‘Confirmed,’ said Gald, from back in the crew compartment. Orsino had sent the cold-eyed proctor with Josef, and he fancied he could feel the man’s malevolence in the clipped reply.
‘Going dark,’ said the pilot. The wing lights on all three gunships went out.
The gunner in the door beside Josef swung the barrels of his rotor cannon around. They began to spin. The man’s helmet was a mass of vision and targeting enhancers. In the crew compartment behind him the arbitrators released their harnesses. Josef slipped his right hand through the worn leather loop on the haft of his hammer. He raised the aquila icon hanging around his neck with his left hand and kissed the cold brass.
‘You are of the priesthood,’ said a clear voice in his headset. He glanced around and met the glowing red gaze of Sister Superior Agata. The Battle Sister was fully armed, sword sheathed at her back, a bolter in her hands and her face hidden by a full helm.
‘I was,’ he shouted back.
‘But you talk like a soldier.’
‘That I am and was, sister. The blessed Emperor has seen fit to call me to many different duties.’
‘To serve the inquisitor?’
The gunship banked hard. Spires, domes and towers whipped past. They were dropping fast, snow a blurred wall all around them. He could see the lights glimmering through leaded windows only metres away.
‘Target zone in sight,’ said the pilot.
Josef grinned, gripping the grab rail beside the door as G-force slammed through the gunship.
‘Yes, and to do things like this.’
The stone walls of the monastery fell away, and the pilgrim drift opened beneath them. Fire glowed through the blizzard. Shacks and piled structures were blazing. Roads threaded through the orange glow in jagged lines. The wind was whipping tongues of flame from rooftop to rooftop. Here and there were patches of unburned buildings gathering coverings of snow.
‘The last location of the shrine guard units was half a mile along the main road from the gate,’ said Agata.
‘Sir, the fire is masking heat signatures,’ said the gunship pilot. ‘There could be hundreds of people down there or none at all.’
‘Only one way to find out. Take us in.’
The gunships turned, spiralling down, the wind yanking them like kites jerked on strings.
‘If the shrine guard were ambushed, whoever did that could be waiting for us,’ said Agata.
‘Then we will know they are there for certain.’
‘You don’t strike me as a reckless soul, preacher.’
‘And you don’t strike me as someone who counts the odds.’
The ground was coming up fast. The heat of the fires touched Josef’s face even through the cold wind. The gunner’s hands were steady on the rotor cannon, fingers on triggers.
‘Ready to drop, in three…’ said the pilot, flattening out the gunship’s flight in a roar of thrusters. The gunship was level for a second, then dropped. An open stretch of road lay between two rows of burning buildings. ‘Two…’ The gunship’s thrusters shrieked as they caught its descent and slammed it stationary two metres off the ground. ‘One…’
Josef shoved himself out of the opened door, and hit the ground. Agata dropped beside him. The gunship began to rise and pull away down the road as the arbitrators were still jumping from the open hatches. They hit the ground and dropped into firing crouches, bolters and combat shotguns trained on the buildings. Fire climbed the piled shacks. The snow underfoot was slush. Josef could feel the sweat already pouring off him under his robes and thermal bodyglove. The gunships rose into the blizzard above them, howling into the night.
Josef moved forwards. The other two squads had been dropped a hundred metres on either side of them on the road. The buildings and flame glow hid the monastery and stained the sky.
‘Contact,’ shouted Gald. ‘Fifty metres, right arc, single figure closing, status unclear.’
Josef turned. A figure was walking towards them from the shadow of a building that was still only partially ablaze.
‘Halt or you will be executed,’ called an arbitrator, voice amplified above the wind.
Josef could see that the figure was limping.
‘Halt,’ called Gald again.
‘Hold fire,’ called Josef. He was moving forwards as the figure stumbled and fell. He reached the figure as it tried to rise. It was a woman, thickset and wearing the remains of padded armour sewn with bronze panels. Her left arm was gone at the elbow, the left half of her face charred and clotted with black blood.
