Fear And Fire Part 18

'Aye, providing she's willing to take the testimony of a corsair over the lord deacon. We have only Vaun's word-'

'You saw the same as I. snapped Miriya. 'LaHayn has a secret agenda in this place, and that cannot be denied.

'Mercutio should blast this crag from orbit. spat Isabel, returning fire with her uninjured arm. Accursed pastors. You dare attack the Daughters of the Emperor?'

Shot and stake crossed each other in the enclosed s.p.a.ce. The stink of spent cordite and scorched steel cut the women's throats with every breath. Miriya glanced back at Isabel, and saw Verity tending to her injury even as the Battle Sister worked at her bolter, reloading the weapon one-handed. Behind them, Ca.s.sandra stabbed a finger into the melee. 'Some-thing's coming...'

The words had barely left her mouth before the deck plates beneath their feet began to shudder with dozens of heavy footfalls. Miriya turned back to see the tenders and their hound-psykers parting to allow a trio of heavy gun servitors to approach the firing line. Almost the size of dread-noughts, the flesh-metal amalgams stomped dead clerics into slime beneath their clawed feet as they shouldered forward. Meltaguns whined up to full capacity and oily snaps of sound announced the unlocking of multi-barrelled stubber cannon. 'Fall back. she shouted, hurling herself from her cover just as the machine slaves filled the pas-sageway with a screaming riot of gunfire.

She saw Ca.s.sandra grab a handful of Verity's cloak and bodily throw the slighter-framed girl back down the corridor. Portia tossed a krak grenade at the servitors and then joined Isabel in shooting. Miriya paced shots into the stumbling, inexorable man-shapes, her plasma pistol cook-ing off a drum of battery acids in an acrid slam of concussion that doubled with the blast of the grenade. One of the servitors tripped and fell, making the deck plates twitch again with the force of its collapse, but there were more than just these three. The Celestian saw four more piston-legged monstrosities lurching out of the gun smoke.

'Back. Back. Find a branch corridor, a vent grille, anything!'

'Nothing!' came Verity's panicked voice. 'This is a dead end. We are boxed in.'

Isabel growled with every step she took, the stake still embedded in her arm clearly grinding against the bone as she moved. Miriya felt a sting of pride as her Sister did not let it slow her chas-tis.e.m.e.nt of the enemy. Isabel had always been one of the keenest shots in the Celestians, an elite among the elite. As if in acknowledgement of this, there came a death cry from one of the grey robes as a careful bolt sh.e.l.l stove in a tender's ribcage. The Sister Superior stepped past Portia, firing again and again at the marching servitors.

'Ah. Portia cried in desperation. 'If only I had a storm bolter!'

Despite the onrus.h.i.+ng threat, a peculiar amuse-ment rippled out among the women, the charged emotions so close to death turning to black humour. 'Offer it to the servitors. retorted Cas-sandra. 'It would kill them quicker than any gunshot.

Miriya's face split in a fierce grin. If this were to be the end of them, then in the name of Kather-ine, Celestine and the Thousand-Numbered Saints, the Sisters of Battle would make the end a costly one for LaHayn's lackeys.

Something in the walls s.h.i.+fted and banged against flat plates of metal, and without warning the floor lurched to one side. Iron clasps as big as her head snapped open on the walls and ceiling. The gun servitors shrank back as the women lost their footing.

'What in the saint's name...?' cried Ca.s.sandra, grabbing at an iron pillar.

Suddenly the corridor down which they had been forced was drifting away from them, a gap widening with each pa.s.sing second. Miriya's perception was confused for a moment before she realised that the dead-end corridor was nothing of the kind - it was a trap, an open-ended box at the end of a conduit, suspended on chains like the cells they had seen from the maintenance gantries. There was little to gain purchase on andthe Sororitas skidded on the sheer metal deck as a crane arm pulled the captive chamber away, swinging it over the wide open void between the keep's inner tiers.

