‘Forget that foolish minx! She’s worthless. I can let you glimpse such lust-nymphs as will make her seem trite and dowdy. I can conjure lubricious courtesans from memory – ayeeee!’ Such a pang of anguish and frustration seemed to afflict the voice. Glimpsing...? And conjuring? The voice had promised to introduce Jomi to delights, not merely show him, as if spied through a window of thick glass.
‘You’ll be broken on the wheel if I don’t reach you,’ the voice threatened.
The wheel... Jomi jerked back to reality. What else was his whole life on this damned moon but wretchedness? Entrails and heat and fear and Galandra Puschik’s lusts which she would insist on satisfying one day soon, crushingly and disgustingly. He was about to leave all this vileness behind.
Don’t think of Gretchi again till after the owner of the voice arrives! He forced her image from his mind. Wheel, circle; circle, wheel.
In the last golden light the horned, scaly, toothsome reptiles milled sluggishly in their corral. Each was the size of a small pony. Their claws clicked on the stony ground. Crop-land dipped away towards the river. Boulders, some the size of houses, punctuated the ridged oat-fields. Carried here by sheets of ice long ago, the voice had told him.
Jomi inhaled. He thought he heard whispers on the wind. He sensed minds: disciplined minds, almost completely shielded from him as if a firescreen stood in front of a blaze of grox dung. Yet some of the heat glowed through.
Could witches who were far cleverer than himself be creeping towards this place, attracted by the voice? No witches who had been broken in the square had ever seemed particularly clever. Of course, extreme pain reduced them to imbecility, to shattered bags of white-hot shrieking nerves, and little more than that. Could they ever have been clever to be captured? Compared with those wretches, Jomi had become educated... somewhat.
Maybe really clever witches had escaped and banded together in the furthest hinterlands far from farms and towns. Thus it had taken them months to trek here.
Jomi could also sense other minds nearby that were dull and slow and fierce. Was he hearing the thoughts of the groxen too? Surely not...
‘Voice,’ he questioned.
‘Hush, bonny boy, I must concentrate. Oh it has been so long. Soon I will embrace you. Strive to see the circle in front of you.’
He mustn’t fail the voice at the last moment; for thus he would fail himself. Nor must he scare it away by hinting at the presence of those other strange strong minds in the vicinity. Those, and the brutish minds. Obediently he imagined a circle and strained his eyes in the dimming light.
Yes!
A glowing hoop appeared, balanced upon the ground a few hundred metres away. Slowly it swelled in size, though it did not brighten. If anything, it grew dimmer, as though to evade scrutiny from elsewhere. Within the hoop was utter night, a darkness absolute.
T
HE FACT THAT
the portal was coming into existence some distance away from the boy – and slowly – tended to rule out the activity of a warp creature such as an enslavers. Warp creatures of that ilk were usually impetuous in their attack.
Nor could the alien eldar be creating this opening. The eldar were masters of warp-gates and such; they hardly needed the type of psychic focus that the boy seemed to be providing. As though anything on this moon could possibly interest the eldar!
This portal was opening almost painfully – if such a thing could be. Almost creakingly, as if its “hinges” had rusted during long aeons of time. Obviously a warp-portal didn’t have hinges; but the analogy held.
Grief Bringers in power armour were spreading out under cover of the boulders. A gang of ogryns was lumbering into position in the almost-darkness.
‘If we seize the psyker boy now...,’ began Hachard, tentatively. ‘We may scare whatever is coming. We must wait till the portal-maker steps through. We hunt for knowledge as well as prey.’
‘Knowledge...’ Did the commander shudder? ‘In the Dark Age,’ he murmured, ‘they sought knowledge for its own sake...’ Serpilian said sharply, ‘Only the Emperor knows what really happened during the Dark Age.’ How the inquisitor wished that he too knew. Godless science had flourished back then. From time to time remnants were still found: precious, arcane techniques and equipment of utmost value to the Imperium. Long ago the human race had spread throughout the galaxy like a migration of lemmings – heedless of the beings lurking in the warp, for it was heedless of its own psychic potential. Innocents, innocents! Puppies in a daemon’s den! Like a sudden storm, insanity and anarchy had erupted till the God-Emperor arose to save and unify, to control the human worlds, to calm the psychic tempest with utmost and essential rigour.
