ours,’ he said. ‘Collecting Mabbon’s just a courtesy. We sent the bulk of our lot after the eagle stones. And if they sent eight here–’

‘What’s that?’ asked Brostin. ‘Sixty-four minus… that’s fifty-six. Fifty-fething-six of these bastards?’

‘To field all the Qimurah on one world at one time,’ said Mabbon. He was clearly stunned. ‘That’s unheard of. That’s never happened. It–’

‘It means Pasha and the Ghosts are totally fethed,’ said Rawne. ‘Oysten! Get me the vox. Now!’

From the blockhouse ahead, gunfire renewed in serious, frantic blurts.

‘Oysten!’ Rawne yelled. He looked at Brostin and Varl. ‘Close on him,’ he said, pointing at Mabbon. ‘We’re going to take him straight through and out. Staying here is not an option.’

Lunny Obel opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He shook his head.

Finally, he said, ‘Fethed if I understand any of this.’

He put another las-round into the already dead adept warden, just to be certain.

He looked around.

‘How many?’ he called out. ‘How many did we lose?’

‘Eight,’ said Maggs quietly.

‘Nine,’ said Larkin. ‘Nine. Etzen’s over here behind the… the thing.’ He waved his hand wearily at one of the turbine hall’s control desks.

Tona Criid rose from the body of the other adept warden. She had picked up the ornate stave he had, without warning, used to kill three of the Ghosts. She turned it over in her hand. Then she looked around the hall. Fyceline smoke was still hanging in the air. Zhukova had just managed to manually close the outer hatch, locking out a Mechanicus automata that was now standing outside, emptying its munition hoppers against the hatch plate. The impacts were making a noise like a machine-hammer, and flecks of green paint were scabbing and flying off the inside of the door. Behind that immediate thundering, Criid could hear other gunfire. The automata, a squat gun servitor, had been one of several that had started shooting in the arcade outside the Turbine Hall just seconds before the adept wardens had gone berserk. By the sound of it, there was now a full-scale rolling battle tearing through EM 14, as the companies of Tanith Ghosts who had entered the facility with Major Pasha tried to fend off the Cult Mechanicus personnel who had turned on them for no reason.

Criid took a quick head count: Obel, Larkin, Zhukova, Mkhet, Boaz, Falkerin, Galashia, Cleb, Ifvan, Maggs, Lubba… all told thirty-one Ghosts from the two teams that she and Obel had assembled were left.

‘What do we do?’ Lubba asked.

‘We go in,’ said Obel. ‘We go in now, as per Pasha’s orders.’

Criid nodded.

‘I think the situation has changed wildly since she issued that order,’ said Larkin. ‘The fething Mechanicus freaks are trying to end us.’

‘I don’t think they know what they’re trying to do,’ said Maggs. He gestured at the data screens that covered one wall of the imposing hall. They were rolling with broken codeware and half-formed runes. The hall’s lights were flickering, and the huge turbine didn’t sound as though it was running well. Even a tech-novice could tell that something catastrophic had swept through the Mechanicus facility.

‘They didn’t turn on us,’ Zhukova agreed. ‘They just all turned insane, like a switch being thrown.’

‘How could you tell?’ asked Larkin. ‘They’re freaks at the best of times.’

‘You could tell,’ said Zhukova. ‘They went feral. Central system corruption. Maybe part of the Archenemy attack. I don’t know. But if they’d simply decided to kill us, for whatever reason of logic, we’d be dead.’

She looked at the corpses of the two adept wardens. It had taken the combined, desperate efforts of all of them to drop the wardens, and only then because the wardens had attacked without any regard for their own safety.

‘They went mad?’ Larkin asked. ‘How could you tell?’

‘Because they behaved like humans,’ said Criid. ‘Emotion. Frenzy. That’s not Mechanicus.’

‘Well,’ Larkin pouted. ‘Whatever, are we still going in?’

‘Orders still stand,’ said Criid. ‘Orders from Pasha, given to her by Gaunt. The objective is still essential, even if the game on the ground just turned bad.’

‘All right,’ said Ifvan. ‘But how do we get in? And how do we know where to go? Those murdering shit-heads were supposed to show us.’

Zhukova pointed to an embossed metal sign bolted to the marble wall. It looked like a circuit map.

‘That seems to be a schematic of the vent systems,’ she said.

‘Make some sense of it,’ Criid ordered. ‘Everybody get kit-light. We’ll be moving fast because we’ve already lost time. Weapons, torches and ammo. And water. Check your reloads. Strip extras from the dead.’

