The Unquiet Grave Read online

  Red flailed a foot in the abbot's direction, but didn't even get close. "What about the cryo-tube, you snecker?"

  "That, my dear, is called 'baiting the trap'." He rapped the wall with his knuckles. "This stuff flows like water if you get it hot enough."

  "You planted the tube," said Godolkin quietly. It was probably starting to dawn on him how badly he'd been duped. "Everything else?"

  "Everything else."

  "The reliquary?"

  "A store room."

  "I have been a fool."

  "Yes, yes you have. But console yourself, Matteus Godolkin. It took a very long time for you to fulfil your purpose. I had almost given up hope of you ever reaching out to her. The cryo-tube was my last chance."

  "Where did you get it?" Red asked.

  The abbot faced her. "Strangely enough, I do have a passing interest in archaeology. It's what I did before I came here. The tube was one of my prize finds."

  "Pity you didn't find mine first. Then I'd have had your throat out, and saved everyone a lot of snecking trouble!"

  "Temper temper..." The abbot gestured to two of the other monks. The men scurried out of Red's view and came back holding several long bars of the same metal she was chained to. She watched as they eased one bar through the one behind her ankles. She hadn't even realised that one was hollow.

  Another bar slid behind her head. Once Godolkin and Harrow had been put through the same treatment, there was a heavy, metallic sound from deep inside the pillar. Red felt something unlock behind her, releasing the bars and frame from the pillar's surface.

  The full weight of the construction was suddenly hanging off her shoulders. She groaned, and felt herself tipping back. Before she could fall, four monks had darted forwards and grabbed the ends of the long poles. In seconds they had hauled her up, carrying her between them.

  With gravity no longer pulling her down, her head was able to tip back, which felt good for a moment. Then it hit her.

  Her head could go back. Sneck, they were going to put her on the wheel.

  "No! Get me off of this thing, you snecking bastards!" She flung herself about on the frame, or tried to, but the chains were so short she couldn't get any momentum. The monks staggered a little, then laughed among themselves and set their feet a little wider. Red felt herself being lifted into the air.

  The abbot was going out through the doorway. The monks began to follow, taking Red with them. She could hear Godolkin and Harrow being carried the same way.

  The doorway led into the wheel room.

  Red was dragged up the side of the thing, between the spikes set into the rim, and over onto the spokes. The poles locked down into braces, fixing her firmly in place. Her head lolling back, she got an upside-down view of the abbot watching her. "You sick bastard!" she snarled. "Did you come up with this thing?"

  "Oh no. This has been here ever since Saint Lavann. He saw it in a dream, I believe." He reached out of her view, and when he came back he was holding a set of the horrible, bladed tongs. "It's only fitting that I give this gift to you, Durham Red," he told her calmly. "It's your mind that will wake Him, you see. He's asleep right now, dead and dreaming, but when your thoughts join with all the others He has fed on, He'll wake up." He leaned towards her, and whispered. "You really are a lucky girl. Oh, the dreams you'll have!"

  "I'll dream of kicking your arse all the way to hell, you scumbag," she hissed.

  He smiled, and raised the tongs. "Yes, I'm sure you very probably will."

  The monk next to him exploded.

  The man had been hit with a plasma charge, set at full heat. His body fluids flashed into steam, blasting his body apart in a shower of blood and pulverised meat, painting the abbot crimson from head to foot and blowing him across the decking. Red heard the tongs fly from his hands.

  The wheel room was suddenly bright with gunfire. Red twisted wildly, trying to see what was going on - she caught a glimpse of a massive form, clad in multiple layers of black armour, firing a huge weapon bolted over its right forearm. The weapon chugged and flashed and Red heard the unmistakable sound of staking pins slamming into flesh.

  The staking pin was part of the sacred trinity of weapons used by Iconoclast warriors.

  She had been on the receiving end of them before, back on Wodan. The staking pin was a needle-sharp metal bolt the size of a baby's arm. The burner cleansed the staked victim with holy fire and then the silver blade, unfolding like metal origami from its grip, would sever the neck. Stake, burn, behead; the traditional ways of killing a vampire.

