Shield of Baal: Tempestus

by Braden Campbell

  ‘Abominable traitors!’ Grace cried. She charged forward, firing her pistol as she went. The chest of one of the nearest Shelsists vaporised as she found her mark.

  The other women covered their leader’s charge. Bolts crashed into the cultists and punched through their makeshift barricades. Cairista painted the room with white-hot promethium flames.

  The cultists directly blocking the Canoness’s path were consumed in fire. Their weapons discharged aimlessly as they screamed and flailed. Two of the bullets struck Grace’s chestplate and bounced harmlessly away. She vaulted over the table behind which the cultists were cowering, and mercifully drove her sword through the heart of the man writhing at her feet. The others she left to their sins.

  Beneath the fresco, the hooded figure was pointing towards the Canoness and screaming. Grace couldn’t make the words out over the cacophony of the heavy bolter, but she could easily guess that he was calling for her murder. Half a dozen Shelsists surrounded him. Two of them were reloading a harpoon launcher ripped from the bow of a whaling ship. The others carried the clumsy autoguns of their forefathers. Grace was fairly certain that the rifles posed little danger to her, but the ballista had felled poor Karyn; it was obviously strong enough to puncture powered armour, and therefore had to be destroyed.

  She had taken only a few steps towards their position when they fired upon her. There was nowhere for her to hide, and nothing nearby to take cover behind. So, she simply wheeled around and lowered her head. Bullets fruitlessly struck her back and legs. The harpoon let fly with a sharp twang. It impacted her spine with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs, but otherwise, her armour held true.

  As they peppered her with bullets, the Canoness holstered her pistol. From her belt, she pulled a golden sphere crowned with a double-headed eagle. She tore the eagle off with her teeth, whirled around, and lobbed the sphere into the cultists’ midst.

  It detonated among them in a cloud of smoke and biting metal fragments. The Shelsists jerked backwards and ducked. Their armoured suits protected them for the most part, but the Canoness seized upon their confusion. She crossed the distance between them in a few long strides and leapt up to the ledge. She grasped her sword with both hands and swung, forever separating one cultist and his left arm.

  Then the others were upon her, beating with the butts of their rifles and stabbing with bayonets. She managed to parry most of them. The rest skittered across her armour harmlessly.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ the Canoness screamed. She carved another wide arc, and two of her attackers were sliced clean through. She whirled around and thrust at the man behind her. The sword buried itself through his chest until the garland crosspiece touched his ribs.

  The remaining two Shelsists continued to strike at her, but whatever blows they managed to land seemed to have no effect on Grace. The Canoness withdrew her sword as she slammed a spiked elbow plate into one of their faces. The last of her attackers had his head separated from his neck in a single, deft stroke. She faced the robed figure.

  No, she saw, it wasn’t a robe. Not as such. It was a sheet of waterproof tarpaulin tied around the waist with rope. The sleeves were long and the cowl left his face as a pit of black. He threw down his torch and grasped his staff in both hands. It was thick and knotted, and looked to be made of alabaster stone.

  ‘Murderess!’ he cried. His voice was deep and strange, as if his throat was filled with phlegm. ‘Look what you have done.’

  The Canoness cast a quick glance over her shoulder. She saw that the remaining cultists were either dead or dying. Charred husks that had once been heretics lay scattered everywhere. The crisping of their flesh and tightening of their muscles had drawn each of them up into the foetal position. Sister Fayhew stood before a considerable number of fallen men and women who lay in a wide crescent, limbs twisted and broken. Each had some kind of improvised weapon in their hands. They had tried to charge the Sisters’ position, Grace saw, and had failed miserably. Some of the other Sisters were cut or bleeding, but they stood together, boltguns pointed towards the rocky ledge.

  ‘It is no less than you deserve for rejecting the Emperor,’ the Canoness said fiercely. She levelled the tip of her sword at the black abyss of his cowl. ‘Now, foulness, tell me where you found these weapons. Tell me why your damned cult refuses to die.’

  ‘Do not ask us anything,’ the man groaned. ‘The answers will be beyond you.’

