Helsreach (warhammer 40000)

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Augmented infants - the lobotomised bodies of children kept eternally young through gene manipulation and hormone control - were enhanced by simple Mechanicus organs and pressed into service as winged cherub-servitors, hovering on anti-grav fields as they trailed prayer banners through the halls and arched chambers.

  In the myriad rooms of the basilica, the devoted and the faithful of Helsreach went about their daily reverence despite the war blackening their city. Grimaldus walked through a chamber of monks offering prayer through inscribing hundreds of saints' names on thin parchments that would hang from the weapons of Temple guards. One of the holy men kneeled as the Astartes passed, imploring the ''Angel of Death'' to wear the parchment on his armour. Touched by the man's devotion, the knight had accepted, and voxed an order to the rest of his men scattered throughout the temple grounds to acquiesce to any similar charity.

  Grimaldus let the lay brother tie the scroll to his pauldron with twine. The offered parchment was a modest but appreciated replacement for the iconography, oath-papers and heraldry that had been scoured from his armour in the last five weeks of battle.

  The Reclusiarch had ventured alone into the undercroft, wishing to bear witness to the civilians there in his patrol to examine all defences and locations within the basilica. The subterranean expanse might once have been austere and solemn, featuring little more than infrequently-spaced sarcophagi of black stone. To the knight's eyes, it was a refugee bunker, packed tight with humans that smelled both unwashed and afraid as they sat around in family clusters - some asleep; some speaking quietly; some comforting crying babies; some spreading out meagre possessions on dirty blankets, taking stock of everything they now owned in the world, which was all they had managed to carry with them as they'd fled their homes.

  Wordlessly, he'd walked among them. Every one of them had moved from his path; every one of them so openly awed by their first sighting of an Astartes warrior. Parents whispered to children, and children whispered more questions back.

  'Hello,' a voice called from behind him as he was moving back up the wide marble stairs. The Reclusiarch turned. A girl-child stood at the bottom of the staircase, clad in an oversized shirt that clearly belonged to a parent or older sibling. Her ratty blonde hair was so dirty that it snarled quite naturally into accidental dreadlocks.

  Grimaldus descended again, ignoring the girl's parents hissing at her, calling her back. She was no older than seven or eight. She stood up straight, and reached his knee.

  'Hail,' he said to her. The crowd flinched back from the vox-voice, and several of those closest gasped in a breath.

  The girl blinked. 'Father says you are a hero. Are you a hero?'

  Grimaldus's gaze flicked across the crowd. His targeting cursor danced from face to face, seeking her parents.

  Nothing in two centuries of war had prepared him to answer this question. The gathered refugees looked on in silence.

  'There are many heroes here,' the Chaplain replied.

  'You are very loud,' the girl complained.

  'I am more used to shouting,' the knight lowered his voice. 'Do you require something from me?'

  'Will you save us?'

  He looked at the crowd again, and chose his words with great care.

  That had been an hour ago. The Reclusiarch stood with his closest brothers and the Emperor's Champion in the basilica's inner sanctum.

  The chamber was expansive, easily able to accommodate a thousand worshippers at once. For now, it stood bare, the hundreds of Steel Legionnaires that were bunking here in recent weeks currently out on their patrols through the graveyard and surrounding temple district.

  The few dozen that had been off-duty were ushered out by monks when the Astartes had entered. Almost immediately, the knights were joined by a new presence. An irritated presence, at that.

  'Well, well, well,' the irritated presence said in her old woman's voice. 'The Emperor's Chosen, come to stand with us at last.'

  The knights turned in the sunlit chamber, back to the entrance where a diminutive figure stood in contoured power armour. A bolter, cased in bronze with gold-leaf etchings, was mag-locked between her shoulders. The gun was a smaller calibre than Astartes weaponry, but still a rare firearm to see in the possession of a human.

  Her white power armour was bedecked in trappings that marked her rank in the Holy Order of the Argent Shroud. The old woman's white hair was cut severely at her chin, framing a wrinkled face with icy eyes.

