Valdor: Birth of the Imperium Read online

  The designated bodyguards deployed to their vehicles, four to each. Three more waited for Kandawire to take the lead vehicle. Before ducking into the crew compartment, the High Lord turned to Armina.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  Armina, for once, looked startled. ‘For what?’

  ‘Insisting on this. You never agreed to it, and it wasn’t your fight.’

  Armina gave her a look of mixed bafflement and disgust. ‘It was your fight. I am your servant. That makes it mine.’

  Kandawire smiled affectionately. ‘You see – that’s the attitude we have to stamp out here. Imagine the Imperium in hock to such slavishness. Imagine nobody questioning anything.’

  ‘Which is why we do this.’

  ‘Exactly. And I have one more task for you.’ She reached into her robes, and withdrew a shielded recording device the size of a child’s fist. ‘It’s ciphered, and linked to your blood-print. It’s all there. Both recordings, plus the evidence from Ararat. I want it kept safe.’

  Armina looked at it doubtfully. ‘You are the High Lord,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be facile. There’s a saying from my homeland – when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. We are the grass.’

  ‘And what is an… elephant?’

  Kandawire laughed. ‘I’ve never been sure. But there’s at least one of them in the Palace.’ She became serious again. ‘This must survive. We are unimportant, but this must survive. He will never be as unguarded again, after this. I still do not fully understand all I was told, but the record of it must not be lost.’

  Armina finally took the device. ‘Then you do not expect to return,’ she said.

  Kandawire shrugged. ‘I’ve been written off before. Who knows? In the meantime, keep it safe. Keep yourself safe.’

  Then she disappeared into the crew-bay of the groundcar, followed by her bodyguards. The clamshell doors cantilevered shut, and the smokestacks belched out black smoke. Armina withdrew, holding one hand over her mouth and using the other to stow the device into the scan-shielded compartment in her tunic. The engines built up to an overlapping roar, and she had to withdraw as the groundcars screeched across the rockcrete. In a hail of snow and squealing, the cavalcade revved out of the depot and into the storm, making the entire space shake.

  As the last of them crossed the barrier, Armina saluted them.

  ‘The brave, it has always been said, are preserved,’ she breathed, before turning, hurriedly, to make for her own transport.

  Ten

  Valdor entered the arming chamber. A dozen attendant serfs were waiting for him, each bearing a piece of his armour. Some articles were supported by two or more pairs of hands, given the weight of the individual auramite segments, and all shone with a glassy, almost dazzling lustre.

  In the earliest days of the long campaign, even the Legio Custodes had not worn this gold. They had made do with what could be provided by the fledgling state they had been created to protect, and their weapons and protection had been almost as crude as those they had fought against. Slowly, slowly, the artifice had increased. Techwrights and artisans were brought to the Sigillite’s orbit and pressed into more strenuous service than they had known before. Old skills were recovered, new techniques devised. The new ceramic compounds used in protective war-plate were the greatest leap forward – stronger and more heat-resistant than their metallic counterparts, and capable of being tooled with incredible precision. Motive power could be coupled effectively to the machined units, giving the wearer precise control over the level of power assistance. Many warlords on Terra employed versions of so-called ‘power armour’, but none of them had access to anything like this.

  So when Valdor looked at his armour now, he saw the way every component fitted perfectly against his flesh, the way every component slotted perfectly against the others. Every sinew-link, every fibre-bundle, every synapse-jack – they were all works of art, tailored to him alone and wearable by no other soul. Once donned, the division between armour and wearer was more a matter of semantics than anything else – for all practical purposes, they became one unit, a seamless amalgam of gene-bred muscle and lab-wrought nanotechnology.

  At the start, even he had not fully understood the need for the ornate decoration that overlaid these symbiotic links. He would have gladly gone to war wearing the drabbest of unfinished plate, just so long as it allowed him to achieve his objectives with perfect fluency. The astrological decorations, the occult symbolism, the martial finery pulled from ancient Earth’s cultural archetypes, those all came from the Emperor’s dictate.

