Lord of the Night

Staring ahead into the driving snow, daring to study her new master's statuesque form in stolen glances, she wondered how long — if ever — it would take her to regain those heady heights of respect. Tasting the ebb and eddy of the retinue's thoughts around her, each one swarming with the desire to impress, to rise to the top, to be noticed, she realised with gloomy certainty that it was not going to be easy.

The crash site was as chaotic and as desolate as Mita could have imagined. To see a thing so mighty as a spacecraft so utterly ruined was a humbling sight. Already the snow settled across its fractured flukes, only the jutting paraphernalia of its lance arrays and command turrets breaking through the white sheet like the half-submerged bones of a drowned corpse.

For all that it was a mighty thing, its ancient plates and spars were nonetheless imbued with a great sadness — and a great bitterness. If the other members of the retinue shared the empathic shudder she felt as she ran a questing finger across a frosted bulkhead they gave no sign of it, but their search was conducted nonetheless with unusual restraint, like looters invading a mausoleum.

The vindictors barely exchanged a word with their uninvited assistants, clumsily picking their way towards a wound on the vessel's side, powerful torches spilling light as they entered. By contrast the retinue deployed quickly and efficiently, entering jagged orifices on three flanks. As they quested deep inside, like maggots squirming through rotten flesh, they directed terse reports via the shortwave voxcasters each wore. Kaustus received these bursts without comment, wandering across the vessel's surface, content to allow his minions to explore on his behalf.

She fidgeted in his wake, wondering whether she should have taken it upon herself to join the search. Her mind fluttered through awkward quandaries: should she await his command or assert her own authority? Should she seek to impress him with loyalty and obedience, or would a firebrand self-initiative gain his approval? Without any inkling of his temperament or tastes, such actions could easily dictate her success or failure as his highest ranking servant.

Unable to skim his thoughts, denied the view of his facial expressions, she nonetheless had a fair idea that she'd singularly failed in her attempts to impress him thus far.

'Are there survivors?' he asked, fingers kneading together.

'My lord?'

He sighed, hot vapour curling from the dimpled breathing slats of his mask. 'Interrogator, I dislike being answered with questions.'

'But, my lord, I—'

'I was assured by the ordo that your skills would prove invaluable. Are you now suggesting they were incorrect?' He spoke slowly and loudly, voice thick with condescension, and Mita struggled to control her rising hackles.

'N-no my lord, but—'

'Excellent. Then the time has come for you to show me you're here for a reason, don't you think?'

She tried to form an intelligent response, but as ever the options each seemed as lame as each other. She sighed, nodding in defeat. 'Yes.'

'So? Are there any survivors?'

Forcing herself to calm, she closed her eyes to the glowing traceries of the binox view and unfolded her mind, allowing it to seep into the metal of the craft like acid through stone. Immersed in the Empyrean, she tasted the ship's secrets, she learned its ancient name, she swarmed in its chambers, and she drank its flavours.

She finally stopped screaming when the inquisitor slapped her, hard, across the cheek.

Zso Sahaal

Zso Sahaal leaned out from his sheltered alcove and drew hungry eyes across the structural anarchy around him.

He'd warmed to his new environment quickly — a predator entering fertile hunting grounds — and couldn't resist a secret smile, relishing the darkness. This chequerboard of shadows, this ferrous jungle, this cavity-filled mountain: here he was indomitable.

Unable to pause, fighting urgency and excitement, he quit his nook and bounded across a plungeshaft, dodging chains and cables: a shadow moving through shadows. Rising across vertical gantries, claw-over-claw, he pushed off with his hooked feet to hop between silent elevators, hanging like gibbeted bodies. Voices filtered from passages to either side and he paused, mimicking the ragged fabric of the wall. In a world of such haphazard architecture one more uneven shape, midnight-coloured and indistinct, was unlikely to draw attention. He unsheathed a claw, shivering at its silky emergence, and waited, every muscle tensed.

Thus poised, with every sense racing and alert, his mind found itself free to wander. It seeped into his memory like oil into a sponge, musing upon how he had found himself here: stalking this ancient labyrinth like a panther in the night.