The Inquisition War (54 page)

In the absence of any Veritas, verification was impossible. Had Grimm spilled the truth-drug into the fuel so that when he was finally forced to babble there could be no check upon his claims? No check other than by finding Zephro Carnelian again. What the little man now believed wasn’t necessarily the truth at all.

‘When did you last meet Carnelian?’

Why, Grimm had already said. It was because of the eldar interest in Slaaneshi infestation of Luxus.

‘How did the eldar learn about Luxus Prime?’

‘Zephro said some of the eldar can see the future—’

Oh, so the Harlequin Man was “Zephro” now, an intimate of Grimm’s! Grimm had been willing to assist a human agent of the eldar even though with squattish disdain he viewed the aliens themselves as snobs.

‘How did you communicate with Carnelian?’

There would be a human courier now and then...

‘Did you know what the eldar are planning at Stalinvast?’ (Aye, at
Jaq’s
Stalinvast! The world he allowed to be destroyed.) ‘No no no, boss, honest—’

Let Jaq follow his nose, and if he became sufficiently
illuminated
, then he might be worthy of another taunting, perplexing encounter...

If Grimm had told Carnelian all about Jaq, then Veritas could have been mentioned. Jaq could almost hear the Harlequin Man’s mocking voice: ‘Oh, do get rid of any that’s left, there’s a good fellow, Grimm. Do bemuse our seeker for truth so that his wits will be really sharpened!’

Had Grimm ever told Carnelian about Meh’lindi impersonating an eldar? Adopting an alien guise sufficiently well to fool humans, at any rate... Futile to ask Grimm even under this devious species of torture!

‘It’s enough...’

Jaq released his hold on Grimm. He pulled the blindfold loose.

Grimm sagged, and almost fell. With his clumpy yet nimble hands he protected aspects of his nakedness at last. Then he peeped up and down himself, amazed to find that he was intact.

Meh’lindi stooped over him, so predatory.

‘
Huh
,’ she said delicately into his ruddy face. That tiny explosion of breath almost blew him over. Grimm grabbed for his drawers and his coverall. His teeth chattered. ‘It’s all in a g-g-good cause, boss—’

‘A
good
cause? Good?'

'The shining path, boss—’

Jaq sighed deeply. ‘Oh, you naive little man. The only cause is His-on-Earth’s. The cause of the ever-dying God-Emperor.’ Could Jaq truly believe that, either? In his incredulity was his belief. In his scepticism was his faith.

In the light of the electrocandles Grimm was florid all over. The smell of hot insulation seemed to be that of his own inflamed nerves and muscles and sweat. Grimm might have been reprieved from a roasting alive.

However, it was his recent tormentress whose flesh must soon be torn open. If fortune favoured her.

EIGHT

Assassin

F
LECHETTES ZIPPED PAST
the crouching trio.

Fleshettes
might be a better name for these tiny darts. Their flanges spinning too fast to see, they would mince any flesh they met. The gang which had ambushed Jaq and Meh’lindi and Grimm was at least twenty strong. They had pinned the trio in a crater by the base of a vast gritty column. All of the gang were using handbows. They had to reload their handbows after each shot. However, the ambushers were firing turn by turn from behind mined walls, observing some sort of discipline.

A flechette had impacted in the back of Grimm’s flak jacket, and had torn through the reinforcing metal fibres. Momentum and spin had been lost, but the dart’s point pricked Grimm’s back irritatingly. He fumbled over his shoulder for the shaft. Lucky shot, or duff part of the jacket. Damnably the dart seemed lodged. His groping fingers couldn’t gain enough purchase. At least by now he could be sure that the dart hadn’t been doped with a paralytic poison.

With his other hand Grimm loosed shots from a boltgun inaccurately in the direction of those ruined walls:
RAAARK-pop
SWOOSH.

The boltgun, a twin to Jaq’s, and plated in shimmery titanium embedded with silver runes, was named on the trigger guard:
Emperor’s Peace
. It belched explosive bolts.

