It felt as though every being in the city was moving with a purpose, except him. The isolation and the sense of helplessness was not something Nzogwu was accustomed to.
The vox made a ticking sound, cutting through a static-garbled transmission from a frateris officer who had decided to let the mob of pilgrims at his checkpoint pass rather than open fire on them. Ro stood and bent over the caster, muttering to himself in lingua-technis. He turned to Nzogwu.
‘We’re receiving a transmission on a bandwidth used by the frateris high command on Piety,’ he said. ‘I don’t know their call signs, but it could be Brant.’
‘Put it through,’ Nzogwu ordered, striding over to the caster and unhooking the horn and aural clamps. Ro worked the transmission dials, and after a moment a voice came through. It was Brant.
‘We have a situation, inquisitor.’
‘That’s an understatement, cleric marshal,’ Nzogwu said, trying not to snap. ‘I have two operatives missing and the city is degenerating into chaos before my eyes. You need to isolate these crowds, re-establish your cordon and, for Throne’s sake, reopen the shrines.’
‘The shrines have been closed on the orders of the Adeptus Astartes,’ Brant said. ‘And I fear it may already be too late anyway. I have received reports of an attack on the primary Adeptus Arbites precinct, east of the Shrine of Garro the Stoic. Judge Fulchard has requested I reinforce him. I am going there immediately. Hopefully an… example can be made of the rioters.’
‘And you want my help in doing so?’ Nzogwu surmised. ‘You think the authority of an inquisitor will be enough to stop what is happening out there?’
‘Together I believe there is a chance,’ Brant said. ‘If the people see our three great arms of the Adeptus Terra – the Arbites, the Ministorum and the Inquisition – united, then their fervour will surely be quenched, at least until I can convince the Adeptus Astartes that closing the shrines was a mistake. Once we have dispersed the rioters outside the precinct I am happy to broadcast a message from you across all channels and frequencies within the city.’
‘You really think what we are seeing is the work of those loyal to the Imperial Cult?’ Nzogwu asked. ‘Not the activities of the xenos worshippers?’
‘I believe the xenos will attempt to use the existing unrest to further their own ends. If we don’t act now it will be too late to curtail the spreading violence. It may already be impossible to stop, but this is our best hope. My reaction force is departing from outside the Theocratica’s north gate in fifteen minutes.’
‘So be it,’ Nzogwu said. ‘I’ll join you, Brant. Let us hope you are right, and we can contain this madness before it spreads any further.’
The transmission ended and Ro broke the link.
‘I am going to the Arbites precinct,’ Nzogwu said to the rest of the retinue. ‘There may still be a chance to stop all this, or at the very least force the cultists to break from the rioters and reveal their true hand.’
‘What about us?’ Janus asked, arms folded over his chest.
‘You will remain here until my return. Tibalt, none are to enter this room, understood?’
The ageing crusader nodded, hefting his broadsword.
‘I’d feel no less safe out there than in here,’ Janus went on, glancing at Tibalt. ‘And what about the Space Marines? If it weren’t for their damned orders I doubt half of these people would be on the streets. It’s as though they’re deliberately attempting to undermine Imperial authority here.’
‘The Carcharodon Astra will be held to account,’ Nzogwu said. ‘But now is not the time.’
‘If not now, then when? We need to reopen the shrines. They’re the ones stopping us.’
Nzogwu was already heading to the door, dragging his overcoat on over his flak vest. He called back as he left.
‘Right now it doesn’t matter any more. If they are renegades, we’re as good as dead anyway.’
Khauri knew of the woman in the veil. He refused to say more, beyond the fact that she was a malignant entity. Rannik didn’t know why she had been appearing to her, but a review of the possibilities revealed none that offered her any comfort. Again she found herself trapped and bound to the Carcharodon Astra.
Panic was only one focused thought away – she knew from experience that if she paused to consider her situation she wouldn’t be able to go on. She was trapped down among the filth and the dead along with one of her nightmares made manifest – a renegade, a monster, a creature utterly removed from humanity. Worse, that creature was somehow connected to her, linked by a phantom that refused to give her peace. How she could banish it, let alone escape this mouldering, dark, echoing place and her grim companion, was something she didn’t have an answer to. All she could do was carry on.
