Anarch

Eleven: Contact

Handbells were still ringing along the shore line. Squads of packsons hurried through the steep streets of the stacked little cliff-town, going building to building and stopping to question everyone they passed.

Mkoll watched from the top of a bale stack in one of the quayside barns. The roof of the open-fronted barn extended over him, preventing anyone spotting him from above, and he had taken a sheet of tarp from the loading dock and pulled it over him.

Every inch of him ached. His scalp wound had finally stopped bleeding, but the whole area behind his ear was too painful to touch. Dried blood crusted his scalp, the side of his neck and his shoulder. He didn’t have a mirror, but he knew the side of his face was probably purple with trauma.

He was drawn tight with fatigue. He’d rested under the tarp for an hour, but hadn’t dared sleep. Fatigue was just something he’d push through. He’d done it before. It was a matter of will. Body-tired didn’t matter. Mind-tired was the killer. His mind was sharp. The pain had done that.

He watched the scene below him, wishing he still had Olort’s field glasses. The whole of the Fastness was on security vigil – the equivalent, he fancied, of an amber alert in an Imperial garrison. The search teams didn’t interest him much. They were sticking to the higher levels of the city, around the records building. They would have little idea who they were looking for. Their quarry had made a reckless escape across the rooftops of the high town. He was either hiding up there, or had fallen to his death in one of the ditch gullies between the stacked dwellings. They were probably dragging for a body already.

What interested him was the area directly below, a stretch of wharf around the base of one of the loading gantries. Internal freight hoists steadily ferried loads up to the level of the bridge spans where teams of servitors rolled them across to the cruiser’s hold gates. Sixty or more men were working on the rockcrete pan below him, mainly servitors and stevedores, plus a few gangs of Imperial slaves. They were being supervised by several Sekkite officers. They rolled metal carts out from the barns beneath him, carts laden with bales and crates, and shunted them into the hoist cages. A few men rode up with them. The rest waited as empty carts came back down, then clattered them back to the barns to be restocked.

A lighter bumbled past at low level, heading for the ship. Mkoll kept his head covered under the lip of the tarp. The small craft was chased by a shadow that flickered across the working dock and then out across the shivering water. Daylight had gone. Above the mouth of the cone, the sky was a starless grey. The shadow had been cast by the banks of floodlights framed on the edge of the wharf. Mkoll had thought about a lighter or a small lifter, but he wasn’t sure where they were working from. A landing area would be guarded, and it was hard to be anonymous among a small crew.

He watched the lighter turn and settle, lights winking, into a hold cavity further down the flank of the immense ship.

More agriboats were coming in, chugging sideways into the next dock bay along with smoke spilling at water level from their straining motors. They were loaded with more mainland personnel, a few shivering prisoners, and some small artillery pieces with sacks on their muzzles and their split trail carriages closed.

The thousand whispers in his head welled up again like the dead channel of a vox. The voice was speaking, a droning hiss he could feel in his sinuses and jawbone.

I have some words for you too, he thought. I’ll say them in person.

Down below, another train of carts rattled across the rockcrete, the gangs steering them shouting and exchanging comments. Servitors dragged empty ones back to the barn from the hoist. One of the officers, a sirdar, spoke to a group of stevedores, then wandered towards the barn, marking items on a slate.

The sirdar entered the lamplit barn and instructed the servitors which load to move from the freight stacks next.

One of his men called to him. He finished what he was saying, and walked around the bale stack to find out what the man wanted.

There was no one there.

Mkoll dropped down behind him, and snapped his neck with a practised twist. The sirdar’s feet jittered, and then he went limp. Mkoll dragged him behind a heap of trench-wire spools, and stripped off his jacket, watching all the while to make sure no one was coming. A decent jacket, and better boots than the ones Mkoll was wearing, but the boots were a size too small. He took the jacket, the Sekkite helmet and the weapons belt, which had a single shoulder strap. The belt’s pouches were full of hard-round clips because the sirdar carried a long-nosed autogun. There were no las cells to fit the sidearm he already had. But there was a small vox handset, a short-range unit, and three small grenades. They were little silver cylinders. Two were marked with red dots, which he guessed meant smoke. The other, its casing slightly ridged, was marked with a black dot. Fragmentation. Anti-personnel.

Mkoll tucked the laspistol into the back of his waistband, then put on the sirdar’s undershirt and jacket, and buckled the weapons belt over the top.

He stepped back behind the wire spools. Two packsons from the labour crews walked past the freight aisle. Once they had gone, he put on the sirdar’s gloves and full-face helmet, gagging slightly at the touch of the tanned leather and the acid smell of the sirdar’s spittle. Then he picked up the slate and stylus.

The sirdar walked back out onto the dock. A work gang was waiting beside a laden row of carts. A hoist car was returning to dock level, jangling with empty carts.

‘Ktah heth dvore voi?’ a stevedore asked him as he walked past.

‘Nen, nen,’ the sirdar replied, busy looking at his slate. ‘Khen vah.’

A bare-chested packson lifted the hoist’s cage door, and the servitors clattered the empty carts out.

‘Kyeth! Da tsa herz! Kyeth! Kyeth!’ the sirdar said, sweeping with his hand to urge the gang to load.

The men started to wrangle the heavy carts into the hoist. One of the packsons looked at the sirdar.

‘Khin bachat Sird Eloth?’ he asked. Where is Sirdar Eloth?

‘Tsa vorhun ter gan,’ the sirdar replied. Gone to his rest.

‘Tyah k’her het!’ the packson scoffed. This early?

‘Khen tor Sird Eloth fagrah,’ the sirdar replied. Sirdar Eloth is a lazy bastard.

The workers laughed. They pushed the cumbersome carts up the fold-down ramp, cursing each other as they handled them into the cage. Another lighter warbled overhead, heading towards the cruiser. Its shadow chased across the dock.

Three servitors and two packsons got into the cage with the new load. One went to pull down the cage door.

‘Nen, coraht!’ the sirdar barked, raising his hand.

He stepped forward and jerked his thumb, ordering one of the packsons out.

‘Shet, magir?’ the man asked.

‘Hsa gor tre shet,’ the sirdar replied, stepping into the hoist in his place. ‘Voi shet tsa khen verkahn.’ I’ve got to go up. Go ready the next load.

The sirdar pulled the cage shut. The hoist began to rise, slow and ponderous, the steel hawsers squealing through poorly greased drums.

The packson with him in the cage said nothing. The three servitors cycled their systems in neutral, and flexed their manipulator arms ready to resume effort.

The hoist reached the loading bridge level, and stopped with a jolt and a thump of block-brakes. The packson slunked open the cage door at the far end.

The sirdar waited while the servitors rolled out the first of the carts. More servitor crews and a few sweating labourers took hold of them, steered them clear, and began to roll them across the bridge.

The sirdar stepped out of the cage. He checked off items on his slate. Two Sekkite officers stood nearby with an excubitor, discussing loading options. None of them acknowledged him.

The sirdar fell in step behind the rumbling train of carts and followed them across the bridge span.

No one challenged him.

The hold gates of the Archenemy cruiser stood wide open to receive him.

‘How do we open a door that isn’t there?’ Curth asked.

‘Maybe we don’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘Say that again,’ said Curth.

Laksheema raised her voice to compete with the steady whoop of the red condition klaxons.

‘I said maybe we shouldn’t, doctor,’ she said.

Curth shot her a foul expression.

Gaunt ran his hand along the old stonework.

‘Maybe we need a drill,’ someone suggested.

Gaunt looked around. Trooper Perday flushed.

‘I mean, like in the Reach, sir,’ she added, nervously. ‘You know, a proper breaching drill. Just thinking out loud…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Is there a breaching unit in the palace compound?’ asked Gaunt. ‘A Hades?’

‘Must be,’ said Beltayn.

‘Think, think,’ Hark interrupted. ‘How do we get a fething Hades down here? Some of the halls between here and the transit grounds are too narrow, and there’s stairs–’

‘Go in from outside?’ Curth suggested.

‘Not viable,’ said Auerben. ‘Even if we could round one up.’

‘Agreed,’ said Sancto. ‘The thickness of the root wall. It would take days.’

‘And where do we drill?’ Auerben asked.

