The Inquisition War (67 page)

A disc from the mist. A token of random futility tossed in their direction as blindly as Fennix himself was blind. A razor-edged coin from the currency of ruin.

The astropath had lurched, and then sighed – almost in relief.

All the noise of battle had been such a confusing torment. No matter how deeply wadded with wool Fennix’s bat-ears had been, the recurrent hubbub of bolt fire and the eerie skirling music had been an agonizing misery. As for the amplified voice of that armoured knight: cacophony.

Fennix might as well never have bothered to keep his body spry. Despite his nearsense he was so disoriented. Were it not for Azul he wouldn’t have known which way to head. Azul had cradled him. Now Fennix would re-enter the dark womb of disintegration – or the infinite illuminating babel of his own inner creed.

The disc had torn into his brain. Thought and life lingered for a while.

‘I’m dying, Azul,’ he had managed to mouth. ‘Soon I’ll hear all the messages that ever were or will be... all at once... one gigantic blaring utterance, one mega multi-word that is the name of—’

Of destiny? Of cosmic history and futurity? Of arcane mystery?

Then the astropath had died – and either knew momentarily, or did not know.

A
ZUL HAD CONTINUED
to carry the corpse further. He crooned to it. Blood and tissue stained the shoulder of his grey moire damask robe where the astropath’s head rested.

Descending, Petrov had entered an oval chamber. The chamber had three subterranean exits into three passageways which soon became filled with swirling blue mist. Azul’s warp-eye ached at those glimpses into the webway. Would that his warp-eye could weep for Fennix, tears squeezing from its black marble substance.

Three archways were decorated with mosaics of eldar runes – perhaps cryptic instructions for those who were conversant with the webway?

Petrov stared dazedly along one passage. To gaze along an energy-channel through the warp and nowhere glimpse the signatures of distant stars nor the beacon of the Astronomican was vertiginous. All familiar orientations were absent.

It occurred to him that the webway might possess no readily mappable linear structure but rather a quasi-random interconnectedness. To walk unknowingly along such a passage into the blue mist might lead to fearful surprises. Small channels, these ones were, suitable for persons. There would be larger channels, through which spaceships could sail.

The webway was like a haphazard psychic bloodstream. It possessed major highways: arteries. It possessed veins. And thin capillaries such as these.

Blood soaked into Azul’s shoulder as he clutched the limp astropath. He grieved until Draco, Grimm and Meh’lindi arrived.

G
OADED BY
G
RIMM
, Azul was at last laying Fennix down upon the floor of wraithbone. A few sparkling spiders oozed from the floor, to scuttle over the corpse. Azul grinned wildly at Jaq, to disavow the horror of bereavement. Grimm was right. Do not seem disabled! Do not seem fragile!

‘Will the spiders spin a shroud for Fennix?’ he enquired.

‘We must hurry,’ insisted Jaq. ‘If the eldar lose the fight there’ll be such a rush of aspect warriors evacuating the amphitheatre. If we’re in the way they’ll not feel too many scruples. Which way did Zephro Carnelian go? He did come here, didn’t he?’

Which capillary had the Harlequin Man chosen to enter? Azul hadn’t seen.

Just then, yellow armour hove in view. A boltgun was pointing.

U
NEXPECTEDLY THE CAPTAIN
of the Imperial Fists swept his visor open. ‘I want to talk with you,’ rumbled a bass voice.

An olive skin, scarred neatly by nicks. Lustrous dark eyes and pearly teeth. A ruby ring through the right nostril. A cheek tattoo of a winged fist crushing a skull. Steel studs were inset along the man’s forehead. How startling to behold the man within the intimidating ancient armour.

‘I am risking psychic assault to show myself to you.’

Ah, that snouted helmet must incorporate psychic shielding. It was open to the air now, and to possible mental pollution. The captain held his gun unwaveringly.

‘My name is Lexandro d’Arquebus. My orders came from the headquarters of the Imperial Inquisition. The orders were accompanied by the correct codes.’

This mighty man harboured doubts! Or at least he was capable of rationality.

‘Imperial Fists are scrupulous thinkers, not just bringers of death,’ he added.

