Vainglorious, p.25
Vainglorious, page 25
‘A fine idea in theory,’ I conceded, ‘but I doubt that the necrons will fall for it. And they must have thousands of warriors available to defend the place.’ Unbidden, the memory of my own desperate attempt to infiltrate the tomb on Simia Orichalcae on a similar mission years before rose up in my mind, and I shuddered – the entire Tempestus squad I’d gone in with had perished before we’d even got near the damn portal, and I’d been lucky to get out with a whole skin myself. I took a sip of my rapidly cooling tanna. ‘It was only the merest fluke that Jurgen and I got close enough to see it, and if those spider things hadn’t mistaken our vehicle for part of the delivery in the first place…’ I broke off, an idea suddenly taking root in my mind. A ridiculous, impossible, probably suicidal idea – but Throne help us all, it was the best I’d got. I braced myself for the inevitable chorus of derisive incredulity, and turned back to Norgard. ‘I don’t suppose Tezler’s mentioned when the next delivery’s due?’ I asked.
Norgard shook her head. ‘As I said, they’re being singularly uncooperative. What little useful intelligence we have been able to glean has largely been inferred from their bluster and threats. They still appear to believe that Aznibal will liberate and reward them for their service.’
Vorspung emitted a short burst of static from his voxcoder. ‘I’m sure they’ll be disabused of that particular notion as soon as the Inquisition arrives,’ he said, with a most un-tech-priest-like degree of relish.
‘I’m sure they will,’ I agreed hastily, before anyone could start asking awkward questions about who’d called them in. ‘Not to mention the task force from Coronus.’ Pretty much the first thing I’d done after emerging from that Emperor-forsaken hole was find an astropath and make sure Amberley and Zyvan were both brought up to speed, and both had responded with commendable rapidity – although I’d been careful to create the impression, without actually saying so, that it was the lord general who’d dumped the matter in the lap of the Ordo Xenos. Of course, I’d have liked nothing more than to simply sit back and wait for the reinforcements to get here, but the warp currents were fickle at the best of times, and unless we dealt with the matter ourselves, all they’d be likely to find when they arrived was our eviscerated corpses and wall-to-wall necrons energetically looting the place.
‘Why do you ask, anyway?’ Morie asked, his curiosity piqued. ‘It might give us a better idea of how long we’ve got, but other than that I don’t see the relevance.’
So I told him, and, in all honesty, the reaction of everyone present was pretty much exactly what I’d expected.
TWENTY-EIGHT
As it turned out, we didn’t have to waste any of our time trying to persuade Tezler to give us the schedule for the next delivery of tribute to the necrons; Vorspung plunged eagerly into the archives, and after a couple of hours of paddling around in the ocean of information generated by the vast array of cogitation engines we’d seen back at the Nexus, was able to produce a chart which he lost no time in disseminating to the data-slates of everyone else.
‘This is conjectural,’ he cautioned, while the rest of us stared at the devices in our hands, trying to look as though we understood any of the information they were displaying. ‘But given the movements of material, and the insultingly rudimentary attempts to obfuscate them, I’ve been able to extrapolate a pattern. The intervals vary from around three days to two months, with a mean frequency of seventeen point two-eight-seven standard days.’
‘Which would be far too long to wait before taking action,’ Morie opined.
I nodded agreement. ‘Throne knows how much damage Aznibal could do in more than two weeks,’ I said. The last thing we needed was to give him enough time to formulate an effective plan of action against us. ‘Especially once he realises Tezler’s out of the picture.’
‘Quite.’ Norgard nodded too. ‘We need to retain the initiative. Act before he does. But let him think he’s setting the agenda.’
‘Exactly,’ I agreed. I shrugged. ‘It goes against the grain, but I think our best chance is to let him think he’s won.’ I shot an anxious glance at Morie, expecting a speech about honour and glory, and loyalty to the Throne, but to my surprise he seemed to be in full agreement.
‘Scruples are for theologians,’ he said. ‘More battles are won by subterfuge and pragmatism than principle. And deceiving the enemies of the Emperor is holy work in itself, is it not?’
