by Dan Abnett
‘Go!’ yelled Nayl, turning back towards the crags and firing his weapon in a two-handed brace. At his side, Kara Swole kicked her assault weapon into life. It bucked like a living thing, spitting spent casings out in a sideways flurry.
They backed across the bridge as the others ran ahead. Mathuin and Kys led the way, into the gunfire coming out of the dim archways and terraces ahead. Mathuin’s rotator cannon squealed, and flames danced around the spinning barrels. Stone debris and shorn ivy fluttered off the wounded walls. Kys saw a man, almost severed at the waist, drop from an archway into the lightless gulf below the bridge.
Ravenor and Thonius came up behind them. Thonius was still gazing up at the screamlight tearing and dancing around the tower overhead. He had one hand raised, as if to protect his face from the bullets and laser fire whipping around him.
+Concentrate!+
‘Yes, yes… of course…’ Thonius replied.
Mathuin ran under the first arch into the gloom of the tower chambers. His augmetic eyes, little coals of red hard-light, gleaming inside his lids, immediately adjusted to the light conditions, and revealed to him the things hidden in the shadows. He pivoted left, and mowed down four hostiles with a sustained belch of cannon fire. More shot at him.
Kys ran in beside him. She had a laspistol harnessed at her waist, but she hadn’t drawn it. She extended the heels of her palms, and four kineblades slipped out of the sheaths built into the forearms of her shirt. Each was thin, razor-sharp, twelve centimetres long, and lacked handles. She controlled them with her mind, orbiting them around her body in wide, buzzing circuits, in a figure of eight, like some lethal human orrery.
A hostile opened fire directly at her with an autopistol, cracking off four shots. Without flinching, she faced them, circling a pair of the blades so they intercepted and deflected the first two shots. The second two she bent wide with her mind, so that they sailed off harmlessly like swatted flies.
Before he could fire again, Kys pinned the hostile to the stone wall with the third kineblade.
Mathuin was firing again.
‘You all right there, Kys?’ he yelled over the cannon’s roar.
‘Fine.’ She smiled. She was in her element. Dealing death in the name of the Emperor, punishing His enemies, was all she lived for. She was a secretive being. Patience Kys was not her real name, and none of the band knew what she’d been baptised. She’d been born on Sameter, in the Helican sub, and had grown to womanhood on that filthy, brow-beaten world. Things had happened to her there, things that had changed her and made her Patience Kys, the telekine killer. She never spoke of it. The simple fact was she had faced and beaten a miserable death, and now she was paying death back, in the God-Emperor’s name, with souls more deserving of annihilation.
With a jerk of her mind, she tugged the kineblade out of the pinned corpse and flew it back to join the others. They whistled as they spun, deflecting more gunfire away from her. Five more hostiles lay ahead, concealed behind mouldering pillars. With a nasal grunt, she sped the kineblades away from her. They shot like guided missiles down the terraceway, arcing around obstacles, whipping around the pillars. Four of the hostiles fell, slashed open by the hurtling blades.
The fifth she yanked out of cover with her telekinesis, and shot. Now, at last, the gun was in her hands.
Inexorable as a planet moving along its given path, Ravenor floated into the gloom, passing between Kys and Mathuin as the ex-bounty hunter hosed further mayhem at the last of the hostiles on his side. Thonius ran up alongside him.
‘What now?’ the interrogator asked hopefully. ‘At least we’re out of that ghastly rain.’
Screamlight echoed and flashed through the tower from far above, reverberating the structure to its core. Kys shuddered involuntarily. Her nose was bleeding again.
+Carl? Zeph?+
Ravenor’s mind-voice was quiet, as if he too was suffering the side effects of the psychic screams. +Rearguard, please. Make sure Kara and Harlon make it in alive.+
‘But–’ Thonius complained. Mathuin was already running back to the archway.
+Do as I say, Carl!+
‘Yes, inquisitor,’ replied Thonius. He turned and hurried after Mathuin.
+With me, please, Patience.+
Kys had just retrieved her kineblades. She held out her arms to let them slide back into her cuff-sheaths. The concentrated activity had drained her telekinetic strength, and the terrible screamlight from above had sapped her badly.
