‘What is it?’ Toharan asked, awed. The two bodies were almost touching now. He saw how they would interlock, and how the twin planetoids were really a single mechanism.
‘An artist’s tool,’ Nessun answered. ‘You saw the masterworks that make up this system. Where do you think the raw material came from? This is the means by which a planet is disassembled before its elements are recombined in a more aesthetically pleasing form.’
The atmospheres of Gemini Primus and Secundus touched. The friction superheated the air. Battle Pyre and its sister ships raced for the sanctuary of the void, their shields glowing as they were surrounded by hurricanes of fire. Strapped down by his restraint harness, Volos looked out a viewing block, and lost all sense of up and down. He could see little now but incandescence and tumbling immensity. Mountain peaks blurred past above and below the Thunderhawk. Two fists were about to connect, crushing everything between them.
Toharan shook his head in bemused wonder. ‘Was the species who built this mad? To expend so much power and effort in so nonsensical a fashion…’
Nessun’s hands caressed vertebrae as delicately as if they were a hummingbird’s wings. ‘You do them wrong, my son,’ he said. ‘Do not mistake caprice for illogic. Perversity has a rigour of its own. You have fought in the False God’s armies long enough to know that Chaos can have a very definite purpose. Every element of the art that you have witnessed has a reason to exist. Did you notice, for instance, how rich the soil of the Gemini bodies is?’
‘In passing.’ In the preparations for the invasion of Primus, he had taken in, as background data, the extensive farmlands and lack of industry.
‘Now why would that be?’ Nessun asked rhetorically, his voice lilting as his body responded to the shifts in the instrument’s melody. ‘Adamantium does not erode. The fertile topsoil would have to be placed there deliberately. What purpose would it serve? I’ll tell you. It was a lure. Bait.’
‘For what?’
‘Sacrifice.’
Delacquo gasped. The air felt like glowing embers in his lungs. Kaletha was screaming. So was he. They all were, but Delacquo couldn’t hear their voices. They were drowned out by another scream: the shriek of the compressed and burning atmospheres. He saw the blinding rage begin in the clouds and descend towards him. It was the flaming grasp of a daemon god, come to obliterate everything. As the brilliance of the endfire filled his vision, he could still see the terrible spinning movement that was the engine of the destroying heat. In his last second before agony bright as wisdom reduced him to ash, he saw mountains falling towards him like descending fangs.
‘And why sacrifice? Because nothing comes from nothing. The machine of art needs fuel.’
Gemini Primus and Secundus met, meshed, and rolled against each other. Mountain ranges filled valleys. The grinder absorbed the energy of two billion souls incinerated in a matter of seconds. The flaming ruins of cities and villages were smashed to dust. The only evidence that humans had ever set foot on the surface of either body was the operation of the machine itself. A civilization died, priming the mechanism that destroyed it for more.
‘And why blood for fuel? It is, of course, one of the essential essences of warp sorcery. But the use of blood holds a lesson, too, as has every baroque step in the activation of this great machine. Its creators, it is clear, were beings possessed of infinite will and absolute amorality. How beautiful they must have been. Can you see the logic of the path they left for us? It was a test. To walk the path, we must prove ourselves worthy as artists. We must be able to hear the music, to see that there is music, and follow the logic from whistle, to bell, to organ. And we must prove our will. To use the machine is to be an annihilator. If we cannot provide blood, how will we have the strength to take it?’
The Battle Pyre was prey in the jaws of a wolf. Heat and gravity shook it, tore at it, squeezed it. Inside its hull, the only sense of movement was a lunatic, violent jerking, smashing its passengers in every direction. If they hadn’t been fastened down, they would have been broken like eggs against the bulkheads. Volos felt its machine-spirit howl. From the comm-bead in his ear, he could just make out an imaginative stream of invective from Keryon as he fought to keep the Thunderhawk on an escape course.
Then, something new was added to the shrieking roar outside the ship. It was the rumbling, cracking thunder of a planet-wide earthquake. It went on and on, a steady, endless apocalypse drum roll. The planetoids had met. Volos kept his gaze steady. If the end had come, he would stare it down.