Several of the Ghosts looked at her.

‘They’d want us to have them,’ she said flatly. ‘They’d want us to use them. Lunny, see if you can raise Pasha. Or anyone.’

Obel nodded, and started trying his micro-bead. Criid crossed to where Zhukova and Maggs were studying the metal sign.

‘Is that a plan?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Zhukova. ‘This is us here. Turbine Hall One.’ She pointed. ‘So access is that duct over there. It’s a bit of a maze, but if I’m reading this right, we can follow the ducts down to the main geotherm shaft here. If the bastards got in this way, then that’s the way they’re coming out. It’s the main spur to the city power system. So if we can get down here as quick as we can, we can block their route. Their only way out will be through us. That is, if I’m understanding this correctly.’

‘You’re our best hope,’ said Criid. ‘And our best chance for finding the way.’

Zhukova nodded grimly. The scouts in both Criid and Obel’s team sections were amongst the dead, their flesh and bone demolished by the wardens’ grav pulses. Ornella Zhukova was the closest thing they had to a fully fledged scout.

‘Finding the way’s not going to be our problem,’ said Maggs. ‘Stopping the bastards is. Pasha and Kadle reckoned they were like bullet proof or some shit.’

‘We’ll just have to pack as much punch as we can,’ said Criid. ‘Flamers–’

‘And fire-retardant,’ said Maggs.

‘We’ve got Larkin and Okain, so we’ve got hotshots,’ said Criid. ‘We can bring the .20.’

‘Snipers and a crew-served? In a tunnel?’ Maggs said, mocking.

‘We’ve got grenades and tube charges,’ Criid went on firmly. She looked at the stave in her hand. ‘And we can improvise.’

Maggs sighed. He looked at the sign. ‘If I had some paper, I could make a rubbing of this. Or a data-slate, we could copy it.’

‘All the data-slates have crashed too,’ said Criid. ‘Central link. The noospheric thing. And I don’t think the Mechanicus uses paper.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Zhukova, staring at the sign and moving her right index finger around her left palm as though she was sketching. ‘I can memorise it.’

Criid, Lubba and Ifvan opened the duct cover. Automation was off, so they had to force the heavy bolts manually. They were sweating by the time they’d finished. It was work a power-assisted servitor would normally have performed. Lubba heaved the circular hatch open, and a wall of heat and gas fumes rolled out.

It made them all step back.

‘Shit,’ said Ifvan. ‘That’s gonna kill us.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ said Criid.

‘Do we need masks?’ asked Lubba. ‘You know, rebreathers and stuff?’

Criid looked around. There were plenty of equipment racks in the hall’s workspace, but no masks or rebreather hoods. The adepts of the Cult had no need of such things.

‘We’ll be fine,’ she repeated. She peered into the duct, and shone her stablight. It was a circular metal tube three metres in diameter, the interior black with soot and mineral deposits. Every three metres, it was banded with a big iron reinforcement ring. The duct stretched as far as her beam could reach.

‘Let’s go!’ she called out.

Obel was gathering his kit, still trying his bead.

‘Obel to Pasha. Do you copy? Obel to Pasha.’

In the laboratory space, Konjic passed the vox-mic to Pasha.

Pasha took it.

‘Lunny? Is Pasha. Sorry, vox is being scrambled by whatever crazy has happened to our Mechanicus hosts. Konjic had to run re-routes, clever boy.’

‘We’re going in, major,’ Obel replied on speaker. ‘Not ideal circumstances–’

‘You do your best, Lunny Obel. Make Belladon proud.’

‘I’m from Tanith, ma’am.’

‘And where is that, these days, eh? Belladon will give you land and honour when you come home a hero. An adopted son. Do what you can. In five minutes, I start sending teams down from this end.’

‘We’ve locked ourselves in here, major,’ said Obel, his voice crackling with static. ‘What’s the situation?’

‘Is bad, sad to tell,’ she replied. She looked over at the door that led from the lab into the arcade. Spetnin had a squad there and two more outside, fending off anything that came close. She could hear the constant chatter of las-fire. ‘The Mechanicus makes deadly toys. Gun-servitors. Kill machines. Very bad. Also, the priests have gone insane. We are killing many, and so are they.’

‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ replied Obel. ‘Can you contact the palace for reinforcement?’

Pasha grimaced. ‘I will try, Lunny. Now off you go. The Emperor protects.’

‘Obel out.’

