by C. L. Werner
Manat’s troops sent a withering salvo into the oncoming cultists. Heavy bolters and lasrifles chewed up the purple-clad infantry, lascannons and missile launchers wrought a grisly toll against the scavenged motorcade that barrelled towards them with zealous abandon. Heaps of twisted, smouldering wreckage were thrown into the air as shells from the battle cannon met civilian machinery.
More warnings were being issued by the Sisters watching from the cathedral. Manat passed the alarm along to his command. The rebels had two of their Goliath trucks and a large mass of infantry assembling behind the cover of the deserted buildings. It was clear they were readying another assault. The first attack had been to draw their fire and gauge the strength of their position. The real effort would come next.
Throwing open the turret hatch, Manat pulled himself up to get a better view than what he could see from inside the tank. As he did, his attention was caught by motion along the Redeemer’s Road. Most of the refugees already on the slopes of Mount Rama had fled higher up the ascent the moment the fighting started, but there were three tatterdemalion figures rushing back towards the perimeter.
Shouting to alert his men, Manat drew his laspistol and demanded the trio stop where they were. No sooner had the words left his mouth than one of the refugees sent a blocky, angular object skittering across the pavement. Manat’s shot caught the infiltrator before he could turn to flee, but even as the cultist fell a blinding roar exploded across the lieutenant’s senses.
Looking down on the slopes of Mount Rama from the vantage afforded by the Curate’s Leap, Trishala could see the cultists as they pressed their attack. The militia barricades at the base of the mountain were besieged, swarmed by the tremendous numbers the cult was throwing at them. Sister Reshma, still impaired by her injuries, had been posted as a sentinel on the balcony. It was her alarm that had drawn the Sister Superior to the observation post.
Intervening terrain obstructed the view at the base of much of the mountain. The exception was the area around the Redeemer’s Road. The cathedral’s angular tilt permitted someone on the Curate’s Leap to look almost directly down on the road and the barricade that now closed it off.
Reshma had been able to see the cultists readying their attacks against the barricade, passing warning to the militia. The soldiers had fought off the first wave, but Reshma feared it had been nothing more than a probing attack.
‘I pray that I’m wrong, Sister Superior,’ Reshma said, her fingers pressed to the purity seal affixed to her breastplate.
‘The wise never underestimate an enemy,’ Trishala told her.
A sudden explosion from the barricade closing the Redeemer’s Road flared into grisly brilliance. The detonation was of sufficient force that the Battle Sisters on the Curate’s Leap could feel it as a dull vibration that swept through the railing under their hands. Through the smoke and flame, Trishala could see the mangled wreckage of a Taurox and a Leman Russ pitched onto their sides, a second Taurox shoved through a wall. The shapes of dead soldiers were strewn everywhere. The refugees that still packed the lower regions of the approach had been flattened by the explosion, slashed and cut by debris and shrapnel. Worse was to befall them, however.
Close on the explosion, a fresh surge of cultists rushed out from the streets, making straight for the Redeemer’s Road. A pair of huge Goliath trucks led their way, the immense dozer blades mounted at their noses swatting aside the burning wrecks that blocked their path. The soldiers at the other barricades, still dealing with their own attackers, couldn’t divert sufficient fire to stop the rush of cultists. There was nothing that could be done to stop the slaughter that would soon make the Redeemer’s Road run red with Lubentine blood.
Trishala felt a cold fury as she noted the peculiarities of the blast that had opened the Redeemer’s Road. The buildings just beyond the barricade had suffered minimal damage while those behind it were blackened and crumbling. The reason was obvious. The detonation that had obliterated Lieutenant Manat’s position had come from within, not without.
Trishala snapped a warning into the vox-bead she wore. ‘Commanders of all barricades! This is Sister Superior Trishala! Be alert for an attack from the rear! I repeat, watch for enemies already inside the perimeter! The explosion on the Redeemer’s Road was the work of infiltrators!’
One after another, the commanders at the barricades acknowledged Trishala’s alert. All except Captain Harshal at the base of the Pilgrim’s Path. A violent roar and a blinding flash from that direction exhibited why he failed to make contact.
