The Twitch

The tremor was back. It started as a soft thrumming in the neck and reverberated upwards until it nestled in my cheek, just below the eye. I cupped my head in my hands and took a breath. I didn’t need this now. Not in the middle of an audience.

‘Lord Inquisitor?’ I did not need to see the expression to understand the confusion. Verger Simo was many things, but worldly wise was not one of them.

I took another breath and readied my answer. ‘Dinner’s getting cold.’

Feth it all to hell. I didn’t need that as well. I looked at him and smiled, trying to hide the fact that my nascent withdrawal had latched onto some utterly irrelevant and inconsequential thought instead of the matter at hand.

‘Pardon, My Lord?’

I clicked my teeth and tried again, with greater emphasis. ‘Dinner’s getting cold.’

‘That’s a shame, Lord Inquisitor,’ Verger Simo looked at me, bug-eyed and unblinking. A bead of sweat dropped onto his cassock, an indicator of the planet of Groxvelt’s oppressive summer heat. He was deciding how best to comment on my sudden culinary distress.

I should perhaps note at this juncture that dinner was not, in fact, getting cold. Rather, we had been discussing the matter of a collection. The Ecclesiarchy building in which we sat held a prisoner awaiting transport to one of the great black ships that were even now getting ready to make orbit. I had merely jumped the gun in arriving early, so to speak.

‘Perhaps we could have food brought in to you, Milord? We wouldn’t want an agent of His Inquisition to go hungry now, would we?’ He was trying to placate me, I sensed. I should have thanked him for it, but I was angry, more than anything. I could hardly rage at myself, being of such high office, so I vented bile at the poor Verger.

‘Dinner’s getting cold.’ I would like to note for posterity that it was not one of my more successful tirades.

I gave up. I would probably have smacked my head against his fine wooden desk until my skull fractured, or opened my wrists and spattered that nice ancestral wall hanging of his with arterial spray, but I was in company and public suicide is not conducive to furthering an already stellar career. Thankfully, my Interrogator came to the rescue, as she often does in situations where my narcotic dependency threatens everything.

‘My Lord Inquisitor Kossoff is most offended that you were not given the keywords for this important office, Verger. He will be taking the matter up directly upon his return to orbit.’

Simo - poor man - balked at the thought of losing what little power he had accrued in this turd-roll of a town. No, he couldn’t be having that. He slipped from behind his plush desk and grovelled abjectly before me.

‘I’m sorry, Milord Inquisitor. I can only apologise. The Reverend Father -’ Freya cut him off with a wave of her hand.

‘Save your protestations and blame-shifting for someone who wasn’t born in the next village, Verger. I know Father Dowlen well enough to know he would have told you when we sent word of our mission. The mistake is yours, Verger.’

‘Dinner’s getting cold,’ I mumbled, more to myself than anyone else.

‘Yes, Milord,’ Freya said, ‘dinner is getting cold. Most cold.’ She rose smoothly, pacing the few steps from her position by the door until she came before Verger Simo. ‘Now, Simo, if this missive is not stashed somewhere, perhaps book-marking that particularly racy lithograph in your illicit collection – no, don’t protest. I searched this room last night and I know my business.’ She smiled, ‘if this missive is stashed somewhere forgotten, I suggest we make no more of it and proceed instead to the matter at hand; the transport of the subject.’

I stood too, wanting to maintain my authority as best I could in the face of Freya Kossoff’s verbal onslaught. A difficult thing to do at the best of times, but absolutely impossible when narcotic addiction limits one to a vocabulary of three words. I brushed imaginary spiders from where they bit my forearms as Freya palmed me a miniature hypodermic filled with Hejn, a mild hallucinogenic banned in most of the Imperial territories I have ever had occasion to visit.

I administered the drug and waited for the narcotic effect to kick in while she continued to berate Verger Simo. He was apologising upon the spirits of every ancestor in the town.

‘I will go and make the arrangements,’ he said. ‘Will you be alright if I leave for just a moment?’

I nodded, not daring to mention dinner yet again. It could have been worse; last time it happened I was stuck saying “while I wipe my arse” for two Terran days whilst in the middle of a heresy examination.

Simo rose like a spooked hare. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he muttered, bowing.

I went behind his desk as he scuttled from the room, all pretence of pomp long gone. I dropped the empty syringe into his waste disposal. Let them catch him with it, instead of me. It was merely a pretext to avoid my adopted daughter’s glance. She and her sister could be so persuasive.

‘Out with it, father,’ Freya grinned as she spoke, gauging my reaction to her methods.

‘Dinner’s getting cold,’ I hazarded.

She laughed and shook her head. ‘Won’t work on me, old man. The Hejn will have performed its sorcery by now, I reckon.’

‘Fine,’ I said, reverting to full speech now that I was capable. ‘Does he really have dirty pictures in his desk?’ My hand went to the combination pad, ready to unlock it and check.

