Rites of Passage - Mike Brooks Read online

  There. A series of shock waves, ripping through the warp and buffeting the Solarox, lines of what she could only internally verbalise as a glistening dark brown against the shifting yellow background. She fought against the feeling of her skin itching on the inside, and clung on to the images in her head. That was no warp storm; it was like no natural phenomenon of the empyrean she’d ever witnessed, if ‘natural’ was a term that could even be applied to this place. The shock waves were radiating outwards from another event; something else had birthed them. But what?

  She forced her third eye to follow the ripples back to their origin, rolling back her subjective notion of time through sheer bloody-mindedness coupled with long practice. It was like trying to get a grip on a bubble in a hurricane, but…

  ‘High lady, are you well? Your pulse is accelerating rapidly.’

  ‘Not now, Anja!’ Chetta snapped, trying not to lose the thread. Talking to someone in the present while peering into the past was not unlike trying to juggle with one hand while fencing with the other. She was nearly there; she could feel the shock waves converging on a single point.

  They met, and formed a distinct image in Chetta’s mind, one of uncommon focus and clarity for someone used to wrestling with the warp’s abstracts. It was almost as though the trigger event didn’t exactly involve the warp at all…

  ‘Oh crap,’ Chetta breathed. She took a quick check on the position of the Astronomican, that great beacon of psychic light and noise radiating out from Terra to guide the Imperium’s starships through the shifting morass of the immaterium. The Solarox had been knocked off course from its planned route to Vorlese, where House Brobantis had its primary holdings, but not far. It wouldn’t take much time to get them back into the most favourable currents, on course to return home as quickly as possible. After all, she had a husband to bury, and important decisions to make. There was little point in going to all the trouble of arranging Azariel’s death in order to carefully steer her adopted house away from his plotted route, only to then not capitalise on it.

  And yet, despite it all, Chetta was still a dutiful citizen of the Imperium. Some things were more important.

  ‘This is Lady Chetta Brobantis,’ she said, relaxing her grip on the past. Now she knew where she was looking, she could see the ugly wound that still pulsed in the warp’s fabric. It wasn’t near, as she comprehended such things, but it wasn’t far either. In fact, she was fairly sure she knew where it was in relation to the material universe, and that unnerved her. ‘We have a new heading. Prepare to alter course on my mark.’

  ‘Are we far off course, my lady?’ Anja replied.

  ‘I said we have a new heading, captain,’ Chetta said firmly, rolling her neck in an attempt to loosen some of the tension in it. ‘Vorlese is going to have to wait. Unless I miss my guess completely, something has just sucked an entire planet into the warp. I rather think we should go and find out what’s occurring.’

  Shadow-Walker

  He stepped off the transport shuttle, a lone man in a long weathercoat and a rebreather mask: unremarkable garb, such as anyone might wear to head into the Smog Deeps of Ascension City, down near the planet’s surface where the pollution clung thick and sticky around the base levels of the great tenement blocks and chrome-chased windscrapers of Vorlese’s capital. He stepped off the transport shuttle and filed through the perfunctory customs checks using the identity documents in the name of Radimir Niklau, easily able to demonstrate that he was not in possession of any contraband items or xenos lifeforms. He stepped off the transport shuttle, a lone man in a crowd of hundreds, each with their own purpose and destination.

  He stepped off the transport shuttle and walked down the ramp even though, strictly speaking, he had no need to do any such thing.

  That was how the Imperium worked, though. So long as the numbers balanced, no questions were asked. There was no surer way to draw attention than to unbalance an equation, even an equation as apparently minor as the passenger tally on a transport ship. So Radimir Niklau left the ship in the same manner in which he’d boarded it, past mirror-visaged proctors with their riot-guns and cyber-mastiffs, alert for threats but completely blind to the one he posed, and disappeared into the teeming medley of humanity and near-humanity that made up the Mids of Ascension City.

