Part 11 (2/2)

Octavius was busy. Both of the blades that he had stolen from the guards were now shattered and broken a little more than stumps of metal in his hands. He was fending off the a.s.sault of two wyches, parrying their weapons with the armoured plates on his forearms and waiting for a gap through which he could strike back. With a sudden movement, he trapped a wychas blade between his palm and his other forearm and then spun around the point of impact as though it were a pivot, snapping the blade in the middle as he turned. Completing his rotation, he clasped the broken end of the blade and drove it into the side of the wychas head. She wailed as her eyes filled with blood, and then slumped to the ground.

At the same instant, Octavius felt a sharp, piercing cold stab into his kidney from behind. He dropped his weight, forcing his a.s.sailant to either withdraw or drop the blade, and turned sharply, bringing the stump of his remaining weapon around in a crude arc. The wych was ready for his counter, and she sprang backwards out of reach, releasing her grip on the blade that still protruded from the captainas lower back.

Even against the hideous and constant roar of the crowd, Octavius and the others could make out a distinct cheer of excitement as that blade struck home in the Imperial Fistsa flesh. The a.s.sailant wych grinned maniacally, her eyes wild and burning with the thrill of combat and the narcosis of notoriety.

Pausing for a moment to take in the scene, Octavius saw that the crowd was still in the stands. They were full of excitement and approval, cheering and shrieking with ecstasy at the orgy of violence that was unfolding before them. Not one of them had descended into the arena and Octavius realised that this was exactly what they had all come to see: the human warriors doing battle against the gladiatrix wyches of Hesperax. Far from being an act of defiance, their battle was precisely what had been expected of them.

He roared in frustration. There was no way that he was going to stop fighting just to dispossess these vile creatures of their pleasure. He had spent his whole life in combat or in preparation for it, and he was not about to abandon himself to a weak and pathetic end. If these dark eldar wanted battle, he would give it to them, and he would teach them not to treat the Deathwatch as playthings in their barbaric games.

With another roar, he ripped the blade out of his flesh, tearing out a lump of abdomen and slicing off a section of his ceramite armour as he did so. The wych before him smiled, as though in approval that he had not been defeated by the poisoned surface of the curved sword. In mockery, Octavius smiled back and then hurled the sword. It spun end over end until stopping abruptly, impaled through the forehead of the still smiling wych.

Another ma.s.sive cheer exploded from the stands. It was as though the crowd could hardly contain its excitement.

aCaptain!a Octavius pressed his boot against the neck of the dead wych and prised her head off his new sword before turning to find the source of the shout. It was the Mantis Warrior, his long black hair flying in a frenzy around him as the tattoos that snaked over his abdomen, neck and face seemed to writhe. Because his armour had been mined in the fight at their landing site, much of it had been removed and discarded by the haemonculi, leaving him with only the gleaming emerald shoulder plate of his Chapter and the belt that bore the insignia of the Deathwatch on its buckle.

His pale, decorated and scarred skin shone with exertion and streams of blood. With both hands he wielded a long, double-bladed glaive, which he spun and flourished with the practiced ease of a warrior accustomed to gladiatorial practices. Not for the first time, Octavius was impressed by the first Mantis Warrior to serve the Deathwatch in a century.

With the deftest of gestures, flicking the tip of a blade as he parried and slashed, Kruidan indicated the ominous, gaping darkness that loomed between the gates to the arena. There seemed to be nothing there, except for the nauseating suggestion of dread.

The parade of wyches that had flipped and sprung their way into the amphitheatre had stopped; all of the gladiatrix darklings were already in position around the arena, prowling and menacing the Deathwatch and the eldar. So the blackness between the gates was yawning and pregnant with unseen terrors.

Standing in the midst of the fray as though utterly unconcerned by the teeming combat around him, Octavius stared over towards the open gates, focusing his gaze into the darkness beyond and trying to discern whether that was a route to salvation or doom. All around him, fighting was persisting in pockets of compet.i.tion, with each Marine matched against one or two dark eldar wyches. In the absence of reinforcements, and considering the almost unbelievable reticence shown by the aliens in the crowd, Octavius began to think in terms of what to do after the Deathwatch had surmounted this challenge. It occurred to him that it would probably be best if they did not stick around to find out.

aOctavius,a boomed Ashok, unleas.h.i.+ng a torrent of warp fire from his fists as he stepped up to the captainas shoulder. aOctavius, we must not permit the wych queen to take the souls of those seers.a His voice was low and his intent was as dark as the shadow under his heavy hood. aThere is no way that they will survive this fight.a The Deathwatch captain turned again. The two seers that had been thrown from the queenas podium had been separated from the rest of the group. Even the dazzling white Aspect Warrior was no longer at their side a she was acrobatically busy with two other wyches that had cut her off from her brethren. The two seers were being hunted by five wyches, who prowled and vaulted in complicated patterns around them, easily evading the increasingly weak blasts of energy mustered by the two aging and crippled eldar. It was only a matter of time before Bhurolyn and the lame Xhelkisor would fall and the darklings would take their souls as the spoils of victory. They were too weak to survive Hesperax even if a miracle were to intervene in the arena.

