03 - Savage Scars (45 page)

“Grand won’t let it end like this,” said Lucian. “Since the earliest days of
the crusade council’s formation, I’ve suspected that he had something more than
conquest in mind. The fact that he concealed his possession of an Exterminatus
device suggests to me he never intended to suppress the tau, or to conquer them,
or to contain them on this side of the Gulf.”

“Lucian,” sighed Sarik. “The fact that an inquisitor demands the
extermination of a xenos species is hardly outside of his remit.”

“True, but he was prepared to sacrifice the ground forces, including your
own, in the execution of his Exterminatus. He’s a radical, Sarik, I’m sure of
it.”

“The internal politics of the Inquisition are no concern of mine, Lucian,”
said Sarik. “But I believe you are correct. Whatever his agenda, it is clearly a
danger to us all. What do you think he will do next?”

“I don’t know,” said Lucian, his expression pained. “But I need to be there,
to stop him.”

Sarik nodded slowly, weighing up the consequences, for his Chapter as well as
himself, of what he was about to say.

“Then I too must be there,” he said solemnly. “Your Warrant of Trade is a
powerful totem, Lucian, but so too is the Inquisitorial rosette. You will not
face Grand alone, on that I swear.”

Korvane pressed his back against the cold, iron bulkhead, listening
intently to the sound of Grand’s footsteps receding further down the shadowed,
red-lit passageway. The metal of the bulkhead was cold because Grand was exuding
billowing clouds of frost in his wake as he prowled further from the council
chamber. As Korvane readied himself to move on again, the frost under his hand
turned to liquid as normal temperature returned, thin, oily runnels streaking
down the walls.

When the inquisitor’s footsteps were almost too distant to hear, Korvane
pressed on again. His heart pounded with barely suppressed terror as he
considered for the hundredth time turning back. This was insane, he told
himself. In going after the inquisitor, he was putting himself in mortal danger,
for Grand was known to be a powerful psyker and as well an accomplished
torturer.

Nonetheless, this had to be done, Korvane thought as he felt the now familiar
weight of the ring his father had given him. The gift was far more than an
object, far more even than the contents of the stasis tomb it would unlock. It
had given Korvane strength and courage, even as it had loaded him with the
responsibility of the heir of Clan Arcadius. That was why he was trailing an
insane inquisitor through the bowels of an Imperial warship.

Because he had to, because honour and duty demanded nothing less. Korvane had
always assumed that being at or near the head of a rogue trader dynasty should
remove one from the action, with legions of underlings to get the dirty work
done. He now understood that the reverse was true. He could understand exactly
why his father had desired to participate in the ground war, and it was nothing
so prosaic as ego.

Some things you just had to do yourself.

With the
Blade of Woe
preparing to take thousands of passengers on
board and getting ready to make warp, the subsidiary passageways through which
Korvane passed were virtually empty. Every available crewman was at his station,
attending to the myriad tasks required of him prior to departure. Korvane wished
he were back in the command throne of his own vessel, the
Rosetta
,
pursuing the fortunes of the Clan Arcadius, not engaged in internecine political
wars with parties who should count one another allies against a common foe.

Inquisitor Grand.

Korvane tried to keep his footfalls as silent as possible as he stalked the
passageway, knowing that such sounds had a habit of reverberating in odd,
unpredictable ways in the bowels of a starship as large and venerable as the
Blade of Woe
. Even with the ever-present throb of plasma conduits and the
distant whine of the drive banks cycling to idle, his footsteps might betray him
to the inquisitor.

More likely, however, Korvane’s own thoughts would betray him. Grand was a
psyker of prodigious power, and while Korvane did not know if the inquisitor was
an empath, he must assume that he was. He had to keep his distance, in case
Inquisitor Grand heard not just his footsteps but his mind.

Korvane realised that the air was getting colder, meaning Grand must have
slowed or come to a halt. He glanced around to get his bearings, but the red
illumination of ship’s night cast the entire scene in stark shadows. He followed
a conduit feeding into a purge manifold, and squinted to read the text
stencilled on its corroded outer casing.
Sub-deck delta twelve, sector D
.

Korvane processed the coordinates, comparing them to what he knew of the
Blade of Woe
and other vessels of its class. It was hard, for the vessel was
ancient and had been added to, renovated, overhauled and rebuilt numerous times
over the millennia. The stencil told him that he was amidships, eighty-three
decks below the secondary mycoprotein vats that turned the crew’s waste solids
into edible tack. He should have known that from the low-level stink that
permeated the whole deck. Another half a kilometre fore of his position would be
the vast cryo-chambers in which slain crewmen awaited reconstitution, and twenty
more levels below him was the low deck sump in which entire communities of
mutants lived without ever crossing paths with a crewman. Recalling what he
could of the
Blade
’s impossibly complex internal arrangement, Korvane
realised that there was a tertiary docking bay not far away. Could that be
Grand’s destination?

Slowing as he approached a junction, Korvane drew his laspistol and loosened
his power sword in its scabbard. All men and women of his background were
required to master such weapons, but he had rarely had cause to use them in
anger.

Coming to the junction, Korvane peered around to the passageways beyond.
Grand’s trail was unmistakable, the glistening skein of ice on the bulkheads
marking his passing towards the hangar Korvane knew lay to the right. Perhaps
the inquisitor was planning to escape by lander, Korvane thought, before
dismissing the notion. Somehow, he knew that the truth would be far worse.

“Indeed it is…” a rasping voice whispered from the hangar portal.

“…much worse.”

“Come, scion of the Arcadius,” said Inquisitor Grand. “And you shall reap
what you have sown.”

