Fire Caste Read online

  Which probably suits that son-of-a-bitch Machen just fine…

  Jon Milton Machen was the spiritual father of the Steamblood Zouaves, a cross-company brotherhood of mechanised nobles who revered the Emperor in His aspect as the Machine God. There were eighteen of them in the regiment, all patricians with the wealth to maintain a fighting suit. They saw themselves as questing knights, free to align themselves with whichever unit had the most need. Each Zouave possessed a unique, customised suit, but they were mostly variants of the smaller Stormsuit template and none of them possessed anything like Machen’s monstrosity. Modine had once joked that the captain was compensating for inadequacies elsewhere. It was the only time Roach had laughed along with the pyrotrooper.

  He glanced across at Modine, surprised the big man was sticking alongside him. In the green light the Badlander’s face looked bestial, but his eyes were filled with wonder as they took in this ugly new world.

  ‘You still with us, Snakeburn?’ Roach asked.

  ‘The sky’s full of blood,’ Modine muttered. Roach saw he was right: there was nothing like a natural cloud in the blotchy canopy, but it was woven with threads that looked just like the thin blue vessels in a man’s arm. Or like that stinking cheese the aristos liked so much – the kind that was all wormy with fungus. As he looked at them, those threads seemed to twitch and it began to rain – a sticky, slow motion drizzle that clung like glue.

  It’s more dribble than drizzle, Roach thought. Like the sky is drooling over us.

  ‘It ain’t natural.’ Modine seemed mesmerised by the rainfall.

  ‘Different world, different rules,’ Roach said, unsure of the Badlander’s mood. ‘We just got to learn how it works, man.’

  Modine looked at him, frowning. Then he spat in disgust and found safe ground. ‘Yeah, like you’d know shit about it, breed.’

  ‘Aw no, don’t you be doing that!’ Dix yelped behind them. They turned just in time to see young Audie Joyce standing in the hatch, heaving up his guts over the scrawny Badlander below.

  ‘You greencap rookie piece of crap! You total frakwit!’ Dix shrieked as he fumbled for his lasrifle. Modine stalked back and swung him round.

  ‘Easy, Jakob,’ the pyrotrooper said. ‘Boy didn’t mean nothing by it.’

  ‘The greencap trash gone and puked over me, Klete!’ Dix yelled. With the vomit dripping down his long nose, his scraggy face would have been funny if wasn’t burning with hate. ‘I’m gonna…’

  ‘You want Calhoun to put you down like a crazy rhinehorn bull?’

  ‘But he puked on me Klete,’ Dix whined, sounding petulant now. When all was said and done, Jakob Dix had always been yellow.

  Roach had lost interest in the argument, his attention diverted by the strange party emerging from the battleship’s metal fortress. Three of them were dressed in the distinctive storm coats of commissars while two others wore the red robes of tech-priests. They were flanked by a contingent of troops armoured in glossy crimson plate and tall, conical helmets. He didn’t recognise the bulky guns the soldiers were carrying, but each was linked to a shoulder-slung power core and he guessed they’d pack more punch than a regular lasrifle. Trailing along behind the rest was a whole procession of Ecclesiarchy types. He counted six zealots with wild hair and jutting beards. All wore filthy rags and vests of chainmail that must have been hell in the heat. Several dozen flagellants loped along beside them, their scarred bodies almost naked below their peaked hoods. The whole troop was chanting and wailing something high and mighty from the Imperial Gospel. To Roach they looked even crazier than the puritans back home.

  That’s one heck of a welcoming party, he thought uneasily.

  A glint from one of the conning towers caught his eye. There was someone up there. The figure was silhouetted against the sky and Roach couldn’t make out any details, but he was sure it was watching them – any scout worth his salt would recognise the flash of magnocular glasses in an instant. He was reaching for his hunting scope when the company bugler blared the assembly and Calhoun yelled at him to get into formation. It was only as he rushed to obey that he realised why the watcher had unsettled him so much: something about its shape had been wrong…

  ‘Have you prayed for me, Gurdjief?’ The voice fluttered fitfully, little more than a dry rattle. The speaker lowered his magnoculars as the sharp-eyed newblood on the deck below hurried back to his squad. There were so many of them this time. Surely some would serve.

