MINDLESS
Eisenhorn stopped for a moment and crouched in the shadows. The sudden and furious din of the Loom around him was making it hard to focus.
Harder than before. The mere background hum of the cycling machine had worn him down and deadened his mind. It had taken him much longer than he had hoped to clamber up to the high levels of the tower. He was painfully aware of how old and unreliable his body had become. It was held together with augmetics and metal bracing. The slow climb had left him tired and short of breath.
Now his mind, the part of him he’d always been able to trust, seemed as faulty as his body. He felt muffled, swathed in a darkness that limited his gifts. A migraine pain stabbed behind his eyes.
The noise of the suddenly active Loom was intense. It was like being at the heart of a Mechanicus factory plant. Sark, or Gobleka, or both, had begun something. There were various possibilities, but the most obvious was that they were moving against him.
He had considered simply sabotaging the Loom. He carried two automatic pistols: the big Hecuter .45, loaded with standard munitions, which was in his hand, and a smaller Scipio compact, loaded with custom rounds, which was strapped in his chest rig. A few shots with the engraved rounds of the Scipio might damage the Loom, possibly even destroy it. They were notoriously volatile devices. And he still had what scraps of his psykana talent remained, and his small but potent vocabulary of Enuncia.
But if he managed to cripple and destroy the Loom, what then? They were in extimate space. He’d die along with it. The Cognitae’s precious Gershom facility would be lost, but so would the vital things he had learned from Jaff about the King in Yellow, Sancour and the Angelus Subsector.
A key threat would be stopped, but the greater threat would remain.
Not for the first time, he focused his mind and tried to reach Betancore outside in the Karanines. It was futile. Either the fold in space would not let his messages through, or his abilities were virtually gone. He feared the latter. The pain in his head was intense. He could barely form a thought, let alone try to send it.
So what were his options? He could push on to face Gobleka and Sark. Or he could get out. A word of Enuncia had unfolded reality, bringing him and the group into Keshtre. Surely another word would allow him to step out?
But the Loom would still be running, and Sark and Gobleka would still be alive. And there was no guarantee that if he got out, he could ever get back in again.
By his reckoning, the cage gantry was not far above him. The light was bright up there, a gold amber radiance that turned all the engine mechanisms above him into silhouettes, and all the shadows below him into stark, hard edges.
He had to go on. He wondered if he could. The etheric dissonance field generated by the Loom had increased considerably when the machine started to run at full rate. It was no longer just dulling him and making him sick, it was actively tearing at his psycho-sensitive mind. He thought ruefully about Medea’s last words to him. She’d been right. He should have brought Cherubael, despite all the handling problems that would have caused. He needed something that hit hard, like the monstrous daemonhost. He was alone and woefully weakened.
He got up and began to move again, limping for the next metal stairwell.
The first shots hit the platform deck beside him. Bright las-bolts buckled the grille and punched through it.
Eisenhorn threw himself flat. There was very little cover. He tried to gauge the angle the shots had come from by the holes they had cut in the platform, but his facility for psychometric reading and prediction was as good as gone. The damn Loom. It was neutering his mind.
Another flurry of shots came in. One punched clean through the metal handrail above him. This time, he glimpsed them in the air, glowing bolts, arcing down at him. He had some sense of an angle. He rose on one knee and banged off a series of shots with the heavy Hecuter, spent cases pinging out of the ejector. He saw the shots spark and flash as they struck metalwork above him.
He saw a figure dart for cover along a catwalk: the tattooed man, Davinch, his twin laspistols in his hands.
Eisenhorn fired again. In partial cover behind a flywheel, Davinch blasted back. The las-fire went wide of Eisenhorn, to the left this time. The Cognitae fool was a poor shot. He’d had three decent tries at Eisenhorn and missed by a margin each time.
Eisenhorn crawled back, until he was half-shielded by a spinning cog. He took careful, considered aim on the flywheel above, waiting for Davinch to poke his head out again.