‘Someone find a fething plan of the undercroft level,’ Gaunt said to no one in particular.

‘Det charges,’ said Sariadzi bluntly.

‘Now, that’s better thinking,’ said Hark, nodding.

‘Stop,’ said Laksheema.

Everyone looked at her.

‘With respect, your debate assumes we want to open the undercroft,’ she said.

‘Feth you,’ said Curth.

‘Feth me all you like,’ Laksheema replied. ‘This is a security matter. A warp incursion. There’s something in there. I believe we would be derelict in our duty to the Throne to open that wall and let it into a palace containing the bulk of crusade high command and the person of the warmaster.’

Daur looked away. Hark squeezed his shoulder.

The Scions snapped around, weapons raised. Grae was returning, bringing the inquisitor’s savant Onabel and two robed interrogators.

‘Let them through,’ said Laksheema. She put her hand on the plump little woman’s elbow and cradled it. ‘Did Grae brief you?’ Laksheema asked.

‘He did, mam,’ Onabel replied. She combed her fingers through her curly silver hair. ‘All our meters are spiking. This is an incursion of serious grade.’

‘Serious enough to evacuate the palace?’ asked Gaunt.

Onabel hunched her shoulders. ‘Not my place to say, high lord,’ she replied. ‘But I wouldn’t stay here. I’m only here because I’m called to work. I’d venture that, at least, the removal to safe distance of senior echelon might be wise. That would include yourself, sir.’

‘I’m staying,’ said Gaunt. ‘Beltayn, go to the war room and…’ he hesitated. ‘No, it’s got to come from someone with authority. Van Voytz won’t act on the word of a vox-man. Inquisitor?’

Laksheema beckoned the two interrogators. She handed them her ordo rosette. ‘Convey to Lord General Van Voyz whatever the Lord Executor instructs you.’

They nodded.

‘Tell him immediate evacuation, including senior level,’ Gaunt said. ‘Tell him to carry Macaroth out of the palace on his shoulders if he has to. Tell him… Ibram told you this. It’s an unconditional order from the Lord Executor.’

‘Yes, lord,’ they replied, and hurried back the way they’d come, the tails of their robes lifting behind them.

Onabel had set her hands on the wall.

‘Here?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Laksheema.

The little savant closed her eyes. She took one hand off the wall and pressed it against her bosom. The other she left in place, her index finger tapping on the stone.

They could smell the ugly aura of psionics immediately. Perday covered her mouth. The Scions took a step back, uneasy.

Clear liquid began to seep out of the stonework, welling up and running down the wall around her hand like heavy beads of condensation. It felt as though someone had opened the door of a walk-in freezer.

‘Water?’ said Daur. ‘Is the flood up this high?’ He reached towards the droplets.

‘Don’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘It’s tears,’ said Onabel. She kept tapping her finger, her eyes squeezed shut.

‘Tears?’ asked Curth.

‘There is a great deal of pain on the other side of this wall,’ said Onabel. ‘Woe.’ Her voice was soft, but a tiny break betrayed her increasing discomfort. ‘I have voices,’ she said. ‘People are… there are dead people. Others crying out.’

‘May we hear?’ asked Laksheema. ‘If you can bear it?’

Onabel nodded. When her mouth opened next, it wasn’t her voice that came out of it.

‘–can’t find the door! There’s no door!’

There was no mistaking the voice. It was Mach Bonin. They’d never heard him so agitated, but it was undeniably him. The savant wasn’t impersonating. Bonin’s voice, the product of an entirely different set of vocal chords, was issuing from her mouth.

‘Mach?’ Gaunt said, stepping forward. ‘It’s Gaunt. Tell him it’s Gaunt.’

‘Is he the other side of the wall?’ asked Sancto.

Laksheema shook her head.

‘There’s no fething door, Yerolemew!’ Bonin said through Onabel’s mouth. ‘How’s that fething possible?’

‘I don’t know, Mach. Mach? Mach? There’s something on the stairs.’ Onabel’s speech had switched seamlessly to the gruff, rich cadences of the Belladon bandmaster. They’d never heard him panicking either. ‘Mach, it’s on the stairs. It’s all shadows. The women are screaming.’

‘Sergeant major!’ Gaunt shouted at the wall and the savant. ‘Sergeant Major Yerolemew! This is Gaunt! Can you hear me?’

‘Sir? Sir?’ Onabel’s lips kept moving, but Yerolemew’s voice had faded, as though he had moved away. The volume rose and fell like a ’caster looped on and off a signal. ‘Mach, did you hear that? Bonin! I heard someone. I heard Gaunt!’

The noises from the savant became inaudible. Muffled sounds. Echoes of words.

‘Bonin!’ Daur called out, moving in beside Gaunt. ‘Bonin? It’s Ban! Let me know you can hear us.’

The voice coming out of Onabel suddenly giggled. A different voice in another register. A child.

‘Feth,’ murmured Hark.

Curth nodded. ‘Yoncy.’

The giggle stopped. Onabel’s mouth continued to move silently. Then suddenly, sharply–

‘Ban?’

Daur shuddered. He fought to control the contortions of his face. His eyes filled with tears.

‘Ban?’ The voice was loud and very clear.

‘Elodie?’ Daur answered.

‘Ban, get us out. Ban? The shadow’s in here. We can’t find the door. Everything… everything’s moving around.’

‘Elodie… we’re trying to–’

‘Everyone’s scattering. Women and children. There was no door. The door just wasn’t there. The shadow came up. The bad shadow. Filling up everything. People – Ban? Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘Ban, love,’ said Elodie’s voice, as though she was just on the other side of a curtain. ‘Ban, it’s killing people.’ She started to sob. Tears ran from Onabel’s eyes and more droplets scurried down the wall. ‘I’m so afraid. There’s blood everywhere. It’s cutting through the retinue and– Ban? I think it’s hungry. I think it’s eating to… to get stronger. To grow. It’s filling everything up. Blood levels are rising–’

‘She means flood levels,’ whispered Sancto.

‘No, she doesn’t,’ said Laksheema.

‘Elodie?’ Daur grimaced through his tears. His fists clenched. ‘Elodie, stay put. Hide. We’ll get in there.’

‘Blood levels are rising. The shadow’s in us. It makes the sound I heard. The sound at Low Keen. The butcher sound. Juniper says it smells like a woe machine. I’m so scared. Get me out. Get me fething out. Please. I’m so sorry, Ban. So sorry. I was right. I was right about her, and I should have said before. I should have said. I knew what she was. I should have made someone listen–’

Elodie’s voice dropped to a distant whisper.

‘Oh Throne,’ she breathed. ‘She’s right here.’

‘Elodie?’

‘Ban? I love you. I always will.’

‘I love you, Elodie. I–’

Onabel fell silent. Her lips stopped moving.

‘Elodie?’ Daur murmured, staring at the savant.

Onabel let her hand slip off the wall. It flopped down at her side. She turned very slowly and opened her eyes. She stared right at Daur.

And opened her mouth. And somehow produced a sound it should have been impossible for a human voice to copy.

The howling shriek of a bone saw.

The light globes overhead shattered like autogun rounds.

Onabel coughed, and bloody phlegm sprayed from her lips. She fell down, twitching.

Daur sank to his knees.

‘Holy fething throne,’ murmured Beltayn.

Laksheema knelt beside her stricken savant. Curth ran to Daur, and tried to get him up. He wouldn’t move, so she crouched beside him instead and wrapped her arm around him.

‘Get charges,’ said Gaunt. ‘Viktor? Get charges now. A demolition team. We’re taking this wall down.’

‘My lord, we cannot let it out,’ said Laksheema. ‘Under no circumstances. It’s your regiment, I know. I understand your despair. But we cannot permit this thing to exit the undercroft area.’

Gaunt looked down at her.

‘I think if it wants to come out, it will,’ he replied. ‘I think it can come through that wall, or any wall, as easily as it can seal a door. I think killing the feth out of it is our only option. So kindly, inquisitor, shut the feth up.’

‘I’ll get charges,’ said Hark.

Auerben put a hand on Gaunt’s arm. He looked at her. She nodded her head to the back of the group behind them.

