There was a hammering on the hatch beneath them. The sound was followed by the crack of gunfire. Rannik realised the hybrids still clogging the surrounding alleys had spotted them. She crouched beneath the roof’s parapet. The Carcharodon remained standing. Even unarmoured and bleeding from the earlier shotgun hits, he appeared set on disdaining the incoming fire.
A sound rose above the tumult of the horde below, a distant, teeth-jarring whine. Rannik looked skywards in time to see a cruciform shape arc around the towering spires of Pontifrax, nose-down, darting across the slum rooftops low and fast. It was a Carcharodons flier, not one of the hulking gunships that had ferried them down from orbit, but something smaller and lither. As she watched it jinked left, spitting flares in time to avoid a twisting rocket-propelled grenade that streaked up on a crooked contrail from the slums beneath. It swooped in over Bastion 17-Z, the scream of its engines engulfing Rannik and Khauri, engaging its thrusters as the twin assault cannons studding its prow opened up into the mob below with a whining buzz.
‘On board,’ Khauri shouted, lifting Rannik like a child. Her protestations turned into a yell of fear as he physically tossed her two-handed towards the hatch of the flier, the entranceway dropping open a dozen paces above the edge of the sub-precinct’s roof. She experienced a gut-lurching moment of dislocation, and saw rounds fired from below spanking and sparking from the grey metal ahead of her, the noise of their impacts lost in the cacophony of the engines.
Then she hit the cold deck plate of the flier’s empty hold, the impact driving the wind from her lungs. She had time to scrabble to one side, gasping, before Khauri impacted beside her with shuddering force.
‘Throne,’ was all she could pant as the hatch levered shut, sealing them within the juddering metal container of the troop section.
‘Lock yourself into the restraints,’ Khauri said, picking himself up along with his stave. ‘We will be taking more fire once we re-enter the city.’
The battle of Absolution Square began, as such things so often did, with a degree of incongruity. A landcar, apparently commandeered, raced up the Boulevard of the Blessed and into the square, tyres squealing. Its occupants apparently only then noticed the Carcharodons battleline arrayed at the far side, turned the vehicle so hard it almost flipped, and raced away, north along Saint Kleitus Way.
‘Scouts?’ Dorthor muttered.
‘Or just some fool trying to escape what is coming,’ Sharr said coldly.
The Reaper Prime and his command squad occupied the steps before the aquila doors of the Cathedra of Saint Solomon, the company’s Devastators arrayed either side of them. Beneath were three tactical squads, Third, Fourth and Fifth, anchored around the company’s Land Raider, Maxima Alba. The other two tactical squads, the twin Predators Black Scythe and Grey Reaper and the Rhinos had been deployed covering the streets and wynds leading off from the cathedra’s flanks and rear.
There was no sign of any frateris troops, either holding the adjacent Theocratica or in the other administrative buildings overlooking the square. Reports were coming in over the vox from the company’s air support that a huge mob of pilgrims was flooding in from the north-east, picking up smaller bands of rioters across Pontifrax as they went. Sharr had already permitted strafing runs, but the topography of the city’s jagged skyline and the sheer weight of firepower the mob could bring to bear was forcing even the trio of Thunderhawks to stand off. He accepted an incoming vox transmission as Maxima Alba gunned its idling engines.
‘Reaper, this is Void Four,’ crackled the voice of one of the company’s pilots, Tokaru. ‘I have extracted Pale One. We are inbound on your position.’
Sharr acknowledged with a blink-click. Dorthor’s auspex had just pinged.
‘Contacts closing,’ the strike veteran said. ‘From the east and north-east. Thousands. Estimated time to contact, less than five minutes.’
Sharr could hear them now, the rising swell of thousands of voices and hammering feet, pounding down the streets and the boulevard towards Pontifrax’s lavish heart. He turned to Niko.
‘Remove the company standard into the cathedra,’ he said. ‘That is our one and only fall back point.’ He switched his vox to address the company in its entirety.
‘The time has come, void brothers. The Chapter’s future will be decided by our actions here today. Make ready.’
