Throneworld Read online

‘High Marshal, my lord Chapter Master, we have arrived in the Sol System, praise be,’ announced Bohemond’s shipmaster. Other reports followed.

  ‘All decks report unproblematic translation.’

  ‘Warp engines powering down.’

  ‘Geller field deactivation in three, two, one. Geller field deactivated. All praise the Emperor, most holy Lord of Man.’

  From the corner of his eye, Koorland saw Bohemond’s twisted lips mouth the words silently along with his bondsmen.

  The High Marshal of the Black Templars strode along the sweeping command deck of the Abhorrence. Fans of workstations spilled down from the command dais at the centre. A window of armourglass a dozen metres across filled the front of the deck, showing the blackness of space. At this far removed, Sol was merely a bright dot, hard to tell apart from any other star. Koorland stared at it, searching for the dim flicker that would mark out the location of Holy Terra.

  ‘All Black Templars vessels, state arrival and status,’ commanded Bohemond. ‘Issachar, Quesadra, Thane. How do you fare?’

  Cyber-constructs carrying holoprojectors swooped in on Koorland and Bohemond’s position, their projection gems bursting into life. The shoulders and heads of his fellow Chapter Masters assembled themselves in the air from striped pulses of laser light.

  ‘All my vessels report zero casualties, no damage,’ said Thane.

  ‘The warp was unusually calm. Not a single vessel lost,’ said Issachar.

  ‘Fortune is with us,’ said Quesadra.

  ‘Fortune has nothing to do with it! It was the will of the Emperor. He knows we come to aid beleaguered Terra,’ said Bohemond. ‘Time check reports a warp transition of four days. Unprecedented. Your judgement was well founded, Brother Chapter Master Koorland.’

  ‘I believe that was an apology, Brother Chapter Master,’ said Quesadra quietly.

  ‘My augur master has detected signs of recent fleet combat around Terra, minimal weapon discharge, and large informational exchange around the Martian noosphere. Where are the defence fleets? Why has Mars not mobilised its armies?’ said Thane.

  Koorland looked past the floating light spectres of his brothers.

  ‘What are our orders, Imperial Fist?’ said Issachar.

  ‘The attack moon still orbits Terra,’ said Koorland. ‘We cannot let this insult stand. Brothers of the Last Wall, adopt attack formation,’ he said. ‘We make for the ork moon without delay. Send messages to Mars and Terra that we have come. As soon as we are close enough, open lithocast communications. We must learn how Terra can be held to ransom so easily.’

  Six

  Dance’s end

  Lhaerial sat in the middle of a spherical room in a pool of brilliant light, bound by ankle, calf, and thigh to a high-backed chair. Her hands were imprisoned within a metal cylinder and pulled up over her back, so that she was forced forward, an uncomfortable position that seemed not to trouble her. Her mask had been taken from her, and her slender, pale-skinned face was visible, flawless but for a single black tear tattooed beneath each of her huge brown eyes. A male interrogator paced up and down in front of her, hands sweeping in expansive gestures, lips working hard. Veritus had the vox-link disengaged, and so Vangorich could not hear what he shouted at her. Instead they watched a pantomime: the angry enforcer, the apprehended villain.

  ‘Shockingly young-looking, isn’t she?’ said Veritus. He and Vangorich stood behind a pane of psychically warded, one-way armourglass.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vangorich. He was fascinated by the eldar, never having seen one in the flesh before.

  ‘And beautiful. I see it in your face, Vangorich, even in a cold-hearted killer like you.’

  ‘I am not blind to beauty,’ said Vangorich.

  ‘Better to be!’ said Veritus. ‘Beauty is the cloak of many an enemy. Do not be deceived.’ Veritus removed his hand from his chin and gestured at Lhaerial, the servo-motors aiding his ancient body burring softly in the quiet of the observation suite. ‘She could be ten thousand years old. Only the most ancient of them show signs of ageing at all, and I hear that some never age a day. They are immortal, kept alive by black alien arts.’

  ‘They are not immortal, inquisitor.’

