‘Exculpator!’ the Colonel shouts, hands cupped around his mouth. ‘Exculpator!’
I guess it’s some kind of call sign and add my voice, the cry taken up by others. The Battle Sisters manoeuvre to surround us, a thicket of bolters, heavy bolters and a multi-melta ready to turn us into bloody paste and vapour if we are deemed to be a threat. Immolator tanks with spark-tipped heavy flamers stand guard over us while silver-clad maidens of the Emperor’s wrath sweep the surrounding defences.
The Colonel tries to make himself known but his attempt to speak with our saviours is met by the silent injunction of raised bolters. I can’t say I can blame the Battle Sisters. Wasters and deserters are not exactly high on the list of righteous folk.
After several minutes the Rhino transports draw up, collecting most of the force along with nearly a score of dead and wounded.
‘We have casualties too!’ I call out as the Rhinos start to move off. Ten bolter muzzles greet me as I approach the battlement of the bunker roof, my hands held over my head. ‘Some of them are nearly dead. Take them with you!’
My request is met with silence but judging by the movements of the Battle Sisters they are communicating by vox. One of them with more ornate insignia breaks from the others and approaches the foundations of the bunker. A Rhino rumbles forward with her, stopping a few metres from the trench, bathing us with its searchlight.
‘Identify yourself,’ a voice commands from the transport’s vox-hailer.
‘Colonel?’ I say, turning to him. ‘Maybe you should handle this.’
He steps up next to me.
‘Colonel Schaeffer, 13th Penal Legion. Acheron command.’
I can imagine the Sister Superior’s surprise, seeing the dishevelled, waster-clothed man claiming to be a colonel of the Astra Militarum. Hopefully the call sign has allayed some of their doubts, but in all honesty I’d not take any chances if I’d met us either. We look like looters, or worse.
‘Surrender to the authority of the Order of the Argent Shroud,’ demands the Battle Sister, her voice given a harsh edge by the address system of her power armour.
‘We are at your mercy,’ the Colonel replies. ‘Praise the Emperor for your arrival.’
‘Bring forth your wounded,’ the Battle Sister tells us. ‘Put down your weapons.’
It takes a few minutes to comply. We carry out Karste and two others too injured to walk, using the long sleds as bridges over the trenches to set them down beside the Rhino. While the Battle Sisters inspect them one by one and then load them into the transport, half a dozen more of ours make their way out, assisted by able-bodied companions. They are searched thoroughly and then allowed to embark; all the while the guns of the Adepta Sororitas are trained on us.
‘Are you from the Abbey of Saint Silva?’ I ask the Sister Superior. ‘It was your hymns that guided us here.’
‘It was the Emperor that worked through you, Burned Man,’ says one of my followers, and others add their praises and testament.
The Sister says nothing, helmed head turning slowly to take in the sight of the Colonel, the wasters and the underhivers, before returning to look at me.
‘You are their preacher?’ she asks.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I reply quickly, realising what that might sound like.
‘He is the Burned Man, chosen of the Emperor, bearer of the Light of Terra,’ one of my followers calls out. A chorus of praise follows, ringing hollow in my ears as I look at the reflection of myself in the lenses of the Battle Sister’s helm. Her bolter rises just a few centimetres, enough to become threatening again.
‘By what authority do you claim the right to spread the word of the Emperor?’ Even through the address system I can hear the accusation in the question. ‘To what diocese are you attached?’
‘I am not a preacher,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t claim to be a preacher.’
‘He is more than a mortal bearer of the word,’ another of my underhive companions offers, making me cringe. ‘He is the Burned Man, the returned one. The breath of the Emperor flows from him.’
‘You lay claim to these powers?’ the Sister Superior demands, thrusting the muzzle of the boltgun towards me.
I fall to my knees, caught between the bolter and the desperate stares of my remaining followers. I see the Colonel gazing down at me. I read the expectation in his face, waiting for me to renounce everything that has happened just to save my skin.
