‘…six weeks, working with these items, which are hardly ideal. It’s so hard to jury-rig what I’m missing. The parsing cogitators are a particular loss. And the vocalisation monitors. I’ve made do with quite a lot, actually, quite a lot, but Throne alive! What I wouldn’t give for a decent grade tech-servitor, or a vox-servitor… or… or an augmetic receiver. Cranial! Cranial implants! I never took them myself, you see?’
‘If this is contact,’ asked Daylight, ‘it’s surely hostile?’
Laurentis nodded, blinking away another noise burst with a shake of his head. ‘I mean, definitely. Definitely. But it would still be worth hearing what it had to say for itself.’
‘You would confirm a hostile intent, then?’
‘I don’t have to!’ Laurentis exclaimed. ‘Look at the rats!’
‘The rats?’ asked Daylight.
‘No, not rats. The Chromes. That’s what I mean. The Chromes. Like rats. You can gather so much data by observing the behaviour patterns and habits of animals. Rats. Remember when I first called them rats, Slaughter? Remember that?’
‘I do, magos,’ said Slaughter.
‘I said it as a joke, at first,’ said Laurentis. ‘I said it because their behaviour reminded me of rat behaviour. Rats suddenly turning hostile and flooding into a new area with great and uncharacteristic aggression. It can be very scary. Very dangerous. They’re not a threat. They live under the floorboards and in the walls for years, never harming anyone, and then they are turned into a threat. Turned into one!’
‘How?’ asked Daylight.
‘Because they are threatened, by a greater natural predator. Something they fear. Yes, fear enough to make them attack things they would not normally attack. In this case, the Imperium. And Space Marines! Goodness me, the Chromes are just animals. They are just vermin! They’re rats, rats, you see? We’re fighting them because they’ve been driven into our zones of space by something they do not want to be around. They are fleeing, fleeing for their lives, and it’s made them desperate enough to battle us.’
He looked at them both.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he asked, pleased with himself. He grinned. Daylight noticed that, at some point, several of the magos biologis’ teeth had been knocked out. The gappy smile made him look more like an eager child than a credible expert.
‘If they’re animals, how are they travelling between worlds?’ asked Daylight. ‘How are they effecting interstellar and void transport?’
Laurentis clapped his hands and did a little jig.
‘That’s another thing, you see? You see? That’s sort of what clinches it because it neatly answers the other mystery! How do the Chromes get from world to world? How do they migrate? What explains their diaspora? Nothing! They can’t do it! They’re animals! QED something is bringing them here! They’re moving through the tunnels!’
‘The… tunnels?’ asked Daylight.
‘Yes. Tunnels. There’s probably a better word for it. I haven’t really worked this material up into a presentation form yet. Tunnels will have to do. The tunnels built by whoever the voice belongs to.’
He looked at Slaughter, and then Daylight, then back to Slaughter.
‘Whoever owns the voice,’ he said quietly, as though someone might overhear, ‘is equipped with a highly superior tech level. They can manipulate, at a fundamental level, gravity and other primary forces of the universe. They can, so it would appear, reposition planetary bodies over interstellar distances. They do this by constructing tunnels — let’s use that word — tunnels through space. Perhaps through the warp itself, as we understand it — not that we really understand it, mind — or through some closely associated stratum of subspace. Perhaps a gravitational sublayer, or even a teleportational vector. I can’t really be sure yet, so let’s simply settle on the term “subspace tunnel”, shall we? Now the Chromes, they’re vermin, you see? Pests? They live in that subspace realm we’re talking about. Like rats live in an attic or a sewer. The subspace realm is an attic of the universe we don’t ever see. A cosmic sewer. And as the owner of the voice moves through that attic… subspace realm… you still with me? As the owner of the voice does that, it drives them ahead of it.’
‘The Chromes are spread indirectly,’ said Daylight, ‘via the transportational rifts constructed by this… unknown xenoform.’
‘Very well put!’ Laurentis exclaimed. ‘Can I write that down? Like rats in an attic that’s on fire, the Chromes are being driven out ahead of the flames, fighting anything that gets in their way. Or like rats in a sewer, where there are big lizards of some sort, and the big lizards are trying to eat them, so they’re afraid and they’re running away from the big lizards and—’
‘I get it,’ said Daylight. ‘Calm yourself, magos.’
He looked over at Slaughter.
‘We very much need to find out what’s coming, captain,’ he said.
Slaughter nodded.
‘It’s not going to be pretty when it arrives,’ said Laurentis, quieter now. ‘It’s an immense threat. The Chromes may be pests, and essentially non-sentient, but they are durable, and resilient and highly numerous, and their entire population — whole nests, whole family communities, millions strong — is being forced to flee for parsecs across the galaxy, through the cellars and chimneys of space.’
He paused.
‘Just like rats.’
Daylight was thinking.
‘Did you say,’ he asked the magos biologis suddenly, ‘that you needed a servitor? What about a tech-adept? Would a tech-adept do?’
Twenty-Six
‘But his primary socket’s ripped out!’ Laurentis complained.
‘He was hurt during the crash,’ Major Nyman explained patiently. He had opened the faceplate of his atmospheric suit so he could be heard. The major clearly didn’t trust the filthy, matted magos biologis at all. He was wary of his manic, agitated behaviour. ‘He’s been hurt. Stop manhandling him.’
‘Please be calm, major,’ said Daylight. ‘Magos, perhaps you could be a little more gentle with the adept? He is injured and hardly in the best shape.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Laurentis said.
Nyman and two of his Asmodai had brought the tech-adept into the magos biologis’s chamber, and were helping him settle on a seat made of a munition crate beside Laurentis’s repurposed workstation.
The humans had all been fed from some of the rations in the stockade’s supplies. They’d been given purified water too. First Captain Algerin didn’t think much of their survival odds. Humans, in his experience, had about four or five days’ tolerance for the conditions of Ardamantua. Algerin also didn’t seem to think much of Daylight’s interest in the magos biologis’ theories. To Algerin, Laurentis was an eccentric who had been driven half-mad by his prolonged exposure to the environment, and was probably fairly deranged and obsessive in the first place. ‘It’s a miracle he’s survived this long,’ Algerin had remarked, and Daylight wasn’t clear if that meant Algerin was surprised that Laurentis had outlasted the other human survivors, or if he thought it was a miracle he hadn’t silenced the magos long since.
The tech-adept seemed a little calmer for food and water, and also to be out of the open, in a place where the noise bursts were more muffled. Nevertheless, his eyes were still dead and wandering, and his movements jerky. The sudden attention and manic eagerness of the tattered magos made him shrink back, timid and alarmed.
The magos made soothing, cooing noises, and began to examine the ruined primary plug in the back of the tech-adept’s neck. The touch of his fingers on the blood-crusted injury made the adept wince. Laurentis made a tutting sound and looked elsewhere.
‘Secondary plugs,’ he said, with some relief. ‘Here in the sternum, and under the arms. Also the spine. Not as clean and direct as a primary cortex, but it should do the trick. Yes, very good, under the circumstances.’