Incarnation - John French Read online

  ‘I was not aware of its place of manufacture,’ he said.

  ‘A sect of techno-mystics made it over four millennia ago, during the tyranny of Goge Vandire. The design came to them in dreams. Half the sect spent their lives asleep, waking only to babble what they had seen. The other half laboured to turn those dreams into machines. They created many things, and most did not work, but this…’ he held the crystal and brass device up between his fingers. ‘This worked. As soon as they made it all of the waking members of the sect killed each other to control it. The sleepers never woke. They died while dreaming, never waking… It is an etheric auspectrum, but might also be called a wyrd-scope, and it was used to predict the occurrence of miracles.’

  Glavius-4-Rho was silent for a second, hoping and waiting to be dismissed. No such release came. He would have to respond – that was the normal pattern of interaction.

  ‘How did it come into your possession, lord?’

  Covenant looked up at him sharply, and Glavius-4-Rho realised that he must have crossed some form of boundary in this interaction. Then the inquisitor sat back, and the cast of his face changed.

  ‘My master… it was my master’s. It is one of the means he used to divine the presence of beings touched by the Emperor’s majesty.’

  ‘He gave it to you?’

  Covenant nodded, then looked up. Glavius-4-Rho almost stepped back.

  ‘No, I took it after he died.’

  Covenant turned away, and for a moment Glavius-4-Rho almost did not recognise the man who was his lord. He looked older, but somehow younger too, alone, with the weight of the past pulling shadows into the recesses of his face. Glavius-4-Rho felt a fact rise in his mind that he was not sure where it had come from.

  ‘You… miss… you regret his absence from life…’

  Covenant put the wyrd-scope back into its box, and shut the lid with a snap.

  ‘Thank you, magos,’ he said. His face was hard control again. ‘You have done good work. You may go.’

  Glavius-4-Rho hesitated and then bowed and scuttled out of the room.

  ‘You have never been on a starship before, have you?’ Viola said as they squeezed down a companionway.

  ‘Once,’ said Bal, ahead of her. He had covered his red and black body glove with a cloak of worn fabric the colour of rust. Under that he wore two laspistols in high holsters and several pouches of ammunition. For her part, Viola wore a black overall and a dark cloak with a deep hood to cover her ivory hair. She sometimes said that the colour was a family trait, recessive in the female line. That was a lie though. The drug and intellect conditioning had bleached it white when she was not even thirteen and it had stayed that way ever since. She was proud of it now, but when going down to the Dionysia’s deep decks she kept it hidden.

  ‘When was that?’ she asked.

  ‘When I was too young to remember it,’ said Bal, glancing up at where a viscous liquid dripped from the pipes above. The companionway was narrow, and made more so by the pipes and cable bundles that lined its walls and ceiling. A thick layer of dust and oil sat on everything, fused and set like stone. There was no light, so they both carried small candles in glass bubbles held on wire handles. ‘People don’t have stab lights or power packs down here,’ Viola had explained when Bal had raised an eyebrow as she had given him his lamp.

  ‘Void life is different,’ she said.

  ‘Yes and no. It’s not so different from parts of the archive stacks. Down in the deep there are places that never see the light, and where you have to crawl through tunnels dug into parchment layers. There’re things and people down there that think that light only comes from fire. Seeing a star – let alone being on a lump of metal going between them – would terrify them.’

  ‘Not you though?’

  He snorted, and she saw his teeth flash in a grin.

  ‘Oh, I am terrified all right. I am just working hard to not let it show.’ He stopped, and held up the glass-lamp. ‘Sealed hatch. No sign of a release handle.’

  ‘Let me,’ said Viola, and squeezed past him, and pressed a ring on her right index finger to the pitted metal. There was a low thump, and a crack opened around the edge of the hatch. ‘After you.’

  He moved past, pushing the hatch open. She noticed that his left hand had slid one of his pistols from its holster as he paused, a frown forming before he shook his head.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Why do you come down here? If it is as dangerous as you say, why come down here and skulk about in the shadows with only a gun-servant like me as backup?’

