by Guy Haley
Brusc dropped to his knees, his sword point down upon the floor. This was the crusade ancient, and one of the oldest living members of the Black Templars. Once a templar was granted this ultimate respect, he gave up his prior existence. Thus few knew who the warrior was interred within, but all were in awe of his wisdom.
With a rumble, the machine’s engines started. With a jerk like a man emerging abruptly from sleep, Cantus came online. The chambers of his hurricane bolter clicked as internal systems checked its status. He rose higher as the hydraulic systems in his limbs pressurised and his fibre bundles contracted. It looked from side to side, then leaned forward over Brusc, power fist whirring.
‘You are the reason I have been awoken from my long slumber,’ said Cantus.
‘I assume so, crusade ancient. The mysteries of initiation are not revealed until they are undertaken.’
‘Hrrrn.’ Cantus’s growl from his vox amplifiers might or might not have conveyed humour. ‘I have been told of you, Brother-Initiate Brusc. You are light of tongue, if heavy in honour. It is your doom to be judged by me. Will you hear my verdict?’
‘I will, brother ancient.’
‘I fear you shall not like it, brother.’
Brusc’s blood, still running hotly from his test in the ring, chilled instantly. He looked up at the Dreadnought. The armourglass slit in the sarcophagus glowed an eerie green, like the eyes of a dog in low light. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Heh, you forget your manners in your shock. You know what I mean!’ said the machine. ‘You are not worthy to join the Sword Brethren, not yet. Do not despair. You are strong of arm and will. But it is not yet your time.’
‘But, why?’ said Brusc. He felt no outrage, which surprised him. ‘I beat Parsival… Is it my faith? Is it my–’
The Dreadnought shifted its weight, an unconscious movement that recalled Cantus’s time as a man. The noise of his foot on the deck as he resettled himself rang loudly.
‘It is not your faith. Your faith is strong, Brother-Initiate Brusc. Nor is strength at arms the only qualification for acceptance to the Circle. Remind me of our motto, Black Templar.’
‘No pity! No remorse! No fear!’ shouted Brusc, the words pouring from him with pride and at full war volume. They boomed in the chamber.
‘Yes, yes!’ Cantus leaned back slightly. ‘These words were not lightly chosen, initiate. Our creed is to pursue the enemies of the Emperor to the ends of the universe, to never cease in spreading the reach of His holy light. You are his instrument. Does a sword have a conscience? No! It is thrust where the warrior who bears it wills it to go. You are a sword in the hand of the Emperor. That is what it means to be a Sword Brother. Not only to be a master of the blade, but to be the blade of the highest, most holy master – the Lord of Mankind – and to act unthinkingly under his guidance. I have reviewed many of your battles, watched the pict captures of your helm. There is yet too much mercy in you. You are not an arbiter, but the deliverer of judgement. Remember that, and your next admission to this room will prove more successful.’
The door behind Cantus Maxim Gloria squealed open.
‘Now depart, Brother-Initiate Brusc. Wakefulness is taxing, and my sepulchre calls to me. I have been otherwise impressed by the deeds I have witnessed and if half what the others say of you is accurate, then I am proud to fight beside you.’
Cantus turned, an awkward manoeuvre for so noble a machine. One foot remained in place as the other stumped about in a half circle. He rocked from side to side as he moved. Once he had attained a half rotation, he walked from the room, his giant feet banging thunderously upon the deck. Brusc’s face fell.
It took some time before he had gathered himself sufficiently to go back into the Place of Challenge and face the others.
The woman stared into Brusc’s eyes. As far as he could tell, this sect had done little to deviate from the norm of the Imperial Cult. He had seen far more divergent churches tolerated. Why were they here?
His conscience troubled him. He had taken an oath. There were to be no survivors. The heretics were to be expunged. At least these would have a clean death. Already the Ministorum preachers that dwelt aboard Majesty were building great iron fire cages to purify those who had strayed from the true path.
