It had been buried in a plug of obsidian jutting from the cavern wall, but serious excavation work had been done to reveal it.
Heavy mining pods and anti-grav drill platforms sat on the ash slopes below it, and the ground was covered in fragments of obsidian.
It was, as Bure had described, a perfect decahedron four metres across, dark green and glassy like water-ice. It glowed with an inner light. Even from a distance, it felt malevolent. I sensed an unnerving tickling at the edge of my psychic range. Medea looked sick.
'I don't want to get any closer/ she said suddenly.
'We have to!'
'And do what?'
I wondered if we could cut it with the mining laser. I wondered indeed if that would do any good. I doubted we would make much of dent in it even if we power-dived the pod at it.
Yet, the cultists had shaved splinters from it to promulgate their evil. It was vulnerable… unless it had somehow allowed the splinters to be removed.
We certainly couldn't move it.
I could feel it now, whispering in my head. There were no words, just a murmur that chilled my spine. Insidious, slow… slow like eons of geological time, slow like a glacier or a tectonic plate. It spoke softly and without haste, gently unfolding its seductive message. It had no need to rush. It had all the time in the galaxy…
The pod yawed wildly. I started and looked around. Medea had lost partial control because she had turned to be violently sick over the side of her seat. Her skin was blanched and she was panting and sweating.
'I… I can't…' she gasped. 'Don't make me go any closer…'
She had reached her limits. I leaned over and put my hand against the side of her head. 'Sleep/ I said softly, using the will.
She sank into merciful unconsciousness.
I took the controls.
I was no flier like Medea Betancore, and for a moment, I thought I was going to dive us nose-first into the lake of bubbling magma as I fumbled with the actuators.
But Medea's late father had trained me well enough. I swooped low over the pool of molten rock, creating a Shockwave vortex in the brimstone, and banked around a massive anthragate column that rose up into the jagged roof. There was just a last wide lake of fire between me and the ash shore where the Lith was exposed.
It was whispering again, but I shook it off. I had trained my mind hard to resist the ministrations of Chaos and its psychic wiles. This was how it turned weak minds. This was how it had polluted and tainted the population of Cinchare minehead. The whispering… the formless, shapeless words of power that drew mankind into the embrace of the warp…
An idea struck me. I like to think it was an idea born out of the same pure simplicity that Bure had celebrated in Aemos. A perfect, simple possibility.
I shrugged from my mind my fears for the life of Aemos and the magos. The blasphemy might already have torn the translithopede apart in the cavern far behind me. If they were not beyond hope, then this was the best I could do for them.
Risking a free hand, I reached sideways and activated the pod's vox-ponder, setting it to record. Then, concentrating on my steering once more, I began to speak, clearly and loudly, dredging words up from my memory. Long ago, on my birth planet, DeKere's World, as a child, standing in the long hall of the primary scholam with the other pupils, reciting together…
A collision warning blared, and I veered to the left in time to glimpse a prospecting pod that filled my cockpit windows for a moment before racing past.
Two bright yellow cursors had appeared on my auspex display. The beacon locators of prospecting pods, like the ones that had chased us into the mine system.
The one that had tried to collide with me was turning wide over the lava lake. The other was coming in on an intercept course. I swung round to face it and then gulled away at the last minute. The pass was close, close enough to see the Ortog Promethium symbols on its flank. Close enough to see Enforcer Kaleil's face through fhe cockpit ports.
The first pod, an Imperial Allied symbol just visible through the heat-flaked paint, came in and blocked my route to the shore and the Lith. Its driver, unidentifiable, had smashed the window lights out and was firing a lascarbine out from the cockpit. Despite our comparative speeds, I felt several shots land home, banging into the pod's fuselage. I steered away, trying desperately not to break my recitation as I concentrated on the air duel.
I began to chant the words like a mantra.
As I turned from the Imperial Allied pod, I met Kaleil's vessel head on. I rolled hard to evade, but still we clipped and the whole pod shook.
Warning lights lit up across the control console. I had thruster damage and reduced manoeuvring ability. The lava lake flashed up to consume me but I climbed hard, away from the ash beach.
All the while, my recitation continued.
The Imperial Allied pod was on my tail, streaking the air with las-shots. We whipped hard around the anthragate pillar, but I couldn't shake him. I tried to think what Medea would do. What Midas would have done. For a moment, my words faltered as I planned and executed my frantic response.
The pod was right behind me. I braked hard, and managed to spin the anti-grav machine in place using the attitude jets, dropping my nose as if curtseying to my attacker. And I ignited my mining laser.
The Imperial Allied pod was far too close to my rear to effect a turn or a brake. I think he was trying for a collision, but I was just too high for him. He ran in under my hull at full thrust, so close he tore the lighting array and the auspex antennae off the underside of my pod.
He also ran straight through the incandescent spear of my mining laser. It sliced the Imperial Allied pod lengthways and sent the disintegrating halves spinning away into the white hot magma below.
My pod was half crippled now from the pair of impacts. I continued my recitation, hoping the brief lapse wouldn't matter.
With its antennae gone, the auspex was blind, but I could see Kaleil anyway. He was gunning across the lake straight for me.
I hovered in place. There was a time for action and, as I had already gambled, a time for words. I switched off the vox-ponder and keyed the open channel.
'Kaleil?'
'Horn!'
'Not Horn… Inquisitor Eisenhorn.'
Silence. He was two hundred metres and closing at a speed that would wipe us both out.
I pressed the vox-mic close to my mouth and used every shred of my will.
'Don't/1 said.
The Ortog Promethium pod veered and then dived straight down into the lava lake. A halo of fire broke up from the slow, undulating splash it made in the liquid rock.
I limped my pod over to the ash beach and set down about twenty metres short of the Lith. Medea moaned in her sleep. I dreaded the dreams that might be boiling through her subconscious.
'Get out of my head!' I snarled aloud at the Lith's persistent whispering.
It took me a moment to rewind the vox-ponder recording and set it to a continuous loop. Then I diverted its signal into the echo-sounding sonar system that the pod used to supplement its
