Horusian Wars: Resurrection

by John French

  Covenant looked at him, and raised a hand to rest on Josef’s shoulder. A sorrowful smile broke the mask of his face for a moment.

  ‘Thank you, old friend,’ he said. ‘Thank you for this, and all your past service.’

  ‘You are very welcome, lord,’ said Josef. ‘Now we had better go and get this done, don’t you think?’

  Covenant was still for a long moment, and then he bowed his head, eyes briefly closing. He turned and walked towards the door of the chapel, his sensor pod swivelling to watch behind him. Josef paused, gaze lingering on the image of the Emperor as warrior. He muttered a prayer, and hurried after his master.

  The Reliquary Tower would have been called a fortress on another world. From where it sprung from the dust and rock of Ero, it rose like a black needle. Buttresses serrated its flanks, studded with the dust-worn statues of Imperial martyrs. Weapons sat on those walls too, watching the air above and the ground below with sensor-slaved cannons and missile clusters. Battle Sisters stood on the firing platforms, sealed inside their power armour, joints locked as the wind rasped past them and the dust blurred their helm displays. The tower was theirs to guard in the name of the Emperor, and even in the face of the storm they would stand watch.

  Saint Aspira had not died here, but it was here that her Sisters had brought her in death, and set her bones down on the planet that had borne her. In the centuries since her return in death, the tower had grown block by block, each of them hewn, carried and set by the pilgrims who came to Ero. Millions of men and women had laboured and died on the tower, some by misfortune, some from old age. Their lives spent, their ashes had been mixed with the mortar of the shrine as it grew. Once complete, it had been blessed by the Prioress of the Convent Sanctorum herself. There were few holier places in the segmentum, and the pilgrims had continued to come without cease. Until the warp rift had opened. Until the light of hell had stained the stars.

  To Celestian Superior Helena, standing vigil at this place, at this time, was one of the most blessed moments of her life. The vox crackled with the prayers of her Sisters, their voices harmonised as they rose and fell through the Canticle of Serenity. Before her, a wide flight of basalt steps sloped down to meet the plateau surrounding the shrine. At her back the lowest level of the tower loomed like a cliff, its face moaning as the storm threaded through the gargoyles and angels watching from its walls. Her squad Sisters stood to either side of the sealed door, their heavy bolters levelled at the murk. The world before them was a blank blue, the distant Titans marked by the dim red of their idling reactors. Without their helmets’ heat-sight Helena and her squad would be blind, but anything with above air temperature body heat would burn in their sight even through the dust clouds.

  ‘Two minutes to storm break,’ said the blank voice of one of the shrine’s auspex-servitors over the vox.

  Helena blinked and atmospheric readouts flashed across her helm display – the wind was growing in strength, propelling dust and particulates at a force that would burnish the lacquer of her armour.

  ‘Movement!’ shouted the Sister to her right. ‘Twenty metres, ten degrees right.’

  Target runes spun into place in Helena’s helm display as she raised her bolter. A pale green smudge fluttered in the blue depths in front of her. The targeting rune locked onto it, and flickered amber. Her finger tensed on the bolter’s trigger, as for a second she wondered at what she was seeing. Nothing could be out there. Anyone approaching the shrine now would have to be moving just ahead of the storm, and anything that could do that would be producing a lot of heat.

  But the pale smudge in Helena’s display was barely warmer than the air.

  That fact froze her finger on the trigger of her gun for a second.

  ‘Thirty seconds to storm break,’ droned the servitor.

  And from behind her Helena heard the doors into the shrine begin to grind open.

  Her head snapped around. The doors were supposed to remain sealed. There had been no one to open them, but opening they were, and bright heat was spilling out into the dust-darkened night.

  ‘Fir–’ she began to shout as a spike of crystal stabbed into the neck seal of her armour and bit into her throat.

  Her limbs folded, strength and sensation fleeing, as she fell backwards, her finger still frozen on the trigger of her gun. She could not move. She could not speak or scream. In her chest her heart beat and breath trickled between her lips. And with a detached coldness she realised that there would be no alarm. No one within the shrine would read her squad as down. There would be no vanishing life signs to trigger an alert.