Portia teetered close to the edge and her boot slipped out from under her. Isabel was near and she tried to grab her, but habit made her offer her b.l.o.o.d.y, numbed arm and the limb refused to obey. Portia fell backwards out of the lurching box and plummeted down. Isabel turned away as a sickening crack of bone and shattered ceramite briefly joined the tide of clamour inside the keep.

Another Sister lost. Miriya allowed herself one tiny moment of anguish at Portia's ending and then sealed it away inside her heart. There would be time to mourn later, when candles could be lit and canti-cles to the fallen recited. 'On your guard. she snapped. 'Be ready!'

With a swift jerk, the motion of the container was arrested and the box hung for long seconds in midair. The women could see nothing outside except the glitter of lights on the far tier and coils of dark vapour, then the chains above squealed and the metal box went into freefall. Miriya was slammed against the side of the container and clung to it, watching the levels of the keep flash by, watch-ing the flat expanse of the lowermost tier rise up to meet them at a frightening speed. She screwed her eyes shut and called the G.o.d-Emperor's name.

When the impact came, she feared her neck would be snapped. Instead she was thrown into Ca.s.sandra and the women collapsed in a heap, tossed around inside the box like gambler's dice in a cup. The headlong fall of the container had been halted a metre or so from the ground, deliberately to shock and disorient them. Blood gummed her right eye shut as Miriya struggled to get to her feet and failed. Every joint in her body sang with pain. She made out the blurry forms of robed men advancing on the box, shock-staves in their hands. Like the power mauls of the enforcers, the weapons delivered pun-is.h.i.+ng electrostatic discharges that could cripple and maim. Miriya managed only to croak out a denial before the tenders swarmed into the container and beat the Sisters into senselessness.

Consciousness, when it returned, did not come in a slow trickle or gentle awakening. It forced itself into Verity's perception like a violent intruder, hammering jagged chunks of painful wakefulness into her. She felt sick and gasped as she failed to prevent her stomach from ejecting thin, watery bile. There was the coppery metallic taste of blood in her mouth, and the acrid taste of raw ozone. The stink of air ripped open by electricity filled Verity's nos-trils and she suppressed another gag reflex. The action made her head loll, her neck rubbery and loose. The Hospitaller blinked, and tried to take stock. The cool, clinical portion of her mind ran through a checklist of injuries, finding contusions and cuts, but thankfully nothing that would indi-cate broken bones or internal bleeding.

How long? How long was I unconscious? Labour-ing, she drew in a breath of tainted air and attempted to look about her. There were iron man-acles circling her wrists and ankles, linked by chains to a strange pulley device above. More chains and more pulleys were connected to the slumped forms of Sister Miriya and the other Soror-itas.

'Miriya?' she managed, pus.h.i.+ng the slurred word out of her mouth, her tongue like a lump of old leather. 'Ca.s.sandra?

Do you hear me?'

When no reply came, she tried to turn in place, but the exertion was like s.h.i.+fting a sack of wet sand. Verity let herself sink to the chilly black flagstones beneath her feet and ma.s.saged the painful places in her arms and legs. Looking about, she could see that the chamber they had been placed in was not a holding cell, but a large workshop. Banks of benches with quiet tech-adepts and servitors sur-rounded them, hard at work on unfathomable tasks beneath the sickly light of ancient biolumes. There were tall, indistinct objects at the edge of her perception, but the Hospitaller couldn't begin to grasp their purpose.

A groan drew her attention back to Sister Miriya. The Battle Sister righted herself. 'My weapons...

equipment. Taken?'

'It appears so. said Verity, her voice croaky 'My medicus ministorum has been removed from my per-son, even my holy tome.'

'Mine as well. replied the Sororitas, searching the pockets in her robes. The Hospitaller had heard it said that the copies of the sacred texts carried by Sisters of Battle held kill-needles and memory-metal knives concealed in their pages along with the G.o.d-Emperor's wisdom. The women glanced up as footsteps approached.

Verity followed Miriya's gaze and felt ice form in the pit of her stomach as Lord LaHayn emerged from the shadows. A group of tenders followed him in tight escort, and one marched with his hood back, a device in his hand trailing cables behind it. The deacon wore a peculiar aspect. He seemed distressed, in the man-ner of a parent disappointed with a misbehaving child.