The credo of his order was that of crusade – the liberation of worlds and the expansion of the Emperor’s realm. Instead he was upon an Imperial world, about to execute frightened children in their mother’s arms. Who was he to deliver their judgement? Let some other dirty their hands. His gun wavered. Gritting his teeth, he brought it back to bear on the woman, before giving up completely.
With an explosive exhalation, he put up his gun. His cheeks burned with shame.
‘Get out of here,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Go on, repent. Be true to the teachings of the one true faith until the end of your days, or as I stand here before you I swear I shall hunt you down and kill you all.’
The woman let out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. She pulled herself from the quagmire. With frantic, shaking hands, she pulled her catatonic children up after her.
‘Thank you, thank you!’ she said.
‘I do not want your thanks!’ said Brusc. ‘Get out of here!’
They staggered into the sheeting rain, slipping in the mud and disappearing out of sight around the side of a monolithic forestry machine.
With the weakness of his mercy leaden in his chest, Brusc returned to the fight.
The Black Pilgrims
A cathedral ship was an immensity. They had no class, mark or design. Each was unique, a baroque fancy fashioned by the faithful to divine and ineffable plans.
The Veritas Diras was seven million tons of sculpted stone carved from a single asteroid. The harsh and unforgiving soul of a pilgrimage fleet, built to bring the radiance of the Emperor the worlds of the Imperium. It reflected a cold, lunar light from its marmoreal splendour, no warmth to its albedo glare.
Missing for three centuries, it was lost no longer.
The Veritas Diras had emerged from the warp into the far reaches of Goshan. At that distance from the system’s heart, the sun was an orange star not much larger than all the others. A world of ammoniac ice passed behind the Veritas Diras, bright as a coin. These were the dead marches. The cathedral ship was a monument in the graveyards of space. The beauty of its parapets and carved buttresses, of its towering statues of saints and heroes and the kilometres-long, double-eagle-headed prow, had become the stark beauty of a flensed skull, final and lifeless. Grand oriels and gallery casements reflected starlight, allowing none within. Blackness swam behind toothed mullions, secrets hidden by a skeletal grin.
This shrine-ship to the undying God-Emperor had become a mausoleum, an architectural death’s-head heretically presaging His final end.
A handful of other vessels attended the cathedral, caught in its weak gravity well.
Of the rest of the fleet that had set sail with it – many hundreds strong, and the millions of faithful that they had borne along the Macharian circuit – there was no sign.
‘This is an affront to the almighty Emperor,’ spoke Brother Godwin. ‘It is blasphemy!’
There were five of them. Black Templars, Sword Brothers, the veterans of the Dominar Crusade. They watched the dead ship through their helm displays, viewing feeds routed to them from their assault shuttle’s augurs. Dim red lighting bathed them in a sanguinary glow, making their black armour dark as murder and their white helmets and bone-coloured surcoats the scarlet of gore.
‘Three hundred years in the warp – I expected more damage,’ said Brother Ercus. More analytical than his brothers, he was yet devout through and through. There was no doubt that his heart belonged to the Emperor – nevertheless, he did not allow his piety to overwhelm him. He was a welcome check on the others.
‘The light of the Lord of Man would have kept it safe. Tha
t is a holy vessel,’ said Brother Morholt, the pilot of the assault shuttle, over the vox. ‘Proof, surely, against even the worst the warp can conjure.’
‘I do not think so. The ship’s body is pristine, brother,’ said Sword Brother Rolan. ‘The same cannot be said for its soul. It has no doubt been polluted by the warp, its crew and passengers devoured.’
He shifted in his restraints, hefting the heavy flamer grasped in his fist. He was eager to unleash its cleansing fire.
‘The forge reports the Geller fields intact,’ Castellan Adelard, their leader, said. ‘Thermal signatures indicate both reactors are active.’
‘Engines?’ enquired Mallas, the last of their group. He was a man of few words.
‘Offline,’ said Adelard. ‘The ship is dead.’
‘Not dead, its spirit lives,’ Dolus, the Crusade’s forgemaster, interjected. He and his Techmarines travelled in a second shuttle alongside the Sword Brethren’s. A third trailing the first pair carried more of their battle-brothers, the power-armoured initiates. ‘I have a reading on the central cogitator banks. Quiescent, but alive.’
