Sava's journal, entry 4

28 Mart 4999 — Leaving Nowhere, the Ill-Conceived Embrace

I had wanted answers. A clear direction. I dreamed of forgiveness perhaps. Ultimately though, I sought understanding. But the Gargoyle of Nowhere is not meant for human minds, but something greater. I know the vision it left in my mind is The Truth. I am ashamed that I do not understand its import. Through analysis I can make the vision mean many things - like seeing visions in a fire. Perhaps all are true. I fear, however, to get it wrong.

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Have I wasted the months since Cadiz? My younger self might feel that. I am wearied that I still have as much work ahead of me as I had before I stood before the Gargoyle. I had hoped for relief, and all I have is more to understand. But the vision holds Truth. I know that. I must find some way to crack the code.

Or is this part of the lesson? Must I find some way to make the Truth part of me without effort, like the shen of the blade? In this case I must meditate on the vision but not force its compliance. We will see what riches it unfolds.

The Gargoyle is vast and old, seemingly made of black stone that does not erode. It squats in the middle of a white stone plaza with eternal patience. It is utterly alien, but not utterly without meaning. It speaks to the viewer’s dreams. I stood before its tendrilled face in the place of its attention and it spoke to me. I was among the stars. There was a Tantsyen konykov at my feet but I was not moving upon it: it was moving under me. There was an even greater majesty here than that of the Baron’s training floor. This was the Dance of the Universe, immense, timeless and inevitable, or so I thought. It wheeled and brought me to the killing move, and I was pierced through and I fell, and as I did so some of the stars dimmed or extinguished. And there I stood again. And again the Dance wheeled and I reached the killing move and was slain, and more stars dimmed. The Dance was a dance of death. The universe would be slain through inevitability. This aroused an emotion in me that I cannot name: desperation, anger, fear, heroic defiance - all were part of it, but it was greater than any. As the Dance wheeled round for a third time and the killing move approached I reached out to take control of the Dance and lead it, and I dodged, and was not slain. And the Dance continued, and no more stars went out. I became a disembodied observer, and was aware that there was another like me already there.

There is a killing move hovering before the universe, aimed at the heart of the Pancreator. But through our resistance, our will to love the universe, can the blow be avoided. Destiny is powerful but through effort, can be set onto a new path. This is what I understand from my vision. I do not know whether it is a general message, or a piece of advice merely for myself, or both. Or neither. I intend to take it to heart, however. I will cease letting myself be dragged by destiny and make my stand.

I shall never return to Nowhere, I think. I kept a handful of its gritty dust, those ashes that cover its surface, to remind me that even entire worlds can fall to killing moves. I will remember somewhat more hopefully the native guides of the wastes that led us to the Gargoyle and shared their bread and fire with us. Simple virtues, pious souls in an empty, dead land.

I have had a long discussion with Teddy that was ultimately futile. His attitude since Istakhr had been noxious and would have gotten him thrashed were I any other Decados. He is 'hurt' that I/we do not trust him as he feels we ought to. I see no reason to change that (especially since he has ‘suddenly revealed’ his Killroy affiliation and a ‘promotion’ to Charioteer Captain), but that doesn’t mean we can’t work with him. At least, so long as our goals lie in the same direction.

He was waiting at Cadavus for me. He arranged transport for my party. He has proved a useful companion. He asserts to be my half-brother, and this may well be true, except that it strains coincidence. He has certainly met the Twins, and tells me he was afraid that I was like them. Perhaps I am. I do know that he wants to keep me safe on the road to my destiny, and until his most recent snit he contributed from his own funds towards this. I don’t know what else he wants from me. I don’t know what else I can do.

Early, 1 Aprelye 4999 — Daishan system, the Ill-Conceived Embrace

Holy Brother Battle Examiner,

Blessed be thy duty in the eyes of the Pancreator and may cleansing fire burn bright and quick the warped shell of my body, should I prove to be contaminated by the horror that is the Symbiote scourge. Pancreator spare me.

My gratitude to Brother James is increased tenfold, for his resolute strength and calm have steered us all through this nightmare of perversion.

