‘We stopped them,’ Miriya corrected. ‘Now you will tell me what they were! You lied to me. You said Hollos was at peace.’
‘It is! We are!’ Rho tried to recover her composure, but failed. ‘The Red…
They’re not like the rest of us.’
‘You will explain it to me,’ Miriya’s voice was iron-hard.
Rho seemed to wilt before her eyes and she looked at the ground, nodding once.
‘Sister Miriya.’ She turned as Lethe approached, reloading her bolter. ‘It’s over. The enemy have fled.’
‘Status of the squad?’ asked Miriya.
Lethe jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Cassandra was injured, but her armour took the brunt of the damage. She remains combat-ready. Other wounds were minor and of no concern. The total of civilian dead is still incomplete, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds. We tally nineteen replicae corpses. Questor Nohlan came down from the citadel… He insisted on examining them.’
‘Very well.’ Miriya sensed there was more Lethe wanted to say, and inclined her head, giving her permission to continue.
‘I have contacted the Coronus,’ added the other woman. ‘They stand ready to deploy additional squads to the surface at your command.’
At first glance, it seemed like the right thing to do. Representatives of the Imperium of Man had been threatened, and the standard response would be to answer that attack with the maximum available force. But there were still too many variables at play here, still too many questions unanswered. ‘Not yet,’
she told her. ‘We did not come here to invade this world, Lethe.’
Lethe scowled. ‘They attacked us. We are the scions of the Imperial church on this world. That makes it an act of Holy War.’
‘Perhaps,’ she admitted. ‘But I will not respond in kind without an understanding of the situation. Too many conflicts have begun that way.’
Lethe shot a look at the replicae, who stood by silent and unmoving. ‘The truth is being kept from us. That’s reason enough. There is more than meets the eye at work here.’
‘All the more reason for the full truth to be uncovered.’ Before her second-in-command could speak further to the matter, Miriya gave out her orders.
‘Carry on here. I will return to the citadel and determine our next course of action.’
‘As you command,’ snapped Lethe, giving Rho one last lingering glare before stalking away.
‘She looks at me as if she wishes to kill me,’ the clone said softly.
Miriya rounded on her. ‘Give me a reason she should not, Rho. Those beings who attacked us, they were replicae. Like you.’
‘I told you, they are not like me! The Red are… throwbacks. They are an aberration among our kind, violent and consumed by destructive emotions.
We have tried to re-educate them, rehabilitate them… But we cannot.
Nothing works. They are… irredeemable.’ Slowly, reluctantly, Rho
explained that in every generation of clones, some would exhibit the reddening of their flesh and a marked predilection for aggression and violence. The council, reluctant to cull what they considered to be innocent beings with no control over their baser natures, exiled the Red to an outlying island continent. But somehow, they returned to plague the peaceful cities of Hollos.
‘You kept this from us,’ said Miriya. ‘How can we trust anything you say now?’
‘You must understand,’ insisted Rho, ‘the Red are an isolated problem.
They are not responsible for what they do.’
Miriya considered that. ‘Like a rabid animal?’
‘Yes.’
She tapped the butt of her plasma pistol. ‘Where I come from, violent beasts are put down, not given free rein to go where they wish! How often do these attacks occur?’
‘Rarely.’ Rho’s answer was too quick, too practised. After a moment, she went on. ‘Not as rarely as they used to, I must admit. But they are like tempests, Sister Miriya. They come and we weather them, and they pass. We
endure. We rebuild–’
Miriya nodded towards the shrouded corpses being gathered up from the bloodied grassland of the ornamental gardens. ‘Tell that to your people who died today.’ A weary sigh escaped her. ‘I will speak with your arbiters. And then I must confer with my ship.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Rho could not keep the fear from her words.
‘That remains to be seen,’ she replied. But in truth, the Celestian knew that her options were already beginning to narrow.
She strode back into the council chamber, her temper only held in check by the oath to this duty she had sworn to Prioress Lydia, but the corridors of the citadel were in disarray, the servants and the councillors scattered and missing, frightened by the massed assault on their most sacred building. It seemed that they had retreated to safe havens and left the Sororitas to oppose the Red alone. Only Rho had shown the courage to join them and look the assault in the eye.
