Santhonax stared at him through narrowed slits. They’d traded insults, accusations and warnings. Krieg couldn’t tell what she was going to do next. Probably order another tank of acid. As it was, her eyes flicked over his shoulder. The tension in Krieg’s fists instantly spread to the rest of his body as his fingers brushed the holster of his hellpistol. There was someone coming up behind him. He turned. It was his cheerless friend from the Narthex, her silver bob twinkling in the half-light and skull helmet tucked under one arm.
The canoness was smirking; something about Krieg’s uncertainty clearly amused her. ‘Well, this is all about to be rendered moot. Major Mortensen is, as we speak, on board Purgatorio receiving orders for his next mission.’
The battle-sister handed Santhonax a data scroll, which the canoness unravelled and studied.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Where?’ Santhonax barked at the Celestian.
‘The shepherd moon of Ishtar, madam.’
‘Perfect,’ the canoness said, half to herself. Then to the Celestian: ‘My compliments to the captain. Please inform him that Dread Sovereign will need to be in low orbit around Ishtar within the hour.’
‘Should I return to Deliverance?’ Krieg put to the canoness. Santhonax ignored him.
‘Have Cadet-Commissar Krieg briefed, equipped and transported to the coordinates you have on the moon’s surface,’ Santhonax told the silver-haired battle-sister, handing her back the scroll.
The Celestian clicked her armoured heels.
‘You want me waiting for him?’ Krieg asked cautiously.
‘Perhaps even Zane Mortensen isn’t stupid enough to practise his heretical ideals directly under the nose of an Imperial commissar. Monitor the mission covertly: you will have the details, and when you observe the major act in accordance with his dark beliefs you can administer the Emperor’s justice,’ she confirmed with relish.
Krieg settled for a neutral, ‘As you wish, your ladyship,’ and lowered his head.
Escorted by the Celestian the commissar made his way from the elegantly gruesome chamber.
‘Krieg,’ the canoness called wistfully just before he reached the bronze egress. He turned obediently. ‘Major Mortensen is not to return from that moon alive: you understand me? The Emperor has never expected as much of you.’
Krieg simply nodded and left the room.
As they stood waiting at the mighty doors of a baroque elevator Krieg, who’d been silent the entire length of the cloister deck, turned to the battle-sister and asked, ‘What did she mean, “Perfect”?’
‘Excuse me?’ the Celestian replied.
‘She said, “Perfect” after you told her the mission was on Ishtar.’
‘Ishtar’s a deathworld,’ the battle-sister replied. ‘With any luck the major will be dead before you even reach him.’
‘Great,’ Krieg mumbled, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of a jaunt down to a deathworld himself. ‘What the hell are the Redemption Corps doing down there?’
With unmasked tedium the Celestian consulted the scroll once more.
‘Well,’ she told him, ‘apart from a variety of different forms of certain death to be found on the surface, Ishtar boasts only one registered settlement: a sparse collection of stilt burgs in the supercontinent interior.’
‘Stilt burgs?’
‘Homo Sapiens Gigantus.’
‘Ogryns,’ Krieg grunted. He’d worked alongside these abhuman brutes before. Storm-trooper squads were sometimes coupled with ogryn shock troops in order to spearhead assaults. The barbarian creatures soaked up a tremendous amount of firepower and at full charge were virtually unstoppable. They were the hammer, excessive and unwieldy, to the storm-troop’s chisel, skilful and precise. A stampede of ogryns could carry a storm-trooper unit a long way into the enemy lines, where the tactics and surgical execution of the specialists could do their worst. They were also clumsy and dangerous, taking orders like barely-tamed dumb animals; but with Illium drowning in a greenskin deluge and reinforcements a distant dream, the Guard was pulling on every in-system resource.
The grandiloquent doors parted revealing another visitor to the cloister deck. The entire space was dominated by a hulking form; begowned from head to toe in a ribbed, leather capote. Not a scrap of flesh or clothing was visible beneath. The voluminous hood dropped down to its belly, without so much as an eyeslit to allow its wearer to see where it was stomping. The mantle’s baggy sleeves met at the belly also, with one of the giant’s hands clearly clasped in the other beneath the material.