  ‘It is not enough to conquer as others have conquered,’ Malcador had told Valdor, right at the start, just after the agonies of ascension had started to fade. ‘You are the heirs of our dreams. You are the bringer of the new age, and the warden of the old. You are the destroyer, but also the preserver.’

  Over time, the lesson was learned. A Custodian became more than a warrior. He became a living symbol, a marker of the Emperor’s mandate on Earth. The merest glimpse of embellished auramite was enough to quell rebellions or send enemy armies into panicked flight. Soon, the only individuals capable of even meeting the Custodians in battle were those made so insane from combat-stimms that they barely knew what they were being killed by.

  Every warrior of the Order became obsessed with his armour. Over the decades, they studied every niche and crevice in it, learning the curve and sweep of each individual item. Jewels were reverently set in place, all of them standing in esoteric relation to the others. Names were carved on the inner arc of the breast-plates, forming long lines like binding rope around the beating heart within. The decoration no longer seemed superfluous; it became intrinsic. They were form and function, aesthetic and mechanic, mind and soul. The donning of it became ritualised. Pieces were moved about in the proper order, fixed with the same procedures and locked in place with the same cares and gestures.

  Now, as the long-promised storm flayed the Palace exterior, Valdor felt the familiar clicks and flickers of his nerve-interfaces sliding into position. He felt the spark of his armour’s soul kindle against his own, expanding his consciousness into a shadow-world of advance-perception and motion prediction. Potency flushed down his veins, augmenting the already prodigious strength fermenting there. It was alchemy, this process, neither pure engineering nor pure biomancy, but something uneasily mixed from both fountainheads.

  If he had been capable of arrogance, he might have revelled in the results. As it was, he had not had a single arrogant thought since the dawn of his new life-state. He had never taken pleasure in his capability, nor his equipment, only a kind of blunt satisfaction when an obstacle was removed, or an order followed, or a threat despatched.

  And yet, there were half-memories – dim ones, like snuffed candles – of the time before. He almost remembered what it was like to dream his own dreams, or to feel the hot spikes of jealousy, rage or avarice. They had become intellectual constructs, those emotions, but still they were far from ­unintelligible. In rare moments of introspection, he found himself wondering how much he had lost in order to gain the powers he had, and whether the bargain was one he would ever have made himself, given the choice.

  Such thoughts did not last long. Every fibre of his being was set against them. Within moments, the obsessions would crowd in again, and he would attend to his fine armour, and attend to the mastery of his superb weapons, and attend to the condition of his already superlative body. As he did so, the old words would cycle through his mind, over and over, like a mantra of one of the religions he himself had helped to scour from existence.

  You are the bringer of the new age. You are the warden of the old. You are the destroyer. You are the preserver.

  The last item was slotted into place, filament-drilled and given a spike-test. The final serf withdrew, bowing respectfully.

  Valdor, now encased in his kill
ing-garb, flexed his arms, checking the response of the auramite second skin. The air around him hummed with danger, the most potent expression of which was the idea, now fizzing through his neural-links, that all this made him invincible. It was a lie, a malignant falsehood, but it nagged around the edges every time this battle-aegis was in place and complete.

  ‘There is surely such a thing as too much power,’ he had said to the Emperor, once. ‘Over-concentration in a single soul brings risks.’

  ‘You do not yet know what you will be expected to face,’ his master had replied. ‘Have patience. It will not always be barbarians and petty witches who die under your blade.’

  The serfs exited silently, shifting back into the shadows. The great Apollonian Spear, once carried in war by the Emperor Himself and now borne solely by His champion, hung in a silver-flecked suspensor miasma, ready to be grasped. Once Valdor’s gauntlet closed on the grips, there would be no withdrawal from what had to be done. He could still experience a morsel of regret, though – that response, for some reason, had never been excised from his emotional life.

