Fear And Fire Part 12

Sherring eyed him. 'And you? What of the help that you promised me? Where are the weapons of LaHayn's own creation you said we would turn on him?'

'Here. smiled Vaun, gesturing at the woman and the man. 'Presenting my comrades Abb the Blinded and the girl Suki.

It was the baron's turn to be amused. 'Surely you jest? A skinny female and a sighdess man? What use are they?'

Vaun inclined his head. 'Show our friend Holt, will you?'

Suki shrank in on herself, and for a moment Sher-ring thought she might vomit on his rich carpets but then she let out a deep-throated yowl from her mouth and brought a gout of stinking fire along with it. The nearest of his bodyguards was caught in the nimbus of her dragon breath and he died on his feet.

The second guardian had his gun in his hand as the blind man pointed a crooked finger at him. Milky eyes surveyed the room as if they could still see, centring on Sherring's man. Veins on Abb's brow throbbed and the soldier screamed. Smoke plumed from his nostrils and mouth, and he fell to the floor, roasting fromwithin.

Terra protect me. whispered the baron. 'Pyro-kenes!'

Vaun's smile grew. 'Impressive, yes? I'm granting you the service of these two as a gesture of solidar-ity.

'Of... of course...' Sherring recoiled, the smell of burnt human meat sickening in his nostrils.

They sent in the flyers to strafe the Sisterhood's war machines, the same flight of oval coleopters that Vaun had used to sweep into Noroc during the Blessing of the Wound. That night, the capital's city guard had been slack and paid for its inattention with death, but Galatea's troops were more than ready for an aerial bombardment. Baron Sherring's affection for flyers and aeronefs was well docu-mented, and the Sisters of Battle had come prepared.

The coleopters thrummed through the cowl of smoke growing up about Metis's tall West Gate, lighting up the slow-moving lines of tanks with bolter sh.e.l.ls and laser fire. They came in low, counting on surprise, but that tactic had already been exhausted of its value.

Units of Sister Dominions, the special weapons caste of the Sororitas, switched targets from the turret emplacements and gun servitors of the cavalry. Storm bolters and meltaguns converged and brought the first of the disc-shaped aircraft out of the sky, shedding turbine blades and hull metal as it tumbled end over end into the smouldering tree line. The flames outside Metis were spreading now, coiled around the southern and western slopes in a flickering orange tore about the neck of the city.

Two more of the s.h.i.+ps collided in panic as their pilots realised too late that the Sisters were not the easy targets they had bombed in Noroc. A third, burning fuel trailing out behind it in a blaz-ing comet tail, turned into the line of armoured Rhinos, and metal met ceramite plate as the two vehicles collided.

The blast made the ground ripple and twitch. The Shockwave of the explosion fanned up the hillside and tucked under the rear quarter of the Rhino where Sister Verity rode. Her world turned about as the steel box suddenly rotated around her, throwing the women and hardware inside into disarray. Blood streaked her vision as Verity's head rang off the decking and she was whipped about. The clinical, detached part of her mind caught the sound of somebody's neck snapping as one of the Battle Sisters with her was struck by a loose ammunition crate. A warm darkness stole the rest of the dizzying impacts from her and then abruptly with no apparent dislocation between moments, the young woman found herself lying in the ankle-length gra.s.s, her body tight with dozens of new bruises.

Verity moved and took a wave of agony from her joints. A strong set of hands cupped under her armpits and helped her to her feet. She blinked, blurred vision clearing gradually to reveal a flock of red-pink shapes. There was a peculiar noise hereabouts, a tinny insect buzzing.

'Hospitaller, heal thyself. she mumbled thickly, the words bubbling up with an edge of hysteria. She straggled to make her eyes see properly and when they snapped back into focus, she regretted it. There before her was the wreckage of the Rhino, volatile promethium fuel pooling beneath it amid a paste of Sororitas corpses. Her gut turned over and she gasped.

'The Emperor watches over you,' said a voice close to her ear. 'He has a plan for you, Sister. No other survived from that transport.

