The Inquisition War (73 page)

Less than half a squad now fired back at the strobing onrush of figures in misshapen armour. Jaq gestured with his force rod, confusing the bee-bolts. A trio of these swooped at a Fist’s groin, nevertheless, blasting his girdle-guard open. The Fist stooped right over. His gauntlet grooved the ground briefly until drugs abated his agony. How he strove to straighten himself. A bolt impacted on the vambrace of his forearm. Other bolts penetrated his ruptured groin-guard. He toppled.

From Petrov, in a terrible whisper: ‘The rune’s complete—’

‘Withdraw, withdraw!’ bellowed Lex. So total had his attention to the graving tool been, that for a couple of seconds he pointed it at oncoming attackers as if the stylus itself were a weapon.

And then they were all crowding through the recess in the rock, back into the blue, the three surviving Fists preceding, Lex and Wagner bringing up the rear, shielding their unarmoured companions.

A lurid comet of plasma streaked from the Titan. The Imperial Fists and those they protected were far enough into the blue, by now, to survive. Maybe lingering plasma would deny Chaos access for a while.

T
HE ENERGY BARRIER
tugged only momentarily at Jaq. The psychic obstacle had not been intended for inhabitants of the sane universe, but for denizens of abreality, unreality. It was weak, though, weak. Weaker still, since they had violated it. This hymen had been stitched across the passage in the webway which had led to a world perhaps once bountiful – before it was swallowed by Chaos. Soon Chaos Marines and other daemonic familiars would flood through again, howling in anticipation, towards ravaged Ulthwé.

The fate of Ulthwé did not matter. Guided by the Navigator, the journey of Jaq and his companions was leading elsewhere.

EIGHTEEN

Deaths

I
T WAS
L
EX
who recommended that the group must catch some sleep en route to the legendary Black Library.

Primo
, he argued, Petrov had no idea how far away through the webway the Library was. Nor by what devious or dangerous ways. Petrov’s rune-scribed eye – safely hidden now by his bandanna – led the Navigator onward without revealing the length of the journey they were undertaking. The entrance to the Library might only present itself after hours of travel, or days. Equally, it might present itself soon and suddenly.

They would need all their wits and alertness and stamina. Stamina must be measured by the weakest amongst them. Surely the weakest was Petrov himself, still shocked by the amputation of half his arm under less than ideal circumstances. Arguably that amputation had pre-empted the full impact of trauma which the engraving of his warp-eye might otherwise have induced. Nevertheless, the fellow must be existing on his nerves, fuelled by the revelation he’d experienced. He mustn’t burn out.

All nerves were frayed, even those of the Imperial Fists. Their numbers were now reduced to a captain, a sergeant, and three battle-brothers. To have fought in the Battle of Stalinvast, and then in the skirmish at Ulthwé, and, then to have encountered daemonic Chaos was sapping of vigour and sanity. No brother should have had to endure what these had experienced on that perverse world in the Eye.

Lex feared that a gibbering psychopathy might be lurking in the Fists’ souls. Even in his own! A psychopathy suppressed by faith, yet if new stress befell too soon, capable of undermining discipline.

Secundo
, the Library was said to be fiercely and frightfully guarded. Though they were furnished with a key, with a talisman, would this suffice?

Tertio
, according to Petrov the Library was vast and labyrinthine, all but unknowable...

Jaq Draco still moved sorely. After use of that rod against the monster-in-the-moon and against the Chaos Titan and the bee-bolts, his psychic reserves must be depleted.

This ill-assorted team must rest. Though hyped by action, they must recuperate.

P
RESENTLY THEY CAME
upon a cul-de-sac of the webway. A side-passage shrank to a vanishing point, braiding in upon itself like some umbilical cord.

Had the webway been twisted shut here by psychic power? Or might this be a place from which the webway might grow a new extension, spontaneously connecting up with some other part of itself?

If the webway resembled a bizarre nervous system, suave and commodious, was the Black Library the brain of the webway, where hideous knowledge was stored?

The cul-de-sac seemed more defensible than a stretch of open misty tunnel. A Space Marine could sleep alertly in a split-brain trance. One side of the brain would become dormant so that fatigue poisons could be purged, while the other cerebral hemisphere would remain aware of circumstances.

