by John French
A hand gripped him and began to pull him upwards. He struggled, machine limbs snapping out at random.
Do not resist, magos,+ said a voice in his thoughts. +We are here to help.+
‘He is alive,’ called a voice. Female, he thought, high registers of authority and control.
‘And heavy…’ growled a male voice from next to him.
‘There’re lot of dead servitors here,’ called a female voice, further off, shouting against the alarms.
His sight pulsed and swam with errors. He was on the gantry next to the primary control altar. A woman stood before him in a battered duster, curled hair piled atop a slim face, infra-goggles hung around her neck.
‘I am Inquisitor Idris,’ she said as though in reply to the still forming question of his thoughts. The alarm light flickered over her features: red-black, red-black, red-black.
The alarms…
Comprehension, memory and panic slammed into his awareness. He thrashed towards the altar.
‘Hold him up, Josef,’ shouted Idris.
‘I’m trying!’ called the man next to him.
‘Mistress…’ came the second female voice from further away.
‘Magos,’ said the man called Josef. ‘Please be calm.’
His sight snapped through spectrum filters. The man called Josef was rotund, clad in an off-white preacher’s robe. He had a bionic ear of above average craftsmanship bonded to the right side of his skull. Chronological age was six to six-point-five decades, physical age problematic from current data. High mass-to-size ratio, high physical strength. Beyond him was Inquisitor Idris.
‘Reactor…’ he rasped through his voice speaker. ‘Reactor…’
‘Mistress, they are here.’
‘Thank you, Josef,’ said Idris, without looking up from Glavius-4-Rho.
He heard the one called Josef mutter something. Far off in the fog something moved, blurring with speed. Explosions flashed on the other side of the chamber.
His data filters were swarming with warnings and error data. He had failed his duty, his god, his purpose. Catastrophic projections began to form in his mind, cascading down without termination into…
Magos Glavius-4-Rho,+ came the voice in his head, and with it a blunt calmness that snapped his head up. Idris was looking at him. +You need to shut the reactor down. You need to do it now.+
He felt calm pour through his nerve connections. Errors cleared. His limbs went still, and then he straightened.
Josef let go of him.
Glavius-4-Rho stood swaying for a second and then lurched to the altar.
His hands found the ordained controls. Shaking mechadendrites locked into sockets. The spirits of the generator howled across the interface.
A cry cut through the air. One of his sensor rings spun around his skull.
Figures in rags were charging forward through the mist. Idris pivoted, raised a hand, and blasted one of them backwards with a beam of cyan energy. It exploded into ash and burnt bone. Fragments caught another figure that had been just behind the first, ripping through its chest and arm.
Volkite technology, noted part of Glavius-4-Rho’s mind, miniaturised.
Josef stepped next to her, hefting an iron bar that looked like it had once supported a stand of candles.
Glavius-4-Rho felt the tug of the machine altar, and spun his eyes back to the movements of his limbs on dials and keys. A rumble was shaking the gantry. The ritual of calming stuttered, and the flow of data from the reactor’s spirit battered at him. Pillars of burning coolant blasted into the air across the chamber. Glavius-4-Rho staggered. Cables snapped free of sockets. The pulse of red light was a migraine stutter.
Something dropped onto the gantry near him. His gaze rotated in time to see a crystal-wreathed fist punch down towards his torso. His split awareness jammed between imminent threat and the ritual connection to the reactor controls. Conflict data flooded him.
A wrought iron bar swung down onto the ragged figure’s weapon arm. The limb folded around the metal like a rag. The figure stumbled to its knees. Josef stepped forward, the iron bar in his hands whistling as it struck the figure in the head. He was breathing hard, fat shaking as he turned.
‘Get on with it!’ he shouted.
Glavius-4-Rho tried to recall the next step in the ritual. His brass digits reached for keys. A rolling boom cut through the air a second before a blast wave ripped across the gantry. Glavius-4-Rho tumbled backwards.
Containment reservoir breach, observed a part of his mind.
