by Various
Colonel Ravin’s pallor deepened. ‘But that’s… that’s incredible,’ he stammered. ‘Traitor Marines? Here? How do you know this?’
‘Because it is the Inquisition’s business to know such things,’ Santos snapped, turning back to the picts. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the colonel stiffen, then with an effort she reined in her temper. You have enough enemies without needing to make more, she reminded herself.
‘It’s all in the reports, colonel,’ she explained. ‘I’ve been studying every status report, Administratum log and Ecclesiarchal dictum filed from Dirge for the last six months.’ Santos picked up one of the picts: it showed the planetary governor’s palace in Baalbek City. Like all city structures, it was low, broad and windowless, built to withstand the frequent cyclones that swept over the crater wall from the wastelands. The resolution of the pict was good enough that she could recognise the impaled figure of the planetary governor, suspended on a girder among an iron forest set on the palace roof. The inquisitor set the pict aside and reached for another.
‘Four months before the uprising, merchant ships were reporting strange surveyor readings in the vicinity of the system’s far asteroid belt,’ Santos continued. ‘The local port authority dismissed the reports as pirate activity, but curiously, there was a dramatic drop in pirate attacks in the system over the same time period. Shortly afterward, orbital traffic control detected a number of unidentified flights into and out of Dirge’s atmosphere. Again, these reports were passed off as smuggling activity, but I have another theory – a Chaos warship entered the system and is likely still here, hiding in one of the system’s asteroid fields.’
Santos studied an image of cultists dragging bloody corpses from a burning dormitory towards the base of one of the cult’s sacrificial pillars. She set it aside with a frown of contempt. ‘Then there are arrest reports from the local Arbites headquarters. In the days leading up to the uprising several cult figures were arrested and when put to the question they described their leaders as armoured giants – the “Lost Princes”, according to one of the prisoners. The cultist described the greatest of these princes as a god among men, who wore the skins of his foes as testament to his power and bore a mighty talisman of his gods’ favour.’
‘The Chaos champion you spoke of,’ the commissar declared. ‘Who is he?’
But Santos shook her head. ‘I dare not speak his name. I’ve placed your souls in peril just telling you this much.’
One pict after another showed cultists at work around hab units and municipal buildings across the city, carting out truckloads of debris and hauling them away. After the fourth such image she began to line them up on the map table in chronological order.
‘If the prisoner was to be believed, there were no less than five Word Bearers present on Dirge, including the Chaos lord. That’s an astonishing number for such a minor world.’
‘Minor?’ Ravin said. ‘Dirge supplies more than half of the industrial materials used by forge worlds across the subsector.’
‘The Word Bearers don’t make war according to the Tactica Imperium,’ Santos declared. ‘They don’t think in terms of lines of supply or resource interdiction. They fight for souls, spreading terror and debasement from world to world like a cancer. Dirge, however, is both isolated and sparsely populated. From their standpoint, it’s a poor target.’ The inquisitor studied the line of images and her frown deepened. ‘Colonel, why did you order these images taken?’
Ravin looked over the picts and waved dismissively. ‘We were trying to gauge the extent and composition of the enemy fortifications based on how much material they were excavating. Those work teams have been at it day and night since before we got here.’
Santos straightened. ‘Excavations.’ The inquisitor felt her blood run cold. ‘These cultists aren’t using floor panels and wall board to build fortifications, colonel. They’re hollowing these buildings out to dig for something. That’s why the Word Bearers are here. Why he is here. The rebellion was just a diversion so they could search the planet without interference.’ Her hand was trembling slightly as she snatched up the last pict in the line. The time code in the corner indicated that the last excavation had begun almost three days ago. No new excavations since, she realised. They must think they’ve found what they’re after.
‘Colonel, I require the use of your mobile reserve and a flight of Vultures,’ Santos declared in a steely voice. ‘I’ll brief the platoon leader en route.’
The building had formerly housed the local tithe assessor’s office. Only three storeys tall, square, windowless and slab-sided, the structure was built like a treasure vault, which wasn’t far from the truth. A small army of servitors and stooped scribes had toiled night and day within its cold, gloomy cells, recording the profits of the mining cartels and the independent prospectors and assessing the Emperor’s due.
