by Dan Abnett
‘I see it on my chart.’
‘The three of us might be able to slip in that way. I’d like to give it a try.’
‘All right,’ I replied. ‘But be careful and stay in contact.’
Up ahead, through the front screen of the cargo-8’s cab, we saw the Bergman pull off through the crowds down a side street and disappear.
‘What about us, then?’ Nayl asked from the wheel.
‘We try the front way,’ I said.
‘Just walk in?’ Kys asked, dubiously.
‘Well, I could make everyone in the crowd and every marshal on that cordon line think we were a Magistratum truck full of riot officers, but I don’t want to play the psyker card too early and get us picked up.’
‘If you can’t make us look like a Magistratum truck, why don’t we just use a Magistratum truck?’ Belknap asked.
‘I like the way he thinks,’ Nayl said.
It took nearly twenty-five minutes to navigate around the backstreets of the district to the north-west corner of the templum precincts. But Carl’s instinct had been good. The area was almost deserted. The crowds, evidently, were favouring the more public zones like the wide boulevards leading into Templum Square.
Plyton drove the purring Bergman into a cobbled lane that ran down the back of the Choristers’ Hall, and pulled into a small yard. The old precinct buildings around them were deserted and dark, though beyond them, in the south-east, the night sky was glowing with the powerful illumination set up around the templum.
The three of them got out and checked their equipment one final time. Plyton was wearing her black Magistratum body armour with the badges and insignia of Special Crime removed and, apart from her holstered Tronsvasse 9, she carried a big, black pump-action riot gun that Nayl had found for her. Plyton seemed a big, bulky figure compared to the much shorter, curvier Kara, whose compact body was wrapped in a dark purple armoured bodyglove with a short tan jacket over the top. She carried the shivered sword across her back, and a bolt pistol in her hands.
‘Which way?’ Kara whispered.
‘Follow the light,’ Carl said, snidely.
‘We can do that,’ Plyton said. ‘But if we jink over to the left there, we can come in along the side of the Paupers’ School, and then be screened by the almshouse wall all the way down to the refectory and the gate lodge.’
‘The stuff you know,’ Carl mocked, checking his Hecuter then sliding it away under the long brown leather coat he was wearing.
‘What’s that?’ Kara asked, pointing at the tails of his coat.
Carl opened the leather coat and drew the sheathed blade out.
‘Throne, where did you get that?’
‘It’s one of the rhyming swords that incunabula used to kill Mathuin,’ Carl replied. ‘I found it in the rubble just before we left. I intend to shove it right back down the throat of whoever sent that thing.’
With Plyton leading, they scurried down the gloomy lane, and across into a paved courtyard lit by a single lamp. On the far side, it opened up into the circuit road that ran around the inner precinct proper. They could see the white cordon barriers running all along the street. A Magistratum riot crawler rumbled past along the circuit road.
‘Anyone around?’ Kara whispered.
‘Yeah, there’s a three-man patrol down there,’ Plyton replied. ‘Give it a sec. Yeah, they’ve gone round the corner. Go!’
The three of them dashed across the circuit road, ducked under the luminous white cordon, and into a small, unlit cobbled lane with the bulk of the Paupers’ School to their right. They hurried on, keeping their backs to the wall. Kara signalled them to freeze as a six-man squad of riot officers in full armour jogged past the end of the lane.
Then she beckoned them on again.
Carl brought up the rear. He looked around and sniffed the cold night air. ‘It’s going to be a wild night,’ he muttered.
A large black Magistratum truck came grumbling down the empty transit underway and Belknap stepped out from behind the cargo-8 waving his hands.
The truck came to a halt, engine running, and a marshal, looking huge in his riot armour, clambered down.
‘What’s the problem?’ he crackled over his helmet vox.
‘My eight’s broken down. I was told to clear out of the area just now by some of you boys and then the damn thing stalled on me. Can you give me a hand? I’m no good with engines.’
The marshal signalled to his driver and followed Belknap around the cargo-8 to the open engine hatch. ‘Surprise,’ said Nayl, and shot him through the visor.
At the same moment, a kineblade whistled out and pinned the truck’s driver to his seatback.
