Repentia - Alec Worley Read online

  She snapped down the trigger lock and her Eviscerator rang a dirge of its own, declaring the arrival of its mistress.

  The Repentia bolted from her hiding place and raced across the ground-floor balcony, swooping her blade through both a cultist and the pipe behind him. Both her cut and her timing were perfect, as the severed column crushed a charging heretic. She vaulted over the fallen pipe as it rolled beneath her, boots splashing through the Traitor’s blood before ascending the first set of stairs.

  She saw one of the Battle Sisters high above peek through the railings of the balcony. The warrior administered a precise shot through the eye of a whooping cultist on the level below, detonating his skull. Another bolter shrieked from elsewhere, its wail dominating the Traitors’ clamour like the growl of an alpha predator cowing the rest of the pack. The shot drilled through the Battle Sister’s cover and blew her apart, drenching the walls in her blood.

  The heretics bayed like dogs, their chant echoing about the tower’s interior.

  ‘Blood! Blood! Blood for the Blood God!’

  The Repentia curdled with rage as she glared up at the bareheaded monster that had fired the shot. The heretics’ champion was a walking monolith, strong enough to steady the recoil of his bolter with a single hand. In his other paw, he carried a grotesque two-handed axe. He swung it idly it as he trudged up a ramp, climbing another balcony closer to the Battle Sisters and the holy book they would give their lives to protect.

  ‘Replenish my limbs,’ sang the Repentia as she sprang onto the next balcony. ‘Guide my onerous blade.’

  She sighted three more enemies and twisted the hilt of her chainsword, shielding herself as their autogun fire sparked against the flat of her whirring blade. She heard a stray round thump through her hood, punching off part of her ear as she closed on the shooters. The bodies of the three cultists offered her blade no resistance, as if her stroke had passed through nothing more than smoke. Drenched in their blood, the Repentia pounded up the next set of metal stairs, indifferent to the hiss of bullets in the air, the clang and whine of their impact upon the pipes and walls around her.

  ‘Restore my faltering spirit with hymns of glorious wrath.’

  As she emerged onto the next balcony, she saw the heretic champion bellowing at her from the level above, directing his troops towards her.

  The Repentia ducked as the sword of a Traitor flashed overhead from behind. Uncoiling herself, she drove the hilt of her chainsword into his chin, opening the brute’s stance just enough for her to cartwheel the blade down onto his neck. It sawed hungrily from shoulder to waist.

  The two halves of her attacker parted to reveal another Traitor Space Marine standing behind him. He raised his bolter, but her blade was already snarling towards his wrist. The heretic’s gun somersaulted through the air. His own severed hand convulsed against the trigger, driving three explosive rounds into its owner’s chest.

  ‘Clothe me in the armour of faith,’ she screamed. ‘Let grievous wounds touch my naked flesh as naught but falling snow.’

  Breathless, she stumbled onto the balcony where she had seen the Traitor champion. Her head felt like air, her chest tight, an ominous numbness seeping into her left arm.

  Someone leapt onto her back from behind a stack of parchment caskets. Sharp teeth found the side of her throat. The pain electrified her. Kicking the balcony railing, she shoved herself back, slamming the crazed cultist into an office door. She felt his skull ring against metal, tearing the teeth from her throat. She spun around, wild with rage, and threw her elbow deep into his jaw, smashing it askew. The cultist went limp and she caught him by the jacket, hauling him around to face two more heretics now firing at her from further around the balcony.

  She ran at them, trusting speed and fury would give her force enough to hold the cultist’s body aloft for the few seconds she needed.

  ‘Yet should I fall, my blood in martyrdom shall flow everlasting and drown the heretic foe.’

  She felt bullets thudding dead flesh, soaking up the barrage as she closed on them in seconds. Hurling the corpse aside, she revealed herself with a horizontal slash.

  Two headless bodies dropped to their knees as she dashed towards the Traitor champion waiting behind them.

  The bareheaded monster raised his bolter.

  ‘In Lucia’s name,’ she shrieked.

  She smashed the bolter aside with her chainsword and crashed into him with bone-breaking force, determined to drive him off the edge of the balcony and into the great pit beyond.

  It was like hitting a wall, the impact snapping something in her shoulder. But it was enough.