  In High Gothic, and using her best pulpit voice Grace roared, ‘I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. If you channel a spirit, I would confront it.’

  ‘What need have we for spirits?’ the man said. ‘We have a goddess.’

  With a speed that surprised the Canoness, the man in the robe struck her with the end of his staff. Although her amour was unaffected, she felt the reverberations of the impact. She thrust at him, but the man easily avoided her. She slashed at him twice. Again, he ducked beyond the edge of her blade.

  He jabbed the end of his staff into the centre of her chest. Her armour continued to hold, but he twisted it upwards, catching her beneath the chin. She brought her sword downward in a tight curve, and cut deeply into the flesh above his knee. Before he could react, she lunged and drove an elbow into his face.

  The man stumbled slightly. His hood fell away, and his robe parted enough for her to see some of what was hidden beneath. Grace drew a sharp intake of breath.

  The man’s exposed skin was pale green and had the texture of scales. His nose had either vanished or fallen off, leaving only two thin vertical slits. His left eye was huge and sickly yellow. Small tentacles sprouted from his upper lip and jawline. Most disturbing, however, was the set of additional arms that unstuck themselves from his ribcage. They were thin, but wiry, and ended not in hands but with wickedly tapered claws.

  ‘Mutation!’ Grace cried.

  ‘Not mutation,’ the man said, his mouth tentacles twitching, ‘bestowments.’ His secondary claws slashed at her, tearing through the plates protecting her forearms. His strength had become something otherworldly. A line from the Catechism of Leadership raced through her mind: Since the Emperor suffers to shield us, it is a blessing to suffer for Him in return.

  She impaled him through his lower abdomen. A great stink, like dead fish, erupted from his guts. Still, he did not attempt to flee the fight. Instead, he wrapped his claws around her neck.

  ‘Hard-hearted, you are, Murderess. Loveless. Chaste by choice.’

  The Canoness felt her heart and lungs begin to crumple within her. She fell to her knees, nearly dropping her sword. She couldn’t breathe. The very life was being squeezed out of her. An image flashed through her mind of crushing tentacles, ghostly white, dredged up from the blackest depths of the sea where light had never shone. It felt like drowning. Her vision darkened.

  With the last of her strength, she brought her sword up, and cut off his right leg. The man howled as he fell to the ground. Dark ichor splashed everywhere. Coughing, the Canoness dragged herself to her feet.

  The man was muttering in his death throes, repeating the same thing over and over.

  ‘What is that you say?’ Grace demanded.

  He smiled up at the Canoness with a look of deranged joy. Blood seeped through the spaces between his teeth.

  ‘They are coming,’ he said. ‘They are coming at last. They are coming. They are coming at last.’

  ‘Who? Who is coming?’

  The man spasmed once, and said nothing more. His facial tentacles continued to twitch for several seconds after his death.

  The Canoness tilted her head thoughtfully as the Sisters moved to join her on the rock ledge. The stakes had suddenly risen here on Lysios. The cult of the Brine Goddess was no longer a collection of malcontents playing at religion and making up stories as they went along. They were gaining in power. They had considerable weapons now. They also had… bestowments. Yes, Grace thought, that was the word the mutant had used. Bestowments. But from whom?

  ‘Sister,
’ she said to Cairista, ‘this man’s flesh has become corrupted. Deliver him from it.’

  Cairista brought her weapon up and bathed the man in promethium. The room filled with acrid smoke and the stench of melted plastek.

  Later, after Grace had prayed for the souls of Tarsha and Karyn, she would compile a report of this latest encounter with the Shelsists and send it to Terra. For the moment though, she simply stood and watched the Brine Goddess’s favoured burn until there was nothing left of him but ashes.

  ‘I have loved you since the day this world was destroyed. All my life, it seems, I have chased after you. Will you never descend from your abode in the sky? How I long to join you. How I long to touch you…’

  – Cantos Continuous, M41

  Chapter Two

  The inquisitor began the day with his regular regimen: one hour of intensive physical exercise, followed by thirty minutes of sword practice. Breakfast consisted of a conglomeration of proteins and amino acids which he drank greedily from a tall glass. It was as thick as glue and utterly tasteless, but he refused to let the rigours of space travel weaken him in any way. The safety of the Sol System was parsecs behind him now. A new world awaited him, and he would not fall victim to it on account of being too frail or a fraction of a second too slow.

