Текст книги "The Outcast Dead"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

FOURTEEN

Flight and Fight

THE GIANT’S WORDS took a moment to sink in, and even then Kai couldn’t process their meaning. There could be no question that this figure was a Legiones Astartes warrior: his bulk and unspoken threat was undeniable, but there was more to it than that. Kai saw the world through artificial eyes, and every sweep, curve and angle of the giant’s face seemed somehow more solid than any other living soul he had seen.

‘You are Legiones Astartes,’ said Kai, his words slurred and little more than a whisper.

‘I already said that,’ stated the giant, taking hold of Kai’s shoulder and hauling him to his feet as though he weighed nothing at all. Atharva was enormous, as tall as Saturnalia, but broader and more powerfully built.

‘Why?’ said Kai.

‘I have little time for questions, and no patience for ones so ambiguously formed,’ said Atharva. ‘Our escape has not gone unnoticed, and warriors we cannot face will be on their way. Now we must hurry.’

Kai stumbled through the buckled doorway of the interrogation chamber. He glanced over his shoulder at the recumbent form of Adept Hiriko, wondering if she were alive or dead. Despite all that she had subjected him to, Kai hoped she still lived.

Six figures filled the vestibule beyond the chamber in which he’d spent an unknown amount of time, six warriors of enormous bulk and distinct character that was immediately apparent even if they hadn’t sported tattoos and Legion markings on engorged biceps, mountain-ridge shoulders and forearms larger than Kai’s thighs. Instantly, he knew who had rescued him from his cell.

‘You are the Crusader Host,’ he said.

‘What is left of it,’ said a warrior with hair that was a dirty mix of pale white and dark roots. ‘You do not see us at our best.’

‘That name is meaningless to us now,’ said another with a bare chest that rippled with muscles and crudely-inked tattoos of weapons and teeth. ‘We are dead to the Imperium.’

‘We are outcast,’ spat the warrior next to him, and Kai saw a resemblance between the two that went beyond their shared genhancements.

‘The Outcast Dead,’ said Atharva, with a sly twist of a grin. ‘If you knew what that meant in ages past, you would appreciate the irony of that.’

‘The Outcast Dead,’ repeated a grim-faced warrior who was a giant even in the company of giants. ‘A dishonourable name for warriors, but a more fitting one than the last we bore.’

‘What’s happening here? I don’t understand what’s going on,’ said Kai.

‘What is to understand?’ said a brute with half his head encased in hammered pig iron and plugged with copper-wound wires. ‘We are fighting to be free. You are coming with us.’

‘Why?’

‘Again with the vaguely-worded questions,’ said Atharva, shaking his head. ‘Tagore, Asubha and Subha are World Eaters, Kiron is Emperor’s Children, Severian a Luna Wolf and that hulking brute with the shaved skull is Gythua, a true son of Mortarion. We were incarcerated, as were you. And as Tagore says, we are fighting to be free, a situation that would be made a great deal easier if you were to save your questions until later. Understood?’

Kai nodded, and Atharva gestured to the corridor behind the warrior he had named as Kiron. Severian ghosted down its length, far faster and quieter than a man of such bulk had any right to move.

Atharva turned to one of the World Eaters and said, ‘Subha, keep this one safe.’

‘I am not your lapdog, sorcerer,’ snapped the warrior.

‘And yet you will do it,’ said Atharva with a firm, demanding tone. Kai sensed a brief flare of psychic energy, but said nothing as Subha nodded and took hold of him. The warrior’s fingers easily encircled Kai’s upper arm, and he winced at the strength of the grip.

Atharva gave him a smile that was part conspiratorial, part shared secret, and set off after Severian. The rest of the group fell in behind them, moving with a familiarity that spoke of decades of training.

He had seen warriors of the Legiones Astartes many times before aboard the ships of the XIII Legion, but where the Battle Kings of Macragge were honourable paragons of all that it meant to be noble, these warriors were more like corsairs or mercenaries.

