Celestine - Andy Clark Read online

  Blaskaine checked the charge on his laspistol again. Flashing close to spent. Still a few rounds left, he thought. Perhaps the last was for himself. But no, he couldn’t waste them. Each shot was for another heretic his soldiers – his warriors – wouldn’t have to fight.

  ‘Let this be enough,’ he said as he heard the enemy’s chanting reach fever pitch. ‘Emperor, I pray, let this be enough to settle my debts. Let this be my atonement. Let me be forgiven. And save me a seat next to Captain Maklen at Your table, hmm?’

  He thought again of the Saint, leading the faithful survivors to victory on Kophyn despite all the odds stacked against them.

  It was enough. Blaskaine hauled himself to his feet. He levelled his pistol shakily into the red haze and sighted through one eye at the milling figures half-seen through the murk. He snapped off a shot, then another, then one more. At least one of them connected, and he was sure he saw another cultist go down. One final heretic sent to damnation before his end. Suddenly, a hail of return fire shredded the barricade and his body into bloody tatters.

  Charn Blaskaine’s body hit the ground, but he felt no pain. He felt only the calm smile of acceptance that spread across his features as the world vanished down a dark tunnel and the light of the Emperor blossomed before him.

  ‘Emperor… be praised…’ he whispered, and then knew no more.

  Sister Meritorius sprinted across the open ferrocrete, enemy fire whipping around her. She fired back, pumping shell after shell into the heretics behind the barricade, blasting them apart. Her faith was a blazing fire. The Saint was leading them to victory. Even as she watched, Celestine swept her blade down and took the head from another of the hulking enemy leaders.

  That was the last of them.

  The enemy were slain.

  Only the War Engine remained.

  ‘Sisters, meltaguns,’ ordered Meritorius over the vox. ‘Blast us a path. Surely the enemy’s foul master lies beyond this portal.’

  Several Battle Sisters moved up, accompanied by a handful of Cadian weapons specialists with melta weaponry of their own. They poured microwave fire into the bulkhead until it glowed and shuddered. The bulkhead began to sag as their fire chewed through it, and Meritorius brandished her blade as she prepared to face whatever lay beyond. The sawing warp-note in the air rose in pitch and vehemence, becoming a scrapcode roar. She looked to the Saint, who stood ready atop a barricade with her Geminae Superia flanking her. Celestine’s face was composed, her calm absolute. Meritorius drew strength from it.

  From behind her, Meritorius heard a commotion. She looked around with a sudden premonition of dread. A squad of Cadians was loping forwards with weirdly blank expressions on their faces, and her eyes narrowed as she saw Unctorian Gofrey accompanied them. Meritorius’ frown deepened as her gaze alighted on the talisman slung around Gofrey’s neck. She felt a moment of puzzlement as she absorbed the import of the Inquisitorial rosette. Then she took in the angle at which the Cadians were holding their guns, the thrumming plasma gun at the rear of the squad, and Gofrey’s mask of wild-eyed hate.

  Perhaps, if there had been any psykers surviving within the Imperial force, they might have sensed the stirrings of empyric powers being used amongst the Cadian ranks, and alerted their superiors.

  Perhaps those psykers would have warned their masters of the raw power they sensed, lurking somewhere within the Imperial ranks. The potent blend of psychic might and utter conviction hanging like a thundercloud over them all. The danger that the energies of the Great Rift might have tainted that power.

  But the force had no psykers. None except for Inquisitor Unctorian Gofrey, a witch sent in secret to find witches, an extremist of the most unmerciful and single-minded sort. A man for whom that which did not originate in flesh and blood and iron was by its very nature unholy and suspicious. A man who saw witches at every turn and had but one solution for dealing with them.

  ‘Saint!’ yelled Meritorius, trying to throw herself between the Cadians and the Saint. Celestine’s Geminae were quicker, and as the lasguns flashed the two armoured Seraphim bounded into the path of the bolts. Sister Intolerus was blasted from the air, half of her face shot away. Sister Indomita weathered the storm of las-shots and returned fire, blowing two Cadians off their feet.

  Gofrey howled, and Meritorius saw his eyes blaze with otherworldly power. Sister Indomita was hurled sideways by an unseen force, smashed through the air as though by the hand of a petulant god. She hit the far wall of the chamber with bone-breaking force and fell, limp as a rag doll.