  She moved past him, blinking her eye to low-light vision. A short, wide passage led to a larger hatch that hung open. Corrosion crawled over the deck and walls. The air smelled of stagnant water and rust. Light came from beyond the door, flickering and red.

  ‘Why come down to the bilge levels? Because you were more right than you know. This ship is like a city, and I am its chief administrator, paymaster and prosecutor. You think it’s all vast fortunes, cargos of treasure and a side-line in working for the Inquisition?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he said with a fresh grin.

  ‘Yes, I suppose a lot of it is, but a rogue trader is their ship. And down here, where I am just a rumour and the void is the promise of death… problems can start down here that, if they aren’t dealt with, can leave the ship dead in the void. And if that happens, all the gold in the heavens can’t buy your way back to life.’

  She moved closer to the open hatch door. Another tap of a ring on her left hand, and the compact stummer embedded in it activated. A bubble of hissing silence swallowed the sounds of their steps. She looked through the gap in the hatch, making sure that she kept back out of the light.

  Five figures stood in the compartment space beyond. Each of them was pale, and long limbed. Three wore the tattered remains of rating uniforms. The other two – a younger man and an old woman – wore amalgams of vacuum suits, festooned with pieces of rusting metal hung on loops of wire. The old woman held a staff hung with wires and power packs, and tipped with a cracked glow tube. The ratings held drive-guns – crude projectile weapons made from rivet drivers.

  ‘Does it speak?’ said one of the ratings. ‘Does the iron-mother speak?’

  The old woman with the staff shifted. Metal clinked.

  ‘The iron-mother speaks,’ said the woman, her voice creaking like rope in a wind. ‘I hear it. I heard it. It speaks. It says that we are bound for night. I hear it speak! And it says we must…’

  ‘A cult…’ hissed Bal from next to Viola.

  ‘Barely. They are called void-speakers. They listen to… sounds in the hull. They think they hear the voice of the ship, of the iron-mother. It’s an old void superstition. Not just on this ship either. Some captains try to get rid of them, and after a while they are just there again, different people telling the same story.’

  ‘You let them do this?’

  ‘Let them? I do all I can to protect them.’

  ‘Why would someone like you–’

  ‘There are many things that happen out of sight on a ship that leave a lot of people dead if you ignore them. The void-speakers hear and know things. Plus, if you deal with them properly they are not so bad.’

  ‘So this is it, this is how you do it.’ He gave a whispered laugh.

  ‘Do what?’ she asked.

  ‘You hear and know everything. You’re the lady of threads…’ said Bal, then grinned apologetically. ‘That is what the household troops called you.’

  ‘Because I am like a spider, yes, I know.’ She moved to the door. ‘And you should know something else if you are going to guard my life. The name sticks because that is exactly what I am like.’

  She smiled at him and stepped through the opening.

  The five void-speakers did not see or hear her until she deactivated the stummer. By then she was five paces from them. They spun at the sound of her next step, and then their eyes went wide and they folded to the deck. Viola bent down
and tugged the void-speaker with the staff up to her feet. The woman was feather light, and her eyes were filming with cataracts. The others stood more slowly, careful to keep their heads bowed and not to meet Viola’s gaze.

  ‘Honoured elder, Yahdah,’ said Viola to the woman.

  ‘Mistress, you return to us…’ The woman with the staff’s head twitched, and she pointed a long finger to where Bal had followed her. ‘This one is unknown to the voice.’

  ‘He is bound to my life,’ said Viola.

  ‘For coin? There is no truth in coin…’

  ‘He is bound to me and so to the iron-mother.’

  The elder held her milky gaze on Bal for a long moment, blinking slowly. Then she bowed her head.

  ‘He is welcome amongst us.’

  Viola nodded, relieved.

  ‘What does the iron-mother say?’ asked Viola.

  ‘It speaks of storms and broken dreams,’ said the elder, and motioned to the deck. ‘Come, sit and let me speak its voice to you.’

