‘Too slow. Too damned slow. I want another eight seconds shaved off this, or we keep running it till you drop.’
Watch Sergeant Andreas Kulle of the Silver Skulls Chapter stood behind a bank of flickering monitors with two other Deathwatch Space Marines and a trio of supporting tech-adepts clothed in the black and silver robes of Watch Support. High above, the moon of Damaroth filled two-thirds of the sky with its lambent blue bulk. Cloud patterns churned slowly, lazily on its surface.
Karras, his fatigues damp with sweat, sighed and looked up. He breathed deeply, taking a moment to mentally reset himself.
No shadows here. So much ambient light.
He glanced to his left, then to his right. Far off in the distance, the inner surface of the Watch fortress’s great ring could be seen curving up towards the glowing moon. Even with his eyesight boosted far beyond that of a normal man, any detail of the structures on those far curves was lost to the vast expanse and the bluish haze.
The training was so different, so precise. Karras hadn’t felt like this since his days as a Scout. There were similarities, of course: the endless hours of sensorium review and neuro-reactive simulation overseen by Lochaine and the rest of the Watch Librarius; the live-fire range practice and close combat drills designed with the physiology of alien opponents in mind. These things he had taken to with ease and familiarity. But this…
‘You’ve got six minutes to prepare and board the Stormraven before we run it again,’ Kulle boomed. ‘Do better. Codicier Karras, a word please.’
Karras dropped his gaze from the heavens and walked over to the group behind the monitors. Passing him, a small army of servitors walked and trundled into kill-block Ophidion to restore the building to its pre-assault state. It was the twentieth time they had done so since morning repast.
‘Karras,’ said Kulle with a nod. The Space Marines flanking him on either side, both being groomed for Watch sergeant status, also nodded, like mirror images on some kind of time delay.
‘Sergeant,’ said Karras.
‘Analysis, please.’
‘Much as before, sergeant. For the most part, it’s the smoke-and-clear on that final room. Without enhanced vision modes or any kind of real-time tactical data-feed, our coordination is suffering. We’re still adapting to this kind of rooftop insertion, and operating without power armour is causing the team to overcompensate. We’re rushing things, so our timings are all over the place.’
Kulle looked at the brothers standing silently on either side.
‘Comments,’ he demanded.
The one on the left – hard-faced Brother Ghan of the Aurora Chapter – was eager to speak first. ‘They should have the method of entry down by now, sergeant. This performance is unacceptable. Eight seconds is a lifetime in tactical asset recovery.’
Karras had to force himself not to scowl at the acerbic, red-bearded Space Marine. How fast had
he
adjusted to Deathwatch methodology? Fast-roping, rooftop insertions, window entries; in general, Space Marine warfare was waged without the need for such subtle things. Brutal and direct was standard. The Adeptus Astartes marched proudly out to sow death among man’s foes. They didn’t sneak in through windows with silenced weapons. Such work was for assassins.
Assassins and Deathwatch operatives, apparently.
A kill-team was a precision tool, called upon to handle anti-xenos operations that other forces simply could not – the exact words of the Watch Commander at the induction ceremony. Well, what better way to cripple an enemy force than eliminate its leadership? Fast, efficient, effective. A single bolter-round could change the face of an entire war.
Perhaps there
was
something to be said for this kind of approach.
‘Brother Procion?’ said Kulle.
The other observer, bearing the silver cross icon of the Iron Knights, smiled. ‘Brother Karras mastered this MoE on the third run. He speaks as if the fault were shared when it is not. Of course, to some extent, an Alpha
should
see the team’s flaws as his own. But it is the Fire Lord who is slowing them down. Brother Uphreidi should switch positions with the Invader, Mannix. Dropping from the rear hatch might suit him better.’
‘Thoughts, Karras?’ said Kulle.
‘Uphreidi and Mannix shall switch as recommended,’ replied Karras. ‘I thank Brother Procion for the advice.’
