Divination - John French Read online

‘It’s curfew,’ said the man. ‘It’s the will of the Lords, you have to–’

  Koleg hit him just beneath the sternum. Air gasped from between teeth. The man stumbled backwards. Koleg jolted his palm into his jaw, and the warden dropped onto the wet stone steps. Koleg drew a needle from a sheath in his cuff and stabbed it into the man’s throat. He flicked the tiny glass bubble on the needle’s head, and sedative began to seep down the silver shaft. The warden would not wake for an hour. By then it would be over.

  Koleg shrugged the pack from his back. Fastenings snapped open. Gun metal gleamed in the blue crackle. His hands worked quickly: propellant kindler into stock, stock into casing, drum number one into feed port.

  I know, I know…

  I know where you go…

  The thread of rhyme passed through his thoughts again. He paused for a second.

  Hawk shifting on a gloved hand, eyes hidden under a red falconry hood…

  He blinked and stood, the grenade launcher in his hands. Viola said that communication out of the district would be disrupted for an hour. He reached into his coat and took out the mask. The raindrops formed silver domes on the black ceramic. Its eyes were mirrors. Two chrome cylinders plugged into the cheeks. He pulled it on. Luminous numerals lit at the edge of his sight. Small speaker grilles settled over his ears with a hiss of static.

  He took a breath. It was not to calm him. He was always calm. It was a habit, and habits were important.

  They did not know that he was coming. The shock would help.

  He looked at the temple doors, big blank slabs of board and metal. White-and-red handprints all over them. Hinges exposed. Rock frame. He had time to place the charges he had brought. There was no need to rush. They did not know he was coming.

  SIGNIFIER 0

  ‘It’s a kill mission, top to bottom. It needs to be–’

  ‘An example,’ said Koleg. He looked up from the weapon components laid out on the green cloth.

  His room was two metres by three metres. White paint covered the riveted metal walls and ceiling. The paint was fresh, but the rust still showed on the panels next to the basin and faucet. The floor was a rough-textured black. His bunk was bolted to the wall. The sheets and blanket on the bed were taut and smoothed, edges folded tight. His personal chest sat in the corner. Equipment gleamed inside the open lid. He sat on the floor, the stripped and separated tools of his trade in front of him.

  ‘I understand what is needed,’ he said. ‘You can leave the mission briefing details. I will review them and clarify if necessary.’

  Viola was still looking at him. He read the expression on her face: the distaste in the crease of her mouth, the questions she could not keep from her eyes. He noted the emotional markers, and then looked away. He looked straight ahead, hands and fingers finding their own way as he broke a gas-propelled grenade launcher down.

  ‘It needs to be an example. That is why it’s just going to be me.’ He glanced up. ‘It is this type of mission that the inquisitor recruited me for.’ He put the last piece of the launcher down and snapped the casing pins from a Kahre 354 hand cannon. ‘Is there something you wish to ask?’

  Viola’s face twitched under her ash-white hair. It was a slim face, he noted, made lean by concern, and taut by habit. Her hand shifted the collar of her velvet dress coat. She began to shake her head and turn away, then stopped and looked back at him.

  ‘You are unsettling,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have been told that before.’

  She looked around the room, and shook her head again.

  ‘This is a cell, you understand?’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘We painted it and scrubbed it, but it was part of a brig.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You requested this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Viola shook her head and let out a breath.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it is all I need.’

  ‘All right,’ she said after a moment. ‘All right. You are here by the inquisitor’s command, and that is enough.’

  She moved towards the door.

  ‘Your discomfort is understandable,’ he said. She paused in her step. ‘I am new. I am unknown. I do not fit. Your discomfort is understandable.’

  ‘I thought you did not feel emotion?’

  ‘I don’t. Not any more. But you don’t need to feel emotion to recognise its effects. If I could not do that then I could not perform my role.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Terror, Mistress von Castellan. The creation of a precise kind of terror.’

  MISSION TIME STAMP 01:35:01

  Click…

  Switch to arm.

  A breath. Muscles relaxing.

