[Dark Heresy 02] - Innocence Proves Nothing

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  Horst shrugged. “Hardly surprising if you’re chasing a myth,” he pointed out.

  “Most legends have a germ of truth at their core,” Inquisitor Grynner said, allowing a faint tone of reproof to enter his voice. “I don’t believe for one moment that there’s an entire craftworld drifting about the segmentum, but the story of the Voidwraith probably conceals something of interest. A derelict vessel, perhaps, or even a space hulk with some eldar artefacts aboard. At any event, a prize big enough to have attracted the attention of the Faxlignae.”

  “And now you,” Horst said.

  “Quite so,” Grynner agreed, nodding. “Anything a heretic group wants that badly is best denied them.” He turned back to Castafiore. “Can you plot its current location?”

  “No,” the Navigator said, his tone managing to imply that only an imbecile would have asked such a question in the first place. “But I can estimate it within a reasonable margin of error. If these revised dates are to be relied on, they chart the journey of something adrift in the warp currents, emerging periodically into the materium in the manner characteristic of such objects. That being so, I can estimate the speed and direction of the current concerned, and…” He manipulated the controls of the hololith, before indicating the image again with a theatrical flourish. “There we have the most likely location at the present time. Assuming it’s not still in the warp, of course.”

  A new nebula blossomed suddenly among the Halo Stars, covering a globe of space a handful of light years in diameter.

  “Thank you, Master Castafiore,” Grynner said, deciding that a further dose of flattery couldn’t hurt. “Once again, it seems, you’ve excelled yourself.”

  Castafiore swelled visibly beneath his ornately embroidered waistcoat. “Once again, inquisitor, you show your wisdom in engaging my services.” He adjusted his moustaches, with an air of profound satisfaction. “How soon do we depart?”

  “That rather depends on how our friends are faring aboard the orbital,” the inquisitor replied.

  Twenty-Two

  Tarsus High Orbital Docks, Scintilla System

  260.993.M41

  Keira saw the heretic drop-ship pass low overhead, but spared it little more than a glance. It didn’t pose any immediate threat to her, and even if it did, there was nothing she could do to damage it with the weapons she had. Confident that the swirling dust storm had kept her concealed, she refocused her attention on the gaunt figure of Karnaki, who was still picking his way through the storm-lashed vegetation and the scattered detritus on the grass-choked deck plates with evident purpose.

  So far he seemed unaware of her presence but, knowing his formidable psychic powers, she wasn’t about to take anything for granted, and hung back, staying just within range of her crossbow; whatever Quillem might say, she neither liked nor trusted the man, and would remove him at the first sign of treachery. For a moment she found herself wondering if she was just looking for an excuse to kill him, in revenge for the way he’d got inside her mind at the Tricorn, before dismissing such speculation as fruitless. She was a weapon in the hand of the Emperor, and was certain that whatever course she took was in accordance with His divine will.

  As the strange, smooth lines of the heretic shuttle disappeared into the murk overhead, Karnaki hesitated, then changed the direction he was walking in. For a moment Keira wondered if he was going to meet it, and tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword, suspecting evidence of the treachery she’d anticipated; then she relaxed again. He seemed to be heading for a point somewhere between his original destination, and the point the drop-ship was descending towards. What that portended, she had no idea, but was sure she’d find out soon enough.

  Once the first shock of seeing the psyker who’d killed Rufio, and led the massacre of the rest of his team, had worn off, Quillem found himself thinking more rationally — again. However much he might yearn for personal revenge, he could hardly fight his way through a strike force of heretical footsoldiers to take it, and challenging so powerful a wyrd would probably just mean his own death in any case. Besides, his duty was clearly to take the abomination alive for interrogation, if that was at all possible.

  He glanced at Drake and Kyrlock. They were still thinking like the soldiers they used to be, making use of whatever concealment they could find, and learning all they could about the enemy before closing to contact. Ducking behind the cover afforded by a line of wind-stripped fruit trees, and ignoring the minor scratches inflicted by the flailing branches, he signalled to Drake. “How are they deploying?”

