auspex in assay and location work. I twiddled the dials until the powerful sonar was aimed directly at the malevolent decahedron.
Conveyed in fierce ultra-sonic pulses, my recording blasted the Lith. The Emperor's Prayer of Abrogation Against the Warp, learned by rote by every good schoolchild of the Imperium. An innocent blessing against the darkness, a banishment of Chaos. I doubted it had ever been used so actively. I doubted my scholam tutors had ever conceived of such a use for that simple, sing-song declaration.
'Words,' I murmured. 'Your corrupt whispers against my words of power. How do you like that?'
I pushed the sonar gain to maximum. In terms of sonics alone, the pulses would have stunned a man to unconsciousness and snapped his bones.
For a good minute or more, I feared it was having no effect.
Then the whispering ceased. It became a subsonic moaning of rage and anguish, and finally agony.
The Lith's surface became discoloured, as if mottled by mould. It shuddered, cracking the obsidian around it.
Then its inner luminescence sputtered and went out, and it became indistinguishable from the black volcanic glass that surrounded it.
When the Lith died, so did its servants, and so did the blasphemy. Checking that Medea was now just sleeping soundly, I nursed the damaged pod back down the cavern in time to see the last stringy remnants of the foul worm combusting and sliding off the translithopede's buckled hull. The air was thick with dirty cinders and the smoke of burning fat.
The burning corpses of cultists littered the chamber floor. Motionless stalkers stood in their midst, cycling on pause, waiting for the next command.
Broken and twisted, the great burrower was at least intact. When I brought the pod into the dock-bay, Bure's own tech-adepts themselves emerged to take care of Medea's unconscious body.
The companionway floor was raked over at an angle. Bure's engineer priests were still trying to repair the inertial dampers.
Acrid smoke filled the air, unpleasantly scented by the fat-fires outside. Aemos met me in the doorway of the control chamber and hugged me briefly in a rare display of affection. Bure had shed his orange robe. A sinister, stark, inhuman silhouette, he watched our very human exchange from the edge of the podium, backlit by fires raging in the workstations below.
'We're fine now, old friend,' I said to Aemos.
He broke the embrace, as if guilty. 'You did well, Gregor. Marvellously! I… I didn't mean any disrespect…'
It was at times like that I wished I could still smile. I am too used to my face being the impassive mask Gorgone Locke gave me.
Using my will gently, so he might understand the truth of my words, I said, 'No disrespect taken, old friend.'
Aemos smiled sheepishly and turned away.
His suspensors hissing, Bure glided over to me. To my surprise, he hugged me too. It was brief and clumsy, his servo arms conveying no warmth. I felt terrible sorrow for him then. His human core had been moved by the events and he had seen and copied Aemos's impromptu display of affection. Just then, I believe, he passionately wanted to be human again. Just for a moment. But his vicing arms had no more emotion in them than the tight handshake with which he had first greeted me.
He swung away, his arms to his sides. His green eye-lights flicked back and forth over the repair teams as they worked to contain the damage.
'I have never said/ he began, his voxed voice toneless and cold, though it tried to be neither of those things. 'Hapshant. He thought the world of you, Eisenhorn. He told me once that he believed you would eclipse his career with your own. I think he was right.'
'Thank you, magos.'
He turned around to look at me. His eye were tiny spots of emerald fire.
'You never did say what brought you here.'
'Recent matters somewhat overtook us, magos.'
Yes. But still, you never did say…'
'I have to explain the… circumstances that have changed in my life, magos. I will explain them carefully, in the hope that you will understand and not think badly of me. But first… I gave you something to safeguard and study, a century ago. I'd like to see it again.'
It was ironic, as if some karmic balance was at work. Of course, I didn't believe in such things. Bure had burrowed and tunnelled his way fruitlessly through the heart of Cinchare for eleven weeks, only to have Aemos casually present him with the Lith's location. And we had gone deep into the mines to find Bure only to learn that what I had come to Cinchare for had been safely locked away in the annex of the Adeptus Mechanicus all along, had I but looked for it.
It took thirty hours for the ailing translithopede to make its way back to the surface. Once we'd broken through the blue gypnate crust at the Imperial Allied mineworks, I sent Aemos and Medea back to the cutter to check in with Bequin and the others, still waiting aboard the
Bure took me to the annex. His encoded touch brought the sanctum to life, and lit long hallways to either side of the Mechanicus chapel. He led me down one of these, the illumination plates still flickering as they warmed up after such a prolonged period of disuse.
The magos linked his thoracic neural cables to a wall socket and disengaged a lock. A heavy, armoured door slid open. Then another, inside the first, then a third, a sturdy iris valve that withdrew segmentally into the wall frame with a noise like swords sheathing.
This is what you want,' said Bure. 'He has been most informative, over the years/
'I'll review your reports later, magos/ I said. 'Leave me with him now/
Bure withdrew.
I stepped through the iris valve and down three grilled steps into the cell, feeling the nauseating static prickle of the psychic dampening fields. Every surface was dusted with ice-crystals. There was a crackle of synaptic energy.
'Hello, Eisenhorn/ said a hollow, vox-projected voice. It came from a casket that squatted on a basalt block in the centre of the room. Both casket and stone were caked in ice. Tiny lights darted and blinked inside the casket's open lid.
I prepared myself. Then I replied.
'Pontius Glaw. We meet again/
TWENTY
Interview with the Damned.
Bure, warsmith.
Orbul Infanta.
'Let me make sure I understand you, Eisenhorn/ said the disembodied voice of Pontius Glaw, slowly and contemptuously. 'You think I'm going to help you?'
I cleared my throat. 'Yes.'
Pontius laughed. Synapse leads connected to the gold circuits of his engram sphere flashed in series. 'I didn't think a man of such studied dullness and sobriety as you would have the ability to surprise me, Eisenhorn. My mistake.'
'You will help me/ I said, quietly but emphatically.
I brushed frost from the grilled steps and sat down facing his casket. It was claw-footed, rectangular, compact and filled with complex technology designed for one purpose: the support and operation of the engram sphere, a rough-cut nugget the size of a clenched fist in which resided the intellect – and
