by John French
The Inquisition was the left hand of the Emperor, a law utterly unto itself and subject to no limit or check on its authority. It stood apart, an exception to the order that bound every part of the Imperium. Its members, and by extension their servants, could do what they wanted in whatever way they wanted. If he was being honest, that lack of definition and limit bothered Alpha-34-Antimon. He had never seen an inquisitor, but he could not shed the distrust that clung to the thought of them.
In the distance the man in the storm coat was blurring behind the veil of dust. Alpha-34-Antimon turned away, and allowed his emotion-regulation implants to strip away the traces of annoyance from his thoughts.
The wind beat against Alpha-34-Antimon’s shield. The pistons in his left arm clenched against the blows. He was not comfortable. The connection to the other secutarii units nearby was fuzzing his nerves. That was unusual. There were several hundred secutarii patrolling around the feet of the Titans. The data-link between the dispersed units passed through the god-machines, and should have been good for 21.456 kilometres in these conditions. It wasn’t though; the connection was as good as non-existent.
Alpha-34-Antimon felt a sudden surge of isolation batter his emotion-regulators.
Ball lightning flashed and rolled across the shoulders of the nearest Battle Titan. The wind was strengthening. Dust was all around the secutarii now, thick and ochre, rattling against armour plates and shields. The silhouette of another Titan emerged briefly in front of them before sinking behind the ochre veil. Static popped across Alpha-34-Antimon’s sight as his vision enhancers fought against the rushing gloom.
They had one more circuit to make before they withdrew to shelter. After that the full force of the storm would break, and nothing except the god-machines and the Sisters of Battle would remain outside.
He was forcing himself forward against the wind when something flashed in front of him: a brief fizz of brightness, and a shadow. He stopped, eye lenses whirring as they tried to focus on the rolling haze. The rest of the squad had halted with him, and he could feel their action queries queuing at the edge of the squad data-link.
Alpha-34-Antimon did not reply. The flash could have been a static arc from the dust, but there had been the shadow, and for an instant he had thought it a figure standing in the dust veil, like a smudge of ink on cloth. He waited.
Nothing moved.
After eighteen seconds he signalled the rest of the squad and began to move. The data-link to the other secutarii in this area was still down. If he could not get a clear connection soon, he would have to–
And there it was again, a mass of tiny blue arcs snapping around a dark smudge in the sand storm. His eyes tried to zoom, but kept sliding off the shape as though it was not there.
Light wreathed the tips of spears as the squad slid into formation. Their shields touched. The air around them shimmered. The swirling dust buffeted against the edge of impedance fields. Alpha-34-Antimon stood at the tip of the diamond, his own spear levelled at the blur of static. He could not tell how far away it was; it seemed to be both still and closing fast.
‘Halt and identify!’ His voice roared from the speaker mounted on his chest. The wind caught the challenge and spun it away.
A second spark-wreathed shadow appeared next to the first, then a third, then a fourth. The rational machine part of Alpha-34-Antimon had time to recognise the humanoid outlines running against the wind, and that they were not in the distance but just a few paces away.
His armour cracked under the force of impact. He was falling, the ragged figure descending with him. Gears in Alpha-34-Antimon’s legs screamed as they tried to keep him upright. He hit the ground. Distortion burst across his sight. The rag-swathed figure was above him, a crystal punch-blade raised to strike. Alpha-34-Antimon twisted and began to rise. The ragged figure dived sideways, rolling and stabbing back at Alpha-34-Antimon as he straightened. The punch-blade touched his impedance field in a spray of sparks. He brought his tower shield up.
Binaric screams filled Alpha-34-Antimon’s data inputs. Systems and organs in his torso were leaking blood and oil. Around him the dust wind blurred with the shadows of figures stabbing, falling, dying. His squad was dying. He could feel their data presences blinking out in his awareness.
The masked figure rolled forward as fluid and fast as water, and the punch-dagger cut through the armour of Alpha-34-Antimon’s right arm just behind his spear hand.
All sensation vanished. Silence held him. The swirl of dust around him rolled back, and he realised he must have fallen backwards onto the ground. The ochre clouds were receding down a dark tunnel.
Weak and treacherous flesh, he thought, and then those thoughts were a fading echo following him down into oblivion.
It took five minutes for the neurotoxins to finally silence his heart. The cognitive implants in his skull stopped functioning ten seconds later. By that time the rest of his squad lay beside him, their bodies already gathering shrouds of dust. Their killers had passed on, their ragged shapes blurring into the wind as they ran beneath the shadows of the chained Titans. Behind them the wind front swept in like the breath of a wrathful god.
Cleander von Castellan watched the scene slide across the viewport, and took a gulp of wine from his goblet. ‘Augment view, ship identification and ground atmospheric readouts.’