His robes caught alight. Oil fell from ripped joints as he rose. Josef was a metre away, hanging from a railing as he forced himself up. Glavius-4-Rho turned to the altar, and took a swaying step towards it.
Red lights and angry runes flashed across its surfaces. Smoke was pouring out of the tower of machinery. Cogs clattered and jammed. The spinning limiter on the altar’s top stopped.
‘Omnissiah’s tears,’ he breathed.
The altar exploded. Cogs and molten metal showered outwards.
Lines of code shut down in his mind.
Another blast wave sheeted through the air. This time he did not fall. Damage registered in a cascade of red data.
‘Magos,’ Josef’s shout registered, but Glavius-4-Rho did not look at him.
‘Sacrilege…’ he heard himself say.
‘The reactor–’
‘There is no way of stopping it now. Core reaction will reach the end of catastrophic progression in…’ He shook his head. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He had not failed; worse, he had defiled the spirits of the machines he had guarded. It did not matter that it had been under the control of a witch; that simply underlined the betrayal of his flesh and the weakness of his soul.
He saw Josef look at Idris.
‘Go!’ said the preacher.
‘I will not survive to tell Covenant I let you die.’
Josef laughed.
‘You always were secretly the more stubborn one.’
Glavius-4-Rho felt error processes cascade through his mind as he slumped back onto the grating. Oil was running from a crack in the silver of his face. Clouds of hot gas rose to brush the vaulted ceiling above him.
‘Come on,’ shouted Josef. Glavius-4-Rho felt something tugging at him. He looked down and Josef’s hand was pulling on his burning robe. ‘We need to move. Now!’ Further down the gantry he could see Idris firing a volkite beam towards where the entrance hid behind the smoke.
‘I must remain with my… machines.’
‘You have a duty,’ growled Josef, ‘and that duty does not involve dying without purpose.’
‘I…’ began Glavius-4-Rho.
‘Move,’ shouted Josef, and yanked him. Glavius-4-Rho felt his limbs follow, and then he was running.
The wind vanished as they entered the central shrine chamber again. One second Enna could hear it roaring through the tunnels, and the next it was gone. The dust was not boiling into the breached tower, but falling in soft silence. Daylight fell from far above; rays of sunshine cut through the swirl and cast the shadow of the saint’s statue from atop her reliquary. They all slowed as they entered the space, as though something had tugged them back as they crossed the threshold. Covenant paused, his sensor pod momentarily still.
‘The storm’s eye,’ said the man called Koleg. Enna glanced at him. The alarms were echoing in the passages now, loud but somehow hollow.
‘My sisters,’ said Severita, and Enna saw the corpses around the reliquary now. They lay in the dust, armour torn, blood clotted on the crimson lacquer of their armour like monstrous growths.
‘They killed many,’ said Enna, and nodded at the rag-tangled corpses heaped on the floor.
The siren blared on. Red lights blinked in the mouths of passages.
‘And all of them are dead now,’ said Koleg.
Enna suddenly knew the feeling that was crawling up her spine. It was the same that she had felt in the Golden Hive on Athelaed, and the ancient ship her mistress had investigated off Gulta. It was the feeling of being alone in a space that until recently had roared with life and noise. It was the feeling of being the only living souls in a tomb.
‘So many,’ said Enna picking between the bodies and limbs. ‘How could they have brought so many to attack us here? She looked down at the crystal blade that she still carried from the corpse.
‘Come,’ said Covenant, and began to move forwards.
A metallic buzzing filled Enna’s ears, vibrating even over the wail of the alarms. She stopped, feeling the sound itch her teeth.
‘Wait,’ she called. Covenant paused, and turned his head towards her. ‘I can hear something. Someone is coming.’
Covenant turned as a figure of bloated armour plates stepped into the chamber. Red light beat a blood pulse rhythm behind it, casting its shadow through the falling dust. Koleg moved and dropped to one side, pistol aimed.