+Are you up to this?+
Kys raised her laspistol.
‘I was born up for this, Gideon,’ she grinned.
The prospect is, as most are, vague. There are no specifics. However, it is regarded as a one hundred per cent certainty by the masters of the Fratery that a daemonic abomination is about to be manifested into the material universe. This, they predict, will come to pass between the years 400 and 403.M41. Emperor protect us, it may have already happened.
There are some details. The crucial event that triggers the manifestation will happen on Eustis Majoris, the overcrowded and dirty capital world of the Angelus subsector, within those aforementioned dates. It may, at the time, seem a minor event, but its consequences will be vast. Hundreds may die. Thousands… mayhap millions, if it is not stopped.
The daemon will take human form, and walk the worlds of the Imperium undetected. It has a name. Phonetically ‘SLIITE’ or perhaps Slyte or Slight.
It must be stopped. Its birth must be prevented.
All I have done in my long career in service of the ordos, all I have achieved… will be as nothing if this daemon comes into being.
‘It’s getting a little uncomfortable out here,’ Nayl remarked. A las-shot had just scored across the flesh of his upper arm, but he didn’t even wince.
‘Agreed,’ said Kara, ejecting another spent clip onto the cobbles of the span, and slamming in a fresh one.
They’d been backing away steadily under fire, and now the archway was tantalisingly close.
They ducked their heads instinctively as heavy fire ripped out of the archway behind them, and peppered the landwards-end of the bridge span. Mathuin was covering them at last.
They turned, and ran into cover, bullets and las-fire chasing their heels.
Inside the archway, Thonius was waving them on. Mathuin’s cannon ground dry, and he paused to pop out the ammo drum and slap in a fresh one from the heavy pouches around his waist.
Nayl bent in the shadows, and reloaded his pistol quickly, expertly. He looked up, and stared out into the torrential rain. In the dark of the storm and the swiftly falling night, he counted at least nine muzzle flashes barking their way.
‘How many?’ he asked.
This time, Mathuin didn’t answer. He turned his stony, hard-light gaze towards Kara and raised an eyebrow.
‘Fifteen,’ she said at once.
‘Fifteen,’ mused Nayl. ‘That’s five each.’
‘Hey!’ said Thonius. ‘There are four of us here!’
‘I know,’ Nayl grinned. ‘But it’s still five each. Unless you intend to surprise us.’
‘You little bastard,’ snapped Thonius. He raised his weapon, and pinked off several shots at the enemy across the span.
‘Hmmm…’ said Nayl. ‘Still fifteen.’
+Kara. Can you join us?+
‘On my way, boss,’ said Kara Swole. She grinned at Nayl. ‘Can you deal here? I mean, now it’s seven and a half each.’
‘Get on,’ Nayl said. He started firing. Kara dashed off into the darkness behind them.
Thonius blasted away again. They all saw a hostile on the far side of bridge, through the rain, tumble and pitch off the crag.
‘There!’ Thonius said triumphantly.
‘Seven each then,’ Mathuin remarked to Nayl.
The Divine Fratery, as I have learned, find it particularly easy to identify in their prospects others who have dabbled in farseeing and clairvoyance. It is as if such individuals somehow illuminate the
ir life courses by toying with the future. The bright track of one has attracted their particular attention. It is through him, and the men and women around him, that the prospect of the manifestation has come to light.
He will cause it. Him, or one of those close to him.
That is why I have taken it upon myself to warn him.
For he is my friend. My pupil. My interrogator.
Kys hadn’t seen or even sensed the cultists behind the next archway. Ravenor, gliding forwards without hesitation, pulped all four of them with his chair’s built-in psycannons.
Kys followed him, striding through lakes of leaking blood and mashed tissue. She was worn out. The constant screams were getting to her.
They heard footfalls behind them. Kara Swole ran into view. Kys lowered her weapon.
‘You called for me?’
+Indeed I did, Kara. I can’t get up there.+
Kara looked up into the gloomy rafters and beams above them.
‘No problem.’ She took off her coat. Beneath it, she was dressed in a simple matt-green bodyglove.
‘Hey, Kar. Luck,’ called Kys.
Kara smiled.
