Spear of the Emperor - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read online

  Even if they weren’t aware of my story, there was nowhere else such an assassin could have come from. Amadeus and his thralls were the only real possibility. Tyberia was dead. I was there, a witness to the murder. That only left Kartash.

  ‘Kartash.’ Through Amadeus’ clenched teeth, the name became a low snarl. ‘Whatever the assassin’s real name is, it is not Kartash.’

  He stared at his reflection in the energy screen, distorted by the shield’s power field. ‘This stinks of the Inquisition. That pathetic body of bitter, bitter humanity.’

  I’d never seen an Inquisitor. They were myths to most of the Imperium, just a dreadful threat that never manifested, a warning to make children behave. I knew nothing of them; most knowledge was sequestered and sealed away from the likes of Chapter-thralls. Did the Inquisition have access to instruments of murder like the black-clad murderess that had killed the Warlord? If so, I pitied the Lions for ever crossing them.

  ‘They had to twist the knife, one more time.’ Amadeus was growling his words in a way he never would have done before his torture, yet with a temper that was becoming increasingly common since his rebirth. ‘For one hundred years they’ve waited for this chance to wound the Lions yet again. Everything Brêac told me about them is proving true. Could they not be content with driving the Chapter to the edge of death, for the sin of calling their authority into question? Will we lose Elara’s Veil because a clutch of Inquisitors cannot move past their moronic grudge?’

  I realised then, something that should have been obvious before. Something I’d never considered. Amadeus loved the Imperium.

  Maybe that seems foolish to say about a man so cold he was practically a weapon, but it was true. Why else would he devote himself so fervently? What else but absolute love could inspire a warrior to suppress his own personality and emotions, in the name of duty? He did his duty because he loved mankind’s empire. To him, as savage and bloody as it could be, it was worth saving. It was worth giving everything he had to keep the Imperium functioning for another day. Even another hour.

  And in their malice, the Inquisition had violated that loyalty.

  I spoke softly, ‘Did you volunteer for this mission, Amadeus?’

  He looked at me the way I was looking at him: with sudden, guarded revelation. ‘Of course. Did you believe I was assigned it?’

  ‘I thought you were commanded to come. I thought you resented it.’

  ‘Throne of Terra, Anuradha, who do you believe I am? I volunteered because someone had to go, even if it meant death. It was a vital duty, or so I thought. But my superiors knew, Anuradha. The Inquisition could not, would not, have acted alone. Master Nisk Ran-Thawll gave his blessing for them to seed this assassin within our ranks. They knew they were lying to me.’

  As he spoke, he banged his knuckles against his chest-plate, over and over. Mimicking, in his fury, the tribal drums of the Spears’ pre-battle ritual. I doubt he even realised he was doing it. Some things just trickle into your blood, the way I’d started saying Aye instead of Yes.

  ‘They even had her, our nameless assassin, trained as a helot, well enough to deceive me.’

  That was what ate him up inside more than anything else. I knew he would mourn his inability to sense Kartash’s betrayal and I was certain he would despise the Inquisition for their schemes of slaughter, but it was the Chapter’s actions that cut deepest. His own superiors, soldiers he had respected his entire life, hadn’t sent him here to explore Elara’s Veil at all.

  This was no mission of mercy, to guide the Spears and the Lions back to the true Imperium. The Nemeton Deployment was a masquerade, a stepping stone on a path that ended with today’s events.

  ‘They threw me into the abyss,’ Amadeus said, low, slow and vicious. ‘They sold my life, and the lives of everyone aboard In Devout Abjuration – they sacrificed the warship itself – to appease the accursed Inquisition. All of those loyal souls, wasted on the whims of treachery.’

  There was nothing I could say to that. I feared every word was true.

  Amadeus exhaled as his eyes glazed over with realisation. ‘The reek of incense,’ he said.

  ‘Master?’

  ‘Kartash’s pious habit. The false holiness. The stench of ritual incense ingrained in Kartash’s skin and hair. Do you see?’

  I confessed that I did not.

