Assassinorum kingmaker, p.25
Assassinorum Kingmaker, page 25
So when the Crown’s ion shield ruptured, a few stray shots hit the lower superstructure, blackening its legs, melting an adamantine shin plate.
And severing the guy-wires that secured the Knight Castellan to the arena without power.
At first, it seemed nothing would result apart from a few armour replacements.
Then the great machine’s head dipped, its carapace shell rolling forward on loose shoulder servos. Unhealthy blue smoke, like the fumes of a bloated corpse, outgassed from the upright reactor vents.
‘Holy Terra,’ she whispered in her own voice, so stunned she forgot to use Rakkan’s.
The antique Knight Castellan, shared by every High Monarch of Dominion since the world declared unity before Horus’ betrayal, fell first to its armour-plated knees, and then onto its crowned face.
It hit the hatch to the field’s lower gallery, the plating bowing with the Knight’s fall. Dirt leapt into the air as if from a battle cannon impact, mixing with the haze of weapons discharge and corpse-smoke venting from the Crown’s reactor.
And through her enhanced vision she saw Raithe, clinging to a mounting rail, slide nimbly to the tournament field.
Ninety thousand people, panicking and stunned, began to roar.
For a moment, she did not know what they were saying – but then she made it out.
‘Dead! The king is dead!’
Absolom Raithe rolled in the dust plume of the fallen Knight, trying to get his bearings.
His mask cogitators had identified and marked fourteen Knights. Seven Questoris-class, seven Armiger-class. The threat level of their weaponry was unbelievable.
And at first nothing happened.
Then his mask flashed Incoming fire.
It took Jester’s targeting augurs a moment to cut through the haze of death-smoke and dust, and reacquire Raithe. Enough time for him to get a head start.
Sycorax’s thermal spear was at extreme range, too far for accuracy and probably wouldn’t hit with killing power. Which is exactly why she fired it before anyone else.
She fired low, scorching the earth where Raithe had just been standing, watching as the heat-wash bubbled the blue-red paint on the Crown’s topside. Yuma’s gatling cannon smashed her thermal spear down to the ground.
‘Do not hit the king, pursue the traitor. Melee weapons and heavy stubbers only around the monarch.’
It wasn’t mere instruction, it was imperative will, and she was running before she gave Jester the signal to do so.
Raithe had leapt onto the Crown of Dominion, taking cover in its fallen armour plates, hoping to dissuade their fire by sheltering among the sacred Knight.
Streams of tracer fire zipped downrange from Sycorax’s sinister quadrant, and she saw Vossa sprint up alongside her, peppering the Crown with suppressing fire.
On her dexter quadrant, another Armiger Warglaive – the friendly Sir Sangraine in Fencer – closed in, hunting for a kill.
There was nowhere for Raithe to go. Nothing but open ground and sheer arena walls for hundreds of feet. Sycorax had learned the danger of the open tournament field only minutes ago, and she’d been in a fully armoured and shielded Knight suit.
Her only chance – hells, Raithe’s only chance – was if she could get to him before the other Armigers.
And motivating herself to do it was not hard, because she had Yuma’s order burning in her mind, spurring her on like a horse feeling the spurs in its flanks, urging her to close with Raithe…
Then rip him apart. But she would deal with that last part when she got there. Right now, she had to use it. She bolted between Vossa and Sangraine, urging her suit to get a nose ahead. Zigging slightly in front of Vossa to interrupt her line of fire.
Then she was at the kill site, armoured feet scuttling on adamant plating. Climbing the dead hunk of metal that once contained the beating heart of Dominion’s government. She saw Raithe, sliding into the crook of the Castellan’s arm, next to the cold coils of the plasma decimator.
He was doing something there, grabbing and pulling components, trying to get inside the system.
To overload it. Create a backfire detonation of the ammunition – a miniature plasma bomb to get the Armigers off his back when they came to look for him. Maybe take one or two with him.
Idiot.
Sycorax revved her chain-cleaver and plunged it down into the space between plasma weapon and carapace, chewing dirt and grass, throwing teeth as she accidentally contacted steel. To anyone watching, it would seem she was digging for the traitor.
