Hammer and Anvil

by James Swallow

  ‘Sister,’ Miriya began. ‘I fear I was too hasty to enlist your help on this excursion.’

  The hospitaller looked up. ‘Oh. Miriya, no… I am glad I could help. I only wish I could do more.’ She absently fingered the hem of her robes, earth-brown with green-gold trim in the signature colours of the Order of Serenity.

  ‘You said you had worked with the Sisters Dialogus and their thought-engines… I believed you would have some measure of understanding about the scout’s systems. If I was wrong, if I overstepped my bounds…’

  Verity shook her head and gave a wan smile. ‘No. It is not that. It is merely that the vehicle’s machine-spirit is of a different order to the devices I am familiar with. And I am no expert.’

  ‘We cannot ask the experts,’ Miriya noted. ‘The adepts are not to be trusted.’

  ‘Yes.’ Verity pecked at the keyboard with her fingers. ‘We must be close. From what I have been able to glean, Questor Tegas proceeded to this zone and here the vehicle remained stationary for several hours. We need only find the exact locale to be certain.’

  ‘We will find it.’ Miriya caught a glimpse of Sister Imogen through one of the gun-slots in the hull of the Venator, as she snapped an order at the other Sororitas. Verity followed her line of sight.

  ‘I think the Sister Superior does not share your belief,’ said the hospitaller wearily. ‘The longer we are out here, the shorter her temper seems to grow.’

  ‘Imogen dislikes anything she cannot see down the barrel of a bolter,’ Miriya replied.

  ‘A narrow mind is a pious mind,’ Verity replied, reciting an axiom from the pages of The Rebuke.

  ‘I am certain she believes that,’ said Miriya. Her words trailed off. There was more she wanted to say, but she could not find the right way to phrase it.

  Verity saw the furrowing of her brow. ‘What is it, Sister?’

  ‘Why are we here?’ The question spilled out of her. ‘Why did we come to this desolate place, Verity?’ The weight of uncertainty that she had felt before, in the memorial garden, returned to her.

  ‘For the duty.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. More than that.’ Miriya met her gaze. ‘I know what you wanted from Sepherina’s mission. After the death of Lethe and… And what we saw on Neva…’

  Lethe.

  The moment Miriya said her name, Verity saw her sister as clear as day, her dark hair framing a hawkish, elegant face, eyes that were old before their time. Her blood sibling, hardy and strong, always there to protect her. But no longer. Lethe was gone, and Verity remained.

  Each time she thought she had made her peace with that truth, there came a moment when she realised that she had not, that she never would. Even though they had gone to separate orders of the Sisterhood on ascension from their schola – Lethe into battle with the warriors of Saint Katherine, Verity to the medicae savants – she had still felt as if her kinswoman was keeping her safe. But Lethe’s death had brought home a terrible reality to her; the harshness of this universe, something that before she had been able to keep at a distance, came in and struck her in the heart.

  Verity believed that it was the duty of every servant of the Imperial Church to improve humanity’s lot in the galaxy, to beat back the night and the dangers of the alien, the mutant, the witch and the traitor. And for a time it had seemed possible, knowing that Lethe was out there, fighting for the same ideal.

  Her murder shook Verity to the core. It threatened to shatter her faith. It brought her fury and sorrow of a kind she had never experienced. Miriya had stood with her and helped Verity find her way back, but the journey had changed her.

  What she had done had changed her. Verity remembered the weight of a boltgun in her hands, the shock of the report as it fired. She remembered the first man she had killed in cold blood. It had been to save a life, Miriya’s life… But in that act she had lost a piece of herself, and it seemed as if she would never find it again.

  ‘I came on the mission to find… peace.’ She looked away from the other woman. ‘Sanctuary 101 is so far from the Wars of Faith, I thought that… I hoped that there would be a kind of stillness here. No distractions. No reminders. Just a chance to engage in the pure work of reconsecration. And perhaps renew my union to my God-Emperor into the bargain.’

  ‘That peace… It is not here.’ Miriya offered.

  Verity shook her head, sorrow settling on her. ‘I have not yet found it.’

