Eisenhorn Omnibus by Dan Abnett
‘Choice?’
‘Tunderey clear-grain, double, in a chill-sleeve.’
‘Dokey-doke,’ she returned as she stalked away.
The music continued to blast. She returned with a single shot glass on her suspensor tray. The glass was actually a cup of pressure-moulded ice. She tonged it onto my table and caught the coin I flipped at her.
‘Keep the change,’ I murmured.
‘Big spender,’ she mocked and paced off, wiggling a backside that had no business being wiggled.
I didn’t touch the drink. Gradually, the ice melted and the oily liquid began to seep out over the table top.
The hooded figure got up and wandered over to me.
‘Rosethorn?’
I looked up. ‘That’s me.’
She dropped the hooded cloak away from her shoulders. She had sharp features and long, straight black hair. Her kohl-edged eyes glinted like jade.
Not Harlon Nayl at all. Maria Tarray.
She sat down opposite me and knocked back my drink, licking the ice-water off her long fingers.
‘You knew we’d get you sooner or later.’
‘I guess so. Who’s we?’
The other drinkers in the bar had got up and formed a circle around us, sitting at adjacent tables. Maria Tarray clicked her fingers and they all drew back coats or cloaks to reveal the handguns they carried. She clicked again and the weapons disappeared.
‘So this is a trap?’
‘Of course.’
‘The astrograms weren’t from Nayl?’
‘Evidently.’
‘You’ve broken Glossia?’
‘How clever are we?’
I sat back. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr Eisenhorn?’
I shrugged. ‘Seeing as you’ve got me cold, yes. These men are more of your damned Vessorine, aren’t they? I’m dead in my seat. I can’t see the harm.’
‘I imagine you’ve guessed already,’ she said. She smiled. I could feel her powerful mind trying to delve into mine.
‘Jekud Vance.’
‘That’s right, Mr Eisenhorn. Your astropath proved to be very useful. With the right persuasion. And the Janissaries excel at persuasion. Vance sent the communiqués, pretending to be Nayl. He knew Glossia.’
She probed at my mind again.
‘You’re using shielding techniques,’ she said, her face darkening.
‘Of course I am. You would be too if the situation was reversed. I have to say though, I’m disappointed. I was hoping that Pontius might be here himself. This is a trap after all. Eisenhorn’s last stand. He might have been civil enough to come and watch me die.’
‘Pontius is busy elsewhere,’ she snapped, and then realised what she’d said.
‘Thank you for that confirmation,’ I said.
‘You bastard!’ she snapped. ‘You’re dead! What good will it do you? This is a trap!’
‘Yes, it is. A trap.’
She hesitated. The janissaries had all risen, guns out, aiming at me. The bar staff were fleeing, terrified.
Maria Tarray slowly reached out and took the rebreather mask off my face.
‘Etrik?’ she stammered, her jade eyes wide.
‘Yes,’ I said, three kilometres away in a locked lodging house room, sweating and straining as I channelled my will via the runestaff and animated the body of Clansire Etrik.
Tarray leapt back from the table, knocking over her chair. ‘Damnation!’ she shrieked. ‘He’s got us! He’s got us! How the hell did he know?’
‘You could talk like Nayl and use Glossia thanks to Jekud, but Jekud didn’t know what Nayl knew. We fought Sadia on Lethe Eleven, not Eechan,’ I had Etrik say.
Maria Tarray drew a plasma pistol and shot Etrik through the chest. The Vessorines all around opened fire with their autoguns and las-carbines.
As my puppet was torn apart, I let go of the warp vortex that had been spinning in my mind ever since I had summoned it.
It surged out of Etrik’s collapsing body and expanded, annihilating the janissaries, Entipaul’s Lounge and the entire level sixty deck of hive four in a radius of fifty metres.
Maria Tarray was atomised. In the last milliseconds of her life, her mental shields collapsed in terror and I got a precious snapshot into her powerful psyker mind. Not everything, but enough.
Enough to know that I had just annihilated Pontius Glaw’s daughter.
