Vaults of Terra- The Hollow Mountain - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Please…’ The voice came from the mouths of every pilgrim, a deafening whimper of pain. ‘Please… I can’t…’

  A gunship banked overhead, engines screaming. Its black hull blocked out the light.

  The column of lightning flared. The glass tabernacle exploded. Shards flew out. Bodies fell, torn apart, limbs and flesh split open. Ninkurra dived to the ground. A razor-edged sheet of glass skimmed her left shoulder. Numbness spread down her left side as the nerve shunts in her spine blocked the pain signal. She rolled back to her feet and jinked aside from another fragment.

  The explosion froze. Pieces of glass, drops of blood and scraps of skin halted in mid-air, and then began to float upwards as the cries became a deafening pulse of terror.

  ‘Oh no…’ hissed Ninkurra.

  The gunship above her opened up. Hard rounds whipped through the crowd.

  The crop stubble was burning. Black smoke smudged the air.

  A high, keening cry came from the mouths of the pilgrims.

  ‘So far…’ moaned the chorus of pain. ‘Can see… so far…’

  She ran forwards. A man swung across her path. He was missing half his head; skull and brain sliced clean away, but he was still moving, mouth still shouting.

  ‘I don’t want…’

  She kicked him aside. The gunship curved around in the air above her. Figures in crimson and black armour were dropping from its open hatches. More fire cut into the crowd as the door gunner of the second craft fired. Hot brass casings rattled as they hit the lip of the open door.

  A wall of bodies in front of her. She raised her pistol and fired three times. The executioner rounds barely had time to sniff their kill markers before they hit. Wet explosions tore a hole in the pilgrims, and then Ninkurra was through it. She was seeing with three sets of eyes: her own and those of the hawks spinning through the air above. She could see the prospect. He was standing in a circle of burning crop stubble. His hands were spread, palms open, head tilted back. Furnace light poured from his mouth and eyes. A golden nimbus pulsed about his shoulders.

  Ninkurra raised her pistol and fired. The round punched into the air and shrank, tumbling in slow motion as it became molten slag. A pilgrim grabbed at her. She took the grasping hands off at the wrist with a flick of the shard-blade, and tried to push forward. It was like trying to run into a gale.

  The sounds of gunfire and gunships faded…

  The feeling of her muscles dimmed…

  She was not moving…

  A trio of hard rounds whipped through the crowd behind her. She could see them move through the air, buzzing like heavy insects.

  Daughter…+ said a voice in her skull that spoke and shook like the sound of thunder. +Daughter of man… why is this happening?+

  She tried to shut it out, tried to bury her thoughts behind the engrams imbedded in her psyche. But the pressure forcing its way inside her mind was immense, like a tidal wave pouring over a sea wall. She could feel it growing, too, raw power flowing out into being, unstoppable, wild, and filled with pain. There was just a scrap of her own will left, and she held on to it as the firetide of thoughts broke through her. She had faced moments close to this, but they had killed the prospect before its power fully manifested. She was about to see what would have happened if they had failed all those times before.

  I can see so far…+ roared the thunder voice in her skull, +but… I…don’t want to… I don’t understand what…+

  Now, she willed.

  The psyber-hawks dived from the sky above. Their feathers burned as they fell. Her last instruction held them true, wings tucked, ash spilling from them. They struck the man as they died, claws cutting into flesh for an instant before they became flashes of light.

  It was only an instant, a stutter in unfolding time. But it was enough. Ninkurra raised her gun and fired once. The world shrieked, and then there was just the noise of burning corn and the chatter of distant gunfire.

  ‘The Horusians were the worst of what are called radicals,’ said Hesh. ‘Inquisitors who take the authority of the divine Emperor, and use it to follow their calling down paths that others would consider perversions of the ideals of the Imperium. Heretics, and betrayers of their office.’

  ‘But they are not called either heretics or betrayers,’ said Viola calmly, ‘they are called radicals.’

  ‘A kindness of language,’ growled Hesh.

  ‘A truth,’ said Viola. ‘They are inquisitors. None save the Emperor may gainsay them. If they believe something is right, who is to say that they are wrong? The Emperor cannot commit heresy or betray Himself, so how can those that walk in His name?’

  Hesh turned his pale eyes on her. Thin lips peeled back over yellow teeth.

  ‘To defend heresy is to become worse than those you defend.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Covenant, and Viola felt the cold authority in the word. He took a step closer to Hesh. The Black Priest did not move. ‘Your master lived his ideals, and died fighting for mankind’s survival. I am giving you the chance to serve mankind, because of him, because he trusted and valued you. But do not think that in this place you are anything but a servant of the Emperor, and your service is your knowledge, your reward is to obey, and if you presume to judge that which is beyond your means then I will judge you in turn.’

  Hesh held Covenant’s gaze for a second, and then bowed his head.

  ‘Your pardon, my lord.’

  ‘Continue,’ said Covenant.

  ‘Horusianism was an old belief, as old as the ordos themselves, some say. Its… followers sought a vessel to contain the ascended power of Chaos, and in so doing conquer Chaos. They sought to enslave Chaos to the service of mankind, to make the tormented the master, the enslaved the saviours of the future.’

  Hesh paused, his mouth moving as though he was chewing something bitter and sharp.

  ‘They believed that the warp holds no evil that we do not put into it, that with great will and strength the powers that seek to destroy mankind may save it. They sought a dark messiah to be the avatar of Chaos, a being of Chaos who will bring Chaos to its knees.’

  ‘You say they were,’ said Viola.

  ‘Horusianism is a dead ideal. The last who professed its creed was Catullus Ven and he is a millennium in the grave.’

  ‘Ardena-Venusia?’ asked Covenant.

