Carcharodons: Outer Dark

by Robbie MacNiven

  The servitor driver cut the landcar’s engine. The sudden silence was unnerving.

  ‘It seems the worthy brothers are all abed,’ Nzogwu said softly.

  The words had barely left his lips before there was a scrape of heavy bolts and the groan of aged timber. The doors swung open, and from the darkness within seven figures emerged. All were robed in the devotati’s black habits, cowls raised, and in the lamp-lit shadows they were a sinister group. They paused at the foot of the entrance steps, and the foremost – stooped beneath a hunched back – threw back his hood to reveal a pale, ageing face and tonsured skull. He looked less than happy.

  ‘Inquisitor Nzogwu?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ Nzogwu said, approaching the man and making the sign of the aquila. Rannik mirrored the salutation. The devotati looked unimpressed.

  ‘I am Praeses Majoris Baldichi,’ the hunchbacked man said. ‘I assume you are here regarding the attack earlier today.’

  ‘I am,’ Nzogwu said, his tone measured but firm. ‘This is an investigative matter. May we enter?’

  Baldichi looked from Nzogwu, to Rannik, to the pistols at their hips and the rosette in Nzogwu’s hand. He nodded.

  ‘Follow me, inquisitor.’

  The Carcharodon Astra came to Piety V as dawn touched golden light to the tops of Pontifrax’s great domes and spires. Void Spear touched down amidst the shriek of turbofans, the landing pad it alighted on streaked with early morning light and the last deep shadows of night. Clergymen and frateris militiamen snatched at their cassocks and robes in the lashing backdraught of the engines and sought to maintain their ranks either side of the hulking gunship’s prow ramp.

  Sharr was the first to set foot on Piety V, his boots ringing from the rockcrete of the Theocratica’s landing plate. With Khauri at his shoulder, he stopped before the gaggle of churchmen who intercepted them before they reached the landing plate’s entrance arch, his armoured form towering over them.

  ‘You are welcome to the Holy See of Piety, great lord,’ one of the clergymen said, cringing in his gold-and-white vestments. ‘Please, allow us to–’

  ‘Who rules this world in the Void Father’s name?’ Sharr demanded. The words were delivered in High Gothic, and after a moment another of the churchmen answered.

  ‘The diocese currently falls under the stewardship of Supreme Pontiff Guilermo de Grattio, my lord.’

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘He is… indisposed, lord,’ another churchman, his robes struggling to contain his rotund bulk, added hastily. ‘There was… an attack…’

  The fat man trailed off miserably, glancing at his brethren. Another spoke, pushing his way to the front of the assembly.

  ‘His Holiness was the target of a traitorous assault during the opening service of the Feast of Saint Etrikus,’ the man said. He was bigger than the others, scarred and shaven-headed. He wore the robe-fatigues of the Ecclesiarchy’s militia, and didn’t flinch in Sharr’s shadow.

  ‘And you are?’ the Carcharodon demanded.

  ‘Cleric Marshal Brant. I am blessed with the command of Piety Five’s frateris divisions.’

  Sharr looked the man up and down, before nodding.

  ‘I am Bail Sharr, Reaper Prime of the Carcharodon Astra. There is a xenos taint festering on your world, and I am here to uproot it. I will expect to meet with you and your subordinates immediately, Cleric Marshal Brant. In the meantime, my battle company will begin deploying to this city. We will be barracking in your main square. Do not approach or interfere with them. Now, I require one of you to take me to de Grattio.’

  Only Brant didn’t respond with dismay. The cleric marshal bowed his head and stepped aside for the Carcharodon as the priesthood around him threw up their arms and shouted protestations at the giant in their midst. Sharr didn’t even register them. He gestured for Khauri to accompany him, and the two Space Marines followed Brant into the Theocratica, while the command squad and the Red Brethren secured the landing plate.

  Overhead, the dawn sky was streaked with the contrails of incoming gunships.

  De Grattio was housed in the medicae block of his own living suite, near the heart of the Theocratica. Brant took Sharr past the heavy frateris and crusader security presence. The Carcharodon was unimpressed by the lavish opulence of the passages and hallways he was led through. Excess, arrogance, imperiousness – the architecture seemed to bring out everything that caused the Chapter to distance itself from the modern Imperial Creed.

