The Inquisition War (7 page)

‘When I am bending my finger sharply, this gun is discharging, I am supposing?’

Yes. By and large. Yes. The hunchback might well succeed in firing the gun.

‘Staying here a while till excitement is dying... Then sneaking to my fine establishment, and into a certain cellar. You ravaged my clan, witch. Softer to question, ah yes.’

He was wrong. Meh’Lindi was herself again, no longer encumbered by clumsy claws and a stoop. Once again, she was a Callidus assassin. If the environs were cramped, what of that? She shuffled ever so slightly.

F
IVE MINUTES LATER
, during a moment of mild inattention when boots rang on the sewer lid overhead, the hunchback died quickly and silently – throat-punched, nerve-blocked, broken-necked – without even crooking his finger once.

Meh’Lindi was ravenous after the change. She had to feed. She only knew one immediate source of protein. The proprietor of the caravanserai had stared at her hungrily.

Now she repaid the compliment, somewhat reluctantly.

In her famished state, his corpse tasted sweet.

S
HE BALLED UP
his robe to haul behind her, tied to one ankle. She reasoned that she should crawl for a mile or so to escape from the immediate neighbourhood.

Some pipes were to prove tight and deep in effluent. She needed to dislocate her joints and hold her breath. She did so. She was an instrument. She was Callidus.

W
RAPPED IN THE
hunchback’s sodden robe, cinched with her scarlet sash, she trotted through the city under the cold constellations, heading back towards the spaceport.

Patriarch and magus were both dead. Yet the evil clan remained. Maybe the city militia would react and call in heavy assistance. Or maybe the local forces were themselves infiltrated by hybrids. Meh’Lindi had no intention of discussing matters with any militiamen in Shandabar.

She had infiltrated a genestealer stronghold – for a night and a morning – and had survived. By luck. Through rage. And courtesy of polymorphine, misused as no assassin had misused the drug before. Perhaps that would be a bright enough feather in Tarik Ziz’s cap...

The alien beast lurked within her, as it always would: tamed, yet holding her captive too.

How her heart grieved.

DRACO

My lord high inquisitor,

I have now examined this particular archive, as you requested of me. I can state that the text does truly date from a time around twelve hundred years before the present day. However, in the absence of a true physical copy of the work, dating a record that exists only as a data file upon our cogitator with any real precision is beyond the abilities of even my most skilled tech-priests. As to its content, there is little to tell. I have been unable to acquire any evidence of the existence of an inquisitor of our Ordo by the name of Jaq Draco. Indeed, my researches have led me to believe that none of the Ordos have any record of such a personage. However, I have not been permitted access to their most hidden archives, and I cannot therefore offer a definitive answer as to his non-existence.

Of his outlandish companions, I have more mixed feelings. The work itself states that the Callidus temple acknowledges the presence upon its roll of infamy a such-named assassin. Yet in all my years I have never heard of such a request for information producing such an unequivocable result – that the secretive leaders of the assassins’ shrines openly would even acknowledge any such query from those outside their order is frankly unbelievable. The Navigator... well, well we know of old the scorn with which our ‘‘brothers’’ in the Navis Nobilite regard outside enquiries. As to the abhuman, the thread is cut. The accursed hive fleet of the tyranid put paid to that line too long ago. I cannot believe, however, that even a renegade inquisitor, if that is what this Draco really was, would tolerate the presence of such a disgusting mutation.

Lord, I understand full well that my role is to examine the facts as they are presented, to report upon the technical aspects of this archive alone. But I must confess to you now: I am sorely troubled. I have been serving you in my capacity as master librarian for two centuries now, but never have you asked me to report upon such a tangled morass of bare half-truths and inferences. If even a fragment of what this memoir purports to reveal is truthful, it implies a conspiracy of the most mind-warping complexity.

Yet where is the evidence? Without it, this work can be nothing but a blasphemous heresy, a traitorous farrago of the most evil kind. This work would be better destroyed than be recorded in any form, lest it one day be revealed, to cause who knows what damage to the minds of scholars less sceptical than ourselves. I implore you, lord, let me erase this heresy.

May the Golden Throne watch over you,

R.

ORDO MALLEUS ARCHIVE:
Decimus-Alpha

RECORD: 77561022/a/jj/fwr/1182/i

ADDED: 3721022.M39

RECLASSIFIED:
1141022.M40

CLEARANCE LEVEL:
Vermilion

WARNING!

What follows is the so-called Liber Secretorum, or Book of Secrets of Jaq Draco, the renegade inquisitor.

This is a book which may have been deliberately designed as a weapon to sabotage faith and duty. The primary purpose of the Liber may be to sow distrust and discord among the Hidden Masters of our order so as to undermine the Ordo Malleus from within. The intention might also be to cast doubt upon the motives of our immortal God-Emperor himself, praise His name. We do not know.

Anyone authorised to scan this Liber Secretorum is privy to the darkest of conspiracies. Anyone not thus authorised faces the penalty of mindscrubbing or death. In either event, you are warned.

PROLOGUE

B
ELIEVE ME
. I intend to tell the truth as I experienced it.

What does the name of
inquisitor
mean? Many people would answer: destroyer of mutants, hammer of heretics, scourge of aliens, witch-hunter, torturer. Yet really the answer is: a seeker after truth, however terrible the truth may be.

As a member of the Ordo Malleus I am already a secret inquisitor. Yet the truth I must disclose involves the revelation of even deeper, more sinister secrets than those known to members of our covert order.

