The Encoded Heart Read online

  It didn't take long to discover that the ship was not only powered down, but completely unoccupied as well. "Bugger," muttered Harrow, echoing Red's casual profanity as he dropped into the pilot's throne. "I should have known that would be too easy."

  "All the more reason to press on, mutant." Godolkin handed him the data-pick. "Ketta would not have left this vessel quiescent unless she had good reason to do so. She may be heading for the source of the power spikes, or may even be responsible for them. But I am certain of this: when we find Ketta, we will find the Blasphemy."

  Harrow frowned. "She said that Red had been taken from her. But she must have been lying."

  "It is a talent at which she excels." Godolkin began striding across the darkened bridge, towards the spinal corridor. "We should waste no more time here."

  "Can't we even see if she has any decent food first?"

  The human spared him a backwards glance. "Ketta is, or was, an Iconoclast special agent. To her, mealsticks are a delicacy to be prized."

  Harrow stood up. "What about a grav-chute?"

  "I have already checked. Move yourself, mutant!"

  Godolkin deactivated his silver blade on the way down the landing spine, stowing it back over his left shoulder. Harrow, following close behind him, was glad to see the awful thing deactivated. Doubly so when Godolkin stopped without warning as the outer lock opened and Harrow almost slammed into his back. Had the blade still been in evidence, he might very well have impaled himself upon it. "By the saint, human! I thought you were in a hurry!"

  The Iconoclast held up a hand for silence. He was sniffing the air, turning his head this way and that. Harrow instantly fell silent. Godolkin's senses were as greatly enhanced as his physique - he could tell a human from a mutant at twenty paces by smell alone, or sniff out an enemy from ten times that distance. If his sense of smell had called him to a halt, that was reason enough for Harrow to fear.

  "Is it Ketta?"

  The Iconoclast shook his head. "No. At first I thought I smelled shocktroopers, but there is a taint to them. Familiar, but in a way I cannot determine."

  He stepped forwards and a staking pin hissed out of the sunlight to score a track of blood across his shoulder blades.

  Harrow saw the wound appear, the bright steel of the staking pin clattering off the far wall of the courtyard and yelled a warning. Godolkin was already down on one knee, in the cover of a landing claw, bringing the holy weapon up to send a pair of bolts slamming back into the treeline. Something was moving out there, impossibly fast and another bolt whickered towards the Iconoclast, missing by centimetres as Godolkin shrugged out of the way.

  From the corner of his eye, Harrow saw another figure dart between two structures ahead of him. He raised the carbine and sprayed fire into the ruins.

  Stone shattered into superheated fragments, each plasma bolt sending up a fountain of white-hot dust and carbonised plant matter. The burst was far too slow, not even coming near the figure Harrow had seen, but the effect of the plasma fire was stunning. He saw the running man stumble as the blast-wave took him, only just finding his feet.

  Staking pins whined back in return. Harrow ducked back, and the razored projectiles shaved peelings of metal from the landing foot. "Sneck! How many of them are there?"

  "We are taking fire from two directions," snapped Godolkin. "Do the maths."

  Harrow looked wildly about. He couldn't see either of the assailants - one was hidden in the treeline and the other was somewhere past the courtyard walls - but the angle of their attacks was widening. The Iconoclast out there in the ruins was working his way around the courtyard, hoping to cut into them from the other side. "Godolkin, we're being flanked!"

  The Iconoclast muttered a curse. His back was a slick of blood, horribly bright against the pallor of his skin and the stark black of the battle harness. The staking pin had cut him deep. "I concur. Harrow, we need to be among those buildings."

  "We'll never get across the courtyard! Let's get back into the ship while we still can!"

  "Mutant, listen to me - if we enter the daggership we will be trapped, and if we stay here we die." He jerked sideways as a pin parted the air next to him, shattering a carved face fifty metres away. "With stone at our backs we might stand a chance."

  "Damn you, Iconoclast! Doesn't being right all the time ever tire you?"

  "I'll let you know." Godolkin swung his weapon around. "Now run!"

  Harrow ran.

