by Gav Thorpe
Lastly, the real clincher was the door ahead of her at the end of the entryway. It was ajar, kept open by a heavy-soled boot. There was more blood on the tread. It certainly wasn’t the sort of footwear Rendenstein would have been wearing.
Paused with the door still open behind her, one hand half-stretched towards the security pad, Wienand considered her options.
She had been summoned here by Veritus. The conclave was due to begin in an hour, in the Octagon. Obviously someone had decided to pre-empt the proceedings, or otherwise interfere.
In Wienand’s estimation that person was most likely Veritus himself. Maybe Najurita had been more reluctant to participate than the old inquisitor had originally hoped, or perhaps Veritus simply preferred to settle matters the way they had been settled in the old days.
Another option was that she had been betrayed by Vangorich, perhaps in trade for the support of Veritus. She dismissed the possibility. If Vangorich really wanted Wienand dead she wouldn’t be alive to think about it. The Officio Assassinorum did not give second chances, not here on Terra where everything was to their advantage.
It was not safe to stay here.
Wienand turned around and strode back into the corridor, left hand towards the sensor pad by the door, her seal ring pulse-transmitting a signal to close the portal. She whispered a three-part code to initiate full lockdown and then turned right, heading towards the monorail terminal a few hundred feet further into the Imperial Palace.
The station was empty, as Wienand expected. The mono-shuttle was for Inquisitorial personnel only – and Vangorich, apparently, Wienand remembered with irritation – and was the only way to access the inner chambers of the Inquisitorial enclave. One shuttle was at the platform, on the westbound track leading to the main part of the Palace via the Adeptus Ministorum Senatorum chapels. The eastbound track, which would take her to the main transport hub at the Eternity Terminus, was devoid of carriages.
There were two ways to read this discovery. The first was to assume that whoever had breached the inner chambers had then exited towards the transport hub. The second, more paranoid and likely version of events, was that someone had anticipated Wienand’s attempt to flee and was manoeuvring her towards the Ministorum enclave for a particular reason.
It also made sense that she was cut off from the transport hub; from there she could requisition an ornithopter to take her directly to the main Inquisitorial Fortress under the south polar ice cap. Her allies were there, as were six companies of Inquisitorial storm troopers and no doubt a few other mercenary types currently in the employ of one inquisitor or another who would be more than willing to engage in hostilities.
She suddenly realised how isolated she was here, and remembered the words of Veritus. He had said that she had become too close to the Senatorum, and perhaps he meant geographically as well as metaphorically. By holding her offices here, in the Senatorum palaces rather than at the polar bastion, she was cut off from the Inquisition.
Thinking she heard a distant footfall behind her echoing down the passage, Wienand darted a look down the colonnaded corridor towards her chambers. She saw nothing, but was now convinced that someone was there, perhaps out of sight, perhaps cloaked somehow. Her enemies – it had to be Veritus – had access to all kinds of archeotech if needed.
She jumped into the open-topped mono-shuttle, closed the gate behind her and sat down on one of the benches. The shuttle was about five yards long, barge-like in shape, with four benches running its width like the thwarts of a rowing boat. Though it had a metal infrastructure, the exterior of the shuttle was covered in ornately carved wood and panelling lacquered a deep red, with polished brass fittings. Rows of terminal panels were fixed in front of each bench. Detecting her presence, the carriage’s machine-spirit sprang into life, illuminating a map display on a board in front of Wienand. She tapped in her cipher key and then selected the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor as her destination.
There was safety in public, she reasoned. The Cathedral was one of the greatest sites for pilgrims all across the galaxy to visit and at any time there were tens of thousands of them living and waiting in the Piety Dorms that stretched for several miles around the shrine. It was easy to get lost there, and Wienand needed to get lost very urgently.
The shuttle rattled into life as gear teeth bit into the rack running the length of the track, lurching the carriage forwards. The clanking increased in speed as the motor accelerated to full capacity, yellow lamps springing into life ahead and behind as the shuttle passed into the tunnel mouth at the end of the platform.