Verity focussed on the speaker, the grogginess in her mind fading with every pa.s.sing second. She looked down to see a pale, scarred hand holding her up. She followed it to a face beneath a torn red hood and choked out a breath. 'Repentia...'

'By the Emperor's grace. replied Iona, hefting her idling eviscerator chainblade. 'Your life will be forfeit if you remain here. He did not spare you so that could happen.

The Mistress, a dark armoured figure with neural whips heavy in her hands, rose into sight and pointed toward the melee. 'The medicae is in our care. Take heed as we press forward. Her life is to be protected!'

Then they were advancing forwards, women in red rags and high rage all about her as the battle swung closer.

CHAPTER TEN.

A backwash of raw heat seared Sister Miriya's cheek and she leaned into the firing controls, bringing the turret ring of the Immolator about in a hard arc. In the lee of the closest autocannon emplacement, a cavalryman with more bravery than intellect worked at a portable mortar, jamming a fresh sh.e.l.l into the breech. The Battle Sister lit up the meltas and drew a line of wavering heat across the ferrocrete and mud to where he stood, burning him down in a flas.h.i.+ng scar of detonation.

Attracted by the activity, the cogitator brain in the turret began a ponderous turn to bear on the tank. Miriya kicked at a control switch by her feet and spoke a quick prayer to the G.o.d-Emperor and His tech-priests.

The switch brought the blessing of power to a single-shot tube launcher that clung to the flank of the Immolator. Words of consecration wrapped about it on streams of parchment and theshapes of holy seals in red and white wax sheathed its exhaust vents.

Miriya pointed at the gun emplacement and glanced at the Canoness. 'With your permission, honoured Sister?'

'You may remove the obstacle. nodded Galatea. 'The hunter is yours to command.

'Aye. Miriya needed no more encouragement, turning an ornate bra.s.s key inset on the turret's dashboard.

The tube chugged out a fat flower of white smoke, and from the middle of that bloom came a wicked projectile, the tip saw-toothed and barbed. Through a means that was beyond Sister Miriya's understanding, the hunter-killer missile spoke directly to the machine spirit of the Immo-lator and its auspex, there in the few seconds between leaving its birth chamber and turning to its target. The rocket went up into the grey air as a salmon leaps from a river, then turned about its own axis and penetrated the top of the autocan-non turret.

The gun emplacement burst open in a black and red flash, unspent sh.e.l.ls ripping the air as they ignited in the inferno. Along the line of enemy turrets, a ripple of electric shock streaked through the cables connecting the servitor-brains inside each, and the maws of guns twitched in confusion.

'Press the attack. screamed Galatea, vox micro-phones in her armour taking her words and amplifying them through the loud hailers of her tank.

'Faith unfailing. Every sister on the field replied in kind, backing up their war cry with bolt sh.e.l.l, fire and fury. The Exorcists and Immolators angled and fired upon the mechanical gun bunkers one by one, opening them so that the butchered ma.s.ses of once-human brains within were boiled into the air.

The echo of multiple detonations sank into the smoke, falling at the feet of the charging Adepta Sororitas. In their trenches and boltholes beyond the towers of the West Gate, soldiers broke and ran at the sight of the women. Red cloaks snapped at the backs of the Battle Sisters and what faint sunlight made it through the war mist flashed off their black power armour. Those who were unhooded showed faces of wrath framed by tresses in ashen or jet. The pa.s.sion of the G.o.d-Emperor was among them, the spirit of Katherine the Martyr their s.h.i.+eld and their sword.

The defenders of Metis gave return fire but on came the women, a force of nature made manifest.

The Repentia carried Verity with them as a wave might have carried a piece of driftwood out to sea. She was beyond her own control, guided and pushed by the hands of the red hoods and their Mis-tress, inside but isolated from their small band. The Hospitaller pulled her own robes around her, better to cover her face from the roaring madness of the battle. There was nowhere she could look that the b.l.o.o.d.y ruin of war was not laid out for her to see.