  There was a series of gaps around the courtyard walls, some left intentionally by its builders, but far more caused by time and the inexorable advance of the forest. Harrow bolted for the nearest, off to the right of Ketta's ship, hearing staking pins carom off the slabs behind him. The attacker in the trees was trying to take him down with long-range fire, but there was no sign of the adversary Harrow had shot at earlier.

  For a few seconds, he almost thought he would make it. The space gaped in front of him, half blocked by the tree that had grown through it, and he could see more stone beyond, layer upon layer where buildings crowded the base of the stepped structure. If he could just make it past the wall he would be among them.

  Then, when he was halfway there, he saw the warrior step out from behind the tree, already firing.

  The first staking pin was shrieking towards Harrow before he could even shout. With the Iconoclast directly ahead of him he could see the flare of the bolter like a minor sun among the shadows, the light spitting a stream of brilliant metal straight at his face. He dived aside and the bolts whipped past him, but there was no way he could avoid the next volley.

  He dragged the barrel of the carbine up, hoping to get at least one burst off before the pins found his heart, and as he did so the air between him and the Iconoclast turned to fire.

  The courtyard was illuminated by flame, a great stream of searing, billowing heat that scorched the skin of his face from metres away. He had seen that fire before, more times than he cared to count, but never had he been so pleased to feel the wash of it. Godolkin was directing a jet of cleansing flame across his path, blocking the other warrior's aim.

  Harrow hurled himself to the ground, rolling aside as staking pins stitched a line through the firestorm. He answered with a salvo from the carbine, just as the flame sputtered and died - Godolkin could only keep the burner activated for a few seconds, or risk the holy weapon blowing up in his face.

  Those seconds were all he needed. Harrow leapt at the next gap in the wall and dived through.

  He landed on rounded cobbles, cool in the wall's shadow. There was a narrow street that looked as if it ringed the whole courtyard, although it was so choked with rubble and plant life that it was hard to see for more than a few metres in either direction. One thing Harrow knew for certain was that the warrior must have been close by. Perhaps only a few broken rocks and a smouldering tree-trunk or two separated them.

  With that firmly in mind, he scampered off the cobbled road and into the ruins beyond.

  The buildings here were low, few rising higher than a single storey, and their walls were angled steeply. Many were totally destroyed by time, some with roofs collapsed inwards, others little more than heaps of stone blocks. But a few were still standing. Harrow made his way towards the closest intact structure and ran inside.

  His feet came down on something that creaked and snapped like old wood. Creatures, hand-sized things with too many legs, rustled away in panic, and dust sifted down from the ceiling. Harrow froze where he was, still terribly aware of the open door at his back, but even more conscious of the way the stone roof had shifted perceptibly above him.

  He took a tentative step inside, shifting more of the wood away with his boots. Something rolled away and hit the wall, startling him afresh, and he tracked it reflexively with the carbine.

  A hollow gourd, he told himself, or a wooden bowl. The floor was a litter of artefacts, worn thin by time. Whoever had lived here must have left in a hurry, without clearing their mess away.

 
There was a square hole in the wall, a few metres along, admitting a shaft of sunlight. Harrow edged towards it, trying not to tread on too much of the dusty, broken debris on the floor, and stood with his back to the wall. Fragments of ancient glass turned to powder under his boots, and he winced. Even that tiny sound was too much.

  He peered outside and saw no one. The street was empty of all but trees and shattered masonry. He let out a breath that he hadn't even been aware he was holding, and lowered the carbine. For the moment at least, he was alone.

  He was reaching down to take the comm-linker from his belt when he heard the gourd roll again. He tried to turn around, to get the carbine back up and pull the trigger, but before he could even move the Iconoclast warrior slammed into him like a wall of iron.

  The man was sickeningly strong. Harrow went flying backwards, the shadows whirling around him, and crashed into the floor in a cloud of dust. He tried to level the carbine but it was snatched from his grasp, yanked clean out of his hands and flung against the wall. Thin chains, launched at him by the warrior, had wrapped themselves around the barrel and wrenched it from his fingers.