  Twenty-three minutes later, he was in a booth in a spider market, sipping a hot, spiced beverage with a higher-than-average caffeine content. The market was so named because it had been built onto the outer skin of one of the towering, mile-high buildings, and patrons had to negotiate it by clambering up and down levels like the giant arachnids that apparently lived in the choking smog lower down. It was a precarious existence, both fiscally and gravitationally, and Radimir was here quite deliberately.

  His contact was late, but not immensely so. They arrived five minutes past the agreed time, feet first down the ladder. Radimir took note of that; they’d come from an upper level, suggesting that they were of higher social status. Unless, of course, they were late because they’d taken the time to climb higher and then descend to the meeting, in order to mislead him.

  ‘You are Niklau?’ the new arrival asked. They had a hood drawn over their face, which wasn’t uncommon here, since the air held a biting chill even at this altitude. However, shadows held no mystery for Radimir. He could make out skin so pale it nearly gleamed like marble, and a pair of dark brown eyes.

  ‘I am.’ He took a sip of his caffeine. ‘You are Kell?’

  ‘It’s as good a name as any.’ Kell cast a nervous glance at the window, which was little more than a square of transparent sheeting, and then down at the floor of hardened, reconstituted organic waste pulp. Somewhere underneath, presumably, were the struts that anchored it to the building. ‘What possessed you to meet here?’

  ‘The possibilities for eavesdropping are extremely limited,’ Radimir pointed out. It was true enough; the booth was big enough for two people, plus a light-limbed juve to clamber in and serve drinks, then clamber out again. One side was the three-foot-thick rockcrete wall of the building, and on the other three was the open air.

  However, Radimir also liked to get the measure of people, and this was a good way to do so. He had few concerns about the location, even if it detached from the wall and began to fall. Kell, on the other hand, didn’t like being here. Radimir strongly suspected Kell had never visited a spider market before. Just from that, and his contact’s arrival down the ladder instead of up it, he was fairly certain his initial impression had been correct.

  ‘Let us be brief,’ he said, and didn’t smile as the lines on Kell’s forehead eased slightly. ‘You have a problem that needs eradicating. I can perform that function.’

  ‘Pressure must be brought to bear,’ Kell replied. A token flicked out of one sleeve and skidded across the narrow table to come to rest in front of Radimir. He picked it up between thumb and forefinger and inspected it: a winged triangle, with two stylised stars at the base and a larger one equidistant between them, higher up, spaced to suggest two regular eyes and then a third in a forehead. The symbol of the Brobantis house of Navigators.

  He nodded and tucked the token away. ‘Members, or associates?’

  ‘Members,’ Kell replied earnestly. Radimir nodded again, as though he hadn’t been going to target Navigators in any case.

  ‘I will require payment.’

  Kell’s fingers flickered once more, and a small oblong of plant fibre slid across the table. Radimir unwrapped one side and ran his fingernail down the stack of tokens bound within: two thousand, in high denominations of the local scrip.

  ‘The agreed fee was five times this.’

  ‘The rest of the fee will be paid when results are satisfactory,’ Kell retorted. ‘Fear not – your patron has deep pockets.’

  The threat in the promise was implicit: you are a tool. If you prove to be a problematic or ineffective tool, other tools can and
will be employed to remove you. You are simply the tool we happened to choose, and you should consider yourself lucky to have the work.

  Radimir simply nodded for a final time. This payment sufficed, and his aims would coincide with his patron’s for long enough. Until then, they could think that they owned him.

  ‘Then I shall get to work.’

  Gallimo

  The Solarox juddered again, but not like before – this was the regular strain of warp travel, and something it had been built to withstand. Chetta massaged her temples, intent on the point she had been focused on since she’d set her ship on this course, very determinedly not concentrating on the Other Things lurking near it.