It strikes deep, desperate fear into my soul that what we have seen here might be a mere presentiment of the horror poised to eat out the heart of the Decados worlds and from there, the Empire. There is more here at stake than my life and the lives of my companions. If by delivering up our souls to the Pancreator we can hold back the night, then so be it: strike us down in the knowledge that you do right. Let us be lost to Night rather than one mote of this foulness find fertile soil on other worlds.

Later

I should leave a clearer report of what occurred. Yes.

Some hours after we returned through the Stigmata jumpgate, our host the Brother Battle warship Righteous Hammer went into battle-alert. Sensors had detected a Decados-pattern scoutship leaving the planet Stigmata under high acceleration for the jumpgate. This was the vessel that had left Jakovian Rogue team 1 on Istakhr before flying onwards, obviously with the other team still aboard.

I wanted answers. I was not prepared to wait. I convinced Brother James quickly, and Teddy and Shui Lin more reluctantly, to attempt to seize the vessel before it could fly through the jumpgate. We were given a little over an hour to achieve this, then the fleet would obliterate the scoutship with missiles.

To my abiding glee, Brother James donned his Cassock Superior for the mission. To my annoyance I was forced to wear a spacesuit, which meant I was shorn of the protection of my synthsuit and shield. Teddy loaned me a blaster pistol, which I soon found a very agreeable weapon.

A short flight at maximum burn on the Ill-Conceived Embrace brought us to dock with the scoutship uncontested, with some 40 minutes to the deadline. We latched onto the top hatch and Brother James, Teddy and I boarded it. As I entered the top deck I was struck immediately by a sense of cloying dankness, as if I were buried in the worst part of the Severus jungle but worse. I checked my suit seals but they were fine. I suspect my impression was due to my nearness to the Symbiote gestalt, a psychic resonance. I did not enjoy it.

In the forward observation room we found a dead body, its throat cut. Old blood dried down its front. The machinery in the room was a wreck. I made sure the body would trouble no one no more by shooting it through the head. Would that I did this to every body we encountered!

We noticed that the scoutship’s engines changed tone and determined it had accelerated once more - we now had less than 20 minutes to achieve our objectives! Brother James lead us to the main deck, where a body cut in half by the lower deck’s hatch made a pool of gelid blood at the base of the ladder. I neglected to shoot this one.

We made our way forward to the door to the bridge to find it locked and the panel burned. Teddy had to redeem the wiring, but as he attended to this, a door halfway down the corridor opened and a nightmare lurched out. Once it had been a man. Horror had reformed its flesh, sinew and bone into a war-machine shorn of symmetry, of sanity, of humanity. Its claws dug into the deck and walls. It saw us and drooled. Brother James and I shot it down as it charged us. I shot it several more times when it fell, just to make sure. This was not enough. From the corpse grew pallid, clinging vines that stretched and wavered towards the lights. This turned my mind slightly: a man had become a ravening beast that was now become a jungle: an ecosystem in a single shell! How could we fight such an infection if it got out? Would that we had brought an incinerator!

Worse horror was on the bridge, once Brother James used a thermite charge to open the door. Another corpse in the captain’s chair, grown open, his entrails and lights now grown into a phantasmagorical parody of a coral reef over the walls and ceiling, bonded into the control systems of the ship. We had talked of salvage earlier, before we knew the horror — now we knew that this ship must be destroyed.

The worst thing was that the human part of this Symbiote excrescence had enough humanity left to bang its human arm on the chair (with superhuman strength that dented the metal) and proclaim with twisted vocal chords, “I am still me!” We shot it to death cleanly amid prayers for his soul. But our time had run out. The Righteous Hammer contacted us to tell us to get out so they could destroy the vessel in time no matter who was on it. I told them to launch their missiles, for if we did not escape, at least the infestation would be destroyed too. We only had a minute to return to the Ill-Conceived Embrace.

The war-beast’s vines had thickened into a barrier to our flight, and it took ugly seconds for my blade and Brother James’s powered frame to tear through the sickening vegetation. As we passed we saw into the crew room from where the beast had come. A handful more bodies were nailed to the wall by their own flesh, now traitorous under the enticements of the Symbiote.