Before any sleep involving either half of the brain or the whole of the brain, nourishment and hygiene were a priority...

T
HE MARINES SHARED
concentrated food with their four guests. Grimm proffered some tastier delicacies from the pouches and pockets of his flak jacket. Water came from pressure-flasks incorporated in the Fists’ armour, and from similar vessels strapped to the legs of Grimm and Jaq and Petrov. Heavy-water, so called.

If this journey
did
last for several days, they might be obliged to quit the webway temporarily so as to raid some unknown world or craftworld and replenish their food and drink. Such a detour could prove doubly dangerous. On re-entering the webway, might the travellers once again be as far away as ever from their elusive destination?

‘A joint of meat wouldn’t go amiss,’ Grimm groused. With morbid jocularity he added, ‘We could all have gnawed on a well-cooked limb, eh Azul? Shouldn’t have tossed that away.’

‘Too well cooked,’ lamented the Navigator. He seemed to appreciate the gruff sally. Here was squattish sympathy. Meh’lindi had already inspected Petrov’s elbow-stump. She had found no sign of morbidity. The amputation had been righteously sealed by the sergeant’s las-scalpel.

‘There’d be nothing but charred bone left,’ sighed Petrov.

‘Oh, and a smear of hot marrow.’

‘What use will I be in future? Supposing we succeed? I’ll only be able to see my way to a Black Library – and to nowhere else.’

Grimm spoke more softly. ‘Listen, Azul, be warned. You’d be of a vast amount of value to a certain Ordo Malleus. That ordo would give its eye-teeth to have that eldar rune in its pocket. Jaq Draco’s all right, as inquisitors go. In fact, as inquisitors go, he went right off on his own! Other inquisitors would be, well... ruthless ain’t the word for it.’

‘The rune –
in its pocket,
’ repeated Petrov. ‘Do you suppose my eye could be used without me?’

‘Azul, when this is over I’d advise you to ask the sergeant to cut your warp-eye out with his scalpel. Give it to Jaq to keep. Then you’ll be safe. No one’ll want to hunt you down.’

‘Armless, and eyeless... Cutting out the eye might kill me. It’s part of my brain!’

‘Oh it’s a risk, Azul. But then you can lose yourself on some backward planet.’

‘Delightful!’

‘Won’t the other Navigators protect you? Those Navis Nobilite bosses?’

‘I suppose so...’

A
SQUAT’S WHISPER
wasn’t particularly inaudible. Jaq had overheard.

If he did reach the Black Library courtesy of that engraved eye, conceivably he could win rehabilitation with his ordo. Charges of heresy would be annulled.

Ah, foolish temptation! The Inquisition was divided against itself. Even the Ordo Malleus had been corrupted – as witness Baal Firenze. If Jaq succeeded in gaining entry to the eldar library, he would simply become the most estranged person in the galaxy. The most isolated! Were it not for the company of Meh’lindi. And to a far lesser degree, of Grimm.

Did he love Meh’lindi in some self-tormenting fashion? What a blasphemy such fondness must be. What impiety such ardour must be, when balanced against duty.

Yet in which direction did true duty lie?

M
EH’LINDI ASKED THE
captain of Fists, ‘Does your Chapter possess any dreadnoughts?’

Courteously, Lex answered this strange exotic person, this woman in an alien guise: ‘Aye, we treasure four Furibundus-class Destroyer dreadnoughts and three Contemptor-class dreadnoughts. Such a holy heritage, those!’

In his youth Lex had spent noble and blessed hours in the scriptories of the fortress-monastery, studying schematics of those dreadnoughts. On some future day as a highest battle honour might his mangled truncated body be enshrined in one of those, surgically and neurally synched with the machine? Enwombed in sustaining fluid within injection-moulded ceramite, itself veneered with adamantium shaped in some vast plasma-centrifuge of the Adeptus Mechanicus orbiting Mars!

Oh, the synchronized double dual boltguns of the “Contemptor”. Oh, the boltguns and lascannon of the “Fury”. Oh, its mighty combustion fuel manifold and exhaust, oh, its rotary actuators.