‘Not unless he has amorous dreams of livestock, he doesn’t. Just a trade-slate of Grox Breeder’s Quarterly, more’s the pity. We could take him in for mistreating a prisoner,’ she pursed her lips, waiting for the punch line.

‘Aye, because that’s our job,’ her sister responded, padding in through the half-open door. She ruffled Freya’s blonde locks and winked at me. ‘I told her about the washout when it happened last time, just in case.’

I frowned. ‘You heard?’

Freya shrugged. ‘Kasja was relaying positional data to me while he was talking. I left the link on when your mind locked up.’

‘The password thing was my idea,’ Kasja Kossoff looked about the room, using a miniature camera strapped to the cuff of her bodyglove to record images of the room. ‘Dinner’s getting cold just seemed to fit rapid transport of a heretic.’ I wasn’t going to ask her how. ‘Simo’s a toady anyway. Shame the Sub-Deacon died before we made orbit.’

Freya edged to the door and looked out. ‘Think he’s trying something?’ She pointed at the light fitting above her and winked, letting me know the surveillance feeds had been disabled.

‘Something else you mean?’ Simo had already unsuccessfully attempted to conceal possession of the subject. Damn the Ecclesiarchy and its small-mindedness.

‘Whatever, father,’ Kasja replied from where she was taking snapshots of Simo’s bookshelves. I could say that my daughters were the picture of paternal obedience under normal circumstances, but I would be lying.

I fixed the sisters Kossoff with a smile of my own. ‘Shall we go and find out?’

***

It wasn’t altruism that made me take them home with me the last time I came to Groxvelt. For one thing, their presence in my household prevents the Terran tax-servitor from taking an unfair percentage of my wealth and property. In this age of the disposable populace death duties are markedly greater for decedents who leave no descendents, pardon the alliteration. Children equal tax breaks.

I have been declared dead twice, for reasons of ‘operational secrecy’. I lack the compassion to tell my Grand Master - incontinent dotard that he is - precisely what operations of mine require pretence of death. This little jaunt in Groxvelt was not one of them, alas, so anything accrued here would be subject to Inquisitorial review before a panel of lesser agents and deskbound incompetents.

I brushed a spider – a real one this time – from my cheek as I thought on that. We were under the main Ecclesiarchy outpost on Groxvelt, situated in Groxvelt, the second city. It had not been cleaned in decades, by the look of things. Thick webs hung from the ceiling, stretching down almost two metres. If my housekeeper was this lacking in diligence I’d have had her thrown into an oubliette years ago.

The twins ranged ahead of me, sticking to the shadows in their matching chameleoline bodysuits. They weren’t activated yet, but the dark camouflage patterns helped to hide them anyway.

‘End cell, by the looks of things,’ Kasja whispered into her vox-link as I negotiated a scree of bricks and mortar; the remnants of another well-maintained cell.

‘Remind me to report these idiots to the sector office when I make my report.’ I responded.

‘This is a simple world for simple people. They don’t know any better.’ Freya hated the place, so quite why she was suddenly defending it remained sadly beyond me. I let it lie for the moment.

‘How many?’ I asked instead.

‘Three, father. I see Simo, a couple of guards in leather and a scribe of some kind.’

‘Servitors?’

‘Freya told you; simple world. Too high-tech for the likes of us.’ I let them bait me. They do that when they’re on edge.

I drew up to where the twins peered around a bend in the corridor, watching Simo’s pathetic attempts to muzzle the psyker-child before I got to him. Kasja smiled ferally as I approached. ‘Killing?’

I responded in the negative. ‘We can’t judge everyone in the building for Simo’s stupidity.’

‘Just them, perhaps; we could grab the twitch and be gone before anyone notices.’ She pouted. They both look ravishing when they pout. It is a truth I have made somewhat distasteful use of, down the years.

‘No, no killing. I was severely reprimanded after the fun you two had with that cult on Fleischen.’

Freya pulled a long-nosed las-pistol from a holster at her back. ‘I could get the guards from here. Muscle’s cheap in these parts.’ She jerked her hand, mimicking a firing action.

‘They have dampeners on the cell. If you kill them their deaths will resonate. I cannot shield us from scrying ears, not down here.’

I broke from cover and strode down the corridor towards Simo and his lackeys, positively exuding confidence and shortness of temper. The latter was down to a malfunctioning spinal brace that sent mini-shocks right through my body. ‘Is he in there?’ I called before any of them noticed me.

Simo made to cower in the dirt but the scribe spoke up, stroboscopic flashes hitting me from some primitive lighting rig bolted to his shoulder pad. ‘This is Ecclesiarchy property and you are trespassing. Declare your business or surrender yourselves for detention.’

I arched a brow. He was evidently far more than a mere scribe. ‘Lord Inquisitor Paulo Kossoff,’ I offered them a glimpse of my Inquisitorial hip flask; I’d wagered my rosette on a drunken Faro game in a speakeasy on Castor. ‘We’ve come for the boy.’

‘The boy is tainted, Inquisitor,’ the scribe said in a voice that set my teeth on edge. I felt rather than heard the twins close in behind me.