  Veritus spun on his heel, face darkening. Wienand stepped into the room, elegantly attired as always, her features set under her steel grey fringe. A few fresh lines had come to mark her face since the start of the crisis, yet still she seemed young to bear so much responsibility. The black matt metal door to the observation suite slid silently closed behind her. Vangorich glimpsed a pair of Inquisitorial storm troopers standing at guard outside. They had not been there when he and Veritus had arrived. Protection against Veritus.

  ‘If you had thought to consult me, then you would be better informed, Lord Veritus,’ said Wienand. ‘If you weren’t seeking my death.’

  Veritus and Wienand stared at one another with hard eyes. Vangorich was hopeful of a rapprochement between the two, as matters were bad enough without the Inquisition falling to war with itself. But if there were to be one, there was little sign of it as yet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Veritus with a cold smile. ‘They are your area of expertise. I would expect nothing less than a deep understanding from someone who has so freely collaborated with the enemies of the Imperium.’

  ‘Not all xenos are our enemies, unless we choose to make them so. They can be useful to us. Allies.’

  Wienand stepped up to the glass to stand next to Veritus.

  ‘You are tainted by your association, Wienand,’ said Veritus. ‘You should not be here. Should I be on my guard in case you attempt to free her?’

  ‘What would you do if I did? Never trust them, but do not let hatred blind you. The eldar have aided us on many occasions.’

  ‘They are manipulators, they use us for their own ends,’ said Veritus.

  ‘Then we must manipulate them back!’ said Wienand. ‘Better that than open war.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Veritus. The inquisitors stared fixedly into the room, neither looking at the other as they argued. Vangorich was trapped in the middle, witness to a sour lovers’ tiff.

  Vangorich held up his hands. ‘Please. Stop.’

  The inquisitors took his rebuke without comment, to Vangorich’s relief. Even he couldn’t fight his way out of the Inquisitorial Fortress. But there was plenty of time for one or both of them to turn against him, he thought. ‘Wienand, it is good to see you again.’

  ‘You too, Drakan, although I think very little of the company you are keeping.’

  ‘Can we not concentrate on the matter at hand here?’ said Vangorich wearily. ‘What’s an assassination attempt or two between friends?’

  ‘So speaks the Assassin,’ said Wienand.

  ‘He has a point, Wienand,’ snarled Veritus, then calmed. He turned to face Wienand but did not look her in the eye, instead gazing fixedly over her shoulder. ‘Maybe I acted hastily, but things had come to a shocking pass and–’

  ‘You did not agree with my actions as Inquisitorial Representative, very good. You had recourse to options other than murder and usurpation!’ she interrupted.

  ‘We had no time!’ said Veritus. ‘You would not have gone quietly, and we would have fought as stupidly as the fools in the Senate, jockeying for power as the Imperium burned around us.’

  ‘So my death was a matter of expediency? How very comforting.’

  ‘Yes.’ Veritus sighed. ‘I am old, Wienand. So much older than you. I have seen so much stupidity. I could not take a chance.’

  ‘And now I am stupid.’ She aggressively sought out his eyes with her own. ‘Did you not think just to ask? No?’

  Veritus’ aged lips pressed thin, going grey.

  ‘Tell me then, Representative Veritus. How goes your management of the crisis?’ said Wienand.

  Vangorich cleared his throat. ‘This glass,
it is psychically blocked, is it not?’

  The inquisitors looked over his head.

  ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I have spent many long years perfecting an air of unimportance, I am used to being ignored, but this is too much. Answer me! Veritus? Is this glass warded?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course,’ snapped Veritus. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you stopped glaring at Wienand there, you’d see that our prisoner is looking right at you, and she finds something amusing.’

  Wienand shook her head dismissively and returned her attention to the prisoner. ‘Have you actually spoken to her yet, Veritus, or did you just plan on killing her too?’

  ‘Not yet!’ said Vangorich lightly. ‘How about we attempt that right now? There is no time like the present.’

  Veritus cleared his throat. A phlegmy, old man’s sound. ‘Very well,’ he said.

  Wienand, Vangorich and Veritus entered the room, the inquisitors still eyeing each other warily. The interrogator ceased his questioning, bowed and withdrew without a word.

  ‘At last you come out!’ said the prisoner. ‘So pathetic are your attempts at masking that any child of my people could better them without effort.’

