Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al.

by Warhammer 40K

  Agony burned her thoughts, and she saw again her father fall, her dagger ripping free of his back. She felt the silk of the throne as she sat on it for the first time as spire mistress. She tasted the sweet dream of being able to live in a world that existed for her and for her alone.

  Then it was gone, and a hole gaped within her soul, pulling in warmth and brightness, leaving just the feeling of shivering flesh, and the smell of spoiled meat and ashes.

  The sound of the wind blowing through broken glass brought the moans of

  pain to her ears. She could feel the wetness of blood and drool on her chin.

  She did not want to look up. She did not want to open her eyes; she knew what she would see.

  In the end it had just become too much: the demands of authority, the decisions, the relentless indifference of the Administratum as they took more and more, and the glory of her throne became a vice to crush her.

  The voice of her dreams had seemed like a release then. She had given that joy a name and a face, and the dream had remade her world. It had become golden again.

  Shouts, gunfire, sounded nearby but she did not move. Her breath was a heavy wheeze in her throat. She heard a crunch of broken crystal.

  ‘Look at me,’ said a voice above her, firm but ragged with effort. Nereid stirred, raised her head and opened her eyes.

  A soldier stood before the throne, her grey armour sprayed with blood, her face hidden by a breath-mask, her eyes a blank visor. Nereid dropped her gaze to the lasgun in the soldier’s hands. The barrel was steady.

  ‘I…’ began Nereid. ‘I just wanted to be–’

  Ianthe pulled the trigger. The las-blast burned through the spire mistress’

  head. Blood and charred brain sprayed the soiled upholstery of the throne.

  The bloated figure slumped, silken bulk settling with a gurgle, its last words lost.

  Ianthe let her aim drop. Her limbs began to shake. A sound on the steps made her turn. Covenant stood behind her, sword deactivated. Josef stood with him. Blood and slime covered both of them. Behind them Severita was moving through the heaped dead, pausing to fire a bolt into a twitching corpse. A few of Ianthe’s squad were still alive, kneeling or lying on the ground, shaking as though they had been pulled from freezing water. Except

  that they were not her squad, not really.

  ‘My lord,’ she said, and bowed her head.

  The after-echo of what she had seen throbbed in her mind. Coloured lights were bubbling in her eyes. She felt as though she were going to be sick.

  ‘You have served well, lieutenant,’ said Covenant, and his voice was as familiar as an old friend’s.

  ‘I always endeavour to, lord.’

  ‘You remember,’ said Josef.

  She looked up at the preacher, and the blur of dozens of memories of his face filled her mind.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  A shriek of thrusters cut through the thin air as a black-hulled lighter dropped into sight beyond the shattered windows. They all turned to look at it as it pivoted in mid-air, its rear ramp hinging open to touch the window edge.

  A figure drifted out of the gloom of the gunship’s compartment. Withered limbs and tattered black robes hung beneath it. Loops of metal pipes hung snaked around the shrunken flesh of its head, crackling with worms of greasy light. Ianthe knew who it was, and knew that they had met in the past, over and over again.

  Covenant looked at the hovering psyker.

  ‘Begin the purge,’ he said. ‘Everyone who had a connection with the spire mistress in the last years is to be culled. Issue an extermination order to the arbitrators under my authority. No mercy or exceptions.’

  The psyker’s head dipped in its machine setting.

  +And these?+ said a voice that crackled in Ianthe’s skull.

  Covenant looked at the troopers from Ianthe’s squad who lay scattered across the carnage-daubed room. One was kneeling in a pool of blood and severed limbs, head rolling from side to side, eyes fixed as though in wonder on the empty air. Another stood, eyes closed, swaying in place like a reed in a wind. The rest did not move, and if they lived, the world was not something that they saw any more.

  ‘If they will survive, cleanse their minds,’ said Covenant. ‘For the rest…

  They have earned peace.’ The psyker tilted in mid-air, in what must have been a bow, and then pivoted to face Ianthe, the question asked by the gesture unspoken but ringing in Ianthe’s mind as though shouted. She bowed her head. She knew what was coming – after all, had she not lived this moment

  many times before?