My story includes a journey to the Eye of Terror itself. Not to mention an incursion into the Emperor’s own throne room in the heart of his heavily guarded palace on Earth, something that you may consider almost impossible; yet I have achieved it.

Ah yes, I won through – only to find that the Emperor may keep secrets even from himself, in his fragmented mind; which you may not believe, either. But such is the case. So I swear.

My story involves a sleeping menace which you yourself may harbour. And you, and you, unknowing!

In a galaxy where more than a million worlds harbour human beings – or variations upon human beings – and where this multitude is but the tip of the iceberg of worlds, and where that vast iceberg itself floats in a deeper sea of Chaos, there must be many secrets. Likewise: guardians of secrets, betrayers of secrets, discoverers of secrets. The whole universe is a skein of secrets, many of which are dire and hideous. Possession of a secret is no blessing, no hidden jewel. Rather, it is akin to a poison toad lurking inside a gem-encrusted box.

Yet now I must open that box for your inspection. I must betray my secret, or as much as I know of it. Believe me.

I! Me!
It sounds odd for a hidden inquisitor to reveal his identity in this fashion. Aside from the obvious considerations of security, who can doubt what a powerful instrument a name can be? Why else will a daemon use almost any trick to avoid vomiting its true name forth from its own treacherous lips? For instance, whosoever knows the name of Thlyy’gzul’zhaell can bind and summon that vile entity... until such time as Thlyy’gzul’zhaell gains the upper claw; whereupon woe betide the foolish summoner. Naturally, a malicious daemon will readily reveal a rival daemon’s name...

Though no daemon I, I feel in my bones that it might prove inauspicious to utter my own name overmuch in
my own voice,
lest somehow I may be summoned and bound – by hostile human forces. Therefore, I shall become he. I, Jaq Draco, will tell the story of Jaq Draco as witnessed by a fly upon the wall, committing Jaq Draco’s experiences to this data-cube in the hope that the Masters of the Malleus or of the Inquisition itself may authenticate the truth of what I report and determine to take action.

In that event, you (whoever you are, wherever, whenever) may be scanning these words as part of a briefing, poised on the brink of a deadly mission.

I hail you – fellow inquisitor, Space Marine commander, whomever.

Firstly I should briefly introduce Jaq Draco’s travelling companions, without whom he would surely have failed. They were three: Meh’Lindi the assassin, Vitali Googol the Navigator, and Grimm. (Little Grimm the squat; do not despise this plucky, ingenious abhuman. Do not mock his youthful foibles.) When Draco landed on the planet Stalinvast accompanied by these three, the inquisitor was in the guise of a rogue trader, an incognito that he often used. Googol was his pilot; Grimm, his engineer. Seemingly, Meh’Lindi was the trader’s mistress, though in truth... a secret inquisitor needs a secret assassin, does he not?

One of the nastier poison toads of the universe was about to launch itself out of its box, under the energetic prodding of a much more public inquisitor by the name of Harq Obispal. Draco would keep vigilant watch in case any toadspawn remained behind uncleansed. He was likewise keeping watch on Obispal, a surveillance of which Obispal should ideally have remained unaware, though doubtless he might have relished the scrutiny, since Obispal was a performer...

ONE

S
OME HIVE WORLDS
consist of shell upon shell of plasteel braced by great pillars, as if the planet has grown a metal skin and then another skin and yet another, each successive skin being home to billions of busy human maggots, fleas, lice.

Other hive worlds are poisoned wildernesses punctuated by rearing plasteel termite mounds, vertical cities that punch through the clouds.

The cities of Stalinvast were more like coral reefs looming above a sea of hostile jungle. Kefalov bulged like some fossil brain adorned with innumerable ridges. Dendrov branched every which way, a forest of tangled stags’ horns. Mysov was a mass of organ pipes, from which sprouted the fungi that were suburbs. Other cities were stacks of fans or dinner plates.

A thousand such cities, soaring, bulging, branching from the surface of Stalinvast and almost all involved in the manufacture of weapons for the Imperium. Stalinvast was a rich, important world. Its thronged reefs were proudly stained rose-red, scarlet, purple, pink. Between the cities the blue-green jungle was riven with great scars where plasma cannon and barrage bombs had been tested. Warrior robots, juggernauts, and great armoured vehicles used the jungles as a proving ground.

The capital, Vasilariov, partook of most of the styles of coral architecture. Fifty kilometres long by forty wide by five high, currently Vasilariov was being scarred by some of its own weapons as Harq Obispal raged through the hive like an angry bear. Doing good work, oh yes.

I
N THE
E
MERALD
Suite of the Empire Hotel, a plate jutting high above raw jungle at the southern edge of Vasilariov, Meh’Lindi said, ‘I think I shall go into town to practise.’

‘Against the rebel hybrids?’ asked Grimm. ‘Huh! Count me out.’

Which meant, as they all knew, that Grimm didn’t intend to miss any of the action.

‘Dressed like that, Meh’Lindi?’ Googol drawled archly.

The Navigator’s large eyes assessed her gown of iridescent Sirian silk tied at the waist with a casual scarlet sash, her silverfur stole, her curly-toed slippers.

True, even costumed thus as a trader’s mistress she would be armed – with a garrotte or two, some tiny digital weapons for slipping on to her fingers, phials of the chemicals she used.

Reclining on a couch, Googol appraised Meh’Lindi’s figure as she began to twitch subtly. The assassin was running through some muscle exercises, using her enhanced body sense to tense and untense. She was artful steel expanding and contracting, tempering itself. Googol’s own pose suggested languor. The spindly Navigator yawned.