by Andy Clark
‘Brothers, our guide,’ said Haltheus, sounding pleased with himself. ‘The cherub will lead us to the beacon. Its optic feed is coming straight to my peripheral, so it should make an even better scout than Skaryth.’
‘Brothers,’ said Kyphas. ‘Vox intercept confirms an Imperial fleet breaking warp over Tsadrekha, and engaging the Khorne worshippers. They’ve come for the beacon.’
‘It isn’t theirs to take,’ said Kassar. ‘Unsung, move with a purpose.’
While the Alpha Legionnaires spoke, Syxx had stood nearby, largely ignored. He had become used to their strange conversations, and stopped trying to make sense of them. Those without their helms gave the appearance of praising the might of the Dark Gods, boasting of enemies they had killed, and mocking the Imperium’s weakness, while those who went helmed didn’t appear to be speaking at all. Syxx had realised early on that it was an act or code and, after a brief and frustrating period of trying to draw sense from their exchanges, had given up.
Instead, he thought of Colla and Ganshi and the rest. It was his habit, whenever he needed to focus his determination and hate. He called to mind their faces, as they had looked in his childhood, in the days before Phelkorian Twyst came and destroyed them piece by piece. Before the sorcerer made him watch.
It had become harder, as the years went by, to recall those sorrow-lined faces, those haunted eyes that glinted with love for him, their child. The years had abraded their features as the wind and rain erode a statue, until he was left with only feelings, sense memories and echoes that sustained him through all the horrible things he had endured. All the horrible things he had done, and enjoyed.
This was for them, he thought.
And for him.
Soon, he would have his revenge upon Phelkorian. He would pervert the ritual, just as he had planned, just as the tome he had stolen showed. He would purify his soul in the beacon’s burning light, and in so doing he would become a conduit for divine vengeance. That light would shine upon everything Phelkorian Twyst had ever wrought and unmake it in an instant.
Syxx felt some flicker of sympathy for the Alpha Legionnaires he accompanied, for they would no doubt suffer the repercussions of his actions. They might well be slain. If not they might find themselves wishing they had been, as he had so many times. His sympathy was reserved almost entirely for Kassar, who had at least shown him some sort of consideration. To the rest he was just irksome baggage, and they, to him, no more than a different set of Chaos-worshipping oppressors. Just because they were subtler in their ways than his masters, less obviously corrupt, did not make them any less tainted or traitorous.
Syxx glanced up as a cyber-cherub puttered into the chamber on its grav-impellers, incense wafting behind it, eyes glowing red. The Alpha Legionnaires exchanged a few more nonsensical words, then gathered and prepared to move out. Checking his last couple of ammo clips were still stuffed into his belt, shrugging off the burning itch of his rune-branded flesh, Syxx took a deep breath and joined them.
Soon, he promised himself.
Soon it would all be over.
Beyond the undercrypts, the corridors of the convent prioris echoed with alarms, shouts and distant gunfire. Every few moments there came a shuddering that caused electro-sconces to flicker and dust to trickle from their ceilings.
‘What is that shaking?’ asked Makhor as they made their way along a deserted colonnade.
‘The enemy without?’ said A’khassor. ‘The storm? Orbital bombardment? Impossible to say.’
‘Perhaps the hive’s primary generatora are going critical,’ said Makhor, morosely.
‘That’s not how our judgement will be delivered,’ said A’khassor confidently.
‘And I suppose that was why we survived the crash, also?’ asked Makhor.
‘Of course,’ said A’khassor.
‘So it was nothing to do with the way the carriage bucked just after we’d dived back inside,’ pressed Makhor. ‘The way it went over on its side and slid clear of the blast? The way that those commercia stalls absorbed its impact and stopped it hitting the pipelines beyond them?’
A’khassor glanced at his brother.
‘You know that it was all of those things and so do I,’ said A’khassor. ‘And I know you have no patience for our judgement, but it will come when it does. The galaxy isn’t done with us, Makhor. We don’t escape so easily.’
Makhor was about to reply when a vox pip silenced them both. Haltheus’ scout cherub had trilled out a binharic warning. The Unsung dropped back into the shadows at the corridor’s edge, crouching in the lee of statuary with their eye-lenses dimmed and their guns held ready.