Leaning forward, Wienand reached under the bench and used her ring-transmitter to open the auto-bolt on the reinforced locker beneath. She pulled open the front to reveal several guns and pistols. She selected a lightweight bolt pistol and loaded it, placing it in the pocket of her coat. As added protection she pulled out a snub-nosed laspistol and tucked that inside her boot. Moving to the locker to her right she repeated the action and retrieved several blind and concussion grenades. Another locker yielded up a shock maul that slipped nicely up her sleeve and a sheathed vibroknife that she tied to her waistband.
As the shuttle clattered along in the gloom of its own lamps, Wienand took stock once more. Rendenstein was still alive, she was sure of it, if only because her bodyguard and assistant was fitted with an internal pulse monitor that had not activated. She might be captured or hurt, but Rendenstein’s heart was still beating.
It was impossible to hear anything over the clattering of the rack-and-pinion engine of the carriage, but Wienand could not shake the feeling that someone was following along the track behind her. She twisted on the bench and glared back. There was nothing in the twin cones of yellow projected by the rear lamps. In the darkness beyond, who could say?
In the fourteen tortuous minutes it took for the shuttle to clank and wheeze its way to the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor, Wienand formulated a plan.
It was a very simple plan. She would lose herself amongst the human crush of the Piety Dorms. That was as far as it went. Survival was her only goal in the foreseeable future. Once that was assured Wienand could expend thought and energy on something loftier, like finding out who was trying to kill her and how she was going to respond.
The implications of what Veritus had done horrified Wienand but she forced herself to think through the consequences. The Inquisition was meant to be a free-form, self-regulating organisation. In fact, the term organisation was misleading. The Inquisition was officially recognised by the Senatorum Imperialis and the rest of the Imperium, but other than that it had no formally mandated structure, duties or remit.
In essence there was no Inquisition as such, just inquisitors. Each inquisitor, a bearer of the Emperor’s Seal, was a power unto himself or herself. Nobody was quite sure who had appointed the first inquisitors – or even if anyone had appointed them and they had not simply assumed the role for themselves. Over a thousand years later, it was still true that an inquisitor was the only authority that could bestow the Emperor’s Seal to another. Not the High Lords, the entirety of the Adeptus Terra nor the Mechanicus could grant such power to one man or woman.
Necessity had required a certain amount of support and infrastructure, and ad-hoc solutions had, over the centuries, gathered gravitas and traction to become quasi-formal institutions. The Inquisition as an entity had grown, as had the role of Inquisitorial Representative. Wienand had read some of the earliest Senatorum reports and it seemed that in those early decades the Inquisitorial Representative had simply been whoever was on Terra and available at the time. That was when the Inquisition had been looking outward far more than inward; resurgent alien threats, the risk of the rise of forces allied to the Ruinous Powers.
It pained Wienand to consider the notion that perhaps Veritus had been right on some level. Maybe the Inquisition had been tainted by association. The free-thinking, dynamic band of trusted inve
stigators and agitators, judges and executioners, proselytisers and protectors had become something far greater, yet also diminished. The Inquisition possessed resources far beyond what it could have claimed even a century earlier, in terms of manpower, wargear and materiel. It had ships and soldiers, fortresses and libraries, communications nets, security protocols, sleeper cells, kill teams, relay posts, research stations and an untold number of agents, operatives, spies, infiltrators, slaved-servitors, pilots…
‘Damn,’ Wienand said out loud. ‘That bastard Veritus is right.’
The whole point of the Emperor’s Seal, the authority it represented, was to set the entire resources of the Imperium at the disposal of an inquisitor. If he or she needed an army, the Imperial Guard was required to oblige. If an inquisitor needed a ship, the Navy would provide. If someone was meant to be killed, there was the Officio Assassinorum. With a galaxy-spanning empire to draw upon, albeit fractured and impossible to govern, why did the Inquisition need these things for itself?
