‘I could not possibly do such a thing, young man,’ he replies.
‘Don’t you want a living saint to defend your abbey?’
‘A what?’ barks the Colonel, looking from me to the preacher and back again.
‘I do not have the authority, Lieutenant Kage,’ Old Preacher continues. ‘I am sure you know full well that the Decree Passive forbids the Ecclesiarchy from commanding men under arms. All military matters are the province of the Sisterhood. It would be most improper of me to interfere.’
I redirect my attention to the Sister Superior at his side. I’m sure she’s the one that brought me from the cell, and almost as certain that it is the squad leader that reported me to the canoness.
‘Sister Aladia?’
‘Yes?’ It’s obvious she wants to join her Sisters at the defences, glancing up at the silvered warriors assembling above us.
‘We can fight with you. Surely you want all the help you can get. The Emperor brought you to us when we needed you, wouldn’t it be wrong to ignore that gift?’
Even through the holy broadcast I hear a mournful dirge that has become far too familiar. A ceaseless, monotonous chanting that doesn’t arrive just through the ears but is felt in the mind and resonates through the gut. I don’t know whether it’s my words that convince Aladia or the imminent threat, but she points to the gatehouse.
‘When you have your weapons, hold the wall there. Do not get in the way of my Sisters.’ She looks at Erasmisa. ‘Canoness, please release the prisoners’ weapons to them.’
She puts a hand on Old Preacher’s shoulder and guides him away, heading for the sanctuary of the inner abbey. When he is through the doorway she moves past us, heading straight for the rampart.
‘Wait here,’ Erasmisa tells us, lifting a hand to a vox-piece clipped to her ear. She whispers something briefly, not happy at all.
Before our weapons arrive the main cannons boom into life, spitting shells back into what had been Imperial territory.
‘Attacking from behind the line?’ I say, seeing the Colonel react with similar concern.
‘The warpborn do not need logistics and lines of supplies as a mortal army does,’ Schaeffer says heavily. ‘If they can manifest, they will, without other restriction.’
Some of the Battle Sisters’ heavy bolters open fire. The enemy are approaching fast, it seems, going from cannon range to heavy weapon range in less than a minute. I want to run up to the rampart to see but Aladia’s command holds me back – I can easily imagine being barged aside or even cut down if we interfere with the Battle Sisters squads.
A double door rumbles open behind us and half a dozen young women emerge, pulling a couple of small carts laden with our weapons.
‘Two companies, hivers and wasters,’ I say as the group moves forward to reclaim our armaments. ‘Orskya, you know what to do?’
‘Shoot outside wall?’ she replies with a laugh. ‘Not inside?’
‘Good enough,’ I say.
‘You are no longer in command,’ the Colonel snaps, putting a hand to my chest to stop me as I turn away with laspistol and knife. ‘This is Imperial territory, the chain of command is in force. You are all troopers of the 13th Penal Legion, remember?’
I wave my knife towards the wasters and hivers running towards the steps that lead to the gatehouse wall.
‘They’re not listening to you, Colonel,’ I say, pushing his arm aside with mine. I slip my knife into my belt and check the powercell on the laspistol. Good for another thirty shots. ‘Do you want to argue about it, or go and kill some daemons?’
His snarl is all the answer I need and I push past, breaking into a run. Mounting the steps two at a time I reach the rampart, but we’re facing the wrong way to see anything; the attack is coming at the back of the abbey. The Sisters at the far wall, about sixty metres away, fire constantly down at enemies I can’t see.
‘Kage!’ The voice that calls for me is shrill, almost breaking. ‘Look!’
I turn back to the open space before the gate, a mess of mud and ash cut through with track marks and boot prints. Oily puddles bubble into existence in the mire, becoming broader pools of dark, congealing liquid. I stop counting at twenty, scattered around us about fifty metres from the wall. The hairs on my arm are standing up and the nape of my neck throbs.
‘Warp spawn,’ I growl, watching the closest pool as it bends upwards, the erratic light of searchlamps and cloud-swathed dawn dancing across the bulging surface.
