Deathwatch (24 page)

Sixteen hours after the decision had been made in his office, the Lord High Arbitrator of Chiaro found himself in a well-appointed passenger cabin aboard the
Macedon’s
cargo shuttle as it hauled itself up towards orbit. On either side of him sat his tall, pale female companions, their long legs crossed beneath dresses of black silk. Sul stood nearby, ready to serve. In the chair across from the High Arbitrator sat Captain Higgan Dozois.

Lord Sannra would have liked a window. It was many years since he had left terra-firma. He had hoped to watch the curve of the planet fall away underneath him, to watch the stars intensify, but it was not to be. The shuttle’s cockpit was built to accommodate a pilot and co-pilot only. Sannra made do with a reasonable amasec from the captain’s personal store, which he sipped from a slender, fluted glass.

Higgan Dozois had not been a difficult man to buy. Though neither Sannra nor Sul knew anything about it, Dozois had managed to sell his entire shipment of narcotics with ease. The Rockheads had sent a senior gang lieutenant to negotiate with him. The meeting was tense, neither side quite trusting the other, but the price eventually agreed upon was fair, and the transfer of the drugs went smoothly. The Rockheads ought to make a tidy profit. Dozois got exactly what he’d expected for the yaga. No more. No less. Now, he was just glad to be off that accursed, egg-shaped world. He hadn’t felt right since the moment he’d set eyes on it. Since he’d landed on it, he’d had the strangest sensation that he was missing something. At least the headaches had finally stopped.

With the sale of the yaga completed, he had quickly turned his thoughts to his outward journey. The Lord High Arbitrator’s sudden and unexpected commission was more than welcome. Melnos wasn’t far, and it was in the general direction he had been planning to take. If he had to put on extra airs and graces for a contract this profitable, so be it.

A week’s warp transit. A quick shuttle drop. Then off to Syclonis in the Gates of Varl for a resupply.

‘I’m confident you’ll find the accommodation to your liking,’ Dozois told his guests. ‘The
Macedon
is a fine ship, if I say so myself. I’ve certainly never had any complaints. In fact, I believe my last passenger, a lady of House Devanon, was some relation to you. Is that not so? I hope she’s well.’

In truth, he hoped she was anything but. Thoughts of her made him confused and disoriented somehow. He remembered his frustration sharply enough. He hoped he’d soon forget it, and he mentioned her now only in a further attempt to curry favour with his well-heeled passenger.

Sannra and his aide shared a dark look. It was the aide who spoke up.

‘A very distant relation only. Last we heard, Lady Fara was busily engaged in establishing a business venture in the city. I’m sure she found her passage with you most satisfactory.’

How uncomfortable they are at the very mention of her
, thought Dozois.
Hiding something, both of them. I wonder if she made a fool of this Lord Sannra somehow. Perhaps it’s best I don’t mention her again.

‘I’ve a very fine dining room aboard,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘And the gallery on the upper deck provides quite spectacular views on planetary approach.’ He gestured around the passenger cabin. ‘It will more than make up for the lack of viewports on the shuttle, I assure you.’

Sannra was about to respond when a voice chimed from the speakers in the cabin’s corners. ‘Captain, forgive the intrusion, but I’m getting orders from both GDC and the Naval defence monitors to turn the shuttle around and head back to port. They… They’re telling me the planet has just been placed under quarantine, sir.’

Dozois lost the polite smile he had painted on his face. The voice on the comm belonged to his pilot. He thrust himself forwards in his chair. ‘They’re telling you what?’

‘GDC have us locked, sir, and both of the Navy boats are on intercept headings. If we don’t turn back, they say they’ll have no choice but to fire on us.’

Lord Sannra gaped. ‘Sul?’ he said shakily. ‘Don’t they know I’m on board?’

‘All the relevant authorities were informed, my lord. This must be a mistake. It’s the only possible explanation. Quarantine, indeed. Who ordered it?’

Dozois spoke to his pilot. ‘Barrett, any word on who issued the no-fly order?’

