“How singular,” Simova said. “Is that an observation gallery built into it there? The Cathedral certainly was not notified of anything like this. I think we shall have to have words with the Monocrat’s court. I’m assuming that it’s his propagandists who are behind this. Look, you can see the pict-lenses. They must be capturing the cages. Don’t you agree, arbiter?”
“No.” Calpurnia’s voice was distracted rather than snappish, but it was enough to annoy Simova.
“I’m sure I’m correct. Although I wish they had—”
“The identification numbers on the sides there are from the nautical traffic directorates down past the lagoon. It’s one of the blimps they use to monitor sea traffic off the coast and report to the harbourmaster. Haven’t you seen them out over the bay?”
“I suppose I must have, arbiter, but what’s such a thing doing flying up to the hive like this? Throne preserve us, look! It’s barely above the level of the cages! What if it drops?”
“Not exactly the problem I’m anticipating,” Calpurnia said calmly. Simova, wrong-footed, gulped air and watched her unholster, check and arm a stub pistol that looked impossibly large for her slender arms.
The arbiter holding the voxer tilted his head as it broke into a terse series of staticky messages. “East and west teams report that anchors are seized, ma’am,” he said after a moment. “Repeating that, both anchors are seized.”
Simova looked around and upwards.
“What anchors? What are you talking about? I see no anchors, the thing’s… wait, do you mean… Yes, it’s lowering a chain, look! How dare they? Where’s… Emperor’s eyes, there should be a deacon on duty here, where… you. You!”
A nervous deacon, who’d been gawping up at the blimp from several metres away, hurried over. “Give me a magnoc, or bring up a reader so we can look at what that idiot in the blimp is—What? Emperor’s light! You improvident lackwit! There is always supposed to be a sighting device available at the cages for members of the priesthood to—”
“Use mine if you wish, reverend.” Calpurnia passed across a stubby tube, smaller and plainer than the ornate Ministorum devices Simova was used to. He conscientiously said a small benediction for its machine-spirit and put it to his eye.
It was not a chain that the blimp was lowering but a cable and hook, from a heavy winching scaffold on the rear of the gondola. The blimp lurched back and forth as the pilot tried to keep it in one position in the cross-breezes, and the hook swung in wilder and wilder arcs as it descended. The ragged figure in the cage was standing with its back to Simova, gripping the bars, watching the hook descend. The sheer enormity of what he was seeing stopped the words in Simova’s throat for a dozen seconds, and it made an undignified squeak of the voice he eventually managed to find.
“The man’s being rescued: Golden Throne, don’t these people realise what they’re doing? Have they no idea of the consequences?” It took a moment for him to realise that he was talking to himself—the Arbites were conferring with one another and with the rustling voices of their companions on the voxer.
“Anchors cutting, repeating, ma’am. Anchors cutting, both sides. Mast on the move, ETA four minutes.”
“Do we see Helmsman?”
“Tentatively placed with Mast, but not confirmed.”
The hook swung over the top of the cage. The magnoc make it look almost close enough to touch; it was odd when there was no audible clank when the back of the hook bounced off the top of the cage bars. Simova started as the sound of traffic-alert horns blared up through the gaps in the rockcrete.
“I take it someone’s going to tell me what that was.” Calpurnia’s voice had only the tiniest traces of an edge.
“Mastwatch reports in, ma’am. Mast has developed engine difficulties, probably fake. The horns were from the traffic backing up behind it. They hit their mark exactly, though.”
“I’d expect no less,” said Calpurnia. “Anchors? If they’re too enthusiastic up there then they may save us having to be involved at all, although I’m not sure I’d call that satisfactory.”
Her words crystallised Simova’s suspicions, and he rounded on her.
“This is not a surprise to you, is it, Arbitor Calpurnia? What do you mean by allowing this to go ahead? Do you plan on intervening before these prisoners are all loaded up and flying to saints-know-where?”
“I’ll have my magnoc back from you, reverend, if you’re done with it,” was her reply. “I’d like to see if that hook has found purchase. Culann, raise Anchorwatch please.”
