Hamich chuckled.
‘I would expect nothing less from an operative of the ordos. Travelling the galaxy, chasing down villains and vagabonds. It must all be terribly exciting.’
‘Have you ever watched a man being burned alive, optio?’
‘Have you ever seen a man with so many reports to log that he forgot to eat or sleep, and wasted away over a matter of months?’
‘I suppose both of our branches of the Adeptus Terra have their own horrors.’
They passed up the cathedra’s steps and through the great aquila doors, an attendant deacon blessing them as they went. The interior of the Theocratica’s place of worship was every bit as opulent as the palace. Gilded doors led to an expansive nave and aisles ranked with row upon row of rustwood pews, carved with elaborate scenes of saints and sinners locked in eternal struggle. Six great pillars, each fashioned in the likeness of the Imperial oak, supported a ceiling that rose to a spectacular dome overhead, its plaster awash with images of the God-Emperor’s triumphs. The air was heavy with incense from the censer cherubim that flittered around the soaring buttresses, and flickered with the light of the thousands of candles adorning the idol-alcoves and niches set into the walls and pillars. At the distant end of the chamber, a raised pew platform sat alongside an apse, the curving space dominated by great glassaic windows and a heavy-looking altar that had been draped with the white cloth and golden objects of the Imperial Creed. It was surrounded by more candles, and black-robed devotati clergymen, their cowls raised. The vast, echoing space between them and the doors was being slowly occupied by the supplicants, their chatter backed by the low notes of organ pipes coming from the east transept.
‘Glorious, is it not?’ Hamich said, his grip on Rannik’s arm still tight as he led her down the nave towards the pews close to the chancel at the front. Nzogwu and the others had already peeled off to the left and right.
‘Excessive, more like,’ Rannik said, unable to resist spiting the optio. ‘Especially given the squalor that surrounds this city.’
‘Careful now, I’m not sure your master would appreciate such a dispassionate view of the Imperial Truth,’ Hamich said with a loathsome grin. Rannik’s expression remained frosty.
‘He isn’t my master. I am no slave.’
‘In the same way that my tens of thousands of Administratum clerks, liturgists and archival drones aren’t technically slaves, and yet…’ He trailed off. Rannik forced herself to say nothing, instead focusing on her surroundings. While the hundreds of dignitaries filling the cathedra stared in awe at the marble and gold, the lacquered wood and burnished gilt, she sought out choke points, overwatch positions and fall-back routes. It was habit, but at times habit saved lives.
The balconies beneath the buttresses on either side were the most immediate concern. They were accessed via external staircases in the atriums branching off the main chamber. An Ecclesiarchy choir was slowly filling them, preparing for the ceremony’s opening, but there was no sign of any guards on the open platforms. In fact, the only obvious protective measures were the dozen frateris militiamen visible on either side of the far pulpit, their robe-fatigues bulked out by the armour they wore underneath, their autoguns shrouded with ceremonial gold cloth. The lack of obvious security was disconcerting, especially given how much tighter it had been outside. What was she missing?
Hamich had found their pew aisle, just four rows back from the open chancel floor that lay before the altar and the pulpit platform. They slid in and seated themselves. A supplicant in the high-collared finery of an Imperial Knight household greeted Hamich, causing him to turn away from Rannik. She took her chance, surreptitiously leaning away from him and keying her earpiece.
‘Avatar, this is Crosshatch. I’m not liking the look of this. Where’s Brant’s security gone?’
‘Affirmative, Crosshatch. Hold position. I’m at your six, nine rows back.’
‘Anyone on those balconies will have the whole space at their mercy.’
‘I know. Salvo is on his way to secure your right side. Stay alert. And remember to play nice.’
‘Did you say something, my dear?’ Hamich asked, turning in his pew, his bulk pressing up against her.
‘Merely a prayer, optio,’ she said, giving him a cold smile. ‘For your health and longevity.’
‘Such a sweet girl,’ Hamich said. ‘I can see why you transferred away from those ghastly Arbites. Inquisitor Nzogwu clearly has excellent taste.’