There was a sudden piercing flash. He saw the death throes of the Cleansing Judgement. Flying on the Battle Pyre’s starboard, and half a length behind, it had been killed by the vortices of the colliding worlds. It broke apart as it burned, flinging wreckage and bodies to the insane winds. Thirty battle-brothers vanished. Volos’s vision strobed red with rage.
It was as if his need for vengeance shielded the Battle Pyre and Nightfire. They found a trough in the storm and shot forward, slipping through the grip of Gemini. They touched the void. Their pilots threaded the needle, finding the one spot where the gravitation fields of the two bodies cancelled each other out, and the gunships streaked away from the grinder.
The shaking eased as the Battle Pyre put some distance between itself and the machine. Volos released his harness and made his way to the cockpit. Keryon gave him a quick nod as Volos slid into the seat beside him. ‘Well flown, brother,’ Volos said.
Keryon grunted. After a moment he said, ‘A terrible loss.’
‘A terrible crime,’ Volos corrected. ‘Our dead battle-brothers cry out for justice. Let us deliver it.’
‘Sergeant Volos requires immediate docking for the Battle Pyre and Nightfire,’ Maro said.
‘Remain on station,’ Lettinger told him.
Tennesyn turned from the hololithic display of the Gemini horror to watch the exchange.
‘It was not a request.’ Maro was staring at Lettinger as if he were a being several steps less impressive than a gretchen.
‘Nor is this. Your captain left clear orders. No aid will be given to that traitor.’
Maro turned away from the inquisitor. He snorted in contempt. ‘Coming about,’ he said.
Lettinger drew his laspistol and placed the muzzle against the back of Maro’s head. ‘I know what you could do to me if you ever rose from that throne,’ he said. ‘So you should know that I will kill you if you so much as lean forward. Now. The ship remains on station. If Sergeant Volos’s ships come into view, destroy them.’
The port-side bridge door slid open, admitting Canoness Setheno. She wasn’t wearing her helmet, and Tennesyn found himself wishing that she were. The face of ice unnerved him more than the stand-off at the pilot’s throne. She paused by the entrance, taking in what Lettinger was doing. She said nothing.
Lettinger cleared his throat. ‘Canoness,’ he began.
Setheno raised her bolt pistol.
Lettinger ducked around Maro, using him as a shield. Setheno hesitated, and Lettinger fired around the pilot. Setheno dived to the left as Lettinger’s shot killed a targeting servitor and blew up his station. Lettinger stayed low and ran from the bridge, out the starboard door.
Setheno hurried to Maro’s side. ‘I am uninjured,’ he told her.
She turned to Tennesyn. ‘I trust I don’t need to ask where your loyalties lie.’
‘With the Emperor,’ Tennesyn blurted. Setheno continued to stare at him. Tennesyn’s mind wanted to shut down until her gaze went elsewhere. ‘And Sergeant Volos,’ he offered, and the paralyzing eyes moved on. She swept from the bridge after Lettinger.
‘And now?’ Toharan asked.
‘Now,’ Nessun said, ‘we feed on Imperial planets. The deaths of the local Gemini populations have given us enough energy for some travel.’
‘This thing can move?’ Toharan.
Nessun nodded, his face rapt as he played. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘And the more it eats, the farther it can go. But let’s begin with
somewhere relatively near. Within the subsector. Captain, I give you the honour of choosing.’
The selection was obvious. Toharan smiled. He had tried to show mercy, and he had tried to teach through example. Both had failed. Now it was time to demonstrate that he simply was not to be trifled with. Better yet, the grinder would exterminate any trace of impurity. ‘Aighe Mortis,’ he said.
There. He had ordered an attack on the Imperium. The final line had been crossed. He drew his chainsword, pushed the activation stud, and marked the moment. He drew the whirring blade over his chestplate and pauldrons, destroying the Imperial markings. The Disciples followed his example. Dragons and aquilas disappeared, and Toharan rejoiced in the ecstasy of conversion.