  Conveniently, they killed pretty much everything else, too.

  The wheel room had become a battleground. Frag-shells were going everywhere, razor-sharp shrapnel screaming off the walls and the metal workings of the wheel itself. Red felt an impact and a sharp pain as a chunk of steel embedded itself into the vertical part of her frame, and realised just how close she had come to having her spine bisected.

  Stakes were hammering out in return: Durham Red, her view still upside-down, saw a monk get hit by one and go flying back through the air, smacking into the axle and staying there, sagging around the gleaming end of the pin. Impaled.

  The monks fought hard, but they were swiftly overwhelmed. From what Red had been able to gather, overwhelming numbers and superior firepower were what passed for tactics in Iconoclast warfare.

  Within a minute or two it was all over. There were a couple of meaty impacts from somewhere below her - beheadings, she guessed - and then the room fell silent.

  Red kept quite still, waiting.

  Footsteps sounded below her. Two sets, one an easy, leisurely pace, the other an almost silent padding.

  "This is the one." The voice was a woman's and not one that Red knew of. "Take him and bind him. He will spend a long time dying."

  Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke, Red though to herself.

  "Admiral?" That was Major Ketta. "Over here."

  The heavier footsteps returned. "Well, what do we have here?" The first woman again. "Saint Scarlet of Durham, the heretic Matteus Godolkin, and a mutant. Ketta, what a nice present you've given me!"

  "Gift-wrapped, too," said Ketta.

  Admiral Huldah Antonia was a striking-looking woman. Red judged her to be in her mid-thirties, quite tall, very slender with a muted, almost boyish figure. Auburn hair swept back under a tall headdress. Clad entirely in black, body-hugging rubberised armour, her face painted white with a crimson stripe across her eyes.

  Haughty and superior as hell, too. A typical Iconoclast officer.

  The troopers had taken Red and the others down from the wheel, but had been careful not to unchain them. The abbot, still unconscious, had been cuffed securely.

  A lot of the shocktroopers had their guns pointed directly at Durham Red. "Please," one of them said eventually, "let us burn her!"

  "Hold your fire, soldiers." Antonia raised a hand and the troopers lowered their weapons. "Fear not, she'll burn soon enough. But it needs to be public. Slaughtering her here would be satisfying, but half the enemy wouldn't believe she was dead, and the other half would celebrate her martyrdom. This needs to be done carefully and it needs to be done properly."

  "Whatever," Red muttered, glaring. "Better that than having my brain fed to a monster."

  Antonia looked puzzled and glanced at Ketta, but the agent could only shrug. "I see only one monster here," she replied.

  "In the drive chamber. It's what they were feeding the brains to."

  At that, she was interested to notice, Admiral Antonia paled just slightly under her war paint. "I'll have that investigated, Blasphemy," she said quietly.

  "Yeah, why don't you. In fact, why don't you go and investigate it yourself? I'm sure he'd love to meet you!"

  Antonia smiled. "Keep talking, Blasphemy. Every quip from now on earns you another day in the Chapel of Agony." She turned to her soldiers. "Carry the others out, into the courtyard. Fit them with breath-masks too. We don't want them dying before their time." />
  Shocktroopers hauled Harrow and Godolkin up, and carried them away, still bolted to their frames. Harrow lolled, seemingly unconscious. Godolkin whispered to her as he was dragged past. "Forgive me, Blasphemy..."

  She wanted to answer him, but he was gone before she could speak.

  "I take it there's no point saying: 'You can have me if you let them go,' is there?"

  Antonia shook her head. "Not when I can have all of you, no. Ketta?"

  "Het Admiral?"

  "Take the remaining shocktroopers and wait ten minutes outside, then return." She slipped a long, slim knife from a sheath at her wrist. "I wish to have a short conversation with our guest."

  Ketta looked unsure, but nodded. "Thy will be done."

  Red watched the Iconoclasts file out. She eyed the knife. "Where are you going to stick that?"