  ‘The assassin did it to mask the scent of polymorphine. That is the chemical in her blood that allows her to alter her flesh and bones. I would have smelled it had she not hidden it. The Spears would have smelled it, too.’

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  I watched Amadeus as he pieced the evidence together and reached another cold truth. ‘The hunchback was nothing but a misleading tactic, as well. That deformity of flesh provided a place for the assassin to hide her weapons. She must have sheathed them in inviolate casings and flesh-changed to accept them within her body.

  From the other cell, we heard Nar Kezar’s filthy chuckle.

  ‘Another beautiful tale of ripe, stinking Imperial hypocrisy.’

  Amadeus finally met the other prisoner’s eyes. ‘When I am executed, Basilisk, my last request will be for Brêac to crush your smirking skull beneath his boots.’

  A nasty light shone in Nar Kezar’s eyes. He adopted an air of amused indulgence and pretended to meditate once more.

  I broke the silence that followed. ‘The Spears won’t execute us, master. They’ll see the truth.’

  My master looked at me, most of his confusion masked. Most, but not all.

  ‘We’re innocent,’ I stressed in the face of his doubt.

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ Amadeus shook his head. ‘You are innocent. I am guilty of ignorance. Through my inattention, I allowed this to happen.’

  ‘That’s madness. There was no way for you to know.’

  ‘Victory needs no explanation,’ he replied with annoying calm. ‘Failure accepts none.’

  2

  Within the hour, it was time for our trial. The process of weighing guilt and judgement was hilarious if only for its brevity. When it began, Nar Kezar rose from his feigned meditations to approach the energy shield sealing the front of his cell.

  ‘Ducarius of the Kavalei,’ he greeted the black-armoured newcomer. ‘Another interrogation, druid?’

  Ducarius waved an idle hand in the prisoner’s direction, and there was a quiver of psychic force in the air. Nar Kezar, that proud lord of the Pure, crashed back against the back iron his cell wall. The impact echoed around the cell block. He rose slowly, and much more quietly now. Still smiling, though. Always smiling.

  ‘Amadeus,’ Ducarius said as he stood outside our cell. ‘Anuradha.’ Morcant was with him, as were two other Paragons. All were helmed for battle. Morcant’s red-and-black crest almost reaching the metal ceiling,

  ‘We didn’t know.’ I tried to infuse my words with sincerity, fearing it only made me sound like a desperate liar.

  Ducarius looked down at me. I felt a pull, a silken caress inside my skull, as if a breeze were drawing something forth from inside me. In that moment I heard the memory of thunder, and felt the cold rain of Nemeton on my skin.

  There was laughter in that storm. There was joy. Not from the storm itself, but from the two souls that danced beneath it, sending their laughter up into the sky. Two children, two boys, one younger and one on the cusp of manhood. Two brothers, their faces unmarked by ink, painted only by the sacred rain.

  ‘Who is he?’ I whispered. Ducarius didn’t answer me, but I think I knew without him needing to. His brother. His older brother, from his tribal life before he was considered dead by his clan and his soul lost to the Spears.

  He wasn’t offering me the memory. We were just close enough, somehow, that I could feel it. What was he seeing inside me? My training? My father’s thirst? My time on the Venatrix?

 
Then, I was falling. Falling backwards, drifting away. The storm faded. The rain stopped. The brothers’ joy became hollow, and the grey sky rotted away to black.

  I blinked. It was over. I’d not moved at all. A minute could have passed, or an entire day. A hunger with numb, grinding teeth worked on my insides. Dark liquid spattered in slow drops down my uniform. I sniffed at a feeling of unexpected warmth as my nose trickled with blood, and dabbed another rivulet of it from my lips.

  Ducarius beckoned Amadeus closer. My master obeyed. They made eye contact, naked eyes to eye-lenses, for no more than three beats of my heart.

  The druid broke the stare, taking a step back with a purr of armour joints. Amadeus’ jaw was clenched tight, but he wasn’t bleeding as I was.

  ‘Move back from the warding field,’ Ducarius said.