  Unbalanced by the ferocity of the Repentia’s attack, the Traitor champion lost his footing. The guard rail broke, bending as it gave way behind him, ushering them both into the abyss below.

  ‘Absolvo me in mortem.’

  No sooner had she spoken the words than her face slammed into the Traitor’s chest, the impact whipping the breath from her body. The tower’s pit had not claimed them. The Repentia rolled onto a floor that should not have been there. She snorted blood through a broken nose, her vision shimmering with tears of pain as she tried to comprehend what had happened. She lay on a large platform, knotted with bolts and rivets. A rack of cables reached far to the ceiling, strung against the wall, wound around a winch seized with rust.

  By the Throne! She had landed on top of a cargo lift, the tower’s great pit still spiralling twenty storeys beneath the ledge upon which she stood.

  Through the chains swaying and clinking overhead, she could see the Battle Sisters now manoeuvring towards the roof. The heretics’ gunfire had diminished enough to allow the squad to retreat. The Repentia had bought them a chance for survival. As a reward, the Emperor had preserved her, for reasons made gloriously clear as the Traitor champion rose behind her. The heretic growled with laughter as he hefted his two-handed axe.

  The Repentia grinned up at him, wincing as she retrieved her Eviscerator, her muscles tightening around fractured ribs.

  She looked upon her foe with horrified awe. The Repentia was a tall, powerful figure, but even she barely reached this monster’s chest, its warped armour a profanity of spikes and brass. The Traitor’s bald head was the colour of drowned flesh, his dark eyes gleaming like beads of blood. He leered at her, fingering a long boning knife at his belt.

  ‘A skull,’ he hissed through several rows of needle-teeth. ‘A skull for Carvax.’

  The Repentia sprang at him, feeling polluted by receipt of his name. But Carvax moved with that deceptive swiftness of the Space Marines, lightning-fast for all his bulk. He kicked her in the chest before she could strike.

  A shock wave of pain blew through her body and she landed upon the platform several feet away, a wheezing wreck. She felt the elevator cabin shake as he ran at her. Rage alone animated her in time to snatch her chainsword and roll to one side as the axe cleaved the air behind her. Carvax growled with frustration.

  Acting on pure reckless instinct, the Repentia thrust the hilt of her Eviscerator under Carvax’s wrist. The manoeuvre sought to lever one of his hands from the axe as he turned, opening his guard for a counter-strike. But the Traitor’s grip was impossibly strong, forcing her to disengage before she was dragged off her feet. This grinning, drooling heretic was a thing of savage force, yet might be as susceptible to an opponent’s cunning as any beast.

  He chortled. ‘You think battlecraft can aid you against the favoured of Khorne?’

  The Repentia bridled her rage as she darted out of reach of another murderous stroke.

  ‘In Lucia’s name,’ she chanted. ‘Spirits of martyrs fallen, I call upon thee.’

  She twirled her Eviscerator, riding the momentum of her retreat.

  ‘Replenish my limbs,’ she continued. ‘Guide my onerous blade.’

  Carvax’s eyes glittered with interest.

 
; ‘Your rage is transcendent,’ he crooned. ‘Summon it all. I want every ounce of it. Throw it at me. Show me the power of your rotting saviour.’

  She fought to restrain her fury as he taunted her, willing her body into obedience as she made a feint. Carvax took the bait eagerly. His axe swooped down, but the Repentia had already spun aside, slashing his vulnerable flank. Her chainsword snarled off a slice of his pauldron, revealing succulent rings of muscle, bone sheared to the marrow.

  Carvax bellowed as the Repentia spun again and again, lashing him left and right, screaming, possessed, her rage unleashed.

  ‘Restore my faltering spirit with hymns of glorious wrath,’ she sang, breathless.

  Sparks burst about the Traitor, fireworks in miniature, as he struggled to parry her barrage of blows. But the Repentia’s frenzied brain warned her too late to vary the pattern of her onslaught. With a skilful twist of his axe, Carvax caught her weapon at the crossguard. He paused to let her struggle, smirking to see her feet slipping upon the floor as she fought to move him, his strength incontestable.

  ‘That’s it, little sister,’ the Traitor Space Marine said. ‘Rage for me. Warm your blood for Khorne.’