This gun and
Emperor’s Mercy
– ancient, precious weapons, both of them must have been lovingly crafted long ago by some devout artisan of the Adeptus Mechanicus as part of a set celebrating the attributes of Him-on-Earth.

Before handing the weapon over to trustworthy Grimm from out of the armoury cell in
Tormentum,
Jaq had harangued the blunt-spoken squat lest he not treat the gun with appropriate respect.

A flechette had torn open Jaq’s glove of saurian-skin. Blood dripped. He was firing
Mercy
left-handed, though economically. He wouldn’t waste bolts on walls even if the explosions did blast out shrapnel and splinters.
RAAARK-pop-SWOOSH.
A flechette whined past his ear like an angry hornet.

Meh’lindi had caught a dart in her right arm. For several reasons she wasn’t wearing synthetic skin. If she was spotted by the wrong eyes, syn-skin might be misinterpreted. It might seem that an assassin of the Callidus shrine was seeking Tarik Ziz with deadly intent. Another reason was that her exposed flesh was destined to be cut – if she was fortunate.

She wore a long grey cloak over her assassin’s cling-tight tunic, and seemed to be some pilgrim.

The girth of the pillar by which they lurked was such that it could almost have swallowed
Tormentum Malorum
entire. Grainy in texture, and gloomy in the diffused light, the pillar soared upward two kilometres to a vault. There, mirrors were slung, reflecting distant daylight from optic tubes which originated outside the enormous building.

Other such columns marched into the distance. Many of these were hidden, except towards their summits, by the linked tiers of habitations braced around them. The vast shell within which the city heaped itself was a gargantuan cavern. Dilute illumination was leprous. Had light been brighter, the pillars might have shone golden. They were composed of sand – sand which had been bonded by some alien energy field of unknown nature. Thus had the cavernous structure sustained itself for ten thousand years. For a million years? No one knew.

The human city was named Overawe. All its people were parasitical, of necessity, within this unnatural cavern. Ordinary habitations in the open upon Darvash could be destroyed by sand tornadoes. The tech-knowledge and litanies for rearing independent hive-cities into the clouds did not exist upon Darvash. Consequently the hives of humanity sheltered within abandoned alien colossi.

To the Darvashi people did these colossi seem like sanctuaries? Or more like traps, which might betray them? Fortresses of sand, which might suddenly collapse into tonnes of grains and grit! Some pillars, such as the one they sheltered by, remained uninfested by piles of sand-brick buildings. Jaq and his companions had already seen robed figures whirling around at the base of another such pillar, ululating and gashing themselves and each other with miniature knives worn as extensions to their fingernails. Those sand dancers had been performing a rite – in the Emperor’s name – so that pillars and vault would maintain their impervious solidity...

Within Overawe, there appeared to be a peculiar etiquette to weaponry. Flechettes were acceptable. Handbows. Shuriken pistols. Weapons which fired darts or discs which spun swiftly just as the planet itself spun, and as its sun spun. Noisy explosive weaponry seemed to be taboo, as if violent shocks might disrupt the molecular bonds of the pillars and the vast roof.

When waylaid by this gang, what choice did Jaq and Grimm have but to use
Emperor’s Mercy
and
Emperor’s Peace
?

Were all visitors fair game, or did those gang members perhaps view the owners of such noisy weapons as impure? Other furtive masked figures were hurrying to join the attack, ducking along behind heaps of debris or trash.

The masks worn by the gangsters depicted great pouting lips the size of a face, with concealed eye-lenses and breathing vents. These lips would
consume
their enemies.

Meh’lindi tore the flechette from her arm. Blood welled. Already she was muttering a prayer of coagulation and constriction. She plucked Grimm’s dart from his back, ripping a hole in his flak jacket. She squeezed a toxic needle on its way as Lips exposed themselves. Lips swallowed the needle. One of the attackers was whirling, whirling, arms flung out, spinning around. Then he flopped.

Jaq’s head still hummed with arcane names.

llluminati. Sensei knights. The Numen.

Put those out of your mind for now!

Or else die, at the hands of these Darvashi hooligans, who might regard themselves as devout.

