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Stealing Orpheon – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Stealing Orpheon

Richard Ford

It was an old Administratum facility on a forgotten world, in a forgotten sector, nondescript and anonymous. Archivists went about their business, filing papers, tallying logs, arranging tomes. The place was silent as the grave, an air of oppressive industriousness hanging over everything like a foetid cloud.

Katta made her way through the librarium, footsteps echoing past the ancient codices and dusty old lexicons, ignoring the lobotomy-induced plight of the servitors as they went about their drudgery. A flight of winding stairs led up to a plain wooden doorway, and at the top Katta paused, looking up at the omniscryer staring down at her. She was immediately bathed in pale green light, her augmetic eye relaying her identity to the sensor array. With a click, the door’s locks released.

Katta stepped into a vestibule lacking any adornment but for an intricate mosaic of the Lord Commander taking up the entirety of one wall. There was a counterseptic odour to the air, in stark contrast to the musty smell of the librarium. This was the true heart of the structure, the real reason this place existed, but then the Logos Historica Verita had to act in utter secrecy. They catalogued knowledge from every Age of Man from the most salubrious of sources, and their continued existence relied on them remaining anonymous. Data of wide-ranging provenance was deposited here to be funnelled along intricate channels to one final resting place. The mosaic on the wall was a stark reminder of who ultimately held sway.

Katta waited in the room, counting the seconds as they ticked by. An all too familiar ritual. She had often wondered whether this was a tactic designed to unnerve her, a further test of her mettle. If that was the intention, it did not work. By the time the door opened, she had counted every facet of the huge mosaic and calculated how long it had taken to carve each one of its seven hundred and forty-three thousand, two hundred and fourteen tesserae.

The ordinate-major was a small woman dressed in drab greys, the kind of person most wouldn’t notice should they walk right by her. She was different to the last ordinate-major Katta had met, and the one before that. The face changed every time, but the greeting remained the same.

‘Do you have it?’ the ordinate-major asked.

Katta reached into her jacket and produced the data crystal. The woman took it, turning the insignificant item over in her hand as though it were some precious jewel.

‘I trust you had no trouble in acquiring it?’ she asked.

That almost brought a smile to Katta’s lips. ‘None,’ she lied.

The ordinate-major raised an eyebrow. ‘None?’

‘There was no trouble to speak of,’ Katta said, hoping that would suffice.

The woman took a step back and seated herself on one of the benches lining the wall, her back straight as she fixed Katta with an expectant expression. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘I would hear it all.’

This had never happened before. None of her previous ordinates-major had cared to hear about her methods. Perhaps news of events on Hermetica had reached this place ahead of her. Perhaps this particular ordinate-major was merely curious. Either way, Katta was not in a position to refuse.

‘Very well,’ she said with a shrug. ‘If you’re sitting comfortably.’

The woman looked anything but. Katta began anyway.

She listened to the multitude of voices, tuning into every whispered entreaty and righteous pronouncement as though they were relayed just to her. A cacophony echoed within the bay of the transport freighter as six thousand and seventy-two souls prayed to a dead saint, spouting litanies lifted from screeds of the Imperial Cult’s codices. Of the many ways Katta Myron had seen herself returning to Hermetica, this had not been among them.

Robed and hooded figures filled the freighter as far as the eye could see. Lowly pilgrims all, adorning themselves in the vestments of the Ecclesiarchy, and for what? To prove their piety? To ape the martyrs of the Cult Imperialis they so desperately yearned to become? Whatever the reason, she was glad of it – disguising herself as one more devout celebrant would help make her anonymous. And for this task, anonymity was key.

Katta was strapped into a standing harness: just another pilgrim next to row upon row upon row. None of them could have suspected the real reason she was returning home after so many years, and she could only hope it stayed that way.

As they entered the planet’s atmosphere, bright sunlight lanced in through the numerous circular viewing ports. Reverse thrusters engaged, and the ship bucked with the turbulence. The praying around her grew louder and more fevered, and Katta felt amusement at the sudden panic that gripped these people. So much for their faith in deliverance.

The noise of her fellow passengers was drowned out by the roar of engines and the hydraulic whine of landing gear being deployed. Katta’s stomach lurched as the freighter’s velocity decreased, an unnerving sense of weightlessness gripping her gut before it finally touched down.

With a gunfire hiss of pistons, Katta was released from the harness. She stretched, cricking the stiffness from her neck as she watched the vast hangar door begin to yawn open. The crowd wasted no time, flocking towards the exit, a jostling mob of robed bodies eager to pay their homage, and she was swept along with them.

Stepping down from the freighter, Katta saw a security barrier in the distance. Beyond it was Hive Casaubon: a vast conurbation housing billions of souls, squalid and congested, a machine of metal and meat, its cogs and wheels and gears grinding and pumping by the grace of the God-Emperor.

As she moved along with the crowd, ever closer to the barrier, she glanced upwards. Through the green tinge of atmospheric pollution, she saw a satellite hanging dormant in the evening sky. A dark hulk, long dead, locked in a perpetual orbit around the planet like some beacon from a lost age.

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