Minka found herself lying on a stone floor. She wheezed and coughed for what seemed like an eternity as vomit and filth came out of her nose and mouth.
At last, she opened her eyes and sucked in the sweetest breath she had ever inhaled. Wiping the water from her face, she blinked, trying to see where she was.
‘Are you all right?’ a voice said.
She blinked again as she pushed herself up to her knees. She couldn’t make out who was talking to her. ‘Who is that?’ she said.
‘Me.’
‘Who the frekk is me?’
‘Grogar,’ the voice said.
She cleared her eyes and looked at the heavy bolter gunner in disbelief. She was full of questions but they could wait. None of that mattered. They were here and they were alive.
‘Where are we?’ Minka said.
Grogar pulled his lumen from its pouch. He wiped the casing dry, and gave her a look to say, Let’s see if this works.
It did. The light flickered for a moment, then held true. He turned the beam upwards. In the circle of light, they could see a vaulted ceiling, mouldy plaster shapes crumbling away and, here and there, the glimmer of gold.
In niches in the wall there were statues. Somewhere nearby they could hear running water.
‘Is this the Great Chamber?’ Minka said, her feet squelching within her sodden boots.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘It can’t be. It was supposed to be a way up into the hive.’
They emptied water from their footwear, then Minka led Grogar over the fallen masonry to the nearest statue, which was about thirty feet across the tiled floor. It stood in a niche carved with interlocking aquilas. The figure stood on a bronze pedestal, thick now with verdigris, half-buried in dust and dirt and rubble.
It looked like it had once held a spear, but the spear had gone, and the other arm was broken off at the elbow. Despite the mould and the dust, it was unmistakably the figure of a female saint. Minka looked for an inscription. She could not find one, but she felt an immediate closeness with the helmed figure. She reached up and put her hand on the saint’s leg and flinched for a moment.
‘Do you feel that?’ she said to Grogar.
He put out his hand and touched the statue as well. ‘It’s warm!’ he said.
‘I don’t think any heretics have come here. They would have defaced it.’ She closed her eyes and let the warmth in the statue calm her. Conviction that she would not die here filled her. This must have been a chapel once. Whatever it had been, there was a power here still that the heretics avoided.
Grogar looked about. ‘This is some hole we’ve found ourselves in. Just the two of us. No las. No vox.’
Minka had seen tighter scrapes than this. ‘You weren’t on Cadia,’ she said. ‘I mean, at the end.’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I wasn’t.’ The big man’s cheeks coloured. The 2050th had been recalled to Cadia, but they’d been held up in the warp, and never made it. They felt guilty and resentful that they had not been there, to see Cadia fall.
‘I was,’ Minka said. She remembered the flight from her home and how, despite the terror and the horror and the loss, there was hardly a trooper who had not seen angels protecting them, or showing them the way.
When you were in a hole as deep and dark as this one, faith was the one thing that kept you alive.
‘Do you remember Cadia?’ she said urgently. ‘I mean, can you picture the place still, in your mind?’
Grogar pulled a face. ‘Not really. I mean, I was only fifteen when I left…’ He trailed off. ‘It’s been twenty years. I’ve seen so many other planets, they all start to blur.’
Minka was intense. ‘Try and remember,’ she said. She reached out and touched the statue. ‘Picture yourself on the Caducades. Or picture the first time you saw Kasr Tyrok.’
Grogar pulled a face but she was insistent.
‘Do it!’ she ordered.
He shut his eyes, and she put his hand back to the statue and held it in place. Then she shut her own eyes. ‘Think of Cadia. Can you see it?’
Minka could. The recollection of her home world was so powerful it almost made her weep. She pressed her eyes together and could smell the distinct salt-air smell of the rocky beaches along the Caducades coastline. She could feel the wind on her face, could feel herself clambering up the rocks to the top of the island, to listen to the moan of wind in the honeycomb of the pylon that stood there. She could see the searchlights of Kasr Tyrok, the flights of Thunderbolts heading into the sunset, and hear the klaxon sounding as the night watch began.