Ahead, an adjoining corridor rang to the crash of booted feet and singing voices. Quick-marching in a double column, a force of Battle Sisters emerged from one side of the junction and crossed out of sight. Makhor held his breath as they passed ahead, barely twenty yards from where Haltheus and Skaryth crouched. He noticed A’khassor readying his plasma pistol. The unstable weapon itself was a talisman of the Apothecary’s belief that his death would come not from some random mishap, but at its appointed time.
The last of the Sisters vanished on their way. Several heartbeats later, the vox pip rolled back down the line to proceed.
‘Whether we’re to be judged or not,’ said Makhor, ‘our arrangement stands, brother. I can’t believe that we’ll make it through this unscathed, not with so many enemies arrayed on every side.’
‘At least we don’t have to worry about Phalk’ir now,’ said A’khassor as they moved on. ‘From what Kassar said, that fool burned his last bridge in grand style.’
‘I wonder,’ said Makhor. ‘Will Phaek’or see it that way? And where did Phalk’ir go, anyway? He still has our vox-channels, our cyphers, our plans… Kassar can’t just let him go. He could compromise us entirely.’
‘You’re right,’ said A’khassor. ‘But one fight at a time, eh, brother? Let’s deal with this beacon and get off Tsadrekha before we start worrying about hunting down Phalk’ir. If that idiot even makes it off the planet alive.’
They crossed another junction, then passed through a shadowy series of galleries that overlooked a magnificent shrine to the Emperor. Sisters Repentia scourged themselves before the idol of the Master of Mankind, their huge eviscerators lying close at hand.
‘Painful and pointless,’ muttered D’sakh to Kassar, distaste in his voice as they observed from the shadows.
‘That is where kneeling to gods will get you,’ said Kassar. ‘They should fight, but instead they kneel in ritual, uttering meaningless prayers and maiming themselves while the precious moments tick away.’
‘And all to catch the eye of one who is, in the end, nothing more than a rotting corpse in a golden box half a galaxy away,’ said D’sakh. ‘Foolishness.’
‘Misplaced faith,’ said Kassar. ‘But let us not follow their example. Time is of the essence.’
The Alpha Legionnaires crept quietly onwards, leaving the penitents to their bloody devotions.
Beyond they found another long corridor, whose armourglass windows looked directly out onto the turbulent sky above the hive. The corridor was lit from without by bruise-coloured light that flickered weirdly through umber, crimson and angry purple, interspersed with flashes of lurid green as lightning leapt amidst the clouds. Rain slicked the thick glass and formed the suggestion of screaming faces as it ran. Beyond, Makhor could see the burning spires of the convent prioris. Gunfire spat from many of them, billowing flames from others. Battle Sisters and Tsadrekhans dashed along walkways and across parade grounds between the structures, struggling through the ferocity of the storm, while far, far below the waves crashed and boiled.
‘Their shields must have failed at last,’ said Haltheus. ‘There’s Khornate landing craft out there by the dozen. Whether we succeed or not, Tsadrekha isn’t going to survive the night.’
‘Agreed,’ said Kassar. ‘The planet’s going to fall. Let’s not be here when it does.’
They worked their way up through the levels of the convent prioris, climbing the inside of one of its highest spires behind their hovering guide. Kassar watched the Coffer glowing and smouldering at Haltheus’ back and knew that, by now, its anger must be causing him physical pain. Yet Haltheus pressed doggedly on.
They were climbing a steep metal stairway between two huge stained-glass windows that depicted saints punishing sinners, when a ferocious shudder ran through the spire. A crack split the left-hand window with a sound like a gunshot, and shards of glass plinked against Kassar’s armour as they rained from above.
‘The Betrayer and his forces have breached the Sacrosanct Arch,’ reported Kyphas. ‘They are inside the convent prioris.’
‘Not far now,’ panted Haltheus in a pained voice. ‘There’s a corridor atop this stairway that leads along the rear of the Cathedrum Vertexis where they keep the beacon. If we’re not too late, we should be able to infiltrate through the priests’ quarters and hit the cathedrum from the upper galleries.’
