Part 16 (1/2)

Behind her, Ca.s.sandra was in hushed discussion with Miriya. This is a poindess voyage,' she growled.

We've been travelling all night and for nothing. Vaun is lying to us.'

That much is certain,' replied Miriya, but we must know for sure. We shall give him enough rope to hang himself 'I can hear every word you are saying,' said the psyker from across the cupola. 'And it makes me sad. Is there not even the smallest iota of trust in you? In anyone?' He looked direcdy at Verity. 'Even the nursemaid?'

'It would be easier to give you some credence if you could reveal this mystery destination of yours,' said the Hospitaller. 'Come now, Vaun. How much further do you expect us to go?'

The man threw her a weak smile and glanced at a chronograph on the 'nef s bulkhead. 'No further,' said Vaun. We're here. He nodded to the tech-priest. Take us down, cogboy, nice and easy. And douse the lumes. They'll be watching.

”Who will be watching?' asked Miriya, striding for-wards to where the naked sky peeked into the wrecked cabin.

'LaHayn's dogs. He pointed into the darkness. ^Vhat do you see?'

Verity squinted. 'Only the volcanoes.

Vaun nodded. 'As you are meant to. That is the out-ermost lie. The aeronef dropped quickly, just a few metres from the ground now. With his bound hands, the psyker took the adept's claw and turned it so the flyer's tiller moved. In return, the s.h.i.+p wavered side-ways. The battlements are cloaked with clever designs, the points of entry disguised. Look now. Do you see?'

The Sister Hospitaller did and she gasped as a string of cas.e.m.e.nts seemed to appear from nowhere along the surface of the tallest ashen crag.

The Null Keep,' smiled Vaun. 'I've been away too long.

From afar, no human eye or auspex scan would ever have considered the towering structure to be anything other than what it first appeared to be: one more huge volcanic tor, seething with roils of dirty steam and clogged rivulets of sluggish lava. Yet the closer one came to the mount the more it changed to resemble a citadel rather than a natural form. At one time, cen-turies, perhaps millennia ago, the craggy basalt peak had been untouched by the devices of human tech-nology, but now it was a masterpiece of clandestine engineering, a castle made by stealth that stood unde-tected in this barren arroyo. Shafts had been bored into the thick walls of the rock face, connecting the magma voids in the same manner as ants and termites lived within their earthen colonies. These open cham-bers had been emptied of molten stone, sealed seamlessly with a science that was lost to humans in this age, and made habitable. Some of the voids were small things, perhaps the size of a few rooms. Others were large enough to accommodate an Imperial Navy corvette, layered with decking, corridors and internal crawlways.

The slumbering volcanic shaft at the axis of the citadel provided tireless reserves of geothermal energy from mechanisms sunk into the liquid mantle of Neva, venting excess gouts of superheated steam from conduits about the surface of the tower.

Battlements and window slits looked out on the approaches. Cunningly fas.h.i.+oned from the cut of the rock itself, these openings appeared to be natural for-mations. Only on closer examination could the dim glow of biolumes be seen behind them. Spines of obsidian gla.s.s and petrified trees masked cl.u.s.ters of armoured sensor vanes and vox antennae. There were even dock platforms, planes of flat stone that extended out far enough to accommodate something the size of a coleopter or a land speeder.

Every shadowed hollow in the sheer face of the mountainside could be home to a watching sense-engine or a concealed weapon emplacement. It was an oppressive edifice, black and leaking menace into the hot, sulphurous air. The endeavour to create such a structure, the will to hide a secret tower in this barrenlandscape, dwarfed the palaces and temples of Noroc. The construction's original purpose was lost to antiq-uity, but whatever it had been made for, it had been born in secrecy. The walls of the inner chambers masked everything that took place within, patterned with exotic ores that defied the study of the few tech-adepts allowed to survey them. Nothing, no wavelength of radiation, not even the warped energy of the human psyche, could escape the walls of the tower. The silence of the Null Keep was deeper than the vacuum of s.p.a.ce.

They left the aeronef in a steep-walled chasm, the nervous and s.h.i.+fty Mechanicus priest chained to the landing skid in case his curiosity got the better of him. When the Battle Sisters had secured the adept, Miriya's intent look at Verity sparked a pre-emptive denial from the Hospitaller.

'Do not ask me to remain here, Sister Superior. I have no intention of staying in this lightless cabin while you venture out.

'I have only your safely in mind. began Miriya, but Verity shook her head.

'I have come this far. I will see this road to its end.

Vaun snorted. 'Ah, bravo, nursemaid. You have such tenacity.

Miriya turned her ire on the psyker, barely moder-ating the tremor in her gun hand. 'We are here, witch.

Now tell us, what is this place?'

'You cannot simply be told what the Null Keep is. Vaun said darkly. You must see it for yourself.

Portia snorted. 'For Katherine's sake. For all we know, this could be some elaborate trap. We'll ven-ture inside and find a horde of mutant psykers baying for our blood!'

'If I wanted to kill you, Sister, it would have been simple to reduce this aircraft to ashes. Sweat beaded his brow and with an effort Vaun managed to make a puff of flame snap from his fingertip. 'No, I want you to see this. It will please me no end to watch the truth barge its way into your shuttered minds. Even if you gun me down then and there, you'll never escape the fact that I was right... and your precious church is wrong!'

