Lesser Evils - Toby Frost Read online

  Lesser Evils

  Toby Frost

  As the lander cut through the last few layers of cloud, Lucan Vaughn checked his lasgun again.

  Twenty years with a gun in my hand and I still don’t trust my weapons. A sudden blast of turbulence rocked the crew compartment, and his backpack thumped against his shoulders.

  Nietzin, Vaughn’s second-in-command, had been standing by the door, watching their journey through the tiny window. As the turbulence shook them he staggered, staying upright with an effort. From his seat opposite Vaughn, Andus ‘Fane’ Garren laughed. Nietzin glanced at him, eyes bitter and hard. The engines rumbled around them.

  Time to take control, Vaughn thought. He leaned round and pressed the intercom. ‘How long, Lao?’

  ‘Let’s see…’ Cornelius Lao sounded refined and bored. Vaughn knew it was a pose, picked up in his old career in a Navy fighter wing. ‘Just over ten minutes, I’d say.’

  Vaughn closed the intercom and looked around the darkened cabin. ‘All right, ten minutes. Everyone check their gear and look ready. Anyone got any prayers to say, then now’s the last chance to say them.’

  The flyer hit a fresh batch of turbulence and shuddered as if it were afraid. Opposite Vaughn, sitting next to Fane, Salia Tashac had screwed her eyes shut. There was a stripe of black soot smeared across the lids. Old habits die hard, Vaughn thought, his hands moving over his gun again. The Tallarn 43rd would probably have hanged Tash if they could catch her, but she still wore their warpaint. He wondered if she was praying or just bracing herself in case they fell out of the sky.

  Vaughn unclipped his harness and stood up. He stepped to the door, and Nietzin leaned in to talk. The lieutenant was several inches taller than Vaughn, and his white hair brushed the roof. ‘All set?’ Vaughn asked.

  Nietzin hefted the team’s plasma gun. ‘All set. Look, Lucan,’ he added, and the lines on his face seemed to deepen, ‘we’ve broken some laws before, but nothing like this.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’ Vaughn glanced left, down the length of the cabin; Tash and Fane were not listening.

  ‘Nor did I.’ The ship rocked and Vaughn grabbed a strap hanging from the roof. It was all he could do not to fall on his comrade. ‘Not to begin with. But this is serious blasphemy, friend.’

  ‘Well,’ Vaughn said, ‘what do you want to do, go back and tell Harsek we were overcome by a sudden outbreak of mercy? You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ The older man paused. He seemed to realise that there was no point. The edge fell out of his voice. ‘I just wanted to say that I’ve got qualms.’

  ‘Me too. But what Harsek says, we do. It’s either us or them, you know that.’

  ‘It always is,’ Nietzin replied, his voice grim, and he drew back and checked the power dials on the side of his gun. ‘Never any other way.’

  The intercom crackled. ‘One minute!’ Lao announced.

  The flyer sank low, trembling. Through the window behind Nietzin’s shoulder, Vaughn saw the orange canyons and outcroppings of Rand XXI, and then towers and domes clinging to the rocks like spines on a monster’s back. As the flyer approached he made out individual buildings, then great stained-glass windows. At last he saw a round landing pad, white as a plate, decorated with a huge fleur-de-lys. And then the flyer banked, twisted, and the legs struck the landing pad with a lurch that sent Vaughn reeling. The door dropped open in front of him and he cried, ‘Let’s move!’, and the strike team ran into the thin mountain air.

  His boots hit the plascrete and suddenly he was in the open, ducking out from under the roaring engines of the flyer. Vaughn took in the fortress-priory before him, running along the ridge like a grey crest. In that same moment he saw the mountains in the distance, barren and red, and felt terribly exposed. Time to get to cover. He glanced back, saw the team behind him, and heard the engines start to rise into a roar.

  At the far end of the landing pad, steps carved into the mountain led down towards the priory itself. A figure rose into view as it climbed the last few steps, robes and hair whipping in the breeze, the red bulk of a bolter held across an armoured chest.