Raithe thought so too, because he’d made himself small, curling up in the elbow joint where the clumsy chain-cleaver couldn’t reach even when the kill imperative in Sycorax’s mind jumped the cleaver in his direction.
Then Sycorax withdrew the weapon and keyed her internal vox. Clicked her throat twice for Go.
And just as Vossa got around her and angled her stubber down, he made a dashing slide below Crown of Dominion’s fallen arm – stubber rounds drumming the panel behind him.
‘What are we doing?’ asked Rakkan. He was bleeding from a head wound. The crowd had started ripping up wood from the stands to build barricades and use as weapons. Gangs of peasants were now creating unofficial checkpoints, beating or killing anyone they suspected of being part of the murder. Many in the crowd had crude magnoculars, and had seen Yavarius-Khau’s body lying on the grass.
They’d bludgeoned anyone wearing an aquila. Anyone with an accent. Rakkan had seen a woman beaten because she didn’t have calluses on her hands, and could therefore not be a real peasant. Her wails that she worked in a scriptorium went unheeded.
The mob was jumping barriers, pouring onto the field to converge on the fallen Crown of Dominion, heedless of the Knights running towards it.
Koln had to break them through to the service area, clearing a path of cracked skulls and fractured limbs. One fanatic had hit her directly in the head with a plank of wood. The plank broke, then the man wielding it.
She’d got them past a caged gate and welded it shut with a micro-melta in her index finger. Stolen them a few grey robes matching those the arena servants wore.
‘If Raithe has succeeded–’
‘Was that the plan? Were you keeping that fro–’
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘It wasn’t. He and I are going to have words over it. But if he has succeeded,’ she stood aside to let a few panicked servants run past, ‘then he needs a distraction if he hopes to get out alive. Something to draw forces towards us and away from him.’ She sidled up to a doorway and glanced inside. ‘This is it, the mass-refectarium hall.’
Koln ducked inside, scanning the room for threats. It was empty; everyone had panicked and run. She knelt down before a bubbling pot in an alcove oven, and reached beneath it.
‘So I helped you find the kitchen – are you going to distract them with food?’
‘No, fire,’ said Koln, drawing out a burning log and considering it, tilting it so the flame spread. ‘Kitchens are where you find the fire.’
Raithe dashed sideways, keeping the superstructure of the Crown of Dominion between him and the advancing Knights. They were reluctant to fire at him near the wreck, and he would take advantage of that for as long as possible.
A heavy stubber tore the ground behind him, spanged off the rear armature of a leg he ran behind.
And then, he saw the crowd. Surging. Charging. Coming for him.
‘The king!’ a woman yelled. ‘He’s killed the king!’
Hands on him, grasping, pulling.
He lashed out with his pistol, feeling a skull give way as he struck it with the butt. Ducked low and kicked the legs out from another assailant, tripping the two peasants behind.
Weapons activation, right quadrant.
Raithe threw himself backward, scrambling beneath the ankle of the fallen Knight as a Helverin autocannon drilled indiscriminately into the crowd. Blasting chests open, sending limbs flying.
The mob screamed and retreated – but only on that side.
Raithe crawled away – out from under the Crown’s foot – to see a fresh charge meeting him.
‘Kill him, kill him. Do not let him escape.’
Sycorax did not obey, she desired, willed, acted.
Yuma had pushed hard, made his imperative her imperative. That was how orders worked, when an Armiger pilot bonded to a larger Knight. It hijacked the impulse centre of her brain with an almost undeniable compulsion to kill the traitor who’d murdered her king.
She clawed over the fallen monarch, ready to spring onto Raithe.
To her right, Vossa let off another tearing fusillade at the crowd, her targeting array confused by the number of man-sized targets. She growled in fury, waded into them, trying to find the assassin.
Kill him, howled the ghost choir. Kill the regicide!
In the edge of her tunnel-focused vision, she could see Sir Sangraine wading into the crowd with his own cleaver, frantic, the eyes of his Armiger burning red.
Then she sighted Raithe, scrambling under the Crown’s leg, and beheld the traitor through a haze of red.