FIFTEEN
Sanctum, Catharsis and Fischig.
Teht uin sah.
Promody.
FIFTEEN DAYS LATER, we were a long, long way from New Gevae, a long way from Gudrun itself. I had, for the time being, evaded the clutches of Khanjar the Sharp.
The morning before my meeting – or my puppet’s meeting, I should say – with Maria Tarray in the mid-hive bar, Aemos and I had arranged passage on a packet lighter called the Spirit of Wysten, and by the evening, we were leaving the planet. Five and a half days out from Gudrun, in the vicinity of Cyto, we rendezvoused with the Essene.
My old friend Tobias Maxilla, eccentric master of the sprint trader Essene, had come in response to the Glossia code word ‘Sanctum’ without hesitation, breaking off from his merchant runs in the Helican spinwards and laying course for Gudrun. He had never been a formal part of my operation, but he was an ally of long standing, and had provided the services of his ship on many occasions.
He always claimed to do this for financial reward – I regularly made sure the ordos remunerated him handsomely – and to keep on the good side of the Imperial Inquisition. Privately, I believe his allegiance to me was the product of an adventurous streak. Getting involved in my business offered more diverting occupation than a trade voyage down the Helican worlds.
There was no ship, and no ship’s master, that I trusted more than Tobias Maxilla and the Essene. With my life shattered, my back to the wall and an enemy after my blood, he was the one I turned to for rescue and escape.
One could also always rely on Maxilla to lift a company’s spirits. In truth, the mood in my little group had been uncomfortable since New Gevae. And that was largely my own fault.
As soon as I had realised that ‘Nayl’ was just another of Glaw’s deceits, a ruse to lure me into a trap, I had set my trap in return. Certain sections of the Malus Codicium concerned the creation and remote animation of thralls – human beings psionically controlled as puppets. I had never tried the technique, for it seemed ghoulish. The Codicium suggested the process worked best with a freshly killed cadaver. But on the other hand, it was simply an elaborate extension of my use of will, and it suited my purpose.
I didn’t go into detail about what I was going to do, but Medea, Eleena, Crezia and Aemos knew something unorthodox was afoot, and they were all concerned when I had Etrik’s body covertly taken from the train to a lodging we had rented in hive four. Crezia mumbled something about body snatching, and Medea was dubious. Back aboard the Pulchritude, she’d shrugged off as a joke the idea that I was dabbling too far. She seemed to have accepted the whole business with Cherubael.
Now she seemed less confident about esoteric psyker tricks.
Even Aemos seemed reserved. He had not said a word about the Malus Codicium since he’d seen me remove it from the safe in my study. And he’d made it clear on several occasions that he trusted my judgement.
But there had still been a feeling in the air.
I kept them out of the room while I performed the rituals, and that may have been a mistake too. Except for Eleena, who was spared the sensations, they all felt the unnerving, creeping backwash of the act.
I had also never used a warp vortex before, but it seemed the only weapon I could equip my thrall with that would trap the trappers. In hindsight, I wonder if the Malus Codicium had planted the idea in my head.
The vortex worked. It destroyed the enemies who had tried to snare me. I doubt I will use one again. The feedback left me unconscious, and I was ill and weak for two days afterwards. My fr
Perhaps they were right.
None of them had wanted to talk about it. Aemos had found the Malus Codicium on the floor beside me and slipped it into his pocket before the others could see it. Later, aboard the Spirit of Wysten, he’d handed it back to me privately
‘I don’t want to touch it again,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I want to see it again.’
I was unhappy at his reaction. His life was devoted to the acquisition of knowledge – it was an actual clinical compulsion in his case – but there he was rejecting a source of secret data, albeit dark, that could be found almost nowhere else in the galaxy. I thought he alone might appreciate its worth.
‘It’s the Malus Codicium, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘They never found it. On Farness Beta, after Quixos fell, the ordos searched for it and never found it.’ ‘That’s true.’
‘Because you took it for yourself and never told them,’ ‘Yes. It was my decision.’