  The three humans lined up in front of the prisoner. She stared at them contemptuously. The removal of her mask had brought a marked change in her manner. She had become more aloof, more cautious, more direct in speech, but it had only sharpened her defiance.

  ‘It is time to discuss your message,’ said Wienand.

  ‘As I told your friends, I come in peace.’

  ‘I have a strange appreciation of the word myself,’ said Vangorich.

  ‘You are a murderer. I smell blood on you,’ Lhaerial said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Vangorich. He found the anger in her quite beguiling. ‘My point is, arriving armed and shooting is not covered by any definition of peace.’

  ‘Would you have listened?’ she said.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Vangorich.

  ‘Drakan,’ said Wienand, ‘this is our prisoner.’

  ‘Of course, of course, please, inquisitors. Inquire.’

  ‘You are a psyker?’ said Veritus.

  ‘And what is that?’ Lhaerial said.

  ‘A witch, a seer.’

  She nodded. ‘A seer of the shadows.’

  ‘Then let it be known I am warded against your powers,’ said Veritus.

  ‘I know your mind regardless,’ said the eldar.

  ‘Tell me of your mission,’ said Wienand.

  ‘I already have,’ said Lhaerial.

  ‘Again,’ said Wienand. ‘To us.’

  ‘I should repeat myself? And then you will ask me again, and again, and you will attempt to hurt me. You are so primitive. I do not know why Eldrad Ulthran wishes to save you. The galaxy would be a cleaner place were you to be exterminated.’

  ‘You lack the power for that now,’ said Wienand, surprisingly gently. ‘And I think when your kind did have that might, something stayed your hand.’

  Lhaerial cocked an eyebrow and gave a sudden, savage smile. ‘Maybe. Doubtless you think our positions reversed? You cannot hurt me. I am Cegorach’s.’

  ‘She speaks of one of their gods,’ explained Wienand.

  ‘Do not be so sure, eldar,’ said Veritus dangerously. Wienand held up her hand behind her irritably.

  ‘Tell us,’ said Wienand. ‘The last time.’

  Lhaerial closed her eyes. They were so big, thought Vangorich.

  ‘I was to deliver a message to the Emperor, not to you.’

  ‘Tell us what was in this message. We are the representatives of His will,’ said Wienand. ‘The Emperor cannot be spoken to, He is entombed.’

  ‘You think we do not know this? Eldrad Ulthran, greatest seer of all, entrusted me with this task. I was chosen because I am a seer, I have opened my mind, the old ways are mine. I do not fear She Who Thirsts.’

  ‘He cannot be reached even psychically,’ said Wienand. ‘It has been tried. You would have died. You must tell us.’

  ‘What was the message? A threat?’ challenged Veritus.

  ‘Foolish mon-keigh!’ hissed Lhaerial Rey. Her eyes snapped open. ‘No threat! The Emperor and the farseer are known to each other. Though they long diverged from friendship, they are not yet opposed. Your dead Emperor is the only hope, for us all, man and eldar alike. This current crisis will pass. The roar of the ork will subside, while the real threat grows. You, the one who calls himself Veritus, you know this to be the truth. I know what you have seen.’

  Veritus stepped back, appalled.

  ‘You are fools to yourselves,’ spat Lhaerial. ‘You are right, old one, and she is right. There is more than one answer to every question. Listen! The ork moon will not last here.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I bring news also of a gift. A force of your Space Marines have gathered in great number, and make their way here. Even now, they pass the red world of this system. Eldrad Ulthran and the seers of Ulthwé worked long and hard to quell the storms roused in the Othersea by the orks, the better that they might come to you. This gift is given freely, because we hope with all our hearts you shall prevail over the ork.

  ‘Listen to our pleas. Do not let the orks distract you, nor any other threat arising from the temporal realm. The gods of the Othersea will not stop until this galaxy is their plaything. The threat they pose is millions of cycles old, the actions of your Warmaster but the latest act in a war that has raged since the time of the old races. For the lifespan of stars my people have opposed them. You are naive if you think Chaos defeated. I have been sent with this one message – do not neglect the Dark Gods, for it will mean the annihilation of us all.’

  ‘Do you suggest that only mankind might save the galaxy?’ said Veritus wonderingly.