She limbered up for a moment, and then leapt up into the rafters, gripping the mouldering wood, and gaining momentum.
Rapidly, all her acrobat skills coming back to her, she ascended, hand over hand, leaping from beam to beam, defying the dreadful gulf beneath her.
She was getting increasingly close to the flitting source of the screamlight. Her pulse raced. Grunting, she somersaulted again, and landed on her feet on a crossmember.
Kara stood for a moment, feeling the streaming rain slick down over her from the tower’s exposed roof. She stuck out her hands for balance, the assault weapon tightly cinched under her bosom.
There was a light above her, shining out from a stairless doorway in the shell of the tower. Faint artificial light, illuminating the millions of raindrops as they hurtled down the empty tower shaft towards her.
‘Seeing this?’ she asked.
+Yes, Kara.+
‘What you expected?’
+I have no idea.+
‘Here goes,’ she said, and jumped into space, into rainfall, into air. A hesitation, on the brink, dark depths below her. Then she seized a rotting timber beam, and swung, her fingers biting deep into the damp, flaking wood.
She pivoted in the air, and flew up into the doorway, feet first.
She landed firmly, balanced, arms wide.
A figure stood before her in the ruined tower room, illuminated by a single hovering glow-globe.
‘Hello, Kara,’ the figure said. ‘It’s been a long time.’
She gasped. ‘Oh God-Emperor… my master…’
The man was tall, shrouded in a dark leather coat that did not quite conceal the crude augmetics supporting his frame. His head was bald, his eyes dark-rimmed. He leaned heavily on a metal staff.
Rainwater streaming off him, Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn gazed at her.
Down at the archway, Thonius recoiled in horror.
‘I think we have a problem,’ he said.
‘Don’t be such a pussy,’ Nayl said.
‘Actually, I think he might be right,’ said Mathuin. ‘That’s not good, is it?’
Nayl craned his neck to look. Something blocky and heavy was striding towards them over the bridge span. It was metal and solid, machined striding limbs hissing steam from piston bearings. Its arms were folded against the sides of its torso like the wings of a flightless bird. Those arms, each one a heavy lascannon, began to cough and spit. Massive hydraulic absorbers soaked up the recoil.
The archway collapsed in a shower of exploding masonry. Nayl, Thonius and Mathuin fled into the cover of the gallery behind.
‘Emperor save me,’ Nayl exclaimed. ‘They’ve got a bloody Dreadnought!’
Rainwater dripped off Eisenhorn’s nose.
‘Gideon? Is he with you, Kara?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he is,’ she stammered. ‘Throne, it’s good to see you.’
‘And you, my dear. But it’s important I speak to Gideon.’
Kara nodded.
‘Ware me,’ she said.
Far below, Ravenor heard her. Kara Swole stiffened, her eyes clouding. The wraithbone pendant at her throat glowed with a dull, ethereal light.
She wasn’t Kara Swole any more. Her body was possessed by the mind of Gideon Ravenor.
‘Hello, Gregor,’ Kara’s mouth said.
‘Gideon. Well met. I was worried you wouldn’t come.’
‘And ignore a summons from my mentor? Phrased in Glossia? “Thorn wishes Talon…” I was hardly going to ignore that.’
‘I thought you would appreciate a taste of the old, private code,’ said Eisenhorn. His frozen face failed to show the smile he was feeling.
‘How could I forget it, Thorn? You drummed it into me.’
Eisenhorn nodded. ‘Much effort getting here?’
Kara’s lips conveyed Ravenor’s words. ‘Some. An effort made to kill us. Nayl is holding them off at the gateway to the tower.’
‘Old Harlon, eh?’ Eisenhorn said. ‘Ever dependable. You’ve got a good man there, Gideon. A fine man. Give him my respects. And Kara too, best there is.’
‘I know, Gregor.’ A strangely intense expression that wasn’t her own appeared on Kara’s face. ‘I think it’s time you told me why you brought me here.’
‘Yes, it is. But in person, I think. That would be best. That way you can stop subjecting Kara to that effort of puppeting. And we can be more private. I’ll come down to you.’
‘How? There are no stairs.’
‘The same way I got up here,’ Eisenhorn said. He looked upwards, into the rain hosing down through the broken roof.
