by Ben Counter
And in the end, thought Cyvon, that was all a Space Marine really needed to know.
‘It may come to pass that none of us will live.’ Eugenivov knelt alongside the other loyalists. The city’s prayer books had been heaped up and burned outside the shrines and cathedrals, but Eugenivov had volumes committed to memory and chose his words from the sermons of saints. ‘For this, I do not despair. I do not demand restitution from my Emperor. Instead, I am grateful. I give the most exultant of thanks. For how often do we know the time and means of our death? And how often do we know it will be in combat against the Great Enemy, against the personification of heresy in the defence of humanity? And no less, alongside the Adeptus Astartes, the Angels of Death, who are the manifestation of His will. I am not sorrowful. I am not afraid, brothers and sisters. I am soon to die, and I am full of joy.’
The loyalists made the sign of the aquila as Eugenivov finished his sermon, and their minds turned to silent prayer.
The Weldworks was behind them. With Stheno’s guidance, the Soul Drinkers and the two hundred or so loyalists had made their way through abandoned manufactoria and mass-transit tunnels to the threshold of House Yathe. They were gathered a short run from the compound walls, among the ruins of a razed tenement district scattered with charred bones and heaps of scorched bodies. Across a stretch of ruins was the estate’s west wall. Above them was the soaring vaulted ceiling of Hollowmount’s many-layered structure, like a dark iron sky. Behind them was nothing, for they could not retreat from here. As soon as they played their hand, Hollowmount would know they were there, and there would be no flight back to the Weldworks now. They were too far from safety, too easily cut off from their foothold in the capital.
Cyvon knew Eugenivov was right. The loyal citizens of Hollowmount were probably going to die.
They would be avenged. Eugenivov’s sermon was correct, he told himself. This was a rare chance to die a good death, and to know those responsible would be punished. That vengeance was one more task the Soul Drinkers would accomplish at House Yathe.
The three squads of Soul Drinkers, plus Oxyath and the loyalists, were facing the walls of a noble house compound. The walls were thirteen feet high and patrolled by cult members in the customary mix of clothing, most of them masked, all of them armed. Within the walls were several grand buildings, their gilded cornices and red-tiled roofs in contrast to the industrial gloom of Hollowmount. Cyvon could see the top of a statue of a grandly dressed man, a scion of the Yathe family, with cables running from its torso to the nearest corner of each building. From the cables hung banners bearing the cult’s symbols. The enthroned woman, the skull crowned and impaled, a dozen hands arranged in a sunburst.
‘No noble bodies hanging,’ mused Cyvon as he watched from the ruins. ‘House Yathe gave up their home willingly.’
‘For such a crime,’ said Sasan beside him, ‘we shall administer justice.’
‘Make ready to execute,’ voxed Tiridates.
Inquisitor Stheno walked among the loyalists. ‘Now is your time,’ he said. ‘Father Eugenivov! Are their spirits ready?’
‘They are,’ said Eugenivov.
‘Then become the sword-thrust through the heart of the enemy!’ said Stheno. ‘For Kepris! For the Emperor! Attack!’
‘Onward, my brothers and sisters!’ cried Eugenivov, jumping to his feet and holding his autopistol in the air. ‘Onward! Hear the Emperor’s thunder! Charge!’
The loyalists burst from cover and ran at the walls. Two hundred men and women, armed with whatever they had scrounged from the armouries of the Keprian military and the Hollowmount enforcers, shielded by nothing more than faith.
‘They’ll buy us fifteen minutes,’ said Inquisitor Stheno. He had not joined the loyalists in their charge.
‘Then we will need no more,’ said Sergeant Tiridates. ‘Soul Drinkers, advance!’
Sergeant Respendial knelt beside a metal cover in the ground that was covered in a layer of ash and bones. The hatch squealed as he opened it, the sound concealed by the gunfire stuttering from the loyalists and the cultists on the walls, to reveal a black opening leading to the level of the city below. Respendial vaulted in, followed by the battle-brothers of his squad and Librarian Oxyath.
