Lacrymata - Storm Constantine Read online

  With this in mind, a few days later, when they were approaching the jump zone into warp space which would lead them finally back to Earth, Graian accompanied Solonaetz as he made his way to the blister, covertly assessing him for signs of strain and fatigue. 'Did you get your neck seen to?'

  'Huh? Oh yes. Foss gave me a working over. It's fine now.'

  Graian pulled at his lip, standing on the access ramp and watching Solonaetz carefully as he shimmied into the confined space of the blister and eased himself into position.

  'Sol, can I speak… plainly with you?'

  Solonaetz leaned sideways and peered down the ramp. 'Is that an order?'

  'Sol!'

  'Sorry, what is it?'

  'Shivania…'

  'Oh.' Solonaetz began fiddling with the controls to the warp-screen, his face taking on a mulish expression.

  Graian fidgeted uncomfortably. 'I have to speak, Sol, as friend and commanding officer. Be careful.'

  Solonaetz looked at him again, his expression guarded. He wanted to say: what gives you the right to call yourself my friend, but vented his annoyance with other words. 'I am not an invalid, Graian! I wish you'd stop treating me like some half-fuddled, incapacitated veteran! Quite frankly, much more of this and I'll be forced to resign my position. I am quite over what happened. It has not made me vulnerable. I am an adult and—'

  'All right, all right!' Graian raised his hands placatingly. 'I had to speak. Appreciate my position.'

  'She knows you don't like her,' Solonaetz said abruptly, once more adjusting his screen. 'Now, that can't help the situation, can it?'

  Graian made a non-committal sound. 'At the risk of further tongue-lashing, just how serious is this… business with you and her?'

  'As serious as any relationship for people in our positions can be. We live for the day. I can't see it's any of your business, Graian. Have no worry that it will affect my work - or hers. Now, if I could be allowed to get on with the business of warp flight…?'

  Graian shrugged, reached up and slapped Solonaetz's thigh in an assuaging gesture, before making his way back to the camera operati, where he would catch up with a little paperwork, leaving the Dea Brava in Solonaetz's care. The interview had not progressed exactly as he'd planned.

  Solonaetz sighed, and settled back in his chair, blinking up through the blister at the streaming stars. If only Graian could know how he too had reservations about Shivania, reservations however that could not compete with the temptation of her body, her sweet soothing of his own. He knew there was an undeniable shred of repulsiveness about her, as compelling as her attractiveness. This, he told himself, was simply because she came out with unwise heretical statements from time to time. She was young, bitter; with guidance she was sure to overcome her grievances. That her quick flashes of temperament could presage anything worse than dissatisfaction was unthinkable; she had been trained by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Their screening processes for removing tainted material was infallible; it had to be. 'It has to be,' he said aloud, as he removed his bandana.

  The warp was quiet beyond the gate. Streams of pure immaterium boiled lazily on either side of the ship, but seemed unlikely to form themselves into maelstrom conditions. The warpscreen showed no inconsistency. Solonaetz dared to hope this would be an easy journey A few thoughtforms flitted in and out of materiality ahead, but they were minor emissions. Solonaetz recited a prayer to the Emperor to enforce his self-protection and banish all anxieties. It was important to maintain a serene psyche during warp travel. He kissed his totems and fixed his concentration on the journey. A short jump. Dea Brava never ventured that far from Terra.

  Solonaetz began to hum a mantra, improvising the tune. It lifted his spirits, and he drifted into sublime communication with the ship, becoming one with her body, faster than light, faster than thought, an exultant silver fish upon the the bosom of this arcane sea. He breathed an essence of salt and spume, euphoric, riding the wave of the astronomican as it pulled him homewards. Salt. Sea. Dunes. Dune-flowers. Flowers. Fruit. Musk. Sandal… Sandal? Solonaetz gulped and was pulled into a momentary reality. He inhaled. What? By the Emperor's sweet blood, what was this? Lacrymata? Impossible! He consulted the warpscreen, his head dizzy with the insidious perfume. The blister was full of it! A pulse glowed on the screen, signifying warp activity. But where? Solonaetz wondered frantically. Behind us? Before us? Where? So close. So close!

  He fixed his eye towards the warp. Nothing definite and yet, a suggestion of imminence. The immaterium was excited! He scanned for Chaos emanations. Perhaps something had clung to the ship. The screen seemed poised, waiting to bloom with information, denying him the knowledge. He strained his senses to penetrate the cause as the perfume flowed over him in delicious, wicked waves, perverting the purity of his concentration. His skin prickled with sweat. The cargo! A focus! He must ignore it, banish it. The scent was an illusion. He must…

  'Solonaetz!' A husky call.

  As a lance of pain pierced the muscles of his neck, the navigator's head whipped towards the access ramp. The hatch was open and there, creeping towards him, naked and glowing as a hot flame, was Shivania, her mouth open, red tongue licking her lips, hair flowing like a cloud, her fingers idly stroking her breast. The perfume assaulted him in waves. He tried to speak. Shivania laughed and opened her shrivelled lids. Had he thought those dead eyes milky? No, they were more than that! Opal, fiery, shifting with a hundred colours.

