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  NIKOLAI DANTE

  IMPERIAL BLACK

  Aside from the corpses near his feet, most of the available space was given over to rows of theatre seats, all facing a raised stage. The leading edge of the acting area jutted out into the seating, like the down-stroke of a letter T. Across this, more than a dozen figures in elaborate make-up and the flimsiest of costumes were engaged in numerous sexual couplings and muscular ménage à trois.

  "Bojemoi!" Dante stared at the stage in disbelief. "What do you call that?"

  Oh my, the Crest replied. Kabuki porn.

  Six ninja dived through the paper wall above Dante's head and landed on the seating in front of him, their weapons already drawn and ready to attack.

  Sex and violence, the Crest sighed. You should feel right at home.

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  #1: SLÁINE THE EXILE - Steven Savile

  #2: SLÁINE THE DEFILER - Steven Savile

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  #1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene

  For Simon, who first transformed Dante from words into pictures

  Nikolai Dante created by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser.

  A 2000 AD Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  www.2000adonline.com

  1098 7 65 4321

  Cover illustration by Simon Fraser.

  Copyright © 2005 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

  All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S. "Nikolai Dante" is a trademark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trademark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.

  ISBN (.epub): 978-1-84997-065-5

  ISBN (.mobi): 978-1-84997-106-5

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  NIKOLAI DANTE

  IMPERIAL BLACK

  David Bishop

  PROLOGUE

  "The hero does not think of death in

  battle, but of victory."

  - Russian proverb

  "2070 AD: The Siege of the Winter Palace and the Battle of Rudinshtein were the final conflicts of the war between Tsar Vladimir Makarov and the House of Romanov. A war begun by a murder ended in atrocities and genocide. Even now, many years later, a visit to either location evokes the horror and suffering endured. You can almost hear the screams, see the clash of troops and smell the blood in the air. After the war, the Winter Palace was left in its ruined state; a mute testament of what happens to all who dare challenge the Tsar's rule, and as lifeless as the nearby Romanov Necropolis. Rudinshtein was not so fortunate. -

  After the war's momentum had abruptly switched to the Imperial forces, the Romanovs regrouped in Rudinshtein before retreating to their Winter Palace. Only two members of that noble dynasty stayed behind to defend the poorest city in the empire - Andreas Romanov and his illegitimate half-brother, Nikolai Dante. Four years earlier, Dante had rescued Rudinshtein from subjugation and its people proclaimed him a hero. But heroes are not enough against the Imperial Army.

  The Tsar's second-in-command, Count Pyre, directed the Battle of Rudinshtein. The 33rd Imperial Artillery Division initiated a relentless bombardment that all but demolished Rudinshtein's ramshackle defences within an hour. In the aftermath of the war, Vladimir the Conqueror denied responsibility for the city's destruction. Tsarist officials claimed it was Pyre's vendetta against Dante - who had killed the count's lover five years earlier - that accounted for the acts of genocide that blackened the Imperial victory. Certainly, it was Pyre who denied the surviving civilians safe passage from the city, but it was General Ivanov who prosecuted that order.

  Vassily Ivanov, a brilliant warrior of unequalled savagery, led the Imperial Black, a regiment whose mere mention was enough to void the bowels of most foes. Officially, his thousand-strong force took its name from the jet-black uniform that was proudly worn by the regiment's soldiers. But most believed the sinister sobriquet had been inspired by the horrific conduct of the murderers and rapists that filled the Imperial Black's ranks. The regiment was the hammer that crushed the life from Rudinshtein, both in battle and during the following three years.

  Rudinshtein fell upon the third assault. A tide of blood flooded the city as Imperial forces surged forward, cutting a merciless swathe through decimated rebel ranks. A spirited final defence took place around the grounds of the Governor's mansion, but even the Hero of Rudinshtein could not save the city he had once ruled.

  On the last night of the battle, Dante walked among his men, sharing a final drink with those still alive from his rabble of conscripts known as the Rudinshtein Irregulars."

  - Extract from Tsar Wars, by Georgi Lucassovich

  Nikolai Dante sat in front of the ruins of the Governor's mansion and, with two double vodkas inside him, thought about life and death.

