‘Wait!’ he shouted, running to interpose himself between the frateris and the implacably advancing Carcharodons. He holstered his plasma pistol and held up both hands as he went, praying silently that what we was doing wasn’t as mad as it felt. The frateris had fired on them, and at the very least a large part of the devotati had been uncovered as xenos-worshippers. There was no reason to think that Brant and his men weren’t cultists intent on gunning him down. Nor did the Carcharodons seem like anything other than renegades happy to butcher Imperial servants if they so desired.
But Nzogwu knew he had to gamble. He gambled on Brant’s loyalty and the Carcharodons’ restraint, even on Rannik not turning her pistol on the Space Marines again. And in the few seconds it took him to cast the dice, he found himself standing on the wreckage-littered road between both sides. They had each come to a halt and, though their weapons were raised, nobody fired.
‘What is the meaning of this, inquisitor?’ Brant demanded. ‘Why have you attacked the holy brethren of the devotati? Where is Praeses Majoris Baldichi?’
‘There was corruption here, cleric marshal,’ Nzogwu called out. ‘It has been purged. I recommend your men lay down their arms and submit themselves to my investigations fully, before this situation devolves any further.’
‘There are processes…’ Brant said, but trailed off. Nzogwu heard the whir of servos and the grinding of boots on stone, and turned to find the Carcharodons leader looming over him. Blood and thick strings of gore were still drying on the warrior’s armour, and he was carrying a chainaxe as long as Nzogwu was tall in a single great fist.
‘Your fellow-worshippers harbour egregious xenos taint, cleric marshal,’ the Space Marine said coldly. ‘You will do as the inquisitor says.’
Nzogwu looked back at Brant, struggling to stop his own surprise at the Carcharodon’s words from showing. The cleric marshal’s expression grew darker still.
‘I have not come here to be the defendant in some snap trial,’ he said. ‘I came because there has been another attack. Multiple ones, in fact, across the shrine-city.’
‘Against whom?’ Nzogwu demanded.
‘The Adeptus Astra Telepathica,’ Brant continued. ‘As far as we are aware, every single astropath on Piety Five has been killed. Including your own star-whisperer.’
+ + Gene scan complete + + +
+ + Access granted + + +
+ + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +
+ + Date check, 2715885.M41 + + +
Welt is dead. I should have seen it. I should never have left him exposed. The strike against the astropaths has left us completely cut off, and I have little time. For such a strike to have succeeded, the corruption in Pontifrax must be endemic.
The Carcharodon Astra are here too, as I hoped and feared. They were even more terrible than I had dared imagine. I am powerless to hold them to account, for now. If I turn the Ministorum and the frateris against them, or attempt to use them to purge the frateris, I will only weaken us against the xenos cult that has taken root in this place. I am damned either way. Regardless, I must act, and swiftly. Damar believes he has found something in the slum shrines. Our best hope is to uncover the cult’s head and strike it off as swiftly as possible.
Rannik has become a liability. She is too emotionally invested. I have asked Damar to keep her close.
Rawlin claimed Welt had contacted Inquisitor Legate Frain before he was murdered. I cannot tell if it was insane ramblings, and even if it wasn’t, I do not know the nature of the message. Regardless, I find myself praying he will hasten to this world. That is not something I ever expected to put on record, but in times such as these any ally is better than none.
May the God-Emperor be with me.
Signed,
Inquisitor Augim Nzogwu
+ + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +
+ + Thought for the Day: Though we may wander in darkness, the sword of the Emperor shall guide us still + + +
_________ Chapter IX
Rawlin had survived. The attack on the Observance had left him confined to a medicae bay at the city’s foremost emergency treatment ward, his flesh burned and gouged, but he would live.
The same could not be said of Welt. In shielding Rawlin from the blast he had been killed instantly. The attackers had scaled the outside of the Observance and fixed an explosive charge to the window during the night. When they had failed to open the door to the first group of assassins, the second had blown the charge. There was pict footage of their preparations in nearby alleys and their efforts scaling the Observance’s sheer side, but identification would be all but impossible – they were shrouded in the black habits of the devotati.