  Amadeus stepped back. I didn’t. I hated the Spears’ grim sense of purpose. I hated that they’d already made up their minds.

  ‘Step back from the warding field,’ he repeated. I only obeyed because Amadeus pulled me back with a hand on my shoulder.

  The energy field thinned, then faded with a rumble of diminishing power.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

  The first Paragon unclamped a bolt rifle from his backpack and threw it to Amadeus. My master caught it smoothly and checked the ammunition count.

  ‘What’s happening!’ I repeated. ‘Was that our trial?’

  But I was back to being a slave, just a human among Adeptus Astartes warriors. My questions meant nothing when they had blood to shed. They didn’t even look at me.

  ‘My helmet,’ said Amadeus. The other Paragon unlocked it from his belt and tossed it over. Amadeus sealed it in place with a sibilance of air pressure.

  ‘My thanks.’ His voice was low and mechanically grating, filtered through his helmet’s vox-grille. ‘What information do we have?’

  Ducarius showed him a rag of cloth that looked torn from a Spear thrall’s azure robe. Blood marked it, as telling as any tattoo.

  ‘The assassin bleeds. She was hit, more than once, in the crossfire. She’s weakened now. We can take her alive.’

  ‘A promising start,’ Amadeus replied. His voice was thickening with eagerness. ‘Your plan, Ducarius?’

  Ducarius tapped the side of his own helm, by one of the aural receptors. The conversation I’d been privy to was suddenly nothing more than a series of muted vox-clicks as my master and the Spears spoke over a squad-comm. I knew better than to try to be heard. More than a decade of training had taught me my place, though I’d rarely hated it with such vehemence until now.

  I looked up at Ducarius, thinking of what I’d seen and the life he’d once lived. Just a child on a world of storms.

  I saw your brother, I thought.

  The warriors’ helms were still infrequently clicking, and they still made the minor movements of conversation. Ducarius glanced my way, his armour thrumming with the motion of turning his head down to see me.

  His voice was a soft, resonating murmur between my ears.

  His name was Fionn. He died of lung-muck. What you would call tuberculosis.+

  I bit my lip, feeling the echoes of that silent voice filter around my mind, seeping into the cracks, taking a long time to dissipate. I wanted to speak more, yet I feared to. It was the same as standing before an icy sea and bracing for the plunge.

  What did you see? I thought at him. Inside me, what did you see?

  Everything.+

  Ducarius was turning away, his brethren and Amadeus moving with him.

  ‘Anuradha,’ my master said. ‘Return to our arming chamber. Hide until this is over.’

  ‘But, master–’

  He kept moving. I had my orders, and he had his mission. He was going hunting, and I was going to hide.

  3

  I refused to sit idly by in exile.

  First, I dragged a crate of equipment from our chambers, out into the corridor. I looked both ways into the dimness. Nothing either way. As comforting as that was for half a second, given that Kartash could turn into shadow and move faster than a room full of genhanced Space Marines, it really didn’t mean anything at all.

  I left the crate and slipped back into the chamber. I used my monitron bracer to scan my surroundings, motion-pulsing for echolocation and thermal-scraping for heat signatures. Nothing and nothing. Our home, such as it was, was empty except for me.

  My real armour was gone, stripped from me aboard the Venatrix, and all I had left was a flak vest with padded gauntlets and a visorless blast helmet. I buckled them on with one hand and entered the keycode to secure the armoury door with the other. The deadlocks crunched home one by one, sealing me in our chambers. I listened to them grinding into position while I loaded shells into my Engager. One, two, three; I loaded the shotgun’s auxiliary grenade launcher and racked the first explosive into place.

  As I prepared myself, I thought of Kartash. I thought of him shivering in the rain, and how we’d felt to learn it was his first planetfall. How he had suffered that night, with the sensation of natural gravity dragging at his limbs for the very first time. How he’d congratulated me for my insightful observations on Nemetese culture. Whoever she was, this woman who’d been living as Kartash, she’d been laughing at us the entire time. Lying to our faces, praising our insight, shivering with false afflictions and inwardly laughing at our easy trust.