Now the square outside the building was piled with the guts of the Imperial tax collection machine. Large, ornate cogitators stood in drunken ranks, their wooden cabinets splintered and their brass gauges tarnishing in the corrosive air. Drifts of torn cables and mounds of flooring and wall board were plucked and pushed by the restless wind, and a pall of glittering dust swirled endlessly in the harsh construction lamps erected by the work crews outside the building.
Glass crunched like brittle bones beneath Erebus’s armoured boots as he stepped through the narrow doorway. Just beyond the threshold a tiled floor extended for less than a metre before ending in a jagged cliff of permacrete and steel.
The miners of Dirge knew their trade well. Working day and night, they’d completely torn out the first two floors and the building’s two sub-levels. Tangles of shorn wiring, crumpled metal ducting and shreds of wallboard hung like man-made stalactites from the gutted ceiling, painted white with a layer of grit that sparkled in the harsh light of the construction lamps.
All work had stopped in the pit below. More than two dozen men set aside their tools and prostrated themselves on the rocky ground at the Chaos lord’s arrival. Erebus looked out over the fruit of their labours and was pleased.
Once the sub-levels had been removed the miners had dug another three metres into the grey, ashy soil before they’d found the first of the black stones. It had taken another day of careful work under difficult conditions to lift away millions of years of rock-hard encrustations that had covered the strange symbols carved into their surface. The work had gone slowly because the delicate sonic brushes would run out of power after only a few minutes in proximity to the rocks, and because the workers’ brains disintegrated from prolonged exposure to the symbols themselves. Even from where Erebus stood he could feel the power of the warp rising like black frost from the surface of the accursed objects.
On the orders of Magos Algol, the tallest of the stones had been pulled upright again. It rose five metres into the air, casting a long, misshapen shadow across the excavation site. The surface of the object looked crude and rough-hewn, but the symbols carved into the rounded surface were sharp and precise. They climbed the stone in a kind of spiral, following the rules of a language that had died out before the birth of mankind. At the top of the stone the symbols ended at the base of a perfect sphere, haloed by an arch of stone wrought in the shape of twining tentacles.
Erebus smiled, revealing pointed teeth and the fearful demeanour of a cruel and vengeful god. The Chaos lord was clad neck to foot in the imposing armour of a Space Marine – but where its ancient engravings once extolled the might of the Emperor of Man, it now preached an altogether different faith. Blasphemous runes and symbols of ruin pulsed sickly from the Traitor Marine’s breastplate and the edges of his pauldrons, and the skulls of defiled Imperial priests hung from a brass chain around Erebus’s neck. Psalms of vengeance and depravity were scribed in blood upon the tanned hides of fallen Space Marine heroes and stretched between barbed spikes across the Chaos lord’s pauldrons and from hooks at his wa
ist. In his right hand Erebus held aloft a talisman of fearsome power – the dark crozius, symbol of his faith in the Chaos Gods.
A broad ramp, wide enough for two men to walk abreast, had been built from the ground floor to the base of the excavation. Its steel supports quivered slightly as Erebus descended slowly into the pit. His black gaze was fixed on the standing stone and the orb at its summit.
Erebus stepped unflinchingly into the stone’s twisted shadow. The darkness that fell upon him was unnaturally cold, sinking effortlessly through the bulk of his daemonic armour. The Chaos lord felt his shrivelled insides writhe at the icy echo of the warp, and Erebus welcomed it, spreading his massive arms wide. His mind filled with visions of the Seething Gulf, the ocean of mad wonder that the servants of the false Emperor called the Occularis Terriblus. It was the font of godhood, the birthplace of universes. Amid the roiling sea of unfettered power, Erebus beheld a swollen red orb that glittered like a drop of congealing blood. He heard the cries of multitudes, the chorus of supplication sung at the feet of his unholy master, and he longed to join his voice to the song. Lorgar! His mind called into the void. The time draws nigh, unholy one. Soon the gate will swing wide!
