Fear And Fire Part 17

Portia did not look up from her examination of her victim. 'It would be my pleasure to demonstrate it to you at close quarters, maleficent. She pulled at a line of b.u.t.tons and the over-robes fell open. This mantle is lined with a ceramite weave.

'Body armour. offered Ca.s.sandra, 'in case their charges get too boisterous.

The clothing beneath...' Portia fingered a gar-ment in rich red material. This is the attire of a cleric' She found the dead man's necklace: it was a string of onyx beads ending in a golden aquila, an affectation of the Nevan branch of the Imperial Cult.

Vaun laughed softly. 'How troubling. Now, what would a pious servant of the G.o.d-Emperor be doing here, I wonder?'

Miriya rounded on the criminal. 'You knew. You knew and yet you let her end the life of a priest and said nothing. she spat. 'His blood is on your hands!'

'Along with hundreds of others. retorted Vaun, his amus.e.m.e.nt gone in an instant, 'not that I care.

'You'll be made to. vowed the Celestian. 'You have my word on it.

The man made an annoyed snarl. 'Ach, look beyond that, woman. he snapped, pointing at the corpse. 'Don't youunderstand what it means?'

Isabel was examining the consoles in the cham-ber. 'I am no tech-adept, but I believe he appeared to be attempting to perform a prayer-diagnostic on these devices. She ran her hands over a set of tarnished bra.s.s dials and a wavering hololithic screen hummed to life. The image was leached of colour, but it clearly showed the activities of a group of similarly dressed figures working at a body on an operating dais. Verity watched for a moment before realising two things: the body was a person still alive, conscious and unanaes-thetised, and the display was a visual record of something that had taken place in this very room.

The screen threw more light about the chamber, illuminating the white porcelain dais and the dark stains of dried vitae about the blood gutters.

Vaun craned his neck to get a better look at the activity on the hololith. 'Now, her I do know. he noted, 'or rather, I did.

Kipsel, her name was. He looked away. 'She died of that.

'Of what?' Verity asked, in a dull voice.

Vaun tapped the lump behind his ear. 'Of this.

Isabel scrutinised a ticking display rotor in High Gothic. 'Kipsel. That name is here in the record-ing. Dates, as well.

The Hospitaller looked over her shoulder. The dates fell squarely in the time period where Vaun's librarium files were empty. She looked up at the screen and her eyes widened. 'Can you halt the progress of the image?'

The Battle Sister turned a control and the recording slowed down to a stop. 'What is it, girl?'

Verity pointed at the corner of the hololith, her finger breaking the surface of the ghost image. 'It's him. It's both of them.

'Holy Terra... Yes, I see it. Isabel worked the controls again, making the image s.h.i.+ft to bring that section of the picture forward.

Verity and the other women saw several men, garbed in the same robes as the dead priest, but with their hoods down.

Two men in particular were at the core of the group, the others around them showing obvious deference. Their profiles were unmistakable, even though time and the poor recording marred the likenesses.

Vaun indicated the men with a theatrical sweep of his hand. 'Honoured Sisters, may I present his most loathsome self, the Lord Viktor LaHayn and his lick-spittle Venik.

Miriya ordered her Celestians to sweep the operat-ing theatre and the anterooms that spread off from it. It appeared that the dead priest had been in the process of surveying the contents - perhaps in preparation to return them to use, she wondered -and one of the rooms contained a wheeled cargo lighter, stacked with spools of glittering wire. Verity identified it as a variety of datum storage media, the same as the hololithic screen used to replay the images of LaHayn and the ill-fated Kipsel. There were uncountable hours of footage here, and Emperor-knew how many recordings of witches undergoing the same brutal violations.

The Sister Superior considered the spools with dispa.s.sion. She had no sympathy for the psykers, but the eager, almost wanton manner in which the woman Kipsel had been desecrated struck a chord in her mind. The church did not torture and maim without good cause, and it gnawed at her that she did not know what Lord LaHayn's motives were.

'This must have been going on for decades,' mur-mured Ca.s.sandra, 'and yet I have never heard of the like.

