‘Captain Kerne, this is Tertius squad.’
Amazingly, the company vox was entirely clear now, but that only made Orsus more suspicious than ever.
‘Orsus, send, over.’
‘We have a development here, brother-captain, that I think you will want to see.’
They met within the blast-walls of the Armaments District, with Brother Laufey’s best snipers lining the heights above them. With Jonah Kerne were most of Mortai’s command squad. Fornix, Elijah Kass and Jord Malchai flanked their captain, and even through the blank lenses of the Space Marine helms, Te Mirah could sense their utter mistrust, deepening to enmity.
They were more powerful than she had expected – all the Adeptus Astartes were formidable foes, but in the captain and his Reclusiarch especially, she sensed wills of absolute unyielding iron.
There would be no easy deception here, and one misstep would be the end of her.
‘Captain Jonah Kerne, of the Dark Hunters Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes – I am honoured,’ she began.
‘You are not,’ the psyker Space Marine, the one they called Elijah Kass, said. ‘You are afraid, and you have a question burning in your mind, a request which you must make, and it frightens you to have to make it of us.’
Te Mirah shielded her own mind, cursing her complacence. This psyker was good: powerful and focused. She chanced a lance of her own inquiry back at him but it was batted away.
‘Speak plain, and you shall have honesty itself in return,’ Jonah Kerne said. ‘Play us false, as is the wont of all your kind, and you shall never leave this place.’
‘They should be killed here and now, before they try to ensnare us in their schemes,’ the Reclusiarch said.
‘I chanced much by coming here,’ Te Mirah told him. ‘I placed my life in your hands. Does not that argue some honesty to my purpose?’
‘It may have escaped your attention, witch,’ the one called Fornix said, ‘but we have rather a lot on our hands at the moment without spinning word games. So you will forgive us if you find our welcome a little cold.’
‘Spit out your falsehoods, faithless xenos, and have done with it,’ Malchai added.
The potential for violence simmered in the air – these creatures radiated it. They were in the middle of a war for their own survival, and one more killing would be nothing to them.
She concentrated on the captain. If she could convince him, then the rest would fall in line. Te Mirah cleared her mind of all fear and apprehension, blocked out the roar of warfare which rose beyond the walls, ignored the spots of laser-sights which were hovering on her and every other member of her entourage.
Honesty, she thought. Perhaps that indeed is all that will work here.
‘I came here to deceive you,’ she said simply.
It took them aback. Fornix actually laughed. ‘An honest eldar at last!’
‘Be quiet,’ Kerne snapped. And to Te Mirah he said. ‘No word games, xeno. Be swift. I have other places to be today.’ He looked up at the smoke-shrouded sky, the tracer skeining across it.
‘Very well,’ the farseer said. She drew in a breath, and then laid her mind open – almost open. At once, she felt the mon-keigh psyker probe it, as hungry as a starved dog. She set aside her layers of protection, but kept one back to shroud those corners of her psyche and her plans that must remain hidden. And the shroud itself she rendered elusive, so that it might be missed. He might just pass over the lies she hid in his eagerness.
‘Deep in the fabric of this world is hidden an artefact of my people, an ancient heirloom, if you will. It is not a weapon, nor can it confer any advantage in war – it is purely a cultural icon of the eldar, a priceless remnant of our past.’ She exhaled slowly.
‘It is an Infinity Circuit, and it is the key to the construction of another craftworld such as my own, a spacefaring home which could accommodate thousands of my people, and keep their extinction at bay a little longer.’
‘She speaks the truth,’ Elijah Kass said in some wonder.
‘What do we care about the artefacts of her decadent species?’ Malchai demanded. ‘Our place in this universe is to cleanse the stars of such vermin, not allow them to multiply.’
‘Quid pro quo,’ Jonah Kerne said slowly, and when Te Mirah looked baffled, he said: ‘What is in it for us?’
Her face cleared.
He is sharp, this one. Now for the lie.
‘Several things, captain. I wish to have access to the deep mines of this world, to search for the Circuit. You guard access to those mines. In exchange for that access, and free passage off-world for the Circuit once it is retrieved, I am willing to offer several things.
‘Your vox is hopelessly compromised by the jamming mechanisms of the enemy, and the warp is in such flux at the moment that even a skilled astropath would have difficulty in relaying any information through to your home world. I can help you with that. I have covens of psykers on board my ship who will relay any despatch you care to send back to your base.
‘Things do not seem to be going well for you here on the ground, captain. If you are to hold this planet, you must call on help. I will enable you to do so. If we come to an agreement, I could have any message you wish relayed to your home world within the day.’
That made them think. Even the black-armoured Reclusiarch with his frightful skull-helm was silent. She decided to flip another small weight on the scales.
‘In addition, while my people are in the mines searching for the Circuit, I will lend the weight of my own forces to the defence. I have squads of cloaked sharpshooters all over the city, waiting for my word. Only let me give it, and you shall have powerful allies to aid you in your struggle to survive. I swear it.’
‘What oath does a xenos swear that we could recognise?’ Brother Malchai grated. But even in him, she could sense the seed of doubt growing. Good, good.
Jonah Kerne stood marble-still. Te Mirah left her own mind open, aside from the shrouded corners, and felt the psyker, Kass, fumble through it. He was not adept at such things, and she could sense his urgency, his need to believe.
‘I sense no deception in her – the offer seems to be genuine, captain,’ he said.
Kerne said nothing for a long time, but stood there as still and calm as a statue in the Reclusiam. The rest of them, Space Marine and xenos, waited, listening to the sound of the war which raged endlessly beyond the high walls of the Armaments District.
Finally, slowly, the Dark Hunters captain reached up and lifted his helm from his head with a hiss of atmospherics, and then looked down on the eldar farseer, eye to eye.
‘Your offer is accepted,’ he said, very quiet, his black eyes searching her face, the ocular implants in them glinting red as blood in the the pupils. ‘I will not hinder you in the search for this thing, or its passage off-world should you find it. I give you my word.’
Jonah Kerne stepped forward, until he was close to the farseer. The eldar woman was tall, but he still towered over her. She mastered the urge to back away from him.
‘Play me false, and you will die. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I know that,’ she said, and there was no falseness in her at that moment. This creature was no psyker, but there was a searching shrewdness in him that could not be fooled, not face to face at any rate.
‘I am hostage for my own word, captain. I will remain with you while my people make the search. If you are betrayed, it will not be by me, and I will pay for any betrayal with my life.’
She turned around. ‘Ainoc, witness me now. You will search for the Infinity Circuit, and you will bring it forth while I remain here on the surface. On your good faith rests my own life. Do you understand?’
The male eldar with the sword at his back bowed slightly. His face was white with a kind of helpless anger.