Deathwing (39 page)

Her eyes were calculating, quizzical. If that’s the worst she has in store for us, Tenzig thought, may whatever gods there are save us! ‘Ah,’ he said, extemporising hastily. ‘You ask for much, I must warn you. What can we expect of your Imperium in return?’

The Imperial judge stared at him condescendingly. ‘Ask not what the Imperium does for you,’ he said, ‘but what you can do for the Imperium. Do you not know that your very souls depend upon it? That without the divine Emperor the hordes of warp space would be upon you in an instant, bringing savagery and insanity in their wake?’

The master focused on the judge like a living gun. It will be him, thought Tenzig, the hard man, here to play against her diplomacy. Expendable. I wonder if he is aware of it?

The woman spoke up hastily, covering for her companion’s outburst. ‘Your Holiness, we prefer not to take, but to have given voluntarily. I stand before you unarmed,’ at this the master stiffened even more, if that were possible, ‘but bearing a warning. We are prepared to be merciful. In return for your cooperation, you shall be made lords of all that you survey; this expedition has other planets to attend to, and Inquisitor Rathman would be more man gratified to leave the maintenance of this world in your caring hands. I beg you, while you have the opportunity, cooperate! We have the power to destroy you in an instant…’

The judge snorted, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the master, searching for some hidden threat.

Tenzig breathed deeply, carefully. That is the dangerous one, he realised. The woman will negotiate, but that one is a fanatic… ‘Is that your final word?’ he asked, wondering when the master would act. ‘Because if, so, I must—’

It seemed to happen in slow motion. As Judit opened her mouth, the master was already moving with the grace of a striking cobra. The disc of shining steel flickered as it left his fingertips, and it was still spinning as he lunged forwards, the rod in his hands a dark promise of pain and death.

The shuriken caught Joachim full in the neck, laying open his aorta in a great gout of blood. He spasmed, the small pistol dropping from his fingers, even as the master altered course towards Judit. That was a mistake.

Her expression never changed as she raised her left index finger – but a pulse of blue light flashed from her ring, and she had merely to step aside from the corpse as it crashed to her feet.

The digital pistol was pointed squarely at Tenzig’s abdomen. He stared at it. ‘It would be very foolish of you to use that,’ he said mildly.

The master lay on the floor; a dark stain was already edging out from beneath Joachim’s corpse.

‘I know,’ said the woman. ‘What guarantee of safe conduct can you give me?’

Tenzig felt release at the knowledge that he was not yet destined to die. ‘You’re no diplomat,’ he accused.

‘And you,’ she smiled, ‘are no monk.’

‘Oh yes, I am a monk – but perhaps they do things differently in the Imperium.’

They locked eyes squarely. Her gaze was like looking into a mirror. Death in the morning. You must have wanted that one dead quite badly, he thought. You could have saved him!

‘An assassin is a kind of diplomat,’ Judit said dryly. ‘So is a judge. It was up to you to decide which of us you would negotiate with. But I would like to know what kind of monks you are, before I commit myself to anything.’

Tenzig folded his hands in his lap, very slowly. ‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘there was a peaceful colony, founded by a breakaway sect from old Terra. It existed in stasis for millennia, a duplicate of a long-dead civilisation. The tech wisdom was given into the hands of the monks for safe keeping… and then came the wars. And the disappearance of the stars, and the coming of madness.’

Judit nodded slowly. ‘The STC source was valuable. You had to learn to defend it. You had to fight, use influence, kill those nobles who would—’

‘What’s an STC source?’ Tenzig asked, feigning puzzlement.

Judit chewed her lower lip, watching him intently. After a long time, she said, ‘Never mind. Your archives are valuable, then. No?’

‘That is correct. Our historical archives are incomplete, but no one else on this world can equal them. There was a sect of old Terra, millennia before our ancestors boarded the starships that brought them here.’ The words tripped off his tongue with barely a hint of deception. ‘And their descendants, the followers of the heavenly virtues—’ and of the secret way. ‘What we know, we inherited from them; not just tech, but our ways. And so…’ He spread his arms.

