by Ben Counter
Patricos saw fear etched into their time-worn faces. They had been picked up from dozens of worlds along the route, many of them having been taken aboard at Gathalamor at the very start of the voyage. They had been together for so long that it only took one doubting voice for rumour and panic to spread like a fire.
'But one of the crewmen told me there is an enemy fleet approaching!' called out one pilgrim's voice. 'And we are under a military command!'
Patricos held his hands up in a calming gesture. 'True, the Navy has called upon our presence, but this is merely a precaution. In the unlikely event of enemy action we could function as a transport or hospital ship. We are unarmed! And we carry with us the faithful souls, the same good Emperor-fearing men and women for whom the Navy fights! They would not let us come to harm. Now, let us pray and give thanks for the bravery and sacrifice of these soldiers and crewmen who protect us in times of darkness. Hymnal Tertiam, verse ninety-three.'
The pilgrims began praying, falteringly at first and then in stronger voice, as Patricos led them in the praises of the immortal God-Emperor.
THE MASSIVE BULK of the Hellforger, almost half as big again as a standard cruiser-class ship, knifed through space towards the midpoint of the Tribunicia. The outer hull plates of its prow flaked off on trails of steaming gore, revealing bone-white fangs that formed a vicious cutting edge like the tip of a chainsword. Wide wet orifices opened up just below the ramming fangs, leading to the mustering chambers where the boarding troops were being herded into place.
The Hellforger maintained a formidable horde of subhuman boarding troops, brutal half-mad creatures evolved and mutated for ugly close-quarters killing. If the Tribunicia survived the initial impact they would be driven through the boarding orifices and onto the Imperial ship, flooding its decks with blood-crazed madmen. It was an old tactic, one of the most effective given the size and toughness of the Hellforger itself. A ramming action, according to Imperial Naval doctrine, was nothing short of madness. A boarding action was scarcely less so. Imperial captains simply had no idea how to defend against the Hellforger hurtling towards them at ramming speed, its razor-sharp prow fully exposed. The terror of the sight alone had shaken more than one Imperial captain and Urkrafhos still had some of those same captains imprisoned, brutalized and insane, deep in the bowels of the Hellforger.
The Hellforger was set on its path. The bridge daemons had done their job well and the massive thrust of the grand cruiser's engines sent it carving inexorably towards the Tribunicia.
Which meant there was nothing it could do when the Pieta suddenly got in the way.
THE ENGINES OF the Pieta roared as the tubby, ponderous pilgrim ship was pulled in several directions at once. In the grand amphitheatre, people screamed as the artificial gravity was knocked out of kilter and they were thrown against the banks of hard marble seating. Missionary Patricos had to grab hold of the lectern to keep himself from pitching into the front row of pilgrims.
'Keep praying!' shouted Patricos over the keening of the engines and the sounds of panic. 'Keep praying! For He will heed your words!'
Something huge collided with the underside of the ship, gouging through the lower decks with a shriek of tearing metal and howl of escaping air. Patricos was thrown onto his back and pilgrims tumbled down the banks of seating as the ship rocked.
Horrendous sounds boomed from below them, fuel cells cooking off, decks sucked dry of air, sections of the hull ripped inwards by the collision.
Patricos struggled to his feet. The pilgrims who had not been knocked unconscious were still praying, mouthing sacred words, their faces blank with fear.
'He does not hear us!' shouted Patrocis at the top of his booming hellfire voice. 'You are not praying hard enough! Sing to Him the depths of your devotion!'
One of the aft engines exploded, filling the air with the sickening sound of sheets of fuel igniting, filling the engineering decks with liquid flame.
'Keep praying!' The ship was spasming like a dying animal, beads of fire dripping from the ceiling. 'You! Pray harder! Now!'
The grinding prow of the Hellforger cut right through the amphitheatre, its gnashing ram of teeth slicing through hundreds of bodies. The rest died as the vacuum screamed in behind it, leaving the shattered remnants of the Pieta open to the emptiness of space.
'GODS' TEETH AND damnation!' bellowed Urkrathos as the last shreds of the Pieta fluttered from the prow of the Hellforger. 'You! Are we still on course?'
