Rites of passage mike.., p.21
Rites of Passage - Mike Brooks, page 21
‘This leaves us with a choice,’ Ngiri said. ‘We stay and wait for rescue, or we head out to try to improve our position ourselves.’ She grimaced. ‘The second option is more in my nature, but I do not know if it’s the wisest course of action.’
‘With the ship’s comm out, the only way someone will find us if we stay here is by sight,’ Jekri commented, gesturing pointedly towards the window. ‘It is still several hours till dawn, and that is without the smog taken into consideration.’ They shrugged. ‘I do not have the gift for numbers that Enginseer Lentzen possessed, but I would suggest that the chances are marginal.’
‘My house will have been monitoring our flight,’ Chetta argued. ‘They should have at least a vague idea of where we came down, based on our last position.’ An ugly thought occurred to her. ‘The question is whether anyone will come. With the Dukarr offensive… And who will take charge? The head of security is dead. I was the last of the ruling family branch. My husband’s most prominent kin may already be angling to step into my shoes, in which case they will have no wish to see me rescued.’
‘Perhaps a compromise?’ Kennevario Xudine spoke up. ‘My chair’s powercell is not limitless and is drained more quickly by motion, and were it to fail in the course of a venture away from here then I should be left exposed, else become a burden for someone to carry. I shall stay. Decide upon a direction and a destination, and should I be discovered by rescuers then I shall direct them to you. Should you find assistance first, I would expect you to extend me the same courtesy.’
‘Any search party may not be rescuers,’ Chetta reminded him. ‘And don’t forget the danger posed by the local scavengers.’
‘In which case, I shall not direct them to you,’ Xudine said firmly. The corner of his mouth twitched in a tired, pained ghost of a smile. ‘And again, I would ask you to extend the same courtesy.’
‘Staying here is likely to be a death sentence if you’re alone,’ Chetta said grimly. The thought of Kennevario, helpless in his chair when the smog spiders or the mutants came calling, made her shudder. The man had been part of a grand deception played on her, but he’d done it in the service of the Emperor, and he didn’t deserve such a fate. Chetta looked at her TriStar guards. ‘I want two volunteers to stay behind with Lord Xudine.’
Anthons, with his broken leg, and Sica, who’d cut her cheek, volunteered to remain. That left Wroze, Grangar, Viller and Hickett from Chetta’s honour guard, who all donned respirators. Chetta selected one from the gun-cutter’s lockers as well, as did all of Ngiri’s crew, with the exception of Jekri who maintained that they would be fine without.
‘You’re very well equipped,’ Chetta commented as she settled the mask into place over her face. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, but it would undoubtedly be better than attempting to breathe the polluted soup outside.
‘Simple practicalities,’ Ngiri replied. She’d completed her armour by donning her helmet, with a quick and well-practised flick of her hair to get it clear of the neck seal, and now spoke from behind red-lit eye-lenses on which would undoubtedly be superimposed telemetry from sensors such as range-finders and heat sensors. ‘There could be a catastrophic coolant gas leak in any part of the ship, for example. You need hazard gear readily available in all locations. Happily, that means we have spares.’ The inquisitor looked around. ‘Comm check.’
They’d all synchronised their personal comm-beads, and sounded off one at a time. Then, with Fell leading the way, they began to negotiate their way out of the dead craft.
The ship’s hatches had to be operated manually, to prevent the choking atmosphere from leaking into the hold where Kennevario, Anthons and Sica were to remain: a task mainly completed by Fell’s bionic arm with nudges from Carmine’s powers. Then once the final hatch had been opened, Chetta found herself faced with what remained of the rear of the ship.
Whatever the Jo’Sin craft had fired at them had been effective. It had torn a huge rent in the rear fuselage, ripping right through into what must have been the galley. Chetta picked her way carefully over the warped metal beneath her feet, then out through the mangled hull, and finally onto the barren ground of stones and dirt beyond. She activated the luminator in her left hand, which did little more than turn a cone of smog from a big dark blur to a big light blur.