Erebus chuckled to himself, the sound echoing in the cavernous space and causing the cultists to tremble in fear. He turned to the assembled multitude, his eyes alighting on two figures kneeling apart from the storm-suited labourers. One was a hulking giant in red armour similar to Erebus’s own; the frail, elderly man hunched next to the Word Bearer looked as slight as a children’s puppet, all slender sticks and grimy rags, too fragile to touch.
The Chaos lord favoured his servants with another dreadful smile. ‘Arise, Phael Dubel,’ he commanded gravely. ‘And you, Magos Algol. Blessed are you in the eyes of the Gods Who Wait.’
The magos rose to his feet with an agility that belied his frail and aged appearance. His skin had the grey pallor of a corpse, his thin, wrinkled lips pulling back from gleaming steel teeth in an avaricious grin. His dark robes, once decorated with the fur mantle and chains of a Magos Archaeologis, now bore lines of depraved script that spoke of his allegiance to the Ruinous Powers. Algol’s eyes glittered like black marbles in the shadows of his sunken eye sockets, bright with forbidden knowledge and reptilian cunning.
Dubel, one of the Chaos lord’s chosen lieutenants, bowed deeply to his master and stepped to one side, turning so that he could keep the assembled workers and the open doorway in view at all times. One hand rested on the butt of his holstered bolt pistol. The other, clad in a fearsome, outsized gauntlet called a power fist, opened and closed in an unconscious reflex, as though the weapon hungered for a victim to crush in its grip.
Magos Algol walked a careful path around the sharp edges of the stone’s shadow, looking up at Erebus with a calculating smile.
‘You see, great one? It is just as the Book of the Stone described,’ Algol’s voice was harsh and quavering, like the sharp note of a plucked wire. ‘I told you we would find it here.’
Erebus regarded the towering stone greedily. ‘Have you deciphered the runes yet, magos? Does it tell us where the Orb of Shadows lies?’
‘In time, in time,’ the magos said, raising a wrinkled hand. ‘The runes require careful study, great one. Their meanings, if interpreted without proper care, could be… explosive. But,’ Algol added quickly, ‘it does indeed speak of the orb. You will have the answer you seek.’
‘Then do not let me keep you from your work, blessed magos,’ Erebus said to the man. ‘Inform me the instant that you have deciphered the text.’
The magos bowed to the Chaos lord and approached the stone, his hands fluttering eagerly as he began to contemplate the inscriptions. Erebus joined his lieutenant. ‘Send word to the Throne of Pain,’ he said quietly, referring to the cruiser hiding in Dirge’s outer asteroid field. ‘We will return to Ebok as soon as Algol has uncovered the location of the orb. Then our work will well and truly begin.’
Dubel looked back at the looming stone, his black eyes lingering on the sphere. ‘Once we have the orb, what then?’
‘Then we seek the Temple of Ascendancy,’ Erebus replied. ‘I believe it to be on Fariin, in the Elysiun System, but the orb will tell us for certain.’
The Traitor Marine stiffened, fixing his master with a suspicious stare. ‘Ascendancy? You seek to follow the same path as Lorgar?’
Erebus returned his lieutenant’s stare. ‘I? No, Dubel. I am but a humble servant,’ he said enigmatically. ‘Perhaps I seek to blaze a path for Lorgar to follow me.’
Dubel’s eyes widened in shock. Before he could reply, however, the ground shook beneath a drumbeat of thunderous explosions as Imperial rockets slammed into the side of the hollowed-out building.
One hand gripping a support strut just inside the Valkyrie’s open hatchway, Alabel Santos leaned out into the assault craft’s howling slipstream and watched the Vulture gunships streak over the flat roof of the target building. Fires were burning from rocket strikes in the debris-choked square and tendrils of smoke rose from craters blasted into the building’s thick permacrete wall. The landing zone looked clear.
The three Valkyries of the mobile reserve platoon – plus an extra support craft carrying Balid and his gun-servitors – were howling along at roof height down one of the city’s narrow streets, right on the heels of the gunships. She could already feel the Valkyries start to slow as they dropped toward the deck, preparing to flare their engines for tactical deployment.
