by C. L. Werner
Away from the pillared temple, Bakasur viewed a platoon of soldiers reinforcing the low walls of an outdoor gallery. Smashing fountains and urns with entrenching tools and rifle butts, the troopers dragged the broken masonry to the perimeter. While the men at the walls piled up the rubble they’d created, some of their comrades took up position among the statues of long-dead priests and missionaries, using their broad plascrete bases for cover. The gallery was sited to afford a commanding view of two intersecting streets and the soldiers promised to make taking those streets a costly prospect.
Bakasur evaluated the defences the soldiers had raised. Against lasrifle or autogun, they might serve well enough. But these were far from the only weapons in the cult’s arsenal. It needed but a slight exertion to stimulate the mentalities of the hybrids that could make a mockery of the position. Only a flicker of thought, and the magus sent his plan directly into the brains of the cultists.
For a few moments, the troopers continued to reinforce their position. Lasguns flashed and a sheet of burning promethium shot out as a band of cultists tried to rush the gallery. The attack was quickly beaten back by the soldiers, a litter of dead and dying hybrids sprawled in the road.
Such relief as the platoon felt by repulsing the cultist charge quickly evaporated. The bodies on the street jounced and shuddered as a fleet of immense vehicles came rumbling towards their position. Bakasur could feel the despair that dripped from the troopers. They recognised the machines driving down upon them and appreciated how formidable they were.
Hulking masses of permasteel, the Goliath trucks had been the armoured workhorses of the old mines, built to withstand toxic spills, cave-ins and firedamp. The cult had restored and further strengthened their bodies with layers of metal plating, even going so far as to chain a metre-thick slab of ferrocrete to the front of the leading truck’s engine block. Weapons bristled from the cabs and roofs of each truck, sporting everything from heavy stubbers and modified mining lasers to autocannons and cobbled-together plasma guns. The sigils of the cult were painted across each Goliath, proudly boasting their allegiance.
The troopers made an effort to stand their ground. Lasguns flashed, striving to penetrate the cabs and strike the drivers. The platoon’s heavy flamer sent another sheet of fire washing over the street, but the blazing promethium made little impression on machines built to withstand the ember-eruptions of Lubentina’s slag-drops. The only mark the soldiers’ efforts made was to blister the paint of the foremost Goliath and scratch some of the extra plating bolted to the others.
Roaring nearer to the gallery, cultist guns returned the militia’s fire. A swath of perimeter wall was blown apart by the pounding inflicted upon it by an autocannon, the troopers behind it shredded by both the high-velocity rounds and the splinters of their own barricade. The beam of a laser seared across one of the bronze missionaries, sending the statue crashing backwards and precipitating a chain reaction that soon found six of the sculptures smashing earthwards. The soldiers sheltering beneath the statues scattered, scrambling to find new cover.
Before the rattled platoon could regain any sort of cohesion, the leading Goliath came barrelling into their position. The perimeter wall shattered as the heavy truck smashed through it, one hapless soldier pulped beneath the machine’s enormous wheels. The Goliath rumbled onwards, only stopping when the ferrocrete slab fastened to its hood slammed into one of the statues. As the truck came to a rest, the heavy stubber nestled in its cab maintained a steady fire, forcing the soldiers to keep their heads down.
The iris hatch at the rear of the Goliath swirled open and from the bay set within the truck’s body a swarm of cultists spilled out across the devastated gallery. Shotguns boomed as the hybrids surged towards the reeling soldiers while cracking autoguns picked off those men who tried to flee back towards the streets. An enraged aberrant, a huge rock drill clenched in his brawny arms, charged into a group of shaken troopers huddled behind a heap of debris. The churning grinders that tipped the aberrant’s crude weapon were swiftly caked in the flesh and sinew of his mangled victims.
The fiery explosion that abruptly engulfed the leading Goliath and flipped the immense truck onto its back snapped Bakasur’s focus away from the carnage of the gallery. The magus set his concentration upon the task of finding the enemy who’d inflicted such a blow upon the cult. He found them, another platoon of troopers barricaded in the rockcrete halls of an abbey. Already the men were frantically loading another missile to send against the Goliaths. Bakasur expanded his awareness away from the soldiers, exploring the buildings around them. To the left they were supported by only a few squads, and the building to their right held an entire detachment.
The nature of that detachment gave Bakasur pause. He resisted the inclination to exploit the opportunity to its fullest, however. For the moment it was enough that the platoon with the missile launcher was eliminated. That would require only an unprotected flank to achieve. More direct action could wait.
Again, the magus set his psychic powers to stimulating the minds of his cult, those he’d chosen to serve as extensions of his own will. The hybrids assaulting the gallery divided their forces, some remaining to hold the captured position and to keep the attention of the men in the abbey. The others, shielded by the buildings beyond the gallery, rushed down the street parallel to the abbey. They’d emerge well to the right of the troopers. No alarm would be given by the soldiers in the building that guarded the abbey’s flank, nor would the hybrids encounter any resistance until they were upon the platoon Bakasur had marked for destruction. The magus’s telepathic exertions had seen to that.
