The Flesh Tithe - Miles A Drake Read online

  She didn’t know if her words inspired them. They would have to steel themselves, and all she could do was set an example. ‘Get everybody back inside,’ she told them, mentally taking stock of what they had. With barely a dozen fighting men inside a half-wrecked convent, their chances seemed grim. But the arms and armour of the dead could be salvaged and distributed among the thirty or so survivors that hid within. Surely some would fight? In the face of mankind’s hated foes, they would have to. Or they would die.

  ‘And distribute the weapons to those who can use them,’ she added. ‘We’ll need every able-bodied soul to defend this place tonight.’

  She turned to the Arbites enforcer, who stood over one of the fallen abominations, prodding at it with his iron-shod boot.

  ‘Not so easy to kill, are they?’ he stated, more than asked, as Lucia approached him.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But zeal and fury can destroy any of the Emperor’s foes.’

  He gave a half-glance at the weapon she clutched. ‘The bolter probably helps.’

  Lucia glared at him. He shrugged, glancing out across the darkening alleys.

  ‘Raul,’ he said, with no explanation. As Lucia cocked her head, he thumbed his matte-black breastplate. ‘Enforcer Raul. Last of Precinct Tercius. Probably.’

  Lucia made the sign of the aquila. ‘I’m Sister Lucia, Hospitaller of the Order of the Ebon Chalice, caretaker of the Convent of Saint Cybele.’

  ‘The rest of your Sisters?’

  ‘Gone,’ the Hospitaller returned. ‘To Ixeris to protect the Pilgrim Roads from Togoran Bloodreeks.’

  Raul shook his head. ‘Fragging Bloodreeks. They never stop, do they? A shame. Could have used them here.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Lucia agreed. ‘But all of the Emperor’s holy work is of paramount importance. I was left behind to protect this convent.’

  ‘There aren’t by chance any more Sisters of your order planetside?’

  ‘None, regrettably. All of the military convents were dispatched to Ixeris after the latest Bloodreek incursion.’

  ‘Well…’ the enforcer mused, the shadow of a smile forming on his face. ‘Then we’re on our own.’ He turned away from the Sister, gesturing towards the blood-stained, debris-ridden plaza. ‘I’ll keep watch and see what I can do about cleaning up the mess.’

  Lucia made the sign of the aquila again. ‘No. We are never alone. The Emperor watches. And He protects.’ With that, she moved to administer last rites to the fallen.

  An hour later, the last rays of Sygera’s daylight raked the cold, smoky atmosphere. As night fell, a dismal darkness engulfed the city. The chatter of distant gunfire and fading cries were the lonely dirges to which they waited. The laud-hailers had died with the convent’s reserve generators.

  Inside, the convent remained dimly lit by candles and torches, but other than that, with power cut to the city, the darkness was absolute. Xenos aircraft periodically shrieked through the skies, but their frequency had lessened, to everyone’s relief.

  Several more throngs of survivors emerged from the dark alleys to seek refuge in the chapel. They were bewildered, exhausted, and horrified, and Lucia directed them inside while the remaining militia and Raul kept vigilant order on the barricade. A fair number of the arrivals came armed, either as survivors or soldiers, and joined the ragged band of protectors outside.

  The tales told by these survivors were all the same: of sheer horror. The xenos abominations were spread throughout the city, stalking the streets, hunting for their human prey. Lucia heard of only small packs – never more than five, never less than two. The enforcer reluctantly mentioned that over two-score of them had swarmed the precinct, with the seemingly random support of their marauding aircraft.

  Pacing along the barricades, exhaustion began to chew at the survivors. What little recaff remained had already been distributed amongst the militia and the enforcer. Lucia kept herself awake by sheer force of will, and regular prayers muttered under her breath. She applied her Hospitaller’s trade to the wounded. With the xenos’ onslaught and weaponry, it became evident that they left few victims alive, such was their lethality. All the while, she watched the dark alleys for any signs of further survivors, or the horrors that were certainly out there.

  Several times, alarm was called by sentries at sightings of monstrous, scarecrow figures standing motionlessly in alleyways, before fading into the gloom again. Each alarm spurred a wave of panic and a bustle of activity as men and women moved to meet the phantom threat. Each alarm amounted to nothing, save for the cloying sense that ‘they’ were out there, watching and waiting.