In the centre of the room was a bag spilled open with dozens or scores of jumpkeys. How much of the hoard from the missing Charioteers this represented we will never know. As we fled Brother James threw a grenade into the space that destroyed the room’s contents.

The legless torso was writhing under fast mutation as we reached the ladder. We wasted precious seconds killing it anew.

Feeling its way into the Ill-Conceived Embrace's airlock was a monstrous insect with scything claws. We wasted more time gunning it down. Brother James threw Teddy up the shaft into the Ill-Conceived Embrace's gravity field and he hurled himself towards the bridge to disengage the ships.

We had run out of time. The ships still linked fell through the jumpgate together with Brother James and I still on the scoutship. This did not stop Brother James going about his mission: he helped me towards the our ship and then followed after dropping breaching charges into the hulk. Once the airlock closed behind us, Teddy undocked and put space between the ships.

Once through the jumpgate the charges blew, destabilising the scoutship’s abused reactor, which then exploded in turn in a pyre of cleansing fusion flame. I checked my suit for breaches, found none, although the surface was etched in places as if by a fine mist of acid. I will be discarding this suit as soon as I can.

The Ill-Conceived Embrace's data store identified our destination as Daishan. The ship’s sensors picked up between 20 and 30 dreadnought-sized Symbiote ships lazing in space some distance away from the jumpgate. The jumpgate itself was on a slow cycle and would take 20+ hours to recharge before we could escape. We shut down all systems and drifted, pretending to be debris from the blast. It seems to have worked — we have not been scanned or approached.

Later

Soon we will return to Stigmata to face the cleansing fire. I want to be clean. I do not want to face a future in which I become a monster like the poor traitors in that ship. But I do not sense the cloying dankness that I first felt on the scoutship and that gives me space to hope that we escaped the taint.

I try to arrange the facts I have learned so far, but they are slippery, like live sardines.

One. Two Jakovian cells went rogue at the same time the Twins and Maya acted against me. They travelled towards Istakhr and Stigmata. One cell remained on Istakhr. The other arrived at Stigmata, where they displayed Symbiote infection. This probably happened to them on Stigmata, but it is remotely possible that it occurred earlier but was dormant until Stigmata. They attempted then to return to Symbiote space, namely Daishan. The pilot’s last actions suggest to me the infection was a matter of dormancy or betrayal. Either way, there seems to be a connection between the Institute (per three, below) and the Symbiotes that I do not like at all.

Two. The cell remaining on Istakhr is led by the woman Freka, who may be a Decados, and who may be a witch. Her cell has lost three or more members in confrontations with my party. She seems interested in our movements. I thought they were hunting me illegally, but their motives have since become undetermined.

Three. Over a hundred Charioteer pilots with keys giving them access to the Decados interface have gone missing. They all apparently had contact with the Zuviev Institute. However, enough of the keys have remained in use that traffic to Decados space has remained relatively constant. This suggests a surprise attack on Decados, or a secret takeover to use the Decados shell against some other enemy, such as the Empire, or maybe even the Vau.

Four. A great pile of the keys were taken by the rogue Jakovians and sent towards the Symbiotes. These were destroyed when we destroyed the scoutship. I’m happy about that, but not as happy as Teddy.

Five. I don’t know how much of this the Jakovians know.

Six. I don’t know how much of this Yevgeny knows.

Seven. The Decados garrison on Stigmata and the Decados fraction of the picket fleet at the jumpgate have been withdrawn to Decados space because of ‘trouble on Malignatius’, leaving much unhappiness behind.

Eight. The Twins have chosen this time to make Vendetta. They are apparently allied with Maya. By killing me they assure themselves of the Zuviev Barony in our generation. How are they connected to the Jakovians? Can they be connected to whatever is happening in the Institute?

I want to return to Istakhr in the hope that Freka is still there to answer questions. Failing that, I think I need to return to Cadiz. I think via Aylon, De Moley and Severus if Malignatius is a war-zone.