by C. L. Werner
‘Kill the infidel!’ Debdan raged. ‘Make of her an offering to the Great Father!’
At their captain’s command, the rest of the soldiers sprang into action, sweeping across the gatehouse to encircle Trishala’s position. An angry rebuke from Debdan explained why the traitors had taken such risks and chosen this moment to reveal their corruption. ‘Not all of you! Lochan! Watch the acolytes! We must keep control of the gate!’
Trishala blazed away as las-bolts sizzled against the ceramite plates that encased her body. Sending a burst at one of Debdan’s treacherous command, she put a shell through his chest and sent his carcass tumbling into the ranks of his fellows. A second traitor went down with his leg severed at the knee, his wails of pain ringing through the gatehouse. A third soldier, trying to creep around behind a projecting stanchion, made the mistake of exposing the top of his helmet. Trishala’s shot burned through the armaplas covering and pitted the skull inside.
Trishala dropped back behind a workstation, hastily reporting the situation in the gatehouse across the vox. She had to alert her Sisters to Debdan’s treachery. There was no knowing how far his treason went, or what other sabotage his men had inflicted within the cathedral. The only response to her hails was a crackle of static. Somewhere, somehow, the brood brothers were jamming communications within the gatehouse.
A fusillade of las-beams came cracking back at Trishala, scorching the tilted workstation she’d ducked behind to such a degree that it broke from its moorings and went spinning away, reclaimed by the gravity it had so long defied. She rushed out from her compromised position, plunging in the one direction she felt her enemy wouldn’t expect. She lunged forwards, straight towards the gunfire.
Her ruse proved warranted. Caught off guard, the cultists were tardy in responding to Trishala’s charge. When she rounded a cogitator’s terminal and found a soldier crouching behind it, the man was so startled that he didn’t even finish putting a fresh cell into his weapon. Instead he swung the lasgun around, thrusting it at her like a club.
Trishala caught the improvised bludgeon in her armoured fist and wrenched the gun from the soldier’s grasp. Unarmed, he sprang at her, clawing for her throat with his hands. Trishala struck back, smashing the side of his head against the terminal with such force that both the console and his skull were dented by the impact. The traitor collapsed in a heap, his corrupt life oozing onto the floor in a mess of brains and blood.
‘Defiler!’ Debdan’s voice raged. ‘You are unfit for the ascension! Rush her together! She is but one infidel!’
Trishala looked at the grenade dispenser on her belt. She could even the odds quite quickly with those, but even more quickly she rejected the idea. The cultists had refrained from using krak grenades to penetrate her armour and she could easily guess why. The danger of damaging the Great Gate’s machinery was too pronounced. She didn’t understand why the cultists wanted the gate intact rather than simply disabling it, but she knew what would happen if she couldn’t get it closed.
Trishala slapped a fresh clip into her bolter and prepared to meet the charging cultists. Perhaps she couldn’t fend off all of these traitors by herself, but such was the situation into which she’d been thrust.
With bestial, subhuman cries, the soldiers converged on Trishala’s position. Even as they started their charge, however, the attack was broken. From the far end of the gatehouse shots rang out, slamming into the cultists and sending half a dozen of them sprawling to the floor. Trishala turned her head to see Sister Kashibai and a squad of Battle Sisters rushing into the room. Heartened by the unexpected intervention, she added her own shots to the barrage.
From the overwhelming force that was set on drowning Trishala in sheer numbers, Debdan’s traitors were swiftly reduced to a handful. Mangled by bolter shells, the ragged remains of the cultists were scattered about the gatehouse, strewn across the stanchions and workstations. The last few who rushed Trishala fell in gory heaps at her feet, ripped open by the impact of her fire.
‘You will not prevail, defiler!’ Debdan raged at Trishala. The Sister Superior motioned Kashibai’s squad to settle the rest of the traitors. The captain was an enemy she’d deal with on her own.
‘You were clever, Debdan,’ Trishala conceded as she sent a burst from her bolt pistol slamming into his cover. ‘No traitor hides himself half so well as when he warns others to be vigilant for traitors.’