Karras saw Ghan scowl and shake his head. Kulle and Procion missed it. The Aurora Space Marine rarely offered anything but criticism, and none of it particularly useful. He verbally compared everything he saw against his own past performance, seeing this training session only as a chance to expound his own virtues in front of Kulle.
Procion, on the other hand, had been constructive from the start. Still, Karras was frustrated, and the source of that frustration was Watch Sergeant Andreas Kulle.
Was Kulle really running this exercise for the benefit of the new Watch members? Or was his true goal the evaluation of the ne-sergeants
[13]
he had brought along?
Karras felt he and the other trainees deserved better than that.
‘You asked for another eight seconds cut, sergeant,’ he said brusquely. ‘Might I ask how you yourself would achieve it?’
Kulle met Karras’s gaze and found it hard and penetrating, like a spear-tip.
There it is
, thought the Silver Skull.
He knows I’ve been distracted. Ghan and Procion have waited long enough for our decision, but I needed to be absolutely sure. Very well, Death Spectre. I have all the information I need, in any case.
‘Brother Procion. Brother Ghan. You are dismissed for now,’ said Kulle without turning to them. ‘Return to quarters and write up your conclusions. Have them ready by evening assembly. I’ll read them after last litany.’
Both the Space Marines looked less than happy at being sent off, but saluted Kulle stiffly with right fist to chest. ‘For the honour of the Watch,’ they intoned together. Then they turned and stalked towards a cluster of block-shaped buildings a few hundred metres to the south. One of these blocks was the Mag-line node from where they would take an auto-carriage back to their chapel-barracks.
Karras did not imagine the journey would be one of friendly banter. He looked at Kulle, awaiting his attention.
The Watch sergeant’s light grey eyes followed the two candidates as they departed. When they were gone, he said, ‘Ghan won’t make it. He served with distinction on Squad Cerberus for eighteen years, but he hasn’t the mindset for a Watch sergeant. He’ll be given another kill-team or he’ll be released to return to his Chapter. Procion, though…’
The sergeant turned his gaze back to Karras. ‘In a Deathwatch kill-team, the weakness of one is the weakness of all. The Alpha
must
know the identity and nature of the weakest link. It is his role to correct for that weakness or, if possible, to eliminate it entirely.’
‘I did not realise it was Uphreidi who was slowing the insertion,’ said Karras.
‘You suspected another,’ said Kulle, grinning. ‘Good. I have the advantage of the monitors, and you are operating without helm or gift, so allowances must be made, but I’m glad you saw it. The insertion
is
an issue, as Procion pointed out, but storming the final room – the smoke-and-clear stage of the assault – is at least half of your problem. You realise that one of your team is deliberately hampering you?’
‘Hampering, yes, but deliberately?’
Kulle dropped his grin. ‘I told Procion and Ghan not to say anything. I’m glad you noticed. It is the Ultramarine, Solarion. He has been undermining the team’s performance since the first run, clearing the west hallway at a stroll, breaching his assigned door a full second after everyone else goes in. If it were just incompetence, I would swap him out, but the Deathwatch sequesters no incompetents to its ranks. If he were such, he would not be here. I’ve seen his feeds. He is an exemplary operator. He is almost certainly throwing you off by choice. Have you clashed before? Is there some history we should know about?’
Karras was speechless. The Ultramarine? They had not even shared words before this day.
A flat, grille-distorted voice spoke from beside the bank of monitors on the left. It was one of the tech-priests. ‘The kill-block is reset, Watch sergeant. The servitor crews have withdrawn. The Stormraven is ready.’
‘What will you do about Solarion?’ Kulle asked Karras.
As the Stormraven powered up its turbines on the far right, Karras wrestled with a fury that had lit inside him. Turning his will upon it like a torrent of icy water, he forced himself to extinguish it. Emotion would not serve. It was efficiency the Deathwatch demanded. He could see only one way to get it.