  A Sister of Battle. Vaughn was not sure he’d ever seen one before – at least, not at this range. She looked tougher than he’d expected, hard-eyed and callous. She was calling out something about landing clearance that she’d started to say on the steps, her voice raised above the engines and the wind.

  ‘You,’ Vaughn yelled. ‘Drop your weapon!’

  It was pointless, of course. As soon as she saw them properly, the bolter was swinging up in her gauntleted hands, and as soon as she moved Vaughn’s men fired. Their guns were rigged for just this purpose, wired to hotshot power packs: a set of vicious cracks came from the right, and the Sister folded. She stood at the edge of the landing pad, doubled over. As Vaughn approached she looked up, and the blood running from her nose and mouth was shockingly red against her pale face. Then she fell onto the ground.

  Vaughn reached the edge of the landing pad and looked down. It was a long climb on the stairs, and an even longer drop onto the mountainside. He’d never liked heights.

  The dead woman’s armour had been polished until it shone like black marble. One of the lasgun shots had punched straight through her chest. The hole in her armour looked like a tiny stone thrown through a plate of tinted glass.

  For a long moment Vaughn looked at her. Death had made her face as pale as a porcelain doll’s, the skin smooth and pallid as candle wax. There was a little prayer-scroll woven into her dark brown hair.

  Then he but his boot against the dead woman’s hip and shoved her off the landing pad and into the abyss.

  ‘That’s a long way down,’ Fane said. He’d grown up in a hive city, where sunlight had been a rarity.

  Vaughn ran onto the steps, and as he did the roar of the engines swelled up and Lao’s flyer heaved itself into the sky. The dirty white ship swung in the air, turned to the north and dropped out of sight behind the mountainside, following the canyons.

  Vaughn began to climb down the steps, as quickly as he could without losing his balance. The thought of falling made him queasy, of bumping down a hundred hard stairs before dropping into the canyon. He heard his men hurry down after him, in a rattle of kit and armour plate.

  Well, Vaughn thought, one thing’s for sure, there’s no going back now.

  Two hundred steps so far. A slow fire was burning in his calf muscles. Behind him, Tash was the first to curse. Vaughn ignored her. As ever, he knew that it wasn’t her fault that she was hard to like.

  The priory grew closer. He saw the details of the stained glass and the flapping banners. He made out the words ‘Imperator Deus’ in gilt lettering above the nearest pair of double doors.

  By the saints, we’re exposed. A few bolter shells, one missile, and we’d be done for.

  It wouldn’t even have to hit them, he realised. The force from a frag shell would knock the whole team over the edge. Despite the ache in his legs, he sped up.

  As he ran, Vaughn took out his monocular and studied the side of the priory. He wondered how the Sisters of Battle brought in their supplies: they wouldn’t make their own armaments, surely. Perhaps there was another landing pad, one he hadn’t been briefed about. That didn’t bode well. Or perhaps the Sisters carried all their gear down these stairs – backbreaking work, even if you didn’t fall into the canyon below. They’d probably think it was good for the soul.

  The team kept up a good pace, even Nietzin. ‘You need me to carry you, old man?’ Fane demanded. Nietzin puffed out a curse in response. Vaughn’s
gun bumped against his side.

  As they approached the fortress, it occurred to Vaughn that he really didn’t know much about the Sisterhood at all. His knowledge was limited to awed rumours, a couple of mission briefings, and some dirty, heretical jokes he’d picked up in the Guard, the sort of thing that would get you into serious trouble with the commissar. He had no idea what to expect. He remembered his old company commander’s adage: When you don’t know the enemy, go in hard. You’ll either terrify them into surrender, or–

  Or you’ll die serving the Emperor. Great.

  ‘Come on, people, pick it up!’ Vaughn snarled over his shoulder, and he quickened the pace once more.

  If Harsek’s information was right – and Vaughn had his doubts about that – it would be ten standard minutes before anyone checked the landing pad. He visualised the little diagram, sketched with a blunt pencil on scrap paper like most of the best battle plans he’d made. To the east was the main body of the priory, the buildings rising in sanctity as they rose in height: domitarium, then scholarium and training chambers, and finally the dome of the Chapel Santissimus on the peak of the ridge. To the left, the lower buildings squatted on the rock: the refectorium, storehouses and hospital, where the less important matters of the body could be taken care of, overshadowed by the buildings of the soul.