‘All of it will burn, defiler,’ Debdan snarled. ‘The Great Father will cleanse this world and only those who bear his blessing will be permitted to ascend!’ Again he risked a shot at Trishala before moving back into cover.
From her position, Trishala could see Kashibai closing on the brood brothers. She could also see the acolytes frantically waving, trying to draw the Sister Superior’s attention. She knew the reason why. The soldiers Debdan had sent back to guard the prisoners were gone. The acolytes were pointing to the doorway Prelate Azad had emerged from, a portal set halfway up the curiously angled wall. The doorway was parallel to where the brood brothers had withdrawn. Kashibai wasn’t coming to grips with the traitors, she was being drawn into their trap.
‘Kashibai! On your left!’ Trishala shouted as she leapt over the las-bolt-scarred terminal and dashed towards the doorway. She fired into the darkened passage. A traitor soldier cried out as he toppled back into the gatehouse, his chest a crimson ruin. A second man fell beyond the threshold, coughing as life fled from him.
Trishala was just thinking she’d ended the threat of ambush when the true import of the soldiers’ diversion rushed into the gatehouse. Utterly inhuman, its jaws open in a bestial shriek, the genestealer was through the doorway and lunging at her almost before she was aware of its presence. The xenos slammed into her, its hooves grinding her down against the floor. She felt its claw rake across her back, shearing into her armour. Armour that had resisted the force of las-bolts parted under the genestealer’s talon.
Prostrate upon the floor, Trishala couldn’t see her attacker. All she could do was aim her bolter upwards and fire. She felt the sickening wash of xenos ichor splash down on her as the shells ripped into the alien. The genestealer’s shriek was deafening. She could feel its pressure against her back increase, braced herself to feel those sharp claws tear into her body.
Suddenly the weight on her back was gone. Trishala heard the genestealer slam down a few metres away, carried away by its own tremendous lunge. She could see the horrible work her bolter had made of the thing, the exposed organs that dangled from its shattered carapace. The monster snarled and shrieked for a moment, then was blown apart by a barrage from Kashibai’s squad.
The genestealer’s destruction threw the last brood brothers into a frenzy. Like madmen they rushed the Battle Sisters, snapping off wild shots that failed to hit their intended targets. The response from the Sisters was far more effectual and final.
‘Infidels and desecraters!’ Captain Debdan howled as he stepped out from cover. ‘The Great Father will not forgive this blasphemy against his children.’
He charged at Trishala, his shots searing the floor as he tried to put a las-bolt into her face. From the ground, Trishala sent a burst that withered the officer and threw his body against the thick window behind him.
Trishala rose from the floor, casting her gaze towards the genestealer Kashibai’s squad had finished. She didn’t feel any pain where the genestealer’s claws had struck her and a quick inspection with her fingers told her that the alien’s talons had pierced but not quite penetrated the ceramite plate. As before, it was a narrow margin, but within it was the difference between life and death. She gave praise to the God-Emperor for extending to her such mercy.
‘I grew concerned that the Great Gate was still open and detached a few Sisters to investigate when I couldn’t reach you,’ Kashibai reported.
‘Praise the God-Emperor for your intervention.’ Trishala turned to the surviving acolytes.
‘Close the gate,’ she told them, holding them under her commanding gaze until they had the door grinding its way shut once more.
‘Debdan was a clever traitor,’ Kashibai said. ‘He kept the gate’s movement erratic so we would think it malfunction rather than treachery.’ She pointed at the genestealer sprawled on the floor. ‘That must be the monster his men supposedly killed in the Gauntlet’s Retreat.’
Trishala walked towards the dead creature. The similarity of the attack against her on the steps had provoked an awful suspicion. With the toe of her boot, she turned the carcass over. The xenos had been mangled by the many bolter shells that had killed it, but the injury to one of its arms was much older. An injury that had removed one of its claws and, in some way, reduced the overall strength of the creature.