Bakasur let his consciousness seep back into his body. The risk of drifting too far from his mortal shell was a dire one. Now that the cult was poised to secure the chokepoint that jeopardised their advance, he saw no reason to entertain such danger further. Until he’d outlived his utility to the Great Father, his life wasn’t his own to expend. There was still much to be done. Much to prepare before the end.
Before Lubentina outlived its utility to the Great Father in spreading his glory across the stars.
From the balcony set high upon the cathedral’s central tower, Trishala stared out across the sweeping sprawl of Tharsis. Entire districts had become smoking ruins, ransacked and despoiled by the rebels. The Tomb-Cutters’ Guild had been reduced to a pile of rubble, the factories and works around it turned into acres of desolation. The hab-blocks of the chapel-serfs were empty, blackened ruins. Fighting persisted in the area of the under-temples and the seminaries, the flash of explosions and the crack of gunfire rising from the streets. Brigades of local militia rushed to form cordons around those regions firmly in the grip of the cultists while batteries of artillery lumbered into positions on the outskirts of the city, where they could direct their fire against those areas considered lost to the enemy. Wherever soldiers and rebels were absent, ragged files of civilians staggered through the streets, hurrying towards whatever promised them escape or shelter. Some fled into the wastelands beyond the city, some tried to make their way to the spaceport. Others tried to reach the Sovereign Spire and the governor’s district, seeking refuge within the fortress.
The stream of petitioners ascending Mount Rama had swollen into a flood. From all across Tharsis, the frightened masses were rushing to the Warmason’s Cathedral. As she observed the tide of desperate humanity packed along the Chastened Road, Sister Superior Trishala felt a bitter sense of déjà vu. She felt that she’d been here before, seen all of this long ago on Primorus.
Then she’d been naught but a girl, a child caught up in an incomprehensible turmoil from which there was neither refuge or respite. When the xenos cult on her homeworld had exploded from the shadows into open revolt, the populace had reacted with the same useless panic and terror. She remembered the hot, smothering atmosphere in the security shelters the inhabitants of her hab-block had fled into, the thousands of trembling people packed into a
space intended for only a few hundred. She could still hear the air-cyclers chugging away, their machine-spirits railing against the ordeal of purging the exhalations of so many refugees. Later there had been the other sound... the scrape of xenos claws against the doors.
A groaning shudder passed through the metal balcony Trishala stood upon. She could hear the massive door that led back into the cathedral slowly rumbling open. Plasteel nearly a metre thick, it was an absurdity that such a ponderous construction should open onto something as innocuous as the little balcony. But, like so many of the secret corners and incongruous features of the cathedral, the huge door was a legacy from the past. A reminder of the curious design that Karim Das had chosen with which to pay homage to Vadok Singh.
‘I thought I should find you on the Curate’s Leap,’ Kashibai told Trishala as she walked out onto the balcony. The balcony had taken its name after a despondent curate had jumped to his death, unable to endure the shame of accidentally destroying an ancient tome dating to the time of the Great Crusade. It was claimed the imprint of his fingers could still be found on the railing where he braced himself before his jump. More substantial was the pattern of cracks and holes that marred the tombs directly below the balcony.
Trishala continued to gaze down at the throngs of Lubentines. ‘Have I become so predictable, Sister?’
Kashibai joined her at the rail, her armoured hands closing about the spiral lattice of the mesh. ‘I’ve served under you long enough to know you dislike any disruption of routine. You can only take so much before you need to get away.’
‘Solitude bestows tranquillity,’ Trishala quoted from the Angelikite Verses. ‘It becomes needful sometimes to step aside and refocus the mind.’
‘You are hardly alone here,’ Kashibai said, nodding to the masses in the plaza below.
‘One can be alone in the midst of multitudes,’ Trishala corrected her. ‘I’m not certain even Palatine Yadav has accepted that this is more than a mutant uprising. If he did we should be out there, eradicating these creatures, not hanging back with the refugees.’
‘Not all are blessed with the strength to fight,’ Kashibai said. ‘It is the honour of those with such strength that we can protect those without it.’
‘It is a burden, not an honour,’ Trishala corrected her. ‘If we could be certain the cathedral was secure I could send detachments from our convent to reinforce the militia. I am certain that Palatine Yadav would support such actions now.’ She waved her hand at the distant glow of Tharsis, at the conflagration blazing in the seminaries and the Redeemer’s District where Hafiz’s artillery continued to bombard the rampaging cultists. ‘Because of that, I cannot risk sending even a few squads out.’
‘More and more people are fleeing the city,’ Kashibai agreed. ‘Many of them are coming here for sanctuary, seeking the protection of Vadok Singh and the God-Emperor.’
‘They seek the protection of our bolters,’ Trishala said, her voice dripping with cynicism.
‘They don’t know how to fight,’ Kashibai said. ‘How many of those people down there do you think have even held a gun, much less fired one? Their service to the Imperium has been one of labour, not war. Even then there have been many who answered Palatine Yadav’s calls to assemble the frateris militia, taking up weapons they’ve never used to defend their city.’