  The stairs flattened out. Together the team ran over a stone bridge broad enough to take a Baneblade tank, a sanctified banner flapping at either end. There were skulls on the banner poles, with letters scrimshawed into the bone. Vaughn didn’t stop to see whether they were the skulls of heretics or saints.

  The building before them was grey stone, quarried off-world and barely decorated. A path ran around the edge, lashed by wind, its handrails little more than metal spikes linked by old rope. Vaughn jogged into its shadow, and the team followed him. His breath was still tight from running, but his body seemed to sigh. They were out of view of the main buildings now. It should be a bit further down the wall, he thought, remembering his sketch. Just a bit further – please, let it be here…

  There it was. A metre across, hardly more than a bulkhead adorned with a plain fleur-de-lys of tarnished steel, the edges brushed shiny silver by generations of howling wind. Beside the door, to Vaughn’s relief, was a little keypad under a metal skull. The skull’s left eye shone red.

  He looked back at Nietzin. ‘You know what to do,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘Fane, Tash, watch the sides.’

  The older man took a plain grey data-slate from his thigh pocket. Nietzin turned it over in his hands, his lips moving. Then he leaned in and pressed the slate to the keypad. Slowly, he drew it down the lock.

  Nothing happened. Vaughn checked his watch. By now, according to Harsek’s information, the guard from the landing pad ought to be checking back in at the dormitarium. Any moment now, the Sisters of Battle would begin to wonder where she had gone.

  With a loud click, the skull’s red left eye went dead. Its right eye flared into bright green life. The door slid back, and they were looking into a tiny lift, just big enough to hold four men.

  The lift shuddered and rattled as it descended, as if it had detected the presence of intruders and was trying to shake them out. Vaughn stood pressed against Nietzin, with Fane on his left and his lasgun held up beside his head as if presenting arms on parade. It occurred to him that if the lift jolted hard enough, the gun would probably go off and blast his ear away. These things were custom models, bought by Harsek’s dealer through some complex, back-alley arrangement: still, they couldn’t be much less reliable than the Departmento Munitorium versions he’d hefted back in the Guard.

  ‘We’ll come out in the storerooms,’ Vaughn said. ‘Once the lift stops, blast the controls and seal the doors shut. We’ll take the access stairs on the way back. There shouldn’t be anyone around – nobody to set off the alarms, that is. Then we make our way to the main cogitator. Once the main cogitator is out, we’ll head down to the cells. The cells will have powered doors – besides, each section of this place is probably airlocked. The last thing we need are the Sisters trapping us.’

  And who knows what we’ll find waiting for us down there?

  They nodded.

  Fane said, ‘Seal off the sector, then make it ours. Like how we used to do it in the hive.’ His skin had always had a pallid, greenish tint, the result of years of living off synthetic food in a warren of bad light and polluted air. The weak red glow of the lift made him almost spectral.

  The lift banged to a stop, shaking them against one another. Tash banged into Fane’s breastplate and she muttered a curse in some Tallarn dialect.

  ‘Keep sharp,’ Vaughn warned, and he hit the door button.

  The door rumbled open and the team jabbed their guns into the aperture. Wordlessly, they scurried into the room, fanning out to cover the entire hall. Tash smashed the lift controls with her gun-butt and ran to catch up with the others.

  The room was large, high-ceilinged, functional rather than sanctified. The metal walls looked scuffed and greasy. Four huge hoppers hung down from the roof, each three times Vaughn’s height. Only a glowing holo-image in an alcove looked more than just industrial. It showed a saint that Vaughn didn’t recognise giving a blessing, a power sword in her free hand.

  They crept across the room, past the hoppers. No doubt they were for preserved grain or the like: even the pious had to eat sometime. The holographic saint cycled through her program, giving the same looped blessing as they hurried past, as if trying to mime a warning.