She did not know how long they stood there. The sensation of warmth grew, then receded. When it had gone entirely Minka felt almost deflated. But then she noticed something had changed. ‘My clothes are dry,’ she said. She took his hand and put it on her sleeve.
Grogar looked at her, and then looked down at his own Cadian drab combat suit. Only his boots were still wet. His jacket, trousers, flak armour were crusted with dry salt. He started to laugh. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said, but he was a simple-minded warrior and this was beyond his understanding.
But Minka understood. It was a miracle or a sign. Of that she was sure. She slapped his arm. ‘Defeat is not an option. We have to get out of here. Don’t you understand? This is the hour of utmost darkness. But we’re Cadians. We survived. And the Imperium needs us.’
He nodded slowly, only just grasping what she meant. But one thing was easy enough to comprehend: this was the hour of darkness, and the Imperium needed them more than ever.
A BROTHER’S CONFESSION
Robbie MacNiven
Once, before it had been carved from its bedrock and cast adrift among the stars, the Chapel of the Dioskuri had been a high, cold place. Mountain raptors had called it their home as readily as the lonely pilgrims who had trekked through snow drifts and along knife-backed ridges to reach it. Stories were told among the Primaris Space Marines that the fragile bones of birds and woven votive offerings left by worshippers could still be found in its darkest corners. Kastor, who frequented the chapel more than any of them, had certainly never come across such relics. They had long since crumbled to dust, for it had been ten thousand years since the Dioskuri had lain heaped beneath mountain snow, or moaned with the bitterness of a midwinter wind. Ten millennia had gone by since it had been uprooted and rebuilt, stone by stone, on board the battle-barge Spear of Macragge. Now its pilgrims were god-warriors of the former XIII Legion, and its attendant, Kastor, wore the skull-helm of an Adeptus Astartes Chaplain.
He donned that helm now, though there was no immediate threat of battle. The black armour and vestments of a Chaplain were as ceremonial as they were functional. They represented the wearer’s grave charge: to uphold the faith and purity of his battle-brothers, and act as both judge and executioner for those who failed. In that moment, as the Spear of Macragge traversed the currents of the warp on its way from combat operations in the Atari system, Kastor stood in judgement.
‘It is time, brother.’
The accused had surrendered himself of his own volition and now knelt before Kastor and the chapel’s altar, shrouded in the black cloth of judgement. His name was Polixis, and he was the Apothecary of the Fulminata – one of the strike forces of Primaris Marines who, a century earlier, had joined the Ultramarines Chapter. Light from the tallow candles set around the chamber flickered along the strong lines of his face and gave his blond hair a deeper, golden sheen.
‘Speak now, before the Emperor’s sight.’
The ritual words rang through the chamber, scraping from the vox vocaliser of Kastor’s helm like an executioner’s blade across a whetstone.
Polixis was silent before answering, his head dipped, as though he was trying to find the words that would most succinctly convey his guilt.
‘I killed my battle-brother,’ he said eventually, his voice low but fi
rm.
Kastor remained still.
Polixis raised his burning gaze to meet the Chaplain’s darkened visor. ‘I killed Artimaeus Tulio, of the Fulminata.’
Five Days Earlier
The de la Sario manor house shook with gunfire, screams and the fury of the Primaris Space Marines. The Fulminata rarely tasted defeat, and yet on this day, their objective was slipping away.
Polixis launched two shots from his bolt pistol. The hard rounds punched through the charging Tchari supplicator’s bare breast and burst open his chest cavity. The man, clad only in a white loincloth and a silver hook-nosed mask, dropped instantly. Two of his cult kindred threw themselves into adjacent doorways. A spray of las-fire whipped into the dark stonebark panels that lined the hallway as they attempted to keep the Primaris Apothecary at bay, forcing him to one side.
Polixis advanced, using speed to close the distance before either cultist could pin him. He slammed another shot into the doorframe that sheltered one of them. A hail of splinters ripped through the man’s torso. He dropped, screaming. His comrade managed to fire two last las-bolts into Polixis’ left greave and breastplate before his weapon’s power pack whined, its charge empty.