  ‘Prepare for translation,’ she ordered. ‘In ten, nine…’

  Warning klaxons sounded, even inside the Navigator’s chamber, as Captain Arqueba activated the pre-translation procedure. All through the Solarox, passengers and crew would be bracing themselves. Translations could vary from a chill feeling in the bones and momentary nausea to half the ship’s occupants clawing at themselves to get the insects out of their veins – and indeed, in extreme cases the insects might actually manifest physically. It all depended on the translation point, but Chettamandey Brobantis had been doing this for decades, and she could sense the exact spot that would bring them out closest to their destination with the least amount of psychic trauma. But it would take split-second timing to ensure they managed it without attracting the attention of the Other Things.

  ‘…five, four, three…’

  The safe point shifted suddenly, lurching towards her.

  ‘–crap, mark!’

  The Solarox translated. Chetta felt her teeth swell in her gums, pushing her jaws wider and wider, beginning to split her cheeks… And then it was done, and her face was back to normal with nothing but a phantom ache lurking in the back of her mind.

  ‘That was a little sudden, my lady,’ Anja commented. Her voice sounded loose, as though she were trying to speak through a mouth that her brain insisted was larger than it should be.

  ‘Blame the Emperor-damned warp,’ Chetta muttered, rubbing her cheek. The view in front of her showed nothing but pinpricks of light now, dozens if not hundreds of distant stars shining for an apparently unchanging eternity, and the loss of the warp’s life and motion was both a relief and an aching absence. Coming back to real space was always like having one of her senses violently disconnected, mainly because that was exactly what had just happened. ‘If we did that correctly, we should be in the Gallimo System. What do your readouts say?’

  ‘We…’ Chetta heard other voices in the background: those of the bridge crew making reports. ‘We’re picking up location beacons from Gallimo Prime’s moons, but nothing from the planet itself. And the system is full of distress signals.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Chetta said wearily, ‘let me guess. They’re all saying something along the lines of, “Where the hell did Gallimo Prime just go?”’

  There was a brief pause before Anja answered her. ‘Yes, high lady.’

  Chetta sighed and rubbed her two human eyes. She’d hoped that she was wrong. Even as the Solarox had approached the translation point and she’d perceived the writhing, pulsating forms of the warp’s psychic predators, drawn to the sudden arrival in their midst of tens of billions of souls, she’d hoped that she was wrong.

  She hadn’t been wrong.

  Gallimo Prime, the largest and most important world in the Gallimo System, had been sucked into the warp, taking all its citizens with it. Right now, on the other side of the veil of reality that separated the material universe from the immaterium, monstrosities the likes of which Anja Arqueba and her warp-blind crewmates couldn’t even begin to fathom were glutting themselves. The Solarox was the merest crumb of a morsel in comparison, and Geller-shielded to boot; their brief dance past the predators and into real space had been, in all likelihood, comparatively safe. But that didn’t mean that Chetta was going to tell Anja what it was her helmsman had just steered around, blindly following the directions Chetta had transmitted. There were some things – many things – that the two-eyed were simply better off not knowing.

  ‘How far out are we from where Gallimo Prime would be, if it were here?’ Chetta asked.

  ‘Our best estimates suggest eight hours at sublight, my lady.’

  ‘Take us there,’ Chetta ordered. ‘I want to look at it from this side. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, captain, but watch out for the moons. With their planet’s gravity well gone, who knows where they’ll end up.’

  ‘Acknowledged, my lady.’

  ‘Navigator out,’ Chetta said, completing protocol. She eased herself down from the throne and limped towards the door, leaning heavily on her cane. The act of navigation itself had become steadily easier over her life as her mastery of it increased, but the physical after-effects were getting more draining. Nothing she couldn’t handle, at least for now, but there would come a time when she couldn’t move around under her own power any longer.

  Not yet, she thought fiercely, as she always did, and reached out with her free hand to key the opening combination for the chamber doors. Not yet, and not next time. After that… we’ll see.

  The security team were still waiting outside for her, as though she’d been gone for five minutes instead of over twelve hours. Chetta flapped her free hand in acknowledgement of their steadfastness.

