Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne

by Chris Wraight

  The target was still running. Her cameleo-shroud was malfunctioning, and coated her in a swirling mess of fractured lens artefacts, but she could still run. Spinoza fired twice, nearly hitting her. They both raced out along the gantry, now arching precariously over the vats themselves – a slender line of metal hanging above the seething pits of boiling nutrient-swill.

  At the far end of the hall were two pairs of massive doors, one closed, the other closing, grinding down on fat-streaked tracks as angled pistons hissed into extension. The target might make that gap – Spinoza wouldn’t.

  She fired again, nearly losing her footing on the gantry’s sloping surface, and finally hit the target, sending a bolt fizzing into her right knee and sending her tumbling. Spinoza ran harder, now just twenty metres away. The quarry slipped as she struggled to rise, and nearly slithered over the edge.

  ‘Surrender yourself!’ Spinoza shouted, keeping her pistol aimed at the target and preparing to drag her back to safety. A boiled-alive corpse was no good to her.

  But she never got close. With startling speed and strength, the target managed to wrench herself back to her feet, spin around and draw what looked like some kind of blade. The last set of doors slammed closed, sealing them in.

  Spinoza drew her crozius, and kindled the energy field. Electric light flooded out, illuminating the full squalor of the glistening, dripping landscape around them. Noisome vapours swirled around them both, sickly and grease-pocked, while the screams of blind beasts being fed into the rendering jaws just kept on coming. Alarms had been activated somewhere, and far down below menials were running, but that meant nothing – the sole object of her attention stood before her, cornered at last.

  Flecks of cameleo-effect still shimmered across a suit of black armour enclosing a taut physique. There were no marks of identification, just plates of matt ceramite, and her face was hidden behind a smooth helm.

  ‘I serve the Holy Orders of the Emperor’s Inquisition,’ Spinoza declared breathlessly, holstering her laspistol. The crozius flared on a spike of disruptor charge, flashing savage blue across the pressed metal of the gantry floor. ‘Submit now, if you wish to live.’

  But then the target’s sword kicked into a life of its own, and the steel blade crackled with a sheath of lurid yellow-gold plasma.

  ‘Good for you,’ said the woman, crouching into combat readiness. ‘And likewise.’

  Moments after dousing down the clamberways and climbing up from the chem-storage chambers, the signal came in. Crowl blinked it up to his retinal feed, and immediately knew what it meant.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, turning to Hegain. ‘I require two Nighthawks, full complement, immediate dispatch. I’ll shunt you the data.’

  ‘As you command. If I may, what is–’

  ‘Revus,’ said Crowl, striding along the tunnel leading to the planned rendezvous, reloading Sanguine as he went. The captain’s repeater-life sign had suddenly veered far from where he had been hunting, then switched to an automatic crisis signal. ‘Someone has been stupid enough to interfere with one of my people.’

  ‘Oh yes. You have the right of it. By your will, and done with all swiftness. But, can I venture it – the interrogator?’

  ‘Inform her when you can. For now, the priority is the captain.’

  They walked out into a circular space, the base of a long shaft bored deep down into the underhives, its length strung with chains and swaying cabling. A Nighthawk hovered ahead of them, its engines already ramped up to full thrust, its crew-bay doors hanging open. Once the squad was inside, the gunship boosted upwards, its thrusters spitting flickers of gaseous flame.

  They thrust clear of the shaft’s upper lip, booming out into the inhabited levels again. The Nighthawk swung round, pushed north, switching thrust to horizontal to gain speed. A series of high-arched bridges passed overhead, thronged with ground traffic. Massive braziers had been lit along the ceremonial transitways to an Imperial Cult oratory, three hundred storeys high and festooned with holographic images of the Angel Sanctified, and the air was shaky with heat, soot and flame. The chanting was audible over the transporter’s rumble – ‘For Him was he slain, for Him was he slain’ – over and over and over.

  They climbed and banked, screaming through the bovine mass of slow-moving air traffic, shunting aside any too slow-witted to take evasive manoeuvres. Block clusters passed in a blur of velocity, tower after tower, their vast faces studded with a million grime-flecked viewportals. A few seconds later, the two backup Nighthawks came streaking out of an adjoining spire-canyon, swinging in behind Crowl’s lead ship and falling into support formation.

