Celestine - Andy Clark

by Warhammer 40K

  Starting, he sincerely hoped, with Sister Anekwa Meritorius. When the battle sirens started howling moments later, and the scream of incoming shells filled the air, Gofrey felt a smile stretch itself across his features and the anger burn hotter in his breast.

  ‘The time of testing is here!’ he cried, not caring to whom. ‘Repent your sins, you faithless masses, for in the fires of battle we all shall be tried for our guilt.’

  Sister Meritorius stood framed by the man-high crenellations of the battlements and watched the enemy begin their attack. The vast majority of the foe advanced on foot, hordes of ragged ore-miners, smelt labourers and dust farmers armed with pilfered small arms and displaying the blood red bandannas and war paint of the War Engine’s followers. They chanted and screamed as they dashed headlong towards Hawk Gate. Above them waved tattered crimson banners and brass icons, all depicting the same stylised skull sigil.

  It was an unclean symbol of the Blood God, Meritorius knew. The rune of he to whom the desperate peoples of Kophyn gave their worship when the light of the Emperor went out. She hated them for that choice, with a vehemence that eclipsed all else.

  ‘Enemy artillery drawing up on the ridge, ma’am,’ said one of the nearby Cadians, peering through her magnoculars. ‘I’d advise taking cover.’

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ said Meritorius as rippling muzzle flares lit the distant ridge.

  ‘So does ferrocrete, ma’am,’ muttered the Cadian as she ducked. A rain of shells tumbled down upon Hawk Gate, resolving from black dots against the cobalt sky to hurtling projectiles. Meritorius took a deep breath and willed herself to hold her ground. If it took the fires of the enemy’s fury to burn away the numbing shroud that kept her from her faith, then so be it. Anything to feel the Emperor’s love restored.

  The shells hit and the world turned white. Thunderous detonations blanked out all other sound, and Meritorius felt the heat of the blasts as her hair and cloak billowed in the furnace winds. The battlements shuddered. Debris filled the air. Then it was over, and amidst the smoke and the first screams of the wounded, Meritorius found she was still alive. She raised a hand to a sharp sting at her cheek, her gauntleted fingers coming away spotted with blood.

  ‘Shrapnel,’ she said absently, then stared out through the smoke, trying to perceive the foe. She was dimly aware of the Cadians rising to their feet, looking at her with fresh wonder as they dragged their heavy weapons into firing positions.

  ‘They will maintain their bombardment,’ said Meritorius, her voice vox amplified through her gorget so that it boomed along the ramparts. ‘The enemy seek to keep our heads down and our guns silenced while their infantry close. Remember the fate of Dasha Adul. Keep the foe from the gate at all costs, and remember, men and women of the Imperium, the Emperor is with you!’

  The Cadians raised a cheer at her words and, as the smoke tatters and orders flickered through their vox receivers, they let fly into the onrushing cultist hordes. They were not the only ones. Every gun emplacement, artillery position and firing slit flared bright as the Cadian 144th vented their fury upon the charging foe. The front ranks of cultists were a few hundred yards from the gate when they erupted in fountains of blood, fire and tattered flesh. A hissing storm of lasgun fire fell like glowing rain to scythe down dozens upon dozens of howling heretics. Missiles whipped down on trails of smoke and detonated amidst tight-packed clusters of the foe. Heavy bolters and autocannons chugged, chewing red lines of ruin through the footsoldiers of the War Engine’s hordes.

  Hundreds died in minutes, yet thousands more poured in behind them. They scrambled and trampled over the bloody wreckage of their former comrades, wild eyed and bellowing. Hardly like humans at all, thought Meritorius. More like wild animals.

  ‘Ma’am, incoming!’ shouted the Cadian gunner as another volley of shells screamed down upon the ramparts.

  ‘Cover!’ roared Meritorius. ‘Then up and resume firing! The Emperor is with you!’

  Again, the fire and fury of the enemy’s shelling shook the battlements. A hundred yards to her right a lucky shot passed between two crenellations and hit the firestep, blasting an avalanche of rubble and bodies down the backslope of the gate. Corpses and rockfall rained down on the Cadian Whiteshields waiting on the canyon floor. They screamed in agony, half buried beneath crushing rubble. As the field medicae dashed to reach them Meritorius saw one flattened suddenly beneath a late-falling chunk of masonry the size of a bunker door. Yet again, she herself was more or less untouched.