Raithe knew he was done. Surrounded by the mob. Hunted by the Armigers.
The crowd, emboldened and furious, was running into the fallen Knight Castellan now, swarming into the crevices where he’d managed to take shelter.
And his spy mask, his spy mask made him instantly recognisable.
He zigged and zagged to the opposite leg of the Crown, batting away hands as they reached for him. Leaping through the loops of cabling that hung in between the Castellan’s legs.
A man swung a piece of bench at him.
Raithe took his head off with a pistol shot before ducking under his arm.
Incoming fire.
He juked right, avoiding a meltagun blast from an Armiger that melted four civilians in his path, then took advantage of the hole in the crowd that it had created, splashing ankle-deep through the remains.
Then, a man tackled him. Brought him to the ground.
He was big, the man. Nearly Raithe’s size. Raithe hit the ground hard, bracing so his breath would not be knocked out of him. Locked the man with one arm and rolled deeper into the crook of the Crown’s leg.
‘Kill the traitor!’ yelled Yuma.
Kill him, ordered the ancestors.
Kill, kill, kill, urged the ambient thought-network emanating from the two other frenzied Armigers. Do your duty. Honour the ancestors. Embrace the power of the ancestors. Destroy the regicide.
There were so many voices. Too many personalities overlaid one on top of the other. She was Sycorax, in the constructed persona of Rakkan, being simultaneously advised by a choir of ancestors with her will slaved to Baron Yuma. Even her artifice was cracking under the strain, psyche torn between the multiple roles she had to simultaneously inhabit.
Sycorax wanted to save Raithe, Rakkan wanted to kill him to improve his standing, Yuma wanted revenge, the ancestors glory. She could hear the thoughts of Vossa and Sangraine, even those Questoris Knights converging on them, looking for a connection to see or control what the Armiger squires were doing. A bonfire of rage, merging into one. A stir of voices urging Sycorax-Rakkan to kill the traitor.
No, she willed.
Traitor! screamed the ancestral choir. He is resisting us! Trying to save the assassin. Not Rakkan. Not Rakkan!
Then she saw him. His mask. Among the crowd. Twenty hands on him, already tearing him apart. His jerkin ripped to shreds, showing pale flesh beneath.
Jester locked a firing solution, and her thermal spear came up nearly of its own accord. Raithe’s head and shoulders poked above the over-under barrels of the weapon.
‘Nnnnnngggggggaaaaaah,’ she said. Her teeth clenched so hard they nearly cracked as she activated the weapon.
Absolom Raithe was liquefied along with thirteen members of the mob. Their flesh ran like candles on a fire, bones cracking and cooking black, shot through with the orange glow of burning marrow. Leaving no trace, apart from the distorted lump of his spy mask.
And three clicks in her internal micro-bead. They bore Raithe’s unique bead signature. Extraction successful.
The calculating son of a bitch had put the mask on someone else.
THIRTY-ONE
>>Surveillance Transcript [Device Designation: 22-Beta]
>>Operation: Kingmaker
>>File No. 5782-Gamma-KMKR
>>Mission Day: 23
>>Subject Bugged: Baron Titus Yuma
>>DO NOT TRANSMIT<<
YUMA: How did this happen? How did Dask allow this to happen?
ACHARA: Now, Titus, I don’t think assigning blame is–
HAWTHORN: You’re sure he’s dead?
YUMA: Of course he’s dead. He was already in poor shape. Living in the throne too long. One step away from the Dreadnoughts of the Adeptus Astartes.
KRAINE: Why were the houses not told of his condition? Why was I not told? Ancestors’ sake, Yuma, I’m your damned brother. You always went on about how great a man he was.
YUMA: He was a great man, Tiberius. Great men still get old. And if his state was fully known, Stryder and Rau would have been tearing at each others’ throats.
ACHARA: That’s privileged information, Titus.
YUMA: It hardly matters now, does it? After that display at the tournament his incapacity was all too clear.
[AUDIO: Door opening, sealing.]