  ‘A rumour, never confirmed. Likely a move by the Solar Cabals to discredit her.’

  ‘You sound very certain,’ said Josef.

  Hesh shot him a look.

  ‘I am. When Lord Vult took the seat of Inquisitorial Representative amongst the High Lords of Terra, he asked me to confirm the extinction of the Horusian ideal. I was thorough. I saw records that even the most exalted of my lord’s peers have not seen, past and ongoing. I burned through one hundred data-sift servitors in the task. Nothing was left to chance. I am certain.’

  ‘A lot of effort looking for signs of something that is supposed to be dead…’ said Viola.

  ‘My master was concerned with the stability and unity of the Imperium, and the Holy Ordos that protect mankind, and he did not believe in leaving risks to that stability uninvestigated.’

  ‘So he got you to check the grave to make sure the corpse of this dead ideology had not sprung back to life?’ asked Viola, arching an eyebrow.

  ‘Horusianism is not an ideal, it is a poison. You can see the shadow of its passing in the fragmentary records of wars within the ordos. Wars… not skirmishes between individuals of different convictions, but wars lasting centuries, battles fought in shadows and by means too terrible to think of. My master wanted to be certain that those days were gone.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Covenant.

  Hesh looked at him.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Why did he want to be certain?’ asked Viola, her mind flowing forwards into the space left
by Covenant’s question. ‘It was not whim, was it? What made Daemonhunter-Lord Vult think that the dead ideal of Horusianism might not be as dead as it seemed?’

  For the first time since entering the chamber, Hesh looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Nothing… A heretical superstition.’

  ‘You will tell me,’ said Covenant, his voice low.

  Hesh drew and let out a breath.

  ‘There was a… a prophecy… more an outpouring of insanity, in point of fact. A Black Ship entering the Solar System suffered a containment breach. A high-grade, unstable psyker began to manifest his nature. When he had been subdued he was conscious for several seconds. His words were recorded by the witch-keepers and passed to agents of the Inquisition on Terra.’

  ‘What did this psyker say?’ asked Viola.

  ‘I am not permitted to remember it in entirety,’ said Hesh, ‘just phrases from it.’

  ‘Those fragments?’

  ‘“Three born of judgement… bearer of cup, bearer of coin, bearer of crown… reborn, renewed, re-blessed…” That is all I am allowed to remember. The motifs in those phrases correspond to some of those found in the works of Catullus Ven, and in the writings of Inquisitor-Master Zaranchek Xanthus. Writings that related to the beliefs of Horusians and…’ Hesh trailed off, teeth closing over his tongue. Viola saw the muscles on his jaw tense.

  ‘Finish what you were going to say,’ said Covenant.

  ‘The writings concerned the appearance of a “prospect” for a vessel of Chaos – for the rise of their Dark Messiah.’

  The silence lengthened through the seconds.

  ‘Yet you found no evidence that Horusians were active in the Inquisition?’ asked Covenant.

  ‘None. It was coincidence, the noise of the warp throwing up the heresies of the past.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Covenant. ‘But if Horusianism was dead then it has found resurrection. Its followers walk amongst the Inquisition again. They killed your master.’

  ‘Talicto was no Horusian,’ growled Hesh. He was angry, Viola realised. Despite his utter control and stillness he was vibrating with rage.

  ‘No, Talicto was half a decade dead already when your master and I found him.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘There are three,’ said Covenant. ‘A triumvirate within our ranks. They wear the faces of friends, but they have been following their path for a long time.’

  ‘You have proof?’ asked Hesh.

  ‘You do not need proof,’ said Covenant. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Who are these three?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Covenant.

  Hesh laughed. The cold sound was so sudden and unexpected that Viola flinched.

  ‘Corpses and phantoms, lord… If you hoped that I could help you chase ghosts then you will find my service a poor thing.’

  ‘I do not want your help to hunt them,’ said Covenant, his voice steady. ‘I want your help to discover what they are trying to do.’

  The man was dying when they reached his side. Ninkurra’s shot had ripped a scoop from the right-hand side of his neck and shoulder. Somehow he was still alive. Blood was pumping from him in time with his gasps. His eyes were open. They were blue, she noticed. He had a beard, black-streaked iron on a square jaw. He looked tough and strong, in the way that the land and open air, and worry of next season’s crop, breeds strength. He did not look like a saint, or a witch, but none of them ever did. The frost was still threading through his pooling blood. He opened his mouth and blood poured over his lower lip, bright red, crusting with ice as it fell. How he was still alive was a miracle, or the end of one at least.

  ‘Hush,’ said Memnon. He bent down beside the dying man, who extended a wet, red hand. Ninkurra flinched forwards, but Memnon raised a hand without looking up, and she froze. ‘This is peace. Whatever has befallen you before, whatever fears have grown inside you, they are gone now.’ Memnon put three fingers to his own forehead and then pressed them to the man’s forehead gently. The man stilled. ‘This was not your time, but know that this needed to happen. There is a purpose to everything, and you have served yours. Know that and know peace.’

  The man’s eyes fluttered. His mouth moved once more, forming words that would never be heard.

  Memnon stood, still looking down at the corpse. He pressed his hands to his eyelids and cheeks. Ninkurra heard the whisper of a prayer. His hands left bloody smears on his face when he lowered them.

  Around them, smoke was rising from burning stubble. Flames licked soot over the shattered tabernacle. A burst of rotor-cannon fire blasted down from one of the circling gunships.

  ‘Make sure it’s complete,’ said Memnon, watching as distant figures in blue fell. The troopers were moving inwards from their drop positions. Ninkurra could hear the crack and fizz of lasguns. ‘No survivors.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ she said.

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