Squad Phraates followed. Phraates himself had his arm bandaged over a makeshift weld job on the armour of his forearm. He carried his bolt rifle with his other hand. Cyvon and Sasan were close behind him. A Space Marine’s vision was barely impeded by even total darkness, and Cyvon could see the sodden corpses choking the narrow tunnels and sewer conduits that ran beneath the street.
‘The cult purged this whole region,’ said Cyvon, taking note of the sheer volume of the dead. ‘They threw them down here when they were done.’
‘And these dead will also be avenged,’ said Phraates up ahead.
The tunnels led beneath the walls, skirting around the massive block foundations, and under the House Yathe compound. Some tunnels were blocked by stinking masses of congealed gore and fat. Others had collapsed. These were Hollowmount’s broken blood vessels. The city was bleeding to death.
‘Here,’ said Stheno from behind a rebreather, indicating a tunnel junction ahead. Sergeant Tiridates waved forward a pair of battle-brothers from his squad, who attached explosive charges to the ceiling. This part of the tunnel was shin-deep in blood, so foul and polluted it was only a Space Marine’s armour filters and third lung that made it fully breathable. Stheno’s breathing was laboured, even with the rebreather. The Soul Drinkers splashed away from the junction and took up position out of the blast zone.
‘We’re blasting our way in again,’ mused Sasan. ‘Praise the primarch who didn’t teach us subtlety.’
‘Would you rather knock on the door, Brother Sasan?’ growled Phraates.
The charges exploded, and a tremendous mass of rubble and earth poured into the sewer junction. Before the last of it had settled, Sergeant Respendial was on the move, leading his squad up towards the faltering light from above. ‘Guns up, brothers!’ voxed Respendial. ‘Now we are known! Now we are the message!’
The gunfire kicked in without hesitation. Bolt rifles and autoguns, voices raised in alarm. Squad Phraates followed Respendial up through the new breach and Cyvon saw they had emerged in the compound’s gardens. The hole had opened up beside a huge ornamental fountain a short distance from the statue he had glimpsed from outside the walls. The gardens were regimented raised flower beds and manicured ornamental hedges, punctuated by discarded equipment containers and the bodies of executed captives heaped up next to bullet-riddled walls. Heretics were rushing from the buildings and Cyvon saw the same mutilated faces and mixture of garb he had noted before, although many of the heretics here wore a heraldic uniform: that of House Yathe, he supposed, proving the noble house had thrown their lot in with the cult. An enormous glass conservatory rose to one side, with the main house to the other and a cluster of smaller guest houses towards the southern edge of the compound. Everything dripped with money and status, from the red-tiled roofs lifted from some bucolic vista to the gilded decorations on the eaves and the statues of House Yathe patriarchs dotted around the gardens.
The cultists were rushing to the rooftops and walls. Heavy stubber and multi-laser emplacements on the former were aimed down at the loyalists assaulting the latter, and suddenly the heretics were facing enemies from inside as well as without. The heretics grappled with the heavy weapons to turn them around, struggling to cope with the sudden escalation of the assault.
‘To the main house!’ ordered Tiridates. ‘Respendial, the east wing! Phraates, the side buildings! Move out, brethren! Break the back of this heretic church!’
‘To me!’ ordered Phraates, firing one-handed up at the rooftops as he yelled. ‘Three to a door, breach and purge! Mark your targets, expect every form of heresy!’
Gunfire streaked down at the Soul Drinkers. Cyvon took cover
at the feet of the huge statue as one of its arms was shattered by chains of heavy stubber fire. Normal soldiers would be slowed down by such weight of fire, but the Soul Drinkers would not let it impede them.
‘Wait for the Librarian,’ said Sasan. ‘This performance needs its light show.’
Epistolary Oxyath jumped up onto a fallen statue. Multi-laser fire pinged and sizzled off his armour. He clenched his fist in a sharp, brutal gesture, and a section of the main house’s roof crumpled in on itself as if crushed by an invisible fist. Bodies caught in the warping of space vanished bloodily amidst the debris, before the whole mass of wreckage dropped into the building, shattering windows and blowing out walls as destruction ripped through the structure.
The side buildings were decorated with the severed heads of the cult’s victims. They stared down, slack-jawed and blank, from the eaves and window sills. Each house was an elegant cottage ornamented with carved scrollwork and murals of pastoral scenes. It was all discoloured with grime and blood. Bullet holes in the walls showed where impromptu firing squads had been set up.