‘You can rouse it?’ asked Mallas.
‘Of course.’ Dolus’s voice popped with star-born interference. ‘It has slept only a few centuries. All organic components are dead. Servitor-led systems have perished, but the machine-spirits wait patiently for the touch of the faithful.’
‘Life signs?’ asked Adelard.
‘It is hard to say, my lord. The vessel is carved into solid rock with a high iron content. I will have no definitive answer until we are closer.’
The trio of black-skinned shuttles set their retro burners, slowing them as they drew nearer to the cathedral ship. They passed beneath a lesser vessel.
‘Light escort cruiser,’ said Adelard. He targeted reticules in his visor, each centring on the armaments projecting from its sides. Each muzzle was fashioned in the form of a gargoyle. The stanchions between gun blocks were cast as angels – hands clasped, eyes looking upwards.
‘I see no damage here either,’ said Ercus.
A thumbnail screen in Adelard’s visor showed Ercus’s view. The Sword Brother was rapidly scanning the nearest vessels. ‘There is no damage to any of them.’
‘Then it is as reported. They were not overtaken by raiders,’ said Adelard.
‘The mystery deepens,’ said Ercus. ‘Genestealers, perhaps.’
‘Pah! There is no mystery,’ said Brother Rolan. ‘Warp intrusion. It is as I said. Genestealers could not infest an entire fleet. You are wrong, brother!’
‘Care to take a wager?’ asked Ercus.
‘Let us not make assumptions, best be wary for all eventualities,’ said Adelard. ‘Even you, Brother Rolan, as old as you are, have not seen all that the galaxy has to offer.’
The others laughed good-naturedly. Rolan made an exasperated noise. A fine fighter he was, perhaps the best of the Crusade’s veterans, but he spent more time doing penance than any of them.
The shuttle coasted under the giant, holy vessel. It was as big as a battleship, an ornate sphere as regal as a king’s orb, and the long prow and stern extending from its equatorial diameter made it appear transfixed by a sword. The shuttles circled it once, then again. The Sword Brothers watched intently, searching for signs of weapon damage or hull breaches. There were none.
‘All entries are sealed. Blast doors shut,’ Morholt reported. ‘This vessel was placed in lockdown.’
‘Forgemaster Dolus, can you access the ship’s systems and open the way within?’
‘Regrettably I cannot, castellan. I will need to interface directly with the machine-spirits of the cathedral ship. Once they are roused, remote operations will be child’s play. For now, they hide behind their code-walls and will pay no heed to me.’
‘Then select us a landing site that will allow quiet entrance,’ said Adelard.
‘There is window, a lesser chapel, here.’
A wireframe schematic scrolled up the inside of Adelard’s visor; Dolus’s suggested ingress blinked red. Adelard nodded, impatiently clearing with a thought-command the screeds of information cluttering his view. He was ready for action. They all were.
‘Brother Morholt, follow Brother Dolus’s recommendation. Bring us in. Enough of this reconnaissance.’
His brothers voxed their glad agreement. ‘Always forward,’ said Rolan, ‘never back. That is the way of the Black Templars.’
‘Aye!’ shouted the others. ‘Onwards for the glory of the Emperor!’
The shuttle travelled vertically relative to the cathedral ship, its heavily decorated skin scant metres away from the Black Templars prow. Grand statues slipped by, expansive canyons of carved stone plunged deep into the hull. The shuttle passed between two buttresses the size of fleet tenders. A tall window was before them.
There was a silent flash and the window sagged inwards, slagged by the assault craft’s melta array. Plasteel shutters on the inside of the windows shone with white heat and collapsed. Air blasted from the breach, buffeting the ship. Morholt played the weapons over the window, until he had cut out a gap large enough to allow the craft inside. The rush of air gave out and Morholt piloted them carefully within.
Darkness enveloped them. The shuttle jolted.
‘The gravitic plates here are functional,’ said Morholt.
