Josef glanced up, rubbing his hands together. More candles sat in silver candelabras hanging from the ceiling. The metal was so tarnished it was almost black. The gilded halos of painted saints and warrior angels gleamed. The air smelled of tallow smoke and dust. For a second, and for a reason he was not sure he could put into words, he felt more peaceful than he had in months.
‘Why are you smiling?’ snapped Epicles from just behind him.
‘How can you tell?’ growled Josef, without turning to look at the astropath. ‘Unless you have been lying all this time, you are blind.’ He paused. ‘No, in fact, that is perfectly likely.’
‘I can’t see you smile, you idiot, but you are whistling again, and I can only imagine you do it with a grin on your face.’
Josef’s steps slowed.
‘I am not whistling,’ he said.
‘Yes you are. Just because I am blind does not mean I can’t hear. There, you have started again now.’
He was about to look behind him when the candle flames winked out.
The key-keepers on the Gate of Bells were shepherding the last pilgrims over the threshold when there was a flash out in the night. They flinched back, eyes clamped shut. They could see shapes in the images glowing on their retinas, shapes like wings and claws. One retched, half-falling, hands slamming into the worn stone of the passage floor. The other key-keepers were dragging and pushing the heavy doors shut, shouting at each other.
A kilometre away, green fire reached up into the snow-blurred night. A second later they heard another explosion scream into being. The sound reached across the distance instantly. It shook in their skulls: babbling, shrieking, the clamour going on and on, but it felt distant now, as though they were seeing and hearing through a hard sheet of crystal.
Above them, the bells – silent for thousands of years – shivered. Another of the key-keepers vomited. The rest stood, staring for a moment, as the fires washed out and new buildings began to burn, pinned in place as the light of flames painted nauseating colours amongst the falling snow. Then they saw the first of the ragged figures running up the road towards the doors. Some were burning, tatters trailing smoke as they ran. Knives, cleavers and hooks gleamed in their hands.
The key-keepers moved then, screaming at each other as they turned the handles to haul the doors shut. Up the road the tide came, silent, bare feet leaving bloody prints in the snow. Their last view before the doors closed was of metal masks nailed over faces, fingers and tatters of skin hanging from them like the jewels of a great king. Then the doors closed and the iron bars fell across them, and above them the bells tolled.
Darkness swallowed them instantly.
Josef had unslung his hammer from his back before he had taken a second breath.
Someone screamed.
‘God-Emperor, have mercy…’
‘We repent…’
‘Mercy…’
‘Silence,’ roared Josef.
The targeting lens on Covenant’s shoulder cannon lit as it spun.
‘Negative for targets,’ called Koleg, ‘but the temperature has dropped.’
And then the candles lit again. The flames burned bright and white, spearing upwards, growing as they burned like artillery flares. The tallow was hissing as it melted and flowed.
Josef snarled, and clamped his eyes shut against the light.
‘No, no, no!’ The shout tore the air. Josef opened his eyes, turning. Epicles was curled on the floor. Blood flowed down his face and between the fingers of his hands clamped to his ears. Josef was beside him. Behind him he could hear the sound of running feet as some of the bishop’s entourage fled.
‘Calm,’ said Josef, as he lifted the astropath to the side of the passage. Epicles was scrabbling at Josef’s arms, like a child in the grip of a nightmare. ‘We are here. We are here.’
The paint and plaster on the ceiling was charring. Smoke was billowing up the walls from the blazing candles.
Running steps came up the corridor, guns rising to greet whoever was coming.
‘Bishop Xilita!’ A loud clear voice echoed down the corridor.
Josef looked up from Epicles’ bloody face.
A Sister of Battle in the armour of the Order of the Argent Shroud was striding towards them. The hair framing her dark face was ash-grey. A sword was sheathed across her back, a bolter in her hands. Bishop Xilita looked around. Koleg’s pistol had snapped up, finger tight on the trigger.
‘Do not fire!’ shouted the bishop. The authority in that voice was strong enough that, if it had been anyone other than Koleg, he might have flinched. The specialist’s aim did not waver.
‘Lord,’ he said.
‘Hold fire,’ said Covenant. He had not drawn his sword but his psycannon was panning back and forth, hunting for threats.
‘It is too bright,’ gasped Epicles. ‘Too dark. The ferryman and the coin-bearers are here. Too bright beneath the earth, too dark to see…’
‘Bishop Xilita,’ said the Sister of Battle, not pausing in her stride.
One of her attendants was trying to pull her away. She shrugged the man off.
‘There has been an incident in the Western Pilgrim Drift.’
‘When?’ snapped Xilita.
‘Moments ago. They are running to bring you word, but panic is boiling up from the western cloisters. They are saying that no one lives in the Western Drift, that the fires were breathed by witches and that creatures of the dark beat against the doors.’
‘The shrine guard?’
‘A hundred had already gone out to regulate the pilgrims permitted within the walls. They are gone.’
‘Gone. Why were they there in the first place?’
‘The High Sentinel–’
‘Western Pilgrim Drift,’ said Orsino, cutting across the Sister of Battle’s words as she came to stand next to Covenant. ‘That is the area seven kilometres west according to the data. If we loft the gunships now we can have three units there in minutes.’
