Deathwatch Read Free Page A

side, gave an order to someone on his own bridge, and returned his attention to the link. ‘You saw the insignia, same as I did, captain, and we only saw that because they wanted us to know we were not under attack. It was a courtesy. I’m not about to start asking questions to which I honestly don’t want the answers. And trust me, you don’t either. Do us both a favour and forget anything happened.’
    ‘Like red hell I will! I’m going straight to Sector Command with this. The implications–’
    ‘The implications don’t bear thinking about, son,’ interrupted Mendel. ‘I’ll assume you like breathing as much as I do, so I’ll say this and then I’m done. I hope you’ll credit me with at least a little age-based wisdom. Drop this thing completely, captain. Don’t mention it in any reports. Don’t record it in your log. If anyone ever asks, it was a glitch in the monitoring scripts. Nothing more. That’s your story, and you stick to it.’
    Sythero knew his expression betrayed his distaste, but it was clear, too, that he was alone in wanting to take the matter further. As is so often true, the resolve of a man standing alone is that much easier to shake. He cursed under his breath, wanting to do something, but not quite adamant enough to act against such strong counsel. Mendel and Brindle were neither of them fools, after all.
    ‘If it happens again?’ he asked the older captain, his tone signalling his acceptance of defeat.
    ‘We stay nice and quiet, and wait it out,’ replied Mendel. ‘I’ve worked system defence for a dozen other worlds, captain, and I’ve only ever… Look, I doubt it’ll happen again, but if it does…’ He shrugged.
    Sythero nodded, hardly satisfied but subdued at last. ‘Very well, captain. In that case, I’ll not keep you any longer.’
    Mendel gave a sympathetic half-smile and signed off.
    Sythero remained staring silently at the comms monitor long after it had gone blank. In the days that followed, the numerous duties of a Naval captain helped to push the matter further and further towards the back of his mind. But he never quite forgot it. From time to time, his mind would throw up the image of the skull-and-I symbol that had appeared on all his screens, and he would wonder at it, at the power it represented and the questions no one else seemed willing to ask.
    Of the men he had ordered to the ship’s viewports, only one reported anything unusual. Two hours and thirty-three minutes into the primary systems lock-out, Ormond Greeves, a low-ranking weapons tech assigned to one of the aft plasma-batteries, reported a brief flicker of fire skirting the edge of the dark hemisphere of the planet below. It looked, he said, as if something – perhaps a small craft, perhaps just debris – had entered the atmosphere of Chiaro at speed. Greeves had good eyes – he was a religious man, too, whose words were seldom, if ever, false. But his report was never entered in the ship’s records.
    Of what really happened that day in the orbit of the mine-world Chiaro, only those responsible could properly tell. But they were of the Holy Inquisition and, with but a single exception, they were answerable to no one.

2
    ‘ Blackseed has been planted,’ said one hooded figure to another in a clear, toneless voice.
    They sat across from each other at a table of polished wood, rich and dark, the grain unnaturally symmetrical. No Imperial iconography here. It was a simple room, lit by simple oil lamps with simple iron fixings. There were no glasses or dishes on the table, no tapestries or portraits on the walls. No need for such. This place, after all, and everything in it, was mere psychic projection. The figures, too, were projections only, in truth seated many light years away from each other, brought together by the life-sapping toil of the psychic choirs under their command. Nothing here was real save the words they shared and the wills behind them. Here in this mutual mindscape, no