Ahriman: Exile (28 page)

XVII

Darkness

‘Ahriman?’ Carmenta’s machine voice was weak in his ear.
A whisper
, he thought.

‘Yes, mistress?’ He had been making for Astraeos’s chambers. Now he stopped. There was something in Carmenta’s voice, a note that he could hear even through the lifeless modulation of her words. She was linked to the ship, of course. In a sense it was the ship’s voice she was using.

‘Come to the command deck.’ There was something wrong, he could tell. Something colouring even the cold machine words. Had they been discovered? They must be close to the heart of Amon’s gathering. Something could have detected their presence. Perhaps his psychic masking was flawed. No, he would know. But what else could have edged Carmenta’s voice with tension?

‘What has happened?’ he said.

‘You have to see it yourself,’ replied Carmenta.

The three Storm Eagle gunships slid through the dark in a triangular formation. Each was painted an arterial crimson, but in the void they appeared black. The thin light of stars picked out the hints of rows and rows of pictograms etched across the hull of each craft, each no larger than a finger bone. Across the underside of the crafts’ wings, engraved gold feathers spread in mimicry of the wings of true birds of prey. No lights betrayed their approach, and their engine flames glowed a cold blue that was quickly lost to the eye. They could not see what they were making for, but that did not matter. They followed a single signal that pulsed through the void.

When the ship did appear in front of them they were so close that they had to bank sharply to avoid crashing. They skimmed the scorched and gouged hull, following the signal’s siren call. They looped high towards the bridge that punched from its upper hull like a fist. They passed holes the size of battle tanks, unhealed in the thick armour plating. Even at a few metres’ range the ship seemed dead. Only the guiding signal gave the lie to that perception.

The landing-bay doors opened to greet them. The three Storm Eagles glided through the opening and settled onto the metal deck, their thrusters briefly surrounding them in a cloud of white mist. The ramps at the front of each gunship hinged open. The figures that marched onto the deck did so in complete unity, their armoured bulk hidden by the low light and the dissipating clouds of thruster fog.

Three figures emerged last of all. Each wore robes of silver and bone over their red armour. Wide crests flared above their helms, one resembling a cobra, another topped by the twin serpent, the third a disc worked like a rayed sun. The cobra-headed figure marked his steps with a staff topped by a black orb. Curved khopesh swords hung at the waist of the other two figures.

A servitor shuffled from the shadows. It was a hunched, pitiful thing, its flesh withered in the copper and chrome of its mechanical frame. It stopped a pace from the armoured figures, and bowed like a rag doll folding to the floor.

‘Greetings,’ said the servitor in a voice like electricity sparking between wires. The three figures glanced at each other. ‘The mistress of the
Titan Child
calls you to follow.’ The servitor turned and began to shuffle away. After a second’s pause the three figures and their silent entourages followed.

Astraeos found Kadin in the central corridors. It had taken him some time to decide to tell him of Cadar’s fate. Warmth still lingered in the slowly stagnating air of the vessel’s core, but there was no light. Astraeos had tracked his brother by sound, listening for the thrum of powered armour and the hiss of pistons in the deepening silence. His brother was armoured but bareheaded, his eyes gazing directly ahead. In the ghost-green of Astraeos’s night vision Kadin’s eyes glowed like jewels in sunlight. Three paces behind Kadin limped Maroth, chuckling and mewling, his vox-caster and speaker-grille cutting in and out. Astraeos felt anger bubble to the surface at the sight of the broken sorcerer.

‘Brother, there is something that we must speak of,’ called Astraeos.

Kadin did not look at him but kept walking. ‘How nice that you still call me that.’

‘You are my brother, you always will be.’

Kadin inclined his head, looked to Astraeos and then away with a thin smile on his lips.

‘Touching.’

Maroth continued to chuckle, the sound chopping between speaker and vox, as if his armour itself were laughing.

‘Be silent,’ Astraeos spat. Maroth turned the muzzle of his helm from Astraeos to Kadin. Behind the faceplate Astraeos knew the broken sorcerer was grinning.

