The Inquisition War (23 page)

I
N THE VAULTED
auditorium to which they were carried, a score and a half of robed figures sat around a horseshoe of data-desks. The robes were of black or crimson velvet – over body armour – and all of those seated at the desks wore identical long masks. Thirty mock-Emperors regarded the prisoners through tinted lenses; for those masks mimicked the shrivelled features of the Master of Mankind, including some of the tubes and wires which sustained that living corpse.

Only the capering Carnelian showed his true, mischievous face. He was wearing a domino costume of black spots on white on his left side, white spots on black on his right. His high collar was white and fluted. His black half-cloak swirled as he turned to display himself. Magnetic shoes, studded with pearls, were pointy and golden in hue. On his head, a gilded tricorne hat. What a lethal, sly fop the man was.

‘In the Emperor’s name,’ said Jaq. ‘You, who mock the Emperor—’

‘Be quiet,’ growled a voice. ‘We
are
of the Emperor. We do His bidding.’

‘Hiding here in the warp? Manipulating a creature of the warp?’

One of the pretend Emperors hauled off his mask abruptly. That tri-forked ginger beard! Those bristling eyebrows! Shock coursed through Jaq. ‘Harq Obispal!’

Yet of course: that shark ship...

The ruthless inquisitor roared with laughter, steel teeth showing amongst his ivories.

‘Ostentation can be a mask too, Jaq Draco! A brazen display can distract attention from the true purpose. Though you cannot deny that Stalinvast needed cleansing of its parasites! Ah, those convenient genestealers...’

Obispal’s gaze drifted towards Meh’Lindi, and he frowned as if adding the final piece to a puzzle which had been perplexing him, but not liking the pattern that he saw.

Did Obispal’s associates realise that the rashly rampaging inquisitor was only present in this auditorium courtesy of Jaq’s assassin who had plucked him to safety? Jaq smiled at the impassive Meh’Lindi, blessing her impetuous intervention in that arcade in Vasilariov.

‘Hear me, inquisitor ordinary,’ he said.

‘Obey me. I am of the Malleus.’

Obispal grinned. ‘I know full well. What else could you be, snooping on my activities?’

Jaq pressed his advantage, however slim. ‘It’s as well that I was, otherwise you’d be dead now, torn apart by genestealers, wouldn’t you be?’

Several masked figures stirred. One asked, ‘Is this true?’ Even Carnelian registered surprise.

‘It’s accurate enough,’ allowed Obispal, ‘though by that stage my death wouldn’t have made a whit of difference to the outcome. I was merely somewhat incautious at one point. One risks one’s life for the Emperor always, blessed be His name.’ The man’s tone was dismissive, and Jaq had to allow him more credit for flexibility than he would have supposed.

‘Still,’ hissed another mask, ‘it would have been a shame to lose so bold a partner in this enterprise of ours; and of His Supremacy’s. Recruiting suitable candidates is a delicate business. Which brings us to yourself, Jaq Draco—’

Further around the horseshoe, a voice which struck Jaq as familiar asked him: ‘Draco, what is the greatest need in this galaxy?’ Jaq replied immediately: ‘The need for control.’

‘So let me tell you about our Emperor’s hopes for the fullest possible form of control...’ The owner of that voice pulled off his mask.

Jaq felt stunned anew. For the man looking at him through one natural eye and a lens in the socket of his other eye, the silver-haired man with a scar bisecting his cheek, to which he had sewn rubies so that the long-healed wound seemed still to gleam with blood – was none other than Baal Firenze.

‘Proctor!’ Jaq sketched a minor adoration of respect. ‘You sent me to Stalinvast—’

‘And you have been more quick-witted than even I expected.’ Firenze nodded towards Jaq’s companions. ‘Let’s have some total privacy, Zephro.’

Carnelian produced null-sense hoods and proceeded to fit these over Grimm’s head, and Moma Parsheen’s. Dartingly as a lizard’s tongue he kissed Meh’Lindi on the side of the brow before plunging her, too, into silence and blindness.

