Deathwing (23 page)

SEED OF DOUBT

Neil McIntosh

I
T HAD SEEMED
an eternity, waiting for the life-raft to crash.

Sitting hunched in the tiny cabin, Danielle had watched the patchwork face of the planet inflating like a balloon as the raft fell towards it. Auras of death glittered, beckoning, in her mind.

The end of the mother-ship had been written in the instant when the warp storm had burst around them. The storm’s rage had passed in a moment; time enough to hurl a great fist against the hull and chart the ship a new course, a superheated spiral dive towards the planet Cabellas. There had only been two rafts; one, at least, had made it. She was still alive.

Just for now, Valdez was leaving her alone. The inquisitor was preoccupied with his inventory of equipment: how much salvaged from the ship, how much of that still intact.

Danielle wondered about other survivors, something that would interest Valdez only selectively. Who? How useful? Or how dangerous.

She had watched the launch of the second raft, soon after their escape in the first, but maybe not soon enough. And she remembered her last sight of the
Spirit of Salvation
, a red glow against the black glaze of space, twisting in its final arc towards destruction. Aboard, five hundred souls. Cargo bound for Terra, final terminus of the Imperium. She had reached into their minds, shared the final moments. Most were stricken with an animal panic, but there had been a few who had already foreseen their fate on Terra. They were calm in the face of early death.

Not for the first time in her life, Danielle was a survivor. And she was alone.

Riders on horseback were approaching the wreck of the life-raft, shabby soldiers decked out in the style of old frontiersmen of the Imperium: greasy denim, leather jerkins overlaid with bandoliers of bullets. The faded badges the soldiers were wearing were for pioneer battles fought and won long before they’d been born.

Inquisitor Mendor Valdez strode out to meet the Cabellans, his brief nod telling Danielle to follow.

A rider with gold insignia splashed over his chest pulled forward and raised a sloppy salute. ‘Any more survivors?’

Valdez sized up the reception party. Aside from the troopers there were four spare horses leashed together in a line at the rear. ‘We need to be taken to the tithe marshal,’ he stated. He turned to Danielle. ‘Are you still in contact with the psyker?’

Danielle closed her eyes and searched. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Not far from here. But her thoughts are weak.’

‘Hold on to it,’ said Valdez. ‘We’re going to run the operation as scheduled.’

‘Even now?’

Valdez looked around at the wreckage of the raft, massaging his bruised ribs. ‘Especially now,’ he said. ‘What chance, Tchaq?’

A solidly-built figure emerged from the crumpled hull of the raft, las-weld clutched like a weapon in his hand. The Cabellans eyed the bio-enhanced tech-priest mistrustfully.

Valdez spat his pain out in a sour sneer. ‘Don’t fret, he’s staying here. Well, Tchaq? What have we got?’

The tech-priest grimaced, running a hand over his sweaty, bald pate. ‘Orks would have better kit than I’ve got to work with,’ He paused and traded stares with the horsemen before continuing. ‘Give me a while and I might squeeze a squeak out of the voxcaster.’

Valdez grinned briefly. ‘Good.’

Tchaq muttered, ‘Just think yourself lucky you dropped out of the sky with two tech-priests.’

A second tech-priest, younger and taller than his comrade, stepped from the cabin, eyes glinting behind slits cut in his metallic face mask. ‘We’ll fix it, sir,’ Golun affirmed. ‘Every hour spent on this dung-heap is one too many for me.’

‘Then we’ll leave it in your capable hands. Now,’ Valdez turned to the Cabellans, ‘lead the way. And get a move on.’

D
ANIELLE RODE AT
the rear of the procession. Away from the babble of voices she could clearly read what was passing through the minds of the Cabellan troopers. Behind the facades of cheerful banter she found suspicion, mistrust and fear. She looked out through their eyes and saw Valdez, saw herself, as they saw them. Ambassadors from a distant Emperor. Bringers of uncertainty to a sleepy, ordered world. Bad news.

She made no attempt to steal through the aura cast like a halo of ice around Inquisitor Valdez. It would have been easy enough, like lifting trinkets from a blind man’s stall. Unlike many of his order, Valdez had no mindsight, no powers beyond other mortal men. He had climbed the Imperial ranks, fuelled by instinct and the primal urge to fight and win. What she had found in Valdez’s mind – blinkered refusal to countenance any uncertainty, any deviation from the one path – depressed and confused her. The inquisitor had forged his limitations into a weapon to be used against anyone who saw, who questioned too much. She had long accepted that his mistrust of her bordered on hatred.