  The dead of night brought the flashing lights of a void battle. Criss-crossing arcs and blooms of emerald, orange, yellow and blue energy lit up the sky. A ship that had remained hidden, or reinforcements? Lucia didn’t know. She saw many of the folk within the convent peering out of its shattered windows to watch, their eyes wide with wonder at the sights above, and glimmering with hope. Some of the braver, or more foolhardy, refugees came out onto the steps of the convent for a better view. The Sister thought of leading the survivors in a Hymn for Salvation but, in the end, decided against it. With the rapidity that Sygera’s garrison fleet had been disassembled in orbit, she hardly expected a positive outcome from whatever this engagement was. She did not wish to fan the flames of hope, knowing that they could gutter out in but a moment.

  Half an hour passed before a new star blossomed in the sky, and Lucia knew it was the plasma-core detonation of whatever warship had offered its resistance. She closed her eyes, offering a prayer for the souls of those on board. As she did so, the hopeful whispers of the survivors turned to gasps of shock, and then to murmurs of despair. Bidding them to return indoors, she was forced to usher some of the more shaken back inside, before returning to the line.

  ‘As I said… we’re on our own now,’ Raul muttered to her back at the barricade. There was no fear in his voice, nor care.

  Lucia did not respond, but stared out into the darkness, removing her bolter from its maglock. The xenos’ talons had marred its chasing, but she knew it was still functional. She had refilled her magazines, clamping several more clips of blessed shells to her belt from the chapel’s armoury. With little access to las or stub-weapon ammunition, she knew the situation for the others was probably even worse.

  ‘If we are alone, then we die here. On hallowed ground,’ she said, quietly enough for only Raul to hear. ‘And we take as many of the unholy abominations with us as we can.’

  He cocked his head, the curl of a smile forming on his lips. ‘So be it.’

  Almost an hour later, the pitch in the distant symphony of noises echoing through the city intensified, growing louder as it drew nearer. Rising to kneel behind the blood-matted barricade, she listened to the reverberating dirge of screams and the staccato of chattering gunfire. She pushed the noise to the back of her mind, and forced herself to focus through the growing fatigue.

  ‘Vigilance,’ she told herself. Her body ached from her old wounds. She closed her eyes. Tysseris had been bad. The line had pushed back into the war camp on so many occasions that even she, ordinarily kept from the front, had fought enough to be considered something of a veteran. Those six years on Tysseris had been terror; facing the grotesque Togorans had been a living nightmare. But at least then the enemy had clear strategy, and could be killed by one well-placed bolter shell. These xenos were something else entirely.

  Smoke obscured Sygera’s moons, and the gloom was darker than it had been on any other night, thanks to the loss of power. The sightings were becoming more frequent, with alarm being called every ten minutes or so. It was nerve-wracking, knowing that they were so near, yet waiting. Lucia’s tenacity kept her calm. She knew that most of the others looked to her. If she faltered, their spirits would break. And so, she would not falter.

  The wreckage of the two xenos lay amidst the macabre carpet of the army they had slaughtered. Most of the human bodies had been moved and placed under ta
rps, but much of the mess still remained. On several occasions, Lucia thought she saw the chrome remains of the xenos stir: a twitch of a razor claw, or a sickly glow in hollow eye sockets. She attributed it to a glint of light reflecting in its eye, or the emerald retinal flare that still marred her vision.

  Lucia scowled as she saw Sera approaching her along the barricade. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘I want to help!’ the girl protested. Somehow she’d found an ornately chased autopistol, which she was clutching tightly. Lucia saw both fear and eagerness in her green eyes. She took the pistol away from the girl, nonetheless.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘I took it from Kallen. He had it in his bag,’ Sera explained.

  Lucia sighed. ‘Naturally. Now go back inside. You are not a soldier.’

  Sera glanced defiantly towards the militia manning the barricades. ‘Neither are they. There aren’t any soldiers anymore. Just people that don’t want to wait and die. I want to help. I know how to shoot a gun. And how to reload it. And I don’t want to wait for those… things… to kill me. I’d rather die fighting!’