Santos swung back into the passenger compartment and addressed the platoon commander. ‘Once we hit the ground we’re going to have to move fast. Have two of your squads form a perimeter around the Valkyries and I’ll have my gun servitors provide support. You and the assault team go in with me. Once we’re inside, don’t hesitate. Don’t think. Just kill everything that moves.’
The storm trooper lieutenant nodded at Santos, his face hidden behind a full-face tactical respirator that gave him the look of an automaton. His vox unit crackled. ‘We’re with you, inquisitor,’ he said curtly. ‘The Emperor protects.’
Santos drew her pistol just as the Valkyrie plummeted like a stone and then stopped less than a metre over the rubbish-strewn square with its engines shrieking. There was a stuttering roar as the door gunner let off a burst with his heavy bolter at some distant target. ‘Go, go, go!’ she shouted, leaping from the assault craft and heading for the building at a run. Behind her the storm trooper assault team deployed with speed and precision, hellguns covering the building’s entrance. The lieutenant followed right behind Santos, a plasma pistol in one hand and a crackling power sword in the other.
The inquisitor pulled her power knife free from its scabbard and thumbed its activation rune. She rarely carried it; the knife was an heirloom weapon, given as a gift from her mentor Inquisitor Grazlen when she attained the rank of inquisitor.
Santos held the weapon in a white-knuckled grip as she charged into the building’s narrow doorway. She was going to bury that burning blade in the Chaos lord’s eye or die trying.
Chunks of broken permacrete and twisted plasteel continued to rain down from the gutted ceiling among Erebus and the cultists as turbofans shrieked and heavy weapons fire hammered outside. The Chaos lord looked for Magos Algol and found the corrupted scholar on his knees, coughing wetly amid falling drifts of dust. ‘Finish your translation, magos!’ Erebus thundered, then raised his accursed crozius before the huddled cultists and spoke in a piercing voice. ‘Rise up, warriors of the faith! The servants of the false Emperor are upon us! The eyes of the gods are upon you – go forth and win their favour!’
With a lusty howl the cultists staggered to their feet and brandished the tools of their trade: heavy sonic drills, power mattocks and arc hammers. They knew from bitter experience what those tools could do to soft flesh and brittle bone.
Dubel drew his bolt pistol. There was a searing crackle as he ignited hi
s power fist’s disruption field. ‘Death to the servants of the false Emperor!’ he roared, and the cultists surged forward, racing up the ramp to the doorway just as the first of the attackers stepped into view.
An inquisitor, Erebus thought, catching sight of a woman in ornate power armour leading the charge. Her alabaster face was distorted in a snarl of almost feral rage, and she fixed him with such a black look of hate that he could not help but think they’d met somewhere before.
Erebus bared his teeth in challenge and spread his arms in welcome, words of blasphemous power hissing off his tongue.
There! The shock of seeing the Chaos lord again sent a bolt of pure, righteous fury through Alabel Santos. Erebus was mocking her, grinning like a devil, his arms open wide. I’ll give you something to smile about, she thought, raising her inferno pistol. Just as she drew a bead on Erebus, another armoured shape rushed in front of the Apostle, bolt pistol raised. The mass-reactive rounds smashed into her shoulder and chest before her ears registered the flat boom of the pistol’s report. The impacts spun her around, the servos in her power suit whining dangerously as they sought to compensate for the blows.
Footsteps thundered up the ramp towards Santos as a dozen cultists charged forwards, weapons ready. The lieutenant appeared beside the inquisitor, levelling his pistol and firing two quick shots into the oncoming mob. Bolts of superheated plasma blew the lead cultists apart. ‘Flamer to the front!’ the platoon leader ordered over his vox.
Armoured storm troopers fanned out on the narrow lip of permacrete to either side of the doorway, firing red bolts of las-fire into the charging cultists. Then a soldier stepped to the top of the ramp and fired a hissing stream of burning promethium point-blank at the charging miners. The cultists shrieked and fell back from the tongue of searing flame, setting the ramp alight with their tumbling, thrashing bodies.