Eisenhorn focused his will.
+Davinch!+
It hurt, like a hot spike between the eyes. Eisenhorn tried again. A mental goad like that, particularly when you knew a man’s name, was usually enough to jerk him out into the open. He got into the hindbrain and gave it a flick the target couldn’t resist. Under optimal circumstances, he could psyke into a man’s head and make him jump to his death or shoot himself, a look of horror on his face as his body turned against him.
But these circumstances were far from optimal. The Loom’s dissonance field was both snuffing out his psionic ability and reflecting what little he could broadcast.
Eisenhorn began to move again, keeping low as he headed along the platform. Another burst of fire chopped at him. Hard rounds this time, an assault weapon from the rate. The metal slugs ripped across the platform and sparked off a brass bearing behind him.
Different weapon. This was someone else. Blayg, or Gobleka, perhaps. Again, the aim had been wide. Were they all terrible shots?
No, they weren’t. The evidence was plain. Keshtre was a vital facility, but the Cognitae had only staffed it with a handful of operatives. Just enough to keep it running. So they had to be good, the very best. Elite cult soldiers, hand-picked for their skills. Eisenhorn knew from the case file that Gobleka was a fine marksman. He’d cut down Interrogator Arfon Kadle on Gudrun with a single headshot at three thousand metres.
These men weren’t trying to kill him. They were trying to drive him.
He kept low and scanned for movement. He glimpsed Blayg, the short, jowly one, switching positions. Eisenhorn got off a single shot. Blayg dropped out of sight. A moment later, he reappeared and hammered the deck beside Eisenhorn with autofire.
Eisenhorn fought back the pain clouding his head and made a decision. He had to change tactics. He had to use whatever edge, whatever chance, however desperate, to seize back some advantage. They were trying to drive him. They wanted him alive. If he was their prisoner, he might be taken closer to the very place he was struggling to reach. But it had to be convincing.
He rose to his feet, clearly visible.
‘You want to drive me, do you?’ he yelled. ‘Herd me?’
He fired two shots in Blayg’s direction.
‘I won’t play your game!’ he shouted. Another fierce burst of autofire rattled into the decking beside him. Eisenhorn remained standing. He didn’t even flinch.
Blayg reappeared, peeking down, his combat autorifle aimed at Eisenhorn.
‘Comply now, or we drop you!’ Blayg shouted.
‘What the hell makes you think I’ll cooperate?’ Eisenhorn yelled back.
‘Look down!’ Blayg called back, his aim fixed.
Eisenhorn glanced down. He saw the gently wavering red dot of Blayg’s targeter floating on the centre of his chest.
‘We’d like you alive,’ Blayg called, ‘but it’s not essential. Take the stairs up. Do it! Or I take the shot!’
‘Go to hell,’ said Eisenhorn.
Blayg had pushed it as far as he wanted to. He had no illusions about Gregor Eisenhorn’s brutal and relentless reputation. He’d heard all the stories. He’d seen Jaff’s body. The man was inhumanly dangerous.
Damn Gobleka’s preferences. Enough chances. Enough playing with fire.
Blayg squeezed the trigger, ripping out a tight burst from his autorifle.
The rounds hit Eisenhorn precisely where the marker had painted him, full in the chest. Eisenhorn reeled backwards in a puff of red vapour, hit the back rail of the platform and slumped down.
Blayg slowly rose to his feet.
‘Davinch!’ he shouted. ‘He’s down!’
Sprawled on his back against the rail, Eisenhorn lifted his head and his Hecuter.
‘That’s right, show yourself, idiot,’ he murmured, and fired.
The large-calibre round burst the top of Blayg’s skull. He swayed, then folded up in a heap.
Eisenhorn slowly heaved himself to his feet. It was hard to breathe. His chest plating had stopped most of the burst, but his ribs were cracked, and his chest felt as if it had been crushed. One of the high-velocity rounds had punctured through the plate and done some soft tissue damage.