  'Solonaetz,' she said, shaking her head, so that her lustrous hair seethed like a nest of furred vipers. 'Come to me. The essence is my flesh. It gives me sight! I have anointed my eyes! I see! I see so much! I see you, Solonaetz!'

  'No!' he said, in a strangled voice. He felt as if the very substance of the Dea Brava was melting before his eyes. All that existed was the pale, shining form of the astropath, and the hideous seductions of the warp waiting to take him in the final, everlasting embrace.

  'No, Solonaetz? What is this no? We are in our place, are we not? Mutants, we! I can hear my sisters calling, vapours upon the warp tides! All those that die, Solonaetz! All those that die! You slide this ship upon a torrent of their blood! Open that great eye of yours and really see! Look at me! Touch me! Open the blister and take me home!'

  For a few moments Solonaetz wondered whether he was hallucinating his own desires. Is this what I want, what I've always wanted? Then, Shivania reached out a hand to touch him, her fingers flexing, curdled eyes blinking and leaking sluggish tears. She hissed and smiled. 'I spit your seed into Chaos!' she cried and lunged forward to throw herself into the blister upon him.

  Acting reflexively, Solonaetz winced back and then, with an extreme spurt of effort and will, pulled himself from his chair and flicked out his leg to kick the access-way shut. He heard an agonized squeal, and an infinity of violent colours smacked against his warp-sight, bringing peals of agony, pain he could not have imagined in the worst of nightmares. His body writhed and his stomach convulsed. The surface of the blister was aswarm with foul shapes, all grinning, all scratching at the plascryst, telling him with sickening gestures of all they planned to do with his body when they reached it.

  Solonaetz tasted salt, knew he was biting his tongue. He slammed his head against the console, screaming, 'Fiddeus! Gabreus! Anyone!' but the communications node seemed a million miles away, beyond his reach. Had the ship left its course? His eye was blind to the route, seeing only a tangle of voluptuous shapes that beckoned and tempted, promising eternal pain, eternal ecstasy. He could hear Shivania scratching at the hatch, her voice a hoarse whisper of desire.

  'My Lord Emperor!' Solonaetz screamed. 'Help me! Help me!'

  And then a pure strain of unadulterated thought forced its way through the melee. 'Take my hand,' it said. 'I am with you, navigator. Take my hand.'

  And he focused on that beam, his consciousness flowing with it, melding with it, following. Although he knew in his heart the Emperor was cocooned within his palace on Earth, his aged, tortured bod
y kept alive by machines, the navigator's spirit saw a figure walking the astronomican's beam as if it was a shining path, leading the Dea Brava away from danger, dismissing the effluvia of the warp with the strength and the grief of its soul. A vision of his faith, maybe? But to Solonaetz it was the Emperor himself, spirit-walking in the void.

  Some moments later, he came to a kind of reality, and realized the fluidium outside was quiescent, the warpscreen clear of clots. There was no sound beneath the hatch-way and the fume of lacrymata had left the blister. He was Dea Brava and they swam the wave of the astronomican, embraced by the spiritual essence of a thousand martyrs, swimming home.

  'Did you call me, Solonaetz?' Back in real space, Graian Fiddeus was at the blister even before Solonaetz had unbuckled his safety harness. 'I thought I heard a call, but the ship's mind told me otherwise. Even so, I thought I'd better check. Are you all right?'

  Solonaetz looked terrible, his white face slick with sweat, dark shadows around his eyes. He had not even replaced his bandana; just hanging there in his chair, like a corpse - or someone dragged - the mutant eye staring dully at the warpscreen. Averting his gaze, Graian squeezed into the blister alongside him and gently tied the bandana back in place. 'What happened?' he asked. 'Sol?' He gave the navigator a shake.

  Solonaetz shuddered, jerked and then gulped air. Ship's air: faintly metallic, rubbery-sweet and, thankfully, free of perfume.

  He sighed and momentarily leaned against the captain. The instant was of silence, suspended heartbeats. Then he pulled away.

  'Many die to keep the astronomican alive, don't they?' he said.

  'Not unwillingly. You know that.' Fiddeus had a horrible dread Solonaetz had suffered a further breakdown. 'What…?'

  Solonaetz shook his head quickly to silence him. 'No. The cargo; it has been tampered with.'

  'What?! Impossible! I would have been informed!'

  'Nevertheless, what I say is true.'

  'It was protected.'

  Solonaetz looked at him bleakly. 'Yes, undoubtedly. As I am. Always. Believe me, Graian, I am not mistaken.'

  Fiddeus rubbed his face uncomfortably. 'You are ill, Solonaetz. Get yourself out of there. I'll take you to Foss.'