Here, the ill.u.s.tration from a medicae script made real, where the shattered gla.s.s egg of a servitor was spread about the ferrocrete; there, a man cored like an apple, bones white in a red ma.s.s of singed meats.

Verity had come across wounds as savage as these and more so, but those had always been at a dis-tance.

She had seen the dead and the dying once removed from the field of conflict, the thought of where those wounds had originated some abstract, dislocated concept. Now, she watched the inflicting of those damages, she smelled the familiar burnt-copper aroma made new and horrible by those sights.

Verity staggered and the Mistress caught her arm and stopped her from falling. The Sisters Repentia stormed on before them, throwing themselves heedlessly over barbed wire bales and into the depths of trenches behind. Lesions covering them across every centimetre of skin, the Repentia called down death in banshee wails. Their heavy eviscer-ator chainswords made short work of the men, spinning razors of teeth shredding flesh, bone and cloth on the down stroke, the blunt iron edge on the weapon's other face caving in skulls and ribcages on the upswing.

The one called Iona, the woman that had invoked the Catechism of the Penitent after failing to save Lethe from death, worked at the craft of killing with blank frenzy. Verity watched her drive her sword through the sternum of a screaming cavalry officer, and found the most terrible thing to behold was the empty, doll-like glaze in Iona's eyes. The Hospitaller felt the conflict of emotions returning, the same hurricane of anger, sorrow and regret that had taken her the day she arrived on Neva. Had Iona felt the same? Had she been so scarred by Lethe's brutal killing, that all she could do was throw herself to the mercy of a blood-spattered redemption?

Verity was troubled to realise that on some level, she could empathise with the pale woman.

'Advance!' screamed the Mistress. 'Take only sins, not prisoners. Leave only flesh, not corruption.

Onward. Onward'

Verity was taken with them, into the trenches and tunnels that led to the city.

Local legends said that the West Gate of Metis had been forged from the hull metal of the first human colony s.h.i.+p to arrive on Neva, back in the time of expansion when the stars were new to mankind's touch.

They were, in their own way, relics of great import to the people of this planet, but the gate dared to bar theway of the G.o.d-Emperor's chosen agents. The steel which had travelled a million light years from the place of its forging was shattered by a hundred Sororitas guns, and with a sound like the collapse of heaven, the four-storey gate was felled.

The razor-prowed Repressors bit into the debris scattered across the highway, tracks spinning as they fought to gain purchase on the ferrocrete. Dead men and killed machines were forced into gutters as the Daughters of the Emperor marched in skirmish lines behind an armoured fist of tanks. Their blood was up, and down the streets before them the wind carried their hymnals.

The last line of defence left by panicked officers, laser-armed snipers in the outer buildings st.i.tched crimson threads into the Sisters. Miriya and the other women in the tank turrets paid them back tenfold with plasma and rockets, tearing the upper floors from stone tenements and razing the wood and tile of others. At their backs, the fires from the forest advanced in with them, the curling smoke and flames hissing over the b.l.o.o.d.y trenches.

Metis was a city of riches. Like so many conur-bations on Neva, the scars of poverty and lawlessness that touched the faces of many hive worlds and colonies were absent, or, at least they were elsewhere, s.h.i.+fted to the factory moons where the poor and the desperate could be corralled. The most down-market districts were veritable palaces compared to the rat-warren hovels that Sister Miriya had seen on some rim worlds.

Still, they burned just as well. A bow wave of civilians, new refugees made this day by the arrival of the Soror-itas, raced from their homes as the Immolators tore past them. Those that dared to stand in defi-ance to the Sisters of Battle were given the ritual censure of holy shot. Those that made proper obeisance were left by the roadside.

The Canoness rode tall atop her tank at the head of the castigation legion, the cloak of Saint Aspira billowing out behind her and snapping in the breeze. She coiled her book in one hand, directing the Dominions in the forward lines to places where errant cavalrymen challenged their proces-sion. Some of the baron's soldiers threw down their arms and prayed for mercy when they saw the Sororitas coming.

