Traitor by Deed

by Ben Counter

  Brother Arasmyn preferred to fight up close. He ran right at one of the enemy and slammed him against the side of the vehicle, then rammed his combat knife through the man’s neck. Pitamenes picked off another as the trooper ran for the cover of the half-collapsed shrine wall, and Manuch shot one more off the walls behind them.

  ‘Damned place is swarming with them,’ said Manuch.

  ‘You say that like a curse,’ said Sasan. ‘What good is a Space Marine with no heretics with which to blood himself?’

  ‘More talk,’ said Pitamenes grimly.

  Heretics, Sasan had called them, and their eagerness to open fire on the Space Marines confirmed they were enemies of mankind. But Cyvon could not call them heretics without knowing why they fought, what drove them, what kind of madness had taken them over such that they were choosing the sure death of facing the Angels of Death in battle. He could ask who they were, but his battle-brothers would have given the same answer, in their own ways.

  It did not matter.

  Captain Quhya’s contingent were sweeping down off the walls on the other side of the shrine. Heretics caught in the crossfire between the two payloads of Soul Drinkers dived for cover even as bolt rifle shells found their mark and ripped wet, red holes through them. Cyvon snapped shots into the fleeing enemies as he backed against the bullet-riddled vehicle and caught a glimpse of the ruined finery inside the shrine. The walls had been painted and framed with golden scrollwork, dulled and defaced by the collapse and the intrusion of the desert winds.

  He turned over one of the fallen heretics with his boot. The man’s arm and shoulder had been blasted off, laying open half his torso. He wore a scarf around his face to fend off the dust and wind. A burst of autogun shots chattered from inside the shrine, rattling off the side of the flatbed, and Cyvon ducked out of the line of fire.

  He pulled the scarf aside. The face beneath had been scored down the middle with a deep knife wound, too neat and precisely placed to have been caused by shrapnel or an accident. It had been deliberately inflicted. The wound went down through the mouth, splitting the lips. The tongue that lolled from between them was split too, like a lizard’s. The nose was pared open down to the bone, revealing nasal cavities choked with scar tissue.

  ‘Press on!’ came Captain Quhya’s order over the vox. ‘Drive them into the interior and hit them from all sides!’

  ‘If these heretics want to make a last stand in there,’ said Sasan, ‘it would be rude to deny them.’

  Sergeant Phraates jumped down off the flatbed. ‘Breach and purge!’ he ordered. ‘Manuch, cover the rear. The rest, full forward!’

  Cyvon left the mutilated heretic where he had fallen. The other bodies bore the same mutilation. What would drive someone to deliberately damage themselves?

  But these were thoughts for when the fighting was done. Cyvon ran after Brother Sasan and Sergeant Phraates, straight at the gap in the shrine wall where the crevasse had undermined its massive sandstone blocks.

  Fire poured out at them. Phraates trusted in his armour, and autogun shells pinged off the purple-painted cera­mite plates of his greaves and shoulder guard. Cyvon backed against the wall and Phraates charged past him, loosing off half a magazine of bolter shells into the shrine’s gloom. Cyvon swung in behind him, scanning across the interior, ready to fire.

  The gloom receded. His enhanced eyesight cut through the darkness. The walls and dome had once been covered in painted angels, swooping down from sun-drenched heavens. Saints had gazed up at the firmament, holding the archaic weaponry of the Imperium’s endless wars, and gilded letters had spelled out prayers to the God-Emperor. Now, the images were almost lost behind damage and bullet scars where they had been most thoroughly defiled. An enormous circular chandelier of wood still hung lopsidedly from the sagging dome, covered in ancient candles and encrusted with wax.

  The place was a wreck. The dark wood pews had been piled up into barricades, or used as fuel for a huge bonfire in the centre of the room beside the splintered remains of the preacher’s pulpit. The lit bonfire surrounded a blackened statue of the Emperor in gilded armour, from which the eyes had been struck. The eyes of the painted figures on the walls had been similarly gouged out.

  Dozens of the heretics were sheltering among the ruined pews. Cyvon’s trigger finger tightened by instinct, spraying a volley of bolter shells across the room in a fan of fire. The heretics dived to the floor as Soul Drinkers burst in from every angle and criss-crossed the shrine with gunfire.