Pasha handed the mic back to her adjutant.

‘Didn’t have the heart to tell him,’ she said. Konjic had been trying the Urdeshic Palace and high command channels for several minutes. They were all dead. It wasn’t just scrambling or interference. The caster display read all those sites as non-functional. She dreaded to think what might have happened.

She took a deep breath. All she could do was focus on the job at hand, the job the Lord Executor had given her.

Spetnin hurried over. He was bleeding from a scalp wound.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Almost an over-run,’ he replied. ‘All our companies inside the complex have been driven into pockets by the frenzy. The Mechanicus has run amok. But they’re making easy targets. It just takes a lot to kill them. Our casualty rate stands at about thirty per cent.’

‘Throne,’ she rumbled. That was hundreds of men.

‘Our big problem is going to be ammunition,’ Spetnin said. ‘We’re burning through it, and we can’t get out to resupply. Are we getting reinforcement?’

She shook her head.

‘Not from the palace,’ she said. ‘But we have four companies outside.’

‘Who are in a fight themselves,’ Spetnin reminded her.

‘They may be better off than us,’ she said. ‘They were ready for theirs. Konjic, please to see if you can raise Kolosim.’

On the scree around the approach road, the Ghosts were lighting up the night. Their position was holding, and they were answering everything the insurgents handed them with interest. Already, the fire rate from the Archenemy, invisible in the waste-ground on the far side of the highway bank, had begun to drop off. Kolosim reckoned that in another ten minutes the hostiles would run out of munitions, or the will to continue, or the Ghosts would have simply killed enough of them to break them.

He cracked off some shots himself, using a rockcrete post as cover, his cape drawn in around him to mask him in the night. Ripples of bolts were criss-crossing the highway, and the Ghost’s extended line was dancing with discharge flashes and the big fire blurts of the heavy support weapons.

His link crackled.

‘Kolosim, go,’ he said.

‘Pasha. It is shit-show in here. We’re going to need some help.’

‘Happy to oblige as soon as this breaks, major,’ he replied.

‘Make it fast, captain. We are running dry of ammunition. If you can get in here, bring plenty. And consider anything and anyone you meet who isn’t a Ghost a hostile. The Mechanicus has turned.’

‘They’ve turned?’

‘Bah. Long story. Just get in. But bring ammo, and bring things that kill hard. Tread fethers. Grenades. Crew-served units. All targets have a high stopping factor.’

‘Stay alive,’ he responded. ‘I’ll advise you as soon as we’re moving. Kolosim out.’

Kolosim ducked down and crawled through the rubble to Bray’s position.

‘Here’s a twist,’ he said. ‘We’re going in.’

‘Into the Mechanicore?’ Bray asked.

Kolosim nodded and quickly related what Pasha had said. ‘I want you to get at least a company strength ready to fall back as soon as this dies down enough.’

Bray nodded. He looked back up the approach road at the dark, grim bulk of the Mechanicus fortress, a grey monolith in the night.

‘Ironic,’ he said. ‘We thought our job was going to be defending that place. Not invading it.’

‘You know what ironic gets you?’ Kolosim asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Fething nothing. Not a thing. This situation is ongoing and developing. I don’t much fancy assaulting a fortified location like that head on, but I’m not leaving Pasha and the rest to die in there. That’s over two thirds of the Ghosts.’

‘If we can get the main gate open, we might be able to use the transports to move munitions inside in bulk. Faster than carry-teams.’

‘All right,’ said Kolosim. ‘Clock’s ticking.’

The fire rate coming in at them suddenly dropped away to almost nothing. Just a few lone shooters continued to pink away.

‘The feth?’ said Bray.

Kolosim pulled his bead close. ‘Ghost formations, cease fire. Cease fire.’

Firing from the Tanith lines died back. An almost eerie silence settled over the nightscape, broken only by a few cracks and pops from persistent shooters and the distant grumble of heat lightning. A haze of smoke drifted.

‘I don’t like that,’ said Bray.

Kolosim didn’t either. He’d expected the attack to die away eventually, because the insurgents moved in small, mobile, ill-supported units and their ammunition was limited. But they hadn’t all run out all at once. This fire-halt was coordinated.

They waited. After an anxious minute or two, they heard the engine.

A cargo-6 was coming down the highway from the east, lights hooded. It was moving at a fair pace. Kolosim couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked like its cab windows had been plated with flakboard.

‘Crap!’ he said. ‘Oh crap!’

