The most arresting sight, dominating all others, was the ship. It was an Archenemy cruiser, gnarled and scarred, a medium-displacement shiftship over a mile long. Like the tiny agriboats beneath it, it had taken shelter in the cone of the Fastness. It hung in place on its grav-anchors and suspensor arrays thirty metres above the water, and the bulk of it seemed to fill the open hollow of the cone’s interior. Supply pipes looped from its flanks and belly to the dockside plants and manufactories. Bracing cables of woven wire as thick as a man’s thigh strained tight between anchor points on the hull and the surrounding cliffs, as taut as the strings on a lyre. Vapour and steam vented in thick, slow, dirty clouds from the ship’s aft drives. Bilge water and liquid grease poured in steady cascades from its underside. It had clearly not been at the Fastness long. The surface of the lake beneath the ship, black in the ship’s immense shadow, rippled with moire patterns triggered by the invisible action of the suspensor fields.
The cruiser’s down-lights were lit, illuminating the immediate wharfs with searchlight beams of an ugly radiance. Banks of lights had been set up on the docks too, angled to light the ship’s paint-scabbed and warp-scorched plates. Mkoll could see the minuscule figures of men moving like lice on the ship’s upper hull, work-crews engaged on field repairs and plate refits. There was the occasional blue-white twinkle of welding torches and fusion cutters.
Structures resembling siege towers had extended out from the docks, bridging the gap and linking ship to shore. As the agriboat passed beneath one, Mkoll could see the internal hoists lifting freight up to the access levels, and crews of stevedores and servitors hauling the loads across the bridge-spans overhead into the ship’s open airgates. Small lift ships and lighters droned like flies, shuttling between the cruiser’s gaping belly holds and the shoreline landing platforms. One flew overhead, running lights flashing, wings angled for low-flight mode, and the agriboat rocked in the wake of its thrusters.
The agriboat’s engines started to mutter a new note, and the vessel began to slide sideways towards the waiting docks. Other boats in the small fleet slowed and moved in with it. There were dock crews, servitors and soldiers waiting on the quay.
Mkoll heard chattering. It was in his head, a constant hissing, like a thousand soft whispers.
Olort looked at him, noticing his reaction.
‘He speaks to us all,’ he said, ‘to all and to every.’
Mkoll grimaced slightly. The psionic background drone would take some getting used to. It felt like fingernails scratching at his eardrums and the lining of his sinuses.
He was here. Close by.
They were moving in to dock. At the prow of the boat, men were standing ready to catch and throw the mooring lines.
‘I don’t know how you expect to–’ Olort began.
‘You have urgent business to attend to, damogaur,’ Mkoll replied.
‘Business?’ asked Olort.
‘Reports. Statements of deployment. You’ll be inventive. We’ll move directly through the crowd and get in.’
Olort sighed. He looked at Mkoll with an almost kindly smile.
‘This is the end. You realise that? Whatever plans you were nursing, they end here. You have delivered yourself. Your own choice. You are here and this is it. There is no escape, and no opportunity for any course of action except surrender.’
Mkoll didn’t reply.
‘Come,’ said Olort. ‘Submit now. I’ll take you in directly, and deliver you. It’ll be a feather in my cap, but it will make things easier for you. I’ll see to that. We have an understanding, don’t we? You’ve spared me. I’ll spare you.’
‘Spare me?’
‘Spare you the worst. You’re a trophy. You have value, and for that reason, you will be treated with care.’
‘And accept induction?’
‘If you choose so. I appreciate you may not be able to bring yourself to that. But you are enkil vahakan, Ghost. Special status will be afforded you.’
Mkoll looked at him.
‘Give me the blade,’ said Olort.
‘No.’
‘You’re a prisoner already,’ said Olort. He shrugged. ‘Look around. You have entered the heart of us. You have placed yourself in our bastion and in our midst. Your identity will not remain hidden for long. There is no escape. Give me the knife, and I will make things go as well for you as they can.’
The agriboat rocked against the quayside, grinding against the sacking bumpers. Men shouted instructions, hauled on cables, and jumped the gap to tie up. The boat’s engines coughed into reverse.
‘You have urgent business to attend to,’ Mkoll said.
Olort’s face fell. ‘A knife at my back? You think that will get you in here? That will keep you alive?’
‘It’s worked so far.’
‘I am but one life–’
‘But you don’t want to lose it. I’m sure you would die in the name of your lord. Cry out, and bring them all down on my throat. But you want to live, damogaur. You’d rather live. I see that in you. You see purpose and personal glory in this, and all the while that chance exists, you’ll keep your mouth shut. So… you and your sirdar have urgent business to attend to.’
The agriboat had scraped to a halt, and sat rocking. The troops aboard began to clamber out, passing up packs and folded support weapons, and reaching out for proffered hands. Packsons barked orders and got the shackled prisoners on their feet.
Mkoll let Olort feel the solidity of the blade at the base of his spine.
‘Let’s go,’ he whispered.
Olort moved forwards.
‘Make way here!’ he called. ‘I have urgent business to attend to!’
They made their way along the pier, and Mkoll stayed close to the damogaur. The whole structure had a cake of algae on it, hard-set from years of growth. It was pink, purple and ochre. The crowds were tight. At every side, packsons stood in loose groups, some resting, some swapping stories. A few had knelt down in what little space was available to offer prayers and observations. Sekkite officers and grotesque excubitors moved through the masses, marshalling the arrivals, and despatching them in ragged columns up the wharf to holding areas. Gangs of prisoners were being led away. Mkoll counted more than sixty captured men unloaded from the boats. How many more had already been brought to their doom?
The great horns roared above them. A cargo-lifter skimmed by, its shadow flickering in the searchlight beams.
‘Keep moving,’ Mkoll whispered.
A sirdar with a data-slate approached them. He threw a cursory salute to Olort with a quick hand to his mouth, a reflex gesture that to Mkoll had begun to read as blowing a kiss. The Tanith found the cultural mis-connect of the gesture unsettling. The sirdar and Olort exchanged a few words. The enemy tongue was fast and hard to follow, but Mkoll heard the phrase ‘urgent business’ more than once. The sirdar nodded, and pointed in the direction of the stilted buildings overhanging the wharf.
The scratching whispers in Mkoll’s skull continued.
From the rail of the dock, he saw a rockcrete foreshore where Sons of Sek with flamer packs were torching piles of what looked like undergrowth. Thick clouds of black smoke billowed from the burning heaps. The smell was pungent and sweet.
‘What are they doing?’ Mkoll asked.
Olort answered, using a word Mkoll didn’t know. There was no time to question further. They crossed a busy yard and entered the nearest building.
The place was old. Lumen-globe lamps hung from chains anchored to the ceiling. It was part modular build and partly carved from the rock wall. Industrial meltas had been used to fuse the rock and modular plate together. The hallway space was big, and echoed with voices and the tramp of feet.