by Rob Sanders
About him, Occam heard the pumps and life support die away. The rumble of the Dreadclaw’s thrusters could no longer be felt through the drop pod’s superstructure. The Serpent’s Egg was now nothing more than a coffin tumbling through space.
All the legionnaires could do was wait. Occam pulled himself around the compartment, checking on the unconscious Reznor and putting him back in his cradle. He checked on Ephron Hasdrubal also. The sergeant assured him that beyond getting sparks directly into his eyes when his helm was hit, the cracked optics and faceplate itself showed no sign of a breach. This was the same with Reznor’s blackened gauntlet.
The Word Bearer was not so fortunate. Without his plate, the Traitor was exposed to the fierce hostility of the void. A drop in pressure. A lack of oxygen. Murderous cold. Checking the prisoner, who already looked like he had been beaten and tortured into a private hell, Occam saw that his genetically engineered body was already responding to its glands and implants. The Word Bearer was entering a state of suspended animation, preserving his vital functions, while his skin had started to bleed a parchment-like second surface – a thin organic veil of scabby threads that Occam knew would form into a cocoon-like covering, protecting the prisoner from the ravages of the environment.
The Redacted bided their time. Without ports in the armoured Dreadclaw and with the exterior pict-feeds dead, the renegades knew nothing of what was happening in the void outside. Occam even tried to peer through the cracked breach in the compartment wall but could see nothing. The Serpent’s Egg could be at the epicentre of a desperate space battle between the Iota-Æternus and the Inquisitorial corvette – and probably was – but locked inside the drop pod, the legionnaires knew nothing.
From time to time the strike master’s plate registered ghostly readings suggestive of activity outside – energy feedback from what could have been an exchange of laser beams and cannon fire. He felt the slightest inertial nudge of the Dreadclaw adjusting trajectory, probably caused by the drop path crossing the path of an engine trail or sub-light turn where the two vessels outside were desperately trying to position themselves for a devastating broadside.
Naga-Khan had been a privateer for the alien races of the Eastern Fringe and had engaged Imperial vessels in piratical actions many times before. More recently, the strike master had been on the bridge while the shipmaster had sprung such ambushes. Naga-Khan favoured drawing his victims in, presenting the Iota-Æternus as a harmless freighter broadcasting false identica on all channels. As inquisitive vessels approached, he would present the unarmed Q-ship’s flank. Without weaponry, such a manoeuvre failed to register as a threat. That was until the shipmaster ordered compartment doors rolled aside on the vessel’s port and starboard sides, revealing to an attacker hidden cannon batteries instead of freight holds. Firing as each cannon bared, the Iota-Æternus overloaded the enemy’s forward void shields and blasted powerful energy beams down through the length of the target vessel, Naga-Khan ultimately crippling his foe.
Occam had seen the captain expertly spring the same successful ambush a hundred times. He could think of no reason why such a scenario wasn’t playing out at that moment. The shipmaster had the element of surprise, as well as xenos-modified weaponry and sub-light engines. The strike master bet, however, that Naga-Khan had never faced the captain of an Inquisitorial corvette before. Such ships benefitted from some of the best technology the Imperium had to offer.
The Redacted’s long wait finally came to an end with the subtle reintroduction of gravity. As Occam’s boots drifted back down and the drop pod thunked to the floor of a hangar flight deck, the strike master considered to whom the deck belonged.
‘Pattern Asteron,’ Occam ordered. Quoda and Malik joined their strike master about the compartment walls, their glowing plasma guns pointed at the hatch. Hasdrubal, Reznor and the Word Bearer were still locked in their cages but the sergeant had his multi-blade dagger out. Autolicon Phex had taken position behind the cradles, his heavy plasma gun pointing between the legionnaires and down the length of the drop pod.
As a plasma torch went to work on the exit hatch of the Serpent’s Egg, filling the inner compartment with sparks, Occam and his legionnaires hugged their weapons against their pauldrons. There was no time for grenades, or to allow such weapons to be thrown into the Dreadclaw from outside. As soon as an enemy presence was confirmed, the Redacted would need to turn the hatch into a monstrous mouth vomiting forth a storm of murderous plasma.
‘Stand by,’ Occam said as the plasma torch finished its work. ‘Remember – do not be taken alive. That’s an order.’