The answer was simple. The Imperium was broken. The offices and organisations meant to rule and control the vast interstellar swathes of mankind were simply unfit for the purpose. In fact, no institution would ever fit; the size of the Imperium and its scattered worlds prevented anything like meaningful communication and governance.
‘Damn,’ Wienand said again, as she realised the full extent of what Veritus intended. ‘He means to use the Senatorum as the Inquisition’s puppet. He thinks the Inquisition should control the Imperium.’
A hiss of hydraulics and a gentle squeak of brakes brought Wienand sharply back to the present. Veritus had to be stopped, but in due course. Wienand reminded herself of concern number one: survival.
The Inquisitorial shuttle bay was a concealed adjunct to a much larger transport station situated a few miles from the Cathedral of the Saviour Emperor. Glow-globes broke into dim life as the carriage coasted to a stop alongside a bare metal gantry of a platform. The carriage motors whined down to a low drone and then fell dormant. Wienand activated the nav-system once more, bringing the shuttle back to full life. She punched in the codes for dock three of the Widdershins Tower, location of the Cerebrium.
As the shuttle shunted forwards, Wienand jumped clear to the gantry and watched the carriage rattle on up the track. She wasted no time, darting up a set of metal steps at the end of the platform two at a time. She keyed in the combination of the lock-cycle barring the door at the top and slipped out onto the main concourse of Saviour Station.
The drone of hundreds of people greeted her and for the first time since setting foot in her chambers, Wienand allowed herself to hope that she might actually live through the next hour.
Seventeen
Port Sanctus – Vesperilles System
A constant rumble shook the deck as the Colossus’ guns kept up a rolling salvo of fire. The battleship’s lances spat white beams at the ork ships swarming along the line of Imperial Navy vessels. Void shield generator overload warnings thrummed as return fire ploughed into the battleships and cruisers of the Emperor’s Navy.
The greenskins had boiled out of the inner system like hornets streaming from a nest, dozens of smaller attack ships and a score of larger vessels that came hurtling directly for the fleet. Kulik had first taken the headlong charge as further proof that the orks were not as sophisticated as Price feared; such rush attacks had been the hallmark of many an ork raiding force for centuries. Lansung had ordered the fleet to split into lines of attack in response, hoping to break through the orks in a repeat of the attack on the asteroid field.
That was when the orks had revealed their first surprise. Rather than continue on their course directly towards the nearest ships, the alien warships had slowed and gathered their strength, turning their fury upon just two of the forming battle lines. The Colossus had been one of several ships that had borne the brunt of that first attack.
The Seraphic Guardian, Terrible, Last Endeavour, Magnificent Fate and Klaus Magnate had all surged forward in response to the call from Admiral Price to protect the flagship, but now the cruisers were embroiled in a messy fight with the smaller ork ships while the larger enemy vessels had broken away to concentrate their attack on the second line of Imperial ships.
Price was stalking back and forth across the bridge, grunting and muttering to himself. It was obvious that he had over-reacted to the first ork attack but it was too late to salvage anything meaningful from the situation.
‘Damage crews to prioritise the energy grid and flight decks,’ Kulik announced, adjusting his balance as another shockwave pulsed along the battleship. He glanced up at the screen showing the void shield generators and hull integrity data. More hits aft. The orks were very deliberately targeting the main engines. Shaffenbeck had evidently noticed the same thing.
‘Do you think they’re trying to cripple us before moving in for the kill, sir?’ said the first lieutenant.
‘Maybe,’ replied Kulik, though he preferred a different explanation, which he voiced, just loud enough to make sure Price could hear it too. ‘It might also be that they are trying to damage our engines to stop us getting anywhere near the attack moon. It might not be as impregnable as we feared.’
‘One disaster at a time, captain,’ Price said sharply. ‘The attack moon will wait for us to throw ourselves at it, no need to hurry the matter.’
Surprised, Kulik said nothing in response to the admiral’s defeatist remark, but caught a look from Shaffenbeck out of the corner of his eye.
‘Helm, bring us seven points to starboard and have every other fourth and sixth deck gun crew moved to their starboard batteries. I want a constant fire once we turn.’