The goliath had ducked beneath the frame of the elevator doors, allowing a small throne – set between the monster’s shoulder blades – to pass beneath. The diminutive throne was fashioned similarly from ribbed leather and secured to the gross bulk using a thick leather harness. It carried the tiny, atrophied body of a wasted ancient, whose obscene little form in turn was swathed in a leather cloak that was part of the throne. Only his head was completely visible, the bloated cranium hovering serenely above his enfeebled body.
Krieg was not a little taken aback at finding the hulk and its charge in the elevator but when he finally turned around he found that the Celestian had fallen down on one knee, with her head angled at the floor. As the visitor’s bulk sailed past, Krieg noticed for the first time the Inquisitorial rosette dangling from a robust cord around the behemoth’s neck. Swinging this way and that, the badge of office was almost hypnotic. Realisation dawned. This was Herrenvolk.
The commissar could hardly be blamed for not recognising the inquisitor: very few people had actually seen him. Santhonax and her battle-sisters worked in collaboration with the man and as such had more access to him than virtually anyone else. Beyond the Pontificals, he worked almost exclusively through a network of henchmen and spies that he kept on his payroll. Many claimed that he had a telepathic or telekinetic link with his closest operatives and Krieg had certainly witnessed Interrogator Angelescu, the Inquisitorial storm-troopers’ point of contact with the inquisitor, act strangely from time to time: almost as though his body and mind were on occasions not his own.
The Celestian grabbed the back of his neck with her gauntleted hand and pushed his head down into an obedient bow. Krieg instinctively allowed his eyes to travel upwards and caught a final glimpse of the inquisitor, sitting astride his humanoid steed, as he passed. One of Herrenvolk’s own oily black eyes were fixed on the commissar, peering over the back of his throne, set in a gaze as unsettling as it was unreadable.
Koulick Krieg…+
The words rattled around inside the core of his very being. His soul seemed to expand to accommodate them. They were everywhere and he was nowhere.
Koulick, son of Illarian, son of Spartak, son of Nestorr…+ The thoughtspeak faded and simultaneously returned a moment’s eternity later. +…Hear me…+
‘Cadet!’
The backhanded slap took him across the face like a basin of cold water. He was back – slumped in the corner of the ornate elevator with the battle-sister crouched over him, the fleeting traces of pleasure falling from her features: she’d enjoyed that.
‘What happened?’ Krieg managed, pushing with his knees and sliding his shoulders back up the car wall.
‘You’re male and you’re weak,’ the Celestian replied flatly, as one might recall an obvious fact. Then after a second’s pause to establish she meant it: ‘You fell unconscious: it’s the inquisitor. He has that effect on a lot of people – he’s, how can I put it… potent.’
‘You seem fine.’
‘I’m not you,’ the Celestian answered making the sign of the aquila. ‘Emperor be thanked.’
The elevator doors parted to reveal Dread Sovereign’s crowded flight deck. Sleek strikefighters shared the hanger with landers and Adeptus Ministorum Valkyries.
Krieg attempted to stand without the assistance of a wall. It came… slowly. Th
e equivalent of mental indigestion still reverberated around his skull.
‘Suit up. That’s your ride,’ the battle-sister told him indicating the nearest Valkyrie. Krieg took a few unsteady steps closer, out onto the hangar. A sombre nameplate identified the aircraft as Purity Control. What the callsign lacked in finesse it compensated for in unequivocability: a book you could definitely judge by its cover. The Celestian hit the elevator floor stud.
‘Not coming to enjoy the sights?’ the commissar asked.
‘You’re going to the one place where the sights enjoy you,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘I’m going to the Pontifical’s armoury; you’re going to need something considerably harder-hitting than that a hellpistol to go hunting down there.’
The cadet-commissar’s hand went down protectively over the holster of his hellpistol and gave her a parting look of mock hurt. The doors closed. Krieg turned, alone on the flight deck, and mused thoughtfully on whether the battle-sister meant the deathworld fauna and flora or the Redemption Corps’ major.
II
Rosenkrantz had flown all manner of skies and put down on all kinds of dirt, but Ishtar had almost immediately topped the Jopallian pilot’s top-ten table of singularly weird crash landings.
