by Various
She smelt smoke as they bounced over the wake and around the sluggish obstacle before them. Orange warning lights blinked on the display before her, warning of an engine overheat in progress. ‘Find them!’ she barked.
‘Calm yourself, Agentia.’ Sorkad’s dour voice crackled in her ear. ‘I can assist.’
‘Where are you, pilot?’ said Gallor, casting a look up into the pale blue sky.
‘Where I have been all along, in the cradle of space. But the Velox’s orbit is directly over Majesty. And this ship’s optics are very, very precise.’
‘You see the speeder?’ A wolfish grin threatened to break out on Kendel’s face. It was still new to her, this idea of having… What had Pau Yei called it, a retinue? It did not come naturally to the former witch-seeker to rely on the skills of others.
‘I do,’ Sorkad replied. ‘Feeding you the positional data now.’
Gallor placed a hand to his helmet as the information was relayed to his visor display. ‘That way.’ He pointed to an industrial zone on the far side of the wide river. ‘They won’t escape.’
The guards left on the dock by the disused refinery fell to pinpoint shots from Legion bolters, and in moments Gallor was striding down a set of iron stairs into a flooded, echoing under-space. Kyda was at his side, and the two of them moved at a deliberately slowed pace in order to let Kendel keep close. Kyda’s body language expressed fully how little he enjoyed that, but they had both agreed to this mission and to the ex-Sister’s authority. They waded forwards ankle-deep in the oily, cold waters.
‘Thermal traces,’ Gallor announced, spying blotches of colour through the imagers in his helmet. ‘Fading with the chill. We’re close.’
‘When we find them… Only the astropath is to live, yes?’ Kyda asked Kendel, a note of annoyance in his words.
‘More than one prisoner would be useful,’ she retorted. ‘You may feel free to wound with abandon.’
Kyda made a dismissive noise as they reached a sealed hatchway, and with one swift motion, he planted his armoured boot in the door with enough force to knock it off its hinges. Gallor’s battle-brother shouldered through, and he was a step behind him.
The chamber beyond might once have been a store-room, but now it was a bolt-hole, with suspended platforms above the flood-waters and makeshift dormitory spaces. Gallor took this in within an instant, as men with guns opened fire on the warriors of the Death Guard.
‘For his glory!’ screamed one of the shooters, and Gallor knew from the Eye of Horus daubed on one wall who he might be. Small calibre bullets rang harmlessly off the legionary’s sealed armour, some of the ricochets spinning back to strike down those who had fired them.
Kyda had already terminated five people in the time it took Gallor to draw a breath, and the other Death Guard stormed across the room to make a close-in kill with a heavyset man who died fumbling with a cut-down lascannon. Gallor advanced, moving and firing, aware of Kendel behind him and her desire for a prisoner or two.
But it seemed these traitors were unwilling to facilitate that end.
Through the melee, he caught sight of the robed astropath making a break for another exit across the compartment, and he shouted to the witch-seeker. The psyker stumbled under a roller-gate, which he slammed down into the shallow water as he passed, in the apparent hope of cutting off any pursuit. Gallor sneered at such foolishness.
Breaking another attacker with a back-hand blow from his gauntlet, Gallor went to the gate and wrenched it open again, enough for Kendel to pass through. She hesitated, jabbing a finger past his helm, her eyes widening. ‘Behind you!’
He spun to face another of the assailants, this one dragging round a rotary autocannon to aim in his direction. He faced it, shielding Kendel as she moved.
The gun screamed, filling the chamber with cordite stink, and a torrent of armour-piercing rounds ate into Gallor’s breastplate. Chips of ghost-white ceramite sheath were blasted away in seconds, exposing sections of metal beneath, but Gallor still ran into the stream of fire, one arm raised to protect the lenses of his helmet.
He destroyed the autocannon by stopping the spinning barrels dead with his armoured gauntlet, and then, without pause, the Death Guard rammed the sizzling weapon back into his attacker, caving in his chest with the force of the impact.
Silence fell.