A tear almost welled in Lex’s eye at the thought of the paradise of potent piety which was the fortress-monastery of the Imperial Fists. Its scriptories and librarium, its halls and its foundries and gymnasia, its surgeries and firing ranges – and the Chapel of Dorn.

Would he ever behold that holy home again?

What was this strange, brave female’s interest in dreadnoughts?

‘Are any of those fitted with a six-barrel assault cannon, captain?’

‘Nay, lady, neither the Contemptor nor the Furibundus sport such a weapon—’

‘Damn.’

‘—though they could be so fitted.’

‘Tell me, Lex, disregarding hits by heavy weapons, what is the most vulnerable feature of a dreadnought?’

Meh’lindi was still thinking of ways to disable Tarik Ziz.

Lex considered. ‘If the cooling and exhaust systems are damaged, heat will build up inside the dreadnought – supposing that it continues to exert itself. The internal actuators might melt or even ignite. This would heat up the amniotic fluid which cushions the pilot. In extremis, this would boil the pilot alive. Signs of this will be black smoke venting from the dreadnought. The internal micro-bore hydraulics sometimes begin to leak. This reduces the dreadnought’s strength and mobility.’

‘Can cooling and exhaust systems readily be blocked by simple things such as torn-up clothing?’

Lex chuckled. ‘Only a lunatic would contemplate attacking a Contemptor or a Fury with rags. I admit this would be unexpected!’ Meh’lindi persisted. ‘What filters protect the air intake from poison gas or toxins?’

Grimm butted in drily. ‘All you need to do, Meh’lindi, is perform a striptease in front of the dreadnought to over-excite its pilot. Keep hold of all the veils you strip off. When the pilot is intoxicated leap on to its back with your legs round its neck. Plug the vents with your veils. After half an hour of lumbering around, trying to dislodge you, it’ll overheat. You’ll know, ‘cos by then you’ll have hot thighs.’

This discourtesy offended Lex.

‘Be silent, abhuman!’ he rumbled.

To Meh’lindi he said, ‘Well duelled, by the way, back in Ulthwé, lady.’ The unaccustomed mode of address was becoming less awkward for him, though hardly effortless. ‘Your style was flamboyant and sweaty, perhaps. We Fists fight our duels with our boots fixed in duelling blocks so that we cannot ever flinch.’

Meh’lindi eyed Lex dubiously.

He added: ‘Your duel of alien words with that Harlequin was particularly effective. A Fist thinks. A Fist respects nimble thinking.’ She nodded, accepting the captain’s commendation.

‘Do you realize,’ Grimm asked Lex. ‘that you just paid her a compliment? Beware of making Jaq jealous.’

‘You are absurd as well as abhuman!’ declared Lex. ‘I suppose many ordinary human beings, let alone abhumans, must be jealous of the Astartes with our purity and our reinforced bodies.’

‘Huh, that’s it. Don’t forget the physique.’

‘Shut up, Grimm,’ said Meh’lindi. ‘You’re babbling. I am Callidus.’

‘Inquisitor’s consort,’ he mumbled, with a hint of unrequited though cordial envy.

She asked all of a sudden, ‘Did you really ever have a wife called Grizzy?’

‘Yes!’ he yelped. ‘I did! Sure as I’m standing here right now.’

P
RESENTLY
J
AQ WAFTED
incense from a tiny pressurized thimble almost as if fragrancing a bower for a mistress.

‘Let us pray before slumber,’ he declared. ‘Balm for the soul disperses nightmares.’

What a hollow prayer this might be, addressed to a schizoid husk in a golden life-support throne!

Nay. That husk must be rekindled for salvation’s sake! It must be reborn as the Numen, to lead New Men. How might that come to pass? In a Rhana Dandra bonfire – of Himself-on-Earth and all His Sons?

From which might arise, phoenix-like, a more potent, less agonized deity? One in liege, unbeknownst, to eldar Harlequins? But still Jaq prayed; and though he was no battle chaplain, the Fists who survived reverently appreciated his prayer. Maybe his words were routine and orthodox, yet they were wearily impassioned. Then the travellers lay themselves down to sleep – or to half-sleep with visors open.

Lex murmured quietly to Sergeant Wagner, imparting his opinion of Baal Firenze.