Execution - Rachel Harrison Read online

  ‘Run!’ Crys shouts. ‘Run, you great big fool!’

  Zane wavers. More rounds impact against her shield. The cracks spread.

  ‘Varn!’ Raine shouts with her. ‘The charges!’

  The kine-shield fails when Varn is seconds away from the shield’s edge. He tries to throw his bag of demo charges the rest of the way, but it never leaves his hands. The rounds from the wall-mounted guns are made to punch through tanks. They punch through Varn with no trouble at all. Even over the racket, Raine hears Yulia Crys cry out. Then the demo charges Varn was carrying go up and Raine is thrown backwards. The world becomes a series of sensations:

  Heat.

  Light.

  Noise.

  Then something else, a stinging, like knives running over her bones. Sound drops away. The siege drops away. Raine hits the dirt, landing flat on her back. She watches as the explosion that killed Varn washes upwards and away from her across the surface of the void shield. The explosion hurled her straight through it. The ringing in her ears fades. The fortress guns can track no steeper. They strafe along the line on the other side of the shield, churning the earth, splintering rock and armour and bone. Raine lets out a slow breath. Then she hears something else. A booming voice coming from inside the fortress.

  The Imperium of Man is dead, it says. The Imperium of Man is dead.

  Raine gets to her feet, her mind reeling at the rebels’ blasphemies. She’s still reeling from the explosion, too, but she doesn’t have time for that.

  The Imperium of Man is dead.

  The Wyldfolk surround her, burned and battered. Depleted. There are eighteen of them still breathing, and only fifteen standing. Nuria Lye is already bandaging wounds and staunching bleeds. Crys is alive, though. And Zane. Andren and his Duskhounds are with them, their armour scorched, peeled back to silver. He looks to her. They all do.

  Raine speaks up over the distant voice.

  ‘They say the Imperium of Man is dead,’ she says. ‘But the Imperium of Man is every one of us. Every soldier. Every tank on the field. Every ship in orbit. Every single faithful heart from here to Holy Terra. Soldier, citizen, priest and pilgrim.’

  She looks up at the fortress, and the ragged banner emblazoned with the baleful eye.

  ‘We are many. We are strong. Most of all, we are right.’

  Severina Raine spits blood and ash onto the ground.

  ‘And that is something you cannot kill.’

  Raine drags Crys to her feet and into the shadow of a crumpled Chimera chassis. The hull is caved in, flattening the crew compartment. This close, Raine can smell old blood.

  ‘The wall,’ Raine says. ‘Can you still breach it?’

  Crys looks down. Her left arm is limp and useless, the wrist completely shattered. Nuria Lye sets to strapping it with the supplies from her kit.

  ‘I favour my right hand, so yes.’

  ‘And with the charges you have?’

  Crys looks past Raine for a second, out beyond the curve of the shield.

  ‘Without Varn’s?’ she says.

  It seems an effort for her to say his name. Her throat works and her eyes flicker, but when she looks back, she’s composed. Everything pushed down inside. Raine knows this, because it’s the way you keep going. The way you get your duty done.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Crys says. ‘But I’ll need Gereth Awd, if he’s still walking.’

  ‘To help you set the charges?’ Raine says.

  Crys smiles, all teeth.

  ‘No, sir,’ she says. ‘I need his flamer tanks.’

  Raine watches from behind the shell of the tank as Crys sets her improvised charge against the fortress wall. They are breaching at the foot of one of three bastions, equidistant around the central keep. One for the Wyldfolk, one for the Mistvypers, and one for the Hartkin. Three cuts in the fortress’ flanks. Three wounds that will not close.

  Crys stays low and flat against the wall. She picks a join in the stone where it will be weakest and packs it with grenades. First, two melta bombs. Next, her own bag of demo charges, except two, which Raine told her to save. Lastly, she binds the lot together with Awd’s flamer pack and sets a detonator line. All the while, that voice echoes from inside the fortress, bellowing heresies at the sky.

  ‘The emplacements and the guards are silenced,’ Andren Fel says. ‘They won’t know we’re here until we tell them.’

  There are few who can approach Raine without her hearing it, but Andren Fel can. He crouches down beside her, his hellgun slung. The snarling face on his mask is painted anew with spatters of blood. There are deep scores from knife blades on his carapace plate.