  Since the war began, he had killed more men than he could remember. The blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands of enemy soldiers was on his hands. He did not enjoy killing. It gave him no pleasure beyond knowing that the act preserved his own life. At the beginning of the conflict, Dante had entertained the notion that each Imperial soldier he slew brought him one step closer to killing the Tsar. Now he recognised just how fanciful that notion had been. Each death provided carrion for the crows that haunted battlefields across the empire, nothing more.

  Around him, the civilians trapped in the ruins did their best to ignore the stench of rotting flesh and burned bodies. In a province all too familiar with poverty, the mansion had once been a building of rare grandeur. Now it was a bombed out wreck. The rubble was useful only as a hiding place for those who had not escaped the doomed land in time.

  Tired hands clutched thin clothes around malnourished bodies. Faces smeared with soot and despair stared hopelessly past each other. Some civilians huddled round b
urning barrels of oil, which provided the sole illumination. Others tried to sleep, their slumbers made fitful by the pounding of Imperial artillery, a barrage so constant it had become merely a dull thudding at the back of each mind. Mothers sought to comfort children or nurse their babies. The few male civilians were cripples and geriatrics, those unfit to fight. Any able-bodied man had long since been sacrificed upon the altar of Romanov ambitions, sent to war against the Tsar, sent to fight and to die. Barring some miracle, their families would be joining them in the hereafter before the next dusk.

  A few days ago these people had looked at Dante with hope, believing he would find some way to save them, however unlikely. He had done it before, could he perform another miracle? Their faces no longer registered his presence among them. Such a thin line separated life and death, Dante thought. Tomorrow, they expect to cross that line, he sighed, and so do I.

  Rouble for your thoughts, a patrician voice asked inside Dante's mind.

  "I'm surprised they're worth that much to you, Crest."

  I was being generous, the voice replied archly. Besides, it's hard to find exact change on a battlefield.

  Dante rolled his eyes. Being bonded with a Romanov Weapons Crest was not without advantages. The sentient battle computer was a repository of vast knowledge and wisdom, and it could access and override any computer in the empire. It massively enhanced Dante's natural healing abilities; and it enabled him to extrude cyborganic swords from his fists, providing formidable weapons in close quarter combat. But living with the Crest in his thoughts at every waking moment was akin to having a supercilious servant occupying your mind day and night - useful when you needed it, an almighty pain in the brain the rest of the time. "If you must know, I was wondering how drunk I have to get to shut you up."

  Finish that bottle and you should find out. But I doubt even an inveterate drunkard like you wishes to die with a hangover.

  "Good point," Dante conceded. "If I die tomorrow-"

  Which seems the most likely outcome.

  "If I die tomorrow," Dante persisted, "what happens to you? Do you die too?"

  I will cease to function soon afterwards, if that's what you mean. We are symbiotically bonded, so my status is dependent upon yours. It is possible that a gifted surgeon, with the correct tools and expertise, could retrieve some of my mechanism from your corpse, but such talents are rarely found on a battlefield.

  "So we both die together."

  I am a battle computer, Dante. I do not think in terms of life and death, but of success and failure.

  "So if I died..."

  That would be a failure. I am programmed to mould you into a potential emperor. However hopeless a task, that is my mission. If you perish before that happens, I have failed. I would experience regret, or its machine equivalent. So, if you could find some way to remain alive, that would be preferable.

  "Thanks for the encouragement," Dante muttered sourly and swallowed another mouthful of bathtub vodka, the clear liquid searing its way down his throat. He threw the bottle into the darkness, but the expected smashing of glass never came. Instead, a stench like boiling cabbages and day-old pus fouled the air, assaulting Dante's senses and making his eyes water.

  "You and the missus arguing again?"

  Dante did not need to peer into the shadows to know who had spoken. The man's voice was a lecherous rasp, born of the sewer, raised in the gutter. Such gruff words and revolting smell could mean only one thing: Spatchcock was approaching. Sure enough, a hunched figure emerged from the darkness clutching Dante's discarded vodka bottle, his foul-smelling form clad in the soiled uniform of a Rudinshtein Irregular.

  "The Crest might be bonded to me, but we aren't married," Dante replied.

  "You argue like you are." Spatchcock drank gratefully from the bottle before offering it to his commanding officer. "Sure you don't want any more, captain?"

  Dante shook his head. "It's all yours."

  "Cheers." The lice-ridden conscript swallowed the last of the vodka before belching mightily. His face strained for a second, then an explosion of wet noise burst from between his buttocks. "Oh, that's better."