  Thumb tense on switch.

  Press.

  Click…

  The doors to the temple blew in. Rock dust and smoke billowed through the breach, and out across the square.

  Koleg’s mask blanked the flash of the explosion. The blast wave whipped over him.

  Two seconds, counted precisely in his mind.

  He stood. The launcher was in his hands. The first cylinder was loaded with photo flash, choke and shriek grenades. He aimed. His mask was set to infra-sight. The air around the temple door was red with heat.

  Five seconds.

  Orange silhouettes moved beyond the door, staggering. The metal of their guns was cold-blue.

  Koleg fired, shifted aim and fired, shifted and fired. The grenades flew through the door and detonated. Choke gas blended with smoke. Hot silhouettes began to stumble and fall.

  Flash of blinding light, white through the cloud. Human shouts. The sound of people trying to breathe while choking.

  They have no gas masks, he noted. The shriek charge went off under the stone arch. The air shivered. The staggering figures began to spasm. Koleg caught the edge of the sound an instant before his mask filled his ears with grey noise. That instant of exposure was enough to bring bile to his throat.

  Forward, another two grenades.

  Thump-crack, thump-crack…

  He had reached the door when the first armed target lurched into sight, and raised a weapon. Koleg put the third grenade into its central mass. It punched the figure back off its feet. The shriek grenade detonated and a fresh blast of neuro-disruptive noise ripped through the air. Koleg was through the door, slinging the launcher over his shoulder. The bloom of heat from the door breach was fading from his sight. He pulled his macro­stubber from its holster. Lights flashed on as the temple finally began to wake. Koleg tapped the switch on his mask. Red markers spun at the edge of sight as the mask sifted heat and motion for threats.

  Flaking faces of saints and angels covered the ceiling and walls. Open arches ran across the far end of the chamber. A man came out of a vestibule door, wearing soiled, multi­coloured robes, face blue and white from ingrained dye. Koleg squeezed the trigger for an instant. Recoil kicked up his arm. Muzzle flare breathed from the pistol. The deluge of micro-rounds tore a hole in the man’s chest. Blood smudged the fog of gas. Koleg surged forwards, grabbing the corpse as it fell. The next target through the door had an autopistol.

  Munitorum pattern d-3-4, thought Koleg. High rate of fire. Substantial recoil.

  The target fired an instant after Koleg shoved the corpse forwards and put a point-blank burst into the shooter’s face. Koleg went through the next door.

  The temple structure opened beneath him.

  SIGNIFIER 1

  The door closed behind Viola. Koleg remained on the floor. His hands slotted the last pieces of the macrostubber pistol together, and he set it down beside the other weapons. All were ready. He looked at them for a moment, and then picked up the data-slate that Viola had left on the bed. It had a holo projector attachment and filled the air above
it with a three-dimensional image of a structure which looked like a spire tower that had been turned upside down, and thrust into the ground. Audio crackled from the slate’s inbuilt speaker.

  ‘…Seekers of Incandescent Truth, a cult that conforms to the prevalent local interpretation of the Imperial Creed…’

  ‘… fallen out of favour within the dioceses…’

  ‘…temple capable of housing nine hundred adherents, numbers currently dwelling in the temple estimated at two to three hundred…’

  He listened. He watched, and read. When it was complete, he set it going from the beginning. After three passes he shut it down. Then he sat, eyes open, but flickering from side to side as though he were dreaming. Parameters were set, methods selected. When that was done, he paused.

  It would take him an hour to pass from orbit to the strike location. The rogue trader ship Dionysia would pass over that optimal drop location in one hundred and five minutes. That was acceptable. Inquisitor Covenant wished this dealt with as soon as possible, before the Seekers of Incandescent Truth had time to realise what was happening, before they had time to prepare. He would complete the task within the next four hours. Before he began he needed to review his signifiers.

  They were in a box: green metal, foam-lined, letters and numbers stencilled on the outside. He stared at it before he opened it. That was the way he had to do it, the way that he had been taught to do it, each step meti­culous. The lid opened with a hiss of collapsing vacuum. He paused, observing the passage of his thoughts, watching for threads of emotion. There were none. He would maintain his watch throughout this preparation.