“Both anchors still cutting. They’re… wait… Anchorwatch reports anchors away! Repeat—”
“Thank you, Culann, no need.” She was not looking through the magnoc, but up at the building walls. Simova realised with a sick sensation in his gut what “anchors away” must have meant. One of the chains had been cut. He watched it curl and flap loose down the rockcrete face of the stack, shattering a row of gargoyles and gouging chunks out of the ledges and balconies it lashed against on the way down. Before it had landed he jerked his gaze back to the distant cage, but Calpurnia had been right: the hook had found purchase and the cage now swung back and forth from the blimp. But the cage was not being raised, as Simova had expected, but lowered.
“Mast still in position,” reported Culann. “Confirming just one vehicle. No definite sightings of Helmsman. We’re having trouble intercepting their vox-bands so we haven’t placed his voice yet either.”
“Keep everyone back, Culann. I don’t expect anyone to see Helmsman until Captain is… you know, I think we can dispense with the code-name. I didn’t like that one anyway. I don’t think Symandis will pop his head up until Stroon hits the ground.” Simova gaped.
“That’s Ghammo Stroon? That’s his cage? Damn, from this angle I didn’t…” The curate remembered where he was, and rounded on the ranks of Wardens behind him.
“Who is monitoring Stroon’s cage? How is… what…”
“The penitent Ghammo Stroon has not been heard to express contrition,” came the toneless reply. “My humble judgement records forty-eight offences before the sight of the Emperor and by Eparchal decree, for which penitence must also be made.” The man was silent for a moment, and then corrected himself: “Fifty-one.” Calpurnia looked through her magnoc: the figure in the cage was making an indistinct but definitely obscene gesture in the direction of the Cathedral spire.
“The… why have…” Simova was trying his hardest, but discoursing about punishment in the abstract in the Chamber of Exegetors had not prepared him for seeing action first-hand. He stepped forward to try and lay a hand on Calpurnia’s shoulder but the chastener, who was a head and a half taller than Simova with shoulders as broad as the curate’s waist, stepped forward and silently blocked his way. Simova finally managed a sentence:
“This rescue must be stopped!”
“Mmm.” Calpurnia folded the magnoc with a snap and stowed it back at her belt. “I don’t see Mast yet, but it won’t be long.”
“Mastwatch and Noose are still standing by, ma’am.” Culann’s voice was showing an edge of tension.
“Thank you.” Calpurnia had donned her helmet again. “The cage is on the ground, and I can see Stroon at the door. They had to know that there would be alerts by now. When they move, they’ll move fast.” She drummed her fingers against her leg for a moment. “I think we need to be closer.”
At her words Culann began stowing the voxer in his harness while the chastener gestured to the Arbites who had been waiting in the pavilion that Simova had put up for the Ecclesiarchy’s own staff. The curate’s mouth went dry as he watched them move up: more chasteners, massive and broad-shouldered in heavy carapace armour, hefting shotguns and grenade launchers. The tramp of their boots was countered by the metallic tik-tik-tik of cyber-mastiff feet as the dog-like attack-constructs paced beside their handlers, and the last two chasteners carried shining steel grapplehawks in their heavy launching-frames, the suspensors in their ribcages w
hining as they warmed up.
As he watched their armoured backs spread out and move towards the hanging line and the beached cage, Simova felt eyes on him. It was the little delegation of priests who had been walking under the cages to hear the confessions. There could not have been a lot to hear: the other penitents had all fallen silent as the shadow of the blimp had passed over them.
Curate Simova did not consider himself a coward. His duties had taken him to more cloisters than battlefields, but the Adeptus Ministorum was at its heart a militant church and its doctrines never shied from violence. Nevertheless, at that moment he felt glad to have the line of Arbites between him and what was about to happen. He snapped his fingers for attention and beckoned the priests over.
“Join with me in raising your voices,” he told them. “The Adeptus Arbites need our battle-prayers.”
Shira Calpurnia half-heard the little chorus of plain-song from behind them, and it soothed her. There was always a need for prayer—to believe otherwise was prideful and sinful. The stranded cage was still a good four hundred metres away, and she upped the pace a little.
