Eisenhorn Omnibus

the God-Emperor show him mercy, he knew better than I.

There was a release of power and light so powerful that it was beyond sound. The host body disintegrated, showering us with a hail of burned flesh, charred bone and blackened augmetic debris.

Aemos and the runestaff shuddered and jerked as they both lit up with corposant that crackled and flashed up and down them.

The last few electrical arcs sizzled away into the deck. Aemos remained standing where he was with the staff still upraised. A tiny plume of smoke licked off the headpiece.

Aemos? Aemos!'

'I've… dispossessed it… for a moment…' Aemos said without turning round. His voice was low and his words were emerging only by huge effort.'.. .So it's weak… and confused… but that won't… last… we need… a proper host vessel… for it to… occupy…'

He turned to face us. The destruction of the astropath's host body had singed his clothes and knocked his eyeglasses off.

'What did you do with it?' I asked.

He didn't answer. The effort would have been too great. Aemos would only ever say two more words to me.

'Aemos, what did you do with it?' I repeated.

He opened his eyes. They were blank. Completely blank.

It took us ten minutes to make the daemonhost safe, ten minutes we really didn't have. I was encumbered by the fact I couldn't move unaided. Eleena had to hold the Malus Codicium for me as I did the work, making the marks and runes and wardings with blood from my own wounds. I recalled the same hasty rituals I had performed on the beach at Miquol.

'Come on!' Kara urged.

'There! It's done! Aemos, can you hear me? It's done!'

His old hands were shaking. He lowered the staff. I could see his mouth trying to form the words, but he couldn't manage it.

But I knew this part. The incantation, the litany, the abduration against evil. The final sealing words.

'In servitutem abduco, I bind thee fast forever into this host!'

Medea nearly burned out the lift-jets of Maxilla's bulk pinnace getting us clear of the hangar deck. Everything shook. It didn't have anything like the kick of the old gun-cutter, but she nursed every last ounce of thrust she could out of it.

We managed to get about sixteen kilometres from the Essene when the first of the real spasms shook it. The majestic sprint-trader, Isolde- pattern, pride of its master, looked like a black shell to us, lit from within by raging atomic fires, spilling trails of debris behind it as it slowly tumbled into the embrace of the gas giant.

There was a small bright flash and then two more, almost simultaneous, like a flicker. Then a white dot appeared where the Essene had been, and grew bigger, and then became a white line that got brighter and longer and closer, until we could see it was the flaming edge of a huge expanding disk of nuclear energy.

The pinnace vibrated frantically like a bead rattle in the hand of an excited child as the Shockwave seared past and around us.

Then it was quiet, and still again.

And the Essene was gone.

Aemos was crumpled in one of the high-backed acceleration seats in the pinnace's passenger space. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow and ragged.

Kara helped me to the seat next to him. She was saying something urgent about improving the tourniquets and field dressings on my legs but I didn't really hear her.

'Uber?'

As if I had disturbed him in his sleep, he opened his eyes. They were his eyes again. Bloodshot, old, blinking to focus without his eyeglasses.

His breath sounds were getting worse.

'You hold on,' I said. 'There's a portable medicae unit in the cargo section, Eleena's trying to get it working.'

He grunted something and swallowed.

'What?' 1 said.

He surprised me by suddenly taking my blood-stained hand and gripping it tightly. He turned his head slowly and squinted at the daemonhost we had made together. It sat, strapped into its seat, on the other side of the aisle, head bowed and dormant.

'Most…' he whispered. 'Most perturbatory…'

I was going to reply, but his grip had slackened, his breathing had stopped. My oldest friend had gone.

I sat back, gazing at the cabin roof. The sensations that I had been blocking swept in and overwhelmed me.

I felt frail, as if I was made of paper. I knew I had lost a huge quantity of blood.

The pain in my legs was like fire, but it was nothing compared to the pain in my heart.

I heard Kara calling my name. She called it again. I heard Eleena asking me to say something.

But the void had come up like a wall, and they were too far away to hear.

NINETEEN

In the Halls of Yssarile.

Leaves of Darkness.

In the name of the Holy God-Emperor.

Someone, somewhere close by, was using one of those damned shuriken catapults. I could hear the jhut! jhut! jhut! of the launcher mechanism and the thin, brittle sounds of the impacts.

There was blood in my mouth, I noticed. I'd worry about it later. Crezia would fuss no doubt. 'You should not be doing this/ she had warned me fiercely in the infirmary of the Hinterlight.

Well, that's where she was wrong. This was the Emperor's work. This was my work.

'Moving up/ Nayl said over the intervox. 'Twenty paces/

'Understood/ I replied. I stepped forward. It was still an effort, and still very much a surprise to feel my body so wretchedly slow. The crude aug-metic braces around my legs and torso weighed me down and forced me to plod, like an ogre from the old myths.

Or like a Battle Titan, I considered, ruefully. One heavy footstep after the next, lumbering to my destiny.

It was the best work Crezia and Antribus had been able to manage given the time and the resources available. Crezia had passionately wanted me confined to vital support until I could be delivered to a top level Imperial facility.

I'd insisted on being mobile.

'If we throw together repairs now/ she had said, 'it'll be worse in the long term. To get you walking we'll have to do things that no amount of later

work can repair, no matter how excellent.'