Judit nodded again. ‘Very good. If we can verify that nothing evil exists in your archives, we may leave you to your works; but first…’ She paused.

‘Yes?’

‘There is still the matter of planetary governance,’ she added. ‘I was not exceeding my ambit when I offered you the rule of this world. Whatever he may have thought you fit for.’ She nudged the corpse by her side with a black-shod toe. ‘Your order appears to be able to enforce its desires…’

For a long instant, the world seemed to stand still in reverence. Tenzig heard the hammering of his own heart loud in his ears, a haunting from beyond the past. An offer of supreme power; security for the order, which by serving the Imperium might be ignored by it.

He looked at the slightly-built woman, and seemed to see through her to a time when things had been different; an age when absolutes were not on offer, an age more in keeping with the philosophy of the order, of the holy prophet who had stayed among men and preached of fate and the eternal cycle of being, and who had achieved enlightenment. Finally he nodded.

‘On behalf of my order, I am constrained to accept this offer. If you carry the necessary documents, you are free to leave alive. I regret,’ his eyes swept the floor, ‘the necessity of this show of force.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Judit grinned humourlessly. ‘It was a necessary formality. We cannot afford to leave planets in the hands of weaklings.’

Yes, I understand, Tenzig thought. ‘You wish to see the library, then?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘That was what I came here for,’ she said. ‘To see it intact. Bombardment can make rather a mess of a planet. Take me there.’

‘This way, then,’ Tenzig stood, stiffly, and ushered her to the door. Together they descended the stairs, all the way to the basement.

‘Here lie records saved in ages past,’ said Tenzig, pausing at the great wooden doors. Producing a key, he turned it in the lock and pulled, heart thundering behind his ribs.

‘Lights,’ said Judit tersely.

‘Here,’ Tenzig touched a switch, rubbed the dimple in the plastic that was worn smooth by ages of fingers. A warm glow flooded the corridor and the stacks of lovingly-catalogued scrolls that covered the walls. He stepped inside.

‘Do you see?’ he asked, questioningly. ‘Do you see the source of our power?’

Judit nodded. ‘Indeed,’ she said. For here was wealth indeed, and power beyond the dreams of a barbarian warlord. ‘We shall have to arrange for scribes to visit you,’ she added, ‘but this certainly confirms my offer to you.’

So this is why you came and negotiated, instead of dictating to us from above, he realized. A strange form of taxation, indeed…

He watched as she brought out the creamy parchment of the draft treaty, embossed with the Imperial seal, and held it before him so that he might see.

‘And let us hope that this is the start of a great era in the history of your world!’

L
ATER, AFTER THE
assassin had returned to her ship in the sky.

‘And the master,’ the abbot said thoughtfully. ‘Do you believe he misinterpreted their response?’

Tenzig – now Master Tenzig – shook his head. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘More accurately, he understood all too well what their response would be. They are a hard people; some display of force was inevitable, really. A balanced response.’

‘Yes,’ said the abbot presently, ‘then the reverend master fulfilled his duty. And you, Tenzig, have done your part.’

Tenzig bowed his head. ‘But they will return. And next time it might be my calling to defend the order with my life.’

‘Perhaps,’ the abbot said. Then he smiled. ‘But their ignorance of us has been increased to a safer level. You left them believing that the paper archives were our only source of wisdom.’

The abbot’s words seemed to hang in the air, even after he pressed the button in his pocket to trigger the teleport link to the chamber beneath the scriptorium, where the ancient, unimaginably sophisticated machines of the STC library waited patiently.

UNFORGIVEN

Graham McNeill

T
HE MIDNIGHT DARK
closed on Brother-Sergeant Kaelen of the Dark Angels like a fist. The emission-reduced engines of the rapidly disappearing Thunderhawk were the only points of light he could see. His visor swum into a ghostly green hue and the outlines of the star shaped city below became clear as his auto-senses kicked in.