Every shred of Korvane’s being screamed at him to turn and flee; yet he could
not. One leaden step at a time, he passed through the open hangar portal and
into the cavernous launch bay. Though only a minor facility compared to the
Blade of Woe
’s main bays, the space was so large it rivalled the interior of
a mighty Ecclesiarchy cathedral.

The hangar was cast in the bright, turquoise light reflected from the surface
of Dal’yth Prime. The world filled the view through the open hangar, the air
held within by an invisible energy shield. Serene seas framed the arid
continental masses, the scene so pristine it belied the devastation Inquisitor
Grand had sought to work upon it. How quickly the glowing orb would have been
transformed into a black, shrivelled wasteland if the inquisitor had not been
countermanded by one of the few in the galaxy with the authority to do so…

Korvane felt his legs stop moving as he reached the centre of the hangar.
Before him, held firmly in the cantilevered arms of a ceiling-mounted launch
cradle, was a matt-black, elongated form five metres in length. It reminded
Korvane of an ocean-borne predator, its prow blunt, with numerous angular fins
protruding from its length. The object’s rear section was a compact plasma drive
with a single thruster, ready to power it through the atmosphere on the
hell-dive of Exterminatus that would spell its death, and that of every living
organism on the world below.

“You are correct, Arcadius,” said Inquisitor Grand as he emerged from behind
the torpedo. As he moved, he ran one hand along the torpedo’s flank, fingering
each sharp fin as his wizened touch passed over it. Where that hand caressed the
matt-black skin of the torpedo, the kiss of frost was left in its wake.

Korvane’s heart thundered as he forced himself to stand erect before the
traitor. He would die, of that he was sure. But he would do so on his feet, with
his head held high, like a true son of the Arcadius.

Inquisitor Grand reached his gnarled hands up to his hood, and lowered it, so
that his face was visible. His entire head was a single, badly healed wound,
with clumps of silver hair poking out between knots of scar tissue. His ears
were mere stumps, his eyes lidless slits between folds of wizened, twisted skin.
His nostrils were ragged flaps of skin above his mouth, which was all he
normally allowed others to see. His lips were formed into a bitter, feral sneer.

“You’re going to do it…” said Korvane. “You’re going to defy Lord Kryptman…”

Grand’s sneer twisted further as his hand came to the end of the torpedo, his
touch lingering on the flared plasma thruster. “Please accept my apologies,
Arcadius,” Grand leered. “You really aren’t worthy of an extended valedictory
diatribe. I think I’ll just kill you…

“That,” Grand added with a twisted grin, “will really piss your father off.”

Grand brought his right hand up, the sleeve of his robe falling back to
reveal yet more ravaged scar tissue. Korvane’s breath came in laboured gulps,
and his limbs froze solid as wracking cramp gripped his muscles. Slowly, one
gnarled finger bending back at a time, Grand made a fist.

As Grand’s little finger folded back, Korvane felt an icy flare of pain in
the centre of his chest. As the ring finger curled around, the ice crept into
his heart. When the middle finger folded inwards, a dozen icy daggers speared
into Korvane’s heart.

Grand paused, bringing his thumb and index finger together slowly. Korvane
felt his heart falter, his pulse becoming weak. The strength was rapidly
draining from his muscles as ice spread through his veins. Blackness pressed in
at the edges of his vision, and he tore his eyes from his leering executioner so
that the last sight he saw might be that of the serene world for which he had
given his life.

His vision swimming, Korvane struggled to focus on the scene beyond the
hangar bay portal. The turquoise orb of Dal’yth Prime was suddenly white and
angular and entirely out of focus. With the last of his strength, Korvane
struggled to resolve the scene, which made no sense to his oxygen starved brain.

Then, the view beyond the hangar portal swam into focus, and Korvane’s lips
formed into a weak grin.

The serene globe of Dal’yth Prime was all but obscured by the sight of a
Thunderhawk gunship rising on flaring manoeuvring jets, veering slightly as its
pilot brought it in towards the void-sealed portal.

Inquisitor Grand spun where he stood, turning to face the gunship. The
instant his attention was turned elsewhere, Grand’s icy hold was relinquished.
Korvane dropped to the hardpan, his limbs screaming with the pain of frostbite.
Gasping for breath, he rolled onto his side as Inquisitor Grand stalked around
to the opposite side of the torpedo, the inquisitor watching calmly as the
gunship pierced the void-seal and set down nearby on screaming retros.

With a last burst of gas, the gunship settled on flexing landing struts. Even
before it was fully down, the hatch at its blunt prow lowered on hissing
hydraulics, and slammed to the deck with a resounding clang. A group of figures
tramped down the assault ramp. Korvane’s eyes struggled to bring them into
focus.

The first of the figures to set foot on the hardpan was a Space Marine, his
formerly pristine white power armour scorched black and smeared with gore. A
flowing topknot capped the Space Marine’s head, and his face was traced with an
intricate pattern of honour scars. Veteran Sergeant Sarik of the White Scars.

When Korvane saw the next figure, his heart leaped. It was his father,
resplendent in his heirloom power armour that was almost as battered and dirty
as Sarik’s. Lucian wore his hair in a style not unlike the sergeant’s, a hint at
the fact that the Clan Arcadius had long-established links to the Chapter’s home
world of Chogoris. The Space Marine and the rogue trader both drew their blades
as one, spreading out as they approached the waiting inquisitor.

As the two parted, a third figure was revealed behind. It was a woman, ragged
strips of silver fabric flowing around her body and long, plaited hair streaming
madly behind.

“No…” Korvane gasped. “You bitch…”

A rasping chuckle echoed through the cold air of the hangar, audible even
over the sound of the gunship’s engines powering down. Korvane realised the
sound was coming from inside his own head, and the voice was Grand’s.