Lesser Evils - Toby Frost Read online

  Vaughn nodded. ‘Let’s go get our girl.’

  They hurried down two flights of emergency stairs. As Vaughn stepped out, a figure leaned around a buttress, bolter in hand, and let rip.

  The wall beside him cracked and as he dropped the shells detonated, blasting chunks out of the rockcrete. He fired, hit the woman’s shoulder and saw the beam ricochet off her polished armour. Something roared behind him, and a pellet of superheated plasma blew straight through the Battle Sister. She fell dead. No amount of faith could override a wound like that.

  A narrow window let a slit of sunlight into the corridor. Vaughn stepped over, tilted his head and saw little dark figures spilling out of the buildings further up the ridge. Voices carried on the wind. They must have caught the Sisters at morning prayers, for most of them were running out of the domed chapter-house at the far end of the complex.

  ‘We’ll use the connecting tunnels.’ It’ll be murder, he thought, but preferable to what’s outside. He thought of the narrow walkways on the mountainside, the long drop into the canyon if he slipped, and reflected that he’d rather take a bolter round to the chest than fall into the abyss.

  Together they ran into another storeroom. A hulking figure lurched out of the shadow, metal arms raised. Vaughn put three las-shots through its chest, and as it dropped he saw that it was just a menial servitor. They left it lying on its back, broken but still moving. Its legs still paced the air like a fallen clockwork toy, its bloodless head turning from side to side.

  Vaughn stopped and looked around the corner. A vaulted corridor had been carved into the rock, twice his height and seemingly endless. He recalled the map and Harsek’s briefing. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The Custodium Penetentia is down here. Tash, have you got the things?’

  She nodded. ‘Medicae’s all ready, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ He peeked around the corner again. Fifty yards up the corridor, a Sister ran from one side to the other, her robes flapping behind her. ‘This is going to get nasty,’ he said. ‘Follow me and keep going. And if you can avoid being taken alive…’

  Fane loaded a fresh power pack.

  ‘Right.’ Vaughn took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go!’

  He ran out, bent over to present a smaller target. Vaughn reached the far wall and threw his back against it as gunfire roared down the passageway. He raised his gun and sent half a dozen las-rounds back in return, hardly bothering to aim. A tapestry fell from the wall, smouldering. ‘Iconoclast!’ a woman screamed over the gunfire. ‘Blasphemer!’

  The vaults stood out slightly from the wall at the base. They gave about twelve centimetres’ worth of cover. The team worked their way forward, each firing across the corridor to pin the Sisters back up the corridor. The air was a lattice of bolter shells and searing hot beams. One of the Battle Sisters fell into the corridor clutching her gut and was dragged into cover by the ankles, howling as las-shots burned the floor around her.

  Vaughn pointed. Ten metres further up, a doorway lead off to the right. ‘Down there!’

  Tash was first. She sprinted out, weaving as she ran, and Fane and Nietzin covered her way with suppressing fire. Vaughn crept forward until he was nearly opposite the doorway, then leaped. He landed awkwardly, rolled and was inside.

  Tash grinned at him. She was holding a grenade. She leaned around the doorway and hurled it back into the corridor. There was a loud, echoing bang. Plaster filled the corridor. Vaughn glimpsed a Sister carrying some huge gun, a heavy bolter perhaps, stumbling from the force of the explosion. Nietzin ran across the corridor and inside. Fane ducked in after him.

  The room was little more than a landing over a set of stairs. They ran down the staircase into a bare, whitewashed room. A monitor unit stood at one end. Half a dozen screens flickered over the console, showing the cells of the penetentia.

  ‘You’re bleeding, old man,’ Fane said.

  Nietzin ran a hand across his forehead. ‘A stone chip must’ve caught me. I’m all right.’

  Tash was at the far end of the room, before a massive door. ‘Problem,’ she said, turning. ‘Bad problem.’

  ‘Like we didn’t have any before,’ Fane said.

  ‘The door to the cells is code-locked. We can’t get in.’

  Nietzin cursed. ‘It must run off a different system to the main controls. Damn it!’

  Vaughn glanced at the stairs. It would be a matter of seconds before the Sisters gathered their forces and resumed the attack. ‘Well,’ he snapped, ‘can’t you make it open?’

