The engine noise increased markedly as Hadrian’s mission to the engine room bore fruit. The landspeeders had backed off as the storm began to spill over the pass, bringing an opaque white cloud of ice and snow down the far side of the mountain. The Zephyr limped into its protective shadow like an ancient ship taking refuge in the fog. The retreat of the aircraft was interesting, bespeaking an instinct for self preservation that one didn’t expect of cultists. With the complete white out beyond the armorcrys windows I was able to relax enough to wash and change into a new outfit, thankfully saved by the passenger cabins being forward of the doomed Montello Car. I was dressed now in a dark buff bodyglove built for skiing, over which I wore a jacket and a pencil skirt along with knee high boots of supple gray leather, the most pragmatic of the footwear I had packed. The surviving passengers were in a predictable panic, some screaming at the staff, others almost catatonic with fear. Under the circumstances the staff were doing a commendable job of restoring order, circulating with kaf, amasec and hot food. They seemed to have some perverse attachment to the notion that ‘the Amalethea Zephyr always ran on time’ into which they were displacing all the fear and terror of the last few hours. The bodies, nearly a score of passengers and staff along with a half dozen of the attackers, were being stored in the Alroblom Car, a ball room which had been the site of the original bombing, its sides blown open to the freezing air by the bombing. This made it an ideal temporary morgue for the preservation of the bodies. It didn’t escape me that Hadrian and I would have been there when it went off, if we hadn’t been otherwise occupied. It said something about our enemies that they would not only attempt such a bombing but that they would follow it up with an assault to make sure the job was done.


“And there is nothing to be done about the vox?” I asked the ancient tech priest before me. He was a hunched thing, with several pipes extending from his back. Periodically they belched little puffs of smoke into the air. I was seated at a table in the dining car into which most of the passengers had been gathered. Train staff with autoguns from their weapons lockers stood at the doors, looking very nervous. I wondered what the chances were of one of them accidentally letting off a burst that would take out half the great and the good of the planet. Hadrian had apparently made enough of an impression on the crowd that my table remained an island free of protesting passengers, though anyone who had seen me before I changed, covered in blood and gore, might reasonably have wanted to avoid me. Or perhaps the las carbine and tactical harness on the table dissuaded them.


“Zzzzz… nothing,” the techpriest burbled from beneath his hood. “Zzzzz tech sacrilege was extensives, zzzpares and back ups… zzzz also dezzztroyed.” The metallic burr in his voice set my teeth on edge and not for the first time I wished Lazarus was here to take care of this sort of thing. The enemy infiltrators, probably more of Vidar’s entourage, had cut our communications before the rest of the attack began. That seemed reckless, a lot of moving parts for an assassination attempt, any one of which might have tipped us off in advance. One of the junior engineers was missing, and I had no doubt that his body had been thrown from the train to allow a saboteur to take his place. The thought that there were infiltrators still aboard couldn’t be ruled out, but the crew were on alert for unfamiliar faces and the offending Ident had been blocked from access to any of the internal doors.


“Zzzze will have to take on… zzzzpares at zzz nextz zzzztop,” the Magos continued. I wondered at the fact that the old tech priest thought that the Zephyr would continue beyond the town of Trierea on the far side of the pass. Such was the mentality of train people I supposed. There was a slight shift in my stomach as we crested the pass. The internal speakers played a bar of the crescendo of The March of the Primarchs and a cultured voice informed us that we had crested the mountain. Ordinarily that would be the high point of the Ascension Ball but today it was met only with a slight muting in the buzz of conversation.


“How long do you expect this storm will last Magos?” I asked as I watched the sleet of ice whip past outside.


“Zzzzt one zero day zzz at least,” the Magos buzzed. I arched an eyebrow.

“Ten days? That is quite a storm isn’t it,” I asked.

“Zzzzapologies, one zero is to say zzzz two days,” the Magos clacked, somehow conveying exasperation with those uninitiated into his world of mechanical mystery. That would take them almost to Trierea at their current rate of travel. I paused as an unpleasant thought occurred to me.


“Are there any safeguards in place against the track being cut, bridges taken out?” I asked, suddenly assailed by the idea of the train plunging into some canyon and taking us all with it.


“Zzzimpossible,” the Magos assured me, “conductivity tezzzzts would indicate if zzzzhe line zzinterity wazzz compromised.”


That made me feel somewhat better, although I had a pervading sense that our unknown adversary had far from given up. An attack like this bespoke considerable resources and intelligence. My fingers played with the plex portraits of Hadrian and myself that I had taken from the dead. Now that I had the leisure to go back over my hairstyles in detail, I concluded that they had been taken during the Midsummer Festival, in which many of the local gentry and peasants had been invited to Hadrian’s estate for a fair, as was the custom of large landowners on Pacitus. That did nothing to narrow down who was after us, as anyone could have taken the picts, maybe even without knowing what they were for.


Not for the first time I wished I had controlled myself and taken my attacker alive. It was possible I could have taken information from his mind. For a guilty moment I considered interrogating a shade but Hadrian would not approve and it was vanishingly unlikely I could find anyone else on the train to help with the ritual. As if summoned by the idea of using warpcraft Hadrian appeared, looking somewhat disheveled by battle but alive and uninjured. There was a murmur from the crowd as he did so. Evidently ‘the Admiral’s’ reputation had spread among the passengers and staff. Several men looked disgruntled and several women looked alarmingly speculative. The staff seemed to have an attitude of grateful subservience, pleased to have a military man and a voice of leadership in this crisis. I let out a sigh of relief to see him alive and unharmed.


“Anyone who is injured should report to the medicae,” he called out, though I highly doubted any of these rich passengers was concealing a wound out of sheer stiff upper lip.

“Otherwise the Conducter wishes you to return to your cabins, dinner will be served at the usual time and the staff has much to do,” he concluded. The staff began to usher the passengers back into their cars and within a few minutes we had the dining car to ourselves. Hadrian strode over to me and I stood to meet his embrace, wrapping my arms around him for long seconds. At last we separated and he sat, pouring himself a cup of recaf from the carafe on the table.


“Any idea who they are?” he asked. I flexed my fingers then lifted a dataslate with a series of shots of the mercenary who had broken his own neck. He had been stripped naked and looked grotesquely like a nudist at a beach. 

“No cult marks,” I noted, not that it proved much, many cultists were smart enough not to mark themselves for destruction no matter how much the act might please their patron deity.


“Some tattoos, surgically removed,” I indicated spots of slightly scarified skin. I really wished that Selenica was here to give her opinion on that. It was strange how easy it was to become used to working with Hadrian’s team after spending years looking out for myself.

“Obviously military trained, all identically equipped,” I didn’t have any psi active plates but I communicated a mental image of the landspeeders I had seen.

“Millitarum models,” Hadrian responded to my unspoken question, “maybe surplus or stolen.”

“Vox is cut but we should be safe enough for the next little while,” I told him, crossing my arms against a chill that was as much in my mind as in the air.

“What in the name of the Throne is this?” I asked plaintively.