  ‘Captain-general,’ came Samonas’ voice in his cochlear bead.

  ‘Proceed,’ Valdor replied.

  ‘You asked for evidence. It awaits review over the grid whenever you wish.’

  ‘Summarise.’

  ‘Her forces have been supplied and are moving into position. They will be ready to strike within the hour.’

  ‘Understood. And so I think I know what you are about to ask me.’

  ‘I detained an operative working on the core sequencing programme. She knows very little, but it was enough. Her testimony is recorded, should you wish to review.’

  ‘I have full trust in your judgement. Tell me her name, though.’

  ‘Liora Harrad, technician Class Tertius.’

  Valdor inclined his chin fractionally, detected a minuscule imperfection in his helm’s response time. To any other soul that would have been imperceptible. It would not impede his responses in any measurable way. It would still require remedial work, once all this was over.

  ‘An Albian name,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘With a heritage.’ He stirred again. ‘Then you have full sanction. Move now, ensure this is done swiftly.’

  There was a pause over the link. ‘We are few in number here. Will you join us, captain-general?’

  ‘No.’ Valdor reached out, into the suspensor, and gripped the spear. ‘There are multiple storms assailing us this night – you will have to extinguish this one yourself.’

  He started to move, and the doors to the chamber hissed open. Cold air sighed across the glass-fine auramite, though it would get much colder before all was done.

  ‘By His will, then,’ Samonas said, preparing to make his own movement.

  ‘By His will,’ said Valdor, closing the link, and briefly wondering, in an abstract sense, just when there had, for him, been anything more than that.

  Magister Novacs Ilaed walked through the doors to the Inner Control Nexus, adjusting his starched cream tabard as he went. The lumens were too bright down here, and the projector-beads flashed from the white plastek corridor walls quite uncomfortably. Everyone hated these overlit interiors, but that made no difference, for this was her domain, and the only opinion that carried any weight in here was Astarte’s.

  The Nexus itself was a strange construction – an elliptical bubble of steel and glass lodged amid this orthogonal half-city of rockcrete and masonry. Its walls were curved, its interiors shiny. Every surface was pristine, an effect safeguarded by the small armies of menials who shuffled through its innards every hour. It was always quiet in here, though the low hum of machinery never quite went away, and the air always smelled faintly of almonds.

  He could just about hear the storm flying against the walls outside. The narrow viewports on either side of the corridor were already blurred with the impacts of whirling snow, and there was a steady thud-drum against the arched roofs. The very idea of that maelstrom made Ilaed shudder – he was from tropical climes by birth, a native of the chaotic hyper-conurbs of Hy-Brasil, and this forlorn place perched at the summit of the habitable biosphere had always repelled him. Still, you went where your passion led you, and after a long and furtive career in genetic engineering during the dark times, Ilaed had been led here, one of many scientists sucked up by the Emperor’s voracious war machine, scooped into flyers and brought en masse to the laboratories and research stations of Unity’s showpiece citadel.

  Ilaed had been told that, one day, the climate here would not be quite so disagreeable. That would, of course, imply that the Emperor was capable of altering the atmosphere itself. After what he had seen since arriving, twenty years ago, Ilaed no longer doubted it.

  He reached Astarte’s sanctum. He felt a hot blush of a dermal scan, and a tingle across his innards as the chromosomal wash took effect. A glossy panel on the right-hand side of the doors glowed green, then the doors opened.

  The interior matched its mistress’ spartan personality. The chamber was circular, more than twenty metres across. Light played everywhere – from reflectors, refractors, crystal tubes and finely channelled watercourses. The floor was white, as was the roof, and matt-grey synthleather couches ringed an open foyer. The only outside windows ran in a narrow band bisecting the two hemispheres of roof and floor, though all were currently obscured with storm-fury. This place was high up, and the hurricane outside was becoming ever more violent.