Trishala gestured to the crowds along the Chastened Road. ‘Would that the God-Emperor gave them all such courage, then the Cardinal-Governor’s idealistic vision of Lubentina fighting its own battles would be more than a dream.’
‘Part of our duty is to protect those unable to protect themselves,’ Kashibai said.
Trishala bristled at Kashibai’s words. ‘Our most sacred duty is that to which we have vowed to be true. Protecting the relics of Vadok Singh,’ she said. ‘Double the guard on the Palladion and remind the Sisters that no member of the laity is to draw closer to it than the transept. Then I want you to reinforce the honour guard in the narthex. Order has to be maintained. A mob of this size and in this state is beyond the ability of acolytes and militia to control. It needs our attention. If we don’t exert control over these people from the moment they cross the threshold we’re inviting disaster into our midst.’
‘These people are desperate,’ Kashibai cautioned. ‘It won’t be easy to restrain them.’
Trishala only partly heard Kashibai speak. She was listening instead to the scrape of xenos claws against the doors of the security shelter. The aliens never did tear through those doors. Someone on the inside had opened them for the creatures.
‘These people are dangerous,’ Trishala said. ‘Even if you don’t believe that, conduct yourself as if you do.’
Palatine Yadav looked across the information on his data-slate, horrified by how swiftly the rebellion had escalated. The local militia had been driven from the Redeemer’s District and was now trying to extricate itself from the vicinity of the scholarium. The tomb-yards had been completely obliterated by artillery and the barrage being concentrated against the missal-works would soon see them condemned to the same fate. The incense factories were firmly in the grip of the cultists, shielded from bombardment by the hab-blocks of the perfumers who laboured there. So too were the seminaries and under-temples of the Preachers’ Quarter, infested by rebels who’d boiled up from long-forgotten connections to the old mines of Karim Das. Loyal forces still held a firm grip on the governor’s district and the complex of bureaucratic buildings that had grown around the Sovereign Spire. The spaceport had yet to come under attack and the approaches to Mount Rama were still open to the Imperials. Still, it was impossible to mistake the rapid spread of the rebels. A fifth of the city was either destroyed or firmly in the grip of the cultists and another fifth was actively being fought over. Sabotage had reached epidemic proportions with power plants destroyed, water sources poisoned, and bridges bombed. It was a grim assessment that he gave Cardinal-Governor Murdan as they walked together.
‘By trying to protect everything, we would lose everything,’ Murdan said as they walked through the incense-filled corridors of his private apartments. Murdan paused in his steps to contemplate a hololith projecting on the wall across from him, a portrait of his predecessor Rohak. Each time the two men made a circuit of the passageway, the governor stopped to study the image of that long dead hero who had prevailed during the heretical riots of 3637. It was as though by looking into that face he could find the secret of the strength and wisdom that had enabled Rohak to triumph over the heretics.
Yadav didn’t think Murdan would find any answers there, even if there were any to be found. He was too unyielding in the beliefs he’d adopted to reconsider his decisions. In the Cardinal-Governor’s view, it was better to break than bend. Any compromise, any vacillation was a mark of doubt – something he equated with spiritual failing.
‘We can’t simply abandon Tharsis to these heretics,’ Yadav said, repeating the argument that had dominated their discussion.
Murdan continued to stare at the portrait. He wagged a skeletal finger at Rohak. ‘To win the war you must concede the battle. Rohak knew this. He evaluated his resources and made a practical assessment of what he could hold and what he couldn’t. If he’d tried to save everything, the enemy would have taken it all.’
‘You’re talking about withdrawing from almost the whole of the city,’ Yadav protested. The agitation in his voice brought Murdan’s ivory-coated bodyguards a few steps closer to the men, one of them even going so far as to unbutton the flap of his laspistol’s holster. Their loyalty to Murdan was such that they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if they thought the governor was being threatened.
Murdan turned away from the portrait. There was regret in his eyes as he looked at Yadav. ‘Colonel Hafiz has lost a quarter of his troops and the militia you assembled to support him has been decimated. The reality is that we don’t have the manpower to contain these cultists. They’re poppin
g up like weeds. Exterminate them from one street and they show up in even greater force in the adjacent district. If we concentrate on holding the spaceport, the Sovereign Spire and the Warmason’s Cathedral, then we can preserve the core of Lubentina. We will have something to build from when the uprising is put down.’
‘That means abandoning millions to the enemy,’ Yadav objected.
‘That is a sacrifice we must make,’ Murdan sighed. He raised his lean hand to interrupt Yadav’s rebuttal. ‘Do you know that after the militia’s setbacks in the Cloisterfells Minister Kargil asked me to pour poison gas into the tunnels? I was as aghast at the suggestion as you are now. My thoughts were on the innocents who would perish. If I had focused on the innocents who would have been saved by such a brutal act, this crisis would be over now. No, palatine, I cannot be swayed by appeals to my compassion. My heart has already betrayed my obligations once. I won’t allow it to do so again.’