  ‘Door must close in ten seconds,’ shouted an amplified voice, the words barely carrying over the roar of the wind.

  Helena tried to blink and found that she could, but that was all she could do.

  Above her a human shape in cool green bent down over her, braced against the wind. She blinked again, and the helm cycled to standard sight. A face of torn rags looked down at her, the crystals of its dust goggles glinting in the light from Helena’s own eyepieces as it tilted its head. It seemed to nod to her, and pressed its hand to its face and then to her faceplate. It held its hand in place for a second, and then rose, strips of rag snapping in the wind. Helena had the impression of others following it. Then they were gone, leaving Helena with the sound of her breath and the sound of the storm as it broke over the shrine with a roar and dry lightning.

  Enna felt the breath stop in her throat as she looked down. She had seen more than most of humanity ever dreamed existed. Vile sights of terror and blood, things that could halt the breath in the throat with awe, places that most would not believe existed; she was moved by little, and impressed by almost nothing. But her breath still whistled as she released it.

  She had stopped beside a balustrade that ran the circumference of the landing she and her mistress had emerged onto. The statue of Saint Aspira filled the space beyond, carved marble drawing the eye down to the floor beneath. She did not look at the statue. It was, after all, just a marker for a box of dry bones. She had seen dead saints, and shrines, and the places where the devoted thought divinity had touched the world, and this sanctuary of faith was no different from any others. It was not the sight of the holy place that had made her pause, but the people who moved around it.

  Figures in armour, in robes, in costumes of a dozen worlds stood like tiny painted statues. Entourages hung close to some, clad in ways that would not be out of place in a hive fighting pit, or a ceremonial parade ground. The simple pageantry of it was breathtaking. It made the hackles rise on the back of Enna’s neck.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Idris, coming up beside her and leaning on the black marble of the balustrade, her eyes moving over the sight beneath them. ‘So much power concentrated in one place. To meet but one person who has the power to execute worlds and judge the mightiest is extraordinary.’ She smiled and turned her back on the view, looking now at Enna. ‘There must be ten with such power just in sight. Heady stuff.’

  ‘Do you know them all?’ asked Enna without looking up.

  ‘No,’ said Idris, and chuckled. ‘Some, yes, but then only by name. We are rare creatures, Enna. You are not unusual in never having seen other inquisitors. Most here will not know each other, or know perhaps only a few by name and reputation. I have served humanity for… oh, for decades, and an encounter with one of my peers has been a blessed rarity.’

  Enna looked at her mistress, eyebrow arched.

  Idris shrugged, and the smile on her face twisted up on one side.

  ‘We don’t always play well with each other. We disagree, and we are used to getting our own way. More often than not, a meeting of our kind is riven with much politics and discord, and that is if we are lucky.’

  ‘You sound like you enjoy it,’ said Enna.

  Idris laughed.

  ‘Yes… yes, I suppose I do. You never know what is going
to happen, but it is rarely dull, and often momentously important.’ The humour drained from her face, and her eyes seemed to focus on somewhere far off. ‘Civilisations have been condemned to extermination, secrets consigned to oblivion, and would-be saints denounced as abominations.’ She paused and blinked, her eyes clearing as she looked around.

  Enna was about to ask a question when Idris flinched, straightening, her eyes focusing on something on the other side of the chamber.

  ‘It can’t be…’ Idris breathed, and smiled, lips pulling in genuine pleasure. She began to stride across the landing towards a pair of figures that had just stepped from one of the small stone doors which opened off the central well of the tower.

  Enna followed, eyes flickering around her as she moved, noting the position of the watching Sisters, and the other figures moving close by. The sensation she had felt looking down at the groups of inquisitors and their entourages was not awe, or fear; it was caution. Nothing her mistress had said had broken Enna’s feeling that they had both just stepped into a cage filled with apex predators.

  ‘Covenant,’ called Idris from in front of her.