Miriya cast around, frowning. Were these people so weak that they fled at the first sign of battle? How had they managed to survive in a universe as hostile as this one? There was no place for the pacifist way in Miriya’s world.
There was only war, and the need to fight to live.
‘Arbiters!’ she called out across the empty chamber. ‘Where are you? I would speak with–’
The words died in her throat. The Battle Sister heard the clumsy, inexpert approach, a sudden and furtive movement nearby, boots scraping on flagstones. Someone was attempting to flank her, figures moving unseen in the shadows beyond the light thrown from the tall stained-glassaic windows that dominated the chamber. She relied on instinct, turning as the inevitable attack came.
Darts arrowed from the depths of the shadows, whistling through the air like lazy hornets. The first flew wide as she dodged away, but the second came at her from another direction and she was distracted for long enough, for one tiny moment. Enough for the dart to bury itself in the bare flesh of her neck.
Gasping as the chilling flood of a neurotoxin flashed through her veins, Miriya seized the dart and yanked it out, tossing it away.
‘Who… dares…?’ she snarled, but her throat was closing up and it was a monumental effort just to speak. The rush of blood in her ears rose to a
thunder. Even as she pulled her plasma pistol, the Celestian felt the tranquilising agent passing into every part of her body. Her hands felt heavy and numb.
The Battle Sister resisted, fighting against the void coiling at the edges of her vision, cursing her assailant through gritted teeth. ‘Damn… you…’
‘Shoot her again, you fools!’ The voice was distant and distorted, but she knew it. She had heard it before, in this very room…
More buzzing shots lanced into her and she gave a strangled cry, stumbling to the ground. Miriya fell, cursing herself as her body refused to answer her commands. The pistol was a dead weight in her hands, her legs turning to water. The glittering tiles of the council chamber floor rose up to meet her, turning black and dark, opening up to swallow her whole.
She rose back to wakefulness with a choking gasp.
Miriya could not reckon the passing of time. It seemed like an instant, but it could have been days. The Battle Sister awoke, resting in a heavy wooden chair, and found her armour untouched but her pistol absent from its holster.
She had expected restraints, but there were none.
Her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Her new surroundings were a cellar of some sort, lit by dull biolumes, damp and chilly. And there, standing before her in a loose group, were five hooded figures in heavy cloaks.
One of them detached from the group and came forwards, rolling back the
hood to reveal the face beneath. ‘Sister Miriya,’ began Arbiter Ahven, ‘I must apologise for–’
The Celestian did not let her finish. The grave mistake these fools had made was now fully revealed to them as Miriya became a blur of black-and-crimson armour, crossing the chamber in the blink
ing of an eye. Her gauntlet clamped about the throat of the other woman and she lifted her off her feet, scattering the rest of the group.
Miriya slammed her captor into the stone wall and hissed in fury. ‘You have attacked the God-Emperor’s Sororitas! You will answer for that!’
The other hooded figures drew weapons – common blades and stub guns –
but Ahven desperately waved them away, gasping for air. ‘No! No! Stop!
Miriya, please! Let me explain!’
It was a long moment before the Battle Sister released her grip and the arbiter dropped to the floor. ‘Speak,’ she said coldly.
‘I… I am sorry,’ Ahven managed, recovering as her cohorts helped her to her feet. ‘I deserved that. But you must understand, I had no choice…’
‘I have had my fill of this world’s lies and half-truths.’ Miriya’s reply was icy. ‘You will explain yourself to me now, or I swear by dawn Hollos will be ashes.’
The threat hung in the dank air between them, and no one doubted that it was genuine. ‘I could not take the chance you would refuse me. This was the only way to be sure we could speak alone.’ She massaged her bruised throat and coughed. ‘We are in the sewers beneath the citadel. This is the only place where we can meet without fear of being overheard by the replicae.’ At a nod from Ahven, the rest of the group revealed their faces. They were all normal humans. ‘You have seen a glimpse of our society,’ she went on. ‘You see how the replicae have made themselves the supreme power on our planet.