Miriya wondered if the Imperial Inquisition might have had a hand here, but there was nothing to indicate the presence of the Ordo Malleus or any other branch of the G.o.d-Emperor's inquest. In her experience, inquisitors were only too pleased to trumpet their deeds to the church. No, the studied and careful concealment of what was taking place in the Null Keep made her seasoned warrior's mind taut with suspicion.

Verity examined the operating dais. There were tools, now rusted and dull, still stored in drawers set into the cracked porcelain frame. From a tray con-nected by a corroded servitor-arm, she plucked out a silvery orb and held it up to the torchlight. Miriya exchanged a look with the Hospitaller as they both recognised the same design of implant device from the inside of Ignis's skull.

In another anteroom there were objects that were undeniably of inhuman origin. Suspended in tanks of thin oil, Portia turned her torch to illuminate steely constructs mated with rods of green-hued gla.s.s, all long lines and right angles.

Next to this, a curved hollow of yellowed bone marked with pur-ple eldar runes, its purpose unguessable, and finally a grotesque hydrocelaphic ork skull, bloated beyond normal size by the touch of mutation.

Viktor always had eclectic tastes. noted Vaun archly. There's no avenue of investigation he won't venture down.

Something inside Miriya's iron-hard resolve snapped and she backhanded the psyker with a sav-age, lightning-fast blow. Vaun stumbled away, clutching at a bleeding cut on his cheek as she drew her plasma pistol. 'I have reached my limit with your games, creature. I want no more of your half-truths and obfuscations!'

Vaun spat blood on the tiled floor. 'You pull that trigger, wench, and the whole keep will know it. You'll never get out of here alive!'

'I'll take that chance. The collimator coils atop the gun hummed and glowed. 'No more games, no more wordplay, no more circ.u.mlocution. You'll tell me the truth now, or else I will gun you down and tear it from these black walls myself!'

The psyker dabbed at the wound on his face, measuring the moment. 'Very well. It seems I have no choice.' He sighed. 'It's an interesting story.'

Torris Vaun had been no more than a youth when he discovered that the cleric in his settle-ment had contacted the capital and told them of his 'talents'. In a fit of directionless anger, the boy had burned the church to the ground with the humming, electric potency that lurked behind his eyes. The cleric, his dirty habit smouldering, had made it into the graveyard before he set him alight too, and Vaun had stood andlistened to the crisping crackle of flaming human meat.

Not a single soul in the town would come near him as he waited by the chapel arch, watching his handiwork. They were too scared to approach for fear he would do the same to them. As he listened to the townspeople point and whisper, Vaun decided that he would have to leave this place and strike for bigger, greater things. Of late, the settlement had grown stifling, the challenge of terrorising the little towns.h.i.+p ever less interest-ing.

Presently a man arrived, a swift coleopter deposit-ing him on the hill. Another priest, Vaun noted. He began to muster his powers in preparation to kill again. But when the newcomer came close enough, Torris could see he was laughing. The black humour was infectious, soon the youth was laughing too. And there, in the glow of the burning church, the new arrival offered him his hand and a chance for fortune and glory the likes of which Vaun had only dreamed.

'You know the story of the Wound, of Saint Celes-tine and the Pa.s.sing of her Glory?' Vaun waved his hand. 'Of course you do. But Neva's past holds more to it than that, or the ridiculous games fought by the n.o.bles with a.s.sa.s.sins and cat's-paws. You just have to look deeper. Much deeper. The psyker righted a fallen chair and sat upon it, warming to his subject. 'Celestine's coming cleared the warp-storm that had shrouded this planet and for that she was duly enshrined in its miserable annals. But that occurrence was not the first time the clouds of the empyrean had converged on Neva. You see, such a thing has happened here dozens of times, as far back as the Age of Strife. He paused, fis.h.i.+ng a bat-tered tin box from his pocket. 'May I take a cigarillo?' Vaun asked Miriya. 'It's been a while-'

Ca.s.sandra reached down and slapped the box from his hand, sending it skittering away into the shadows.

'Ah. That would be a no, then?'

'Keep talking,' growled Miriya.

Very well. The storms. While some worlds that felt the touch of the warp were destroyed or worse, fell bodily into the realm of Chaos, Neva was not one of them. No, instead the caress of the immaterium was subtler, more insidious. Like a taint upstream flow-ing down a river, the warp left a mark on this world. It turned the bloodlines of every living soul upon it, just a little.' The man held up his thumb and fore-finger a few centimetres apart. 'But just enough. Tell me, Sister Superior, how many psykers are there for every normal human in the Imperium?'

