by Ben Counter
‘I’ll kill you!’ shouted Deiphobus, drawing his bolt pistol.
Tchepikov held up his good hand. ‘I know. I know you will, Imperial Fist. But… but they told me they would have free run of Opis, and that I would not stand in their way. It was not a request. And I knew that I would be killed and replaced if I defied them. I will do my duty here on Opis. I will see this war through to the end. I cannot do that if they have me assassinated.’
‘Who?’ demanded Deiphobus. ‘Give me a name.’
‘I know no names!’ said Tchepikov. ‘The Assassinorum. That much I know. Sightings of agents and Assassinorum troops on Opis were to be suppressed. Any support they requested, they would receive. This came to me through the highest encrypted channels, no names, no specifics, but the implications were clear.’
‘That is not enough. Give me more. Something we can use. Something we can act on. The Imperial Fists are no less relentless than the Assassinorum, Tchepikov, and even they cannot match us in our anger.’
Tchepikov swallowed. The commander was gone – in his place was a normal man, as capable of fear as anyone else. ‘Scarfinal Island,’ he said. ‘I had to keep it clear for spacecraft landings. I know nothing more. Not who is there, not what they are doing. That is all I know. The Emperor’s eyes upon me, that is all I know. I swear it.’
Deiphobus holstered his gun. ‘You said you have a duty to do on Opis,’ he said. ‘You are right. For this reason I will let you live. Whether Lysander agrees with my decision depends much on what we find at Scarfinal Island.’ He turned back to the troops at the door. ‘We are both servants of the same Emperor,’ he said to them. ‘Stand aside.’
‘Do as he says,’ said Tchepikov. ‘Stand down, men. Shoulder your weapons.’
The troops stood aside and Deiphobus left the prayer dome.
‘You would do well,’ he said as he walked away, ‘to offer another prayer. This time, pray that I do not have to return.’
K-Day +15 Days
Classified
Three hundred troops stood to attention, as they always did for ten hours per day, unmoving, unthinking.
General Seven walked up and down the ranks. He inspected the troops once every two hours for signs of physical degradation, equipment disrepair or the various physiological ailments that tended to hamper the effectiveness of a mind-wiped soldier. Nervous systems were particularly at risk. Repeated mind scourging and reprogramming shortened the life of nerve clusters and certain areas of the brain. Malcoordination and tics were particularly dangerous signs.
There were no anomalies that cycle.
‘Seven here,’ said the general in response to the vox-chirp in his ear.
A series of code chirrups sounded.
‘I acknowledge. Time query.’
The response suggested a time span of between two and four hours.
‘Thy will be done,’ said General Seven. Like his men, General Seven lacked a name or discrete personality, but was capable of much more autonomy of thought than the majority of the troopers. He had to be trusted with leading them as well as fighting, and for that reason had many more of his original faculties intact.
‘Landing detail!’ he ordered. ‘Clear the landing pad and stow the defence cannon! Docking clamps and refuelling made ready! Hundred-man protocol detail, full dress. To your duties!’
The men of the Officio Assassinorum broke up into work teams to prepare the landing pad, a circle of rockcrete studded with docking clamps and maintenance access hatches. Scarfinal Island protected the pad well, being the relic of a volcanic eruption that had left high, deadly basalt cliffs and peaks surrounding a large central depression. Overhead clouds of seabirds wheeled and screeched as they flitted back and forth between the ocean feeding grounds and the nesting caves among the cliffs. There were few other sounds, for the troopers did not speak unless it was strictly necessary.
They had once been judged by the Temples of the Officio Assassinorum, these men. Some were death cultists picked from the many deviant churches of the Emperor. Others were the hereditary offerings of famous bloodlines, who were bound to hand over their most martially able offspring to the agents of the Imperium. A few had even been psychopaths chosen from Imperial prisons, whose skills and temperaments made them ripe for training.
But they had all failed. The great majority always failed – some were killed during their training, others were deemed too dangerous to live. Those that were intact were scrubbed clean of their memories and placed in the blank uniforms, devoid of name or rank, of the Officio Assassinorum’s own army.
