by Ben Counter
'I know.' said Ligeia. 'One of the justicars would probably be more efficient. But... you are mine, you four. They do not belong to me like you do. I have arranged for Inquisitor Klaes to supply a ship - it is small and lightly armed but it is very fast. You should be there within two weeks, if you leave immediately.'
Xiang bowed her head and, without turning around, backed swiftly out of the room. Ligeia had never worked out how the death cultists communicated with one another - she could sense the meanings of their conversations without seeing any movement or hearing any sound - but Xiang would be going to tell her fellow death cultists what Ligeia wanted of them.
There were only four left now. Death cultists, almost by definition, did not grieve - death was a welcome end for them, as long as it came in such a way that their own lives were offered to the Emperor in sacred combat. But they had lost two of their number on Sophano Secundus, and Ligeia was saddened to see two such highly trained and devoted servants of the Emperor lose their lives. They protected Ligeia but, even more, Ligeia was responsible for them. She owned them, and she was their reason to exist. Their deaths were echoes of her own death.
There had been no funeral rites - they had left Taici and Gao on Sophano Secundus. Their deaths alone were sacred, and what happened to the bodies was irrelevant. Ligeia found their lack of pretensions quite refreshing but she would still not want to be left, decaying and forgotten where she had died. She hoped that someone would feel responsible for her when the time came.
Ligeia poured herself another glass of amasec, letting its strong fruity smell chase some of the horrors out of her head before taking a swallow to calm her shaking hands.
Then, she took one of the other books from the floor, put it on the desk, and placed her hands on the cover. She took a deep breath, and dived back into the revelations of Ghargatuloth.
JUSTICAR GENHAIN TOOK careful aim and waited for a moment, as the lenses of his bionic eye snapped into focus. Then he fired a single bolt through the forehead of the human-shaped target at the far end of the gallery.
The shooting gallery on the Rubicon was a long, low room, windowless like an underground chamber, with walls carved deeply with scenes of battle and victory intended to focus the mind on diligence and improvement. The columns separating the firing positions were carved into the likenesses of Imperial saints - Genhain at that moment was flanked by a glowering Saint Praxides and Saint Jason of Huale, who were both trampling hapless heretics beneath their feet. Several servitors patrolled the shooters' area, waiting for the Grey Knight to require more ammunition, while the firing range itself was empty save for targets hanging from the ceiling as they trundled along.
'Good?' asked Alaric, standing just behind Genhain.
'Doesn't feel right.' replied Genhain, lowering Alaric's storm bolter. 'Leave it with me for a few hours. I'll have it better than new.'
Genhain had a feel for guns that rivalled any Grey Knight in the Chapter. He was one of the best shots the Grey Knights could field and, even with the existing wargear rites, many of the Grey Knights who knew him would ask him to check their guns for flaws they could not detect. A storm bolter might be working perfectly as far as other Marines were concerned, but Genhain would know if it was too likely to jam, to buck in the hand on full auto, to lose its accuracy in certain conditions.
'Do not neglect your own men on my account.' said Alaric.
'My squad are doing well.' said Genhain. 'They are observant and in good spirits. I'd rather not lead them too closely when it comes to prayers and suchlike. It always feels better to lead yourself in such things.'
'And their guns?'
Genhain smiled and took aim at the same target again. 'Their guns are good.' He fired again, the bullet hole appearing just above the first.
'They fought well on Sophano Secundus.'
'They did. I am proud.' Another shot, this one wide. Genhain bit down a curse and began to inspect the bolter's firing mechanism. 'I was worried about the inquisitor.'
'Ligeia?'
'I don't think she is a fighter. She looked rattled.'
'Ligeia is a strong woman, justicar. You're right though, she'd rather leave all the fighting to us.' Alaric thought for a moment. Genhain led his men very differently from Santoro or Tancred, and Alaric knew Genhain's judgement was sound. 'What do you think of her?'
Genhain looked up from Alaric's bolter. 'Me? I think she is very good at her job, just not as good at ours.'