  ‘You remember,’ said Covenant, ‘so you know the choice that faces you.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Death or to live and remember nothing – I remember, my lord.’ She paused and words came to her lips, like a prayer learned long ago. ‘To know that daemons exist is to invite corruption. To face them is to risk your own soul.

  To face them and live is to risk the souls of billions.’

  Josef bowed his head, and she heard him mutter something that might have been a prayer. The psyker was drifting closer, and Ianthe could feel its presence blurring the edge of her thoughts.

  Covenant held her gaze.

  ‘A risk,’ he said, carefully. ‘Or a burden to be carried.’

  Ianthe raised her head, blinking. Josef looked up at Covenant. Sparks flickered around the psyker. Amidst the blood and corpses, Severita turned to look towards them. Covenant kept his gaze on Ianthe. ‘You have served me for many years in a war that is for the survival of mankind. You will serve in this war again, but you can choose to do so armoured by ignorance, or by the strength of your soul.’

  Ianthe stared back at him for a second, and bowed her head before answering.

  ‘Do you know why we do what we do?’

  ‘You are the Inquisition.’

  ‘I am just a servant, as are you now. But do you know what we do in the service of the Inquisition?’

  ‘We protect mankind.’

  ‘Do you understand what that means?’

  ‘If we fail, so does the Imperium.’

  The sergeant flicked his eyes to the face across the table from him. Hard eyes met him, unblinking and piercing. The officer’s red-and-grey combat armour bore no mark of rank, but the weight of her gaze was enough to hold his questions behind his teeth. He had led his squad through two warzones, and seen the rest of his regiment vanish until there was only him and the few he led: a vagabond remnant of war.

  ‘You have a question, sergeant?’ she asked.

  He flinched.

  ‘I have not served the Inquisition before. I just wondered if this is how it always is?’

  Something flickered in the unblinking stillness of her eyes.

  ‘Tell me about your service before this,’ she said.

  ‘With respect, I have given you chapter and verse twice already,’ he said.

  She shrugged, and leaned forwards slightly.

  ‘Humour me,’ she said.

  THE HORUSIAN WARS: RESURRECTION

  by John French

  Summoned to an Inquisitorial conclave, Inquisitor Covenant

  believes he has uncovered an agent of Chaos and prepares to

  denounce the heretic Talicto before his fellows…

  Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

  RED & BLACK

  JAMES SWALLOW

  And so it was decreed, in the wake of the Age of Apostasy. So it was said by the High Lords of Terra, that the Ecclesiarchy, the great church of the Imperium, founded on the worship of the God-Emperor of Mankind, would never be granted the use of ‘men under arms’, lest the temptation be too great for cardinals of weak character and high ambition.

  The Ecclesiarchy; the guardians of the Imperial Creed and the celestial truth of the Emperor’s divinity, whose sole purpose was to regulate the veneration of millions across the galaxy. And in a universe so harsh, where heathen alien life, heretic witch-psychics and the f
orces of Chaos laid their threat, the church could not go undefended.

  No ‘men under arms’; so the very letter of the edict was adhered to, and thus rose the Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas – the Sisters of Battle. Some called them fanatics. Warrior-women spiritually betrothed to their religion, clothed in powered armour, cleansing the unbelievers with flamer and boltgun. The Celestians; the Seraphim; the Repentia, Dominions and Retributors, called to castigate those who defied the Emperor’s divine will.

  The great work of the Battle Sisters never ended, for there were always Wars of Faith to be won, always more heretics for the pyre. They were the line of fire between the anarchy of the infidel and the bulwark of pure devotion. The red against the black. For millennia they had been the burning sword and holy shield for humankind.

  Few exemplified such devotion more than Sister Miriya, a ranked Celestian Eloheim of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, although she would never have been so arrogant as to say such a thing herself. Under the flickering light of electro-candles, she walked the length of the penitent corridor on Zhodon Orbital, voicing the words of holy catechism amid the echoes of her footfalls.

  ‘ A spiritu dominatus. Domine, libra nos. A morte perpetua. Domine, libra nos. Ave, Imperator. Domine, libra nos.’ The phrases in High Gothic fell from her lips easily, with rote precision, whispering off the stone walls.