  Three small packets lay in the box, each wrapped in black velvet. He began on the left, taking each packet out, setting it down, and unfolding the velvet to reveal the contents: a crystal cylinder a little taller than a clenched fist; a votive candle; a falconry raptor hood to fit over the eyes of a trained hawk.

  He looked at them, listening to his pulse. It remained steady, the turning of his thoughts regular, smooth, flat…

  Then he reached out and picked up the crystal cylinder. A thick, brushed-steel cap sealed the top. Three slivers of pink flesh hung in the thick fluid within, each no larger than the tip of his smallest finger.

  Memory filled his senses.

  It began with smells: burnt flesh, urine, static and sweat all hiding under the thick blanket of counterseptic.

  The orderlies moved around him, checking the bindings that held him at the wrists, neck, ankle and waist. He rolled his shoulders. Above him a cluster of articulated limbs twitched and extended. Laser cutters, micro-saws and drills spun and cycled between different speeds. It reminded him of a prize brawler, limbering up before a fight.

  ‘It’s part of the mind interface integration,’ said the chirurgeon. Koleg glanced up at her. She smiled at him. It was a beautiful smile, he thought. Teal plastek robes covered her from neck to fingertip. An indentured medicae tattoo sat on her left cheek. Chrome cables led from sockets in her spine up to the cluster of flexing limbs hanging from the ceiling. ‘I have to make sure that when I impulse a drill to push through the skull it stops when I tell it, and doesn’t, you know, start trying to click fingers it doesn’t have instead.’

  ‘I would prefer that not to happen,’ he said, and found himself smiling back at her.

  ‘For now,’ she said. ‘You would prefer that not to happen for now. By the time I have finished with you, the two possibilities will seem as insignificant as each other.’

  Assistants in red and teal bodygloves began to clamp his head in place. Cool fingers held him still as metal touched the skin of his scalp. The beat of his heart rose.

  ‘Calm, calm now,’ said the chirurgeon. She was still smiling at him. The movements of the articulated limbs on the ceiling slowed. A single needle-tipped arm reached down and jabbed into his neck. Warm numbness spread through him. ‘We are going to have to secure your head so that you cannot move during the procedure.’

  A second later he heard the sound of drills and bolt drivers as they screwed the clamp to his skull. He was breathing hard. He tried to think of the swish of feathers, and the beat of wings carrying a hawk into a blue sky.

  ‘Heartbeat and adrenal levels rising,’ said a cold voice from out of sight.

  ‘You have to be conscious, you see,’ said the chirurgeon, ‘so that I can observe your emotional reactions as I work. It’s the only way to be sure that the excision and implants are correct. That we are taking enough, but not too much.’

  The limbs unfolded above him, spreading like a flower under warm sun. A circular saw the size of a coin began to spin. The chirurgeon was next to him now, needle-tipped fingers moving over his skull, serene smile still in place. ‘There will be no pain once we are working directly in the brain.’

  ‘They…’ He tried to speak, but his breath was coming fast now. His blood hammered in his ears. ‘They did not tell me about this. They said it was an augmetic implantation. That I would wake up and not feel…’

  ‘Hmm… Yes, that’s true.’ Her fingers held still on his scalp. ‘But also not. You agreed to this because you do not want to suffer any more. But I am afraid that to do that we need to know what part of your brain your sorrow and terror live in so that we can remove them. I need to be able to see the signal spikes. So, right here and now, Sergeant Koleg, for this to work, you need to be terrified.’

  The saws and drills plunged down towards him.

  MISSION TIME STAMP 01:39:42

  The Seekers of Incandescent Truth had not begun as heretics. They professed love of the Emperor. But it was their faith that had led them astray. They had taken to kidnapping nascent psykers. All were tortured for pain-soaked words of revelation. Some proved imperfect to the needs of the cult. It was worse for those who survived. The cult had not done anything more directly dangerous, but they would. In time, of course they would. The rot would swell and burst its bounds. When that happened it might do a lot of damage, or it might implode. It did not matter, though; it could not be allowed to continue, and the inquisitor had decided that while it was being dealt with, the death of this heresy could serve as a lesson.