Jaq heaved a painful breath. ‘Are you aware,’ he asked, ‘that the Inquisition is at war with itself? Or that there is a secret Inquisition within the Inquisition?’

Jaq displayed his daemonic palm tattoo. ‘Do you recognize this?’

The captain gaped. Of course he did not know the emblem of the Ordo Malleus – nor even of the existence of such an ordo.

‘Or this?’ Jaq willed the hydra tattoo on his cheek to show. ‘Has Baal Firenze showed you this mark of abomination and conspiracy upon himself?’

Lex blanched. He made a warding sign with his gauntlet. ‘Tell me not of heresies.’ Yet he had demanded conversation. ‘Inquisitor Firenze does not entirely seem to know who he is. Or was,’ he conceded.

‘So I have gathered, Captain d’Arquebus! Once, Firenze was a participant in the direst conspiracy in the galaxy. This knowledge was evidently taken away from him. Firenze forced me into this conspiracy – which is why I wear its secret sign. I rebelled against these heretics and their secret leaders. I even travelled into the Eye of Terror to try to unmask their treasons—’

‘You went where?’ In the captain’s tone there was awe and dread.

‘I encountered a mutated Marine, and we killed him.’ Vitali Googol had been the instrument of that bullman’s death. Now Googol’s soul was a plaything of daemons...

‘I swear this, captain, by the Column of Glory which I have beheld with my own eyes.’

‘That’s true enough,’ said Grimm.

‘
The Column of Glory...
’ breathed the captain. Awe beyond awe...

‘In the Emperor’s palace,’ added the squat helpfully. ‘That column.’

‘Of course an Imperial Fist knows of the Column of Glory! To be able to make a pilgrimage there! So very close to the throne room of our God-Emperor!’

‘Which we entered, and left again,’ said Grimm, plainly. ‘We can hardly be heretics. Or at least not your regular heretic – like Firenze was before he was washed and hung out to dry.’

‘Be quiet, you impious abhuman,’ snapped Jaq. ‘Do you think I trust you especially?’

‘I’m hurt,’ muttered Grimm. Meh’lindi hissed ferally at the stocky quasi-human silencing his grumbles.

With evident reluctance the captain enquired, ‘What manner of conspiracy was Firenze involved in?’

Jaq shook his head.

‘What is its aim?’ repeated the captain. ‘Who are its leaders?’

‘Such knowledge could destroy you.’

‘Aye. Perhaps it could.’

‘Besides...’ Jaq gestured impatiently up the tunnel toward the amphitheatre of war. ‘We need to go into the webway before it becomes crowded. We must find the Harlequin Man.’

‘That was my mission, and my men’s,’ said the captain. ‘To breach the webway. To capture some Harlequins.’ Bitterly he added, ‘And to purge and cleanse because Inquisitor Firenze does not know his own true purpose! Do I know yours? My military allegiance should be to Inquisitor Firenze.’

Meh’lindi’s comment was even more bitter: ‘Just as mine should be to the Callidus shrine of the Officio Assassinorum.’ The captain gazed at her. ‘You are so strange...’

On account of being a woman? Or seeming to be an alien?

‘Huh,’ grunted Grimm. ‘Do we have another potential devotee of our Lady of Death?’

Jaq said firmly, ‘We are about to enter the webway, captain.’

The captain would be obliged to kill Jaq to prevent this.

‘How will you find your way?’ the captain asked slowly.

‘By my Tarot, I hope! By the grace of Him-on-Earth. By the light of the luminous path, if it illumines me.’

‘What is that luminous path? I only know the radiant light of Rogal Dorn.’

Jaq made no reply.

The captain surveyed the three archways leading from the chamber.

‘Which path will you take?’ He did not intend to prevent Jaq’s little group from departing.

Jaq also eyed the three misty blue tunnels. He reached to remove his Tarot pack.

However, the puzzle of which route to follow was about to be simplified. From out of the shimmering mist along the middle passageway came an armoured predatory figure, glowing a bilious green.