'One or two in every hundred thousand births, perhaps less.'

Vaun nodded. 'On Neva the number would prob-ably be closer to five times that. He ignored the looks of incredulity on the women's faces. 'Neva's brush with warp s.p.a.ce means that its people are more attuned to the psychic realm. Most of them never know it, they just get "feelings" or have strange dreams. But many of us exhibit the more, shall I say, unique properties.'

'Impossible. snapped Portia.

'Short-sighted as ever. retorted Vaun. 'Think, dullard. Neva is not the only world to have such a blessing.

What of Magog, or Prospero, the holdfast of the Thousand Sons? Those planets were rich in preternatural power.

'Magog obliterated itself. said Verity, 'and the s.p.a.ce Marines of the Thousand Sons turned to Chaos.

Prospero vanished into the Eye of Terror.

Vaun dismissed her words with a wave of the hand. 'Details, mere details. The fact remains. The bloodlines of Neva are laced with metapsychic potential. I am living proof.

'What does this mad theory have to do with LaHayn and this place?' demanded Miriya.

'Everything.

The cleric - he was an arch-confessor then, of high rank among the diocese and not yet the Lord Viktor LaHayn - took him to a dark castle and made him play with his ability. Vaun excelled, untroubled by moral concerns and other petty things, and LaHayn saw potential in him for greatness. He hadn't known it at the time, but now Vaun understood: LaHayn, a normal, pathetic dead-mind like all the others, was jealous of him. He craved the power that came so easily to Torris, and when he couldn't engender it in himself, he worked to make himself master of those who had it.

LaHayn had had his pet adepts place things inside Vaun, opening up his brain and doctoring it. The agonies were fierce, worse than any thing a non-psyker could ever have imagined, but they also opened the floodgates to stronger wells of burning power within him. Vaun's mindfire blossomed, and in the service of his new master, he was compelled to fight in the secret wars that raged beneath the placid surface of Neva's society. But as Vaun's ability and prowess grew, so did his resentment.

The day came when Vaun crossed paths with an avaricious baron named Holt Sherring. The baron had only fragments of the story of the Null Keep and Neva's dark secret, but it was enough to make him a player in LaHayn's game. When Vaun was sent to kill him, Sherring offered the psyker a way tosmash his enforced habituation and set himself free. There was no hesitation in Vaun's agreement - but he no more wanted to be a p.a.w.n of the baron than the deacon, and as soon as he was able to break free, Vaun fled to the stars to carve a reputation for him-self, and brood on a reprisal.

'The Null Keep was created in the deep past as a bulwark against the daemons of the warp, and LaHayn took it for himself. It was an ideal location for his works, isolated, invisible. He kept his dark machinations concealed so they could not taint his public image, just as Neva's people moved their pol-luting industry to the outer moons.' Vaun tapped his knuckles on the wall, remembering. This was my home, my prison, my torture-house. All of us, the pieces in the lord deacon's games. After I broke free, I swore I would come back to obliterate this place. And bless poor, stupid Holt, but he found it for me.

'I do not understand,' said Isabel. 'If you were held here for so long, why did you need Baron Sherring to find the location for you?'

He pointed at the implant. Viktor's adepts are very talented. The implants they created place blocks on the mind. I can no more hold the loca-tion of this place in my head than I can count the number of stars in the galaxy.' He snorted. 'It's all blurs. A clever way to stop any escapees from return-ing to plague him. Or so he thought.

'You learned to break your conditioning?'

A nod. "You see, LaHayn learned the secret of Neva as an initiate, from a secret sect of Geths.e.m.e.nite monks. He told me that it was a revelation for him. Vaun smiled coldly. 'Years later, he had me hunt down and kill every one of them, burn their monastery, destroy their ma.n.u.scripts.

You were his weapon...' said Miriya.

'I was his slave. The brittle ice of his smile shat-tered. 'He compelled me, made me kill for him, all so that he could cement his position in the hierar-chy. I helped keep this secret, you see. If an inquisitor got too close, or some cleric who knew too much grew a conscience, it was I that barred the way. The burned dead in the name of LaHayn's grand scheme grew large in number. He looked at the floor. 'For a time I liked it. I was his red right hand, his sly agent of menace. But I knew that one day I would outlive my usefulness to him.