'Well, she won't be fighting any time soon. They broke Valinov back on Mimas and he let slip that Ghargatuloth can only be killed by a "lightning bolt". The Nemesis sword Mandulis used was fashioned into a lightning bolt, so Ligeia has sent her death cultists to get it from the catacombs on Titan.'
'They could have trouble.' said Genhain. 'It is difficult even for inquisitors to get into Titan, let alone have one of the grand masters disinterred.' Genhain tightened the firing mechanism and took aim again. 'But at least it shows Ligeia understands us.'
'How so?'
'She asks us only to fight and doesn't expect anything else. She could have sent you to Titan, and you could have retrieved Mandulis's sword far more effectively, but she didn't. She respects us. Some of the Ordo Malleus think the Grey Knights were created to serve them, but we are a sovereign and independent Chapter, as much as the Space Wolves or Dark Angels or anyone else.'
Genhain had deliberately named two of the more unpredictable Space Marine Chapters. 'Few Grey Knights would speak that way.' said Alaric.
'It is only the truth.' Genhain fired again, this time on full auto, and a cluster of holes blossomed in the centre of the target's head. 'If the Grey Knights did not think for themselves, they would be far weaker soldiers. That is the core of what a Space Marine is. We work with the Ordo Malleus because it is the most effective way to do what we have to do, but we were not founded for their benefit. We were founded to do the will of the Emperor, just like the Inquisition. I think Ligeia understands that.'
'I am glad you trust me well enough to tell me this.' said Alaric. Many of the more traditionally-minded Grey Knights would think that Genhain had strayed dangerously close to insubordination. Alaric, on the other hand, was quite glad that the Marines he had chosen to accompany him on this mission were able to think for themselves. If there was one danger in the way Grey Knights were trained and indoctrinated, it was that their own spirits would be so crushed beneath the weight of dogma and duty and they would not be able to form their own judgement.
'If I cannot trust my commander, Alaric.' replied Genhain, handing Alaric his bolter, 'then who can I trust? This gun could have lost accuracy in a protracted firefight, but its machine-spirit has been persuaded to be more co-operative.'
Alaric took the gun and fitted it back onto his gauntlet. It felt subtly different, as if it belonged there. 'Thank you, justicar. It always helps to shoot straighter.'
'You have to trust your gun.' said Genhain with a smile. 'Otherwise, where would we be?'
WHEN SOPHANO SECUNDUS fell, a silent call went out across the Trail.
On Volcanis Ultor, a sect hidden deep in the underhive of Hive Tertius overloaded the city's geothermal heatsinks and caused several layers of hive city to be swallowed up in nuclear fire.
Even as ships sent by Inquisitor Klaes pounded Hadjisheim into smouldering ash from orbit, a mutiny in the small sector battlefleet caused three cruisers to be scuttled with all hands.
A prophet appeared on the forge world Magnos Omicron preaching the new word of the Machine God, demanding innovation and creativity over the worship of the Omnissiah and the endless search for perfection. Before he was found and killed, he had rallied three forge cities to his cause and it took a minor civil war amongst the tech-guard to stop his crusade.
Provost Marechal lost thousands of Arbites as he shuttled them from world to world to douse the flashpoints where heretics suddenly played their hands. From an orbital command station around Victrix Sonora, Marechal co-ordinate
d hundreds of Precincts as they battled riots and rebellion across the Trail.
On the garden world of Farfallen, once a playground for the Trail's rich, a previously unknown tribe of feral humans crept out of the overgrown botanical gardens to slaughter the planet's isolated Imperial communities.
The governor's villa on Solshen XIX, an agri-world whose wide oceans teemed with fish that fed the Trail's hives, was transformed overnight into a charnel house overrun with daemons. A cult led by the governor's own son had summoned creatures of the warp in response to visions from the Prince of a Thousand Faces, and the governor had been hanged in a noose of his own skin from the cliffs surrounding his villa.
Many thousands on the Trail's downtrodden hive worlds would starve with the planet lost to Chaos and anarchy.