  ‘Lord Vora’s in there,’ she said without preamble. ‘He’s dead. And before you ask, he was like that when I found him.’ She knew her ferocious reputation with House Brobantis’ servants, and saw no harm in playing on it, even in a self-deprecating manner. ‘See that he’s removed and prepared for burial. Lay him with my husband, for now – they shared blood, at least.’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ the sergeant nodded, and the team began to file past her. Chetta thrust her hand out to stop the last one in his tracks.

  ‘Not you,’ she said. ‘You go and find DeShelle and tell her to attend me immediately.’

  ‘Where will you be, high lady?’ the armsman asked, saluting.

  ‘The bridge, of course,’ Chetta replied through gritted teeth as she made for the nearest service elevator while her hip ground in its socket. She waited until she was out of earshot, then continued under her breath. ‘There’s a hole in the universe, and I need to take a closer look at it.’

  Chetta had appointed DeShelle DuVoir as her personal aide approximately one Terran year ago, and had been thoroughly satisfied with her performance ever since. She was a mere slip of a girl, with skin a few shades lighter than Chetta’s own deep brown, and very short dark hair into which she shaved patterns that were apparently of some significance to her parent culture – as was the delicately engraved collar of ebony metal she always wore around her throat. She was warp-blind, of course, and far from bold, but remarkably intelligent and very capable.

  Chetta was standing on the bridge of the Solarox, gazing out of the main viewport at where Gallimo Prime had once been. All around them was a mess of running lights: ships that had taken off from the planet just before the disaster, ones that had arrived expecting to find it, and various panicking fools who’d apparently decided that no solid ground was safe.

  Of course, they might be correct. What was to say that Gallimo’s moons, the orbits of which Captain Arqueba was watching very closely indeed, wouldn’t go next? Anecdotal data suggested that everything up to the very outer limits of Gallimo Prime’s atmosphere had been pulled into a sudden yawning chasm, but ships beyond that level had escaped. Perhaps flying about and weeping in fear was actually the safest course of action. It would make about as much sense as anything else that was going on.

  ‘What do you see, my lady?’ DeShelle asked.

  ‘Foolishness,’ Chetta muttered. ‘Foolishness and panic.’ She fought down the clawing sense of unease in her own gut. Leadership was about setting an ex
ample. House Brobantis might not be hers by birth, but so far as she was concerned it was hers now. The ailing House Dacastos had married her off for a short-term political gain that had availed them little in the years since, and were now heading towards becoming a footnote in history. Her children, each of them a hard-won victory against her body and her advancing age, were Brobantis, she was Brobantis, and she owed it to the house to lead it as well as she could.

  ‘We’re being hailed by a patrol boat,’ Arqueba reported. ‘They want to know why we’re passing so close to the planet’s former location.’

  ‘Ask them whose authority they’re questioning us under, given that the planetary governor, every member of his staff and the entire planet’s Administratum are currently lost in the warp somewhere,’ Chetta grunted.

  ‘Or you could perhaps inform them that the Lady Chettamandey of Navigator House Brobantis is using her warp-sight to assess the situation and determine whether it poses any further threat,’ DeShelle suggested mildly.

  Arqueba snorted a laugh. ‘What would we do without your diplomacy skills, DeShelle?’

  ‘Since I appointed her, those skills are technically mine via delegation,’ Chetta pointed out. ‘I’m sure you can deal with them, Anja. Just hold our position steady for a little longer. I need to take a proper look at this.’

  She turned away, closed her physical eyes to shut out all distractions, and opened her third eye. It always felt blind at first in real space, as if she were staring into a lightless void, but as the seconds passed things started to come into focus. There were the very faintest sparks of life from other ships, the souls of their crews as they skimmed the warp by the nature of their very existence. Here and there shone brighter lights – astropaths, perhaps, or other psykers, whose essences were more closely connected to the empyrean and so attracted her gaze more. But they weren’t what she wanted to see.