The Unquiet Grave Page 16

  The images halted abruptly, and Omri's holographic form scanned back into view. "Your appraisal?" asked Antonia.

  It would have taken her days to go through that amount of technical information. But then, she wasn't a tech-prime. "There is a continued weakness in the principal charge-capacitor array. Overheat in the ventilation ducts. Microfractures in seventeen vanes of the dorsal heat-sink. The un-pressurised decks above and below the blast dampened the explosive effects, but the mountings on three more dampers must be considered suspect. You were lucky."

  Antonia didn't feel all that lucky. "Your recommendation?"

  "Continue with your mission, Het Admiral. Then return to Shalem immediately, at a speed no greater than eighteen factors. And try not to antagonise anyone on the way home."

  A speed of eighteen factors would get Othniel back in about a week. "I'll transfer the flag to Despoiler upon my return." She smiled. "Thank you, Omri. I needed your reassurance."

  "It is my duty to serve, Het Admiral. I look forward to your return."

  The holo-ring went dark. Antonia stayed where she was for the moment, pondering, tapping lightly at the edge of the keypad with a fingertip. She wondered, not for the first time, if she was doing the right thing.

  She shook herself. Doubt wasn't something that had any place in the mind of an Iconoclast admiral.

  Lavannos had enjoyed the ignorance of the Accord for too long. Something had been allowed to fester there, something that had taken the life of a great warrior and respected agent of the patriarch. Antonia, as admiral-commander of Shalem, had enough autonomy from high command to make punitive strikes on any world she considered a threat to the security of the Accord.

  Besides, according to Major Ketta, Durham Red was on Lavannos. Yet another reason to scour the place.

  Antonia turned to go. As she did so, the holo-ring sprang back into life.

  She whirled. The image of a man had appeared there: tall and muscular, his lined face grimly handsome. Clad in black armour and white face-paint, his hair covered by a sensory skullcap.

  Fleet Admiral Trophimus.

  Antonia snapped to attention. "My lord!"

  "At ease, admiral." Trophimus was Antonia's direct superior, lord of the battle-fortress Noamon and commander of the fleets of twenty entire temple-stations. He reported only to the patriarch himself. "How fortunate to find you here at such an hour."

  Fortune, Antonia thought despairingly, had nothing to do with it. Trophimus had been trying to reach her for days, and with her reports still uncompleted she had been going to ever-greater lengths to avoid talking to him. He must have placed a priority order with the entire relay-station network, telling them to look out for signals to or from her crypt-key, and to piggyback a parasite signal onto any call she made. He'd simply taken over control of the vault as soon as her conversation with Omri had ended. "Indeed, my lord."

  Trophimus steepled his fingers. "I'll come directly to the point, admiral. I know your time is precious." He raised an eyebrow. "Too precious to spend completing Curia's reports, in fact."

  "About those-"

  He waved a hand. "Don't concern yourself, Het. I've got an approval already written. Just get them to here at Noamon and I'll stamp them off." He smiled. "Believe me, I know what a bane paperwork can be."

  Antonia felt as though a balloon, inflated behind her ribs for weeks, had just been popped. "Oh," was all she could manage.

  "That's not the reason I called, Het Admiral." His smile faded. "I understand you are en route to Lavannos."

  "That's correct."

  "A punitive strike?"

  Antonia nodded. "Yes, my lord. A threat to the Accord has been detected there, and the taint of evil. It must be eliminated before it can spread."

  She decided, against all protocol, not to mention Durham Red for now.

  "Hmm." Trophimus frowned. "This judgement is based on the reports of Major Gaius?"

  The name, spoken by other lips, sent a blade through her. She stiffened slightly. "My lord, Gaius had been investigating rumours of a blood-cult on the fringes of the Accord for some weeks. He was convinced it was not connected to the Tenebrae, but was linked to some other, far older form of worship." She took a deep breath. "He believed that the cult might centre on the retreat-world of Lavannos, sacred moon of Mandus. It appears he was right."

  "He was killed during his investigation."