A hundred cults broke their cover and engaged in wanton, apparently purposeless destruction. Places of worship were looted, hundreds in one night in a seemingly co-ordinated strike against the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Church.
It could not last long. The cults could only do so much before the combined efforts of the Arbites, the Imperial Navy and the horrified population stamped them out. And in a way, that was the worst thing about the uprisings on the Trail of St Evisser - they had all the hallmarks of an endgame. It was the final setting of the stage for something vast and terrible, where cults hidden for centuries gave their lives away to enact plots dictated to them by sinister voices in their heads.
The Ecclesiarchy responded with uncharacteristic speed. The Order of the Bloody Rose sent a Preceptory of Sisters of Battle to be co-ordinated by Cardinal Recoba on Volcanis Ultor, and their request for additional manpower was met by the Imperial Guard, namely the Methalor 12th Scout Regiment and the Balurian Heavy Infantry. Even the Imperial Navy diverted a force of subsector battlefleet size from the long journey up to Cadia. Someone powerful in the Ecclesiarchy was clearly rattled by what was happening on the Trail - but though the Sisters and Guardsmen were deployed to guard religious sites throughout the Trail, they could do little to stop the steadily rising tide of heresy.
Ghargatuloth had spoken. And to those who knew how to listen, everything he said indicated that it would not be long now before the Trail was drowned in horror.
Chapter Ten
MIMAS
THERE WAS A place on Mimas, just outside the great crater, where the earth was torn and scarred. It had been dug up thousands of times by servitor labourers and covered over again. Here and there seismic activity had caused broken bones, even the odd grinning skull, to break the surface, only to be re-buried by roving patrol servitors. In the centre of the broken land was a single building in the High Gothic style, its every surface tooled deeply with images of punishment and retribution - sinners burning in the many indistinct hells of the Imperial cult, vengeance crashing down on the heads of the heretic, the eyes of the Emperor seeing every sin and the servants of the Emperor exacting revenge. Men were killed in scores of ways, from hanging to dismemberment to exposure in the toxic Miman atmosphere, all recorded in sculpture on the building's pillars and pediments.
Dozens of gun-servitors guarded each door. A garrison of Ordo Malleus mind-scrubbed troops stood permanently at attention in their quarters below the building, ready to react to any threat. The building itself was formed around a central chamber with many galleries looking onto it, where a single raised platform stood surrounded by seating for dignitaries, technicians and archivists, like the slab at the centre of an anatomist's theatre.
Gholic Ren-Sar Valinov was brought to the execution chamber on Mimas seven weeks after he had been broken by Explicator Riggensen. Valinov had not said one more word since that day. If anything he appeared more sullen and uncooperative than before, as if cursing himself silently for letting Riggensen's interrogation crack his mask of infallibility. And so the interrogation staff on Mimas had advised the lord inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus that Valinov was of no further intelligence value.
The Conclave of the lord inquisitors unanimously approved the execution of Valinov. It transpired that Ligeia had indeed been bluffing when she had first questioned Valinov - there would be no elaborate psychic half-death, just an old-fashioned execution. Valinov had been convicted of several capital charges but it was as punishment for grand heresy that he was brought from the prison to the execution chamber just outside Mimas's crater, and Imperial law required that the punishment for grand heresy was death by dismemberment.
IT WAS A solemn occasion. There was no sadness that Valinov was about to die - there was, however, a shame-tinged regret that a fellow inquisitor, once a greatly respected and valuable man, should have fallen so low. The Ordo Malleus had lost inquisitors before to Radicalism and worse fates, but every time it happened the wound was as deep. The Malleus was proud of what it did, and every traitor amongst them was an affront to that pride.
Explicator Riggensen was there to take down any deathbed confessions Valinov might make. He had witnessed executions before but the antiseptic smell of the execution chamber and the gleaming insectoid shape of the servitor-mangier suspended from the ceiling still made him uneasy - which was saying something, considering his occupation.
An official clerk sat at a lectern in front of Riggensen, a pale and heavily augmented woman who scratched details of the execution with quills mounted on metal armatures she had instead of arms. The clerk's head darted from side to side as she noticed who entered the darkened, circular chamber - several more clerks and archivists observing particular aspects of the execution entered, shuffling along in their long robes.
