Celestine - Andy Clark Read online

  ‘If I’m reading this right, it runs from one hundred yards behind our current position to this location, half a mile deeper into the mines at the exchanger hub, yes?’

  ‘That is correct, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, her eyes lighting with excitement. ‘And with the mines inactive, there’s no gas down there. Soldiers could make their way along the crawlway at a crouch. We’d cover a half mile in a matter of minutes and appear substantially behind the enemy’s current front lines. Throne, that’s brilliant, why didn’t I see it?’

  ‘When you’ve served as long as I have–’ began Blaskaine with a ghost of his former smirk, but Kasyrgeldt was waving a hand, her face falling.

  ‘No, wait, sir, I did see it, but I discounted it. If we fell back on that position it would be a slow manoeuvre with this many soldiers. As soon as the enemy grasped what we were doing they could simply activate the compressor pumps and flood gas through the crawlway, or else just follow us down or collapse the passage.’

  ‘Not if they’re busy engaging a rearguard,’ said Blaskaine. ‘One-fifth of our remaining force will hold position while we quietly filter squads back and through the tunnel. When our numbers thin, the rearguard launch a full frontal assault up the main tunnel, draw the enemy’s fire and hold their attention long enough for the remainder of our soldiery to fall back on the crawlway, enter it and proceed to the exchanger hub. With the Emperor’s grace, that is.’

  ‘It is a desperate decision but it would have a high chance of success,’ said Kasyrgeldt. Blaskaine felt pride as he watched his adjutant and protégé working the numbers. As he had known she would, Kasyrgeldt set her jaw and looked him in the eye.

  ‘Sir, permission to lead the diversionary attack,’ she said.

  ‘Refused,’ said Blaskaine. ‘I will have that dubious honour, lieutenant.’

  She looked confused, then horrified.

  ‘Major, you can’t. You are the senior officer in charge of this entire operation.’

  ‘I can, Astryd, precisely because I am the senior officer and as such you are all required to follow my orders and allow me to get myself killed in whatever damn fool fashion I so choose,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Look at me. One arm, one and half legs at a push, worn down and wounded so badly I might as well be dead. What use will I be to the Saint if I come hobbling into the heart of the enemy sanctum? I could, perhaps, die on the War Engine’s blade in a particularly distracting fashion?’

  ‘Sir, I know that your wounds are shocking, but with the proper medical attention–’ began the medicae, but Blaskaine cut him off with a sharp look.

  ‘Do not mistake this for maudlin self-pity,’ he said. ‘I am not some dewy-eyed martyr. I am not committing suicide by combat, and I’ll shoot the first soldier to suggest it. I have led a long life in the Emperor’s service and during that time I have sacrificed many, many lives, some of them in exceptionally difficult circumstances. I have always told myself that those sacrifices were necessary for the furtherance of a greater Imperial good, and I stand by that to this day.’

  He heard again the sound of desperate cries, saw the fires of Cadia’s death throes cut off by the closing ramp of his drop craft. He knew that he had done the right thing, the difficult thing, no matter what anyone else said.

  Sometimes just because one did the right thing, that did not stop one being damned for it.

  ‘If fighting in the light of the Saint has taught me one thing,’ Blaskaine continued, ‘it is that sometimes, to do our duty to the Emperor, we must be willing to sacrifice more – all, in fact – with nothing more than faith that our ending will prove worthwhile. I have finally come to a pass where the most strategically viable sacrifice I can make is that of my own life, not those of others. I will not have that decision diminished by questions about my reasoning. Do I make myself inescapably clear?’

  The Cadians around him saluted, their faces grim.

  ‘Astryd, I’m placing you in operational command of assault force charon,’ said Blaskaine. To her credit, his adjutant didn’t protest any pretence at unworthiness, only nodded, her face pale but resolute. ‘Furthermore, I would have it recorded by all present that I am at this time enacting my right as a senior officer of the Departmento Munitorum to make a field promotion.’ Blaskaine fumbled awkwardly with one of his uniform pockets and produced a small metal pin, a skull with eagle’s wings stretching from it, chased in gold.

