by John French
She saw the bolt-round kick free of the muzzle. Covenant was still standing where he had risen, his eyes on Talicto, the sensor pod looking up to where the shell streaked down from a ledge close to the ceiling. The fat preacher Josef was rising from his seat in front of his master, eyes moving across the crowded tiers. The rest of the chamber was an image of confusion. Inquisitors and their minions turned towards the flash. Bodies twisted instinctively away in the impossible instant between firing and impact. High on his pillar Vult seemed locked in place, a statue rather than a man. At the edge of the chamber figures in red armour were running from their niches, weapons rising, faces set.
And across the drug-frozen image the bolt-round sliced, flame drawing a burning line through the air. Concentric shockwaves radiated from it as it ran true. And Talicto was looking up at where the flash had come from, hollow eyes turning to look at a death that would find him before he would hear the roar of detonation. In that endless instant Enna thought she saw a smile on his lips.
And then he was not there.
And in the stuttered second that he vanished she saw the figures stepping from the edge of the chamber.
Dozens of figures in rags, wearing masks of fabric with torn holes for eyes, stood unmoving in the stopped-clock world of her combat drug fugue. Crystal edges glistened in their fists, and motes of dust fell from them.
Time slammed back into flow.
The bolt-round struck the seat where Talicto had been. Shrapnel and splinters of wood spun through the air. The roar of detonation tore through the chamber. Echoes sliced through the sound of sirens.
The crowds on the benches were moving. Many were fast, bodyguards, warrior-acolytes and veterans of secret wars. Some were very fast.
But, for these first instants none were faster than Enna Gyrid. She came out of her seat in a single snap of muscle. The figures in rags were sprinting forwards. Enna landed on the back of a seat two tiers lower down and jumped towards her mistress as she began rising from her seat.
Crystal shards flashed through the air. A man in a white robe on the lowest tier dropped, blood welling from his neck, eyes open and seeing nothing even as he fell. Enna landed next to her mistress and yanked her down as a crystal shard thumped into the wood just behind where she had been standing.
Enna,+ Idris’ thought-voice filled her mind.
‘Make for the speaking pillar,’ shouted Enna in reply as she began to move along the row of benches. There was a doorway just by it that led to tunnels which ran under this level of the tower. Enna could see it, and the path down and out of the chamber, hover in the image of the tower’s plans she had memorised before they arrived. Part of her was glad she had done her work well. Another part wished she had not been right, rather than paranoid.
No,+ Idris’ thought-voice halted her in mid-movement. She turned to look at her mistress. Idris was crouched low, hands moving in a blur as she swapped rings between her fingers, stacking them on the middle and fore fingers of her right hand. Blue worms of energy arced around the rings as they snapped together with magnetic force.
Enna paused, her thoughts catching up with her, and she realised what she had missed; Idris had spoken to her telepathically.
She swore.
‘The null-fields are down,’ she said.
Someone must have got to the field generators,+ sent Idris, and the last ring snapped into place. +And if they have…+
A rag-clad figure dropped onto the tier above them, tattered fabric trailing in its wake. Enna spun a kick into the figure’s face that sent it sprawling. Idris stood calmly and pointed her fingers at the figure as it began to rise. Blue energy poured from her hand. Dust burned orange along the beam’s path. It hit the figure in the chest and blew its torso to ash.
I am suddenly glad I decided to ignore the agreement on bringing weapons.+ Idris glanced towards the far end of the chamber. Enna glanced in the direction of her mistress’ gaze and smiled despite herself. A churning press of bodies filled the space before the pillar. She could see the glint of blades and the flash of energy discharge. Ragged figures were moving through the press, and bodies were falling before them, even as warriors leapt to close with them.
Enna reached up and pulled the pins from the plait running down her back. They snapped onto grooves on the back of her gauntlet. Each one was the length of a small finger, forged of adamantine and threaded with nano-toxin channels. Linked to the back of her gauntlet they made her punch deadly. It was better than nothing, but in the shrill chaos enveloping the chamber, she wished she had thought of a way to smuggle in something more substantial.