Or traitors, thought Kai, remembering why they had been held captive in the first place.

He was in the company of traitors, so what did that make him?

THE PACE WAS brutal, and Kai wasn’t so much walking behind the Space Marines as being dragged by them. Tunnels of rock, corridors of antiseptic sterility and bare stone passageways passed in a blur until Kai lost all sense of direction.

‘Enemies,’ came a voice from ahead. Little more than a whisper, yet sounding as though the speaker were right in front of him. Kai saw Severian at a cross junction, making a chopping motion with his hand along a corridor at right angles to their route.

‘Tagore,’ said Atharva.

‘On it. Asubha, low and fast.’

‘Me first,’ said Kiron, rolling around the corner with a rifle that looked absurdly tiny in his fist. He fired two blisteringly bright shots in quick succession, before ducking back into cover.

‘Go,’ he said.

Tagore bared his teeth and ran around the corner with Asubha at his side. Kai heard the pounding of feet and a feral roar that sounded inhuman in its ferocity. The grip on his arm tightened, and Kai let out a muffled grunt of pain.

‘My arm, you’re hurting me,’ he said.

Subha looked down at him, as though offended he was even talking to him.

‘My brothers kill, yet I am nursemaid to a mortal,’ he hissed, but the grip on Kai’s arm relaxed a fraction. Screams of pain and fear echoed from the walls, and Kai jumped in fright.

‘The way is clear,’ said Atharva, rounding the corner and gesturing for the others to follow. Kai was dragged along with the Space Marines, and the scene of carnage he faced at the end of the corridor was so utterly horrific that he retched until his throat was raw.

A host of bodies – it was impossible to say how many – lay in dismembered abandon at yet another cross-junction. Broken limbs, caved-in skulls and ruptured torsos lay scattered like the leavings of a slaughterhouse and wild arcs of blood looped over the walls in scarlet arches. That Space Marines were killers of men was a fact Kai understood on a very basic level, but to see the reality of their unleashed power was a shocking, sobering moment.

Kai had done nothing wrong, but these warrior’s Legions had betrayed the Emperor. Just by talking to them he would be considered no better than a betrayer. Yet they had saved him from death and were killing these men for reasons he could not even begin to fathom. Though this scene of butchery sickened him, Kai had sense enough to know that any chance of life was better than the death he was certain to face had he remained here.

Only two bodies had escaped the attention of the butchers that had made a ruin of more than a dozen men in a few seconds. These two soldiers had been armed with large-calibre energy weapons, and both were headless, their necks ending in cauterised stumps.

‘You shoot well,’ said Atharva as Kiron moved up the corridor.

‘Marksman first class,’ said Kiron, tapping his shoulder. ‘Only Vespasian ever outshot me in tourneys’

‘Tourneys?’ spat Tagore. ‘Why waste time on play when there are wars to be won?’

‘To hone one’s skills, Tagore,’ said Kiron, as though offended. ‘Perfected skill beats raw violence every time.’

Tagore clenched his fists over the broken stub of his spear blade. ‘Another time and I would show you the error of that belief.’

‘Pissing contests? Now? Are you insane?’ demanded Gythua.

Tagore laughed and slapped a hand on Kiron’s shoulder with enough force to draw a scowl of displeasure from the Emperor’s Children warrior.

‘Another time,’ repeated Tagore.

Kai let out a pent up breath, feeling the horrible tension that had built up in that fleeting confrontation. Their prowess as warriors gave meaning to each Space Marine, and to impugn that was the gravest of insults. In a brotherhood of equals, such posturing was friendly rivalry, but among warriors who shared no bond other than that forced upon them, it could be deadly.

‘Where to now?’ said Tagore. ‘The net will be closing.’

‘This way,’ said Severian, taking a passageway that led upwards.

‘You knew the Custodian’s mind,’ said Tagore. ‘Is the Wolf right?’