She flexed her left arm and shoulder and felt a sharp twinge run through her. It had been more than half a year since it had been rebuilt after her shattering injuries atop the spire of the Cathedral, and Calpurnia knew she was healing quickly as such things went. Quickly, but not yet completely. She unsnapped the power-maul from her belt and gripped it tightly in one gauntleted fist.
Three hundred and fifty metres. There were more figures around the cage now, busily working at it. Her detectives had reported that the clique had bought an oxy-cutter with false credit and doctored authorisation, and stolen breaching-charges from a shipment to the Monocrat’s personal militia. She had personally suspended the investigations into both crimes: if Symandis had suspected that the Arbites were onto rescue preparations he might have become suspicious.
Three hundred and ten metres. Vox came in, simple and coded. Anchors both locked. The saboteur teams that had blown the chains loose had all been rounded up. That was where most of the breaching-grenades had gone, she would bet. The four teams represented almost the clique’s entire field strength, and all of its best and with the teams codenamed “Anchor” taken out two of those teams were down.
Two hundred and sixty metres. No one had been able to give her a sure guarantee that the bridges would take the weight of a Rhino, so the strike force spread out on foot, the cyber-mastiffs on the flanks, the grapplehawk tenders in the centre. Two hawks, one for Symandis, one to recapture Stroon. Easy. There was a chastener at each of Calpurnia’s shoulders, and it took an effort of will for her to slow her pace to allow the line to overtake her.
Two hundred and twenty-five metres. The targets’ discipline was excellent. They had to have seen the force of chasteners, and she was sure they knew the saboteur teams had been taken. But they bent to their work still, and Calpurnia could see the glare of the cutter at the bars of the cage. Let them try. All she needed was for—
“Helmsman!” cried Culann from a pace behind her, but they were close enough now that the vox-tores in their carapaces had picked it up as well. “Helmsman! All Arbites, we have Helmsman and Captain! Helmsman and Captain!”
“Maintain pace, please, don’t speed up. Remember your orders.” Calpurnia kept her voice level, expecting any moment to have to interrupt herself with the next order. If both Symandis and Stroon were confirmed as being ahead of them, then she didn’t think she had long to wait.
A couple of the men around the cage were shooting panicky looks over their shoulders now. They would not have expected the Arbites in such force or so soon, perhaps not at all. Calpurnia gritted her teeth. Their orders were not to open fire until her mark, and she trusted her Arbites to hold that order absolutely, but she hoped that the rescuers would not start shooting before—
There was a blue flare ahead of her—not the steady pinpoint of the cutter but the flicker of a power weapon. It flared twice more and the side of the cage fell away. Stroon was free.
“Captain’s free!” Calpurnia barked. “Stroon’s free! Close the noose. Go!”
And then everything happened. The chasteners sped up into a run. Lead Chastener Vayan boomed through his vox-horn for the men to surrender to righteous judgement and overhead four krak missiles drew sharp white trails from the building heights. Their impacts blew out the blimp’s engines and it began a slow, undirected drift; the cable, still attached to the cage, grew taut and dragged the cage away. And then, after a moment, the cage dropped and wedged itself tight in the gap through which the rescuers had climbed, blocking it and anchoring the blimp in place.
And so the Emperor shows His hand for His servants, Calpurnia thought with only a little smugness, before she called into her tore again.
“Mastwatch, the hole is blocked. The cage fell into it. Our targets are trapped, no need for main force in disabling Mast. Take as many alive as you can.” And then, heeding the warning twinges from her arm, she slowed to watch the chasteners close.
Symandis’ own little taskforce was armed too. They carried punch-daggers, home-machined blades, little foldaway laspistols and stubbers you could hide from the crude traffic-control auspexes if you knew the trick of it. But the Arbites’ armour was tough and their wills were tougher: they began weaving as they ran to spoil placed shots to armour-joins and held their guns in a high shoulder position that kept an armoured vambrace over the half of their faces the helmets didn’t cover. Not a man so much as staggered as they ran towards the crack and pop of the enemy’s small-arms, and then two grenade launchers chugged and the fire stopped completely even before the heavy double-wham of the shock grenades. The people they were facing knew more than enough to take cover when they heard launchers.