Occam saw the legionnaires nod their agreement. They only had to look at the Word Bearer to see what a vengeful Inquisition had in store for them.
As the hatch fell away and thunked to the deck, smoke obscured the opening. Occam’s cycling optics revealed figures beyond. One came forward through the obscurity.
‘The shipmaster’s compliments,’ a voice carried into the compartment. It belonged to Mina Perdita. As the smoke cleared, the Redacted could see the Assassin, the High Serpent and members of the Seventh Sons on the hangar deck beyond – the deck belonging to the Iota-Æternus. ‘He is glad to report that he has crippled the enemy vessel, my lord – with superficial damage to our own.’
‘Very good,’ Occam told the Assassin, allowing the barrel of the plasma gun to drift down. The legionnaires in the compartment did likewise. ‘My compliments in return.’
‘Your orders, my lord?’
‘My orders,’ Occam told her, ‘are to get us out of here – best possible speed.’
PART III
UNITY AND LIES
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Turning The Scales
The Cathedra Crosium was definitely impressive.
Even a man like Archimedis Van Leeuwen – no stranger to the segmentum’s wonders – found himself staring.
Towering high above the low-gravity world of Incandesica, the cathedra’s crown of steeples and chapel towers reached for the heavens. Incandesica was situated at the heart of the Crozier Worlds and was the hub of Adeptus Ministorum affairs in the sector. The mighty Cathedra Crosium sat at the heart of Incandesica’s high-rise continental expanse of City-Sanctus. One fat hive, expanding for thousands of kilometres and dominated by dormitory spires, temple complexes and the magnificence of gothic shrines, the City-Sanctus was swarming with priests and pilgrims.
Doubling as a palace of planetary governance, the great state rooms of the cathedra were vaulted chambers of ornate stonework – ancient and beautiful. Colonnades of statues ran up the centre, depicting cardinals and other high ecclesiarchs heralding from the sector, and saints that had inspired the faithful of the Crozier Worlds.
The colonnade came to an end at the centre of the cavernous chamber. Situated there was the pulpit throne of the cardinal incumbent, framed by a colossal tapestry bearing a fanciful depiction of the God-Emperor carrying the globe of Incandesica on his armoured shoulder. Above the throne, the cathedra’s highest steeple remained open like a crown of its own, revealing the starlit firmament and the passing of the cardinal world’s devotional moons.
Even at a brisk pace, it took half an hour to make one’s way through the palace’s many massive ante-chambers, ambulatories and transepts. Fraters, pilgrims and confessors stopped in their tracks to allow the party to pass, while boltgun-wielding Battle Sisters, in full ceremonial palace plate, gave the visitors the narrowing of their eyes.
Leading the way in his robes and furs was the Lord Inquisitor Van Leeuwen, a member of the Holy Ordos. The sigil of the Ordo Hereticus emblazoned on the breast of his ancient powered plate told all that even in a place of important men, he was a man of singular importance. The inquisitor carried his ornate helm at his side and tapped an empty belt holster with a bionic claw – the bolt pistol that usually resided there had been left with the dean of the palace gate as a sign of respect.
Several Sister-Vestals gasped as they saw his gruesome face up close. The
mottled transparency of his face and the skin stretched across his skull were evidence of several rejuvenat treatments too many. The silver fangs that replaced his teeth and the red pin-point optics burning through his misted eyes and glowing through his wasted flesh added to the inquisitor’s grotesque appearance.
He was not alone. The flagstones shook beneath his own step as an honour guard of recruited penitents flanked him. The last surviving members of the Nova Legion, the five Angels of Death had painted over their legionary colours with the black of mourning and pledged their superhuman talents to Van Leeuwen and his hunt for their sworn foes. Like the inquisitor, they too had left their weaponry with the dean.
Attending upon Van Leeuwen in the form of diplomatic aides were a native son and daughter of the Crozier Worlds. Sister Superior Sabine of the Order of the August Vigil had been part of the secondment sent from Incandesica with two hundred of her devout kind to support the inquisitor in his work on the Cradle’s edge. Confessor Karolco, meanwhile, had worked for Van Leeuwen as an exorcist, extracting the secrets of possessed heretics.