  There was a day when such a thing would have made her faith burn hot. Now she found herself feeling little of anything at all.

  The smoke cleared for a second time and Meritorius leaned out to add the thumping fire of her boltgun to the Imperial fusillade. Self-propelled shells whipped down into the enemy, every mass-reactive shot bursting another heretic as though they had swallowed a grenade.

  As she fired, Meritorius activated her vox, speaking to her sisters and to the preachers of the Imperial mission that they had accompanied into the stars.

  ‘The enemy press hard, but this is only the beginning and we must hold at all costs. Let your voices ring out, sisters and brothers. Let your prayers be heard by friend and foe alike.’

  Confirmations flashed back to her, and amidst the din of battle she heard the beginnings of a battle hymn from the gun fortresses. Vox amplified by the Battle Sisters, the choral singing rose over the hammering of gunfire and the screams of the dying, haunting and beautiful and stern. Soon enough the Cadians joined their voices as best they could, a mighty hymn of defiance echoing from Hawk Gate to defy the hated foe.

  Meanwhile, Meritorius switched channels.

  ‘Major Blaskaine, this is Sister Meritorius,’ she voxed.

  ‘Receiving, Sister Superior,’ came the Cadian’s reply.

  ‘Major, the enemy have drawn up prodigious artillery assets on the ridge north of the wadi. If they continue their bombardment of us unmolested, I fear they will compromise our defences quite rapidly.’

  ‘Understood, Sister, we see them on auspex,’ said Blaskaine, and Meritorius felt a moment’s irritation at the man’s relaxed tone.

  ‘Then perhaps you would be good enough to intervene on our behalf, major?’ she said.

  ‘Wheels are already in motion, Sister Superior,’ replied Blaskaine. ‘I believe Captain Maklen is about to provide the enemy with a demonstration of what proper artillery looks like. I recommend you enjoy your vantage point and perhaps shield your eyes, Sister.’

  A basso roar rose from deeper within the canyon city, sounding for all the world like a catastrophic avalanche or ferocious earthquake. Meritorius looked back to see half a dozen bulky rockets thundering into the sky on thick pillars of fire and smoke. Manticore missiles, she realised, each one the size of an armoured personnel carrier, machine-spirit guided and packed with thousands of micro-bomblets.

  ‘Throne alive,’ breathed Meritorius as the enormous rockets lumbered overhead and spread out before beginning their death-dive towards the enemy. She saw the blasts a moment before she heard them, a flurry of apocalyptic light-flares that transformed the distant ridge into a roiling sea of fire. Mushroom clouds billowed into the air as the dragon’s roar of multiple explosions reached her ears, and Meritorius watched the blast waves from the explosions hurl the rearmost ranks of heretics from their feet as they raced outwards.

  ‘Emperor be praised,’ said the Cadian gunner to Meritorius’ right, looking again through her magnoculars. ‘There’s no enemy artillery left. There’s nothing left…’

  ‘Magnificent, major, the Emperor’s wrath made manifest,’ voxed Meritorius. ‘Please relay my thanks to Captain Maklen and her gunners.’

  ‘Will do, Sister Superior,’ replied Blaskaine. ‘Just don’t ask for another demonstration. That was the last of the Manticore ordnance. The launchers are dry.’

  ‘Understood, Majo
r Blaskaine,’ said Meritorius, before breaking the vox-link. Such a display of Imperial might, she thought, and yet she felt nothing.

  Meritorius sighed and looked down over the ramparts to see fresh waves of cultists pouring into the fight. So many heretics had been slain now that the living were using bulwarks of the dead for cover, digging in behind the bodies of their former comrades and raking the gate with fire. Bullets chewed along the ramparts, spitting fresh shards of shrapnel where they struck. Meritorius flinched despite herself, and a glance at the Cadian gunner showed that the woman had caught the moment of weakness. For an instant, the two of them locked eyes and Meritorius felt as though her failings were laid bare. She despaired as she saw the first stirrings of fear and doubt blossom behind the Cadian’s eyes in response to her own. Then a round caught the gunner in the ear and blew out the side of her skull, throwing her body off the firestep like discarded waste.

  The weapon’s other gunner looked up at Meritorius, eyes hard and demanding.

