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Vaults of Terra: The Dark City - Extract

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Chapter One

He walked up to her chambers with confidence. You had to project confidence – to wear it like a glove. Let the thin skin of assurance fade, even by a fraction, and then you were vulnerable.

Latan Zijes had many enemies. That was not unusual. Any person of any consequence on Terra had enemies – the place was a nest of competing egos. Even now, when it felt like civilisation was poised on the very edge of annihilation, the schemes continued, the feuds ran on. Rampant disorder was a cloak behind which many scores could be quietly settled. And if things returned to normal at some stage, well then, who would remember just how things had been done in these most unusual of times?

The ordo had taught him to make a virtue of any weakness, make a weapon out of any setback. It was all a game in the end – a grand, multilayered game, and one he planned, in time, to dominate.

For now, though, he had to be careful. He had risen fast, and that bred resentment. Other players were skilful, patient, and had claws of their own. To be an inquisitor was to be forever surrounded by danger, from within and without the Imperium, and few individuals were as dangerous as the one he was about to meet. She was, in theory, his protector – a powerful advocate on his behalf and a useful name to drop into difficult situations.

But that could change. Recent days had taught them all that. Everything – everything – could change.

Zijes adjusted the stiff collar of his jerkin. He pulled his real-leather overcoat tight over his chest, and patted the artificer Utanya laspistol at his belt. Not that he would be using that, of course – just habit.

He approached gilt-edged doors. Not as overwrought as most of the internal architecture of the labyrinthine Imperial Palace, but still too gaudy for his taste. The two guards had been primed to expect him, and didn’t bother to challenge him or ask for credentials – no doubt he’d been scanned and double-scanned ever since arriving at the fortress, his every breath scrutinised on the long march up the stairwells. By the time they reached for the brass skullform door handles to let him inside, Zijes guessed that his vital signs and heat-image patterns were being busily pored over by a dozen or more menials down in the basements. Reassuring, in a way.

She was seated when he entered. She didn’t get up, but remained poised elegantly on the edge of a velvet-upholstered chaise longue. A selection of armchairs was available for him. He went for a dark blue piece in the Interregnum style, low-slung with iron claw-feet. The walls of the chamber were marble, the floors polished granite. A pair of gold-chased suspensors hung, humming slightly, overhead. Tall windows gave a view out over an overcast, smoke-mottled urban landscape.

The Inquisitorial Representative, Kleopatra Arx, was a slight woman. Her physical appearance was almost an affectation – a suggestion of fragility that had fooled many opponents over the years. Even by the standards of the orders they both served, she was a ruthless operator, capable of acting with swift and deadly resolve whenever the circumstances demanded. The various branches of the Inquisition were not, and never had been, united. The many ordos shared no common bureaucracy or standing militia, and each inquisitor operated entirely independently. To be a representative to the High Lords of that sprawling collection of pathologically driven individuals, each one jealous of their cherished autonomy, was something close to mad hubris. And yet, Arx had served in the role now for a long time. Before the very recent disaster, she had been proposing reforms. They might even have gone through, had she been given more time to work on them.

So you had to respect Arx. You could think she was misguided, or vain, even deluded, but you had to take her seriously.

‘Inquisitor,’ she said, putting a china cup down onto a silver tray. As she did so, a tiny hummingbird flitted from her shoulder and hovered over the fireplace. Its feathers glittered, as did its beady eyes – undoubtedly artificial, the whole thing, but very cleverly made. ‘I am glad to see you alive.’

Zijes settled into the soft seat, crossed his legs and relaxed. He kept his gaze fixed on her while simultaneously entertaining himself trying to spot all the micro-weapons targeted on him. At least four so far, and he wasn’t even looking very hard.

‘Strange times we live in,’ he said. ‘I once thought I’d miss the best of the action by staying on Terra.’

Her gaze was steely. She never seemed to blink. All the time, that damned metal bird flitted back and forth.