‘That is why I am here.’ I flashed a smile. It always works with females, I reasoned, might as well try it on a man. I was sadly disappointed.

‘We are awaiting instructions from the Archbishop, Lord Inquisitor. You may take the boy if his recommendation is that we let you do so.’ I was close enough now to see the man’s pince-nez. Emperor’s teeth, why didn’t he just go off-world for ocular rejuvenation?

‘How long until you receive an answer, do you think?’ I stayed reasonable, letting my hands slide comfortably behind my back, mainly to stem the beat of electronic convulsions as they threatened to wrack my body.

‘A few moon turns, I think. The Archbishop is most diligent.’ The scribe returned to his work.

‘You presume to turn your back on an Inquisitor, Master Scribe?’ I should have asked for his name but I wasn’t in the mood.

One of the guards caught my tone and fingered his suppression cudgel. Simo tried to vanish through the floor, all the while radiating a smile of good-natured stupidity. ‘Leave it alone,’ I said, trying to enforce my will. The guard sniggered and idly thumbed the charge button, proof positive that I should lay off the narco-pleasures the next time I planned on trying to use my psychic abilities.

I sighed and said a single word: ‘quicklime.’

I felt the air whip past me as suppressed stubber fire beat its percussive drum through billy-club’s bald head, spraying the wall with cranial matter. My hand came up as the other guard went for his weapon. The autopistol round hit him square in the throat and he dropped, gurgling, to the floor.

‘Weapons safe,’ I called as the twins joined me.

‘You said no killing,’ Kasja hissed at me as she passed, skipping over the dying man to tackle the scribe. Simo stood in a puddle of his own urine, whimpering a prayer.

‘My finger slipped.’ I assessed the situation. We only needed one of them to deactivate the cell defences. ‘Kill the scribe. Quietly,’ I said, predicting the alternative.

I grabbed Simo and dragged him into the open cell as my youngest daughter clamped a hand over the scribe’s mouth, the needles strapped over her leather gauntlets extending with a metallic snik. The officious prick’s muffled screams threatened to fill the corridor, so I shut the door.

‘Is this the twitch?’ The question was needless, but I asked anyway. A headache had started somewhere behind my eyes and was quickly swamping cogent thought.

‘The – the what?’ I let Simo go and he slumped against the wall, heaving his breakfast down the front of his cassock.

‘Is this the warp-child, fethwit?’ I gestured to the filthy, hooded lump chained to a stool in the centre of the cell. The stink of the creature’s faeces made my eyes water.

Simo nodded, unable to speak around a throatful of vomit.

‘Then we had better get to work.’ I said briskly. I did a quick spot-check of the room, noting the positions of the dormant pict-feeds. ‘The cameras are down. My Interrogator has already seen to that.’

‘You killed the new Sub-Deacon.’ Simo was curled up in the corner by now.

‘Who did?’

‘You,’ he looked up. ‘That was the new Sub-Deacon assessing our prisoner. Don’t ask me how he got here so quickly, but you’ve just bloody murdered him.’

‘No, Verger Simo,’ I jabbed a finger at his chest. ‘You murdered him in cold blood when he found out that you were attempting to traffic this foul thing through a third party. My kill-team caught you in the act but was too late to prevent your contact from leaving with the warp-child.’

Simo said nothing while he took it all in. Then he smiled. ‘Did you bring the polymorphine? I can’t stand another moment wearing this fat fool’s skin.’

***

It takes a lot to make me look at a baked brick wall instead of a naked woman. In fact, I’ve only done so on two occasions. Both times it was because Jelena Lijepa was changing. Don’t ask me why, but watching a four hundred pound man turn into a lithe and striking woman is some distance beyond the boundaries of even my most visceral peccadilloes.

‘How did it go?’ I pulled out a discrete plasma torch and lit a cigarillo to cover the stench. It takes exquisite muscular control to change without ... making a mess. Jelena lacked that, at times. She was only a postulant adept of the Callidus Temple when I met her. I would have succeeded in turning a full-fledged assassin; the well of psycho-hypnosis would have been too deeply sunk. Killing her handler had been more problematic.

I practiced making smoke rings as I exhaled. A man has to have a hobby. ‘Embedding the personality, I mean.’ The boy remained in position, as though he had no inkling of our presence.

She grunted amidst a strange after-birthing sound; its visual precursor was something I had no wish to see. ‘Ye-yes went fine.’ There was a crack as she set her jaw properly. ‘He-he went… out. His usual haunts; the ones you br-briefed me on,’ she paused and I rolled the cigarillo around my mouth – a fine brand I imported from Atilla; rich tobacco with the merest hint of cloves. ‘Easy to en-rap-rapture,’ she exhaled loudly as the morphing process completed itself.

‘Where did you find him in the end?’ I asked once she had finished with the rather distasteful business.

‘He was a man, where do you think I found him?’ Was a man. There was something so final about the way Jelena spoke. I liked that in her. ‘I had to work in that unkempt brothel for two weeks before he came in.’

