Auric Gods

Chapter Ten City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light

The mag-trans was poorly lit and smelled of dank. The shadows served Meroved, who went swiftly through the transit tunnels beneath Vorganthian’s eastern district. No one bothered him. Few of the ragged-looking patrons even glanced in his direction. This part of the automated transit hub did not attract crowds. It was the oldest section of the network, in one of the oldest city districts and close to disuse.

Parts of the roof had begun to sag in places, the sheer weight of the agglomerated levels above taking a toll on the aging granite brick and iron rebar. Streams of effluence trailed through gaps in the rockcrete, dark and dirty little stains that put Meroved in mind of blood.

He had left the observatory with all haste, dressing quickly in a lightweight but durable flak-weave bodysuit with a plasteel-plate layer over the torso. He had selected a broad-bladed vibro-sword, which now sat in a scabbard slung across his back, and a heavy-gauge bolt rifle called a Shieldbreaker, which hung on a strap next to it. A hip holster contained an archeotech fusion pistol, Firebrand. From an old wooden casket, he had taken several pieces of arcana.

A black storm cloak finished off the ensemble, both large and thick enough to hide the munitions belt he wore around his waist and the fact he was well armed. A deep hood concealed a vox-bead.

It had not taken long to reach the mag-trans tunnels via grav-speeder and follow them on foot to the main transit hub. His observatory lay at a nexus point underneath the city and all roads fed to it, which made reaching the edges of the city easier. Meroved had left the transport behind in a disused service dock, where it would remain hidden and undisturbed until he returned for it.

The tunnel he had entered the transit hub by eventually opened out into a large and dilapidated atrium. It ran upwards for several floors, terminating in a vaulted ceiling where cracks in the decaying plaster had spread like veins. A single mag-carriage hovered at the edge of the tiled space in a poorly maintained grav-harness, its repulsor plates sparking. It carried a handful of passengers: a few lowly scribes and some Munitorum labourers who huddled close together and exchanged words in a stooped, conspiratorial fashion. One of the labourers, a woman with grimy hair and soot stains on her face, looked up at Meroved as he passed. Upon seeing him she quickly looked down again.

The atrium itself had a few loiterers. Dirty bullet-farmers and plate-cutters gathered in begrimed and beaten-down groups. A dishevelled old man in dirty rags played a tuneless ditty on a pump-organ but had failed to attract a crowd. A Ministorum priest in long puce robes read aloud from a battered copy of the Sermons of Sebastian Thor and was similarly ignored.

A trader in a dishevelled brocade jacket with a discoloured neck ruff had more admirers. He cleaved to his servitor body­guard, clutching a lockbox close to his chest as he gave a look of undisguised contempt to a pair of shaven-headed juves with ganger tattoos. And then there were the hooded and the cloaked figures, the ones who kept to the shadows and the edges, the mutants and low-level wyrds. These poor wretches posed no threat to Meroved or the Throne. They hid down here away from the witchfinders and bounty hunters who plied their trade in the scalps of the undesirable and the shunned. Fear and suspicion were valuable commodities in the Imperium and the hunters traded on them.

Meroved scowled beneath his hood.

Lassitude and despair clung to this place like an invisible fog. This part of the transit hub should have been torn down years ago, though perhaps the labour-barons who ran it were simply waiting for it to be crushed by the layers pressing down from above.

Off-world smugglers tended to use the rundown parts of the city to conduct their illegal activities. Much like the dregs trying to hide away behind rags and anonymity, such activities seldom piqued Meroved’s interest. He wasn’t on Vorganthian to enforce law and order; his remit was much larger and more far-reaching. The cargo rumoured to be in the smugglers’ possession had changed the normal run of things. The pattern had shifted, just as he had told Gedd.

The Vexen Cage. A relic, a very old and dangerous relic that had no place being at large in the galaxy. The description he had received matched what he knew of it, but until he was certain he would not act beyond observing. What he did, what he was oath-sworn to do, only worked because no one knew he was doing it. His decision to leave the observatory had not been taken lightly.

Meroved needed proof, one way or the other.

He surreptitiously opened the vox-bead.

‘Zatu,’ he whispered, crossing the atrium floor.

A click in his ear indicated Zatu was receiving.

‘I have reached the atrium.’

‘East tunnel, my lord,’ Zatu replied.

Meroved found it immediately. It was approximately seventy feet ahead of him, a wide arch of grey stone that led into further shadows. A chain hung across the opening with a metal sign that read CONDEMNED in stencilled letters. He saw something else too, a small mark on one of the bricks that made up the arch. It was too deliberate to have been created by accident, so Meroved had to assume the graffiti was meant as a message or marker. However, it looked incomplete, like an arrowhead without a shaft with a thin vertical line drawn at the broad end.

A man standing near the tunnel, leaning against a decrepit column, looked up. He wore a long grey storm coat and had the look of the Astra Militarum about him with a close-shaved head and a regimental tattoo. A second mark under his right eye was definitely not military. It was of a lit candle depicted in dark red ink. Unlike the other civilians, the man did not look away when Meroved met his gaze.