The Beati had been sitting on the floor beside Beltayn’s ruined vox-set the whole time. She hadn’t spoken a word. She hadn’t uttered a sound. She had just sat as if chronic fatigue had finally overcome her entirely.

She rose to her feet.

‘If we leave it in there, it will keep feeding and get stronger,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘I’ve been trying to focus. Trying to… trying to know.’

‘Know?’ asked Gaunt.

‘Know what I should do.’

‘You should leave,’ said Grae. ‘You and the warmaster. All the vital personnel. It’s here to kill, to obliterate the command structure–’

‘It is,’ the Beati nodded. ‘It’s a Heritor weapon. An old one. A rare one. Asphodel made it. His finest and most nightmarish work. A woe machine like no other. It’s been growing this whole time, learning, maturing.’

‘How the feth do you know any of that?’ Curth snapped.

‘He told me,’ said the Beati. ‘Because I asked and I waited and he answered.’

‘Who?’ asked Curth.

The Beati looked at her with a sad smile as though the answer was unambiguous.

‘Move your poor savant,’ she said to Laksheema. ‘Captain Daur? I need you to move too. Stand back. Weapons up.’

Laksheema and Grae carried Onabel clear. Daur got up, and allowed Curth to walk him aside. The others raised their weapons in a clatter of charging bolts, released safeties and slotting clips.

The Beati approached the wall.

‘Wait,’ said Gaunt. ‘You’re too valuable.’

‘No one’s too valuable, Ibram,’ she replied, ‘and no life is disposable.’

She put out her hand and touched the spot where Onabel had been tapping. There was no ceremony, no fanfare, no warning. The stone work crumbled. It collapsed around her fingertips. Blocks fell out and bounced across the floor. Some disintegrated into dust. The rupture widened, radiating out from her touch. A section of whitewashed stone three metres wide flexed, folded and fell back into the darkness with a rumble like an avalanche.

Dust billowed around them, glittering the red target beams of the Scions’ aimed weapons.

There was a ragged hole, like the mouth of a cave. Beyond it, the air was a soft blackness tinged with red. They could smell smoke, the stench of waste water. Blood.

The Beati drew her sword. She looked weak and drained, as though collapsing the wall had sapped her fading strength even more, but her voice was strong.

‘We kill it,’ she said. ‘We kill it before it eats its fill and becomes strong enough to kill us.’

Ordinate Jan Jerik checked his timepiece again. Just over an hour until middle night. According to schedule, Corrod’s forces would be at the execution points by now. By sunrise, Urdesh could be a different world, a place of new prospects and possibilities. Indeed, the complexion of the Sabbat Worlds as a whole should have begun to change.

He snapped shut the engraved silver cover of the timepiece and slipped it back into his waistcoat pocket. An hour until middle night. It was quiet. The halls of House Ghentethi were almost silent, with only night staff at their stations. Outside, the rain had eased, and an easterly was spoiling in across the Great Bay, piling steep banks of dark cloud inland across the south-western limits of the city, black against the slate-black sky. Full dark. That, he gathered, is what soldiers called it.

It all seemed too still and silent for such a significant moment. The world, he thought, should be shaking apart as such fundamental changes were made.

There would be difficult and confusing times ahead, of course. He understood that. Existential transitions were painful. But Urdesh had weathered many such transitions in its history. It had grown resilient. His efforts would focus on keeping the house secure, and on ensuring that the Archon and his magisters appreciated and remembered the role of his clave appropriately. It would be an era of renewal, an end to the long conflict that had kept them cowering like starving dogs, an end to the decades of war that had convulsed the Sabbat Worlds. The chokehold of the Cult Mechanicus tyrants would be broken, and the claves would be free to prosper again in the ways they had done generations before. They would be the demiurge masters of the world-forge, and Urdesh would be the precious, beating heart of a new epoch. A new Archonate.

This had been explained and promised to him repeatedly by the intermediaries who had visited frequently over the last two months. Some had been insurgent chieftains, others rogue tech-shapers from the wasteland zones. Once or twice, Sekkite officers in hooded rain cloaks had appeared on the house loading docks in the dead of night. Some had conversed in Jan Jerik’s tongue, while others had brought servitors as translators. One had channelled a voice which had spoken out of him like the wheeze of ruptured bellows.

The promises had been consistent. In return for assistance and specialist intelligence, Ghentethi would be spared and favoured. In the aftermath, it would have priority access to food supplies and resources, and after that, a pact-bond granting it first pick of contract-projects and commissions of manufacture. Jan Jerik had already made a comprehensive list of the forge assets and industrial facilities he would demand as Ghentethi’s due recompense, as well as acquisition orders for the labour force he would require.

The war was about to end. It would not end all at once, and there would be lean years as the broken forces of the vanquished were prised out of the Sabbat Worlds and driven to flight. But it would be a victory, the victory long imagined, and it would begin in earnest tonight. Ruined and shamed, the crusaders would not attempt to return for generations to come. It would take lifetimes for them to recover from the loss, and gather strength enough to contemplate the prospect of a fresh campaign.

Lifetimes, if ever.

Jan Jerik took out his timepiece again, checked it, and put it away. Corrod would be in position. Hadrel would be in position. The future hinged on those uncanny creatures. There was no way to know how they had fared. One unscheduled venting of the thermal network could have ended them already, and no one would know. Dawn would come and the future would be unaltered. The hope of victory would have passed away invisibly.

But things needed to proceed on the assumption that they had prevailed. A data wafer lay beside his glass of amasec on the lacquered side table. On it was a code-burst written in Sekkite cipher, designed to be broadcast via wide-band vox on the lower frequency channel used by the Archonate’s communications network. Corrod had helped him to compose the specifics. A call to arms. An order of uprising to all the insurgent forces in the tattered skirts of the city and beyond. Eltath had been pregnable for months. There were cells embedded everywhere, even in the inner quarters, along with Sekkite combat packs that had gone to ground in the city rather than flowing out with the general retreat a few days earlier. The code-burst commended their mettle and loyalty, promised them spiritual reward and deliverance, and specified critical targets.

They would be no more than noise, a violent disruption intended to fog the situation and draw Imperial attention from the key objectives.

Of course, if Corrod was already dead, the uprising would be a meaningless snarl, swiftly put down by the Militarum divisions for no result. And the code-burst transmission would be tracked, and Ghentethi erased by crusade prosecution.

Jan Jerik thought of Corrod, of the abomination that had revealed itself in the freight elevator. The image made him shudder. He had allied his House with abhuman creatures. It had been a gruelling choice. His doubts over the last few weeks had been many, not least at the sight of Corrod’s apparently worthless wretches when they first arrived at the house door. It was a choice between the continued yoke of slavery to the Omnissiah of the Golden Throne, and the prospect of an age without the privations of chronic war. He still didn’t know if he could trust the warp-words of Sek’s changeling angels. He feared their terrible beauty. But he did know what a lifetime under the scourge of the Mars priesthood felt like.

He knew true monsters when he saw them. He knew where freedom lay. Life was a series of choices, and every choice contained an unknowable risk.

He reached for his timepiece again and stopped himself with a smile. He didn’t need to know the time, for it no longer mattered. He had made his choice an hour earlier when he sent the code-burst.

He sat back and waited for the dawn to bring whatever it would bring.

Van Voytz looked at the ordo rosette again, and then handed it back to the waiting interrogators.

‘This is from the Lord Executor?’ he said.

‘I have repeated his words precisely, lord,’ one of them replied. ‘He insisted on that.’

Van Voytz nodded, and they stepped back. He stood for a moment and surveyed the war room. He’d come down to the main floor, his favourite place, among the strategium tables and the bustle of tactical staff. They’d been on red condition for the best part of an hour. Chevrons still flashed on the alert boards, though he’d had the interminable klaxons muted to allow them space to think.

He went to his station, and quickly wrote down a general command on a signal pad. He tore the sheet off and handed it to a runner.

‘Take this to the watch room,’ he said. He looked at his console, and began to type his authority code in.

‘You have accessed Central Classified Command Notation,’ an adept at the desk beside him said immediately.

‘I know,’ said Van Voytz. He continued to type.

‘This order burst will instruct on the General Band to all stations,’ the adept said.

‘I should hope so,’ Van Voytz replied. ‘I’m not so old I got the damn coding wrong.’