T
HE LANDING FIELD
had proved to be a broad mesa of rock rising steeply above the desert sands near the colossus. Great pits had been cut in that flat-topped table of stone, not by human hands but by those of the colossus-builders. If sandstorms threatened, massive stone lids on frictionless bearings could be swivelled to cap the berths for starships. In serpentine tunnels around the pits were servicing facilities and reservoirs of fuel.

The last stage of descent from orbit had been through moderate gritty winds which must be only a mild breeze for Darvash. Just prior to landing they had seen only a solitary freighter ensconced in one of the pits. In another silted pit there lay an ancient wreck. On disembarking, Jaq had commanded refuelling in the Emperor’s name. The port authorities, such as they were, had obeyed. In caverns presumed to have been carved by the colossus-builders were a subterranean promethium well and a refinery.

Petrov and Fennix had remained on board
Tormentum Malorum
. Perhaps right now they were gazing into one another’s eyes, blind eye into warp-eye, warp-eye into blind eye. Perhaps they were murmuring to each other about the universality of telepathic sendings or about the way in which a warp-eye contained the whole galaxy within itself.

Anyone ordinary witnessing this warp-eye would instantly be destroyed. Did the sanction apply to Petrov himself? Oh, he was immune to himself, so he claimed. To stare into a mirror at the reflection of his own warp-eye wasn’t an act of suicide.

Nor would it provide
him
with a revelation.

What if he stared into another Navigator’s exposed warp-eye?

Petrov had refrained from answering. This was private to Navigators. Yet one sensed that Azul Petrov regarded his own warp-eye as uniquely special, blessed with an exceptional destiny.

For transfer by heavy crawler to Overawe, the trio had worn filter masks and goggles. In Overawe itself, such protection was despised. Nevertheless many of the denizens wore grotesque decorative masks.

How to know whether any of those masks hid agents of Tarik Ziz, keeping watch on arrivals? Anyone he had trained would be a master of disguise. Here, such mastery seemed almost irrelevant.

Jaq had decided that filter masks and goggles, worn inappropriately, would be more of a beacon than an incognito.

Who had informed the Officio Assassinorum of Ziz’s whereabouts? Someone hiding behind a mask, even more stealthily than any of Ziz’s agents?

Was Ziz aware that the Callidus shrine suspected his presence here? Jaq would need to gamble that the former Director Secundus did not know.

‘If one of our assassins is here keeping watch,’ Meh’lindi had assured Jaq, ‘she’ll be virtually invisible.’

‘She, or
he
,’ Jaq had reminded her. She had been too long on her own, with Jaq. A hundred years too long. In stasis, time had deposited itself upon her heart like a drift of dead creatures settling upon an ocean floor.

Through the stacked sombre markets and workshops and fungus gardens of Overawe they had pursued the discreetest of enquiries, exploring the crowded multi-tiered terrain of that artificial alien cavern, keeping their eyes open.

The local dialect of Imperial Gothic was a compressed rush of consonants. On this sandy world vowels had virtually dried up. Tarik Ziz’s name would be Tuk Zz’ – not that Jaq or Meh’lindi voiced that name, which the apostate would hardly be using. Imperium was “Mprm”. It took a while even for Meh’lindi to mimic the compressions of the speed-speech. Jaq couldn’t master it. If the space port, such as it was, had not employed several interpreters, how could it have functioned at all? The Darvashi seemed almost insectoid in their utterances, as if dry sticks rubbed together rapidly in their throats.

The trio had strayed too far in their investigation of Overawe. Flechettes said so. This area was derelict, a haunt for riff-raff.
RAARK-POP-SWOOSH
, spoke Grimm’s gun. –
thud-CRUMP
.

Lips exploded, brain mushrooming through a mask. The attackers chittered agitatedly. Like a horde of rats, more had arrived.

The gravel trench around the base of the column was shallow, barely affording protection. Had a flamer been brought to bear, Jaq and his companions would have been roasted.

However, there was an etiquette regarding weapons – against which Jaq and Grimm were offending.