  The two figures that had emerged from the side door looked around. One was a squat, fat man in an off-white robe that hung off his bulk in ill-fitting folds. A Ministorum brand marked his forehead, and tufts of grey hair clung to the base of his crown and cheekbones beneath a shaven scalp. The other was tall, and moved with the precise grace of a trained warrior. He wore a three-quarter length military-style coat beneath a red cuirass with a high gorget. The face that turned towards them was lean, the features both fine and hard, and the eyes gleamed with cold control. A sensor pod, which must have been mind-impulse linked, pivoted on his shoulder, its clusters of lenses focusing with a melody of fine gears.

  Idris stopped three paces from them, still smiling. Enna stopped a pace behind her mistress. Idris’ gaze stayed steady on the impassive face of the man who Enna knew must be Covenant. The moment stretched.

  ‘Hello, old friend,’ she said. ‘Still confusing mystery with aloofness I see.’

  ‘Josef,’ she said with a nod of greeting.

  ‘Inquisitor Idris,’ he replied, bowing his head.

  ‘Has he infected you with over-formality?’

  ‘Hardly,’ snorted Josef, and shook his head. ‘It has been a long time…’

  ‘Ten solar years, give or take. Are you trying to point out that we are all a little older and showing it, or compliment us all on still being alive?’

  Josef smiled, eyes glittering, and his mouth was opening to say something.

  ‘We must talk,’ said Covenant.

  Idris’ gaze moved up to him, and Enna saw that the humour was gone from her face.

  ‘Something is happening,’ she said carefully. ‘Something is going to happen here, isn’t it? At the conclave. Now.’ Covenant nodded. Idris half turned, cocking her head as an invitation to follow and walked towards the stairs leading down towards the saint’s tomb. Covenant fell in beside her. Enna moved to follow her mistress, Josef just behind Covenant.

  ‘I was not aware that you would be here,’ said Covenant, his voice level and emotionless.

  ‘Likewise,’ said Idris. ‘But I am guessing that what you are about to tell me will rather spoil the sincerity of saying that it is a pleasant surprise.’

  They were at the top of the wide flight of stone steps that curved down the inside of the tomb chamber. Sisters of the Order of the Bloody Rose stood in niches every ten steps, bolters held across their chests. Candles burned beside statues of warriors, priests and saints.

  ‘I am here to denounce one of our order,’ said Covenant.

  ‘What?’ hissed Idris. ‘Who? On what grounds?’

  ‘Using the power of the Dark Gods, the creation and manipulation of vile cults, and the pursuit of knowledge that should not be known. On the grounds that he has used the power of the Emperor to plant the seeds of ruin in the heart of humanity. On the grounds that he has fallen, and must be brought to account for his fall.’ Covenant’s voice was low, but Enna could hear the sharp edge in the words. Cold prickled her skin. It was not just what he had said – that an inquisitor who would be here this night had fallen so far – but the feeling that she had just heard judgement, absolute and final, as though spoken by the emissary of a wrathful god.

  Idris looked at him for a long moment as they descended down the steps to the floor in the shadow of the saint’s statue.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last, and then let out a heavy breath. ‘This is supposed to be a conclave of war, Covenant. The warp is burning in the night sky outside this tower. Worlds are being swallowed, and horror vomited into the dreams of the weak-minded. That is what we are here to stop – that is why we are here, to make war against the darkness.’

  ‘This is that war,’ said Covenant, stopping on the step beside Idris and turning to look at her. His eyes were dark glass glinting with reflected flame light. ‘This is that war, Idris. How can we fight and win when our own serve the Archenemy’s ends?’

  Idris looked at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes for a second and shook her head.

  ‘You could never be argued with,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten that.’

  Josef coughed, and Enna glanced at him. The preacher’s face was impassive, but she thought she saw a flash of amusement in his eyes.

  ‘Idris,’ said Covenant, his voice still calm, his stare unblinking. ‘Are you with me?’

  ‘There is, no doubt, something about this that will make me both pleased that I am, and regret that I ever came here,’ she said.

  ‘Are you with me?’ Covenant said again.

  Idris gave a tiny shake of her head, fingers briefly rubbing at her eyes. Then she looked directly at him and nodded once.

  ‘Always, my friend,’ she said. ‘Always.’

  Enna thought she saw a shadow of something move in the depths of Covenant’s eyes.