I take a breath and look up at the Battle Sister, trying to focus past the massive barrel of her weapon. Faceless, she seems more like an animated statue than a living servant of the God-Emperor. I can feel the static from her power armour dancing across the hairs on my arm and smell the holy oils used to lubricate it.
‘I died and I live again,’ I say quietly, letting my hands drop to my lap. I straighten my back, determined to face my execution with whatever dignity can be mustered kneeling in bloodied ash, about to have my head blown off in front of those that think me blessed.
My arms itch and the back of my neck pulses in time with my heartbeat. I feel the quickening in my nerves. It isn’t the static of the armour causing the reaction. Though it was unexplained, I’d come to trust this new instinct.
‘The abyssal spawn are returning,’ I say, staring straight at the Sister Superior.
‘What witch–’ She stops when the retort of bolters sounds out from the sentry line beyond the trenches. As one the other Battle Sisters peel away, forming into squads as they move out into the battle again. Within seconds the whole company has moved from static force to mobile assault, engines roaring and voices raised in exultant battle-prayer as they move out over the ash dunes to engage the returning enemy.
‘Follow the Rhino,’ snaps the Sister Superior, looking at the Colonel. She motions with her bolter for me to stand up and I push myself to my feet. ‘Your fate will be decided at the abbey.’
She runs after her companions, squad falling in around her, heading towards the renewed flare and roar of conflict. I look out at the silver-armoured warriors advancing undaunted against the brazen horns and flashing aurae of the warpborn. For a moment they shine, perhaps just a stray beam of a searchlight on their armour, but the host of the Battle Sisters gleams against the shadows, every one of them sheathed in a pale illumination.
Ten
SAINTS AND BLASPHEMERS
I was hoping the journey to the abbey might provide some sense of relief but it feels just as fraught as every stage of our flight from the underhive before. It combines the eerie emptiness of the ghost city with the feeling of imminent battle that dogged us through the ork territories. Everywhere are reminders that not only is this a planet contested for several years, but also a new foe has arrived to sweep away all that came before.
Seeing command keeps and artillery pits empty, some of them with bodies still lying in the grime, is a stark reminder of the speed of the withdrawal. Hasty, I would say. I can see Orskya and other wasters looking carefully as we pass abandoned supply depots, some of them with tanks of promethium and barrels still stored. Here and there shells and ammunition crates are piled in magazines; camouflage netting covers boxes of rations, piles of bedrolls and other sundries. I can see the scavengers itching to let loose on these supplies but stern exchanges with the elders holds them back. The fear of retaliation from the Battle Sisters outweighs the instinct to take what they can and make a break for the wastes again.
We follow the Adepta Sororitas Rhino as it churns through the dirt, cutting across slit trenches, past stretches of razor wire and around tank trap lines, winding between emplacements. It feels like we’re intruding upon something hallowed, the noise of the engines and our own progress disturbing the still. Corpse flies buzz around cadavers marked with cruel blades, rotted beyond a few days. Some of them don’t even look human, their flesh contorted and melted into strange shapes, bones bent like heated plastek. Even
more disturbing are the corpses with grateful smiles on their faces, trapped in bliss at the point of death.
Not a lot of the dead, certainly not the numbers you’d see after a massed battle, but evidence that the retreat was not wholly without opposition. I see no orks, nor any evidence the xenos made it this far into the Imperial zone.
‘Why did they leave?’ asks Olesh, trudging alongside, Denas wrapped tight in a makeshift sling against his chest, firmly gripping the hand of Farann, who stares with naked curiosity at our surroundings.
‘Don’t know,’ I say, keeping my misgivings to myself.
‘Was it warpborn?’ the older child asks. The question is asked with a quiver of fear and darted looks at the shadowed entrances to bunkers around us.
‘Probably,’ I say. ‘I guess they appeared here too.’
‘But the abbey will be safe,’ Olesh says, though whether he’s reassuring his nephew or telling himself isn’t clear.
‘The Battle Sisters still hold,’ I say. ‘They are the Emperor’s blessed. You saw how they showed no fear of the warpborn.’