The woman pulled her bolter, but Miriya held up a warning hand. know better than to let a witch goad you, Portia. Recite the Saint's Lament and reflect upon it.

Her face soured, but the dark-skinned Battle Sister did as she was asked, turning away to mumble the prayer under her breath. Miriya looked to Vaun once more. She could see the neuropathic drugs were beginning to wear off, and she knew that Ver-ity had no more.

'She has a valid point. Why should I trust you, witch?'

'Nothing I have ever said to you has been a lie, Sis-ter Miriya. he replied. 'I see no need to change that now. He paused. The keep is the covert domain of Lord LaHayn. It is here that I spent those lost years of my life-' Vaun threw a look at Verity, '-here that your precious deacon's schemes are incubating. As the nursemaid said, this place is the end of the road. For all of us.

Miriya accepted this with a nod, then with her hands she made a couple of sharp sign-gestures, battle language directives that the other Sisters instantly reacted to. The woman took her plasma gun from its holster and spoke the Litany of Activation to it. She approached Vaun and gave him a level stare. 'You will have heard this from me before, but it bears repeating before we go forward. If you betray us, your life will be forfeit. All that keeps air in your lungs is my desire for the truth. Give me cause to doubt you, and I will give you the screaming, b.l.o.o.d.y end that you so richly deserve.

'Such a compelling argument,' he teased, 'and pray tell, if I do indeed give you the truths you seek, what then? What gift do I get?' 'A chance to repent and a quick end. 'Well. Vaun smirked mockingly. 'I'm convinced. Shall we go?'

There were entrances to the Null Keep, but none of them were less than four hundred metres above the level of the valley floor. Instead, Vaun led them to a place where the oval mouths of steam tunnels opened to the cloudy sky. This is the manner in which I exited the citadel on the day I escaped. Many had attempted it before me and all had been brought back for us to see, their bodies bloated by scalding and their skin falling off in sheets.

You speak of this place as if it were a prison. said Ca.s.sandra.

'It is that, and it is other things as well. A honeycomb of cells exists within these walls, dungeons cut in the solidified magma bubbles, rooms impossible to gain purchase upon...' He shuddered at the memory.

Isabel gingerly peered over the lip of the tunnel and ducked back with a start, blinking furiously. Ach. The heat. It will roast any exposed fles.h.!.+'

Miriya traced the fleur-de-lys on her chest plate. 'Don your helmets. Our power armour will protect us.

Isabel pointed at Vaun. 'What about him? What about the Hospitaller?'

The psyker shook his head. There is a routine to the outga.s.sing from the core. The temperature falls andrises in a precise rhythm, which I can predict. Keep close to me and I will guide you through, but do not dally. Hesitate in the wrong place and you'll be cooked. Like a suitor asking for a courtly dance, Vaun offered his hand to Verity. 'Stay by my side, dear nursemaid. He ended the sentence with a leer.

Verity. Miriya nodded. It was as much an order as she was going to give.

Loathing rose on the Hospitaller's face as she gin-gerly approached him. 'Have no fear, Sister. said Vaun in a silky voice. 'I promise I will be the con-summate gentleman.

The girl closed her eyes, fighting down the disgust that she felt, and Miriya gave Vaun one final look of warning. 'Portia, with me. Ca.s.sandra, the rear. Isabel, you will keep our erstwhile guide honest. If you so much as suspect he is leading us astray or performing a foul act upon Sister Verity's mind, you have my consent to kill him where he stands.

In a ragged line, they entered the tunnel and ventured inside. Boiling hot streams of scorching air rumbled past them, fogging the visors of their Sabbat-pattern helms with condensation. Miriya toyed with the preysight setting, but the colours were a riot of tumbling reds, whites and oranges, and she quickly became disoriented.

Blinking sweat from her lashes, she pushed on, conscious of the suit's internal mechanisms labour-ing to keep her body cool. The tiny fusion core apparatus in her power armour's backpack showed warning glyphs at the corner of her vision, the tem-perature gauge rising quickly toward the red line.

The Battle Sister kneaded the grip of her gun and pondered Portia's words again. For all she knew, Vaun was leading them into a pit of boiling lava -but to have brought them this far only to take them to certain death? It was not his way. In the days since his escape aboard the Mercutio, Sister Miriya found she was coming ever closer to understanding the mind of the aberrant. Vaun's ego was his driving force, and to merely end her life and that of her squad would not be satisfactory for him. He wanted them to admit he was in the right before they died.

In the back of her mind, a small voice asked the question: and what if he is? Miriya shook the thought away and kept moving.

After what seemed like hours of walking in a doubled-over crouch, they reached an intersection festooned with service walkways. Vaun sagged a little, but directed them on to a service hatch, Portia ventured through and beckoned them into a maintenance room. Relief welled up in each of them as the Battle Sisters took a moment to remove their helmets. Verity was pale and her habit was drenched with sweat. She drained most of her water bottle before she administered a potion to each of them that would restore the balance of their bodies.

There was another door in the room and Vaun walked across to it, peering through a barred slit. The strength that had been missing from his gait was starting to return. 'Here we are,' he said, a curi-ous sadness in his tone that Miriya had not heard before.

The Sister Superior took a look herself, and gasped.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.