‘He is,’ confirmed Atharva. ‘Severian’s awareness serves him well.’

Again they set off, and each time the Space Marines met resistance, they demolished it with efficiency that would have been cruel had it not been achieved with such clinical precision. Only the three World Eaters seemed to take any pleasure in the violence, but even that was more about the display of prowess than any base enjoyment of slaughter.

Onwards and ever upwards they pushed, sometimes fighting their enemies, sometimes avoiding them. Severian and Atharva had knowledge of this prison that was more than the equal of the soldiers tasked with preventing their escape, though Kai could not imagine how they could have come by such information.

‘Where are the Legio Custodes?’ asked Kai, in a moment between desperate flight and visceral bloodshed. None of the Space Marines had an answer for him, though he saw the same question had occurred to them all.

‘They are not here,’ said Gythua. ‘That is all that matters.’

‘They are heading to Prospero,’ said Atharva. ‘If they are not there already.’

‘Prospero?’ said Kiron. ‘Why?’

‘To slay my primarch,’ said Atharva, and Kai heard the resignation in his voice.

Even Tagore had no reply to that, and Kai sensed their shock at so bald an assertion. Clearly there was little love lost between these warriors, but to hear so terrible a thing spoken aloud reminded them of what they had lost by being brought here.

‘Is such a thing even possible?’ asked Kai.

Atharva looked at him as though he had said something profoundly stupid, but the moment passed. ‘Regrettably, it is entirely possible. We are all wrought from the raw matter of stars and the Great Ocean, but even stars can die and oceans turn to dust.’

‘How do you know this?’ asked Asubha.

‘I know it because Primarch Magnus knows it,’ said Atharva.

No more was said on the matter, and their brutal, bloody ascent to the surface of the world continued. Where ambushes were laid, Severian would strike from the shadows. Where attacks came upon them without warning, Tagore and Asubha would counterattack with furious strength. Where men with guns filled the passages with fire, Kiron would drop them with pinpoint shots that boiled brains within skulls before bursting them like overfilled balloons of blood and brain matter.

When barriers were erected to bar their path, Gythua would wade through hails of gunfire to batter them down, shrugging off the shots of his enemies as though they were of no more consequence than insect bites. Dried blood slathered the Death Guard’s chest, and a charred crater the size of Kai’s fist had been bored in his side. Armoured doors presented no obstacle to them, for Atharva possessed a golden ring, like that worn by Saturnalia, which unlocked every portal closed against them.

As the last such shutter was opened, Kai was bathed in the most beautiful illumination he had ever seen, a light he thought he had forgotten, the light of Terra’s sun. Kai’s augmetics recognised the filtering effect of an integrity field on the sunlight and realised they were in a mountainside embarkation bay. A row of gold-trimmed shuttles and landers lined one of the cavern’s walls, and a number of less ornate craft hissed and vented pressurised gasses as servitors and loaders cleared their c argoholds and stowage bays.

‘Move,’ said Severian, looking back the way they had come. ‘They know where we are now, and aerial units will be scrambling soon.’

Half carried, half dragged by Subha, Kai and the others ran into the hangar. Surprised faces turned towards them, ground crew, tech-priests and menials. None of them dared challenge the intruders in their midst, for it was clear that these bloodied daemons were butchers of men.

Gythua led the way, a limping mass of bloodied muscle and scar tissue. He growled with a mixture of pain and anger, leaving a spotty trail of sticky droplets in his wake. Kiron ran alongside him, ready to help his friend should he falter yet keeping his hands to himself lest the proud Gythua take offence. Severian followed and Tagore went with him. Asubha ran to the nearest craft, a sleek cutter that had not long touched down by the heat haze rippling around its engine vanes.

‘Can you fly it, brother?’ shouted Subha.

‘This thing? In my sleep,’ replied his twin.