‘I’ll partner with him. Mannix will take the west hall. Solarion moves with me. We’ll see how he likes that.’
Kulle’s grin returned, predatory, like the blade-toothed smile of a Cestean crocophid. ‘Just don’t
accidentally
shoot him, brother. A friendly fire incident will look bad on my report.’
His gaze shifted over Karras’s right shoulder to the area by the ammo tables where the others had finished resupplying and prepping their weapons. Dropping his grin, he shouted over at them:
‘Back in the Stormraven, you cack-handed sloths. The twenty-first time is the charm!’
Higgan Dozois ran his eyes over the woman’s form for the thousandth time, drinking it in with the same pleasure he always did. It was something he did on reflex now, something he seemed incapable of resisting. There she stood before the viewport, back towards him, utterly indifferent to him despite every card he had played over the last seven weeks. He rolled his gaze over the sweep of her hips, the long slender legs in their glossy black breeches, the shapely calves that fitted snugly into the tops of her spike-heeled boots. She shifted, and her black hair shimmered in the pale cream light of the viewing deck.
What a torment she is
, thought Dozois.
I swear she delights in taunting me. Only an hour to groundside, and then it’s over. All those weeks, all those hours together, and she’s given me nothing. If she wasn’t paying so well…
It still rankled despite that princely sum. He had been a gentleman from the start, naturally. She had dined nightly at the captain’s table. He had given her the very best quarters on his ship, save his own, of course. He had plied her with fine wines, rare dishes, high-minded conversation, games for two. He had even stated his desires plainly when all else had proven futile. But this woman, born of a Noble House with more financial troubles than his own if reports read true, rebuffed his every advance.
Dozois, who was not an unhandsome man and heir to a significant portion of his House’s wealth, could not understand it. He had always enjoyed a fine measure of success with female passengers. But then, he had never wanted to bed a woman quite so much as he wanted Lady Fara Devanon. Once again, he allowed his eyes to trace those hips.
Exquisite
. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps she sensed his eagerness and was repulsed by it.
Far too late to affect indifference now,
thought Dozois.
Journey’s end.
He and his crew had brought her, as contracted, to Chiaro. Her House sought to secure industrial supply contracts here, though why it should hope to do so on a planet so far from any major Imperial trading lanes was beyond him. She had made some vague reference to a distant familial tie here. Dozois had been too busy admiring the graceful line of her neck to pay much attention.
He had examined her cargo on loading, as was his right: mining lasers and heavy machinery for the most part, some consumables, very little of interest to him personally. They would sell, he guessed – perhaps even at a decent mark-up – but, according to his own sources, Chiaro’s output had been in decline for decades. It rather looked as if House Devanon was locking the gates after the grox had bolted, so to speak.
All of which means what?
Dozois asked himself bitterly.
What do you care? Get her off the
Macedon
and be done with it.
He had other contracts waiting and, while none would pay quite as well as the Devanon contract, they ought at least to cause him less frustration.
Lady Fara spoke, bringing him back to the moment. Even her smooth voice, the voice of a woman trained and educated to the upper limits of her House’s provision, stoked the fires of his lust.
‘I had seen picts, of course,’ she told him without turning from the window. ‘But its strangeness only really becomes apparent to the naked eye, don’t you think?’
Dozois walked across to stand by her side. Even a metre away, he imagined he could feel the heat of her body. Testily, he tried to focus on the planet below.
‘I’ve seen no rock like it,’ he conceded. ‘Though I’ve seen countless eggs of that very shape.’
The lady didn’t bother to laugh.
‘You see the dark band there?’ she said, pointing. ‘The Nystarean Gorge. It runs the entire circumference of the planet. Four kilometres deep on average. Quite remarkable.’
Dozois followed the direction of the woman’s long finger. ‘I’ve read the dossier,’ he told her, and was surprised at the churlish quality in his voice. Quickly, he reeled himself in and added in gentler tones, ‘There’s an ongoing debate, I believe, about the origin of the canyon. Solid arguments that it’s artificial, you know. Crafted by some ancient xenos race, they say. Then again, they say many things, don’t they?’