  'Hail, prioress,' Bayard acknowledged her with a bow, as did the others. Grimaldus and Priamus made no obeisance, with the swordsman remaining unmoving and Grimaldus instead making the sign of the aquila.

  'I am Prioress Sindal, and in the name of Saint Silvana, I bid you welcome to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.'

  Grimaldus stepped forward. 'Reclusiarch Grimaldus of the Black Templars. I cannot help but notice that you do not sound welcoming.'

  'Should I be? Half of the Temple District has already fallen in the last week. Where were you then, hmm?'

  Priamus laughed. 'We were at the docks, you ungrateful little harpy.'

  'Be at ease,' Grimaldus warned. Priamus replied with a vox-click of acknowledgement.

  'We were, as my brother Priamus explained, engaged in the east of the hive. But we are here now, when the war is at its darkest, as the enemy approach the temple doors.'

  'I have fought with Astartes before,' the prioress said, her armoured arms crossed over the fleur-de-lys symbol that marked her sculpted breastplate. 'I have fought alongside warriors who would have given their lives for the Imperium's ideals, and warriors that cared only for accruing glory, as if they could wear their honour like armour. Both breeds were Astartes.'

  'We are not here to be lectured on the state of our souls,' Grimaldus tried to keep the irritation from his voice.

  'Whether you are or not doesn't matter, Reclusiarch. Will you dismiss your fellow warriors from the chamber, please? There is much to speak of.'

  'We can speak of the temple's defence in front of my brothers.'

  'Indeed we can, and when the time comes to speak of such things, they will be present. For now, please dismiss them.'

  * * *

  'Do you cleanse yourself, by the Stoup of Elucidation?'

  This is the question she asks in the silence that descends once my brothers are gone, and the doors are closed.

  The stoup she speaks of is a huge bowl of black iron, mounted upon a low pedestal of what looks like wrought gold. It stands by the double doors, which are themselves bedecked in imagery of warlike angels with toothed swords, and saints bearing bolters.

  I confess to her that I did not.

  'Come then.' She beckons me to the bowl. The water within reflects the painted ceiling and the stained glass windows above - a riot of colour in a liquid mirror.

  She dips a bare finger into the water after taking the time to detach and remove her gauntlets. 'This water is thrice-blessed,' she says, tracing her dripping fingertip across her forehead in a crescent moon. 'It brings clarity of purpose, when anointed onto the doubting and the lost.'

  'I am not lost,' I lie, and she smiles at the words.

  'I did not mean to imply that you were, Reclusiarch. But many who come here are.'

  'Why did you wish to speak with me alone? Time is short. The war will reach these walls in a matter of days. Preparations must be made.'

  She speaks, staring down into the perfect reflection offered by the bowl. 'This basilica is a bastion. A castle. We can defend it for weeks, when the enemy finally gathers courage enough to besiege it.'

  'Answer the question!' This time, I could not keep the irritation from my voice even if I had wished to.

  'Because you are not like your brothers.'

  I know that when she looks at my face, she does not see me. She sees the death mask of the Emperor, the skull helm of an Astartes Reclusiarch, the crimson eye lenses of humanity's chosen. And yet our gazes meet in the water's reflection, and I cannot co
mpletely fight the feeling she is seeing me, beneath the mask and the masquerade.

  What does she mean by those words? That she senses my doubts? That they drip from me like nervous sweat, visible and stinking to all who stand near me?

  'I am no different from them.'

  'Of course you are. You are a Chaplain, are you not? A Reclusiarch. A keeper of your Chapter's lore, soul, traditions and purity.'

  My heart rate slows again. My rank. That is all she meant.

  'I see.'

  'I am given to understand Astartes Chaplains are invested with their authority by the Ecclesiarchy?'

  Ah. She seeks common ground. Good luck to her in this doomed endeavour. She is a warrior of the Imperial Creed, and an officer in the Church of the God-Emperor.

  I am not.

  'The Ecclesiarchy of Terra supports our ancient rites, and the authority of every Chapter's Reclusiam to train warrior-priests to guide the souls of its battle-brothers. They do not invest us with power. They recognise we already hold it.'