That was it. The Carcharodon Astra needed no great orations or litanies. Their duty was as clear as ever. Silent as the void, they waited.
And with a howl, the xenos horde burst into the square before them.
+ + Gene scan complete + + +
+ + Access granted + + +
+ + Beginning mem-bank entry log + + +
+ + Date check, 2801885.M41 + + +
The situation has degenerated completely. There’s rioting throughout the city, and the frateris seem powerless to stop it. I am going with the cleric marshal to relieve the primary Adeptus Arbites precinct. This will likely be my last entry for some time.
Signed,
Inquisitor Augim Nzogwu
+ + Mem-bank entry log ends + + +
_________ Chapter XI
A knock rang out through the Theocratica’s state room. Janus, Ro and Tibalt looked at one another. After a moment’s silence the crusader moved from where he had been standing beside one of the windows, and headed for the door.
‘Don’t open it,’ Janus said. The knock sounded again. Both Janus and Ro reached for their sidearms as the crusader turned the handle.
On the other side they found the supreme pontiff himself, waiting. De Grattio was conscious once more, though his wizened expression gave nothing away. He was still clad in his loose, plain blue medicae shift, as though he had only just left his ward.
‘Supreme Pontiff?’ Janus asked when Tibalt said nothing. The crusader seemed rooted to the spot, unable to speak. Janus assumed he was conflicted over his duties – while his oaths were to the Ministorum, he had also sworn fealty to the ordos and Nzogwu. If the master of Piety V demanded entry in his own palace, there was little Tibalt could do.
De Grattio, however, seemed content to stand on the threshold, staring into Tibalt’s eyes. Janus had forgotten just how black the pontiff’s own gaze was, void-like, almost dead, like a doll’s. It was only when Tibalt’s broadsword clattered to the floor that he realised there was more than mere awe behind the frozen silence between the two men.
‘Ro, get back,’ Janus snapped, raising his autopistol. He knew both the words and the action were useless. He tried anyway. Tibalt stepped aside, his features slack, his eyes staring, sword abandoned as his mind tried and failed to overcome the numbing hypnotism of a genestealer hybrid. Even as he did so, there was movement in the doorway. There were creatures behind de Grattio, stooped and hissing, and as the crusader left the door they pushed past the pontiff, a sudden blur of wicked claws and black, glittering eyes.
Janus managed to get off just one shot before the purestrain genestealers darted into the room, and their talons ripped the life from Augim Nzogwu’s Inquisitorial retinue.
By the time the frateris relief column reached Pontifrax’s primary Arbites precinct headquarters, Bastion Alpha, the mob outside its razorwire-studded walls had devolved into a full-scale riot. Most of the crowd seemed to be raggedly clad pilgrims from the slums, but there were also black devotati among them, and many of them seemed to be armed. Gunshots rang out from the streets and alms buildings near the precinct, and the Arbites garrisoning the walls were returning fire.
Nzogwu was at Brant’s side as he brought his men up to the gates. They had arrived on foot – the frateris’ limited motor pool seemed to have been deployed to stiffen what remained of the cordon stopping the rest of the slum’s inhabitants from flooding the city. Brant ordered his vanguard to fire on the rioters without hesitation – the fusillade of autogun fire quickly cleared the street leading to the
precinct’s front gate.
‘It looks like we’re already too late,’ Nzogwu said to Brant as they approached, squads of frateris fanning out on either side to secure the wide, open street set before Bastion Alpha’s walls. ‘The situation is out of control.’
‘With respect, inquisitor, I would hear Judge Fulchard’s opinion before saying that,’ Brant said, stepping over one of the dead rioters, an aged pilgrim. Nzogwu noticed the token clutched in the old man’s death-grip – the same crescent-shaped xenos predator found by Damar in the shrine. Whether the cult had fully turned the mob or not, it was present in one form or another. He picked up his pace as the precinct’s doors swung open to admit them.
The precinct’s commander was waiting. The short, stocky arbitrator was fully clad in riot gear, face obscured by his helmet, shotgun in hand and an autopistol at his hip. Behind him stood the precinct’s parade ground and execution blocks, and beyond it the black rockcrete bulk of the main keep.
