Auric Gods

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

Gedd had returned to the precinct as soon as she was back on Elserow. Xeus had met her outside the observatory, just as Meroved had said. He had been right about her not being able to find her way to the street too. Unlike when she had been here before, there was no stairway that led out of the alley. There was just a lamp, like that on the Avenue of Light. It had flared brightly, as before, and Gedd had shut her eyes to avoid being blinded. When she opened them again she was back on Elserow. Xeus had gone.

She met Klein on her way out of the precinct, shouldering his way through the burly peacekeepers, who were strapping on armour and preparing for an underhive sortie.

‘Low-hive cleansing?’ she asked, sparing Klein a glance as she headed to the precinct’s landing strip.

‘What? Oh yes, whatever, Gedd,’ he said, doing his best to follow. He had shed most of his kit and was wearing simple grey fatigues. ‘Our twelfth suicide…’ he ventured.

Gedd stopped and turned, swearing colourfully at the other peacekeepers trying to bustle past her. They all saw sense and took a wider berth.

‘Not a hive-worker,’ said Klein.

Gedd scowled. She didn’t have time for this.

‘And?’

‘Salvage yard dredged up a ship from over by the northern rigs.’

Gedd’s jaw tightened at the mention of the rigs.

‘I’m still not hearing the punchline, Klein.’

‘The pump-gun suicide, he was crew on that ship.’ He checked a data-slate that Gedd had once surmised was surgically attached to his hand. ‘The Voidstrafer.’

‘Ridiculous name for a ship.’

‘It’s a rogue trader,’ said Klein.

Gedd shrugged. ‘That explains it. Was it carrying anything?’

‘No cargo. Salvager said it was empty–’

Gedd snorted. ‘Of course he did.’

Klein went on, ‘–but that the hold had been blown open with charges.’

‘Interesting,’ said Gedd, and it was, but she didn’t know what to do with the information at that point. ‘I’m heading north anyway. I’ll take the cutter for a flyover. See what I can see.’

‘You need company?’ Klein asked.

Gedd had already turned on her heel and was walking away. ‘I do not. Just need transit. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.’

Gedd left Klein and the bustle of the precinct house behind.

Now, she was in a gun-cutter heading for the Hoard, her pilot having been given strict instructions to depart as soon as she was on the ground and be ready for her signal for pickup.

A strange day all round, really.

The Hoard lay at the northern edge of the city, deep into low-hive. It was a collection of vast warehouses and silos, bordered by hab-blocks. Trade had come this way once via the mag-shuttles and the arc-trans, but a catastrophic generator failure had turned the district’s fortunes. Without the Vorganthian main-grid, power became limited. The mag-shuttles no longer ran and the arc-trans froze as the northern winds began to bite. Half of the district lay clad in ice, the other half populated by the desperate dregs too weak or too stubborn to move on.

A heavy snowdrift, grey with ash from the uphive factorums, blighted the commercia-scape as the boxy gun-cutter touched down. Down-thrust from its turbines warmed the ice, and Gedd splashed onto greasy black melt-water as she leapt the short distance from the ship’s exit ramp to the ground.

She held her slicker tight around her body as she moved across a square of piston-hammered asphalt. Behind her, the cutter went airborne again, the din of its engines lessening as it pulled away into the storm.

The place looked deserted, though she thought she saw a few hooded figures huddled in doorways.

‘Bloody twists and wyrds…’ she muttered under her breath. ‘What’s here, Meroved? Other than imminent death due to hypothermia.’

Gedd looked out to the ocean and the distant rigging platforms. Her eyes narrowed and she paused for a moment before moving on. Her father had been a rigger and had found some strange things in the deep ocean trenches. He never brought them back with him, he never mentioned them in detail at all, but she had heard him murmur in his sleep about the deeps and their secrets.

She turned away, the momentary nostalgia freezing on the wind.

Ahead of her was an old and disused warehouse, its battered plasteel door bent and gaping. ‘There. That’s it,’ she hissed, her breath coming out in spectral plumes. ‘Saint’s piss, I hope it’s warmer on the inside.’