  Raine looks past him to where Lydia Zane waits. The psyker has her eyes tightly closed. Blood has dried around her mouth and nose. It makes her look like a winter-thin wolf that has been at the kill.

  ‘Remember what I said,’ Raine says to Andren.

  ‘Protect Crys,’ he says. ‘Protect Zane. No matter what.’

  Andren looks back at the psyker.

  ‘Though what I’ve seen Zane do…’ he says, in a low voice.

  ‘Makes you wonder who needs protecting,’ answers Lydia Zane, as her eyes flicker open.

  Andren sighs.

  ‘No offence meant,’ he says. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t do that.’

  Zane grins. It makes her look even more wolfish.

  ‘None taken,’ she says. ‘Though perhaps you should not think so loudly, captain.’

  Andren shakes his head. The vox crackles in Raine’s ear.

  ‘Mistvypers, ready to breach.’

  ‘Hartkin?’ Raine says. ‘Are you ready?’

  More crackling. Raine’s chest aches. She realises it’s because she’s holding her breath.

  ‘Aye,’ comes the answer, after a moment. ‘Just had to quell a little resistance here, commissar.’

  ‘Good,’ Raine says. ‘Crys?’

  She doesn’t have to see the combat engineer to know she’s grinning.

  ‘More than ready,’ Crys says.

  ‘All squads,’ Raine says. ‘Breach.’

  Raine ducks down behind the cover and jams her hands over her ears. The Antari do the same.

  A few seconds later, Yulia Crys’ improvised charge detonates. The noise is catastrophic, even with the distance and cover between them and the blast. Raine hears fragments of rock clatter against Andren’s carapace armour. She clearly hears Crys whoop in the aftermath. When Raine looks over the cover, she sees why.

  There’s a hole blown clear through the fortress wall. Fire clings to the stonework. Some of it has run like slag from the heat. It’s an impressive mess.

  ‘She has got a gift,’ says Andren from beside her, and he laughs.

  ‘Good work, Crys,’ Raine says over the vox.

  She sees Crys salute her from where she kneels behind shattered lumps of masonry.

  ‘Anything that’s built, sir,’ she says.

  ‘We followed the smell down into the lower levels under the scholam.’

  Raine thinks back to the dank tunnel. The sagging support beams. Water ran everywhere down there, dirty and black.

  ‘There were three of us. Me, Lem and Bayti.’

  Raine hasn’t thought of them in a long time. Lem with her wide eyes, like the porcelain dishes the drill abbots used. How she could turn a knife on you with just a flick of her thin wrists. Bayti with his void-born height and pale skin.

  ‘We had fuel-lit torches that made the shadows flicker. No pistols, just short training blades.’ She pauses, remembering. ‘Our shoes were soft and thin. They let in all of the water.’

  Raine takes a sip of her tea.

  ‘The nest was in one of the old store-chambers. You could see where the sin-thieves had worried away at the stone and metal to make a hole. How it had been made wider over time. Cut
by claws and teeth and smoothed by the water and the passing of the vermin.’

  The whole tunnel had been dark. Gloam itself was dark. But that hole had seemed the darkest thing she’d ever seen.

  ‘The door to the store chamber had been closed for decades,’ Raine says. ‘It was frozen stiff and warped in the frame. The handle was rusted and weak. Even if we could have broken it down, the vermin would have fled by the time we’d done so.’

  Andren looks at her.

  ‘You had to go through the hole made by the rats,’ he says.

  The explosion didn’t just make a mess of the stone and metal of the fortress. Dozens of rebels lie crumpled and broken just inside the breach, caked in blood and thick stone dust. Some haven’t had the grace to die. They gasp and whisper and drag themselves after the Antari, digging their hands into the churned earth like claws. The Duskhounds finish them with single shots from their hellguns.

  ‘Keep moving,’ Raine cries. ‘Into the bastion!’