The bubble splits, becoming two, then three, then four distinct blobs, falling away from rough figures within. Within the passing of a minute nearly a hundred plague-carriers stand before us, larger tentacle-mouthed beasts dragging themselves into existence around them. An unnatural gust of wind wafts the stench of graveyards and deathbeds over us, but this time it seems to dissipate almost instantly, replaced by the smell of the Sisters’ incense. The daemons’ monotonous chanting and the tolling of discordant bells is lost against the rousing hymnals of the voxmitters; praises to the God-Emperor drown out the slobbering and wailing of the charging beasts. It’s disgusting to look at the congealing warpborn, but I don’t feel the gut-churning revulsion that affected me in the wastes.
We open fire as the rotting warriors advance, a surge in the song from the voxmitters drowning out the madness-inducing chant that accompanies them. Las-bolts and bullets scythe down, greeting the striding plague-warriors and slug-beasts with a haphazard wall of fire. Las-blasts slash across unnatural flesh leaving smoking welts but little else, while bullets seem to slow as they hit, as if they’ve been fired into wet ground and with equal effect. A sudden roar of bolters engulfs us from the towers either side. Three distinct volleys of bolts shear through the oncoming warpborn, their detonations tearing off limbs, rupturing inhuman bodies and blowing apart warpborn skulls. The slain daemons return to piles of slurry, seeping back into the trampled ground.
‘Keep firing,’ I warn, noticing that the sloshing remains continue to move, slithering across the mud, slowly reforming. Like rivulets down a hill they come together, creating a larger pool about thirty metres from the outer towers. Gunfire from the barbican lashes into the morass, but there’s nothing physical to shoot, so bolts and gouts of flames simply disappear into the rippling surface.
As before, the warpstuff bulges and writhes, gathering shape from nothing. Its surface is pocked by bolt impacts, vapours rising from blistered edges as multi-meltas and burning promethium scour the surface of the bubbling mass. This time there is no splitting. The creature that heaves its immense bulk from the ground is as big as the winged nightmare that came upon us in the underhive. This is not blood and shadow though, but a heaving pile of festering flesh and pus-slicked horror.
It continues to swell, almost as tall as the towers and far greater in bulk. A rusted mace forms out of a growing limb, its end pierced like a censer, trailing swarms of black flies like living smog. The broken-nailed fingers of the other hand grip the hilt of an immense, rusted sword, longer than I am tall and as broad as a man’s shoulders. Folds of green skin and rolls of flesh materialise from the mucus froth, growing a broad, neckless head with a cluster of beady eyes over a slit mouth that grins in a terrifying fashion as it turns its immortal intention upon us.
Shrieks of pure dread rebound from the walls around me and I hear voices raised to the God-Emperor, pleading and sobbing for protection. A slobbering tongue lolls from the mouth to leave a trail of hissing saliva over multiple chins. I can feel waves of nausea beating at my thoughts like a hot wind and remember the crazed souls in the dungeon. If not for the sanctuary of the abbey perhaps we would all lose our minds to the corruptive force of the warpborn.
As more gunfire rakes into uncaring daemonflesh, the monstrous creature swings its mace, the head crashing against reinforced ferrocrete with a thunderclap detonation. Shards of masonry spray, and from the gouge carved into the corner of the tower,
cracks race outwards, the material succumbing to centuries of decay in seconds as the power of the warp fiend spreads further and further. Shrugging off blasts that would pierce the armour of battle tanks, the towering nightmare brings down its blade, carving a ruin through already weakened stone, shattering the wall to its foundations. Silver-armoured bodies topple from the breaking tower, a dozen of them, crushed in the devastation of their fort.
Like a mote of dust in a sandstorm I feel utterly helpless against the titanic power formed in front of us. Never before have I felt more like a small and pointless assembly of bones, flesh and blood. The fear is so overwhelming that it’s become nonsensical, a total numbing of the senses to everything around me. For several heartbeats there’s just me and the uncaring vastness of the universe. I hear laughing, a guttural expulsion that shakes the walls, summing up the utter disdain the universe has for me.