HAWTHORN: Glad you could join us, Gatekeeper Dask. After all, this is only the greatest crisis in four decades and we have no idea what’s going on, so why would we need a spymaster?
DASK: I am afraid that the High Monarch, though of strong body, was slain by the–
[Hawthorn laughs]
YUMA: They know, Symphonia. I told them.
DASK: That could have terrible conse–
YUMA: What did you know, Symphonia?
DASK: Give me a moment, Titus. It’s chaos out there. Mobs in the streets, attacking anyone they perceive as enemies of our late monarch. Four of my footmen are out in the basilica square, hanging from lamp posts. Another group seems to have set fire to a wing of the arena. The mobs are furious we shot them up as they tried to catch the killer. And that speech…
YUMA: The plot.
DASK: A hinterland rebel operation. Who knows how they got so far into Gathering Palace. Infiltrated amid the streams of peasants from the near countryside, I expect. They bombed the box checkpoint and sent in a strike force, but apparently that was only a feint to allow an off-worlder, some kind of mercenary based on the partial mask we recovered, to slay our lamented king.
YUMA: An off-worlder you were seen speaking to, I understand.
DASK: What are you suggesting?
YUMA: Always talking about your whispers and rumours, your agents everywhere – what good did it do, eh? He’s dead. Our king is dead on your watch and you didn’t breathe a hint of a plot.
DASK: Don’t shout at me, Kingsward. You’re the one who was gallivanting around on the field and leaving the monarch unguarded. The High Monarch’s person is your remit. If I failed, so did you.
YUMA: Tell us. Right now. Tell us what you knew.
ACHARA: Yuma, put away that mace.
[AUDIO: Sounds of a scuffle.]
KRAINE: Brother! Brother! Hear her out.
DASK: Months ago my agents discovered a traitor working in Gathering Palace. A court messenger. She was highly trained and broke away from us when she was discovered. We pursued her to a broadcast station. Sir Sabban slew her but she appeared to have broadcast a message off-world.
HAWTHORN: That smacks of the Imperium.
YUMA: And you didn’t think this was relevant to the monarch’s security?
DASK: It was too inflammatory to get out. You had no compunction keeping the king’s health a secret, Yuma.
YUMA: That’s different.
DASK: The secessionist faction could have used it as pretext to push the movement forward. And while secession might be popular with the houses, it isn’t the policy of this government. You manage the families, we manage the policy, that is how it’s always been.
KRAINE: It sounds like it was the policy of its monarch, if you’d let him speak, Achara.
ACHARA: A government is more than its head. The monarch cannot control the court on a whimsy, just as you cannot control all of House Rau. Leadership by monarchic decree is not government, it’s tyranny. Particularly when the monarch is a madman.
YUMA: Careful…
ACHARA: He’s not monarch any more, Yuma. And has been less so every day. He wasn’t a king by the end, just a man in a chair. You know how much that hurts me to say, but it’s the truth.
YUMA: She still hasn’t told us who the killer was.
DASK: I don’t know. He claimed to be one of Sabban’s off-worlders, sent to give a report Sabban promised last night. Now I suspect the hinterland rebels intercepted that message, killed Sabban, and replaced his man. I spoke to Sabban not ten hours ago, but his tracking implant has gone silent. The assassin was killed by Sir Rakkan via a thermal spear. Unfortunately the number of bodies and the free use of melta weapons in that brawl mean his body is unrecoverable.
HAWTHORN: Who was Sabban investigating?
DASK: Rakkan. I have sent a summons insisting he come to the palace. I want him watched.
HAWTHORN: You think Rakkan killed the High Monarch? Rakkan? My son?
DASK: He’s just returned, and with a retinue of outsiders. I am unsure how he connects to the sophisticated vox-system. But he could be a tool of greater powers. The Inquisition. Perhaps even the Officio Assassinorum–
ACHARA: Don’t be silly, Symphonia, everyone knows that doesn’t exist.
HAWTHORN: Servants tied Rakkan’s shoes until he was ten. His liver looks like an artillery range. Don’t mistake me, I love the boy, but he’s not overthrowing any governments. Hells, he’s an Armiger pilot.