  A blast of thruster wash buffeted Josef as he walked between the black-bodied gunships. The livery of the Adeptus Arbites had been painted out, and midnight black now shrouded them from nose to tail. The only mark on each of them was a small image of a winged fist set at the heart of the tri-barred ‘I’ of the Inquisition, stencilled in white beneath the cockpit canopies. Arbitrators in black armour moved in the open spaces between the craft, checking equipment. Most wore their full carapace armour, the plates gleaming under the hangar-bay’s lights. The same symbol that marked the gunships sat on each of their shoulders. The orange stripes of squad leaders were the only other markings he could see. They were not arbitrators now, but wards of the Inquisition, bound by oath to serve the will of the inquisitor who had summoned them, him and the judge who led them.

  They saluted Josef as he passed, sharp and smooth. He returned the gesture, though it felt as ragged as he did. He needed to… No, he didn’t need to sleep. He had tried to sleep and even when he did, it did nothing. He coughed, and tried to not cough again.

  ‘Khoriv?’ The voice came from behind a cluster of arbitrators. He turned as the group parted. ‘You have been avoiding me,’ said Judge Orsino as she stepped forwards with a whir of exo-armour. She was smiling, but her eyes were sharp glitters. Her head was bare, grey hair cropped close. She walked with a cane, the top capped with a silver eagle’s head. In spite of the wrinkled skin and wasted flesh, he still had the feeling that she could beat back a riot by force of will alone.

  ‘Not avoiding,’ he said. ‘Time has just not allowed me to–’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I know when I am being evaded, the question is why?’

  Josef shrugged, and crossed his arms and thought about ways to deny it. Then he sighed and half turned away.

  ‘It’s something about this operation, isn’t it?’

  ‘It isn’t an operation, it’s a crusade. Covenant…’ He stopped himself, and shook his head. He felt angry, he realised. Suddenly and intensely angry.

  Orsino looked around at the nearest arbitrators, and gave a small flick of her chin. They bowed and moved away.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, looking back at him.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t, it is not my place.’

  ‘If it isn’t your place, then more has changed than I see.’

  Josef was quiet for a moment.

  ‘He has the bit between his teeth. He won’t let go, and he is…’

  ‘That is what inquisitors do, my friend, that is the way they are and the way they need to be.’

  ‘I know, but there is something in him. It feels personal.’

  ‘And can you blame him? Idris after all…’

  ‘No, it’s not just that, he is becoming like he was before Argento died.’

  ‘And that is a bad thing?’

  ‘It might be. I am… I am not sure. He is out of balance. I don’t want him to face this alone.’

  Orsino frowned.

  ‘Alone? Why would he be alone?’

  ‘He is always alone.’

  ‘Yes, but that is not what you meant…’ She was staring at him intently now. ‘Khoriv, you will tell me what is wrong.’

  Pain bloomed inside his chest for a second, and he felt a spasm coming. He clamped his will down on it.

  ‘Nothing,’ he managed to say. ‘Only as I have said.’

  Orsino’s stare had hardened.

  ‘I know when I am being evaded, Khoriv. You nearly had me there, and while I believe that you are worried, that is not what is wrong, is it?’

  ‘I should go,’ he said, and took a step away. ‘The ship is due to come out of the warp in an hour, there are–’

  ‘Khoriv, are you ill?’

  He looked at her for a second while the world flipped over inside his head.

  ‘I am fine,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Most of the galaxy has tried to kill me. Nothing has made it yet.’

  ‘That is not what I–’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I am a very bad person to try and lie to.’

  He opened his mouth to reply, and then closed it and shrugged.

  ‘You want proof? Who is your nastiest?’ he asked, jerking his chin at the nearest squad of arbitrators. ‘They all look tough, but you will have a killer, a real bone-breaker who can always be counted on when you need someone brought in dead.’

  ‘What are you–’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘Proctor Gald,’ she called. A man with a clean-shaven head broke away from the group, and bowed to Orsino. His eyes were pale green, Josef noticed, his face slim and set.

  Cruel, this one, thought Josef. Gald moved with the relaxed fluidity of someone who knew how to use the muscle they carried. He flicked a gaze over Josef and turned to Orsino. And arrogant, too.

  ‘Your honour,’ said Gald.

  Orsino looked at Josef.

