by Henry Zou
Chapter Twenty
The Penitent Engine activated with a squeal of hydraulics and hosed the boiler room with cones of flame. Riverine scattered at the machine that had arisen in their midst, falling away in all directions. Fire blistered paint from the walls and churned the ankle-deep floodwaters, boiling up a solid curtain of steam.
‘Heavy weapons! Heavy weapons on target!’ shouted Baeder as he bounced shots off the Engine’s frame with his autopistol.
Three and a half metres tall, the Penitent Engine had collapsed its hydraulic legs and crouched amongst the generators, purifiers and compressors of the boiler deck. It had hidden there, camouflaged amongst the raw metal machinery.
When it rose, the Penitent Engine rose as a solid walker frame, its hard-wired pilot crucified across its central chassis. From afar, it resembled a hybrid between an industrial servitor and a chapel organ. Banks of pistons powered its theropod legs and smoke stacks were arrayed along its upper back. Tilt cylinders engaged the use of its upper appendages, both ending in flamers.
Trooper Gresham managed to circle off behind the Engine and squeeze off a long burst from his heavy stubber. The solid slugs had no visible effect. Shuddering on stiff, rotary joints, the Penitent Engine about faced and fired. Gresham disintegrated under a sheet of white heat, his black outline visible for a split second beneath the fire.
Baeder knew they were in trouble now. The boiler room was packed tight with the ship’s vitals. Silo furnaces dominated the chamber and what little space remained had been devoted to nests of piping systems and bulky, thrumming generators. The main Riverine assault was now bottlenecked with no space to utilise explosives or armour-piercing rockets. The flamers of the Penitent Engine were devastating them in those confines. Tactically, it was the worst possible position for them to be in.
‘Sir!’ cried Mortlock.
Baeder flinched. He recognised the panic in Mortlock’s voice. He had also come to know that anything which could panic the indomitable Major Mortlock was probably very bad indeed. Baeder turned around and froze. From the space between two welded air compressors, a second Penitent Engine clawed up from its dormant state. A third was cutting off the boiler room entrance, suppressing the hatch with its twin flamers.
It was as if Baeder’s rational mind chose that very moment to shut off. His mouth roared a war cry that he didn’t hear or understand. He vaulted over a turbine generator and rolled directly into the path of the first Penitent Engine. Baeder tried to get inside the Engine’s flamers, looking to trade blows at close range. Industrial chainblades, painted with yellow and black hazard stripes, underslung each flamer. They revved up into a high-pitched whine and swung in a rhythmic, clockwork pace.
Baeder bobbed underneath, as he had drilled often in the regimental boxing yard. He lunged with his power fist but the Engine back-pedalled with a speed that was at odds with its size. Piston banks pumped its bird-legs backwards as Baeder doubled up on his punch. The chain fists snapped together like scissors. Baeder ducked low, almost bending his knees into a full crouch. A coxcomb of sparks splattered down over his shoulders as the chainblades collided.
In the corner of Baeder’s vision he saw a second Engine thud towards him. The remaining Riverine in the boiler room were now trapped by the marauding machines. The men aimed at the Engine’s exposed pilot, a female in a white shroud racked into the machine’s frontal chassis. Yet even with their lasguns set to the highest output, punching cauterised holes in the pilot, she continued to shriek and babble in pseudo-prayer.
Baeder knew the Ecclesiarchy was not above the use of chemical drugs. He was reminded of the time his tutor had taken him to witness a public execution that the Ecclesiarchy had staged in a local theatre near his scholam-house. The brutality of the punishment meted out by the preacher had stunned his young mind. By the time the man was limbless and screaming for penitence, Baeder had been retching bile. The preacher then shot him three times in the chest with a pneumatic stake and declared the exhibition over. However, Baeder never forgot the look in the heretic’s eyes as they snapped open and he shrieked even louder. Through bubbles of blood he asked why the preacher had not allowed him to die after his penitence. The preacher fled the stage in a fright. Chemicals had kept the victim’s heart pumping despite the horrendous trauma. He saw that same glazed look in the eyes of the hard-wired pilots.
The Riverine had nothing to match them.