As the inquisitor and his entourage arrived before the pulpit throne, it began to turn on its mighty dais. Van Leeuwen noted the presence of Battle Sisters up in the raised stone galleries, pointing scoped and targeter-mounted Stalker-pattern boltguns through embrasures and down at the new arrivals. The inquisitor felt the scopes of the weapons follow him and the dot of targeters pass across his ornate plate. It seemed to Van Leeuwen that bringing weapons into the cathedra only breached Adeptus Ministorum diktats when they were carried by visitors.
Choirs of voxhailer-mouthed servitors flanked the throne chamber, filling its vastness with hymnals and cogitator-fed recitations from the Lectitio Divinitatus.
In the throne was the husk of a man, twice even Van Leeuwen’s age. Buried in an ornamental cassock and towering mitre, the cardinal astra’s skeletal hand looked as if it were fossilised to the ceremonial crozier he held upright. The inquisitor suspected that the wizened cardinal rarely left his throne, if the nest of medical tubes, pumps and monitors was anything to go by. As the dais turned, the cluster of clergy and attendants gathered about the cardinal came around with it. While Sisters Hospitaller attended upon the cardinal’s person, a Sister Famulous stood before a runescreen-mounted lectern. A crusader in ancient plate stomped forward, his steps heavy on the dais. As he rested the tip of his notched ceremonial power sword against the stone the sound reverberated around the chamber. With him stood a Battle Sister, some kind of canoness, the inquisitor suspected. Her head was brutally shaved like Sister Sabine’s. Van Leeuwen watched her flick untrusting eyes from his entourage up to the Sisters behind the embrasures. An extravagant cloak covered her ornate plate and the canoness held a sceptre in her gauntlets. Although the sceptre was ceremonial, it looked as if the Battle Sister were ready to brain anyone getting too close to the ecclesiarch.
‘Lord Inquisitor Archimedis Van Leeuwen, of the Ordo Hereticus,’ the Sister Famulous announced from her lectern, before presenting her master: ‘Cardinal Astra, Planetary Governor and Sector Arch-Ecclesiarch – Josephat Hieronemo Trazier the Third. State your business and go in peace, Lord Van Leeuwen.’
‘My business,’ the inquisitor announced, his voice echoing eerily about the vaulted throne chamber, ‘concerns not just the cardinal astra but also his people. He is shepherd to billions across the Crozier Worlds, guiding them in body and soul towards the God-Emperor’s benevolent light. He must know that packs of rabid dogs are tearing their way through his flock.’
‘It is my understanding…’ a gaunt priest said, stepping forward.
‘The honourable Arch-Deacon Faizel Scamander,’ the Sister Famulous announced, ‘Protector of the Creed.’
‘…that the people look to the Emperor’s servants to protect them from such savagery and the Holy Ordos to root out the cause of such disease.’
Van Leeuwen stepped forward also. He heard the creak of plate up in the elevated galleries.
‘Don’t lecture me, sir, on my duty,’ the inquisitor said, ‘and I shall not lecture you in return about your own responsibilities.’
‘Have we not already fulfilled our responsibilities to the Inquisition?’ the canoness said.
‘Canoness Preceptor Mauratania Kendriss…’
‘The cardinal astra,’ Kendriss continued in her heavy accent, ‘in his eternal wisdom, sent you two hundred of my Sister Dominions, to aid the Ordo Hereticus in its good works. I see that you have brought one of my Sisters before me.’
‘What more could you want from us?’ a portly priest with a ragged, silver tonsure and beard called out with more incredulity than, by the fearful expression that crossed his face, he originally intended.
‘Vandrach Guzzman – Pontifex Urba of the City-Sanctus…’
‘Everything you have,’ Inquisitor Van Leeuwen seethed back through his silver fangs, ‘if I so choose and the Master of Mankind demands.’
A moment of uncomfortable silence descended upon the chamber.
‘We did not mean to give offence, inquisitor lord,’ the cardinal astra rasped between breaths on a rebreather.
‘And you, your holiness, did not give any,’ Van Leeuwen said. ‘For my hasty words in this divine place, I apologise also.’
‘The physical and spiritual safety of the God-Emperor’s people has, is and always shall be of paramount importance to His most trusted servants,’ Cardinal Trazier said with effort. ‘Men like you, lord inquisitor, and men like me.’