‘You know things are broken, of course,’ Arx said, folding her hands over one another in her lap. ‘You may not understand just by how much. Where were you?’

‘When it happened? Kameriba zone nine. Took me a while to get back here, after your message got through.’

‘I don’t doubt it. So, I’ll not sweeten this for you.’ She spoke frostily, precisely. ‘The Cadian warfront is gone. You know that, yes? You can see for yourself the effect that has had. Half of Terra lost to insurrection, much of it long planned, some of it spontaneous. A psychic storm has hit. It will be the labour of a generation to repair the damage, assuming we survive the next few weeks.’

Zijes smiled bleakly. ‘A cheerful picture.’

‘It gets worse. The Astronomican is down. Our fleets are becalmed. So we are blind and we are crippled, just when the ancient walls that kept our greatest enemy away have been breached at last. If the scale of this present crisis were known outside these confines, then we would swiftly lose any hope of restoring order.’

Zijes’ expression never altered, but even for him, inured to shock by a career spent among heretics and monsters, her words bit deep. The Astronomican is down.

‘It can be restored,’ he said, more of a statement than a question – to contemplate otherwise was impossible.

‘We must hope so. Every effort is being exerted. Restoration should be a matter for my esteemed counterpart, the Master of the Mountain, but he is dead. His staff are either dead too, or driven mad. Master Kerapliades has assumed control of what remains, supported by warriors of the Adeptus Astartes and tech-priests from the Mechanicus. The whole thing, though, to be perfectly candid, is a bloody mess.’

Zijes took that in. ‘Throne,’ he said. ‘I had–’

‘No idea. Of course not.’ Arx reached for her cup again. She took a sip, and the hummingbird darted across the room to a new vantage. ‘For myself, I have a thousand things to attend to, any one of which would in normal times occupy my entire focus. The Mountain should not be one of them, and those currently busy with its reconstruction would not thank me for interfering in their work. The prudent thing would be to leave them to it.’

Zijes smiled again. ‘Which you’re not going to do.’

Arx put the cup down with a soft clink. ‘You will be briefed on what we know. It’s not much, but it will demonstrate why I cannot let this be controlled by others. Every institution on this world has been rocked by the storm. Many souls have died, and many more will die in the days to come. Franck, the old Master, was hardly powerless. He was present, in his own domain, when the effect hit. He must have known a storm was coming, and yet proved unable to preserve himself. I wish to know why. I require someone trustworthy to make enquiries.’

‘Someone under your control.’

‘The opposite. A free agent. Though I could still be in the position to reward such an agent, were they to provide me with what I need.’

Zijes raised an eyebrow. ‘Going after a High Lord’s affairs,’ he said. ‘Hardly risk-free.’

‘But important. Because there’s another thing.’ Arx raised a slender finger, and a hololith of a woman’s face spun out of the air between them. ‘Another strange death. Inquisitor Adamara Rassilo – too sensible to have got herself killed for no good reason, and yet she too is gone. I had her dealings looked into. Difficult, at the moment, to find anything out of importance, but I do know she was responsible for the recent placement of several interrogators here on Terra. One name struck me in particular – a promising newcomer named Luce Spinoza. Heard of her?’

‘No.’

‘No reason why you should have. Except that I spoke to the Space Marine sergeant responsible for securing the Mountain after the worst of the trouble. An admirable example of the type – I recommended his promotion. He could tell me little about causes, but did confirm the presence of individuals there – inside the Fortress, right at the same time as the Master was killed. An inquisitor, Erasmus Crowl, and members of his entourage. What were they doing there? No one can tell me. They were allowed to slip away, apparently. Forgivable, given all else that was going on, but it leaves a loose end.’

Zijes nodded. ‘Spinoza was Crowl’s interrogator?’

‘Correct.’ She sat back, interlocking her hands again. ‘So we have two erased persons, both of them powerful, both of them capable, and one name linking the two. There is no sign of Crowl. His base of operations is known, and Spinoza may be there still, but it is set far into the uncontrolled zones now and hard to access at the best of times.’