The shuttle’s lights snapped on and tiny discs of illumination played over silent stone saints – a lesser chapel, yet still mighty. Morholt put the craft down near the chapel’s doors, some two hundred metres inside the ship. The other shuttles followed, landing not far from the first. They faced the doors, ready to bring their weapons to bear should the need arise.
The landing ramp of Adelard’s vessel opened. With metallic clunks felt and not heard, the mag-harnesses securing their Terminator suits disengaged. ‘Sword Brothers, forward,’ he said over the vox.
The Terminators filed out, passing from the shuttle’s light into the chapel’s gloom. The initiates ran out of their own craft, soundless in the vacuum, their swift deployment in a defensive circle registered as tremors upon the Sword Brothers’ suit senses. Dolus and his two acolytes came out of their own craft last, servo-harnesses unfurling as they cleared the hatchway.
Adelard investigated the chapel with all the technology his suit possessed. He sent his brothers out from him to widen the net. Their faith lanterns flickered at their waists, representing their undying zeal to bring the light of the Imperium’s rule to the darkness. Suit-lamps, far brighter, stabbed out from their hunched carapaces to chase off the night.
‘No signs of damage, brother,’ they said, one after another.
Adelard approached the side of the chapel. The floor was stone, cracked under the weight of the shuttles. The panels of the walls were of dark bronze inscribed with devotional scriptures. He glanced towards the broken window.
‘We shall do penance of thirteen nights for the destruction wrought upon this holy place,’ he intoned. ‘Unwillingly we destroy that which is sacred to the Emperor. May the light of Terra forgive us for our misdemeanours, though committed as they are during the course of our duties.’
‘We ask forgiveness of the Lord of Man,’ responded his brothers.
‘Forgemaster Dolus, attend to your prayers. We shall see if they will rouse the machine-spirits. Initiate Brusc, ensure that he does so unharried.’
‘We are eager to accompany you, my lord,’ Brusc protested.
‘I approve of your desire to engage, brother, but a defensive perimeter must be maintained. You will remain here. Protect the forge.’
‘Yes, castellan,’ said Brusc, bowing his head. ‘As you wish it.’
The Sword Brothers lumbered through echoing corridors, their backs swaying. They pushed on past chapel after chapel, thoroughly checking each for the presence of evil. They found none, only the stone faces of saints glarin
g in their suit-lamp beams. The squad flicked through their numerous sensor arrays without thinking. Infrared overlays gave them nothing but the chill landscapes of forgotten presbyteries, while echolocators sketched funereal monuments in sound. Motion trackers caught only their own progress.
Atmosphere persisted in the inner halls, but it was stale and poisonous. They breathed suit air, ripe with their own scents and the harsh, vinegary stink of carbon scrubbers. Their armoured boots clanged obscenely loudly in the silence, mag-locks clamping hard where gravity gave out.
‘Truly,’ said Mallas, dolorously, ‘this place of devotion has become nought but a tomb.’
They came at last to a set of great plasteel doors, every inch chased in gold depicting scenes from the Emperor’s life. The Space Marines halted in front of it, awed by its beauty. They muttered quick prayers and brought their weapons up to their faceplates, longing to kiss the killing edges of their blades and mauls in obeisance to the God of Men.
‘Sealed,’ said Ercus, who had recovered quicker than the rest. His upper torso rotated, away from the door switches hidden in exquisitely wrought miniature churches of alien wood. ‘The mechanisms are dead, their spirits fled.’
He rejoined his brothers. Terminator plate was clumsy and cumbersome, its heavy plating and restrictive range of movement made most wearers ungainly. Yet, somehow, Ercus managed to remain graceful.
Adelard thought out to his suit’s cogitator, commanding it to capture every square centimetre of the door. ‘The Black Templars will recreate this object, this I swear. I shall do it myself if needs be.’
‘A good oath, brother,’ said Godwin.
‘A necessary one. Now, break it down.’
Godwin advanced slowly in contrast to Ercus. However, he was nigh on unstoppable in battle. ‘My hammer is sorrowed by this work,’ he said.
‘Have Dolus pray to its spirit to placate it,’ said Adelard. ‘And assure it that you shall smite those who are forcing us to undertake this defilement.’