  Miriya’s hand reached out and touched her friend’s; and for a moment, Verity saw a terrible vulnerability beneath the hard, armoured soul of her Sister. ‘We’ll keep searching, you and I,’ she said. ‘He will show us the way.’ Miriya nodded to the bulkhead, where a small brass icon of the Golden Throne lay bolted to the Venator’s roll cage.

  Verity wanted to say more, but then the vehicle shifted on its chassis as Imogen climbed inside the crew bay. ‘Correct the maps by four and one-third increments,’ she ordered, and Verity nodded, immediately obeying the command. For the moment, her conversation with Miriya was at an end.

  The display on the pict-screen shifted by degrees, turning to compensate for the magnetic effects as the other Battle Sisters boarded. Verity heard Cassandra grunt as she dropped into the driver’s seat and gunned the sluggish engine. The Venator jerked forwards in fits and starts before the tyre treads finally bit and the vehicle lurched into motion.

  ‘And where now?’ Imogen demanded, twisting off her helmet as the hatch locked shut.

  Verity peered at the map and indicated the mouth of a narrow defile half a kilometre from their position. ‘This way, I think.’

  ‘You think?’ echoed Sister Kora, doffing her own helm to reveal an olive-skinned face shining with sweat. ‘How long do we have to keep turning circles out here?’

  ‘Until we find what Tegas was looking for,’ Imogen told her, ending any further debate on the matter. She called out to the forward cabin. ‘Cassandra! Follow the ridge towards the arroyo.’

  ‘That will take us downwards,’ came the reply through the grille between the compartments. ‘The trail drops away, into a network of narrow canyons.’

  ‘At least we’ll be out of the wind, then,’ said the Sister Superior, nodding to herself. ‘Proceed.’

  ‘They are humans,’ insisted the revenant. ‘I won’t listen to your lies about them any longer. I saw it with my own eyes.’

  ++What you see is only the product of a broken mind, weak and pathetic++

  The voice of the Watcher was like an earthquake inside, a thundering echo through bones and meat. The hooded figure dug clawed, bony fingers into the shredded rags at the edges of the dirty robe and pulled at them in anger.

  Far below, glimpsed only as a ghost-image, the vehicle picked its way across the desert, the women on board ignorant of the fact they were being observed all the while from atop one of the rock spires.

  ‘You said they were phantoms. Aspects of myself walking and talking in mimicry of the real, falling from the sky…’ The words dissolved into a wild chuckle. ‘Not true. Not true not true not true not true…’

  ++And if they are real, what of it?++

  ‘It means I am not insane.’

  ++It means nothing. They will die like all the rest, screaming and boiling away into vapour++

  The head inside the hood shook back and forth. ‘No. No. I won’t be alone again. I will not allow it.’

  Something like laughter bubbled up from the darkness within. ++You have no say in the matter++

  The revenant stumbled and stood up. There, fresh in memory, was the recall of the moment in the chapel. The first time daring to return to the ruins. The candle. The precious votive. The prayer spoken, known so bone-deep it could not be remembered now, only spoken through pure flesh-recall. ‘Liar.’

  ++What do you think will happen to them?++ The Watcher’s whispers were made of pure poison. ++It all depends on how foolish they are. If they leave soon, they might live. But it they keep prying, keep digging++

  ‘Ke
ep strutting and playing as if this world belongs to them…’ The words formed in a husky, breathy staccato, spoken before the ghost-voice could form them.

  ++If they make a nuisance of themselves, they will wake the storm++

  New tears began to fall, splashing on the red stone, drawing out the colour of the rocks like blood. ‘That must not be.’

  ++They will perish in agony just like those who came before them++

  Down in the canyons, the heat-form of the rover began to cool and fade as it passed into the lee of the sheer rock face.

  ++You cannot prevent that++ said the constant voice. ++You can only bear witness++

  ‘Not again,’ she said, and jumped from the high ledge, scrambling down the fast, familiar path.

  Disquiet settled in Sister Miriya’s gut as the Venator descended from the desert landscape and into the shadowed netherworld of the canyons. The rust-coloured rock and the endless dust gave way to rectilinear shapes that rose up either side of the narrowing gorge, planes of alien stone that unsettled her with their unnatural, almost machined geometry. ‘What is this place?’ she whispered.