‘They must be using high-yield blasting charges if we can feel the vibrations all the way up here,’ Reshma said.
It was a sound theory given the cult’s affinity for turning mining equipment into armaments, and one that provoked a new worry for Trishala. The Warmason’s Cathedral had been constructed with strength and durability in mind, built to withstand the worst of Lubentina’s earthquakes and sandstorms. But a high-yield blasting charge was designed to break the very bedrock of the planet. One of those pressed against the Great Gate by a cultist could rip it open. What such an explosive could do against the less protected doors and windows of the cathedral was an even grimmer prospect.
‘Captain Debdan,’ Trishala called into the vox. ‘I want you to take your men down to the gatehouse. You will support Sister Kashibai.’ After their reluctance to close the Great Gate without Prelate Azad’s authority, Trishala was certain the acolytes would balk at the next order she wanted implemented. It was why she switched to a private channel when she issued it to Kashibai.
‘Implement total lockdown,’ Trishala ordered. It was a command to drop siege plates down across every door and window in the structure, thick slabs of armaplas that would seal off each opening. Once they were in place, those within the cathedral would be cut off from the outside. Though a single command issued to the cogitators would lower all the plates automatically, to raise them again required employing manual force against each one.
‘The acolytes are certain to protest,’ Kashibai voxed back.
‘You’ll have Captain Debdan to enforce the command,’ Trishala said. ‘The local militia isn’t under the Ecclesiarchy’s authority. That might give the acolytes pause.’
A dull, mechanical groan drowned out Kashibai’s reply. It was a sound that Trishala had become only too familiar with. It was the sound of the Great Gate in motion. She peered down towards the base of the cathedral, her suspicions confirmed when she saw the refugees outside in the plaza rush up the steps and towards the entrance that should have been closed to them.
‘Sister Superior!’ Kashibai shouted to be heard over the reverberations of the machinery. ‘The Great Gate’s opening.’
‘Stay there and keep anyone from getting in,’ Trishala ordered. She shifted channels and raised Sister Virika, commanding her to link up with Captain Debdan’s troops. ‘We have to get that gate closed again.’ She turned to Reshma. ‘Maintain your watch here. Alert me if there are developments.’
‘You cannot suppress this information!’ Colonel Hafiz’s voice boomed through the Sovereign Spire’s council chamber. The great hall was all but deserted now; even the cybernetic cherubim had been dismissed. It was the first time any of the remaining councillors could recall the room being without their pious chanting.
Cardinal-Governor Murdan appeared even leaner than usual, the administrations of his servants unequal to the ordeal of hiding the strain he was under. It spoke volumes to the governor’s agitation that he’d dispensed with the sanctimonious trappings of his office. Psalms and incense were things that provided him no solace in present circumstances. The reports from the spaceport had upset his equilibrium. For the first time there was doubt in his voice and a gleam of fear in his eyes. The xenos cult had been a menace he was prepared to confront, but the incursion of traitors from the Heresy on his world was something that shook him to the very core of his being.
/> ‘It will not be spoken of,’ Murdan said, clinging to the jade aquila that he’d removed from the altar in his private chapel. ‘No one will speak of this... affront. This profanation of Lubentina! That it should come to this. Just when it seemed we were turning back the rebels.’
Hafiz’s troops had managed to reclaim several districts already ravaged by the cultists. The uprising had been prevented from spreading across the Netjali and the fight for the Illuminators’ Guild had finally been won. Units had moved into the missal-works and even advanced into the scholarium. Yet, while on a map it seemed the Imperial forces were reclaiming Tharsis, Hafiz knew the reality was very different. The militia hadn’t beaten the rebels. There had been no decisive confrontation and victory. All there’d been was a slow push across ruined districts, hunting down the remnants the cult had left behind to harass the soldiers. The real strength of the rebels had been withdrawn, pulled back to strike elsewhere. From all indications, they were moving on Mount Rama.
Hafiz had tried to explain as much to the Cardinal-Governor, but Murdan was too focused on the Space Marines to listen.