‘We’re completely isolated,’ Rannik said. The retinue had assembled in full in the remains of the Observance suite. The whole tower block had been evacuated and an Arbites team had cordoned the building off, but Rannik had managed to talk them through before Nzogwu had been forced to call upon his authority. The floor that had once housed the retinue’s apartments was still stable enough to enter, and the ordo operatives now stood before the ruins of Rawlin and Welt’s rooms. The intervening wall had been mostly demolished, and the floor was a mess of rubble and burned or broken furnishings. The space that had once been Welt’s window was now a gaping hole through which the city’s jagged forest of spires and domes was visible, a straight drop through which a cold wind cut. Damar was there, as were Ro, Tibalt, Janus, the lexo-archivist Llorens and Maurus, the Ministorum lay preacher brought to help ease the tensions between the operatives and the pilgrim masses.
‘Every single astropath eliminated,’ Janus said. ‘How is that possible?’
‘It could only be achieved by the most complete infiltration of this world’s top tier command and control structures,’ Ro replied.
‘You’ve seen the choristorum?’ Rannik asked Nzogwu. He had gone with Brant directly to the Theocratica’s astropathic hub, where all messages into and out of the system were sent and received.
‘I have,’ he said slowly, as though still processing what he had seen. ‘It’s the work of xenos, undoubtedly. Purestrain xenos, not the hybrid things concealed in the Cloisterum. The astropaths had been torn to pieces, as had the frateris guarding them.’
‘The frateris weren’t responsible then?’ Rannik pressed.
‘If they were they allowed themselves to be butchered by their masters. Someone with high-level access was involved – the pict footage has been wiped and doors that should have been easily secured were auto-unlocked.’
‘And now it’s impossible for us to get word off world,’ Damar said. ‘We should have anticipated this.’
‘We weren’t ready,’ Nzogwu admitted, his words coming faster now as his thoughts seemed to settle on a course of action. ‘This is an infestation reaching the end of its cycle. We could be talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of infected personnel across this city, maybe planet-wide. We need to find the head of this taint and cut it off before it flourishes into a full-scale insurrection.’
‘Is that why the Carcharodons are here?’ Rannik asked.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But at the moment we are in no position to open proceedings against them. We could all be fighting for our lives in a matter of hours.’
‘You saw them,’ Rannik said, speaking slowly so that her voice didn’t crack. ‘You saw what they are capable of. We have to confront them now, before they slip away again. We’ll never have another opportunity like this.’
‘No,’ Nzogwu said firmly. ‘I cannot simply declare them excommunicate traitoris and demand they submit themselves. Besides, they also saved both our lives. They show every intention of rooting out the cult.’
‘So they can abduct the population free of taint,’ Rannik said. ‘They will do the same to us, or simply kill us.’
‘We cannot pursue both the cult and these Adeptus Astar
tes simultaneously,’ Damar said. ‘You have to let this one go, Jade, for now. We will call them to account one day.’
Rannik opened her mouth to snap a retort, but managed to hold the words back. The rest of the retinue were looking at her, their expressions grim. None of them were going to back down, and Rannik had to concede that they were right. As much as it hurt to admit it, there was nothing they could do right now to harm or hinder the things that she had first seen on Zartak.
‘I understand your thoughts,’ Nzogwu said, looking at her. ‘After Zartak I swore I’d track down those responsible and hold them to account. We’re closer than ever to doing that. But first we must secure this world from the corruption that permeates it.’
‘How? The Cloisterum is a charnel house and the frateris have already locked down the smaller devotati holdings scattered across the city. How do we even begin to screen an organisation like either the frateris or the devotati? It’s obvious they aren’t wholly tainted, or we’d already be dead. How do we then divide the corrupt from the pure without the time or resources to do so?’