‘You have entered a Priority One Red Condition mandate. This will be an Unconditional and General Order to all personnel in the palace zone.’

‘Yes, it will,’ said Van Voytz.

‘What’s going on, Barthol?’

Van Voytz looked up from the keypad. Urienz had crossed the war room floor to join him.

‘I’m ordering full evacuation.’

‘You’re joking, surely?’ The brows of Urienz’s pugnacious face narrowed.

‘No. Direct instruction from the Lord Executor.’

‘This is an attack, then?’ Urienz asked.

‘There’s something going off in the sub levels,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Well, they haven’t got in there,’ said Urienz.

‘Gaunt says something has. An incursion. Clearly one he considers a credible threat.’

He resumed typing.

Urienz took hold of his wrist, gently but firmly. ‘Macaroth won’t wear this, Barthol,’ he said.

‘Well, he’s not in a position to argue.’

‘I did what Gaunt asked,’ Urienz said. ‘I went to Macaroth. As usual, he was furious about the interruption. I had to weather another of his tirades. I got a little sense out of him when his anger blew out. He’s aware that there’s a situation in the undercroft levels. He believes it’s–’

‘What?’ asked Van Voytz.

‘A misidentification. Perhaps the product of technical problems, perhaps some remote influence by the Archenemy. A distraction, Barthol. Macaroth insists that any significant Archenemy counter assault is a week away at least. There’s nothing of substance within a hundred and twenty kilometres of Eltath. Look, in the last two hours we’ve stepped up from amber status to red condition, plus the secondary order. Macaroth’s livid. The enemy’s poking at us somehow, trying to get us to dance a jig and lose our grip on the game. And we’re dancing, Barthol. Dancing like idiots.’

Van Voytz scowled at him. ‘The Beati supported Gaunt’s concern,’ he said.

‘And praise be to her,’ said Urienz. ‘But she’s a figurehead, a field commander. It’s not her place to direct strategy. An evacuation, Barthol? That would be a disaster. If this is anything solid, it’s a psychological attack intended to spook us into disarray before next week’s assault. An evacuation is exactly the sort of mayhem it’s designed to cause. The Sek packs will roll in across Grizmund’s line in the south west and find high command camping in the streets and shitting in doorways.’

‘I have an order, Vitus,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Well, the warmaster will have your balls in a monogrammed box if you follow it.’

Van Voytz shook his head. ‘I know Gaunt,’ he said. ‘He’s many things. But he’s no fool. If he says there’s cause, there’s cause. Throne’s sake, Urienz, he’s seen more of this shit first-hand than you or me. And that doesn’t matter anyway. He’s the Lord Executor. This is his order.’

Urienz shrugged. His broad, powerful frame stretched at his tailored blue jacket.

‘Your funeral,’ he said.

‘Better mine than everybody’s,’ replied Van Voytz.

He smiled at his fellow lord.

‘Yours too, actually,’ he added. ‘Gather an escort company and convey the warmaster from the palace.’

‘You bastard,’ Urienz replied, with a sorry shake of his head. ‘Can’t you charge Lugo with that?’

An adept at a nearby station called out and held up a signal form. Marshal Tzara strode across and took it. She brought it through the hustle of the floor to Van Voytz and Urienz.

‘An alert from vox-net oversight,’ she said, frowning. ‘Unauthorised broadcast detected about an hour ago. Code-burst, wide-band, low numbers.’

‘Origin?’ asked Van Voytz.

‘Vapourial or Millgate. They’re working to lock the source.’

‘Could be one of ours, strayed from the line,’ said Van Voytz.

‘Damn Helixid no doubt,’ added Urienz.

‘No,’ said Tzara. ‘It was encrypted. Cipher division is searching for a key. It’s not a Throne pattern. Ciphers grade a seventy-eight per cent likelihood that it’s a Sanguinary code, probably Sekkite.’

‘What are they doing, transmitting from down there?’ Van Voytz asked. ‘That’s under the line.’

‘And they’re painting a target on their backs,’ said Urienz. ‘Twenty minutes, and we’ll have Valks executing gun runs on the position.’

‘Call it in,’ said Van Voytz. ‘As soon as we have a lock.’

‘The issue is not who is sending and how swiftly we can wipe them,’ said Tzara. Her tone was gruff and no-nonsense. ‘The issue is who was listening. Wide-band, a transmitter of that power… it could only be received inside the city bounds.’

Van Voytz glanced up. A section chief at strategium station four had just raised his hand, clutching a signal form. Within seconds, another hand had risen at station six, then two at station eight. Three at tac relay. Two at forward obs. One at vox coordination. Five, all at once, at acoustic track. Still more hands rose, brandishing forms.

‘Shit,’ said Urienz.

‘Call them in!’ Van Voytz ordered.

‘Reporting small arms discharge in Albarppan,’ the section chief called back.

‘Sustained weapons fire, possible rocket grenades, East Vapourial into Millgate,’ shouted the woman at six.

‘Tracking mortars, two possible three, region of Antiun Square,’ called out an adept at eight. ‘Rapid, sustain, ongoing.’

‘Gunfire, harbour-side. Gunfire, Lachtel Rise. Gunfire, Shelter Slope.’

‘Vox activity, tight band, tight chatter, region of Kaline Quarter. Chatter reads as Sekkite.’

‘Detonations in Plade Parish and adjoining arterial. Habs ablaze.’

‘Movement reported, Millgate and surrounds. No confirmation of hostiles, but no ID tagging and no call response.’

‘Coordinate response primary!’ Van Voytz bellowed. ‘Marshal, tracking now. I want target solutions for the city batteries.’

‘At once!’ Tzara replied.

‘Air cover, up!’ Van Voytz shouted, turning to station two. ‘Call it in, call it in! Suppression and containment! Support divisions mobilise in five minutes or I’ll have heads on sticks!’

He looked at Urienz.

‘Get Macaroth out,’ he said.

‘You’re going with the evac?’

‘This isn’t a damn coincidence, Vitus. Get a bird ready to take him out of the city.’

Urienz nodded and made off across the floor. Van Voytz turned back to his station. ‘I want direct vox with Grizmund, Kelso and Bulledin in three! Advisory signals to Cybon and Blackwood. Tell them to stand by for instruction. And find me Lugo!’

He reached for the keypad. His screen flickered and went dark.

‘What the hell? Technical here!’

He looked up. There was a thump and a dying moan of power as the strategium nearest to him shut down. The holomaps it was displaying shivered and vanished. One by one, the strategiums around the war room floor blinked, sighed and shut down. As the tables failed, the main screens went dark in rapid succession.

Then the overhead lights strobed and went out.

‘Power down! Power down!’ an adept yelled.

‘No shit!’ barked Van Voytz above the tumult of voices. ‘Auxiliary power now!’

‘Switching,’ the adept replied. ‘No automatic. Re-trying… Auxiliary, failure! Back-up generators, failure!’

‘They can’t fail,’ Van Voytz snarled. ‘Re-initialise and re-start! Fire them up!’

‘Technical reports… the reserve batteries have drained,’ the adept said. ‘Support generation systems are experiencing a critical loss of capacity. No power to palace systems. No power to core-vox. No power to war room reserve and safety. Auspex is down. Detection grid is down. Fire control is down.’

She looked at Van Voytz in the half-light.

‘Void shields are down,’ she said.

‘Holy shitting Throne,’ whispered Van Voytz.

Ferdy Kolosim put the unlit lho-stick to his mouth and clasped it between his teeth, grimacing. A night this dark, he couldn’t light it in the open.

The sky was a huge swathe of reddish black cloud, low and menacing. It spread out across the unlit city like a shroud. Kolosim could barely make out the outline of Eltath. Blackout conditions were still in force. He located a few spots of light; the twinkle of a pylon beacon, small building lights like distant stars, a floodlight washing something to the southwest, the brief vent flare of a gas plume at Millgate.

The rain had stopped. There was a smell of wet soil in the darkness. A slight breeze had lifted, stirring litter in the waste ground to his left. The breeze felt like the prelude to something stronger, maybe a big storm that would roll in from the bay by dawn.