Enna’s eye caught sight of Lord Inquisitor Vult, still atop the pillar at the far end of the chamber. As she watched he crouched, the plates of his Terminator armour sliding over each other as pistons and fibre bundles tensed. He leapt and for an instant he was falling, a huge figure clad in lacquered armour. He landed. The floor shook. Splinters of stone scattered through the air. He rose, and struck a figure in rags with the back of his fist. The figure fell, his torn cloth mask red with the ruin of the face beneath. Vult waded forwards, gore flying from the white armour of his fists.
Battle Sisters were beside the lord inquisitor now, firing as they advanced. Bolt-rounds ripped into rag-clad bodies. For an instant Idris could see the wild ragged figures falling, and wondered what madness had made these assassins believe they could succeed.
We have to find Covenant,+ sent Idris, making for the chamber’s main doors. Enna moved to follow, and had just turned when a booming rumble shook the floor. Idris slowed, her eyes locked on the great double doors leading into the tower’s core chambers.
‘What–’ began Enna, as the doors shook.
Get down,+ sent Idris, as the doors opened. Enna looked up as a wall of ochre dust billowed through the entrance. And with it came more figures in rags with shard blades shining in their hands. The storm wind gusted, and the shroud of dust swallowed the world.
The dust poured in through the doors, curling out and up. Josef turned in time to see the ochre wall rushing forwards. Then it was over him, filling his eyes. Sound flattened and distorted.
‘With me,’ came Covenant’s voice from next to him. Josef felt his lord brush past. He followed.
A man in a mail body-glove loomed out of the swirl, mouth opening beneath a tattooed scalp. A shard of crystal ripped the man’s cheek off. His eyes rolled back as he fell. A figure in rags burst from the fog. Josef saw a long splinter of crystal in the figure’s hand. Blood and dust clotted its edge.
‘Down!’ shouted Covenant. Josef jerked aside. The figure in rags flicked his hand towards them. A shard of crystal spun from his fingers. Josef felt ice brush his skin as a wave of telekinetic force shivered past his shoulder from Covenant. The shard exploded in mid-air. The figure in rags leapt. The wave of force rammed him backwards. The hand holding the crystal blade bent back on itself with a snap of bone, and pushed into the figure’s throat. It fell to the floor. Blood washed onto the dust-covered tiles. Covenant was moving, vaulting over benches.
Josef pulled himself up and followed, breathing hard.
‘Talicto had a displacer field,’ he shouted, coughing, dust filling his mouth. ‘The cur managed to get a displacer field past the security.’
Covenant reached the floor and ran towards where the dust-wind was blowing through the main doors into the chamber. Gunfire echoed and flashed in the rolling cloud.
‘He is still here,’ called Covenant. The sensor pod on his shoulder was spinning, lenses whirring as they cycled through filters. ‘He can’t get away until the storm passes.’
‘Koleg will have hit his shuttle,’ shouted Josef. ‘He can’t get away.’
‘He will have another way out,’ replied Covenant. A Sister of Battle staggered into sight. Her skin was powdered white, her lips red with blood. A crystal barb projected from her neck. She swayed, eyes open
but not seeing. Josef started forward, but she was falling. A twitch of invisible force pulled the boltgun from her hands as she fell. Covenant caught it. The sensor pod on his shoulder pivoted as another figure in rags broke from the pall of dust. Covenant pivoted and fired. The shell ripped the figure’s head from its shoulders.
A woman in the uniform of a Chalcisorian Lancer spun from the murk. Blood matted the fabric of her left arm and she had an iron bar in her right hand. Josef could see the decorative eagle wings jutting from the iron and the torn bolts where it had been wrenched from its fitting. She raised her weapon as she saw them.
‘Hold!’ shouted Josef, and his voice must have reached her over the wind because she froze. Her mouth opened to say something.
A crystal blade whipped out of the dust and cut through the back of her neck. Her head hinged forwards. Crimson gushed out and up, clotting as it flowed in the powdered floor. Covenant fired once and a shadow fell.