  ‘Give your arming prayers, Sisters,’ Imogen ordered, looking around the crew compartment. ‘Be prepared for anything.’

  ‘What do you think those forms are?’ asked Xanthe, staring through a viewport. Without her helmet to hide them, the sallow-faced woman’s elfin eyes were wide with trepidation. ‘I’ve not seen such structures before.’

  ‘I have,’ muttered Danae. The taciturn warrior offered nothing else to the conversation, instead running her fingers over the frame of her meltagun, whispering to it.

  A dull chime sounded from the panel before Verity, loud as the peal of a cathedral bell in the sullen quiet of the vehicle. The hospitaller peered at the pict-screen and frowned. ‘A detection,’ she began. ‘A lasing beam, it appears. There was a brief moment of contact from a kilometre distant. Gone now.’

  ‘A targeting sweep?’ said Kora, clutching her bolter.

  ‘No,’ Verity went on. ‘The beam was too weak.’

  Miriya remembered what she had seen in the courtyard of the convent, the blink of laser diodes between Tegas and his adepts. ‘A communications signal,’ she said. ‘Something just sent an interrogative to us.’

  ‘And if we do not reply in kind?’ Imogen frowned. The Sister Superior leaned forwards. ‘Cassandra, what do you see out there?’

  ‘The canyon narrows,’ began the Battle Sister. ‘I…’ She trailed off. ‘I see structures! A fence… A gate!’

  ‘Slow your approach!’ Imogen stood up and shouldered open a hatch in the roof, daring to peek out. The Venator’s engine grumbled and the vehicle decelerated. Miriya did not wait for an order; she came up beside the other woman, her gun at the ready.

  There, ahead where the arroyo came to a dead end, grids of machine-stamped metal had been used to wall off the passage, and behind them a cluster of workshacks and habitat modules were visible, arranged in a precise radial formation.

  ‘Another outpost…’ said Imogen, disbelief in her words.

  ‘Movement,’ warned Miriya. At their approach, the gates were rolling back, clanking as they retreated away.

  Cassandra called up from the driver’s compartment. ‘Eloheim? Your orders?’

  ‘Take us inside.’

  Miriya shot her a look. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Do not second-guess me, Sister,’ replied Imogen, dropping back into the cabin.

  Once inside the perimeter fence, the Venator rumbled to a halt before the hab modules, the engine still growling as it ticked over. Miriya chanced a cautious look through one of the gun slits and quickly took the measure of what she saw.

  Judging by the amount of dust and silt that had collected around the stilt-leg pylons supporting the habitat capsules, this encampment had been in place for some time. Not in the measure of years like the convent, she estimated, but months at the very least. In some places the glassaic windows were still unblemished by the abrasive scouring of the winds, and the anechoic coating on the module exteriors was largely intact. She spied autonomic weapon turrets raised up on spindly towers, each aiming outwards down the canyon, and with a cold twinge of certainty she realised that the launchers up there could easily have obliterated them before the Venator had come within sight of the outpost.

  ‘Contact, to the right!’ hissed Sister Kora, at the aiming slits.

  ‘More here, to the left,’ added Verity.

  Miriya looked and saw a group of figures in red robes, flanked by plodding gun-servitors and skitarii. ‘The Mechanicus.’

  Imogen’s face twisted in an ugly scowl. ‘Falsehoods and damned subterfuge… That whoreson Tegas lied to our faces!’

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Xanthe. ‘What is this place? What are they doing here?’

  ‘Fine questions, all of which I will have answers to,’ snarled Imogen. ‘Sister Miriya, with me. The rest of you, weapons to the ready.’

  Leaving her helm locked to the mag-plates on her hip, the Sister Superior threw open the gull-wing hatch and jumped down to the sand. Miriya came after her, her thumb snapping off the safety catch on her bolter. The wind pulled at her dark hair, whipping it back off her face. Miriya’s earlier misgivings were now a thunder in her chest.

  ‘In the God-Emperor’s name, who is in charge here?’ Imogen shouted, daring the Mechanicus adepts and their minions to remain silent. ‘What is the meaning of this? Answer me now!’