  “Standard pattern,” Drake replied. “One team to secure the LZ, the rest moving off to the objective. Looks like a couple of full squads at least, maybe more.” After a moment Quillem was able to mentally translate “full squad” to ten troopers, the standard size of an Imperial Guard unit, and nodded.

  “They seem to be spreading out,” he said.

  “Probably breaking down into combat squads to search for the wyrds,” Kyrlock said, and Drake nodded.

  “That’s what I’d do,” he agreed.

  “You’re the expert,” Quillem said, recalling that Drake had been a soldier most of his adult life. He voxed a short situation report to Brother Paulus. “Be advised that several are carrying xenos weapons,” he concluded. “Eldar and tau.”

  “It makes no difference,” the Deathwatch Librarian assured him. “We will prevail.” His voice had the flat ring of complete certainty, and Quillem felt his own resolve stiffen in response.

  “So what do we do now?” Drake asked. “Just sit here, and wait for the Astartes to take them out for us?”

  “No,” Quillem said, indicating the rounded bulk of the tau vessel, through the swirling dust clouds which surrounded it. “We’re going to take the ship.”

  Keira and Karnaki became aware of the newcomers at almost the same instant, his preternatural senses apparently detecting their presence as effectively as her Collegium-honed ones. Figures were moving behind the swirl of dust, and she wondered for a moment if it was the Astartes, before the leading silhouettes became close enough to resolve. Any doubts she might have had about their identities were abruptly dispelled as soon as she was able to get a good look at them; their variegated body armour, no two sets of equipment exactly alike, marked them out as mercenaries, and the variety of weapons they carried was no less eclectic. Several were armed with lasguns, like Drake’s, while others favoured simple and robust firearms. A few carried more exotic guns, which she didn’t recognise, but was prepared to believe were of xenos manufacture; the vessel they’d arrived in undoubtedly was, so it would hardly be surprising if some of their personal kit had come from the same source.

  Karnaki came to a halt, facing them, his retinue of servo-skulls spreading out into a defensive formation. It could only be a matter of moments before the leading mercenary noticed him, Keira thought, and sheathed her sword in order to ready her crossbow. She could draw the blade quickly enough if she needed it, and it seemed more prudent now to have her ranged weapon ready for use. Much as she detested Karnaki, she couldn’t just stand by and watch him get cut down if he was indeed a loyal servant of the Emperor. And if he turned out to be in league with the heretics after all, a single shot would be all she needed to reward him as he deserved.

  Just as the leading mercenary drew close enough to detect them, however, his attention was diverted by the unmistakable roar of bolter fire, and several of his comrades went down, blown apart by the heavy-calibre explosive-tipped projectiles. The survivors turned, and began to shoot at something behind them; after a moment more figures could be seen, emerging from the murk, advancing unstoppably though the blizzard of fire.

  Keira felt the breath stilling in her throat. No stranger to the arts of violence, she could appreciate the level of casual expertise the huge figures in their space-black armour were bringing to the combat as few other observers could have done. In its own way, she reflected, it was beautiful, a dance of life and death, enacted with the precis
ion of a ballet and the lethal effectiveness of a knife blade.

  The first volley of fire from the mercenaries ripped into the middle of the Astartes kill team, las and plasma bolts bursting against their armour, and the hissing, razor-edged discs discharged by the eldar weapons scoring deep gouges in the ceramite. No mere human warriors could have withstood so lethal a barrage, but the Deathwatch simply shrugged it off, albeit at the expense of an injury or two; the one with the grey shoulder pad, marked with the snarling sigil of the Space Wolves, moved a little more awkwardly than his battle-brothers after that, favouring his left leg, but keeping pace with them nonetheless. Then the bolters spat again, in furious retribution, and the greater part of the heretic squad died where they stood. The rest turned, melting back into the shroud of dust and the shrieking wind, and the Space Marines followed, as stern and unyielding as the wrath of the Emperor.