‘Do it,’ said Covenant. He looked at Josef, who was kneeling beside the shivering Epicles. ‘Go with them.’ Josef started to rise. One of Orsino’s arbitrators bent over Epicles.
Covenant’s gaze moved to the Sister of Battle. ‘You as well, Sister Agata.’
She looked surprised at his use of her name. Then she bowed her head, though there was reluctance to the gesture, thought Josef.
‘You are the inquisitor,’ she said, as though half in answer and half in question.
‘I am,’ said Covenant, turning to look at the bishop and the others still clustered together as the flaring candles finally dimmed. ‘I am Covenant, and in the name of the Holy Ordos of the God-Emperor of Mankind, I place this monastery and all those dwelling here under my command and will.’
EIGHT
‘What in the eyes of sacred Terra is that?’ asked Bal. Viola glanced around from the enhanced view of Dominicus Prime’s northern hemisphere. The image filled the space above the Dionysia’s command dais, turning the view beyond the ports into a magnified sheet of detail laced with auspex data. The ship was in low orbit, sunk as deep as it could go into the gravity well and holding station above the Monastery of the Last Candle. It was there to provide oversight, signals and support if needed. That had been the intention, up until a few minutes before.
‘It’s a storm,’ said Viola, her eyes flicking over data cascading across three sets of screens.
‘Don’t storms that size come from somewhere?’ asked Bal.
‘Yes,’ she said, not moving her eyes, trying to soak in information and form a conclusion, any type of conclusion about what was happening.
The storm had sprung up as the drop-ship had descended, spreading across the planet’s north like ink poured into a bowl of water. It had grown fast, in contradiction to any atmospheric models or data.
‘Mistress Viola, we cannot get signal penetration through the storm layer.’
‘Multi-spectrum interference…’
‘Wind speeds rising�
�’
‘So how does something like this–’ began Bal, but she cut the lifeward’s question off before he could finish.
‘It is not natural.’ She turned and looked at Bal and wondered again why she had not dismissed him when she had come up into the command deck. There were twenty household troops within shouting distance, and a personal lifeward at her elbow was largely superfluous. That, and he kept asking questions. ‘There is no reason for it to be there. It should not be there. It should not be that big or have formed so fast.’
‘Mistress von Castellan, the secondary astropath is signalling that there is a major etheric disturbance.’
‘Multiple storm cells forming…’
‘Communication links to Crow Complex lost… Signal relay to Monastery of Beneficence breaking down… Mistress, we have lost all direct communication to the surface.’
Suddenly, the bridge seemed to quiet. On the image filling the space above the command throne, the swirl of storm cloud sat across the dark face of Dominicus Prime. Clusters of signal data flickered from amber to red.
‘The astropaths–’
‘The secondary astropath has fallen into a delirium, Mistress Viola,’ answered the signals officer before she even finished the question. ‘Telepathic connection via Astropath Epicles is not possible.’
‘Thank you for clarifying that,’ she snapped.
‘My apologies, mistress,’ called the officer, and she could see the signals officer’s face stiffen. She took a breath. The stimms and cognition enhancers were playing a merry dance with her nerves.
She needed rest. She needed silence. And that was exactly what the present would not allow her.
‘Navigators report etheric disruption is rising,’ called another communication officer, a vox-tube pressed to her ear.
‘Sensors are failing, mistress…’
‘Interference flooding auspex filters…’
She needed to focus. She needed to process the data of what was happening and select a strategy. She needed to start making decisions. She…
‘Mistress Viola, we are blind.’
Blind…
She thought of Cleander in the medicae chamber, eyes closed, surrounded by the thump and hiss of machines. She had only had the time to see him once since they had entered the system. He had looked… thin. Weak. Not like her brother at all. Nerve damage and cranial bleeding, Iaso had said.
‘Try this.’ She looked around, shivering and blinking, wondering how long. ‘Just a second or so,’ said Bal, holding out a small tarnished silver flask. ‘You only phased out for a second. No one noticed.’ Around them, the din of the bridge still surged and growled.
Viola stared at him and then the flask.
‘Nihren, from my home, distilled from parchment mulch, would you believe.’
She took the flask and took a swig. Fire spread through her.
‘It’s…’ She coughed the word. ‘It’s vile.’ Her eyes were watering.
Bal grinned as he took back the flask. ‘But good for taking the edge off a stimm burn when it’s building up – seen it before, more than a few times.’
Viola shook herself. The jolt of spirits had helped. The shadow of a grin was still on Bal’s face as he tucked the flask into his belt beside a holstered pistol.
‘You were wrong,’ she said coldly, looking back to the clusters of officers, servitors and crew. ‘They all noticed. On a ship everyone notices everything. They have all seen me overload before, so don’t make it seem like I can’t cope now, understand?’
‘Yes, mistress,’ he said crisply, his face now a stiff mask.
‘All defences to full alert. Armsmen to the command and engine spaces. If we are blind then let’s not be stupid too.’
The replies echoed up, but she hardly heard them. Her eyes were back on one of the clouds blanketing the planet’s arc beyond the viewport. As she watched, a kilometre-wide patch of cloud strobed with lightning.