  ‘I’ll have to,’ Nietzin replied. ‘Otherwise we’re trusting on the Emperor to send us a miracle.’ His expression told Vaughn how likely he thought that would be.

  There was sudden noise on the staircase. Tash ducked into the stairwell, and the flash of her lasgun turned the stairs into a blaze of strobing light. A voice cried out and an armoured body crashed against the wall.

  ‘There’s a load of them,’ Tash said. ‘It looks like they’ll – grenade!’

  Something small and cylindrical bounced hissing down the stairs. Tash lunged, grabbed it, lobbed the cylinder back up the stairs and threw herself onto the ground. Vaughn ducked, raising his plated forearms across his face – and nothing happened.

  Tash got up, blinking. Vaughn opened his eyes and saw a cloud of thick grey smoke spilling down the stairs. He smelt burning chemicals tinged with incense. The stuff seemed to clog his nose and mouth. ‘Smoke!’

  He yanked his rebreather up, shoved it over his mouth. He saw Tash stumble back, retching as she pulled her mask on.

  A buzzing, ripping sound came from above. Boots clattered on metal stairs. A Sister of Battle charged through the smoke like some furious spirit, holding a long metal shield in front of her. Nietzin’s plasma gun blasted straight through shield and woman, and the hail of fire from Fane’s lasgun tore the soldier behind her apart. Then a great bull of a woman, almost Nietzin’s height and far broader, rushed them. A brazier on her backpack threw coals out behind her; inscribed skulls hung around her neck. In her hands was a roaring chainsword more than a metre long.

  ‘Die!’ she bellowed. Fane leaped back, lasgun forgotten, grabbing for his lucky pistol. Nietzin peered down the plasma gun, struggling to get a sight.

  ‘Die, filth!’

  The sword was too big for the room, perhaps too big even for her. She swung the blade as if to hurl it away, and Vaughn ducked low and the sword whipped over his head, smashing out half the monitor screens in a shower of sparks. The shock jarred the woman’s arms. She staggered back, swinging the weapon up like a fisherman hauling in a net. Tash dropped and rolled out of the way, and as the Battle Sister swung her ponderous weapon, Nietzin fired.

  He missed her. The plasma shot caught the chainsword halfway down the blade and blew it apart. Fragments tore across the room like shrapnel. Fane dived onto the floor. Like a thrashing snake, the chain whipped through the air, hit the wall, flicked back and struck its owner in the thigh. She bellowed, dropped and Fane pounced on her.

  The room was almost silent then. Fane looked up. His pistol, an ornate, flashing thing worthy of a hive-gangster, was pressed against the woman’s head.

  ‘You want me to kill her?’ Fane’s rebreather distorted his voice.

  Beneath him, the woman struggled and gasped. Her own mask had fallen down, but she seemed at least partly immune to the gas. She was muttering between her teeth, snarling out some catechism that Vaughn couldn’t understand.

  She didn’t look like any soldier he’d ever known. Back in the Guard, he had encountered occasional commissars with the rabid look that she now wore, like an enraged animal caught behind bars. But not many of them. The Sisters knew how to fight, he thought – they were experts – but they made him think more of lunatics than soldiers.

  ‘Not yet,’ he replied. He pulled his rebreather down. ‘We’ve got the prioress!’ he shouted up the stairs.
‘Stay back or we’ll kill her!’

  The woman on the ground managed to control herself enough to speak. ‘I have no fear of dying,’ she proclaimed. Her voice was deep and loud, a preacher’s voice. ‘The Emperor shall shield me!’

  It was the prioress herself. Vaughn glanced at the doorway. Tash was watching the stairs. A voice, surprisingly high and feminine, called down, ‘Touch the prioress and you’ll die!’

  ‘Tash?’ Vaughn said. ‘Throw me the cuffs.’

  He looked down at the prioress. ‘Now,’ he said, snapping a pair of excruciators closed over her wrists, ‘it’s time to act like a martyr and endure.’

  She was silent for a moment. All the rage seemed to have gone out of her. Perhaps, Vaughn thought, she was gearing herself not to dish out pain, but to receive it silently. ‘I did not expect to be taken alive,’ she said.