I raise my laspistol and feel so absurd that I might start laughing too. An ant might as well try to destroy a Leman Russ tank. Sweating, feeling fever-heat coursing through me, I almost lose my grip on my laspistol as my hand starts to shake, my muscles twitching with some kind of palsy of dread.
A flash of red startles me from my fugue.
Across the gatehouse I see the Colonel firing at the immense creature, ripping off shots with a lasgun as though he has any chance of hurting it. Still, his example is enough for some of the others, who bring their weapons to bear, adding more las-bolts and bullets.
Shrugging off the welter of fire, the titanic warpborn heaves its bulk against the second tower, slamming its impossible obesity into the structure. Sprays of ichor and boil-pus explode outwards from ruptured flesh, but the fortification buckles, a huge crack breaking along its flank as though caught in the throes of an earthquake. Like a grotesque bear hugging its prey, the warpborn embraces the breaking tower, using its weight to haul it down to the ground amid a plume of dust and filth. Flies swarm in spirals about the debris, dancing in celebration over the rubble.
A handful of Battle Sisters emerge from the debris, bolters barking defiance until the sword sweeps down, hewing three of them into pieces. The other two Sisters scramble over settling masonry and twisted metal, their bolts covering the creature’s grinning face in a barrage of small explosions. Unnatural flesh flies from every detonation, thick blood oozing from the craters left by their impacts.
The creature lifts the mace, its rusted haft catching the next fusillade, and then brings it down, crushing a fourth Battle Sister into a pulp of shattered ceramite and pasted flesh. The last of the tower garrison runs out of ammunition but stands defiant upon a heap of broken ferrocrete amid the bodies of her Sisters, one hand lifting the pendant that hangs about her neck. It seems as though the warpborn flinches for a few seconds and an after-image of flames flits across my vision, though I saw nothing.
The gate below us crashes open and a pair of Immolator tanks speed out, even as the daemon-giant smashes the Battle Sister from the rubble with a backswing of its mace, hurling her broken body two dozen metres through the air.
Blessed promethium scorches from the turrets of the armoured vehicles, bathing the great lord of decay in waves of white-hot fury. Two squads of Battle Sisters advance beneath us, the flies parting from their path like water on a ship’s bow, the silvery light I thought I saw out in the wastes again swelling around the holy warriors. The thunder of their bolters sets the tempo for the hymnal, their voices raised in song from external address systems as they advance in step, every round fired finding its massive target.
Swarmed in bolt impacts and swathes of white flame, the warpborn moans, its mouth splitting wide as it swings the serrated edge of its sword at the closest Immolator. The blade strikes the side of the vehicle to carve a furrow through armour and exhaust stack, billowing smoke from the engine mixing with the fly cloud that swirls around the immaterial behemoth.
The stones around me ring to the sound of armoured boots as more Battle Sisters pour up the steps to the rampart, presenting a wall of bolters, flamers and melta weapons to the front of the abbey, their arrival forcing me and the others back from the wall. I can get only glimpses of what happens next and hear the raging bellows of the monster as it slowly succumbs to the firepower and faith of the Adepta Sororitas.
Everything falls still and silent for a few seconds, bringing with it a massive release of pressure.
‘Praise the God-Emperor!’ I shout, punching the air while relief floods through me. I sag, almost falling to my knees before I find the strength to stand again. My hand falls to my side, pistol still in my fingers. ‘Praise the Emperor.’
The Battle Sister in front of me turns.
‘Save your voice for prayers of strength, soldier of the Emperor,’ she says and raises her gaze skyward. ‘You will need all of your faith against the coming enemy.’
With a cold shiver I look up to follow her gaze. The sky above is smeared with high strips of cloud, and among the gloom I see sparks of movement. I think it must be aircraft at first but the angle seems wrong. I then realise it’s because the objects are coming straight down, directly towards us.
‘Drop pods,’ someone mutters on my left.
‘Traitor Astartes,’ says the Colonel.
