[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  There was clearly no reasoning with her, so I wasn’t going to waste any more breath trying. Instead I simply nodded. “The Emperor protects,” I said, falling back on the familiar infantryman’s platitude, and the canoness nodded too, apparently taking heart from the well-worn formula.

  “He’ll need to,” Amberley interjected grimly.

  Recalled to the matter at hand, Eglantine nodded. “The swarm is already overrunning the outer walls,” she said. “Sister Bonica and her Celestians will escort you back to your shuttle. After that, all our fates are in the hands of Him on Earth.” She glanced at the plain black carrying case hanging from Jurgen’s left hand, his right hefting his lasgun, which he’d slung from his shoulder so that he could shoot it from the hip with some semblance of accuracy. “Is that the abomination that so profaned our citadel?”

  “It is,” Amberley confirmed.

  Eglantine sighed. “It seems a very small thing to have done so much harm.”

  “Killian did the harm,” I said, unable to resist glaring at Metheius, who was tagging along as good as gold, assisted by the occasional prod from the barrel of Zemelda’s lasgun. “With a little help. The important thing now is to undo it.”

  “Quite.” The canoness returned her attention to Amberley. “As soon as you’re airborne we’ll regroup, and try to keep the swarm away from the town. We’ll delay it as long as we can.”

  “Emperor willing, that should be enough,” Amberley said.

  “I pray so.” Eglantine began to lead the way back through the wide corridors we’d traversed no more than an hour or so before, exchanging brisk messages with her subordinates, who were apparently fighting on several fronts. I listened in on my comm-bead as best I could, but little of what I heard made sense to me. I was unfamiliar with the layout of the convent, and the sisters used their own protocols and battle language. I was able to gather enough to infer that things weren’t going at all well, though.

  After a while we deviated from the route I remembered, bypassing Killian’s guest quarters, and I began to see the first signs of damage: flamer burns on the frescoes, bolter holes in the statues and hangings, and the occasional body, left where it had fallen as the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. The deep gashes left in the ceramite of the first shredded Sister we chanced upon looked uncomfortably familiar to me, and I wasn’t surprised to find the remains of several genestealers piled up at the next junction. It seemed the hive mind was sticking to its traditional tactics, infiltrating scout organisms ahead of the bulk of the swarm to disrupt the defences it faced, and I gripped my laspistol and chainsword a little tighter as we jogged along, surrounded by the comforting bulk of silver and black power armour.

  “That way,” Eglantine said at last, pointing down a cross corridor we’d just come to. She turned and faced the Celestian sister, making the sign of the aquila. “Emperor be with you, Bonica.”

  “And with you,” Bonica responded, “until we meet again before the Golden Throne.” My last sight of Eglantine was a blur of motion, sprinting with all the speed her armour-enhanced muscles were capable of towards the distant tumult of battle, and the briefly glimpsed mayhem in the courtyard beyond her hurrying form. The wide corridor we stood in led to what, a short while before, had been an elegant formal garden, its wide lawns and flowering borders crushed to mud beneath a heaving sea of chitin, mandible, and doggedly resisting Sororitas, falling back slowly as that irresistible tidal wave of malign bio-forms broke against the shore of their bolter fire and expertly wielded sarissae.[1] [1. A form of bayonet, much favoured by the Adepta Sororitas.]

  “Pontius,” Amberley voxed. “We’re going to need pickup fast.”

  “I’m on it, ma’am,” our pilot’s voice reassured us, calm as always, and I began to feel a faint flare of hope. “There’s a courtyard about six hundred metres from your present position the ’nids haven’t reached yet. Big mosaic of one of the saints on the wall.”

  “I know it,” Bonica assured him, and we began double-timing it away from the battle behind us, although several of the sisters looked distinctly disappointed not to be following their canoness into the jaws of death (quite literally in this case, probably).

  “Good.” Amberley voxed our pilot again. “Keep scanning for us, in case we have to deviate.” She hurdled another fallen Battle Sister, who seemed to be missing most of her head. “There are signs of infiltration in the building already.”

