Far below, the monstrous ordnance of the Titan struck the mountainside. The tremors reached all the way up.
At the other end of the platform was an iron door. In the landing lights of the Thunderhawk, it was a stark black, glinting with methane frost. Wienand walked to the door. There were no handles. She stifled the impulse to knock. They know we’re here, she thought. Veritus stood beside her. ‘Now what?’ she asked. ‘Did you have a speech prepared?’
Veritus shook his head. The harsh light mounted on his helmet bleached his features. The shadows of his face were deep as canyons. As he gazed at the door, so utterly closed and cold, he did not resemble the dangerous inquisitor Wienand had struggled against on Terra. He did not look like the zealot who had sent assassins after her. He looked like a very old man, one who had seen too much, who stood at the brink of despair, and who had to fight hard not to fall into its abyss.
No, he did not have a speech.
Wienand wondered again why Veritus had insisted on coming. To observe the Deathwatch? Certainly. There was much to know there. There would be matters to prepare as a consequence. But here, why come to this locked door? He could have just as well waited aboard the Herald of Night.
Perhaps he had come to bear witness. So had she. Though she felt another need as she stood here like a supplicant. She did not know what she should call it. She recognised the imperative, though. Even if Thane had not turned this part of the mission over to her, she would still be here.
A minute passed. Then another. Silence deeper than the absence of sound, a silence of the soul, hard and cold, surrounded the tower. At last, Wienand said to Veritus, ‘You must go.’ When he started to object, she interrupted him. ‘You know I’m right. You can’t be here.’ She looked back at the Penitent Wrath. ‘That can’t remain idle. It needs to be elsewhere. You need to not be here.’
Veritus looked at her. His face was still, unreadable. His eyes were nothing but glinting black. In the end, he nodded and walked back to the gunship.
‘Leave me,’ Wienand voxed Qaphsiel.
‘Understood.’
She faced the door. She didn’t look as the gunship took off. Light faded. There was only her helmet lamp now, and the night pressed close. The silence gathered weight. Wienand’s awareness of the war faded. There was only the door, and the myth behind it. She could not summon the myth. She could not make the door open. But she could wait. To stand here and meet the tower’s silence with her own was the most direct action she had yet taken in this war.
Then the silence changed. There was no noise in the thinning, falling, snowing atmosphere. But the silence changed, because there was movement. Frost cracked. The shadows changed.
The door opened.
From the dark of the Titan’s eye, massive stubber fire battered the Space Marines. They fought back with light. Forcas stretched out his arms. Energy flashed from his fingers, golden and pure, a blaze of righteousness in the night. The light became a wall. It was a shimmering nobility. The orks trained their fire onto the barrier. The shells exploded against the golden aura. Forcas strained. The shield trembled, flickered for a moment, then held.
‘Get beneath the guns!’ Thane yelled. ‘They’re our way in.’
The Space Marines broke left and right. Forcas stayed where he was, preserving the shield, holding the orks’ focus. Thane and Warfist went left around the wall, ran back into the dark. It was lesser, the glow of Forcas’ barrier spreading over the entire open area before the Titan’s skull. The Space Marines were visible to the gunners, but the barrier was the lure, dazzling them, frustrating them as it resisted their shells. On the other side of the wall, Straton and Abathar had almost reached a point directly underneath the eye turret.
The barrier flickered again, buckling under the sustained fire. In another moment, Forcas would be exposed.
The eye was three metres up the wall of the skull. Abathar fired upward with his plasma cutter. He sliced through the barrel of one of the guns. The weapon exploded. Straton threw a grenade through the socket. There was a second blast. The eye glared red at the night, blazed as ammunition cooked off, then went dark.
At the base of the head, a door in the shape of a maw rose with a deafening metallic screech. Orks boiled out of the opening. Thane and Warfist strafed them with bolter fire and hurled frag grenades into their midst. The charge stumbled into chaos, giving Forcas time to run across the space to join Straton and Abathar.
Thane and Warfist kept moving, and kept shooting. More and more orks were rushing from the maw. They become a flood, and there was no more holding them back.
