Scourge The Heretic Page 6
Stricken with horror, Drake stumbled backwards, certain that her touch would bring infinitely worse than death, and tried to bring his lasgun up with panic stiffened fingers. For a moment, he thought he was going to be too slow, and flinched, anticipating the burning touch of the sparkling witchfire, but before either of them could complete their intended movement, Kyrlock had struck out with his chain axe. The mechanism sparked as the metal made contact with the mutant woman’s crackling aura, but the teeth whined on, beginning to bite into flesh. With an abruptly curtailed shriek, she vanished as suddenly as she’d arrived, another miniature thunderclap marking her passing.
‘Thanks, Vos.’ Drake shuddered, his body tingling with the after-effects of blind panic, and threw up in the snow.
Lower Atmosphere, Sepheris Secundus
088.993.M41
‘How much longer?’ Keira asked impatiently, caressing the hilt of her sword again. Her cache of throwing knives, one on each forearm and one in the small of her back, were familiar, comfortable weights, solid and reassuring. She checked the mechanism of her crossbow pistol for the dozenth time, and returned it to the clip on her hip. She knew that the weapons seemed primitive to her companions, but growing up on the belly of Ambulon you got by with whatever the Emperor provided, and she’d proven her competence with them in countless Redemptionist crusades before the inquisitor had recognised her worthiness and recruited her to smite the enemies of Him on Earth on a far wider stage.
While other members of her family had coveted the incendiary weapons most members of the sect favoured as the surest way of purifying the Emperor’s realm and the most visible sign of His holy wrath, she’d come to appreciate the silent lethality of blade and bow, ranging ahead of the rest of the congregation to strike down the sentries of the unrighteous before they could give warning of the retribution about to descend on their compatriots. Her tutors in the Collegium Assassinorum had refined her natural gifts, to the point where nothing in life seemed so satisfying as a silent stalk and a silent kill, returning another sinful soul to the Emperor for final judgement.
Horst chuckled indulgently. ‘Are we there yet?’ he whined, in the tone of a petulant child, and exchanged a wry smile with Vex.
Keira flushed, feeling the strange sensation of pressure beneath her sternum that seemed to swell up whenever Horst showed signs of noticing her. It was disconcerting, uncomfortable, and curiously pleasant, although she couldn’t put a name to it, and lately she’d developed the habit of trying to attract his attention deliberately in order to experience it a little more often. This was hardly the time for distractions, though, so she turned back to her weapons, losing herself in the litanies of the assassin, and began to focus her mind on the task at hand.
‘Another ten minutes or so,’ the inquisitor said, his voice calm and reassuring, ‘maybe a little less.’
‘I’d estimate between eight and thirteen,’ Vex put in helpfully, ‘depending on the precise weather conditions at our destination. The last reports we had were less than encouraging.’ As if to emphasise the point, the shuttle shuddered, battered by a sudden crosswind, and then steadied itself.
The inquisitor nodded. ‘Thank you, Hybris,’ he said dryly. ‘Precise as always.’
‘Precision is one of the Omnissiah’s greatest gifts,’ the tech-priest said cheerfully, and began to check the mechanism of his autopistol. ‘But under the circumstances, I think I’d rather rely on this one.’
Nodding in agreement, Keira began the meditation of the blade, attuning herself to the precise weight and feel of the pieces of razor sharp steel scabbarded around her body. Their keen edges thirsted for the blood of the unholy, and her hand twitched again, subconsciously sharing their eagerness to shed it.
The Citadel of the Forsaken, Sepheris Secundus
088.993.M41
If there was any warning of what was about to happen, other than the violently flickering balefire sparking and arcing across the face of the portal in front of them, Malakai did not perceive it. With a rending shriek of tortured metal, adamantine slabs thicker than the length of his forearm burst and tore like tissue paper, and a tsunami of unleashed psychic force swept them away down the corridor. None of the storm troopers even got the chance to fire, picked up and whirled away on the tidal wave of warp energy like scraps of flotsam. Some died instantly, touched by the full force of that malignant flood, their bodies torn apart or incinerated by power beyond any mortal comprehension, while others slammed into unyielding rockcrete walls or metal stanchions hard enough to shatter bone and liquefy flesh.