Vult emerged from the settling murk. Dust and blood clung to his Terminator armour. The diminutive figure of Inquisitor Quadin was a step behind him, and a clutch of figures came with them. Enna saw a cluster of Sisters of the Bloody Rose amongst them. The Battle Sisters spread into the space, firing arcs overlapping inwards and outwards. Above them the statue of Saint Aspira was a shadow in the falling dust. Vult stopped, and those with him spread into an arc. Enna saw that they had bolters, all of them carrying the sacred emblems of the Sororitas. Blood marked their casings. They seemed like ghosts, the dead emerging from the underworld. Covenant stopped, his own weapon aimed at Vult’s head.
Severita moved to his right, her bolter aimed at the lord inquisitor, eyes hard in her henna-marked face. The weapons of Vult’s ragged entourage remained levelled at them.
‘Did you have a hand in this?’ asked Covenant, his voice calm and cold.
Inquisitor Quadin’s lip curled on her blood-streaked face. Guns braced to fire. Vult raised a hand with a purr of servos and oiled metal.
‘Did you?’ he replied.
The moment stretched in the stillness between the two groups. Alarm lights blinked, the sound of the sirens seeming to stretch away in slow echoes.
‘The reactors have been compromised,’ said Covenant, at last, lowering his bolter but not taking his finger from the trigger. ‘Inquisitor Idris is attempting to secure them.’
Vult dipped his hooded and masked head, though whether in acknowledgement or thanks, Enna could not tell.
‘And if she fails, or if it is too late, then this atrocity will become annihilation.’ He turned to a Sister in the armour of a Palatine. The woman’s face radiated controlled rage.
They are facing failure, thought Enna, failure and the violation of the sanctuary. The foundation of their existence was shaking. Rage was the only response that made sense.
‘We will secure the landing platforms,’ rasped Vult. ‘The storm’s eye is overhead. Get every craft in the air before it moves on. This is an evacuation. Signal the fleet. Full quarantine measures.’ He looked at Covenant. ‘Your role in this will be subject to question.’ He paused. ‘If you survive.’
‘There are no questions that I must answer,’ said Covenant.
The ground shook before either could speak again. Cracks raced across the floor.
‘Plasma reactors are cycling into meltdown,’ shouted the Palatine.
Covenant turned and began to run; Enna followed after him, leaving Vult and the others to make for the landing pads.
‘The reactors?’ called Enna. Covenant vaulted down a flight of steps, without pausing to reply.
Josef was breathing hard as he ran up the iron steps from the machine levels. Smoke was rolling across the ceiling above them, rising from below. Heat chased them, pricking his back, as his boots thumped down and the curve of stairs reached above them. The iron bar resting over his shoulder felt heavier by the second. The magos was beside him, hobbling on his calliper-legs like an injured spider. Idris was just behind them, glancing down the way they had passed. Dead weapon servitors hung from brackets in the walls, drained of blood, their input tubes severed.
They had not even fired their weapons, he had noticed when they had taken these stairs downwards.
Beside him the magos stumbled, coughing out a stream of electronic clicks.
‘Keep moving,’ growled Josef and reached for the tech-priest, but the half machine shrugged him off.
‘The reserve power is failing,’ he said, and above them the beat of the red alarm lights stuttered. ‘The last machine spirits in this tower are dying.’
‘And we will die too if we don’t move.’
Glavius-4-Rho hesitated, then began to climb again. Above them the light stuttered again, the ruddy illumination dimming.
Josef,+ said Idris in his mind, and he felt the taut ice in her sending. +Look back.+
He glanced down the steps.
Figures in rags were climbing the iron stairs, their movements jerking in the blood red flicker.
Idris raised her hand and sent a pulse of energy down the stairs. The beam snapped out, then died. She cursed.
Josef shrugged the bar off his shoulder. Beside him the magos climbed another step, then turned as though looking for them. His eye lenses flashed as they fastened on the figures rising up the stairs towards them. He raised his left arm. Brass leaves peeled back from the forearm as a cluster of three tubes folded out from inside his arm and began to spin.
