Contents

Cover

To Speak as One – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

To Speak as One

Guy Haley

‘What is this?’ Inquisitor Cehen-qui unrolled the message scrip and pulled it through his hands. Paper rasped on his soft gloves. As he read the message again, his expression grew more incredulous. His fine brows narrowed. His glossy black topknot fell from his shoulder and laid itself across his shining white tunic.

Four of Cehen-qui’s most important staff attended the inquisitor. The first was a small, bald figure of non-specific gender. Callow had no title. Factotum was the closest word for what Callow did. Callow fetched, Callow carried, Callow smoothed away the irritations of the day. Cehen-qui expected little more than that, so it was Callow’s great misfortune that they’d been given the message to deliver.

Callow blinked nervously. ’It is an astropathic message, my lord, from the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl.’

‘I can see that, you fool,’ Cehen-qui snapped. ‘And stop cringing.’ He reread the message for the third time before screwing it up and throwing it down onto the deck of the station command centre. The paper rolled in and out of shadow as it passed under broken lumens, then fell down a hole left by a missing plate. ‘Who by the Sacred Throne of Terra does he think he is?’ He straightened his very white gloves.

‘My lord?’ said Callow, in some distress.

The second attendant, a tall man of late middle years, at least in appearance, shifted the heavy book he carried and laid a calming hand on Callow’s arm. He shook his head. Don’t say anything else, he meant to convey. Callow didn’t notice.

‘Who does he think he is to demand our prisoner?’ Cehen-qui continued. ‘Who does he think he is that he can command the Emperor’s Inquisition, the Inquisition,’ he growled, ‘to do his bidding like that?’ He clapped his hands together. His gloves muffled the sound. The gold braid on his jacket swung violently. Callow flinched.

‘What do you think of him, Gamma?’ Cehen-qui asked his third attendant.

Gamma was an adept of the Machine Cult. He wore black robes fringed with golden cog teeth. His augmetics, most obvious of which were a pair of heavy industrial claws poised over his shoulders, were plated gold to match. His armour was a very deep red, with the smallest accents of cream. His forge world was so obscure that few would have recognised the colours. He liked it that way.

His full name was Frenk Gamma-87-Nu-3-Psi. Cehen-qui never used it.

‘He is a heretic and a blasphemer,’ said Gamma firmly. ‘He pollutes the Omnissiah’s work with his meddling. He makes free use of xenos technology, and,’ his voice thickened with disgust, ‘he conducts original research. We cannot give him the aeldari. Who knows what perfidious use he will put it to.’

The second servant, whose name was Valeneez, sucked in a breath between unevenly spaced teeth. He had been in Cehen-qui’s service longer than any of the others.

‘I disagree, Frenk, and respectively with you, my lord. His communique bears the seal of Lord Regent Roboute Guilliman himself. Technically, there is a case to be made for the legitimacy of the archmagos dominus’ request.’

‘Cawl is a puppet of the usurper,’ said Gamma. His bloodshot eyes glared above his respirator mask. His augmetics made an angry clicking.

‘Gamma has a point,’ Cehen-qui said. ‘While I believe the returned primarch to be true to the cause of human survival, Lord Guilliman has no more right to command the Inquisition than Cawl has. To whom is the Inquisition answerable, Valeneez?’

‘The Emperor Himself,’ said Valeneez deferentially. ‘But the Lord Guilliman is the Emperor’s son, and His appointed deputy, ruling in His stead, so therefore it is reasonable to–’

‘Appointed by whom?’ said Cehen-qui loudly. The few crew on the command deck tried very hard not to listen in. ‘We only have his word that the Emperor gave him this role. Of course,’ he said, tugging his coat into place, ‘his right to command the armies of the Imperium in defence and reconquest of the Emperor’s domains is indisputable, but command the Inquisition, whose operations he has actively worked against? Never. The primarch’s authority in this matter will not stand. The prisoner remains where he is, imprisoned, until the excrutiators from Cypra Largo arrive.’

‘If we assume you are right…’ began Valeneez.

‘I am right!’ Cehen-qui shouted. He tapped at the Inquisitorial badge pinned to his sash. ‘This says I am right.’

‘Well then, my lord, given that you are right,’ Valeneez said, ‘we are not in a good position. This station has not been occupied for some time, most of its systems are offline, we’ve multiple blind spots, not enough storm troopers to patrol it, and a barely functioning weapons grid. If we stay here we are leaving ourselves open to attack. We should take the prisoner elsewhere.’

‘Maybe,’ said Cehen-qui, becoming thoughtful. He looked out of the long slit window overlooking the station’s three prongs. The orange gas giant it orbited filled much of the view beyond. ‘Cawl is a maverick. If we do not give him what he wants, then the danger is that he will attempt to take it from us. However, we cannot change the rendezvous. None of our messages to Inquisitor-Castellan DelGrani have got through the warp storms. We must assume that the ship is still coming, and will be here within the week. The prisoner cannot get free. He must be presented to excrutiators with the appropriate abilities as soon as is possible. His own kind will be looking for him. We must be ready to stop Cawl. I will not have the prisoner’s knowledge fall into the hands of the Adeptus Mechanicus. We might be exposed, but we are not without our own weapons now, are we, ShoShonai?’

He turned to his fourth servant. She stayed off the few spots where the deck was properly illuminated. She stood totally silent, face downcast.