Octavius nodded, acknowledging the unspoken wisdom of Ashokas words.

aSee to it,a he said. aI will investigate the gates. We need to find the spirit pool in which the queen is keeping her sacrifices. Despite all this,a he cast his arm around the scene of combat with the calm indifference of someone who was watching the conflict from a great distance, athere is still the question of the ascension of the queenas daemon.a Without a word, Ashok bowed curtly and then turned, striding off towards the embattled seers. He had long since abandoned the poisoned blades that he had lifted from the dark eldar guards, preferring to feel the snap of bone and the tearing of flesh in his hands, which now dripped with blood and crackled with unearthly powers. The haemonculi had not deprived him of his hood, which he now pulled deeply down over his face, hiding his reddening, glowering eyes in a new layer of shadow.

From the control deck of the t.i.tanicus Rex, Captain Mordia of the Grey Knights peered into the fractional future. The warp signatures around the fringes of the Eye of Terror were always tumultuous, but there was something s.h.i.+fting now a something threatening to emerge into the relatively heavy light of real s.p.a.ce. He had seen it happen countless times before and he knew the signs.

Even before the ancient frigate had closed on the Circuitrine system, which lay half submerged in the lashes of the great Eye, fragments and shards of the warp were already evident, bleeding out of the unseen dimensions into the ostensible vacuum of s.p.a.ce around it.

No alarms sounded on the Rex. Vessels in the service of the Grey Knights in this sector only rarely had their violation alarms active. They were constantly being dispatched into polluted s.p.a.ce, and there was little point in rattling everyoneas nerves with persistent alarms. Mordia had reflected more than once that it might be worth installing some form of purity alarm, which sounded when the vessel was no longer at risk of violation by daemonic powers. In general, however, he gave such trivial matters almost no thought at all.

From all over the s.h.i.+p, Mordiaas squad sounded in. The t.i.tanicus Rex was a sleek and elegant example of the best engineering that the Imperium could muster and it appeared ma.s.sive from the outside. It was, however, smaller than a strike cruiser, but far larger than a normal rapid strike vessel. If appearances were not deceptive, it should have contained at least half a company of Marines with full support equipment. In fact, the venerable vessel was a dedicated guns.h.i.+p with only a single squad of Marines ensconced within, distributed throughout the vesselas decks and control centres. The greatest portion of the hull was occupied by gun batteries and relays; where there might have been stations for personnel, there were ammunition dumps and ma.s.sive purification wards and the rear third of the frigate was taken up by a monumental engine, the likes of which would never be seen on a craft of a similar size anywhere else in the sector. The Rex was one of the finest strike vessels ever to have emerged from the great docks of t.i.tan in the Emperoras very own solar system.

All of the gunnery emplacements around the hull were registering emergent targets. There was nothing yet solid enough for them to fire upon, but the targets were lingering on the edge of material existence, like suggestions of the future or memories of the past. As he watched the swirling patterns of ruddy mist gathering in the icy vacuum, Mordiaas eyes scanned over the screen of the terminal that displayed the data from the long-range sensors. There was still nothing, not a single crisp, material signal or signature registered on the screen, despite the general background blur of activity in the warp that was spilling over into the material realm.

The t.i.tanicus Rex roared onward through the thickening mire, ploughing deeper into the swirling eddies of mist that enshrouded the Circuitrine system, its gun turrets twitching and tracking constantly as potential targets oscillated in and out of existence. Whatever was waiting in the tortuous dimensions of the warp, it was pressing hard against the barriers of the material dimensions, clawing at the fabric of s.p.a.ce-time. It could taste the promise of lives to possess and souls to steal, but it was not yet powerful enough to rip through. What was it waiting for, wondered Mordia?

Unphased by the gathering storm, Captain Mordia of the Grey Knights pressed on. After long decades of arduous training and dedicated service, he was well prepared for whatever might emerge from the unspeakable and invisible realms.

Let them come, he thought, staring out into the sullied mess of the s.p.a.ce before his mighty and righteous vessel. Let them come, and we will show them the meaning of existence in this reality.