It started with the drop. With Deliverance rapidly falling away above them and the Spectre plummeting for the velvet, malachite gloom of Ishtar’s thick atmosphere, the Vertigo’s velocity died and a shudder rang through the aircraft’s superstructure. It was almost as though the bird had put down, beak-first, in the ocean; Rosenkrantz knew this because she’d done just that on more than one occasion. This realisation was reinforced by the backwash of glutinous slime that cascaded up the canopy. The pilot’s initial fear was restricted visibility but the atmospheric spawn was largely transparent. Not that it mattered that much, the deeper they fell through the cloud layer the darker it got.
The engines soon began to struggle in the gaseous gloop and, one by one, the quad proceeded to short and cut out. This brought to mind a second concern: falling clean out of the sky. Despite the fact that the upper atmosphere should have had the drag-inducing qualities of a thick paste, they were still freefalling like a lead brick. A brief vox-transmission to the Urdesh Ecliptic confirmed that their partner Spectre was experiencing much the same problem.
Dark, voluminous shapes began to fill an already darkening sky. All about the aircraft, great organic balloons filled the air. Ochre bladders, packed with lighter-than-air gases and threaded through with fat, pulsating capillaries, drifted around the Spectre. Rosenkrantz guided the plummeting aircraft as best she could, through the school of drifting behemoths and down past their gargantuan filter feeding maws. To all intents and purposes they looked like giant, bloated squid, with webbed tentacles drooping for the planet surface. A sea of larvae sat suspended in the migratory spawn and the alien creatures were clearly descending on the congregated bounty. The appendages rippled gently, drawing the migrating sky-spawn up into the gossamer nets between each tentacle and then on into the gargantuan creatures’ mouths. Vertigo had been unfortunate enough to come down through the middle of the spawn-slick.
It wasn’t long until the inevitable happened – Vertigo’s wing tip tore through one of the bloated balloon sacks, dragging the peaceful monstrosity through the skies beside them until alien and aircraft parted, sending the Spectre spinning for the surface.
The Spectre’s controls suddenly slackened as the aircraft punctured another cloud layer. The slime was gone, but was immediately replaced by a thin drizzle that foamed as soon as the tiny droplets hit the canopy plas. From unusually slack the stick became increasingly rigid and Rosenkrantz could hear the now familiar sound of an engine dying.
Benedict told her that the flaps had frozen, which seemed incredible since as far as the pilot could make out they were gliding through the downpour towards what looked like primeval jungle below. There was nothing else she could do: voxing that the crew should brace for impact, Rosenkrantz fought to keep the nose up and slapped the Spectre’s swollen belly down in the heart of the alien rainforest.
Which was where they now found themselves.
Rosenkrantz unclipped the harness and massaged her bruised shoulders. It could have been worse. On Arborsia IV she’d had to put down amongst the titanwoods of Shadebarrens: the trunks had simply torn the wings out of the aircraft and a branch had cleaved in the reinforced plas of the cockpit canopy, impaling her newly assigned co-pilot.
An incoming vox-transmission confirmed that the Ecliptic had put down mercifully close by but had failed to level out and had lost a wing to the impact, rendering them combat inoperative. The crew were injured but alive, and its fire support Centaur payload was intact. The second bird was a wreck, however, rapidly sinking into the chemical mire beyond and was in the process of being evacuated and abandoned.
Leaving Benedict to a more detailed assessment of their own aircraft’s status, the Jopallian pilot slid down the companionway ladder and into the hold. It was chaos. The fire support Centaur that had been strapped down in the Spectre’s belly had unsurprisingly broken loose in the crash. Nauls was busy with the armoured vehicle, the moody chief cutting it free of the mesh racks at the rear of the bay with a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters. Before it had buried itself in the webbing it had smashed into the compartment wall killing one of Rask’s Shadow Brigade Guardsmen outright – an officer by the look of him. The Redemption Corps had fared a little better in the crash: Sarakota had some broken ribs and a suspected punctured lung, meaning he was now declared mission-inactive and required constant mask-bagging from one of Vertigo’s gunners. This had been a temporary arrangement set up by the Second Platoon’s medic until the sniper could reach a medical bay. Sergeant Minghella would have seen to the storm-trooper’s needs himself had it not been for the fact that he was a crash casualty also, knocked senseless by the bouncing fire support vehicle as it smashed around the compartment. He’d been unconscious ever since – breathing but unresponsive – and had been strapped into his own stretcher on the Spectre bay floor.
