Dan Abnett - First and Only

You've said as much before. Hell, I've even paraphrased you to my men.'

'You've told your men?' Fereyd asked quickly, with a sharp look.

'My officers. Just enough to make sure they are with me, just enough to give them an edge if it matters. Fact is, I've probably told them all I know, which is precious little. The prize, the Vermilion trophy… that's what has changed everything, isn't it?'

'Of course. Even with regiments loyal to him, Dravere could never hope to turn on our beloved warmaster. But if he had something else, some great advantage, something Macaroth didn't have…'

'like a weapon.'

'Like a great, great weapon. Eight months ago, part of my network on Talsicant first got a hint that Dravere's own covert agencies had stumbled upon a rumour of some great prize. We don't know how, or where… we can only imagine the efforts and sacrifices made by his operatives to locate and recover the data. But they did. A priceless nugget of ancient, Vermilion level secrets snatched from some distant, abominable reach of space and conveyed from psyker to psyker, agent to agent, back to the Lord High Militant General. It couldn't be sent openly of course, or Macaroth would have intercepted it. Nor was it possible to send it directly, as it was being carried out of hostile space, far from Imperial control. On the last leg of its journey, transmitted from the Nubila Reach to Pyrites, we managed to track it and intercept it, diverting it from Dravere's agents. That was when it fell into your hands.'

'And the General's minions have been desperate to retrieve it ever since.'

Fereyd nodded. 'In anticipation of its acquisition, Dravere has set great wheels in motion. He knew its import, and the location it referred to. With it now in our hands – just – we couldn't allow it to fall back into Dravere's grasp. But we were not positioned strongly or closely enough to recover it. It was decided… I decided, in fact… that our best choice was to let you run with it, in the hope that you would get to it for us before the Lord General and his coterie of allies.'

You have terrifying faith in my abilities, Fereyd. I'm just a footslogger, a commander of infantry.'

You know you're more than that. A loyal hero of unimpeachable character, resourceful, ruthless… one of Warmaster Slaydo's chosen few, a man on whom the limelight of fame fell full enough to make it difficult for Dravere to move against you directly.'

Gaunt laughed. 'If the attempts to kill me and my men recently weren't direct, I hate to think what direct means!'

Fereyd caught his old friend with a piercing look. 'But you did it! You made it this far! You're on top of the situation, close to the prize, just as I knew you would! We did everything we could, behind the scenes, to facilitate your positioning and give you assistance. The deployment of the Tanith in the frontline here was no accident. And I'm just thankful I was able to manipulate my own cover as part of the Tactical Counsel to get close enough to join you now.'

'Well, we're here now, right enough, and the prize is in our grasp…' Gaunt began, hefting up his rifle again and preparing to move.

'May I see the crystal, Bram? Maybe it's time I read its contents too… if we're to work together on this.'

Gaunt swung round and gazed at Fereyd in slow realisation. You don't know, do you?'

'Know?'

'You don't know what it is we're here risking our lives for?'

You thought I did? Even Macaroth and his allies don't know for sure. All any of us are certain of is that it is something that could make Dravere the man to overthrow the Crusade's High Command. As far as I know, you're the only person who's decoded it. Only you know – you and the men you've chosen to share it with.'

Gaunt began to laugh. The laughter rolled along the low stone tunnel and made all the men look round in surprise.

'I'll tell you then, Fereyd, and it's as bad as you fear—'

Mkoll's hard whistle rang down the space and cut them all silent.

Gaunt spun around, raising his rifle and looked ahead into the blackness, his fresh lamp-pack already dimmer. Something moved ahead of him in the darkness. A scrabbling sound.

A barbed round hummed lazily out of nowhere, missing the flinching Larkin by a whisker and exploding against the stone wall of the corridor. Domor started screaming as Caffran held him. Shrapnel had taken his eyes and his face was a mask of flowing blood.

Gaunt seared five shots off into the darkness, and heard the chatter of Bragg's autocannon starting up behind him. The party took up firing positions along the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel.

Now the endgame, Gaunt thought.

ELEVEN

The medics, trailing their long red scrubs like priests' robes, their faces masked by gauze, moved silently around the isolation sphere in the belly of the Leviathan. They reset diagnosticators and other gently pulsing machines, muttering low intonations of healing invocations.

Heldane knew they were the best medics in the Segmentum Pacificus fleet. Dravere had transferred a dozen of his private medical staff to Heldane when he learned of the Inquisitor's injury. It mattered little, Heldane knew as a certainty. He was dying. The rifle round, fired at such close range, had destroyed his neck, left shoulder and collarbone, left cheek and throat. Without the supporting web of the medical bay and the Emperor's grace, he would already be cold. He eased back in his long-frame cot, as far as the tubes and regulator pipes piercing his neck and chest would allow. Beyond the plastic sheeting of his sterile tent, he could see the winking, pumping mechanisms on their brass trolleys and racks that were keeping him alive. He could see the dark fluids of his own body cycling in and out of centrifuge scrubs, squirting down ridged plastic tubes supported by aluminium frames. Every twenty seconds, a delicate silvered scorpion-form device screwed into the bones of his face bathed his open wound with a mist of disinfectant spray from its hooked tail. Soothing smoke rose from incense burners around the bed.

He looked up through the plastic veil at the ceiling of the sphere, lucidly examining the zigzag, black-and white inlay of the roof-pattern. With his mind, the wonderful mind that could pace out the measures of unreal space and stay sane in the full light of the Immaterium, he considered the overlaid pattern, the interlocking chevrons of ivory and obsidian. The nature of eternity lay in their pattern. He unlocked it, psychically striding beyond his ruined physicality, penetrating the abstract realms of lightness and darkness, the governing switches on which all reality was triggered.

Light interlocked with dark. It pleased him. He knew, as he had always known, that his place lay somehow in the slivered cracks of shadow between the contrasting white and black. He entered this space between, and it embraced him. He understood, as he was sure the Emperor himself did not understand, the miraculous division between the Light of mankind and the Darkness of the foe. It was a distinction so obvious and yet so overlooked. Like any true son of the Imperium of Man, he would fight with all his soul and vigour against the blackness, but he would not do so standing in the harshness of the pure white. There was a shadow between them, a greyness, that was his to inhabit. The Emperor, and his heir Macaroth, were oblivious to the distinction and that was what made them weak. Dravere saw it, and that is why Heldane bent his entire force of will to support the lord general. What did he care if the weapon they hunted for was made by, or polluted by, Chaos? It would still work against the Darkness.

If man was to survive, he must adjust his aspect and enter the shadow. Ninety years as an Inquisitor had shown Heldane that much at least. The political and governing instincts of mankind had to shift away from the stale Throne of Earth. The blackness without was too deep, too negative for such complacency.