‘Works for me,’ I said, heartened by the ripple of approval around the conference table.
‘Then it’s decided,’ Morie said, standing with impressive speed for a man of his bulk. ‘We adopt the commissar’s plan with all due dispatch.’
Which is how come I found myself, a couple of hours later, at the head of a convoy of cargo-8s uncannily similar to the one we’d fled the tomb in, rattling down the ramp to the cavern below. As we passed the transport tube, I found myself looking out for the wreck of the lorry the necrons had shot to pieces, but there was no sign of it, beyond a faint patch of discoloration where fuel and lubricants had leaked. Which shouldn’t really have surprised me – no doubt it had been swiftly removed to restore unimpeded access, and sent off to make some unfortunate enginseer’s life more complicated than it needed to be.[146]
‘Didn’t expect to be back here so quick,’ Jurgen said, his familiar presence at the wheel as quietly reassuring as ever.
‘Neither did I,’ I said, trying to sound a lot more casual about it than I felt. We were taking a huge gamble, even by my own standards; everything depended on whether Aznibal really was as arrogant and overconfident as I suspected. I hoped so, but I couldn’t be sure. Over the course of my long and discreditable career I’d faced most of the enemies of humanity, even parleying with them on occasion, but even xenos species and Chaos-corrupted loons had something like facial expressions I could make a reasonable stab at interpreting. Aznibal’s blank metal visage, on the other hand, had left me nothing to go on but his words, and I was all too aware of how easily they could be twisted to deceive.[147]
No use worrying about it now, though, I told myself; we were committed.
The cavern was less busy than I remembered, with fewer tech-priests and artisans hacking away at the rock faces, moving the spoil or directing servitors than on our previous visit. As Jurgen steered us across the cavern floor, at a far more sedate pace than the last time we’d been here, a russet-robed tech-priest raised an idle hand in greeting – recognising Norgard, in a disguise rather more convincing than the ones my aide and I had adopted on our last little jaunt to the lower levels, I returned the gesture, and nodded. Everyone in sight was a skitarius, their weapons concealed beneath their robes, or among the mining tools they wielded with surprising expertise.[148] There were a few more servitors around than I remembered too, ignoring our presence as always, but most of the ones I could see appeared to be wandering aimlessly rather than engaged in any purposeful activity, parts of their bodies shrouded in tarpaulins, or concealed by boxes or bundles they were carrying to nowhere in particular with the single-minded diligence of their kind.
‘Looks like the cogboys are ready, anyway,’ Jurgen said, and I nodded.
‘Let’s hope the Astartes are too,’ I added, as my aide rolled us gently to a stop in almost exactly the same place Clode had parked such a short and eventful time before. I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves, as the rest of the trucks came to a halt behind us, and clambered out of the cab.
The sense of deja vu was almost overwhelming. There was the line of parked lorries, packed with crates of all sizes, from standard ammo box to taller than I was; there were the servitors plodding forward to unload them; and there was the mouth of the tunnel leading to the necron tomb, its sinister, sickly glow seeping through from the far end. I swallowed, my mouth dry, and was unexpectedly heartened by a familiar odour as Jurgen killed the engine and jumped down to join me. His lasgun was slung at his shoulder, the melta tucked away neatly in the cab. I would have been no less happy to see it in his hands than he would have been himself, but this was a calculated risk – we needed to look relatively harmless, but if we’d turned up appearing to be completely unarmed Aznibal was bound to smell a rat. However arrogant and conceited he might be, he was evidently far from stupid.
‘So what happens now?’ Jurgen asked, with a seemingly casual glance at the disguised skitarii in the cabs of the other trucks. All were remaining where they were, with the limitless patience of those with augmetically enhanced cerebellums,[149] although I had no doubt they were assessing everything around us for signs of a threat.
‘We get this lot unloaded,’ I said, ‘withdraw and wait. See if those spider things take the bait.’
My aide glanced down the tunnel again, the slight narrowing of his eyes the only indication that he was anything other than his normal phlegmatic self. ‘Something already is,’ he said.