Vaun took a long breath. While I guarded his secrets, LaHayn worked diligently at his endeavours. He gathered those with the psychic gift and made sure that the t.i.thes to the Black s.h.i.+ps were just as they should be. He threw them the weak ones, the lesser and broken minds, all the while skimming off the cream for his own private cadre here at the keep. Slowly and surely, he has been experimenting on my kind, peeling back the secrets of the mind with ancient technology and callous resolve. All the while, building an army, keeping them asleep until he needs them. For when his invasion begins.

'Invasion?' echoed Ca.s.sandra. 'What do you speak of, criminal?'

The invasion of Terra, of course. The lord deacon intends nothing less than to destroy the Golden Throne of Earth.

The Aquila-cla.s.s shuttle carved a supersonic path through the roiling black clouds of the wastelands, tipping up on the edge of a wing to skirt about the plumes of toxic gas issuing from the muttering chains of volcanoes. Designed to resemble the Imperial eagle with its wings outstretched, the craft was swift and capable: an icon of the Emperor's will made manifest in steel and ceramite. There were only a few of the s.h.i.+ps in service on Neva, and only one dedicated exclusively to the use of a single man. In the pa.s.senger compartment, Lord LaHayn ignored the buffeting of the flight and replaced his empty amasec gla.s.s in a receptacle before him. An enunciator on the bulkhead shaped like a choral mask gave a peep of sound.

'Great Ecclesiarch,' came the voice of the pilot servitor. 'We are approaching the keep. Please prepare yourself for landing.'

'Good,' replied the deacon with a nod, and he pressed himself back into his sumptuous accelera-tion chair.

His outwardly calm demeanour masked the churn of his inner thoughts. The course of events was in serious danger of spiralling out of control, and LaHayn feared that the tighter he made his grip, the more threads would slip through his fingers. It was imperative for the Great Work that he personally took command of things - and there was no place better suited than his sanctum sanctorum, his perfect retreat and workshop here in the Null Keep. The lord deacon had left Venik behind, preen-ing at his new role as Neva's interim governor. The haughty dean would give the n.o.bles and the people something to focus on while LaHayn worked behind the scenes. With luck, he would have every-thing on an even keel in time for the state funeral of poor, stupid Emmel.

At the edges of his thoughts, a doubt unfurled. Who was to blame for this turn of events? In the cold light of truth, the blame could easily lie at his feet. Had he not been so rigid in his orders, had he been willing to let the Battle Sisters terminate Vaun on sight, then none of his carefully wrought schemes would be so close todiscovery. He dismissed the thought with a grimace. This was not the place for uncertainty. No, the woman Miriya, it was with her that the blame rested. Her stupidity in letting the witch escape to wreak havoc...

The priest glanced out of the viewport as the keep hove into view and smiled thinly. Still, some good had come of this com-edy of errors. Vaun's covert contact with Sherring had become obvious and that had allowed him to eradi-cate a rival. Now all that remained was to complete the circle with Vaun himself.

The shuttle dipped towards the peak of the tower-ing volcanic cone, pa.s.sing through dark, ashen smoke, and LaHayn pondered on the matter of his former protege. Vaun would come to the keep, of that he had no doubt. From the moment he had heard of the escape and flight to Neva, he had known what destination Torris sought. It was only a matter of time until teacher and student faced each other again.

'And this time, there will be an end to it. he said aloud.

A cloister bell tolled through the decks of the Null Keep and reached to the upper tiers where the Sis-ters concealed themselves.

'Perfect timing. grinned Vaun. Viktor does have an excellent sense of theatre. I've always admired that about him.'

At the hololithic lectern, Isabel manipulated the controls to gain some sense of what was transpiring. A general alert, Sister Miriya. she said reading the glyphs. A s.h.i.+p is landing at one of the docking plat-forms.

'I could show you. offered Vaun. The screens link into a central nexus web. The tenders used them to broadcast those dreary hymns. With your permis-sion, of course.

'Do it. ordered Miriya.