  ‘Astryd Kasyrgeldt, I hereby promote you to the rank of captain of the Cadian One Hundred and Forty-Fourth Heavy Infantry. May you serve the Emperor with honour, pride and heroism.’

  Kasyrgeldt’s expression was unreadable as he pinned the captain’s badge to her tunic and stepped back with a wan smile.

  ‘It looks right on you, captain,’ said Blaskaine.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t thank me, just earn it,’ said Blaskaine, wincing at a pain in the stump of his arm. ‘Now, I’m sorry to say that second and fourth platoons will be remaining with me as rearguard. They look to be the worst torn up, according to your slate. Don’t worry, captain, I’ll give them the good news. Just leave me one of the vox-packs and I’ll coordinate the muster from here. Meanwhile, you pull everyone else off the line bit by bit and get them moving through the crawlway. Keep it subtle. We’ll hold out for as long as possible before we launch our push.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. She paused, as did the rest of the command squad, then as one they saluted him again.

  ‘Enough. Get moving before my self-preservation instincts kick in and I volunteer one of you in my stead,’ said Blaskaine, keeping his tone bluff to mask the tangle of emotions tightening his chest. His soldiers hurried out of the chamber, ducking back into the screaming maelstrom of battle and thence to their appointed places.

  Kasyrgeldt was the last to leave. She looked back at Blaskaine, and he saw fierce loyalty in her eyes, along with something else that it took him a moment to place. Approval, perhaps? Or was it pride?

  ‘I won’t let you down, sir,’ she said.

  ‘You never have, Astryd, even when I didn’t return the courtesy,’ said Blaskaine, then cleared his throat. ‘Go. Make the Emperor proud.’

  ‘I will sir, I just hope I can impress him as much as you have,’ she said, and with that she was gone.

  Blaskaine took a deep breath and looked briefly at the stone ceiling. He listened to the gurgle of fluids through his surgical brace, felt the ache of his whole body, and worse, the pulsing darkness in his mind where he had forced the memories down.

  He offered a silent prayer to the Emperor and hoped that his reasons truly were as dutiful and selfless as he had said. He thought of the Saint, of her golden light and her holy magnificence, of how his sacrifice would aid her in winning a great victory against the forces of Chaos. That was enough.

  Blaskaine picked up the vox handset and keyed in a channel, linking to the vox-units of second and fourth platoons where they fought upon the firing line.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Major Blaskaine,’ he said. ‘I have new orders for you.’ He drew a deep, shaking breath. ‘You are not going to like them, but you must trust me when I tell you there is no other way…’

  Sister Meritorius ducked, allowing her enemy’s axe blade to whistle over her head. She surged back up, lunging with the point of her power sword. It plunged through the ornate breastplate of the Mas’drekkha warrior, its molecular disruption field parting metal, flesh and bone. The man’s eyes bulged behind the eye holes of his leering daemon mask. She ripped her blade free and kicked his legs out from under him.

  The Mas’drekkha fell and Meritorius stamped hard on the back of his head with one servo-assisted boot for good measure. Bone crunched and blood squirted, and her enemy convulsed in his death throes.

  ‘Fight, fight for the Emperor!’ she roared, swinging her bolter up and firing down a side-tunnel. Another Mas’drekkha j
erked as her bolt-shells punched through his torso, then detonated in a spray of viscera as they exploded inside him.

  Assault force beta had advanced at a relentless pace, the Cadians struggling to keep up with the power armoured Battle Sisters. Meritorius and her Sisters sang as they fought, proud hymns echoing down the tunnels. Still, the droning note that filled the air had grown louder with every step they took deeper into the mines, and now it all but swallowed their plainsong whole.

  A squad of Cadians dashed past her, pelting up the steep slope of the tunnel with their bayonets fixed and lasguns spitting fire. Three of them fell to autogun rounds before their charge slammed home against the mob of cultists at the top of the stone ramp. Another two went down with Mas’drekkha axes embedded in their bodies. Blood flew as the two forces engaged, and Meritorius dashed in to help.

  Her bullish assault slammed one cultist from his feet with a crunch of bone. The sweep of her power sword saw another collapse without a head, blood fountaining from the stump of his neck. A third warrior came at her brandishing a miner’s pick.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he screamed.