Baeder was pincered between two Penitent Engines, their chainblades buzzing from every direction. He was alone. There was no room to escape. Pipes and ventilation tubes caged him. He dived low as a chainblade soared over his head. When he came up his heart was pounding hard. Somewhere in the thin pool of water he had dropped his autopistol. Yet still he raged. It was a volcanic build-up from months of carnage and mental anguish. He physically felt his veins swell in hot, angry flushes. His power fist suddenly felt light. He was no longer in control of his own body. Baeder hurled himself at the Engine to his left and reached for the chainblade with his power fist. The fist’s disruption field collided with the whirring chain teeth. The external generator on his wrist spiked in voltage and snorted a plume of sparks. Violent tremors shook Baeder all the way up to his shoulder socket. He wrenched the Engine’s left appendage away with a squeal of twisted metal and wire. As he did so, the corona of energy around his fist flickered and died. The power fist was spent.
Baeder stood very still. The battle rage ended, whisked away like a shroud from his head. Rationality set in. As the Penitent Engines raised their arms in execution, Baeder could only think that struggling as he died would be an undignified death. He wondered if he would truly be damned to the warp for all eternity.
The Penitent Engine to his rear was suddenly smashed aside. Chips of metal pelted his back. He felt the force and sound of a locomotive collision. Turning, Baeder saw the Penitent Engine lying on its side, embedded into the dented heap of a purifier tank. Atachron straddled it like a triumphant wrestler, hammering away at its chassis with strokes from a double-headed axe.
‘Down, Fyodor!’ shouted Gabre as he wedged his enormous shoulders through the boiler hatch entrance. Acting on instinct, Baeder threw himself flat onto the decking. Gabre released a tentacle of thermal rays from his meltagun into the one-armed Engine at Baeder’s front. The Engine’s pilot began to steam as the molecules of her body cooked off. It collapsed to one leg as the metal bubbled and warped, crashing the machine out to the left. Gabre continued to play his meltagun over the wreck until it had fused with the metal of the decking, spilling out in wide, molten slags.
‘I owe you a blood debt,’ Baeder said as the Chaos Marines approached him.
‘Everything will be repaid in full,’ replied Atachron, his voice meaningfully passive.
Baeder wanted to ask what he meant, but Atachron waved his great axe onwards. ‘The gods tell me our prey lies beyond these hatches. Your men will need you to lead them. The cardinal has much to answer for.’
Stripping off the inert power fist, Baeder pried a fen-hammer from the fingers of a fallen Riverine. It was a weapon that he was not familiar with. Yet the striking head gave the hammer a sturdy weight and the padded grip felt good in his palms. It felt right. ‘Let the cardinal answer to this then,’ said Baeder. He looped the hammer over his head like a drill sabre and advanced at the head of his Riverine.
Admiral de Ruger was indignant. His grand ship was being sunk by filthy indigs and estuarine corsairs. The greatest pride of his entire fleet was being invaded by barbarous heretics who had no right to tread on its hallowed deck plating.
‘Sir, we have to abandon ship,’ shouted one of de Ruger’s aides. The bridge room was tilting at a twenty-degree slant. Console displays were flashing urgent red warnings. The smell of burning petroleum was on the air, cut with the dry aftertaste of sea salt.
De Ruger tried to protest but he had no more ideas. For all his political wit and cleverness, t
he admiral became stricken with fear. ‘These filthy, landless thieves are sinking my ship,’ he repeated in disbelief.
‘Sir, they’re boarding us. We have to head for the preservation rafts now,’ the aides insisted.
‘Come then,’ de Ruger said, waving them on. ‘Before they fall upon us.’
His three aides led the way through the compartments which were rapidly filling with smoke. The three junior officers had discarded their frock coats and boots, rolling their jodhpurs up to their thighs as they waded through the rising flood. De Ruger followed behind, weighed down by his silver chestplate and lobster tail tasset. His black riding boots filled with water and the blue and white ostrich plumes on his burgonet wilted with moisture.
By the time they reached the deckhead, the battle had caught up with them. Nautical infantry jammed the wide corridors in their bayonet formations, bristling outwards in a phalanx of lasgun and boarding pike. The insurgents seemed to be attacking from all directions without any sense of order, appearing only to inflict random damage. The way onto the deck was blocked by heavy fighting.