  ‘I always pray for you, my lord.’ The confessor’s rich baritone was a stark contrast to the watcher’s brittle rasp, but then everything about Yosiv Gurdjief was a world away from the blighted creature he revered. Despite his shabby robes the priest looked like a heroic statue given life, a sculpture of coiled steel turned to muscle through the alchemy of faith. His black hair fell below his waist and obscured his face behind a filthy curtain, yet for all his wildness his features had the arrogant cast of a noble. Taller than most men, Gurdjief towered over his stunted master.

  ‘Then why is there no end to this pain?’ the ruined man asked.

  ‘Pain is a blessing. Through suffering we share in His eternal sacrifice and draw closer to the light of His wrath.’

  A withered claw shot out and clasped Gurdjief’s wrist.

  ‘Then why do you not share this blessing, priest?’ the wreck snarled.

  Gurdjief could feel the spiny nodules in the man’s palm digging into his skin, but he was unmoved. This was an old ritual between them and they both knew he was immune to the fungal leprosy. Most men were. Phaedra was a world of a thousand blights, yet Her foulest pestilence was also Her most selective, capable of infecting less than one in a thousand. In Gurdjief’s eyes Admiral Vyodor Karjalan had been exalted.

  ‘I am unworthy, Vyodor,’ Gurdjief breathed, twisting his wrist to grasp that ruined claw, just as he twisted his words to grasp the admiral’s name and seal their friendship. ‘But you have served Him for almost two centuries across countless worlds. You have earned this benediction.’

  ‘And what of Bihari and Javorkai and all the other peasants who were blessed with this filth?’ The admiral sneered, recalling the dozen mariners who had shared his curse. ‘What of Natalja? She was just a girl. How did she earn your precious gift, priest?’

  ‘Do not question Him, Vyodor.’ Gurdjief’s mournful eyes were suddenly bright with wrath and compassion. ‘We cannot know what secret heroisms our brothers and sisters performed in His name. Their glory is lost…’

  ‘Their lives are lost!’ The screech tore a cloud of spores from the admiral’s desiccated throat, triggering a spasm that sent him reeling against the balcony. Gurdjief breathed deeply of the blight as he watched his master’s rapture. The man’s misery was truly inspiring. Under his misshapen greatcoat every inch of Vyodor’s flesh was covered in fungal swellings. Some had ripened to calloused spines that threatened to tear through the fabric, while others clustered in bloated, pulsating reefs. The infestation had rooted itself deep in the man’s bones, contorting his skeleton into a new shape. Without the regular blood transfusions devised by the ship’s tech-priests his joints would calcify and render him immobile. Gradually the transformation would accelerate, the fungus reshaping its host’s flesh while nurturing and preserving the brain with hideous intimacy. Gurdjief knew this to be true for he had catalogued the process in other hosts. Indeed he had witnessed the final, magnificent torment…

  ‘Natalja… is dead,’ the admiral wheezed, drained by his rage. The priest grasped his hands, willing him the strength to rejoice in his suffering.

  ‘She died a saint in the Emperor’s eyes,’ Gurdjief insisted, glossing over the lie. He had not granted Vyodor’s daughter the Emperor’s Mercy as he’d promised, but he had not allowed her the transfusions either. Despite her screams and curses he had forced the girl to face her destiny, even consecrating a chapel to her in the bowels of the ship. They had been
secret lovers once and he had felt an obligation to enlighten her. Over the years she had bloated and blossomed to fill the chamber like a sacred cancer until she was the chapel. Whenever Gurdjief felt doubt rising in him, whispering that his faith might have taken a dark twist, he would descend to Natalja’s sanctum and steady himself with the purity of her torment. Her eyes were still so very beautiful…

  ‘Then perhaps I should die too,’ the admiral taunted. ‘Perhaps I should make a clean end of it.’ He stared down at the vertiginous drop from the tower. ‘I could do it now.’ But they both knew it was a lie. Admiral Vyodor Karjalan had lived too long to embrace death, no matter how hideous life had become.

  There was a rumble overhead and they looked up as a third drop-ship swooped over the tower and descended towards the landing strip.

  ‘What if none of them have the right blood, Yosiv?’ Karjalan asked. Only those who were susceptible to the blight were viable for the transfusions and the admiral’s supply was running perilously low.