'Sister Verity, Sister Miriya. You cannot know how unhappy it makes me to find you here.

The furious Sister Superior was suddenly on her feet. 'What in Holy Terra's name are you doing in this foul place, cleric?'

LaHayn threw a nod to priest at his side, and the man turned a dial on his control unit. The pulley over Miriya's head ground its cogs and she was hauled upward with a jerk, just enough to take her a couple of centimetres off her feet. She hung there like a pup-pet painted in black enamel, cursing the deacon.

'Show some respect for my rank, Sister. Now, tell me, how did you get here?' he asked calmly, his voice carrying. Tell me how you found the Null Keep.'Go to h.e.l.l, traitor. barked Ca.s.sandra, and for dar-ing to speak she too was hoisted upward with a painful wrench.

Traitor...' LaHayn rolled the word around his mouth, as if it were some rare delicacy to be sam-pled.

'Perhaps in the eyes of a fool. A true servant of the G.o.d-Emperor would understand I am anything but seditious. He studied Verity. 'Will you answer me, Hospitaller? I know I could put these Sororitas to the question for days and nights before they broke - but you? I think you would not be so strong.

T-test me, if you will. Verity managed, fighting down her fear.

LaHayn nodded. 'Perhaps another query then, something easier. Torris Vaun. Where is my errant witch?'

'Don't answer him. snapped Ca.s.sandra. 'He knows where his lackey is. He's playing games with you.

Cold amus.e.m.e.nt bubbled up in a frosty chuckle. 'My lackey? Ah, perhaps Vaun was that once upon a time, but those days are long gone, more's the pity. Perhaps if I had not allowed my attention to wan-der...'

LaHayn snapped his fingers, putting an end to his reverie. 'No matter. What's done is done. He watched Verity's face, thinking. 'Yes. I think I can answer my own questions. He brought you here, didn't he? Vaun found his way back and he used you to get here.' Another nod. 'Cunning. He's lost noth-ing of his skill.

The unhooded tender spoke for the first time. 'There was no sign of the pyrokene on the upper tiers, ecclesiarch. If he is indeed within the perime-ter of the keep-'

LaHayn snapped out orders. 'Triple the guards at the engine hall. Draw weapons for all adherents. Vaun is to be captured intact.'

The priest frowned. 'My lord, that will deplete numbers in the dungeon tiers.'

'I am well aware of that, Ojis. retorted the deacon. 'Now do as I say. He'll try to breach the chamber. We'll take him there.' Ojis turned to relay the com-mands to the other tenders as LaHayn brought his attention back to the women. 'I suppose I should thank you. In your own muddling way, you have fulfilled the decree I set you: to bring me Torris Vaun alive.'

That creature should have been terminated when the Argent Shroud found him on Groombridge,' snapped Isabel, nursing her injured arm.

LaHayn sneered. 'Do you know how rare he is? You can't begin to comprehend the investment he represents, the effort I have spent. His value is a thousand times that of your lives. He looked away. 'I want him to live, woman. He is the last piece in a puzzle I have spent a lifetime a.s.sembling.

'So it is you we should blame for Vaun's rampage, then?' Verity asked, finding a reserve of defiance inside her. 'All this leads back to you, lord deacon.

You sent the killer to the librarium. You're the spi-der in the web, not that witch.

Your fort.i.tude against my shadow was quite unex-pected, I admit. As for Vaun, his time runs thin. I might say the same about you,' he frowned.

You would spill the blood of the Daughters of the Emperor?' spat Ca.s.sandra. You would be dead at Vaun's hands if not for us. We saved your life at the Lunar Cathedral.

You did. nodded LaHayn, 'and that is the only rea-son why I have not executed you out of hand. Sisters, you present me with a conundrum: what am I to do with you? I do so object to the waste of material with such promise.

'If you will end us, then do it now. demanded Miriya. The stink of the witch about you fills me with repugnance.