As Gedd reached the warehouse, the wind rattled hard against the windows, and a metal sign outside hinged on a bracket swung dementedly. A thick patina of rust obscured the name on it. A ramp of snow had accumulated out front. Driven by the wind, the door pushed hard against it but could not dislodge the snow. It did yawn wide enough for Gedd to enter without needing to move it.

She was about to go in when she paused at the threshold.

A marking, something recent, had been etched into the frame. She turned and looked over her shoulder but all she saw was snow. Even the wretches in the doorway had gone. A child could have made the mark, an idle act of petty vandalism. She filed the thought away for later use.

The storm lessened the moment Gedd went inside, reducing to a howl that shook roof tiles and plate sidings. Metal pillars supporting the warehouse’s frame creaked ominously but held.

‘Better…’ said Gedd, blowing onto gloved hands.

It was dark within. Shafts of light from outside peeked through cracks in the roof but did little to lift the dinginess of the interior. No power meant no illumination.

She called out. ‘Hello… Peacekeepers. If someone is in here, make yourself known.’

No answer came, but for a slight echo.

‘Because I’ll bloody well shoot you,’ she said in a quieter voice. ‘Creepy as…’

Gedd threw two flares out into the shadowy expanse of the warehouse like a fisherman would cast a hook into the sea. The stench of sulphur and polymeric resin touched the still air.

Crates and other containers, and the strangely anthropomorphic shapes of long-dead machines caught the edge of the light.

She snapped the head off a third flare, using it as a torch, and delved into the darkness.

It wasn’t long before she found the first bodies.

A maintenance pit had been put to use as something arcane and ritualistic. Standing at the edge, Gedd crouched down and touched her fingers to a smear of solid candle wax. She counted seven other such sites, all arranged around the circular pit. It was large, at least thirty feet across, and accessed via a wide slope that led from the upper part of the warehouse floor.

‘What in the name of the saints…’

The machinery, the tools and other trappings one might expect to find had been pushed aside. In their place she saw heavy-looking chains, half buried in snow, and six partially frozen corpses attached to them. Two sets of chains were empty, either unused or their captives had escaped. Or been set free.

‘Oh, now I am actively disliking this place.’

She thought about contacting Klein and getting him to bring the troops, but remembered what Meroved had said. She would not disobey him.

Instead, she listened, trying to discern if she was truly alone. Gedd only heard the wind, wailing a lament and pulling at the roof tiles as it tried to get in.

An ill feeling wormed into her gut, a sense of unease she found hard to dislodge. Meroved had told her to observe and investigate. She had to press on. The Verifier felt heavy and reassuring, holstered to her hip. She had come this far.

‘Saint’s piss…’

Exhaling a held breath, Gedd took the slope.

Once inside the pit, Gedd approached one of the bodies, a woman. She had suffered some physical deterioration from the adverse conditions, but the wounds to her face, arms and chest looked like they were made prior to death. Sigils Gedd didn’t recognise had been cut into the flesh and showed some evidence of healing. Clothes, little more than ragged, gossamer robes, had darkened with the blood. The chains had similar configurations carved into each link. Some of the links had been broken.

‘What is this all about?’

Closer examination of the bodies revealed something that Gedd did not expect. Her skin crawled at the sight of it and she wondered if this was what Meroved had meant when he referred to an encroaching darkness.

Each of the corpses had some minor transfiguration. Tiny bone nubs protruding from the forehead; black lesions across the back, face and neck; a tongue split into a ragged fork; needle-like teeth; a partly distended jaw, now broken; lengthening of the limbs, toes and fingers; loss of hair and the extension of the spinal column. She catalogued all of it, writing down her findings on a data-slate that she tucked back into her slicker when she was finished.

The changes could be birth defects – Gedd had seen wyrds with similar afflictions – but she suspected and feared they were not.

She was sweating in her gear, despite the fact it was colder than a Valhallan winter. Gedd wanted to turn around and get the hell out, but something kept her rooted. She hoped it was a sense of duty. There was something else in here, beyond the pit. Gedd kept moving.