FIFTEEN

Webway

T
HAT FIGURE WAS
an Imperial Fist Marine. The blue fog of the webway had temporarily made his armour appear of a different hue.

In salute to his captain the Space Marine clashed his gauntlet across his plastron. The boltgun in his other gauntlet shifted to and fro. Now it was veering towards the alien guardian, and now towards the squat who was armed with two boltguns. Especially towards the alien female. What in the name of Dorn was the situation here?

Crisply the Marine reported his own situation on the comm-channel.

‘Lord. Sergeant Wagner led us on an exploratory thrust into a portal in the city. These hazy tunnels sometimes branch without the fork being obvious. I became separated, sir. I apologize to our Chapter.’

‘No need, brother,’ said Lex. ‘Your information is valuable. Be at
battle-ease
. These four people aren’t detainees.’

Stockman regarded his captain’s open visor with respectful wariness. The captain’s explicit order had been for suits to remain sealed until the company regained its boarding torpedoes and until those were well on their way to rendezvous with the troopship. Stockman’s report might have been squeakily audible to the four strangers through the captain’s open visor.

A runty corpse lay on the wraithbone floor. Recently shot – with a shuriken disc, so he judged. Shot, therefore, by the female eldar woman. A human shot by an alien.

Nevertheless, Stockman assumed battle-ease, stifling his impetus to kill.

‘These are agents of the Imperium, Brother Stockman. The female is an impersonator of aliens.’ That open visor... ‘With respect, lord, is theirs a separate mission to ours?’

‘You might say so.’

‘With respect, lord, have they come here through the alien webway?’

If that was so, then what sense did the massive deployment of battleships and Cobras make? All of it so that the Imperial Fists could breach the eldar habitat. What sense, if the Imperium already knew of a more cunning and stealthy route by which to enter? Was the Fists’ brave deployment within the habitat a deliberate diversion – a footnote to the activities of this robed and bearded man and the female impersonator, the Navigator and the abhuman? Was Inquisitor Firenze merely orchestrating an additional diversion which was costing the lives of his battle-brothers as surely as the battle in space was expending thousands of lives of more ordinary mortals?

And had Captain d’Arquebus known this all along?

Misgivings were implicit in Stockman’s dutiful query.

‘You think clearly, Stockman,’ said Lex. ‘But have faith.’

The secret inquisitor spoke up. He must have judged the probable reason for Lex’s words.

‘We came here in a shielded ship, captain, not through the webway. Who but the eldar understand the ramifications of the webway?’

‘Are the other men of Sergeant Wagner’s squad lost in this webway now?’ Lex asked Stockman.

‘My lord, I do not know.’

‘I shall attempt to locate them. Stockman, I have transferred command temporarily to Librarian Kempka. Remain here and hold this place if possible. Try to deny it to the enemy as an evacuation route. If hard pressed, retreat by the way you came. Do not squander yourself. Report my decision to our Librarian. Time presses.’

T
HE CAPTAIN WAS
intending to accompany Jaq’s party. To escort them!

The lone Space Marine stood a fair chance of interdicting this chamber to the eldar. If Stockman heard eldar beginning to descend from the surface he would fire up the tunnel. His bolts would ricochet wildly, lethally. Needless to say, Stockman must also watch his back in case enemies came through the webway. Equally, Sergeant Wagner and his squad might come.

Was a squad of Fists really lost in the webway? A devout captain would do his duty. If he became lost too, this would not be desertion or dereliction...

J
AQ HAD TAKEN
out his Tarot, unwrapped the mutant skin which swathed it, and removed the Harlequin card. Carnelian’s face was clear enough. His clothing, however, was constantly changing. It underwent a flux of styles and hues. Hectic hilarity was almost audible. The card jerked leftward.

The captain consulted an instrument on his wrist as if loath to be guided by a Tarot card. He shrugged massively. Muttering a prayer, Jaq restored the other cards to his gown.

Almost as soon as they began to make their way along the leftward passage, they heard Stockman opening fire behind them. Eldar must be coming already. The RAAARK of bolts became muffled as glowing blue mist swirled. Then the noise was inaudible. Whatever occurred behind them could have been a world away, in another reality.