One of the choir members on the balconies above struck up a bass note. The rest joined in, and the supplicants fell into silence as the cathedra resounded with High Gothic plainsong. Rannik rested her hand on her autopistol, concealed beneath the voluminous folds of her dress.
The choir’s canting turned to the Te Imperius Deum Laudamus, the words of praise seeming to fill up the vast, arching spaces around them. The supreme pontiff entered the apse from the ambulatory space behind it, preceded by his armoured crusaders and followed by a trail of clergymen, some weighed down with the gold-and-white finery, chains and mitres of their offices, others in the simpler black cassocks of the devotati. De Grattio himself was even more ornately garbed than he had been during the reception – the man’s decrepit body was swathed in thick folds of embroidered cloth, and an ermine-trimmed train a dozen paces long trailed out behind him, hauled along by a dozen pageboys in tights and powdered wigs. In one hand the aged Ecclesiarchy master clutched a golden aquila staff, while the other held the black orb of the devotati. On his head was a towering skull-faced mitre, while his feet, paradoxically, were bare – a weak homage to the pilgrims that had first brought wealth and power to the monastic houses of Piety V.
The pontiff and his cavalcade of clergymen filed into the apse, where they made their genuflections towards the high altar. De Grattio then carried on up the stairs to the wooden pulpit platform, helped by one of the pages. He took position behind a lectern fashioned in the likeness of the Imperial aquila, head bowed as his assistant hefted open the great tome set before him.
For a moment there was nothing but silence – clergy and congregation alike waited in the flickering candlelight. Even the cherubim had taken up a perch on one of the buttresses overhead, watching the pontiff with childish intensity.
De Grattio spoke. The words boomed out over a vox-amplifier concealed within the lectern, eclipsing even the earlier chants of the choir. The words were delivered in High Gothic, and it took Rannik a moment to understand what the high pontiff was saying. She had always scored miserably low in her classes growing up in the schola progenium but over the past decade she had worked hard to learn the formal tongue of the Imperium. It was, after all, the language most favoured by the Carcharodon Astra.
‘Salutations, fellow-servants of the God-Emperor, as we gather here this evening to celebrate the final Feast of Saint Etrikus, her martyrdom at the hands of the heretic and the recidivist, and her unrepentant faith in the saving glory and majesty of Him on Earth.’
De Grattio went on, his voice a crackling drone. His head remained bowed over the lectern, and he seemed hardly capable of staying on his feet, so frail and weighed down by his finery was he. Rannik wondered whether the opening blessing was prerecorded – she had certainly heard of unscrupulous Ecclesiarchy preachers doing such things before.
‘Hallowed is the God-Emperor, hallowed is the salvation He has promised us. Join with me now, brothers and sisters of His blessed grace, in the first prayer of supplication.’
There was a moment of silence as the pontiff’s attendant turned the page for him. Before he spoke again, words rang out abruptly from somewhere in the congregation directly in front of Rannik, also spoken in High Gothic.
‘Mendax! Aditus salutis nostrae!’
Liar, she translated. Our salvation approaches!
The supplicants gasped at the sudden, blasphemous interruption, and the two crusaders guarding the altar
hefted their great power swords. In the split second of stunned quiet that followed, the voice cried out again.
‘Glory to the star saints!’
The cathedra resounded with the percussive bangs of a flurry of gunshots. The grand pontiff collapsed, his staff and mitre tumbling across the pulpit platform.
The Nicor’s choristorum was a place even most Carcharodons were forbidden from entering. It was lodged in an astral blister near the battle-barge’s primary bridge, far from the slave decks or even the cryo-chambers and armouries. Te Kahurangi was one of the few able to access it without prior agreement from the astropathic chamber’s scry-master, his psychic presence unlocking the triplicate sealant runes guarding the entrance doors, and his staff initiating the grav-lift that took him up into the heart of the Nomad Predation Fleet’s main astropathic choir.
