Blood Pact

EIGHT Etogaur

‘I’m Gaunt.’

The prisoner, clamped into his seat, turned his head to look. He stared at Gaunt for a long while, expressionless. The tank door closed behind Gaunt with an anvil clang. It was airless in the cell.

The prisoner began to speak. His voice sounded dry, almost dusty, as if it had been left neglected and unused for years.

‘I never met you,’ he said. ‘On Gereon. I never met you in person. I will need some… verification.’

Prisoner B’s command of Low Gothic was excellent, but he had an accent, an out-worlds accent that put a burr on the words, and made each syllable sound as though it was draped in razor-wire.

Gaunt walked around the cage chair once, and came to a halt facing the prisoner. The prisoner made direct and immediate eye contact without flinching. His eyes seemed to loom at Gaunt in the phosphor-green glow of the tank. Gaunt could see–

Nothing. There was nothing there to see!

Gaunt cleared his throat.

‘My unit eliminated the traitor general Noches Sturm at Lectica Bastion,’ he said, skidding matter-of-factly through the account as if it was a summary of how he’d spent an idle morning off-duty. ‘The headshot that ended him was self-inflicted, a last moment of honour in an otherwise despicable life. Out of respect for that, I covered his face with a cloth from his bed chamber before I left the body. The cloth was green silk.’

The prisoner nodded.

‘Now how do you know me?’ asked Gaunt. It was still and airless in the tank cell. Gaunt wanted to rap on his side of the one-way mirror and urge Edur to crank up the air-cycling.

‘I was a senior officer in the occupation forces of Gereon,’ the prisoner replied in that voice of dust and barbed wire. ‘My remit was to examine Sturm and, by means of interrogation and interview, extract as much useful intelligence from him as I could. After his death, a great effort was made to identify, locate and execute his killers.’

‘I remember. I was there,’ said Gaunt.

‘You were active on Gereon for quite some time after the assassination. You worked with the resistance. You effectively built the resistance from the ground up. Though we never caught you, your name was known to us. The name Gaunt, the names of your elite team… They were notorious.’

‘That almost sounds like you’re paying me a compliment,’ said Gaunt.

The prisoner shrugged as much as the restraints would allow. ‘“Any soldier who does not respect another soldier’s achievements is a fool”.’

‘You’re going to quote Slaydo at me now, are you?’

‘I’d quote the Archon Gaur, but your ears would bleed.’

Gaunt walked over to the tank door.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the prisoner.

‘I don’t think we’ve got much to talk about,’ Gaunt replied.

‘We’ve only just begun,’ the prisoner said.

Gaunt looked back at him. ‘The Imperium wastes very little time capturing or interrogating soldiers of the Archenemy. Their corruption is considered too pernicious. No intelligence obtained from them can be considered reliable, and there is always the risk of contamination to the interrogators. You should have been executed before now, not preserved in detention.’

‘I have managed to convince my captors to allow me to remain alive this long. You are my last chance.’

‘Why should I care?’

‘For the sake of the Imperium,’ said the prisoner.

‘Is that something you care about?’ Gaunt asked, making no effort to disguise his sarcastic tone.

‘I have pretty much ceased to care about anything,’ said the prisoner. ‘But I know you care, and that’s enough. I can help the Imperium, Gaunt, but in order to do that, the Imperium has got to learn to trust me.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

‘I believe you are the one person who can convince them to listen to me.’

‘Why?’ asked Gaunt.

‘You were on Gereon for a year,’ said the prisoner. ‘An occupied world, Gaunt. A tainted world. It doesn’t matter what you did or how bravely you served the Golden Throne, you ought to have been executed on your return. No one lasts that long without falling prey to the taint of Chaos. But you’re alive, and still in service. Somehow, you convinced your masters that you were clean.’

‘By the skin of my teeth,’ said Gaunt, ‘and there is still dissent.’

‘But you did it. There is no one better equipped to judge me, to estimate how genuine I am, and then convince the powers that be to listen.’

Gaunt shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I want to do that. I’d be damning myself.’

‘If you refuse me, I’ll be dead before the day’s out,’ said the prisoner. ‘I’m an asset, Gaunt, and only you can see it, if you look.’

Gaunt had walked back to the cell door, and was reaching out his hand to bang on it. He hesitated.

‘When you say you can help the Imperium, what do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I mean,’ the prisoner replied, ‘that I can help the Imperium win the war for the Sabbat Worlds.’