  Keira turned back to Karnaki, to find that the man from the Ordo Malleus was nowhere in sight. Berating herself for becoming distracted, if only for the handful of seconds the firefight had lasted, she began moving again, in the direction she’d last seen him, hoping to pick up his trail. A flicker of movement in the distance resolved itself into a solitary servo-skull, bouncing in the wind as it tried to keep up with its master, and she picked up her pace to follow it, closing in again on her prey.

  “What was that?” Trosk asked, turning his head in an attempt to distinguish the noises he wanted to hear from the constant shrieking of the wind, as the distant sounds of combat threaded themselves through the turbulent air.

  Elyra shrugged. “Gunfire,” she said. The unmistakable ripping sound of bolters was mingled with the more conventional crack of lasguns and the staccato rattling of assault rifles, which meant that the Astartes had run into some serious resistance; probably a landing party from the heretic drop-ship they’d seen.

  “I can feel fear,” Zusen said, pointing into the swirling dust, and smiled wryly. “Someone else’s, I mean.”

  “Blood and death, the darkness descends…” Ven babbled, his fragile mind overwhelmed once again.

  “This way,” Voyle said decisively, listening to the voice in his comm-bead. “Our escort’s engaging the enemy. They’ll keep us screened while we get to the ship.”

  Not for long, Elyra thought. The Space Marines would cut down anyone foolish enough to stand against them in a matter of seconds, but perhaps this escort, whoever they were, would have enough sense not to attempt to engage them head-on. Judging by the distinctly sporadic firing, however, they didn’t seem to have learned that lesson yet.

  “Someone’s coming,” Zusen said, pointing in the same direction as before, her face troubled. “He’s seems fearful, but he’s not slowing down.”

  “Afraid of us?” Trosk asked, and smiled, in the way Elyra remembered him doing after he’d disposed of the bandits in the hold of the Ursus Innare. “Well, he should be.”

  Elyra kept moving, in the direction Voyle had indicated, the entire group spreading out a little in their eagerness to reach whatever safety the ship they’d seen had to offer. The battering wind made it hard to stay orientated, and she made sure she kept Voyle in sight; every few moments he would listen to the voice in his earpiece, and change direction a little, presumably in response to reports of the whereabouts of the Astartes. The sound of gunfire had died away by now, although whether their escorts had disengaged, or simply been wiped out to a man, she couldn’t have said.

  “Look out!” Ven shouted, pointing into the swirling dust, either entering a lucid phase in the nick of time, or sensing the danger in his delirium. A line of servo-skulls was swooping out of the murk, heading straight for the ragged group of fugitive wyrds. “Death among the dead!”

  An instant later his words were vindicated, as a las-bolt impacted on the earth at his feet, and the wyrds scattered, seeking what cover they could. Elyra dived for the ground, and rolled under a long-abandoned water tank, which must have been a part of the old irrigation system as she did so, another bolt kicked up a gout of dirt where she’d been standing an instant before.

  She moved the pistol in her hand, tracking one of the skulls, but it was a tricky shot; the target was small, fast-moving and jinking erratically in the crosswinds. She squeezed the trigger, and was rewarded with a puff of pulverising bone: the tiny servitor wavered uncertainly for a moment, then broke off, spiralling away as the wind took it.

  “Good shot,” Voyle said, from a few metres away. “You must have damaged the grav unit.”

  “Lucky shot,” Elyra corrected, trying to find a fresh target. She couldn’t tell how many of the whirling skulls there were swooping around them, but there must have been half a dozen at least. Twin laspistol barrels protruded from their eye sockets, firing continuously, and the screaming around her made it obvious that a few of the shots were finding their mark.

  “Allow me,” Voyle said, and, to her astonishment, she realised that he was standing out in the open, completely unprotected. The skulls circled, and began to swoop towards him, firing as they came, but every las-bolt seemed to deviate at the last minute, expending itself harmlessly at his feet. Then he gestured dismissively, and the skulls scattered, thrown aside by the force of his will. Most simply vanished into the vortex of air, whirled away through the rent in the dome above them, but a couple shattered against stanchions and decaying agricultural equipment in shards of splintered bone and twisted metal.