  Even as she gestures to the nearby structure with her sword, a tide of rebels spills out of the base of it. A klaxon blares. The Antari cannot afford to stop, so they push into the Drastians. The gunfight quickly becomes a melee. A press. Raine draws her sword, cutting her way through turncoats and heretics. Not all are soldiers. Raine sees the remains of courtly dress and serving clothes alike. Every one of them has marked their face with that same symbol. Some are raw and bleeding. They smell as if they’ve been dead a week, their black eyes glassy and unblinking. Their breath is hot on her face. She is hit with the butt of a gun. A knife slices her arm. None of it goes unanswered as she strikes back with sword and pistol, pushing through into the bastion. In scant moments between each swing and each cut, she catches sight of the muted grey-and-green splinter camouflage of the Wyldfolk, and the black carapace and red eye-lenses of the Duskhounds. The robes of Lydia Zane. Raine can hear the psyker snapping bones and armour alike, even over the racket.

  Raine smashes the butt of her pistol into the face of a man who tries to bite her. No, not a man. Not anymore. The impact breaks apart the pattern carved into his face, and he sinks at her feet. She feels the press start to ease. The shouting eases with it. The smell doesn’t. If anything, it gets worse.

  Raine looks around, catching her breath. She is inside the bastion. The Antari are all still with her.

  ‘Keep moving,’ she says.

  They all do, save for one. Daven Wyck is crouched over one of the rebels, his knee pressing on the soldier’s throat.

  ‘The Wyldfolk have you,’ he says, sing-song.

  Raine sees the rebel’s hands opening and closing, scrabbling at the stone floor.

  ‘Wyck,’ she says.

  He draws the combat blade from his belt and buries it in the rebel’s stomach in one swift movement.

  ‘Cuts from us always kill,’ he says, with a smile.

  He pulls the blade free and gets to his feet.

  ‘Yes, commissar,’ he says.

  ‘Quick kills,’ she says. ‘We are not animals.’

  Every Antari she’s met has grey eyes. When Raine was first assigned to the regiment, she thought that they were all the same grey. After a while she began to notice the differences. Wyck’s are a cold grey, like chips of flint. Right now, the grey is almost swallowed by the black of his pupils.

  Those eyes flicker down to the combat blade in his hand, then Wyck wipes it against the leg of his fatigues. It leaves a black stain. His smile disappears slowly, like clouds moving in front of the sun.

  ‘Understood, commissar,’ he says, softly. ‘My apologies.’

  Commissar Raine follows after him up the stairs, knowing that sooner or later, she’s going to have to do something about Daven Wyck.

  Raine and the Wyldfolk push their way up the bastion’s central stairway, towards the mounted gun. The Mistvypers do the same to the east, the Hartkin to the west. Despite the odds against them, the Antari still treat it like a contest.

  ‘Third level secured,’ says Odi over the vox.

  Wyck laughs.

  ‘Hurry your feet, Rom,’ he says. ‘We have already taken the fourth.’

  The sergeant of the Hartkin’s displeasure can be heard in his reply.

  ‘I bet you have,’ he says, over the sound of lasfire. ‘You have the Duskhounds, and the witch.’

  Wyck snorts a laugh.

  ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘Even with them slowing us down, we are still one level above you.’

  Zane bares her teeth in a scowl. Andren shakes his head. Neither get a chance to answer, because they are interrupted by a throaty bellow from the stairs leading up to the next level. A figure emerges, overmuscled, abhuman, clad in crimson armour. It is so big that the armour plates on its shoulders scrape along the walls. A slab shield protects it, ankle to throat. In its other hand it carries a power maul half as long as Raine is tall. Through the vision slit in the shield, Raine sees deep-set black eyes under a heavy brow.

  ‘Kill,’ the bullgryn says in a low, slow voice.

  Behind it, two more bullgryns clatter their weapons against their shields.

  ‘Kill!’ they echo.

  They thunder out of the stairwell and into the room, armour clanking, power mauls humming. The Antari cannot go backwards, and they cannot slip around them. It leaves them only one option.

  ‘Through them!’ Raine shouts.