  "Back in here," said Antonia, and put the knife in its sheath again. "I'll not tell you why, Blasphemy, but you've done me some favours on this world. The soldiers must continue to believe you are the epitome of all evil. All I see is a mutant with long teeth."

  "So?"

  "So, I'm prepared to deal with you."

  "Deal with me how? You're going to let us go?"

  "No, I'm going to torture you to death live on galaxy-wide holofeed. Your friends will be executed too, but if you co-operate I'll make their ending a swift and painless one."

  Red shifted uncomfortably in the frame. The piece of shrapnel was still digging into her back. "Aren't you committing some kind of terrible crime just by talking to me?"

  The woman shrugged. "I'm not. I'm sticking a knife into you for fun, in all the places it won't show." She glanced quickly over her shoulder. "And anything you say to them will be deemed automatically untrue, oh princess of darkness and mother of lies."

  Red sighed. "Okay, you've got me. What do you want?"

  "I want you to tell me exactly what you mean by 'drive chamber'."

  13. SCREAM

  Antonia thought about using some of her shocktroopers to take the monastery room by room, but had decided there was no need. In a short while the entire surface of Lavannos would be molten anyway. No one would remain alive.

  She had one more task to perform before she left this place forever. She needed to see the resting place of Major Gaius.

  Durham Red and her companions were taken into the monastery's courtyard and held under guard there. They were given breath-masks and draped with thermocowls, although Godolkin had refused the latter. Some of the shocktroopers had balked at giving the Blasphemy and her heretic companions any form of succour at all, until Antonia had explained to them that freezing to death was actually quite a painless way to expire.

  While that was being done, she had wandered out of the main gates and stood for a time, watching the great roils of cloud moving slowly across the face of Mandus.

  Ketta joined her a few minutes later. She was wearing battle-armour brought in specially aboard the landing-craft, and breathing comfortably through its integral mask. "Het Admiral? The prisoners are secure."

  "Thank you, Ketta."

  "Some of the shocktroopers are still unsure about letting them live, even for a while. Some of them are, well..."

  "Afraid?" Antonia shivered. "Nothing to be ashamed of there, Ketta. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to put a blade through the neck of that bitch right now. But I saw what happened when she was resurrected. I was at Broteus when the Tenebrae came out of hiding, and as a result I've got two undamaged ships out of forty. If their saint dies in a simple execution, what then?"

  "Can't we just kill and leave her here? The Tenebrae would never find out and she'd just pass into legend again."

  "The idea of Saint Scarlet as legend terrifies me almost as much as she does in reality, Ketta." Antonia wandered a few paces away. "Rumours of her reappearance are already on the loose. She's too big, too dangerous. You almost don't dare kill her. You know something, major? I don't know what to do with the Blasphemy! The only thing I can do is to deliver her alive to the patriarch, and let him make the decision."

  Ketta was silent for a long time. Then she said: "Admiral, may I speak freely?"

  "Always, my friend."

  "I believe you think more than any Iconoclast I have ever known."

  Antonia smiled grimly. "I shall take that as a compliment, Ketta, even if it was not intended as such."

  She leaned back. Othniel was poised in the sky above them, fifty kilometres up. It held steady, using braking thrusters to keep position between the pull from Mandus and the pitiful gravity of Lavannos. As she watched, flickers of light showed briefly around the vessel's prow. Another correction.

  Swarms of daggerships, super-fast interceptors, darted around it.

  "Everything you said about this place is true, Ketta. The things the Blasphemy told me. If I can give thanks for anything, it is that I do not have to stay here long enough to sleep." She turned back to the agent. "I am going to see Gaius. Will you walk with me?"

  "If you wish. I'll arrange a guard."

  Antonia nodded. "Make sure they keep their distance. We have things to discuss."

  When Antonia told Ketta about the origin of Lavannos, she almost fell into the Eye of God. "Admiral, that can't be!"

  "It could just be a lie concocted by the Blasphemy for some foul purpose of her own, but I don't know. A faction within Archaeotech division tried to stay my hand while I was on my way here. Fleet-Admiral Trophimus told me himself."

  "Your father?"

  Antonia gave Ketta a look. "Please don't say that out loud again, major."