Men twice Miriya's age mewled like children as they met her gaze, finally understanding what crime they had committed. Some of them laid eyes on Galatea's cloak and knew it for what it was, a holy relic touched by the aura of their Eternal Lord. The Canoness was the Emperor's avatar, swift and terrible with her jus-tice.

Miriya could read the questions they asked of themselves in their faces - How could we ever have thought to defy the church? What will become of us? Will we be forgiven? The staccato cracks of bolt pistols answered for her. Those in Sherring's brocade and bra.s.s-b.u.t.ton finery were being culled for their disloyalty.

'From the lightning and the tempest, our Emperor, deliver us. Galatea quoted the verse from the battle prayer by rote. 'From plague, deceit, temptation and war, our Emperor, deliver us.'

Sister Miriya tasted cordite and burnt wood in the air and turned away to run her gaze over the Sororitas lines surrounding the slow-moving tank. On foot, Reiko caught her eye and gave her a grave nod. The veteran Superior walked with Isabel and Portia at her side and a wounded banner bearer behind. Among the red robes, Miriya realised that she saw no sign of the Hospitaller Verity, and on reflex she made the sign of the aquila. 'Terra pro-tects the faithful. she whispered, watching the newly dead roll by beneath the Immolator's treads.

Torris!' Ignis's strident voice carried along the marble corridors and stopped the psyker dead in his tracks. Vaun turned on his heel, clasping a pict-slate in his hand.

'Calm down, boy, you'll catch something alight. What's the panic?'

The ginger-haired youth gulped air. The baron is coming apart at the seams in there.' He jerked a thumb at the door to the chambers. 'He sent me to find you.'

Vaun tapped his lips with a forefinger. 'It's my esti-mation that our welcome is about to be worn out for good. It's time to take steps. He glanced around. There were no guards in earshot, as one of Sher-ring's first frantic orders had been to send all available men to fortify the mansion house gates. 'Where are those b.l.o.o.d.y nuns?'

West Gate's been breached, all vox traffic from that quarter is nothing but dead air or weeping. Fires are spreading, too.

This isn't a raid of punishment, then. the crimi-nal replied. 'The Sisterhood won't leave a stick unburnt here. Our dear pal Holt is going to be made an example of.

Ignis's fingers crawled over his s.h.i.+rt and plucked nervously at his collar. 'I don't want to be here when they arrive.

Vaun shrugged. Who does? Don't worry, we'll be long gone by then. In my capacity as the baron's "special consultant" I'm going to have his racing 'nef fuelled and put on the roof pad. Once we see the tanks rolling up the mall we'll kite out of here and go for the keep.

The youth's eyes went wide with surprise. The keep? You found it?'

The psyker waved the pict-slate at him. 'Not me, boy. Sherring did. All part of the agreement I made with him. This is his price for my good company.'But how? That old b.a.s.t.a.r.d LaHayn kept it hid-'

'Doesn't matter how, Ig, just matters that we know where it is. The honourable lord deacon's dirty little secret is ours now, and it's ripe to be plundered. Sherring was busy while we were off planet - sure, he's an oily little tick, but he's connected on Neva. Must have cost him big to get this. He weighed the slate in his hand. It seemed such a small thing to be so important, and yet inside the primitive bio-cell memory of the device were strings of numbers that meant more to Torris Vaun than any other prize he had taken.

'Sherring won't just let us go. Ignis frowned. We're supposed to help him win this battle.

'Yes. How sad. Vaun pocketed the slate. That just shows how big a fool he really is. Beneath all the braggadocio, the airs and graces, Sherring doesn't see past the end of his own nose. So while his back is turned, while he's making enough noise to wake the dead, we take what we want from him and slip away real quiet, like.

A smirk flickered on Ignis's face. 'You set him and LaHayn at each other like dogs. All this kick-ing and screaming, Metis seceding and all, this is just your smokescreen!'