‘No, no, don’t move,’ said Josef, kneeling down beside her. This close he could hear the woman’s breath sawing and bubbling. The arbitrators had moved with him, forming a ring around them, guns pointed out into the flame-touched night. Josef saw the woman’s lips move and bent closer.
‘That’s one of the shrine guard,’ said Agata from behind him.
‘Where are the others?’ snapped Gald.
‘Quiet,’ said Josef. The woman was shaking her head. A bubble of pink foam formed on her lips.
‘Be calm,’ said Josef. ‘What happened here?’
‘Red…’ hissed the woman. She began to shake. ‘No… survivors. The drift… pilgrims…’ She was gasping now, panting as she fought for breath. ‘They… all…’ A mass of red foamed at her lips. She began to convulse. Her lips moved again. Josef leaned closer. Blood bubbles exploded on his cheeks.
‘What did she say?’ asked Gald.
Josef felt the blood drain from his face. He pushed himself up, the surge of adrenaline seeming to drag on him.
The woman gave a shudder and went still.
‘She said…’ Hearing the drum of his heart louder than the words. ‘They are all…are all pilgrims of hate now.’
Behind them, a fork of lightning punched up into the blizzard from the ground and tore a hovering gunship from the sky above them.
There was commotion around the Gate of Bells as the sound of an explosion rattled the doors.
‘Get back,’ growled one of the shrine guard, shoving a cluster of pilgrims filling the passage who had just made it through the doors before they closed. One of them turned slowly, rag-wrapped head rising.
The torch light caught a glint of metal. Of sharp metal.
The shrine guard saw, and was shouting as the knife point punched up under the chin of his helm.
The pilgrims were shrugging off their snow-covered cloaks. The woman who had stabbed the first guard stepped back, shedding rotting cloth like a skin. There was a hooked blade in her hand and jagged scars across her bald scalp.
A high ringing filled the air.
The pilgrims were all red now, all wrapped in tatters.
And the guards by the door were turning, shock on their faces and shouts on their lips.
The woman in red looked like she was grinning, showing all her teeth.
But it was not a smile. It was a cut that ran from edge to edge of the woman’s face.
And the shouts of surprise were all screams now.
Iacto could hear the noise as he approached the doors to the House of Concordance. Raised voices, and the crash of heavy objects striking the floor. Claudia was close behind him with two novitiates dragging carts of parchment rolls and leather-bound tomes. Two figures in black amour stepped into their path. His eyes met the wide mouths of levelled guns.
‘Identify yourselves. You have five seconds to comply,’ said one of the figures. Its voice was a machine-modulated growl echoing from its helm. He shrank back. He felt his guts lurch.
It’s true, he thought. This had to mean it was true. The Inquisition had come on the eve of night. He had not believed the news when Claudia had brought him the summons.
‘I am Abbot Iacto,’ he said. ‘I am head of the Sage Order of the Faithful. I was–’
A red lacquered servo-skull buzzed in from behind the armoured figures and gripped his face with metal callipers. He jerked back, but the skull gripped tighter.
‘Be stil
l,’ growled one of the armoured figures. Iacto went still. The skull pulled itself to within a centimetre of his face. A pulse of red light flicked out from the skull’s sockets and bored into Iacto’s eyes. He bit back a yelp. The skull clattered and beeped, then released his head. The second skull must have done the same to Claudia, because she was blinking and had an expression that he knew meant she was only just holding her temper.
‘You are identified and logged,’ said one of the armoured figures. They stepped to the side. The doors to the House of Concordance opened. ‘You may enter.’
Iacto nodded, and turned to make sure the two novitiates followed with the records. He noticed half a dozen servo-skulls with articulated, steel legs scuttle off the stacks of scrolls and books like spiders.
‘Not them,’ said one of the guards. ‘Only you and your second may pass.’
Iacto looked around, a protest forming in his mouth. He met the mirrored visor of the nearest figure and the words faded.
‘Come,’ he said to Claudia, and gripped the handles of one of the carts.