  Meritorius caught the downswing of his weapon on the flat of her sword, then twisted it and disarmed the cultist with a flick of her wrist. She smashed the pommel of her sword into his eye, hard enough to cave in the front of his skull.

  ‘You were not even worth my blade, heretic,’ she spat.

  ‘Sister Superior, auspex suggests a massive space beyond the next bulkhead door,’ voxed Sister Absolom. ‘The Saint’s signifier rune is closing. We are converging upon the same point.’

  ‘The enemy’s sanctum, no doubt,’ replied Meritorius. ‘That would explain the sudden onslaught of Mas’drekkha.’

  They had so far used meltaguns to cut through two huge armoured bulkheads that had been raised to cut off inner tunnels within the mines. They would handle this one in the same fashion. Meritorius switched vox-channels.

  ‘Assault force beta, all warriors, rally to these coordinates,’ she commanded, exloading the location of the bulkhead. ‘Gird your courage, sons and daughters of the Emperor, for we come at last to the heart of heresy.’

  She switched vox-channels again as warriors streamed past her and along the high-ceilinged tunnel that led towards the bulkhead.

  ‘Saint Celestine, are you receiving me?’

  ‘I hear you, Sister Meritorius,’ came the Saint’s voice, strong as steel and musical as a choir.

  ‘Your forces and ours are about to converge,’ said Meritorius. ‘I believe we are at the threshold of the enemy’s inner sanctum. What of assault force charon?’

  ‘They are overcoming delays. Sacrifices must be made, Sister, but they will join us when the Emperor appoints it their hour to do so.’

  ‘Will you lead us in this final battle?’ asked Sister Meritorius.

  ‘I will fight at your side,’ replied Celestine.

  ‘I am not… That is, I have not…’ said Meritorius, her voice trailing off.

  ‘You are, you shall, you always have and will,’ replied the Saint without hesitation, and the firm warmth in her voice left Meritorius in no doubt that Celestine had seen the ashes and the fire both within her heart. ‘The void is dark, Anekwa Meritorius, and all stars wax and wane within it. But they rarely stop burning, and the darkness cannot diminish them.’

  With that, Celestine cut the vox-link. Sister Meritorius felt an incredible sense of release, a lightness in her chest and in her mind. The Saint knew, and far from passing judgement she offered only acceptance, and strength.

  ‘Emperor be praised,’ said Sister Meritorius and set off along the tunnel at a run.

  She emerged through an arched entrance onto a metal gantry that ran above a wide staging chamber. Its floor had been levelled with ferrocrete and stencilled with bays and numbers for the dozens of mining machines and prefabricated labour units it played host to. These had been dragged out of position and heaped up to form barricades. Several side-chambers led off from it, perhaps administration offices or rest areas during more peaceful times. The chamber’s ceiling was strung with hundreds of lumen globes, whose light flickered fitfully amidst the hellish red glow. Most of the chamber’s north wall was taken up by a heavyset metal blast shutter designed to slide open from the centre. It was daubed with the runes of the War Engine, repeating over and over in hideous proliferation, and looked far newer than the rest of the room.

  Gunfire and screams echoed madly around the chamber. Meritorius saw that a hard core of Mas’drekkha and flesh-robed cultists were holed up here, dug into the side-chambers and hunched behind the barricades of machinery. They had crew-served heavy stubbers that raked back and forth across the chamber, streams of bullets whining from metal and stone, and punching through Cadians in puffs of blood. Dotted amongst the Mas’drekkha, she saw several especially huge and overmuscled warriors with black hoods, billowing skin-cloaks and ornate axes. She presumed these must be their champions – the cult leaders who had led their people astray, who had manipulated simple superstition into something darker. Meritorius could see the foul blessings the arch heretics had received for their works, shallow augmentations of strength and physical presence.

  ‘Scant enough rewards for the souls of an entire world,’ she muttered in disgust. ‘Such are the wages of heresy.’

  The Imperial forces had pressed up behind several barricades, but were otherwise confined to the chamber’s southern entrances. Sprawled Cadian bodies showed where abortive attempts had been made to charge the stubber-nests.