  He saw the carbine strike the wall and spin away in two sections.

  The chains whipped back into the warrior's grip, then sang out again. Harrow felt them hit him in the face, the neck, and he cried out. There were hooks at the end of the chains, barbed things as sharp as needles, and they sank effortlessly into his flesh. He reached for them, trying to drag them from his skin, but the warrior barked out a laugh and pulled the hooks back. Harrow tried to keep his teeth tightly clenched, but he screamed anyway.

  The Iconoclast held him up for several seconds, then let him fall back down. Harrow hit the floor and twisted in pain, his face in the dust. The debris around him clattered, hard edges of it cutting into his skin, and in the dusty sunlight from the window-hole he finally saw how wrong he'd been about the fate of the building's previous occupants. They hadn't left in a hurry, as he had first thought. In fact, they hadn't left at all.

  Blood streamed from where the hooks had him, and it fell on bones so old they were halfway to powder.

  The warrior dropped to a crouch next to Harrow, the chains in one fist, a cut-down staking bolter in the other. The muzzle, still hot, brushed Harrow's cheek. "A mutant?"

  The man's teeth were filed into points, and tipped with steel. Harrow sagged back, forcing himself to relax, to ignore the pain and the hammering in his chest. His hands fell away from the hooks, to the bone-littered floor. Shards of thighbone moved beneath his fingertips.

  "Why are you here, mutant? Do you seek the Blasphemy, or the Renegade?"

  "I seek no one."

  The warrior shrugged, muscles sliding and knotting beneath corpse-white skin. "Pity. You found someone."

  "I'm willing to forget it if you are."

  The warrior grinned, a barracuda smile. "I'm almost tempted to keep you alive for a time, scum. I'm sure you'd be entertaining company for an hour or two." He put down the bolter and took a long combat knife from a sheath at his belt. Harrow felt the tip of the blade at his neck, scoring upwards to his jawline.

  "Past experience tells me your idea of entertainment and mine would differ somewhat," he replied, trying to keep his voice steady. Down at his sides his fingers had found what he was looking for, and gripped it tightly. He'd only have one chance at this. "But maybe we could work something out."

  "Maybe. But I've tarried too long as it is." The knife came up, bloodied. "Just time to have your eyes out, and then I'll be gone."

  "Don't forget to write," Harrow said, and slammed his right fist up and into the side of the warrior's head.

  The Iconoclast howled and leapt up, scrabbling at the side of his skull. A long shard of bone was protruding from his ear, already soaked with blood. Harrow had explored the length of that bone with his fingers, and knew that a good amount of it must now reside inside the warrior's head.

  The man was staggering back, his chains forgotten. Harrow snatched up the bolter, flipped it around and hauled on the trigger. It jumped and flared in his hand, stinging his fingers, and the warrior's howls stopped at once. The blunt end of a staking pin had appeared between his eyes.

  He sank to his knees, opened his mouth as if to speak, and pitched forwards into the dust. His arms and legs moved fitfully for a moment, but it was only as a reflex. In a few beats of Harrow's leaping heart, the Iconoclast became still.

  "I was here to offer assistance," said Godolkin from the doorway. "But it appears you need none."

  Harrow sagged. "I'll settle for a trauma kit. What happened?"

  "I followed the other one into the trees, and staked her, but she survived and escaped." Godolkin nudged the fallen trooper with his boot. "Harrow, these are not shocktroopers. They have been enhanced, considerably."

  "As long as he stays dead, I could care less." Harrow got up, the hooks still dragging at him. He raised his hands to one and began to work it from his skin. "Help me get these things out, and then we'll be away. This building is ready to collapse, I think."

  "It and you both." Godolking started towards him, then froze. "Mutant, look at this."

  "What?"

  In reply, the Iconoclast held up a bone from the floor. It was half covered in the dead warrior's blood. As Harrow watched, the bone sagged, bubbling, and fell in two.

  "I have seen this ichor once before, Harrow." Godolkin dropped the hissing, dissolving relic onto the warrior's back. "On Biblos. The Blasphemy tried to drink from one of these creatures."