‘How did the charade go?’ I chewed a fingernail. Another of the obsessive habits I had developed since my slide into addiction began.

‘They swallowed it all, Inquisitor. The story about the Malleus ships was honey in their morning tea. The fluyt was a good idea,’ she said, meaning my own retro-fitted cargo runner. ‘They thought it was the vanguard when it broke orbit.’

‘Is it safe to turn around?’ I grimaced, spidery cracks in the brickwork transmogrified into poisonous worms as my burgeoning migraine decided to ratchet up the pressure in my skull.

‘For you, Inquisitor, it’s always safe.’ I still didn’t move. ‘You won’t lose your breakfast.’

‘Lunch, actually – and no it wasn’t liquid before you ask me, Adept.’ I turned to find her slipping into a bodysuit identical to the ones the twins wore. ‘This is definitely the boy?’

Jelena looked at the other wretched occupant of this sinkhole of a cell. ‘Yes, he’s the one. Simo told me,’ she pulled down her facemask, leaving only her mouth and jaw visible. ‘Men and their throne-damned, pillow-borne braggadocio.’

That was all I needed to know; I had been her target once and knew the measure of her… techniques. I paced the cell, followed by wisps of my own smoke as Jelena went through some basic exercises. Her notion of a crash-diet involves some physical re-orientation afterwards. If the twitch could hear us, he made no move to show it. I didn’t know the strength of the shields on the cell – or even the quality of the hood he wore.

The door opened and Kasja scuttled in, features slick with the replacement sub-deacon’s blood as she pushed a gurney through the open door, the grav-plates humming as it sliced through the air. Freya was outside, sliding from foot to foot as she awaited further instructions.

‘What is it?’

Kasja jettisoned the gurney and licked blood from her gloves, mimicking a feline. ‘Upstairs says we’ve got company inbound. Simo’s office had an alarm we didn’t cut.’

Jelena paused in her movements. ‘I never found one – and I know my business even better than the Interrogator,’ she tossed that barb out the door, aiming for Freya.

‘Found or not I – I – I,’ the shock must have registered in my eyes as speech failed once again, because kasja slammed a hypodermic right into my carotid artery. The cigarillo fell from my hand as the narc’ kicked in and I dropped like a stone, the room spinning up and away from me in a sea of turquoise. Felt bloody good though.

‘Good shot, Kas’,’ her sister called from outside. I would dock her one standard quarter’s pay for that, I decided as I slipped away. ‘Adept Lijepa, how the feck do we get out of here with the package?’

I must have blacked out after that as Freya took seamless control of the operation. Not that I minded – Throne, not that I was even conscious to care. They could have stripped and shot me, put me in the twitch’s place and I would have been none the wiser, in my Hejn stupor. After what felt like moments but could have been hours I surfaced, stiff-necked and shivering. Odd, then, that I was perspiring heavily enough to dampen the flagstones beneath me.

‘Six minutes; copy,’ I heard Kasja’s voice as though through unpolluted water. It refracted and distorted as it reached my ears. ‘Militia en route, ladies and…’ there was a pause as she checked I was alive, judging by the manner in which she gripped my wrist. ‘Ah, the old fart’s not dead yet,’ she muttered, to her sister’s great amusement.

I sat bolt upright, my eyes drawn shut against the kaleidoscopic images I knew to be waiting just the other side of my treacherous eyelids. ‘How many and from which direction?’

‘No idea, Inquisitor,’ she stepped away from me. ‘Shall I vox Aljosa for additional data?’

Gunfire rattled down the corridor, hard shells shattering the brickwork where they struck the walls. Freya and Kasja dropped low and sped out into the corridor, taking cover behind the ruins of a guard station. Adept Jelena made to follow them, but I gripped her shoulder, sober as a High Lord.

‘Watch him, just in case,’ I jerked a thumb in the direction of the twitch. She did not argue, but rather took up station beside the boy. That’s another thing I like about her; unlike my daughters, she occasionally follows an order.

I pulled my autopistol from its holster and thumbed the safety catch. My shoulder pressed flat to the doorjamb, I tilted my head around the corner and took aim. There was a scream as one of the militiamen collapsed, a bloody flower blossoming where I hit him in the chest. I tried to ignore the blurring of my vision as I ducked back inside the cell to avoid the answering fire.

‘They’re using flintlocks,’ Freya hissed in my earpiece. ‘Crap, but I thought we were backward over in Groxmarkt.’ The people of Groxvelt lacked creativity when it came to naming their settlements.

I jerked another look when I heard the sound. It started as a low hum, quickly building to a discordant thrash of static. Boleskin. It had to be Boleskin. ‘Get down!’ I shouted at my daughters, just as the noise changed pitch and became a bundle of deafening chords. I hit a button on my wrist display, my ear pieces immediately proof against the cauldron of sound blossoming in the corridor. The twins ducked behind the steel watch desk moments before a blast of superheated sound blew me over the electro-gurney and overturned the hapless warpchild.

