Part 17 (1/2)

Portia did not look up from her examination of her victim. 'It would be my pleasure to demonstrate it to you at close quarters, maleficent. She pulled at a line of b.u.t.tons and the over-robes fell open. This mantle is lined with a ceramite weave.

'Body armour. offered Ca.s.sandra, 'in case their charges get too boisterous.

The clothing beneath...' Portia fingered a gar-ment in rich red material. This is the attire of a cleric' She found the dead man's necklace: it was a string of onyx beads ending in a golden aquila, an affectation of the Nevan branch of the Imperial Cult.

Vaun laughed softly. 'How troubling. Now, what would a pious servant of the G.o.d-Emperor be doing here, I wonder?'

Miriya rounded on the criminal. 'You knew. You knew and yet you let her end the life of a priest and said nothing. she spat. 'His blood is on your hands!'

'Along with hundreds of others. retorted Vaun, his amus.e.m.e.nt gone in an instant, 'not that I care.

'You'll be made to. vowed the Celestian. 'You have my word on it.

The man made an annoyed snarl. 'Ach, look beyond that, woman. he snapped, pointing at the corpse. 'Don't youunderstand what it means?'

Isabel was examining the consoles in the cham-ber. 'I am no tech-adept, but I believe he appeared to be attempting to perform a prayer-diagnostic on these devices. She ran her hands over a set of tarnished bra.s.s dials and a wavering hololithic screen hummed to life. The image was leached of colour, but it clearly showed the activities of a group of similarly dressed figures working at a body on an operating dais. Verity watched for a moment before realising two things: the body was a person still alive, conscious and unanaes-thetised, and the display was a visual record of something that had taken place in this very room.

The screen threw more light about the chamber, illuminating the white porcelain dais and the dark stains of dried vitae about the blood gutters.

Vaun craned his neck to get a better look at the activity on the hololith. 'Now, her I do know. he noted, 'or rather, I did.

Kipsel, her name was. He looked away. 'She died of that.

'Of what?' Verity asked, in a dull voice.

Vaun tapped the lump behind his ear. 'Of this.

Isabel scrutinised a ticking display rotor in High Gothic. 'Kipsel. That name is here in the record-ing. Dates, as well.

The Hospitaller looked over her shoulder. The dates fell squarely in the time period where Vaun's librarium files were empty. She looked up at the screen and her eyes widened. 'Can you halt the progress of the image?'

The Battle Sister turned a control and the recording slowed down to a stop. 'What is it, girl?'

Verity pointed at the corner of the hololith, her finger breaking the surface of the ghost image. 'It's him. It's both of them.

'Holy Terra... Yes, I see it. Isabel worked the controls again, making the image s.h.i.+ft to bring that section of the picture forward.

Verity and the other women saw several men, garbed in the same robes as the dead priest, but with their hoods down.

Two men in particular were at the core of the group, the others around them showing obvious deference. Their profiles were unmistakable, even though time and the poor recording marred the likenesses.

Vaun indicated the men with a theatrical sweep of his hand. 'Honoured Sisters, may I present his most loathsome self, the Lord Viktor LaHayn and his lick-spittle Venik.

Miriya ordered her Celestians to sweep the operat-ing theatre and the anterooms that spread off from it. It appeared that the dead priest had been in the process of surveying the contents - perhaps in preparation to return them to use, she wondered -and one of the rooms contained a wheeled cargo lighter, stacked with spools of glittering wire. Verity identified it as a variety of datum storage media, the same as the hololithic screen used to replay the images of LaHayn and the ill-fated Kipsel. There were uncountable hours of footage here, and Emperor-knew how many recordings of witches undergoing the same brutal violations.

The Sister Superior considered the spools with dispa.s.sion. She had no sympathy for the psykers, but the eager, almost wanton manner in which the woman Kipsel had been desecrated struck a chord in her mind. The church did not torture and maim without good cause, and it gnawed at her that she did not know what Lord LaHayn's motives were.

'This must have been going on for decades,' mur-mured Ca.s.sandra, 'and yet I have never heard of the like.

Miriya wondered if the Imperial Inquisition might have had a hand here, but there was nothing to indicate the presence of the Ordo Malleus or any other branch of the G.o.d-Emperor's inquest. In her experience, inquisitors were only too pleased to trumpet their deeds to the church. No, the studied and careful concealment of what was taking place in the Null Keep made her seasoned warrior's mind taut with suspicion.

Verity examined the operating dais. There were tools, now rusted and dull, still stored in drawers set into the cracked porcelain frame. From a tray con-nected by a corroded servitor-arm, she plucked out a silvery orb and held it up to the torchlight. Miriya exchanged a look with the Hospitaller as they both recognised the same design of implant device from the inside of Ignis's skull.