  Like many of the citadel stations across human space, Zhodon resembled an ancient cathedral ripped free of the land and cast into the darkness. Spires and naves spread like the points of a morning star, plasma lanterns burning behind mile-high stained-glass windows. Located on the pilgrim route to the Segmentum Solar, the platform was a way-point for travellers and a barracks for the Witch Hunters of the Ecclesiarchy.

  Miriya approached the iron gate that closed off the sanctum of the prioress, the mistress of this place. She slowed and dwelt a little, taking a moment to study the complex devotional sculptures in the walls. Above was a rendering of Saint Katherine, first mistress of her order, whose brutal death gave them their title. Miriya bowed in respect, crossing her hands across her chest, forming the holy shape of the Imperial aquila. ‘In your name,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Grant me your wisdom and clarity.’

  After a moment, she rose to look upon the statue. Like the saint, Miriya’s face bore the ancient mark of the fleur de lys, tattooed in blood-red on her cheek. Her hair was a cascade of black, falling to the neck of her battle gear.

  Saint Katherine was shown as she had been in battle, her mail and plate little different from Miriya’s, even though centuries separated them. Sigils of the aquila, purity seals and rosaries decorated the armour, and a chaplet hung from her neck. Miriya’s hand rose to her own, resting on a string of adamantine beads. Each one of the beads represented an act of devotion to the Imperial church.

  She wondered if her next duty would warrant a new link in the chain.

  Prioress Lydia had been unusually circumspect on the details, a fact that concerned Miriya greatly. Secrets were not the currency of the Sisterhood, and she disliked anything that smacked of the clandestine. The Imperial Creed was the God-Emperor’s Light, and so all deeds done in His name were never to be committed in shadow.

  Miriya knocked twice on the heavy iron door and from beyond it, a voice bid her to enter. She strode in, her eyes downcast as protocol demanded, and bowed. ‘Your Grace. As you order, so shall I be ready.’

  ‘Look at me. Let me see your face.’ Miriya did as she was ordered and raised her head. The prioress was two hundred solar years old, but kept to the

  appearance of a woman a quarter of that age by juvenat treatments. Lydia had been a prioress before Miriya had been inducted as a novice, and she would likely remain one for decades more. She was arrow-sharp and

  uncompromising, a masterful tactician and commander of the Orders Militant in the local sector of space. Miriya heard it said that the prioress had burned a thousand witches, and fought alongside saints. The steel in Lydia’s eyes gave truth to it. ‘You believe you are prepared for the task I will set you, Sister Celestian?’ She smiled slightly. ‘We shall see.’

  The faint edge of mockery in the prioress’ tone made Miriya’s lips thin. ‘My squad stand willing to meet the enemy,’ she replied, with stiff formality. ‘If you doubt their skills, mistress, I would ask why you summoned me and not another of our Sisterhood.’

  Lydia studied the other woman intently. ‘We are the weapons of the God-Emperor’s church, Miriya. But we are more than that. We are His banner-bearers, the spear-tip that brings the rod of truth behind it. We must never lose sight of this. For each heretic we put to the sword, we must welcome another soul into the glory of Imperial Truth.’

  Miriya frowned. ‘Is that not the work of preachers and iterators?’

  ‘Yes.’ She inclined her head. ‘But in some instances, it is ours as well. The Adepta Sororitas must inspire, Sister, and not just fear, but love. Not every test the church faces can be dealt with by bullet or blade’s edge.’

  The conversation was not progressing as Miriya had expected. Instead of a mission, the prioress seemed intent on giving her a lesson. She chafed under the thought. Miriya was a battle-tested veteran, not some callow noviciate.

  Lydia seemed to sense her thoughts, and went on.

  ‘I summoned you specifically, Sister Miriya, because the duty I am about to set will require a mind clear and uncluttered by doubt. But also one that is willing to question.’

  Lydia’s words carried the slightest hint of challenge. Miriya’s reputation preceded her; in an army where obedience was the watchword, the Celestian had often earned censure from her commanders because she frequently dared to exhibit an independent streak.

