by C. L. Werner
It was then that Rhodaan determined they would see what the rebels were up to before starting their ascent. One of the buildings the cult had seized as a strongpoint overlooking the barricade was the place the warsmith decided would be ideal to look over the battlefield.
A signal from Uzraal across the vox proclaimed the building to be clear. ‘Assemble the warband on the roof. Periphetes will stay below and discourage any rebels curious about their comrades here.’ Rhodaan looked over at Cornak. ‘We’ll inspect the situation for ourselves before engaging. Unless you’d prefer to use your magic?’ He took a deep satisfaction when Cornak’s fingers curled tighter around the heft of his staff. The sorcerer was always quick to boast of his powers, but he was also quick to explain their limitations.
‘It is dangerous to draw upon the arcane too often,’ Cornak said. ‘Magic isn’t something to be drawn upon for matters of small import.’
‘Those explosions we heard would be of some consequence if they were caused by the Imperials trying to keep invaders off their mountain,’ Rhodaan said. Turning from the sorcerer, he climbed the stairs, marching through the carnage unleashed by his Iron Warriors. When he reached the roof, he found Uzraal and the others gazing down on the barricade and the swarms of purple-clad infantry trying to overrun it.
‘They’ve tenacity,’ Uzraal stated, pointing to the sprawl of bodies strewn around the barricade. The Imperials behind the barrier were blazing away with lasguns and heavy bolters, flamers and cannon. Each rush the cultists made, the Imperials left scores of them stacked on the ground.
‘The flesh expect trouble from the rear,’ Rhodaan observed, gesturing to a squad of soldiers who took no part in the fighting at the barricade but instead kept their guns aimed at the road they were protecting. Several hundred metres up the ascent, a huge press of refugees could be seen, struggling in their panicked climb. Between the Imperial rearguard and the refugees, several bodies lay strewn on the ground. Civilians that had been trampled by the mob, or something in league with the rebels outside?
Rhodaan soon had his answer. From a darkened structure a hundred metres behind the barricade, a large group of cultists charged into view, hundreds strong. The soldiers of the rearguard started firing away at the enemies inside their perimeter. The cultists returned fire, but it appeared their more important concern was getting hold of the bodies lying in the road. Or more particularly, the bulky bundles each of the corpses held.
‘This should be interesting,’ Rhodaan said.
The Imperials sent shot after shot into the rebels at their rear, dropping several. Their alarm at having such a large force flank their position and come at them from behind had unnerved the soldiers, reducing their efficiency. Even so, had their enemy possessed any degree of self-concern they might have driven off the attack. Instead the rest of the rebels returned the Imperial fire, and three of the cultists rushed at the barricade, their arms wrapped around the bundles they’d taken from the bodies. One of the charging hybrids was felled but the others endured the shower of las-blasts. As they neared the vehicles behind the perimeter, the saboteurs threw their burdens at the barricade. They didn’t bother to run away – knowing they couldn’t outrun the destruction they’d just unleashed.
The charges the cultists had activated went sliding down the approach straight at the tanks and armoured transports. One of them slipped under a Leman Russ before detonating, the other exploded a little less than a metre from the barricade itself. The result was a blinding flare of violence. The Leman Russ was sent flying, somersaulting through the air before slamming down into the street twenty metres away, its turret flattened as the wreck rolled onto its back. Smoke billowed from the jagged rent in its belly, sparks and flashes of fire licking out from the gaps in its hull.
The rest of the barricade was likewise demolished. The other vehicles were knocked around like toys, squashing soldiers as they were sent spinning away from the blasts. One side of a building collapsed into the road, dumping tonnes of rockcrete onto the approach and pulping the ragged carcasses of the saboteurs. Debris and shrapnel slashed into the rebels, killing some of the cultists and leaving the rest bloodied and shaken. The refugee column was too far up the approach to be directly affected by the explosion, but as the rolling cloud of dust kicked up by the demolished building shot towards them the crowd descended into abject panic.