Heat lightning growled in the low cloud. There wasn’t much spark to it, but the mumbling sheet-flashes let him see the city for a fraction of a second every few minutes, the climbing skyline rising to the east, a key-tooth silhouette of spires and habs.

Sergeant Bray approached, effortlessly making no sound on the rough scree.

‘Are we set?’ Kolosim asked.

‘Oh yeah. All four companies, left and right of the approach road. Wire’s cut back. We’ve got support teams set up, decent, broad field with a focus on the road. Fire positions in a string off that way for about a kilometre.’

‘Transports?’

‘All off the road. Got them side-on, in case we need fall back cover. Scouts out on both flanks. It’s mostly bomb-site ruins on both sides for five kilometres.’

Kolosim turned and looked back up the approach road towards EM 14. It was the only vaguely lit thing around. He could see the glow of the gatehouse lights. The road was dark. The steel fenceposts stood out starkly where they hadn’t been pulled down. The oblong shadows of some of the transports were just about visible, rolled back on the rough slip.

‘Quiet order?’ Kolosim asked.

‘Everyone’s behaving,’ replied Bray. ‘Pretty decent alert level, actually.’

‘An active purpose refines the mind,’ said Kolosim.

Bray nodded at the Mechanicore complex.

‘Taking a while,’ he said.

‘Red tape. Reluctance,’ said Kolosim. ‘The priests don’t like to cooperate. Pasha’s probably reading them the riot act.’

His micro-bead pipped.

‘Kolosim, go.’

‘Caober. You pick that up?’

‘Be more specific.’

‘Uh, mortars. Mortar fire. South-west.’

Kolosim glanced at Bray.

‘Nothing here,’ he said into the link. ‘Crossing to you.’

They moved down the shallow slope and jogged across the road into the waste scree on the other side. Kolosim could see Ghosts hunched around him, the folds of their capes making them blend with the stone heaps and slabs of broken rockcrete they were using as cover. He and Bray moved along behind the outer line of them. Caober emerged from the darkness.

‘Mortars?’ asked Kolosim.

‘Sounded like,’ Caober told the big red-head.

They listened for a moment, and heard nothing except the breeze stirring litter. There was a faint flash of heat lightning.

A second later, a slow, soft peal of thunder.

‘Not mortars,’ said Bray.

Caober shook his head. ‘It wasn’t thunder just now. More punctuated. A little trickle of thumps. I’d put money on mortars.’

‘Well, that could be coming up from the line,’ said Kolosim. ‘It’s active beyond Tulkar.’

‘We wouldn’t hear it,’ said Caober. ‘Not at this distance, in these conditions. It was closer.’

Bray frowned. ‘Listen,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Kolosim.

Bray raised a finger, his head tilted to hear.

Pop-pop-pop.

‘That’s not mortars either,’ said Kolosim.

Pop-pop-pop.

‘That’s fething small arms,’ said Bray. ‘Autogun.’

Kolosim reached for his bead.

‘Stand ready,’ he said.

The distant popping stopped. About a minute passed, and they started to hear much louder cracks, like branches snapping.

‘Las,’ said Bray.

‘Definitely,’ said Caober.

‘What do you think?’ asked Vadim from his position nearby. ‘Insurgents?’

‘Must be,’ said Kolosim. ‘Can’t be Sek packs this deep in.’ He hoped he was right. The city edge was far from secure, but they were well inside the inner ring. If it was a company strength of the Sons, someone somewhere had made a big tactical error. Insurgents were bad enough. The small raid-cells were still pocketed throughout Eltath, lying quiet. They’d found that out to their cost at the Low Keen billet.

They couldn’t see the first few shots. Then a ripple of bright bolts flashed in high, looping into the scrub behind them. Two or three at first, then a sudden riot of them, incoming from a dozen sources. They flashed and zipped across the highway bank, hitting rocks, raising tufts of dust from the edge of the slip, and spraying pebbles off the front portion of the scree. A volley stitched across the mouth of the approach road, and Kolosim heard a sharp twang as a fence pole was cut in half.

‘Hold,’ he said into the micro-bead. He flicked channels. ‘R Company lead, R Company lead, this is rearguard. Be advised, we have contact at the gate at this time.’

‘Copy, rearguard.’

Kolosim switched channels.

‘All positions, hold fire. Let’s see how busy this gets.’

A second flurry came in, stinging the night air with bright darts. The las-fire began to chop at the forward positions, cracking and splitting rock cover.

‘They’re correcting,’ said Bray. ‘Cutting in closer now.’

Somewhere out in the dark, a support weapon started to chatter. A hard round .30, crew served. The shots licked along a line from the outer fence post to the nearest transport. They heard the slap as the heavy rounds punched through bodywork, then a smash as a windscreen blew out. The firing stopped, then they heard it begin again, the distinctive clattering cough of a belt feeder. It was spitting blue tracers this time, every tenth round. The illuminated rounds seemed to float and drift as they came in, feeling the range.

‘Seena,’ said Kolosim into the link.

‘Sir.’

‘They’re giving us tracers. Are you sourcing that?’

‘Angle’s wrong from here, sir.’

‘Melyr?’ Kolosim said.

‘Sir. If he keeps chucking that at us, I can narrow it down to about a ten metre zone.’

‘Don’t be greedy, Melyr. Just make a mess of the whole area.’

‘Pleasure, sir.’

‘Pour it on, please,’ said Kolosim.

Forty metres from him, one of the support positions opened up. The .30 howled for about ten seconds.

When it ceased, the tracers stopped skimming in.

‘Thank you, Melyr. Do it again if he starts back up.’

Kolosim didn’t hear Melyr’s reply. The night opened up with an intense barrage of small arms fire. A rain of las and hard rounds swept across their position. The combined roar felt extreme after the long quiet. If these were insurgents, there were a lot of them, and they had coordinated with alarming effect. Kolosim guessed at eighty or ninety shooters. How did cells link up to deliver this?

For thirty seconds, the barrage was so intense it kept them down. The noise seemed deafening. A sheet of smoke and lifted dust rolled off the scree.

Kolosim rolled onto his back, and adjusted his bead.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘They’re determined to have this out.’

He lay on his back for a moment, watching las-bolts flit over him, dazzling against the black sky.

‘Full contact, full contact,’ he ordered. ‘All positions. Light them the feth up.’

The moment he spoke, four prepped and ready companies of Ghosts opened fire. The light-shock lit the entire gate area.

Now the noise was truly deafening.

Major Pasha strode down the burnished arcade of the Mechanicus station behind the two adept wardens. Elam and Ludd led a squad of Ghosts in her wake. Behind them, Criid, Theiss, Spetnin and the other company officers were deploying squads to cover the front half of the complex.

The place was vast and the layout complicated. There were floors of polished brass and ornate walls dry with rust. Deep turbine halls throbbed with energy, and were criss-crossed by suspended walkways that would easily hinder standard practices of cover. Machine shops thrummed with power tools, dancing with sparks. Side vaults gave access to cryonic bays, and were bathed in cold blue light.

Everywhere they went, servitors and cowled adepts stared at them in curiosity and suspicion. They could hear the muted tick and chatter of machine cant as the adepts gossiped to each other. Newcomers, outsiders…

Halfway along the arcade of the inner court, Pasha was met by a senior tech-priest and a slender young man in black. The two adept wardens stepped back and stood to attention, their dendritic fingers holding their stave weapons upright.

‘Pasha, commanding Tanith First,’ Pasha said, snapping the sign of the aquila.

‘Sindre, interrogator, Ordo Hereticus,’ the pale young man replied. ‘I present Versenginseer Etriun, the study lead.’

The cowled priest nodded. Mandelbrot-pattern electrodes in the flesh of his throat rippled with light. He emitted a soft buzz of code.

‘You are aware of our business here?’ asked Pasha.

‘The gatehouse relayed the details,’ said Sindre. ‘The Mechanicus formally objects to this invasion by the Astra Militarum.’

‘Invasion?’ asked Pasha, amused.

‘All these Guardsmen. So many. How many companies did you need to bring into the sanctity of the Mechanicore?’

‘Sufficient,’ said Pasha. ‘I note that the priesthood objects to the intrusion of the Militarum, but not to the presence of the Inquisition.’

‘You’re not terribly good at politics, are you?’ said Sindre.