  "Forgive me, Het Admiral. But how would Archaeotech know about this place?"

  "I can't imagine." She thought about giving her the warning Trophimus had given her, but decided to keep it to herself for now. "But if this story about Earth's Moon is true, if ancient humans somehow were able to shift an entire world, no wonder those Archaeotech fools wanted me to hold fire."

  She'd never been able to see much point in the Archaeotech division anyway. Many forms of technology had been lost in the Bloodshed, it was true, and perhaps some of them might have a use in the Iconoclasts' continued suppression of the Tenebrae. She had often wondered how many bridge crew she might need if a killship's systems could be run by the fabled artificial intellects of old. Four or five, probably, but where would the joy be in that? A war fought between machines would be no war at all. It was humans that mattered, not cold circuitry.

  To the untutored eye it might seem that the Iconoclasts were a homogenous, united force, all striving towards the common goal, the greater good. To anyone who could see the broader picture, nothing could have been further from the truth. Every officer had his or her own agenda, every division and department their own vision of how things should be. If it wasn't for the holy patriarch, the whole unruly lot of them would dissolve into anarchy, of that Antonia was sure.

  God forbid she ever saw such a day. "How far now?"

  "Just ahead, Het Admiral. This next gully."

  The steps were just as Ketta had described them. Antonia told the guards following them to take up position around the gully and wait until she returned or signalled for assistance.

  Ketta went down the steps first, hugging the wall. Antonia followed close behind, staring down with some shock into the Eye and wishing she had brought a grav-chute.

  The steps were mercifully few. Before long they were into the tunnel, stooping to climb along it. Both their suits of armour contained integral flashlights, turning the gloom in the circular passageway as bright as day.

  As they reached the end of the tunnel, Ketta paused. "Het Admiral, be warned. This place is... foul. It damaged my soul to be here, and I lost no one I was close to."

  Antonia put out a hand and touched the agent's shoulder. "Your soul is in no danger, Major Ketta. Rest assured of that."

  She stepped past her and down into the cavern.

  Gaius lay to one side of the awful space. She crouched next to him, brush
ed the frost from his eyes. "My poor man," she whispered.

  She would shed no tears for him, not in this frozen hell of a place. She would not dishonour him so - he was an agent of the Accord, who had died doing his holy duties. And, in so doing, had led her to Lavannos. A dangerous cult had been wiped out and the blasphemous Saint Scarlet, the walking disease whose very existence promised such ruin to humanity, had finally been brought to heel.

  "You have done well, my love. So very well. No one could ask more of you." She stood. "Time to sleep." She walked back to the tunnel entrance. Ketta had stayed there, crouched just inside. "Thank you, major. We'll go back now."

  "Are you not taking his body?"

  Antonia shook her head. "I have something else in mind. I think he would have appreciated it."

  It took them the same amount of time to return to the monastery as it had to walk to the cavern, but this way seemed far longer. The journey was conducted in silence. Neither woman felt much like talking.

  When Antonia reached the monastery she took a moment to check the situation in the courtyard hadn't changed. Durham Red and her pet heretics were still under guard, thankfully, and everything seemed as it was.

  She left Ketta in charge for a moment, then went back out through the gates and onto the Serpent Path. When she had walked far enough to get a good view of the Eye, she halted, and took the comm-linker from her belt. "Erastus?"

  The screen lit up, an image of the sub-captain's grizzled face filling it. "Right here, Het Admiral. Your orders?"

  "It is almost time, sub-captain. First, I'd like you to practise your precision bombardment techniques." She used the linker's keypad to type in a series of digits. "These are the coordinates of a subterranean cavern some ten metres below the surface. Be so kind as to vaporise it for me."

  Erastus grinned. "Thy will be done." His image vanished.

  The sub-captain probably thought Antonia had a cave full of prisoners she wanted executed in a hurry. Let him think what he wanted. There was no way she could have taken the frozen carcass of Major Gaius back with her, not with his skull the empty goblet it had now become. Cremation seemed an acceptable compromise. Besides, he'd always enjoyed fireworks.