The Damnatio Memoriae descended from the overcast sky, parting the clouds and the ocean spray, driving away the flocks of seabirds. It was a plain black craft of an ungainly shape, with an asymmetrical, blocky nose and great flaring engines. It was small by the standards of war-craft, easily able to fit onto the island’s small landing pad, but it was ancient even by the standards of the finest Imperial spaceships and hence was faster and more reliable that almost any other craft in the service of the Emperor. It had to be, for it had ferried its passengers across a good expanse of the Imperium in less than a week. A pilgrim craft or battleship might have made the same journey in a year.
The ship landed in a sweep of hot exhaust. The engines powered down and the docking clamps slammed shut around its landing gear.
The honour guard of troopers, in their black-and-purple dress uniforms, filed up to flank the disembarkation ramp as it descended. Lector Gydwyllien, in a black greatcoat with the iron skull badge of the Officio’s lower orders, hurried from the island’s command building to greet the half-dozen figures who descended.
Two were scribes, partly augmetic individuals accompanied by trundling lectern-servitors, whole libraries of history and execution lore filed away in the datamedia concealed in their skulls. Two were bodyguards in gilded power armour forged to resemble ancient plate, carrying power greatswords and shields bearing the heraldry of a coiled snake and a rose. One was a medicae officer, in plain black with serpentine mechadendrites fixed to both shoulders.
The final figure wore a long ball-gown of deep-maroon velvet trimmed with ermine, long white gloves and a heavy mechanical collar which did nothing to dull the elegance and beauty she carried with her. Her skin was the colour of polished hardwood and her face could not have been more perfect if it had been sculpted. A thin rapier hung at her waist and she walked with a cane, although she had no signs of infirmity.
‘Lady Syncella,’ said the Lector, kneeling at the foot of the ramp. ‘The honour is more than any of my station could deserve.’
‘And yet this honour is brought about by failure,’ said Syncella. Her voice had a flat, mechanical quality, as if she were speaking the words of someone else. ‘As grave a failure as can befall the Temples of the Death.’
‘All who transgress shall be punished,’ said Lector Gydwyllien.
‘All who transgress,’ echoed Lady Syncella, ‘shall be punished.’ They were the same words inscribed above the bridge of the Damnatio Memoriae, and into the memories of those Assassinorum troops who still had the capacity to remember for themselves. They were the first lesson an agent of the Temples ever learned. ‘I will speak with Agent Skult.’
‘Agent Skult is in the field,’ said Gydwyllien. ‘I shall have a summons transmitted–’
‘No,’ said Syncella. ‘I will go to him. The Damnatio Memoriae can take me to him faster than he can get to the island. Where is he?’
‘In the Blood Eyrie,’ replied Gydwyllien.
‘Has he reported any sightings?’
‘None since Mountain 1194.’
‘Then time becomes more pertinent still. I shall require a hundred and fifty men, fully armed with heavy and squad weapons. See to it.’
Gydwyllien bowed his head. ‘It will be done within the hour.’
Lady Syncella laid a delicate hand on the Lector’s brow. ‘The Emperor’s own will out,’ she said. ‘The stain will be washed away. Shadows will fall over
the Temples again.’
‘I pray,’ said Lector Gydwyllien. ‘Every hour, I pray anew.’
‘You will not be permitted to remember.’
‘Then I will pray for my mind to be scoured clean.’
Lady Syncella shook her head and smiled. It was a convincing facsimile, an expression of comforting sorrow. Like so much else, it had been sleep-taught to her, her facial features stimulated until the muscle memory had built up and she could pick this particular configuration from a list she kept filed away in her mind.
‘No, Lector,’ she said. ‘That will not be enough.’
‘Then my next prayer,’ said Gydwyllien, ‘shall be for death.’
‘Rejoice then that its hour is known,’ said Syncella. ‘I must leave you now, and maintain silence. I will speak to you again soon, when our work is done.’
Lady Syncella glanced at her attendants. The mind-impulse unit built into her hindbrain sent a signal to them to accompany her back on board the Damnatio Memoriae.
Gydwyllien turned back to the troops who stood silently ranked up.
General Seven walked to the front of the troops and turned smartly. ‘Squad armaments and make ready to depart!’ he barked. ‘At the double!