The altimeter reading on his visor was unravelling like a lunatic countdown, the shapes below him resolving into clearer, oblong forms. The speed of his descent was difficult to judge, the powered armour insulating Kaelen from the sensations of icy rushing air and roaring noise as he plummeted downwards.

With a pulse of thought, Kaelen overlaid the tactical schematics of the city onto his visor, noting with professional pride that the outline of the buildings below almost perfectly matched the image projected before him.

The altimeter rune flashed red and Kaelen pulled out of his drop position, smoothly bringing his legs around so that he was falling feet first. Glancing left and right he saw the same manoeuvre being repeated by his men and slammed the firing mechanism on his chest. He felt the huge deceleration as the powerful rocket motors ignited, slowing his headlong plunge into a controlled descent.

Kaelen’s boots slammed into the marble flagged plaza, his jump pack flaring a wash of heated air around him as he landed. Streams of bright light licked up from the city, flak waving like undersea fronds as the rebels sought to down the departing Thunderhawk. But the heretic gunners were too late to prevent the gunship from completing its mission, its deadly cargo had already arrived.

Kaelen whispered a prayer for the transport’s crew and transferred his gaze back to the landing zone. Their drop was perfect, the Thunderhawk’s jumpmaster had delivered them dead on target. A target that was thronged with screaming, masked cultists.

Kaelen ducked a clumsy swing of a cultist’s power maul and punched his power fist through his enemy’s chest, the man shrieking and convulsing as the energised gauntlet smashed though his flesh and bone. He kicked the corpse off his fist and smashed his pistol butt into the throat of another. The man fell, clutching his shattered larynx and Kaelen spared a hurried glance to check the rest of his squad had dropped safely with him.

Stuttering blasts of heat and light flared in the darkness as the remaining nine men in Squad Leuctra landed within five metres of him, firing their bolters and making short dashes for cover.

A cultist ran towards him swinging a giant axe, his features twisted in hatred. Kaelen shot him in the head. By the Lion, these fools just didn’t stop coming! He ducked behind a giant marble statue of some nameless cardinal as a heavy burst of gunfire stitched its way towards him from the gigantic cathedral at the end the plaza. Muzzle flashes came through smashed stained glass windows, the bullets tearing up the marble in jagged splinters and cutting down cultists indiscriminately. Kaelen knew that advancing into the teeth of those guns would be bloody work indeed.

Another body ducked into cover with him, the dark green of his armour partially obscured by his chaplain’s robes. Interrogator Chaplain Bareus raised his bolt pistol. The weapon’s barrel was intricately tooled and its muzzle smoked with recent firing.

‘Squad form on me!’ ordered Kaelen, ‘Prepare to assault! Evens advance, odds covering fire!’

A
PROPHET HAD
risen on the cathedral world of Valedor and with him came the planet’s doom. Within a year of his first oration, the temples of the divine Emperor had been cast down and his faithful servants, from the highest cardinal to the lowliest scribes, were cast into the charnel fire-pits. Millions were purged and choking clouds of human ash fell as grotesque snow for months after.

The nearest Imperial Guard regiment, the 43rd Carpathian Rifles, had fought through the temple precincts for nine months since the planet’s secession, battling in vicious close combat with the fanatical servants of the Prophet. The pacification had progressed well, but now ground to a halt before the walls of the planet’s capital city, Angellicus. The heavily fortified cathedral city had withstood every assault, but now it was the turn of the Adeptus Astartes to bring the rebellion to an end. For the Space Marines of the Dark Angels Chapter, more than just Imperial honour and retribution was at stake. Many centuries ago, Valedor had provided a clutch of fresh recruits for the Chapter and the planet’s heresy was a personal affront to the Dark Angels. Honour must be satisfied. The Prophet must die.

D
OZENS OF CULTISTS
were pitched backwards by the Space Marines’ first volley, blood bright on their robes. More died as the bolters fired again. Kaelen exploded from cover, a laser blast scoring a groove in his shoulder plate. The first cultist to bar his path died without even seeing the blow that killed him. The next saw Kaelen bearing down on him and the Marine sergeant relished the look of terror on his face. His power fist took his head off.