‘We’re clear,’ Straton voxed.
‘Go!’ said Thane. He nodded at Warfist, who ran the rest of the distance to the eye. Thane paused long enough to throw two more grenades into the orks and hit them with a wide spray of shells. The orks were lightly armoured. They were the servants of their god-machine, not infantry, and Thane killed many. They were also legion, and their undisciplined shots were counting. Bullets hit him, a cascade of blows, driving him back.
‘We’re in,’ Warfist said.
Thane ran. He’d bought the squad the time it needed. Now the rest of Gladius poured fire on the orks from inside the eye, covering Thane. He maglocked his bolter to his thigh and leapt. Warfist caught his arm and pulled him inside.
The turret was a space of twisted, burned metal and carbonised flesh. The doorway out was blocked. Abathar hauled the wreckage out of the way while the others fired down on the orks as they tried to climb. Forcas created another golden shield over the opening of the eye. The orks screamed, enraged by the desecration of their icon as well as the barrier to their weapons.
Abathar had the way clear. Beyond was a narrow corridor leading deeper into the head. Thane said, ‘We have to kill the greenskins that direct this abomination. Can you take us to them?’
‘I can speculate about where they might be,’ Abathar replied.
‘That’s all I can ask. Lead us.’
Abathar plunged into the dark, cacophonous shadow. Thane followed. Straton stayed to plant a melta bomb. When the light of Forcas’ shield winked out, a more searing brilliance followed. The ceiling of the turret fell in, and the eye was blinded forever. The Deathwatch moved into the Titan, seeking its brain.
The hall at the top of the spire was circular. Vaulted, stained crystalflex windows faced every direction. With no illumination outside the fortress, the windows were lit by their own art. The mosaics depicted warriors destroying the enemies of the Emperor. Many of the foes wore psychic hoods. Their faces were contorted grotesques. Their eyes blazed with the fires of the warp, and the fires died before touching the warriors in armour of gold, of red, of black. Some of the windows depicted vessels, black against the black of the void, distinguishable only because they were outlined by the same phosphorescence that limned the figures of the other mosaics. The interior of the spire was lit the same way. The narrow, pointed dome was yet another star chart.
This one was of the entire Imperium. But the chart was old. It was the Imperium as it once had been, not as it was now. The faint trace Wienand had seen in Vultus was sharp here as a razor to the eye. In the night of the world, the cold silver was stark, nearly blinding, and without forgiveness.
The voice of the woman before Wienand was just as cold, just as lacking in mercy. It was the sound of silver.
‘Why have you come to Nadiries?’ she said.
Answering was difficult. It was painful to be in the presence of these women. An aura of nothing, of suffocating blankness squeezed Wienand’s soul. She felt as if something had murdered her unconscious mind. She was diminished. If this was her experience, she could not imagine the agony a psyker would suffer in this hall.
What had Wienand expected? Was it this? Was it to see the Sisters of Silence arrayed before her in this solemn amphitheatre?
No.
They
wore dark, hooded robes, filigreed in the cold silver. They were wrapped in the void, upon its black the wordless voice of the stars and their memories of endless sacrifice. While Wienand struggled to speak, they pulled back their robes and hoods. The army of silence appeared before her in armour of gold, of red, of black.
Had Wienand expected to face the Sisterhood for the first time like this, standing in the centre of the amphitheatre, facing judgement colder, more pure, than that of the Inquisition?
No.
What had she expected? She did not know. But most of all, she had not expected to be alone, to know that it would be her words on which the success or failure of the mission would depend.
She had also not expected the Sisters of Silence to speak.
At last she managed, ‘We have come to seek your aid.’
‘We?’
‘The Inquisition, which I represent. The Adeptus Astartes, who are fighting at this moment to save Nadiries.’ She paused for a moment. ‘We is every citizen of every human world. The Imperium seeks your aid.’
The woman stared at her. Her armour was crimson. So were the optics that had replaced her eyes. Her face was expressionless, as devoid of light as the world.