  ‘It will be as the Emperor wills it, Vyodor,’ the confessor said. ‘But now I must join my brethren for the consecration of the newbloods.’

  ‘Indeed, priest.’ The admiral’s twisted form seemed to straighten at the call of duty. ‘I have received word from General Oleaus at Dolorosa Breach. The 81st Encinerada have been routed and the Iwujii Jungle Sharks are pinned down a league into the Mire. The push is faltering.’

  The confessor nodded, unsurprised. The push was always faltering. The Imperial drive to subjugate the Dolorosa continent was the oldest, most bitter campaign on Phaedra and the cost in lives was immeasurable. The region was a vast tangle of islands riddled with waterways and infested by some of the worst jungles on the planet. It was also the heartland of countless Saathlaa guerrillas and their xenos puppet masters. It was even rumoured that Wintertide, the tau commander, lurked somewhere at the heart of the continent.

  ‘Oleaus needs more men in the Mire. We cannot lose momentum now.’ Karjalan’s eyes were bright points of passion in the dark morass of his face.

  Sometimes Gurdjief pitied his friend’s petty dreams of victory, but perhaps they were a mercy. If they gave Vyodor the strength to endure then so be it. For the confessor there were no mercies left. He had ventured too deep into the Mire and seen too much to deny the truth of things. By any sane reckoning the archipelago was the worst kind of no-man’s-land imaginable, but Gurdjief had abandoned sanity long ago and seen the horror behind the horror. Unlike his master he understood that the Emperor had not cast them into this hell to find victory.

  The Lethean Mariners had come to Phaedra fresh from the glorious Purgation of Sylphsea, where Vyodor Karjalan had prosecuted a masterful campaign against the Aoi brood armada. It had been a magnificent triumph marred only by the loss of the Imperial Governor’s son, a young hothead who had sailed his cruiser into the jaws of a brood submaniple. There had been no saving him so Karjalan had fired the main gun on the lot of them, making the boy’s death count for something. Unfortunately the Governor hadn’t seen it that way and their next posting had been this dead-end war. Despite the insult, Karjalan had been confident of breaking the Dolorosa stalemate and winning absolution. Back then he was still an unbreakable commander of men who had never known defeat. Back then Gurdjief was still a naïve young soldier with no thoughts of entering the priesthood.

  Back then was more than a decade ago.

  ‘I want these Arkan dandies on the transport boats within the hour, priest,’ Karjalan said. ‘They have the look of toy soldiers, but perhaps there is fire in their hearts.’

  ‘As you say, my lord.’ Gurdjief bowed and turned away.

  ‘But save me the true bloods,’ Karjalan whispered, watching the troops on the deck with bleak, hungry eyes.

  The drop-ship shuddered as it dipped into the viscous soup of the planet’s atmosphere. Strapped into flight couches along the cramped tunnel of the cabin, the Arkan avoided each other’s eyes. Most of them were Burning Eagles, the elite 1st Company of the regiment. Unlike the regular Confederates they wore navy blue jumpsuits padded with dark leather. The standard flat-topped foraging caps were replaced with fluted bronze helmets, their visors sculpted into the visage of a ferocious raptor. The imagery was more than a conceit: the Eagles were paratroopers, trained to fight as they rappelled or dived from the sky, but they weren’t riding an Arkan steam dirigible now and their disquiet hung in the air like a psychic smog. Captain Vendrake wondered if the witch could taste it more keenly than the rest of them.

  He was watching her out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting further along the cabin, squeezed between her watchdog and the colonel, unreadable in the swathes of her midnight blue robe. Behind her veil she might be grinning at their naiveté. Or changing…

  Just like the damned of Trinity.

  Angrily he thrust the thought aside. He hadn’t been able to shake the memory of that confounded town since his argument with Waite. If he didn’t get a grip he’d end up as mad as the Whitecrow. He had to put the past and its daemons – real or otherwise – behind him and focus on the clear and present danger amongst them. The witch was the issue here! The sight of her face in the viewing gallery had unnerved him. He’d seen no beauty or grace there, only a bitter weariness that wasn’t quite human. Perhaps she had a place in the regiment as a weapon, but if so she was the kind of weapon that could backfire on its wielder like an overloaded plasma gun. Certainly she had no place as the consort to the regimental commander. He stared at the colonel sitting so arrogantly beside his pet hag. How could such a soldier fall so far?