  Her tolerance for the prioress’ obfuscation was quickly thinning. ‘I would ask you illuminate me, mistress. I do not follow your meaning.’

  ‘You will, Sister,’ offered Lydia, rising stiffly from her chair. She beckoned with one augmetic hand, the entire forearm replaced by a machine-proxy in

  the wake of an old battle wound. ‘Come with me. And know that what I am about to show you must be veiled by the utmost secrecy.’

  She followed. They travelled into the lower levels of Zhodon Orbital, to sections of the station that Miriya had never entered, past reliquaries and sacred compartments open only to nobles and cardinals. The prioress used blood-locks to bypass thick steel doors etched with hexagrammic wards, until at last they emerged in a chamber that was part prison, part hospice. The metallic space had a cold and clinical ambience. A cluster of watchful arco-flagellants stood sentinel before a wall of opaque armoured glass. They had once been men, each a heretic damned for his defiance of the church, now repurposed in its service. Their bodies were augmented with weapons, brains controlled by lobotomaic taps and hymnal implants. For now, they were docile, but if activated they would become vicious berserkers.

  Miriya ignored them and peered at the dark barrier. She could not help but wonder what manner of prisoner required such guardians. A psyker mind-witch? A xenos beast? Perhaps even… a daemon? Her hand fell to the holster at her hip, where her plasma pistol lay ready.

  Prioress Lydia halted before the panel and glanced at the Battle Sister. ‘A question for you. The Hollos star system. Do you know the name?’

  Miriya paused for a moment, drawing on mnemonic memory programmes from the hypnogogic training regimens of her time as a novice. Hollos; the name rose up from depths of her thoughts, dragging recollection with it.

  ‘Aye. It is a vanished domain, cut off from the rest of the sector by violent warp storms in the thirty-eighth millennium. Vessels avoid the quadrant around it like the plague.’

  Lydia nodded. ‘Correct. An Imperial colony world in unremembered space,

  unreachable for more than two thousand years. The storms killed any ships that attempted passage. The Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Terra declared Hollos to be lost…’

  ‘But now something has changed?’


  ‘You are perceptive, Sister,’ noted the other woman. ‘It is indeed so. Over the past year, the storms about Hollos have finally abated and the space beyond them has once again become navigable. Contact with this errant daughter-world has at long last been re-established.’

  ‘Praise the Throne,’ Miriya began.

  ‘Not just yet,’ warned the prioress. ‘The nature of that contact has given the Ecclesiarchy great cause for concern.’

  Two millennia was a long time to be alone in the darkness. Miriya wondered what kind of changes could be wrought to a world, a society, a people, over so many years. The return of a lost colony to the Emperor’s Light should have been a joyous occasion, but all too often such things only ended in bloodshed and pain.

  ‘A warship intercepted a small vessel a few light years from the Hollos system,’ Lydia went on. ‘There was a lone crew member on board. A messenger, of sorts.’

  Something in the prioress’ tone gave Miriya pause. ‘Human?’

  Lydia raised an eyebrow. ‘See for yourself, Sister.’ The prioress gave a command and the misted glass became clear. Beyond it, Miriya saw a sparse dormitory chamber, furnished with a simple pallet, a fresher unit and a small, makeshift shrine venerating the God-Emperor.

  But it was the cell’s lone occupant that made every muscle in her body tense. It was humanoid in form and female, after a fashion. The being’s skin was milk-pale and dressed with peculiar striations that at first seemed like tattoos. Tall and athletic in build, but not willowy like the alien eldar, it was clearly human, and yet it was not. Miriya’s combat training immediately took hold, and she found herself evaluating the way it moved about the cell, looking at it for points of weakness and wondering how it might be killed.

  Her eye was drawn by its innate grace and poise. The Battle Sister studied it and a strange thought occurred to her. The creature seemed almost engineered in its perfect symmetry. Beneath a cowl of close-cut white hair, eyes of stark violet glanced up to peer at her, then looked away.

  Miriya shot the prioress a wary look. ‘What in Terra’s name is it?’

  ‘She is not aware of us,’ said Lydia, without answering immediately. ‘The glass does not allow her to see through it.’