‘They say it’s by order of the Holy Inquisition, sir. That can’t be right, can it?’

Again there was a dark, knowing look that passed between the lord and his aide.

Dozois cursed. ‘Whoever issued the damned order, I’m not about to have my ship fired upon. I think we had better do as they say.’

Lord Sannra looked helplessly at Sul, confusion and desperation both written clearly on his face.

‘How far are we to the
Macedon
, captain?’ asked the aide.

The captain relayed the question to his pilot. The answer came back. Just a little over three minutes, according to the flight cogitator. Sul asked another question and got an answer for that, too. The Naval defence ships were sixteen minutes away. Any missile launched from groundside would take approximately six minutes to reach them. How long it would actually take GDC personnel to prepare a launch was anyone’s guess. In all the years men had occupied Chiaro, they had never once been forced to defend the planet. The few missile bases that existed were under-funded, undermanned and poorly maintained.

Sannra wouldn’t have gambled much on their not being able to muster a few ground-to-orbit missiles, but Sul seemed ready to play those odds.

‘Captain,’ said the aide sternly. ‘You will proceed to the
Macedon
as planned. Order your pilot to make haste. We will not be turning back.’

‘You can’t be serious, Sul,’ gasped Lord Sannra. ‘This is all tied to that damned woman. We have to turn back. We have to! I’m the Lord High Arbitrator. I can’t be fired on by my own planet’s defenders.’

The aide moved in a blur that defied his age and apparent frailty. Dozois watched in stunned silence as the little man plunged a knife deep into the breast of his lord and master. There was a wet, wheezing sound. Blood boiled up from between the aristocrat’s lips. Tears welled in his eyes as they rolled upwards, trying to meet those of his aide, asking why, why this terrible betrayal.

Sul’s expression didn’t change a bit. Even as he murdered the man he had served for more than thirty years, his expression was calm, almost placid, in stark contrast to the violent act.

The women on either side flew from their seats screaming hysterically. They bolted for the nearest door in a whirl of blonde hair and black fabric. Dozois suddenly wished he was wearing a weapon. With such a prominent passenger on board, he had decided not to, worried that it might send the wrong message. He cursed that decision now.

‘What in the Eye of Terror are you doing, man? You’ve just–’

Suliman ignored him. He turned his eyes to the women and called out, ‘Kindred!’

The doors to the passenger cabin slid open. Two towering nightmares of chitin, claw and sinew swung beneath them and into the room. They straightened, and their sickening purple-skinned skulls bumped against the cabin ceiling.

Each was a horror from the darkest nightmares of men, a glistening amalgam of smooth armoured ridges and dark, striated muscle. Their claws were as long as machetes, as black as their soulless eyes and wickedly curved. They looked sharp enough to flense meat from living bone with ease. They stood on two legs, a short useless tail hanging limp behind them, and from their torsos hung four arms, long enough to reach the floor despite their height. But it was their faces that chilled the most – the quasi-human configuration of eyes and nose above a mouth more suited to some grotesque deep-sea monstrosity, the teeth like glass daggers, all set in a head horribly swollen and distorted, veins pulsing at the temples.

Both women fainted at once and hit the floor hard. Dozois, paralysed with fear, felt a hot wetness spread through his breeches from the area of his crotch. He began to shake uncontrollably.

The huge, six-limbed creatures bent over the women and lifted them effortlessly into the air. Blonde hair fell away, revealing two graceful, exposed necks. Alien eyes fixed on them.

‘Do it,’ hissed Suliman, tugging his knife from the cadaver of his former master. The wound made a sucking sound as the blade came free.

Dozois saw the monsters open their wide, razor-toothed jaws. He saw grotesque purple tongues whip out and back again, leaving raw red craters in pale human flesh. At the centre of those small, fresh wounds, implanted packets of alien DNA began their work, multiplying, diversifying, rewriting.

The beasts lay both women aside then turned their terrible black eyes on Dozois.

Suliman spoke from close by. The captain felt the wet point of a knife at his neck.