The lenses of Rhodaan’s helmet blazed with a dull glow as the optics compensated for the thick pall of dust that billowed across the rooftop. Through the grit, he could see another surge of cultists pouring in from the outlying district. A Goliath with a massive dozer blade fitted to its nose barrelled towards the demolished barricade, ready to smash aside the wrecked vehicles and clear a path for the infantry following behind.
‘We must thank the xenos for opening the door for us,’ Rhodaan said, aiming his bolt pistol.
Focused upon the breach their comrades had opened for them, the cultists were taken utterly by surprise when the Iron Warriors began decimating their ranks.
After watching their ploy against the Imperials, it struck Rhodaan as quite fitting to use the same trick against the rebels.
Chapter IX
‘Controlled bursts! Be certain of your targets!’ Sister Kashibai’s admonition rang out across the vox, carrying to the Battle Sisters assembled with her in the narthex. The position had been reinforced by Sisters detached from other duties within the cathedral so that Kashibai now had upwards of thirty warriors to defend the Great Gate.
Looking out into the plaza from the gateway, Kashibai appreciated how immense was the task set before them. The square was fairly crawling with refugees, a panicked morass of humanity that was trying to force its way into the cathedral. Clawing, kicking, trampling, the mob was lost to reason now. All that was left was the fear that hammered in their hearts and the prospect of safety that goaded them on.
Sister Superior Trishala had given the order and Kashibai could do nothing but obey. No more people were to be admitted into the cathedral. She would pray for their souls when the fighting was done. For now, she had to forget them. It was the crowds already inside who demanded her protection.
Las-bolts caught Sister Rachna in the throat when a clutch of supposed refugees drew weapons from beneath their coats. More cultists revealed themselves in a blast of fiery plasma as they charged the gate, Sister Shanta’s left side reduced to a mess of melted armour and vaporised flesh. The enemy rush was silenced in a hail of bolter-fire, but the damage was already done. Far more than the loss of two Battle Sisters, the attack had demolished the discipline of the crowd. Already on the edge from the breaching of the perimeter, the civilians lost all restraint.
The fusillade the Battle Sisters loosed into the crowd saw no less than two score hurled back in a welter of blood and dying flesh. The deafening salvo for a brief instant accomplished a miracle. The wave of maddened humanity drew back, stunned by the menacing display. For an instant, silence brooded above the square. Kashibai looked towards the Great Gate, wondering why she couldn’t hear the portal growling its way back into its hidden recess to leave the doorway and the cathedral exposed to the masses in the plaza. The immense gate had stopped, freezing in place midpoint in its journey.
The silence was broken by a rumbling mechanical shriek. Up from the crowd rose cries of protest and horror, screams both terrifying and piteous. The sound that had broken the silence was that of the Great Gate’s mammoth door shuddering into motion. Plaster and masonry crumbled as the huge portal began to creep out from its hidden recess, its tremulous momentum sending a shudder through the mountain itself.
The Great Gate was closing again! The sanctuary those in the plaza had so desperately hoped to gain was being cut off, denied to them when they stood upon its very doorstep, when safety had so abruptly re-entered their hopes. Now it was being snatched away from them again. That realisation whipped the fires of fear into a conflagration. An infl
amed horde rose up, charging the steps, rushing for the doorway before it could be closed to them.
‘Hold them!’ Kashibai gave the command to her warriors. Again, the sheer assault on the senses provoked by the salvo caused the mob to draw back, slipping and stumbling down the steps.
‘God-Emperor forgive me,’ Kashibai whispered as she looked down on the wretched crowd.
‘We can’t keep them back long,’ Sister Pranjal cautioned Kashibai. ‘Sheer numbers will make it impossible to hold them off.’
Kashibai nodded. ‘We only need to hold them until the gate closes.’ She looked askance at the groaning portal of thick metal. She prayed that the door’s long-slumbering machine-spirit would rouse itself to greater effort. Otherwise she knew she’d be forced to a decision that would persecute her the rest of her days.
Slowly, much too slowly, the Great Gate lumbered outwards. With each groan and rumble, Kashibai could see the agitation of the crowd rebuilding itself. Subduing them wasn’t enough, she had to regain control. She had to turn hope against fear. To do that would mean violating the letter of Trishala’s orders.