  Astarte was alone, just as she’d said she would be. As the doors slid closed behind him, Ilaed realised that there were no servants present either, which was unusual – she normally surrounded herself with her creations, all of them subtly improved or tinkered with in some way.

  ‘Reporting as ordered, lord,’ Ilaed said.

  Astarte didn’t turn to face him for a moment, and so he was staring at her back for an uncomfortable amount of time. Her floor-length shift was as white and sheer as everything else here. When caught at a certain angle, the material was dazzling, generating a faint halo around her, like the angels of old Terran myth. She was so, so thin, as slender as the Tower itself, a mere slip of substance amid a sea of diffuse light.

  That made it all the more jarring when, as she turned to face him at last, he saw again the grey flesh of her hairless head, face sunken across prominent bones, wrinkled into desiccation. Amar Astarte was the greatest mortal genewright who had ever lived, save the one who had sponsored her, and could have easily given herself a new skin, and yet chose not to. More than that, though, was the decay she seemed to have encouraged, as if to make some kind of statement, although Ilaed had never understood what that might be.

  ‘Were you followed?’ she asked.

  Ilaed found the question insulting. The internal transit routes from the Dungeon to the Nexus were as secure as any on the planet, and he was no amateur. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

  Astarte nodded, and padded over to a small, round column. Hovering over the surface, trapped in a suspensor field, was a gently rotating crystal vial the length of a hand. She looked at it mournfully, ignoring Ilaed. The vial glittered in the web of light, exposing bubbles in the milky solution within.

  ‘Even now, after all this time, I find myself captivated by the potential we hold in these little things,’ she said, her soft voice as dry as her flaking scalp.

  Ilaed readied himself. When she was in these kinds of moods, conversation was a chore to be endured. ‘Quite so,’ he said.

  Her eyes narrowed, following the traced arc of the vial as it slowly swept around. ‘Hundreds of thousands of them, each unique, each cultivated with such extreme care. And yet, we could reach out – I could reach out, myself, here – and just… snap it open. How long would it last, then? A few seconds? But let it mature… Then we are looking at eternity, I think.’

  Ilaed waited for the rumination to die out.

  ‘Constan
tin would have let them all burn, had I not been there. I wonder if he would have been happy to do it. Had he known then what he knows now, he might have lit the taper himself. But then he was given an order, and of course Constantin cannot disobey an order. None of his kind can. That is the weakness at the heart of this empire – no one is dis­obeying anything.’

  ‘There must be discipline,’ Ilaed ventured, carefully.

  Astarte looked up at him. A wry half-smile darted across withered lips. ‘Must there? To give us the space to do what we do. But then it becomes an end as well as a means.’ She reached out a gloved finger and placed its tip into the suspensor, almost touching the vial. ‘It should make us fearful, I think. All of this should make us very fearful.’ The translucent field flexed and refracted around the fabric of the glove. ‘The great balance. Power and control. A weapon, its user. The former must not be greater than the latter. I’m sure you agree, Novacs.’

  If Ilaed had understood, he might well have agreed. As it was, he had very little idea what she was talking about. Probably best to retreat into platitudes. ‘The programme is on schedule. I am told that results from the proving grounds are promis–’

  ‘What did you wish for, when you started this?’ she asked, removing her finger and turning to him at last. ‘The genecraft, I mean. What did you intend your legacy to be? Were you entranced by the science of it? Or was it the coin you were able to gather?’

  Ilaed hesitated. ‘I– Well, I found I had an aptitude for it. And, back then, it had to be secret, and in the service of the wars, so–’

  ‘This is all still in the service of the wars, magister,’ Astarte said, gloomily. ‘Things are more systematic, that is true. We have achieved more than I would have ever thought possible. They are ready. They are as perfect as we are ever likely to make them. Mass production will follow when they figure out how to achieve that, and after that no one will remember it, but we were the ones who made it all happen.’