The troops marched off towards the barracks and storerooms. Already other soldiers were hauling refuelling lines and adjusting the control surfaces of the Damnatio Memoriae’s stunted wings for prolonged atmospheric flight.
Gydwyllien wiped away the tear that had gathered in his eye. True beauty always made him weep, and there was nothing as beautiful as the purity of death.
‘There,’ said Gorgythion. His face was bathed in the green of the sensor display, projected across the viewing port in front of him. ‘Exhaust wash leaving the island, staying low. They’re not going back into orbit. We were too late.’
‘Are you certain?’ said Sergeant Kirav, watching through the door to the passenger compartment. ‘That’s past sensor range.’
‘A Thunderhawk does not have the sensors of the Sanctifier,’ said Gorgythion. ‘But they can tell much to someone who knows how to read them.’
The blotches of grainy light, building up a picture of the telltale energy signatures around the Thunderhawk, meant nothing to the eye of a man like Kirav. But Gorgythion was the best pilot in the Imperial Fists.
‘Follow them,’ said Kirav. ‘Stay low.’
The gunship prowled at wave height, salt spray lashing at the viewport. Red warning runes winked across the controls and Gorgythion ignored them. Scarfinal Island, a crown of black basalt lashed by the roughening waves, flashed by to one side. On the other side was the coastline north of Khezal, its towns and cities now empty of souls, all of whom had fled north to join the growing catastrophe there. Within a few moments Scarfinal Island was out of view. The Thunderhawk, which bore the name of the Gilded Pyre, whistled into the open ocean, guided only by the faintest traces left by the passage of a ship that was several minutes ahead of it.
‘Slow and ungainly,’ said Gorgythion, seemingly to himself. ‘Half the bird the Sanctifier was. But I’ll show you what you are. I’ll teach you.’
Kirav turned back to the Imperial Fists assembled in the Gilded Pyre. ‘We’re following them.’
‘Who?’ asked Captain Lysander. In the grav-restraints around him were strapped the Imperial Fists of Squad Kirav, Scout Squad Orfos and Squad Septuron, along with Brother Ucalegon.
‘We don’t know,’ said Kirav.
‘Whoever it is,’ said Lysander, ‘these twenty battle-brothers and this single gunship will have to be enough to take them on.’
‘And we will prevail,’ said Ucalegon. The obsidian sword was strapped into the restraint beside him, its blade glinting in the weak compartment light. ‘As Rogal Dorn prevailed on the Vengeful Spirit. As we have always done.’
‘I see her,’ came Gorgythion’s voice from the cockpit. ‘She’s fast. A spaceship configured for atmospheric flight.’
‘Can you keep up?’ said Kirav.
‘I shall teach this machine how,’ replied Gorgythion. ‘I have not had a single enemy in my sights that has ever escaped. The Gilded Pyre wants to fall behind. She wants to give up. But one such as I has never flown her, and I will teach her what she can really do.’
‘Then the occasion lends itself to prayer,’ said Lysander. ‘Lead us, Brother Ucalegon.’
The Blood Eyrie was named after the rust-red stones of a cluster of peaks which crowned a clutch of mountains in the very heart of the range. In this same mountain range, many kilometres away, Squad Orfos had lost two brothers, one dead and one wounded. One of Opis’s least-known civilisations, absent entirely from the history of the Aristeia and its conquered enemies, had once performed the impossible feat of surviving up here in the ice-cold sky. The Eyrie was a series of great caverns, open to the air, and cut through the red peaks. Some peaks were completely hollowed out, open like bell towers to the elements, their peaks a lattice of stone ribs. Stone bridges between the peaks seemed as thin and delicate as the strands of a spider’s web.
Eagles and spindly, winged humans were carved everywhere. Their long, mournful faces looked out across the expanse of mountains which from here looked endless. Once thousands of people had lived in wooden buildings built into the structure of the Eyrie, but now they had decayed away leaving only the skeleton of a city higher than the clouds.
For the first time in the better part of three thousand years, the wind was not the only sound. The drone of engines changed pitch as the black slab of the Damnatio Memoriae swept down between the peaks of the Blood Eyrie. It slowed and hovered, the cannon in its nose playing across the skeletons of the city.