‘I could believe it, captain. In fact, I’m sure I could believe anything about this world. Strangeness seems built into its very fabric.’
Dozois couldn’t dispute that. Chiaro was unique in all his experience, and his travels had taken him to the rimward boundaries of two segmenta. Nothing he had seen looked quite like this.
Chiaro’s axis of rotation pointed directly at the heart of its local star, Ienvo, meaning that, unlike other worlds, there was no day-night cycle. To the ground-dwellers who lived on the canyon floor, only the stars in the sky appeared to change as the planet rolled on its axis. The floor of the Nystarean Gorge was suitable for human habitation, but nowhere else was. Chiaro’s northern hemisphere was constantly bathed in Ienvo’s flesh-crisping glare, while the southern hemisphere was eternally dark and deathly cold.
Nightside and Dayside,
thought Dozois,
and men eking out an existence in the narrow gap between. Poor sods. Give me a captain’s life or none at all.
The Nystarean Gorge might be habitable, but men didn’t fill all that much of it. There were only two major cities on Chiaro: Najra and Cholixe. A mere six hundred and ninety kilometres stood between them.
Cholixe, the larger of the two, was populated mostly by the Garrahym people, a racial minority on their home world of Delta III Ragash. The Garrahym had been brought to Chiaro en masse to work the freezing mines of Nightside. According to the files Lady Fara had shared, the Garrahym were a hardy, stocky breed prone to quick violence and high alcohol consumption. These facts in themselves were of little interest to Dozois – his holds carried little alcohol and even less weaponry. But he knew from experience that elements of such a culture would also be prone to certain chemical addictions – a fact that did much to brighten his mood. As profitable as Lady Fara’s patronage might be for the captain and crew of the
Macedon
, he could hardly have kept his ship in fuel if not for his trade in
yaga
. The shipping and selling of the illegal narcotic root was punishable by death, but it was so potent and so difficult to detect through traditional scanning methods, that modest quantities could easily be hidden, then suitably diluted and mixed with reagents once the target market was reached. There would be demand in Cholixe, Dozois was sure. Few ships other than Adeptus Mechanicus cargo freighters ever landed here, and the priests of the Omnissiah offered no competition in black-market goods. They cared little for anything save their mad obsession with technology.
Najra, the smaller of Chiaro’s two cities despite being the official capital, was a different matter. Dozois did not plan to go there. For whatever reason, Lady Fara’s appointments were in Cholixe only, and she had commissioned transport solely to that city. A pity in some respects, for Dozois preferred the bustle of planetary capitals when he went groundside, but he doubted he would be missing all that much this time around. Najra’s populace were far less likely to indulge in the dangerously addictive joys of his wares. The people of that city were Hasmiri: devout, hard-working, and pledged to the ascetical teachings of their beloved Saint Sufra. They worked Dayside, excavating and mining the machine-cooled tunnels below the northern hemisphere’s baking surface. Sufra had been one of those sour-faced saints who spent his whole life condemning pleasure in any and every form. No. There would be little business for Dozois among the Hasmiri.
Just Cholixe, then
, Dozois told himself.
Just the Garrahym. Drop, sell and split. And good riddance to this devil-temptress!
‘Don’t you think?’
Dozois started, suddenly aware the lady had been speaking to him while his thoughts had turned to business.
‘Forgive me, m’lady,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘I was miles away. You were talking about the origin of the gorge? No conclusive explanations, even after millennia of human occupation. I think we may never know the answers to Chiaro’s riddles. Then again, if the Martian priesthood ever did uncover its secrets, would we ever know? I doubt it.’
Lady Fara turned to face him and smiled back with red lips of the most exquisite shape. Dozois thought he heard blood rushing through his ears, red cells rasping on the inner surface of his veins. ‘There are some mysteries we ought not to solve, don’t you think?’ the lady purred. ‘What would life be without a little mystery?’
