The Garantine greedily gathered armfuls of hardware, taking bandoliers of melta-grenades, a wickedly barbed neuro-gauntlet and the rig for a sentinel array. With another guttural laugh, he snagged a heavy, blunt-ended slaughterer’s sword and placed it under his arm. ‘I’ll be in my bunk,’ he sniggered, and wandered away under his burden.
Iota watched the Eversor go. ‘Look at him. He’s almost… happy.’
‘Every child needs its toys,’ said Soalm.
The Culexus gave the racks a sideways look, and then turned away. ‘Not me. There’s nothing here that I need.’ She shot the Venenum poisoner a look, tapping her temple. ‘I have a weapon already.’
‘The animus speculum, yes,’ said Soalm. ‘I’ve heard of it. But it is an ephemeral thing, isn’t it? Its use depends on the power of the opponent as much as that of the user, so I am led to believe.’
Iota’s lips pulled tight in a small smile. ‘If you wish.’
Tariel nervously approached them. ‘I… I do have an item put aside for your use, Culexus,’ he said, offering an armoured box covered with warning runes. ‘If you will?’
Iota flipped open the lid and cocked her head. Inside there were a dozen grenades made of black metal. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Explosives. How ordinary.’
‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘This is a new technology. An experimental weapon not yet field-tested under operational conditions. A creation of your clade’s senior scienticians.’
The woman plucked one of the grenades from the case and sniffed it. Her eyes narrowed. ‘What is this? It smells like the death of suns.’
‘I am not permitted to know the full details,’ admitted the infocyte. ‘But the devices contain an exotic form of particulate matter that inhibits the function of psionic ability in a localised area.’
Iota studied the grenade for a long moment, toying with the activator pin, before finally giving Tariel a wan look. ‘I’ll take these,’ she said, snatching the box from his hand.
‘What do you have for the rest of us in your delightful toy box?’ Koyne asked lightly, playing with a pair of memory swords. They had curved, graceful blades that shifted angles in mid-flight as the Callidus cut the air with them.
‘Toxin cordes.’ The Vanus pressed a control and a belt threaded with glassy stilettos extended from a sealed drum marked with biohazard trefoils.
Koyne put up the swords and reached for them, only to see that Soalm was doing the same. The Callidus gave a small bow. ‘Oh, pardon me, cousin. Poisons are of course your domain.’
Soalm gave a tight, humourless smile. ‘No. After you. Take what you wish.’
Koyne held up a hand. ‘No, no. After you. Please. I insist.’
‘As you wish.’ The Venenum carefully retrieved one of the daggers and turned it in her fingers. She held it up to the light, turning it this way and that so the coloured fluids inside the glass poison blade flowed back and forth. At length, she sniffed. ‘These are of fair quality. They’ll work well enough on any man who stands between us and Horus.’
The Callidus picked out a few blades. ‘But what about those who are not men? What about Horus himself?’
Soalm’s lips thinned. ‘This would be the bite of a gnat to the Warmaster.’ She gave Tariel a look. ‘I will prepare my own weapons.’
‘There’s also this,’ offered the Vanus, passing her a pistol. The weapon was a spindly collection of brass pipes with a crystalline bulb where a normal firearm might have had an ammunition magazine. Soalm took it and peered at the mesh grille where the muzzle should have been.
‘A bact-gun,’ she said, weighing it in her hand. ‘This may be useful.’
‘The dispersal can be set from a fine mist to a gel-plug round,’ noted Tariel.
‘Are you certain you know how to use that?’ said Kell.
Soalm’s arm snapped up into aiming position, the barrel of the weapon pointed directly at the Vindicare’s face. ‘I think I can recall,’ she said. Then she wandered away, turning the pistol over in her delicate, pale hands.
Meanwhile, Koyne had discovered a case that was totally out of place among all the others. It resembled a whorled shell more than anything else, and the only mechanism to unlock it was the sketch of a handprint etched into the bony matter of the latch – a handprint of three overlong digits and a dual thumb.
‘I have no idea what that may be,’ Tariel admitted. ‘The container, I mean, it looks almost as if it is–’
‘Xenos?’ said Koyne, with deceptive lightness. ‘But that would be prohibited, Vanus. Perish the thought.’ There was a quiet cracking sound as the Callidus’s right hand stretched and shifted in shape, the human digits reformed and merging until they became something more approximate to the alien handprint. Koyne pressed home on the case and it sighed open, drooling droplets of purple liquid on to the decking. Inside the container, the organic look was even more disturbing; on a bed of fleshy material wet with more of the liquid rested a weapon made of blackened, tooth-like ceramics. It was large and off-balance in shape, the front of it grasping a faceted teardrop crystal the sea-green colour of ancient jade.
‘What is it?’ Tariel asked, his disgust evident.
‘In my clade it has many names,’ said Koyne. ‘It rips open minds, tears intellect and thought to shreds. Those it touches remain empty husks.’ The Callidus held it out to the Vanus, who backed away. ‘Do you wish to take a closer look?’
‘Not in this lifetime,’ Tariel insisted.
A pale tongue flickered out and licked Koyne’s lips as the assassin returned the weapon to the shell. Gathering it up, the Callidus bowed to the others. ‘I will take my leave of you.’
As Koyne left, Kell glanced back at the Vanus. ‘What about you? Or do those of your clade choose not to carry a weapon?’
Tariel shook his head, colour returning to his cheeks. ‘I have weapons of my own, just not as obvious as yours. An electropulse projector, built into my cogitator gauntlet. And I have my menagerie. The psyber eagles, the eyerats and netfly swarms.’
Kell thought of the pods he had seen elsewhere aboard the Ultio, where Tariel’s cybernetically-modified rodents and preybirds and other animals slept out the voyage in dormancy, waiting for his word of command to awaken them. ‘Those things won’t keep you alive.’
The Vanus shook his head. ‘Ah, believe me, I will make sure that nothing ever gets close enough to kill me.’ He sighed. ‘And in that vein… There are also weapons for you.’
‘My weapon was lost,’ Kell said, with no little venom. ‘Thanks to the Eversor.’
‘It has been renewed,’ said Tariel, opening a lengthy box. ‘See.’
Every Vindicare used a longrifle that was uniquely configured for their biomass, shooting style, body kinestics, even tailored to work with the rhythm in which they breathed. When the Garantine had smashed Kell’s weapon into pieces out in the Aktick snows, it was like he had lost a part of himself; but there inside the case was a sniper rifle that resembled the very gun that had been his constant companion for years – resembled it, but also transcended it. ‘Exitus,’ he breathed, stooping to run a hand over the flat, non-reflective surface of the barrel.
Tariel indicated the individual components of the weapon. ‘Spectroscopic polyimager scope. Carousel ammunition loader. Nitrogen coolant sheath. Whisperhead suppressor unit. Gyroscopic balance stabiliser.’ He paused. ‘As much of your original weapon as possible was salvaged and reused in this one.’
Kell nodded. He saw that the grip and part of the cheek-plate were worn in a way that no newly-forged firearm could have been. As well as the longrifle, a pistol of similar design lay next to it on the velvet bedding of the weapon case. Lined up along the lid of the container were row after row of individual bullets, arranged in colour-coded groups. ‘Impressive. But I’ll need to sight it in.’