  “I’ve got you on auspex,” Pontius assured her, which sounded good to me.

  We were passing through another atrium when the ’stealers jumped us, a whole pack of them flowing silently out of the shadows where statues stood in niches and ornately gilded doorways led off to silent chapels. That alone would have been intimidating enough, but towering over them all was the baleful silhouette of a brood lord, its scything talons and rending claws extended as it bounded forward at the head of its grotesquely twisted progeny.

  “Run,” Bonica snapped, as the Sisters opened up with their bolters, scything down the front rank as they closed. I didn’t need urging twice, breaking into a sprint for the only clear exit I could see, Jurgen at my heels. “We’ll hold them here.”

  Not for long, I thought, there were too many of them, and Amberley evidently shared my opinion, running just as hard as I was for the open door and the rectangle of blue sky beyond. Zemelda hesitated, cracking off a shot at the onrushing horde, and Pelton dropped back to seize her arm, dragging her into motion again. While her attention was momentarily distracted Metheius made a break for it, sprinting away at quite an astonishing turn of speed. I assume he must have had augmetic legs, as he even managed to overtake me, which is something not easily done when I’m fleeing for my life.

  “In nomine Imperiator!” Bonica yelled, brandishing her chainsword and leaping forward to meet the patriarch head-on. To my astonishment she sent it reeling back wounded before the thing rallied and knocked her sideways with a vicious swipe that laid her armour open. Before it could finish her off another of the Sisters hosed it down with a flamer, which cut a swathe through its smaller brethren and made it flinch away from its intended victim.

  I never got to see the rest of the one-sided encounter, because at last I was through the doorway, into the courtyard with the mosaic that Pontius had spotted from the air, and Emperor be praised, there was our Aquila. It hovered gently a few metres above the ground, and began to settle, the screaming of its engines drowning out the shrieks of the Celestians dying messily behind us. So intent was I on the prospect of rescue held out by the slowly descending ramp that I never even noticed the new threat facing us, until a gargoyle swooped down from nowhere to pluck Metheius from the ground.

  The techpriest rose slowly, twisting desperately in the thing’s grasp, until it ripped his head from his shoulders, spattering the flagstones beneath them both with blood and lubricant. Leaving the body to fall across a delicately filigreed bench plastered with enough wrought iron fleur de lys to be hideously uncomfortable for anyone unfortunate enough to sit on it, the winged obscenity wheeled around in search of fresh prey, and to my horror I was able to discern a whole flock of the vile things gliding in over the wall towards us.

  Had they been carrying fleshborers, I’ve no doubt that it would all have been over in seconds, but these, it seemed, had been bred for close combat, relying on talon and jaw to dispatch their enemies. I took out the one that had done for Methius with a single shot from my laspistol, and Amberley opened up with her lasgun, potting another as it swooped down towards us shrieking like a daemon.

  “Pelton! Get Jurgen aboard!” she ordered, the full authority of her Inquisitorial rank in the tone of her voice. “We’ll cover you.” My aide turned towards me nevertheless, and I nodded confirmation.

  “We’ll be right behind you,” I assured him, with as much conviction as I could muster. Arguing with Amberley was pointless at the best of times, and under the circumstances would be downright suicidal. I just had to trust that she knew what she was doin
g, and that once the artefact was safe we’d be able to follow it. Guns blazing, Jurgen, Pelton and Zemelda forged their way towards the ramp, bringing down at least a dozen of the airborne horrors as they did so, while Amberley, Simeon and I must have accounted for a score or more of the remainder between us.[1] [1. Cain may be exaggerating here, but my own recollections of that engagement are too fragmentary to be sure.]

  The former commissar was darting rapidly back and forth, tracking targets and dispatching them with the speed and efficiency of a Hydra battery, and I hardly needed to glimpse the distended veins in his face and hands to realise he was benefiting from a massive dose of “slaught. Reflexes and aggression boosted far beyond what the human frame was normally capable of, he resembled nothing so much as a Khornate berserker, an impression enhanced as the power pack of his lasgun finally ran dry.