The chamber itself was shrouded in darkness, but illuminated with a silvery glow thanks to the stars above. The reinforced armourglass dome gave those beneath a full spread of the firmament, countless glittering lights and multihued swirls of gas set against the utter darkness of the void. The rest of the choristorum, however, was far from picturesque. The smooth, black plating of the psy-reactive flooring led to half a dozen telepathica cradles, caskets of metal streaked with old grease and dermal lubricant salves. Clusters of hundreds of wires snaked out from the throbbing earthing node sunk into the chamber’s centre, burrowing into the caskets and linking their occupants. They were wretched creatures, pale and wasted, their shaven scalps studded with links and masked with respirator-hoods and nutrient feeds. Their bodies were submerged in amniotic-like fluids, not dissimilar to the gel-like substance that preserved the Carcharodons during their long cryo-sleeps. As Te Kahurangi entered all six of the astropaths wired into their cradles appeared to be asleep, but the Chief Librarian knew it was an illusion, the work of the suppressants constantly pumped into their bodies when they were inactive. They were currently more than aware of his presence.
‘This is an unexpected honour, Chief Librarian,’ said a voice from the deeper shadows clustered around the edges of the chamber. Attendant Master Yenaro stepped from the darkness into the soft starlight, his heavy grey robes and raised cowl giving him a spectral air.
‘There was no time for prior warning I’m afraid, attendant master,’ Te Kahurangi said. He towered over the human, but Yenaro was unintimidated – he was one of a select few of the human serfs raised out of bondage, a figure so vital to the Chapter’s continuation that he was afforded rights and privileges unavailable to even most void brothers. Yenaro oversaw the Chapter flagship’s astropathic complement as well as the transmission and receipt of vision-messages. His father had done so his entire life, and his offspring would do likewise. None outside the Chapter’s Librarius, bar the Reaper Lord of the Void, could command him.
‘You wish to initiate an astral communique,’ Yenaro surmised.
‘And I wish it to remain unrecorded,’ Te Kahurangi said.
Yenaro said nothing, but nor did he move to his control lectern. All communications both to and from the choristorum had to be psy-logged and replicated. The sending or receiving of astropathic messages without the Librarius’ knowledge and review was forbidden. Unless the sender was the Chief Librarian. Eventually Yenaro nodded.
‘As you wish, my lord.’
The scry-master retreated to his lectern and began the dream-cycles. The suppressants keeping the astropaths docile were gradually reduced until one of the psykers began to show flickering signs of consciousness on the vitae monitors built into the lectern’s top.
‘If you wish to avoid the automatic log…’ Yenaro trailed off, looking at Te Kahurangi.
‘I understand,’ the Chief Librarian said. Instead of taking up a position beside the attendant master and his scry-lectern, he approached the casket containing the waking astropath. Contact would have to be made directly. He unclamped one gauntlet and reached out, pausing inches from the psyker’s submerged scalp.
There would be repercussions for what he was about to do.
But he was a Carcharodon Astra. He was already sure about the course of action he had to take. For the good of the Chapter, he would be unwavering.
He plunged his hand into the amniotic fluids and grasped the astropath’s pale skull. The man’s eyes snapped open and he surged upwards. His screams resounded from the armourglass, as the stars above watched on in silence.
As the gunshots rang out, the Cathedra of Saint Solomon descended into chaos. The frateris guarding the chancel rushed the pulpit while the congregation tried to flee in every direction at once, the sudden uproar of screams and shouts feeding the panic. Rannik was moving in an instant, shoving a stammering Hamich down behind the partial safety of the pews before shouldering her way out into the aisle. She hitched up the skirts of her gown and kicked off her heeled shoes as she went, snatching her autopistol from the holster strapped round her thigh.
‘Move!’ she bellowed at the people crowding around her. More shots rang out. One of the frateris in the pulpit went down, blood blossoming across the dark woodwork and white flagstones. Rannik flung herself past an overweight deacon and shoved a powdered woman out of her way, the chancel before the pulpit’s stairway finally opening up before her. Rawlin’s voice clicked in her earpiece.
‘Multiple shooters, left-side balcony and the front of the nave. They’re dressed in Ministorum robes. I can’t get an angle.’
‘I’m securing the pontiff,’ Rannik snapped, pushing through the last of the congregation fleeing towards the back of the chamber.