Here was a boy, of the possible future-to-be. Here was... what else? Serpilian extended his sense of presence, but mauve distortions dazed his vision.
A
ROBOT HIGHER
than any building in Groxgelt, a robot that bristled with what Jomi took to be weapons, lurched through the gate of darkness.
‘Here I am, dearest boy,’ exulted the voice in Jomi’s brain. ‘Don’t fear this metal body. This is the shell that has sheltered the kernel of myself while I drifted alone for aeons in the warp in a derelict megaship. Now at last I can touch the soil of a world. Now I can hope to be a fleshly body once more. Oh the sweet endearing flesh, the senses that sing, the nerves that twang like harp-strings! And what song did they sing so long ago? Sooooon I shall remember.’
The robot took a tentative step towards Jomi. As if exercising limbs which hadn’t encountered the pull of gravity for many millennia, the robot swept an arm around. Energies crackled from the tips of its steel fingers, gusting across the herd of groxen. The reptiles began to snort and hiss and rip at the soil of their compound, and butt their horns against the fence.
What fleshly body was the kernel of this huge machine hoping to be? As the juggernaut took another lurching step in Jomi’s direction, he began to sweat. He crouched.
S
ERPILIAN SHOOK THE
bag of rune bones at his waist so that he sounded like an angry rattlesnake, then switched on his energy armour. Beneath his cloak subtle forces wove a cocoon that clad his body, and his cuirass glowed faintly.
He too now heard that voice inside his own head, and shivered at the treachery which the ancient survivor must intend. It was hoping to seize control of the boy’s brain and body, dispossessing his spirit, casting that into the limbo of the sea of souls.
The inquisitor stared at the giant gunmetal-grey relic, trying in vain to classify it. It was squatter than a Battle Titan, its limbs less flexibly jointed, nor did any obvious head protrude from the top of its chest in the way that control-heads jutted, turtle-like, from Titans. However, it looked almost as formidable. And what was more, it housed someone who had endured literally for aeons. Serpilian knew of no mechanical system other than the Emperor’s enormous immobile prosthetic throne which could sustain a person’s existence during entire aeons.
What remnant of flesh and bone could possibly lurk inside that mobile juggernaut? Only the head and spinal column of the castaway? Only the naked brain, bathed in fluids? Or maybe – could such a thing be? – only the mind itself, wrought within some intricate interior talisman by ancient eldritch sorcery?
That robot was treasure.
Its occupant hoped to steal a human brain which housed such great psychic potential, to add to its own psychic powers... Whosoever controlled such a boy...
Serpilian suppressed within himself a tenuous twinge of traitorous ambition. Was he being corrupted by proximity to this monster from the past?
‘It’s ever this way,’ Hachard commented grimly. ‘A thin line confronts the foulest enemies. Yet, thank Him on Earth, that line is stronger than a diamond forged in a supernova. Permission,’ he requested, ‘to summon the Land Raiders?’
‘Yes. Do so. But only as a reserve. I don’t wish the robot destroyed utterly.’
Hachard radioed in battle code.
As the two men stood under a sheaf of stars, a voice piped:
‘Sirs! Sirs!’ It was the squat, accompanied by the ogryn BONEhead. ‘Surely that’s a robot from the early Age of Strife, sirs! The portal must lead to a space hulk in the warp, mustn’t it? Where else could such a robot have lurked? That hulk could contain a wealth of ancient technology.’
‘Yes, little man,’ agreed Serpilian. ‘I do believe that’s so.’
At that moment the curfew trumpet shrieked from afar, as if that tocsin were the signal for battle.
‘Commander, disable the robot. Shoot off its legs.’
Hachard rapped out orders. Almost immediately plasma and laser beams stitched the deepening night. Yet the beams glanced away, deflected by some shield – or even by an aura of invulnerability. For the mind within that machine was potent, was it not? Had it not had mad, lonely aeons during which to examine and hone its powers?
The robot’s own inbuilt lasers and plasma cannon fired back, tracking the sources of the energy beams. At the same time a wave of confusion lapped at Serpilian’s mind. The creature in the robot possessed psychic weaponry too, so it seemed.
Perhaps something else shared mind-space with the occupant of that plasteel refuge, something that one wouldn’t exactly classify as human company...