  'And you are given a gift by the Ecclesiarchy? A rosarius?'

  'Yes.'

  'May I see yours?'

  The few Astartes singled out for ascension into the Reclusiam are gifted with a rosarius medallion upon succeeding in the first trials of Chaplainhood. My talisman was beaten bronze and red iron, shaped into a heraldic cross.

  'I no longer carry one.'

  She looks up at me, as if the reflection of my skull visage was no longer clear enough for her purposes. 'Why is that?'

  'It was lost. Destroyed in battle.'

  'Is that not a dark omen?'

  'I am still alive three years after its destruction. I still do the Emperor's work, and still follow the word of Dorn even after its loss. The omen cannot be that dark.'

  She looks at me for some time. I am used to humans staring at me in awkward silence; used to their attempts to watch without betraying that they are watching. But this direct stare is something else, and it takes a moment to realise why.

  'You are judging me.'

  'Yes, I am. Remove your helm, please.'

  'Tell me why I should.' My voice is not pitched to petulance, merely curiosity. I had not expected her to ask such a thing.

  'Because I would like to look upon the face of the man I am speaking with, and because I wish to anoint you with the Waters of Elucidation.'

  I could refuse. Of course I could refuse.

  But I do not.

  'A moment, please.' I disengage my helm's seals, and breathe in my first taste of the crisp, cool air within the temple. The fresh water before me. The sweat of the refugees. The scorched ceramite of my armour.

  'You have beautiful eyes,' she tells me. 'Innocent, but cautious. The eyes of a child, or a new father. Seeing the world around you as if for the first time. Kneel, if you would? I cannot reach all the way up there.'

  I do not kneel. She is not my liege lord, and to abase myself in such a way would violate all decorum. Instead, I lower my head, bringing my face closer to her. The joints of her pristine armour give the smooth purr of clean mechanics as she reaches up. I feel her fingertip draw a cross upon my forehead in cold water.

  'There,' she says, refastening her gauntlets. 'May you find the answers you seek in this house of the God-Emperor. You are blessed, and may tread the sacred floor of the inner sanctum without guilt.'

  She is already moving away, her milky eyes squinting. 'Come. I have something to show you.'

  The prioress leads me to the centre of the chamber, where a stone table holds an open book. Four columns of polished marble rise at the table's cardinal points, all the way to the ceiling. Upon one of the columns hangs a tattered banner unlike any I have ever seen before.

  'Hold.'

  'What is it? Ah, the first archive.' She gestures to the sheets of ragged cloth hanging from the war banner poles. Each once-white, now-grey sheet shows a list of names in faded ink.

  Names, professions, husbands and wives and children…

  'These are the first colonists.'

  'Yes, Reclusiarch.'

  'The settlers of Helsreach. The founders. This is their charter?'

  'It is. From when the great hive was no more than a village by the shore of the Tempest Ocean. These are the men and women that laid the temple's first foundations.'

  I let my gloved hand come close to the humming stasis field shielding the ancient cloth document. Parchment would have been a rare luxury to the first colonists, with the jungle and its trees so far from here. It stands to reason they would have recorded their achievements on cloth paper.

  Thousands of years ago, Imperial peasants walked the ashen soil here and laid the first stone bones of what would become a great basilica to house the devotions of an entire city. Deeds remembered throughout the millennia, with their evidence for all to see.

  'You seem pensive,' she tells me.

  'What is the book?'

  'The log from a vessel called the Truth's Tenacity. It was the colonisation seeding ship that brought the settlers to Helsreach. The four pillars house a void shield generator system, protecting the tome. This is the Major Altar. Sermons are given here, among the city's most precious relics.'

  I look at the tome's curled, age-browned pages. Then at the archive banner once more.

  Last of all, I replace my helm, coating my senses in the selective vision of targeting sights and filtered sounds.

  'You have my thanks, prioress. I appreciate what you have shown me here.'

  'Am I to expect any more of your kind arriving to bolster us, Astartes?'

  I think, for a moment, of Jurisian, bringing the Ordinatus Armageddon overland, uncrewed, at minimal power and of little to no use once it arrives.