‘ShoShonai, I am speaking to you,’ Cehen-qui said. ‘Are you ready?’

She lifted her head. Her face was shadowed by her hood. Silvered eyes shone in the dark. ‘My lord,’ she said with a voice of inhuman quality. The cloth of her robe moved disturbingly, as if a nest of serpents writhed beneath. ‘We are ready.’

‘My lord!’ one of Cehen-qui’s minions called from the etheric monitoring station.

‘What is it?’ Cehen-qui said.

‘I have a warp signature on the edge of the system.’

‘Any indication of provenance?’

‘Datapulse signum identifier will not reach us for another four hours, my lord, but etheric waveform patterning suggests a vessel of middling gravitic draught.’

‘Well then,’ said Cehen-qui briskly. ‘They’re here. To action stations, everyone. They shall take our prize over my dead body. If that happens, I’ll make sure the rest of you die first.’

Otranti was a gas giant of a vivid shade of orange, with a fuzzy atmospheric boundary. It reminded Primus of a rare fruit he’d tried thousands of years ago, the albaricoque. It had been velvety and sweet. He had liked it.

He tried to remember if that had been one of the last things that had moved him.

The station was a bright dot against the equator, and growing fast.

‘Interesting,’ said Qvo-87.

‘Interesting?’ said Alpha Primus. His purple lips were downturned. Only the slight raise to his voice’s pitch indicated he was, in fact, interested in what Qvo had to say. Even so, he sounded like he was on the cusp of crippling ennui.

‘This facility is very poorly defended,’ Qvo went on. A small forest of pistons lifted his command cradle up so that he could peer into a set of displays hidden behind rubber viewing visors, forcing Primus out of the way. The command deck of the 0-101-0 was too tight for the Space Marine. Qvo’s command crew were bulky creatures, high-level magi possessing many extra limbs. None looked remotely human any more, and although Primus could feel the flickering of humanity within their metal bodies, his eyes insisted they were not people, but ugly idols to the Machine-God. They were creatures with steel souls.

Primus was the first to acknowledge he was as artificial as them himself, everything about him having been rewritten down to the genetic level. The big difference between he and they was that they had chosen to be the way they were. He most definitely had not. Thinking about it made his scars itch, and as much of Primus’ skin was scar tissue, the experience was unpleasant, so he stopped thinking about it. He cleared his mind as easily as switching off a lumen. Blankness took the place of irksome thought, until Qvo started gabbling again.

‘Interesting, interesting, interesting,’ said Qvo. It was impossible to tell where the magos ended and the ship began. Primus had known all the iterations of Qvo. He still wasn’t sure if he was a machine or not.

‘You will not provoke more interest in me by repeating the word interesting,’ said Primus. His voice was low and miserable as a leaden bell. ‘You are irritatingly predictable.’

‘I am, aren’t I?’ said Qvo brightly. ‘I do wish that the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl had seen fit to give me a broader range of self-determinative logic patterning.’ He gave Primus a mock-serious look. ‘But that would break the lore.’

‘I care not at all that your red-robed brethren would find you an abomination,’ said Primus.

‘Lucky me, I am unique,’ said Qvo. He spoke distractedly, flitting on hissing pistons between screens and interface ports. He hummed a few bars of an ancient tune, and stopped. Primus lifted his heavy head. Qvo tapped away on a brass claviboard with four of his hands. Green logic code scrolled down a wafer-thin glass screen.

‘Are you going to give me the appropriate data to accomplish my mission or not?’ said Primus.

‘I am hoping it will not come to that.’

‘When our dear master is involved, it always comes to that,’ said Primus. ‘We are here. I shall be fighting. It is never any other way. Why this place? We are asking for trouble.’

‘Ahem.’ Qvo cleared his throat preparatory to speaking. The noise was entirely synthetic; only his head appeared to be organic, therefore he probably had no throat. If Primus was honest, he was mildly curious about what parts of Qvo were flesh and what were not, but asking the infuriating pseudo-magos would have felt like a defeat, so he never did. That, like so much else, annoyed him.

‘Because this station has the exact combination of circumstances that will allow us to secure what we need without anybody finding out about it, that’s why,’ said Qvo. ‘It is a genius plan on the part of the archmagos.’

Qvo pulled a number of levers. A high-detail hololith in far-spectrum colours sprang up in the middle of the bridge. Primus ducked a hissing pipe to get a better view, coming to stand to the front of Qvo.

Primus’ eyes possessed the spectral spread to see the hololith. Qvo knew that, Primus knew Qvo knew; presenting the diagram in such exotic shades was his way of making some kind of point. Qvo always seemed to be making a point. Primus was often at a loss as to why, or indeed what the point was.

The station had an unusual configuration: a tall cylinder topped with a wide disc with three long, boxy limbs pointing towards the gas giant, the spread of which was contained within forty-five degrees. It looked like a primitive wheel with all but three of the spokes broken off. The rear of the hub had a bulge fringed by the piers of a modest dock. A single ship was berthed there: swift, deadly and highly technologically advanced, with a superstructure surmounted by a gilded Inquisitorial ‘I’ surrounded by lightning bolts.

Click here to buy To Speak as One.

A Black Library Publication

This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

To Speak as One © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. To Speak as One, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-737-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.