Another had gone low under the plate, punching clean through him below his ribs. Blood was weeping down the front of his coat. He could feel more soaking his back. He concentrated and tried to use his will to block the pain, and seal the bleeding.
His will was gone. The Loom had taken it from him.
Davinch was standing behind him.
Eisenhorn started to turn, but he was far too slow. Davinch whirled a spin-kick that knocked Eisenhorn sideways, then another that flicked away the Hecuter. A third kick, straight to the sternum, put Eisenhorn on his back. Agony from the gunshot trauma flooded him.
The tattooed man stood over him, looking down, both laspistols aimed at Eisenhorn’s face.
‘Look at you,’ Davinch sneered. ‘The famous Gregor Eisenhorn, scourge of heretics. It’s over, you old bastard. What are you, without that famous psykana gift of yours? Eh? Frigging nothing. Just an old, worn-out shell. A ruin. A nothing.’
Davinch peered closer. He grinned.
‘And you’re shot too. Dear old Blayg plugged you. That’ll be a through-and-through. You’re going to bleed out like a pig. That is, if I let you.’
Davinch’s smile grew broader.
‘And you’re going to wish,’ he whispered, ‘that I had.’
They climbed to the next platform and stopped to let Voriet rest. Nayl kept watch. Drusher and Macks eyed the hurtling gears of the Great Machine all around them with both fear and wonder.
Macks said something.
‘What?’ asked Drusher. It was hard to hear over the clattering roar of the machine.
‘I said it’s giving me a headache,’ said Macks, raising her voice.
Drusher nodded.
‘The noise,’ he said.
‘And the light, and the heat,’ she grimaced. The light shining down from above was brighter than before. It looked sickly and unclean, like the glow of something toxic and contaminating. It made Drusher remember a day, years before, before he had first met Macks, when he’d been caught out in the middle of the steppes of Lower Udar. He had hiked north from a grim livestock town called Kellikow, hoping to find a grazing station the men at Kellikow had mentioned. The station was long gone and derelict, and he’d been looking for alternative shelter when the thunderstorm came in. The light, the whole sky, had turned an extraordinary shade of yellow, a fulminous twilight to herald the fury.
The light filling the tower looked the way the light had done that day. Threatening and unnatural. He’d managed to trudge back to Kellikow, soaked, and spent a week in the infirmary, fighting off pneumonia.
Drusher missed those simpler times.
‘It’s not just that,’ said Voriet from nearby. He was leaning heavily against the metal handrail. ‘The mechanism’s generating an interference pattern. Background psionics. It’s messing with us.’
Macks wasn’t listening. ‘What the hell’s that?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Nayl? Nayl!’
She pointed. There was a figure on a parallel catwalk some distance away. They could just see it, moving out of sight behind part of the Loom mechanism. It was a human figure, walking quite fast, determinedly, arms at its sides.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nayl, moving along the platform to get a better look, gun in hand.
‘Cognitae?’ asked Macks.
The look on Nayl’s face was doubtful.
‘Another one!’ Voriet called out. A second figure had appeared on a platform several stages below them. This one was limping, almost shuffling, but though slower than the first, it seemed equally determined.
‘Get behind me,’ said Nayl.
They turned. A third figure had appeared. It was coming up the steps towards them. It had once been human. It had taken considerable damage to the left side of its body and head. Its flesh was beginning to rot and discolour. Its good eye fixed them with an eager glare. What was left of its face was expressionless.
It was moving fast, striding up the steps and onto the platform.
‘Throne’s sakes!’ Macks exclaimed.
‘Back up!’ Nayl shouted at the advancing thing. He aimed his gun. The figure did not slow down.
Nayl fired. Centre mass. The heavy round had no effect. Drusher saw a telltale green shimmer around the figure, a pinprick green light in its empty socket. A crackle like electricity.
‘Nayl!’ he yelled. He pulled the gun out of his pocket and aimed. One shot.