Wienand estimated there were fifty Sisters of Silence present. Some wore helmets. Many did not. Their heads were clean-shaven except for a single long rope of hair. Some bore electoos of the Imperial aquila on their brows. Ritual scars marked their cheeks. Almost all the Sisters wore grilles over the lower halves of their faces. Some had helms with ornate rebreathers that concealed their features entirely. They had new faces of metal. All of the designs connoted a form of silence, though one that found expression in actions so final, they exceeded the power of mere words.
‘The Imperium seeks our help,’ said the warrior with the crimson stare. She spoke with a flat, deathly tone. ‘I am Kavalanera Brassanas, Knight Abyssal of Purgatory Squad, and it has been many centuries since the Imperium made it clear the aid of my order was not desired. I find this request hard to credit.’
‘And even more difficult to trust,’ said a Sister behind Brassanas. Her armour was black. Her face was one of those entirely concealed. Her voice resonated metallically behind the mask.
‘I agree with Knight Obsidian Drevina,’ said Brassanas.
‘The entire Imperium is besieged by orks,’ Wienand said. ‘They have technology beyond anything we possess. They have destroyed whole worlds. They smashed the Imperial Fists. The Imperium will fall without your aid.’
No emotion. No answer. Time fell into the dark. There was a faint movement of the Sisters’ fingers. They were speaking to each other, Wienand realised. She felt as if she were witnessing the discourse of tombs. They use their cant, she thought, but they speak too. Why?
Brassanas said, ‘Perhaps it is time for it to fall.’
Wienand gaped. But the shock made pieces fall into place. The Sisters had turned their backs on the Imperium, as they had turned from silence. ‘You renounced your vows,’ she said. ‘Was it that easy to abandon the Imperium?’
‘Our vows were to the Emperor,’ Brassanas replied. ‘And to the Imperium He created. The corruption you serve is not that Imperium. We still serve the Emperor. We still stand guard against the witch.’
‘We do not recognise the simulacrum that has replaced the Emperor’s dream,’ said Drevina.
‘That is the true betrayal,’ Brassanas said. ‘Let it fall.’
‘Let it fall,’ Drevina repeated.
‘Let it fall,’ the other Sisters echoed. ‘Let it fall. Let it fall.’
The whispered chorus chilled Wienand because it had the ring of justice. In this hall, there was moral authority of a kind never dreamed of in the Great Chamber. Wienand thought of the High Lords, and saw only the rightness of Brassanas’ verdict.
And yet…
In that verdict, Wienand saw the way forward.
‘Vulkan would have agreed with you,’ she said.
‘Vulkan,’ said Brassanas.
Wienand sensed a stir in the hall, though no one moved. ‘The primarch had no love for the High Lords. He saw the corruption. He knew the High Lords and all their works to be worthy only of contempt. Yet he fought for this Imperium.’
‘Vulkan was with you?’ said Drevina.
‘Fought?’ said Brassanas, emphasising the past tense.
Wienand nodded. ‘He died fighting the orks on Ullanor.’
A gasp rippled through the theatre.
‘Vulkan is dead,’ Drevina said, and her whisper was a mourning cry.
‘Vulkan is dead,’ the other Sisters repeated. ‘Vulkan is dead.’ The words tolled. The echoes grieved.
‘Ullanor,’ Brassanas said, sounding the word slowly. ‘The orks have returned to Ullanor. Then perhaps the end has truly come.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Wienand. ‘But Vulkan fought it.’
Brassanas said nothing.
‘If the Imperium falls, if Terra falls,’ Wienand pursued, ‘what of the Golden Throne?’
Still nothing.
‘What of your vow to the Emperor? And is this to be your legacy? The destruction of everything the Sisters of Silence have fought so hard to protect? Because you refused to help when you possess the key to defeating the orks?’
‘We possess the key?’ said Brassanas. ‘Explain yourself.’
‘The ork witches,’ Wienand said. ‘Destroy them, and we destroy the Beast.’