Josef bent down and took the iron bar that was still gripped in her hand.
‘Emperor, see her soul safe through the night,’ he muttered, and hefted the iron bar, ‘and forgive me the liberty.’ He straightened. ‘This… Talicto didn’t do all of this to escape censure.’
Energy discharge and gunfire flashed in the powdered haze. Covenant was already moving towards where the open doors must be.
‘This is not an escape,’ called Covenant, as Josef followed him. The sensor pod on Covenant’s shoulder spun, and he fired. Rounds exploded out of sight. ‘This is a massacre.’
The dust wind howled as it flooded the Reliquary Tower. The sound of sirens blended with the scream of its fury. Sparks and fire churned in the holes blown into its upper levels, and smoke blended with dust as it coiled through the passages. The breaches were not large, barely wide enough for a human to stand upright in them, but that was invitation enough to the storm. The wind found the weaknesses in the unshielded stone and cascaded in and down. It found blast doors left unsealed beside dead Sisters, and raced on, shrouding their corpses in the earth of Ero. Unshielded, the substance of the tower began to sing. Masonry and metal vibrated to the harmonics of the wind. Floors trembled. Stained glass windows blew inwards, the image of saints and heroes scattering in rainbow fragments.
Severita was already half way down the meeting chamber wall when the storm breached the doors of the chamber. She had dropped over the side of the ledge as soon as Talicto had vanished, and was climbing down between banners and the jutting handholds of carved symbols of faith when the doors opened to the storm. The wind snapped past her. She held tight to the banner pole she had been using as a handhold. Her stolen weapons banged against her back as the gust caught them.
Beneath her the sound of screams boiled up with the ochre cloud. Her last sight in the instant after Talicto vanished had been the figures in rags stepping like ghosts from the shadows.
‘Mercy,’ she whispered, gripping the fabric of the banner and kicking off from the wall.
She fell, and for a heartbeat felt as though the wind would lift her back into the air. Then the banner’s tattered fabric snapped taut in her grasp and jerked her to a halt for an instant before it began to tear. She let go, dropping the last metres, and hit the floor. Force slammed through her. The mesh weave of her bodyglove hardened for an instant. The impact stole the air from her lungs. She rolled to a crouch. Her sense of direction was suddenly gone. Her ears were full of the snarl of the wind and the distorted echoes of cries and gunfire. Instinct told her to run, to move, to find someone else, to find something else that could ground her in the chaos.
She went still, will overriding panic, her mind filling with the words and rhythms of the Canticle of Tranquillity. It was one of the first lessons the Order had taught her. On the eighth day as a novice, an old Sister Superior called Arna had taught the words of the devotion to her and her new Sisters. On the fourteenth day they had put her in a tank and filled it slowly until the water was over her head. All the while she had spoken the words without cease, focusing on the rhythm of each syllable and breath. When the water had covered her face she had continued in her mind, blotting out the panic of drowning with the sacred verse. She had been made to repeat the devotion eighteen times. After that, they had stopped making it easy.
Crouched in the whirling cacophony and chaos, Severita felt the grace of the Emperor pull her mind to a point of calm. She had a task to complete, a step on the road of her penance, and she would not waver. She focused on details: the slight tilt of the floor beneath her, the quality of echoed gunfire, her memory of the chamber as she had seen it from above. Talicto’s displacer field had saved him from her shell, but it would not have taken him far. A displacer field was a rare but unpredictable device that protected its bearer by snapping them a short distance through the warp to avoid harm just before it occurred. Severita had no curiosity concerning the mysteries of its function; all that mattered was what it did, not how. Talicto must still be in the chamber, or very close. She would find him.
She ripped a strip from her shift and wrapped it around her mouth and nose. Her breath was still coming in shallow gasps from the impact of the fall. She drew her stolen bolt pistol, released its safety and pressed it to her forehead. The bolter still hung from her back, but for this, the smaller sister of that sacred weapon was needed.
She began to move, feeling her way along the line of tiers and seats towards where Talicto had sat.