He approached her. You are mistaken if you believe that this is a matter of collaboration, Sister Miriya. No, this is about control. My Great Work is dedicated to the harnessing of the psyker gene, just as the magos biologis craft germs for a virus bomb or the Mechanicus construct a cogitator. Verity could see the deacon warming to his subject, the same arrogant poise he showed when he addressed the people dur-ing the Games of Penance moulding his manner. All he lacked was a pulpit from which to hold forth.

LaHayn gestured to Ojis and the tenders. 'Many have been brought into my fold, Sisters. Dedicated adherents to the G.o.d-Emperor, one and all. If only you understood my vision, you would see the perfec-tion of it.

Verity saw the opportunity and seized it before the others could take a breath to decry him. 'Then tell us, lord deacon. Explain what possible prospect could compel you to craft a secret opus, hidden from the eyes of the Imperium.'

He laughed. 'Oh, how arch. Do you think me so venal that an ill-worded taunt would make me spill my secrets to you?'

'But you will. growled Miriya, 'because you crave an audience. You and Vaun are alike in many ways, deacon. Your egos drive you, you're compelled by the belief in your own Tightness. You both live to prove that those who deny you are wrong. Miriya's eyes narrowed. 'So do it. Attest to us how right you are.

The ancient man-made halls of the Null Keep were just as he remembered them. The floors of old black basalt slid past and recollections crowded in on him. Sense-memory of his youth came forth, still dull at the edges with the lingering effect of the neu-ropathic philtre. The feeling of the cold stone against the slaps of his bare feet, the tenders watch-ing the young prospects as they made them play hunt-and-seek in the service tunnels.

He halted in the half-dark, licking his dry lips, working the wire binding off his wrists. The psyker felt a peculiar sense of elation, perhaps even a little fear. He let himself toy with it for a few moments, beforepurging it from his mind. This place - it had been the site of his awakening, but also of his great-est betrayal.

Vaun's face twisted in anger. He hated himself for the way that he had admired LaHayn in the early days, the way that he had been only too happy to do the priest's bidding. But then, he had been imma-ture and unschooled. Now he knew far better, and so he nurtured his hate of the man who had betrayed him.

He wondered how he could have missed some-thing in his former mentor that seemed so obvious to him now. Like all the others LaHayn had covertly recruited from the t.i.thes destined for the Black s.h.i.+ps, Vaun had only been a means to an end - a wager against the deacon's grand plan for glory. He reflected on this, and sensed there in the stone around him the faint traces of despair. So much had been done, so many horrors turned upon the minds and bodies of psykers in this place. Their collective misery stained the walls, it leaked like glutinous oil into the mentality of any who had the preternatural sense to feel it. Vaun sh.o.r.ed up the opaque thought-walls inside him and blotted it out. It took much of his will to bring silence once more.

Gingerly, for the first time in months, the psyker allowed himself to think of the engine. He saw the device in vague, ghostly sketches, half-glimpsed, and faintly remembered flashes. The thought of the machine and its impossible geometries threatened pain. Conjuring it in his head was like probing a newly scabbed wound, and yet, it was the end goal for everything that transpired here. As much as Vaun feared it, he wanted it, but to lay his hands upon the device would not be an easy task. He drew himself into an inky pool of shadow as two tenders raced past him. To get what he wanted, Vaun thought, he would need to do that which he did best: engender anarchy and disorder.

As Miriya spoke, Verity watched the deacon care-fully. 'Vaun showed us evidence of your experimentation on the witchkin. Tell us why you are marshalling an army of freaks!'

LaHayn's face darkened with anger. 'Not freaks, you insolent woman. Enhancements. Improve-ments. My subjects are stepping stones on the road to the Emperor's destiny!'

'You dare to speak his name in this temple of hor-rors?' spat Isabel.

'Be quiet, girl,' he sneered. 'Your dogmatic order understands nothing of the Lord of Mankind's machinations. LaHayn took a breath. 'I will indulge you, because it will amuse me to see your minds struggle to comprehend the awesome reality. He dragged Verity to her feet. You know the story of the Heresy, of how the G.o.d-Emperor was felled by the archtraitor Horus and confined forever to the stasis of the Golden Throne.