The horses climbed out of the valley on to the great plains of Cabellas. Danielle looked down upon fields of wheat grown tall as men that swayed in great, dreaming waves. At the edges of the gold sea, nests of virulent green tangle-fungus competed for space in the rich soil. The tithe domains of Cabellas formed one of the Imperium’s great storehouses. Here, as throughout the galaxy, the struggle between order and disintegration continued unabated.

Teams of men worked the fields, purging gouts of choking weed from the path of the harvesters. They stopped to stare at the offworlders as they passed above them. The message on their faces was the same: here are intruders.

Danielle avoided their gaze. Beyond the steel-grey grain spires that ringed the distant settlement a lone, siren voice still called. Although each step brought them closer, the voice was fading.

Hold on,
Danielle heard herself saying. But she knew it would be too late.

She looked up. The inquisitor had halted the column and was looking back at her, blue eyes probing, searching. ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What is it?’

‘Her thoughts are weakening. I thought for a moment I’d lost them.’

Valdez waved her forward impatiently. ‘Ride up here with me.’

Danielle obeyed. As she drew level with the inquisitor she noticed he was sitting lopsided in the saddle, hand braced hard against his side. She sensed pain and Valdez’s stubborn refusal to weaken.

‘Let me help,’ she said tentatively. ‘I have… powers. I can—’

Valdez tugged at the reins, urging his horse on. ‘Don’t waste your spells on me,’ he snapped. ‘Save them for the service of the Imperium. In the Emperor’s name, we may need them yet.’

T
ITHE
M
ARSHAL
S
HARNEY
led his visitors to a portal and waved an arm across the expanse that comprised his kingdom. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Anything grows here,’ he chuckled, ‘and everything tries.’

He handed them glasses of wine. ‘You won’t taste better than this anywhere.’ He took a sip from his own glass and shuffled into the room, watching the inquisitor as he might a barometer. ‘If it’s the quotas you’ve come about, there won’t be any repeat of what happened last yield-time. You have my word for it.’

Valdez drained his glass without pausing. ‘Rot your quotas,’ he said. ‘The Emperor doesn’t send me here as a tax collector.’ He leant against the portal rim, gazing down upon the sprawling steel structures below. ‘Somewhere in this settlement there’s a psyker. That’s the cargo we came to collect.’

Sharney looked doubtfully from the inquisitor to Danielle. His mind was insular, protective by instinct. Before he could reply she said: ‘We know about her. I was picking up her thoughts before we reached orbit.’

Sharney squinted hard at her and re-filled his glass. ‘You’re one of them too, aren’t you?’

Danielle nodded. ‘Like, but stronger. The woman we’re seeking may be afflicted by a power she cannot control.’

Shamey shrugged. ‘All right, we’ve got nothing to hide. We can manage our own affairs, that’s all.’

‘Save the sermons,’ Valdez said, patience exhausted. ‘Just tell us where the mutant is.’

Shamey drew himself up, puffing out his chest self-importantly. ‘I’ll take you there myself,’ he said, ‘but you’ll find you’ve had a wasted journey.’

T
HE OLD COUPLE
sat hunched by a low wooden bed, heads bowed in the attitude of those preparing for mourning. The room was a grey cell lit only by the dusty beams of light that pierced the curtained windows. A single sheet was drawn across the outline of a figure lying on the bed.

As Valdez and Danielle entered, the shape stirred almost imperceptibly.

Danielle stepped forward.

‘See?’ Sharney muttered, peevishly. ‘It’s over.’

‘Don’t get too close,’ Valdez warned.

‘I know what I’m doing.’

The couple looked up. Without explanation they allowed her to approach the bed.

‘She can’t hear nor see you,’ said the old woman. She looked through Danielle, staring into nothing.

Danielle laid a hand tentatively on the woman’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘She knows I’m here.’

The head buried deep in the pillow turned towards her. An eye peeled open, a milk-white clouded bead. A voice whispered in Danielle’s mind, a butterfly memory:
Sister.

I hear you, Danielle replied. Can you still speak to us?

The girl’s face was swollen and dark, as though covered in a massive bruise. Danielle stooped low to hear the word: ‘Gestartes.’

She looked up. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked the old woman. ‘Is that a place?’

Unhearing, the woman stared at the wall. Her husband rose slowly and took Danielle aside. ‘Gestartes is her brother,’ he explained. ‘The only one of the family who could stay near once the sickness was on her.’

‘When did this sickness start?’ Valdez asked, quietly.