  Hundreds of the enemy had barracked here. They had slept in the bedrolls scattered among the pews. Scores of them had already died in the time since the Soul Drinkers had landed. It had been less than a minute. They fell in the crossfire, shredded by shrapnel from the explosive rounds. In return, their weapons pinged and fizzed off the Soul Drinkers’ power armour, or scored furrows through the defaced murals as their panicked aim went wild. The Emperor’s statue was sprayed with blood, and bodies were draped over the altar and pulpit. The centre of the shrine was becoming a tangled swamp of gore and body parts.

  It was less a gunfight than a dissection. The battle-drills of the Soul Drinkers were executed to perfection. Cyvon moved now without conscious decision, fighting by rote, knowing his battle-brothers would be following the same tactical patterns laid down hundreds or thousands of years ago and sleep-taught to the Primaris of the Soul Drinkers.

  ‘Onward!’ came Quhya’s order over the vox. The three jump pack-equipped battle-brothers of Inceptor Squad Astyagon rocketed across the shrine on columns of flaming exhaust, strafing the heretics with chains of fire from their assault bolters. Hellblaster Squad Khosrau swept into the shrine beside Squad Phraates and eroded the hard cover of the solid wooden pulpit with pulses of fire from their plasma incinerators. Liquid plasma washed over the heretics, burning away their flesh to leave blackened bone and melting anything they hid behind. Superheated air washed across the shrine, igniting the torn pages of discarded prayer books.

  ‘Follow, brethren, or be damned!’ ordered Sergeant Phraates. He led the way over the broken pews towards the heretics’ last stand, firing one-handed as he drew his chainsword. Cyvon snapped shots into the heretics taking cover behind the massive base of the Emperor’s statue and saw more skulls blown open. In the storm of fire, it was impossible to tell to whom the kills belonged.

  ‘Sweep the scum aside and purify this place!’ yelled Phraates, his voice ragged with the rush of battle.

  The stench of death hit Cyvon in waves now, as if accentuated by the heat of the Hellblasters’ plasma fire. It hit harder than the chemicals of bolter propellant, even through the filter of his helmet.

  It was coming from beneath. He could make out the steps beside the altar, leading to a lower level of catacombs or ritual chambers. Somewhere the heretics were dying to defend.

  A team of heretics hauled a missile launcher on a pivoting stand up to what remained of the pulpit. Two fell immediately as the Inceptors finished their arc and riddled them with bolter fire that blew their upper torsos into crimson spray. The surviving two aimed the missile launcher across the shrine at the charging Squad Phraates.

  ‘You dare?’ snarled Pitamenes, stepping up onto one of the pews for a better shot at the weapons team. ‘These vermin would take the life of a Soul Drinker?’ He shot one of the heretics in the throat, blowing his head clean off.

  Manuch dropped to one knee and fired a single bolt into the heretic aiming the missile launcher. The bolter detonated inside the man’s shoulder and his arm spun away in a spray of gore.

  The launcher swung towards the sky as the heretic’s remaining hand contracted around the firing lever. A missile streaked straight upwards, and the dying man vanished in the billow of white exhaust.

  The missile detonated against the dome in a thunderclap and a burst of orange flame. The roof cracked and sagged, and in a shower of debris the enormous wooden ring of
the chandelier came loose. It seemed to fall in slow motion as its chains snapped and it plunged edge first towards the centre of the shrine.

  Cyvon skidded against one of the pews to halt his advance before he ended up underneath the falling chandelier. It crunched into the floor just ahead of him and kept going, smashing through flagstones already half melted by the barrages of plasma and bolter fire.

  The floor collapsed in a cascade of ancient broken stone, thousands of years of wear, combined with the undermining of the shrine by the crevasse, causing it to give way completely. The edge of the collapse rushed towards Cyvon faster than he could react and he felt the floor disintegrating beneath him. He saw Pitamenes beside him grabbing on to the stone and halting his fall as Cyvon plunged into the dark underside of the shrine.

  Chunks of masonry cracked against his armour. He willed himself to keep hold of his bolter as debris rang off his helmet and bursts of white pain flashed across his vision.