Reflexively, Verity made the sign of the aquila, the still-loose chains on her manacles clanking as she did so.

'And from there, the G.o.d-Emperor watches over us.

Yes...' LaHayn looked away. He seemed gen-uinely moved by the scale of the sacrifice made by the Master of Mankind. 'But what you do not know, what is recorded only in the most secret and arcane places, is the nature of the Great Work that He was about when Horus's perfidy drew him away. The deacon's voice dropped to a low, reverent whisper. 'I have dedicated my life to that knowledge. I have found sc.r.a.ps of datum from across the galaxy, col-lated and sifted them, and drawn together a piecemeal vision of what I believe to be the Emperor's lost labour. That is what I continue here, His works.

'By cutting up psykers and stuffing them in bot-tles?' mocked Ca.s.sandra through gritted teeth. You'll have to do better than that.

The deacon stalked away in annoyance, his voice rising to echo about the stone chamber. 'With each pa.s.sing century, more and more psykers are born within the Imperium, far more than the Adeptus Ministorum will admit to. These are not mutant throwbacks, they are the hand of human evolution struggling to exert itself. The fools of the Ordo Malleus try to stem the tide but they are blind to the truth: the progression of mankind's psychic poten-tial is inevitable, that it was the will of the Emperor to shepherd it, not destroy it.

'Madness. retorted Miriya. 'How can you claim to know the G.o.d-Emperor's mind? His intentions are beyond those of normal men. You've made some patchwork ideal from half-truths and rumour, then trumpeted it as fact. This is delusion, priest, delu-sion!

He shook his head fiercely. 'Don't you see?' LaHayn hissed. 'He knew that one day all mankind would develop the power of the mind. It is our destiny. Think of it, imagine a time when every man is a G.o.d himself, a subject in an Imperium that spans the universe. Can you even begin to comprehend the glory of it?' The deacon's eyes glittered. 'Had He not been wounded so grievously by Horus, that destiny is where we would be now. He would have led us there. Instead He lies trapped on the Golden Throne, hobbled and frozen.'

Ca.s.sandra went pale. 'All humans, to become psykers? It sickens me to contemplate such a thing.'

'Bah!' roared LaHayn. 'If the psyker is such a canker, then why do we rely on them to light the way for our stars.h.i.+ps, to carry our communica-tions, to fight on our battlefields? Where is your answer to that dichotomy? The Empire of Man would be in ruins without their kind, and if we could become them, wewould know no bound-aries.

'The witch opens the gates to the Ruinous Pow-ers-' began Verity.

'Only those who are weak. insisted the deacon. 'The Ruinous Powers would be shattered if every human being could match them on their own ground. He let out a sigh, suddenly spent with the effort of his argument.

Verity broke the silence that followed, her mind still whirling with the echo of the ecclesiarch's tirade.

'There are no words to contain the scale of heresy that you have uttered, lord deacon. This is... It is madness beyond all reason.

'The colour of Chaos is on him. spat Isabel. 'He must be tainted to believe such lies.

LaHayn looked at her sadly. 'So limited in vision. So afraid to go beyond your rigid canon. If it is not written in your books of rules, then you cannot com-prehend it happening, can you? You are afraid of anything that challenges your narrow views. It is eas-ier for you to call me a heretic and claim I am loyal to the warp G.o.ds, than to accept I might be right. He sneered at her. 'I pity you. The priest-lord beckoned Ojis forward. 'I see now my breath has been wasted. I had hoped to offer you a place at my side, but none of you have the scope of vision I require.

'If you kill us, more Battle Sisters will come. blurted Verity. 'If we found the Null Keep, then so will Galatea.

'If you are thinking of your little Mechanicus friend and that battered aeronef of Sherring's, don't waste your time. said Ojis. 'Both were obliterated by our pyrokenes but an hour ago.

'I will not kill you out of hand. LaHayn turned away The tenders are always short of fresh test sub-jects, psychic and latent. You'll serve them.

Ojis worked the conttol in his hands and each of the chained women was hoisted up, a train of pulleys dragging them toward a cable lift.