Kassar nodded and pipped his vox for the Harrow to keep moving. If Excrucias kept his half of the bargain then all well and good. If not, Kassar swore to himself that his brothers would make it out alive, even if he did not.
At that thought, a strange numbness began to spread up his sword arm, seeming to emanate from where his hand gripped Hexling’s hilt. With it came the traitorous notion that his survival was every bit as important as theirs. Perhaps more. After everything he had sacrificed for them, didn’t he have a right to survival?
More, didn’t he deserve a reward?
Frowning, Kassar pushed the thought from his mind and shook the numbness from his arm. He kept climbing. Outside, the storm raged on, the insidious energies of the Great Rift shining through it to taint the stained-glass saints with madness.
They moved along the corridor, past a gaggle of purposeless, idling servitors clad in electro-weave cassocks, and up another steep staircase into the shadowy priests’ quarters. The Unsung passed through spartan living chambers and cramped devotional shrines, and all the while Kassar waited for their luck to run out. For all that circumstances had been against them at every turn, now at the last those same factors – the Khornate invaders, the presence of Khârn, the raging storm – all combined with the Alpha Legionnaires’ natural stealth to ensure they remained unnoticed.
And so, at last, the Unsung filtered out onto a shadowy balcony high up in the Cathedrum Vertexis, and gazed down upon the Tsadrekhan beacon.
The cathedrum itself was like a vast, circular pit with a marble floor hundreds of yards across, and four huge entrance archways leading into it. Steep-sided galleries rose all around, bustling with machinery and activity. They climbed hundreds of feet to the shadowed upper gantries where the Unsung crouched, and then higher still to a magnificent, domed ceiling painted with an image of the Emperor sitting in judgement over all. A vast stained-glass window admitted light to the cathedrum, the circular disc depicting Terra at its centre, and all the spheres of human settlement radiating out from it like the cogs of some impossibly intricate machine. A candle burned on a tiny grav-impeller before each world, turning the window into a softly lit star. Yet its light was as nothing to the blinding radiance that shone from the scrawny mortal resting in a cradle of wires and machinery at the cathedrum’s heart.
‘That’s the beacon?’ asked Makhor.
‘What gave it away?’ asked D’sakh.
‘But, that’s not an It,’ said Makhor. ‘That’s not a machine, or a… a… well… It’s a He.’
‘This changes nothing,’ said Kassar. ‘I’m more concerned with all the corpse worshippers down there protecting him.’
The beacon was surrounded by well over a hundred Battle Sisters, armoured warriors and robed Hospitallers, even scribes, artificers and novitiates in their bone-hued habits. Though they were hundreds of feet below, Kassar’s enhanced eyesight could easily pick out a formidable array of weaponry amongst them. Then there were the grotesque machines that loomed amongst the Sisters’ ranks. Penitent engines, bipedal monstrosities thrice the height of a Space Marine, with revving saws and hissing flamers on their arms. On the front of each, a hooded figure hung cruciform, wires and tubules pinning it cruelly in place.
Several figures oversaw a gaggle of tech-priests and Imperial clerics as they fussed around the beacon and his cradle. A tall, steely-looking Battle Sister was remonstrating with a robed adept of the Mechanicus, while a pair of Seraphim Sisters looked on dispassionately. Kassar gestured in their direction. In response, Haltheus sent his cherub winging lower until its crude aural pickups could discern what was being said. Though thin wisps of sulphurous smoke were curling from his helm where the Coffer’s wire joined it, Haltheus fed the cherub’s audio and optic streams direct to his brothers’ vox-beads.
Kassar saw a grainy, green-tinged image of the beacon and the figures surrounding it, furred with dancing lines of infernal runes and static.
‘…is taking so long,’ came the Battle Sister’s voice, her tone exasperated.
‘The proper rituals must be observed, canoness,’ replied the tech-priest, his voice a many-layered digital chorus overlaid with binharic. ‘If we displease the machine-spirits of the cradle, they will not relinquish their grasp upon the mortal form of Kaleb Deciman.’
The canoness’ response was frosty.