  ‘Something has gone awry,’ voxed Crowl, using an open channel to all troopers within the three transporters. ‘The captain has been detained by agents of the Adeptus Arbites. I don’t know why, but the insult will not be borne. We will take him back. That is all.’

  Ahead of them, flanked by two massive Administratum archive towers, the objective became steadily visible through the haze – a night-black spire, shot like a burned spear into the eternal city’s clamour, lit by pale blue floodlights and encrusted with running columns of ebon skull-forms. Watchtowers crowded atop battlements atop heavy bolter batteries, all overhanging a lattice of intersecting transit causeways. A vast sigil cast from pure iron had been hammered into its crown – a set of scales, clenched by a gauntlet, superimposed onto a dark column. Watcher-drones circled around the summit, sweeping its precipitous shoulders with cycling detector-beams.

  No civilian traffic went anywhere near it, and even the omnipresent columns of banner-bearing pilgrims veered away from its hundreds of jaw-like gates. The floodlit mantras Lex Imperialis Supremis and Iustitia non Dormitat blared out in letters ten metres high from veined marble entablatures, backed up by the immense rolls of the guilty hammered on age-tarnished plates of bronze. Imperial aquilae gazed out from every corner and every turret-tip, carved from obsidian, their eyes glinting blackly, watching all, seeing all.

  Once within visual range, standard recorded vox-hails crackled over the Nighthawks’ consoles.

  ‘Citizen! You approach a Fortress Arbites. Power down and prepare for scrutiny. By authority Lex Imperialis Sector MCMXXXIII, Subsector LXIII, Sub-subsector IX-XII, Augmentario Juridicarum Urbis Terra Salvator. In His example are our deeds made pure!’

  Several watcher-drones swooped in to intercept the oncoming ordo gunships, their bat-like wings sliding back to reveal electro-stun grapples.

  ‘Take those down and maintain full speed,’ ordered Crowl calmly.

  The Nighthawks opened up with their rotary cannons, smashing the drones into scrap and roaring through the debris towards the cyclopean face of the spire. Moving in formation, they swept up towards the summit as the rockcrete neared. All too clunkily, the fortress’ bolter banks switched to track them.

  Crowl checked the locator signal for Revus, and shunted the data to the Nighthawk’s machine-spirit. ‘Two support craft to keep those batteries occupied,’ he voxed. ‘Pilot, you have your coordinates.’

  The secondary Nighthawks pulled in close, now aiming a hail of fire at the closest of the turret-mounted bolter banks. The sloping ablative plates of the fortress erupted into explosions, splashing blooms of static as the gunships found their mark. The batteries cracked back in response, hitting the Nighthawks and rocking them on their axes, but for the moment failing to penetrate the bulk of the vessels’ outer armour.

  Crowl’s craft punched ahead, loosing forward fire at a metal-framed, stained-glass window high on the fortress’ north-facing edge. Blast shields were grinding their way across the ten-metre-wide orifice, but too slowly, and the armourglass shivered, buckled and imploded under the concentrated rain of rounds.

  ‘Take us in,’ ordered Crowl. ‘Escorts – get inside before you lose your armour.’

  Crowl’s Nighthawk smashed clean through the tumbling mass of glass an
d plasteel, breaking into a large hall on the far side. Its two protectors followed in quick succession, both now badly damaged and listing from the bolter assault, but still aloft. Once inside, the transports opened up their crew-bays and released the storm troopers. Thirty grey-clad warriors slammed down to the hall’s floor, Crowl in their midst.

  It was an avenue of remembrance – a long, shadowy nave lined with lists of fallen arbitrators and judges, their names accompanied with kill-tallies and records of justice delivered. Terra’s fire-flecked wind screamed in through the shattered window, making the parchment devotion-tracts flap and the candles gutter. At the far end was a graven image of a Magister Iudex carved from basalt, eight metres high, his face lowered as he wrestled with an idealised serpent of insurrection.