  Lhaerial shifted her gaze to Veritus, and her hard eyes made him flinch as if she saw something in his mind and reflected it back upon him. ‘The idea appeals to your vanity? You were correct in what you were saying, through there. You are a tool to us. Our people ruled the stars when this world was ruled by reptiles. Many came against us – the soulless ones, the krork at the apex of their might, in comparison to which this latest folly is laughable, the cythor and a thousand other races so terrible your intellects could not contemplate them. Even your own ancestors and their unliving legions at the so-called height of their mastery. We defeated them all.

  ‘To you we seem a sorry remnant, a ragged glory fading into the void, but we are not yet extinct, inquisitor. What is a few thousand cycles of weakness when set against millions of power? You fell yourselves, your empire is a pathetic mockery of what your kind once had. Mark my words well – unlike you we shall be mighty once again. We would prefer it if there were still a galaxy to rule when we are ready to return.’

  Wienand pursed her lips and shook her head regretfully.

  ‘You do yourself no favours,’ she said. ‘I am trying to help you.’

  A fanatical light shone from Veritus’ eyes as he looked at the eldar. ‘Now that is a threat,’ he said. ‘Listen to me, alien. I know the truth of it, awful as it is. There is one path to peace, and that is when every last world is under the hegemony of mankind.’

  Lhaerial smiled. Her teeth were very small, perfectly white. ‘You are mistaken. You safeguard our heritage, until the time comes for the Empire of Ten Million Suns to rise once again. For that reason alone we vouchsafe your continued existence. The Primordial Annihilator is our common enemy. Our kind coexisted before the fall. We have no quarrel with you.’

  Veritus stepped menacingly close to the eldar.

  ‘The Debari incident, the Veridanium massacre, the fall of Outremer, the burning of Choidenmirn.’ He counted off atrocities on golden metal fingers. ‘All these were perpetrated by your species against ours, and in the last five hundred years.’<
br />
  ‘Not all of my kind are of good heart, just as not all of yours are.’

  Veritus laughed. ‘You claim to represent the world-ship of Ulthwé? All of those were actions of that faction against the Imperium!’

  Lhaerial managed to shrug, despite her binding. ‘The worlds of Ulthwé that you trespass upon, doubtless they thought the punishment necessary.’

  ‘Then how can we possibly trust you?’ shouted Veritus.

  Lhaerial looked into the ancient inquisitor’s face. ‘How can we possibly trust you? We only have each other, for now at least. We can stand apart and die alone, or we might persist together.’

  ‘This is intolerable!’ snapped Veritus.

  ‘Calm yourself, Veritus,’ said Wienand. ‘Listen to what she is saying – she is right. We must listen to her. If they truly wanted to harm the Emperor, they would have come against us differently, if it were in their power to do so. I believe her. She speaks the truth.’

  ‘You are corrupted by their influence!’ said Veritus. ‘Van der Deckart told me all about your actions on Antagonis in concert with these creatures. They are fundamentally untrustworthy. Your dealings with them are grounds enough for execution!’

  ‘On whose authority?’ said Wienand.

  ‘I am the Inquisitorial Representative,’ said Veritus. ‘On my authority.’

  ‘You are the Inquisitorial Representative by nefarious means. I am the incumbent, you are the impostor. And we are not in the halls of government now. We are among our own kind. You are not popular in this fortress, Veritus. I have many supporters here.’

  ‘I have many also,’ said Veritus warningly.

  ‘I should kill you now.’

  ‘Stop!’ Vangorich stepped between them. ‘Is this really the time?’ he said, looking at the prisoner. Lhaerial Rey’s head hung, unconcerned at the humans’ conversation.

  ‘Oh, this is the perfect time for this conversation,’ said Veritus. ‘The eldar is going nowhere, and this room is among the most heavily warded in all the Fortress, a good venue for the most private of affairs.’ His hand rested against his pistol.

  ‘Don’t! Don’t draw that! Listen to yourselves!’ said a pained Vangorich. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed through his teeth. ‘Ordinarily I would have no qualms if the two of you wished to pit the Inquisition against itself. Your agency has interrupted legitimate operations of mine so many times I have lost my patience with it. A reorganisation would do it and me a world of good.’