  Rather than snapping a fresh one into place, as any trained soldier ought to have done, he simply gave a howl of frustrated rage and began using the weapon as a club, battering one of the gargoyles to the ground as it swooped towards his head, its talons extended. Inevitably, so intent was he on reducing the creature to bloody mush, he completely forgot the presence of all the others. Apparently maddened by the grisly fate of their compatriot[1] the others mobbed him, tearing him into scraps of flesh and bone in a single whirling cloud of slashing death. [1. Or, rather more plausibly, the hive mind singled him out as the greatest threat among us.]

  “Come on!” Whatever she may have felt about the gruesome death of her henchman Amberley was certainly pragmatic enough to take advantage of the distraction it afforded. While the flock’s attention was diverted we sprinted for the boarding ramp, not even bothering to shoot anything on the way.

  “Genestealers, closing fast,” Pelton called, and he and Jurgen began firing their lasguns from the top of the ramp, my aide having finally divested himself of the shadowlight in its anonymous carrying case. (In theory, I suppose, any of us could have taken the thing now that it was properly insulated, but no one seemed particularly keen to try.) After a moment Zemelda joined in too, her face grimmer than I’d ever seen it. I suspected her game of inquisitors and heretics had finally stopped being fun.

  I risked a glance behind us, and wished I hadn’t. The ’stealer swarm was boiling out of the building we’d left mere moments before, having apparently run out of Sororitas to kill, and was closing fast, although the brood lord at least seemed to have been taken out of the fight. On the downside, though, there wasn’t enough left of Simeon to keep the surviving gargoyles interested, and they were beginning to take to the air again, rising with great slow beats of their leathery wings. Galvanised by a fresh shot of adrenaline I picked up my pace towards the belly of the Aquila, and the safe haven it offered, trying to shake off the chill certainty that I wasn’t going to make it.

  “No problem,” Pontius said casually, opening up with the nose-mounted lascannons at last, and the onrushing horde of ’stealers scattered in confusion, ragged holes blasted through their ranks, those behind stumbling over the smouldering corpses of their less fortunate brood mates. One of the gargoyles was clipped by the barrage of heavy weapons fire too and fell heavily, its left wing shredded, to thrash around in the viscid puddle of Simeon’s mortal remains, although the others were sufficiently agile to avoid the deadly beams.

  Fleeting as the respite had been, it was enough. My boot soles rang on the steel plating of the ramp at last, and the Aquila began rising from the ground, while everyone except Amberley wasted lasbolts in a final gesture of farewell. She was talking urgently to someone on her comm-bead, and after a moment of retuning I was able to catch the final fragments of conversation.

  “Standing by,” an unfamiliar voice said, and then hesitated. “Can you confirm those co-ordinates?”

  “Confirmed,” Amberley snapped, in the tone that intimidated planetary governors, and returned her attention to the battlefield below.

  Looking down through the gap around the rapidly closing ramp, I felt the breath catch in my throat. The entire convent was overrun by a scuttling tide of chitin, walls and buildings coated by a moving slick of bioengineered killing machines, and there seemed no end to them. Most terrifying of all, as we banked away I could see that the vast bulk of the swarm was still making its way up the side of the plateau, a heaving mass of armour, claw and talon, which stretched down into the depths farther than the eye could see.

  “The sisters will never be able to hold them,” I said grimly, and Amberley shook her head.

  “No, they won’t,” she agreed, as the closing ramp thudded into place, cutting us off from the grisly sight. Her expression grave, she led the way back to the passenger compartment. I followed, my eyes drawn irresistibly to the panorama of destruction beyond the viewports, but my nose soon informed me that I’d been joined by Jurgen, who placed the case containing the shadowlight on the table.

  To my surprise, it seemed, a few of the Sororitas still survived, small pockets of resistance within the convent flaring briefly before being overrun and swamped, while a pitiful handful were attempting to follow Eglantine’s battle plan, forming up alongside the Rhinos that had borne them to temporary safety in a last-ditch attempt to stern the tide. My eyes were drawn briefly to a convoy of fast-moving dots approaching from the direction of the town, which proved, as our widening spiral took us over them, to be a dozen trucks packed with PDF troopers from the garrison we’d intended to visit that morning, apparently as intent as ever on following the Sisters’ lead.