  Already running, Crowl calibrated the location of Revus’ life-signal, calculated the optimal route, and shunted the tactical iso-schema to the storm troopers’ helm-buffers. Pain shot up his calves like hot spikes, and he ignored it. Gorgias bobbed alongside, its needle gun exposed, its eye blazing an excited crimson.

  By then alarms were sounding, echoing down the fortress’ vastness and bringing its inhabitants racing towards the breach in their defences. The storm troopers travelled halfway along the hall’s length before breaking left and blasting their way into an antechamber. The first resistance arrived – a team of enforcers bearing heavy suppression shields and power mauls. Crowl picked off the leader with Sanguine, sending a single round smacking through an exposed neck joint, and Hegain’s squads disabled the rest, barely pausing mid-stride to select their targets, find the weak points and hit them with surgically aimed hellgun volleys.

  They burned down two more levels before hitting the topmost cell-zones – the ones reserved for the most exalted prisoners. Retreating cell guards were swept aside at the entrance, their reactions and training no match for ordo-conditioned assault troops, and Crowl himself led the charge into the prisoner pens. Ignoring the rattling clamour of those in the long lines of cells, he strode towards the life-signal pinging behind a heavy plasteel door at the end of a long corridor. A lone storm trooper raced ahead, placed frak charges on the hinges and bolt-housing, then withdrew. Crowl and the others crouched down, and a heavy crump followed by the stink of cordite marked the destruction of the lock-bolts.

  Crowl was first up and into the cell. The chamber was five metres square – bigger than some hab-units in the slum-zones – bare metal, but clean and lit with strip-lumens. Revus got up shakily from a bench as Crowl came in. He was clad in prison fatigues, his armour gone, an ugly weal across his grizzled face, but he did not look seriously harmed.

  ‘What happened?’ demanded Crowl, sweeping the cell for auto-weapons.

  ‘It’s not what you–’ started Revus, groggily, as if drugged.

  He never finished. Booms shuddered along the corridor outside, as if piledrivers had been started up, followed by cries of aggression and alarm. Crowl turned to see the flash of lasfire reflected in the corridor’s polished walls. He reloaded Sanguine and hurried back to the cell door – just in time to see the body of a storm trooper fly across the broken doorway and crash into the wall beyond.

  Gorgias flew through the gap, spun around and started firing, only to break off with a high-pitched shriek of surprise.

  Then Crowl was through, ducking low and sliding across the corridor’s floor, firing two-handed.

  The aim was good. Even given a split-second to pick his target, he’d found it with both shots. He might have laughed, though, had he had the time, and if the pain in his muscles weren’t so great, for it didn’t matter.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he spat, just as his captain had done, and prepared to die.

  Chapter Eight

  Spinoza moved first, swinging the crozius as Chaplain Erastus had taught her – heavy enough to break bone, not so heavy as to leave her unbalanced.

  The woman met the strike with her blade, and the two energy fields screamed together, spilling out a merged kaleidoscope of flying colour. They pulled apart, then crashed together again, maul against sword, the weapons snarling like beasts.

  ‘Submit now,’ Spinoza panted. ‘It will go better for you.’

  The woman laughed. ‘Better for me? No, I do not think so.’ She swept back into the attack, whistling her blade low and flat, going for Spinoza’s legs.

  Spinoza parried, and the two weapons blazed again. Spinoza pushed back, hurling the woman away, then went after her.

  She is fast, but I am stronger.

  ‘You were shadowing us,’ she said, pulling Argent heavily in a loose figure of eight. ‘That is a dangerous game.’

  ‘Every game is dangerous,’ said the woman, giving ground, stepping back along the gantry’s length. ‘But you. You are blind and you are stupid. I will not be ended by stupid.’

  The power fields whipped around them both, streamers of released energy like flails, dancing amid the blur of limbs.

  ‘Give me your name,’ said Spinoza, knocking her back another pace, and the closed doors beckoned. ‘The more you give me–’

  ‘The more lenient you are? Hah. I know your methods. Be watchful! You do not face me before.’