  "Yes, my lord. There is another agent on Lavannos, Major Ketta. Her report indicates that Gaius was butchered by the very cult he sought to expose."

  "I see." Trophimus made an odd kind of grimace, as though he was wrestling with some internal dilemma. "I have had a request, Het Admiral. Archaeotech division would like a stay of execution on Lavannos."

  "Archaeotech?"

  "They also have heard rumours, apparently. Something about important pre-Bloodshed artefacts."

  Antonia gaped. "Fleet admiral! We are discussing a dangerous cult here, the murder of an agent of the Accord! How can those imbeciles at Archaeotech even consider trying to stay my hand for the sake of some worthless trinkets?"

  Trophimus spread his hands. "My thoughts exactly, Het Admiral. I don't expect for a minute that you will honour their request. I just wanted to make sure you knew about it."

  Something in his tone gave Antonia pause. "Why?"

  "Admiral, your methods polarise opinion in high command. There are those who consider you an innovative and honourable commander. Others hold a less charitable view."

  That was no surprise. It was an open secret that Antonia was regarded as a dangerous throwback by several other admirals. "I see."

  "I hope you do." He leaned forwards, and lowered his voice. "I beg you to tread carefully, admiral. There are things happening here, things I cannot discuss. Suffice to say that great changes will face us soon. Do not let yourself be overwhelmed by them, Huldah Antonia."

  "I understand, fleet admiral. And thank you for your concern."

  "The prompt completion of future reports would be nothing if not a help, Het Admiral." He winked at her and then vanished.

  Antonia stared into the space he had left. "Goodbye, father," she whispered.

  She got back to the bridge with only minutes to spare. Othniel was decelerating from superlight speed.

  The holo projectors had been slaved to a forward tactical view: a massive panel of light hung in their air, filled with the raging fires of jumpspace. As Antonia reached the rail, Othniel returned to the universe.

  There was a lurch. The jump-shaft vanished, the searing flare of it scanning away to either side as the killship emerged from the tunnel. The prayer-chants changed cadence immediately, becoming strident battle-hymns.

  Mandus, the titan gas-giant that gave Lavannos shelter, grew to fill the panel, orange light washing down over the bridge.

  A disc of pure black hung at its centre.

  "Orientate all antimat batteries for ground-fire," Antonia snapped. "Launch daggerships, Alpha and Beta shoals. Make sure the hunger-guns are woken and active."

  She turned to Erastus. "Sub-captain, keep that world in your sights. I want it razed on my command."

  "Thy will be done, Het Admiral." He grinned wolfishly. "Just give the word, and I'll burn it apart for you."

  "I look forward to that." She put her hand on his shoulder, glaring at the black disc of Lavannos. "In the meantime, have my landing craft made ready, with a platoon of shock-troopers on board. I have a few things to attend to on the surface."

  Not long now, my love, she thought grimly.

  Not long at all.

  12. OPEN

  Durham Red had thought that the worst place she could wake up would be on the wheel, chained to the spokes, head back with a pair of blades around her skull. She was wrong.

  She was on her back, lying on something hard and smooth. It was cold. She was shivering uncontrollably, her limbs shaking with the chill, and there was a terrible pain in the side of her neck. Whatever the monks had injected her with had bu
rned through the skin as it had taken her down.

  There was a bright light above her. It glared through her closed eyelids, so painful that she had to put up a hand to her face. Moving the arm hurt quite a lot, but the pain began to fade as control returned to her.

  When she caught up with the ones who had dosed her, she resolved, very bad things would happen to them.

  She turned aside, away from the light, and opened her eyes. For a moment all she could see was white, and wondered if something had happened to her eyes, but gradually a few details began to resolve in the glare. A wall, a few metres away. A small table or trolley, with bright things gleaming on it. The edge of what she was lying on. Her own bare arm.

  Red sat up, hard. She didn't have her clothes on any more.

  The bastards had stripped her. She wore nothing except a shapeless gown of grubby white fabric, tied loosely at the neck. No wonder she'd been cold.

  Very slowly, she swung her legs around and down.