‘Do the machine-spirits – or you for that matter – realise that, if they do not relinquish their grip upon the beacon swiftly, they will succeed only in killing us all and surrendering his blessings into the hands of heretics? The fleet is in orbit but the storm is worsening and they cannot wait forever.’
‘Canoness Levinia,’ replied the tech-priest in a tone of maddening calm. ‘The blessed mysteries of the Omnissiah cannot be rushed. They do not yield to mortal concerns any more than holy metal yields to the pressure of weak, flawed flesh. My acolytes are performing the rites in the optimal fashion, and as soon as they have completed the holy uncoupling, Kaleb Deciman will be stabilised and ready for evacuation.’
Kassar frowned as the optic feed cut out for a moment, drowned by a glowing mess of the Coffer’s evil-looking runes. It swam back into sight, but the image had become more occluded, and the voices were tinged with a warping echo that made them sound somehow unclean.
‘Sister Chastity reports that the shuttle is ready on pad nine,’ said one of the Seraphim to the canoness. ‘We could simply take him now. The Emperor would forgive us this desecration if it was performed in the name of our lady.’
‘Geminae Sister Kassia,’ said the tech-priest. ‘If you were to forcibly uncouple Kaleb Deciman before his transfer to the anointed conveyance is complete, it would result in his painful and immediate death. I calculate that neither the Emperor nor the Omnissiah would forgive you such heresy.’
Kassar saw a wheeled frame beside the beacon’s cradle, a torturous-looking thing of metal bands, padded straps and strange machineries. Already, several tubes and wires had been disconnected from the cradle and hooked into this ‘anointed conveyance’, but it was clear that the work was not yet complete.
At that moment, Haltheus hissed a curse and ripped the wire from his helm. A squeal of feedback raced through the Harrow’s vox, descending into a guttural snarl before fading to nothing. Far below, the cherub spasmed, burst into flames, and fell from the sky to hit the flagstones with a meaty slap. Several Novitiates broke ranks to investigate the servitor’s sudden fall.
Haltheus decoupled the Coffer and pushed it away with his foot, leaving it to smoke and snarl.
‘Sorry,’ he said with a shrug. ‘The Coffer became irate. If I hadn’t uncoupled when I did, that could have been us, and not the cherub.’
‘We learned enough,’ said Kassar. ‘We must stop them before they complete the deco
upling.’
‘How?’ asked Makhor. ‘Even striking suddenly from above, we would never defeat that many.’
‘Cultist,’ said Kassar, turning to Syxx. ‘Can you perform your ritual from here? How long will it take?’
‘I would need to stand within the beacon’s light and recite the incantation, lord,’ said Syxx, his voice tight with fear and anticipation. ‘It will last perhaps a minute or two. It can’t be too rushed, lest I stumble over a sentence. The results could be catastrophic.’
‘Too long,’ said Kassar, turning back to his brothers. ‘Even if we drop explosives, surprise them and drive them back from the beacon, we couldn’t maintain a cordon long enough.’
He glanced up, into the highest reaches of the cathedrum where the shadows gathered thick and heavy. Hexling crooned in his mind, a note of caution, of something out of place. Something watchful and waiting.
‘Besides,’ he said warily, ‘I do not trust this. I’ve a sense that something is awry…’
‘Something?’ asked Makhor. ‘Everything is awry. We stand upon the clinch of victory but we cannot achieve it.’
‘Perhaps we can,’ said Skaryth. ‘If we can set our enemies at each other’s throats one last time.’
‘Elaborate,’ said Kassar.
‘The Betrayer is fighting below,’ said Skaryth. ‘We lure him in, bring him to the doors of the cathedrum. As the Khorne worshippers and the corpse worshippers tear each other apart, we complete our mission.’
‘Khârn will get here himself, soon enough,’ said Makhor. ‘Why risk our lives leading him?’
‘Because everything we’ve seen suggests that the Betrayer is a butcher,’ replied Skaryth. ‘One who kills everything in his path. By the time his rampage leads him here, it may be too late.’
‘And what if we do get him here?’ asked Makhor. ‘You’ve all seen what Khârn can do. What’s to say that he won’t rip us apart as easily as the corpse worshippers?’