‘With the storms,’ The old man bowed his head. ‘We thought it was just a fever. Then she became racked with spasms: violent, terrible. It was as though she’d become—’

Valdez supplied the word. ‘Possessed.’

The man looked up, fear mixing with his grief. ‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘Jula fought for her soul. It’s cost her her life.’

Valdez looked pensive. ‘And where is Gestartes?’

As if woken from a spell, the old woman spoke. ‘Gone,’ she said. ‘He tended her long into the night, even though he feared the sickness had tainted him. When we woke at dawn he’d gone.’ She repeated the word, slowly. ‘Gone. Both of them gone.’

Valdez turned quickly to the marshal. ‘Find this man,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t care what it takes, just do it. Go now.’

Sharney hesitated for a moment, lips forming round a mumbled protest. He caught the look in the inquisitor’s eye, and nodded assent.

Valdez beckoned to Danielle. ‘We’ll step outside and wait where there’s cleaner air.’

She followed the inquisitor out into the daylight.

‘The storms they mentioned. And the warp storm—’

Valdez nodded. ‘The same. The warp seethed with energy – perhaps with the energy of one of the Dark Powers themselves.’

‘Do you think – the Lord of Decay?’

‘Yes,’ said Valdez, ‘and that fool Sharney talks as though a little local quarantine’s going to end his problems,’ He cast a scornful glance towards the departing figure of the marshal. ‘Not this time, my friend. The Emperor alone knows what virulence the warp has set free. Pray that Tchaq gets through to Kar Duniash. Quotas or no quotas, the Imperium may have to dispense with Cabellas.’

‘But surely—’ dismay tinged her voice, ‘surely the infestation has waned. The girl’s no harm to anyone now.’

‘The girl?’ Valdez chewed the word out contemptuously. ‘One less psyker worm to blight the Imperium. But whilst she still lived she was an open channel for the poisons of Chaos. Now the infection’s running in her brother’s veins. Who can say how fast the seed may spread?’

‘And when we find Gestartes?’

‘Kill him. That’ll be a start.’

Danielle had reached into the minds of the grieving family; she knew that they, even Sharney, pumped up with his pompous vanity, were innocent souls. Try as she might she could not approach the cold serenity with which the inquisitor would dispatch them all.

‘How can you be sure the infection has spread from the warp?’

Already, she knew the argument was lost. Valdez closed his hand into a white-knuckled fist and held it under her gaze. ‘I don’t need to be sure,’ he mundered. ‘Doubt, doubt is all I need. Doubt like a maggot burrowed in the fabric of the universe,’ Valdez drew a finger down Danielle’s cheek. ‘And remember: I have doubt of you, too.’

Danielle flinched away. ‘I’ve been tested,’ she countered. ‘I’ve never faltered in the service of the Imperium,’ She felt intimidated, and despised herself for it.

Valdez dropped his fist in a gesture of disdain. ‘There’s always a first time,’ he said acidly. ‘And I’ll tell you something else—’

The vox-comm clipped to the inquisitor’s belt started to flash red. Both of them looked down at it in surprise before Valdez found the presence of mind to free the device and activate it.

Tchaq’s deep voice was recognisable even over the warbling distortion. ‘How’s that for service?’ he demanded.

Valdez cheered up immediately. ‘Thank the Emperor! Have you reached Kar Duniash?’

Tchaq sounded irritated. ‘Don’t expect the Imperium in a day. We’ve been working flat out just to patch local channels together.’

‘All right. Keep at it. In the meantime see if you can raise the other raft. Grunland’s a good soldier; he’ll have pulled his boys through if anyone could.’

‘Yes, sir. Trouble?’

Valdez snorted and switched off the device abruptly.

M
ARSHAL
S
HARNEY WAS
back within the hour. The little man’s face was flushed with an unaccustomed urgency. ‘My stewards have searched everywhere. Everywhere,’ he protested. ‘Not a corner of the settlement’s been overlooked,’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Valdez sighed. ‘The bird has flown,’

‘Well, he wasn’t under arrest you know!’ Sharney’s indignation was hollow. He began shuffling from foot to foot as though under sentence of execution. He was spared by a cry from the house.

Jula’s struggle was ending. Her body writhed in the last throes of battle, blind eyes rolling marble white, searching. As Danielle entered, the young woman grew calmer and sat upright. Clusters of dark tumours were spreading across her face and neck, making her almost unrecognizable. Danielle crouched close by Jula’s side to hear the two whispered words: ‘Gestartes… Mordessa.’