  Meritorious opened fire on Gofrey as, around her, the Imperial forces turned in amazed confusion to see the conflict at the heart of their advance. Meritorius’ bolts were intercepted by the bodies of Cadian thralls, who flung themselves into the path of her fire without a moment’s hesitation.

  In return, their fellows opened fire on Meritorius and drove her into cover.

  The Saint turned with a look of utmost sorrow upon her face.

  ‘Unctorian Gofrey, you need not do this,’ she said, and though she did not raise her voice, still it carried over the sounds of gunfire, the droning warp dirge, the hiss of melting metal and the crackle of fires. ‘Your fanaticism has blinded you and made you an unwitting tool of the foe, and in your zealotry and your fear you turn your hate upon that which you do not understand, even though it be the Emperor’s own gift to you.’

  ‘A witch’s lies,’ spat Gofrey, and his eyes flashed again. Meritorius watched aghast as a tracked cargo hauler the size of a small tank was hurled across the chamber. Celestine dived aside, evading the sailing mass which instead slammed into the weakened bulkhead and tore through the softened metal to crash on, into the chamber beyond.

  The warp dirge redoubled in volume. Meritorius saw into the space beyond the bulkhead, saw a nightmarish mass of brass gears and pistons and roaring furnaces, bloody muscle and stitched flesh and staring eyes, rune-scrolling cogitator screens and flaring lenses, all stamped again and again with the skull rune of the Blood God Khorne.

  The Cadians nearest the collapsing bulkhead cried out in terror as segmented metal tendrils and coiling cables slithered from the darkness. They tore off limbs and punched through bodies to shed sprays of blood. They coiled around necks and ripped heads from shoulders, dragging the severed skulls back into the mass of the daemonic abomination.

  ‘Is that the War Engine?’ croaked Meritorius in horror. Her sanity threatened to crack under the strain of the sight, and only her newly restored faith kept it bolstered. Then she heard a fresh eruption of gunfire and spun back in time to see Saint Celestine sweep down upon Gofrey’s Cadians. The Saint fought with the flat of her blade, clubbing one man senseless then spinning and backhanding a woman to knock her unconscious to the floor. In return, las-fire rang from the Saint’s armour and a frag grenade clattered down at her feet. Celestine kicked the explosive away and then drove her fist into another Cadian’s face, flattening him.

  Recovering their wits and seeing the Saint in danger, a handful of Cadians from assault group beta raised their lasguns and advanced on Gofrey, yelling at him to cease his assault. Brave, thought Meritorius, to challenge the Inquisitorial seal. Their bravery earned them death, for Gofrey had none of Celestine’s restraint and crushed the Cadians’ skulls with a flick of his mind.

  ‘She is no Saint!’ bellowed Gofrey. ‘She is a daemon witch, sent to lead you into damnation! Turn your guns upon her in the name of the Holy Inquisition!’

  Some of the Cadians stood and gaped in confusion, as did most of the Imperial preachers. Yet Cadians are amongst the most highly trained and disciplined soldiers in the entire Astra Militarum, and, in the absence of a commanding officer from whom to derive their orders, most made snap decisions as to their loyalties. Maybe thirty per cent of them obeyed Gofrey’s command. The rest chose their faith in the Saint, and as Meritorius watched in horror the chamber descended into civil w
ar, Cadian squads turning their gun butts and fists upon one another. It would be scant moments, she saw, before these exhausted, highly strung warriors lost the last of their hesitation and began shooting.

  And still the War Engine’s tentacles slithered further into the chamber, and its roar increased in volume.

  It was then that Meritorius knew what she must do.

  ‘Sisters,’ she barked through her vox. ‘This discord serves only our foe. Have faith that the Saint will defeat this false Inquisitor. We must banish that which we came here to banish. We must slay the War Engine.’

  With that she turned her back on Celestine, who fought now in the midst of a mass of brawling Cadians, and advanced upon the tentacled horror beyond the bulkhead. Meritorius raised her boltgun and began to pray, uttering the booming High Gothic words of the Rite of Banishment. Her weapon thumped, sending shell after shell whipping through the bulkhead to punch into the daemon’s flesh and blow sprays of gore from its mass.