Kendel sprinted up a ramp and emerged blinking into the sunshine, finding herself on a steel platform that led down to another jetty. The astropath was at the edge, shivering and clutching at the air, dithering over which direction to flee in. He sensed her approach and rounded on her. The man’s face was heavy with age, nerves in his jaw trembling with panic. He took a step in her direction, raising his hands in talons.
‘You won’t take me to the Black Ships!’ he screamed. ‘I will tear out your throat before I let you!’
Kendel was aware of her laspistol’s weight in her hand and she let it drop to the deck. ‘I’m not here for you. I want to know who sent the messages.’
‘Liar!’ He spat the word at her, and Kendel remembered the same insult from the lips of his comrades in the spire. ‘I had no choice in that, but they’ll never believe me!’ The psyker wanted to attack her, she could see it clearly, but the mental repulsion between them was too much for him to overcome. He coughed up bile. ‘Curse you!’ He reached out, as if he could somehow strangle her from a distance.
Then his lungs exploded out of his chest in a spurt of aerosolised crimson. The astropath staggered, pawing sightlessly at the open maw of parted ribs running from his sternum to his belly, before he came crashing down.
Sunlight flashed off the canopies of a dozen hovercraft out on the water, each flying the pennant of the City Wardens as they floated in to surround the platform. Kendel saw the sharpshooter who had killed the astropath rack the slide of a long-las and eject a spent powercell. Brown-jacketed wardens swarmed off the craft and flowed around Kendel as she stooped angrily to recover her gun.
When she looked up, there was Habeth, standing over the astropath’s corpse with a virtuous cast to his face. As if he had slain some kind of monster.
He met her gaze and gave a theatrically overwrought bow. ‘Death to all traitors,’ he intoned.
The Aristarch’s proclamation echoed from the speaker on the wall. On Kendel’s orders, Sorkad piped the vox transmission to her cabin on the Velox, and she listened with growing dismay. Her eyes fixed on the planet below through a viewport in the hull, Kendel found the dark smudge where the city of Majesty was located on the surface, and glared at it.
Proge’s speech was as florid as he was. On and on it went, circling around the subject and wandering off on tangents; but somewhere among all the words, he was declaring a victory. The Aristarch told his people of a terrible conspiracy that he had smashed with the help of Warden Habeth, promising them a planetwide day of celebration.
Before she had departed the city, Proge had declared effusive thanks to Kendel, and as she had found with the matter of Vasado’s death, there was little opportunity to entertain the thought that Habeth might not be the hero of the day. There were many promises made, assurances about a purge of Proge’s government to come, to root out any lingering taint across the planet – but it all seemed too engineered, too well rehearsed to the former hunter.
The Velox had been granted priority to depart, but Kendel bid Sorkad to hold the ship where it was, encouraging him to fabricate a minor lie about repairs in progress.
Too easy, she told herself. As if everything has been a kind of shadow play, conjured to guide us down a single path. Habeth was hiding something, Kendel had no doubt of it, but would her gut feeling be enough to act upon? The Sigillite’s authority allowed her a long enough leash to do so… But it would also prove more than enough to hang her with should she be mistaken.
She missed the precision of her witch-seeker days. Back in the Sisterhood,
things had been clear-cut.
There was a hesitant knock at her hatch, and Kendel heard a faint choking sound. ‘Enter.’
The hatch slid open and Pau Yei was outside, sweating and sickly from her proximity. ‘I will remain here, if it pleases you.’ She gripped a rail on the curved wall as if she were afraid some terrible gravity would drag her into the witch-seeker’s cabin.
Kendel’s eyebrow rose. For the astropath to seek her out, matters had to be dire. ‘What is it, milady?’
‘I have read the Warden’s reports on what happened at the refinery.’ Pau Yei spilled her words out in a rush, eager to say her piece as fast as she could. ‘The astropath who was shot by the sniper. His name was Yaang. I knew him, Agentia. When I was an apprentice seer and he an instructor. But well enough, I declare, to know that he would never betray the Emperor. His service was his life.’