Kulik studied the schematic a little longer. The cruisers had broken into pairs and were snaking their way to port, driving off the ork attack ships but leaving themselves vulnerable to several larger ork vessels moving up in a second wave.
‘Have Remarkable and Justified Annihilation come about on the port side,’ the captain told the comms officer. ‘They are to cross our turn and assist the forward cruisers.’
Price stopped his pacing and looked at Kulik with narrowed eyes. Remarkable and Justified Annihilation were two Lunar-class ships, the newest in the rimward patrol flotilla. Although part of the rimward fleet they were also under the command of Kulik as commodore, and he was technically within his rights to issue orders. The admiral looked at Kulik for several long seconds, perhaps trying to work out if the captain was being insubordinate, before he shook his head and resumed his stalking.
A secondary detonation somewhere amidships caused the Colossus to shudder from prow to aft, the sudden movement almost throwing Kulik to the deck. Price stumbled, to be caught by an alert lieutenant who had been turning to report.
‘Sir, we’re detecting a strange energy surge from the ork ships to starboard.’ Price pushed himself away from the officer and straightened his coat. Muttering some more, he turned and glared at the damage display on the main screen.
‘Be more specific, lieutenant,’ replied Kulik. ‘What sort of energy surge? That ship looks too small to be warp capable.’
‘It’s like a small-scale transition, captain. I’ve never se–’
‘Watch lieutenants on decks four and five report enemy boarding parties, sir!’
Price, Kulik and Shaffenbeck all turned as one towards the comms lieutenant who had issued the warning, then as one they all returned their attention back to the main screen. The nearest ork ship was at least three thousand miles away.
‘Confirm that report, Mister Hartnell!’ barked Shaffenbeck, striding towards the comms panel.
‘More ork attackers, sirs!’ the distraught lieutenant repeated. ‘Decks fourteen and fifteen.’
‘Teleport attack?’ Price was incredulous. ‘Those ships are far too small.’
‘Confirm some form of warp portal excavation, captain,’ said the office
r at the sensor console. ‘All three enemy ships have some kind of teleporter lock.’
‘Where?’ demanded Kulik.
The officer changed the main display and a series of green crosshairs sprang up on a rotating isometric display of the Colossus. There were breaches in seven different places. Blue icons represented the responding armsmen teams, closing in on the ork teleport attack sites from above and below.
‘Emperor’s blood, that’s two decks below us!’ Price took a few paces towards the comms officer. ‘Tell the armsmen to prioritise the second boarding. They must protect the bridge!’
‘Belay that order!’ Kulik’s command stopped Price in his tracks. The admiral was enraged as he rounded on the captain, but Kulik cut off his superior. ‘The first attack is right on top of the flight decks. We need to keep the launch bays operational. Officer of the watch!’
‘Sir?’ asked Shaffenbeck, stepping up.
‘Admiral Price will have ship command, in my absence,’ Kulik told him. The captain purposefully pulled free his service pistol and heavy sword. ‘These are not just for parades.’
‘This is highly improper, captain,’ protested Shaffenbeck.
‘Go with him, lieutenant,’ said Price, mollified by Kulik’s explanation. ‘See that your captain does not get into too much trouble.’
Caught between his sense of duty and two conflicting orders, Shaffenbeck stepped first one way and then the other, gaze flicking between his superiors. Kulik shot him a meaningful glance and the lieutenant seemed to break his stasis and followed his captain towards the doors.
‘Mister Hartnell,’ Shaffenbeck addressed the lieutenant at the comms station, ‘have Sergeant Latheram meet the captain at the top of the command deck third for’ard stairwell, with as many men from the upper companies as he can muster.’
‘Have him arm defence squads from the lance crews, they’ll be put to better use against the boarders than trying to hit fast attack ships,’ added Kulik as the doors rumbled open just in front of him. He paused at the threshold and turned on his heel to look at Admiral Price. ‘Leaving the bridge, with your permission, sir?’