A tech-priest in crimson robes with a rotating series of eye lenses attached to a radial disc attempted to intervene, but Subha put him down with a casual swipe of his spear. Even as the shorn halves of the Martian fell, the body’s upper half continued to harangue the World Eater as a burst of panicked binary static screeched from his shoulder-mounted augmitters.

Alarms shrieked from above, and an armoured blast door began rumbling across the wide rectangle of open space visible through the integrity field. Spinning warning lights threw stark shadows and a hellish orange glow through the hangar as the ground crew who could flee took to their heels.

‘Get on!’ shouted Kiron. ‘Hurry, the close-in defence guns are coming online!’

Subha dispensed with any pretence of courtesy and picked Kai up as though he were a recalcitrant child. The World Eater sprinted towards the open hatchway as the rest of the Outcast Dead climbed aboard.

‘Atharva!’ shouted Subha. ‘Catch.’

Kai yelled as he sailed through the air, but Atharva caught him without difficulty and swung him around to plant him in a crew seat bolted to the fuselage. Kai felt as though every single bone in his body had been battered, and bit back a vulgar insult as Atharva pressed him into his seat.

‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘This will not be a smooth ride.’

Subha threw himself on board as Asubha feathered the engines of the craft with a sudden shriek of power injection. The cutter leapt into the air and spun around as the crew door slid shut with a pressurising hiss of pneumatics.

‘Go!’ shouted Kiron. ‘Get us out of here, World Eater.’

The cutter leapt forward like an unleashed colt, and but for Atharva’s restraining hand, Kai would have been hurled down the length of the compartment. The craft lurched and he heard hammering blows on the aircraft’s hull.

‘Are they firing on us?’ he yelled over the screaming engines and battering impacts.

Atharva nodded, bracing himself with his free hand on the ceiling of the cutter’s crew compartment. Gythua slumped against the bulkhead, as Kiron held a stanchion beside him. Subha lay prone on the metal decking, and Tagore clung to the bulkhead at the entrance to the cockpit while Severian simply stood in the centre of the compartment as though this was just a routine lift off.

Kai screamed as the cutter rolled sharply and Asubha pushed the throttle out. The trailing edge of the cutter’s left wing clipped the edge of the closing blast door, sending it into a wild spin. Centrifugal force pressed Kai into his seat, and he lost all sense of spatial awareness as the cutter boomeranged out into the open air.

Up was down and down was up. Kai lost all sense of whether they were falling or climbing as the walls and floor spun crazily. Sky and mountain flipped sickeningly through the toughened view ports, and Kai closed his eyes. At any moment they would be dashed to a million pieces against the rocks, their shredded remains spread over hundreds of square kilometres of the mountainside.

Warning lights flashed and alarms from the cockpit echoed down the fuselage. Kai heard Asubha yelling obscenities at the controls and avionic cogitator.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry…’ said Kai through gritted teeth, repeating the words over and over again as they tumbled through the air like a dying bird until he felt the pressure of Atharva’s restraining hand lift.

‘To whom are you apologising?’ asked Atharva.

Kai opened his eyes as his lurching senses told him they were flying level again. Hope and amazement vied for centre space in his mind as he saw tall spires of gold and the rugged flanks of the mountain sweeping past through the view ports.

‘The dead,’ said Kai without thinking.

‘The dead need no one to apologise for them,’ said Atharva. ‘It is the living who need forgiveness.’

Though the words were said lightly, Kai sensed the bitterness behind them. Atharva had the bearing of a scholar trapped in a warrior’s body, but there was no mistaking the potential for violence that swelled within his breast.

‘Good flying, Asubha,’ shouted Tagore.

‘We’re not done yet,’ said Asubha. ‘Incoming fighters vectoring in on our position. Firelances by the speed of them.’

‘How far?’ called Atharva.

‘One hundred and eighty kilometres and closing fast.’

‘Fly nap of the earth and hold your course,’ ordered Atharva.