  Fane shoved the barrel of his pistol into the flesh of her thick neck, and she pulled away from him; as much from his leering face than his gun. ‘Woman, who cares what you think? If I pull this trigger, your brain will be so much red mist, understand? All of your holy talk, it’s all the same to me. You don’t become a martyr unless you’re dead.’

  ‘Leave it,’ Vaughn said. He met the ex-ganger’s eyes for a moment, and there was something in them beyond casual viciousness and amusement in snuffing out life. For a moment Vaughn wondered if Fane had some deeper argument with the Ecclesiarchy. Whatever it was, it was getting in the way of the job. ‘Fane. I said leave her be.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ Fane replied, making it sound like a threat. He holstered the pistol and stood up. ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you, holy or not.’

  The prioress looked back at him as if he was not quite human. ‘You’ll burn,’ she replied, and the calm in her voice worried Vaughn more than her anger.

  ‘Go and help Tash cover the stairs,’ Vaughn said. ‘Well, what’re you waiting for?’

  ‘Right,’ Fane said. He sounded disgusted at having to obey.

  Tash waited by the stairs, crouched down to get a better view. She would have looked sullen and morose even without the black soot across her eyes. She looked round, met Vaughn’s glance, then scuttled over as Fane took her place. Tash ducked down beside the prioress, tiny next to her armoured bulk, and reached into her pack.

  ‘Keep this woman away from me,’ the prioress declared. ‘She is… tainted.’

  ‘Sedative,’ Tash replied, filling a syringe. ‘This won’t hurt you, but it’ll slow you down.’ She pushed the syringe into the prioress’ neck. The woman simply glared at her, as if challenging her to do worse. ‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Tash added, ‘I don’t like you either.’

  Vaughn looked at the prioress. ‘We need you to open the doors,’ he said.

  The prioress shook her head. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ she replied. ‘What’s down there in the cells has to stay here. I suppose you’re looking for treasure,’ she added. ‘Relics to sell to some seedy prelate, or to melt down for gems. I can tell you that what’s down there won’t get you rich, that’s for sure. You’ll be lucky if she only kills you.’

  ‘A possible emergent psyker,’ Vaughn replied. ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’ The prioress glared at Vaughn, as if her stare could burn him. ‘And you came to liberate her? She’s open to the warp. If a daemon was to possess her – Thor protect us–’ Understanding crept across her face. ‘You’re cultists, aren’t you? Servants of the Ruinous Powers.’ As best as she could with her wrists tied, she made the sign of the aquila across her chest. ‘Salvate me, Imperator.’

  ‘No. That’s not us.’ The accusation stung Vaughn. He knew about the renegades on Tranch and the Siege of Vraks, about the murders and rituals they were said to have carried out. The idea of being mistaken for such creatures disturbed him. ‘Listen to me. We’re not cultists and we’re not traitors. But we’re taking her with us, understand? I don’t care how much that seems like sacrilege to you. Once we’re gone you can atone for losing her all you need. But she comes with us, and that’s that.’ Vaughn drew his bolt pistol. ‘Get the doors open. Now.’

  For a moment she looked uncertain, and then a sort of hard calm came over her features. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m warning you–’

  ‘You’ll get nothing.’ She raised her chin, as if she was about to spit. ‘You can do with me as you want. I belong to the Master of Mankind. Better that I should die a thousand times than let you in there. In the name of the saints, I shall endure as Lord Thor endured the agonies of Vandire–’

  ‘Hey!’

  They looked round. The prioress stopped in mid-rant, like a broken vox-caster. For once, Nietzin was smiling.

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen: one miracle,’ he said, and the door to the cells slid open.

  Sister Cerra, 22, entered the Sisterhood at 14. Completed Novice and Cantus stages, in the process of Constantia training in preparation to become a full Sister.

  Vaughn marched down the dark corridor, turning the words over in his mind. Down here, with the cells and rats, you needed something else to think about.

  Reports of minor psychic phenomena towards end of Cantus training. Suspected psychic anomalies intensified over past year: four months ago, removed for spiritual reclamation and purgation of the soul.

  The walls were rough and damp, the air clammy. At his side Nietzin, who knew more about the Emperor’s penal system than Vaughn, looked tired and grim.

  Four months down here. I’d rather be shot.