CHAPTER 27
INTERNECINE
Lettinger raced through the corridors of the Immolation Maw. He could hear the canoness’s footsteps. They sounded like a bell tolling for him. She was having no difficulty keeping up. He wasn’t losing her. Good. He had guessed that, sooner or later, this moment would come. He was ready for it. He ran down the levels toward the prison chapel. There, he tore down the transept, activating wards behind him. He ducked down behind the altar, pistol out, and waited.
Setheno arrived at the chapel. She paused for a moment at the entrance. Lettinger sensed her evaluating the scene. He smirked. It was the least she could do to acknowledge the work he and Toharan had put into the space. He doubted she had ever been down here, but she would still know that changes had been wrought. Most of them had happened after the failed attack on Volos’s cell, during the final hours in the warp, at the last meeting of the Disciples of Purity. The hole in the altarpiece where the icon of the Emperor had been was now a deeper void. The edges were rounded, and darkness dripped from them to the floor of the chapel. The stonework of the walls was blurry when looked at directly, and there was a subtle, twitching, oily movement just visible on the floor. There were no new symbols supplanting the ones that had been destroyed. Replacing one god with others was still, Lettinger believed, not what this struggle was about. It was about power, and who was worthy to wield it. This was what he told himself. It was a litany he repeated even now, as Setheno started forward again, striding right into the trap.
It triggered when Setheno was halfway down the transept. The attack came from two directions. Darkness bunched up behind and in front of her, and spat out two daemons. They were pink, giggling abominations, heavy bulks of flesh sprouting multiple arms and legs. Jagged-toothed mouths surfaced and sank, now in the centre of the mass, now at the top, now at the side, now at the rear. The horrors taunted and leered at Setheno as they rolled and bounded over pews, hurling gibberish insults at her that they seemed to expect she would understand. Lettinger had the unaccountable suspicion that perhaps she did.
The daemons cavorted about her, keeping their distance as they launched missiles from their palms. Setheno ducked and lunged forward as shifting, prismatic bolts passed over her head. She fired her bolt pistol behind, knocking one horror off-balance as it scrambled away from the rounds. She swept her power sword ahead of her. Aura crackling, the blade sliced through the lower limbs of the other daemon. The creature tumbled forward, snarling and laughing as it grew two new ones. But as it did so, it rolled towards Setheno. A joke caught in its mouth as she rose over it and brought her blade sizzling down through its chest. The daemon wailed. It bulged out on its sides, its flesh shading from obscene pink to a festering blue, and then, a hellish amoeba, it split.
Lettinger tried to get a clear shot at Setheno, but she and the daemons were moving too quickly. If he accidentally shot the horrors, he might redirect their attacks his way. So he waited for his opportunity, and smiled that Setheno now faced three daemons.
She seemed to have expected this. The two blue monsters, sobbing and screaming at each other, were just rearing back, hands upraised to unleash their warping assault, when Setheno struck again. The impaling move had been just the first step of her killing dance. She reversed the blade and thrust up, slicing the daemon on her left in half. With a babbling ululation, it vanished. The sword arced over and down into the other, and sent it back to the warp, too.
Setheno threw herself sideways, into a row between pews. Arms and multi-jointed fingers grasping air, the remaining horror landed where she had been a moment before. It fell in a heap, amused and ranting as it tangled its limbs. It sprouted others and righted itself. As it did, it fired a salvo of warp bolts Setheno’s way. She deflected them with the sword. Lettinger gaped as Setheno straightened, the blade moving so quickly it became sheet lightning. Skarprattar wasn’t harmed by the mutating powers of the daemon’s missiles. Its aura grew blinding, and the chapel was filled with a piercing, purifying, flute-like song. Setheno lowered the sword and poured her pistol’s entire clip into the daemon. The storm of explosive bolts blew the monster apart, spreading its flesh across the chapel too quickly for it to divide into coherent halves. The stench of ozone and slaughterhouse lingered after the remains evaporated.
Lettinger whipped around the altar, his pistol on full-auto, and bombarded Setheno with las-fire. She had barely released her trigger, and he hit her before she had time to react. He scored smoking holes in her armour. She dropped her empty gun and charged him. Lettinger leaped over two rows of pews and ran, firing all the time. She couldn’t hurt him as long as he stayed out of reach of that sword.