It didnat matter how many times she saw him; every time she met the curator, Perceptia had to fight against her own sense of revulsion. In an attempt to pre-empt her own instinctive discomfort, the inquisitor had removed her eyegla.s.ses and thus transformed the two-faced creature into a somewhat featureless blur. It was a childish thing to do, and Perceptia felt sure that the four-eyed Seye Multinus would not be blind to it, but she had enough on her mind at the moment without extra, needless anxieties. The young inquisitor still found herself pus.h.i.+ng her middle finger up along the ridge of her nose, as though to press back her gla.s.ses. In the absence of the spectacles, however, the gesture merely served to draw attention to the fact that she had removed them.

aAah, Inquisitoror Persceptiaa. Iaveve beenn waiting for youu.a The strange echoing voice made her skin crawl. aGreetings, Seye. Do you have anything for me?a Her voice was too perfectly controlled, making her manner seem forced and false.

aYesyes,a hissed Seye, his two mouths spitting in excitement. He knew when he had found something important; it was what he lived for. If Perceptia had been wearing her gla.s.ses, she would have seen the barely contained eagerness glinting in the four eyes that stared back at her. aFollow mee.a With that, the bizarre little man turned and shuffled off through the doc.u.ment stacks, making almost no sound at all as his soft feet pressed against the dull, matted floor. With surprising speed, he led the inquisitor along a winding route between the innumerable shelves and bookcases until he reached the little desk at which Perceptia had been working earlier.

Perceptiaas eyes widened as she emerged out of the darkness of the last aisle. Instinctively, she pressed her finger against the bridge of her nose, trying to push her gla.s.ses into place so that she could see more clearly, but they were not there. For a moment, she fumbled through her doc.u.ment pouch until she located her spectacles and returned them to her eyes.

aWhich pile is which, Seye?a she asked, conscious that the curatoras answer would be of only logistical significance at this point.

In her absence, Seye Multinus had taken all of the files, doc.u.ments, and books down from the shelves along the aisle that had interested her. He had read through each and every sheet of paper and sorted them into two constellations of ma.s.sive piles, one on each side of Perceptiaas little desk. Casting her eyes from one side to the other, Perceptia could make out very little difference in terms of the distribution of doc.u.ments or the size of the piles.

With obvious and sickly delight, Seye shuffled from one side of the desk to the other, pointing at the piles and picking out individual ma.n.u.scripts whilst babbling away in his echoey and incoherent manner. After a few excited seconds, it seemed that the curator no longer knew which way to turn, so he stopped directly in front of the desk with one of his faces pointing in either direction. His mouths worked rapidly as his eyes darted over the t.i.tles along the spines of the files, but each mouth was reading a different line and the result was little more than a cacophonous outpouring of sibilance and excited, frothing spittle.

aSeye!a snapped Perceptia, trying to bring some semblance of quiet and order back to the hallowed s.p.a.ces of the Hereticus librarium. She needed the quiet to be able to think properly, but she also needed Seye to calm down and explain what he had found and how he had organised the material that towered up around them.

The little curator creature flinched as though he had been struck, and he scurried off into the shadows of one of the nearby aisles, as if he were afraid that Perceptia would attack him. The long legacy of fear and abuse was not easily exorcised from his psyche, especially not in an atmosphere that was more full of suspicion and anxiety than it was of oxygen.

aSeye,a repeated Perceptia in the sudden, uncomfortable silence. Her voice dropped into a low velvet, and she did her very best to lend it an edge of compa.s.sionate appreciation. She had learnt a thousand ways to extract information from an uncooperative prisoner, but when it came to simple human communication she was rapidly reduced to being merely a bookish and socially r.e.t.a.r.ded woman. Talking to people as though they were worthwhile human beings had never been Perceptiaas forte, and it was even harder when she found herself talking to a two-faced, four-eyed mutant curator that was frothing from two mouths with evident over excitement.

aSeye, this looks most impressive. Can you please tell me which of the piles contain references to the Circuitrine Nebula? Time is a factor here, as you may appreciate.a The curator slunk back out of the shadows, one of his mouths working silently as though unsure of what to say. Before it could mutter a single coherent word, the other mouth cut in. aaall off themem, inquisitoror.a For a long moment, Perceptia did not say anything. She looked from Seye to the piles and then back again. aAll of them?a aYesyes,a echoed the curator, a hint of excitement returning to his voice. aEveryy onene. Not onene withoutout Cirrtrinene. Not onene.a aYou looked at every doc.u.ment in that aisle?a asked Perceptia as she struggled to comprehend the implications of what Seye was saying. As she pointed down the aisle that she was talking about, her eyes followed the line of her own finger and she saw for herself that there was not a single sheet of paper left on those shelves.

Seye just nodded, his mouths smiling so broadly that they nearly cracked into a single, cavernous grin.

aSeye,a began Perceptia as her mind started to form a new string of suspicions. aDid you know that they would all mention the Circuitrine system before you started looking?a If every confession in that section contained mention of that specific system, it seemed to Perceptia that they must have been filed in that location because they mentioned Circuitrine. The coincidence would simply be too unlikely.

