'I'm here,’ said Mersadie, even though she susВpected the comatose imagist couldn't hear her. She didn't understand what Euphrati was going through, and it made her feel so useless.
For reasons she didn't quite understand, she had stayed with Kyril Sindermann and Euphrati as they moved around the ship. The Vengeful Spirit was the size of a city and it had plenty of places in which to hide.
Word of their coming went ahead of them and wherever they went, grime-streaked engine crewВmen or boiler-suited maintenance workers were there to show them to safety, supply them with food and water and catch a glimpse of the saint. At present, they sheltered inside one of the engine housings, a massive hollow tube that was normally full of burning plasma and great thrusting pistons. Now the engine was decommissioned for mainteВnance and it made for a good bolt-hole, hidden and secret despite its vast dimensions.
Sindermann slept on a thin blanket beside Euphrati and the old man had never looked more exhausted. His thin limbs were spotted and bony, his cheeks sunken and hollow.
One of the engine crew hurried up to the nook where Keeler lay on a bundle of blankets and clothes. He was stripped to the waist and covered in grease, a huge and muscular man who was moved to kneel meekly a short distance from the bed of his saint.
'Miss Oliton,' he said reverentially. 'Is there anyВthing you or the saint need?'
'Water,’ said Mersadie. 'Clean water, and Kyril asked for more paper, too.'
The crewman's eyes lit up. 'He's writing someВthing?' Mersadie wished she hadn't mentioned it. 'He's collecting his thoughts for a speech,' she said. 'He's still an iterator, after all. If you can find some medical supplies as well, that would be useВful, she's dehydrated.'
'The Emperor will preserve her,’ said the crewВman, worry in his voice.
'I'm sure he will, but we have to give him all the help we can,’ replied Mersadie, trying not to sound as condescending as she felt.
The effect the comatose Euphrati had on the crew was extraordinary, a miracle in itself. Her very presВence seemed to focus the doubts and wishes of so many people into an iron-strong faith in a distant Emperor.
We'll get what we can,’ said the crewman. We have people in the commissary and medical suites,’ He reached forward to touch Euphrati's blanket and murmured a quiet prayer to his Emperor. As the crewman left she whispered her own perfunctory prayer. After all, the Emperor was more real than any of the so-called gods the Crusade had come across.
'Deliver us, Emperor,’ she said quietly, 'from all of this,’
She looked down sadly and caught her breath as Euphrati stirred and opened her eyes, like someone awakening from a deep sleep. Mersadie reached down slowly, afraid that if she moved too quickly she might shatter this brittle miracle, and took the imagists hand in hers. 'Euphrati,’ she whispered softly. 'Can you hear me?' Euphrati Keeler's mouth fell open and she screamed in terror.
'Are you sure?' asked Captain Garro of the Death Guard, limping on his newly replaced augmetic leg.
The gyros had not yet meshed with his nervous sysВtem and, much to his fury, he had been denied a place in the Death Guard speartip. The bridge of the Eisenstein was open to the workings of the ship, as was typical with the Death Guard fleet, since Mortarion despised ornamentation of any kind.
The bridge was a skeletal framework suspended among the ship's guts with massive coolant pipes looming overhead like knots of metallic entrails. The bridge crew bent over a platform inset with cogitator banks, their faces illuminated in harsh greens and blues.
Very sure, captain,’ replied the communications officer, reading from the data-slate in his hand. 'An Emperor's Children Thunderhawk is passing through our engagement zone.'
Garro took the data-slate from the officer and sure enough, there was a Thunderhawk gunship passing close to the Eisenstein, a pack of fighters at its heels.
'Smells like trouble,' said Garro. 'Put us on an intercept course.'
'Yes, captain,’ said the deck officer, turning smartly and heading for the helm.
Within moments the engines flared into life, vast pistons pumping through the oily shadows that surrounded the bridge. The Eisenstein tilted as it began a ponderous turn towards the approaching Thunderhawk.
* * *
The scream hurled Kyril Sindermann from sleep with the force of a thunderbolt and he felt his heart thudding against his ribs in fright.
'What?' he managed before seeing Euphrati sitВting bolt upright in bed and screaming fit to burst her lungs. He scrambled to his feet as Mersadie tried to put her arms around the screaming imagist. Keeler thrashed like a madwoman and Sindermann rushed over to help, putting his arms out as if to embrace them both.
The moment his fingers touched Euphrati he felt the heat radiating from her, wanting to recoil in pain, but feeling as though his hands were locked to her flesh. His eyes met Mersadie's and he knew from the terror he saw there that she felt the same thing.
He whimpered as his vision blurred and darkВened, as though he were having a heart attack. Images tumbled through his brain, dark and monВstrous, and he fought to hold onto his sanity as visions of pure evil assailed him.
Death, like a black seething mantle, hung over everything. Sinderman saw Mersadie's delicate, coal dark face overcome with it, her features sinking in corruption.
Tendrils of darkness wound through the air, destroying whatever they touched. He screamed as he saw the flesh sloughing from Mersadie's bones, looking down at his hands to see them rotting away before his eyes. His skin peeled back, the bones maggot-white.
Then it was gone, the black, rotting death lifted from him and Sindermann could see their hiding place once again, unchanged since he had laid down to catch a few fitful hours of sleep. He stumВbled away from Euphrati and with one look saw that Mersadie had experienced the same thing –horrendous, concentrated decay.
Sindermann put a hand to his chest, feeling his old heart working overtime.
'Oh, no…' Mersadie was moaning. 'Please…
what is…?'
'This is betrayal,' said Keeler, her voice suddenly strong as she turned towards Sindermann, 'and it is happening now. You need to tell them. Tell them all, Kyril!'
Keeler's eyes closed and she slumped against MerВsadie, who held her as she sobbed.
Tarvitz wrestled with the Thunderhawk controls. Streaks of bright crimson sheared past the cockpit –the fighter craft were on his tail, spraying ruby-red lances of gunfire at him.
Isstvan HI wheeled in front of him as the gunship spun in the viewscreen.
Impacts thudded into the back of the Thunder-hawk and he felt the controls lurch in his hands. He answered by ripping his craft upwards, hearing the engines shriek in complaint beneath him as they flipped the gunship's mass out of the enemy lines of fire. Loud juddering noises from behind him spoke of something giving way in one of the
engines. Red warning lights and crisis telltales lit up the cockpit.
The angry blips of the fighters loomed large in the tactical display.
The vox-unit sparked again and he reached to turn it off, not wanting to hear gloating taunts as he was destroyed and any hope of warning was lost. His hand paused as he heard a familiar voice say, Thunderhawk on a closing course with the Eisen-stein, identify yourself,’
Tarvitz wanted to cry in relief as he recognised the voice of his honour brother.
'Nathaniel?' he cried. 'It's Saul. It's good to hear your voice, my brother!'
'Saul?' asked Garro. 'What in the name of the Emperor is going on? Are those fighters trying to shoot you down?'