‘We aren’t going to pursue the frateris or the surviving devotati,’ Nzogwu said. ‘We’re going straight to the source. This is a genestealer infestation, and we’re going to hunt down and kill the patriarch. Doing so will reveal all the remaining corruption.’
‘And how do we find something that infiltrated this world decades, maybe even centuries, ago?’
‘We’ve already made a start,’ Damar said. He drew something from a pocket in his fatigues and held it up. It was a metal token, shaped like a crescent, fashioned into a snapping maw and a ridged spine that tapered off to a wicked tail. For a horrible moment Rannik thought she was looking at the predatory crest of the Carcharodons, but she quickly realised it was different – more alien, more ravenous. The little token made her grimace.
‘I retrieved this from the pilgrim offerings in a shrine outside the city,’ Damar said. ‘There are more of its kind there.’
‘It’s a typical genestealer cult symbol,’ Nzogwu added. ‘It seems their influence extends out into the slums.’
‘We’ve seen numerous examples of cult activity since our arrival,’ Damar said, referencing the half of the retinue that had made planetfall amidst the pilgrim hovels rather than in the shrine-city proper. ‘Ro and I managed to infiltrate one of the shack shrines. We found tunnels. They look like they were once part of a rudimentary burial system that was modified into sewers and has since been changed to… something else. There was more evidence of the cult there. We got into a little bit of a firefight, hence the delay in reaching you at the Cloisterum.’
‘This is worth following up,’ Nzogwu said. ‘We have to move fast.’
‘We’re going down into the tunnels?’ Rannik asked. ‘If the cult is in the slums too, will we be numerous enough? If we’re cut off down there–’
‘We’re not going alone,’ Nzogwu said.
‘Local Arbites forces?’ Rannik said. ‘I’ve not had a chance to meet with Judge Fulchard, he couldn’t be…’ She trailed off as he shook his head, and her expression hardened.
‘The Carcharodons,’ she said slowly.
‘Their commander also has his suspicions. He is sending a task force into the slums. I have… requested that we accompany it. Their abilities will allow us to cut right to the heart of the xenos, and perhaps we can help restrain some of their more violent activities as far as the slum’s populace are concerned.’
‘Violent, as in massacring anything in their way?’
Nzogwu nodded, but said nothing.
‘I would like to volunteer to go,’ Rannik said.
‘I thought you would. Damar will accompany you. I will link your comms systems to my own rosette tracker so even if we’re cut off, hopefully we can maintain our location with one another.’
‘What time are we moving out?’ Damar asked.
‘In an hour’s time, from Absolution Square. The cardinals have agreed to allow me to establish a temporary base of operations in the Theocratica, so that’s where the rest of us will be located. Brant has teams on standby too if a rapid response is required.’
Nzogwu dismissed the retinue, but asked Rannik to stay behind. She wouldn’t meet the inquisitor’s eye, but instead gazed out through the blast hole at Pontifrax’s gothic glory.
‘Rawlin has news for you,’ Nzogwu said quietly to her after the last of the retinue had departed. ‘Or more accurately, Welt did, right before he died.’
Rannik felt a chill creep over her. Somehow, she knew what was coming next.
‘He wanted to warn you about a woman. He said that… she wasn’t what he had thought she was.’
‘He didn’t say anything more?’ Rannik asked, looking at him. ‘He didn’t… identify her?’
‘No. The blast happened immediately afterwards, or at least that’s the last thing Rawlin remembers clearly. He’s on a lot of counterseptics and pain stimms, but he was insistent.’
Rannik looked away once more, out of the hole torn in the Observance, at the distant spires of the shrine-city’s ecclesiastical sprawl. Welt hadn’t needed to say. They had both known. They’d both known the woman in the black veil was out there still, somewhere. She had taken Welt. Next, she would take Rannik.
‘We just have to carry on,’ she heard herself saying, though she wasn’t sure why. ‘We need to hit back, before we suffer any more losses.’
‘And the woman?’ Nzogwu asked.