‘Get him up, get him up! Feck.’ I opened my eyes Freya burst into the cell, a panicked look upon her face. She ignored me and hauled the filthy child to his feet. I knew what that meant as I dusted myself down and rose, trying to ignore the globs of fat shimmering as they dribbled down the steel door.

‘Yo,’ the strange patois drawl carried right down the corridor, probably through the whole damn cellblock. I have no idea how Boleskin does it. A cloud of smoke preceded his appearance in the doorway.

‘How did you get free?’ I glared at him – it – him. I don’t know the correct word where this one is concerned.

Boleskin shrugged, the colossal column of ash slipping from his hand-rolled cigarette and collapsing across his velvet shirt. He absent-mindedly brushed it away, eyeing the trio of women clustered in the farthest corner of the dank and windowless space. He has that effect upon females that make his acquaintance. ‘Radical,’ he said.

‘For the last time, daemon, I am not a radical!’ I spat upon the floor, trying unsuccessfully to expel the brimstone taint his very presence brought.

He dropped the hand-rolled cigarette and crushed it underfoot, taking a moment to pick a fleck of tobacco from where it had lodged between his teeth. Sensing my impatience, Boleskin procrastinated, using a finger to trace the wards and binding sigils painstakingly embroidered into his carnodonskin suit. I had no idea where that had come from; neither before nor since have I bound a daemonhost that had the presence of mind to provide its own body and clothing.

The drone of prop engines thrummed in the skies far above. We didn’t have time for his chicanery. ‘Care you contribute anything useful, daemon?’ I asked, through gritted teeth.

Boleskin smiled, tight and waspish, ‘Mother Gullet.’

The room seemed to sigh upon its foundations, shook by the gravity of the warp-spawn’s utterance. The twins shrank farther back, momentarily. Jelena squatted, cross-legged upon the floor and closed her eyes. The twitch sat uncomfortably on the gurney, as unaware of his surroundings as before. Only I spoke.

‘No, I will not allow it. I cannot lose an operative… a companion… in this manner.’ I would not allow a bonded daemon to show such proscribed knowledge of the Assassinorum, either.

Boleskin smirked, returning to his habitual and studied insouciance. ‘So mete it be, man.’

‘Man is not the correct manner of address for a senior Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, daemon. I would have thought spawn such as yourself would take note.’

‘Milord?’ Jelena spoke, but I ignored her.

‘I bound you once. I can unbind you, daemon. Remember that,’ I jabbed a finger at his lapel. Boleskin had the insolence to snigger at me, foul thing! ‘How do you dare even speak such heresy, with the sigils of binding upon you?’

‘I read of Mother Gullet in your personal library. They were in Inquisitor Jaeger’s memoirs.’

Even the faint patina of dust seemed to cease in its circulation as I stared the daemon down. ‘Madak suppressed his writings. They are banned by order of His glorious Inquisition. How dare you even speak of such unholy tomes?’

‘Don’t ask me, man. You had the damn book in your library. So I read it,’ the daemon shrugged, flicking tousled locks my way. ‘It’s you the Man’ll come for, not me.’

I readied a psychic fist to strike Boleskin but, but Jelena saved it from such a fate. ‘My Lord, if you would listen to me. The mysteries of my temple,’ she sighed, ‘of my former temple make a legend of this figure amongst our adepts. The operative we affectionately call Mother Gullet had the foresight to carry the renegade Governor Bundreich’s child from his palace through mastery of polymorphine.’

The halogen illuminators bolted into the ceiling above us flickered and died. Freya keyed something into a wrist plate and swore. ‘Power’s down,’ she said. ‘We have to get out of here now. They can see us, damn it.’

I was caught by indecision. My addled brain flew through the parlous possibilities, imagining booted feet hammering down the corridor at any moment. ‘Adept,’ I said, trying keep my voice even. ‘Tell me of this assassin you and Boleskin seem to know so much about.’ I motioned to the twins. ‘Cover the corridor; go as high as you can without being spotted. We’ll need time to defend the twitch when the militia tries again.’

My daughters nodded and sloped away. I felt their presences vanish up the stairs and out of my immediate range as Jelena began to speak.

‘We call her Mother Gullet, Lord. She carried the Governor’s child from his palace in her stomach, disguised as a chambermaid.’ She said simply.

‘Hostiles inbound now,’ Kajsa muttered over the vox.

I looked at my assassin. ‘How did she achieve this?’

Jelena tilted her head, as if remembering. ‘She injected a dose of polymorphine into her throat. Then she swallowed the child.’

I heard the first crackle of gunfire from the hallowed spaces above. Boleskin left without me needing to prompt him. I blocked out the psychic emanations of those damned fools about to die by his brand of visceral power.

‘She had exquisite mastery of the morphing art,’ Jelena purred. ‘I cannot hope to match it.’