  Sweat-covered and dressed only in a loose robe, he pulled down the viewport covering and looked out into space. The ship had emerged from the warp two days ago, and had been steadily decelerating ever since. Yesterday he had ordered a series of torpedo probes launched into the ocean, and their signals had confirmed his hopes. Within the hour, he and his team would be landing on the surface. Then the hunt would begin. Everything was proceeding smoothly. His only regret was that he would be achieving greatness on such an ugly-looking world.

  Lysios had to be the most depressing place he had ever seen. Its only natural satellite, Ixoi, was so huge, and orbited so closely, that its gravitational field had distorted the planet into a permanent egg shape. The hemisphere opposite the moon was riddled with tectonic instabilities and fissures. The side closest to the moon was comprised entirely of ocean. It rose like a mountain made of water, kilometres tall. The crests of its waves scraped the stratosphere, and formed icebergs that tumbled down the leeside. Moreover, this vertical ocean moved. It took Ixoi a decade to complete a single revolution around Lysios, but as it travelled, it dragged the sea along with it. Thus, there was no place that was not subjected to regular flooding or even total submersion. It was impossible to think that it had once been considered one of the Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Segmentum Solar.

  I bet it stinks down there, he thought. Like fish and muck.

  He changed into a fresh set of clothes, and surveyed himself in the mirror. When he was satisfied, he opened the antique trunk in which he stored his weapons and equipment. His combat armour, although light, was exquisitely made. He secured his sword belt around his waist, and holstered a pistol beneath his left arm. He double checked to make certain that his refractor field generator was fully charged and operational.

  There was a knocking on the bulkhead behind him. Through the door he heard a voice call his name.

  ‘Inquisitor Ulrich?’

  He knew who it was, of course. There was only one woman on board. He strode across the room and opened the door.

  In the corridor stood a young woman as tall as he. Her hair was naturally platinum and longer than that of any Sororitas the inquisitor had previously dealt with: a testament to the fact that she spent her life ensconced in scriptoria rather than rolling around on filthy battlefields. Her skin was pale. Her eyes were the colour of jade. Of the rest of her he could make no judgement, as she was covered from neck to ankle by a thick, red scribe’s robe.

  ‘Sister Margene,’ he said. His nose twitched. She smelled of parchment and ink, which he did not particularly care for.

  She held out a thin stack of papers. ‘Inquisitor, I have a readiness report from Tempestor Chavis. He and his men are prepping the two ground transports they brought with them, and await your presence in the loading bay.’

  Ulrich left her standing in the corridor while he crossed to his desk. From a fruit bowl, he selected a poperin. It was small and round, and its skin was mottled red and green. He chewed it slowly as he flipped through the report. ‘Would you like to look at it?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  He gestured to the window. ‘Lysios. I thought you might like to see it, especially after all the time you’ve spent reading about it.’

  ‘I would, yes,’ she replied. ‘My quarters have no viewports.’

  ‘Well, we can’t all travel in first class, now can we?’ Ulrich took another bite of his exotic fruit, and watched closely as Margene crossed over to the window.

  ‘I have never seen anything like it,’ she said in a near whisper.

  ‘I would think not,’ Ulrich said. ‘This is your first time away from Terra, yes?’

  She dipped her head in reverence at the mention of humanity’s sacred home world, but her eyes never left the strange planet before her. ‘Very true,’ she said. ‘This is not only my first trip to another star system, but my first time beyond the Convent Prioris since my training began as a child.’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘Thank you once again for the opportunity, inquisitor. I will not fail you.’

  ‘I am a man who remembers his friends. Serve me well on this little outing, and I promise that you will be suitably taken care of.’ He tossed the report down. ‘If I have one regret, it’s that your first journey had to be to such an ugly waste of a world.’