  She was on a long, smooth slab of metal, indented like a shallow sink. There was a rusted drain at one end of it, a stained, bundled towel at the other. Her head had been resting on that. She reached back to the back of her neck, and her fingers came away wet.

  What in sneck's name was going on here?

  She clambered down off the table and looked around. The light above her was from a bank of lumes, extending from the ceiling on an adjustable arm. The walls of the room were bare, the smooth white stone of the monastery, and the floor was cold tile under her feet. There was a rough wooden table against one wall, a closed door opposite.

  The trolley by the table was covered in implements.

  Red prodded them gingerly. There was a saw, scalpels and syringes, a heavy-bladed butcher knife. A long, jointed thing like the leg of an insect, a handle at one end, a vicious point at the other. Everything was grimy and stained with rust.

  Red pulled the front of the gown forwards, looking down the neck-hole. She breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever loathsome operation had been scheduled for this room hadn't happened yet. Maybe she'd woken too early, but a squad of monks and surgeons could be trooping towards her at any minute, itching to open her up and see what made her tick.

  Let them try. She picked up the butcher knife, taking a moment to wipe off the handle on her gown.

  The door wasn't locked. She pushed it open and looked outside. There was no one in sight, just a white-walled corridor stretching away in either direction. Doors, just like the one she was clutching, were set into the walls every few metres and they were all closed.

  She had to be in the accommodation block, at the eastern side of the monastery. It was the only place big enough to house this corridor. And there she had been, in her room on the floor above this, never knowing there was an operating theatre under her feet.

  Dear God, she'd left Judas Harrow here.

  She walked out into the corridor and closed the door behind her. Both ends of the passage disappeared around corners, quite some distance away. She began to pad silently along the tiled floor, the knife held blade downwards in her fist.

  After a few metres she stopped and listened hard. She could have sworn she had heard something ahead of her, around the corner.

  There it was again. The sound of something heavy being dragged along the floor.

  She was too open here, too exposed. If they had guns she'd be a sitting duck, and all she had was a butcher knife. It wasn't even balanced for throwing, too heavy in the blade. If she lugged it at anyone she'd be lucky to stun them with the flat of it.

  There was a door alongside her. She turned the handle and pulled it open, glancing inside to make sure it was safe.

  And realised, in one awful instant, that safe wasn't a word she could apply here.

  There was a man in the room. He was upright, leaning slightly forwards, bound by the arms and neck to a heavy wooden frame. He was naked, and his shaved head drooped forwards.

  From throat to groin, he was open.

  Red clapped a hand over her mouth. The man's ribcage gaped at her, the skin and flesh of his chest sliced and peeled back, fixed to the frame with rough metal nails. His ribs had been spread exquisitely, separated from the sternum and bent to clutch at the air like the petals of some monstrous flower. The organs they had once protected had been teased from their moorings to hang on an intricate collection of wire hooks.

  Worst of all, he was still alive. His organs pulsed and throbbed. As Red stared, he lifted his heavy head to her.

  He was trying to scream, but his mouth had been sewn shut.

  Red slammed the door and backed away, her stomach churning. Was this what had been scheduled for her?

  The dragging was getting closer.

  She gritted her teeth and headed towards it. No matter if there was an army dragging a body along that corridor, she decided, she would rather face it with a rusty knife in her hand than open another one of these doors.

  It was very close, now. The dragging was wet, laboured, mixed with a dull scraping. Hoarse, wheezing breath, and a sudden slapping sound. Two slaps, then a drag. A breath. And then the same, but closer.

  There was nothing being dragged. Whatever it was, was dragging itself.

  Red moved back from the corner. She couldn't look, couldn't see what that awful, tortured thing might be. She turned away.

  The corridor was full of tendrils.

  They were on her in seconds, billowing around her, slimy and corpse-cold. Before she could bring the knife up dozens of them were knotted around her arms, her legs. More wrapped around her head, forcing it back until her vertebrae cracked with the strain. She howled.