We can tell we’re getting near to the battle abbey by the singing on the wind. Like the transmission we intercepted, vox-hailers project the hymnals of the Emperor far into the gloom. The abbey itself rears like a small hill out of the smog, bastions of stone raised up to flank a metalled roadway leading to a gate tower set into a high wall of buttressed ferrocrete.
Bodies hang on the guard towers, not of orks but humans, stripped naked, eyes put out. Scores of them, bound to the wall by spiked chains, each carved with the symbol of the Ecclesiarchy on their chests, branded with marks of purity and faith. A worried muttering erupts, and my gut tightens as I read the signs set above the grisly displays:
The Price of Heresy
The Rewards of Treachery
The Fate of the Unfaithful
‘Whose side are they on?’ whispers Nemoa.
Everyone slows, wasters and hivers alike, fearful of coming under the guns of the forbidding abbey. There’s probably not one among them that hasn’t cursed or blasphemed, and even those that have been adamant in my divine survival are perhaps thinking that such thoughts might be heretical to the Battle Sisters. It’s a pointed message that the Adepta Sororitas are here to serve the Emperor alone and no mortal agency of the Imperium.
The gate opens to the advance of the Rhino and remains so as we follow into the shadow. A shiver passes through me on the threshold, but it’s just the chill of the abbey’s interior, or so I tell myself.
It’s not helpful that the first thing I see in the enclosed courtyard is a statue of the Emperor towering above us, flaming spear piercing the Horusian Serpent that twines about His legs. This is flanked by two lesser figures of the Sisters’ battle saints, one with bolter, the other with shield and sword, the skeletons of their foes underfoot. A chant plays from voxmitters built into sculpted cherubs that line the overhang of the parapet around us, every surface covered with sculpted scrollwork, reliefs of the Great Virtues and images of the Sisterhood putting the foes of the Emperor to death. Even underfoot the floor is tiled in cracked mosaic, a repeating pattern that incorporates the Imperial aquila, the Skull Imperator and the stylised ‘I’ symbol of the Ecclesiarchy, wrought in mesmerising red, black and white.
Some of the wasters stumble to a stop, arms falling to their sides, heads slowly turning one way and then another to take in their extraordinary surrounds. Quite a few of my followers drop to their knees, some of them even prostrating themselves before the marble-and-gold splendour of the Imperial Majesty. Of those that remain standing, most make the sign of the aquila – hands across chest, thumbs interlinked – or gesticulate some other devotional. My response is to raise a crooked finger to forehead, touching knuckle to flesh as I mutter ‘Imperator Dominus.’ It’s probably the first time I’ve done that since I left Olympus and I don’t remember how young I was when it was beaten into me as the sign of respect to the Rex Imagifier.
These terms flood back to me unbidden. They seemed nonsensical as a youth, as alien to me as orkish or verilixian.
A squad of Battle Sisters emerges from a fortified door on the right, bolters and flamer directed at us. Under their guard several other women follow, dressed in red robes beneath black tabards, hair hidden under white hoods. They are not armoured but they don’t look any less fearsome. They immediately move to the Rhino and start to unload the wounded.
Hospitallers. More precisely, Sisters of the Orders Hospitaller of the Adepta Sororitas. I remember medicae stations among the Astra Militarum bases run by their members and occasionally roaming underhive clinics. A dozen more young orderlies – all girls – come bearing stretchers and medicae equipment. Some of the wounded are treated there and then, writhing and moaning under the attention of the Sisters. Others are placed on the stretchers and carried away.
I watch closely but don’t see Karste. I start forward but find myself the target of eight bolters, a bolt pistol and a flamer within two strides.
‘The girl with the pierced lung?’ I say, holding up my hands.
One of the Hospitallers looks up from her charge, arms bloodied to the elbow as she unties a tourniquet.
‘Which one?’ she asks, abrupt but not without some kindness in her face.
‘A crest, sort of.’ I mimic Karste’s hair and point inside the Rhino. ‘Stabbed in the ribs, caught in the lungs.’