‘Something here, Zatu,’

‘Do you have the relic in sight, my lord?’

‘Not yet. It may be close. Stand by.’

Slipping the catch from his hip holster, Meroved made for the ex-Guardsman. He had gone less than a few feet when the glow-globes that were affixed to posts around the atrium floor flickered and went out. A heavy darkness fell, like a blindfold drawn across the eyes. The last carriage noisily slipped its harness, drawing Meroved’s eye for a second. The resulting charge had overloaded the lights. It sped off, trailing a chain of angry sparks. After a few seconds the momentary blackout lifted.

The ex-Guardsman had gone, but the chain roping off the east tunnel still swung slightly in his wake.

Meroved accelerated into a run, his cloak parting to reveal Firebrand. He shot through the chain, the two severed ends sweeping apart like a drawn curtain. Panicked shouts came from some quarters.

He reached the tunnel entrance in seconds, the meagre crowds parting instinctively, and rushed inside.

Only then did Meroved slow to a walk. More darkness pervaded here, and even greater disrepair. The sign had been accurate, but someone was using this part of the transit hub. He discerned footprints and the signs of occupation, a few lho-stick stubs and a doused sodium lamp. The tunnel went on for at least a hundred feet before it turned a corner. Meroved followed it.

He had only gone a few paces when the low hum-buzz of an anti-gravitic engine made Meroved turn to his left. Alcoves punctuated the tunnel walls at evenly spaced intervals on both sides and from one burst the man he had seen outside the entrance, riding a Harrower jetbike. It was vintage and large, a low-rider with the driver leaning back as he pushed out the throttle and dug in his heels. A long grey-and-black chassis cut through the air like a prow, its front-mounted heavy stubber no use against a pursuing target.

A lookout, Meroved realised. He had to stop him.

He triggered Firebrand and the muzzle flared, emitting a low activation whine. The fusion beam glanced the front deflector of the jetbike’s chassis, kicking up a riot of hot and angry sparks that sent the driver off course and his ride digging into the ground like a ploughshare. It cut a furrow about twelve feet long before it went too deep and stuck hard, flinging the driver over the chassis and another twelve feet farther up the tunnel. He came to rest in a heap, his limbs bent awkwardly around his body.

Meroved quickly covered the distance to the crash site in long, powerful strides. Crouching down, he hauled the driver up onto his backside, eliciting howls of pain, and propped him against the wall.

‘Talk,’ he demanded. ‘Now.’

The ex-Guardsman grimaced, his teeth pink with blood. A surge of it came up out of his throat and he choked for a few seconds before managing to spit it out over his chin.

‘You’re dying,’ Meroved told him. ‘Your ribs are shattered, and at least one of them has pierced a lung. Your left arm is broken and both legs. Death will be very painful. I can make it less so and end it quickly.’

‘Holy… Terra… you’re…’ the ex-Guardsman began, wheezing and gurgling between words, ‘one of them…’

Something like awe or fear flashed in his eyes. Even so close to death, a mortal could not deny the existential dread of being faced with one of the Emperor’s chosen.

Meroved scowled. He needed him to talk.

‘And you knew that before you ran. How? Who are your allies? Are they down here too?’

The man laughed, though it looked painful for him and sounded more like choking.

‘It will be like drowning,’ said Meroved, losing patience, ‘except you’ll be on land and it will be in your own blood. What is your name? What does that mark underneath your eye mean?’

A few moments remained. Meroved could hear it in the man’s breathing.

‘Speak to me. You have nothing to gain now by obfuscation. Serve the Throne and in that find some redemption.’

The ex-Guardsman smiled, and looked strangely beatific before spitting up another dark gobbet of blood.

‘I am already a servant… but shall not yield…’ he rasped, every breath a supreme effort, ‘to despair… My suffering… serves… a great purp–’

He slumped back, chalk-pale, eyes sunken into hollows.

Meroved stood and cursed beneath his breath. He had found nothing, and was about to raise Zatu on the vox when he saw the parchment edge that had slipped out of one of the dead man’s pockets. Crouching back down, Meroved pulled out a map. It depicted the disused tunnels, describing a route from the eastern entrance to some kind of rendezvous point or hideout. Further inspection of the body revealed a null-collar around the man’s neck. It had been deactivated but appeared functional. Meroved unclasped it, folded it along the three hinges set around its circumference and tucked the collar into one of the large pouches on his munitions belt.

Then he looked back the way he had come to the jetbike, its anti-gravitic engines gently pushing it against the dirt, like an arrow slowly quivering in a target ring. Both the stirrups and the seat could be heavily adjusted. He reckoned it was approximately the same size as a Dawneagle, though bulkier and less refined than the jetbikes ridden by his old comrades in the Kataphraktoi.

Meroved raised an eyebrow.