Now or never,
thought the captain.
A last charge.
‘Mystery has its place,’ he concurred, leaning slightly forwards, ‘and yet, what satisfaction is there in a question unanswered? We have an hour, dear Fara,’ he said, deliberately opting to drop her rightful prefix. ‘Shall we not finally answer the question which has hung over us both since you came aboard?’
Lady Fara feigned confusion. ‘And what question is that, my good captain?’
See how she plays the game.
Dozois inched a little closer and made bed-eyes. ‘The question that always stands between a man and a woman, my dear. Simply, how good would it be?’
Lady Fara lapsed abruptly into delighted, almost musical laughter. She put a cool white hand to his cheek and, once her laughter had subsided, told him, ‘I have enjoyed you so, captain. Truly, your company and your humour have made a long, dull journey that much more bearable, and for that I thank you.’
Dozois’s smile was painted on. She… she was actually
laughing
at him. Did she think him some kind of joke?
‘I must rouse my entourage,’ she told him, dropping her hand from his face. ‘We must make ready for the drop. Until then.’
With that, she turned and strode towards the doors at the far end of the room. The yellowing scan-skull above the doorway detected her. Red lights blinked green in its sockets. The door hissed open with twin bursts of greasy steam. Dozois stood numb, watching her go. Without turning, Fara Devanon slinked through the door and out into the corridor, hips rolling like the flanks of a sleek black panther.
The captain turned his eyes back to the viewport and to the bizarre planet below.
Seven weeks,
he thought bitterly.
Seven bloody weeks. And nothing for me but mockery. To the blasted warp with you, whore. May your precious mysteries swallow your soul down there.
Shianna Varlan, Interrogator Class 3 of the Ordo Xenos of His Imperial Majesty’s Holy Orders of the Inquisition, stalked off down the corridor at a steady pace, heels clicking on the plasteel floor. She followed a route that would take her back to her quarters aboard the
Macedon
for the last time, and to the aides that awaited her there. So much to do in this last hour before boarding the drop-shuttle. This accursed journey was almost over, thank the Throne. It had been all too long and tortuous. The insufferable captain had barely given her a moment’s peace: invitations every time he sat at table, requests for her personal company at regular readings given by the ship’s chaplain, the constant battering innuendo while they played hand after hand of
Heretic!
together. His eyes were on her all the time. She detested it. The way his gaze played over her was almost a physical, tangible thing, like invisible hands groping. All men were the same, little better than beasts.
No. Not all, Shianna
, she reminded herself.
His Lordship is different.
Still, such unwelcome attention was hardly new to her. Fine genes were one of the primary assets for which she had been chosen, and she used them to the fullest, as she was expected to, even commanded to. But orders or not, it made her feel unclean, and that in turn made her wrathful. She had hated Dozois from the first, that simple, foolish man. But, as was always the case, greater need had forced her to put personal feelings aside. She had played her role to perfection: Lady Fara Devanon, aristocratic daughter of a minor House struggling to improve its lot; a woman firm in the knowledge of her feminine allure, but aware, too, that this was a coin to be spent only once. Give a man like Dozois exactly what he sought and you lost all power over him. The character Lady Fara, much like the woman who played her, valued her self-respect.
Pray we do not meet under other circumstances, you inbred fool! For I’ll surely kill you if we do.
Thoughts only, an empty threat, but the mental image that accompanied them pleased her. In all likelihood, she would never see Dozois again after today. It was time to put the foolish man aside, time to focus on the next phase of the operation. Her transit to Chiaro was at its end. On arrival in Cholixe, her work would begin in earnest.
She knew little of what lay ahead, but that was hardly new either. According to His Lordship, there were other assets already in play. Something on Chiaro had demanded the special attention of the Ordo Xenos. She would discover its nature soon enough.
And then, if so commanded, she would destroy it.