The autosnub jerked in his hand. Drusher discovered it was surprisingly hard to hit a target, even one as big as a human being coming right at him, just a few metres away. His shot simply clipped the figure’s right shoulder.
He was about to curse at himself when the figure went down. It went from walking to falling without an interruption. Suddenly slack, as dead as it looked, it crumbled, bounced off the handrail and lay still.
‘An animation,’ said Drusher.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Nayl. He was taking the clip out of his gun and opening his pocket to fish out custom rounds.
‘Like before,’ said Drusher.
‘Indeed so, magos,’ said Nayl. ‘Don’t let them touch you!’ he yelled to Macks and Voriet.
‘Nayl!’ Macks called. Another figure was mounting the staircase at the other end of their platform. Before death it had been a stern, older woman. Corruption had bloated and blackened her flesh. Green electric sparks floated in her dead eyes and fizzled around her bared teeth. She too was moving rapidly, coming right at them without hesitation.
Macks squeezed off two las-bolts at her. They were solid shots, but the energy just radiated away.
‘Don’t waste it!’ Nayl told her. ‘It won’t have an effect.’ He had slammed a specialised round into the chamber of his Tronsvasse. He stepped in front of Macks and Voriet, aimed at the woman as she reached the head of the stairs and shot her between the eyes.
There was an ugly puff of matter. The woman’s head snapped back, and she toppled down the stairs. She ended up at the foot of the steps, on her back, her legs tangled in the side rails.
‘They’ve sent these things to get us, haven’t they?’ Drusher asked Nayl.
‘Yes,’ he replied. He was loading another round. ‘Raised them. That might be why the Loom’s working.’
‘But we can stop them,’ said Drusher.
Nayl nodded.
‘But it depends how many of them there are,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got a few custom rounds between us.’
‘How… how many could they have made?’ Drusher asked.
‘Depends how many people the Cognitae have killed,’ said Voriet. ‘How many bodies they have.’
‘Let’s move,’ said Nayl. ‘Only shoot if you have to.’
They hurried to the steps where the first figure had appeared. Macks and Drusher helped Voriet between them. They moved down, but another figure had appeared, striding towards them. It was hard to tell if this one had been male or female in life. Its death appeared to have involved being flayed.
‘Up! Up!’ Nayl urged them, guiding them to the side and up a link staircase to a higher catwalk. He waited as the flayed thing drew closer, then dropped it with a single shot.
He hurried after the other three, up the steps and onto the higher catwalk.
‘Be wary,’ he advised. ‘These devils are much faster than the thing that came for us in Helter.’
‘Because they’re more intact,’ said Drusher.
‘What?’ asked Macks.
‘The thing in Helter was just old bones. This force animates them, but it can only use the structure it’s got to work with. Simple mechanics, really. It can make disarticulated bones rise and shuffle along. But these poor creatures are intact–’
‘More or bloody less,’ said Macks.
‘They’re articulated,’ said Drusher. ‘They have tendons, sinews, muscle mass. The force can use that framework to move them faster.’
‘I think he’s right,’ said Nayl.
‘I think he’s writing a frigging paper on them,’ growled Macks.
‘Keep moving,’ said Nayl.
They followed the catwalk over a massive, spinning drum of brass, then ascended another staircase to the next gantry. Voriet was struggling to keep pace. Twice, he slipped and cried out as his broken arm struck the handrail.
Another figure was waiting for them on the gantry. It was just dry, white bones. Green swirls of light imaged the organs missing from its torso. It shuffled towards them, feet dragging.
Drusher raised his sidearm.
‘Don’t waste a round,’ said Nayl, grabbing his arm. ‘We can outrun this one.’
They left it behind, hustling Voriet along, and took another flight of stairs up to a wide catwalk that circled the base of a huge, burnished gyroscope.
‘Oh Terra!’ Macks exclaimed.
Another figure was pacing inexorably towards them. Its face had been blown away by point-blank shots.
But it was Hadeed Garofar.