De Ruger drew his sabre, a basket-hilted briquette, and waved his aides into the fray. ‘Go on! Make a path!’ His only means of escape was a cage elevator at the end of the service corridor, but a melee between ten Persepians and a handful of rebels degenerated into a mauling close quarter fight before him.
‘Sir! Beware to your left!’ shouted an aide as he tried to pushed the admiral away. De Ruger shrugged him off and smoothed his great coat.
Five Riverine emerged from a bulkhead hatch no more than a dozen paces from de Ruger. Although they did not know him to be the fleet commander, they recognised the rich gold braiding across the admiral’s chest and the inlay on his burgonet helm. A square of silk embroidered with a cartographer’s depiction of the Persepian seas, was plastered wetly across his back. ‘That’s the bastard,’ growled a shirtless Riverine, pointing at de Ruger with the thick chopping end of a machete. ‘That must be him.’ Rebel Guardsmen clattered out from the same hatchway, eager to claim the liver of an Imperial high-ranker.
De Ruger puffed his chest as he heard the rebels sloshing through the water towards him. An officer’s pride prevented him from retreating in the face of heretics. He stood his ground and flourished a glittering arc in the air with his sabre, a formal salute of the Persepian sword duel.
‘Let’s have you then,’ challenged de Ruger. He stood straight-backed, sword parallel to the ground in a classic swordsman’s stance.
But the Riverine running point simply dropped to his knee and fired his autogun into the admiral’s chest. De Ruger fell sideways, smoke wafting from the punctures in his ceremonial plate. The burgonet tipped over his face and the sword clattered from his hand. His mouth was open, frozen in an expression of dignified shock. As if he could not believe that he, Admiral de Ruger, supreme commander of the Persepian Nautical Fleet, had just been slain by a Riverine wearing a corporal’s chevrons. Blood soaked his powder-blue dress coat and clouded the water around him. Looking up, de Ruger clawed weakly at the Riverine as they fell upon him, tearing at his dress medals and hacking him with machetes.
Explosions trembled the decking. Steel groaned with pressurised creaking. More of the rebels were breaching the hull. Avanti almost lost his footing as the Nautical listed again, sliding candles and papers off his stateroom desk.
‘Cardinal, what is happening?’ demanded Amadeus Savaat. For once, the cardinal’s esteemed guests shared Savaat’s outrage.
‘The Persepian armsmen have everything under control. They are exemplary soldiers, I assure you. I would not have your investments protected by anything less,’ Avanti said, holding onto the edge of his desk.
A trade baron – Groseph Uhring – began to cry. Uhring was the firstborn son of a grain and textiles magnate from the inner Mesalon sub, heir to an illustrious line of merchant aristocrats who owned five per cent of all shipping along from the Bastion Stars to Medina. He sobbed into his tricorn and began to shake. ‘Forget the investments!’ he wailed. ‘Just let us live. Take us to safety and my father will donate untold amounts into the Imperial coffers.’ As if to punctuate his plea, there came another distant rumble in the ship. Faint, muffled screams of men echoed in its wake.
Avanti silenced him with a turn of the wrist. ‘There is no need to panic. We will proceed to the saviour deck. Valkyries will take us to the mainland, although I doubt the necessity of such precautions.’
‘Necessity, cardinal? You promised us this war was as good as over. From what I can see, it is anything but over!’ Savaat raged, stamping the plush carpet with his badge-lance.
‘We are going to die! I smell leaking gas!’ wailed Uhring, throwing his hands up into the air. He was right. Even Avanti could scent the heavy odour of propane. Somewhere, the pipes which provided heating of the staterooms had burst. There was a murmur of worry amongst Uhring’s fellow trade barons. Some began to take pinches of snuff from locket pendants in an attempt to mask the stink.
‘Gentlemen, please,’ shouted Palatine Fure. She was like a siren of calm amongst the babble of panic. ‘Follow me. My sisters and I will accompany you all off this Nautical until the situation can be placated.’ She signalled to her retinue of Sororitas who began to move out of Avanti’s stateroom in a herring-bone formation.
‘We are going to die. I can smell it! Can anyone else smell it?’ Uhring cried. No one answered but even the hardy mercenary-explorers of the Phalia Trade Company made signs of the aquila.