  Carvax swung the tangled weapons as one, driving the whirring tip of her Eviscerator deep into the metal floor, twisting the weapon until its teeth jammed in the dense layers of plasteel under their feet. The chainsword’s gears whined; its motor convulsed and smoked. The Repentia’s weapon was stuck.

  As she struggled to free it, Carvax swatted her aside with a contemptuous laugh. The blow caught her jaw, stars dazzling her as she reeled. Her vision cleared and she saw the heretic untangle his axe.

  Spitting aside blood and the crumbs of a tooth, the Repentia ran at him. He looked bemused as he pulled his weapon free only to find the woman ducking at his waist, as if she meant to somehow wrestle him into submission.

  The Repentia unsheathed the boning knife from among the tools of butchery clattering at his belt. Before Carvax could stop her, she had slithered through the columns of his legs and stabbed the blade up to the hilt in the back of his knee.

  Black blood burst over the Repentia’s fist as Carvax bellowed like a wounded bull. She thought she could feel the hilt of the Chaos weapon squirm in her grip, like a huge maggot striving to burrow deeper into its master’s flesh. The Traitor Space Marine plunged to one knee and the blade broke off in her hand.

  She cast the hilt away, repulsed, and returned to her half-buried Eviscerator. She tugged desperately at the immovable hilt. Carvax rose, favouring his good leg as he fingered the awful wound in the other. He let out a warbling sigh, seemingly enthralled by the sight of his own blood dripping from his armoured fingers.

  The Repentia screamed in frustration as she threw her weight down on the chainsword’s hilt. The weapon shifted, the teeth shook, straining to run, but it was not enough.

  They both looked up as a storm of heavy bolter fire strafed the uppermost balcony, releasing dust and debris from the crane, swaying the chains beneath it. A huge, predatory shadow swept along the windows of the upper levels. The Repentia’s heart leapt at the thought of the reinforcements promised by Sister Eunice. But the blasts were intermingled with female cries of alarm and rage.

  ‘Behold,’ purred Carvax. ‘Our gunship has caught your sisters trying to escape.’

  It was true. The Repentia could see a handful of armoured figures re-emerge onto the topmost balcony, hurrying behind meagre cover as the remaining heretics ascended the levels beneath them. Once again, they were trapped.

  Carvax approached, limping as he swung his axe in anticipation.

  ‘Soon the book shall be ours,’ he said. ‘Its scriptures shall be reconsecrated in the name of the Skull Throne, and your captured sisters shall administer that blessing with their gushing throats.’

  The Repentia finally abandoned her weapon. Carvax called to her, his hand extended.

  ‘Join us, little sister,’ he said. ‘You have renounced your sisterhood already. Now let your wrath win you glories undreamed.’

  The Repentia fled for the edge of platform. The Traitor limped after her, the entire cabin shuddering beneath his loping gait.

  ‘Nowhere to run, little sister,’ he snarled. ‘Give yourself to Khorne.’

  The Repentia dived off the platform.

  The immense pit yawned to receive her.

  Carvax strained to reach her, slicing the air, desperate to obliterate his opponent before gravity could do it for him. But suicide was not the Repentia’s intention.

  She caught one of the smaller chains suspended from the crane high above, flinging her legs to steer herself in a wide arc. Though starved, her body remained dense with muscle, the Repentia’s weight providing more than enough impetus to swing her back towards the other side of the cabin roof.

  Carvax’s frantic pursuit had almost carried him over the edge of the platform. He was pulling himself back from the ledge as the Repentia’s feet hit the wall. Her powerful shoulders bunched as she pulled the chain taut and ran several paces along the wall.

  When the cabin was in range, she leapt down, concentrating her weight as she landed feet first on the hilt of her Eviscerator.

  The impact levered the weapon free with a screech of torn metal and the blade resumed its roar. The Repentia scooped up the hilt, but Carvax was already upon her, too enraged to toy with her any longer. His ghoulish face was aghast with bloodlust, his strokes relentless. The Repentia could only parry every strike, each heavier and more resounding than the last. She felt herself buckle a little further with each successive blow.

  Yet should I fall, my blood in martyrdom shall flow everlasting and drown the heretic foe.