'Excuse me...' The psyker moved around Isabel and altered the setting of the device. The image changed to become an exterior view of a flat, gla.s.sy landing pad. After a moment, an honour guard of robed tenders marched up in a line as a shuttle dropped into view. There was no sound. The air-craft's wings folded upwards and claw-like landing skids deployed before it settled to the ground. Miriya looked closer. The man descending the ramp from the shuttle was unmistakably Viktor LaHayn.

'Now do you accept the veracity of what I told you?' demanded Vaun. He drifted away from the console, moving slowly out of the nimbus of light.

'There may be some truth in it. Ca.s.sandra's admission was grudging.

Miriya glanced at the witch, then back at the hololith. It was the moment that the man had been watching for, the single instant when all the Sisters had turned their attention from him. Finding such a point in time was the mark of a tme genius, Viktor had always told him. The key to greatness. he had pontificated, 'is to know patience, to know when the tipping point is before you. Strike then, and you will leave your adversary in disarray.

Just so. Vaun had let them push him about, abuse him and deride him since the moment they had found him in the wreckage, and all of it had been a play leading to this instant. Even the watchful, shrewd Sisters of Our Martyred Lady were not infal-lible, and it would be his pleasure to show them that fact.

Two things happened at once. The mindfire that Vaun had been carefully marshalling for the last few hours erupted into the room, the air igniting. The women were punched down by the back draft. At the same time, he was at the vox lectern, slamming home the punch-switch that sounded the alert klaxon.

Shot and sh.e.l.l came snapping at his heels as he threw himself out of the derelict operating theatre and into the ruined corridors. Vaun ran and found his old hiding places, laughing silently as the ten-ders came swarming upward.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Miriya's rage knew no limit. Howling like a wild-cat, she stood in the throat of the oncoming firestorm and sent streaks of killing fire back towards the aggressors. Her fury was a terrible thing to see unleashed, and her anger - directed at herself as much as at the enemy - lit the corridor around her with plasma flames.

The Battle Sisters left the decrepit medicae lab behind as the tenders came to suppress them. The initial group deposited by the cable-lifts fired first, unwilling to do anything but attack the group of intruders. They were easily dispatched, no match for the Sisters of Katherine when their blood was up. But these were only the first. More men in grey robes came, and this time they brought blood-hounds. The brains of the bound psy-slaves had been reduced to animalistic levels, and they scut-tled on all fours, howling as they threw wild darts of psychokinetic force about them.

The tenders were well armed for priests. What they lacked in the cold application of soldiery exhibited by the Sisters, they made up for with their rare bolter-crossbow weapons, glittering with artifi-cer filigree.

Humming electro-stakes as long as Miriya's arm rained down the open hallway, rebounding off the steel walls in sparks of searing blue light. The Celestian heard an irate curse behind her as Isabel took a stake in the shoulder, spinning her around like a top. The priest-troopers and their cohorts came on, pressing the attack, pus.h.i.+ng the women deeper into the iron compart-ments.

Portia was at her side, snarling over the noise of her bolter. 'What now, Sister Superior?' she demanded, placing a scathing emphasis on Miriya's rank. 'Our means of entry is cut off, and these cler-ics outnumber us more and more with each pa.s.sing moment!'

Miriya ducked behind a burning console to col-lect her thoughts. The plasma weapon in her hand was glowing cherry red with discharge, and she could feel the heat of it through her gloves. d.a.m.n Vaun. sherailed at herself. d.a.m.n the witch and his lies. My foolish curiosity has led my cohort to ruin!

'Sister. snapped Portia. 'What are your orders?' The smell of hot metal issued from the breech of her gun as she retreated into the lee of a stanchion to reload a spent sickle magazine.

Miriya glared at her. 'We quit this place. A higher authority must intervene here. I will contact the Canoness!'

Another electro-stake whistled through the air above them. Vox signals. Blocked. came Isabel's voice, each word tight with pain. 'I can't get a mes-sage out.'

'Even if we could get a communication through the walls of this blighted tower, Galatea will execute us for disobeying her orders. retorted Portia.

There will be a transceiver array in this place. We will find it and sound a clarion. Miriya stared at her gun, metering her rage. 'I will take whatever punish-ment the Canoness decrees - but she will see my transgressions as miniscule when she understands what we have discovered here!'