Algerin looked at them.
‘He was so angry,’ he said. ‘Mirhen, such a great man, but so angry. He railed at the gods, at the stars, to see his fleet wrecked and his Chapter shredded, and the honour that has carried us through at the forefront of all Chapters, since the very start, shredded away… by animals. By vermin and a crooked planet.’
He took a breath.
‘They killed him because of his anger, you know,’ he said. ‘He wanted to kill them. He wanted to kill them all, but there were too many. I tried to pull him back. He—’
Algerin stopped. He looked at Daylight.
‘You have brought ships to take us off here, wall-brother?’ he asked.
‘I have,’ replied Daylight. ‘But conditions are still bad. We have to devise a way for them to get close enough to effect evac.’
‘I don’t think conditions will improve,’ said Algerin. ‘Not any time soon.’
He looked up as Severance’s men brought the Asmodai stragglers into the makeshift fortification.
‘Men,’ he said, unimpressed. ‘They will not last long. We had about fifty auxiliaries with us at the start. The noises drove them mad in the first week. We had to… It wasn’t a good situation. Only one of them survived. I suspect it’s because he was scatter-brained to begin with. He’s determined though, I’ll give him that. Determined to puzzle it out.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Daylight.
‘See for yourself,’ Algerin invited. ‘He’s with one of yours.’
‘I am Slaughter,’ said the second captain of Daylight Wall Company.
‘I am… Daylight,’ said Daylight.
‘I’m glad of the sight of you,’ said Slaughter. ‘You came for us. That won’t be forgotten.’
Daylight nodded. ‘I am heartened to hear that sentiment from one mouth at least. Who is your charge here?’ he asked. A bedraggled and filthy human in ragged robes was hunkered in the corner of the nest chamber, working at various pieces of Imperial apparatus. The devices, stacked and piled against the chamber wall, many of them damaged, were running off battery power. Several of them had clearly been customised, refitted, or repurposed.
‘He is the magos biologis sent to accompany our mission,’ Slaughter explained. The chamber was gloomy and dank, part of the surviving underground burrows of the blisternest. Water dripped from the organic arch of the roof.
‘He was supposed to study the xenoforms while we killed them. I was set to guard him when our fortunes changed. I’ve been doing that ever since, pretty much.’
They approached the scientist. He was intent on his work, muttering to himself. He was in need of a decent shave. His hair, dirty and unruly, had been clipped back in a bunch using the bent clasp of an ammunition pack.
‘His name is Laurentis,’ said Slaughter.
‘Magos,’ said Daylight, crouching beside the magos biologis. ‘Magos? I am Daylight.’
Laurentis looked at him for a moment.
‘Oh, a new one,’ he said. ‘You’re new. He’s new, Slaughter. See? See, there? I’m beginning to tell you apart.’
He smiled.
Noise bursts echoed outside the chamber, and Laurentis winced and rubbed his ears roughly with begrimed knuckles.
‘The wavelength is changing. It’s changing. Today, and these last few days. Greater intensity. Yes, greater intensity.’
The magos biologis looked at them as if they might understand.
‘I had specialist equipment,’ he said. ‘I was sent it by the Chapter Master himself…’
He paused, and thought, his eyes darkening.
‘He’s dead now, isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Slaughter.
‘Well, yes. Sad. Anyway, before that happened, him, dying, he sent me equipment. I asked him for it. Specialist equipment. I asked for it, you see? But so much of it was damaged before I could use it. Everything went a bit crazy. Yes, a bit crazy.’
‘The magos believed from the very outset,’ Slaughter said to Daylight, ‘that the noise bursts were a form of communication. He wanted to decipher them. A drop of specialist equipment to allow him to do that was arranged, but it had been overrun by Chromes and half-scrapped by the time we got to it.’
‘Communication,’ said Daylight. ‘From the Chromes?’
‘I thought so at first,’ said Laurentis, jumping up suddenly to stretch his cramping legs. ‘Yes, yes, I did. At first. I thought we had underestimated the technical abilities of the Chromes. I thought we had underestimated their sapience. They migrate from world to world. That suggested a great capacity for… for, uhm…’
Another noise burst, a longer one, had just echoed though the darkness of the stockade and the ruined nest, and it had rather distracted him.
‘What was I saying?’ he asked them, digging his knuckles into his ears again and jiggling his head.
‘Communication?’ prompted Daylight. He remembered very clearly what had been spoken of on the bridge of the Azimuth. The noises coming from Ardamantua read as organic — boosted and amplified for broadcast, but organic. Like a voice. ‘You believe it’s communication?’ he pressed.
‘Yes! Yes! That’s what I thought! That was my theory, and it seemed a valid one. I thought the Chromes were trying to surrender, or negotiate peace, that’s what I thought at first. Do you remember me saying that, Slaughter?’
‘I do, magos,’ said Slaughter.
‘Then I thought they might be trying to compose a challenge. Then I thought they might be warning us, you know, warning us not to mess with them. Then, then I thought they might be trying to warn us about something else.’
‘Like what?’ asked Daylight.
‘Well,’ said Laurentis, ‘it doesn’t much matter, because I don’t believe it is them at all any more. Do I, Slaughter?’
‘You don’t,’ said Slaughter.
‘I think it’s someone else. Yes, that’s what I think. Someone else.’
The magos biologis looked at them both.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think I’d like you to explain more,’ said Daylight. ‘Who do you think this someone else is?’
Laurentis shrugged.
‘Someone very advanced,’ he said. ‘Very advanced. Take gravity, for example. They are very, very advanced in that field. Gravitic engineering! Imagine! They’re shifting something. And this world, it’s just the delivery point.’
‘What are they shifting?’
‘Something very big,’ said Laurentis.
‘A moon?’ asked Daylight. Slaughter looked at him sharply.
‘It could be a moon. Yes, it could be,’ said Laurentis. ‘You’ve seen the reflection in the lake, have you?’
‘I have,’ said Daylight.
‘Whatever it is, it’s still in transition. If it’s a moon or a planetoid… well, Throne save us all. That’s a different class of everything. I mean, we can terraform, we can even realign small planetoids in-system. But shifting planetary bodies on an interstellar range? That’s… god-like. There are rumours, of course. Stories. Myths. They say that the ancients, the precursor races, they say they had power of that magnitude. Even the eldar once, at the very peak of their culture. But not any more. No one can do that any more. Not on that scale.’
‘Except… whoever the voice belongs to?’ asked Daylight.
‘Yes, well, perhaps,’ said Laurentis.
‘And who does the voice belong to?’ asked Daylight.
Noises boomed and howled. Laurentis scrabbled at his ears again like a man with headlice, and pulled a pained face.
‘That’s the real trick, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Knowing that. Knowing that thing. We’d have to translate the words first, and find out what they were saying. Maybe… maybe they’re introducing themselves to us? Maybe this is a contact message. A hello. I’ve spent six weeks trying to figure that out…’
He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed his makeshift pile of devices and equipment.