  As they reached the door on the far side, Vaughn heard boots. He made a quick fist to halt the team, and they rushed to the door, two to each side. Vaughn glanced at Nietzin. Very quietly, the older man crouched down, laid his plasma gun on the floor and drew his knife. The sound of the boots rose, ringing on the metal floor, and a figure stepped into the room.

  It was a girl, perhaps seventeen. She wore a wide-sleeved robe like a farm-worker’s smock, the hood down and the sleeves rolled up and pinned for practicality. She walked straight past them, muttering to herself as if trying to remember something.

  She seemed extremely young to Vaughn – no, he realised, it was not her age as such, but the fact that she didn’t look very tough at all. He glanced left. Nietzin hadn’t moved.

  Across the doorway, Fane waved his hand. Tash caught Vaughn’s eye and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask, Well, what now?

  Fane pulled his knife. Vaughn raised his gun, took two long steps across the room and brought the butt down on the novice’s head.

  She made a small Oof! sound from the air being knocked out of her. The girl dropped like a body cut down from a gallows.

  ‘Watch the door,’ Vaughn said. He crouched down and put his hand to the novice’s head. There was a little blood there, but no serious wound. He was surprised at how relieved he felt. When he stood up, Nietzin was looking at him.

  ‘Knocked out,’ Vaughn said, and Nietzin nodded as he sheathed his knife.

  ‘That was soft, old man,’ Fane said quietly. ‘You get soft, and then you get slow. You get slow, and then you get dead. Remember that.’

  Nietzin stepped back. He had a family of his own somewhere, Vaughn knew. Harsek had rescued them from the same prison camp as Nietzin, making the old soldier his for life.

  ‘Tash?’ Vaughn said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Gag her. Get her into the shadows. Come on, move!’

  Tash pulled a couple of restraining ties from her pack. She looked only slightly older than the woman on the floor. Nietzin stooped to help her move the novice. Vaughn pulled his map out of his pocket.

  ‘Soft,’ Fane said as Tash and Nietzin laid the novice down.

  ‘If I want your opinion, I’ll let you know,’ Nietzin replied. ‘Let’s go.’

  Below the storerooms, in a tiny chapel of its own, they found the cogitator. Saints and martyrs glo
wered down from the walls as if challenging the machine to betray them: there was no great love between the Sisters of Battle and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose cog-and-skull symbol stood out on the control panel.

  ‘You know how to make it work for us?’ Vaughn asked.

  Nietzin smiled. A candelabra hanging down from the roof brushed his ruff of white hair as he approached the controls. He set his pack down and took out a small portable terminal, sheathed in red leather like an old book. ‘Data-djinn.’ He patted the terminal.

  ‘One of Harsek’s finest, I’m sure.’

  Nietzin pushed wires into their ports. He mouthed a quick prayer. ‘And a little of mine. Forgive my less than total trust. Now, the machine spirits need to link…’

  Vaughn stepped back and watched the chapel door. Nietzin knew his tech: it was detailed inquiry into old heretech that had got him sent to a penal colony in the first place. That and the things he’d started teaching his staff, ideas about free thought he’d learned from ancient, censored texts. But the old man knew his stuff. He’d soon have the facility under their–

  A siren howled in the room above. Three pairs of eyes flicked to the roof. ‘Throne!’ Fane spat. The sound pumped on and on, a steady blast of sound.

  Tash checked the settings on her gun. ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘That wasn’t me!’ Nietzin called over his shoulder. ‘We’re still making the connection. I just need a little while longer.’

  ‘You don’t have it!’ Vaughn snapped back. They know we’re here. They must have picked up the flyer, sensed us somehow. Maybe the lift was alarmed.

  The siren roared on, muffled but furious, as if some monster was raging in the room above.

  ‘We’re in,’ Nietzin called. ‘The link’s sealing all emergency doors, cutting primary power to the defence lasers. It’s sending a message reporting fire in the dormitarium. That ought to confuse them. Right,’ he announced, pulling the terminal away, ‘The airlock to the cells is open.’ Nietzin pulled the plasma gun into his hands. If the siren bothered him, he didn’t show it.