  "Diavolo," Dante winced. "We could use your ass as a biological weapon against the Imperials."

  "Bit late for that now," Spatchcock said with a shrug. He peered towards the enemy forces encircling the Governor's mansion. "D'you think they'll attack again before dawn?"

  "Probably not. They'll want to finish us off in daylight, savour the moment."

  Spatchcock nodded grimly. He had been a prisoner in a Romanov gulag when the war began, incarcerated for being a pickpocket, poisoner, forger and an all-purpose purveyor of filth. Offered a choice between execution and fighting against the Tsar, he had chosen conscription. He was no soldier, but his murderous skills had been put to good use under Dante's unconventional command. Spatchcock jerked a thumb towards a case of Imperial champagne lying unopened on the ground. "You ready to inspect the men, captain?"

  Dante sighed and nodded. Ever since the assault on St Petersburg, he had made a habit of walking among his troops on the eve of battle, sharing a drink and a few tall tales with them. It was his way of saluting their loyalty, a reward for following him into certain death. It would be the last time. Everyone knew that. The end was coming and it was dressed in an Imperial uniform.

  Spatchcock threw the empty bottle back into the shadows and was rewarded with a dull thud and a cry of pain. "Oh, I say," an aristocratic voice protested. "You could have had my eye out."

  Rai chewed on his fingernails, his teeth gnawing at the corners of each cuticle. It was a nervous, childhood habit that he'd never quite outgrown, despite repeated thrashings from his father. One day you will be this village's leader, the old man had raged - how can they respect anyone who still chews their nails? Since joining the Romanov forces, Rai had bitten his fingernails down to nothing and beyond. He liked to think his father might understand. When you lived on a constant knife-edge, you needed some way of relieving stress. Most of the other soldiers smoked or drank, or went with whores in the long moments of boredom between battles, anything to distract themselves from the inevitability of what lay ahead. Rai chewed his nails; as a vice, it was cheap and harmless. There was little in the war about which you could say the same.

  He glanced at the others who were sprawled around him, dozing fitfully in the dark. Most were Russian or from the Balkans, a few came from further away. Like him, most had been released from an Imperial prison that was overrun by the Romanov forces in the early days of the conflict. Offered the chance to join what was the winning side at the time, they had eagerly volunteered. There was no hiding place from war. Besides, most of those in Rai's gulag had been political prisoners of the Tsar's regime, so it was a chance to put their principles into practice. Only a handful of those liberated from the prison remained.

  "Deep in thought?"

  Rai scrambled to his feet and snapped to attention when he realised who was approaching. "Captain Romanov. Sorry, I was just-"

  "Relax, private, relax. This isn't an official inspection. And my name's Dante, not Romanov - not anymore."

  Rai studied the face of his superior. The captain was perhaps thirty, but looked older in the light from a fire that was dying nearby. His black hair was cropped close to the skull, while a ragged beard and moustache masked much of his face. There was weariness about the captain's eyes, as if they had seen too much, witnessed more than anyone should.

  "I don't understand," Rai admitted.

  "I was born a Dante and I'll die a Dante," the captain replied. "Besides, most of my so-called noble family has left us here in the lurch. They can take their damn name with them." He called over his shoulder. "Flintlock, where are you?"

  "Here, captain," a harassed voice replied in the cut-glass accent of a Britannia aristocrat. A tall, middle-aged figure with tousled, blond hair and a bruise that was forming under one eye, hurried into view carrying an armful of champagne bottles. He stopped and offered on
e to Dante. "Here you go."

  "They're for the men, not for me," the captain hissed.

  "Oh, rightio." Flintlock offered one of the bottles to Rai.

  "No, thank you. I don't drink."

  "Really? Oh well, all the more for the rest of us." Flintlock smiled and raised the bottle to his lips, but it was snatched from his grasp by the captain.

  "You've had plenty already," Dante snarled. "Go help Spatch give out the remaining bottles to anyone who wants it. Soldier or civilian, I don't care which."

  "But I-"

  "Go!" A swift punt in Flintlock's posterior sent the protesting private away.

  Dante smiled at Rai. "There's no need to stand at attention for me, you know. Sit down, relax and take it easy."

  Dante sank to the ground, resting his back against the ruins of a stone wall.

  "Yes, sir." Rai sat opposite him, resisting the urge to resume chewing his nails. He noticed the captain's fingers were just as careworn.