Zijes thought on all that. ‘Hardly unusual for an inquisitor to be present when disaster occurs.’

‘They were there ahead of time,’ said Arx. ‘They raised the alarm. Something else – some separate trail – took them there. Something, I believe, connected to Rassilo’s disappearance.’ The hummingbird zipped back to her shoulder, landing lightly. ‘Or not. It should be looked into, just to be sure.’

‘But… now?’

‘Absolutely now.’ Arx leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees, looking at him intently. ‘We are on the edge of destruction, inquisitor. I look out of these windows, and all I see is our future unravelling. While the Beacon remains dark, no armies are coming to save us. We do not even understand the nature of our catastrophe.’ Her face was bleak. ‘Knowledge. The tiniest scrap of it. Why was Crowl at the Mountain? Why did Rassilo die? Has something been missed, right at the top, for too long? I wish to know these things.’

‘Without being seen to be involved.’

‘We will survive this. We will go on to restore it all, just as it was, and the Imperium will remember the names who steered us back into supremacy. I will remember them. Just as I will remember those who failed to rise to the occasion.’

Zijes laughed. ‘No need for that, Representative – you paint an intriguing enough picture. Show me what information you have, and I’ll look into it for you. If Spinoza is as new to this as you say, we’ll make a nice pair.’

‘I would not underestimate her.’

‘I won’t,’ said Zijes. He got up, seeing that the meeting was over. ‘I never do. That’s the game, is it not? Play it hard.’

‘It’s not a game,’ said Arx, still seated.

‘Of course not. Just a figure of speech.’

But it was, in truth. That was how he liked it. And now a new one was starting up, which was something to be very happy about indeed, because this was how reputations were made, and this was how narratives were controlled.

He had risen fast, had Latan Zijes. But there was space to rise yet further.

‘Is that the one?’ asked Luce Spinoza.

‘It is,’ replied Aneela.

The two of them had come to the spire in a black Nighthawk gunship bearing the livery of Courvain, one of only two that the citadel’s lexmechanics had managed to render usable again. Its engines stuttered as it held position two hundred metres up on stubby wings, kicking out spots of soot from the outtakes. Aneela and Spinoza manned the cockpit; the crew hold was filled with a squad of storm troopers primed for rapid deployment.

The cockpit viewers scanned across a scene of accelerated destruction. Directly ahead of them was the flank of a large horn-shaped hab-spire, blackened by the fires that had raged within it for days. Transitways and access viaducts needled out from its ruptured hide, connecting it with the neighbouring towers, all of which were in a similarly ravaged condition. Few lumens were lit, and the skies were the colour of engine oil, churning incessantly with heat-whipped storms.

Out in the open, on a narrow landing stage sited just in front of one of the spire’s many gaping intake maws, stood a single-person flyer. Its cockpit windows were smashed, its engine panels wrenched open. Three prone bodies lay under the shadow of its cracked wings, swiftly decaying in the hot air. Refuse was everywhere, skittering across the asphalt in skirling gusts, but no living subjects were visible on the scopes. The riots had lasted a long time in these zones, but now their energies were ebbing at last, leaving behind a sullen world of fear and uncertainty. Hundreds of thousands of souls still cowered inside that single colossal spire complex, now terrified and alone, cut off from the benevolent instruments of Imperial order. If the still-active cults didn’t get them, then the looters would, or their thirst, or hunger.

Help would not be coming, Spinoza knew, for a long time. This zone – Jaeda Novus – was too far from the core, a long way from where any kind of control was still being exerted. She’d heard the injunctions from Arx’s people, and knew that assets were being pulled back to the Sanctum all across the globe. She’d even wondered whether, given what had happened, she had better respond to those now, and lend her support to the efforts being made within the Palace confines to get a grip on whatever strange disaster had befallen Terra. She had been tempted. If Crowl had truly left them for good now, running down his obsessions without heed for any wider considerations, then perhaps that was the only thing left to do. Forget Courvain, that half-ruined heap of ouslite. Forget the band of eccentrics and misfits who shambled around in its corridors, and get back into places where chains of command were properly defined and respect for institutions ran strong.