They allow two of us to sit on their precious council, but they ignore everything we say. They know better than we natural-borns! They are superior!’ She turned her head and spat in disgust. ‘But there are many who reject their rule.’
Miriya scanned the faces of the others in her group as they nodded and muttered their agreement with Ahven’s words. ‘And you speak for them?’
The arbiter nodded. ‘In secret, I lead a sect who oppose Rho and her vat-bred freaks. We have been working against them for years, waiting for the opportunity… And now you are here!’ She exchanged a look with her co-conspirators. ‘It is time. The stars are right.’
‘What are you saying, Ahven?’ Miriya found her plasma pistol sitting undamaged atop a low wall and returned it to her holster. ‘That you wish the support of the Imperium in your plans for a coup?’
‘Will you stand with us?’ Ahven took a step towards her, her tone shifting towards entreaty. ‘Human and human against synthetic? You have seen them.
Weak-willed and pathetic, working against the order of things. They have no right to rule us! The replicae are supposed to be our servants, not our masters!’
‘On that point, I may agree,’ allowed the Battle Sister. ‘And what of these…
Red? Did you summon them to attack the plaza today?’
Ahven stiffened, becoming defensive. ‘In every revolution blood must be spilled. The Red are what the replicae should be, slave-warriors. But today’s attack was not directed against you.’
Miriya eyed her. ‘You bring me here by force. You attack civilians and cause bloodshed. And now you dare to petition my church for help?’
When Ahven spoke again, her eyes were alight with a passion. ‘I remember the words of the Codex Imperialis! The words of the Ecclesiarchy, left behind two millennia ago. No heretic, no mutant, no xenos can be suffered to live!
What are these replicae if not inhuman?’
The ferocity of the arbiter’s words gave Miriya pause. ‘I will consider your request,’ she said after a long moment.
Night had fallen across the capital as Miriya returned to the plaza before the citadel, and she sought out Questor Nohlan, picking her way through the rubble and the churned earth of destroyed flowerbeds.
Beneath a floating lumoglobe, the adept was bent over the burned remains of one of the Red, his machine-enhanced hands and a trio of mechanical limbs prodding and poking at the innards of the attacker. He seemed quite enthused by his grisly work, oblivious of the stark horror before him. With the bright, buzzing edge of a laser scalpel, Nohlan painstakingly flensed strips of skin from the dead replicae, all the while talking to himself in quiet, sing-song tones. ‘Processing. Oh, how interesting… Processing.’ He froze mid-action as Miriya came into the glow from the lume and offered her something approximating a smile. ‘Sister Miriya! You’ve been off the vox for hours, where were you? Sister Lethe was quite perturbed.’
‘It is of no consequence,’ she told him, deflecting the question. ‘Have these corpses provided you with any new information?’
‘Oh, indeed…’ His head bobbed. ‘The locals were reluctant to let me examine them, but Sister Iona can be quite persuasive. Processing.’
‘What have you learned?’ She came closer, eyeing the corpse with mild disgust.
‘Cross-referencing. Original files from Mechanicum colony Hollos Seven-Nine-Seven. I have formed a hypothesis about the variant strains of replicae we have seen here. The Red and the, uh, others.’ He cocked his head. ‘You see, the brain tissue of the violent clones shows evidence of a distinct neuro-chemical signature not present in the tissue of Rho and her kind.
‘You performed an autopsy on one of the… normal replicae as well?’
He nodded. ‘I did it without informing the locals. I thought it best not to ask permission. I imagine they would have been opposed to the idea,’ Nohlan
added airily.
‘Quite.’ Miriya put aside the adept’s cavalier attitude to the sanctity of the dead for a moment and went on. ‘So, this chemical… Is it artificial? A virus?’
‘Negative. Sister Miriya, it is the absence of the chemical that is artificial.’
She glanced around, to be certain that none of the replicae were within earshot of their conversation. ‘What are you saying? That Rho and her kind have been biologically altered in some fashion?’