Minister Kargil extrapolated upon Murdan’s position, though with far less emotional reasons. ‘Lubentina exists, thrives as a shrine world. A suggestion of corruption... could be our downfall. There are opportunists even in the Ecclesiarchy and they would be quick to seize upon any excuse to turn the faithful away from Lubentina and towards shrine worlds more conducive to their own aspirations.’
‘The xenos can be purged,’ Murdan declared. ‘Chaos is corruption incarnate.’
The last member of the conclave spoke up. Palatine Yadav had listened to reports of Traitor Space Marines with horror. He shared Murdan’s sentiment that it was preferable to fight the xenos cult than have their planet defiled by these heretics. At the same time he appreciated that it wasn’t something they could choose. The Chaos Space Marines were on Lubentina. They were already killing people, slaughtering loyalists and rebels with equal savagery.
‘After all your men have endured, after all our people have suffered, can we treat them with such disdain?’ Yadav asked. ‘I understand your disgust, Cardinal-Governor, though I have less sympathy for Kargil’s financial worries. The very knowledge that beings such as these could ever have existed is an affront to the God-Emperor,’ Yadav touched his fingers to his heart. ‘In here I know there is no enemy more vile and loathsome than a traitor and no traitor more accursed than those who betrayed the God-Emperor. Yet as one who serves the Emperor I know there is no more noble an act to prove my devotion than to stand against such an enemy. Courage is the mark of my faith. So too will it be with our people.’
A dry hiss of laughter rasped from Murdan’s drawn lips. ‘You would shame me for my uncertainty.’ His skeletal hand emerged from the folds of his robe to stifle the palatine’s protest. ‘Your oratory does you favour, but I wonder how much valour there is behind those fine words. You think if I tell my people that instead of the help... I requested... our troubles have been magnified a thousandfold that they will steel themselves and become fighting tigers? You think they will rush to fight monsters that have defied even the holy Adeptus Astartes?’ Again, the governor laughed. ‘They will run, Yadav. Terror will blot out all other considerations. Tell Hafiz’s soldiers that Chaos marches on Tharsis and they will abandon their positions. They’ll scatter and leave this complex and the spaceport undefended.’
‘I say that they will fight to defend what they believe in,’ Yadav insisted.
Kargil sneered at the palatine’s assurance. ‘Could it be because the heretics seem intent on gaining the Warmason’s Cathedral that you want to believe what you say? From their route of march since leaving the spaceport there can be little question that the cathedral is their objective.’
‘Which is why warning must be relayed to Sister Superior Trishala and those guarding the cathedral,’ Yadav insisted. ‘They must be made aware of this new threat.’
Murdan looked towards Hafiz. ‘Tell us, colonel, do you think there is anything more Trishala and her Sisters could do to defend the cathedral that they aren’t already doing?’
‘Not being there to assess the situation, I should not like to commit myself to any theory,’ Hafiz said. He shifted uneasily as he felt Murdan’s eyes lingering on him. ‘It is true that the cultists have thrown immense numbers at Mount Rama and have overwhelmed parts of the perimeter my troops established.’
‘Then she will already be doing everything she can to defend the cathedral,’ Murdan concluded. ‘It can only serve to worsen her situation to inform her of the Traitor Space Marines. Should that knowledge slip out among the refugees packed into the cathedral there would be riotous panic.’
‘There is a left-handed benefit to be had,’ Kargil opined. ‘With the cultists focusing on the cathedral and the Traitor Space Marines sharing that objective perhaps they will be obliging enough to kill one another.’
‘You would gamble the sacred relics of Vadok Singh on such a conceit?’ Yadav glared at the minister. ‘Whichever side prevailed, the lives of all those within the cathedral would still be forfeit.’
‘They will become martyrs,’ Murdan declared, raising the jade aquila to his lips. ‘They will die so that Lubentina might live. By their deaths they shall purify the taint of Chaos and the filth of the xenos. Their sacrifice will shine as a new beacon to the faithful, a glorious pyre to act as testament to the glory of Vadok Singh. Though the Warmason’s relics pass, the martyrdom of those devoted to him will be eternal.’