Neither shot penetrated the Space Marine’s white battleplate.
The Apothecary fired a double-tap at point-blank range into the man, shredding his muscled body and painting his blood up the walls. He turned to the other, who lay on the floor with several wooden stakes protruding from his abdomen. Polixis’ fingers wrapped around the struggling man’s throat, then twisted. There was a loud crack and the cultist became limp in his hands. He tossed him aside, then moved on down the corridor without pause, reloading as he went.
Time was running out.
The door at the far end of the corridor caved beneath his boot just as Intercessor Squad Nerva stormed the chamber beyond from the other side. The dining space resounded with the click-crash of auto bolt rifles and the shattering of glass. Polixis arrived in time to split another of the Tchari in two as he fumbled for a grenade from the bandolier strapped over his chest. The round blew half the cultist’s skull away and sent his broken silver grotesque spinning across the room.
‘The hall is ours,’ said Sergeant Nerva.
‘There’s no sign of the governor in the servant’s quarters,’ Polixis added, striding across the room to join the squad as they spread out.
‘Aerial scans show him being removed to the west of the manor house by the cult,’ Nerva said, voice grim, while four Primaris Marines from his combat team – Ovido, Plinus, Priscor and Quintillius – secured the battered room, scanning the heretical Tchari corpses. ‘The captain has ordered an air strike to neutralise him.’
Polixis said nothing. It took a conscious effort to bury the anger that surged through his thoughts. Nerva and the Primaris strike team had arrived at the manor as dawn broke, hoping to recover Governor de la Sario before the cult could reach him. Only the ruler of Atari could access the gene-vault that contained the codes for the planet’s orbiting weapons platforms. Unless the governor was now neutralised, the heretics of the Tchari – daemon-worshippers who had risen in a coordinated revolt against Imperial rule – would have access to weaponry capable of scouring Atari bare.
‘The western and northern portions of the estate are overrun,’ Nerva continued. ‘The captain is moving to secure the vault as we speak, but there are over four hundred cult members converging on us. We have orders to evacuate.’
‘What about his daughter?’ Polixis asked. ‘Her gene-stamp will be as effective as his.’
‘My second combat squad were searching for her, but their flanks are overwhelmed and time is tight,’ Nerva said. ‘If both father and daughter are lost to the cultists, we need to extract and consolidate at the vault. The heretics can’t be allowed to access it.’
Polixis was about to reply when the heads-up tactical display scrolling across his visor pinged.
‘The second combat team are taking casualties,’ he said. The sigils that represented the vitae-signs of the two members of the Intercessor squad – Scaevola and Tulio – had both blinked yellow. A second later, the clipped tones of Tarquin, leader of the five-man detachment, crackled over the vox-link.
‘More cultists entering from the west. At least a platoon in strength, including heavy stubbers. Still no sign of the girl. Another minute and we’ll be intersected.’
‘Withdraw,’ Nerva ordered. ‘We are out of time.’
Even as the automatic confirmation blinked over the visor, the vox was chopped by the furious thudding noise of a heavy weapon, playing counterpoint to the beat echoing through the manor. The mark representing Tulio’s life feed turned red.
‘Brother Tulio has been hit,’ Tarquin said, words barked over the crashing sounds of a close-range firefight. ‘His Belisarian Furnace triggered but he has been cut off.’
‘Withdraw,’ Nerva reiterated. ‘I am not returning to the Fulminata having lost half of my squad.’
‘His progenoids must be recovered,’ Polixis interjected.
‘If they attempt to retrieve his body, they will suffer more casualties. The Codex is clear on this matter. There is too much to lose for too little gain.’
‘I was not suggesting your Intercessors retrieve him,’ Polixis said. ‘It is my duty to retain his legacy for the Chapter.’
‘With all respect, Brother-Apothecary, I could not countenance losing you either. This building is too large and complex to secure, and cultists are flocking here every second we delay. The more of us that fall, the more emboldened they will become.’