‘Then why bother? We fight our way through.’ I threw up my hands in frustration. I should have been aiding my daughers, not debating Officio Assassinorum legend with my operative.

‘My Lord, it will allow us to move unseen once we leave this location. Outside the township, we will have more freedom to choose a method of extraction.’

I had no choice, but still I held out for the punchline I knew to be coming. ‘Did the child live?’

Jelena chuckled, a brittle sound filled with sudden melancholy. ‘My Lord, we are Callidus. We do not steal for blackmail or trophies. We are the vengeful instrument of Holy Terra, blessed be its soil.’

I thumbed my eyes, trying to rub the opiate blur away. ‘Do what you must, Adept. Imperator Servo,’ I finished.

Jelena pulled back the hood of her bodysuit. ‘Aye Lord, the Emperor protects, blessed be His name.’ Her suit was already around her shoulders, as she shed like a serpent would its skin. ‘Lord?’

‘Yes Adept?’ I glanced up from where my eyes had wandered.

‘Might I have some privacy? I’m not certain how this will affect my body.’ She shrugged and the suit pooled at her waist. With effort, I looked away.

‘Of course, Adept – just try not to digest him,’ she had the grace to smile at my poor jape.

I clicked my heels and went topside, passing through the dank and cavernous holding cells before I abruptly hit the plush carpeting of the Ecclesiarchy’s personable façade. I heard the crackle of las-fire and that strange whump of feedback as Boleskin “did his thing”, as he euphemistically termed it.

I took note of the return volley and carefully selected my boltpistol, a gift from the Grandmaster on my thirtieth standard birthday. It was a beautiful thing, wrapped in gold leaf and fitted with an extended clip. I hefted it experimentally in my hand and moved with purpose down the long corridor in which I found myself.

Picking up the pace, I opened the vox and patched in to channel four. Freya grunted incoherently as Kasja begged her for support. Boleskin answered amiably, despite not even having a vox-set. I didn’t want to know how he managed to do that, damn him – it – him.

I kicked open the double doors, my back brace whining a protest, venting sparks that threatened to set my storm coat aflame. I took aim into the lobby and squeezed off a shot. One of the militiamen besieging us spun away with a yelp, his musket discharging as it hit the ground. It blew out a comrade’s chest as the shot entered beneath the armpit and he fell, too, landing in a heap as I ducked into cover behind one of the security posts.

The militia’s riposte blew chunks of wood and metal across the lobby, decimating one of the fine couches my group had waited in a few short hours ago. I looked up and took another shot, the red dot of my laser sight bucking as I took another man through the stomach.

‘Report!’ I shouted into the vox.

‘Freya’s injured – she caught a shot in the hip. She can’t walk.’

‘Where is she?’ I dared a quick look and was showered with plaster from the fresco behind me when the militia spotted me.

‘Thirty metres northeast. Far side of the lobby.’ I could hear her anger. It was open ground, kept to provide a killing ground in the event of insurrection. We couldn’t reach her on our own.

There was nothing else for it.

‘Boleskin.’

The daemon appeared at centre stage, slouching out from hiding to stand before the gathered militia. They raised their weapons haphazardly, these farmers, and fired. A hail of shot ripped through the daemon, but Boleskin paid it no heed. One of the militiamen fell to his knees, crying in terror at the sight of the daemon.

‘Good evening,’ Boleskin said as he lit another of his foul-smelling smokes.

Kasja and I rose as one, picked off a couple of the militiamen before they had a chance to react. None of them had so much as bothered to find cover. The fools deserved everything Boleskin would do to them.

The daemon made a gesture in the air and the world shifted about him. I wouldn’t say it was warpcraft, not precisely, but I still found myself stood, watching him, instead of ducking back into cover like I should have. It hardly mattered; none of the militia so much as raised a weapon as Boleskin prepared himself.

He raised an arm high above his head and I saw the strange weapon in his hands. It was beautifully crafted, with black and white whorls chasing one another across its surface. He made final adjustments with his free hand, tightening the screws securing the power cables across its frontage before he looked up, smiled, and brought his raised arm down in a whirlwind.

I threw myself down as the first mighty chord was struck, resonating through this high-ceilinged hall. I felt one of my eardrums perforate and I went numb, the immense pain casting out the last vestige of my balance. Around me the cauldron of sound burned, immolating the very air with its raw, transcendental venom.

The poor fools before Boleksin began to scream. The scent of ozone filled the air with a fleshy miasma that didn’t dissipate until some moments after Boleskin’s last stuttering crescendo. My psy-senses picked up words my ears could not as the daemon took a bow.

‘Thank you; you’ve been a wonderful audience.’

I wiped the pinkish tears from my eyes and shakily drew myself into a kneeling crouch. I spat blood from my mouth and shouted down the bloody expanse of the greeting chamber. ‘What did you do?’

Painkillers and stims flooded my system, my augmetics affording me just enough hearing to catch the smirking imp’s retort.

‘I gave them a whole lot of love, Lord Inquisitor; the same as always.’