  The fusillade thickened as Meritorius’ Sisters joined her, bolt shells and meltagun blasts ripping at the convulsing daemon. Its roar grew louder, more furious as its cogs were smashed and its flesh ruptured, as cogitator screens shattered, and eyes burst, and furnaces spilled their glut of flaming skulls.

  Cadians had joined her, Meritorius realised, their faces grim as they fought to complete the task the Emperor had set before them. Not all of them, though, she saw; the sight of this daemonic horror had been too much for some of the brave soldiers, and they ran mad with terror or fell to their knees, clawing their own faces bloody.

  Tendrils lashed out, punching through a man to her right and tearing him in two. A segmented metal tentacle lined with blades whipped around Sister Penitence’s waist and hauled her forwards. Penitence was still screaming her hate and firing her bolter into the monster’s mass as she was stuffed whole into a blazing furnace maw.

  Yet the daemon was quivering and shuddering, its flesh becoming translucent as its grip upon reality faltered.

  ‘Pray, Sisters!’ cried Meritorius. ‘Keep firing!’

  It was then that she heard the distinctive whine and scream of a plasma gun firing behind her, and a sudden chorus of horrified cries.

  ‘The Saint!’

  ‘Emperor, no!’

  ‘Burn the witch!’ came Gofrey’s furious shout.

  ‘Heresy!’ howled another voice, full of outrage and fury.

  ‘Hold position, eyes forward, do not relent!’ bellowed Meritorius, internally screaming in frustration. She had to know what was happening at her back, but to relent for even an instant would be to let the beast rally and consume them all.

  ‘Grenades!’ barked Meritorius, palming a handful of krak charges and hurling them into the shuddering mass of the daemon that had turned Kophyn into its own private slaughterhouse. More charges followed, sailing through the air in a cloud and clattering into the daemon’s chamber to implode with ferocious force.

  The War Engine heaved and shuddered hugely. Its digitised roar reached a deafening crescendo and its flesh-metal tentacles lashed out again and again, yet now its body was burning and torn. Its ichor spewed in gouts across the chamber floor, and in places it began to turn transparent then vanish altogether. Chunks of machinery clattered to the floor, no longer held within the corrupted mass of daemon flesh. Wires sparked. Cogitator engines clattered down to silence.

  ‘Flamers!’ ordered Meritorius, and brave soldiers advanced through the nest of flailing limbs to ply jets of fire across the disintegrating abomination. Several paid the ultimate price for their courage.

  Meritorius fired again and again until her clip ran dry and she slammed a new one into place. She ignored the sounds of gunfire and screaming and clashing blades behind her, shut out the boom of Gofrey’s voice and the cries of the wounded, and kept firing.

  Anekwa Meritorius did her duty.

  At last, the War Engine blew apart with an explosive blast of furnace-hot winds and atomised gore, and a death scream so deafening that it caused lenses to crack and ears to bleed.

  At last, with the abomination before her slain, Meritorius was free to turn and look upon the horror that had been wrought behind her back.

  Inquisitor Gofrey could feel blood streaming from his nose, weeping down his cheeks from eyes that must by now be red with burst vessels. He had nudged dozens of Cadian soldiers to his cause, pushing so hard that he had killed almost as many as he had successfully enthralled. He didn’t care. It was a faithless man who balked at the cost of doing the Emperor’s will.

  It wasn’t done yet, though. The Saint’s armour was cracked and blackened where las-bolts had pierced her body. She had torn free of her encumbering jump pack after Gofrey had crushed one of its finely crafted wings with his mind. Her face was a mask of blood where a Cadian sergeant’s sword had opened her scalp, yet still her eyes remained locked on Gofrey with furious intensity.

  Other Cadians, those too far lost to heresy to hear Gofrey’s warning, had rallied to her. Now she came at him with her blade raised, and the once proud soldiers of the Astra Militarum flayed each other with point-blank gunfire.

  ‘This heresy ends now!’ roared Gofrey, and nudged his plasma gunner hard. The man’s first shot had been stopped by a Cadian selflessly hurling herself into the path of the blast. Determined to avoid the same thing happening again, Gofrey focused his will and, with a scream of pain, bludgeoned aside those soldiers between himself and the false Saint. Bodies tumbled, bones broke, and something in the Inquisitor’s mind tore.