He knew what it was. The Sekkite insurgence had driven bombs into several targets during the long months of the Urdesh campaign. They were rolling something in now. The foot attack had been to keep the Ghosts in position. Now the kill thrust was coming.

A cargo-6 could carry about ten tonnes. If it was fully laden, and that load was thermite or D60, both of which the insurgents used, then it would level a couple of square kilometres around the approach road.

Several Ghosts had taken aim at the approaching truck.

‘No!’ Bray ordered. A stray shot would set off an unstable load. A tread fether like the one Chiria was lugging would certainly stop the truck, but the result would be the same. It was already too close. A blast would take half of the Ghosts with it.

‘Fall back?’ asked Bray.

Kolosim shook his head. There was no time. No one would get clear. Not even at a run.

He dashed down the line to Nessa.

‘Driver!’ he said, signing. ‘Driver or engine block! Nothing else!’

She nodded, and set her long-las, resting it on its folding bipod across the top of the boulder she was crouched behind.

The cargo-6 thundered closer, kicking up dust. It was running fast, and wavering across the centre-line of the highway.

‘Nessa?’ Kolosim urged.

‘I have to wait,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It has to be side-on, or the round will go clean through to the back compartment.’

‘Shit!’ Kolosim hissed.

The truck came up the final stretch. Ghosts in the line nearby had ducked flat. It took the corner hard, tyres squealing, tilting hard on its suspension. Throne, it was loaded heavy.

Past the corner it began to accelerate up the approach road. It was almost level with them.

Nessa looked serene. She seemed to have stopped breathing.

Her long-las boomed.

The hotshot round went through the boarded side window of the cab. It must have delivered a straight kill to the driver, because the truck veered hard. Nessa ejected the cell, slammed home another, and fired again. Her reload cycle had taken less than a second. She didn’t even appear to aim the second time. She fired, and the second hotshot punched through the truck’s engine cover. Something blew out under the hood and the truck decelerated hard. Its motor was clattering and stricken. The truck came to a slow halt as its sudden lack of motive power worked with the incline of the approach road. It started to coast, then swung sideways and rammed a fencepost.

Kolosim had closed his eyes. He opened them. The truck had not detonated. Its front end was caved around the post. It started rolling backwards slowly, carried by its own weight on the slope.

‘Feth!’ Kolosim said.

The truck rolled silently, motor dead, and bounced off the approach road on the other side, rear axle down in the gulley.

Again, it did not go off.

Kolosim was up and running. So were Caober and Chiria, heedless of the fact that they were exposed with insurgents in range on the far side of the highway.

Chiria reached the truck first, and clambered into the back.

‘Chiria?’ Kolosim yelled.

‘More D60 than I ever want to see in one place again,’ she called back. ‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘It’s on a timer.’

‘How long?’

‘You don’t want to know. Run.’

Caober had opened the cab door. The driver, a Sek packson, was dead behind the wheel. Nessa’s shot had entirely vaporised his head.

Kolosim got up into the back. His jaw dropped. He’d never seen so many boxes of D60. Maybe a tonne and half, plus some open crates of thermite mines. Chiria was hunched over them.

‘It’s pretty rudimentary,’ she said. ‘Impact trigger running the timed fuse. Very rough. Surprised they didn’t die rigging it.’

‘How long?’

‘You still don’t want to know.’

‘Stop saying that!’ he exclaimed.

‘Just cup your balls and pray,’ she said. She was good with explosives. If anyone could do it, it was Chiria.

‘Uh oh,’ she said.

‘What!’

She turned to look at him. A big grin split her famously scarred face. ‘We’re still alive,’ she said.

She tossed him the detached timer and firing pack. He caught it badly.

‘Feth you,’ he said. ‘I nearly shat.’ He kissed her on the side of the head.

‘Get off,’ she said.

They heard pops and cracks. The insurgents had started up again. It wasn’t as heavy as before. They had little left to deliver.

But they were aiming for the truck. They wanted to finish the delivery of their gift.

Kolosim jumped down out of the cargo-6. Las-bolts and hard rounds were clipping the road and gulley around him. He heard one slice through the cargo-6’s canvas cover.

‘Light ’em up! Make ’em stop!’ he yelled into his bead.

The Ghosts began firing, trying to drive the remaining insurgents down and keep them so pinned they couldn’t fire.

But shots were still coming in.