Not now, though. Spend long enough in a place, even one as decrepit as Courvain, and you started to put roots down, become entangled in promises, take on obligations. And some obligations, given what she’d done – given what she’d been forced to do – were impossible to shift now.

‘Getting movement signals from just inside,’ Aneela reported, holding the gunship steady. She was a fine pilot, Aneela. Spinoza was good herself, but Crowl had known how to pick his close staff, quietly assembling an entourage that, for all their surface unimpressiveness, knew what they were doing. ‘Nothing, I would think, lord, you couldn’t handle.’

Spinoza glanced at the augurs, took in the data, and nodded. ‘Bring us in for the drop, then pull up and await my signal,’ she said, reaching for her laspistol. ‘Sergeant?’

‘All is in readiness,’ came Hegain’s voice from the crew hold, accompanied by the click and snap of weapons being primed.

Aneela brought the Nighthawk down lower, and its downdraught sent the refuse piles tumbling. Spinoza hit the door release, and the heavy metal cover hissed upwards. The air that rushed in stank of burning, and immediately her helm’s rebreather kicked into full operation.

As the gunship neared the landing stage, she pushed herself clear and jumped out. Eight storm troopers crunched to the apron around her, all armed with hellguns and kitted out in enclosed combat armour. The Nighthawk immediately surged back up into the roiling skies, its marker lumens merging into the haze of smog and dust.

The storm troopers formed up around Spinoza, sweeping the open stage with their weapon muzzles. She broke into a jog, Hegain at her side. She didn’t spend any time on the downed flyer. They would scan it later, just in case, but if Crowl had abandoned it then there wouldn’t be anything useful to retrieve. The target was inside the spire, under the ink-dark shadow of the entrance maw, into a world of stench and muffled violence.

They moved swiftly down the long entrance ramp, and then up a stairwell and into the internal corridors. The stink grew worse – stale urine, vomit, spilled chems. A few straggling residents caught sight of them and scurried away like rats. The storm troopers’ targeting beams angled down the dark tunnels, briefly catching on the edges of broken door frames and gaping windows. A hum of active machinery echoed up from the deep vaults below – clearly, at least some of the spire’s huge power and filtration mechanisms were still operating. A few explosions cracked out, though all from a long way off.

They reached their destination. The entrance gates were smashed, the heavy blast doors in pieces. A gang of scrawny hivers had been squatting in the ruins, but didn’t stay around for the storm troopers’ arrival. Hegain let them go, and advanced up the portal.

‘No signs detected inside,’ he reported, running his gloved fingers over the scanner controls. ‘Power down, security disabled.’

Spinoza led the way in. She hadn’t brought Argent, the priceless crozius gifted her by Space Marines – no sense risking damage to that fine weapon unless it was likely to be useful. The standard-issue Accatran laspistol felt strangely light in her grip by contrast – a flimsy thing, barely better than her fists. Hegain stationed four of his troops at the broken gate; the rest came inside with her.

The interior of the hab still had a lingering air of strangeness. Its fittings had been ripped out, the powercells dragged from their jacks, the armaglass screens shattered, but here and there you could make out the oddness of the decor – the sweeps, the curves, the little details that were hard to look directly at without your eye slipping away out of instinct. Under the surface smells of smoke and sweat, odder aromas still hung around, some sweet, some so bitter it made your sinuses itch.

Hegain and his troopers went through the chambers methodically, running scans then rooting through the refuse. Spinoza moved along the central corridor and into what looked like the main living area. The hab was a big one – far bigger than a standard worker would ever have been allocated. The man who had lived here had been rich and powerful. Why he had chosen to live in such a run-down zone was a mystery. Maybe he’d liked it. Crowl had liked Salvator. A strange breed, the servants of the ordos – herself included.