‘Clear!’ called Kys.
Unwerth jumped down from the tailgate of the cargo-8 and opened the back hatch of the Magistratum vehicle for me. Belknap, Nayl and Kys dumped the bodies of the marshals in our vehicle and locked it up. Then Belknap and Kys joined Unwerth and myself in the back of the Magistratum truck and Nayl got in behind the wheel.
He put the big machine in gear and drove us away along the transit, turned right into one of the boulevards, and began to crawl through the pedestrian crowds gathering at the cordon across the mouth of Templum Square. There were two similar Magistratum trucks and a riot crawler in line ahead of us, and the marshals at the cordon had lifted the barriers aside to bring them through.
‘If anybody wants to pray for good fortune, they should do it now,’ Nayl said as we closed on the barrier. To my surprise, Belknap actually did what Nayl suggested, closing his eyes and mouthing the charm of sanctity under his breath.
Through the armoured hull of the truck, we could hear the anxious murmurings of the vast crowd.
‘Nearly there,’ Nayl said.
Eager to get the cordon closed and prevent the pressing crowd from spilling through, the marshals waved us on after the other vehicles.
We were in the huge plaza of Temple Square now. It seemed ominously empty after the bustle of the streets. The bulk of the grand templum towered ahead of us, lit up by dozens of powerful searchlight units that had been erected around the plaza. The huge white stab beams lanced up into the night sky and tracked slowly, occasionally catching on the fuselage of one of the patrol fliers circling low over the area. There were a lot of riot marshals on the ground around the templum, along with figures in grey suits. I noted that at least three of these grey figures were managing weapon-servitors on leashes.
Marshals with lighted batons were ushering us over to park with other Magistratum trucks in the plaza on the east side of the templum. There were dozens of vehicles drawn up there already. Nayl pulled us in on the far side of them, so line of sight from the main activity around the front entrance to us was blocked by the parked trucks.
‘What’s the time?’ Kys asked.
‘Nearly seven-thirty,’ I replied.
Jader Trice climbed out of his flier and walked clear, keeping his head low as it rose away again, into the search-lit sky. Revoke led the chief provost in through the main entrance of the grand templum, and the secretists and marshals all around them broke into spontaneous applause.
‘Thank you,’ smiled Trice. ‘Thank you all.’
Boneheart awaited them in the immense nave.
‘Everything is secure. All units report steady status, condition beta.’
‘Excellent,’ Trice said, straightening his robes.
‘The lexicon is two minutes away,’ Boneheart added.
‘I want to see it arrive,’ Trice said. ‘Where’s the Diadochoi?’
‘Already in the sacristy,’ Boneheart replied. ‘He went through as soon as he touched down, along with the cipherists.’
‘And Culzean?’
‘Culzean was with him, sir,’
Trice turned to Revoke. ‘I’d like you to come with me, Toros. After all your work, you should witness this too.’
‘I should stay and supervise–’ Revoke began.
‘Everything’s covered,’ Boneheart
said. ‘You go on.’
Revoke nodded to Boneheart and followed the chief provost out through the west entrance and along the wide exterior cloister to the old sacristy. This building too was floodlit, the vertical searchlight beams like the bars of a giant cage around it.
‘Day of days,’ Trice murmured.
‘This is a great moment for you, sir,’ Revoke replied. ‘A culmination.’
‘A great moment for us all,’ Trice said.
They entered the old sacristy.
The vault was lit by thousands of glow-globes. Ministry contractors had erected a large circular dais under the domed roof, the centre of the dais positioned directly beneath the apex of the dome. Ranks of seating had been built into the edges of the dais, facing inwards and, at the compass points, sleek obelisks of resonant stone had been set upright in sockets, each one corresponding exactly to the axes of the hive’s occult geometry. Trice climbed up the short flight of steps onto the dais, seeing Culzean and his bodyguard sitting amongst the other senior cipherists and dignitaries in the seating section. Culzean nodded to Trice, but Trice chose to ignore him.