Malakai was luckier than most, crashing to the floor before reaching a more solid obstruction. He felt his ribs break beneath the protective outer layer of his body armour, and skidded into the angle of two walls, bouncing from one to the other, killing most of his momentum as he did so. Looking up, he was just in time to see the twisted remains of one of the thick metal slabs plummeting towards him, and flinched involuntarily, expecting his life to be over in a moment.
The Emperor, however, was merciful. The upper edge of the shattered door ploughed into the wall less than a metre above his prostrate form and wedged there, creating a small, triangular space beneath it. Blinking his eyes clear of the pattering rockcrete dust, and trying to ignore the lance of pain in his chest every time he moved or coughed, Malakai scrabbled in the rubble surrounding him for his bolt pistol.
To his complete lack of surprise, the weapon had gone. Comms were down again too, the vox in his helmet ominously silent. After a moment, his questing fingers found a deep, spongy gash in its hard outer layer, the legacy of an impact that would certainly have shattered his skull without the protection it had provided. Breathing hard, he began to explore his tiny refuge for a way out.
In front of him, a tangled mass of debris and detritus barred the way, tumbled across the narrow triangular opening. As his eyes adjusted to the claustrophobic darkness, he began to discern thin shafts of faint grey light seeping in through a number of narrow chinks in the rubble. He was at a loss to explain it for a moment, but the reason finally occurred to him. The thought was so shocking that he drew in his breath involuntarily, provoking a sharp dagger thrust of pain from his damaged ribcage. The walls had been breached, and the faint pre-dawn light leeching through the clouds outside was penetrating inside the massive structure. How such a thing was possible he had no idea, and with his helmet vox smashed he had no way of finding out.
Taking advantage of the feeble illumination, he wormed his way backwards, finding the other end of the space blocked by the crosswall he’d ricocheted around so painfully. A faint glimmer of light managed to slither round the rim of the metal slab, but the gap was barely enough to get his fingers through, even if he could have turned around in the narrow area bounded by wall, floor, and canted metal ceiling. So, forward it was. He’d just have to shift the rubble, preferably without bringing the whole lot down on his head.
As he took careful hold of a chunk smaller than most, about the size of his fist, and began to try working it free, he became aware of sounds outside, the crackling of small arms and the hoarse cries of men in combat. The familiar miniature thunder crack of hellguns was overlaid with the sharper snap of conventional las weapons, and he wondered for a moment if they were being wielded by the mysterious invaders, or if a few of the conscript rabble outside were still making a fight of it. The former, he strongly suspected.
There were other sounds too, unfamiliar ones, but before he could analyse them further they were drowned out by an ululating roar of triumph from deep within the oubliette below the citadel. The sheer volume of it, and the insane malevolence of it, chilled his blood. Working as fast as he dared, he worked the chunk of rubble free, creating a large enough gap to see through.
Once he could, he regretted it instantly. The tumult in the distance was growing, like the battering of surf against the shoreline of hell, reinforced by the scuffling of countless feet. The feeble grey light seeping in from outside was being re
placed by a brighter flickering, a polychromatic aura that made him feel sick to his soul. He saw them at last by the light of the shimmering balefire: a shambling, scurrying horde, grey robes flapping, eyes wide with wonderment or complete insanity, laughing, shrieking, weeping, or grimly silent, flooding towards the outside world.
‘This way! Hurry!’ an authoritative voice called, amplified to bone shaking resonance, and Malakai just caught a glimpse of a figure in body armour gesturing from the end of the corridor. Its face concealing helmet was crested in the eldar fashion, but the flak encasing its torso looked as though it had once been Imperial Guard issue, and the melta it carried was unmistakably of human manufacture. It gestured encouragement and disappeared beyond Malakai’s narrow field of vision, presumably in the direction of the breach in the wall. A moment later, his fragile refuge began to shake, as the liberated psykers began to stampede past him towards freedom.