Noise greeted them as they stepped through the doors. More figures in black armour were ripping the ancient pews from the floor and clearing a wide space of bare floor around the rostrum at the centre of the domed chamber. A tech-priest, in grey robes and a hunched machine frame, was manipulating dials and levers on one of a series of blocky machines. Thick cables snaked across the floor, and through open access grates. A smell of static and burning plastic touched his nose. A wave of heat washed over Iacto as the doors closed and locked behind him. More armoured figures stood at the room’s edge, slab-framed guns held across their chests. A dark-skinned man in a long trench coat watched Iacto and Claudia from a seat in the remaining pews. Next to him sat a decrepit-looking man wearing green robes over a frame so thin he could have passed for a mummified corpse.
A cluster of figures he knew stood at the centre of the cleared floor. The bishop stooped beneath her panoply of penitent chains. Next to her stood Archdeacon Sul, red-faced and sweating. The guards on the door had clearly denied his attendants entrance, because the archdeacon was carrying his huge ceremonial bone and iron mace in his own hands. As Iacto moved forwards he noticed Sul shift his weight, and blink as sweat ran down his face.
Opposite them stood a woman in black armour, her wrinkled face set beneath a towering headdress of silver and brass, an eagle-topped staff in her hands. She was saying something, and authority and control radiated from her expression even though Iacto could not hear the words.
The inquisitor, he thought, as the group noticed him and turned.
‘Abbot Iacto,’ said Bishop Xilita. ‘He is head of the Most Ancient Order of the Faithful, who keep the records and histories of this holy place. He has the plans you have asked for.’
Iacto was about to bow to the woman in the gilded headdress, when she gave a bark of laughter.
‘Not me,’ she said, and stepped back. Iacto saw that there was a fourth member of the group.
The man was young, with dark hair swept up into a topknot above a sharp face. The mark of the Inquisition gleamed on his red cuirass. The hilt of a sword projected from above his shoulders.
Iacto tried not to stare. He had never seen a member of the Inquisition before, and part of him was somehow disappointed. A soul who wielded the power of the Emperor Himself was just a man.
He began to kneel, mouth opening to give formal greeting.
‘Why do we need plans?’ blurted Sul. Iacto looked up, surprised. Sul’s hands were gripping and ungripping the mace, sweat rolling down his face. The inquisitor had turned to look at the archdeacon, and there was something in the way that neither gaze nor expression altered that made Iacto’s skin prickle with cold in the heat.
Iacto saw Sul swallow. He suddenly wanted to shout at the man to be quiet, to keep whatever fear was driving him to speak behind his teeth.
‘What do records matter?’ Sul was shaking. ‘We must pull out. The servants of darkness have come with the night. We must–’
‘Control yourself, sir,’ said the woman in the headdress. Now that he was closer he could see the symbols of judgement, law and authority on her staff, headdress and panoply.
Adeptus Arbites, he realised, a judge. He swallowed, and found his throat dry. Even without an inquisitor, this aged woman had the power to enforce Imperial Law without limit or oversight.
Sul’s jaw was still working, his eyes darting between hard faces. Iacto coughed and stepped forwards, pulling the first scroll from the cart next to him.
‘Honoured lords and most holy servants of our Emperor,’ said Iacto into the uneasy quiet. ‘This is the most recent plan of the complex. It was conducted one hundred and eleven years ago, but all but a few of the pertinent details are still accurate.’ He unrolled it between his hands, and looked up. Bishop Xilita shot him a look that he fancied held a note of relief at his intervention. Sul was blinking away sweat. His eyes were glazed, his pupils wide. ‘I brought other plans of the structure that can help create a more detailed picture.’ He chanced a look up at the judge and the inquisitor. ‘Where do your eminences require them?’ The judge was frowning, her gaze moving between Sul and Xilita. The inquisitor was looking directly at Iacto.
‘And the other records?’ said the inquisitor.
Iacto felt the smile he had been wearing behind his expression fade.
‘Here, my lord,’ he said, and gestured to Claudia to bring forward the other cart of ledgers and codices. ‘There are more, but these cover the areas you–’
‘Glavius-4-Rho,’ said the inquisitor, looking to the hunched tech-priest in grey as the gun on his shoulder rotated to fix on Iacto.