‘I’ll say this for the Vorlesians,’ the shape that was Ngiri commented, her visor turning this way and that. ‘When they set about polluting a place, by the Emperor do they do a job of it. I can barely make out a thing.’
‘We were flying through the city,’ someone said. Carmine, Chetta thought, although with his voice coming directly into her ear, and everyone little more than shadows in the gloom and their mouths covered by respirators, it was virtually impossible to say for sure. ‘Surely we must be surrounded by hab blocks?’
‘We will be,’ Chetta confirmed. ‘But the distances involved are deceptive. They’re built further apart than you think. This was all meant to be a pleasant parkland once, but someone didn’t realise that if you build a city in a valley, the smog has nowhere to go.’ She looked around, but nothing met her eyes except creamy-green murk. ‘Finding a hab block at least means we’ll have somewhere we can start climbing out of this mess, but we’ll likely encounter people, too. And down here, I don’t fancy our chances for them to be friendly.’
‘You’re saying we may as well pick a direction at random?’ Ngiri asked. Chetta shrugged, despite the fact that no one would see it.
‘Had I been paying attention to exactly where we were when we started to lose altitude, I may have been able to hazard a better guess as to our location. As it is, the best I can do is that we’re somewhere between the Brobantis and Dukarr palaces, which means my home is somewhere to the south-east of here.’
‘That sounds like as good an idea as any,’ someone said. Chetta recognised Fell’s gravelly tones. ‘So, does anyone know which way south-east is?’
‘The auspex is blank,’ Jekri said, when no one else spoke.
‘Fine, we do this the hard way,’ Chetta muttered. ‘Fell, I want you three paces in front of me and to my left, because there’s no way I’m having that flamer pointing anywhere near my back. Hickett, you three paces in front of me to my right.’
‘What are you doing?’ Ngiri demanded.
‘Navigating,’ Chetta told her bluntly. ‘I’ve found my way home flying blind through warp storms before – if a bit of dirty fog is enough to throw me off then I may as well end it all here and now.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Fine,’ Ngiri said. ‘Fell, do as she says. You’re on point with Hickett. Wroze and Grangar, you’re rearguard. Viller and Carmine, left flank. Jekri and I will take the right. Nero, you stay in the middle with Chetta, and warn us if you sense anything.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ Nero said, and her form – somewhat slighter than the others – shuffled closer. Chetta didn’t think she was imagining the reluctance in her former aide’s body language.
‘“Sense anything”?’ she asked, disabling her comm-bead for a moment as Nero came within proper earshot, even of words spoken into a respirator mask.
‘I have mild precognitive abilities,’ Nero replied primly, ‘and sporadic divination talents.’
‘A shame you never used them for me,’ Chetta bit out.
‘Oh, I did,’ Nero hissed back. ‘Just not when you could see. I was told to be the best damned aide for you that I could be, and I was.’
‘Ready,’ Ngiri announced, cutting off Chetta’s reply. ‘Let’s move out.’ Her glowing red eye-lenses seemed to focus on the pair of them. ‘And everyone keep your comm-beads active, please. We don’t want to get separated out here.’
They began to trudge across the ground. It was hard going, Chetta was prepared to admit. She hadn’t been having a good day anyway, and it had been compounded by being on her feet for longer than usual – and surviving a shuttle crash was never going to help matters. Although, she conceded to herself, it was better than not surviving a shuttle crash.
In short, what it all added up to was that she was getting near the end of her strength, and even her usual bloody-minded stubbornness wasn’t going to be able to carry her much further. For a moment she thought wistfully of the gun-cutter’s hold, and staying behind with Kennevario, but idly awaiting rescue would have driven her to distraction in short order. Half her body might be in agony out here, but that was at least something she could set herself against.
‘Do you require any assistance?’ Nero muttered. She hadn’t turned her comm-bead back to broadcasting, in apparent defiance of the inquisitor’s instructions.