  Solonaetz leaned back in his chair and uttered a low, bitter laugh. 'Ill, am I? Take me somewhere where I can talk to you, Graian Fiddeus. Play the part of being the good friend you always profess to be. I have a favour to ask of you.'

  She was in her cabin, dressed in her finest robes, brushing out her hair. She wore her mask, the eyes unseeing, staring into nothing. 'I thought you would come,' she said, laying down her brush.

  Solonaetz didn't comment. 'I have something for you,' he said. 'A gift. It is the best I can give you under the circumstances, Shivania. I know you will understand and use it wisely.'

  She accepted the gift, closing her fingers over the small, crystal bottle. Her laugh was shaky. 'Well, Solonaetz, there goes your bonus, I suspect! Such generosity!'

  'Not generosity, Shivania. I loved you in a way. It is compassion. Merely that. A report will be made to the Scholastica when we return. You know what the verdict will be, and its consequences. You are tainted; you must know that. You complained before about your lack of freedom. Well, if you reach Terra, your life aboard this ship will seem like paradise. They will send you to feed the Emperor's soul. Because of what we shared, I want to spare you that. Thank me. I grant you your dearest wish: a full draught of the maiden of oblivion. If you are lucky, for a moment, you'll have the sight you craved.'

  He left immediately and, for a while, Shivania sat motionless, the bottle held in her lap. She could not cry, no matter how much she yearned for that release. Her lips shook around the shape of his name. He'd possessed a strength she had not anticipated; to her, a hideous strength.

  Then she opened the bottle.

  A languorous, sensuous aroma flooded her cabin, sweet with desire, poignant with loss. Its crescendo was the last damp fires of autumn, before the winter comes, when all is burnt, the rubbish from the fields, the dead wood. She smelled dark earth and sensed a welcoming. Somewhere. With shaking hands, she tipped a little of the essence onto a single finger and anointed her throat. Moonskin, lacrymata, lady of tears, dark sister. Not for the weak, oh no.

  As the siren scent rose around her in a final, embracing cloud, Shivania tilted back her lovely head on her perfect neck and tipped the contents of the bottle down her throat. For a few, fiery seconds, her body sang a maniac dance of unendurable beauty and passion, but for a few seconds only.

  It was a swift death.

  'I know it is hard for you,' Gabreus said, 'but you acted in the noblest way, Solonaetz.' The priest fondly patted the navigator's shoulder. They were sitting in his chapel-vault, beneath the light of benediction. It had been a difficult confession. 'Come now, lift your head, young man. Fiddeus is pacing outside like a brooding leopard. Don't give him cause for concern. Be strong!'

  'Why, though?' Solonaetz asked helplessly. 'Why her? She was so…'

  'Tainted!' Gabreus interrupted sharply. 'Believe it, Solonaetz! The lacrymata was merely a catalyst, and a lucky one in the event. Worse could have occurred if you think about it. You bested the powers of Chaos in your own way. No trivial feat, I assure you. No system is infallible. There will always be mistakes. The Adeptus Astra are thorough but their dominion is vast. Because of this, it is inevitable the odd blight slips through their screening net. It is true she might never have succumbed, and that the essence itself was the cause, but that is irrelevant really. Live your life, navigator. Forget her! In scant days, we shall be home and your family awaits you.' He smiled. 'And don't forget the feast Fiddeus has promised us!'

  Solonaetz nodded, kissed the priest's belt and backed from the vault.

  Graian was waiting outside, as Gabreus had told him. 'One thing I have to know,' Solonaetz said. 'The lacrymata: where is it bound? The Adeptus Terra would never allow such a substance to pass hands in the free market, surely. Who commissioned its purchase?'

  Graian Fiddeus scratched his neck, wrinkled his nose uncomfortably. 'Well… Guido Palama is indentured to one department back on Terra, just one. The dispersal of the perfume, the true lacrymata, is rigorously controlled.'

  'Who bought it, Graian?'

  He sighed. 'The Inquisition.'

  Solonaetz laughed. 'I should have known! An instrument of torture!'

  'Hardly a matter for humour!'

  'You think not? We live in a universe of contradictions, my friend, to our continual delight. Now, I suggest we repair to the camera recreata to toast our fair Terra when she reveals herself in the heavens. The Inquisition!' He shook his head.

  'You look better, Solonaetz,' Fiddeus said bleakly.

  The navigator was already striding away up the passageway. He flung a remark over his shoulder. 'Just a reprieve, my friend. Just a reprieve.'

  About the Author

  Storm Constantine is a British science fiction and fantasy author, primarily known for her Wraeththu series. Since the late 1980s she has written more than 20 novels, plus several non-fiction books. Storm is currently working on new fiction and non-fiction books, as well as working with other writers through Immanion Press. She lives with her husband and four cats, in the Midlands of the UK.

  A Black Library Publication

  First published in Great Britain in 2001, in the Deathwing anthology.

  This eBook edition published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

  Lacrymata © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2012. Lacrymata, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are eith
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  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 0-7434-1171-4

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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