  ‘We’re all behind you, Hardin,’ Lieutenant Quint whispered into his ear. ‘Just say the word and we’ll back you to the blasted hilt.’

  ‘Back me how exactly?’ Vendrake asked, turning to the man sitting beside him. Quint’s earnest expression sagged with hurt. Silverstorm’s second officer had once been considered quite dashing, but he’d let himself run to fat.

  ‘Oh come now, Hardin,’ Quint wheedled. ‘We’ve all seen you scheming away with old Waite.’

  Vendrake shook his head sourly. Pericles Quint was a vaguely competent rider, but he was also a total idiot. Like most of Silverstorm he was a patrician, but his lineage was on a different order of magnitude. Hailing from one of the Founding Families, he was the wealthiest man in the regiment, with a dozen titles to either side of his name. The only mystery about him was why he hadn’t jumped ship back on Providence.

  ‘Scheming is a vulgar sort of word, lieutenant,’ Vendrake said. ‘Not the sort of word a gentleman of Providence would care to associate himself with.’

  Quint began to bluster, but Vendrake had already turned back to Cutler. He knew that Silverstorm would back him if he moved against the colonel, but the key players would be the company commanders. If they stood with him the whole regiment would fall into step. The Norland-hater Machen was already champing at the bit about the witch so he’d play along for sure, but Templeton was a strange bird and Waite was still fiercely loyal to his old friend.

  Unexpectedly Cutler looked up and met Vendrake’s gaze, his expression stony. The captain’s mouth went dry. Had the witch sensed him spying in the viewing gallery? Had she plucked the treason from his mind and informed on him? How could he defend against something so insidious?

  Suddenly the colonel’s attention snapped to his vox-operator. The elderly greyback was sat opposite Cutler, too far away for Vendrake to hear over the rumble of the engines, but he saw the man fiddling with his vox-set, growing frantic as Cutler harangued him. Others in the cabin began to notice the commotion.

  What in the Seven Hells is going on? Vendrake wondered.

  Then Cutler howled. It was a sustained bellow of rage that made Vendrake’s hackles rise. No sane man would make a sound like that…

  The colonel’s face was twisted with wrath and his muscles bulged against his harness, fighting straps he could have simpl
y unbuckled. With a final effort he broke free and surged to his feet. Convinced his commander had finally snapped, Vendrake reached for his sidearm.

  He’s like a man possessed!

  Then Cutler reeled to an abrupt standstill and swung round to stare at the witch. Long moments passed, then Vendrake saw his face twitch as the mania drained out of him, leaving a residue of cold fury.

  She’s leashed him in like a mad dog. Vendrake was repelled by the insight.

  The colonel breathed deeply and seemed to grow taller as he glared around the cabin. ‘Confederates, I’ve just received word from the ground.’ Cutler paused, playing his old trick, addressing them all, yet seeming to speak to every man individually. ‘Major Waite is dead and we have all been played for fools.’

  With that the colonel drew his pistol and stalked towards the cockpit.

  The boat crested an angry wave, tilting almost vertically as it crashed back down into the churning ocean. Sour spray cascaded over the gunwales and splashed the men huddled on the metal benches within. The water looked like curdled milk, yellow and blotchy with a glutinous algal scum that reeked of sewage. The stench had been bad enough up on the battleship, but down in the seething cesspit sea it was almost unbearable.

  Another wave wrenched the boat and Toomy lolled senselessly against Roach’s shoulder. The man’s head looked like one enormous bruise above his vomit-encrusted beard. Absently the scout pushed the unconscious sniper aside and continued carving his bone flute, seemingly oblivious to the angry sea. Sat across from him, Dix gagged and threw up again, not even bothering to target the greencap this time. Wedged beside him, gripping the safety rail so hard it hurt, Audie Joyce felt his own guts heaving in sympathy, but he was all out of puke. Most of the men in the boat were. Over the last hour almost everyone had added to the rancid soup swimming around the bottom of the boat, even Sergeant Calhoun.