‘Don’t have much call for it,’ said Pasha.

‘Well, for one thing, I haven’t trooped a regiment in here,’ said Sindre. ‘For another, I am attached to the study. The ordo has a fundamental interest in the items. And for another, the versenginseer requires my assistance as an intermediary. Unless you speak mechmata hyper-bineric?’

‘I do not,’ said Pasha.

‘That’s a shame, captain.’

‘Major,’ said Pasha. She tapped her collar studs. ‘Just dots. Not hard to remember. If you can’t tell dots from dots, I wonder how you can tell heresy from a hole in the ground.’

The tech-priest made an urgent, buzzing sound. Sindre nodded.

‘We find your tone aggressive, Major Pasha,’ said Sindre.

Pasha shrugged. ‘Aggressive? I am soldier. Aggressive is my mother. She would bite your throat right out. Grrrr! Bite it.’

Pasha clutched her own throat for emphasis.

‘Now, eagle stones please, thank you,’ she said.

‘This is untoward,’ said Sindre. ‘The stones are xenos artefacts, under safekeeping. Neither the Mechanicus nor the Ordo Hereticus has yet determined their potential or use. It was clearly understood that they should remain in our hands for the duration. This was a given, signed off by the Militarum, the office of the warmaster, the Intelligence Division, your company commander Gaunt, and my associate Sheeva Laksheema.’

Pasha nodded, as if chewing this over.

‘I tell you what is untoward,’ she said. ‘I am here, asking you for thing. It is not a matter of negotiation. My rearguard is already in hot contact with the Archenemy on your doorstep. My company commander, “Gaunt”, as you speak him with shocking lack of respect, is Lord Executor. Lord Executor? You know this thing? My orders are his will, and his will, it cannot be challenged by Ordo Hereticus, Mechanicus of Mars, Intelligence Division, my fething mother, whatever. Also, I have asked you very nicely, please. Now get me the eagle stones, ready for transport, or I will stick my boot up your arsehole and go get them myself.’

‘I’d do it if I were you,’ said Ludd. He was standing at Pasha’s side, his arms folded. ‘I’d run and do it. She doesn’t feth around.’

Sindre glared at them.

‘I will take this up with the ordo senior,’ he hissed.

‘And he will take it up with the Lord Executor,’ said Pasha. ‘Then every­one will be happy, as long as they are the Lord Executor.’

The tech-priest’s actuators buzzed.

‘This way,’ said Sindre, gesturing behind him.

Pasha grinned.

‘You are lovely man,’ she said. ‘No matter what the other boys in the ordo say about you.’

They followed Sindre and Etriun along the arcade. As he walked, Sindre gestured to one side and then the other. The two adept wardens stayed where they were, but six skitarii emerged from the shadows and fell in beside the Ghost party, three on each side. They moved in perfectly synchronised step.

‘Expecting trouble?’ asked Ludd.

‘Security is elevated,’ replied Sindre, ‘the Urdeshic Palace issued an amber status advisory for Eltath this afternoon. The skitarii are a precaution. We’re lucky to have them. Few remain on Urdesh these days.’

The skitarii were the martial division of the Cult. They were as tall as the adept wardens, but seemed bigger because of their armoured mass and their breadth of shoulder. They were skitarii of the Cult Mechanicus Urdeshi, and wore the traditional double robes: short black coats over longer red mantles. Little of their original organics remained. Their augmetic hands were bare metal claws, clutching weapons across their chests. Their faces were silver masked, polished to a mirror sheen. Green pinpricks glowed in the deep recesses of the eyeslits. Four carried archeo­tech firearms across their chests: antique galvanic sleetguns. The other two – members of an officer caste, denoted by the intricate etching that covered their steel craniums – brandished black metal staves that were a metre and a half long, plainer versions of the ceremonial staves the adept wardens carried.

Without breaking stride, Etriun waved his actuator, and opened a massive golden blast hatch, then a second, and then a titanium iris valve six metres in diameter. Cold, sterile air blew out at them. They descended a metal ramp into a grand laboratory hall. Polished chrome workbenches gleamed in pools of stark, directional light. Each bench was equipped with manipulator robotics: long, delicately articulated alloy limbs that curled over each work surface ready to activate and begin work. They looked like huge metal whip-spiders clinging to the end of each workstation. They were dormant, shut down, limbs raised and splayed like hands raised in greeting.

‘Access crypt K of the Gnosis Repository,’ Sindre said to a trio of waiting adepts logis.

‘Crypt K is released and waiting,’ one replied in a synthesised voice.

Sindre led them across the lab. A compression hatch parted with a pneumatic hiss. What lay beyond resembled a detention bay. The deck was underlit and the general light levels were low. Thick pipework ran along one wall, connecting to a complex junction of ducts and vertical pipes at the far end of the bay. Massive hatches lined the other side. Light beading around each hatch glowed red, except for one hatch towards the far end, where the beading shone green.

Etriun entered the bay, followed by one of the skitarii officers and one of the warrior-caste. Sindre followed with Pasha’s team. The other skitarii remained on the lab side of the hatch.

‘Wait,’ said Sindre. ‘This is the Gnosis Repository. The crypt-safes contain their most precious relics. The versenginseer will perform the retrieval.’

The Ghosts halted. Etriun shuffled and approached the green-lit hatch. He hauled on the rail, and the crypt door swung open on galvanic hinges. Etriun paused for a moment, staring into the crypt, bathed in the soft white light that streamed out of it.

His actuator buzzed.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Sindre, stepping forward.

Las-bolts tore out of the open crypt, hitting Etriun in the thigh, groin, chest and head. He wobbled backwards, and fell against the wall behind him.

‘Throne alive!’ Sindre yelled. ‘Close the crypt! Lock crypt-safe K!’

More bolts whickered down the length of the bay. A second shooter, out of sight in the ductwork at the far end. Sindre was hit in the upper chest and hip. He squealed and fell onto the lighted deck. The skitarii warrior beside Elam took four hits and spun around hard, sparks and fluid spraying from its body. It recovered and swung back immediately to re-aim. Gerin, the Ghost to Pasha’s left, took a bolt in the face and collapsed on his back. He did not recover.

‘Suppressing fire!’ Pasha roared. Her side arm, a heavy Tronsvasse service pistol, was already blasting. The Ghosts opened up, raking the length of the Repository with assault fire. The two skitarii began unloading their weapons, advancing steadily. The damaged warrior fired its ancient galvanic. The sleetgun spat hails of micro ’chettes down the length of the bay. The officer’s stave juddered and pumped out invisible bursts of force that rippled the air. Ducting at the far end crunched and buckled.

There was no cover. Multiple hostiles were concealed at the opposite end of the long chamber. The entire length of the bay lit up with a furious cross pattern of exchanged fire.

Ludd ran to Sindre, clamped his hand around the man’s gouting chest wound, and started to drag him backwards. Wall panels shattered. A las-round went through Ludd’s sleeve. Sindre was staring up at him, eyes wide, his mouth gaping. The shot had gone into the top of his chest, almost at the base of the throat. He was soaked in blood.

‘Where the feth are they?’ Pasha yelled, jerking as a las-round clipped her shoulder plate.

Elam was hollering into his link.

‘All sections! We are compromised and taking fire! Intruders inside EM Fourteen! Repeat intruders inside EM Fourteen!’

Two figures emerged from the open crypt hatch. They were hard to see. The bright light shining out of the crypt seemed to attenuate them, making them seem eerily tall and unnaturally slender. One was using the open hatch as a shield and shooting a lasrifle at Pasha’s group. The other dashed across the walkway, grabbed Etriun’s body and dragged it back into the crypt. The skitarii officer drummed a pulse from its stave that dented the crypt hatch. Somehow, the slender man behind it braced it open. He returned fire. The las-bolt hit the skitarius directly in the left eye. There was a minor implosion inside its gleaming chrome skull. It wavered, and dropped to its knees so hard that it cracked the clearplex panels of the underlit floor. Three more shots found it, and blew out its neck with such force, its almost-detached head swung around at a wild angle and hung sideways off a stump of fractured ceramite vertibrae. The stave clattered from its hands. It did not move again.

The fire rate from the far end of the Repository increased. Within moments, two more Ghosts had been killed by las-bolts.