The air was clean and cold. The central area of the wide dais was empty, except for the hub of suspensor rods poking up through the precise centre of the stage. Around this hub stood the thirteen grey-robed cipherists chosen to officiate the Enunciation. The Diadochoi was with them.
‘What is he wearing?’ Trice hissed to Revoke.
The Diadochoi was not dressed in the grey ritual robes Trice had so carefully designed and made. He was wearing a tailored gown of scarlet velvet and a long shrouding mantle.
‘Lord,’ Trice said, approaching the Diadochoi.
The Diadochoi turned and smiled at Trice. He was using his public face, the face of Oska Ludolf Barazan.
‘Jader! Our great day reaches its climax. Aren’t you excited?’
‘Lord, you should be changed by now. The ritual robes–’
‘Too drab for an occasion like tonight. I will be wearing this.’
‘Not drab, lord,’ Trice fought to contain his fury. ‘I designed the robes to be inert, so that they would not, by colour or design or pattern, threaten the purity of–’
‘You worry too much, Jader,’ the Diadochoi said. ‘Hush up now. See? The lexicon is here.’
Trice was about to explode with rage, but Revoke squeezed his arm and shook his head. Everyone looked up.
The ages-old false ceiling of the sacristy roof, accidentally penetrated by a simple limner, had been torn out. The real roof, the original dome, was now revealed. The sheer beauty of the ancient frescoes: the haloed figures, the golden temples, the idyllic pastoral landscape, stilled Trice’s anger for a moment. Perfection unveiled. Paradise found.
This, Trice considered, was what had driven Archdeacon Aulsman to suicide. The sheer heresy of it. For all its ornamentation, for all its lapis and selpic, its silver-etched constellations, this was Theodor Cadizky’s handiwork. There was no God-Emperor, no primarchs, no illustrious holies of the Imperial creed. What the frescoes showed, and boldly proclaimed in their inscriptions, was a prelapserian Eden, where ordinary men and women walked upon the face of Terra and were bestowed with the power of gods. Around them were the esoteric marks of a great chart, a mirror of the scribings the geometricians had wrought upon the floor of the Encompass Room. The perfect axial alignment of the hive’s mechanism, the occult order and the lines of power that Cadizky had built into his Petropolis.
‘Lexicon conveyance approaching,’ Revoke said, as his headset bipped.
‘Open the shutter,’ said the Diadochoi.
With a whirr, the central portion of the dome high above them slid open, leaves of metal unfolding around each other. They could hear the jetwash of a lifter hovering over the roof.
‘Time?’ Trice asked.
‘Ten minutes to eight, sir.’
‘We are at condition alpha,’ said Trice.
Kara, Plyton and Carl had reached the north-east gate lodge of the templum precinct. The old sacristy was ahead of them now, swathed in light.
‘Cover!’ Carl hissed. They ducked into the shadows as the roar of an approaching lifter echoed around the old walls.
‘Gods!’ said Plyton, peering out. Blazing with stablights, a heavy lifter was coming in over the domed roof of the old sacristy, caught in the beams of the floodlamps. It hovered in place, the noise of its engines shrill, and projected an intense white beam down from its belly, apparently into the top of the dome.
‘Ravenor! Ravenor!’ Carl voxed anxiously. ‘It’s started. Something big is happening!’
On the east side of the grand templum, we got out of the Magistratum truck. There was no longer any time to worry about the risks of discovery. I slid my chair up around the outer wall of the templum, heading for the main entrance. Belknap and Nayl followed me, running. Nayl, a huge shape in his brown armoured bodyglove, held a custom plasma rifle up to his chest. He’d fitted it with an underbarrel grenade launcher. Belknap, leaner than Nayl, in his black army fatigues and long, billowing leather coat, cut a romantic figure, like a pirate or a swashbuckler. He carried his practice bag in his left hand.
Kys and Unwerth went the other way, looping around the north side of the templum. Dressed in a tight green skinsuit, her hair loose, Kys was forced to rein in her long stride so that the diminutive Unwerth could keep up. Patience had a twinned pair of laspistols, and she’d drawn them. Her four kineblades remained sheathed in the boning of her bodice.
‘Keep up, Sholto!’