Serpilian had seen to it that the Grief Bringers wore protective psychic hoods. Still, in that first onslaught two Marines broke cover impetuously, rushing directly towards the robot. Their suits glowed, then incandesced. The overload filter in Hachard’s radio stole away their screams. Another brave man took advantage of the diversion to advance at a powered run from a different direction, clutching a melta-bomb. He was obviously hoping to sacrifice himself by detonating this against one of the robot’s feet, thus destabilizing it. Plasma engulfed him; the night erupted briefly as the bomb’s thermal energy gushed prematurely, liquefying his suit. The Space Marines quickly resumed more disciplined fire.
As Serpilian squinted at the flaring, stroboscopic scene, he could tell that the robot had halted, though it showed precious little sign of disablement. Beams simply slid off it, bouncing away into the sky.
A grim hill hove into view, then another.
‘Land Raiders arriving on station,’ said Hachard. ‘If we aim their las-cannons at one leg in concert we should bring it crashing down soon enough.’
‘What if the shielding and the aura hold? Even temporarily? Fierce energies will recoil unpredictably. The boy may be evaporated in the backlash. If the lascannon beams do break through, the robot might explode.’
Couldn’t Hachard guess at the value of this artefact from elder days? Maybe not. He only saw a present menace to the Imperium. Of all those present, save for Serpilian perhaps only the squat realized... The inquisitor could hardly confide in him. Indeed, he might need to silence the little man.
Once again, Serpilian felt a thread of heretical temptation insinuating itself within his soul, and muttered a prayer. ‘Asperge me, God-Emperor. Cleanse me.’
‘Permission, sah,’ requested the sergeant-ogryn. ‘My men... strong. We charge at the robot? Wrestle it on to its side?’
Hachard laughed; and it occurred to Serpilian that the wave of confusion might have affected the minds of the ogryns peculiarly. Unlike the Space Marines, the abhumans had been shielded only by their own dense skulls and by their brutish, if violent, thought processes. The confusion might only now be surfacing in their brainiest representative, the sergeant.
‘Why not?’ said the commander. ‘Listen carefully, sergeant: send all your ogryns round to the north side. Yes, in that direction. Over there. Then you come back to report. As soon as my Marines cease fire, your ogryns must charge. Do you understand?’
‘Yus, sah.’ Thunderjug stomped over to his troopers and bellowed at them for a while.
‘Couldn’t one of them scoop up the boy?’ suggested Grimm.
‘They’d probably tear his head off by mistake,’ snapped Hachard.
‘Um... Commander, sir.’
‘What is it now, abhuman?’
‘Isn’t a charge by the ogryns a mite suicidal?’
‘Not necessarily,’ intervened Serpilian. ‘The robot replied to fire with fire. But the ogryn charge might confuse it. I take it that that’s the commander’s intention, rather than him implying that his hands are being tied.’
‘Huh,’ said Grimm.
Thunderjug returned and stood to attention.
J
OMI CLUNG TO
the ground in terror as the air blistered above him.
‘They’ll need to change their tactics,’ advised the voice. ‘A lull must come – and I think I can cause a diversion. When I say run, sprint to me as fast as you can, ducking low. I can take you inside this body. I can transport you back through the portal. Better the warp than death, don’t you think?’
The sizzle of lethal beams almost convinced Jomi. Almost.
‘I shall save you, Jomi, save you. I am your safety...’
The voice began to drone hypnotically, bewitchingly. It promised joys, it promised lusts, fulfilments – yet seemed savagely bewildered as to what these might be. Did Jomi hear a background hint of crazed laughter? His body twitched, puppet-like. He threw up his hand reflexively, and a low, stray laser beam seared his wrist superficially. The pain jerked him free from the growing enchantment, plunging him again into a tenain of terrible fear.
‘Are you man or woman?’ he gasped.
‘I hardly remember.’
‘How can you not remember such a thing?’
‘It became unimportant... Yet a ghost reminds me of the flesh! A goading wraith within. Ah, Jomi, Jomeeee, I know so much, and am so separated from all that I knew. My ghost cries for a body to carets and sculpt to its desire... Come to me soon, Jomeeee, when I call—’
F
ROM THE VOICE’S
moaning words Serpilian gathered ample confirmation that its owner had been a psychic eavesdropper on millennia of war-torn history and even of hidden pre-Imperium history. How the inquisitor thirsted for its knowledge.
But the ancient survivor was also, he strongly suspected, possessed.
Possessed by a daemon of the warp.