‘Over here!’ Kolosim yelled. With Chiria and Caober, he was already straining to push the truck out of the gulley. The nearest fire teams ran over to join them. One was hit in the back of the leg as he ran forwards. Someone stopped to drag him back to cover, yelling for a corpsman. The others came to Kolosim’s side, tossing down their weapons and planting their hands against the truck’s bodywork. Kolosim had fifteen Ghosts heaving on the truck with him. They got it bumped out of the gulley and back onto the road. Caober leaned into the cab to correct the steering while he pushed. Backs breaking, they began to roll it up the long slope towards the Mechanicore. Shots pinged and cracked down around them.

All they had to do was get it out of range. Push it up the slope. Just a hundred metres would be enough.

A hundred metres. Under sustained fire. Pushing a five tonne truck carrying a tonne and a half of high explosive.

The air in the ship was stale and humid. It had clearly taken damage in the past week, and major environmental subsystems had been taken off-line for repair. The sirdar passed through areas where the main lighting was out and red-lensed lanterns had been hung from the spars to provide temporary illumination. Oil, grease and waste water dripped through the decks and pooled under the walkway grilles. Some sections were closed off entirely. The sirdar heard the whine of power tools and the sputtering pop of welding gear. Several other sections were stacked with structural debris and baskets of broken plasteks and ceramite. Gangs of servitors and haggard human slaves were working to clear the detritus from the companionways and compromised compartments. Packsons and gold-robed crewmen roamed past.

The hissing whisper was everywhere. It scratched at his ears, and tugged at his brain. It was far, far louder inside the ship.

At most junctions and compartment hatches, the sirdar passed easily, unchallenged by the packsons posted at each way point. At one, an overzealous guard called out after him as he passed. The sirdar kept walking with confidence, as though he hadn’t noticed the cry, and the guard didn’t follow it up.

At another junction, he was stopped by two etogaurs who berated him for over a minute about the noxious heat aboard ship and the lack of circulating air. The sirdar nodded, checked his slate, and promised he would look into it directly.

Access was alarmingly easy. All that was required was confidence, the ability to look like you belonged there, and a few words of the language to get you past. Enough purpose in your stride, and no one gave you a second look.

And the Archenemy had no reason to be alert. They were in the heart of the Fastness, a secure location unknown to Imperial intelligence. The only Imperial humans in a radius of ninety kilometres were in chains.

The brig lay on the eighth service deck aft. Most prisoners were held ashore, especially those who had signalled they were ready to convert and accept impressment. Only the most significant and sensitive were chambered aboard the ship.

Like enkil vahakan.

The sirdar loitered in the shadows of a through-deck ladder well for a few minutes, and observed the operation of the brig access. There was an outer and inner cage, large and heavy sliding metal frames, and between them was a security post manned by two large packson watchmen. There was a small operations console built into the wall, a vox-link and security board, and a belt-fed Urdeshi-made .20 on a tripod, mounted to cover the inner bay of the brig block through the second cage.

While the sirdar watched, a damogaur and two packsons arrived, and gained access to the outer cage using a pass key. They talked briefly to the duty watchmen, who then used their own key to let them through the inner cage. A few minutes later, a different damogaur exited alone, locking the outer cage securely with his own key.

The sirdar followed him along the service deck to a traverse, waited while a detail of packsons hurried past, then called out a question to catch the damogaur’s attention. The sirdar left his body stuffed in a service locker.

The sirdar returned to the brig with the damogaur’s key.

Without hesitation, he let himself in.

The security watchmen looked up at him.

‘Desh arad voi toltoom,’ the sirdar said. More interviews.

‘Who?’ asked one of the watchmen.

‘Enkil vahakan,’ the sirdar replied.

The security watchmen hesitated. One said they hadn’t been notified. Nothing was scheduled.

‘He has set new questions,’ the sirdar replied with a shrug. ‘He wants them asked tonight. Are you going to be the ones who delay him getting the answers? It’s on you, brothers. I’ll just say you were doing your job.’

The watchmen glanced at each other. One got up, unlocked the inner cage, then slid it open.

‘The grace of his voice guide you and drown out all untruths,’ the sirdar said as he stepped through the cage. ‘I will not be long.’

The brig block was a stinking, infernal realm. It was lit by age-stained lumen globes set in iron cages, and the deck and walls had never been cleaned. They were caked with the residue of pain and suffering. Some of the cells in the block were unoccupied. Through the open hatch of one, the sirdar saw a man being tortured by the damogaur he’d seen entering the brig ten minutes before. His packsons, stripped to the waist, were doing the work while the officer stood on and watched, asking the same question over and over.