  There was one tentacle bigger than the others, as thick as her arm. It levelled a viscous end at her, stayed waving, hovering, curled like a cobra ready to strike. Red tried to turn her head away, but the other tendrils held her tight, tearing her hair out by the roots. Fluid dripped from the big tentacle, sliming down her face.

  Teeth erupted from its sides, saw-blades of pale bone, and it snapped forwards. Red felt it hammer into her mouth, past her jaw, the teeth ripping into her throat as it wormed its way down...

  And screamed herself awake.

  "It's this place," said Godolkin dully. "It makes you dream."

  Red looked madly about, panting. There was no monastery around her, no tentacles. She had her clothes on, or what was left of them. She didn't have a knife in her hand.

  The real situation, if indeed this was real, was not much better.

  She was bound, chained, heavy cuffs clamped tight around her wrists, locked to what felt like a cold metal bar that was lying along her shoulders, behind her neck. It was forcing her head forwards, so she couldn't see much of what was around her, but what she could see was black Lavannos stone. Behind her was a wide pillar and it was to this that she - and Godolkin, at least - were tied.

  Her ankles were cuffed to another bar, joined to the top one by a vertical beam. The bonds were very, very strong.

  She rattled uselessly. "I guess you've tried to get out of this," she growled.

  "I have."

  "Bugger."

  "My sentiments exactly," muttered Harrow, from somewhere to her left.

  Red twisted, trying to see him, but her head was too far forwards. "Jude? Are you okay?"

  Harrow snorted. "Apart from being drugged, locked up in my room, then hauled out, beaten up and drugged again, I'm doing quite well, thank you."

  "Godolkin?"

  The Iconoclast shook his chains experimentally. "I have seen better times, Blasphemy, but I am unharmed. However, I do feel the situation is unlikely to improve."

  "That's right," Red grated. "Keep your chin up." She yanked her head around, working her shoulders under the bar until she could see a little more to her right. There wasn't much to see: just stone walls, a low, wide doorway, some candles. "Anyone know where we are?"

  "You are very close to immortality, Durham Red."

  She knew that voice. "Well, if it isn't the ab
bot of Earl Grey. Have you come to let us out?"

  "I'm afraid not." He came through the doorway, stooping slightly to get through. "I hear you've been having bad dreams."

  "No more than usual." She wondered if he would get close enough for her take a bite out of him, but a second later more monks began filing through, all of them carrying frag-carbines. Which put paid to that notion.

  "Really? It sounded quite unusual to me." The abbot smiled warmly. "It's quite an honour, you know. He doesn't speak to everyone."

  Red blinked at him. "Who?"

  "The Mighty One. The Mindfeeder. Him."

  "Oh, I see! That brain-eating monster you've got in the drive chamber."

  "In the drive chamber." The abbot seemed faintly amused at that. "Yes, my dear. Him."

  "I didn't dream at all," said Harrow.

  Godolkin had, thought Red, although she thought it probably wouldn't be a good idea to say it. "So, now me and tentacle-boy have had a chat, do I get to be a monk?"

  The abbot raised his eyebrows and nodded to her. "Very perceptive. That is how we are usually chosen, yes. But I'm afraid in your case, that won't be possible. After all, I've gone to very great lengths to get you here, holy one."

  "Abbot, it was I who called the Blasphemy to this world, not you."

  The abbot sighed. "Godolkin, my old friend. You, with all your dreaming, would have made quite a good brother. Just not a very bright one." He walked around to face the Iconoclast, partly out of Red's limited view. "Getting her here has been something we've been working towards ever since the fall of Pyre. We couldn't find her, but we found you. On Cassita Secundus."

  Godolkin made an exasperated hiss. "The pilgrim who recommended the retreat to me. He was one of yours."

  "Of course he was. Actually, he was going to fill you full of drugs and have you shipped here, but you came so willingly of your own accord that he didn't have to bother. Once you were here, we knew you'd never be broken into revealing Durham Red's location, so it was a matter of getting you to call her." He was walking around the pillar, back towards Red. "I have a certain connection with him, you see. I can influence the dreams a little."