They danced around the chapel, he keeping his distance and harassing her with las-fire, she closing relentlessly, the blade before her. She showed no interest in retrieving and reloading her gun. Not that she would have a chance. Lettinger knew where he stood in this battle. The reflective flak armour beneath his cloak wouldn’t be worth a thing against the power sword. But it granted him mobility and speed he could use against Setheno. If she paused, if she looked away even long enough to grab her pistol, he would reduce her head to ash.
Setheno seemed to grow weary of the dance. Lettinger had circled back around to the chancel, and Setheno stopped in the crossing. She watched him, saying nothing. He mirrored her confidence. He stood before the altar, in the open, taunting her for her lack of foresight in expending her ammunition. She didn’t appear frustrated. There was still no emotion at all on that colder-than-alabaster face. Lettinger felt his blood pressure rise, infuriated by the canoness’s sanctimonious calm. He had the urge to scream at her, to hurl imprecations and blasphemies until he finally provoked a reaction from that abyssal impassivity. With some difficulty, he mastered his temper. Just kill her, he told himself. He fired until his power pack came up dry. She deflected the head shots with her sword, but otherwise stood there, maddeningly stoic, absorbing the shots with her armour, and staggered only once. Fuming, Lettinger thumbed the release on his pistol. The power pack fell to the floor. He pulled out a spare from his belt. He glanced down as he slapped it home beneath the barrel. The Litany of Loading, so meaningless to him now, sprang unbidden to his lips. He looked back up.
He had underestimated Setheno’s speed in the armour. She closed the distance between them while he was still realising what he was seeing. By the time he thought to react, she had brought the sword up between his legs, slicing until the hilt was just below his breastbone. He stared at it for a moment, frowning, wondering just how this turn of events could be compatible with everything he was supposed to accomplish. His eyes, growing sluggish, rose to meet Setheno’s. The Gorgon towered over him, considering him with no more interest than she would a pinned butterfly. He waited for her valediction. He knew the form. He had followed it himself, not that long ago (an eternity ago). He expected formal judgement.
He did not receive it, unless it was delivered in the sovereign contempt with which she yanked the blade back down, opening him wide. Lettinger emptied himself onto the chapel floor. The wet slap of organs against stone was the last thing he heard.
When there was no response from the Immolation Maw, Volos instructed Keryon to make for the Gemini moon. He voxed Lucertus in the Nightfire with
the same order. ‘Do we have enough fuel?’ he asked the pilots.
‘To get there, yes,’ Lucertus answered. ‘Afterwards, if the ship isn’t near…’
‘Then we’ll have nowhere to go anyway. We end things there, or we end.’
‘Maybe both,’ Keryon mused.
‘As long as that traitor’s blood drips from my blades, I will accept that result with a grateful spirit.’
Toharan stared at the completed grinder. He drank in the sight of worlds transformed into an engine of perfect annihilation. There, before him, captured by the eye of bone, was the promise of something even more important than what Nessun was preaching. He could see the art. He could see the weapon this represented. The Imperium would fall before a beast that was fed by the very destruction it caused. But did even Nessun understand the gift of that destruction? Toharan could barely articulate it to himself, though he could feel it in his breast and in his soul. He had just been witness to the reduction of billions of lives to nothing. Aighe Mortis would be ground to dust. Exterminatus left the husk of the planet behind, but the grinder returned matter to the void. It would deal a death blow not only to the Imperium, but to existence itself. The terrible pressure of being would ease as he travelled on this chariot of oblivion. He would see the universe reduced to purity under its wheels.
Toharan smiled. Toharan laughed. He was giddy. He felt liberated. He experienced true joy for the first time in his living memory.
And then Volos had to spoil the perfect moment.
‘Approaching ships, Father,’ a Sword said.
Toharan saw them too: bright specks emerging from the grinder, streaking away from the very nexus of the destruction. Nessun noticed, and the eye-screen changed focus and perspective. It narrowed its attention to the specks, magnifying them, revealing their identity. ‘Thunderhawks,’ Toharan muttered, cursing.
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