‘As you know, Draco,’ resumed the proctor, ‘there is an outer order of the Inquisition, and there is an inner order. And then there is the Ordo Malleus – with its Hidden Masters. Within the ranks of those Hidden Masters exists a secret, innermost conclave founded in recent centuries by the Emperor himself, answerable to no one else, and now here in session. This most secret group is the Imperial Order of the Hydra. Its main tool is, of course, the hydra. Its long-term purpose is none other than the total control of all human minds throughout the galaxy.’

And Proctor Firenze proceeded to explain the plan that motivated this cabal of Hidden Masters gathered there in the hulk.

W
AS IT AN
hour later? Jaq still reeled at the grandeur and abomination of the enterprise.

Some twenty of the cabalists had removed their masks by now, as if in earnest of good faith. Jaq knew none by sight – unless they had been surgically altered; nevertheless he could perceive that they were true-human, no marks of Chaos blemishing their features. He would know those faces again.

Eight others retained their incognitos. Cloaked in crimson, those were the High Masters of the Hydra. Jaq detected psychic strength of the utmost degree, yet no taint of daemonic pollution. This was undoubtedly human business.

Obispal was a member of this very special Ordo. So too had Jaq now sworn to become. He had repeated his oaths dully like a sleeptalked. One of those oaths bound him never to return to Terra, never to revisit the headquarters of the Inquisition, nor the even more elusive bastion of the Ordo Malleus.

In return Jaq had received a new electro-tattoo, imprinted on to his right cheek by Carnelian. The design was of a squirming octopus clinging round a living human head. All of those present who had shed their masks activated their own identical tattoos then willed the image to vanish again.

So it transpired that the elusive Zephro Carnelian was a trusted roving agent for the Ordo Hydra. Not an enemy at all – but an ally in the greatest, most righteous, yet perhaps also the vilest of plans.

Jaq now had custody of portions of the hydra packed in an adamantium stasis-trunk fitted with coded locks. When in future he removed coils of tentacle to seed the guts of the worlds he visited, so – he was assured – the entity would replenish itself, stasis notwithstanding, since the Chaos that underlay the universe connected the hydra together subtly, no matter how scattered its parts. ‘I have no further questions,’ Jaq finally told the conclave.

‘Unhood those useful iotas, then,’ Firenze instructed Carnelian.

Meh’Lindi, Grimm, Moma Parsheen:
iotas
, mere jots, tiny ciphers in the vastness of the Imperium and in the huge insidious scheme of the cabalists. Jaq, for his part, wondered whether he too was merely an iota, or had genuinely been promoted to become a moulder of destiny.

Even with rejuvenations it seemed highly unlikely that any of those present could possibly live long enough to experience – to
enjoy
seemed totally the wrong word – the fruits of the hydra enterprise. Unless those eight masked High Masters were sufficiently confident in their associates to try to journey to the next galaxy and back – in some incredible megaship – to take advantage of time-compression! Or to place themselves in stasis for centuries on end? Unless they dared to absent themselves from the slow unfolding of the plan – would not their keen minds continue to be needed?

Therefore the scheme must indeed be altruistic and unselfish, without personal benefit to those who were currently involved. This must indeed be a scheme for salvation in the long term: salvation through utter enslavement.

Carnelian unhooded Jaq’s companions, re-admitting noise and light to their senses.

Held motionless in zero gravity by the servitors with no input of information whatever, the three had been undergoing sensory deprivation for the past hour. Grimm dribbled like a happy baby. Meh’Lindi wore a mildly blissful smile which vanished as she came alert again. Moma Parsheen cried out as she sensed environment flooding back, the way that sensation needles through a frozen limb. For the first time in her life, perhaps, the astropath had been psychically blind as well as visually so; utterly isolated. ‘It’s great that you arrived here, Jaq,’ enthused Zephro Carnelian as he folded away the hoods. ‘Without wishing to expose myself to obloquy, as you exposed friend Harq before we all became colleagues—’

Obispal guffawed, though there was a sour note to his humour.

‘—would you mind confirming exactly how you distinguished yourself by finding us? Purely for the record?’ Surely the Harlequin man must have guessed?

‘For the record,’ said Jaq, ‘it was an astropath trace. A homer in your mind.’

‘Ah, ah, of course. Inserted
when
?’