  The supreme pontiff himself remained unaware of the Angels of Death watching over him in his ward. While the shots of the gunmen in the cathedra hadn’t penetrated his body armour, the fall had cracked his skull and left him in a coma. Brant informed Sharr that the College of Cardinals was still deliberating over whether to elect an interim leader, or whether to give de Grattio more time. It seemed as though the idea of electing another supreme pontiff only for de Grattio to return to consciousness was more vexing for the cardinals than having him quietly pass away.

  ‘You are telling me Piety Five is currently without a ruler?’ Sharr asked in the corridor outside the pontiff’s sumptuous medicae block.

  ‘The bishops can meet and discuss lay matters in the Forum Theocratica,’ Brant said. ‘But yes, to all intents and purposes we are in a phase of transitional government until the College has reached a decision.’

  ‘You know the identities of the pontiff’s attackers?’

  ‘They were both members of Piety’s current dominant cult, the devotati. Cloistered monks, with few personal contacts and no previous history to suggest a mindset prone to heresy.’

  ‘The devotati, they have a headquarters?’ Sharr asked.

  ‘The Cloisterum, on Justicia Hill. It is on the outskirts of the city, close to pilgrim slums.’

  ‘I am taking a strike force there. You will put your militia on high alert and lock down all public and government buildings in the city. You will also inform the clergy that they are not to practise or preach over the next forty-eight Terran hours. I am closing down the shrines.’

  ‘That is not possible,’ Brant said as Sharr began to turn away. ‘There will be protests from the clergy and riots among the pilgrims! The supplicants will agitate as well. Besides, my frateris have no power to close the shrines. It is their sworn duty to keep them open.’

  ‘You will close the shrines,’ Sharr reiterated. ‘Or I will consider the frateris fully complicit in cult activity.’

  Sharr summoned his command squad, and spent the next half hour touring the remainder of the Theocratica, ostensibly using the time to test its defensive potential. He spent a particularly long period with Brant on the main address balcony overlooking Absolution Square. Inside, the Theocratica’s primary gathering chamber was dominated by a living arboreal display of well-tended bushes and small trees clustered around a great Imperial oak. The symbology of the tree, its boughs and leaves, was repeated frequently throughout the palace, and upon the seal and signet of the Piety diocese. Sharr’s command squad spent a long time observing the display while their commander was in discussion with Brant and his frateris subordinates.

  Eventually the Carcharodons returned to the Theocratica’s primary landing plate. The Reaper Prime had sent word to the first elements of the company making planetfall in Absolution Square – they would take a strike force to the headquarters of the devotati, and render judgement against them immediately. As Khauri mounted Void Spear’s ramp alongside the Reaper Prime, he spoke for the first time since they had made planetfall.

  ‘Is it wise to close the shrines?’

  Sharr paused before replying, whether because he was considering his answer, or didn’t think the question deserved one, Khauri wasn’t sure.

  ‘Our objective here is to expose the cult as quickly as possible, so that we can attack and destroy it decisively. The easiest way to do that is to encourage the
cult to be bolder. If it chose to, the xenos patriarch could remain hidden and simply await the hive fleet’s arrival. We must lure it out by presenting it with the possibility of total victory before its masters can reach the system. Disorder will encourage it.’

  ‘We are deliberately destabilising Imperial rule,’ Khauri surmised. ‘What if the Ecclesiarchy turns on us as well as the cult?’

  ‘If they are mad enough to do that we will slaughter them too. I doubt many of the faithful will dare stand against the Emperor’s Angels of Death.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Khauri said slowly. ‘But we should not underestimate them. For all their wealth and indolence, there are many here driven by a zeal that could be unthinking and destructive if unleashed. I have felt the heat of their thoughts, Reaper Prime. There is a fire smouldering in many, not least the cleric marshal.’

  ‘Fire, but no taint?’ Sharr asked. ‘And what of the pontiff?’