  He might have blacked out for a moment. Cyvon cursed the possibility, and ignored the complaints from his battered limbs as he rolled onto his front and got to his feet. His armour automatically dispensed anaesthetics, but he had already forgotten about the pain before they started working.

  ‘Report!’ came Phraates’ rough-edged voice, sounding distant through the vox.

  ‘Alive,’ said Cyvon. ‘I am alive.’

  He took stock of his surroundings rapidly. He had come to rest in an arched tunnel of worked stone, now half choked by debris from the collapse. Overhead was a slice of an opening that looked up to the shrine’s dome, streaked with bolter fire. Ahead of him the passage opened up into a larger chamber lit by guttering candlelight.

  This was the source of the stench. The odour of death surrounded him, so heavy it seemed the air was thick and sluggish with it.

  He got to his feet, checking himself for injuries. Nothing of note. He cycled the action of his bolt rifle, and it gave a heavy, broken clunk.

  Whether it was through random chance, or because he had been inattentive during his pre-battle wargear rites, the weapon had failed him. Cyvon shouldered the rifle and drew his combat blade. Its monomolecular edge shone in the faint candlelight. With his other hand he drew his bolt pistol. It had a shorter range and lower rate of fire than the rifle, but in these close confines it would suffice.

  ‘Unhurt,’ voxed Sasan. ‘Throne alive, something died down here.’

  Cyvon heard voices from up ahead. Strident and defiant, someone ranting as if whipping a crowd into a frenzy of zeal. And he heard the crowd, too, their roar rising and falling with the speaker’s inflection.

  He backed against the archway and glanced through to the larger chamber. The scene was lit by hundreds of candles oozing wax down the walls. Well over a hundred people kneeled before the far wall, on which shone an image from a projector above the archway. Each of the kneeling figures was stripped and hunched, and so malnourished their spines and ribs stood out vividly through their bruised and lesioned skin. Each figure’s wrists were manacled to an iron ring in the floor in front of them, forcing them into a kneeling position.

  Forced to kneel. Forced to pray.

  The stench was emanating from the congregation. Some of them had fresh wounds, as if they had just been flogged before being dragged down into the catacomb. Others had long-healed wounds and skin so grey and lifeless they might have been dead. The congregation was continually refreshed, perhaps as a punishment, perhaps as a sacred duty for the heretics above. Cyvon could not help but wonder how long they had been down here, chained in enforced prayer.

  He levelled his pistol across the gloomy chamber. Niches in the walls still held scraps of bone and funeral shrouds. This had once been the catacomb where clergy had been buried beneath the altar to their Emperor. Now it was defiled by this mockery of worship.

  Cyvon stepped carefully between the rows of worshippers. They did not acknowledge him. Their eyes were fixed on the projection. Their faces, like those of the heretics fighting above, were sliced down the centre from forehead to chin, opening up the nasal cavity and splitting the lips into an expression no unmutilated human face could wear. Their eyes were lidless, dry and speckled with dust.

  Sasan entered the chamber from another archway. The purple of his armour was grey with grime and debris from the collapse. An acknowledgement rune flashed against Cyvon’s retina, projected by the auto-senses inside his helmet, and with a thought he returned the signal to his battle-brother.

  A section of the ceiling had collapsed in a far corner of the room, brought down by the old subsidence of the shrine building. A sliver of movement flickered behind it – white fabric. Robes.

  Cyvon broke into a run down the centre of the chamber, past the rows of worshippers. The other side of the collapsed stone came into view, and behind one of the blocks crouched a heretic, this one in layers of white vestments with a mask of stretched and tanned skin worn over his face. He had an autogun clutched in his hands.

  ‘Behold her vengeance!’ yelled the heretic, bringing up his gun to fire.

  Cyvon was faster by far. Before the heretic could take aim, the Soul Drinker had pulled the trigger. His bolt pistol barked and the explosive round smacked into the centre of the heretic’s chest. The wall behind him was sprayed with the interior of his chest cavity as a second shot blew off his gun arm.

  A weight slammed down from the ceiling onto Cyvon. He heard Sasan opening fire and more bolter shells thumping into flesh before they detonated. Cyvon rolled onto his back, trying to dislodge whoever had landed on him. He felt steel claws scrabbling at the neck joint of his armour, trying to wrench his helmet off.

