Dan Abnett - Eisenhorn Omnibus

Your lord seer?

Send again. I didn't make that out.

Nothing, Gideon. We're going to try and come round on your flank, around the north-east intersection of the gorge.

Understood.

Come on! I urged. The others all jumped, all except Eleena, and I realised I was still using my psyche. Sloppy. I was tired and in pain. Still no excuse.

'My apologies,' I said, vocal again. 'We're moving forward. This chasm turns south-west and intersects with two others. Target site's at the junction, so Gideon reckons/

We hurried forward, moving through the steep shadow of the gorge.

'Glory be!' exclaimed Kenzer suddenly. He was looking up.

Bright flashes lit up the starry sky framed by the sides of the chasm. They washed back and forth like spills of milk in ink. Alerted to our presence, Glaw's starship had presented for combat and the Hinterlight was answering. Vast blinks of light lit up the sky like a strobe.

'I wouldn't wanna be up there/ said Korl Kraine. Kraine was a hiver who'd never served in any formal militia. His allegiance was to Ravenor first and to the underclan of Tanhive Nine, Tansetch, second and last. He was a short, pale man wearing patched and cut-off flak-canvas. His skin was dyed with clan colours and his eyes were cheap augments. He wore a string of human teeth around his neck, which was ironic as his own teeth were all made of ceramite.

Kraine raised his night-sighted Tronsvasse autorifle to his shoulder and scurried forward. He'd lived in a lightless warren of city all his life until Ravenor recruited him. This gloom suited him.

The sound of catapults grew louder. There were several of them at work now, buzzing out a duet with heavyweight lasguns. I heard the gritty thump of a grenade.

Kenzer, the archaeologist, was lagging. He wasn't part of Ravenor's official troop, merely an expert paid to help out on Promody. I didn't like him much. He had no fibre and no real commitment.

I didn't need to read his mind to see that he was only here for the potential fortune a few exclusive academic papers about the Ghiil discovery could make him.

'Hurry up!' I yelled at him. My back was getting tired and the blood in my mouth was back again.

Kenzer was hunched down at the base of the chasm side, fidgeting with his hand-scanner.

I called a halt and stomped back to him, my heavy boots, reinforced with the brace's metal frame, kicking up soot. Ironhoof, indeed!

I believed my greatest annoyance wasn't the brace-frame or its weight or the lumpen gait I was forced to adopt, not even the non-specific haemorrhage that was seeping into my mouth.

No, the worst thing was my cold scalp.

I really couldn't get used to it. Crezia had been obliged to shave my head in order to implant the cluster of neural and synaptic cables that would drive the augmetic frame around my legs. She had been upset all through the implant procedure. It really was terribly crude, even by basic Imperial standards. But out in the middle of nowhere at all, it had been the best she and Antribus could cobble together.

Needs must, as they say.

I was bald, and the back of my skull was raw, sore and clotted with the multiple implant jacks of the sub-spine feeds my faithful medicaes had installed to make my leg frame work. The steel-jacketed cables sprouted from my scalp and ran down my back into the lumbar servo of the walking brace. The bunched cables were flesh-stapled to my back, like a neat, augmetic ponytail.

I would get used to it, in time. If there was time. If there wasn't, what the hell did it matter?

I stopped beside Kenzer, throwing a hard shadow over him.

'What are you doing?'

'Making a recording, sir/ he gabbled. 'There's a marking here. The carved walls we've seen so far have been blank/

I peered down. It was difficult to bend.

'Where?'

He pulled a puffer-brash out of his kit-pack and blew the soot away.

There!'

A small spiral. Cut into the smooth face of the rock.

It looked like a tiny version of the chart we'd seen on Promody, or a really tiny version of the mazed surface of this planet.

'Record it quickly and move on/ I told him. I turned away. 'Let's go/ I called over my shoulder curtly.

Kenzer screamed. There was a flurry of las-fire.

I wheeled back immediately. Kenzer was sprawled on the floor of the gorge, ripped apart by laser shots. He was only partially articulated, such had been the point blank ferocity of the shots. The wide puddle of blood seeping from his carcass was soaking into the soot.

There was no sign of any attacker.

'What the hell?' Barbarisater was in my hand and had been purring, but now it was dull.

Nayl dropped close to me, his matt-black hellgun sweeping the area of the corpse.

'How in the name of Terra did that happen?' he asked. 'Lief? Korl? Upside?'

I looked back. Gustine and Kraine were walking backwards slowly, scoping up at the cliff tops of the gorge.

'Nothing. No shooters above/ Gustine reported.

I slapped my palm against the cold stone face of the gorge above the marking Kenzer had found. It was unyielding.

We moved forward, following the sweep of the chasm. Kraine was covering our backs. After we'd gone about fifty metres, he suddenly cried out.

I turned in time to see him in a face-to-face gunfight with two Vessorine janissaries in full carapace-wear. Kraine staggered backwards as he was hit repeatedly in the torso, but managed to keep firing. He put a burst of rounds through the face plate of one of the Vessorines before the other one made the kill shot and dropped him into the soot.

Nayl and Medea were already firing. The remaining Vessorine swung his aim and squeezed off another salvo, winging both Eleena and Nayl.

Then he walloped over onto his back as Kara's cannon ripped him apart.

'See to them!' I ordered, pointing Medea at Nayl and Eleena. Nayl had been skinned across the left arm and Eleena had a flesh wound on her left shin. Both kept insisting they were fine. Medea opened his kitbag for field dressings.

I looked at the corpses, Kraine and the Vessorines. Gustine appeared beside me. 'Where the jesh did they come from?' he asked.

I didn't answer. I drew my runestaff over my head out of its leather boot, and gripped it tightly as I focused my force at the gorge wall. Soot and the debris of eons puffed out, and I saw another spiral mark in the wall like the one Kenzer had found.

'Charts,' I said.

'What, sir?' asked Lief.

I bent down, spitting on my fingers then rubbing my hand across the spiral marks. I tried to ignore the fact that there was a smear of blood in the spittle.

'No wonder Ravenor couldn't find a door. We're not seeing this in the right dimension.'

'Pardon me, but what the craphole are you talking about?' asked Lief. 1 liked him. Always honest.

'The warped ones understood location and moment in way we can't imagine. They were, after all, warped. We see this as a geometric network of mathematically precise chasms, a maze. But it's not. It's four dimensional…'

'Four?' Gustine began, uncertainly

'Oh, four, six, eight… who knows? Think of it this way, like a… a woven garment!

'A woven garment, sir?'

Yes, all those thick, intertwined threads, such a complex pattern.'

'All right…'

'Now imagine the knitting needles that made it. Just the needles. Big and hard and simple.'

'Okay…' said Medea, joining us.

'This planet is simply the knitting needles. Hard, rigid, simple. The reality of Ghiil is the garment woven from it, something we can't see, something complex and soft, interlaced round the needles.'

'I'm sorry, sir, you've lost me/ Lief Gustine said.

'Lost/ I said. 'That's damn right. These marks on the wall. They're like mini charts, explaining how the overall reality can be accessed and exited/