‘Your ribs didn’t appear to be in great shape,’ Chetta said shortly, wincing as another twinge shot up her right side. ‘I have my cane. You look to your own aff–’
The spitting snarl of a hellgun tore through the air. Chetta spun, her body objected, she started to fall and then Alyssana Nero was there, catching her and grunting in pain herself at the effort of supporting Chetta’s bulk.
‘Report!’ Ngiri was snapping.
‘It came from behind me,’ Wroze replied immediately.
‘And me,’ Grangar added. Chetta could just see her helmet, twitching this way and that.
A beam of ruby light stabbed out through the darkness, occluded but not smothered by the smog, and accompanied once more by the weapon’s distinctive report.
It was coming from the wreckage of the gun-cutter.
Final Preparations
Radimir had already lost half of the Children, but he wasn’t overly concerned. After all, by the time this was through, he’d have lost them all. And weren’t even these small offerings still to the glory of the Great Powers?
The Smog Deeps were a grim environment, true enough, and many of the cult hadn’t had the proper equipment to survive it. Those with proper respirators were still with him, although a couple were starting to get short of breath as the devices were taxed to their limits. Many of those with old or corroded models had died. Every Child who had braved the choking atmosphere with no protection at all had perished within minutes… with two notable exceptions.
Svet, the huge mutant, was still going strong. Whatever had caused his immense size and altered appearance, be that genetic deviation or divine intervention, it seemed to have given him the ability to survive even in this polluted pit. One of his brothers had succumbed, but Svet powered on.
More surprising, perhaps, was Aylen Marjuk. The ex-Guardsman had donated his respirator – military-issue, by Radimir’s guess, which along with the laspistol was a further suggestion that he’d deserted – to Evelyn Darke when her own had started to fail and she’d fallen to her knees, fighting for breath. Radimir had expected Marjuk to suffer the same fate, as Darke had sucked in clean air greedily and guiltily, and judging by his grim expression, Marjuk had as well. Instead, he’d lapsed into a coughing fit that had rasped wetly, but then seemed to recover. Now he walked around bare-faced, breathing in the smog as though it were the cleanest air of the upper levels. Radimir, for whom shadows held no secrets, could see that the whites of the man’s eyes were turning green, as were his teeth. His tongue looked longer, more pointed. He rubbed at his forehead now and again as well, as though something which pained him lurked beneath the surface of his skin.
It seemed as though the Lord of Disease had found a favourite amongst Sulaman Eichner’s sorry bunch.
It wasn’t just the pollution that had claimed victims. The work of carving the great glyph into the skin of the planet was not an easy one, and it had taken its toll. Had they done it in the light, Radimir had no doubt that he’d have precious few lives left to play with. As it was, when even in daytime the smog reduced the local star’s rays to a dirty brown smear of light in the sky, the Children of the Serpent had, in the main, managed to avoid seeing too much at once of the eight-times-eight sigils they’d been marking out.
And yet, there had been fatalities. One woman had simply slumped down, blank-eyed and unbreathing: a burst heart, had been Eichner’s assessment. Radimir had seen one man grow catatonic and rock for minutes on end, until he suddenly removed his respirator and began trying to eat his own arm until he choked on blood and smog. Svet’s second brother had started screaming without warning, and bludgeoned another man to death before anyone had properly gathered what was happening. When Svet had approached, his brother had turned the shovel he wielded on his mutated kin, with no sign of recognition. Marjuk, his tongue lolling out of a green-toothed grin, had put a las-bolt through the man’s head even as Svet wrapped his huge arms around his brother in an attempt to restrain him.
Radimir had needed to interpose himself quickly, before Svet could reach Marjuk and two of Radimir’s most gifted followers could come to blows. From then on, they had worked on opposite sides of the great glyph.
Now the work was nearly complete. Seven sides were ready, and the eighth was almost done. Without the correct triggers it would be nothing more than a corruption of the natural order writ large in Ascension City’s barren topsoil, something to blast the sanity from any that witnessed it. With those triggers, though – Radimir fingered once again the seven hard orbs in his pouch – it could destroy the planet. After he’d killed the most recent Brobantis Navigator he’d turned his attention on the Dukarrs, partly for amusement and partly because Fortuna Bettan had told him about the trade war, and it made sense to set such powerful entities at each other’s throats. The youth he’d slain had been richly dressed even by the standards of Navigators, so he’d presumably been important, at least as such things were measured.