‘Back! back!’ Pasha bellowed. ‘We are dead in the open!’

They backed towards the laboratory hatch, making their own cover with streaming las-fire. Ludd was dragging Sindre. Trooper Setz ran to help him.

The remaining skitarius did not retreat. It advanced steadily and remorselessly into the storm of shots. Its sleetgun whined as the voltaics cycled to power, then cracked as the galvanic charge launched a cloud of micro dart rounds. It got off four shots and almost drew level with the open crypt before sustained las-fire finished tearing it apart. It fell, its robes ablaze.

Pasha’s survivors backed into the gleaming lab space. Shots shrieked after them. Elam and Kadle stood in the hatch frame and hosed with full auto while Pasha found the activator for the compression hatch and slammed it shut. The four skitarii who had remained in the lab were advancing, match-step, towards the hatch.

‘Wait! You, wait!’ she yelled at them. ‘They just cut down two of your kin! And four of mine! That’s a kill zone in there!’

The skitarii halted. Binaric code bursts snapped between them.

Ludd and Trooper Setz dragged Sindre to one of the chrome benches and laid him on it. They left a long trail of blood all the way back to the hatch. Setz tried to maintain compression, while Ludd opened his field kit with bloody fingers.

‘Keep him still!’ Ludd cried.

‘How the living feth are they in there?’ Pasha demanded, storming towards the nearest adept. The adepts logis in the lab seemed to have frozen in disbelief. A logic problem had made them cycle.

‘We do not understand,’ one said. ‘The Repository space is secure. There cannot be danger within a secure space–’

‘There must be another access point!’ Pasha snapped. Her upper arm was bleeding. She ignored it.

‘No,’ said another adept. ‘The Gnosis Repository is a sealed section. One access.’

‘One access my backside!’ cried Pasha.

‘The thermal vents,’ said the third, arriving at a viable hypothesis. ‘If hostiles entered via the thermal vents–’

‘Impossible,’ replied the first. ‘They would never have made it through the geotherm system alive.’

‘Well, they fething did!’ snarled Pasha.

The adept wardens strode into the lab through the iris valve, followed by Criid’s first section and a squad from Theiss’ company.

‘What the feth is happening?’ Theiss asked.

‘Compromised!’ said Pasha. ‘Their fething security is compromised to shit! The enemy is in the vault! They have the fething stones!’

‘They cannot exit,’ said the remaining skitarii officer in a grinding voice that echoed from its chest plating. It and its three kin aimed their weapons at the compression hatch in neosynchronous unison. ‘We will cancel their lives as soon as they try.’

‘Do this,’ ordered the adept wardens in unison.

‘They can get out the same way they fething got in!’ Pasha roared.

‘Not possible,’ said the adept wardens.

‘Stop telling me that,’ said Pasha. ‘This vent system. This ge-o-thermal vent. Is there a way into it?’

‘There is access at several points within the complex,’ said an adept logis. ‘The geothermal substrate is a network that supplies power to all aspects of this facility, and to all other forge sites on Urdesh. It underpins the city, connecting a subterranean duct network that draws heat and pressure energy from the natural volcanic–’

‘Don’t give me lecture!’ Pasha cried. ‘Show me way in! Show me fething access point!’

‘Turbine Hall One is the closest,’ said an adept logis.

The adept wardens looked at each other and then back at Pasha.

‘We will show you the location,’ said one.

‘We will mobilise the remainder of our skitarii complement from cryonics,’ said the other, ‘and activate all automata gun slaves.’

‘Tona!’ Pasha called out. ‘Go with this pair of… of… wardens. Ready a strike group. Prep to go in fast, cut the devils off!’

‘Get flamers up front, Criid!’ Elam added.

Pasha looked at him.

‘Flamers? Not fething flamers!’ she exploded. ‘These devils came up through fething ge-o-thermal system! They are fething fire-retardant!’

‘There’s something about them, that’s for sure,’ said Kadle. ‘I’m certain I clipped one in the firefight. One of the two who came out of the crypt. It didn’t even jolt him.’

‘Tona? Tona, go!’ Pasha yelled. ‘Shoot them, kill them with sticks, fething kick them to death! Whatever! Get in and cut them off!’

Criid was already yelling orders into her link as she followed the adept wardens out of the lab.

Under the hard light inside crypt K, Corrod looked down at Etriun. The versenginseer was lying on his back, fluids leaking from his multiple wounds. There was a spark of life in him, machine life at least. His electoos had gone a cold blue colour.

Ulraw entered the crypt. He had been clipped on the arm during the exchange, but the bolt had barely broken the skin.

‘One casualty on our side, damogaur,’ he said. ‘Ekheer. Struck by flechettes. He’s healing. The enemy has withdrawn to the lab level and closed the hatch.’

Corrod nodded. ‘Bring the others up,’ he said.

The Qimurah had entered the Gnosis Repository through a spur in the thermal vents that rose through the sub-levels of EM 14. As they drew close, Corrod had been able to smell the eagle stones, and feel their pull. He had been preparing a device to unlock the crypt hatch when the light surrounding it had gone green. Like a gift. The shapers of the dark had granted him a boon.

He had known what it really meant. Someone was approaching. He had sent the bulk of his force back to the vent access at the end of the bay to take up firing positions, and then entered the crypt with Ulraw.

The stones were lined up on either side of the crypt. Eight stone tablets, each encased in a sterile plastek cover and set in an illuminated alcove. The Glyptothek removed during enemy action from the College of Heritance on Salvation’s Reach more than ten years earlier. An heirloom of past eras, prized beyond any other thing by He whose voice drowns out all others. They were Enkil Vehk, the key of victory. Not just victory over the scum of the Throne, but victory over the bloated Archon, Urlock Gaur. Anarch Magir Sek would crush both of them. He would drive the crusade of blighted Terra back into the stars, and he would claim his rightful place as Archon of the Sanguinary Tribes.

Ulraw returned with several of the others. They gazed at the tablets.

‘Remove them carefully,’ Corrod told Ulraw. ‘We’ll be moving out quickly.’

‘The enemy will counter-attack within minutes,’ said Hellek. ‘They are not fools, sad to say. They will have realised we used the vents. They will block them or attempt to flush them.’

‘Which is why we will move with haste, Hellek,’ Corrod said. ‘And why I will create a suitable distraction.’

Ulraw began to remove the stones from their alcoves. Corrod knelt down beside the dying adept.

Ordinate Jan Jerik had provided him with all the technical support he had demanded: access to the vents, schematics, pass keys, system codes. He had also supplied, at Corrod’s request, a data plug of Mechanicus pattern loaded with a tailored code he had called Berserker. It was, Jan Jerik had explained with pride, sanctioned codeware dating back to the Dark Age of Technology, a machine plague that would poison and corrupt any system it infected. This, he had promised, would scramble and deactivate even the most secure Mechanicus holding crypt.

Corrod hadn’t had to use it. The crypt-safe had been unlocked for him. But it seemed such a waste.

‘Friend,’ he said to Etriun, speaking in the Imperial tongue.

Etriun’s eyes fluttered. Soupy fluids gurgled out of his mouth.

‘I have something for you,’ Corrod said. ‘A gift from me, and from the Anarch whom I serve. You will share it with all of your kind, so they may delight in its wild ecstasies.’

Corrod yanked several cables out of the plug ports behind Etriun’s left ear. The versengineseer shuddered and emitted several shrill, buzzing calls of despair. Corrod fumbled with the ports until he found one that matched the data plug. He pushed, and the plug connected with a snap.

Berserker initiated. The tech plague streamed from the data plug into Etriun’s amygdala and cyber-cerebral implants. It flooded his micro-cogitators. It burned what was left of his flesh. It was feral code, magnificent in its ferocity and aggression.

Etriun spasmed. He was dying, but his neosync connections to the EM 14 noosphere were still open.

Kolding entered the laboratory space.

‘There!’ said Captain Elam, pointing to the workbench where Setz and Ludd were fighting to keep Sindre alive.

Kolding opened his kit and assessed the man’s wounds. ‘Keep pressure there,’ he told Setz. ‘I’ll try to seal and then pack the wound.’

‘I think he’s bleeding out,’ said Ludd.