‘I’m sorry, captain,’ said Sul. ‘I forget to mention my family here would be joining us. They managed to clamber aboard while the cargo was being loaded. I hope you don’t mind, but, you see, we have something of a mission, they and I. We have to reach Melnos, or any populated planet, really, and your ship is the only chance we have. Now, don’t go getting any ideas, will you? You’ve a full life left ahead of you. A full, rich life still left to live. I’ll let you live it, too, so long as you get us to the
Macedon
quickly and get us out of this system. But I assure you, if you don’t, you
will
die. And it will be a far more painful experience than poor Lord Sannra’s. Mark my words.

‘Well, captain? What say you?’

The cargo shuttle docked with the
Macedon
just three minutes later. The body of Lord Nenahem Sannra was left slumped in the shuttle’s passenger cabin, his rich clothes soaked in cold, sticky blood.

Despite repeated calls from the Navy monitors and GDC to power down, Captain Higgan Dozois, now ensconced in his command throne with Suliman and his restless, kill-hungry monsters standing over him, ordered the warp engines brought online. He had little choice. He kept telling himself there might be a window later, a chance to turn things around, even to escape, but, as he looked out over the bridge at his terrified crew, all of them desperately trusting him, depending on him to keep them alive, he knew he was stuck. There was no way the crew could overpower Suliman’s monsters. When they had first stepped onto the command bridge, two foolhardy ensigns had drawn small-arms and charged the creatures. Dozois had tried to shout them down, but it was too late. The abhorrent, six-limbed aliens had leapt on them, shrugging off their pathetic pistol-rounds without a scratch. In front of everyone, the ensigns had been torn to red tatters by clawed, inhuman hands.

Resistance was a death sentence.

They’ll kill us anyway
, thought Dozois,
or do what they did to those women. As soon as we’re of no further use…

He wasn’t quite sure what he had witnessed back in the shuttle. The Lord High Arbitrator’s women were certainly still alive – they had groaned as he and his captors had stepped over them – but the welts on their necks meant something. He just couldn’t imagine what.

‘Sir,’ called out the chief auspex operator, ‘those Navy boats are only seven minutes out. They’re calling again for us to power down. And I now have three missile contacts approaching. The closest is six minutes off our port side.’

‘Engines?’ asked Dozois.

His helmsman looked up. ‘Engines at sixty-two per cent, captain. We might outrun the missiles, or we could trust to the point-defence turrets to knock them out, but if those Navy ships have forward lance batteries–’

‘Warp engines?’ asked Dozois, cutting the helmsman off.

‘At full now, sir, but the Navigator needs another four minutes of focus before we can breach.’

Sul leaned forwards and spoke low in the captain’s ear. ‘We’ll all die together, captain, if you don’t hurry this up. Jump blind if you have to. Just get us away from here. Now.’

‘I’ll handle it,’ snapped Dozois. Before Suliman could add anything, the captain rose from his throne and stormed down from the command dais to the floor of the bridge. ‘Mister Sael, step away from your station please. I’ll take this one.’

The shocked helmsman stepped back with a nod, his mouth open, but no words coming out. Dozois almost never took the helm himself.

The captain looked at the monitor. It was just as Sael had said. He might outrun the missiles or gun them down. He might even make warp before the Navy ships could open fire. But did he really want to?

The Ecclesiarchy were always banging on about the Emperor of Mankind and of eternal salvation at His side. Dozois had never gone in for it much. He had always lived for the moment. But at that moment, he hoped, truly hoped, that the priests were right, because he wasn’t going to ship those monsters to another planet full of innocent people.

Were he to allow the
Macedon
’s destruction at the hands of the Navy or Chiaro GDC, forever after, people would think of he and his crew as traitors or renegades. But, if he could only summon the courage to take responsibility himself, to pre-empt the very destruction he could not now escape, they would know. They would know someone on board had taken a stand.

Holy Emperor, you had better be real.

He hit a quick series of runes, shutting off the ship’s overrides and alarm systems. Then, with a sinking heart, he drew a finger across a dial on the monitor, setting the warp engines, which were already at full charge, to overload.