Forest of Sorrows, Sepheris Secundus
088.993.M41
‘What’s happening?’ Kyrlock asked, beginning to regret having given Drake the amplivisor in the first place. The huge vessel that had wrought such spectacular destruction was continuing to circle the ruined citadel, striking down from time to time at whatever sporadic efforts at resistance it happened to notice, but that wasn’t what had attracted his attention. Something was happening at the breach in the wall, and he strained his eyes through the strangely moving snowflakes to try and make sense of the phenomenon. It looked as though the rockcrete was liquefying, flowing out across the plain surrounding the ravaged fortification, although he couldn’t imagine why that would be.
‘It’s people, hundreds of them,’ Drake reported, and then, perhaps appreciating his friend’s frustration, or perhaps merely wary of being taken by surprise by another teleporting mutant, he handed the amplivisor to Kyrlock. ‘All dressed like that… whatever she was.’
‘Mostly,’ Kyrlock corrected, focusing the device after a moment of fumbling. The flood of grey-robed people, if they actually were people, which he doubted, was apparently being directed by the soldiers they’d seen before. Although, how so few of them managed to control so many, he had no idea. Every now and again, a mercenary in a distinctive high-pointed helmet would gesture, apparently at random, into the crowd, and a grey-robed figure would scurry over to join the rapidly growing group milling around at their back. He couldn’t be sure, but the mercenary seemed to be holding something, small and glowing, but the distance was far too great to make out what it might be. There was no time to puzzle over the matter any further, however. Something about the movement of the crowd, which still seemed to be pouring through the breach in the wall in a never-ending flood, suddenly struck him. ‘Uh, Danuld,’ he began uneasily, ‘is it me, or do they seem to be heading this way?’
‘We’ve got a problem,’ the pilot said, as a contact icon suddenly flared on an auspex screen to the left of his control station. A second later, an image appeared in the hololith, as solid and detailed as if it were an actual physical model. Text in flawless Gothic surrounded it, confirming what his eyes had already told him. ‘Inbound contact. Aquila class shuttle, ETA two minutes.’
‘Discourage them,’ the assault leader voxed. ‘We’ll need a bit longer than that to finish sorting the sheep from the goats.’ The cryptic phrase meant nothing to the pilot, but he nodded anyway, injecting a note of lazy confidence into his voice.
‘Not a problem.’ He glanced up at the gunner. ‘Is it?’
‘None at all,’ she assured him. ‘I’m running out of things to kill here anyway.’
‘Then let’s go hunting,’ the pilot said, feeding power to the engines.
Behind him, the gunner snorted sardonically. ‘You call this hunting?’ she said. ‘Fish in a barrel, more like.’
Four
Forest of Sorrows, Sepheris Secundus
088.993.M41
‘Keep running!’ Drake yelled, crashing through the snow laden scrub. He had no idea where they were going, but he trusted Kyrlock to find whatever safety there might be in the depths of the forest. To his vague surprise, he could see more of his surroundings now, the grey light of early dawn filtering through the trees and the billowing snow clouds above them.
‘I am,’ Kyrlock assured him, from several metres ahead, not even bothering to turn back as he replied. There was no need to anyway, their vox channels were clear again, although neither had made any further attempt to contact the rest of the platoon. Even if someone was still around to give orders, they had no intention of following any if it meant becoming embroiled in the holocaust behind them. The forester was running easily, perfectly at home in this terrain, and Drake tried to match his fluid movements instead of floundering through the drifts in his wake. ‘If we can find a thicket of needlespine we can burrow in under it until they’ve gone. Thought I saw one the other side of the clearing that ship landed in.’
‘We’ll get cut to ribbons!’ Drake protested.
Up ahead, Kyrlock’s shoulders moved in what might have been a shrug. ‘You city boys. Worried a few scratches might spoil your good looks?’ He stepped easily round a patch of ice, which sent Drake’s feet slithering beneath him a moment later. ‘That’s nothing to what those witches behind us’ll do if they catch up.’
‘What the hell,’ Drake said, trying to sound casual as he tripped over another hidden tree root. ‘We’ve got body armour, right?’