  Lucia almost turned away, even if Sera’s words had a truth to them she could not deny. But then she saw the fire in the girl’s eyes.

  ‘Please,’ Sera pleaded. ‘Otherwise I’ll grab rocks and throw them if they come again.’

  Lucia sighed again, resigned. She placed the autopistol back into Sera’s hands and gave her a stern glare. ‘Fine. But do not fire until I fire, and if I, or the enforcer, give an order, you will follow it. If I tell you to run, you run. Do you understand?’

  Sera nodded eagerly. ‘Yes. Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Very well,’ Lucia agreed. ‘Then stay on the steps of the convent. If they come, get behind the barricades and do as I say.’ And with that, Lucia returned to what remained of the makeshift wall to continue her vigil.

  The Sister jolted from her reverie as the keening wail of one of the invaders’ aircraft scythed overhead, skimming the rooftops. It was the first in hours. She gritted her teeth and scrunched her eyes shut in agony as the sudden sound cut through every fibre of her being.

  As she recovered, she heard others shouting. ‘Sister,’ Raul called, pointing down the alley near his section of the line. ‘I think they’re coming.’

  Hearing the distant screaming and gunfire echoing nearer, she readied her boltgun and saw three huge skeletal shapes shambling towards Raul’s dazed line. One of the ‘dead’ xenos lying out beyond her barricade was rising as well, draped in its tattered mockery of human flesh. She saw the gouge inflicted by her chainsword earlier was all but mended, and she cursed whatever vile sorcery allowed these things to repair themselves.

  Lucia blinked once to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, and upon seeing the rest of the defenders, Raul aside, gawking in horror at the rising abomination, she shouted a war cry. ‘Purge the xenos! If they rise again, we shall slay them again!’ Sighting down her boltgun, she fired a controlled burst at the creature as it started shambling towards her. The rattle of militia stubguns joined her bolter’s fury, and the thing’s metallic exoskeleton deformed, jolting back from the impacts.

  It kept coming.

  It howled dead static, and Lucia gritted her teeth, firing again and again. It would have to get through her to get to the people she’d sworn to protect. She would see that it never made it that far.

  It fell a second time and she glanced around, noticing the tide of people running from two of the other alleys towards the convent, dozens of survivors and fighters just paces ahead of yet more of the xenos. They loped forward, their ragged shrouds of human viscera glistening in the baleful moonlight as much as their half-metre-long talons and their hollow emerald eye sockets.

  This was it, she thought. This was how it ended. Her heart thundered, and the surging adrenaline heightened her senses to the deadly focus of raging battle.

  She turned and fired at the xenos descending upon the enforcer’s line. His shotgun blasts were staggering them back, and he lobbed his remaining krak grenade into them, toppling the first.

  Another almost fell to the combined fire of a dozen stubbers, jolting back several times, its skeletal armour pockmarked by hundreds of indentations, but it was Lucia’s fire that shattered its skull. The last reached them, knocking the enforcer aside with a backhand, and shredding the militia while Lucia reloaded, disembowelling men and women as they tried to run. It wasn’t until Raul rose and unleashed a point-blank volley that it finally fell.

  The mass of fleeing men, women and children pouring through the alley had now reached the barricade on the other side of Lucia, and she wheeled around, even as she noticed the second of the fallen xenos on Raul’s barricade rising again. They would have to deal with it on their own.

  To her frustration, most of the militia were already firing. She took some satisfaction to see Sera, to her side, holding fire, waiting for Lucia’s order. The bullets cut through the last of the approaching crowd in the attempt to stop the three xenos in close pursuit. Shaking her head in disgust and rage, Lucia fired over the head of a screaming woman, knocking back the scarecrow abomination about to cut her down, but not before the woman fell to the indiscriminate gunfire of the militia.

  With the militia, Sera included, firing with full abandon, the relentless hail of stub-bullets and cracking lasfire put one of the xenos down while Lucia’s bolter was focused elsewhere. Lucia fired a controlled burst at another, blasting its skeletal limbs from its body in quick succession. A third xenos vaulted the barricade close by and disembowelled two of the militia with a single sweep of its claw.