‘That won’t hide us,’ Asubha warned him.

‘I know, but I have wiles beyond your understanding,’ said Atharva, closing his eyes.

FLIGHT LEADER PTELOS Requer eased up on the afterburner, letting Eastern Lightflatten out the steep curve of its ascent from Srinagar Station. The roar of the Firelance’s engine was like the bellow of a giant beast, and the force of acceleration was like being kicked in the back by one of the migoulabourers that worked in the camps before the palace walls.

Tobias Moshar flew Promethean Arkjust off his right wing, and Osirin Falk captained Twilight’s Fadeon his left, three flyers with a combined kill count of over two hundred enemy aircraft. Most of their combat flying had been done over two centuries ago, but the pilots remembered and their enhanced cognitive recall had lived those fights scores of times.

Requer was a natural flyer, a man who felt ill at ease when not able to take a warplane into the sky, a man who regarded a life lived on the ground as a waste of potential. The majority of sorties he flew these days were nothing more than routine intercepts of privateers bringing contraband into the mountains aboard prop-driven aircraft that predated the beginning of the wars of Unity.

This flight promised to be different.

A red-ball alert had come down from on high, and Requer had been first to the flight line, running though his pre-flight check in the shortest time before waving away the ground crew and punching the lifter-jet to get him airborne. Operations had vectored them to the target, and checking the readings on the slate before him, Requer felt his initial exhilaration bleed away as he saw how slowly the target was moving.

‘Do you have the contact, Torchlight?’ came the voice of Operations.

‘Got it,’ answered Requer. ‘Bearing two-seven-nine, one hundred and sixty-seven kilometres out, altitude one thousand metres.’

‘That’s it, Torchlight,’ confirmed Operations. ‘Your orders are to close and destroy the target. Visual confirmation of destruction is required.’

‘Understood, operations,’ said Requer. ‘What is the nature of the target?’

‘As I have it, the target is a Cargo 9escort cutter.’

‘An escort cutter?’

‘That’s what I have here,’ said Operations. ‘Its destruction comes with the highest authority prefix.’

‘I think we can handle an escort cutter,’ said Requer.

‘Understood,’ said Operations. ‘Good hunting.’

Requer shut off the link and opened the vox to his fellow flyers.

‘You all heard that?’ he asked.

‘Someone reallywants that cutter brought down,’ said Moshar.

‘Who do you think is aboard?’ asked Falk.

Requer plotted a reverse vector for the cutter and let out a whistling breath of surprise.

‘Looks like it’s come from Khangba Marwu, so I’m thinking there must be some escapees on board,’ answered Requer. ‘Must be some very bad men aboard that cutter, so let’s get this done right. We’re coming up on the initial point, so climb to Angels minus two thousand on my mark.’

Moshar and Falk acknowledged his command with a click on the vox and Requer turned his attention to the countdown unfolding on the ranging scope. When the number reached zero, he pulled back on the stick and pulled the Firelance into a steep climb. Their closure rate would put them in missile range inside two minutes, but Requer wasn’t about to launch until he had a visual on the fleeing cutter.

The mountains flashed past to his right, a blur of icy rock that moved too fast to make out any detail. Despite the novelty of escapees from Khangba Marwu, this mission looked like it would be as routine as any other. After all, a Cargo 9was no match for even one Firelance, so three was overkill. The structures of the palace below were a blur, a streaking tapestry of gold, silver and white marble. Requer had flown the length, breadth and circumference of the palace a hundred times or more, and every time he found some new wonder at which to marvel. Yet he had no eyes for its magnificence on this flight, he was on a war footing and all his attention was claimed by his target.

The range marker was slipping closer to the centre of his display, and Requer looked down as he saw a flash of silver against the black rock of the mountains. The cutter was jinking left and right, hugging the side of the mountain in the false hope that such manoeuvres would keep it safe from a hunting Firelance. The pilot had skill, weaving in and out of natural rock formations at high speed to keep his pursuer from obtaining missile lock, but it would take more than that to evade Ptelos Requer.