‘Compliance,’ droned one of the servitors wired into the machines which ran along the back of the viewing platform. Cleander waited, listening to the murmur of gears turning.
The dust storms of Ero moved across its face like spirals of dirty spun sugar. Clouds trailed from the main mass of each storm, reaching back across the deserts to the margins of the oceans. Beside the swirls of cloud even the city sprawls and ocean platforms seemed insignificant, small totems of mankind’s hubris in the face of nature. Star ships hung above the planet, winking with reflected light from Ero’s young, bright sun. There were hundreds, and even as Cleander watched, another constellation of vessels rose above the horizon. At this distance even the macro haulers were just pinprick glimmers against the black.
He took another drink, and let the heat of the wine spread down his throat. The smell of fire spice
filled his nose. It was not a good vintage. The harmonies of alcohol, fruit and spice were poorly balanced, and the taste was as crude as it was potent. He enjoyed it though, maybe because of its unapologetic lack of refinement. It was simply what it was. With every year added to his life he found that he liked things which were straightforward more and more, and also found that they were increasingly difficult to source. The situation beyond the viewport was one example of something that was far from simple.
‘Greetings and lies to all who have eyes,’ he sang into his glass. ‘Farewells and good wishes to all who give kisses…’
Holo-projectors flickered to life beneath the viewport. Luminous green data spread across the image of the planet and high orbit. The names of the warships came first, flashing in rings around the specks of light that were each vessel: Lord Absolute, Fire Child, Blade of the Light Eternal, Last Son of the Sword, Rebuke Eternal. On and on went the titles, each as struttingly aggressive as the last.
Cleander snorted to himself. There was something crass about having to scream the nature of such vessels so bluntly, as though kilometres of armour and the ability to reduce cities to fused glass were not indication enough that these were warrior queens of the void.
Forty-seven ships of war lay in this portion of Ero’s orbit alone. Another fifty-two hung out of sight above the planet’s other hemisphere, and more would be arriving from the system edge over the coming days. That was without the macro transports and bulk haulers, which hung beside the warships in shoals. Regiments of soldiers, maniples of Titans, companies of Space Marines – all coming together to save this corner of space from cataclysm. That, at least, was what most of the commanders of those forces would say. From where Cleander sat, the view was rather different.
‘Enough fire to burn the stars from their settings,’ he muttered to himself.
‘You should be on the bridge,’ said Viola from behind him. He did not bother to turn and look, even though he had not heard her enter the observation gallery.
‘The conclave has not begun,’ he said, and took another sip of wine. ‘Koleg signalled that the last shuttle was just touching down. There’s time yet before I need to stand by the helm and look commanding.’ He frowned as his eye found the edge of one of the largest dust storms. Atmospheric data scrolled beside trace arcs highlighting wind currents and trajectories. ‘Magnify feed on the operational area,’ he said.
Another murmur of gears and a square of hololight formed over a section of the planet. The image inside the square fizzed to monochrome green and then magnified. A curve of mountains marched around a wide plateau. The edge of the storm was already pouring into the bowl formed by the highlands, filling it like water pouring into cupped hands. The image magnified further, blinking in time with the click of the projectors. Tiny shapes began to form and then grew in clarity.
The Reliquary Tower rose from the centre of the image, its lower bastions already lost beneath the leading edge of the dust clouds. Titans encircled it, their vast size made small by distance, and blurred by the folds of dust. Beyond the mountains, he could see the edge of the tent and prefab cities that the Departmento Munitorum had created for the millions of troops and stores that had come to Ero. The camps extended across the scrublands of both continents and grew in size and population with every turn of the planet. In the dry language of the Administratum it was ‘a Primary Grade Mustering – subtype Gamma’, but every man and woman who had answered its call knew what it truly was: the birth of a crusade.
‘We should launch the gunships now,’ said Viola.
Cleander glanced over his shoulder at her. His sister’s face was impassive, her eyes still and fixed on the port and holo-projection. Long, ivory hair hung down the back of her red dress coat. The silk of the cravat around her neck matched her white hair, and the gold thread of her waistcoat caught the light as she turned slightly, the stitched patterns gleaming briefly. She was two decades his junior, young by the long lives of their dynasty, but her poise and control made her seem the senior whenever the pair appeared together – at least, that was what Cleander had always thought.
‘You chose to wear your sword,’ he said nodding at the brass hilt resting beneath her left hand. Her face twitched and her left eye briefly flashed chrome. She was watching some other stream of data from one of the ship’s systems through the subtle augmetic.
‘Launching squadron out of port launch bay Juno,’ she said. Cleander saw a trio of runes flash at the side of his display as three of the Dionysia’s brood of gunships entered the orbital sphere. Viola glanced behind her to where Kynortas would be waiting dutifully in the shadows. ‘Call the household cohorts to full readiness, and set alert condition throughout the ship.’