‘This isn’t the one that got in by the balcony,’ Trishala said, a chill in her voice. ‘This is the one I fought on the steps, the same one I wounded in the Cloisterfells.’
‘But how did it get in?’ Kashibai wondered. ‘And what became of the one Debdan’s men claimed to have killed? We found no trace of it in the Retreat.’
‘Doubtless the other genestealer is still prowling the cathedral,’ Trishala said. ‘It or Debdan must have let this one in somewhere. Our task is to find out where and how... and discover how many more may have been admitted with this one.’ She pointed to where Prelate Azad’s corpse lay. ‘The xenos infected the prelate,’ she declared. ‘With his collusion there’s no secret of this cathedral that may not have been disclosed to them.
‘They wanted to keep the Great Gate open,’ Trishala explained. ‘But they were also intent on keeping it intact. If they simply wanted to let their filthy cult inside, why would they be worried about being able to close the gate again?’ She shook her head. ‘It was my decision to initiate the lockdown that forced Debdan to reveal himself, but if the cult simply wanted to prevent the lockdown, Azad would have known which litanies to invoke and which rites to perform so that the cogitators would remain dormant.’
‘They wanted everything intact,’ Kashibai stated, a horrible suspicion coming to her mind. ‘They don’t simply want to force their way inside the cathedral. They intend to capture it, to hold it as their own.’
Trishala nodded in grim agreement. ‘We must vox our suspicions to Palatine Yadav and have him communicate them to the rest of the council. They must know of Captain Debdan’s treachery and be aware that other officers and officials may have been corrupted.’ She turned again to the dead genestealer. ‘The moment the Great Gate is closed, leave the frateris militia in charge of the narthex. We’ll need every Sister we can spare to go through this cathedral all over again. Room by room, hall by hall, looking for any of Debdan’s traitors that may still be around and for any trace of any xenos they let inside.’
The snarl of bolters echoed down the Chastened Road, drowning out the screams of the dead and dying. Flames licked at the darkening sky, billowing out from buildings unfortunate enough to present an obstacle to those who now ascended the Chastened Road. Smoke, thick as mud and black as night, spilled through the avenue, fanned ever onwards by the fires that produced it. Terror had claimed Mount Rama before the Iron Warriors set their boots upon its streets, but it was only under the malignancy of the Third Grand Company that terror became an all-consuming force, as elemental as fire and wind and death.
‘Periphetes, report,’ Rhodaan growled into his vox. The optics of his helm pierced the thick smoke as keenly as a knife; only the hottest of the flames provoked even the slightest distortion of the image conveyed to him. He could see the renegade Steel Brother ahead of the other Space Marines. It was a further sign of how far the Steel Brethren had fallen from the standards of the Iron Warriors that Periphetes would vent his hatred on the broken flesh strewn about him. Hate was a tool, an instrument to be harnessed and used, not an addiction to be sated on even the most insignificant prey.
‘No resistance, warsmith,’ Periphetes’ reply came back. ‘These rebels have no fight in them.’
Perhaps that was true, by the standards of the Iron Warriors, but Rhodaan considered that there was no scarcity of cultists to oppose them. Every dozen metres another batch of the rebels would appear, firing from the buildings flanking the road or swarming en masse onto the street to block the path. They were dealt with quickly enough, but even so they cost the Iron Warriors time. After watching the demolition of the barricade, Rhodaan knew the cultists had done the same at other approaches and were even now sending their forces climbing towards the cathedral on parallel tracks. The mobs that harassed Rhodaan’s retinue were splinters of those invading forces, diverting from the main advance to attack the Space Marines while their comrades stormed the summit.
Behind him, Rhodaan could hear the distinctive tapping of Cornak’s staff on the street surface. The sorcerer had demurred at performing a magical divination, insisting he had to keep his mind entirely devoted to blotting out the psychic inveiglement of the xenos magus. Only by complete concentration could the Iron Warriors hope to slip beneath the enemy’s awareness. Rhodaan cared little about the xenos or their awareness; what did concern him was getting to the cathedral before them. The more foes that stood between the Third Grand Company and his prize, the longer it would take to seize it and claim the power and prestige it offered.
