Pascal heard a soft curse and looked up.
'He's gone,' said Cawlen, his face a mask of anger as he slumped into the chair opposite Pascal. 'Rykard, he's dead.'
Pascal nodded and slid the bottle over the table to Cawlen, who took a long swallow of the powerful spirit.
'What did he die for, Cawlen?' asked Pascal. 'Tell me why he died.'
'He died for Salinas,' replied Cawlen, 'to defeat the Imperium.'
Pascal shook his head. 'No, he died for nothing.'
'How can you say that?' snarled Cawlen. 'He died fighting the oppressors. How can that be for nothing?'
'Because the idea of defeating the Imperium is ludicrous,' said Pascal sadly. 'I think I always knew that, but I just wouldn't admit it to myself. I mean, what can we do? Really? We fight with stolen weapons that are so old they're probably more dangerous to us than anyone we actually point them at. They have tanks and aircraft and now they have Space Marines.'
'Only two of them,' said Cawlen, 'and one of them is missing an arm.'
'Doesn't that tell you something? That we only merit the attention of two Space Marines? It tells me plenty.'
'So we can't win? Is that what you're saying?' demanded Cawlen.
'No. Yes… Maybe. I don't know any more,' said Pascal.
'Sylvanus Thayer would never have given up!'
'Sylvanus Thayer led the Sons of Salinas into a suicidal battle without hope of victory and I won't do that, Cawlen. I won't.'
'He died a hero,' Cawlen said defiantly.
For a brief moment, Pascal wanted to tell Cawlen the truth, that Sylvanus Thayer lay burned and horribly mutilated in the House of Providence, but fate had cast the former leader of the Sons of Salinas in the role of martyr and it seemed churlish to deny him that honour.
'Yes,' said Pascal, 'he did, but I don't want any more martyrs. I want people to live their lives. I want peace.'
'That's what we're fighting for.'
Pascal laughed, but the sound was bitter and harsh. 'Fighting for peace with acts of war?'
'If that's what it takes.'
'Thinking like that will get us all killed,' promised Pascal.
Three figures were arranged in a triangular pattern in a cramped chamber of heat-resistant tiles, each facing the centre of the room. The first of the figures was a young man who lay strapped to an upright restraint couch, his limbs bound by silver chains and his head held fast with clamps that prevented it from moving so much as a millimetre.
Hissing atomisers moistened gaping, empty eye sockets, the lids of which were held permanently open by ocular speculums, and gently swaying pipes fed him nutrients while others disposed of his bodily waste. Behind him, a clicking, whirring bank of machines monitored his vital signs, the rhythmic pulse and bleep the only signs that he lived at all, so shallow was the rise and fall of his chest.
A meshed vox-capture unit was fitted over his mouth, connected to a series of golden wires that coiled and looped across the floor before arriving at the second occupant of the room.
This figure was likewise restrained, though there was precious little need for it as every limb save his right arm had been surgically removed. He sat in a mechanical cradle of brass armatures and pulsating cables, and, like his opposite number, matter was delivered and retrieved through gurgling pipes. The golden wires from the room's first occupant ran across the room's floor and up over the back of his skull before dividing and plugging into iron sockets grafted where his ears had once been. His eyes had been sewn together and tiny script had been tattooed over the withered, sunken lids.
A wooden lectern sat to one side of this individual, upon which rested a sheet of yellowing parchment dispensed from a roll that sat below a glowing pict recorder. The figure's only remaining limb lay unmoving beside the parchment, a long, feathered quill held tightly between the forefinger and thumb of its spindly hand.
The room's final occupant was also a meld of flesh and machine, but where its fellows were bound to their task through restraints and wards, he was simply obeying orders hardwired into his brain through lobotomy and instruction wafers fed to him by his masters.
A gun-servitor, he had no mind left to call his own and was simply a living weapon-bearer with no will to perform any task other than that which was ordered. Though more humanoid in form than the other two occupants of the room, his body had been enhanced with bionics, muscle stimulants, balance compensators and targeting hardware to allow him to bear the weight of the enormous incinerator unit that replaced his left arm.
The weapon alternately tracked between the room's other occupants, the gun-servitor's brain primed for any of the warning signs that would trigger its attack response and fill this chamber with blessed fire and immolate everything in it, including itself.
The incinerator swung to aim at the figure in the restraint couch as his chest began to heave with effort. The bleeping noises from the machine behind him increased in frequency, becoming shrill and warning.
A hissing blue flame sparked to life at the mouth of the incinerator's enormous muzzle.
The first restrained figure, though bound at every portion of his body capable of movement, stiffened, as though an electric current was discharging through him. His jaw worked up and down, although the vox-capture unit prevented any of the sounds from issuing into the air.
No sooner had this begun, than the quill-bearing figure jerked to life like a machine freshly supplied with power. The quill began scratching across the page, filling it with spidery script, the wiry limb snatching back and forth across the parchment. The glow from the pict reader flickered as the words passed beneath it, carried off to yet another secure room within the facility.
The incinerator filled the room with the hot hissing of its pilot flame, but the gun-servitor's parameters of action had not been fulfilled, and so it sat immobile as the process went on before it.
At last the restrained young man with the burned out eye sockets relaxed, the tension flooding from his body and an inaudible, yet wholly felt sigh escaped him. His colleague also relaxed, the withered arm returning to its place beside the now filled section of parchment.
Silence descended upon the room as the incinerator's blue flame was extinguished and the gun-servitor returned to its monitoring repose.
A recessed door opened in the wall, invisible from the interior of the room, and a series of robed thurifers entered. Each carried a smoking incense burner and their hooded faces were blind to the room's occupants. They made a number of circuits of the chamber, guided by questing hands on the wall while gently swinging their censers of blessed oils and fragrant smoke.
Mist like a morning fog filled the room, but this did not trouble the giant, armoured figure that followed the thurifers into the room. Enormous to the point of gigantic, the burnished, blue-steel silver of his armour seemed to fill the room. The smoke would have blinded any normal man, but this warrior made his way to the lectern table without difficulty.
A huge, gauntleted hand reached down and tore the parchment from the dispenser, holding it up to his helmeted head as he read the words written there.
He had heard them recited through the mouth of a vat-grown cherub, but he needed to see the words for himself, to know them and feel their truth with his own eyes.
The signs were unmistakable.
The Great Eye had opened and the portents of the haruspex were coming to pass.
He heard heavy footfalls behind him as a figure clad in enormous plate armour, the equal of his own, entered the chamber. He clutched a heavy bladed polearm in one fist.
'Is it true?' asked the newcomer. 'A power stirs on Salinas once more?'