The master of arms bowed his head and withdrew, his movements somehow silent despite the bulk of his gilded pressure armour. Cleander watched him leave. Ever steady, ever loyal Kynortas knew better than to wait for Cleander to confirm the order. Cleander von Castellan was the head of the dynasty, the master of this ship and paymaster of every one of the souls that served on her. He was the absolute lord of this domain, but Viola was the power around which that domain turned. Every line of credit, store-master, informer network and trade contact was hers.
‘So your thought was less of a thought, and more you telling me about something you had already ordered,’ he said.
Her left eye cleared, and she glanced at him. The emotion in her eyes was somewhere between contempt and frustration.
‘You should prepare,’ she said, and began to pivot on her heels.
‘The gunships need to keep above the atmosphere,’ he said. ‘Wind speed and particle density will strip them down to their engine blocks if they hold station in the storm.’ Viola paused and looked at him, eyebrow arched. ‘And of course you have already issued that order,’ he said.
He looked back at the projection and porthole, and rubbed his eyes. ‘This is getting more complicated by the day, and it’s not yet even begun. There is enough materiel here to kill a civilisation, and enough power and influence to order it done. And here we are… Any one of those ships could hammer us to gas and slag if it chose. I am reading one hundred and four near-atmosphere patrols. Our credentials have been demanded and checked fifteen times since I started talking, and you know that if any one of them failed we would find out what it’s like to be a lone ship facing a battlefleet. We are insects playing with the anger of giants.’
He took another swallow of wine, and smacked his lips. Viola frowned, eyes flicking to the goblet and then away.
‘Haven’t you had enough?’
Cleander snorted. She was right of course. What they were about to do needed a clear head. Not for the first time, he was glad that Viola was there to be what he could not be. He wondered what the fate of his family would have been if the two decades that separated them had been reversed, and she had been the elder. Would he have made the same mistakes without the weight and privilege of being the head of the family? He doubted it. The fortune of their forebears would have remained tied to the solidity of earth and stone. The Dionysia would have wandered the void at the command of another master. He would not have seen the light of weeping stars, or held the wealth of dead empires in his hands. And he would not now be preparing to do something very ill-advised.
He swallowed the last of the wine and stood, shrugging into his dress coat as he turned from the view.
‘All right,’ he breathed out, and reached down to pick up his own sword from where it leant against the side of the chair. He unwound the sword belt from the scabbard and fastened it around his waist. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the familiar weight of both weapon and coat settle. Reflexively he shifted the eyepatch over his left eye socket, and began to walk towards the door. ‘All right, let’s start this dance.’
Viola raised an eyebrow and then fell in at his side.
The sin-marked warrior looked up at the stone
face of the saint, and felt tears she could not shed come to her eyes. Saint Aspira, Saviour of a Hundred Stars, towered above, arms spread as though in peace and victory, the folds of her cloak falling away from sculpted armour plates in translucent folds of marble. Golden rays haloed above the saint’s head. Each blade of metal hung on hair-thin wires, so that they seemed to float like spears of frozen sunlight. The tip of the statue’s raised sword almost touched the apex of the great dome above. Gilded eagles spiralled through painted storm clouds on that curved ceiling, lightning clasped in their claws. The saint’s eyes looked down from beneath the raised blade, unblinking in a stone face of perfect, holy serenity. Beneath that gaze the penitent warrior knelt, and bowed her head.
I am broken, Severita thought. I am a stain on existence. I should not exist. I should not be here.
Around her the space extended away to meet the columns which encircled the statue-capped tomb. Bronze candelabras rose from the tiled floor like trees, their branches blazing with flame. Black prayer pennants hung from the edge of the walkway which ran around the dome’s base. Slender figures stood on that walkway, as unmoving as statues, their crimson armour catching the stray threads of candlelight. Severita had seen those red sentinels as soon as she had entered, and had felt their eyes touch her as she had crossed to offer prayer to the Saint. She could feel the judgement of their eyes as though their gaze burned the hessian of her robe from the sleeveless bodyglove beneath, and sliced through her brand-scarred skin to open her soul to bleed onto the black mirror of the floor.
‘Sacred Master of Mankind, forgive my presence,’ she whispered, bowing her head. ‘Do not withhold punishment from this, your failed servant. Exalted mistress, who walked the path of swords and ashes, may my deeds wash clean the stain of my existence. Great saints who have shown the way, please–’
‘Severita…’ The voice was soft, but its gentle force was enough to pull her out of her deepening pool of prayer. She held her eyes closed for a second, adding the incomplete litany to the tally of her sins that looped without cease through her thoughts.