  One of them shifted and took a step forwards. Miriya saw the rank medallion of a sanctified tech-priest about his neck. The adept’s face – such as it was – did not seem familiar to her. In fact, she quickly became certain that none of the assembled group had been on board the Tybalt with them on the journey from Paramar. And there were far more of them than Tegas had brought with him.

  They were already here. Miriya felt a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘I am Ferren.’ The tech-priest made a conciliatory gesture. ‘Honoured Sisters, welcome. Your arrival is unexpected. That is inopportune.’

  ‘Sister Superior.’ Cassandra’s voice buzzed in their ears, thick with static, her words carried to them by vox-bead. ‘Long-range communications are inoperative. We cannot reach the convent by machine-call from this location.’

  ‘Look sharp,’ said Imogen, biting out the words.

  Miriya said nothing. Was that some deliberate ploy on the part of these interlopers, or just an effect of the planet’s turbulent magnetosphere? Whatever the cause, the squad were on their own in this. No warning of their discovery could be sent.

  Slowly, the weapon-arms of the gun-slaves and the laser carbines of the skitarii rose to a guard position. Miriya studied the adepts and wondered if they were using their unvoiced speech to coordinate their actions. She moved to draw up her gun in return, but the instant she moved, a trio of actinic blue sighting beams threaded through the air to dance across her breastplate. She lowered the bolter again and they winked out.

  ‘I must ask you to lay down your armaments and step away from the vehicle,’ continued the tech-priest. ‘Have the five others inside the scout car disembark one at a time.’ His shifting crimson eyes scanned the Venator, doubtless picking out those within via thermographic vision cues, like the preysight of the Sabbat helmets. ‘You are trespassing. This matter must be addressed.’ He sighed, a grating wheeze that echoed the grind of old gears. ‘I would prefer not to resort to violence.’

  ‘You have the arrogance to accuse us of trespass?’ spat Imogen. ‘Tegas came here to find you, didn’t he? Because of all this!’ She gestured around angrily at the hab modules and the obvious signs of work on the stone walls, the cuttings and the laser-burned cavern entrance. ‘Mark me, you will answer for your deceit!’

  Miriya caught her gaze for an instant and saw something there; a look, an intention she couldn’t properly interpret. She decided to construe it as she saw fit.

  The tech-priest tilted his head in a quizzical gesture.
‘I see that it is unlikely I will find a dispassionate response here.’ The circle of weapons moved to take aim, directed by silent command.

  ‘He’s going to fire…’ Cassandra’s garbled whisper sounded distant.

  ‘Your curiosity has brought you to this, Sister. I am disappointed that there is no other way to resolve our situation. If only you had turned back, returned to the convent, ignorant of what you have seen. Now I am required to take steps that–’

  The Battle Sister did not let the tech-priest continue any further. Miriya squeezed the trigger of her bolter and fired it into the ground on full automatic discharge, allowing the slamming recoil to drag the muzzle upwards. The mass-reactive bolt shells ripped into the sandstone before her, kicking up a sudden torrent of dust and rock fragments.

  With the first shot, Imogen was moving, firing her own weapon from the hip, shooting at the gun-servitors, aiming to kill the bearers of the heavier weapons. ‘Cassandra, drive!’ she bellowed, and Miriya heard the throaty roar of the Venator’s motor as it lurched forwards, skidding.

  Danae emerged from the scout’s upper hatch with her melta weapon, and fired shrieking lances of heat in a fan of flame that scattered the skitarii. The vehicle ground through the sand and surged away, wheels spinning.

  Fire flashed and Miriya broke into a duck-and-run, feeling the dry air crackle around her as crimson beams stabbed towards her. Laser strikes fused sand into clumps of dirty silica at her heels as she ran towards the rear of the Venator. She bit back a scream of pain as one shot found its mark and melted into the ceramite and flexsteel of her shoulder pauldron. Smoky flame puffed and guttered out on the trim of her cloak, but she did not slow.

  The Venator was racing in turning circles across the camp’s central area, absorbing glancing shots and dodging others, trying to avoid a direct hit. Miriya saw Cassandra put the scout vehicle into a controlled drift, and the rear quarter swung out, smacking a gun-servitor into a broad support spar. The knobbled wheels spat dirt, and she waded through it, reaching for the grab rails along the flank of the vehicle.