  The lead bullgryn swings for her. Raine steps backwards, feeling the rush of air as the maul misses caving in her chest by inches. The head of the maul buries itself in the floor, shattering the stonework with a burst of energy. The bullgryn roars and wrenches it clear. Raine brings her sword down, but the bullgryn’s shield comes up. Her sword slides across it, putting a deep furrow in the metal without parting it. The bullgryn twists at the waist and swings again, pushing her further backwards. This time, she barely blocks with her own sword. The force of the blow rattles her arm, sends it numb to the shoulder. The maul comes down again. She blocks a second time, her back against the wall now. That arm isn’t numb anymore. It’s in agony, probably fractured in a dozen places. Her grip starts to loosen. The bullgryn is laughing, a wet, throaty bark. It twists and raises its maul again. Raine hears the distinct sound of hellgun fire from behind the bullgryn, punching into the few areas of exposed flesh on its back. The bullgryn roars. That’s the moment. The break in its guard. Raine spins away and the bullgryn drives its maul into the wall where she once stood. Stone and plascrete explode outwards. She feels a shard cut her face. Blood runs into her eyes.

  Raine jumps on the bullgryn’s back and grabs hold of its armoured collar. Her injured arm sings with pain. She yells and brings her sword down, cutting its head free from its shoulders. It takes her two strikes to get through the thick, overmuscled neck. More blood spatters into her eyes.

  The bullgryn’s headless body falls forward, crashing into the wall and sliding down it. Raine tumbles free. Somehow, she’s still holding on to her sword. She has to lean on the wall to get to her feet. The other two bullgryns are still standing, laying about them with their crackling mauls and bellowing wordlessly. The Wyldfolk are backing up, lasguns blazing. The bullgryns shrug off wounds that should slow them. Yulia Crys is busy firing at the second bullgryn when the first swings at her. Andren interposes himself and takes the hit. Raine hears his chestplate crack from across the room. His Duskhounds riddle the bullgryn with lasfire. Andren is on his knees, but he keeps his aim and fires too. The lasbolt tears out the bullgryn’s throat, and it falls backwards with a crash.

  The throat, Raine thinks. He is a Duskhound to his bones.

  Daven Wyck ducks under the remaining bullgryn’s swing and buries his combat blade between its armour plates. It bellows and knocks him clear off his feet with a thrust of its shield. He lands on his back and goes still. Raine only knows he’s still alive because she can hear him trying to get air. The bullgr
yn goes after him, roaring, Wyck’s knife still sticking out of its gut.

  Raine sheathes her sword and raises her pistol. Her vision swims as she takes a few steps closer. The bullgryn slides in and out of her gunsights. She blinks the blood out of her eyes.

  Then the bullgryn is lifted bodily into the air and slammed against the ceiling. It falls to the ground with a boom that rivals Crys’ improvised explosives. Raine can hear it panting wetly. Lydia Zane approaches, hand outstretched. She is bloodied, but serene. She flicks her wrist and drives the bullgryn up into the ceiling again and again, as if it weighs nothing. After the fourth impact, Raine can’t hear panting anymore.

  Well, not from the bullgryn, anyway.

  Daven Wyck eases himself onto his elbow. He is winded, his flak armour splintered and dented. His breathing skips and wheezes.

  Lydia Zane pulls his combat knife out of the bullgryn’s broken body and walks over to him.

  ‘Do not let me slow you down,’ she says, throwing the blade onto the ground.

  There’s a mixture of fury and fear in Wyck’s eyes. He snatches up his blade and gets to his feet.

  ‘Funny,’ he manages to say, between breaths. ‘Very funny.’

  Across the room, Andren Fel starts to laugh, though it clearly hurts him to do it.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ he says. ‘I really do.’

  ‘Bayti started talking in his starborn tongue,’ Raine says. ‘I hadn’t heard him do it since he first arrived at the scholam. I didn’t know it well, but I knew enough.’

  Raine remembers Bayti splashing backwards through that glossy water, his eyes glossy too.

  ‘It is an interpretive language. Heavily contextual. What he was saying either meant “can’t” or “won’t”.’

  ‘So, what did you do?’ Andren says.

  ‘I told him that there was no room for either can’t or won’t. That cowardice was a sin. I told him that the vermin would smell it and come for him. That they’d strip the sin from his bones and his flesh with it.’

  ‘Did he refuse?’ Andren asks.

  She remembers the way her fists had curled, ready to strike Bayti. Clammy palms. She remembers the way her heart hammered in her chest. Then, finally, she remembers the way Bayti had looked at her then, as so many others had since.