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An
ancient horror finally arrives.
A
very short story, this one came about when I realised there was
one event that had to happen on thousands of Imperial worlds sooner
or later.
<1,000 words
| Writing
time |
:1 day |
| Finished |
:20th
April 2006 |
Download
as Word file  |
Even if you hadn’t
heard it from a colleague at the fabrica, or caught a whisper of it
on the public riser-cars, or seen graffiti daubed on some hab stairwell
being burned-off by the Vigiles, you knew it was coming. You know something
was coming.
The holo-networks had been different for weeks, Ecclesiarchy programs
ran from power-up to power-down on some channels. Others just ran war-vids,
real or fictional, a endless low-res procession of Imperial victories
and crushing might. The Arbites were everywhere, stopping crawl-cabs
and kicking down doors, demanding names and serial numbers, stopping
and searching.
All this might have been overlooked, I suppose; it had been no different
the time the old Lord Governor had died, and the Public Mourning Decrees
were in full swing. The Arbites were everywhere for months that time,
and they were everywhere this time, too. Like I say, no different. But
the Navy never turned up when the Governor died, did they? Well, they
did this time. Just kind of arrived, with no announcements or ceremony
or visits or marches. Just sat there, in high orbit, everyone pretending
they weren’t there, weren’t watching us. Word was they had
brought other ships with them. Dark ships, if you know what I mean.
You knew something was coming, alright.
“Don’t look,” they said. “Just don’t look,
and it will be ok.” But we had to look. And we knew it wouldn’t
be ok. It would never be ok again. Everyone knew that, but no-one would
say it.
So the day approached, and somehow you knew what day it was going to
be, despite no-one ever actually telling you. Somehow, the date just
kind of got around, like the flu, passed from person to person without
anyone really doing anything. Maybe we just didn’t mention the
date at all, and that was how we knew. It was the date no-one would
talk about. It was the date no-one would schedule anything for, or meet
anyone on. It was the date people wanted to forget before it had even
happened.
And so the holo-networks kept up their diet of plastic happiness and
military awe and iron faith in the Emperor, and then the day came.
I went to work as usual. I remember thinking it was funny; no-one stayed
away from the fabrica that day, not one person. Even Tarn Coilette,
the guy with the dodgy sus-heart, came in, and just sat at his bench
wheezing. No-one wanted to be remembered as having stayed at home that
day, as having stayed away from their fellow men. Why did you stay at
home? What did you do? Did anyone else join you there? Give us their
names? Sign this confession. We all knew that, if the crackdown had
been bad before that day, it was going to be ten times worse after,
and the people up in those ships I mentioned, they wouldn’t take
“no” for an answer. They were famous for it.
So the fabrica was full, and everyone was working away, and the Supervisors
were shouting and joking like it was any other day, although the shouting
was a bit quieter and the jokes a bit louder, just like they were doing
across the whole city, I guess. And then it happened.
We were indoors, but even so, we felt it. We all did. I know you did,
despite what you say. It was like that feeling you get when you wake
up in the middle of the night, and it’s dark and quiet and you’re
warm and comfortable and you’re falling back asleep, and then
you hear the sound that woke you up in the first place. You hear it
properly this time. And you’re not warm or tired any more. And
your heart is thumping, even though it’s just a sound, and it
probably doesn’t mean anything. It’s probably just the pipes,
and the kids are safe in bed. But your heart is still hammering a different
beat. That feeling, and we all got it at once, as if we had all been
asleep, and we’d all just got a knock on the door at three am.
We all stopped working, and we went to the tall windows. Not a view
I’ll forget. Usually we can just see other fabrica towers crowded
around, big, solid, featureless. Faceless. But not that day. Every window
in every one of them was filled with people, workers standing there,
just like all of us. Looking at each other, but mostly looking up.
Light travels slowly in a galaxy this big. Light dawdles, while the
ships of the fleets dance from star to star, winking here and there
like flashbugs in the night. So we knew what was coming, long before
the light got here. Thousands of years before the light got here, if
truth be told. And it was a day for telling truth. Cold, horrible truths
we’d rather not be told.
We looked up and saw it in the gloom of the evening sky, almost invisible
at first, slowly forming, but getting brighter and brighter, and also
somehow darker and darker. A stain, seeping out into the night, one
that could never be removed. Seeping into the night? Worse. Seeping
into us, too. That feeling? That feeling never went away after that
day, it’s still with us all now, an ashen cloak of dread no-one
can take off. Even in the brightest daylight we can feel it there, above
our heads, watching us. Ever since that day the slow light of an historic
horror finally reached our homeworld.
The day we saw the Eye of Terror open.