  ‘The preacher here wants you to show him how good you are in a fight.’

  ‘Of course, your honour, how many of the squad does he wish me to demonstrate with?’

  ‘Me,’ said Josef, stepping forward and folding up the sleeves of his robes. ‘Just me, lad.’

  Gald’s lip curled a fraction before he could control it.

  ‘I am not going to… your honour…’

  Gald glanced at Orsino.

  ‘Don’t look at her. I am old and fat, but believe it or not I know what I am asking. Just so that you do too, I am going to ask. If your loyalty to the God-Emperor means that you are ordered to try and beat me bloody with everything you have, will you do it?’

  Gald nodded, without even blinking.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you think you can?’

  Gald’s lips twitched as he controlled the smile.

  ‘I am well trained.’

  Josef nodded and stepped close to him. When he spoke, his voice was low.

  ‘So, if I said that you don’t have a hope, and that even from the smell of you I think you are a vicious piece of excrement who enjoys it when he is given an execution mission, and is probably only one step up from a reptile – and if I then gave you the choice of trying to send me to the medics with my jaw hanging off, what would you do?’

  Gald kept his face impassive but his pupils had shrunk to needle punctures.

  ‘I would rip your fingers off and feed them into your fat mouth.’

  Josef nodded.

  ‘Then do it, boy,’ he growled.

  Gald met Josef’s gaze and then looked away. For an instant it looked as though he was going to say something. Then he exploded forwards, his first blow so fast that Josef almost missed it and only just got his arm up in time. Force slammed down his forearm as he blocked it. The second blow came hard behind the first, and Josef was stepping backwards as the third whipped past his eyes, catching his nose and spraying blood out across the deck. He took another step back.

  ‘Good!’ he roared, tasting copper and iron. ‘You are trying!’

  Gald paused, his
eyes fixed on Josef’s, pale and steady.

  Come on, come on, thought Josef. Come on, you cold bastard.

  Gald relaxed and flashed forwards, so fast, so fluid, even in armour. Josef was outside the blow by an inch, and felt the shock as Gald realised he was exposed.

  ‘Good!’

  The proctor turned fast, striking as he twisted. Josef moved an inch inside that blow and rammed his forehead into Gald’s face. His nose shattered in a spray of blood. Josef caught his right arm as he staggered, locked the elbow and moved just enough to flick Gald off his feet. Josef pinned him as he fell, and looked down into the cold eyes as the proctor gasped for air.

  ‘It’s all right, lad,’ he growled softly. ‘I used to teach people who are nastier than you how to do this, and the thing about being old and fat is that I have had a lot of practice.’

  He released Gald and stood up. The proctor was breathing hard, blood running down his face.

  ‘Best patch him up,’ said Josef calmly. ‘He needs to be combat-ready in an hour.’

  He turned back to Orsino, wiping the blood from his own face with the sleeve of his robe. The judge did not move. Her eyes were steady on him, her lips pursed, her head tilted to one side, her weight resting on her cane.

  ‘Like I said – I’m fine.’

  He held her gaze, but she did not nod or say anything, and after a moment he turned and walked away between the gunships. She watched him go until he was out of sight – he knew it without looking around.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered to himself. ‘God-Emperor, please let me be fine for just a little longer.’

  He walked on until he found a deserted side passage, then let the coughing and the pain crush him to the floor.

  PART TWO

  SEASON OF NIGHT

  SIX

  ‘Brace!’ Cleander von Castellan shouted at the quiet bridge. ‘For Holy Throne’s sake, brace!’ Heads turned towards him. Hands moved to controls out of reflexive obedience, even as puzzlement ran through their minds.

  ‘Sir–’ began Void Mistress Ghast.

  Force snapped through the hull. Structural pillars screamed. A row of system servitors yanked free of their cradles, and slammed into the vaulted ceiling. Blood and black oil spattered onto the deck. Cleander swore and pulled himself straight. The deck was still pitching. Bubbles of oily light were fizzing at the edge of his sight. That was not good. That was very not good. Alarm lights flashed from amber to red through the bridge. Klaxons began to sound.