‘Tarquin will be drawing the main body of the Tchari after him. I can use the tactical display to outflank them and get to Tulio. The speed of the cultists’ assault ensures they won’t have time to mount a static defence.’
Nerva was silent for a moment before speaking again, his tone reluctant.
‘You know I cannot stop you, Brother-Apothecary, but we will be gone from this accursed place in under ten minutes. If you are not on board the extraction, there will be angrier brothers among the Fulminata than just Captain Demetrius.’
‘I will see you aboard the extraction, Sergeant Nerva,’ Polixis promised, already moving towards the hall’s main doors.
Polixis strode out of the dining hall, bolt pistol raised. Data bursts transmitted between the withdrawing Intercessors’ autosenses had mapped out much of the manor on the heads-up display, but presented no information about the location of the Tchari supplicators. There were half a dozen corridors and rooms between the Apothecary and the withdrawing combat squad, but the cultists in their leering silver masks were flooding into the estate grounds from all directions. Tarquin and his brethren could already be cut off.
The Apothecary passed down a narrow, bare service corridor and into the kitchen block. Gleaming work surfaces, stoves and ovens stretched away from him. He entered through the swing doors just as armed cultists, with eye-achingly blasphemous sigils painted onto their bare breasts and arms, emerged at the opposite end.
Polixis fired first. One of the Tchari went down, his left shoulder reduced to a bloody ruin. The other briefly hesitated, frozen between fight and flight. He chose fight.
A single las-bolt blew a cluster of hanging herbs to dust and ricocheted from a spread of cutlery laid out beside one of the kitchen drainage units. The man did not have a chance to release another shot before Polixis ended his existence. The Apothecary passed through the kitchen, bolt pistol tracking behind the counters and meat cryo blocks for targets. Yet there were none.
He stepped over the two bodies, scanning them as he passed through the doorway and into the corridor. One cultist’s vitae signs still showed, but were close to flat-lining – he was unconscious and would be dead from blood loss in just over a minute.
The Apothecary didn’t pause. He moved down the secondary service passageway and up a sh
ort flight of steps into a storage locker, stepping between barrels of salted meats, dried fruits and heavy sacks of flour.
Beyond, he met the remains of Tarquin’s combat team.
‘Apothecary,’ the Intercessor said as Polixis emerged into a small annex connecting to the manor’s librarius. Four members of the team were present – Sergius, Valent and Tarquin standing over the prone form of Scaevola. He’d clearly been dragged from their last contact zone. His breastplate had been split by three heavy-calibre hard round impacts, and numerous small arms shots perforated the scarred ceramite.
‘We were caught in crossfire as we retreated from the foyer,’ Tarquin said as Polixis knelt beside Scaevola, a hint of bitterness creeping into his clipped report. ‘We tried to reach the governor, but there were too many. Well over a hundred contacts. They used their own bodies as shields so they could get him away from us.’
Polixis didn’t answer as his diagnostor helmet scanned the patient, linking with the output of his armour’s autosenses via the black carapace interface. The rune representing Scaevola on the vitae display blinked red. Still, he ran a diagnostic over the body anyway, plugging his prognosticator into Scaevola’s tasset node. The secondary readout confirmed the first – he was beyond the Apothecary’s skill.
‘He is slain,’ Polixis said simply, indicating his narthecium. ‘I must remove his progenoids immediately.’
While Tarquin checked the tactical updates, Polixis blink-triggered his reductor. The tool, built into the gauntlet of his narthecium, came in two parts – a fine-toothed carbon alloy chainblade extractor, and an adamantium drill bit. It was the latter that he activated first, placing it firmly against the centre of Scaevola’s breastplate. There was a familiar shriek of cracking plasteel, and Polixis gritted his teeth as the drill bored its way through first blue-painted ceramite, then the plasteel beneath. After an exact depth of penetration readout on the Apothecary’s modified helm display, he removed and deactivated the bit, placing the reductor’s extractor tube in the perfectly circular hole in Scaevola’s armour.
Lords and Tyrants Page 10