‘How long ago?’ asked Kendel.
‘Seventeen years.’
‘Long enough for a man to change his mind. How long did it take Horus to suborn his brother primarchs? And Yaang was only a man.’
Pau Yei didn’t answer the question, her dead eye sockets turning towards Kendel instead. ‘You have your doubts too. I know it.’
Kendel frowned. ‘Go on.’
‘Yaang was a highly trained and subtle psyker. And most importantly, too accomplished and fastidious in his ways to allow something so base as ghost echoes of his psionic signals to seep out. There is more to this matter,’ she insisted. ‘This is not the resolution.’
A sudden thought crystallised in Kendel’s mind. ‘Is it possible that Yaang’s “echoes”… the signals detected by the prognostics… may have been a deliberate attempt by him to cry for help?’
‘A warning?’ said another voice. Pau Yei retreated as Gallor’s bulk filled the corridor. ‘Forgive me. I have been walking the ship to settle my thoughts, and I overheard your conversation.’
‘I’ll warrant the Death Guard doubts the veracity of these events just as we do,’ said the astropath.
‘This is so.’ Kendel saw Gallor’s great head nod. ‘I am reminded of my own commander’s mission to carry word of perfidy back to the Emperor. What if Yaang was attempting to do the same?’
I had no choice. They’ll never believe me. Kendel picked over Yaang’s last words, wondering if she had unwittingly been part of the narrative at work on Proxima Majoris.
All psykers had a pathological fear of pariahs like her. Had she been manoeuvred into confronting him?
She rose to her feet and reached for her lasgun. ‘Gallor. You and Kyda are to rearm and make ready for immediate deployment.’
‘As you wish,’ said the legionary. ‘To what end?’
She didn’t answer him straight away, turning instead to Pau Yei. ‘Milady, will you summon Qelvyn to the airlock and join us there? I have need of you and what must be done cannot happen if you remain on the ship.’
The astropath paled, but forced a nod. ‘I know what is required of me. I’ll do it.’
Kendel shot Gallor a look. ‘This mission isn’t over.’
The first team was Gallor’s to command, much to Kyda’s irritation.
But then the other legionary had never been best suited to leading, and the task Kendel gave Gallor was one that required the ability to think with more than just a boltgun. The Arvus lighter dropped him off in the industrial district with the soldier Qelvyn and the astropath, before speeding away towards the precincts of the highborn.
Here it was dark and gloomy, an endless boulevard of pipes and towering fabricant works set well away from the pretty streets of Majesty. Workers toiled endlessly, none daring to look up as the unusual trio moved past them.
‘The discipline masters have done their work well,’ Gallor reflected. ‘These plebeians focus on their labour to the detriment of all else.’
‘Aye,’ noted Qelvyn. ‘Whipped dogs is what they are.’
‘If they raise no alarm, then that is in our favour,’ said Pau Yei, stepping awkwardly over the irregular ground beneath their feet, charting a path with the left-right-left motion of a sonic cane. She came to a sudden halt and pointed with one long finger. ‘There is death there. I sense the echo of it.’
The astropath indicated a narrow tower that at first glance Gallor had taken to be a colossal chimney. Grey smoke billowed from the top, and he saw what looked like dirty snow gathered at its base. ‘Ash-fall,’ he noted. ‘What are they burning in there?’
‘Corpses,’ said Qelvyn. ‘Vasado told me the Proximans cremate everyone. They call this place the Terminae, but it’s really nothing more than a giant furnace. If this man Yaang’s body is anywhere, it’ll be in there.’
Pau Yei gave a wooden nod. ‘We must move swiftly. His remains must be intact if I am to be sure.’
Gallor nodded, clamping his gun to the mag-plate on his back. ‘Fall in behind me and stay in the shadows.’ He set off again, avoiding the gaze of the pict-feed lenses.
Kendel landed the lighter in the gardens of the Aristarch’s mansion among flyers from all across the city, and with Kyda looming at her side, she marched through the throng gathered for the celebrations. They parted before her, whispering and giggling like amused children. None of the Wardens patrolling the area, nor Proge’s personal guards, dared even to consider waylaying them.