‘Well, sorcerer, any sign of your xenos witch?’ Rhodaan demanded.
Cornak slowly shook his head. ‘No, not even a hint of his mentality. That alarms me, warsmith. He is aware we were making for Mount Rama. Why has he so abruptly lost interest in us?’
‘You have a theory?’ Rhodaan asked.
‘I believe he is trying to lull me into a false sense of security,’ Cornak said. ‘Tempt me into letting my defences down so I may use my powers to benefit my brothers.’
‘The opponents we’ve met during our ascent have been random and disconnected. Isolated pockets, not concentrated ambushes. Rearguards left to watch the road and deny it to flesh... not iron. You’ve said yourself that this magus has gained an appreciation of what kind of enemy he faces in the Third Grand Company. No, he wouldn’t hope to stop us with such nuisances. Mark me, Cornak, the reason you don’t feel his presence now is because he’s focused on something bigger than a lone sorcerer from Medrengard.’
Rhodaan didn’t need to be psychic to tell that his own theory rattled Cornak. With his faculties not wearied by his efforts against the magus, perhaps he would have had the composure to conceal that reaction, but as things stood, the warsmith could see it clear as day. Had his speculation struck a bit too close, or had he simply voiced a possibility that Cornak hadn’t foreseen? If the cult’s resources were being devoted to some other enterprise, then what might that be?
Again the snarl of bolters came from up ahead. This time, it seemed, Periphetes had encountered something stiffer than a rabble of frightened flesh. Whatever it was, Rhodaan wasn’t going to be delayed by it. ‘Captain Uzraal, Gaos and Mahar with you. Brother Turu and myself will draw fire, the rest of you silence it the moment it reveals itself.’
Leaving Cornak behind, Rhodaan marched ahead. The lane had been blocked off by the wreckage of a demolished building that had toppled across the street. A litter of dead refugees lay strewn about the rubble, pilgrims caught in the path of the collapsing structure.
Periphetes was in a small alcove between two doorways, leaning out to direct shots at the mound of rubble. Answering fire sounded from the big stub gun stationed atop the rubble and by a motley array of small arms arrayed amidst the debris.
‘Brother Turu, Periphetes, keep their attention away from me,’ Rhodaan voxed.
Orders given, Rhodaan advanced to an alcove across from the one occupied by Periphetes. Gunfire peppered the street around him, a few las-bolts glancing off his power armour. It was better marksmanship than he’d expected, given the heavy smoke. Then again, these cultists were only partly human. Their xenos tai
nt may have altered their senses as well as their bodies.
‘These ones decided to shoot back,’ Periphetes told Rhodaan, a smug quality to his voice.
‘Their accuracy leaves much to be desired,’ Rhodaan answered. He was tempted to order Periphetes to do what he now had in mind, but the renegade’s pride had rankled him. He needed a reminder of why Rhodaan was his commander.
‘Suppress the stubber,’ Rhodaan told Periphetes, nodding at the weapons team. ‘I will show you how a true Iron Warrior removes an obstacle.’
When he heard the autocannon of Brother Gaos growling from Uzraal’s advancing group, Rhodaan decided it was time to move. The cultists would be momentarily distracted by the reinforcements and that lapse of vigilance was the opening he needed. Emerging from the alcove, the warsmith charged towards the debris pile, his pistol rattling away at the heavy stubber. One of the crew pitched and fell, his body sliding down the rubble. Another purple-clad cultist rushed to take his place, only to suffer the same fate.
Before Rhodaan could send another burst up at the weapons crew, enemies sprang at him from the building on his left. He swung around, his shots felling several snarling hybrids. One managed to weather the murderous storm, flinging itself on the huge Space Marine. Rhodaan found himself in the grip of an enormous, semi-human beast. It was at once the most debased and the most formidable of the hybrids he’d yet seen. The brute brought its fist cracking down against his horned helm, while a third arm pawed at the chainsword fastened to his belt.