‘She was already in the Emperor’s grace when you arrived,’ the Sister Hospitaller replies, turning back to her patient.
Frustration boils into rage and I want to scream, to pound my fists against something. For the love of anything, what is the point in dragging myself and everyone through this hellhole?
I want to shout out, to ask the Emperor what He wants from me. I’m trying as hard as I can, I really am. I could have walked away, ditched the dead weight a hundred times in the last day, but I didn’t. In the underhive, when I was burning, I could have given up and let the pain consume me, but I didn’t. I thought the Emperor was keeping me alive for some purpose, but if it’s just to keep seeing people around me dying then I’m not sure I want this gift.
Acutely aware of the Battle Sisters with their weapons still trained on me, I grasp hold of the anger as it tries to flood out. Shaking, hands trembling as I fold my arms to stop myself doing something stupid, I grit my teeth and look at the mosaic by my feet, trying to find a place of calm.
I stand like that for some time, ignoring everything, trying to make some sense of what’s happened to me.
‘They all be dead.’
I look up at the quietly spoken words and find Orskya next to me. I realise she’s unarmed – everyone except me has turned their weapons over to a grim-looking Sister in grey robes who’s come out from the abbey. The newcomer is dark-skinned, her long hair plaited tightly and wound into a conical shape, held in place by silver hairpins with skulls for heads. Her left cheek is branded with the triple feather of the Sisterhood, a ruby piercing her flesh as though binding the feathers together.
‘What?’ I mumble. The grey Sister points at me, and then to the knife and pistol at my waist.
‘Your friend dead, but others alive,’ Orskya explains. ‘Dead if you not bring them.’
‘She wasn’t my friend,’ I reply, not sure of the right words. I pull my knife free and then my pistol, handing them both grip first to the severe-looking woman. She turns and throws them unceremoniously on the pile of hiver and waster weapons behind her.
‘Which of you is Colonel Schaeffer?’ she demands, looking over us, obviously confused by our lack of uniforms.
‘I am,’ Schaeffer says, stepping forward. He comes to attention and salutes smartly, so terribly crisp and proper despite his salvaged waster gear.
‘I am Canoness Erasmisa of the Order of the Holy Seal, ranking Sister of this abbey.’
‘One of the Or
ders Famulous?’ says the Colonel, dropping his hand to his side. ‘In command of a battle abbey?’
Erasmisa turns a steady stare on him, lip curling slightly as she speaks.
‘This was, until recently, a combined military force. The Famulous are well placed to coordinate between the Battle Sisters and the Astra Militarum.’
‘I meant no offence, revered Sister,’ the Colonel says quickly. It’s the most put out I’ve ever seen him, and I’ve seen him facing down alien monstrosities and ranking generals with equal calm. ‘I am surprised that non-military personnel have not been evacuated.’
Erasmisa turns a withering stare upon the rest of us, assessing each in turn with a glance.
‘I do not abandon my duties simply because others abandon theirs.’ Her gaze lingers on us for quite some time, everyone overawed by their surroundings, not meeting her stare. ‘Quite an eclectic group you have here, Colonel.’
He stiffens.
‘They are not mine,’ he says archly. He turns and points at me, just a hint of malice in his gaze. ‘They follow this one.’
‘The Burned Man, I see,’ says the canoness. She motions to the Battle Sisters and two of them step forward, weapons at the ready. ‘Sister Superior Aladia sent word. Take him to a cell.’
‘What?’ I take a step back, only just remembering not to lower my hands in case it’s taken as a threat. Some of my followers shout their protests.
‘The charge of heresy will be deliberated as quickly as possible,’ Erasmisa says, as easily as if she were discussing the list of evening prayers. ‘We have little time to waste on these distractions. Let us hope there are no others that require examination.’
Cowed by the Sister’s threat, my underhivers fall silent. I allow the Battle Sisters to lead me towards the door, sparing one look for the Colonel as I walk past. I wouldn’t say he appears smug, it’s just not in his character. But he does have the impression of a man who is at ease with his life for the moment.
Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Page 14