‘If she comes back, I’ll kill her,’ Rannik said, speaking with greater strength and conviction than she felt.
‘We don’t know what she is. Some sort of psychic apparition. A spectre. Maybe worse.’
‘She could have come from the depths of the warp itself,’ Rannik said. ‘I told you. I’ll kill her.’
Nzogwu was silent for a while before nodding. ‘Very well. Get yourself ready. Absolution Square, one hour.’
A Carcharodon known as Strike Leader Nuritona took three squads into the slums. The column was accompanied by the company’s Predator Destructor, Black Scythe, as well as Rannik and Damar. The ordo operatives rode with Nuritona and his tactical squad in the lead Rhino.
Being locked in a plasteel hold with seven of the grey monsters made Rannik’s flesh crawl. Damar looked no better – he was clamped into the restraint harness across from Rannik, the red lighting of the Rhino’s interior giving him a ghoulish, wide-eyed appearance. He was kitted out in his ex-Guard flak plate, lascarbine across his lap. Rannik was clad in her own full riot-plate, the Vox Legi locked at her side. Its bulky presence was her only comfort.
The Carcharodons were silent and unmoving as the transport rocked back and forth, the growl of its engines vibrating the metal around them. Their nightmare features were hidden behind their helmets, and their huge, vicious weapons – bolters, chainaxes and chainswords – were mag-locked to their hips or across their chest-plates. They were like automata, deactivated and left inert until the right binaric code sprung them into sudden, frenzied action. Just being near them made Rannik’s guts churn. It felt like one of her dreams made manifest.
‘Time to arrival, sixty seconds,’ clicked the driver’s voice over the hold’s intercom. The words seemed to trigger the Space Marines. They disengaged their harnesses and rose as one, unclamping their weapons as they did so. Rannik and Damar hurried to do the same, flanked on either side by the huge warriors.
‘Thirty seconds,’ clicked the voice. The column had departed Absolution Square forty-five minutes earlier, Black Scythe leading the three Rhinos out along the Pilgrim Way, through the devotarium district and out into the clogged streets and paths that wove through the slum city. They were almost on top of the shrine unearthed by Damar.
‘There is a crowd gathering outside,’ the Space Marine called Nuritona said to Rannik. ‘Prepare yourself.’
She said nothing, unclamping
her Vox Legi and racking the slide.
The Rhino lurched to a halt. The red interior lighting blinked to green and there was a buzzing noise. The rear access ramp dropped.
Rannik was the second out, after Nuritona. The light of a Piety summer evening hit her a second before the stench and the noise.
Nuritona’s statement about a crowd had been conservative. There were hundreds of people pressing around the Space Marines’ vehicles, clad in raggedy pilgrimage robes and brown or black devotional garb. There were gasps and screams of terror as the Carcharodons started to disembark, towering over those around them.
‘Defensive cordon,’ Nuritona ordered. The crowd’s distress magnified as the Space Marines spread out from the Rhinos, people pushing and falling as they scrambled back from the grey giants. Rannik was joined by Damar in the shadow of their vehicle. She was scanning the ramshackle buildings hemming them in, the conglomerate constructions of corrugated iron and layers of rotting multiwood rising three or four storeys either side. Close in to the edge of the shrines the pilgrim shacks were like a city in their own right, albeit one stinking of refuse and bearing no obvious layout or plan. It was an excellent place for an ambush, and the Carcharodons were clearly aware of it.
‘I don’t like this,’ Damar murmured, lascarbine up, eyes darting from one shack to the next. ‘We’re hemmed in.’
‘We are about to move in on the target building,’ Nuritona said. ‘It is a hundred yards to our south-east. Fourth Squad will take point. I recommend you remain by my side at all times and follow my instructions.’
‘We will accompany the vanguard,’ Rannik said before Damar could speak. He shot her a withering look, but nodded.
‘My master wishes us to be among the first to reach the target building,’ he admitted.
Carcharodons: Outer Dark Page 19