  They’d be far too late to reinforce them, though, of that I had no doubt.

  I was right. As we passed over the remains of the convent for the last time the few remaining Battle Sisters were finally overwhelmed, falling to the jaws and talons of the tyranids, holding the last scraps of ground they could to the very end. No doubt the PDF, and Emperor alone knew how many other innocent bystanders, were about to share their fate.

  “On my mark,” Amberley said calmly, and the voice she’d been speaking to before crackled confidently in my comm-bead.

  “Still standing by, inquisitor. You appear to be clear.”

  Amberley shrugged. “Then fire,” she said simply. I tensed, wondering what new danger she’d perceived, and waited for Pontius to trigger the lascannons again, but for several seconds nothing seemed to happen.

  Suddenly, without warning, ravening shafts of energy blasted down from the sky above our heads, slamming into the ground just ahead of the tyranid advance. A plume of vaporised rock and chitin rose into the air, and our sturdy little shuttle shuddered as the Shockwaves from the disrupted atmosphere battered against it. Jurgen swallowed hard.

  “They’ve missed!” I said, in stunned disappointment, and indeed for a moment or two it seemed that the lance batteries of the starships in orbit had done just that, merely clipping the leading edge of the swarm instead of blasting straight into its centre as I would have expected. Amberley grinned at me.

  “You think so?” she asked, an edge of amusement in her voice. A second later the rest of the flotilla’s firepower opened up too, dazzling my eyes as their heavy beams struck the site of the convent, evaporating buildings, and scouring the entire location down to the bedrock beneath. The remainder of the swarm began to mill around uncertainly, the directing intelligence severely disrupted by the holes being punched in it.

  “Briskly prepped!” Zemelda said in awestruck tones, which I took to indicate approval. Amberley nodded, as a complete slice of the plateau sheared away and began to fall into the depths, disintegrating as it went, so that after a moment it was hard to tell which spinning fragments were boulder, and which were wildly flailing tyranids. A moment later the barrage ended, and I just caught a final glimpse of the PDF trucks slithering to a baffled halt on the new and still molten rim before Pontius turned us towards Principia Mons and they disappeared from sight beyond the frame of the viewport.

  “Quite satisfactory,” Amberley agreed. “We’ve got the shadowlight back, Killian’s
dead, and so is anyone else who knew about it.” She grinned happily at me. “Apart from us, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, wishing the idea didn’t leave me feeling quite so uncomfortable. Amberley smiled again, and handed me a goblet of amasec, which I downed rather more rapidly than such a fine example of the distiller’s art deserved.

  “It would have been nice if we’d had the chance to interrogate Metheius properly, but at least we got copies of his research data,” she added. She looked speculatively at the ominous black case, lying in the centre of the table between us. “Now we’ve found a few more artefacts on Perlia, perhaps we’ll get a better idea of what this thing’s supposed to do.”

  “Perhaps you will,” I agreed, thinking with some relief that I’d never set eyes on the infernal thing again. (Something I was completely wrong about, of course, but at the time I was still blissfully ignorant of the galaxy-shaking events lurking in wait for us all at the turn of the millennium.)

  Amberley nodded thoughtfully. “So what are you going to do now?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Go back to the regiment I suppose. We’ll be here for a while mopping up, and wherever there are troopers there’s bound to be work for a commissar.” A fresh thought suddenly occurred to me, and I sighed with irritation. “Jurgen,” I added, “make a note to contact the PDF on Gavarrone, and reschedule our visit of inspection.”

  There was no real point to the errand now, of course, as I already knew I didn’t have to worry about any further assassination attempts, and their willingness to engage the tyranids alongside the battle sisters had resolved any lingering doubts about hybrid infiltration, but cancelling it without an obvious reason would only lead to questions, something I was sure Amberley would be less than pleased about. I contemplated the mountain of paperwork that would ensue from this unexpected delay, and sighed again. A familiar odour manifested at my shoulder.