One of the doors burst open. Cyvon saw dirty ivory-coloured robes trimmed with red, and a mask resembling an angry felid creature with a mane of carved wooden fur. He recognised the Uppermost Hand from the broadcast of the executions in Sacerdotes’ Square.
‘Target the Hand!’ ordered Phraates, firing up at more heretics on the rooftops. Cyvon snapped a bolt at the Hand and it flew just wide as the cultist spun around suddenly to face Phraates.
The heretic raised his hands, and Cyvon saw metal and glass glimmering on his fingers.
Twin lances of sizzling crimson energy leapt from the Uppermost Hand’s fingers. One seared just past Cyvon’s head. The other struck Sergeant Phraates.
It caught the sergeant in the side of the torso and sliced out of his shoulder guard. It lasted a split second, and left behind a glowing straight line incised through Phraates’ armour. Phraates toppled to one side, steadying himself against a low wall with his bandaged arm. His hand held on to his bolt rifle through instinct. From the deep glowing scorches on the wall behind the sergeant, Cyvon could tell the beam had seared right through vital organs and spine. Even if Phraates lived, it was an instantly disabling wound.
A second burst of shots from Cyvon impacted against a curved wall of blinding light that flashed into existence to meet them. Other shots burst against the energy barrier or ripped chunks out of the walls beside the Uppermost Hand, who ducked back into the building.
Brothers Arasmyn and Manuch ran to Phraates and tried to haul him back to his feet and get him into cover. He shrugged them off angrily but weakly. ‘After him,’ he ordered, his voice strained. ‘Kill him. Then come for me.’
Cyvon ran to the door frame and put his back against it. Sasan hit the wall on the other side, backed up by Brother Pitamenes. ‘Breach!’ yelled Sasan, and swung in through the open door.
Cyvon followed him in. Sasan covered the left side of the room, Cyvon the right, with Pitamenes watching for anything they might have missed.
What had once been an overtly luxurious bedchamber had been torn apart. Splintered furniture was heaped up against one wall, covered with the tatters of a tapestry torn from its mounting. The remains of a huge four-poster bed lay in fragments. In the centre of the floor was a metal hatch, wide enough for an Impulsor to drive through, in the process of mechanically closing.
Cyvon, acting on instinct, leapt into the closing hatchway. He put a hand on each side of the hatch and braced it, feeling the door’s motors straining as he pushed against them. The dense, gene-forged muscle fibres of a Space Marine bunched in his arms and shoulders. A Space Marine’s raw strength was one of the assets that made face-to-face battle his preferred environment, and Cyvon channelled it all into forcing the doors open.
The motors whined, then failed in sparks and smoke. The doors yielded against Cyvon’s hands. He put another burst of energy into pushing the doors apart and they screeched as he forced them wide enough open for two Soul Drinkers abreast.
‘Those were digital weapons the Uppermost Hand used,’ he said as Sasan dropped in beside him. Ahead of them was a steep staircase leading down a rockcrete shaft. There was no ornamentation here. The structure was hidden beneath the compound, another place for another purpose.
‘Quite the thing to pull out of one’s fundament,’ said Sasan. ‘Where the Throne did he get those?’
‘We can work that out once he’s ours,’ replied Cyvon.
‘I’ll cover your backs,’ said Pitamenes. He was a solid if unimaginative warrior, and Cyvon knew him well enough to be grateful he was with them. He could hear the rest of the squad, Arasmyn and Manuch, storming the guest houses overhead. Phraates was still giving orders. He couldn’t fight, but he could still lead. Cyvon doubted the sergeant would die, but every Soul Drinker out of the battle was worth dozens of the cultists.
Sasan snapped off his helmet and took in a breath. ‘Chemicals,’ he said.
‘Care to be more specific, brother?’ asked Pitamenes, who was walking backwards behind them, covering the hatch entrance.
‘Preservatives,’ said Sasan. ‘Coolants. Dried blood. And something strong and corrosive, for cleaning, perhaps. A laboratory?’