The cardinal could feel his subsectoral investment slipping through his fingers. Who would be willing to bring trade to a war-torn planet? He could not let such a thing happen. It had taken him the better part of six years to provoke the natives into rebellion alone. The Ecclesiarchy would not look on him fondly if he failed to bring this world to heel.
‘Kill that man,’ Avanti ordered, pointing to the hysterical baron. Before the oligarchs could fully process what had happened, Palatine Fure crushed Uhring’s face with a blow from her flanged mace, collapsing him instantly.
‘He needed to be quiet,’ Avanti muttered. ‘I’m under quite significant stress right now and I need to think. My apologies if you thought that was crude, but Palatine Fure cannot risk combusting the leaked gas with firearms. Now please be quiet so I can think.’
The assembly fell very quiet. Even Amadeus Savaat stared uneasily at Groseph Uhring’s body, leaking fluid from a split down his face.
‘We must proceed to the saviour decks. May I remind you gentlemen, if you have any firearms on your person do not use them while the threat of leaking gas lingers. My devoted bodyguard here will keep us quite safe.’
To prove his point, the Adepta Sororitas lining the stateroom corridor slung their bolters in front of their chests and drew personal arms. Maces, morning stars and chain flails were unhooked from plate girdles. They snapped the gargoyle visors down over their helmets as Palatine Fure took her position at the head of the fighting column. ‘My Celestian bodyguard,’ announced the cardinal proudly. ‘Gentlemen, despite this interlude of excitement, we will be dining on shellfish in my palace tonight. The Emperor protects.’
Baeder flipped open the deckhead hatch and emerged in the ship’s upper structure. Here the Argo-Nautical more resembled the interior of a ducal manor than the structure of a warship. The staterooms were divided into three separate decks with swirling ceramic staircases connecting the mid-tier mezzanine.
Baeder, Mortlock, some forty Riverine and the Carnibalès found themselves in the ground lobby of the state ward. Thickly-padded carpet of Berberian tapestry covered the expansive floor upon which bobbed a family of divans. The regimental flags of various boat squadrons, battle fleets and armadas were draped like heavy curtains on the wall in proud colours of sky blue, white and golden thread. High overhead, a crystal chandelier flickered as the ship’s main power stations shorted. The air was hot and appeared to
haze. Several gas pipes that provided the state ward with warmed water and heated flooring had burst. The air was pungent with a sulphurous stink.
‘I’m getting a high read-out of combustible gas in the atmosphere,’ Gabre announced.
‘Yes, brother,’ confirmed Atachron. ‘As high as thirty-five per cent in some parts. Set firearms to safe,’ he commanded.
As the rebel Guardsmen toggled their weapons from ready, the double doors at the far end of the lobby crashed aside. A female in pearl-white power armour entered the chamber. Her visor was open. Palatine Morgan Fure. Baeder recognised the cold witch from their deployment parade. She led a column of some thirty Adepta Sororitas flanking a procession of extravagantly dressed off-world dignitaries.
There was a shocked, split second of stillness as Fure saw the rebel raiders. The sisters encircled the flock of dignitaries like low, growling hounds. The Riverine began to bay for blood, clashing machetes against their bladed rifles. Baeder snorted through his nostrils, barely able to contain the angry shudder in his hands. Avanti was amongst them. The man who had decimated the 31st Riverine Founding. He could see the cardinal’s purple robes. He wanted to remember every line and every crease on the ancient planes of his face. They locked stares and Baeder saw no fear in the old man’s eyes. Just a righteous glare of hatred. That compelled him more than any fear. He hated Avanti more than anything. More than the orkoids of the swamp. More, even, than the Carnibalès. Cardinal Avanti personified the Imperium and the entire, rotting hierarchy that had spurned his soldiers.
In the haze of gas, the battle-sisters formed a solid wedge of warriors in front of the Imperial dignitaries. Without the threat of projectile weapons, fighters squared, shoulder to shoulder. Like jousting knights, both sides lowered their weapons and charged. Baeder could see his enemies in intimate detail. He could count the brass buttons on their mantles and smell the frankincense of their bodies. Most Guard regiments were not accustomed to combat at such a range but the Riverine howled for it. The forces met in the centre with a grinding crunch of bodies.