The navigation daemon, a muscular brute covered in glowing runes of sorcery, growled from the wall to which it had been nailed with spikes of meteoric iron. 'The collision turned our hand. The blade will not strike true.'
Urkrathos glanced back at the pict-screen showing the smouldering wreckage of the Pieta still jammed in the teeth of the ramming prow. The daemon was right - the Hellforger would miss the Tribunicia stern-wards. 'Correct it.'
The daemon grinned with all three of its bile-dripping mouths. 'Impossible.' it said.
Urkrathos took the bolt pistol from its holster at his waist and slammed three shots into the navigation daemon, spattering boiling ichor over the wall behind it. 'You defy me!' he yelled. 'Rot your soul, daemon!'
'I have no soul.' said the daemon, still leering with its now-wrecked face. 'And I cannot defy you. It is no lie. The blade of the Hellforger will spare the Enemy's heart.'
Urkrathos spat in one of the daemon's many emerald-green eyes. It was true. If the course correction could be made the daemon would have to make it. The Hellforger would miss.
'Weapons!' shouted Urkrathos. 'Pull back the boarding parties to the gun gangs! Make ready for a broadside!'
Damn these Imperial scum. They just didn't know when to die. Now he would have to shatter the Enemy flagship with gunfire, a far longer and crueller death than he had planned for them. They inflicted this suffering on themselves, these worshippers of the Corpse-Emperor. In butchering them, Urkrathos was fulfilling a sacred duty.
REAR ADMIRAL HORSTGELD looked at the pict-steals of the dying Pieta. He hadn't been certain the ship's crew would realize what their orders meant - if they had, they might not have followed them, pious servants of the Emperor or not. But they were not responsible for the thousands of innocent pilgrims who had just died. Horstgeld was. That was what command meant. Taking responsibility for everything that befell the Imperial citizens under his command, for good or ill.
The revised course solutions flashed up on the bridge viewscreen. The Hellforger would miss the Tribunicia - not by much, but by enough. The Tribunicia would last a little longer, then. And those few moments of life had cost the destruction of the Pieta and the death of everyone on board.
'Ship's confessor,' said Horstgeld to Confessor Talas, standing as always at the bridge pulpit. 'We have sinned. The Rites of Admonition, if you please.'
BENEATH MANUFACTORIUM NOCTIS, at the very foundation of the city where the artificial strata met the iron-drained crust of Chaeroneia, there were scores of low, flat abscesses in the rock. Seams of iron and other metals had been mined out leaving endless flat galleries. Most had collapsed but enough remained to form a hidden highway beneath the city, towards the ancient mineheads just outside the limits of the present-day Manufactorium.
An ancient Chimera APC, so repeatedly repaired and refitted that barely anything of the original vehicle remained, led the feeble armoured column that ground at full speed towards the radioactive ash desert beyond the city. Looted and maintained by Antigonus's tech-priest resistance force, it was the most battle-worthy vehicle the makeshift strike force had and it felt like it was about to fall apart.
'What will we find when we get there?' asked Alaric above the painful grinding of the engine. He and his squad were in the lead Chimera along with Tech-priest Gallen, who seemed to have an affinity for keeping vehicles running that should have rusted to dust a long time ago.
Gallen glanced back at Alaric with his one remaining natural eye. 'The
older shafts are still intact.' he said. 'They were worked by menial gangs, so they are navigable by foot and vehicle. They lead up into the desert.'
'And what's there?'
'Nothing.'
Alaric knew it wasn't true. He could feel the malevolence up ahead, feel it trying to push him back. The diamond-hard core of his soul was aching with it.
'I think we should hear the Rites of Contrition.' said Brother Archis. 'We should go into this with our souls clean.'
'No.' said Alaric. 'Not from me. You should speak them, Archis. You seem to have a knack for prayer.'
'Yes, justicar.' said Archis. 'Brothers, join me.' The rest of the squad, Alaric included, bowed their heads as Archis began to speak. The Rites of Contrition acknowledged the weakness in all their souls, the failures they had all committed in their duty to the Emperor - because their purpose was to eradicate the threat of the daemon and yet daemons still existed and preyed upon the peoples of the Imperium. So as long as the work of the Grey Knights was not done they had to plead for forgiveness from the Emperor and hope that His grace would lend them the strength to complete their work.