‘Well met, Judge Fulchard,’ Nzogwu said. ‘I am Inquisitor–’
‘Augim Nzogwu,’ the arbitrator said, his tone brusque. ‘Welcome. As you can see, things here have escalated to an extreme degree.’
The clicking of his vox interrupted Nzogwu before he could respond. He half turned away from Brant and the arbitrator, hand going up to his ear. There was a voice battling through the blurts of static. It sounded like Rannik.
‘Crosshatch, this is Avatar, come in,’ he said into his bead, trying to move away from the frateris and arbitrators who had clustered around him. ‘Crosshatch, is that you?’
The static degenerated further. Nzogwu cursed and switched to the channel established with Janus, Ro and Tibalt. ‘Bastion, this is Avatar, come in.’
Nothing. This time there wasn’t even static, just silence.
‘Bastion, this is Avatar, do you copy?’
Movement at the precinct’s gatehouse caught his eye, causing him to turn back towards the entrance to the street. The abitrators hadn’t closed the gate after Nzogwu and Brant had entered. The mob was back, and its riotous fury was gone – hundreds of the ragged pilgrims were approaching the opening, now in total eerie silence. The frateris and the abitrators did nothing. They weren’t even looking at them. Every eye was on Nzogwu.
‘The gate–’ he began, but stopped. They had the same eyes. Everyone around him, from Fulchard to Brant. The same glassy, black eyes.
Nzogwu reached for his plasma pistol, but the cleric marshal already had his sidearm out, pressed to his head.
‘You have failed, inquisitor,’ the hybrid magus said. ‘Glory to the star saints.’
He fired.
Rannik cursed and slumped back in her restraint harness, abandoning the vox-link. She couldn’t reach Nzogwu. His locator was showing him present in the city’s primary Arbites headquarters, but Khauri had already refused to turn the flier towards it. They were returning to Absolution Square.
Khauri had said nothing since the flier had picked them up. He was strapped in opposite Rannik, his black eyes staring into space, seemingly lost in the trance Carcharodons appeared to enter when there was nothing to fight or kill.
Rannik realised she was staring, and looked away. The sooner they got back to Absolution Square, the sooner she could return to the Theocratica – even if Nzogwu was in the Arbites precinct, surely he had left some of the retinue back at the commandeered headquarters? She thought about Damar, and bit back a fresh flush of anger mixed with regret. She should never have let him out of her sight. He wouldn’t have been stupid enough to abandon her in a place like that.
A sudden, violent lurch interrupted her thoughts. She gripped her restraints tighter as the flier pitched, its engines rising to a painful shriek.
‘We’re taking fire,’ clicked the voice of the pilot over the intercom. ‘Activating flares and taking evasive action.’
The words, rather than the violent rattling of the hold, seemed to snatch Khauri from his trance. The intercom had barely clicked off again before the whole aircraft shuddered like a wounded beast. An alarm began to clatter, and the lighting abruptly turned red.
‘We have been hit,’ Khauri shouted over the cacophony. ‘Brace yourself.’
Rannik mouthed a prayer to the God-Emperor, the words lost in the cacophony of the plunging flier. Her knuckles were white around her harness. She screwed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth and leaned forwards into the brace position, hands over her head, trying not to panic, trying to block out the ear-aching howl of the engines and the uncontrollable turbulence. The plummeting descent lasted perhaps twenty seconds, but it felt like an age, an age where every breath made her want to throw up and start screaming.
Then they hit the ground. She blacked out, perhaps for a second. When she came to, the alarm had died, but they were somehow still falling, crashing through multiple layers of stonework. The world turned upside down. Forces pulled and crushed her, shaking her like a rag doll against the harness. The hull around her crumpled. Metal screamed, tore. The lights went out.
And abruptly it was over. She was in darkness, but her shaking fingers found the stock of her Vox Legi, still clamped beside her. She triggered the lumen she had strapped to it. A figure was standing over her, deathly white. She screamed.