  And then came the boarding assault. Downing me and Tyberia, trying to kill us by leaving us for the Exilarchy. After that, all the protests of innocence and poor, wounded expressions of mourning that I held a grudge against him over events that had never happened.

  One of my teeth broke, I was grinding my jaw so hard. I swallowed the chip of enamel by accident. God-Emperor, I was falling to pieces since leaving the true Imperium. Surely some tribal poet among the Spears would have something to say about that. Something about symbolism. Ugh.

  Calm, calm, I thought.

  ‘I’m going to find you, Kartash,’ I said aloud to the empty room.

  I laid my Engager against my seat in immediate reach as I clambered into the throne. It had been months since I’d activated my consoles and they were slow to come back to life. The monitors showed grey for several seconds as they remembered the feeling of power flowing into them. The hololithic input and displays took even longer. I was gritting my teeth again, my metal fingers caressing the Engager’s barrel as I waited those interminable minutes, feeling each one as an hour.

  The sensory thimbles were cold as I slipped them over each finger. The needle-sting of blood-identification tingled my fingertips.

  Anuradha Daaz flashed up in hololithic letters in the air before me. Assigned Helot Secundus to Lieutenant Commander Amadeus Kaias Incarius. For the Chapter. For the Emperor. For the Imperium.

  I started typing along the illusory control panels projected before me, falling back into my training, meshing my senses with the remote systems of what was stored in the equipment crate outside. My servo-skulls, all four remaining probes that I’d brought with me across the Great Rift, rose on their weak anti-grav plates. They bobbed uncertainly in the air, slicing the shipboard gloom with their red-dot laser sights. The view on each of my screens was monochrome perfection, bleached of colour but not quality. Their visual sensoria clusters were still in perfect function. Amadeus and I might have been ruined by the Nemeton Deployment, but our wargear still worked fine.

  I eased the skulls forward in opposing directions, cutting my attention between all four. Two remained outside the sealed door, drifting in loose patrolling arcs. The other two went wandering deeper into the ship. Just because I’d been commanded to remain here didn’t mean I couldn’t join the hunt.

  She was a shape-shifter. Finding her could take an eternity. I refused to remain imprisoned in my quarters for months while the Spears took blood samples and Ducarius read
the minds of thirty thousand crew members.

  If she couldn’t get off the ship… Would she hide? Or seek allies? Her injuries would make hiding difficult. But who could she go to? Who would risk everything to join her?

  My monitron caught the movement before I saw it. The screen of my bracer flashed an aggrieved green as it chimed once. I was out of my chair in a diving roll, Engager in hand, before the pulse had stopped echoing around the room.

  Instinct saved me, as it so often saves soldiers when there’s no time to think, only time to act. I thumbed the sensor plate at my wrist as I regained my feet. The mortis-warning beamed to Amadeus in a data-spurt before I even levelled my shotgun at the intruder.

  She dropped from the ceiling. Whatever grace she’d possessed was gone, left behind in the strategium along with the murdered Ekene and the blood she’d lost after killing him. This was no liquid movement ending with a threatening crouch. The figure in contoured, armoured black skin fell like a shadow shot out of the sky. She even grunted as she went to her hands and one knee.

  I knew nothing of the training and modifications that assassins of her ilk must go through, but whatever temple or cult had trained her, they made her strong. I couldn’t believe she was still standing. Her black suit of synthetic skin had tried to reseal itself over the rips and ruptures, but Ducarius had been underplaying the gravity of her wounds when he’d shown the bloodied rag. One of her legs ended at the knee, and the black suit had incompletely sealed over the shattered flesh and bone. Bolt-blasted gore showed at the stump. Another two bolts had taken her in the shoulder and thigh, where the reformed armour-skin was burned and fused over what were surely ragged, bleeding wounds.

  Her mask was gone, half-torn from her face, melted down the side of her neck. I had no idea who I was looking at. I’d never seen this woman before. I didn’t even know if this was her real face beneath the torment and the blood and the scabbing.