Pasha lowered her sidearm. The air in the lab was thick with discharge smoke, and almost every surface was splashed and dripping with blood. A broken monitor was sparking and burning.
‘Throne alive,’ whispered Mkget.
‘Alert!’ Pasha yelled. ‘Alert, all sections–’
She realised that her ear-bead had been yanked out when the adept assaulted her. She fumbled for it, found the trailing wire, and stuffed it back in her ear.
Before she could speak, she heard the frantic traffic from the Ghost units inside EM 14.
‘–attacking! They’re fething attacking! I say again, the Mechanicus have turned on us! The Mechanicus have turned on us!’
Outside the lab, rapid gunfire was rolling through the hallways and arcades.
Twelve: Qimurah
The man who was going to kill him at dawn came to save his life in the middle of the night.
Keys scraped at the locks of the old cell door. It took three keys to release the thick slab of battered metal. Usually, the unlocking routine was methodical and precise, but this sounded hasty and rushed.
Mabbon waited patiently. He could do little else. The iron manacles on his wrists attached him to the floor by a heavy chain. He could stand and walk in a small circle in the tight confines of the filthy cell, or he could sit on the rockcrete block that served as a stool. They always ordered him to sit when they were coming in, and he preferred it that way.
The heavy door opened, groaning on its metal hinges. Zamak looked in at him. Zamak was one of the six guards who watched Mabbon around the clock. He was Urdeshi, a thick-set man from the 17th Heavy Storm Troop cadre that provided all six members of the guard team.
Zamak looked flustered, his face red, sweat on his forehead. His puzzle-pattern jacket was open as if he hadn’t had time to button it properly. He wasn’t wearing his body armour.
He stepped into the cell, producing the set of keys that fit the manacles. No body search first. No thorough pat-down. None of the usual, painstaking protocols.
‘I don’t usually see you at this hour,’ said Mabbon.
‘I’ve got to move you,’ said Zamak. He was trying to find the correct key. His hands were shaking.
‘Is it dawn already?’ Mabbon asked.
‘Shut up,’ said Zamak. He breathed hard. ‘They’re through the yard already. They’re killing everybody.’
Mabbon had been aware of the gunfire for the past ten minutes. Las-fire, sporadic, its whip-crack sound muffled by the cellblock’s thick stone walls.
‘Who?’ asked Mabbon.
‘Your kind!’ Zamak spat. ‘Your filth!’
Mabbon nodded, understanding. It had been inevitable. He had been waiting for it.
‘Sons?’ he asked. ‘Sons of Sek?’
‘I don’t know what they are!’
Mabbon shrugged, as much as the chains would allow.
‘A kill team, I should think,’ he said placidly. ‘Mortuak Nkah. An “extinction force”. I imagine that’s what they’d send.’
Zamak fumbled and released the heavy cuff around Mabbon’s right wrist.
‘I’ve got to move you,’ he said. ‘Get you clear. Get you to a safe location.’
‘Why?’ asked Mabbon.
Zamak stared at him. ‘They’re coming to kill you,’ he said.
Mabbon nodded. ‘I know they are,’ he replied. ‘Zamak, you’re scheduled to shoot me at dawn.’
‘Yeah,’ Zamak said, struggling to fit the key to the other cuff. Garic, the S-troop squad leader, had explained the timetable to Mabbon two days earlier. At dawn, the six man team guarding him would take him from the cell, escort him down to the yard, put him against the wall, and shoot him. Mabbon didn’t know which of them would actually end his life. It might be any of them. All six would fire their lasrifles at once. He would, he had been told, be offered a blindfold.
‘Well, I don’t understand,’ Mabbon said. ‘You want me dead. They want me dead. Stand aside and let them have me.’
‘I can’t do that!’ Zamak exclaimed. He looked horrified at the suggestion. ‘I’ve got to get you clear–’
‘Why?’ asked Mabbon. He was genuinely bemused. ‘The packsons are killing people to get to me. Killing anyone in their way, or so it sounds. If you try to protect me, you will become a target.’
‘So?’
‘Zamak, the logic isn’t hard. Let them have me. Save yourself.’
‘I can’t do that. I’ve got to move you. That’s orders.’
‘If you get me clear, are you still going to execute me at sunrise?’ asked Mabbon.
‘Of course.’
‘Then what–’ Mabbon began.
‘Shut up!’ Zamak snapped. He couldn’t get the key to fit the left cuff.
‘I’m serious,’ said Mabbon. ‘You’re risking your life over a… what? A bureaucratic issue? By dawn, I’ll be dead. Does it matter who does it?’
‘It doesn’t work like that!’ Zamak said.
‘Well, I think it should. There’s a strong chance you’ll die protecting me. If you don’t, you’ll only shoot me yourself. Go. Get out of here. By dawn, I’ll be dead. You don’t have to be dead too.’
‘Shut the hell up!’
‘I really don’t understand the Imperium sometimes,’ Mabbon said. ‘It’s so constrained by administrative nonsense and paradoxical–’
Zamak had become so flustered he dropped the keys. They landed on the floor between Mabbon’s feet.
‘Shit!’ said Zamak. He bent down to pick them up. Outside, close by, a lasgun ripped out three shots. They heard a man cry out in pain. The cry cut short.
Zamak turned in fear. He drew his sidearm and stepped back to the cell door warily. He peered out.
‘Shit,’ he said again. He stepped out of the cell and disappeared from view.
Mabbon looked at the open door. He waited. He looked down at the keys on the floor at his feet. He cleared his throat and sat up straight, his hands resting in his lap.
He stared at the doorway.
He heard a man shouting nearby, then a burst of pistol fire. An auto sidearm, emptying its clip. The double-crack of two las-shots, then a third. Silence.
Zamak reappeared. He leant against the frame of the cell door. His breathing was laboured, and he was struggling to change the clip on his autopistol. He was making a mess of the task because his hands were both slippery with blood. There was a hole in his torso just below the rib line, and his jacket and undershirt were soaked, dark and heavy.
He’d just slammed the fresh clip home when a las-bolt struck him in the centre of his body mass. The impact bounced him off the door frame, and he half-fell, half-slid to the ground outside the cell with his body turned to the right and his legs splayed.
His killer appeared, framed in the doorway. He looked down at Zamak, then fired another shot into him for good measure.
The killer turned, and stared at Mabbon through the open door.
‘Pheguth,’ he said.
‘Qimurah,’ Mabbon said. ‘I’m honoured. I did not expect him to send one of your kind.’
‘More than one,’ said the Qimurah. ‘The vengeance of He whose voice drowns out all others will not be denied this time.’
Mabbon nodded.
‘I am not trying to deny it,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’
The Qimurah stepped into the cell. He was fully worked and revealed, towering and skeletally taut. His neon eyes shone. The Anarch did make such beautiful things.
The Qimurah wore dirty, Guard-issue fatigues that didn’t fit well. The old combat boots had bulged and split a little where they failed to contain his elongated, clawed feet. He carried a worn, humble lasrifle. His tangled rows of yellowed teeth, like little tusks, shaped into what was probably a smile.