‘I await your command, lord, but please be aware…’ The tech-priest slotted a thick cable into the side of a block of machinery. Lights lit on its side, and a cone of static-filled green light blinked into the air. ‘The previous tasks that I am working to complete remain in a state between beginning and completion.’
‘Aid the abbot with compiling the information out of the records.’
‘As you will it,’ said the tech-priest.
Iacto bowed, then looked up. A question came to his lips, and despite all the decades that had taught him that silence was survival and curiosity dangerous, he heard his voice sound in the still air.
‘My lord inquisitor. We have brought records of the passing of days going back five centuries. What is it that you are looking for in the records?’
He wished he had not asked as soon as he had spoken.
The inquisitor took a step forward and lifted a leather-bound almanac from those heaped in the cart. He opened it. Dust puffed into the air. The inquisitor’s eyes moved down the page, and then up to Iacto. The abbot flinched back from the hard fire in that gaze.
‘For the hand marks of the divine,’ he said.
The burning wreckage of the gunship had not even touched the ground when a second lightning bolt struck the other gunship, and blew it apart.
Agata’s visor blinked black but the flashes exploded in her mind.
‘Down!’ she shouted. A blazing wing hit the building just in front of them. Fire and dust burst into the air. A blast wave ripped out. A chunk of rubble hit an arbitrator in the base of the back as he turned to run, and mashed his armour into his torso. Agata staggered, servos whirring in her armour as it fought to keep her standing.
In her mind the litany of the endurance lit like a flame.
Emperor, You are my strength…
Flame punched up into the blizzard as the remains of the second gunship hit the ground.
As You are eternal, so I am unbreakable…
Red flame and smoke curled into an anvil head above.
As You endure, so shall I bear the blows of the unclean…
The arbitrators were picking themselves up, but there were figures in the buildings around them now, figures who had pulled themselves out of the shadows.
Agata’s skin was prickling, and even through h
er helm she could taste ozone and sulphur.
She saw the preacher Josef trying to stand up from where he had fallen. He had his hammer in his hand, but there was blood on his face and he fell back as he tried to get his feet under him.
Agata fired. The first bolts tore the closing figures apart. She ran, firing with each stride, the bolter kicking in her grip. She shifted target as she moved, each movement requiring no thought, like a prayer recited until the words were written on the soul.
Flesh and bone tore apart. Blood salted the snow.
She was beside the preacher, her gauntlet under his arm.
‘Move!’ she roared, yanking his bulk up, servos shrieking, muscles tearing. He almost collapsed back. There were more figures coming from the burning dark. Agata fired one-handed, aiming low. The figures were shrieking, curses hissing from mouths that no longer had tongues. The bolt shells punched into the rubbled ground at their feet and exploded. Air bursts of shrapnel and stone splinters tore their legs apart, tumbling them to the ground, still. The round counter in her helm display flashed red. More figures came of out the swirl of snow and smoke.
She clamped the bolter to her thigh and drew the sword from her back in a single movement. The blade was heavy, designed to be wielded with two hands.
‘The Master of Mankind watches over me,’ she called.
The blade lit with a whip-crack of lightning.
Josef was blinking, head shaking as though trying to clear it of sleep, weight swaying as Agata supported him. A few arbitrators were standing.
The ragged figures charged.
‘As He is my shield…’
A wasted figure loomed out of the dark, nails hammered into its frostbitten torso, face a mask of blood and torn skin, its arms dragging a block of black metal on a heavy chain over its head to smash down into Agata.
‘…so am I the death of His enemies.’
And the sword cut through the falling snow.
‘Lord Covenant!’ Galvius-4-Rho’s shout was loud enough to make Iacto flinch, books tumbling out of his hands. The tech-priest straightened from one of the blocks of machinery that had been dragged into the chamber. Iacto looked up, realising only now just how tall the tech-priest was. Inquisitor Covenant was looking around from where he was talking with Xilita. Archdeacon Sul had been dismissed and was halfway to the door.
Incarnation - John French Page 15