She climbed the stairs to the Planetary Governor’s reception chamber as they had days before, past myriad scented candles and festive banners, to the solid oaken doors that barred the way.
‘Aren’t you going to knock?’ muttered Kyda. It seemed the kills he had taken in the refinery had done nothing to lessen the constant simmering of his ire.
‘Do it for me,’ Kendel ordered, and that brought a brief, wolfish grin to the legionary’s face.
Kyda slammed open the doors and strode into the chamber, advancing on the nobles inside like the executioner he was. The Death Guard’s shocking entrance had the desired effect, and as Kendel stepped around him, she saw a sea of frightened faces before her.
Her gaze was immediately drawn to Proge, who sat bolt upright, frozen in mid-conversation with the marshal she recalled from their first day on the planet.
‘Agentia Kendel?’ Proge rose slowly to his feet, faltering. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
The marshal forced a false smile. ‘With respect, this is a gathering for Proximans, not off-worlders. Had you wished to attend–’
‘We’re not here for your little party,’ Kendel snapped. ‘I grew weary of the obstructions placed before my retinue. I am taking a more proactive approach.’
‘Your tone is disrespectful!’ retorted the woman, blinking furiously. ‘You have blundered around our city, witch-hunter, and for what? We were willing to turn a blind eye to the disorder you brought to Majesty if only to see your task here swiftly completed, but now you overstep your bounds!’
‘You think so?’ Kendel showed her the brand on her palm. ‘My bounds, as you call them, are where I decide them to be.’
‘Be calm,’ ordered Proge. ‘We are civilised. We will act like it.’ He gave Kendel a firm look. ‘Are you quite sure you have made the right decision here, Agentia?’
Something in his tone cut right into Kendel, and for a moment she felt like she were a Novice-Sister again, hauled up before her superiors to be chastised for some trivial infraction.
Then she crushed that emotion and looked Proge in the eye. This was a man used to being obeyed, and like these other nobles, used to being the unquestioned master of all he surveyed. Suddenly all she saw was arrogance, entitlement, condescension, and she wanted very badly to knock that out of him. A smile grew on her lips. ‘Quite sure, Aristarch,’ she echoed.
‘You have what you came here for,’ insisted the marshal, her eyes flicking to Kyda’s impassive bulk and then back again. ‘What more do you want of us?’
Proge’s expression softened and he tried a different tack. ‘Agentia Kendel. Do not judge us too harshly. I will admit to you that all Proxima was shamed by what you uncovered in the spire, but I believe it better to celebrate the success than to dwell on the errors of a few wayward renegades.’
‘Wayward?’ Kyda growled the word, silencing the room. ‘That is how you define a traitor on this planet? As if they have simply made a childish mistake in showing fealty to Horus?’
‘The Warmaster has…’ began the marshal, before she paused to reframe her words. ‘You must accept that no one on Proxima Majoris has seen the dark things we have been asked to believe about Horus Lupercal. He is remembered well by many. It is natural that some might still have a measure of devotion to him. That does not make them evil.’
‘No,’ agreed Kendel. ‘It makes them fools.’ She took a step towards the other woman. ‘Parochial, arrogant fools. And traitors still.’
Qelvyn grimaced at the scene that awaited them within the Terminae. This was no place for respecting the dead. It was an industrial facility for disposing of waste.
A vast conveyor belt studded with anchor spikes rolled endlessly towards the rumbling maw of an incinerator, carrying discarded human bodies into the fires. She averted her gaze, looking up, and found more to horrify her. Above, complex mechanisms of cables and racks were in constant motion. They ferried new bodies down to the belt, and along the way robotic claws plucked clothes, funeral goods and anything else of value from the corpses.
Pau Yei gave a cry of anguish and without waiting for the rest of them, scrambled wildly up a ramp to the sorting platform, her cane clattering and humming as she went. Gallor shot Qelvyn a look as they gave chase but he said nothing, his broad face unreadable.