‘I see. And that’s how you learned to control daemonhosts too, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m disappointed in you, Gregor.’
MAXILLA WAS, AS ever, the perfect host, and the general spirit did pick up a little once we were in his company. He met us at the Essene’s fore starboard airgate, dressed in a chequered sedril gown-coat, a blue silk cravat pinned with a golden star pin and a purple suede calotte with a silver tassel. His skin dye was gloss white with black hearts over his eyes, and a fine platinum chain ran between the diamond earring in his left lobe to the sapphire stud in his nose. Behind him, gold-plated servitors waited with salvers of refreshments. He greeted us all, flirting with Medea and making a particular fuss of Crezia and Eleena, two females he had not met before.
‘Where to?’ was his first question to me.
‘Let me use your astropath, and set course for the place we first met.’
I SENT WORD, in Glossia, to Fischig, telling him to alter his route to avoid Gudrun and meet me at a new rendezvous point. ‘Thorn wishes Hound, at Hound’s cradle, by sext.’ Maxilla’s cadaverous, nameless Navigator performed his hyper-mathematical feats of divination, and set the Essene thundering into warp space as fast as its potent drive could carry it.
As always, I was unable to rest easily while travelling in the hellish netherworld of the warp, so instead I retired with Maxilla to his stateroom. He was a terrible gossip and always relished a few hours catching up whenever we were reunited. Surrounded as he was by a crew that was more servitor than human, he did so crave company.
But I had been looking forward to a private talk. I’d never confided in him particularly before, but now I felt he might be the only man in the Imperium who would give me a fair hearing. And if not fair, then at least one free of harsh judgment. Maxilla was a rogue. He made no excuses about it. His entire life had been devoted to testing the ductile qualities of rules and regulations. I wanted, I suppose, to find out what he thought of me.
His stateroom was a double-storey cabin behind the Essene’s cathedral-like main bridge. A ten-seat banquet table of polished duralloy that I had dined at many times before occupied a mezzanine area at the far end under a domed section of roof that could peel back shielding at the wave of a control wand to become an observation blister.
Curved stairways, with tetrawood balustrades that Maxilla claimed had been salvaged from a twenty mast sunjammer on Nautilia, ran down from either end of the mezzanine onto the main deck area, a wide hall with a floor of inlaid marble. Works of art – paintings, statues, antiques, hololiths – were displayed all round the room between the crystelephantine wall pillars. Some were protected by softly glowing stasis fields, others hung weightlessly in invisible repulsor beams.
Elegant scroll-armed couches and chairs, some draped with throws of Sampanese light-cloth, were arranged on a large rectangle of exquisite Olitari rugwork in the centre of the room. The rug alone was worth a small fortune. The room was illuminated by six shimmering chandeliers from the glassworks of Vitria, each one suspended by a small antigrav plate so they floated below the dished ceiling.
I sat down on a couch and accepted the balloon of amasec Maxilla handed to me. ‘You look like a man who wishes to unburden himself, Gregor,’ he said, taking a seat opposite.
‘Am I so transparent?’
‘No, I fear it is rather more a case that I am hopeful. It’s been a boring few months. I crave excitement. And when the only man I know who makes a habit of getting involved in the most ridiculously perilous ventures anyone ever heard of calls to me for help, I perk up.’
He fitted a lho-stick into a long silver holder, lit it with a tiny flick of his digital ring weapon and sat back, exhaling spiced smoke, rolling the amasec in his glass around with an experienced hand.
‘I…’ I tried to begin, but I didn’t really know where to start.
He put his glass down and made a gesture with his control wand like a theatrical conjuror. The air became close and slightly muffled.
‘Speak freely,’ he told me. ‘I’ve activated the suite’s privacy field.’
‘Actually,’ I admitted, ‘my hesitation was more to do with not knowing what to say.’
‘I deal in routes and journeys, Gregor. In my experience, the best place to start is always—’
‘The beginning? I know.’