‘Target vessel ninety per cent sensor-blind,’ said the tech-priest wired into the gunship’s systems.
‘Ninety per cent?’ said Ninkurra, not looking up from checking the void suit’s fit and seals. The gunship was rattling and bucking as they boosted through the last layers of Dominicus Prime’s atmosphere. She preferred more preparation for a task like this – a lot more preparation. ‘There is a lot in that ten per cent that could turn us into vapour as soon as we break atmosphere.’
‘True,’ said the tech-priest, stirring in its system cradle. It was a bloated, cable-wrapped thing, with data sockets for eyes, but for some reason a perfectly formed mouth of white teeth. ‘The rogue trader vessel designated the Dionysia does possess armament capable of destroying us, but its power output suggests that it is focusing on the planet, and trying to make a signal connection with the surface.’
‘How long until they might have a clear view of us?’
‘Six minutes, zero-three seconds.’
‘Are our countermeasures functioning?’
‘To the best of my awareness our etheric shielding has maintained the function of this craft’s sensor countermeasure systems.’
Ninkurra did not reply.
The gunship was not conventional, even for the myriad forms of craft that came from the forges of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Hunch-winged and angular, it was heavily armed, and studded with exotic systems countermeasures. Its proportions seemed subtly wrong to her, as though its angles were intended to confuse and its proportions were intended for beings larger than a normal human. For covert infiltration and warfare, though, it was a tool beyond compare. She just hoped that it proved a match for whatever the rogue trader ship had.
She lowered the void helmet over her head and heard it hiss as it pressurised. Her two psyber-hawks were comatose and stowed in the vacuum cylinders with the rest of her equipment. Her preparations, just like the plan she was following, had been formed of necessity in the time it took the gunship to reach the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. She had considered other options, other ways of approaching the Dionysia, and longer timelines of infiltration, but the atmospheric and etheric disturbance had made up her mind to hit the rogue trader ship without pausing.
‘We have a clear visual feed if you desire direct observation of our course,’ said the tech-priest.
‘Show me,’ nodded Ninkurra. A second later a pict-panel on the other side of the compartment lit with multi-coloured static. The blur of colours resolved into an image of night streaked by distant whirls of light from where the warp storms were curdling the starlight. Set against it was the dagger-form of a ship, its flanks grey stone and black iron, its prow a golden barb. It grew even as she looked at it, the serrations on its spine becoming towers and basilica. It was small compared to the great warships of the Imperial Navy, or the bulk of a macro-hauler, but it was still a city cast into the vacuum in the skin of a cathedral.
‘What about an ingress point?’ she asked.
‘I have located a suitable ingress point that requires no direct hull breach and affords minimal probability of detection.’
Blue lines carved off a section of the image and it grew to fill the screen. It showed an area of the ship’s hull where a deep gouge had bored through stone and armour to leave a black puncture wound.
‘Battle damage,’ said the tech-priest, ‘full outer skin breach, forty point two four metres at its widest point.’
‘Recent?’ she asked.
‘Yes, and they have been unable to effect repairs, so it is probable that they have sealed internal bulkheads around the internal damage.’
‘And the probability that they have filled the area with murder servitors and gun platforms?’
‘Unknown, but that will be evident in one hundred seconds. Brace for ingress.’
Ninkurra felt the mag-harness grip the back of her void suit and yank her against the compartment wall. The image of the pict-screen blinked to what must have been a true eye view. The side of the Dionysia loomed, the pinprick lights of viewports a fa
lse field of stars. She could see the needle points of sensor towers and the light reflected from the planet beneath catching on its prow.
‘Passing void shield envelope,’ said the enginseer.
The gunship buzzed as exotic energies played over its hull.
‘They have active shields,’ she breathed.
‘And an active and alert defence turret system that has almost identified us as a target twenty times in the last ten seconds.’
‘Is that supposed to be comforting?’
‘I do not know what you mean. The statement was accurate. Comfort is not a value that I can analyse.’ His stream of speech paused and he turned his head as though looking out through the hull with eyes that he no longer had. ‘We are about to enter the hull breach.’
The screen-view of the void outside went black. The gunship juddered as vector thrusters fired, cutting its speed and nudging it forward through the cavern of twisted girders and torn decks.
‘Setting down,’ said the enginseer. ‘No indication of detection.’
The fuselage rocked and then shook as landing feet locked to the deck.
Ninkurra stood, harness snapping free. She floated for a second and then activated the mag locks in her boots and her feet clamped to the floor.
‘Opening external hatch,’ said the enginseer.
The atmosphere inside the cabin hissed into the dark as the rear hatch dropped.
‘Once you are out of this craft I will not be able to communicate with you,’ said the enginseer as she moved towards the darkness beyond the open hatch. She looked back at the bloated figure in its nest of cables. ‘Any signals, even short range, risk detection. I will shut down the craft and its spirit, and I shall enter a dormant state until you return.’
‘Of course,’ she said, and stepped down the ramp tugging her floating vacuum cylinder.
‘The products of good fortune attend you in your undertaking,’ said the tech-priest.
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