‘Remnants of the original gene-template for the replicae from the Hollos Seven-Nine-Seven remain in my databanks,’ explained the adept. ‘They show the missing neuro-chemical as a “bio-trigger”. A genetic control mechanism implanted by their creators, if you will.’
‘Implanted by the Imperium,’ Miriya corrected.
‘Affirmative. But clones like Rho and the others we have met in the city, those without the bio-trigger, have free will. I believe they have deliberately re-engineered themselves to switch off the production of the neuro-chemical.
They… evolved.’
Nohlan’s theory, if it were true, suggested a heretical act that would incur grave consequences. ‘How could that happen, unless they defied the orders of the gene-smiths who made them? Unless the slaves defied their rightful masters?’
‘There is another possibility,’ offered the adept. ‘It may have occurred naturally, without external interference.’ He spread his machine-hands.
‘Perhaps it is the will of the God-Emperor? Remember, not all of the replicae have been granted this… gift.’
‘A gift, or a curse?’ She wondered aloud. ‘No. I do not see His hand in this, questor. I see division and violence on the horizon. This planet is on the verge of a revolution. And I must decide if I am to stop it, or allow Hollos to be engulfed by war.’
It was Nohlan’s turn to be a step behind. ‘What are you saying, Sister Miriya?’
‘Prepare for greater violence,’ she told him. ‘No matter what happens, I fear it is inevitable.’
A new dawn rose, and it was as if the attack had never occurred. Overnight, human workers had washed away all traces of spilled blood and mended every last broken stone, until the plaza was spotless.
Miriya led her Battle Sisters to the council chamber, where Rho and the others were waiting. For a moment, Miriya’s gaze dwelled on Arbiter Ahven, but the other woman showed no reaction to her scrutiny. The Celestian moved to stand in the centre of the room, the squad in guardian stances and Nohlan at her side. After the events of the previous day, the peace-bonds on their weapons had not been restored.
&nb
sp; Rho stood up and bowed to the room. ‘Honoured representatives of the Imperial church. You have our deepest regrets. We hoped that you would not be touched by our internal social problems. That you were dragged into such a lamentable incident shames all of Hollos. We beseech you and ask that you understand we meant no artifice in this matter. The… embarrassment of the Red is a problem we are working to bring to an end. We hope it will not sour your feelings towards our world.’
Miriya gave a nod, her expression cold and steady. ‘I understand. Know this, people of Hollos. The Imperial church will welcome you back to the rule of Holy Terra.’ There was a murmur of approval from the council, but they fell silent once more as the Celestian continued to speak. ‘I have communicated via astropathic signal to my superiors regarding the situation on this world. The ships of the Ministorum are already on their way. But be clear, there will be changes ahead. For many of you, the… reintegration with the Imperium will be difficult.’ The mood of the room changed, as her words made the council become wary.
‘What changes do you refer to, Sister Miriya?’ said Rho.
Miriya met the gaze of the arbiter, knowing that her next words would change the fate of a world forever. ‘It is with regret I must inform you that all replicae on Hollos will fall under the jurisdiction of the magos biologis, the gene-smiths of the Adeptus Mechanicus.’
The clone-beings on the council reacted with open shock and dismay. Rho
raised a hand to quiet them. ‘If you please, what does that mean, exactly?’
‘Confirming,’ noted Nohlan. ‘As artificially created life forms, clones have no rights to citizenship in the Imperium of Mankind.’
A bleak silence fell in the wake of the adept’s words, and when Rho finally broke it, it was with anger. ‘You cannot expect us to accept that! We, who have protected this planet for twenty of your lifetimes? We, who made Hollos a near-utopia?’ Her pale face darkened to a rosy shade. ‘How dare you make such demands?’
‘It is as the Imperial church has decreed,’ she said sadly.
Miriya saw a smile bloom on Ahven’s face, and the human arbiter suddenly rushed to her feet, waving Rho aside. ‘Be silent, vat-born,’ she snapped.
Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al. Page 25