  Cyvon snapped his bolt pistol onto the magnetic clamp at his waist and grabbed a handful of the heretic grappling him. He threw the attacker over his shoulder to the floor in front of him, as if he were wrestling a sparring opponent to the ground.

  The thing that hit the floor had been human once, but no longer. It still wore the tatters of a fine military uniform with threads of brocades clinging to the chest and medals pinned to the tattered front of a dark-red jacket. Its arms were reinforced with pistons and rods for strength, and for hands it had sets of steel claws.

  The face was a horror. The skin was pared away from the central split, opening up the eyes into wide bloodshot orbs sitting in their deep, red sockets. The lips were peeled back and pinned to the cheeks, revealing a grimace of gore-flecked teeth.

  One of the arms pistoned forwards. Cyvon caught it with his free hand before the claws found his throat. His other hand gripped the combat knife. He punched the blade forward into the attacker’s chest and felt it scrape between the ribs, but the enemy kept going.

  The heretic should have been dead. Cyvon’s enhanced hearing could detect the hammering of its heart, driven by combat stimms. It struck again with a reinforced arm, with strength and speed that could crack ceramite. Cyvon pivoted to one side and the fist drove chunks from the stone wall behind him.

  The heretic screamed.

  In a flicker of the candlelight, Cyvon could see the dark-red flesh exposed by the deep furrow down the centre of the ­heretic’s face. He lunged with the combat knife, aiming for the vertical split. The knife sank into the heretic’s brain cavity, right between its eyes, up to the hilt.

  Finally some key connection was severed, and the heretic fell limp. Cyvon flicked it off the blade and let it clatter to the floor. He drew his bolt pistol again and spun around to see Brother Sasan kick a similarly enhanced attacker away from him and pump two bolter shells into its chest.

  The chamber was finally clear. Sasan looked around and, for the first time Cyvon could remember, seemed lost for words.

  The projection showed an open square surrounded by looming city spires. Thousands of people crowded the square, facing a wooden stage that took up one end of the space. Banks of seating held thousands more on the other three sides. Banner
s hung around the square. Some, bearing the elaborate arms of aristocratic houses, were torn and defaced. Others, new and resplendent, had the image of an enthroned woman whose head was surrounded by a halo of sunbeams.

  On the stage was gathered a group of priests. They wore masks of carved wood and metal, and their garb was similar to that of the robed heretic Cyvon had despatched. Behind them were several large steel cages with human shapes inside, crouching and pawing like animals.

  Another group on the stage were hunched and emaciated, their tattered and stained uniforms hanging on starved frames. Most were in the remains of the black garb of the Administratum, while others wore the robes of Ecclesiarchy clerics. Armed heretics below the front of the stage trained their guns on this other group, even though the captives looked barely able to stand, let alone fight.

  The crowd cheered as one of the priests stepped forward to a vox-caster microphone mounted on a lectern. The priest wore a mask carved into a snarling, catlike face, and the ivory of his robes was trimmed red. He held up a hand to quiet the crowd. He wore several fat rings that glinted in the lights trained on the stage.

  ‘I stand here as the Uppermost Hand of the prophetess,’ he began, ‘of the Voice of All. Through me, she speaks. And she pronounces death!’

  ‘Enough of this heresy,’ said Sasan, and strode to the back of the chamber, towards the projector.

  ‘Wait,’ said Cyvon. ‘We know nothing about this enemy.’

  ‘What do we need to know?’ asked Sasan, pausing beside the machine. ‘They took up arms against us. They defy the rule of the Imperium. They are the enemy. Or is this place not quite heretical enough for you, brother?’

  ‘Sergeant,’ voxed Cyvon. ‘Found something. A place of worship. A broadcast from a city, maybe Hollowmount. It might tell us something.’

  ‘Captain Quhya has ordered us to move in ten minutes, as soon as the transports make landfall,’ replied Phraates. ‘Cyvon, observe the broadcast until then. I should like to know what is waiting for us in the city. The rest of you, sweep for hostiles and regroup in the courtyard.’