  ‘You have my thanks,’ he said.

  Idris frowned.

  ‘You did not say who it is that you have come to condemn.’

  Covenant glanced towards the space around them, at the clusters of figures talking in shadowed groups, eyes watching each other covertly. Smoke rose from the candles and braziers.

  ‘He is–’ began Covenant, but as he spoke a trio of figures stepped through an arch on the far side of the chamber.

  The figure at the centre of the three drew Enna’s eye like the gleam of fire on a clear night. Layers of ivory armour plate moved with ponderous weight, the ache of servos purring through the air as the figure advanced across the floor. Golden eagles spread their wings across his chest and greaves. Pale eyes looked out from beneath a black hood, the rest of the face hidden by a silver breath-mask. The stylised image of a horned daemon head worked in bronze screamed from the left pauldron, the sigil of the Inquisition a splintered wound in its forehead.

  ‘Lord Daemonhunter Vult,’ murmured Idris, ‘and Quadin and Talicto, of course.’

  Enna stared as the inquisitor lord stalked forward, his Terminator armour making him a mountain beside the pair that flanked him. On his left, a short woman in polished scale nodded and whispered, small eyes scanning the room beneath a black skull cap. A quartet of servo-skulls flitted around her, bathing the air around her head in curtains of holo-projected script.

  The figure on Vult’s right moved like a shadow in the inquisitor lord’s brilliance. Black robes hung from shoulders wreathed in black fur. The flesh of his wide, bald head was pale, and his eyes sunken and shadowed. Enna noticed that he held a rosarius of finger bones in his right hand, his thumb flicking them along the cord in time with whatever thoughts moved behind his eyes.

  Enna knew them both from the descriptions Idris had given her of the convenors of the conclave. The woman was Malika Quadin, apparently a noted savant. The man in black was Goldoran
Talicto. Both were key allies of Vult, and their influence had apparently been crucial to drawing so many inquisitors to this conclave of war.

  The three stopped in the shadow of the saint’s tomb. Behind them a procession of followers halted: Black Priests, their bald heads tattooed and branded with holy script, their hands hanging uneasy at their sides, each one masked, silver constellations picked out on their silk robes in copper thread; chubby men with pink skin, and arms glittering with the sockets for weapon implants; truth-finders with folded scalpels for hands – all of them stilled as Vult raised his left hand. A hololithic image spread above his fingers, flickering in the incense-thickened air. A horned daemon head snarled, its eyes burning with fury, fire glowing from the cracks which ran through its skull from the tri-barred ‘I’ beaten into its forehead. A living echo of the emblem on Vult’s pauldron, it was an old symbol that Enna had seen only once before.

  ‘What is it?’ she had asked when she had glimpsed the tattoo on Idris’ bare shoulder.

  ‘A symbol,’ Idris had said, ‘a reminder of a purpose we choose for ourselves.’

  ‘To protect mankind?’

  Idris had given a tiny shake of her head.

  ‘To be the hammer of daemons,’ she had said.

  Silence spread through the shrine chamber. Enna saw figures who had been waiting elsewhere in the tower step to the balustrades above, or onto the chamber floor. The light grew dimmer as robed Sisters doused the candles. Now only the hololithic image and the candles on the shrine of Saint Aspira lit the dark. The broken daemon’s head turned, leering at the shadows.

  ‘In the name of the Emperor of Mankind,’ Vult’s voice was an echoing rasp in the silence. ‘I call you all to witness, and to gather on this day and in this place, that by our unified knowledge and might we may turn back the Enemy that waits beyond. In the name of He who serves mankind eternally, I call you.’

  A gong sounded far off, echoing from some deep vault of the tower, its note tingling in the air with each striking. At the side of the shrine-chamber, great iron and silver doors began to open. Red-clad Battle Sisters flanked the portal, silent and still. The space beyond was bright compared to the tomb chamber. Enna could see huge candelabras of black iron hanging on suspensors in the space between the tiled floor and the vaulted roof. This was the conclave hall for the Sisters who guarded the shrine, its space and stone tiers now given over to the conclave of the Inquisition.