Brassanas stared at her for several long moments. Then she said, ‘We will deliberate. You will be taken to the lower gates to await our decision.’
‘No!’ Wienand shouted. There could be no deliberation. There was no choice. There was only duty. ‘How long will you deliberate? Until the orks tear down your gates?’
Brassanas watched her.
‘I too have been betrayed,’ Wienand said. ‘I have seen the corruption first-hand. I know exactly what it is I am defending. And I will defend it to my last breath. I will not let the Imperium fall into silence.’
‘Sacred or profane,’ Drevina said to Brassanas. ‘We must choose our silence.’
Brassanas nodded. She threw her cloak back over her shoulders, revealing the power claw on her left arm.
Now there were other echoes in the hall. They were the ratcheting clanks of magazines slammed home, and the impact of boot heels on stone. One by one, the unforgiving saints of the Imperium began their preparations for war.
The ork engineer’s gun unleashed a torrent of energy. The coruscating beam struck Thane, surrounded him, and lifted him from the deck. It threw him back between two immense spinning columns. Each was ten metres in diameter, and grooved. They moved back and forth along a horizontal slot in the deck, grinding together, then pulling back. Thane bounced off the pillar to his left, then fell into the ragged tear in the deck. He clung to the edge. Below him, the darkness shrieked with massive, incomprehensible machinery. If he fell, he would be reduced to pulp and splinters of ceramite in moments.
On either side, the spinning pillars closed in. The residual energy from the gun’s strike pulsed and jittered through his armour, and it would not obey his muscles’ commands. He held on to the ledge, but he couldn’t move.
The columns spun nearer.
There were three ork engineers in the control centre of the Titan. Abathar’s speculation had proven correct. He had led Squad Gladius upwards through the ork Titan’s head, winding through corridors tangled with power conduits and clanging with exposed gears to this point, just above the energy-cannon eye.
A hatch opened in the forehead of the Titan to reveal the land below and the mountain ahead. The space was vast yet crowded, a maze of pistons and chains, of machinery that spread like a cancer, yet somehow moved the Titan forward and directed the aim of its weapons. The engineers laboured in a multi-levelled nest of levers and arcing power sources. Each o
rk worked at its level, but when Gladius attacked, two of the engineers retaliated with energy weapons. The third clambered up and down the control levels, frantically throwing switches and working the dark machinic sorcery that kept the Titan advancing.
The force field protecting the engineers held back Straton’s shells. Warfist raced through the chamber, gutting the greenskins commanded by the engineers and slicing cabling in half. The second engineer hit Abathar with his beam weapon. The Techmarine was seized by a gravity whip, and the ork propelled him out of the hatch. The claw of his servo-arm clamped around a thick cable as he flew, and he hung on. The ork held the trigger down, its weapon glowing with heat. It shook Abathar back and forth, trying to dislodge his grip and send him falling far to the ground below.
A score of orks had rushed Forcas, overwhelming him with sheer mass, pushing him into machinery where he had no leverage. As Thane struggled to pull himself up, he heard a feral roar. Greenskins staggered back. The Blood Angel tore through them with his chainsword and a howling fury Thane had sensed just beneath the surface of his rigid, pious calm. His face was covered in the enemy’s blood. He raised a fist surrounded by a halo of scarlet warp energy. Both ork engineers trained their weapons in his direction. They fired at the same moment he unleashed his incinerating blast. The two forces collided halfway across the chamber. The explosion was blinding.
The Titan tilted violently to one side. The deck slanted. It was enough for Thane to push himself out of the trap. The columns clashed together behind him and the space marine rounded on them, facing a wall of grinding, whirling metal. He threw a melta bomb at the intersection of the pillars and thumbed the detonator at the same moment. The explosive went off before it could be sucked into the vortex. There was another dazzling flash.
Thane stumbled away, regaining control of his limbs. The columns spun into the melting heat of the explosive. They fused with each other, and their huge mass pulled them in the opposite directions of their spin. A huge, shuddering jolt ran through the Titan. From the decks below came the sounds of screams and the vibration of blasts.
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