'You're learning, that's good. Best way to get men to work for you is to have them think the job is their idea. Vaun patted him on the shoulder. 'It's all about weakness. You find it in your mark, then you break them with it. The sound of distant sh.e.l.lfire reached them, rumbling through the walls and setting the molycrystal chandeliers above their heads twittering with vibration. 'This little bloodbath is going to cover our tracks nicely. By the time the confessors and the cardi-nals are through sifting the ashes of Metis, we'll be kings of the Null Keep and everything in it. And then... then, Ig, we'll cut our names into the galaxy.

'Do you think... Could we destroy a planet, maybe?'

The psyker smiled. 'You know, I've always won-dered how that would feel. It's going to be interesting to find out. Vaun gestured down the corridor. 'Go keep the baron busy. You'll know when it's time to go. He was two steps away when the younger man's question came after him.

'What about the others? They're still out there in the thick of it. Abb and Suki, I mean.

'I know who you mean. Vaun said, without turning around. 'There are always sacrifices to be made, Ignis.

You know that.

'But we lost Rink already. If there's just us two-'

There'll be plenty of new recruits in the keep. he snapped, 'more than enough. He threw a hard look over his shoulder. 'Do as I said. I can't afford to play favourites, not this late in the game.

Vaun stalked away, leaving Ignis rubbing gingerly at the scarring behind his ear, and remembering.

The central avenue from the breached gate guided the Sisterhood to Metis's grand plaza, within the confines of which stood the fenced grounds of the baron's stately mansion. The circular city was arranged like a wheel, with spokes radiating out from the centre and concentric rings of boulevards growing ever smaller as they contracted inwards. At some of the crossroads along the line of the advance, the armoured vehicles and the Battle Sis-ters met makes.h.i.+ft barricades that were stormed by concentrated attacks, or hastily emplaced Leman Russ tanks drawn from the token Imperial Guard garrison. The line soldiers who had agreed to stand against the Sisterhood were ritually burnt alive, denied even the mercy of a bolter sh.e.l.l.

They moved on, ever on, leaving the tanks afire or in fragments. From giant speaker horns hung from the city's boxy buildings, Baron Sherring's hysterical speeches played in loops, his words nearly shrieks. Galatea ordered each one of them destroyed with rocket or laser, and in turn made the loud hailers on the Sororitas vehicles broadcast songs of penitence and admonishment. Panic warred with the Battle Sisters for mastery of the streets as they moved ever closer to the core of Metis, like a slow arrow toward its heart. The edges of the caldera were enveloped in fire now, and to observers on s.h.i.+ps in orbit the plume of smoke appeared as if the dead volcano had returned to life.

Crossing into the outer gardens of the plaza, Miriya saw flashes of red in the near distance and caught the whirring of eviscerators. The Repentia had pressed on and taken the first kills of Sherring's personal guard, the golden sashes and ribbons the men wore soaking up their blood as the tireless blades took them. Galatea leapt down from the back of the Immolator, and Miriya dropped back through the turret hatch to follow her out into the battle. I've ridden long enough, she told herself, it is time to face the traitors close at hand.

Desultory laser fire and bolt shots hissed through the air around them, missing cleanly as the baron's men tried to beat the women back. Galatea was snapping out orders. 'Sister Reiko, take the Retribu-tors and a.s.sault the southern flank.

Sister Miriya, have your Celestians come together and follow in the path cut by our Repentia.'

'Aye. chorused Reiko and Miriya, saluting with a balled fist to the fleur-de-lys on their chest armour.

A jerk of motion from Portia caught Miriya's eye. The Battle Sister was looking skyward, and she pointed with her gun, her tawny face split in a gri-mace. 'Dominica's Eyes. What is thatV There was a shape coming towards them, swoop-ing low through the drifts of haze. It was a woman, arms open to them, buoyed up on thin sheets of orange fire. Portia did not wait for an answer to her question and fired at the apparition. The flying woman brought her hands close to her chest and forced a gaseous breath from her lungs. She spat choking flames down at the Sisters with a rattling crackle of noise.