  "Sacred rubies." Harrow was aghast. If Red had taken a mouthful of that stuff... "What are they?"

  "Iconoclasts with a vastly modified physiology. Toxic blood chemistry, acidic body fluids, heightened reflexes..." The man looked down, and gave the dead warrior a vicious kick.

  "Harrow, these are the Omega warriors of Lord-Tactician Saulus!"

  12. STORM WARNING

  It was raining on Magadan. Fat raindrops the size of fingernails slapped down from the sullen sky, splashing back up in tiny crowns when they struck the ground. They fell on the rough roads that tangled away from the Grand Keep, and lifted the cobbles on beds of sludge. They beat the leaves from the trees and flattened the grass. They turned soil to mud, mud to slurry, the debris fields surrounding the Keep into endless, sodden mires. And worst of all, they fell on Durham Red.

  "Snecking rain," she muttered.

  It had been a day, she had decided, for learning new things. She would have been quite content with what she had discovered about the Magadani, and the debt they owed to her old enemy the Gothking, but it seemed that the universe hadn't finished with her schooling quite yet. There was more, some unforgiving power must have decreed, that she still needed to know.

  For example, she had learned that the aerial vehicles berthed in the Keep's hangars were beautifully constructed, luxurious to pilot, and fatally booby-trapped. The aircar she had stolen had taken her no more than ten kilometres before it had started berating her in a variety of automated voices, and only another five before the controls had ceased to respond. From what she had been able to discern from the voice-warnings, the ship hadn't been given clearance from the Magister to leave the Keep, and, to prevent contamination by the outside world's many airborne diseases had been programmed to nosedive at full speed into the surface. Luckily, the patch of ground it had chosen to impact was totally waterlogged, more swamp than solid. Red had waded out of the wreck shaken but largely unharmed. The flier, on the other hand, had promptly sunk.

  Red had also learned that the coat she had worn to the Masque, while it looked substantial, was not remotely weatherproof, and was in fact starting to fall apart at the seams. The gloves were still in the flier, where she had discarded them to get a better feel for the controls, and the rest of her costume was turning out to be much more suited to the temperature-regulated interior of the Keep than to adventuring in the outside world.

  The breastplate had grown heavy on her. She'd dumped it a kilom
etre back.

  It had been a very long time since Durham Red had been as cold, wet, muddy and thoroughly miserable. In the day's favour, she had learned one more thing: that the surface of Magadan, far from being a poisoned wasteland, was instead fertile and quite benign. If Sorrelier had been right about the plague-ridden nature of the place, then either such diseases were a lot slower to act than many Red that had known, or she was fighting them off quite effectively.

  She had still taken a terrible risk. Getting into the aircar had simply been the quickest way of escaping from Sorrelier, but once she was out of the Keep she had found that she didn't really want to go back. She'd decided to fly on and then set down somewhere quiet for an hour or two, just to think and work out what to do next. But the booby-trapped ship hadn't given her the chance.

  Red had been trudging along for more than an hour, through a landscape that had turned slowly from swampland to sparse woods, and then to a kind of hillocky scrubland. The grassy slopes around her were broken by shards and boulders of dark yellow stone, some as big as skyscrapers, as though the planet's crust had shattered beneath the soil and thrown fragments of itself up into the light. Some were close enough to overhang the road, and Red had sheltered beneath more than one during her trek.

  Another was ahead, looming through the mist and the spattering rain. Red increased her pace until she got under the great roof of stone and was finally able to lift her head. Normally the weather didn't bother her - she quite liked to feel the elements against her skin, especially if she was dressed for it. But the rain on Magadan was less like weather and more like a beating. Red's hair lay plastered over her head, a sodden conduit for cold rain to slide down the back of her neck and into her clothes.

  She stretched and wiped her face with her hands. It felt good to raise her head and ease the kinks from her back, but if she didn't stoop over when she was walking the rain hit her in the eyes and gummed them closed. She shivered and wished that she'd worn a hat to the Masque.