I thought they’d be here quicker. You hear stories about Space Marine drop assaults and imagine it’s over in seconds. Armageddon has seen a few over the years and this one seems pretty tame in comparison to the tales of Commander Dante dropping directly onto the Beast’s main camp in the first war. Just three bright lights getting a bit bigger and a bit brighter every minute.
I wish it was over quicker. I’m getting an ache in my neck from looking up, but it’s the rapid beating of my heart that takes the real toll. It feels like I’ve been fighting for weeks not hours, and then I think about what’s happened and realise I’ve not slept in two days, and of the past forty-eight hours there’s only one – in the camp with Orskya’s people – during which I wasn’t battling or running for my life. Ichar IV was intense once it got going. Coritanorum was pretty much twenty-four hours of tension and fear. All of that seems like nothing compared to what we’ve been through.
I suppose it’s because I can’t see the end. Those other times there was a mission. Now the mission is to survive until… Until what?
‘There’s always going to be something else, someone else trying to kill me,’ I mutter, still unable to take my eyes off the trio of descending fireballs.
Unease prickles through me and for a moment I think it’s the Neverborn returning. But it feels more like a chill than a heat, and I finally drop my eyes from the approaching drop pods to find Oahebs next to me. My skin feels like it’s trying to peel itself off my flesh to get further away and I can’t stand to look at him for more than half a second. I’ve done well to avoid close proximity for most of the time we’ve been back together but there’s not really anywhere else to go on the packed rampart.
‘What do you want?’ I ask him.
‘I want to know how you keep going, knowing all the bad things you’ve done,’ he says with a belligerent stare. ‘I want to know what it’s like to have killed the people you’ve killed, endangered a whole planet, and then walk away from it pretending the Emperor thinks you’re special.’
‘I’m not pretending anything,’ I tell him.
‘There’s nothing special about you, Kage,’ he continues, spittle flying from his lips. It’s as if it doesn’t matter whether I care what he has to say, he’s going to say it anyway. ‘I know what special feels like. Special is being so different nobody can stand to be in the same room as you for more than a few seconds. Special is your parents leaving you at the local shrine because you disgusted them so much. Special is being raised to think that you’re an aberration in the eyes of the God-Emperor, to strive your whole life to atone to Him for the sin of being born the way I was.’
‘Frag you,’ I snarl. ‘You’re a
soulless, mutant freak. You shouldn’t exist, but they found a use for you. You should be grateful nobody put your head in with a brick when you were a baby. You don’t get to judge me just because your life was shit.’
He points up into the sky.
‘You’re going to die sometime, Kage. Your luck, that good fortune that seems to keep you from biting the bullet each time, is gonna run out. Maybe today. And you’re bound for the abyss, I can tell you. Call yourself the Emperor’s chosen all you want, you aren’t going to the golden light, Kage. You’re tainted, I can smell it on you. Maybe that abyssal passenger isn’t around any more but it picked you for a reason. Maybe you invited it in?’ He raises his voice. ‘Maybe those things are following you, trying to get you back. We’d be better off if you led them somewhere else.’
A few of the hivers and wasters look at us, and one of the Battle Sisters turns her head, attention drawn by the disturbance. I grab Oahebs by the front of his scavenged coat and push through my revulsion to drag him closer. I feel repelled by his presence. Not sickened like with the plagueborn, but physically repulsed; it’s an effort to stay close to him.
‘That sounded like a threat,’ I snarl.
He smacks my arm away with a growl.
‘I know my purpose,’ he tells me, stepping back. ‘I’ve come to terms with the misery of my life, because I know the good I’ve done, the tainted traitors I’ve helped expose. Anywhere else, anytime else, you’d have a bullet in the back of your head and an Inquisition brand on your cheek.’
I turn away and catch the gaze of the Colonel, who’s been watching the argument from a few metres away, arms crossed.
‘Keep your freak away from me,’ I snap at him as I push past.
I find a place alongside the wasters, who have been corralled at one end of the wall by a squad of Battle Sisters. Their chatter stops as I approach, and I wonder what they were talking about.
‘Problems?’ says Orskya.
I shake my head. ‘Nothing new,’ I tell her. I glance around the group. ‘What are you talking about?’
Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Page 16
