Lord of the Night

'A mission.'

To Mita, bathed unwillingly in a tumult of psychic emissions, the phrase was like an icy wind. She tasted the hungry anticipation of the retinue, all forced amusements forgotten, minds focused and sharp. She gave them their dues: fools they might be, but they were obedient with it.

'Investigation and salvage.' Kaustus cocked his head towards his staff, barking commands. 'Three teams, three transports. Division pattern delta. Now.'

The entourage divided like a machine, three groups forming in short order. Without the benefit of individual familiarity, Mita could nonetheless detect the more obvious distributions of resource: in each group there hulked the cowled form of a combat servitor, in each a medic fussed with triage apparatus and checked chemical proboscis, in each a hooded priest stepped from figure to figure, administering blessings and prayers.

Kaustus had been collecting disciples his entire life, amassing a crew to shame even the most luminary of fellow inquisitors. With a single command the capabilities and specialisms of the whole had been spliced evenly and instantly, without comment or question or flaw. Even to Mita, still smarting from their scorn, it was a display of impressive efficiency.

She struck what she hoped was an authoritative pose — uncomfortably aware that she alone had failed to fall in. If Kaustus had expected her involvement he gave no sign of it, nodding briskly at each group.

'We rendezvous at gate Epsilon-Six in three hours,' he barked. 'Cold-weather gear, night-sight, fully armed. Dismissed!'

The retinue filed from the suite without a word, and Mita reflected that for all their variety, for all the many characters and histories contained within the group, they operated with parade-ground efficiency to match even the most elite of the Imperial guard's storm troopers.

She realised with a start that she was the last to leave, and that Kaustus was staring at her, gloved fingers toying elegantly with the cruciform ''I'' medallion around his neck. 'Interrogator,' he said, features unreadable. 'You appear to still be here...'

'My lord,' she swallowed, hunting for a diplomatic method of delivering her enquiries, settling eventually for a lame: 'What are we to investigate?'

The anticipated rebuke for her insolence never came. She imagined the man's lips curling behind the mask: the grin of a cat entertained by its struggling prey.

'That's just it, interrogator,' he cooed. 'You already know.'

She frowned. 'My lord?'

'How did you put it? "Something from the heavens... Something massive... Something dark"?'

'I... I'm sorry, my lord, I don't u—'

'You were right. Albeit somewhat late.'

'Late?'

'A vessel — a large vessel — crash-landed in the ice wastes two hours ago. Given that we were already here, it would seem remiss to not aid in the investigation.'

'But... but...'

'It's not coming, interrogator. It's already arrived. Dismissed.'

She marched out in an unthinking haze, and as she stamped towards her dingy cell to prepare, an ugly foreboding twisted in her guts. Her waking revelation returned to her and she winced against the pain.

Something has fallen from heaven.

Through night-vision binox — baroque coils of cabling and lenses enveloping her eyes like a hungry kiss — the hive was a flaming steeple.

Peering over her shoulder, shivering despite thick furs, Mita regarded the city-world as the convoy left it behind, swallowed by the horizon like a melting stalagmite. That there were larger hives on worlds less remote couldn't detract from its magnificence: the city's vastness snagged at her eyes, sucking on her attention. Two hundred million souls, crushed together like termites, eking out their blind lives in the belly of a spine-tipped beast.

Most would never see the sky.

It punctured the air like a gnarled knuckle. Cloud-clad and encased in frost, it was an inverted icicle, its uneven surfaces eroded by time and weather, pitted by industry and accented by turrets and spires. Where once the tempests of Equixus had raged undisturbed, now they found themselves incised, gashed apart by this upstart architecture. It drew a thick blood of lightning, auroras boiling into the night, and the splendour of its crackling crown strobe-lit the bleak wastes for kilometres around.

On this, the planet's unlit face — tumbling in perfect synchronicity with the orbital year — it was always dark, and always cold. Against the gloom, factories belched fiery waste and loading bays vented nebulae of ionic pollution. From the upper tiers, above the drudgery of plebeian life, windows bled galaxies of spilled light. In Mita's eyes, with her binox devouring every luminous pinprick, the hive stood against the darkness like a monolith-god, an effigy thick with fire.