Void Stalker Read Online Free Page B

the woman’s ragged clothing.
    ‘Is that a gladius?’
    The figure froze. ‘Lord?’
    ‘Are you carrying a Legion gladius?’
    She drew the blade at her hip. For a Night Lord, the traditional gladius was a short stabbing weapon the length of a warrior’s forearm. In human hands, it became a sleek longsword. The swirling Nostraman runes etched into the dark iron were unmistakable.
    ‘That,’ said Talos, ‘is a Legion weapon.’
    ‘It was a gift, lord.’
    ‘From whom?’
    ‘From Lord Cyrion of First Claw. He said I needed a weapon.’
    ‘Can you use it with any skill?’
    The bandaged woman shrugged and said nothing.
    ‘And if I’d merely shoved you aside and entered, Vularai? What would you have done then?’
    He could hear the smile in her strained voice. ‘I’d have cut out your heart, my lord.’
    The chamber of navigation offered a little more illumination than the rest of the ship’s rooms and hallways, lit by the grainy, unhealthy half-light of almost thirty monitors linked to external pict-feeds. They cast their greyish glare across the rest of the wide chamber, bleaching the surface of the circular pool in the centre. The meaty reek of amniotic fluid was thick in the air.
    She wasn’t in the water. In the months since they’d taken the Echo of Damnation ,even after half the ship had been scoured and purged clean with flame weapons, Octavia had vowed to only use the amniotic pool for warp flight, when she required her deepest connection to the ship’s machine-spirit. Talos, having seen Ezmarellda, the chamber’s previous prisoner, could understand all too well why the Navigator refused to spend too long in the nutrient-rich water.
    Mixed in with the chemical stink of the thin ooze were the usual smells of Octavia’s personal space: the tang of human sweat; the musty edge of her books and parchment scrolls; and the faint – not unpleasant – spice of the natural oil in her hair, even when recently washed.
    And something else. Something close to the scent of a woman’s monthly blood cycle, with the same rich piquancy. Close, but not quite.
    Talos walked around the edge of the pool, approaching the throne facing the bank of monitors. Each screen showed a variant view of the ship’s outer hull, and the cold void beyond. A few showed the grey face of the world they orbited, and its contrasting white rock moon.
    ‘Octavia.’
    She opened her eyes, looking up at him with the moment’s bleariness that follows sleep but precedes comprehension. Her dark hair was bound in its usual ponytail, hanging from the back of the silk bandana.
    ‘You’re awake,’ she said.
    ‘As are you.’
    ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘though I’d rather not be.’ Her lips curved into a half-smile. ‘What did you dream?’
    ‘I can recall little of it.’ The warrior gestured to the world on the screens before her. ‘Do you know the name of this world?’
    She nodded. ‘Septimus told me. I don’t know why you’d want to return here.’
    Talos shook his head. ‘Neither do I. My memory is in fragments from even before I succumbed to the vision.’ He released his breath as a slow sigh. ‘Home. Our second home, at least. After Nostramo, there was Tsagualsa, the carrion world.’
    ‘It’s been colonised. A small population, so it’s a recent colonisation.’
    ‘I know,’ he said.
    ‘So what will you do?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Octavia shifted in her throne, still wrapped in her thin cloth blanket. ‘This chamber is always cold.’ She looked up at him, waiting for him to speak. When he said nothing, she filled the silence herself. ‘It was difficult to sail here. The Astronomican doesn’t shine this far from Terra, and the tides were blacker than black.’
    ‘May I ask what it was like?’
    The Navigator toyed with a stray lock of hair as she spoke. ‘The warp is dark here. Utterly dark. The colours are all black. Can you imagine a thousand shades of black, each darker than the last?’
    He shook his head.