I told him, first in general terms and then with increasing detail, about the events as they had unfolded. Durer. Thuring. The battles with Cruor Vult and Cherubael. His dyed face became tragic, like a clown’s, as I told him about Alizebeth. He had always had a soft spot for her.
Though I felt I had taken his advice and started from the beginning, I realised more and more that I had not. I kept going back, filling in details. To explain Cherubael, I had to go back to Farness Beta and the struggle against Quixos, and that in turn required mention of the mission to Cinchare. I told him about the assault on Spaeton House and our desperate flight across Gudrun. I recounted the murders that had taken place across the sub-sector. He’d known Harlon Nayl and Nathun Inshabel, not to mention several other members of my team. My account of Pontius Glaw’s revenge was a litany of bad tidings.
Once I had begun, I couldn’t stop. I spared nothing. It felt liberating to confess everything at last and unburden myself. I told him about the Malus Codicium, and how I might have compromised myself by keeping it. I told him about my dabbling with daemonhosts. And thralls. And warp vortices. I owned up to the deal I had struck with Glaw on Cinchare and how that had empowered him and turned him into the threat that now pursued me.
‘Everyone, Tobias, everyone in my operation – my family, if you will – everyone except you, Fischig and the handful I brought aboard here with me, has died because of what I did on Cinchare. Something in the order of… well, I haven’t made an exact count. Two hundred servants of the Imperium. Two hundred people who had devoted themselves to my cause in the firm belief that I was doing good work… are dead. I’m not even counting the likes of Poul Rassi, Dudane Haar and that poor bastard Verveuk who perished in what turns out to be the overture to this bloodbath. Or Magos Bure, who must have been killed by Glaw for him to have escaped.’
‘Might I correct you, Gregor?’ he asked.
‘By all means.’
‘You called it your cause. That they were devoted to your cause. But it isn’t, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You still, passionately, believe that you are doing the Emperor’s work?’
‘Damn right I do!’
‘Then they died in the service of the Emperor. They died for His cause. No Imperial citizen can ask for anything more.’
‘I don’t think you were listening, M
He got to his feet. ‘No, I don’t think you were, inquisitor. Not even to yourself. I’m pressing this point because it’s so basic you seem to have overlooked it.’
He walked across the stateroom and stood looking up at a hololithic portrait of an Imperial warrior. It was very old. I didn’t want to think where he might have got it from.
‘Do you know who this is?’
‘No.’
‘Warmaster Terfuek. Commanded the Imperial forces in the Pacificus War, almost fifty centuries ago. Ancient history now. Most of us couldn’t say what the damn war was about any more. At the Battle of Corossa, Terfeuk committed four million Imperial Guardsman to the field. Four million, Gregor. They don’t do battles like that any more, thank the Throne. It was of course the age of High Imperialism, the era of the notable warmaster, the cult of personality. Anyway, Terfeuk got his victory. Not even his advisors thought he could win at Corossa, but he did. And of those four million men, only ninety thousand left the field alive.’
Maxilla turned and looked at me. ‘Do you know what he said? Terfeuk? Do you know what he said of that terrible cost?’
I shook my head.
‘He said it was the greatest honour of his life to have served the Emperor so well.’
‘I’m happy for him.’
‘You don’t understand, Gregor. Terfeuk was no butcher. No glory hound. By all accounts he was humane, and beloved by his men as fair and generous. But when the time came, he did not regret for a moment the cost of serving the Emperor and preserving the Imperium against all odds.’
Maxilla sat down again. ‘I think that’s all you’re guilty of. Making hard choices to serve the Emperor the best you can, to serve him where maybe others would not be strong enough and fail. Doing your duty and living with the consequences. I’m sure dear Terfeuk had sleepless nights for years after Corossa. But he dealt with that pain. He didn’t have any regrets.’
‘Committing men to battle is not quite the same as—’
‘I beg to differ. Imperial society is your battleground. The people you have lost were your soldiers. And soldiers are only martial resources. They are there to be used. You used your own resources to win your battles. This book you speak of. This daemonhost. He sounds fascinating. I’d love to meet him.’