‘Listen to me!’ Kashibai shouted to the crowd. ‘The cathedral must be closed! The gate cannot be open when the enemy comes! There isn’t time to get everyone inside!’ A bold idea came to her, one that would at once salvage something from the crisis and remind the panicked masses that they were humans, not animals. ‘The children! Bring the children forwards. There’s still time to save them.’
The declaration sent a murmur through the crowd. While some voices still shouted in protest, many more were raised in gratitude. Out from the crowd, the youngest of the refugees were brought forwards, sent scurrying up the steps. Kashibai felt a pang of guilt as she watched families torn apart, tearful parents pushing their children towards a sanctuary they knew they wouldn’t share. She felt shame as the crowd piled onto those who tried to flee with the children, to seize this last chance at safety. She’d intended the crowd to police itself once they had something to fight for, but to see it executed with such savagery gave her pause. She felt as though she’d set a rabid animal loose.
‘Your plan may work, Sister,’ Pranjal said as the first of the children hurried past her into the narthex. ‘So long as the gate closes before anything more happens to agitate them.’
Even as Pranjal spoke the words, a grinding shudder swept through the Great Gate. Kashibai looked aside, horrified to see the monolithic portal start to withdraw back into its recess. Instead of closing, the gate was being flung open once more. The reversal of the narrative she’d given the crowd was just the sort of thing that Kashibai dreaded. Resigned to their fate only a moment before, the retreat of the hulking metal barrier fanned the fading hopes of the mob.
‘We have to hold them,’ Kashibai told Pranjal. ‘As long as we can, we have to keep them out.’
The peculiar tilt that marked the architecture of the Warmason’s Cathedral was more pronounced within the forty-metre stretch of the gatehouse’s narrow operating centre. The ceiling was comparatively low when balanced against the discordant symmetry of its upended floor. The windows set into the far wall looked down upon the plaza rather than out across the cityscape of Tharsis, the translucent armourglass material of such a thickness that only the barest impression of motion and shape could be seen through them. The metal walls were pitted with banks of machinery, many of them winking and sparkling with a deranged confusion of lights. Projecting up from the floor were banks of workstations, the awkwardness of their angle making them almost parallel with the firmament.
Here among this riot of machinery were the controls for the Great Gate. Generations of acolytes had acted as gatekeepers, sworn to silence and seclusion, instructed in the rituals and prayers by which the truculent cogitators could be coaxed into activity. The litanies of operation had been disseminated over millennia without once being put into practice, for to rouse the Great Gate without cause was deemed an act of blasphemy. Trishala’s worry as she entered the gatehouse was that the gatekeepers had been too timid in their ministrations and the door had suffered some fault that had caused it to open. She’d almost convinced herself that the reason she couldn’t raise the acolytes, Captain Debdan or Sister Virika was because of some discharge within the gatehouse that was disrupting vox traffic.
One look across the room changed Trishala’s mind.
Sister Virika lay slumped on the floor a dozen metres from the entrance, a smoking hole drilled into her forehead by a lasweapon, the shot inflicted from extremely close range. The dozen acolytes had been drawn away from their usual stations and were clustered about a nest of machinery near the centre of the room facing towards the windows. Many of them had pale, trembling faces, gazing in fright at Virika’s body. Others kept directing confused looks towards the raised terminal where a few of their number continued to operate machinery under the watchful supervision of their new overseers. Ranged across the hall were thirty soldiers in the uniform of local militia.
‘Sister Superior,’ Captain Debdan greeted her as she entered the room. He turned away from the troops surrounding the acolytes and walked towards her. ‘Cultists were trying to seize control of the gatehouse. They shot Sister Virika. We have just put them down. The location is secure now.’
Trishala’s bolt pistol was in her hand. The instant he noted her weapon, the captain arrested his approach. ‘I see no cultists,’ she told Debdan, her tone both tense and suspicious.
The captain pointed to the acolytes. ‘There,’ he declared. ‘The xenos that got into the cathedral must have infected the clergy with its corruption.’ He continued to walk towards Trishala. ‘It is to be regretted that we weren’t able to stop it from corrupting these men, but at least their treachery has been uncovered before they could do further damage.’ Debdan pointed to the terminals still in operation. ‘My men are forcing them to close the Great Gate. When they’re finished we’ll make them initiate the lockdown.’