I stood, palm on the Perspex window of the security station for support. ‘Kasja, see to Freya, then haul Jelena and – just get Jelena up here somehow. Use the freight elevator is you have to. Just get them topside in five minutes. We’re running out of time.’

***

‘Throw down your arms and surrender!’

The speakers bolted on to the lead chimera distorted the words beyond recognition, but their meaning was plain. I looked at Freya, strapped to Kasja’s back and carrying a pair of long-barrelled pistols in her hands. Her stoic countenance betrayed the pain of her shattered hip. I felt sorry for her, for all my mortal operatives. I had dragged them down here on a fool’s errand.

The beacon clamped to the gurney clicked and whirred and, for a moment, I felt a surge of hope. There was a way out. I could still get them all away. I met Boleskin’s eyes beneath the hooded cassocks we both wore and he gave the briefest nod. I knew what I must do, but I was not taking the word of a daemon that all would be well. That was radical foolishness of the highest order. I looked up at Freya.

‘Holster them, Interrogator. I want no more bloodshed to stain this endeavour.’

She huffed sourly, but did as she was told. They all understood the situation as well as I.’

The figure on the gurney gurgled in a burst of flatulence. We were running out of time. We had perhaps minutes before Jelena began the joyless business of digesting her foolhardy meal.

I raised my arms wide and shouted across the expanse of empty street. ‘My guards have holstered their weapons. We will not raise arms against you on your approach. I stepped back and placed a hand upon the edge of the gurney, the other raised high to swat at the sand that cut at my eyes like a smattering of diamonds and rust.

The chimera rumbled into life, moving down the street at a crawl. Planetary Defence troops filtered out of the alleys and side streets, weapons raised. I glanced over at Kasja, noting her gloveless hand upon the cold steel of Jelena’s conveyance. I swore under my breath. I had to trust the daemon. I had to trust Boleskin.

‘Hit the switch,’ I ordered.

There was a rustle of Hessian and suddenly the teleport homer sprang into life. It beeped once and then went ping, the beta software drawn up to max as it sought an answered chirrup from orbit.

A sonic blast almost blew us all off our feet and the gurney yawed as Kasja and I gripped it, buffeted by the backwash of a Valkyrie as it peeled off into a strafing run. My legs almost gave way as the P.D.F troopers vanished in a nimbus of light, lasguns fizzing moments too late to catch us.

A chill gripped my spine as I forced my eyes open. Look at them, damnit! Lay your eyes upon these things that court you, lull you through the crap you pump into your veins. I opened my eyes…

… and was confronted by an image of stark surrealism. There were no slavering hordes, no unholy things waiting to flense us. No, what waited us was far, far worse.

I caught flickers of movement, stroboscopic like the grainy images of old-time pict-casts. Boleskin was not alone. Indeed, numberless hordes of humans pressed against the bubble of our protection, young men and women screaming a name. It wasn’t his – not quite – but I understood it to be their name for him, those deluded fools – if foolish and human they were.

Boleskin waved at them, reaching out into the void and withdrawing once more holding a sheaf of parchments. He went through them one by one, scrawled words upon each one with an ancient quill-pen and passed them back through the film of reality that separated us from the vile depredations of the warp.

Other daemons surrounded him; three in fact, all clad in the same strange clothes he insisted on wearing. One, a huge rug-headed monster with golden locks, threw back its head and howled; supersonic banshee’s scream that sent the blood rushing through my nose once more.

The other figures vanished, consumed in welter of blood and an orgy of hermaphroditic violence. I opened my mouth in a silent scream of terror, so stark that even Boleskin noticed as the things ripped their way through even his skein of self-adulation. He smiled and winked.

The universe let out a mind-wrenching belch and my sorry group thudded onto the deck of my fluyt, where it had waited in orbit above Groxvelt. Attendants swept forward under the direction of Pieter Zuschuss, my loyal and rather stupid attendant. I slid down the side of the gurney, almost toppling it. I could feel the blood dripping from my nose and ears, but paid it little heed. I was crying I think, but it was so difficult to tell above the sudden cacophony.

‘She’s dying, frak it, let me down!’ Freya yelped as she landed on the unforgiving corrugated steel of the cargo hold. I could hear her moving, felt her shove me carelessly aside as she tried to get to Jelena, who lay gurgling senselessly upon the gurney.

‘Don’t you dare, Frey’, don’t you fething dare!’ Kasja was screaming at her sister, the words intelligible beyond the initial warning. I drew my knees up to my chest, closing my eyes to shut out the noise.

There was the wet sound of blade on flesh and the soft release of air. Someone crumpled to the floor as birthing slime splattered upon the deck. Through it all I heard the whispers, the voices of the Warp in collusion with my daemonhost, trying to pluck away my sanity. My mind kicked out for the surface, groping for anything that might save me.

‘Five... fifteen… thirty-seven… twenty-four… seventeen… forty-five…’ the twitch was alive.