The living area was deserted. Dead plants, their withered leaves black and straggling, had been piled up behind the jagged edges of a large internal window. Spinoza started to run the battery of augur scans she’d prepared. The valuables had been looted, of course, but so much trash remained that something important might still have been missed.

After a while, Hegain came to join her.

‘Habitation unit is secured, lord,’ he reported.

She looked up. ‘He was here?’ she asked.

Hegain nodded. ‘The signals were somewhat hard to isolate, in truth, amid all the goings and the comings. But yes, to be sure of it, he was here.’

She nodded and turned back to her work, filtered through the ash heaps and scraps. A long piece of bone – an animal tusk, maybe – lay in pieces on the floor. Bloodstains still darkened the walls, some of them new, most dry and old.

‘Anything that might carry a trace,’ she said, repeating an earlier order. ‘Stack items for transit in the vestibule.’

Hegain bowed and moved off to the refectory chambers, and she continued with her own filtering. Despite the overriding decrepitude, the faint air of menace began to get under her skin after a while. Some of the objects, even when broken into pieces, were clearly of proscribed origin and smelled unsettling. This was a foul place, a place where foul things had been stored and foul ideas incubated.

Spinoza pushed on through the trash, hating every minute of it. She took up what looked like an old weapon – a curved knife made of some substance she couldn’t identify. She shook out caskets that might once have held jewels or coins, checking nothing had been left behind. After discarding one such container, she startled herself by catching a reflection in the shattered glass of a handheld mirror that had lain underneath it. The flecks of silvered material still clamped in place around the bronze rim looked like irregular teeth around an oval mouth, and as her helm-lumens flashed across the pieces she felt for a terrible moment like Crowl himself were staring back at her from them, only that it wasn’t quite Crowl, but a bizarre and twisted version of him with black-in-black eyes and bone-grey flesh, broken up across the shards.

She controlled herself, pushed the fancies out of her mind. She took up the mirror to investigate further. It didn’t look of Terran origin. Something about the lustre to the bronze made her think it was probably xenos. Why had it been destroyed? Maybe just trodden underfoot in the general violence that had destroyed the hab, though it certainly looked like someone had gone after it with some determination. In the dim and shifting light, she didn’t like her own reflection shown up in its residual shards – an armour-clad brute, crunching and pushing through heaps of alien spoil.

And yet, in that one fleeting moment, she had almost cried out in recognition, as if he could possibly have been there, lost in the mirror’s depths, beckoning her inside with him, ready to make amends for everything he, and she, had done.

She drew in a deep breath, bagged the mirror for further study and kept going, hoping for something tangible. More rubbish was sifted through, all thrown aside, until she reached out for the burned remains of a book – a traditional book, with a synth-leather cover and charred parchment leaves. She opened it and flicked through the torn pages. Notes had been scrawled across every inch in a cramped script, much of it hard to make out. The legible text was mundane, for the most part – references to old mission documents, items to requisition, reminders to apply for ration cards. She almost put it down again, but then something caught her eye – a diagram, sketched hastily, as if a copy from some other document. Runes were plastered across it, though none of them were Gothic. Not particularly surprising, given what Spinoza knew of her subject’s occupation and interests, but useful nonetheless.

She closed the book, reached for another item bag, and sealed it up. Then she straightened, flexed her stiff muscles, looked out across the rest of the chamber.

Six days ago. He must have been rooting through the very same rubbish, searching for much the same set of clues. Or maybe he had given up and gone elsewhere. Or maybe he had destroyed the place himself. Was this a dead-end? Or just the start they needed to make? And should she even be doing it, given all the other calls on her time?

She smiled grimly to herself.

‘Damn you,’ she muttered, reaching to retrieve the book and the mirror before moving off to look for more scraps. ‘You don’t shake me off that easily.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
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