Not that they had any intention of making a last stand. The burly figure of Symandis was already running up the slope of the pavement. Calpurnia didn’t need to give the order: the first grapplehawk went screeching out of its frame, weaving on its suspensor as its handler thumbed the studs on the controller to steer it forwards. It only took a few seconds for its cortex, patterned on the preying instincts of the Avignoran black eagle, to lock onto its prey, and then send it swooping with metal hooks and taser-spikes unsheathed.
Calpurnia swore as Symandis spun at the sound of the suspensor and shore it in two with a stroke of a crackling power-axe.
“Culann! Stohl!” Even as the words were leaving her mouth she was in a flat run, champing her jaw shut and ignoring the warning tautness in her shoulder as her power-maul sizzled and spat. She jinked to the left and around the wedged cage, barely registering the shots and sirens echoing up from the roadway below as the stolen scaffold-truck they had codenamed Mast was stormed by Arbitor Odamo and the Mastwatch teams.
Symandis had taken a moment to draw a bead on her, but his snub-barrelled pistol could not give him the range—the shot didn’t even pass close enough for Calpurnia to hear it hit the paving. Then he was running again.
“Mastiffs! Two mastiffs on Helmsman, breaking left. Two mastiffs now!” She hated to take strength from the fight behind her, but Symandis was just as much a target as Stroon had been. The whole reason they had let the cage be lowered was to make sure Symandis was there before they moved. “Mastiffs on Helmsman!”
With a clatter of claws two of the hunter-constructs loped past, narrow metal faces fixed with inhuman intent on the criminal ahead of them, their handlers racing to keep up. Running ahead of them, armoured boots sparking off the pitted and uneven paving, Calpurnia resisted the urge to draw her pistol: the mega-bore rounds would wipe out any hope of capturing the wretch alive. The grapplehawks were supposed to have achieved that—where the hell had Symandis got a power-axe from?
The handlers must have directed a secondary attack pattern: when Symandis whirled with a low sweep of the axe timed to decapitate the lead mastiff, they both shied away and passed one to either side of him. Suddenly Symandis was between the two mastiffs and the Ar
bites. When he realised this he tried to break right and make for a different paving gap. One mastiff darted in and there was a sound like metal shears as its mechanised jaws snapped the air behind Symandis’ heel, a microsecond away from severing his Achilles tendon. The other ducked under a stroke of the axe and managed to rake its teeth along the side of Symandis’ knee before he knocked it scrabbling with the axe haft and put two rapid bullets into the side of its torso. It lurched drunkenly away as Symandis backpedalled, sweeping the axe to and fro pegging two more quick shots towards Calpurnia.
As the first bullet whistled overhead, something crashed into her from behind, shoving her to one side. She growled and tried to drive an elbow back until she realised…
“Damn it, Culann!”
“You were under fire, ma’am, I was trying to interpose myself!”
She opened her mouth, but this wasn’t the time. The two mastiff handlers and Lead Chastener Stohl pelted past her after Symandis and as she stood she took a moment to look over her shoulder.
These were no hysterical rioters or brainless slum-thugs. Stroon was weak from three days in the cage, but a circle of his men were bearing him in the other direction as fast as they could, trying to make the most of Symandis’ diversion and the way the chasteners had to sight through or fight past Stroon’s own men: they had obviously worked out the Arbites were trying to take Stroon alive.
Mast was crippled, and there was no way they could get down through one of the other gaps without the fall splattering them across a busy roadway… but Calpurnia saw in her mind’s eye Stroon clambering down his followers as they made a groaning human rope of their interlocked hands—it would only need to hold for ten, twenty seconds—or simply having them hurl themselves through a gap to form a soft pile of bodies on which to land. However unlikely, she wasn’t going to take the chance.
[Shira Calpurnia 02] - Legacy Page 2