The man was an Urdeshi colonel, a high value prisoner. He was so far gone, he was no longer making a sound or even flinching as the packsons worked at his flesh with flat-wire knives.

The man’s eyes just stared out past his tormentors into the hallway, gazing at a freedom he would never know. He caught the sirdar watching him. Their eyes locked.

The man’s staring eyes twitched. His mouth moved, leaking slightly. He knew. He saw what every Sekkite aboard had missed. Despite the uniform and the hand-strap mouth, he saw the sirdar’s eyes. The expression there. The horror and the pity.

The sirdar hesitated. He wanted to go in, to lay vengeance on the officer and the two packsons. He wanted to put the Urdeshi out of his suffering.

He could not afford that kind of diversion.

Very slowly, he shook his head. Don’t.

Then he made the sign of the aquila.

The Urdeshi did not respond. He simply closed his eyes.

The sirdar hurried on. Beyond the block of regular cells, there was an area reserved for more specialised containment. The notification mark on the page he’d torn out of Olort’s book matched a sigil scratched above the archway. Highest level securement.

He checked there was no one close by, then deactivated the screening field and stepped through the arch. The dank and rusted chamber beyond was octagonal. Each wall section was formed by a heavy hatch with a vox-speaker set into a large window of reinforced glass.

The hatch windows were dirty, but it was clear that each looked into a flooded cell. The sirdar peered into the nearest one. The fluid beyond the glass was murky green, drifting with fibrous scraps, like the dredged sediment of some polluted canal. There was a shadow in it. A human cadaver, rotting back to bone, floating like a revenant apparition. It looked like the corpse of a drowned mariner who had been in the water for a long time.

There was a similarly ragged corpse in the silted water of the next cell. The sirdar squinted in at it. The corpse within suddenly jerked its head and glared at him with rheumy, lidless eyes, its fleshless mouth snapping and chewing.

The sirdar recoiled from the glass. He could hear a scratchy, gurgling voice. It was coming from the cell’s vox speaker. He saw that cables were attached to the corpse’s temples.

These were stasis tanks, filled with nutrient fluid. The prisoners were held in suspension, their minds wired via augmetic links to vox-grilles that articulated their thoughts.

He moved to the third tank. The fluid suspension here was a little cleaner, as though it had only been filled a few days before. A drowned man drifted inside. His hair was black, his clothes the tattered fabric of Imperial Guard fatigues. Cables were fixed to his temples too. His flesh was bloodlessly white and shrivelled by long immersion.

‘Feth,’ the sirdar murmured. He knew the face. Time had passed, and it was older, but it was unmistakable.

He put his hand against the dirty glass.

‘Hello,’ he whispered. ‘Can you hear me? It’s me. It’s Oan.’

The figure inside stirred, as though it was twitching in a bad dream. A few oily bubbles broke from its lips.

The sirdar looked around. There was a control panel beside the hatch frame. He didn’t know much about stasis suspension. He didn’t know if abrupt removal would shock or damage the subject.

There was no time to debate it. He threw the switch that would open the sluices and drain the tank.

The fluid level inside the tank began to drop. The sirdar could hear it gurgling and flushing through the underdeck drains. The body inside was slowly revealed, losing its buoyancy and slumping into the corner of the metal vat.

As the fluid level dropped, the sirdar saw his own reflection in the glass, and took off his helmet. If the captive survived release, he wanted him to be able to see his face.

As soon as the fluid had dropped far enough, the sirdar opened the hatch. Excess water, stagnant and foul, sloshed out over his boots. The tank reeked of organic waste and bacterial processes.

The man inside was limp. Dead or unconscious. The sirdar grabbed him and dragged him out. His flesh was cold and extraordinarily colourless. The sirdar tore the cables out of his temples, leaving little bloodless punctures, and pumped at his chest. Brackish soup glugged out of his slack mouth and nostrils.

‘Come on,’ the sirdar whispered. ‘Don’t let this be hello again and goodbye.’

The man convulsed, and started to cough and choke. His eyes opened. He retched and spat out ropes of mucus and spittle while the sirdar supported him.

He looked up at the sirdar, blinking in the stale light. Some colour was returning, and his flesh began to show livid bruises from beatings and many minor combat injuries.

‘Oan?’ he asked, his voice made of nothing.

‘Hello, Brin,’ said Mkoll. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Mkoll locked his arms around Brin Milo, like a man greeting a son he’d thought he’d lost forever.