  ‘Sisters, the enemy are dug in here and seek to prevent us from reaching their sanctum. Shall we relent?’ Her vox message was met by a suitably strident chorus of denial from the nine Battle Sisters that still lived.

  ‘Sister Superior, if the Cadians launch a two-pronged push up the flanks, it should afford us the chance to move on the central barricades,’ voxed Sister Penitence. ‘Once there we could hurl frag grenades into the closest gun-nests, and–’

  Meritorius didn’t hear the end of Sister Penitence’s plan, for at that moment Saint Celestine swept into the chamber from its south-eastern entrance, her Geminae Superia close behind. The Saint launched herself through the enemy’s fire, bullets ricocheting from her armour. One Geminae landed atop a toppled hauler and unloaded her pistols into a stubber crew, blasting them apart. Celestine herself fell upon the Mas’drekkha with a cry of holy rage, her blade slicing through their bodies.

  Behind Celestine, a second Imperial force flowed into the chamber with their guns blazing and Meritorius saw the balance of the battle shift. The stubber gunners tried frantically to draw a bead on the Living Saint, and their reserves burst from cover with howls of battle-lust.

  ‘The enemy have thrown away their advantage in their eagerness to spill blood for their foul god,’ cried Meritorius, her eyes shining at the magnificent sight of the Saint in battle. ‘So do all the slaves of the Dark Gods fail and falter. Forward, faithful, and slay them all.’

  Gofrey was livid. He had intended to catch the false Saint while she battled through the confined tunnels. He had planned to set upon her from all sides, to spend his attendants’ lives in an ambush that would have brought him close enough to strike the killing blow. Instead, he had been forced to fight his way through wave after wave of cultists. Each conflict had slowed him and, though he had seen the glow of Celestine’s radiance ahead through the murk more than once, ever the agents of the enemy had impeded his holy work.

  ‘Just further proof of the daemon-witch’s heretical nature,’ he muttered to himself.

  Ahead he heard the din of battle as the so-called Saint led the charge. Gofrey had half-expected her to abandon the army before the walls, and then had waited for Celestine to turn upon her followers during the assault up through the city’s winding streets and into the tunnels beyond.

  Now, though, he knew her game. The Dark
Gods do battle with one another and use mortals as their playthings and tools, he thought as he stalked along a sloping tunnel. Surely, then, this false-Saint was a servant of a rival deity and would use them to strike down the War Engine before turning upon those who remained. Worse, perhaps she would lead them on into damnation unutterable, then those in turn would fight for the Gods of Chaos!

  No. He would not suffer this witch to live another minute. This ended now. He saw an archway ahead, saw Cadian squads dashing through it and into a storm of criss-crossing gunfire. He would find the false Saint here and expose her for all to see, for Gofrey’s faith was pure, and witches must be burned.

  He nudged his thralls and sent them jogging ahead, slack faced with their lasguns ready. One, though, he kept with him. A gunner in whose hands thrummed a plasma gun primed and ready. A weapon enough to kill even the risen Saint.

  He smiled.

  Gofrey broke into a run, and as he did so, at last he drew out the mark of his order upon its heavy chain and let it hang proud upon his chest.

  The rosette of the Holy Ordo Hereticus. The witch hunters of the Inquisition.

  Inquisitor Gofrey charged into the swirling melee in the chamber, the fires of his faith burning inferno-hot in his breast. The witch Celestine would die, and all would see in the moment of her fall that she was but a daemon temptress sent to lead them from the Emperor’s light.

  Gofrey beheld her winged shape ahead and snarled a command at his thralls. As one, they advanced with their guns raised.

  In a smoke-filled corridor, strewn with bodies, Major Blaskaine crouched behind a pile of sandbags. He bled from several bullet wounds, and could barely feel his pinned leg any more. The flesh had torn around several of his crude medical sutures, and more blood soaked his uniform. It hardly mattered now, he thought. He must have bought Kasyrgeldt long enough. The Emperor could grant him that much, couldn’t He?

  Bullets thumped into his barricade. A few Cadians still remained, firing their lasguns back at the enemy from positions of cover nearby. But they were a spent force, and the enemy was massing for a last push.