‘Cherubael?’ he whispered.
Something nightmarish in the strobing screamlight answered him.
Its pitted steel hull glossy with rain, the Dreadnought strode through the shattered archway. The booming storm threw its hulking shadow a hundred jagging directions at once with its lightning. Its massive cannon pods pumped pneumatically as they retched out streams of las-bolts. The weapons made sharp, barking squeals as they discharged, a repeating note louder than the storm.
Behind it, three dozen armed brethren of the Divine Fratery charged across the bridge span.
Stone split and fractured under the bombardment. Pillars that had stood for aeons teetered and collapsed like felled trees, spraying stone shards across the terrace flooring.
Nayl, Mathuin and Thonius retreated into the empty inner chambers of the ruined tower. Even Mathuin’s rotator couldn’t so much as dent the Dreadnought’s armour casing.
‘Someone really, really wants us dead,’ Thonius said.
‘Us… or the person we came here to meet,’ Nayl countered. They hurried down a dim colonnade, and Nayl shoved both his comrades into the cover of a side arcade as cannon fire – bright as sunbursts – sizzled down the chamber.
‘Golden Throne! There’s got to be something we can try!’ Nayl said.
Mathuin reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out three close-focus frag grenades. He held them like a market-seller would hold apples or ploins. It was just like Mathuin to bring a pocket full of explosives. He never felt properly dressed unless he was armed to the back teeth.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a mini-nuke in the other pocket?’ asked Thonius.
‘My other suit’s at the cleaners,’ Mathuin replied.
‘They’ll have to do,’ said Nayl. ‘We’ll go with what we’ve got.’ He looked around. They could hear the heavy clanking footfalls of the Dreadnought bearing down on them, the hiss of its hydraulic pistons, the whirr of its motivators.
‘They may not even crack the thing’s plating,’ Mathuin remarked. As well as a supply of ridiculous ordnance, Zeph Mathuin could always be relied on for copious pessimism.
‘We’ll have to get them close,’ said Thonius.
‘We?’ said Nayl. He’d already taken one of the gren
ades, and was weighing it up like a ball.
‘Yes, Mr Nayl. We.’ Thonius took another of the grenades, holding it between finger and thumb as if it were a potentially venomous insect. He really wasn’t comfortable with the physicality of fighting. Thonius could hack cogitators and archive stacks faster than any of them, and could rewrite codes that any of the rest didn’t even understand. He was Ravenor’s interrogator because of his considerable intellect, not his killing talents. That’s why Ravenor employed the likes of Nayl and Mathuin.
‘Three of us, three bombs,’ Thonius stated. ‘We’re all in this together. I’m not going to be pulped by that thing without having a go at stopping it myself.’
Nayl looked dubiously at Mathuin.
‘It’s not up for debate, you vulgarians,’ Thonius said snottily. ‘Don’t make me remind you I’m technically in charge here.’
‘Oh, that would explain why we’re technically nose deep in crap,’ Nayl said.
A thick section of stone wall blew in nearby, hammered to fragments by withering cannon fire. The massive weight of the Dreadnought crushed heat-brittled stone to dust as it stomped through the gap.
The trio began to run again, down the next terrace, trying to put some distance between them and the killing machine.
‘Get ahead!’ Mathuin said. ‘I’ll take the first pop.’ Nayl nodded and grabbed hold of Thonius, who was still puzzling over his grenade, figuring out how to adjust the knurled dial to set the timer. Nayl got the interrogator into cover.
Thonius straightened his sleeves.
‘If you’ve pulled my coat out of shape, Nayl…’ he began.
Nayl glared at him.
Behind them, in the open, Mathuin primed his grenade, and turned. As the Dreadnought hove into view, he hurled the small, black charge.
Kara rejoined Ravenor and Kys like an ape, swinging down through the rafters, and leaping the last few metres.
Eisenhorn descended after her. He was being carried by a grotesque figure, a human shape twisted and distended by arcane forces. The thing glowed with an eldritch inner light. Its bare limbs and torso were covered with runes and sigils. Chains dragged from its ankles.
It set Eisenhorn’s heavy, cumbersome form down on the flagstones.