  Meritorius broke his gaze and turned back to the battle, firing another volley down into the massed foe. She had nothing to offer him.

  Major Blaskaine ground his fists into his eyes, trying to rub the exhaustion from them and failing.

  ‘How long have they been attacking now?’ he asked, directing the question to no one in particular.

  ‘Battle’s been going for twelve hours and sixteen minutes, sir,’ said Lieutenant Kasyrgeldt.

  ‘It feels like days,’ said Blaskaine. ‘And we’ll have nightfall soon. Won’t that be a delight?’

  The nights on Kophyn had been hellish for many weeks now. The natural stars of the void were no longer visible amidst the darkness. Instead, freakish auroras lit the night, lurid colours spilling and billowing through the stratosphere, twisting into the monstrous suggestions of leering faces and fanged maws. What celestial phenomena could be observed were wrong and unnatural, corresponding to no star-chart that Blaskaine had ever seen.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, sir, I doubt we’ll have to last through the whole thing,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘I’m seeing fresh waves of heretic armour rolling up on Jackyl Gate. Looks like they’ve activated their Stormlord at last. The gate’s defences are down to eighteen per cent effectiveness, and Captain Maklen already deployed most of her reserves to shore them up. There’s no way we can stop that punch, and once the gate falls there’ll be heretics swarming through the streets like vermin.’

  The bunker shook, and the lights flickered. Dust trickled down from fresh cracks in the ceiling.

  ‘Bloody enemy bombers,’ spat Blaskaine. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a few squadrons of Lightnings to get up there amongst them.’

  ‘If wishes were weapons, we’d have a Titan Legion on station,’ replied Kasyrgeldt.

  ‘Void shield generators failing above sector two,’ called one of the console operators.

  ‘Sister Meritorius reports another wave of enemy infantry approaching Hawk Gate, sir,’ said another one. ‘She’s reporting weapon servitors and Dreadnought-sized mutants.’

  Any last reserves of gallows humour Blaskaine might have used to deflect the severity of the situation drained from him along with the blood from his face.

  ‘To openly invite the mutant into your ranks,’ he breathed. ‘It seems impossible for these people to have fallen so low.’

  ‘In days as dark as these, anything is possible,’ said Kasyrgeldt.

  Blaskaine took a deep breath and stood from his own console. He placed one hand on the butt of his laspistol, and looked around the command bunker. Red runes flashed on every auspex screen. Operators talked rapidly into headsets, struggling to keep the strategic maps updated as wave upon wave of fresh enemies poured into the fight. The grim black signifier of the enemy’s Stormlord flashed ever closer to Jackyl Gate, the super heavy tank grinding unstoppably towards the beleaguered bastion. It was no doubt packed with the axe-wielding Mas’drekkha soldiery of the War Engine’s elite. Casualty reports spiralled by the moment.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began Blaskaine, before the entire bunker shuddered again, more violently than before. Cracks shot through the bas-relief carvings, sundering Imperial angels and decapitating brave soldiers. The lumens went dark. Only half of them flickered back to life.

  ‘Void shields gone,’ came the report.

  ‘Stormlord engaging at Jackyl Gate,’ came another.

  ‘Breach! Breach reported at Jackyl Gate,’ barked another operator a moment later. ‘Sub-Duke Velle-Marchon is committing the last of his tanks to seal the gap.’

  Blaskaine shook his head. They all knew that a score of battle-damaged tanks wouldn’t be enough to stop what was coming.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began again. ‘It has been a damned honour to serve with you all, but I think we all know that the situation is irredeemable. I am giving the order for all remaining combat assets to fall back through the deep caves. Voxman, please pass my regards to Sister Superior Meritorius and ask her to hold Hawk Gate for as long as the Emperor permits.’

  ‘Sir?’ asked Kasyrgeldt as the Cadian operators exchanged glances. ‘Should we not commit all reserves to holding Jackyl?’

  ‘You and I both know that there’s no victory to be had here, lieutenant,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Our duty now is to remove whatever assets we can from this combat zone. Whatever we salvage today can be used against the War Engine tomorrow.’

  ‘Sir, we can’t just let the gate fall,’ blurted a junior lieutenant angrily. ‘Throne knows we’ve done enough of that!’