  Koleg was the agent of that lesson.

  He knelt on a grated platform above the cavern. Multicoloured light glimmered up through the mesh floor from the drop beneath. The space was a wide, circular shaft. Metal steps led to a spiral of metal gantries that ran down the cavern walls. Lanterns of stained glass hung in the central space, lighting the gloom with dirty red, blue and orange. Down at the bottom of the shaft, lights shimmered and crackled cold-blue and fire-yellow.

  Someone saw him. Bullets sparked off the grated floor. Threat markers multiplied in his sight. He placed the macro­stubber on the ground next to his knee and slid the grenade launcher from his back. More rounds pinged off the floor. The air vibrated with gunshots and cries.

  Koleg looked up at the ceiling: soot-skimmed bronze and iron supports, no ventilation. They would be relying on the natural draw of air up the cavern. Fire burst across the edge of the gantry. He heard the buzz-whip of rounds passing close by. He released the launcher’s ammo drum and reached for the one in the pouch on his lower back.

  A trio of figures ran from a door to the stairs leading up to him. He scooped up the macrostubber and fired. They dropped in red shreds, one tumbling over the edge, blood scattering as he fell.

  Koleg put the pistol down, pulled out the drum of six grenades and locked it into the launcher.

  More figures were coming up the spiral of stairs and gantries. He saw tatters of fabric, faces with fever-sheened skin. He aimed the grenade launcher up, tumbled the firing setting to low-pressure auto, and pulled the trigger. The grenades thumped free of the barrel one after another. Red and black gas trailed in their wake as they arced up and dropped down the central well of the chamber. Koleg picked up his pistol and put a trio of controlled bursts into the c
lusters of armed figures.

  Gas dispersion would take twelve seconds in this space, air saturation thirty. He moved down the stairs, pistol tracking threat markers, his left hand pulling a chrome-and-black disc from a pouch across his chest. The disc was a little wider than his palm with raised circles of shining metal. He stopped and placed it on the metal gantry floor. It locked in place with a magnetic thump.

  Black-and-red-streaked fog filled the chamber now. The screaming had started: one voice and then a second, and then a chorus. It was not the sound of panic, but pure human terror. The gas was at saturation, one half hallucinogen, the other half a fear inducer that the prosecutors of the Adeptus Arbites gave the simple name of ‘scare’. The effect on anyone who breathed it was to make the nightmares of the subconscious real, while plunging them into the most intense fight or flight response. The red-and-black colouring was simply for the spectacle.

  A fat man in a gown of yellow and blue burst from the fog, hands ripping at his own face. Koleg blew the man’s head to mist with a stutter of micro-rounds.

  Koleg looked at the controls strapped to his wrist, and keyed a command. The disc on the floor extended upwards, rings telescoping to sections of a long silver rod. They split and branched, until a metre-high tree of gleaming chrome stood amidst the murk. Tiny blue crystal spheres tipped every twig. Even the most exalted of magi amongst the priests of Mars would have struggled to recognise the device or its purpose. Koleg keyed a second command and sparks began to run up and down the silver rods.

  The sounds of screaming were getting louder. He paused, listening to their pitch rise as they echoed and shattered against the temple’s roof. It was not that he was indifferent to the sounds – he knew the emotional content they denoted – he just felt nothing. That was the gift they had given him in exchange for his service. To pass through a universe where even happiness held the seed of sorrow, and feel nothing.

  He holstered his pistol and took the spool of micro wire rope from a pouch, locked it to the edge of the gantry, and then clipped its end to a loop on the back of his harness. The tree-like device was sparking. Motes of light grew in each of the blue spheres. A shimmering haze surrounded it. Koleg drew his hand cannon, keyed the last command on the wrist controls and jumped into the red-and-black-swirled air.