‘Don’t worry, it’ll decay within a few days.’

‘When exactly!’

Didn’t the man know? Hadn’t Jaq virtually been led here by Carnelian?

‘Why, it was when you transmitted your goading holo into Voronov-Vaux’s sanctum, through the spy-flies you stole from me.’

‘Ah! The biter, bit. The spy, spied on. That would be just after you decided not to declare
exterminatus
after all... I guess your
exterminatus
decision was really what clinched my respect for your ability to think on a grand scale, Jaq. Be damned if we didn’t hope you would simply call in the Space Marines and spread our hydra around some more! Yet no, you think in ultimates. And that is excellent. We need ultimate thinking in the Ordo Hydra, Jaq. So: no harm done and no hard feelings.’

‘Except perhaps on the part of the whole population of Stalinvast,’ Jaq commented acidly.

Carnelian froze. ‘You didn’t send the
exterminatus
message, Jaq. As soon as the hydra began withdrawing, you changed your mind.’

Jaq nodded towards the astropath. ‘She still sent it. Of her own accord.’

For a few brief moments Carnelian’s face might have been that of a polymorphine shape-shifter viewed at speed, passing through absurdly accelerated transformations. For a few instants only, until he laughed.

Carnelian rounded on Moma Parsheen, laughing. And still laughing, he plucked a laspistol from his belt and shot her through one of her blind eyes, boiling her brain.

ELEVEN

‘O
H NO, WE
can’t tolerate an astropath who puts homers into people’s heads. Not when you consider the calibre of people who are collected here. Oh nil and nunquam and nullity. In a word, no.’ Thus had Carnelian swiftly explained his shooting of the old woman.

R
EUNITED WITH THEIR
space armour and weapons, Jaq and Meh’Lindi and Grimm were escorted through the eerie maze of the hulk by the savage servitors. Grimm towed the Navigator’s weightless empty suit along behind him, and Jaq manoeuvred the adamantium trunk. At the hold where all the alien skulls floated, the automatons left the trio.

Out to
Tormentum Malorum
they jetted, only to be greeted with scepticism by the Navigator ensconced inside. ‘Come on, open up,’ said Grimm. ‘You’ve locked the airlock.’

‘Aha,’ came Googol’s response over the radio, ‘but you may say you are those same three people inside those suits...’

‘What’s this,’ asked Jaq, ‘a fit of warp-psychosis? It’s us who untied you back in the Emerald Suite. Remember?’

‘Aha, but if you are my enemies you’ll know about that. Because you would have tied me up.’

‘If you don’t open up, Vitali,’ said Meh’Lindi, ‘lovely lady of death will steal away your breath and mock your bones and squeeze your heart and all the rest of it.’

Could a radio wave blush? ‘Ah, right, yes,’ came Vitali’s voice, and the airlock cycled.

N
OW THAT THEY
were safely back aboard, minus an astropath but plus one locked stasis-trunk, the Harlequin man’s excuse for shooting Moma Parsheen failed to satisfy Jaq.

‘Was it your impression,’ he asked Meh’Lindi, ‘that Carnelian was performing a lightning calculation as to whether we might stand any chance of still saving Stalinvast if we jumped back into normal space?’

‘Huh, fat chance of saving the planet now,’ interrupted Grimm. ‘He shot our message service. Was that his idea?’

‘It’s my impression,’ said Meh’Lindi slowly, ‘he may have decided there was no hope whatever for Stalinvast. That we’d be too late.’ Her tone said that she still loathed the Harlequin man, yet she felt compelled to be accurate.

Jaq agreed. ‘I think the news filled him, just for a moment, with grief and rage. I think he cared about the murder of a world.’

‘Makes sense,’ said the squat, ‘if he was hoping to use Stalinvast as a playground for his bally hydra.’

‘No, it was a deeper caring than that. He visited... justice, true justice upon Moma Parsheen. For a moment he was a billion people seeking some slight recompense for the waste of their lives.’

So therefore the Ordo Hydra genuinely was a caring organisation. Ruthless and totalitarian, of necessity, yet also in the long run cherishing the human race, although it must needs manacle the minds of men; absolutely, as never before.