Josef heard the tech-priest hiss something in static and machine-code. A line of burning rounds scythed through the figures climbing up the stairs. Bodies burst into flames as they fell. Rags flashed to ash, and fresh smoke blended with that already rolling over the ceiling. The magos panned his torrent of fire across the stairs for two seconds before it vanished. He let his arm drop, and hissed something else. On the steps below, a burning corpse collapsed, its skin and flesh cooking.
Josef looked at the tech-priest. It rotated its head towards him. The teeth of its silver skull made it look like it was smiling.
‘A temporary, non-repeatable capability,’ he said.
Josef blinked, then grabbed the magos’ robes and pulled him on up the stairs.
‘There are more coming,’ shouted Idris as they started to run.
‘Of course there are,’ said the magos, and buzzed static. For a second, Josef thought it was laughing.
The lights stuttered, and this time the blink of darkness lasted for several gasping steps. Behind them something roared with a voice of collapsing metal and cracking stone.
The lights blinked back on, the red light syrup-thick. Shadows moved above them, running down to meet them. He paused, shifting the grip on the bar in his hands to meet this last enemy just as he had met all the rest. He was not going to survive. Not this time. The Emperor was going to gather him to His hand at last, his service done.
‘Down,’ called a voice from above them, and the familiar flat tones of Koleg’s voice made him drop to the floor, pulling the magos down as the grenade whistled past. Fire flashed out and the air buzzed with shrapnel. Bolt-rounds flew overhead. Josef rolled over. Traces of fire stitched the red stained dark above him.
‘Moving,’ he shouted. The path of fire switched away from him an instant later, and Josef rose to his feet, tugging the magos with him as he ran up the steps. Above him he could see Covenant, Enna and Severita advancing, firing with each step. Koleg knelt at the side of the stairs further up, reloading his macrostubber pistol with detached fluidity.
‘The reactors…’ he began to gasp.
‘Get to the landing pads,’ called Covenant as he fired a burst.
‘The storm,’ called Idris, as she sprinted up level with Josef. ‘We won’t be able to take off.’
Covenant�
�s face twitched as he fired a last round, pulled the magazine from the boltgun, reloaded and fired again.
‘The storm’s eye is overhead,’ he said, between bursts, ‘and there should be gunships coming.’
‘You really had it all planned out,’ said Idris, still smiling.
‘Not for this,’ said Covenant. He fired one last time, then turned and sprinted up the stairs. Koleg opened up, the zip of hard rounds taking the place of the boom of bolts without a pause.
Josef kept moving, pulling the magos. His job was not to fight now; it was to move as fast as he could. He passed Koleg, and a few metres in front of him Covenant and Severita turned, raised their guns and fired. Josef looked over his shoulder. Koleg was rising from his firing crouch, and Idris was five steps behind him.
‘There are more coming,’ she called. ‘I can feel their thoughts.’
The stairs beneath them were a rolling darkness. The alarm lights faded, then flicked off. Muzzle flare bloomed. The heat rolled up through the blackness. Josef felt it folding over him. The alarm light blinked back on, red smudged to dirty brown. He saw Covenant pause in the pattern of his fire. He saw a shape move from the curtain of smoke, cinders falling from its rags. He saw Idris running just behind them, hands still trying to coax energy from the weapon rings on her right hand.
And in the slowed flicker of light he saw the burning figure in rags raise a hand and throw. The shard spun from its fingers, its edges gold and red with reflected light.
Covenant aimed and fired in a single movement. The bolt struck the rag clad figure as the shard left its fingers. Another figure, another shot, and there was blood falling as the fire rose.
Covenant moved down the steps. A shiver of raw force ripped the smoke-clogged air in front of him as he unleashed a wave of psychic power. Bodies pitched backwards, and the last slow pulse of red light flickered as it lit the scene. It was all slow, a red-soaked, stopped-clock tableau in front of Josef’s eyes.
Idris fell. The shard of crystal projected from her neck. Her eyes were wide in a face that was not the face of knowledge, or power, or a holy warrior against the dark, but just a human being at the last instant of their existence. Covenant was at her side, trying to catch her, but she was dead before she hit the iron steps.