  ‘It is difficult to say while he remains unconscious,’ Khauri said. ‘But… given what I have sensed from the cleric marshal, I suspect it is as we discussed while still in orbit. I believe your plan to be a sound one, Reaper Prime.’

  Sharr did not respond as they seated themselves in Void Spear, the command squad and the Terminators following them in. The Reaper Prime’s expression was inscrutable behind his helm, and Khauri did not intend to reach out and touch upon his thoughts. Eventually Sharr spoke again, and his words surprised the Librarian.

  ‘Your counsel is appreciated. I said it on the White Maw, and I shall say it again here – do not hesitate to speak your mind. Your abilities provide you with a prescience not afforded to the rest of us. You should not take that for granted.’

  ‘I understand, Reaper Prime,’ Khauri answered, feeling a strange sense of relief. ‘I shall offer my advice freely.’

  ‘Very well,’ Sharr said, as the hold filled with the vibrations of the Thunderhawk gunship’s engines. ‘Stay on your guard as well. When we uncover the source of the xenos filth, our minds will likely be attacked as viciously as our bodies.’

  Praeses Majoris Baldichi led Rannik and Nzogwu through the Cloisterum Devotati. Nzogwu had requested access to the primary chapel. The chiming of lauds-hour prayer bells rang through the bare stone corridors and hallways, waking the brethren to their dawn prayers, but as of yet Rannik had seen none besides the praeses and those six who had first accompanied them. She had also begun to wonder why they couldn’t hear the ringing of bells calling the faithful to the shrines and churches in the city below. When they had arrived the night before, it had felt as though every minute of darkness were punctuated by the tolling of the canonical hours, yet now the steeples and spires seemed to have fallen silent.

  ‘Is the Cloisterum always afforded a frateris guard?’ Nzogwu asked as Baldichi led them through a dark, shadow-haunted undercroft and up once more into an auxiliary corridor. Since the checkpoint outside, Rannik had seen three more teams of frateris, armed and armoured, mounting patrols around the monastery.

  ‘No,’ Baldichi said brusquely. ‘They are here at the request of the cleric marshal due to the… incident yesterday. As are you, I assume.’

  ‘My investigations are independent of the frateris,’ Nzogwu said.

  Baldichi didn’t respond. Rannik wondered how hard Nzogwu had pressed him in private.

  There was another courtyard deeper within the devotati headquarters, a cloistered space dominated in its centre by a fountain sculpture that took the shape of three Guardsmen of Navalorn, kneeling in the waters and looking skywards with stoic expressions. Rannik recalled the briefing slate she had skimmed on the journey to the Cloisterum. The devotati owed their founding to military personnel mustered out of the Makarus Crusade, conducted on the Eastern Fringe three millennia earlier. The black habits had originally been a memorialisation of the Astra Militarum’s many casualties during the crusade, and the only time the monks ever permitted anyone to leave their ranks was if they were joining the Imperial Guard. Rannik wondered whether there was a link with the order’s martial roots and the fact that two unassuming members could suddenly transform into armed gunmen.

  The cloisters were quiet and dark, the shadows seeming to twitch and shift at the interlopers’ passing. The only others present were two frateris militiamen patrolling the far side. There was a strange air to the place, from the mournful expressions of the statuary to the stillness that seemed to muffle even footsteps and the swish of clothing. It made Rannik’s skin crawl.

  ‘The inner chapel is this way,’ Baldichi said, ushering them to one of the many doors leading from the courtyard into the heart of the monastic complex. As the stooped praeses majoris reached for the door latch, Rannik caught sudden movement out of the corner of her eye. In the same moment there was the bang of a gunshot, and a grunt from Nzogwu as he was hit.

  The screams had kept Rawlin up for much of the night. Welt occupied his own sleeping chamber adjacent to the one used by the interrogator in the Observance. The astropath’s nightmares had been multiplying ever since they had begun their journey to Piety V. They appeared to have reached fever pitch now – Rawlin had barely slept. He cursed Nzogwu’s instructions to stay behind and watch the deranged psyker, and cursed Rannik for always wanting to be at the inquisitor’s side. At times it felt as though she were Nzogwu’s apprentice, not him.