Murdan’s zealous inspiration quickly had Kargil calculating ways in which the expected tragedy could be turned to advantage. Yadav listened to them confer, unable to decide which he found more disturbing, the governor’s zealotry or the minister’s opportunism. Sickened, he turned to leave the council chamber.
Hafiz caught the palatine by the arm as he passed. ‘Murdan may be right about the danger of passing a warning across the vox. I have confidence my soldiers would stand firm, but there’s no saying the effect on civilians.’
‘What would you do?’ Yadav asked.
Hafiz raised his voice. ‘I would pray for them, palatine.’ Leaning closer to the priest he continued in a whisper. ‘I’d do my praying with the Three Hundred and Forty-Fifth Division, bivouacked in the West Garden. They can be ready to move in less than an hour.’
Yadav fell silent, stunned by the offer Hafiz was making. They would both be circumventing Murdan’s orders and it was doubtful Yadav would escape punishment for defying the governor a second time. That is, if he even survived long enough for that to be a concern. He’d be leading the local militia troops right into the worst of the crisis and at the heart of the conflict they would find monsters of almost unspeakable power. Now that the reality was right in front of him, he wondered if faith alone was enough to confront the horror of Chaos.
Balanced against his uncertainty was the knowledge that Trishala and the Order of the Sombre Vow, all the monks and priests who tended the cathedral, all the multitudes of faithful who’d sought sanctuary within its walls, all of them were in peril. So too were the relics of Vadok Singh. Could it be that was what they’d come for? To steal the Shroud of Singh and the Phylactery of Dreams, the Star of Knossos and the Warmason’s Casket, the most revered of them all.
The choice was to abandon everything, to sit back like Murdan and Kargil and simply watch, or to sally forth on an errand of almost certain death. Even as he weighed the two, Yadav knew it was no choice at all.
The plasteel door burst from its hinges as Periphetes drove his armoured bulk against it, propelling himself into a broad foyer with the remains of a registration cubicle littered about the floor and a flight of stairs snaking its way upwards. Whatever other appointments the room might have once possessed had been dragged off and piled up around the windows at the far end of the room. A gang of fifteen cultists firing through windows from behind their improvis
ed fortification swung around when Periphetes made his entrance. Mahar and Turu were close behind, storming through the denuded doorway and raking the group of rebels they’d taken by surprise. The purple-robed hybrids crumpled under the bolter-fire, smashed back against the antechamber’s side wall. If the sounds of violence hadn’t alerted their comrades on the floors above, the dead hybrids that were knocked through the front windows would.
The first cultist that came running down the stairs was cut down by a burst from Rhodaan’s pistol as the warsmith made his entrance. ‘Captain Uzraal, secure this structure,’ he ordered across the vox.
Uzraal swept past the warsmith, leading the other Iron Warriors up the stairs. A moment later Rhodaan saw the white-hot flare of his meltagun as the captain immolated whatever enemies had been waiting above. The chatter of bolters soon followed, settling whatever rebels had escaped Uzraal’s attack.
‘I thought you weren’t going to allow the enemy to delay us?’ The question was uttered by Cornak of Ouroboros as the sorcerer stepped into the foyer. He glanced over at the litter of cultists Mahar and Turu had gunned down. A burst from his pistol stamped out such life as remained in one of the wounded creatures.
Rhodaan nodded at the jumble of bodies. ‘They’ve been making a feeble effort at keeping us back, but have refused to commit any large force to oppose us. That means they’re concentrating their strength towards another objective. One that interferes with our mission here.’
Overhead, the sounds of fighting drifted down to the Iron Warriors. When the Space Marines had neared the base of Mount Rama, they’d noted the gunfire streaming from this building, harassing the Imperials at the blockade they’d raised across the path ascending the mountain. The Iron Warriors had been of a mind simply to ignore the cultists and force their own way through the Imperials when a tremendous explosion shook the district. A cloud of flame and smoke rose from somewhere beyond the press of buildings nuzzled against the mountain, suggestive of some assault against Mount Rama itself. Less than a minute later, a second blast roared up from the opposite side of the slope.