'Even if you are right. cried Verity, 'even if you are following the work of the Emperor, what can you possibly do? He lies in state on the Golden Throne, millions of light years from here. Will you make a militia of witches and have them tear His body from the heart of the Imperial Palace?'

Terra was not the only place where He performed His experiments, child. The deacon's voice faded as he wandered into the shadows of the workshop. 'Neva's connection to the warp was no happen-stance. It was His doing. This planet is an experiment, and before He fell, the Emperor left something here. LaHayn looked up to watch them vanish through a slit in the chamber wall. 'I'm close to unlocking the last secrets, and when I do, I will remake mankind in His image.

The rough conduits of the mountain's lava tubes pre-dated the arcane constructions within the con-fines of the Null Keep. Many of the tubes still connected to the murmuring, quiescent core of the volcano, funnelling hot air and steam throughout the ashen cone. There were others, like this one, choked with collapsed stone and forgotten. Vaun used his hands and feet to ease himself down the angled tunnel, pressing his weight to the walls to drop metre by metre. It pleased him to see that the map he kept in his head had changed little.

There was a kind of secret amus.e.m.e.nt that came to wan-dering freely within the very heart of LaHayn's castle. Alone, the psyker could admit to himself that his scheme had not unfolded in the manner he had expected, but then his greatest skill had always been his ability to improvise. That was why LaHayn had selected him as his personal pyrokene a.s.sa.s.sin, it was the reason why Vaun had only ever been sent on the most dangerous, most problematic missions for his teacher. The irony that this was also the factor that had led to Vaun's ultimate rebellion was not lost on the psyker.

He dropped onto a shallow ledge. In the stone wall nearby there was a shuttered grille and beyond it - if his memory served him correctly - the upper-most tiers of the place the tenders called 'the sty'. Heavy bolts held the vent in place, but they were nothing more than simple steel. With care, Vaun applied his fingers to the first of them and concen-trated. In moments, the metal was glowing cherry red. Gradually, the bolts began to sag and distend.

They were not cells, not in the sense that Miriya would have described them. Rather, the confine-ment that the gun servitors had forced them into were square pits sliced out of the volcanic rock, sheer-walled with iron grates closing off any means of escape. The Battle Sister peered up and made out the shape of a monorail line crossing the ceiling far above. No doubt sustenance was lowered in and cra-dles were used to hoist out the luckless when the tenders had need of them.

They had been kicked into a pit two at a time, Cas-sandra and Isabel in one, and Miriya here with the Hospitaller in another. After the machine-slaves had retreated, the Sister Superior called out to her com-rades and was rewarded by a faint reply. Ca.s.sandra seemed angry and determined by the sound of her voice. Her strength by example would bolster poor injured Isabel.

Miriya completed a circuit of the chamber, prob-ing each corner for anything of use, and at last sat heavilyupon a rusted bedstead. Bruises were already forming in the places where her flesh had been slammed against the inside of her armour, first in the fall of the trap container, and now again from being tossed into this room.

'Any bones broken?' ventured Verity. Her face was dim in the gloom. 'Are you in pain?'

'Constantly. frowned the Battle Sister. 'My trigger finger aches from lack of use.' She probed gingerly at her neck where the flesh was visible. 'Curious. I expected them to strip us naked.'

Verity coughed. 'Thank the G.o.d-Emperor for small mercies.

Miriya shrugged. 'Merely an oversight on the part of that priest, Ojis. You know servitors, they will do only what they are told to do. He bade them bring us to the dungeons, and so.... She gestured around at the black walls.

The Hospitaller came a little closer. When she spoke again, her voice was low, so as not to carry to the next cell. 'I am concerned for Sister Isabel's wel-fare. The wound upon her was quite severe. She may not last more than a day, perhaps two.

The Sisters of Katherine are resilient. said Miriya. 'Isabel has known far worse than that. Mark me, she once took a glancing blow from the plague knife of a Death Guard and lived to tell of it. A week of fevers and delirium, but still she returned to the bat-tle and gained honours.

'I will pray for her, then. It is all I can do if I can-not minister to her injury.