The sub-precinct was listed as Bastion 17-Z. It was one of a dozen small Arbites stations planted out in the pilgrim slums, responsible for providing an Imperial presence and at least the threat of retaliation in what would otherwise be a lawless zone. Bastion 17-Z had an entrance to the slum’s decaying underground networks, a mould-blotched armoured door set at the end of a sagging tertiary tunnel. Rannik approached and hammered on it with the butt of her shotgun, looking up at the pict-caster overlooking the entrance.
Nothing happened. She tried again. After a moment more she felt a heavy weight on her shoulder, and realised Khauri had put his hand on her. She stepped aside hastily, the thought of making contact with the Carcharodon making her skin crawl.
For a moment she thought the psyker was going to tap into the terrible abilities he had displayed earlier against the genestealers. Instead, with Damar cradled in one arm he simply raised his other hand and knocked. The force of the strikes reverberated through the tunnel around them, and left a slight dent in the door’s rusting surface.
This time there was a response. A click sounded, and a voice crackled from the grime-gummed grilles of the vox-unit set into the door’s upper half.
‘Identify yourselves.’
Rannik stepped forwards again and held her Arbites badge up to the pict-caster.
‘I am Sub-Warden Jade Rannik, Adeptus Arbites. I have with me a brother of the Adeptus Astartes and a critically injured member of the Inquisitorial ordos. We require access to the surface via your installation, in the name of the Emperor and His Holy Inquisition.’
Silence followed her words. Eventually there was a thud of disengaging locks. She stood back as the door ground open on rusting hinges. Beyond two figures waited for them, a man and a woman, both in full dark blue arbitrator riot gear. The man’s face, bar the downturned line of his mouth, was shielded by his helmet, but the woman still had hers mag-locked to her hip. She was young, her blonde hair cropped short, dark eyes darting from the Space Marine to the man he was carrying, then to Rannik. Her face was pale, and the hard edges of her armour didn’t detract from the prettiness of her features.
‘Sub-Warden Rannik,’ she said, ushering them over the threshold. ‘I am Sub-Warden Tanner, Bastion 17-Z. We heard there was a fellow officer of the Lex with the Inquisitorial delegate that arrived on-world.’
‘News travels fast,’ Rannik said, entering the sub-precinct and giving Tanner the closed-fist arbitrator salute. They were inside a small guard post, reinforced metal walls containing a viewscreen and vox section for monitoring the tunnel outside. A grav-lift at the far end presumably led up to the precinct proper.
‘This is Brother Khauri and my fellow operative, Damar,’ Rannik said, making space as the Carcharodon ducked into the small room with the ex-Guardsman still cradled in one arm. Tanner’s eyes widened visibly as the Space Marine loomed over her.
‘Greetings, sub-warden,’ Khauri said. ‘We require access to the surface immediately. The slums beyond your gates are riven with xenos taint, and on the brink of rebellion.’
‘We know,’ Tanner said, activating the grav-lift. ‘The attacks start
ed about an hour ago. Not just here either, every sub-precinct beyond the shrine-edge is surrounded. We expect a breach within half an hour if support doesn’t arrive.’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ Rannik said as the three arbitrators stepped onto the lift, moving to make room for the Space Marine in their midst. Tanner closed the lift’s mesh door-cage. There was a lurch and a whir as the machine activated, carrying them up to a small control room.
‘My detail is only eleven strong,’ Tanner said as she dragged back the mesh cage and stepped out into the cramped space. A dozen cogitators and a viewscreen bank took up the centre of the chamber, manned by several arbitrators in black fatigues. More stood around the edges, fully armed and armoured, apparently waiting on Tanner’s orders.
‘Drok, Koster, take him to the medicae,’ Tanner told two of them, gesturing to Damar. The men approached Khauri hesitantly, and the Space Marine handed Damar’s pallid body over to them with a care that belied his size.
