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The Serpent’s Dance – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Serpent’s Dance

Mike Brooks

Jovian security was just as alert as Amendera Kendel had expected. Every challenge was heavy with the potential for violence if it was not answered correctly; every automated check required the correct code to be transmitted at the correct moment, lest her ship be targeted by the massive gun barrels of orbital defence stations, or the weapons of the patrol fleet. Behind and beneath it all lurked the planet itself: a monstrous swirling eye, under whose baleful gaze everything was scrutinised.

Yet Amendera Kendel was not telling the truth, and still she was allowed to proceed.

‘I don’t like this,’ she said flatly, watching the planet begin to loom up underneath them.

‘Why?’ Qelvyn Bura asked. The former soldier was cleaning the blade of her knife. ‘You don’t want to pull rank on them – there’s no point trying to be subtle if you’ve already announced to the entire security system that the Regent’s Agentia Tertius is approaching.’

‘I know that,’ Amendera replied testily. Qelvyn’s attitude was generally irreverent at best, but she’d been with Amendera since Proxima Majoris, and Amendera trusted her. More than that, Qelvyn had seen Amendera unleash Exterminatus upon that world, and still stood with her. ‘But if I had to resort to it, at least I’d have fewer fears about these defences being penetrated by hostile agents.’

The Warmaster was coming; that much was undeniable. At some point – tomorrow, next month, next year – the full force of his betrayal was going to strike towards Terra, but those commanding its defence knew better than to think the galaxy’s greatest general would approach without laying the groundwork. The Jovian shipyards were essential to the war effort, and the planet’s defences would be a fearsome bastion against any attacker… assuming they were not compromised. There had already been betrayals in the Sol System; who knew what others might lie in wait?

That was what Amendera was here to find out. Hopefully.

‘You need to work on your charm,’ Ruvier Dall commented. He was a quicksilver rogue – a trickster and conman who’d made a living playing the edges of the Imperium’s rule, at the heart of its power. Qelvyn had found him in a penitentiary, and recruited him to be a part of Amendera’s slowly forming team. Amendera hadn’t understood why, until Qelvyn had pointed out that no one knew weak points like someone who exploited them. She’d also explained that no one liked laws and rules so much as the people who made a living by breaking them in ways that others could not, or did not dare. If everyone could do it, who would pay the criminal? The Imperium’s stability and legislation suited people like Ruvier very well.

The uncertainty of a warzone, let alone the unthinkable aftermath of Horus’ victory? Not so much.

‘I’m not trying to be charming,’ Amendera snapped.

‘Well, you should start,’ Ruvier told her. His face held the same easy smile regardless of what situation he was in, or who he was speaking to, and it ground at Amendera’s nerves. ‘You’re supposed to be a noble.’

‘You ever met any nobles?’ Qelvyn asked him. ‘I have. “Charming” is not exactly the word I’d use.’

‘Not to people like us,’ Ruvier conceded. ‘But to other nobles…’

‘I’m not a noble,’ Amendera said softly. ‘I’m a soldier, fighting a war she wasn’t made for.’ She wasn’t sure if she was talking to Ruvier or herself. She might not have been born into a position of power, but she now held more of it than virtually any other human in the galaxy. She answered, theoretically, only to Malcador and the Emperor, and that was a worm that gnawed at her heart.

‘None of us were made for this,’ Ruvier said, and his voice was uncharacteristically sober, even if his smile remained. ‘We’ll just have to make the best of it.’

Jupiter’s ruling elite lived on the polar Shoal city-stations: massive floating plates, within the gas giant’s tenuous upper atmosphere but far enough from its gravity’s grip not to be pulled into the thick, roiling clouds of hydrogen and helium below. The clan masters and mistresses of the enormous planet wielded great power, even now that the Sol System was increasingly ordered by the demands of Rogal Dorn, and they were privy to highly sensitive information.

They also, however, had not yet given up on their extravagant lifestyles. Exotic delicacies might be harder to source, and the sky above them might be lit up by the drive trails of patrol boats, but that was not enough to truly disrupt the Jovian social calendar. After all, it had been argued, was it not the first stage of defeat, to fear your enemy so much that you ceased to live as you wished? Dorn, who had torn down the Imperial Palace’s glories in the name of defence, or walled them up inside adamantium, might have disagreed with that statement, but the void clans would not be denied. The Sapphire Ball was taking place over the next three days, and there would be no better opportunity to examine the collected nobility of Jupiter, and those guests who could still travel here, to see if any canker lurked within the jewel of the Sol System.

Qelvyn had suggested her own homeworld of Shenlong as Amendera’s cover, but Amendera had refused, since the possibility of encountering someone who would know her story to be false was low, but not impossible. So it was that the noblewoman who strode into the grand hall of the Telenak clan was announced as Lady Voltar of the fictional planet Mollita, which, if questioned, Amendera would claim existed in the Segmentum Pacificus.

The sight that greeted her was almost enough to rob her once again of the speech she’d once foresworn.

The hall was enormous, and easily the largest chamber into which she’d set foot outside of the Imperial Palace itself. It was in shadow, punctuated with mirrored pillars that receded into the distance like the mighty trunks of a particularly regular, widely spaced forest, and the roof far above was of crystalflex, through which faint points of light could just be made out. Scattered here and there were artful rockeries so beautifully designed they almost appeared to be naturally occurring, with plants both taken from the biome of Terra and imported from the far reaches of the Imperium. Graceful automata in the shape of long-extinct ungulates stepped delicately on long, slender legs, broadcasting gentle music from pipes in their metallic antlers and bearing refreshment platters on their backs, while sporadic illumination was cast by hanging or free-floating clusters of lumens.

One of those floating lights drifted towards Amendera and took up station approximately a metre above her head. She looked up at it, then enquiringly at the major-domo standing to one side of the main doors.

‘Please, your ladyship,’ he said with a smile. ‘It is merely to light your way.’

‘This is going to make me nervous,’ Qelvyn muttered as they moved off.

‘It’s going to make you nervous?’ Ruvier replied quietly. ‘I’m a criminal, I’m not used to being picked out like this.’

‘Oh, and you think a soldier likes a giant glowing target following her around?’

‘Quiet,’ Amendera chided them softly. ‘Keep your eyes open, and tell me what you see.’

They paused to subtly inspect the constellations around them. Each group had its own light: as Amendera watched, one would break away from another and drift towards a third, as nobles, governors and other wealthy or influential people finished exchanging pleasantries with one peer and began the process with another.

‘You’re going to have to get involved,’ Ruvier said to her. ‘First rule of a con is to look like you belong. Nobles always think people want to talk to them. And for the love of the Emperor, smile more – you’re hard enough to like as it is.’

Amendera fingered the engraved torc around her neck. It had been a gift from Malcador, although it was far more tool than frippery, for it suppressed the null aura of a pariah. The emptiness that made others so desperately uncomfortable around her was diminished by it, but not removed: Qelvyn still said she felt uneasy, just rather less so. Amendera would need to counteract the effect of her pariah gene with charm, lest everyone avoid her, and their fact-finding mission come to nothing. It was a task more alien and more daunting than virtually any she had been set in her years serving the Somnus Citadel.

She took a deep breath, checked that the half-mask she wore on her upper face to obscure the aquila tattoo on her forehead was still in place, and headed for the nearest light.

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A Black Library Publication

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