Seyeas four eyes widened in wild excitement, as though he was about to reveal the most important secret he had ever known.

To his surprise, none of the wyches attempted to block Octaviusa path towards the ruined gladiatrix gates that loomed out of the wall beneath their queenas ceremonial viewing platform. He saw some of them glance over in his direction as he strode through the arena, but not one broke off from her fight with the other Marines to intercept him.

At first, Octavius thought that this was because they dared not turn their backs on his Deathwatch battle-brothers, but then he realised that there was no panic or frustration in the looks that had been thrown at him. If anything, the manic, burning eyes of the aliens glinted with even more excitement when they saw where the captain was heading. In the crowd, a hush of antic.i.p.ation had begun to settle over the hysteria. All eyes were gradually turning towards the captain, despite the other contests that still raged around the arena.

The crowd was treated to a magnificent sight: a squad of Deathwatch Marines was engaged hand-to-hand with the gladiatrix wyches of Hesperax in the grand arena of Sussarkhas Peak. The wych queen, Lelith of Hesperax, stood like an icon of terrible beauty, overseeing the ritual combat from her blood soaked throne platform; and a single mon-keigh warrior stood alone beneath her podium, defiant and proud against the impenetrable darkness that lay beyond the broken and yawning gates.

It was a scene worthy of transformation into a fresco for the halls of the Watchtower Fortress of Ramugan, or for the Hall of Lost Souls that lurked like a forgotten h.e.l.l in the bowels of Sussarkhas volcanic mountain.

Octavius was unconcerned by the aesthetic quality of his dramatic pose. This was not a game for him. He paused for a moment before the yawning dark of the ma.s.sive and crumbling gates, trying to discern what lay beyond, but then he simply spun his blades and strode forward. He was already cut off on an unknown planet in the fringes of the Eye of Terror, and utterly surrounded by hundreds of dark eldar warriors up in the stands. They had the high ground, and he was stranded in the bottom of a fighting pit with his team embattled and stretched.

This was no time to be concerned about strategy or calculation. This was not even the time for recourse to the Codex. This was the time for honour, courage and death.

As he stepped forward into the darkness, a mechanical whine and a rush of air made him dive back into the arena. He hit the ground hard, cras.h.i.+ng down onto his back as a ma.s.sive metallic talon bore down on him out of the dense shadows as though emerging from nowhere. Just in time, he rolled to one side and the reinforced point of the spike punched into the ground next to him, burying itself nearly a metre into the deck and sending debris exploding into the air.

The Imperial Fist was on his feet in an instant, dancing backwards to distance himself from the new threat and to identify it. Meanwhile, the crowd had exploded into a whole new level of frenzy. The atmosphere was dense with screams and wails of ecstasy. It was enough to make unprotected human ears ring with pain.

As he watched, a huge mechanical monstrosity emerged slowly out of the darkness beyond the gates. It was vaguely pyramidal, but with spikes, tusks and jagged angles sucking out of it like the spines of a warp beast. The protrusions were decorated with skulls and dismembered limbs, and coated in thick, b.l.o.o.d.y ichor.

From each of the two corners at the front, long pincers extended on slender mechanical arms; they reached and quested before the bizarre construction as it gently hovered forward out of the darkness and into the arena. Cut into the front of the a.s.sembly, between the two bladed arms, was a snarling metallic mouth, which gnashed and chewed continuously, venting plumes of noxious smoke each time the heavy jaws snapped shut. And from the rear of the hideous structure rose a terrible, arching talon, like the sting of a scorpion; it lashed forward, punching into the ground at Octaviusa feet as he leapt clear for a second time.

The crowd thundered its maniacal thrill from the stands as Octavius looked from the slender, elegant blades in his hands to the huge, insane, torturous device that had emerged before him. Completely surrounded and utterly outnumbered, having been drawn into the Eye of Terror by the devious machinations of the eldar and abandoned on the cursed, vile planet of Hesperax, Octavius finally had to consider the possibility that even a Deathwatch captain might not be able to win every fight. aCaptain!a The call came from behind him, but he had no time to turn as he dived forward into a roll, ducking under the stinging talon and coming up between the constructas forward pincers. Even before he could regain his feet, the bladed arms lashed in at him from both sides, forcing him to drop to the ground and roll clear once again.

aCaptain!a There was genuine urgency in the cry from Atreus, and Octavius thought that he could hear the pounding footfalls of the librarian charging towards him. At the same time, the crowd roared to an incredible and deafening pitch, just when it had seemed that they could not possibly get any louder.

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