  He dragged himself from his bed as Welt’s screams redoubled, and strapped his autopistol to his side. Welt had been a member of the retinue for decades, but Rawlin would be damned if he went into a room with a screaming psyker without some sort of protection.

  He opened the door between their rooms and peered inside. Both the lumen strips overhead and the one beside Welt’s bed were flickering, throwing the room into oscillating bursts of light and dark. The astropath was at the far side of the chamber, crouched before the tenth storey window, facing away from Rawlin. His screams had dropped to a low murmur, and he was rocking backwards and forwards, still dressed in his green robes.

  ‘Throne, no,’ Rawlin murmured, battling the urge to simply back out of the room. He stepped towards Welt, hand on the grip of his pistol. The psyker seemed to sense his entrance, going silent and still. Rawlin had almost reached him when he suddenly stood and turned, causing the interrogator to yell and snatch his pistol. The astropath’s bony hand gripped his wrist before he could bring it to bear, while the other snatched his night shift, dragging him in close.

  ‘They’re here,’ he snarled, his voice unnaturally deep. His empty eye sockets were bleeding, two streaks of glistening red that ran down a gaunt face, white as death. The blinking of the lumens only made the visage more nightmarish.

  ‘They’re here,’ Welt repeated, releasing the interrogator’s wrist and gripping his chest with both hands. ‘She’s not what we thought she was.’

  ‘Who?’ Rawlin managed. The room had gone cold, his breath visibly frosting in the air.

  ‘Tell Rannik,’ Welt hissed, spittle flecking his lips. ‘Tell her she was right. Tell her she’s not just a shadow.’

  ‘What shadow?’ Rawlin asked, trying to prise himself free from Welt’s shuddering grip.

  ‘The door,’ the astropath said. Before Rawlin could respond again he heard a knocking sound. Someone was outside Welt’s room.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ Welt said, his voice suddenly firm and clear. ‘I have delivered a message to Frain, the last message I will ever send. You must leave. Leave now.’

  Rawlin dragged himself away from the psyker, snatching his autopistol from its holster, eyes on the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded.

  ‘Go,’ Welt urged, trying to push Rawlin back towards his own room. The interrogator grappled for a moment with the astropath, before a thud from the window made them both freeze.

  ‘What was that?’ Rawlin breathed. Welt’s grasp became an embrace as he drew close to hiss in his fellow operative’s ear.r />
  ‘She’s here.’

  The apartment window blew in, a blizzard of glass followed by a wall of fire and twisted metal. Rawlin sensed Welt, caught between him and the window, shudder as he was hit, then experienced a gut-wrenching sense of dislocation as he was lifted into the air. He felt his ears burst, the blunt-force impact of debris and shrapnel all over his body, the agony as his clothes ignited, and the slamming impact as he was carried through to his own room, all as though in nightmarish slow motion. Then, finally, his head connected with something unyielding, and the darkness took him.

  The shot had come the moment Baldichi laid his hand on the devotati cloister door. Rannik threw herself against Nzogwu, pitching them both behind one of the cloister’s pillars as more gunshots rang out. The frateris across the courtyard had opened fire on them.

  Rannik snatched her autopistol from its holster. It was immediately apparent that the pillar wasn’t big enough for both her and Nzogwu. Move or die. She flung herself through the open space to the next pillar, not giving herself time to think, hearing the echoing reports of the gunshots in the tight space and the clack of hard rounds striking stonework around her.

  She hit the next pillar’s cold surface with a grunt and pressed herself against it, chipped stone dust blossoming around her.

  Are you hit, she signed back to Nzogwu. The inquisitor removed his hand from the outside of his right thigh, revealing a red patch spreading from the torn fatigues.

  Fine, he signed back. He’d had worse.

  The frateris paused, and Rannik heard the clack of fresh magazines. A beginner’s mistake. She rounded the pillar, pistol up, and eased off a trio of rounds. One of the frateris had been standing exposed between two of the pillars as he reloaded, and he ­scrambled back as Rannik fired, dropping his magazine as he went. She thought she had clipped him, but couldn’t be sure. Of the devotati there was no sign – Baldichi had vanished at the first sound of gunfire.