He was right, too. The necrotic light in the distance was flickering, intermittently obscured, while shimmering highlights danced against metal. Several somethings were on the move, heading towards us, and I fought down the impulse to draw my weapons. If I did, I was confident that I’d be dead before I even completed the movement.
‘We have you covered,’ Norgard said, cutting in on my vox-bead, and I inclined my head a few millimetres rather than responding verbally. All that probably meant was that my murder would be swiftly avenged, but I preferred to think that the overwatching sharpshooters would be quick enough to take down any threatening necron before it completed its attack.
The handling servitors had reached the lorries by now, and begun to unload. One crate in particular, about a metre long, wide and high, caught my eye, and I found my fingers closing around something small and hard in my greatcoat pocket – realising what I was doing, I let go of it hastily. The servitor holding it froze in place, like its fellows, waiting to be instructed where to put its burden.
Before I could point to the spot where the last stack had been, however, a flicker of movement caught my eye, and the first of the metallic spiders I’d been expecting scuttled into the cavern. Ignoring everything else it approached the servitor, plucked the box from its handling claws, and skittered away back down the tunnel. Taken by surprise I just had time to squeeze the activation stud on the little device in my pocket, and hope for the best.
‘Commissar. Again you surprise me.’ Aznibal strode out of the tunnel mouth, gazing down at me, his eye sockets glowing like a guiser’s daemon mask,[150] reflecting the eldritch energies of the staff in his hand, which I took to be some kind of symbol of his office. It glowed, in the same way as the weapons I’d learned to be so wary of, so I wasn’t about to take it on trust that it was harmless, though; if nothing else, it looked heavy enough to inflict a lot of damage if used as a polearm. He turned his head to take in the line of lorries, and the servitor, which had turned away to retrieve the next crate from the flatbed. ‘I was not expecting gifts so quickly.’
‘Well, you know,’ I said, determined not to show my surprise at this unexpected development. I would have bet a substantial sum that he was through the portal and back on his battle station by now; if he was still hanging around on Eucopia, that rather implied that he was preparing for an all-out invasion sooner rather than later. ‘You told me to choose, so I did. Might as well start as we mean to go on.’
‘Good decision,’ Aznibal said, his voice as hollow as ever, although I hoped I detected an undertone of smugness. ‘Though I haven’t communicated my requirements to Tezler yet.’
‘Magos Tezler is indisposed,’ I said, in my best diplomatic voice. ‘For the time being I suggest you liaise with me, or Magos Vorspung.’
‘Killed the turncoat, did you?’ Aznibal asked, as though the answer was both obvious and of little interest.
‘Not yet,’ I said, ‘but we don’t trust them as an intermediary. We feel happier dealing with you directly.’
Aznibal nodded. ‘Of course. Once a traitor…’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘And since it was important to let you know we’ve accepted your terms, we thought you’d appreciate an immediate gesture of good faith.’
‘I do.’ Aznibal stared down at me again. ‘You have a reputation for trustworthiness, I’m told. I assume that’s why you were selected to lead this delegation?’
‘I’m a pragmatist,’ I said. ‘I don’t like your deal at all. Quite frankly, it sticks in my craw. But I can’t stand by and see a world full of innocent civilians massacred, especially when you’d get what you want anyway. This is the least bad option from where I’m standing, so I’m living with it.’ For a moment I wondered if I’d overdone it, but Aznibal’s posture suddenly shifted, to one I read as a little less wary. Maybe he was buying it after all.
‘I see.’ The sepulchral chuckle resonated from his chest for a moment. ‘If you’d given me pledges of fealty, I’d have killed you where you stand. I know a liar when I see one. Lesser creatures could never serve us as equals.’ His head turned, taking in the growing pile of crates beside the lorries.[151] ‘What did you bring?’
I shrugged. ‘We weren’t sure what your requirements were, so Magos Vorspung made an educated guess, based on the records of what you’ve had before. Just leave anything you don’t need, and let us have a shopping list for the next delivery.’