‘Nothing left, nothing left,’ purred Maroth. ‘Not his brothers, not his honour, not his soul.’ Maroth tapped the lenses of his helm. ‘Only one eye with which to see how much he has lost.’

Astraeos moved at blink-fast speed. His foot stamped into Maroth’s chest with a
crack
of metal on ceramite. Maroth lifted from his feet and hit the passage wall, and Astraeos was on him before he could slide to the floor. Rage ran through Astraeos in a hot red cloud. All he could see was the wreck of his past, and the tatters of everything he had tried to preserve. He had failed; every time he had tried he had failed. Maroth spluttered, wet noises coming out in chopped lumps from his speaker-grille. Astraeos thought he was still laughing. He put his foot on Maroth’s chest as the sorcerer tried to rise.

‘Leave him,’ said Kadin. Astraeos kept his eyes fixed on Maroth, seeing the one who had transformed Cadar and taken his brothers’ eyes.

‘No, Ahriman promised,’ screamed Maroth, the words wet and mixed with broken teeth and blood.

Astraeos roared and raised his foot to stamp down on Maroth. The image of Cadar’s body looking back at him with empty voids for eyes filled his mind.

He paused, breathing hard. His ears were ringing with rage. He wanted to strike again, to feel that release of letting anger and muscle become one. He let out a long, shaking breath.

‘You are losing yourself, brother,’ said Astraeos, jerking his head at where Maroth lay. ‘You let him follow you like a dog. After what he was, what he did–’

‘No, Astraeos.’ Kadin’s voice was quiet, but it cut through Astraeos like a cold knife. ‘I lost myself long ago, as did you.’

‘No, we still–’

‘Have honour? Astraeos, you beggared that long ago. I am not what I was, and neither are you. Would Codicer Astraeos have done that?’ Kadin glanced to where Maroth was trying to pick himself up off the floor. ‘We are changed and changing. What we were is gone.’ Kadin paused. His rasping voice sounded tired. ‘We have Ahriman, and that is all. We are all dogs following at his feet.’

Astraeos opened his mouth to reply, found he had no words. His rage had drained away. He felt suddenly empty, the feeling spreading out and through him.

No
, he thought. The emptiness that bubbled up inside him had been there since the ships of the Inquisition and the warriors in grey had fired on their home world. He tried not to look at his hands; he knew his fingers were shaking.
What do I do? What am I now? What do I do?

And then a new sensation hit Astraeos like a cold shadow passing over the sun, as if a light that he was not aware of had gone dark. His head twitched up, his eyes looking around for the source of the uncanny chill. He could hear the silence in his ears.

‘What was that?’ said Kadin. Astraeos looked at his brother. Kadin was looking up at the shadows at the edge of the corridor. Astraeos felt a shiver run across his skin.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Darkness, it is here.’ Maroth had pulled himself to his feet, his head rolling from side to side as he leant on the passage wall. Then he tipped his head up sharply at Astraeos. ‘Can’t you see it?’

Astraeos blinked his helmet display to life, and opened a vox-channel.

‘Ahriman.’ Static was the only reply. He switched channels. ‘Mistress Carmenta.’

Silence.

Astraeos glanced at his brother. Kadin nodded. They began to run, unclamping weapons as they moved. Behind them Maroth followed, breathing curses to himself.

Ahriman paused before the entrance to the bridge. He had felt something, something subtle and distant like a movement under the surface of dark water, or the quick hiding of a lamp beneath a cloth. He turned, his eyes moving across the shadows at the edge of the antechamber. Nothing, just a feeling. But everything was a sign, he had learned and thought that truth long ago.

He peeled off a portion of his mind. His hand shifted on the grip of his sword. He waited, but there was nothing. He turned back to the doors and pressed his hand against the opening seal. The doors ground back into the walls. He froze.

Darkness. Complete darkness waited for him beyond the doors. No wink of system lights, not even the smallest kernel of luminescence from a servitor’s eye. He felt something, the tiniest imperfection in his thought processes. He had missed something. No, he had seen something out of the corner of his eye, something that was bending light and shadow around it, something that was hiding just out of sight. Suddenly he was very aware of how tired he was, and of the psychically toxic silver lodged in his chest.