‘Is this hell that you’ve brought us to?’ asked Evelyn Darke through her respirator. She was working alongside Radimir, scratching lines in the ground with a length of twisted metal under his direction while Wanden, another of Eichner’s Children, stood nearby with a luminator.
‘Enlightenment doesn’t come without suffering,’ Radimir told her. It was an easy platitude, used by thousands if not millions of sects across the galaxy, from the most ardent of the Emperor’s fools to the purest worshippers of Chaos, and all in between. Let the chattel think that there was a purpose to their misery, a good reason why you were not providing joy and comfort here and now, and they’d carry blindly on with the grim determination of a person dying of thirst who’s been told that a spring lies just over the next hill.
‘I never asked for enlightenment,’ Darke replied dully, although her implement didn’t stop moving. ‘I just wanted to be accepted.’
‘Chaos accepts us all,’ Radimir told her. He frowned down at her hands, which were starting to glow, ever so slightly. The first hints of a self-taught pyro whose temper was beginning to fray.
That was concerning. Wyrds were always dangerous tools, but a pyro in full flame could be a particular problem for Radimir. Darke could leave him truly isolated, with no place to hide and no easy way to run. He drew in stale, rubber-scented air through his respirator in preparation of saying something soothing, and then walking away until she calmed herself again.
His half-formed sentence evaporated as the choking smog was shaken by a thunderous detonation from somewhere above them. He reached for his powerblade instinctively, already scanning the skies. Darkness might hold no secrets from Radimir Niklau, but he could see through the smog clouds no better than anyone else. He felt suddenly, uncharacteristically blind.
‘What was that?’ Darke asked. Anyone else might have clutched the length of metal tighter in the face of such an event, potential threat as it could be. She dropped it, to free her hands.
‘It’s the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension,’ Wanden said. ‘Could it be a firework?’
‘That was no firework, you imbecile,’ Darke snapped. ‘We’ve been hearing fireworks all evening! That was something exploding!’
‘Quiet!’ Radimir said, holding up his hand. He strained his ears as, for a wonder, they both obeyed him. ‘There!’
It was faint, but just discernible: a whistling, rushing noise, distant but growing closer. Something large and heavy was falling through the air, without any noise of engines. Radimir had a sudden image of one of this world’s flyers, the victim of a catastrophic engine overload, falling out of the sky and obliterating all his careful handiwork. Truly, his gods could be fickle, but would they possibly be so cruel? Had they turned their faces from him so spectacularly?
No.
There was a sudden loud hum that lasted for only a few seconds – Radimir recognised the sound of an Imperial anti-grav drive – and then a muffled crash of metal on rock and dirt. It wasn’t close, but neither was it far.
Darke looked at him, and her hands began to glow again.
‘None of that!’ Radimir told her sternly. ‘We don’t want to attract attention.’ He raised his voice a little, to carry to the nearest of his followers. ‘Pass the word! Everyone stay still and quiet. I’m going to investigate.’
He turned and walked quickly, out of the light cast by Wanden’s luminator and away from Darke’s fading hands, and then sent his senses questing through the darkness that surrounded him. He reached out in the direction the last noises had come from, but fell short. He found a small pack of mutated canines, squabbling over the corpse of something that had perhaps once been human, and steered his attention away from them. So too did he avoid the lurking presence of a smog spider, the top of its abdomen on a level with his chest, waiting in a fallen water tower for something warm and juicy to wander carelessly past. He wanted to draw as little attention as possible.
It was so dark down here that he could move virtually anywhere within range of his powers. He stepped easily, slipping through the darkness to his new location, then reached out once more as soon as he’d orientated himself.
Ah, yes. Now he could see what had happened.
