My finger tightened on the trigger.
'No… n-no…'
Yes, you stupid fool… yes…
Blood streamed out of my nose. I wanted to fall to my knees, but the monster wouldn't let me. It wanted me to do one thing, and one thing only. It implored me, ripping my consciousness apart.
It was strident and it was undeniable.
I pulled the trigger.
SEVEN
Voke, and speculations.
Esarhaddon.
Through the Void.
But I did not die.
The boltgun, that gift from Librarian Brytnoth, which had never failed me in ten decades of use, failed to fire.
The child-thing shrieked and leapt away into the smoke and flames and struggling shapes around me. The dead Marine toppled over. The air frothed with psychic discharge and three figures ran past me in pursuit of the tiny abomination. Inquisitors. All three were inquisitors, or interrogators at least. One, I was sure, was Inquisitor Lyko.
I lowered my shaking hand. Both it, and the boltgun it clutched, were cased in psionic ice, the mechanism jammed and locked out.
I turned and found Commodus Voke standing a few paces behind me. His ancient face was contorted with internal pressure. Crusts of psipathetic frost glittered on his long black gown.
'Point. It. Aside.' His words came out as halting gasps. 1. Cannot. Hold. It. Much. Longer.'
Swiftly, I turned the boltgun aside and up into the air. With a barking gasp, he convulsively relaxed and the weapon bucked and fired. The deadly round whined away harmlessly into the sky.
Voke was sagging, the gyros in the augmetic exo-skeleton that cradled his frail body straining to manage his balance. I gave him my hand in support.
Thank you, Commodus.'
'No matter/ he said, his voice a whisper. His strength began to return and he peered up at me with his bird-bright eyes. 'Only a brave man or a fool tangles with a plus-alpha psyker/
Then I am both or neither. I was closest to the emergency. I could not just stand by.'
We were assailed by extraordinary noises from the charnel ground behind us. Gunfire, grenades, screams and the popping, surging sounds of minds fracturing reality, compressing matter, boiling atmosphere. I saw a robed man, an inquisitor or an astropath, rising slowly into the sky in a pillar of green fire, burning, shredding inside out. I saw geysers of blood like waterspouts. Squalls of hail and acid rain, localised to this small stretch of the Avenue, blustered across us, triggered by the ferocity of the psychic war.
Figures were rushing in to join that battle. Many from the ordos with their expert bodyguards, and dozens of the Adeptus Astartes. There was a vibration underfoot, and I saw that one of the towering Warhound Titans was stalking past the Spatian Gate, spitting its turbo lasers at ground targets. A series of withering explosions, mainly psyker-blasts, tore through the habitats and hive structures on the eastern side of the wide – and now infamous – Avenue.
Imperial Marauders flashed low overhead. The sky was black with smoke, all sunlight blotted out. Wisps of ash fell on us like grey snow.
This is… a great crime/ Voke said to me. 'A black day in the Imperial annals.'
I had forgotten how much Commodus Voke loved understatement.
The greater part of Hive Primaris remained lawless and out of control for five days. Panic, rioting, looting and civil unrest boiled through the streets and hab-levels of the wounded megapolis as the arbites and the other organs of the Imperium struggled to impose martial law and restore order.
It was a desperate task. The indigenous population alone was vast, but it had been swelled to an unimaginable extent by pilgrims and tourists for the Novena. Sympathetic panic riots broke out in other hives too. For a day or two, it seemed like the entire planet was going to collapse in blood and fire.
Small sections of Hive Primaris had managed to insulate themselves: the elite spire levels; the noble houses, built like fortresses; the impregnable precincts of the Inquisition, the Imperial Guard, the Astropathicus, the various bastions of the Munitorium and the Royal Palace of the Lord Commander. Elsewhere, especially in the common and general hab levels, it was like a war zone.