In another anteroom there were objects that were undeniably of inhuman origin. Suspended in tanks of thin oil, Portia turned her torch to illuminate steely constructs mated with rods of green-hued gla.s.s, all long lines and right angles.

Next to this, a curved hollow of yellowed bone marked with pur-ple eldar runes, its purpose unguessable, and finally a grotesque hydrocelaphic ork skull, bloated beyond normal size by the touch of mutation.

Viktor always had eclectic tastes. noted Vaun archly. There's no avenue of investigation he won't venture down.

Something inside Miriya's iron-hard resolve snapped and she backhanded the psyker with a sav-age, lightning-fast blow. Vaun stumbled away, clutching at a bleeding cut on his cheek as she drew her plasma pistol. 'I have reached my limit with your games, creature. I want no more of your half-truths and obfuscations!'

Vaun spat blood on the tiled floor. 'You pull that trigger, wench, and the whole keep will know it. You'll never get out of here alive!'

'I'll take that chance. The collimator coils atop the gun hummed and glowed. 'No more games, no more wordplay, no more circ.u.mlocution. You'll tell me the truth now, or else I will gun you down and tear it from these black walls myself!'

The psyker dabbed at the wound on his face, measuring the moment. 'Very well. It seems I have no choice.' He sighed. 'It's an interesting story.'

Torris Vaun had been no more than a youth when he discovered that the cleric in his settle-ment had contacted the capital and told them of his 'talents'. In a fit of directionless anger, the boy had burned the church to the ground with the humming, electric potency that lurked behind his eyes. The cleric, his dirty habit smouldering, had made it into the graveyard before he set him alight too, and Vaun had stood andlistened to the crisping crackle of flaming human meat.

Not a single soul in the town would come near him as he waited by the chapel arch, watching his handiwork. They were too scared to approach for fear he would do the same to them. As he listened to the townspeople point and whisper, Vaun decided that he would have to leave this place and strike for bigger, greater things. Of late, the settlement had grown stifling, the challenge of terrorising the little towns.h.i.+p ever less interest-ing.

Presently a man arrived, a swift coleopter deposit-ing him on the hill. Another priest, Vaun noted. He began to muster his powers in preparation to kill again. But when the newcomer came close enough, Torris could see he was laughing. The black humour was infectious, soon the youth was laughing too. And there, in the glow of the burning church, the new arrival offered him his hand and a chance for fortune and glory the likes of which Vaun had only dreamed.

'You know the story of the Wound, of Saint Celes-tine and the Pa.s.sing of her Glory?' Vaun waved his hand. 'Of course you do. But Neva's past holds more to it than that, or the ridiculous games fought by the n.o.bles with a.s.sa.s.sins and cat's-paws. You just have to look deeper. Much deeper. The psyker righted a fallen chair and sat upon it, warming to his subject. 'Celestine's coming cleared the warp-storm that had shrouded this planet and for that she was duly enshrined in its miserable annals. But that occurrence was not the first time the clouds of the empyrean had converged on Neva. You see, such a thing has happened here dozens of times, as far back as the Age of Strife. He paused, fis.h.i.+ng a bat-tered tin box from his pocket. 'May I take a cigarillo?' Vaun asked Miriya. 'It's been a while-'

Ca.s.sandra reached down and slapped the box from his hand, sending it skittering away into the shadows.

'Ah. That would be a no, then?'

'Keep talking,' growled Miriya.

Very well. The storms. While some worlds that felt the touch of the warp were destroyed or worse, fell bodily into the realm of Chaos, Neva was not one of them. No, instead the caress of the immaterium was subtler, more insidious. Like a taint upstream flow-ing down a river, the warp left a mark on this world. It turned the bloodlines of every living soul upon it, just a little.' The man held up his thumb and fore-finger a few centimetres apart. 'But just enough. Tell me, Sister Superior, how many psykers are there for every normal human in the Imperium?'

'One or two in every hundred thousand births, perhaps less.'

Vaun nodded. 'On Neva the number would prob-ably be closer to five times that. He ignored the looks of incredulity on the women's faces. 'Neva's brush with warp s.p.a.ce means that its people are more attuned to the psychic realm. Most of them never know it, they just get ”feelings” or have strange dreams. But many of us exhibit the more, shall I say, unique properties.'

'Impossible. snapped Portia.

'Short-sighted as ever. retorted Vaun. 'Think, dullard. Neva is not the only world to have such a blessing.

What of Magog, or Prospero, the holdfast of the Thousand Sons? Those planets were rich in preternatural power.

'Magog obliterated itself. said Verity, 'and the s.p.a.ce Marines of the Thousand Sons turned to Chaos.

Prospero vanished into the Eye of Terror.