  It wheeled towards Sera, who shrieked in terror and stumbled away, drenched in the gore of the two men who had stood beside her. Lucia shouted to get its attention, shooting it in the back. Sparks flew, and it spun around in an instant, lashing its other talon at her with startling speed. She leaped back, feeling the hissing blades narrowly miss her. It moved after her and Lucia fired her remaining ammunition at point-blank range, knocking it back to create distance.

  Dropping her empty bolter and drawing her damaged chainsword, she lunged towards it as it staggered. With a desperate battle cry, she delivered a series of wild swings, the chainsword rattling as it revved. There was no precision or finesse to her attacks, just the brute force of desperate survival instincts and zeal-fuelled rage. Her onslaught drove it back, even as it lashed at her, its claw scraping across her side. She felt one of the blades punch through her armour, across her lower ribs. Screaming, she took her chainblade in both hands, and brought it sideways in a wide arc across its thorax, hacking through its metallic spinal column.

  It fell in two, and Lucia staggered back, the agony of the wound, however vestigial, momentarily overwhelming her. The xenos crawled towards her, dragging its severed torso across the blood-slick cobbles.

  Seeing it stagger a few more times as the militia put fire into it, she kicked out savagely before swinging her chainsword in a downward arc. She bludgeoned it down, and lunged forward to kick it again in the skull; stamping again and again until it ceased its spasmodic jolting.

  Lucia wanted nothing more than to step back and take a momentary breath, but it was not over. The thunder of adrenaline pulsed through her like an unstoppable tide. She searched for Sera, but could not see her. She saw Raul finish the remaining creature with repeated slams of his shock maul even as two more of them emerged from the alley behind them.

  ‘Behind you!’ she shouted, her voice hoarse. He wheeled around and fired the last of his ammunition. She would have rushed to his aid were it not for the trio of cadaverous giants erupting from the gloom near her own position, and the rising form of one of the fallen ones outside the barricade. Attempting to vault over the low barricade in the direction of the rising xenos, she stumbled at it, delivering the same savagery towards it until it ceased moving.

  The warning shouts of the militia behind her, and a howl of white noise, prompted her to wheel around. Another nigh
tmare, in full charge, slammed into her and flung her back nearly five metres with a backhand. She landed hard, her armour absorbing the impact. Noticing that her armour was cleaved open over her midriff, she struggled to her knees, biting back the pain. Thankfully, the electrical crackle of the xenos talons seemed to have cauterised the wound. She dimly noted a roaring sound from somewhere above, but ignored it as the xenos closed the distance towards her with its stalking gait. Disarmed, she raised her gauntleted right hand, extending and revving up the small bonesaw in her medicae gauntlet as a last attempt to ward off its killing strike.

  And then it died.

  Incandescent blue plasma-fire engulfed the creature. The flash burned her retinas, momentarily blinding her and leaving yet another searing after-image in her blinking eyes. The blazing husk of the xenos was crushed under the immense, black-armoured bulk of the giant that landed upon it.

  Letting out a ragged gasp, Lucia rose to her feet and saw the carnage unfold around her. Five towering shapes of hulking ceramite were among the human defenders. Five of the Emperor’s angels of death. They wore massive jump packs on their backs, their thrusters still glowing a vivid, infernal orange. She hadn’t seen them arrive, and gasped, gawking at their sudden presence.

  Dazed from the pain, Lucia could do little other than watch them finish off the remaining xenos. Though the abominations were just as tall as the massive forms of the armoured Space Marines, the transhuman giants defeated them quickly enough; ending them with precise shots from their bolt pistols and quick slashes of their chainswords. She watched a Space Marine struggle with one of the xenos, locked in a deadly grapple as he repeatedly bashed it back with the pommel of his chainsword before shooting it three times in the torso, blowing it apart.

  The other four moved about the plaza, their chainswords dismembering the downed xenos to prevent them from rising again. Their jet-black ceramite plate clashed with their ghost-white corvid helms, and when Lucia saw the sinister heraldry of jawless skulls on crossed scythes emblazoning their right pauldrons, she recognised them for what they were.