  Blaskaine pinned the lieutenant with the full intensity of his gaze.

  ‘When Cadia fell we all lost something of ourselves, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘But we pulled out as strategy and sanity demanded, that the Imperium might use our remaining strength for something more than a pyrrhic gesture of defiance. So unless you want to march down to Jackyl Gate now and fight the enemy off with your bare hands, I suggest you shut up and follow orders, there’s a good lad.’

  Blaskaine stared hard around him, daring anyone else to challenge his orders. He could hear how it sounded, how laughable the notion was of staging any meaningful fight back if Tanykha Adul fell. And he knew the rumours, knew what they whispered about him ever since the fall of Cadia. But if there were more days yet to be lived, Blaskaine would just as soon live them, and he could salvage something in order to fight back on his own terms. He was duty bound to do so no matter what they thought of him for it.

  Kasyrgeldt drew breath to speak, but at that moment a piercing shriek burst through every vox-set in the room. Operators yelled in surprise, ripping off headsets and reeling back from their consoles. The lumens glowed brighter, and a crystal-clear note sang in the air, growing louder by the moment.

  ‘What in Throne’s name?’ gasped Blaskaine.

  ‘Sir! The enemy aircraft. They’re… they’re just gone,’ cried one of the operators, pointing at the runic display on his screen.

  ‘Empyric augurs active, sir,’ came another report. ‘Some kind of phenomenon.’

  ‘Define some kind,’ barked Blaskaine. ‘What is this, a weapon for the enemy to finish us with?’

  ‘I don’t…’ The operator gaped in amazement at his conflicting readouts, two tech-priests chattering in binharic as they hunched over the console.

  ‘Report from Sister Meritorius, sir,’ shouted a voxman over the swelling note that filled the air. ‘She says it’s a miracle, sir. She asks you leave the bunker to look upon the skies.’

  Blaskaine blinked, then turned and made for the exit, most of his command staff close on his heels. He followed the tunnels through the rock of the cliffside, making for the closest exterior balcony. As he went, he found himself advancing into a glimmering golden light that shone along the corridors like a false dawn. The high, singing note swelled and rose as he went.

  Blinking in the glare, half-deafened, B
laskaine staggered out onto the viewing balcony and looked up. The deep shadows of the canyon city were thrown into stark relief by a spill of what looked like golden starlight, falling from on high.

  ‘What is that?’ shouted Kasyrgeldt, shielding her eyes and squinting upwards into the golden glare that filled the skies.

  ‘Are those enemy planes?’ asked a sub-lieutenant, pointing to flaming trails of wreckage tumbling from on high.

  ‘Three points north-north-west,’ barked an operator, staring through heavy ocular augmetics into the very heart of the blaze. The light began to dim, the note to fade, and as they did Blaskaine saw what the man was referring to. The glow had come from something. No, someone now drifting down through the night skies and descending towards Jackyl Gate.

  A metal-winged figure, armoured, holding a glimmering blade, her hair flowing in a dark mane around her head.

  ‘Vox-set,’ he demanded, clicking his fingers at an operator who dutifully hurried forward with the man-portable set he wore on his back. Blaskaine grabbed the handset and flicked to Sister Meritorius’ frequency.

  ‘Sister, care to explain to me who in the Emperor’s name that is?’ he barked. ‘And perhaps you could enlighten me as to what in the name of the Golden Throne she just did to the enemy aircraft?’

  Meritorius’ voice, when it came back to him, was so full of hushed awe that it gave even Blaskaine pause.

  ‘Major, I think… I believe that it is the Living Saint.’

  ‘Living Saint?’ gaped Blaskaine.

  ‘Yes, major,’ said Meritorius, sounding every bit as bewildered as he. ‘I believe she has come to us in our hour of need. It is Saint Celestine.’

  Celestine flew through an ever-changing realm. The skies roiled overhead, turbulent strata of colour intermingling with streamers of glaring light and racing masses of cloud. At times there were faces amidst the thunderheads, vast and hideous things with rolling eyes and leering maws. Suggestions of avian abominations screamed through fanged beaks. Terrible yet beautiful visages stared down before breaking apart into flickers of energy like writhing worms. Winds blew hot and cold, carrying smells as variegated as sulphur and camphor, fresh bread and rotting flesh, warm skin and ancient ice and burning parchment and vomit.