‘What happened to him?’ Tanner asked, seeing the grievous slash wounds as he was carried through a door into the white-scrubbed interior of the station’s medicae bay.
‘A xenos,’ Rannik said. ‘A tyranid bioform known as a genestealer. They’re highly dangerous, and they’re in the tunnels below. They’re behind the attacks.’
‘The slums have been quiet for weeks,’ Tanner said, her tone disbelieving.
‘That should’ve been a warning in itself,’ Rannik replied. She was watching the viewscreens. The pict-feeds monitoring Bastion 17-Z’s exterior were picking up half a dozen scenes of chaos. Mobs had surrounded the small outpost’s walls and its two gates. They had yet to coordinate any action beyond baying and smashing at the defences with slum debris, but given how well armed and coordinated the earlier attack on the Carcharodons column had been, Rannik knew it wouldn’t be long before Bastion 17-Z was breached. When it was, everyone inside would be dead in minutes. Even the pict-caster’s grainy returns couldn’t hide the alien deformities that marred much of the crowd, their hybrid mutations now revealed for all to see.
‘If you want to get out, you’re going to have to fight,’ Tanner said.
‘Extraction is inbound,’ Khauri said. Rannik hadn’t heard him speak, but guessed he still possessed some sort of active locator somewhere on the remains of his armour. ‘It will take at least fifteen minutes to arrive. Does this facility have a defensible rooftop?’
‘That way,’ Tanner said, pointing up a ladder bolted to one of the walls, leading to a closed blast hatch. ‘We had the section’s sniper performing spotting on the rooftop, but they have gunmen out there and the weight of fire became too heavy. If it’s aerial extraction, it’ll have to be fast.’
‘It will be,’ Khauri replied.
Rannik had spotted something on one of the viewscreens. The crowds around the sub-precinct were a churning mass of motion, yet in the midst of it all a patch of stillness had drawn her attention. She leaned forwards, over the shoulder of the arbitrator manning the station, peering at the grainy images produced on the screen. As they resolved, her blood ran cold.
The woman in the mourning veil was out there, motionless, standing amidst the corrupt horde, untouched and seemingly unnoticed. And as Rannik looked, she swore the apparition’s head twitched to fix the pict-caster in its sights. She stumbled back from the viewscreen, pointing at the figure.
‘Do you see her?’
‘Who?’ Tanner asked, walking over. Rannik dropped her arm. The churning of the crowd had passed over the apparition and it had gone, as though never there. She glanced back at Khauri, but the Space Marine merely shook his head. As she was trying to find a coherent answer to Tanner, she noticed the gatehouse control panel, across from the viewscreens. The locking rune for the sub-precinct’s main doors had been deactivated. An arbitrator was sat by the controls and as his eyes met Rannik’s, she realised they were black – as black and glassy as the eyes of the genestealers that had come for them out of the dark.
The bang of a shotgun blast filled the small room. Rannik was dimly aware of Tanner shouting a warning, and one of the arbitrators beside her going down in a spray of blood as she brought her Vox Legi to bear on the hybrid at the gate controls. He reached for his autopistol, but Rannik was quicker – the point-blank shot blew his remains across his console and rune pads.
The cramped command centre had descended into chaos. There was more gunfire, deafeningly loud. Rannik crouched as the viewscreens beside her were hit, sparks and shattered plastek exploding across the space in front of her. Another of the arbitrators went down, hit by his own comrades. Two of the armed and armoured lawmen on the edge of the room had turned their weapons on their own, gunning them down before the arbitrators had realised the enemy was already among them.
Khauri had taken a scattershot to his left side, and his armour had been penetrated at several points. He betrayed neither pain nor rage at the sudden betrayal, however – Rannik saw him turn and discharge two bolt pistol shots at the attackers. There was a grisly double-crack as their heads were burst apart with pinpoint accuracy, blood and brains painting the wall behind them.
The sudden silence that followed was almost as shocking as the violent betrayal itself. It looked as though there was only one of the arbitrators left – Tanner. She began to rise from where she had been crouching behind the room’s vox-bank.