Miriya reeled away, the stench of burning bile was.h.i.+ng over her. She felt acid mist p.r.i.c.kle her eyes and ground theheels of her hands into them, throwing herself as far as she could from the blast.

Portia and Reiko fired, lancing shots after the woman. "Witch-kin,' spat the veteran Battle Sister. A psyker freak!'

Blinking the stinging miasma away, Miriya drew her plasma pistol and threaded hot flares of white light at the dragon-breath woman. The psy-witch described a lazy loop in the misty air and dropped to the ground in a crouch, rolling to avoid bolt fire. Miriya saw a second figure now, a portly little man, advancing with purposeful steps from the smoke. He raised stubby fingers in a claw-like gesture, hum-ming to himself. 'Careful, Reiko!'

Her warning had scarcely left her lips when the veteran superior turned her bolter on the fat man. The air about him wavered and the shots deflected away. It was the same trick that Vaun had used to protect himself during the attack on the Lunar Cathedral.

Around the man's feet, circles of coloured orna-mental gra.s.s and flowerbeds crisped and wilted. His face turned florid with hard effort and sweat beaded on his broad brow. All in the s.p.a.ce of moments, the psyker who called himself Abb used his preternat-ural talent to excite the molecules inside the sickle magazine of Sister Reiko's boltgun. In a throaty roar of detonation, every sh.e.l.l in Reiko's weapon exploded at once. The crash of flame took off her gun arm and ripped away most of her breastplate and the flesh beneath. The woman was punched back into Miriya and the Celestian was thrown against a stone plinth.

The aromas of ash and cooked flesh filled Miriya's senses. She pushed Reiko off her and the woman's head lolled to one side, a ruined face in mute shock. In that moment, as she clutched at her Sister, the light faded from Reiko's eyes and she went slack. Cursing, Miriya let the body slip away and stepped forward, leading with her plasma gun.

Abb saw her coming and marshalled his power again, drawing from the pool of inhuman energies at the heart of his psyche. For Miriya, it was as if she had suddenly stepped into an oven, the dreary, moist warmth of the day crushed under a punis.h.i.+ng heat. The Celestian had a moment of old sense-memory from a battle in the deserts of Ariyo, as if a pitiless sun had turned its full might upon her in that single instant.

The plasma pistol sang in her mailed grip, the bright blue-white emitter coils along the breech sparking wildly with eager power. Plasmatic energy weapons were infamous for inopportune failures and catastrophic overheats, but in all the years that Miriya had used this handgun, she had never once had cause to regret it. It was a daily ritual of hers to pray over the firearm and ask the Emperor's for-bearance in its use, so that she might employ it to exercise His displeasure.

'With this flame, I purify,' she murmured through dry lips.

Abb screamed as he forced the charge of burning energy from his mind, turning the power on the Bat-tle Sister. Miriya's finger twitched on the trigger plate and the plasma pistol obeyed her. Psy-force and superheated, sun-hot plasma crossed in the air and split the day with thunder. The Sororitas reeled back, burnt and snarling. Abb became a thing of smouldering black meat, dying as the energy shot enveloped him.

The stench of the psyker-woman's coa.r.s.e exhala-tions turned on the wind and Miriya followed her Sisters as they engaged Vaun's pyrokene killer in combat. Portia, Isabel and a dozen other line Soror-itas st.i.tched bolt sh.e.l.ls in the air as the witch threw herself here and there, bobbing and weaving on pinions of fire. A fresh gus.h.i.+ng spew of loathsome, steaming bile splattered among them. Miriya mar-velled that so dainty a frame could continue to emit tides of flaming vomit. The foetid dragon-breath claimed the life of another Sister as she watched, cutting off her screams as it melted away the meat of her throat.

'Converge,' cried Portia. All guns to bear on the psy-wh.o.r.e!'