  ‘Now,’ he growled, through the white-hot wash of agony. ‘Overcharge and fire!’

  His thrall obeyed, the coils of the man’s plasma gun glowing, its capacitors screaming as they gathered their ferocity. The false Saint saw the danger and lunged, but too late. There came a blinding flash, a howl of energetic discharge, and Celestine was struck full in the chest by a ravening ball of sun-hot plasma.

  The shot lifted her from her feet and threw her backwards to crash against the mangled metal of a barricade. She gasped in agony, and well she might, for Gofrey saw with vicious satisfaction that her chest was a molten ruin of fused armour and blackened flesh and bone. How the damned woman was even still breathing with such a crater in her was beyond him, but Gofrey knew now was his moment. As the faithless cried out in dismay at their Saint’s fall, Unctorian Gofrey strode towards her, his vision shimmering crimson at its edges.

  ‘Now, witch! Now, daemon! Now comes the judgement of the Holy Inquisition! Now I shall do the Emperor’s work and strike you down, that the scales may fall from the eyes of all who have followed you unto damnation!’

  It was then, as he stood over the bloodied, gasping false Saint, that something roared and struck Gofrey in the back with sledgehammer force. The world jolted, and it took him a moment to realise that he had been driven to his knees, his entire back reduced to a blazing mass of agony. Gofrey fumbled behind himself and his palm came away dripping and red.

  ‘What…?’ he croaked.

  Captain Kasyrgeldt pumped her shotgun and advanced towards the fallen preacher. Somehow, he was still upright, despite the full-bore blast she had unloaded into him. She resolutely ignored the wounded form of Saint Celestine beyond him, lest the sight undo her entirely. What in Terra’s name had happened here, she wondered.

  ‘All Cadian soldiery, stand down and ship arms with immediate effect!’ she barked, her voice carrying more authority than she felt. Around her she saw soldiers stepping back with relief, others shaking their heads and dabbing at bleeding noses as though emerging from some sort of trance. One man swung his gun to bear upon her but was instantly clubbed down by the soldiers to either side of him. No one else reacted.

  Impossibly, the Saint was pushing herself to her feet, blood sluicing down her legs from the catastrophic wound in her torso.

  ‘Saint Celestine, please don’t try to move,’ urge
d Kasyrgeldt, then yelled for a medicae. Celestine shook her head and took careful, steady paces towards Gofrey, her blade held in one shaking hand.

  ‘Unctorian Gofrey, your zealotry and fear have blinded you and made you a tool of the enemy,’ rasped the Saint, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Lies,’ Gofrey hissed, still trying to fight his way to his feet despite the wads of buckshot that had severed his spine. Kasyrgeldt frowned as she felt waves of force emanating from the fallen priest, then gasped in shock as she saw those same forces stir his robes and lift him to his feet.

  ‘In the very lair of the abomination that enslaved this world to the will of the Dark Gods, you turned the Emperor’s noble warriors against one another at the moment of their triumph,’ said Celestine, her voice grating and raw. ‘You are no better than Horus the betrayer. Heretic I name thee, traitoris extremis.’

  ‘Do not listen to her lies,’ Gofrey screamed, apoplectic with rage, and Kasyrgeldt heard clearly the madness in the man’s voice. Exhausted Cadians stared from every side, unsure whether to intercede, whether to aid the Saint or restrain her bloodied assailant, wary still of the Inquisitorial rosette that hung from his neck.

  ‘You have profaned the Emperor’s faith and made of it a lash with which to goad your fellow man,’ spat Celestine, raising her blade double-handed. ‘You do not believe in the will of the Emperor, but instead invoke His name to excuse your own monstrous deeds. I have love and sympathy in my heart for every loyal soul, no matter how wayward or lost they might be. But you, Unctorian Gofrey, your very fanaticism has transformed you into that which you hated most, and the darkness will be lessened by your passing.’

  Kasyrgeldt felt unnatural forces whirl into being around Gofrey and cried out a warning to the Saint. Celestine’s blade swung through the air, a streak of silver amidst the gloom, and the Inquisitor’s head tumbled to the bloody ground. His body followed it, the thrumming pressure leaving the air as Gofrey’s powers died along with his mind. The next instant, the Saint fell in turn, her sword slipping from her grip and her eyes rolling up into her skull.