One day, when they were all dead and had fought at the Emperor's side at the end of time, their duty would be done. Until then, they were in the Emperor's debt - a debt they would die repaying.
'YOU SAY YOU have lost them?' asked the collective consciousness of Chaeroneia's tech-priests.
'For the time being.' replied Scraecos.
The archmagos veneratus stood in the remains of the data-fortress. He had compelled its crystalline structure to unfold completely, laying the lowest reaches of malleable data medium open to the weeping sky. The bodies of wrecked battle-servitors and dead menials lay fused with the black crystal where they had fallen, sucked into the substance of the data-fortress by the ferocity with which Scraecos had forced the structure to reform.
There was no sign of the surviving intruders. Only the bodies of their dead troops - a couple of tech-guard in the rust-red and brass of the orthodox Adeptus Mechanicus. Nothing of the Space Marines, or the archmagos who was probably leading them. Scraecos had searched right down to the dead layers of data medium, where no information technology known to the ruling tech-priests could penetrate.
Scraecos idly picked up the mangled remains of one intruder tech-guard as the transmitted thoughts from the command spire questioned him.
'Explain.' said the voice of a thousand tech-priests in his head.
'They are on an investigative mission.' said Scraecos. 'It is unlikely in the extreme that they will be able to pursue their mission and yet remain permanently masked from our scrutiny.'
'And yet masked they are.' said the tech-priests. 'Explain further.'
'We have killed several of their members.' continued Scraecos. 'And we understand their composition and techniques. We know more of their capabilities. They possess some form of advanced technology that bypassed our hunter-programs.' Scraecos glanced scornfully at the hunter-programs, which swam beneath the surface of the crystal, curled up and shivering. 'No doubt it has been developed by the orthodox Mechanicus since we were last in contact with the Imperium.'
'Such words constitute only excuses, Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos. There is no indication that your activities have rendered the capture of the intruders inevitable. It appears instead that your maintenance of a separate identity has rendered you less efficient. Therefore, Archmagos veneratus Scraecos will return to the consciousness of the tech-priests of the command spire.'
Scraecos clenched his mechadendrites in frustration. The data-filaments that replaced his hands brushed against the crystal and he read the weakness and fear of the hunter-programs. They had failed. They. Not him. He was the greatest archmagos in the history of Chaeroneia. The greatest since the dying of the great schism in the days of Horus. Scraecos had performed his task with absolute accuracy and skill. He was the ruler of Chaeroneia.
The Castigator had spoken to Scraecos. In the beginning, it had spoken to him only.
'Very well.' said Scraecos. 'I will return to the tech-priests. I will become We.'
'Grav-platforms will be despatched. Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos will prepare for the cessation of individual consciousness.'
The communication ended. Scraecos was alone again at the data-fortress. The shape of the data-fortress had been exploded into a hard black blossom of crystal, the walls warped into giant petallike panes. The valley was similarly deformed, its sheer obsidian cliffs punched through with scores of smouldering craters where the data medium had been probed for any sign of the intruders.
Scraecos had wondered for some time whether there was an active resistance at Manufactorium Noctis. Most of the time, of course, his memory and cognitive faculties had not been his alone, but part of Chaeroneia's collective mind. But on the occasions where he had existed separately, he had wondered if certain acts of apparent sabotage, or unexplained shutdowns and tech-priests' deaths, could really be ascribed to random industrial accidents alone.
There was someone coordinating a resistance on Chaeroneia. Perhaps dissident tech-priests, rivals for the rulership of Chaeroneia. Or maybe relics from Chaeroneia's distant past, still somehow loyal to the orthodox Mechanicus that the planet had left behind so long ago. The survival of the intruders confirmed this in Scraecos's mind. The resistance had been cunning and resourceful in staying hidden, but in helping the intruders escape they had confirmed their existence. It was the last mistake they would make.