He checked his scopes one last time. The direction was right, and the returns were solid. He craned his neck, twisting left and right to make sure there was nothing else in the air with them. The last thing he needed was an accidental shoot down of some civilian craft straying too close to an engagement zone.

Satisfied this craft below him was the Cargo 9he had been ordered to kill, Ptelos Requer armed the weapons systems and almost immediately his helmet was filled with the harsh buzzing of a missile lock.

He eased the stick forward, pushing Eastern Lightinto a shallow attack dive.

‘Target acquired,’ said Requer, flipping up the trigger guard on his control column.

KAI LOOKED UP at Atharva, feeling a build up of psychic power that filled the air with an actinic chill and the bilious taste of metal. The nunciowas nothing compared to this, and even the vaticand the eremployed no abilities of this magnitude. Atharva was a battle psychic, a warrior-mystic who wielded his powers for destruction and violence, and Kai had tasted its like only once before, in the mindhall of Choir Primus.

Without thinking, Kai opened himself a fraction to that power, feeling himself dragged along with Atharva’s abilities, seeing the mountainside flash past as though he were a bird flying at impossible speed through the air. He saw the majesty of the palace below them, ten thousand towers and domes, a multitude of grand colonnades and the palatial demesnes that housed the billions of loyal servants of the Administratum.

Kai was a comet, a shooting star of thought and purpose. Incandescent, he raced through the sky until he saw three bat-winged specks that arced over the mountains towards them. The shapes grew larger until Kai saw the fighter aircraft clearly, the Firelances Asubha had spoken of: graceful war machines that could jink and spin through the air like dancers.

Their combined essence entered the mind of the lead pilot, and Kai’s thoughts were immediately filled with trajectories, approach vectors and deflection values. It meant nothing to him, but the dominating presence of Atharva absorbed it in a second.

Kai looked through the pilot’s eyes, seeing the ghostly green of a projected display and feeling the constricting grip of his pressurised flight suit. He felt the heaviness of his helm and the exhilaration of making an enemy kill. A warbling tone in his ear told him the missile pods slung beneath the wings had a target lock, and his thumb hovered over the firing trigger.

Before the pilot could fire, a conflicting impulse arose in his mind.

PTELOS REQUER FELT a sudden conviction that the aircraft on which he was about to fire was not an enemy craft at all, but an Imperial one. His thumb slid away from the trigger and he re-engaged the safeties on his missiles.

He blinked in confusion, pulling out of his attack dive and flying over the target. His breathing was laboured and his flight suit hissed as it compensated for his elevated heart rate and increased blood pressure.

‘Requer? What happened?’ asked Moshar. ‘Do you have a weapons failure?’

He tried to answer, but he couldn’t remember what had happened, only that he had an undeniable urge not to fire. A grey fog filled his head, making it impossible to think clearly. Flickering images of things he didn’t understand flashed in his mind, painful and intrusive.

‘Ptelos?’ said Falk. ‘Talk to me, what happened?’

Requer shook his head, trying to push the cacophony of thoughts from his head. He banged the side of his helmet in an attempt to clear his head, but the images kept coming.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, but the fug of confusion pressed even deeper into his thoughts. ‘I had a fire control glitch. Coming around for another pass. Hold station.’

He rolled his Firelance and pulled into a wide turn that brought him in behind the Cargo 9once more. Promethean Arkand Twilight’s Fadefollowed the cutter, their blue hot engines burning like bright pulsars in the early evening sky. Their light was so bright he had trouble focusing, and his mouth dropped open as the blood drained from his head.

Requer checked his scopes again, and let out a breath two threat icons appeared on his scope, enemy aircraft right in front of him. He was right on top of the enemy and they hadn’t seen him! His wingmen were gone, shot down in all likelihood, and he had the drop on the enemy aircraft that had blown them from the sky.