  'One more. He returns to join us and fight by our sides.'

  'Then I bid you welcome to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, Reclusiarch. How do you plan to defend this holy place?'

  'We are past the point of retreat now, Sindal. No finesse, no tactics, no long speeches to rally the faint of heart and those that fear the end. I plan to kill until I am killed, because that is all that remains for us here.'

  Both the Reclusiarch and the prioress turned at the pounding upon the door.

  Grimaldus blink-clicked the rune to bring his vox channels live again, but it wasn't any of his brothers seeking his attention.

  Prioress Sindal waved her hand in a magnanimous gesture, as if there were a crowd to impress. 'Do come in.'

  The great metal-wrought doors rumbled open on clean but heavy hinges. Eight men stood framed by the doors and the austere corridor beyond. Each of them bore a filthy share of blood, mud, soot and oil stains. They carried lasguns with the practiced ease of men who had become utterly familiar with the weapons, and all but two of them wore dirty blue dockworkers' overalls. One of those that did not was dressed in the robes of a priest, but not the cream and blue weave of the temple's own residents. He was from off-world.

  The leader of the group raised his goggles, letting them clack back on the top of his helmet. He regarded the knight with wide eyes.

  'They said you would be here,' the storm-trooper said. 'I beg the many forgivings of this holy place for my intrusion, but I bring news, yes? Do not be angry. The vox is still playing many unamusing games and I could not speak with anyone in any other way.'

  'Speak, Legionnaire,' said Grimaldus.

  'The beasts, they are coming in great force. Many are not far behind us, and I have heard vox-chatter that Invigilata is leaving the city.'

  'Why would they leave us?' the prioress asked, horrified.

  'They would quit the city at once,' Grimaldus admitted, 'if Princeps Zarha was gone. Mechanicus politics.'

  'She is gone, Reclusiarch,' Andrej finished. 'An hour ago, we saw Stormherald die.'

  Behind the Guardsman, a warrior-maiden in the white power armour of the Order of the Argent Shroud caught her breath, staring at the prioress with her features flushed. 'Prioress!'

  'Take a breath, Siste
r Maralin.'

  'We've received word from the 101st Steel Legion! Invigilata's Titans are abandoning Helsreach!'

  Andrej looked at the newcomer as if she had announced that gravity was a myth. He shook his head slowly, a deep and solemn pity written across his face.

  'You are late, little girl.'

  The first wave to break against the walls was not a horde of the enemy.

  Close-range vox detected them first, with reports of elements from three Steel Legion regiments engaged in panicked retreat. Grimaldus responded with the temple's vox-systems, boosted far beyond what the squad-to-squad comms systems were currently capable of.

  He gave the order to any Helsreach forces receiving the message to fall back to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, abandoning any further struggle to hold the few remaining sectors in the Ecclesiarchy District. Several lieutenants and captains sent affirmative responses in reply, including a captain of the hive militia still leading over a hundred men.

  The fleeing Imperials began to arrive less than an hour later.

  Grimaldus stood with Bayard at the gates, looking out into the city. A dark-hulled Baneblade command tank rolled past, guided into the graveyard sector by a platoon of Guardsmen waving directions to the driver. Behind it, a cadre of Leman Russ battle tanks with various turret weapons trundled in loose formation. Mingling between the rolling armour and trailing behind were several hundred Legionnaires, ochre-clad and visibly weary. Wounded were being stretchered by their fellows in serious numbers, and there were plenty of wails and moans calling out over the grind of tank engines.

  Two soldiers passed by the watching knights, bearing the writhing body of a junior officer on a cloth stretcher. The man had lost an arm and a leg, at the elbow and knee respectively. His face was a contorted mess of whatever he really looked like, his visage ruined by the pain flowing through him.

  One of the stretcher-bearers nodded to Grimaldus as he passed, and muttered a respectful ''Reclusiarch''.

  The Templar nodded back.

  'Fought with them?' Bayard asked over the vox.

  'Desert Vultures. I was with them when the first walls fell. Good men, all.'