The hairs on his arms rose, and static prickled up his spine.

He sensed the telekinetic wave an instant before it broke and lifted him from his feet. The darkness vanished, as if a curtain had been ripped back to reveal the sun. Suddenly he could feel the presence of other minds all around him. They burned bright, and power howled around them like hurricane winds.

Sensations and emotions blurred as he turned through the air: heat, cold, anger, the heaviness of his own body, the gravity pulling it down, the threat icons flashing in his eyes, the tension of his fingers still gripping his sword, the spiralling gold patterns inlaid into the floor. He felt the fingers of another mind ramming into his thoughts, pulling apart his calm like a knife parting threads. He was scrabbling in a swamp of panic and then, and then…

His mind froze, it became crystal, each thought, sensation, and emotion held still as he spun through the air.

Amon’s forces were on the
Titan Child
. There were at least three psykers. They were powerful. There were Rubricae too, twenty-four of them. He sensed all of this in the space of a slow heartbeat.

He hit the floor. Full reality snapped back into place. He rolled to his feet and his sword came up to meet a downward cut at his head. Light flared where the two blades met. He saw red armour, bone robes and a golden helm with a sun-disc crest. Power blazed from behind the golden helm, touching his mind like the heat of the sun. He shifted, turned the enemy’s blade, and cut down at the golden helm.

It was not there. The warrior was past his guard, turning so fast that Ahriman could not predict the movement. He began to react, but too slowly. The blow sliced across his shoulder. Ceramite glowed yellow where the blade cut. The sword whipped back.

Ahriman stepped back as the golden-headed sorcerer cut again. The glowing point of the sword screamed as it scored a line across his chest, the cut going wide. Ahriman stamped forwards, and his kick rammed the sorcerer into the air. His mind was still reeling, trying to shape his will into power as the warp boiled around him. He could taste silver and iron.

On the edge of sight two other figures in robes paced forwards. Their movements seemed slow, almost casual. One was raising a staff. Lightning forked through the air. Ahriman felt it an instant before he saw the flash. The lightning shattered inches from his body. Blinding arcs earthed in the floor. Ahriman felt the shield he had raised tremble as the lightning crawled across its glowing surface.

He felt for the point of calm in the middle of the storm of his mind, found it, and suddenly everything seemed quiet and slow. The golden-helmed sorcerer was still turning in the air behind him. He would hit the floor in less than a second. In front of him the sorcerer with the staff and the cobra-crested helm was in mid-step, his aura flowing from crystal blue to muddy red as he struggled to refocus his own power. To his left another sorcerer was one stride into a charge, a curved khopesh held low in both hands. Beyond them he could see the Rubricae. They encircled the room, their boltguns aimed inwards but silent, their eyes watching, waiting.

Ahriman dropped his invisible shield and the lightning wreathed him, climbing up his body. The sorcerer with the staff was shaking, trying to shut off the power that was flowing through him. Ahriman drew the lightning into himself, absorbing it and radiating it outwards. A blinding flash filled the chamber. The three sorcerers stumbled.

Ahriman’s mind rose from his body. His thought form was a creature of pure psychic energy, a vast black-winged bird with two heads, its eyes pinprick windows into a furnace. The physical chamber slid to a dim outline as he left his fleshly body behind.

The three sorcerers shimmered and then their minds leapt into the air, their thought forms trailing cloaks of light and shadow. They changed as they ascended into the warp; translucent wings unfolding from predatory bodies, mouths opening, fangs glowing like the death of stars. They were mockeries of the lost angels of legend, formed from fury and power.

Ahriman’s raven thought form roared and dived towards the glowing angels. The thought forms met in a supernova of colour and light. The crystal dome above the chamber shattered. Frost formed on every surface. Ahriman felt claws and teeth rake his thought form, scoring lines through his wings. This was battle fought with the mind alone, the thought forms no more than projections into the warp, but that made it no less dangerous. In the physical realm he began to bleed inside his armour.