A small group of gangers huddled around their fallen Shadow Brigade officer. They were as motley as any of the 364th Rosenkrantz had come across when it came to field dress and equipment. All of the hivers wore the cerise sashes of their calling but the group in the hold shared three distinctive features: drab khaki trench coats, clean-shaven heads and glares of open hostility directed at the pilot as she passed.
Her own remaining gunners sat hunched against their heavy bolters, establishing a killzone around the crashed aircraft: with Rosenkrantz at the helm, this had become almost routine. She touched Spreckels on the shoulder.
‘The major?’
He nodded to starboard and Rosenkrantz made her way down the bay ramp. A thoroughly alien environment was waiting for her.
Mangrove was the only word she could find to describe it, but it wasn’t like any she’d seen before. She’d landed in all kinds of forests and swamps on myriad worlds and no matter how different, they all had one thing in common: the unmistakable abundance of organic life. The fresh bouquet of new growth; the stench of decay. There was none of that here. Just a potent, chemical sterility.
There were trees everywhere, but no wood and no chlorophyll. Everything on Ishtar had a lucent, heliotropic glaze. The trunks were the equivalent of frosted glass and the leaves and foliage choking the spaces in between were like crystalline flint. Vertigo itself had actually come to rest upon a pyre of the shattered material. Not that it was easy to see: thick cloud cover doused the forest in a twilight haze and airbrushed the canopy with a coral corona.
Pontiff Preed stood on the edge of the ramp, peering out across this strange, new world through his single lens.
‘They blame me,’ she said as she joined him in the doorway.
‘You did what you could. We all give the Emperor thanks for that. No one is exempt from dying, sister,’ the Pontiff
rumbled gently.
‘Not everyone around here seems to share that sentiment.’
‘You talk of Mortensen. That’s just superstitious claptrap.’ With some difficulty he moved his robust bulk in closer and in a conspiratorial hush told her, ‘I believe in the Creed and I believe in the good major. You know that, but there are those who twist both to their own fervent ends.’
He nodded back at the group of hivers gathered around their fallen officer. They were Volscian – their tattoos and red sashes confirmed that – but their distinct trench coats and shaven heads marked them out as different. Their demeanour was stoic and solemn and lacked the underhive twitchiness and up-front bravado that characterised the other Volscians. One stood among them, giving quiet orders and instructing the others in how best to extricate the dead Guardsman’s body from his mangled harness. Sergeant’s stripes adorned one stout shoulder and fat wrinkles gathered at the back of his bald neck. His dark flesh glistened in the Ishtarian twilight.
‘Lijah Meeks,’ Preed informed her softly.
Meeks turned his head eerily to one side, as though he’d heard his name. Thick-rimmed glasses sat on a fleshy nose, beneath which his pink lips curled.
‘What’s with the heads and coats?’ Rosenkrantz asked warily. Most of the Volscians resisted the concept of uniformity.
‘Second Platoon has a fundamentalist streak,’ Preed told her. ‘Ardentites, as far as I can tell. Some kind of Thorian incarnationist faction.’
‘Religious freaks?’ she put to him. His nose wrinkled. ‘No offence,’ she added.
‘None taken, sister. They are not of my flock. Ardentites look for evidence of the divine in those around them. They believe that when the God-Emperor fell He disseminated His gift. He believed the best way to protect humanity in His absence was to hide His power – His talents – among chosen individuals across the galaxy, so that they may individually serve His interests and, as a collective phenomenon, hold back the darkness that threatens to engulf mankind.’ The Pontiff sighed. ‘The coats are gang throwbacks. House Zlaw: threw in their lot with the Redemptionists for a time, then kind of outgrew them. The heads are merely an emulation: a mark of respect to the major himself.’
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 46