‘In all affectation, I am racing as fast as my foreshortened under limbs can go! I am not provided with lissom leggage such as you display, mamzel!’
‘Lissom leggage?’ Patience said. ‘Did you just compliment me, Sholto?’
‘I believe something of that formature may have slid out.’
Suddenly there were shapes ahead of them. Figures. Riot marshals and at least two secretists in grey.
Kys didn’t hesitate. Running towards them, she began firing her laspistols. ‘Unwerth! Let’s go! We’re in it now!’
‘And so we begin,’ Nayl said lightly, as the mass of marshals and secretists covering the main entrance of the grand templum spotted us.
No more hiding.
‘Fire at will, Harlon. Let’s see how many we can take with us.’
Massing forward, the agents of our enemy had begun bellowing challenges, but at least one of them clearly knew an armoured support chair was a warning sign. They began firing. Riot guns boomed in the mailed fists of Interior Cases officers, and the lasguns and pistols of the secretists quickly joined them.
‘Get down!’ I transponded and began to let rip with my psy-cannon. My shots ripped through the front rank of riot marshals at a distance of twenty-five metres, bursting their armour and sending them sprawling. I did not slow my pace. Shots struck my chair’s front and bounced off. Belknap had sensibly ducked in behind me, using my chair as a shield.
Nayl to the left of me hit the deck, rolled and came up on his knees as gunfire ripped over him and pummelled the sides of the Magistratum transporters parked behind us. He began to fire, raking with his plasma rifle, simultaneously pumping grenades from the under-barrel launcher.
Mayhem swept across the Templum Square in front of the great church. A ferocious ripple of explosions from Nayl’s launcher raised fireballs across the broken flagstones and up the entrance steps, sending bodies flailing into the air. His plasma bolts licked like daggers of sunlight, blowing men apart or ripping through them.
Sirens began to sound. Pausing only to reload his launcher from the pack on his hip, Nayl was up again, running and firing.
Boiling smoke now swathed the main entrance. The air was full of gunfire and confused yelling. I skimmed forward over tangled, crumpled bodies.
‘Carl!’ I voxed.
There was no answer. Somewhere off to my left, Nayl was exchanging a furious barrage of shots with the wrong-footed enemy. I heard the bang of shotguns, the crack of
las-weapons, a melody syncopated by the fierce, squealing shriek of his plasma rifle.
Straight ahead of me, two weapon-servitors bounded out of the thick, black smoke raised by Nayl’s munitions. They were huge, chromed cannon-hounds, unslipped and ready to kill. Their pink recognition beams found my bulky shape at once.
+Belknap! Down!+
The medicae ducked behind my chair, not so much because I had told him to but because I had layered my will into the telepathic burst, forcing him to drop. The gunpods on the servitors’ backs began to fire, drizzling me with murderous fire from their four lasrifles.
Fortunately, the adepts of the Guild Mechanicus, who had manufactured my support chair at Gregor Eisenhorn’s personal request, had made it with the same care they used for main line battletanks and striding war titans.
The devastating onslaught spattered off my housing like rain. The cannon-hounds hesitated, bemused. I knew my chair would not easily withstand a second full-on salvo.
I reached out with my psy and lifted one of the hounds off its feet, activating its gunpods as I swung it around to face its companion. Crippled by the first blizzard of las-bolts, the other hound instinctively returned fire, and the two weapon-servitors destroyed each other in a searing exchange of close range shots.
I let the ruined servitor go and it crashed to the ground, parts of its mechanism spilling out and scattering across the flagstones. Its companion had been fused into a crater by the ferocity of fire.
I moved forward again. A secretist I had not seen came out of the whirling smoke to my left, aiming a longlas. Behind me, Belknap raised his lascarbine out of his practice bag and shot the man three times through the torso, slamming him onto his back.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I could have covered it.’
‘Just trying to be useful,’ Belknap replied.
The suspensor beam shafted in through the open shutter and the lexicon, a tiny dark sphere, descended into the old sacristy. The suspensor rods below in the middle of the dais crackled as they activated and took the weight of it, lowering it gently until it sat at waist height in the middle of the chamber.