  He had hoped that they would share a jest at the planet’s expense, but she frowned.

  ‘I find nothing wasteful about it, inquisitor,’ she said tartly. ‘In fact, the native Lysites are, if anything, masters of recycling and ingenuity. They’ve been forced to become so, you see, because of the ocean. The “worldwave”, as they call it. The fact that, at any given time, half of the planet is submerged beneath kilometres of salt water has led to the development of a very unique culture.

  ‘Everything here is tied to the ocean. It’s the source of nearly ninety-five per cent of all foodstuffs. It is also used as a power source, both via various types of tidal generators and as a coolant for nuclear fission reactors. It makes the atmosphere so damp and saline that all machinery demands constant upkeep. Mobility and retrofitting are everything. They must always stay either just ahead or just behind the worldwave, never settling in one place.

  ‘Take the hab-crawlers, for example. There aren’t really any cities on Lysios any more. Not as you or I might understand it. There are ruins, of course, dating back to the onset of the environmental collapse three millennia ago, but no one lives there. No, instead they move about as I said in massive, tracked machines, each holding thousands of people. Our drop-craft, in fact, will be landing at–’

  Ulrich tossed the core of his poperin into the bowl, turned on his heel, and promptly exited into the hallway. The raised soles of his boots made sharp clacking sounds on the metal deck plates. Behind him, Margene rushed to keep pace. Silence stretched out until they neared their destination.

  ‘The Scion leader… What’s his name again?’

  ‘Chavis, sir,’ Margene answered. She was unsure if this was a test of some kind, or if he had genuinely forgotten. ‘Tempestor Chavis.’

  ‘Yes. He and his men have been told little about the reason behind our coming here until now. They’re a very “need to know basis” sort.’

  ‘But now they need to know.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘You would like me to tell them about the creature, then?’

  ‘No. I’ll do that. Just run them through the basic facts.’

  They entered into a cavernous space crammed with storage containers and fuel drums. Along the walls were racks where missiles and other armaments were safely stored. The centre of the room was dominated by a pair of oversized ground vehicles. Their armour plating was blocky and angular. Each had a
large turret weapon mounted on its roof, and slablike, massively reinforced side hatches. Instead of tyres, the vehicles sat on quad track units. Exhaust pipes jutted out on either side of a frontal engine.

  Eighteen men bustled around them. They were all dressed alike, with heavy, pale blue combat armour over beige uniforms. They were tall and fit, with sharply defined features and steely eyes. One of them wore a black beret atop his head, and when Ulrich stood in the doorframe and cleared his throat, it was he who called the others to attention.

  ‘Thank you, tempestor,’ Ulrich said. ‘Before we begin, gentlemen, there is one formality to get out of the way.’ He pulled a silver cylinder from the inside of his coat, deftly opened the top, and shook out a rolled-up parchment. This he handed to Margene before folding his hands behind his back.

  Margene unrolled the scroll, and read aloud in her clearest voice.

  ‘By the authority of the Immortal Emperor of Mankind, you, the selected members of the Tempestus Scions 55th regiment, also known as the Kappic Eagles, are hereby required to submit yourselves wholly and unquestioningly to His servant, Inquisitor Damien Ulrich for a mission to be determined by the inquisitor and whose objectives and implementation will be divulged by the inquisitor at a time and place of the inquisitor’s choosing.

  ‘Failure of any man to comply constitutes heresy against the Ecclesiarchy, and will render said heretic persona non grata excommunicatus in the eyes of the Emperor.

  ‘Here follows the signature of Inquisitor Damien Ulrich, dated 0712999.M41.’

  Margene turned the scroll around so that the soldiers could clearly see for themselves the elaborate scrawl across the bottom. A purity seal of red wax, stamped with the symbol of the Inquisition, rested next to it. When they had nodded their acceptance, she rolled it back up and glanced at Ulrich.

  ‘You have been given a wonderful opportunity,’ he said, rocking slightly on his heels. ‘Very shortly, we will descend to the planet Lysios. The mission is quite straightforward. It’s the environment that may complicate things.’