My eyes flicked open and I pulled myself upright, ignoring the charnel house around me. Jelena lay on the gurney, bloated and distorted beyond all recognition by the lethal dose of morphine it had taken to ingest the boy. Brother Iomi was reading a prayer over her as he sprayed the corpse with blessed oils prior to burning.

I glanced down, to where Freya had cracked her ribs open, literally wrenching them away to get the twitch out before he expired in the second most gruesome manner I could imagine; I had witnessed the first during our brief sojourn in the warp.

The boy himself lay on the floor, mewling in a pool of stomach aside and organ matter. He was terrible to look upon, skin sloughing away, flesh eaten down to the white of muscle in some places. I blinked away the wellspring of tears that threatened to engulf me and readied my bolt pistol. ‘May the Emperor’s peace be upon you, my son, as you cross the worlds and rest against the bosom of his love,’ I spoke the shrivening prayer without fanfare, my hand slick against the butt of my weapon. A waste it was - such a waste of everything; all for a foolish man’s vanity. At least I had the numbers.

I placed the muzzle of the bolt pistol against his temple, grimacing as the skin fell away, revealing the ivory of his skull. I recoiled as his hand pawed at me, fingers clawing. The twitch tried to speak once more.

‘Ar – Artur, remember Artur.’

I nodded and fired, the report of my shot at once silencing the pandemonium around me. I nodded to Iomi, indicating that he should prepare the twitch’s body for destruction. I was about to leave the hold when a small voice stayed my legs.

‘Why?’ Kasja looked through tear-streaked mascara, her eyes red with burst capillaries. ‘I loved her. Tell me it was worth it, father?’ She wiped at her nose.

I nodded once. ‘It was worth it, Kas’.’ I crouched down and embraced her, like she was ten once more and I was the egotistical bastard out to make a legacy, plucking her from the squalor of her existence. ‘I promise it was worth it.’

***

It was a bright cold morning in orbit and the clock wasn’t striking at all. I picked it up from where it sat beside the bed and shook it, momentarily ignoring my daughter as I stared down at Groxvelt through the cupola window in her room.

‘There had better be a very good reason I had to kill Jelena.’ Freya was pacing in her cabin, having refused to join the rest of us for dinner.

I watched Groxvelt writhe in mortal pain as the impacts sent blossoming fireballs into the air, the exterminatus vaporising everything. The order shook in my hand, signed by Supreme Grand Master Bech himself. So end those who fire upon a favourite of the Inquisition. Another pool of blood for me to drown in when my nightmares took hold and another litany of names I would never learn, would never scrawl upon the monument they deserved.

At length, I spoke. ‘A matter of the gravest importance; would I have sacrificed an operative of such consummate skill for less?’

‘I know you, father,’ she threw an Imperial Icon at me; an image of Saint Celestine, I believe. I ducked just in time and watched it shatter against the wall. It had been a present on her confirmation when she was fifteen. ‘All he did was spout numbers!’

‘Those numbers are vital. Did you relay them to Aljosa, as I asked you to?’ My hands were shaking uncontrollably. Soon I would need to slip away and join Sancta Morphine for the evening.

‘Yes,’ she hissed at me. ‘Kasja wanted to carve them on her blade and ram it down your throat for what you did.’

I said nothing. There was little I could do to mollify her, in any case. ‘I did nothing wrong. Adept Lijepa made the offer. She did so in good conscience and with full knowledge of the potential consequences. Her selfless sacrifice has been noted. A commendation will be sent to her Temple via Bech.’ That was the least she deserved.

‘We know, father,’ she spat. ‘We know what you did to her.’ She pressed a button and the pict-imagifier sprang into life, the face of some perma-tanned vox-caster filling the screen.

+++Good evening ladies and gentleman of the Castor System and welcome to our centennial lottery sponsored by Rickards - Hendrick pharmaceuticals. The machine for this century’s draw is Artur – that’s right ladies and gentleman, Artur….+++

I shut off the viewer, ashen-faced. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry doesn’t matter, Inquisitor. Not to my sister. Not to me.’ Freya slammed her palm against the security lock and the door opened at her touch. She looked up at me from the threshold. ‘Defence Pattern Beta-Six, engage,’ she graced me with a wintry smile as my own gun servitors trained their weapons on me. As a last wound, she held up the data-receipt of my ticket for the lottery, and disappeared from my view.

I turned back to the cupola and watched the death-throes of Groxvelt. There was nothing to do but wait.

***

I had been trying for an hour now, but the channels weren’t responding. They were listening sure enough, out there on the bridge of shuttle they had stolen, but my daughters were in no mood to listen to me. They had my money. What more did they need from me, having betrayed their trust?

I watched the twins depart. I tried to raise them a final time, offering everything I had for their return. They ignored my impassioned pleas and fled; the joker and a thief in the night. Eventually there was nothing left for me to listen to but the beating of my own heart, heavy in my breast, and the crackle of static from the mouthpiece. That was that, then. As I shut off the vox it occurred to me; they’d grown up just like me.

My girls were just like me.