  She angled her weapon and braced herself. His axe struck her blade, hurling her into the cables embedded in the wall beside them.

  The Repentia raised herself, each breath a torment. She could hear the cries of the Battle Sisters along the balconies near the roof. Did they even know she was down here?

  Her muscles were torn and spent, exhaustion draining even her rage. She had one strike left in her dwindling core. This last, defiant spasm of violence would see the Oath satisfied, her destiny fulfilled. She could never land a killing blow against the Traitor champion, but striving regardless was all that mattered. The Emperor demanded that she earn her repentance by battling until her last quantum of strength had been spent. Only then would He grant her absolution for her sins.

  She glimpsed the lurking shadow of the Traitors’ gunship, flashing heavy bolter fire through the windows high above, blocking the Battle Sisters’ escape across the roof.

  Carvax gathered himself, drool trailing from his needle-teeth as he raised his axe over his shoulder.

  The Repentia saw blades flashing in the sun as the mob of Traitor Space Marines and cultists closed in on the last of the squad.

  The Repentia revved her chainsword and Carvax charged, red eyes bulging with eagerness, finally set to annihilate his prey.

  Expelling the last of her vigour, the Repentia swung her Eviscerator into the rack of cables beside her. Sparks gushed as she buried the blade in the wall.

  The cabin tipped forward, unbalancing Carvax, his stride faltering as the chainsword’s teeth sheared through the first of the metal ropes, sending it wriggling up towards the ceiling. The Repentia left her weapon lodged in the wall, chewing its way through the rest of the cables as she dived again at the dangling chains. Her sweat-slicked hands caught one of the huge iron links as her keening chainsword finally released the elevator cabin. Both the cabin and Carvax plunged howling into the pit below.

  The Repentia climbed, dazed, astonished by what she had just done. She eventually heard a resounding crash from a dozen storeys below, followed by the discrete crunch of sundered meat and crimson power armour.

  She felt nothing, absorbed in watching her own hands gripping link after lin
k, her body seeming to move of its own volition. The immensity of the chain concealed her as she ascended, unnoticed by the heretics and the Battle Sisters exchanging fire around her. She perceived the combatants as ghosts, beings from a dimension beyond her comprehension or concern. Reaching the crane, she crept along its frame and squeezed up through its mouldering cockpit.

  The Repentia eventually tumbled out onto the roof, finding herself surrounded by the broken buildings of the manufactorum, beyond which lay the jungle. The gunship rumbled below, bringing thunder to an empty blue sky. A walkway led into a neighbouring ruin. Nearby, the corpse of a Battle Sister lay sprawled upon a sheet of her own blood, the metal floor chewed by heavy bolter fire where the squad had tried to make their escape.

  Moving to the body, she was beyond rage, tranquil in her emptiness. Her consciousness had been stripped, every thought and emotion evaporated, revealing the naked circuitry of battle protocols indoctrinated by a lifetime of prayer and ritual.

  The dead Battle Sister’s Godwyn-De’az-pattern bolter lay nearby, its casing white, splashed with blood. The Repentia had not touched such a weapon since speaking the Oath. A nameless exile taking up such a holy item would be tantamount to sacrilege. She lifted the weapon anyway, reciting the words of a combat blessing she had not spoken in years.

  ‘Praise unto Him who bestows this weapon, woe unto them who oppose Him.’

  The bolter’s incredible weight reminded her that the weapon’s recoil would likely break her arm without the protection of power armour.

  ‘Blessed be this weapon’s purpose, blessed be she who serves it.’

  She released the sickle-shaped clip – over half a load remained – then moved as though hypnotised towards the edge of the roof.

  ‘Servitio ad mortem.’

  The Traitors’ gunship nosed at the windows two storeys below. Its hull glistened red as it floated on its jets like the carcass of sea monster.

  Bracing the bolter upon the tower’s parapet, she lined up a probing shot at the cockpit roof. The weapon’s recoil knocked her backwards, almost to the floor. She recovered immediately, settled again and fired several more shots, each sparking harmlessly off the hull. The gunship eventually lifted its nose, irritated. She let it see her, then backed away, switched the weapon to burst mode and waited for the gunship to rise into view, her face expressionless.