Inquisitor Nyxos entered next, wearing ceremonial crimson robes over his whirring exoskeleton. His two advisors were with him, the ancient astropath and the young tactical officer in her undecorated Naval officer's uniform.
Medical technicians were next, the chief medicae manning the controls for the servitor-mangier and the others checking the lifesign monitors attached to the table in the raised centre of the room. There had been occasions in the past where the executed criminal had not died in spite of the comprehensive nature of the servitor-mangier, and so the chief medicae would be required to assert that lifesigns had ceased.
The next individuals to enter were a surprise to Riggensen. Four death cultists walked in, lithe and athletic figures in glossy bodygloves festooned with daggers and swords. Riggensen glanced over the clerk's shoulder as she wrote down that the death cultists were representing Inquisitor Ligeia. It seemed right to Riggensen that Ligeia would want someone she trusted to witness Valinov die with their own eyes. Otherwise she might never have believed he was truly dead.
The various dignitaries and adepts filled the seats around the pedestal. The lumoglobes dimmed until only the pedestal was lit, bathed in a pool of pale unforgiving light. Then a set of mechanical security doors slid open and Valinov was brought in.
Stripped to the waist, with his hands and feet shackled, Valinov was still an imposing figure. His heavy dark tattoos gave him an almost feral look, accentuated by his sharp, intelligent face and the cords of muscle wrapped around his arms and torso. His head was high and he showed no fear - but then true heretics never did, not until their souls were removed from their body and thrust before the vengeful gaze of the Emperor.
Just by looking at the prisoner, every witness to the execution could tell the ex-inquisitor was a dangerous man. Not even the rigorous work of Mimas's interrogators and explicators had broken him, save for Riggensen's sole moment of fleeting triumph. Death, most of them would agree, was too good for Valinov - but when someone this dangerous was still alive, there could be no guarantee he was safe.
An old preacher stood in the front row, his heavy crimson and white robes dark in the dim light. He read from a battered leather prayer book, giving Valinov the Cursed Rites that would mark his diseased soul as an enemy of the Emperor.
'Though your spirit is rotten and your deeds most heinous, we call upon the Emperor to look upon that spirit in
pure and just judgement...'
The preacher's voice droned on through the familiar lines. The chief medicae made a last few checks of the mangier apparatus while his orderlies affixed various electrodes and sensors to Valinov's shaven skin. The clerk seated in front of Riggensen wrote constantly, noting every correct procedure as it was completed. The blood drains were opened in the chamber's floor. Riggensen himself was handed a data-slate and quill, so he could sign that he had witnessed Valinov's death. The servitor-mangier unfolded and each of its six bladed manipulators were tested quickly in turn as the preacher's assistants made the sign of the aquila over Valinov's chest.
The orderly carrying the organ bucket stood ready. The various parts of Valinov's body - head, torso, viscera - would be buried separately in the plain of unmarked graves around the execution building, to prevent some dark power from bringing the corpse back to life. It was a lesson that had been learned the hard way.
The death cultists observed keenly, their eyes expressionless, their bodies motionless save for the occasional twitch of their drum-taut muscles.
The preacher was finishing. The two Malleus troopers flanking Valinov manhandled the prisoner onto the pedestal, where his manacles slotted neatly into the locks at the base and above the head.
The mangier descended, the chief medicae working the controls. The clerk scribbled with greater rapidity.
The front rows would be spattered with blood, but it was worth the indignity to ensure that another foe of the Emperor was dead.
'...and so, Lord Emperor, we place this wretched soul before you and remove it from this body whose hands have committed such foulness. May there be redemption for this soul in the eyes of the God-Emperor, and when there can be no redemption, may the hatred of the God-Emperor destroy it for ever.'
There was a pause before the mangier did its work. It was traditional, like so much of the execution - the prisoner to be executed could, if there was some possibility of redemption, cry out for mercy from the Emperor. No one expected Valinov to speak.