The stairway ended in a wider corridor of bare rockcrete walls. Pipework ran along the ceiling. Freezing vapour clung to the floor, and multiple doors led off in both directions. Through the steel double doors, Cyvon could see a room of operating tables with tiled floors and drains to draw off blood.
Pitamenes opened one of the other doors a crack. ‘Bodies,’ he said. Cyvon followed his gaze and saw he had opened a refrigerated room with dozens of corpses, wrapped in bloodstained plastic, hanging from rails in the ceiling.
A locker on the wall hung open. It had space for several autoguns, one of which was missing.
‘He knows this place and we do not,’ said Cyvon. ‘And we must assume he is not alone.’ He spoke over the vox, subvocalising so anyone listening in could not make out his words.
‘Just a man with a gun,’ said Pitamenes grimly.
‘He has a lot more,’ replied Cyvon.
‘He’ll need it,’ said Sasan as he opened another door, revealing shelves of metal canisters labelled as containing various chemicals, and another set of shelving full of knives and other medical implements arranged in racks. Cyvon recognised rib spreaders and miniature circular saws for cutting away brainpans and slicing through sternums, though much of it was beyond him.
The clattering of something metallic came from another direction. Cyvon automatically swung around to aim at the disturbance down his bolt rifle. It had come from behind one of the closed doors. Sasan was already backed up beside the door.
Cyvon kicked the door open and swung inside.
He emerged into an antiseptic hell. The chamber was wide, long and low, with the ceiling covered in polished steel hooks. From each hook hung a piece of a human body, dissected and pared apart with a surgeon’s precision. Whole quarters hung alongside neatly segmented hands and limbs. A dozen severed legs formed a dangling curtain. Heads hung upside down, with the skin of their faces flensed away to reveal the preserved musculature underneath.
Skins were stretched out on the walls as if to cure. The tattoos and brands of Imperial devotion covered some of them. Others were pale and veined, as if they had never seen sunlight, or were tanned by a life in the forges or out in the wastes. Cyvon crouched low, beneath the forest of body parts. Further into the room was a waist-high servitor consisting of a human torso on a small tracked unit, with long folding metal armatures instead of arms. They snipped and clacked as they tended to a partially dissected corpse. The servitor paused and turned a cluster of sensors grafted to the stump of its neck, as if looking around in annoyance at having its work interrupted.
Cyvon held up a hand as he heard something moving through the doorwa
y up ahead, beyond a curtain of white plastic strips. It was wet and slithering, skin on the tiles.
Through the doorway lurched something resembling a human. Its posture was hunched, with its head hanging low on an elongated neck at waist level. One arm was longer than the other and ended in three oversized fingers. The other arm was withered and multijointed. Its shoulders and pelvis were lopsided and it limped unsteadily forward, leaving a glistening trail of saliva.
Its head turned up. Its face was split down the middle. One of its eyes rolled blindly under a whitish membrane. The mouth hung open and a long, spiny tongue slithered between its jaws.
Sasan was closest to the thing, and opened fire. Bolt shells thumped into its body and chunks of bloody matter sprayed from its back, but it showed no sign of registering pain. Its one good eye snapped to Sasan, and it darted at him with its jaws snapping.
Sasan met the charging thing with a backhand swipe that snapped its spindly neck. The creature hit the tiles with a wet smack. The servitor dutifully trundled towards it to clean up this new mess.
From beyond the doorway came a raised voice, then another, wordless moaning and screaming from a dozen distorted throats.
‘He’s ahead of us,’ said Cyvon. ‘Emptying the cages.’
‘Then we know where he is,’ said Sasan, and Cyvon could tell his battle-brother was smiling.
Cyvon ran at the doorway, Sasan beside him. Pitamenes shouldered his way through the hanging body parts behind them, aiming his bolt rifle behind them to keep up overwatch.
The thing that dived at Cyvon through the doorway had an immense fanged mouth taking up its whole torso. Its squat, elephantine legs supported an oversized fleshy sack of a body with a vestigial head perched on top, the eyes filmy and full of sorrow. Clawed hands raked at him. Cyvon met it with the barrel of his bolt rifle, hammering three rounds down its throat and forcing his weight against it to drive it sideways and away from him. His momentum took him through into the room behind it.