A figure in rags rose to her side, crystal dagger slashing. She twisted inside the blow, blink-fast, gripped its shoulder with her left hand, and rammed her weight forwards. The figure staggered, but whatever it was, it was strong. A second figure appeared next to her. A crystal punch dagger stabbed at her face. She ducked, still holding onto the first attacker, pressed the muzzle of the bolt pistol into its gut, and fired once. The round exploded out of the back of its torso. Severita shoved away the bloody mess of the corpse and spun as the figure with the punch dagger came at her. She lashed a kick into its chest, knocking it back a step, and that was far enough for her to bring her pistol up and blast its masked head from its shoulders.
A shadow appeared behind her, and she whirled to meet it.
Hold, Severita,+ the voice touched her mind, and she felt its force freeze her muscles for a second before her will shrugged off the psychic command, and she brought the bolt pistol up and fired.
A hand slammed the pistol aside, and the shot roared into the roiling fog. She did not pause, but let go of the pistol, letting it fall for an instant before she caught it with her other hand and spun to bring it up to fire at her new attacker. A fist lashed at her head. She had the impression of a slim female face and form-fitting armour. Not a mask, not rags. She paused, pistol steady, barrel level with a pair of violet eyes. The fist that had struck at her head had stopped a hand span from her cheek. Black needles glinted on armoured knuckles, the tips almost touching her skin.
‘Severita,’ called a voice that was the physical echo of the one that had spoken inside her head. A second woman in a long coat stepped into sight beside her, hair and face powdered with dust. ‘I am Inquisitor Idris, and the woman you were about to shoot is Enna Gyrid. I know your master.’
Severita looked at the violet eyes beyond the end of her barrel. The woman called Enna smiled, but the expression did not reach her eyes. She lowered her needle fist, and a second later Severita lowered her pistol.
‘Come with us,’ said Idris. ‘Covenant is still alive.’
‘How do you know?’ said Severita.
The same way I realised who you were, Severita,+ she said without speaking. +Now come, there is not much time.+
Severita paused, biting down the anger as the witch-voice touched her mind again. Then she pulled the bolter from her shoulder, and tossed the bolt pistol to the woman called Enna.
‘Better than that fist of pins,’ she said.
Enna caught it smoothly, and gav
e a crooked smile.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Let’s go,’ said Idris.
‘Primary batteries, aye.’
‘Dorsal lances, aye.’
‘Target locked and set.’
Cleander heard the officers call from their stations, saw their faces turned towards him, eyes on him, waiting. Void Mistress Ghast stood just to the side of his command dais, hands folded behind her back. Cleander glanced between the displays in front of him. The void above Ero filled them, latticed with orange vector lines and spinning target mandalas. A cluster of defence monitors glowed cold blue, the position of the closing frigate a red disc.
‘Energy spike,’ shouted a sensor officer. ‘Frigate’s weapons ready to fire.’
Cleander’s eyes narrowed on the display. Taking on an Imperial Navy vessel that claimed to be bound to Inquisitorial service, in space above a world being used for a grand mustering of arms, was not advisable.
‘Fire all weapons,’ he said.
‘Fire all weapons!’ echoed Ghast.
‘Alpha battery firing!’
‘Gamma battery firing!
‘Dorsal lances firing!’
The Dionysia shook and shook. Amber lights lit on the banks of machines.
‘Struck true!’
‘Struck true!’
‘Struck true!’
The shouts of the gunnery officers rose above the buzz of alerts. Cleander looked up to the screen showing the magnified view of the frigate. Fire flashed across its collapsing shields. The frigate pushed through the caul of burning gas, arcing above the curve of Ero’s orbit towards the Dionysia’s position.
Cleander felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. This was far from the best way it could have gone. It was not even the fight they were facing, or the fact that the frigate outgunned them, or the quantity of main-force warships within uncomfortable proximity. He had faced worse odds many times over, survived them all, and counted many as victory. The problem was not the challenge; it was that he couldn’t do what he needed to win.