‘Stay down,’ Rannik snarled at her. She froze.
‘Clear,’ Khauri said.
‘Damar,’ Rannik said, turning towards the medicae bay. She kicked in the door, shotgun primed. One of the two arbitrators, presumably uninfected, was already dead. So was Damar. The hybrid masquerading as a lawman was gnawing on his blood-drenched throat as Rannik crashed inside.
She screamed with rage and denial, and put the thing down with a shotgun blast. It was still twitching, its flak plate taking the worst of the hit, so she stood over it and applied another to its skull.
‘The main gate is breached,’ Khauri said from the control room. As though to underline his words there came the sound of hammering from the chamber’s entrance. Tanner had managed to get the secondary door locked in time, but the rest of the small facility was already flooding with cultists.
‘Onto the roof,’ Khauri ordered, snatching both Tanner and Rannik and dragging them away from the medicae door. The control room’s entrance had started to buckle beneath the external pounding. Rannik felt an overwhelming urge to disobey the Carcharodon and stay. Illogical as it was, she didn’t want to leave Damar, much less to follow a creature like Khauri.
Then the control room door burst open. Something had hit it hard enough from the other side to crumple the upper half. While the frame held, the breach revealed snapping claws and hands that reached in and scraped at the obstruction. There was a groan of metal as the rest of the doorway began to give.
‘Come on!’ Tanner urged. Khauri was already climbing the ladder, the rungs visibly straining. Teeth gritted, Rannik tore herself away from the medicae bay and sprinted across the control room to the ladder’s foot. Tanner was already there, shotgun in hand. She was opening her mouth to say something, but the crash of the door as it finally burst open stopped her.
The hybrids stormed the control room. Rannik and Tanner opened fire with their shotguns simultaneously as the first creatures burst in through the broken door. They were thrown immediately back, great wounds blown in their deformed bodies by the close-range blasts. More came through, splattered with the discoloured blood of their kindred, snarling and screeching for the arbitrators’ deaths. Their faces were nightmarish, at once recognisably human yet utterly alien. Their skulls were elongated and hairless, their teeth sharp, their skin white as a corpse’s and shot through with ugly purple veins. Their eyes were pitch-black. For a second Rannik found herself thinking of the Carcharodons.
‘Go!’ Tanner shouted as she racked her shotgun and fired again. Light fell on
them both as Khauri hauled open the hatch in the control room’s roof. Rannik fired again and placed one boot on the ladder’s bottom rung. The situation was hopeless – the hybrids were numberless, and if she and Tanner turned and began to climb they would flood the room and tear them both back down or shoot them off. One of the arbitrators had to keep the cultists at bay for the seconds it took the other to reach the roof.
Rannik locked the Vox Legi to her back and began to climb. Tanner fired again, and again, the howls of the xenos worshippers filling Rannik’s ears. They had forced their way over their own dead and were closing on the ladder from either side of the cogitators and viewscreens, their broken machinery sparking as more shots impacted into them. Autogun fire rang out, and Rannik was vaguely aware of shots striking the wall around her. Then she was up at the hatchway, and a grey gauntlet was hauling her through by her flak plate. Khauri dropped her on the rockcrete roof, then slammed the hatch door shut. She had a last brief glimpse of Tanner below, surrounded by hybrids, her shotgun clicking empty.
‘You could have held them off,’ Rannik snarled, regaining her feet and stepping up close to the Space Marine, ignoring how he towered over her.
‘I would not have survived. One of us had to give them pause. She chose to be the one.’
‘You’re Adeptus Astartes. You were created to protect mankind. To protect us. You’re no better than a renegade or a traitor.’
If her words affected the Space Marine, he didn’t show it.
‘Neither of you would be extracted from here without me,’ he said. ‘If I was killed the flight mission would be aborted immediately. You are mistaken if you believe any individual matters. Neither you, I nor Tanner deserve special treatment. The best we can hope for is to serve Rangu in whatever capacity we are able. Tanner has served Him well this day. I pray I am able to do likewise.’
Carcharodons: Outer Dark Page 22