  The woman suddenly switched gear, leaping over a crozius-swipe and barging into Spinoza. The two of them careened back to the gantry’s edge, their feet treading along the metal rim. Spinoza felt her boot slip over the lip, and shoved back hard, swiping out with her crackling weapon. Argent connected with the woman’s stomach, smearing plasma into her armour-plates and throwing her a pace back. Then she waded into close contact, driving, jabbing, using the maul as Erastus had always insisted.

  The doors at the far end began to cycle open again. Fresh alarms were sounding. Something was happening, but she could not lose focus, not now.

  ‘What do you know of the False Angel?’ Spinoza demanded, her face glossy with sweat, her muscles burning.

  ‘No, do not try this,’ the woman said, scornfully, defending herself with a dazzling switchback, then giving ground again. ‘Do not give me such words. I despise you. I despise what you are. Your souls are eaten, I think, so no prayer is saving you now.’

  The doors had split wide now, throwing a bar of orange light across the gantry. There were dark figures there, running onto the bouncing walkway.

  No. Not now. So close.

  Spinoza lashed out again, trying to slam her adversary to the deck, to lodge the crozius between the woman’s chin and her chest and pin her, ready for a knee to drive deep into her stomach and press the wind from her.

  The move was seen. The target twisted away from her, sliding a boot against Spinoza’s and forcing it over the edge. As Spinoza cartwheeled, feeling gravity haul her over, the woman punched with her sword’s hilt, knocking the interrogator over the edge.

  For a moment, all Spinoza saw was the distant ceiling. Her head went back, she felt herself falling, falling, and the heat from the vat below welled up like a cushion, dragging her down. She caught a final glimpse of the target, vaulting past her, breaking down the gantry, sprinting hard, and tried to grasp her, but failed, and went over, tumbling, towards the boiling slurry below.

  Then she was caught. Before she could drop the full distance, something seized her free arm, gripping hard. Spinoza yanked up short, somehow keeping a grip on her weapon, and dangled below the gantry’s underside, swaying amid the fumes.

  She looked up, startled, to see a man holding her. Before she could say anything, she was being dragged back up to the gantry decking, pulled over the edge, and a squad of soldiers was running past them, firing las-beams at the retreating target.

  ‘Who…’ she started, breathless, her heart hammering. ‘What…’

  The man released his grip on her. He was huge, bulked out with plate armour and carrying an autopistol. He twisted off his helm to reveal a thick, ugly face with a full beard that sprang out from the armour-seal. B
efore Spinoza could make another move, she felt the pistol’s muzzle press against her forehead.

  ‘Name, rank, service,’ the man demanded, his voice throaty, aggressive.

  She glared back at him, then managed to reach for her rosette, which she twisted in his direction. He looked at it, and slowly moved the pistol out of her face.

  ‘Just the name, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yours first.’

  He laughed, a rumble that erupted from his barrel chest. ‘Aido Gloch. Interrogator to Lord Inquisitor Quantrain. See, I have one too.’

  He pulled a rosette from under the shoulder-plate of his complex armour, and it dangled on a chain – an iron skull within a shield, bearing the sigil of the Ordo Hereticus in black obsidian.

  Spinoza pushed herself upright, twisting around to see where her quarry had gone. The gantry was empty – the soldiers under Gloch’s command had pursued the target back into the shadows, back towards the mech-hauler shaft and the warrens of the underhive. More troops tramped past them both, swinging searchlights across the hall. Down below, menials were being accosted and slammed up against the walls of their nutrient vats.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Spinoza asked, testily. She got to her feet, deactivating the still-fizzing crozius and shackling it to her belt.

  Gloch remained squatting where he was, looking amused. ‘I could ask the same thing,’ he said, keeping his pistol in a heavy gauntlet.

  Spinoza rolled her shoulders, feeling the effects of the long chase. Once again, the bitter taste of defeat swilled in her mouth. Part of her wished to walk away, but the man had saved her life. There were decencies to observe, even in the ordo.

  ‘Luce Spinoza, the Ordo Hereticus,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, Crowl’s new blood.’

  ‘Why do you people say that? New blood? Throne, it sickens me.’

  Gloch started to smile, forced it down, and regarded her with some seriousness. ‘You know who that was?’