  Chanting came from ahead. The low drone made Vaughn’s skin prickle. He checked his gun without breaking stride, then glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Fane shoved the prioress along. Despite the shot of pacifier serum that Tash had given her, she seemed hardly less alert than before. No doubt about it, the Sisters of Battle were tough.

  ‘This is not for you,’ she said. ‘You should not look upon our work here.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Vaughn stopped before a broad door. The view-slit was padlocked shut, sealed with a prayer-text and a red lump of wax.

  Tash came forward to the door, tugging her medical bag into her hands. Vaughn glanced at Nietzin, and nodded.

  The big man kicked the door as if to stamp it down. It burst open and Vaughn ran in, gun up. ‘Nobody move!’ he shouted, and he stopped, horrified.

  A figure stood at the far side of the room. It wore a loose white gown, the arms raised like wings. The head lolled: the hair was cropped. There were symbols painted onto her scalp in what looked like blood. Two hooded figures knelt before the girl: one read from a book, the other swung a small censer as she chanted. Neither looked round.

  Vaughn stared at the scene for a moment, taking in details. The room reeked of incense. He saw that the girl’s arms were raised by chains; that her skin was pale and raw; that the wall on the left was covered in a mass of parchments. Devices hung from pegs on the wall: whips; saws; long pins attached to sacred parchments; a thing like a mixture of a stylus and soldering-iron; and other items that, even after years in the worst parts of the Imperial Guard, Vaughn had never seen before.

  One of the robed figures started to rise.

  ‘I said don’t move!’ Vaughn yelled.

  Nietzin blasted the first chanter. Superheated blood spattered the wall, hissing on the parchments. The second robed figure took a step backwards. The older man sidestepped, so as not to risk hitting the girl. Then he blew the second chanter’s head into steam. The censer clattered on the stone floor.

  ‘Torturers,’ Nietzin said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘It’s a ritual, you fool,’ the prioress spat. Vaughn could see the effort in her face, fighting down the effects of the sedative. ‘Her powers have to be locked inside her to stop them getting out – sealed with fire. A creature like that draws the warp. The right sigils need to be cut into the flesh, to trap the power of the
warp inside–’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Vaughn said. ‘Get her down.’

  Tash hurried past, syringe in hand, and sank it into the girl’s neck. Then she started to help Nietzin unfasten the chains.

  ‘I called it in,’ Nietzin said. ‘Ten minutes to extraction.’

  Nobody moved in the corridor. ‘Careful,’ Vaughn said. ‘Careful…’

  He crept back down the passage, his eyes flicking from wall to wall. Nobody stood behind the buttresses, waiting for the moment to attack. They can’t have gone, he thought. The Sisters of Battle would never give up like that.

  Tash followed, then Nietzin, watching the two prisoners. A dose of torpor had rendered Sister Cerra drowsy and confused, but at least compliant. If she did have psychic powers, she didn’t show them. Saints be praised for that, Vaughn thought. He glanced back as they hurried down the corridor. The prioress glared at him through a haze of drugs like a furious drunk.

  As they drew near to the cogitator-chapel, a set of harsh metallic coughs broke the air, rising into a single, massed roar. Fane yelled, ‘Chainswords!’

  A figure dashed around the corner, hardly armoured, only half-clothed, waving a whirling blade over its head. Smoke belched from the weapon’s exhausts. A voice screamed from behind a mask of parchments wrapped bandage-styled over the face.

  Tash shot her dead, three las-blasts straight through the chest. As the Sister fell, her saw nicked her unarmoured leg and threw gore across the wall. More devotees ran out, whirling chainswords and yelling praises and threats, and Vaughn’s men cut them down.

  Someone howled behind him. He spun round, expecting a trap, and saw the prioress leap at Sister Cerra. Even half-drugged, her hands tied, the prioress could fight. Cerra was down in a second, clubbed by two heavy fists. The prioress locked her thumbs on Cerra’s windpipe.

  Vaughn didn’t hesitate. He emptied half his gun’s power pack into the prioress’s side.

  He turned and fired down the corridor, covering Nietzin as he reloaded. Someone screamed and fell by the chapel doorway. A novice armed with an autogun leaned around one of the buttresses. Fane snatched his pistol from his belt, raised it and aimed in one motion and put four rounds into her chest.