It descended as if to land in one of the peaks, where the stone ribs were spaced widely enough for it to set down. Then its descent halted and it jerked upwards, like a bird startled into flight. Burning silver flares sprayed from its back, exploding in showers of sparks.
Its sensors had spotted the second craft, one which wove its way through the mountains. It was all but a shadow in the valleys of the mountain range, but now, between the soaring peaks of the Blood Eyrie, it had been forced to emerge into the open.
It was a Thunderhawk gunship of the Imperial Fists.
The guns of the Damnatio Memoriae erupted. Explosive fire hammered into the mountainside behind the gunship, throwing down cascades of rock.
But the gunship did not flee. It was outgunned by the huge-calibre guns of the far larger spacefaring ship. Its own weapons were not designed to penetrate the hide of the Damnatio Memoriae. But nevertheless, it turned towards the larger ship, and its own weapons blazed in reply.
‘Rise up, Gilded Pyre!’ shouted Gorgythion. ‘Rise and be counted! The spirit of the Sanctifier burns in you!’
The Thunderhawk spun and dropped a hundred metres, sprays of fire from the enemy ship shrieking over it.
‘How did they see us?’ yelled Kirav from the passenger compartment.
‘Their eyes are keen!’ replied Gorgythion. ‘But we are here to fight! In the air or on the ground, we are here to kill!’
‘Beros! Stentor!’ ordered Lysander. ‘Get on the heavy bolters!’
Beros and Stentor hauled open two side hatches, and the freezing mountain air swirled in. Two heavy bolters swung out on either side of the Thunderhawk.
Beros sighted the black shape of the enemy ship swinging past his sights. His heavy bolter slammed out chains of fire, bursting against the enemy’s hull. The enemy ship was small for a spacegoing vessel, but it was still easily four or five times the Thunderhawk’s size and the impacts seemed barely to dent its plain black livery.
‘My guns are the faculties of my mind,’ said Gorgythion. His hands played over the gunship’s controls as if without any effort on his part, his piloting instincts so finely honed they were a reflex action that left his mind free. ‘My bullets are the thoughts of my revenge. My sword is my honour. My armour is the certainty that I will prevail. Thus spake Rogal Dorn.’
One of the carved peaks loomed between the Thunderhawk and the enemy ship.
‘I turn faster than you,’ said Gorgythion. ‘Dread lumbering beast. Compared to me, you have the guns of a battleship. But you turn like one, too.’
The Thunderhawk’s nose cannons fired – not into the enemy ship, but into the spurs of stone that encompassed the abandoned city of the eyrie.
Brother Stentor saw what his pilot was doing. He swung his heavy bolter to fire parallel to the gunship’s nose, almost leaning out of the gun port. The heavy bolter jumped in his hands and explosive shells tore through the spur directly ahead, shattering it until it was cut right through.
The Damnatio Memoriae turned its nose up, it engines gunning to push it clear of the Eyrie, but it was half a second too late.
One of the bony spurs fell and sliced off the ship’s stubby left wing. The engine at the root of the wing exploded, throwing shards of spinning metal in every direction. The ship dropped to its wounded side, pivoting as it fell, and crunched into the mountain peak. It brought more stonework down with it, and fragments of ancient carvings rained down.
The Damnatio Memoriae came to rest a few metres from the edge of the peak. Burning fuel poured from the wound in its side, spreading into a lake of fire that fell over the mountainside in a waterfall of flame.
Hatches swung open. Black-armoured soldiers jumped out, running from the fire and forming up for cover among the rubble. More than a hundred of them fled the wreck. Among them was the dark, flitting shape of Lady Syncella, skittering across the hull like a black spider.
The Thunderhawk gunship was not finished. The smoke pouring from the ruptured engine was thrown aside into twisting columns as the Thunderhawk swept low over the wreck, ready to bring the battle to the ground.
Orfos jumped from the opening rear ramp of the Gilded Pyre. Squad Septuron jumped beside him, Assault-Sergeant Septuron himself almost head-first with his chainsword in hand.
Orfos threw out his right hand instinctively as the mountaintop rushed up at him. The bionic responded and he took the impact of his landing on his new iron palm.