Aznibal’s voice became a little more resonant. ‘Do not presume to anticipate me. Everything on this world is mine, and will be duly claimed!’ Which was exactly the reaction I was hoping to provoke. He raised a hand, and a moment later a swarm of the mechanical spiders boiled out of the tunnel mouth.
‘As you wish,’ I said, trying to sound as though I was attempting to mollify him. The spider things picked up everything the servitors had unloaded, and scuttled away into the tunnel, while still more scuttled over the lorries, picking the flatbeds clean. As before, some of them carried the larger crates between them, while others grasped the smaller ones in their mandibles, occasionally steadying them with their front set of forelimbs. As the last of the big crates disappeared down the tunnel, I turned back to the cab of the truck and prepared to mount, carefully keeping a triumphant smirk from my face. He’d actually fallen for it.
‘What I wish is for you to accompany me,’ Aznibal said.
‘Really?’ I turned back, looking up at him, and tried to project an air of polite confusion. What I was actually feeling, of course, was rather more akin to blind panic. ‘By all means. I haven’t anything urgent to be getting on with.’ Which wasn’t entirely true. The timer I’d activated with the vox-pulse from the tiny transmitter in my pocket would be counting inexorably downwards by now. If I’d estimated the delay correctly it would be through the portal and well out of the way before it reached zero, but knowing my luck it was entirely possible that this batch would be stored somewhere within the tomb, and if that was the case, I very much wanted to be a long way from here when it did.
‘As I allow you to continue to exist,’ Aznibal said, ‘you may bear witness to the glory that awaits this part of the galaxy.’
‘If you mean the tomb, I’ve already seen it,’ I said. ‘And a couple of others, come to that.’ I didn’t think it was politic to mention that I’d been instrumental in the destruction of one of them, though, the last thing I needed was to give Aznibal the idea that I might be some kind of threat.
‘Really?’ the towering necron asked, and with a sudden flare of well-masked apprehension I realised that I’d piqued his interest. ‘I would hear what little you may have understood of the secrets of inferior dynasties.’ He turned to the mouth of the tunnel, where a couple of stray spiders which had arrived too late to collect anything were milling around uncertainly. He dismissed them with an irritable gesture, and they scuttled back into the enveloping gloom. ‘Walk with me.’
‘By all means,’ I said, and with every appearance of ease I could counterfeit, strode after him into the darkness.
TWENTY-NINE
After a few paces I became aware of the echo of Guard-issue combat boots a few paces behind me, and a familiar odour, and breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. Though he would have had to leave the melta behind, I felt a good deal more confident in my ability to get out of here in one piece with Jurgen watching my back. I glanced at Aznibal, waiting for him to react to my aide’s presence, but he made no sign of having even noticed him, which was fine by me. I tapped the comm-bead in my ear.
‘I’m accompanying Lord Aznibal into the tomb,’ I said, keeping my voice casual, and hoping that the eldritch stone of its construction wouldn’t block the transmission. Norgard would have seen me enter, but Morie wouldn’t, and would no doubt appreciate my services as a forward observer if he’d been able to pick up my vox. No way of telling if he had, of course; if our stratagem was to work, he had to maintain vox silence for as long as possible.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Aznibal asked, his head turning to look at me in the manner of one of my old schola tutors suspecting (usually accurately, if I’m honest) that I’d been up to something if they could only just work out what it was.
‘Vorspung,’ I said. ‘If my vox-bead works down here, I can pass on your requirements more quickly.’
‘Such crude devices are beneath my notice,’ Aznibal said, as we reached the end of the tunnel and entered the tomb itself. ‘That would be a matter for the crypteks to resolve.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s what you have them for in the first place I suppose.’ Although I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, the gist of it – that he was too important to bother himself with the little details – was clear enough, and I thought a bit of extra flattery wouldn’t go amiss. That was why I’d added the honorific to his name. I glanced around, orientating myself. The line of spider things was following the same course it had taken before, and I breathed a little easier, as sure as I could be that the crate with our little surprise in it was well on its way to the portal. In fact, by my estimate, it would probably be through it in another few moments.