  “Impressive,” a new voice said, and a figure dressed entirely in black, his robes billowing around him in the wind, seemed to solidify out of the swirling dust. “It seems we’ll have to do this the hard way after all.”

  Capturing the heretics’ shuttle might have sounded simple enough while Quillem was explaining his plan, but when it came to putting it into operation, the task turned out to be just as difficult and dangerous as Drake had expected. Keira would undoubtedly have been able to sneak up on the sentries at the foot of the boarding ramp undetected, and dispatch them swiftly and silently once she’d done so, but the three Inquisition operatives lacked her infiltration skills, and were forced to use more direct methods.

  “In position,” Drake voxed, sighting on the nearest sentry down the length of his lasgun, and hoping that the small grove of fruit bushes he’d crawled among would be sufficient concealment. He couldn’t see any sign of Kyrlock or Quillem, but then he hadn’t expected to, the stinging grit clotting the air reducing visibility to no more than a few score metres. The wind-blown haze was the biggest advantage they had: the sentries seemed alert, constantly scanning their surroundings for any sign of a threat, and approaching the shuttle too closely without something to keep them hidden from view would simply draw down a barrage of suppressive fire.

  “Me too,” Kyrlock said, “and it’s rutting uncomfortable. It smells like something died in here.”

  Narrowing his eyes against the abrasive wind, Drake scanned the metal bin on the far side of the boarding ramp where his friend was supposed to be concealed. It was far closer to the heretic vessel than he’d dared approach himself, but Kyrlock had spent most of his life stalking game in the forests of their home world, and although his ability to move silently and undetected was far inferior to Keira’s, it was still a great deal better than Drake could have managed. Just as well, too; the shotgun he carried was only effective at short range, and once the attack began, he wouldn’t get a second chance to use it.

  “What did you expect?” Drake asked. “It’s for storing fertiliser.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in the—” Kyrlock began, only to be interrupted by Quillem.

  “All set. Go on my mark.”

  “Confirm,” Drake said crisply, fighting down a sudden flare of nerves, the tension-relieving banter already forgotten.

  “Confirm,” Kyrlock repeated, almost in the same breath.

  “Three seconds,” Quillem said, and Drake counted them down under his breath. “Go!”

  As Drake squeezed the trigger
, dropping the guard he’d already had in his sights, the sound of an explosion echoed in the air around them, audible even over the howling wind. The rest of the sentries turned to look towards the raised beds where Quillem had lobbed a grenade at random to distract them, and Kyrlock burst from cover, his shotgun blazing as he came. He caught one man in the hail of shot, but the mercenary’s body armour absorbed most of the impact: he was already bringing his weapon round to bear when Drake fired for a second time, taking him in the head.

  Belatedly becoming aware that they were under attack, the three remaining sentries rallied, aiming as one at the only target they could see: Kyrlock. Fearful for his friend, Drake fired again, but the shot was hurried, and ricocheted from the helmet of a woman carrying a lasgun like his own. She staggered from the impact, too dazed to present much of a threat for the next second or two, but he’d revealed his location now, and one of the remaining guards turned away from Kyrlock to return fire. He was carrying one of the strange, smooth-sided rifles Drake had seen the mercenaries using in the assault on the Citadel of the Forsaken, and, aware of the damage it could do, the Guardsman was already rolling desperately away as the bolt of plasma arrived.

  He only just made it, the acrid scent of baking earth sour in his nostrils, dazzled by the glare and scorched by the heat of the detonation. Coughing, he scrabbled away from the burning bushes, and tried to make out what was happening through the strobing after-images clogging his vision.

  Quillem had joined the fight for the boarding ramp too by now, taking down one of the guards threatening Kyrlock with a round from his bolt pistol as he charged forwards. Suddenly presented with two targets, the other man hesitated, the muzzle of his weapon wavering between them, until Kyrlock pulled the trigger of his shotgun again; at so close a range the hail of shot was devastating, reducing the fellow’s arm to a bloody ruin, and making him lose his grip on the strange, bulbous rifle. As it fell to the deck plating, Kyrlock reversed the shotgun, smashing the butt into the mercenary’s face, and he fell heavily to the deck.