‘I am very pleased to hear you say that, cardinal,’ Van Leeuwen said. ‘To address the canoness preceptor’s question, her Sisters do excellent work guarding artefacts of ruin and dangerous xenos technologies – keeping them safe from heretics, damned sorcerers and those corrupted by the warp. But I come to you not to talk of a defence against the darkness, for it lays siege to the Imperium on all fronts. No, I wish to talk to you – a stalwart subject of the God-Emperor – about taking the fight to our enemies and carrying His light and destruction into such darkness.’
‘You talk of the Tyrant’s turning,’ the cardinal astra said, his voice a crackling whisper, ‘and the tragedies of Sector Badab.’
‘Tragedies indeed,’ the inquisitor said, ‘but fortunately they are the concern of the Emperor’s loyal Space Marines and others within the Holy Ordos.’
‘Speak on.’
‘The Tyrant might have fled for the environs of the unholy Maelstrom,’ Van Leeuwen said, ‘but I speak of other… traitors who have long made their home there. A dark brotherhood that strikes from the darkness and whose atrocities demand action from men such as you and I.’
‘Bearers of the Word, your excellency,’ Confessor Karolco called up to the cardinal. ‘Perverters of the creed, spreaders of heresy and butchers of the faithful.’
‘These good brothers of the Adeptus Astartes are all that are left of their honoured Chapter,’ Van Leeuwen said, presenting the Space Marines of the Nova Legion, ‘now pledged with me to finding the dread renegades responsible for such slaughter. And they are not the only ones. My researches have revealed three other Chapters – three other lights extinguished by the darkness.’
‘And these Bearers of the Word,’ Cardinal Trazier said, ‘though I hate to even speak their name, are the ones responsible.’
‘Yes, mighty ecclesiarch,’ Confessor Karolco said, ‘and much more besides. I have personally aided the inquisitor in his interrogations and exorcisms of such warp-spawned deviants. They are a threat to everything the Imperium stands for.’
‘The confessor does not exaggerate,’ Van Leeuwen said.
‘I know of the historical treachery the Word Bearers committed,’ the cardinal astra said, ‘and the present threat they pose with their otherworldly pacts, their heretical poison and apocalyptic arts.’
‘Then you know that they routinely send out ships from the Maelstrom to rain destruction upon the God-Emperor-fearing planets of the Crozier Worlds and that they must be stopped.’
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br /> ‘But lord inquisitor,’ Arch-Deacon Scamander piped up, ‘surely Adeptus Astartes warriors like the ones present before us are best equipped to fight such an evil, as they did during the dark days of the Heresy.’
‘The God-Emperor helps those who help themselves,’ Van Leeuwen told the gathering of ecclesiarchs. ‘I have sent word to the warmasters of the Astra Militarum, the High Admirals of the Imperial Navy, the Martian priesthood and Adeptus Astartes Chapters across the region. The story is the same. Cardinal, it is the story of all times. Threats from within and without. Too many, with too few forces to combat them. The expansion of barbarian empires, xenos invasions, piratical opportunism and the ever-present dangers spewed forth by the unholy Maelstrom.’
‘Indeed,’ the venerable Trazier said.
‘The faithful of the Imperium must play their part, too,’ the inquisitor said. ‘It is not enough to wait for wildfires to appear across the storm-bordering sectors. The inferno must be doused at the source. This is why I have been touring the Crozier Worlds, speaking to the ruling ecclesiarchs of cardinal, shrine and cemetery worlds asking them to raise frater militias and pilgrim armies.’
‘In the name of what, lord inquisitor?’ the cardinal astra asked.
‘A White Crusade, your eminence,’ Van Leeuwen told him. ‘Billions of the fighting faithful, from High Temperance, St Sorcha, Fleur-de-Phasmi, Ignatius Crozier and many worlds besides. All travelling with fiery preachers along pilgrim trails as we speak, to rendezvous at Suspiria Proctor.
‘From there, they shall launch a crusade into the Maelstrom and take the fight to the Word Bearers, their abominate sponsors and their cultist hordes on their own soil. They shall be the hammer that shatters the dark faith of the traitors and puts an end, once and for all, to their ancient threat.