‘He is bleeding out,’ replied Kolding simply. ‘That’s what I’m trying to prevent.’

Pasha glanced at Theiss. ‘Are they there yet?’

Captain Theiss was listening intently to his bead. He nodded.

‘Yes, mam,’ he said. ‘Criid and Obel have reached the vent access. They have squads with them. Preparing to enter.’

‘Word from outside?’

‘Major firefight at the gate,’ Theiss replied.

Pasha paced. Waiting was always the worst. She’d give the vent parties ten minutes, then she’d re-open the compression door and storm the Repository bay. Cut the devils off at both ends.

She eyed the room. The four skitarii still stood motionless, weapons aimed at the hatch. Two of the adepts logis had left to activate the facility’s automata weapon servitors. The one who had remained seemed most concerned that Sindre was leaking pints of blood onto the polished, sterile surfaces of the laboratory zone. Elam and the other Ghosts were just waiting, checking weapons and slotting fresh powercells. The firefight had keyed them up. They didn’t want to crash. They wanted to manage the stress so it was ready the moment the fighting resumed.

She knew how they felt. She’d lost four men. Four fething men. And the Archenemy devils had reached the stones before her. She would not allow them to leave the site with such a precious cargo.

She would not allow them to leave the site alive.

Several of the laboratory’s wall screens suddenly fluttered and started to crawl with odd, rapid lines of code script.

‘What is that?’ she asked. ‘Is that data? Do we have new data?’

The adept logis stared at the screens.

‘I do not recognise the code,’ he said. ‘I do not recognise it. Non-standard. Source unknown. Type unknown. Codeware has entered neosync. Codeware has penetrated internal cogitation. Codeware has penetrated the machine-spirit core. Codeware has–’

‘What?’ asked Pasha. ‘Codeware has what?’

The adept logis didn’t reply. He turned to look at her. There was something very wrong with his eyes. Watery blood was trickling from his sockets and the augmetic optic implants had hazed with roiling fields of static. A substance like treacle was oozing out of his breather mask.

‘Berserker,’ he said in a flat tone. ‘Berserker. Berserker. Berserk. Berserk. Zerk. Zerk. Zerk. Zerk–’

He headbutted her with savage force. It took her by surprise, and she fell, clutching her face. The adept logis knelt on her and began to throttle her. He started screaming a high pitched stream of obscenities.

Asa Elam rushed forward and tried to pull the adept logis off her. It was like trying to shift a boulder. The adept logis had locked solid like a piece of machinery. His grip on Pasha’s throat tightened. Her eyes bulged. Her tongue, protruding from her spittle-flecked mouth, went blue.

Elam smashed the butt of his rifle into the adept’s head. The adept went limp and let go. Elam wrenched him off her. Pasha lay on her back, gasping, trying to breathe again. There were red hand marks around her neck.

The sagging adept logis suddenly came to life again and broke Elam’s sturdy grip. Screaming further obscenities, he lunged at Elam and clawed at his face.

‘What the feth is wrong with you?’ Elam snarled, trying to fight him off. He threw a fast punch, the snap-jab special that had seen Asa Elam triumph in many garrison sparring bouts. Elam cursed as he broke a finger on the adept’s brass faceplate.

‘Throne’s sake! Help me here!’ he yelled.

The other Ghosts, aside from those fighting to save Sindre, were already hurrying to his side.

‘Shit!’ said Kadle.

The robot arms on all the benches had suddenly started to twitch and writhe. Blade limbs and cutter dendrites gouged blindly at the steel work surfaces, making metal-on-metal squeals that hurt their ears.

The four skitarii at the hatch turned. Facing into the lab, they started shooting.

The first sleetgun blast exploded Kadle’s head and upper body in a cloud of meat and bone. The second, another tight cloud of micro flechettes, blew a hole through Mkjaff’s torso, almost removing his entire right side. Gore painted the wall screens behind him. He gazed down in disbelief at the missing part of his torso, then his spine splintered and he folded and fell.

The others ducked for cover. There was little of it. A galvanic shot-cloud grazed Captain Theiss, and stippled the wall beside him with a thousand tiny punctures. He blinked and saw he was bleeding from dozens of small wounds across his right thigh, hip, and right arm. The pain was excruciating. The micro ’chettes were still boring into him. He began to scrape frantically at his skin.

The skitarii officer thumped a pulse from his stave. The bubble of hyper-dense gravity bent light and air as it crossed the room. It hit ­Theiss while he still scrabbled at his own flesh, and pulped his head like an invisible jackhammer.

Ludd wheeled from Sindre’s body. His bolt pistol boomed and the explosive shell struck a skitarius at very short range. The warrior’s torso blew out. Ludd fired again, and knocked the Cult Mech officer sideways in a bloom of flame. On the far side of the lab, Konjic, Mkget and Dickerson unloaded on auto, side by side, hosing skitarii and the area around the hatch with a storm of las. Another skitarius fell, shorting out at every joint. The remaining two – a warrior-caste and the officer Ludd had damaged – kept advancing, firing, las-fire clipping and puncturing their armour. Caught in the middle, Kolding ducked his head and continued working on Sindre as las shrieked past him in one direction and galvanic bursts burned past in the other.

Pasha rose and spat blood. She started blazing at the skitarii with her sidearm. Elam, snarling in frustration, punched the frenzied adept logis in the gut and then the neck. As the adept staggered backwards, Elam swung up his lasrifle and shot him twice. Elam’s right cheek was raked with claw marks. A graviton pulse shivered the air right in front of him, and then punched a dent the size of a medicine ball in the lab’s metal wall. Elam threw himself flat. He fast-crawled, reached the nearest workbench, and got to his knees, using it as cover. He started to hose at the skitarii too.

The multiple flailing cyberlimbs serving the bench grabbed him, like a spider seizing its prey. Elam yelped. The limbs had his wrist, forearm and shoulder, and the digital claws were drawing blood. Mechadendrites slashed and whipped, trying to loop his neck. An additional servo-arm reached in, servos purring, extending a gleaming titanium scalpel towards his face.

Elam tore free, leaving most of his sleeve and part of his cape behind him. He landed clumsily on the polished floor. The manipulator limbs began to mercilessly dissect the scraps of fabric they had captured.

A galvanic shot-burst went through Dickerson and exited in a giant mist of blood and disintegrated meat. The spray drenched Mkget and blinded him for a moment.

Ludd heard Setz shriek. The manipulator arms on all the work benches were thrashing and clawing wildly. Drill-limbs and flashing surgical blades were ripping into Sindre’s helpless form. They skinned and butchered him in a matter of seconds, dividing him into bizarre, geometric pieces.

Setz had still been trying to compress Sindre’s wound. The limbs had seized him too.

Kolding tried to grab him. The hyper-mobile limbs slammed Setz face down into Sindre’s steaming remains. Mechadendrite cables lashed around him, and constricted him, binding him to the bench. The cutting beams, shuttling side-to-side along rapid and precise lines, did the rest, slicing Setz from crown to shoulders into dozens of wafer thin cross-sections.

Kolding backed away, utterly dazed by the horror of it. Ludd body-slammed him, bringing him down out of the crossfire.

Elam and Konjic concentrated fire on the remaining skitarii warrior. The barrage of las-bolts ripped off its arm and destroyed its face. It fell, fluid jetting from the impact cracks crazing its bodyplate.

The last skitarius, the officer with the engraved skull, came to a halt. Cerebral fluid and hydrodynamic synthetics gushed from a large hole in the middle of its forehead. It died standing up, augmetic limbs locked.

Pasha lowered her sidearm. The air in the lab was thick with discharge smoke, and almost every surface was splashed and dripping with blood. A broken monitor was sparking and burning.

‘Throne alive,’ whispered Mkget.

‘Alert!’ Pasha yelled. ‘Alert, all sections–’

She realised that her ear-bead had been yanked out when the adept assaulted her. She fumbled for it, found the trailing wire, and stuffed it back in her ear.

Before she could speak, she heard the frantic traffic from the Ghost units inside EM 14.

‘–attacking! They’re fething attacking! I say again, the Mechanicus have turned on us! The Mechanicus have turned on us!’

Outside the lab, rapid gunfire was rolling through the hallways and arcades.