‘Now you’re getting it,’ Kyrlock said, hurdling a fallen log. The wind began to freshen, blowing more naturally again, and Drake breathed silent thanks to the Emperor. With any luck it would obscure their tracks, so once they were concealed, the mob of warp-touched abominations behind them would have no clue as to their presence. A few hundred metres further on the blizzard began again, as relentless and bone chilling as before, and he squinted through the face-scouring sleet, trying not to lose sight of Kyrlock’s hurrying form, blurred almost to invisibility by the camo cape he wore.
An explosion boomed without warning somewhere above them, a new star flaring momentarily in the sky above the wind-lashed trees. Drake shuddered as the cold began to bite through his cape in earnest.
‘Emperor’s arse,’ he swore bitterly. ‘Now what?’
Lower Atmosphere, Sepheris Secundus
088.993.M41
Aboard the shuttle, the attack had come without warning, the first indication of the aerial predator’s presence being the volley of weapons fire that had slammed into its armoured hull. From his seat near the narrow door to the flight deck, Vex listened to the faltering note of the engines, the almost imperceptible whimpering of the overstressed fuselage, and the rattling roar of the slipstream through rent and ravaged metal. It was abundantly clear to him that their craft had been crippled, and was falling from the sky.
‘What the hell was that?’ Horst asked, gripping the arms of his seat rest with whitened knuckles.
‘Three high energy impacts to the port aft quadrant,’ Vex said, teasing as much information as he could from the ambient noise and the vibrations he could sense through the seat of his robe. ‘Almost certainly weapons fire. Possibly lascannon, although from the sound of detonation I’d be inclined to suspect plasma bolts.’
‘Pilot, report.’ The inquisitor’s voice was as quiet and authoritative as it always seemed to be in a crisis, and Vex could tell that his comrades were taking heart from it. Horst relaxed a little, Elyra gazed at Carolus with her usual expression of absolute trust, and Keira permitted herself to look mildly interested in what was going on. ‘What hit us?’
‘It’s a ship… Huge! But there was nothing on the auspex, I swear!’ Panic had apparently overridden the pilot’s typical Secundan deference. ‘They’re coming round again!’
‘Can we return fire?’ the inquisitor enquired calmly, as though the question was only of minor importance.
‘No, my lord.’ Apparently reassured by someone socially superior taking command of the situation, the pilot’s voice steadied. ‘This vessel is u
narmed.’
‘Rutting great,’ Horst commented sourly.
‘Then I’ll just have to take care of our assailants myself,’ the inquisitor said. ‘Can you still land us safely?’
‘I’ll do my best, my lord,’ the man in the cockpit promised, ‘but the flight systems are extensively damaged.’
‘Allow me.’ Vex stood, and opened the door to the flight deck. The man inside glanced up in shocked surprise for a moment. Then an expression of renewed hope crossed his face as he recognised the robes of a tech-priest. ‘If I may be of assistance?’
‘Please.’ The pilot gestured to the vacant seat next to him. ‘I can’t get the nose up, and half the control surfaces aren’t responding.’ The edge of panic was still infusing his voice.
Ignoring his surroundings, Vex interfaced with the plummeting shuttle’s machine-spirit. As he’d suspected, it had been profoundly traumatised by the damage it had sustained, and he communed with it in binary, cajoling and soothing by turns, rerouting data paths and coaxing crippled systems back on line.
‘We’ve got lift,’ the pilot told him suddenly. They were still descending rapidly, but at least it was going to be an emergency landing rather than a lethal, crater gouging impact with the ground. Then the man’s voice rose again in terror. ‘Here they come!’
Moved by curiosity, Vex directed his gaze through the thick armourcrys viewport, eager to see what sort of vessel the enemy was employing. Even so, he was astonished by the sight of the aerial leviathan that loomed up suddenly out of the enveloping snow clouds. Its vast size and rounded hull were utterly wrong, completely at odds with the principles of perfection striven for by Imperial technotheology. To any true acolyte of the Omnissiah, such an abomination was worse than a threat, it was blasphemy made manifest.