Archmagos Veneratus Scraecos was the ruler of Chaeroneia. He was the will of the true Omnissiah, as revealed to him through the Castigator. This was not arrogance or ambition speaking, It was the pure, cold logic that ruled ninety-nine per cent of Scraecos's soul. And Scraecos would see both the resistance and the intruders dead - his way.
A grav-platform drifted between the spires towards the shattered data-fortress, escorted by several gun-platforms. They were coming to take Scraecos back to the command spire. That suited Scraecos just fine. It was the best place for him to be confirmed as the driving intelligence behind Chaeroneia's collective will.
The hunter-programs had failed. That made one thing certain. Scraecos would have to deal with this problem himself.
THE GUNS OF the Desikratis raked deep shimmering black gouges through the shields of the Exemplar, the hideous bloated Chaos cruiser vomiting astounding volleys of fire that even at a distance were knocking down the void shield banks of the Adeptus Mechanicus ship in rapid succession. The daemon that squatted at the heart of the Desikratis aimed every one of its thousands of guns by hand, loaded the shells with its own tentacles and fired them with an impulse from its corrupted nervous system. The Exemplar was demonstrating resilience well beyond the norm for a ship of its size, but no matter how tough it proved the Desikratis was closing fast and as it slowed and brought itself into point-blank broadside position it would breach the Mechanicus ship's hull and turn its decks into mazes of twisted, burning metal.
But that hadn't happened yet. And the Exemplar still had more fight in it than anyone suspected.
'ALL POWER STARBOARD shields.' said Magos Murgild. The bridge of the Exemplar was by now filling up with menials and tech-priests, replacing the burned-out servitors. Some complicated pattern of protocols governed the mayhem as the ship brought its damaged prow out of the path of the Enemy's guns. 'Evasion pattern theta. Damage control to prow sensoria.'
Hurried communications with the ship's archive had suggested the enemy ship might be the Desikratis, a Chaos-controlled cruiser that had been active during the Gothic War and then surfaced again in the space battles around Nemesis Tessera during the invasion from the Eye.
The Exemplar probably couldn't face it on even terms. It didn't matter. The ship wasn't there to win -it was there to keep the Enemy busy while Hawkespur and Alaric killed whatever it was that had summoned them to Chaeroneia.
'Commissar.' voxed Nyxos. 'What have you found?'
Commisar Le
ung's voice crackled up from Magos Korveylan's quarters in the depths of the Exemplar. 'Little direct evidence of suspicious activities. Some of the research tech-priests have uncovered details of her studies under Archmagos Scraecos, however.'
'Tech-priests? Can you trust them?'
'I believe so, inquisitor. Magos Korveylan seems to have been generally disliked by the crew.'
Nyxos allowed himself a smile. 'Good for them. What have you found?'
'I confess I don't understand it fully. Scraecos seems to have run a form of seminary on Salshan Anterior about a hundred and fifty years ago. It was religious as much as technical. It concentrated on something Korveylan's studies referred to as Standard Template Constructs. Other than that she seems to have been very dedicated to covering her tracks.'
'I see. Thank you, commissar. Keep me up to date on anything you find.'
'Yes, inquisitor.'
'And things may get very rough in a few minutes. We're going into battle and I don't think we can win.'
'Understood.'
The vox-channel closed. The activity on the bridge seemed suddenly quieter and slower, though in reality it was only getting more intense as the Desikratis closed in.
A Standard Template Construct. Of course. It made perfect sense.
'Murgild.' said Nyxos, snapping himself out of his thoughts. 'We need to contact the planet. Any way we can. Do you have historical files on Chaeroneia?'
'Of course, but they do not seem to bear much relevance to the planet as it is now.'
'It doesn't matter. Make them available to me in the verispex decks. I'm leaving the bridge to you but remember you are under Inquisitorial authority. And do try to keep us alive.'
'Of course.'
Nyxos hurried off the bridge. He could hear the distant booming of failing shields as the guns of the Desikratis gradually stripped the Exemplar naked. It wouldn't be long now. But he knew now what this was all about - Chaeroneia, the Chaos fleet, Korveylan's treachery, everything. If he could let Hawkespur know somehow then there was a chance she might actually succeed and all these men and women would not be dying for nothing.