‘Negative, hold back,’ Nzogwu’s voice said over the vox. ‘We can’t reveal our presence yet.’
‘Too late,’ Rannik snapped. She mounted the pulpit’s stairs, straining to breathe in the hellish constraints of her corset. As she neared the top a shadow loomed over her, obstructing the last few steps. She found herself staring up into a mourning veil. The woman in the black dress stood at the top of the pulpit, filling the narrow space with her sudden, malevolent presence.
Rannik yelled and tried to bring her autopistol to bear, but she slipped on the stairway. She had to throw out a hand to stop herself tumbling back the way she had come, snatching the head of one of the carved wooden effigies lining the route to the pulpit. It took her a second to steady herself and bring her sidearm back up.
The apparition was gone. In its place a frateris militiaman was raising his autorifle, gold shroud snatched back, a challenge on his lips. Before Rannik could respond more shots rang out. The frateris was thrown back, his throat and shoulder torn. Rannik ducked as hard rounds tore into the carved rustwood around her, blasting away splinters and clipping one of the golden wings of the aquila lectern above. She turned as best she could in the stairway’s narrow space, covering the nave with her pistol, all the while damning the gown’s silken folds as they bunched up around her.
The congregation had withdrawn like a tide towards the gilded doors at the back of the cathedra, exposing a figure in the black robes of a devotati. His cowl was up, and he was crouched over an autorifle, clipping home a fresh magazine.
Rannik fired, her first two shots snapping wide and cracking off the flagstones beside the shooter. He chose to run rather than return fire, sprinting for the ornate pillars to his right. He didn’t get far before the guns of the frateris who had flooded the pulpit area caught him. He stumbled and went down, twitching as he was hit multiple times, the cathedra ringing with repeated discharges.
‘Cease fire!’ bellowed Nzogwu, striding from the mass of people still trying to force their way from the chamber. He was holding his Inquisitorial rosette high in one hand, his charged plasma pistol in the other, its ribbed coils glowing with power. Welt was beside him, the golden eye of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica that tipped his staff wreathed in blue witchfire. Rannik felt the backwash of the psychic imperative the astropath added to Nzogwu’s order, forcing her t
o ease her finger off the trigger.
The sudden silence that flooded the cathedra after the gunfire was followed by the thumping of combat boots and bellowed orders as more frateris burst in through the atrium side doors, spreading out along the pew rows and the nave.
Rannik stood, pulling her gown’s hem out from under her and shaking out the silken folds. She realised her whole body was trembling, the sudden adrenaline rush refusing to dissipate. She glanced back up at the top of the pulpit stairway. Two frateris were crouched, trying to stabilise their comrade who had been hit blocking Rannik’s route. Of the mourning woman in the veil, there was no sign. Rannik hitched her skirts and descended to where Nzogwu was crouched over the body of the attacker. The inquisitor had drawn the man’s cowl back, revealing tonsured hair and a lean, pallid face. Even in death his expression seemed twisted with hatred, black eyes glaring up at the frescos decorating the dome above. Nzogwu tugged the robes away from his throat, exposing the black mortification stamp of the devotati.
‘This isn’t a disguise,’ the inquisitor said. ‘He’s a member of the clergy.’
‘Or he was, before he embraced heresy and betrayal,’ Welt said, standing over the corpse. Rawlin’s voice clicked across the retinue-wide comms channel.
‘I’ve secured the balconies. There’s another gunman up here, looks like a priest. Took his own life.’
‘Affirmative,’ Nzogwu replied. ‘Maintain overwatch.’ He stood and turned to Rannik.
‘I told you not to engage.’
‘I was the closest to the pontiff,’ she said. ‘You wanted me to just stay down among the pews?’
‘We’re not supposed to be on an operational footing. If we reveal our purpose at the first sign of trouble it will only make my investigation more difficult.’
‘Did you see the woman?’ Rannik asked, looking at Welt. The astropath’s blind eye sockets turned towards her, as though watching for her reaction.
Carcharodons: Outer Dark Page 15