With calm, methodical precision, Requer tagged all three contacts in front of him – the two new ones and the Cargo 9– and once again armed his missiles.

‘Requer! What are you doing?’ yelled a garbled voice that sounded familiar yet completely alien to him. An enemy trick, no doubt.

‘I have good tone,’ he said as the trill of a target lock sounded in his helmet.

‘Ptelos, your weapons are glitching again!’ shouted Moshar, pulling away and climbing.

‘Requer, stand down!’ shouted another voice that was unknown to him.

Three missiles leapt from the rails in a bloom of smoke and peeled off in search of their targets. The first sliced up on a perfect trajectory and flew right into the engine of Promethean Ark. The warhead exploded deep in the guts of the Firelance and blew it apart in a spinning fireball of orange flame and silver wreckage. The remains of the blazing fuselage spun down towards the mountain, trailing thick black smoke and blisteringly bright flares of exploding munitions.

The second enemy pilot cut in his afterburners, but against missiles launched at such close range, he had no chance to evade. Every jink and roll was met and countered by the missile’s seeker head until the aircraft could run no more. The pilot cut his burners and threw out the air brakes in an attempt to cause an overshoot, but the missile was already too close and its proximity fuse detonated less than ten metres from its yawning air intakes.

Flames and thousands of razor-sharp pieces of spinning shrapnel were sucked into the aircraft’s engines, tearing them apart in a thunderous, chugging explosion that ripped the aircraft in two. The sight of an enemy craft so comprehensively destroyed would normally have sent a surging thrill of adrenaline through Requer’s body, but he felt nothing as he watched the burning remains of his victim plummeting downwards.

Requer released his control column as he searched his scope for the third contact. Had his missile downed it already? He couldn’t see it, but it had been close to where his second kill had gone down. Requer knew he should make a visual check for the third target, but it was all he could do to keep his eyes focused on the landscape around him. The idea that an enemy craft might be lining up a shot on him concerned him not at all, and a vacant smile spread across his face. The grey fog that filled his mind soothed him and kept any thoughts of the aircraft he had shot down at bay.

That contented smile never left Ptelos Requer’s face as he flew his Firelance into the side of the mountain.

FIRE AND SMOKE filled the crew compartment, and Kai gagged, his consciousness returning to his body with a violent jolt. His flesh felt suddenly heavy, and he let out a cold breath as he looked up into Atharva’s eyes. Flecks of winter white danced in his pupils, fading like a dream as their natural colours restored themselves.

A long tear in the aircraft’s fuselage billowed smoke and Kai saw the jagged stub of the cutter’s wing hanging by a collection of thick cables and dangling struts. The heavy cutter shuddered and lurched like a dying bird, dropping through the sky at high speed towards an unforgiving ground. The breath was snatched from Kai’s throat and the cold of the mountains hit him like a physical blow. Roaring winds tore through the crew compartment, fanning the flames and doing its best to sweep its occupants from within.

Kiron and Gythua clung onto broken stanchions, and Severian pressed himself to the side of the aircraft. Tagore and Subha were braced against the aircraft’s interior, while Atharva stood before him. The Thousand Sons warrior held onto the stowage racks above him and pressed himself against Kai to keep him from being snatched away by the wind.

‘I can’t hold her in the air!’ shouted Asubha from the cockpit. ‘We’re going down!’

‘How did you do that?’ shouted Kai over the deafening howl of the wind.

Atharva ignored the question and said, ‘Do not do that again. You could have stranded both our consciousnesses out there in that pilot’s skull when he hit the mountain.’

‘You made that pilot shoot down his own aircraft.’

Atharva shook his head. ‘No, all I did was show him something that more closely matched his parameters of an enemy target and let him make the decision. I altered nothing of his own essential thought processes. I am powerful, but I am not thatpowerful.’