Trishala shook her head. She was thinking of the shot that had killed Virika and how close her murderer must have been. Too close to be anyone she didn’t trust. ‘How is it that Sister Virika was killed but none of your men look as though they’ve even been hurt?’ She raised her pistol, arresting Debdan’s advance. The captain’s expression turned anxious. He made a placating gesture with his hands. At the same time, Trishala saw a few of the soldiers starting to move. ‘If anything happens, I promise you die first,’ she warned Debdan.
‘Please, there has been too much violence already!’ Out from the doorway of an antechamber that branched off from the control room, a familiar figure appeared. Prelate Azad was dressed in the finery of his office, looking as regal and collected as if he were about to conduct the Rites of Singh in veneration of the God-Emperor’s Warmason. As Trishala watched him walk into the control room, there was no sign of distress or compulsion in his manner, no wariness in his demeanour as he passed Debdan’s troops. The confused, even alarmed expressions of the acolytes told Trishala all she needed to know.
‘You’ve been missing several days, Reverence,’ Trishala told the prelate. ‘You caused us a great deal of worry. You were needed here.’
Prelate Azad bowed his head in apology. ‘This crisis demanded utmost clarity of thought,’ he said. ‘I removed myself in contemplation, to pray to the God-Emperor for His guidance, to appeal to Him for the wisdom that can save His people.’ He looked over at Debdan, frowning when he saw the captain’s hand slipping towards his holstered pistol. ‘There’s already been enough killing,’ he repeated. ‘Let me do this my way.’
Trishala’s mind raced, trying to deny the magnitude of what she was hearing. A cold sensation shivered through her as she realised that not only Debdan but also Prelate Azad were traitors. She looked across the room, evaluating the odds against her. She saw clearly how Virika had been killed without the chance to fight. The traitors wouldn’t find her so easy to put down.
‘You’ve violated every sacred oath you’ve taken,’ Trishala accused. ‘Forsaken the God-Emperor! Why?’
The accusation brought a sneer to Debdan’s face, but on Azad’s there was a look of actual pain. He held his hands out to Trishala in appeal. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I haven’t betrayed the God-Emperor. If anything, I have been drawn into an even greater understanding of His divine plan. I have been blessed to be granted a knowledge of things hidden from even the Ecclesiarchy.’ A smile so rapturous as to be beatific gripped his features. ‘I have seen the destiny the God-Emperor intended for all His children! The purpose towards which He led us across the stars! I have seen the means by which all the faults and weaknesses of mankind may be burned away. I have been shown how the mortal soul may be inoculated against all corruption.’ Where Debdan had stopped, Azad now came towards Trishala, his arms outstretched. ‘I have discovered the secret of a physical ascension.’
Trishala felt disgust as she gazed on Azad. ‘You’ve been infected by the xenos,’ she told him. ‘Your mind has warped the corruption of your flesh and made you believe it to be some kind of holy revelation.’ She raised her pistol, aiming at the prelate’s smiling face. ‘What you think is wisdom is nothing but madness.’
Contempt and horror at the defiled state of the prelate caused Trishala’s attention to focus entirely on him for an instant. In that moment, Captain Debdan ripped his pistol from his holster and fired at her. ‘Kill the defiler!’ he shouted to his men.
Trishala swung around as Debdan fired, his shot scorching past her head. Las-bolts from some of his soldiers came flashing towards her, cracking harmlessly against her armour. The same couldn’t be said for Prelate Azad. Still advancing towards the Battle Sister, the priest was caught by stray shots from the traitors’ guns. Trishala watched him pitch to the floor, his vestments scorched by several hits. As he died, she saw that terrible expression of rapture freeze on his features, his mind lost in the end to the delusions provoked by the xenos contamination. The monstrousness of it made a cold rage blaze within her. The next instant her bolter was barking away. Had Debdan hesitated, waited to snap off a second shot, he would have been caught in that burst of fire. As it was he managed the cover of a workstation, sheltering behind it as the explosive shells raked across its metal casing.