‘Be calm,’ said a voice she recognised. She realised it was Khauri. The stress seemed to drain from her, and a detached part of her mind, curiously untroubled by the terror she had just experienced, recognised the same gentle psychic influence Welt had used on occasion to counter traumatic experiences. She swallowed and took a long, shuddering breath, willing the sickness in her stomach and the shaking in her limbs to ease.
‘You are a difficult woman to kill, arbitrator.’
‘I’ve got a job to do,’ she growled, managing to finally grip the release clamp on her harness. The restraints snapped back and she stumbled forwards, Khauri’s hand arresting her fall. The deck was pitched at an awkward angle, but at least it had settled the right way up.
Khauri hit the hold’s rear disembarkation ramp. It lowered just a few inches before grating up against something unyielding. He blew the side hatches, and the left-hand one clattered out, emitting a stream of sunlight. The Carcharodon dropped through, stave in hand. After a moment to find her balance, Rannik followed. Her skull was throbbing – despite the restraint harness, she had hit it during the crash landing, and blood was seeping from her scalp. She wiped it away and gripped her shotgun, dropping down through the tilted hatch.
The flier had come down in a church wynd, carrying a good deal of the place of worship down with it. It had clipped the spire and then demolished part of the roof and one wall, leaving behind a wake of rubble in which it had settled, propped against the neighbouring devotarium. A pall of dust and powdered white stone was still settling as Rannik got her bearings.
‘The pilot is dead,’ Khauri said. He had been checking the flier’s cockpit, but now returned, boots crunching against the rubble underfoot.
‘Where are we?’ Rannik asked. A street was visible at the end of the wynd, but it appeared deserted. Sustained gunfire and the tumult of a crowd was rising audibly above the buildings around them, seemingly no more than a mile or so distant.
‘We are south-east of Absolution Square,’ Khauri said. By now, Rannik had learned not to ask how he knew.
‘We cannot reach it above ground without passing through the xenos horde assailing my void brothers,’ he went on. ‘We will take to the underground once more.’
‘Go back down?’ Rannik asked incredulously.
‘The xenos are mounting a full-scale assault. There is zero chance we can approach the cathedra from any side undetected. In the crypts below the city we will be able to channel any threat we face. You, of course, are free to depart.’
She paused to check her vox again, but there were still no returns on any of the frequencies used by Nzogwu or the res
t of the retinue. His marker was still static on the Arbites precinct – from the sounds of the engagement nearby, she wouldn’t be surprised if he was under siege there.
‘I need to find my fellow operatives,’ she told Khauri. ‘And as far as I’m aware, they’re still based at the Theocratica. So…’ She took a breath, and looked the Carcharodon in his soulless, black eyes.
‘If you think you’re getting rid of me that easily, you’re wrong.’
‘All strike leaders, fire at will.’
The Reaper Prime issued the order over the company-wide vox-net to the Carcharodons facing down the cultists rushing Absolution Square. The open space resounded with the thunderclap reports of bolter fire, the whoosh of rockets and the roar of searing plasma as his warriors opened fire. The leading edge of the swarm, flooding the square ahead, shuddered like a single, sentient entity. Cultists and hybrids were cut down, their pallid flesh blasted apart, blood and black ichor slashing the flagstones underfoot. The Devastators set up on the steps either side of Sharr added to the slaughter, frag missiles reducing clutches of xenos worshippers to bloody shreds, plasma igniting ragged robes and turning hybrids to ash in sunflash bursts of brilliance.
Sharr scanned the initial salvo, auto-senses logging estimated damage and casualty ratios. The horde had been checked, but the pause would not last. Numbers were still pouring in from the surrounding streets and the Boulevard of the Blessed was choked with writhing swarms of alien flesh, their rags thrown off and their hideous deformities revealed. Void Spear had already shrieked down to strafe the long, wide road, but its bolters and battle cannon had barely made an impression. It seemed as though Pontifrax’s slums had emptied, the population filling the streets and scrambling over their own dead towards the Space Marines. Sharr supposed, in a way, that they were simply completing their pilgrimage.
If the Carcharodon Astra had anything to do with it, then it would end only in blood, that much the Reaper Prime swore.
Carcharodons: Outer Dark Page 23