Bonin came in.
‘That came up the tunnels,’ he said. ‘One of the disposal teams made a misstep.’
‘Which one?’ asked Rawne.
Bonin shook his head.
‘If we felt it here–’ said Gaunt.
‘Sir?’
Gaunt turned. With Varl guarding him, Mabbon had gone over to one of the control panels wired into the wall of the college chamber. Behind a dingy glass panel, a strip of stained paper was scrolling through a chart recorder, six claw-like, spring-loaded arms leaving scratchy lines on the graph.
‘It’s a motion recorder,’ said Mabbon. ‘They’re commonplace. The magirs and etogaurs of the facility will have detected it.’
They felt another smaller but definite thump through the ground. The graphing arms recorded a sudden and steep spike.
‘Another one?’ said Gaunt.
‘Available time just reduced considerably,’ said Mabbon. ‘No matter what is happening on the main approach, your enemy will now be sending units to investigate.’
Gaunt strode back to Rawne and Mkoll.
‘Strengthen the perimeter,’ he said. ‘I want to know the moment they arrive.’
Members of the troop detachment were bringing in the first of the empty carry boxes.
‘Let’s get these filled. Quickly,’ said Gaunt. He glanced back at Mabbon.
‘Take everything you can,’ said Mabbon. ‘Papers, books, document cases, tubes, data-slates. Use gloves. Seal the boxes when they’re full.’
‘Don’t sort,’ said Gaunt. ‘In fact, don’t even look at what you’re grabbing. The Inquisition can worry about decoding and understanding it all. We’ve just got to deliver. Pick it up, ship it out, move on to the next box. Anything you’re not sure about, leave it or ask me.’
‘Come on,’ said Domor, clapping his hands. ‘Grab and go.’
Gaunt took an empty box, moved to some dirty metal shelves, and began to take the pamphlets and books off it. He could smell book mould and damp. Some of the page edges had stuck to the metal. He took each handful and packed it into the box, filling it neatly and efficiently, the way his father had taught him to pack a foot locker.
He never imagined he’d be handling this sort of material. It was his imagination, no doubt, but his flesh tingled despite the gloves. What were they disturbing? How were they being contaminated? This stuff had power. This knowledge, this learning, it had a potency of its own. The books, the bindings, the materials used, the very words, dictated through the warp by lisping, gleeful, inhuman voices. Under any other circumstances, they would have been burning the stuff.
He moved to another rack. Scroll cases. The tubes were made of the same nut-brown, glossy leather as the belts and straps of the Sons of Sek. He knew what it was. He kept packing anyway.
The box was full. He closed the lid, secured it with the straps, and turned to hand it off in exchange for a fresh one.
Felyx Chass was offering him the empty box.
‘What are you doing here?’ Gaunt asked, biting back his alarm and managing to keep his voice low.
‘Following orders, sir,’ said Felyx.
‘What orders?’
‘Conveyance transport duty, sir,’ the boy said. His face was pale.
‘Take this crate back to the transports. Load it securely. Come back for another one,’ said Gaunt.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Are you all right?’
Felyx nodded.
‘In duty we find true fulfilment, sir.’
‘That’s Ravenor,’ said Gaunt.
‘I took the liberty of reading some,’ said Felyx.
Gaunt handed the sealed crate over.
‘Get moving,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to go quickly.’
Felyx hurried towards the exit with the box. Gaunt picked up the empty carton he’d left behind.
‘You look troubled,’ said Mabbon. Gaunt turned. Mabbon had wandered over to him. Varl and the other Suicide Kings were busy packing boxes and watching the outer exits.
‘This is a precarious situation,’ said Gaunt. ‘We prepared for so long, and invested such effort, and now we’re here… I’m not sure it’s worth it. We’re stealing secrets that we don’t want to hear, and laying the blame on another.’
‘I see,’ said Mabbon. ‘I thought you might just be worried about your son.’
Gaunt narrowed his eyes.
‘You leave him alone.’
Mabbon raised his chained wrists.
‘I’m not in a position to do anything to anyone.’
‘How did you know?’
Mabbon’s face was impassive.
‘I hear things. I don’t get much opportunity to do anything except listen. I am not regarded as human, colonel-commissar. People talk around me as though I’m not there. They gossip to pass the time when they guard me. I could tell you all sorts of things about your Ghosts. I choose not to, because it would be impertinent and inappropriate, and I have no desire to damage the fragile relationship between us. On this occasion, I was merely expressing concern for you because I respect you.’
Gaunt was silent. Then he nodded and began packing the second box.
‘I worry that we’re tainting ourselves. Just handling this material, bringing it back to the Armaduke…’
‘That is simple paranoia, sir,’ said Mabbon. ‘Perfectly understandable. As I explained, the material in the college is inert. It is simply data. Oh, some of it is fairly unpleasant – records of abominations, atrocities – but it is not toxic of itself. It can be handled and removed quite safely.’
Gaunt began to put bundles of old data-slates into the box.
‘Would you like me to help?’ asked Mabbon.
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t touch anything.’
Mabbon nodded.
‘There are,’ he said, ‘other areas, crypts and vaults not far from the colleges of heritence, but kept separate, where true evil lurks. They contain artefacts. Devices. Books that need to weighed down and chained, and which can only be read with surgically adapted eyes. Those are the things you need to avoid. Even the weaponwrights and the servants of the Heritor treat those with care. The warp is in them. But the Imperium is so afraid of the influence of the Ruinous Powers, it chooses to ignore vast amounts of data like this – data that is perfectly sound and reliable – and thus blinds itself to its enemy.’
‘I understand the brief,’ said Gaunt. ‘That’s why I supported the proposal. That’s why I volunteered my regiment. The removal and review of this material will give us insight into enemy operations that most likely will shift the course of the Crusade. If we cripple this facility, we also deprive the Archenemy of a vital resource.’
‘Even those two fine reasons are secondary to our goal,’ replied Mabbon.
‘Sir!’
Gaunt looked around. Sergeant Ewler had found something. Gaunt and Mabbon went over to him. Ewler and two other Ghosts, all of them with half-packed crates, were standing in the doorway of one of the college hall’s annexes, a small circular room lined with wooden shelves. There was a brass display case and analysis console in the centre of the floor.
‘These aren’t books, sir,’ said Ewler. ‘Do we take them too?’
Gaunt looked around the shelves. There were small objects everywhere, individually boxed in wooden frames, or stoppered in specimen flasks, like catalogued museum items: small ikons, pieces of technology, idols, figurines, amulets, strange items of jewellery, ritual athames, wands and beakers, playing cards, samples of powders and compounds, fragments of bone and fossil, pots of liquid. Gaunt saw a few old Imperial medals, a broken aquila, an Inquisitorial rosette, some pieces of augmetic and Imperial tech that he could not identify. He saw items that seemed unmistakably eldar in origin, and the blunt teeth and fetishes of greenskins.