Fear And Fire Part 6

Miriya followed her gaze towards a group of youngsters and her brow furrowed. They were clad in crude approximations of Adepta Sororitas wargear, but made from simple cloth and cardboard instead of ceramite and flexsteel. One of the teenagers stumbled, clutching at her head to hold a wig of straw-like white hair that mimicked the tra-ditional cut of the Battle Sisters.

'I... I saw those youths in the street, when I was trav-elling to the convent. Is this some sort of game?'

Miriya gave a nod. The Games of Penance, as they are known. A reconstruction of great events from Saint Celestine's Wars of Faith. I have never seen them myself...'

'Look, there,' Verity pointed. 'Do you see those play-ers on the stage? What are they supposed to be?'

'Eldar,' Miriya observed, recognising the rudimen-tary capes and plumes adorning the fake armour of the actors. They are playing at the battle for Kodiak Prime, or something like it.' She failed to keep a gri-mace from her face. The whole performance was a caricature, a ridiculous spectacle that might have been comic if she had not found it so offensive. Miriya had faced the xenos in battle, and the eldar she had fought were terrifying deadly killers full of powerful grace and unstoppable speed - these moronic mimics in the ampitheatre were blundering jesters in compari-son, exaggerated and simplistic parodies of the real thing.

The crowd did not share her low opinion, however. The locals were chanting and whooping, spinning cel-ebratory banners over their heads or letting off small screamer fireworks. Over the loud hailers in the sta-dium the opening bars of the Palatine March issued forth, and the two sides in the imitation battle rushed at one another, screaming incoherent war cries.

This is a mockery,' growled Miriya.

'It is... disturbing,' admitted Verity, 'but not to the Nevans. This is their way of honouring the living saint.'

The Battle Sister's rejoinder was silenced as a clat-ter of gunfire rose up from the ampitheatre. Miriya's gauntleted hands tensed automatically at the sound of a hundred ballistic stubbers going off in ragged succession. All of the partic.i.p.ants in the ersatz skir-mish were firing on one another, but where she had expected them to knock each other down with paint sh.e.l.ls and powder rounds, there was the flat crackle ofbullets.

They are using live weapons...' As the Sister Supe-rior watched, one of the youths dressed as a Sororitas inexpertly discharged a salvo of shots into a boy on stubby stilts, the heavy rounds ripping through the wood and cloth imitations of eldar armour. Blood was already pooling on the arena's sands where figures from both sides had been cut down.

'Holy Terra!' gasped Verity, her hand flying to her mouth in shock.

Close by, one of the merchantmen from the cathe-dral clapped and let out a guffaw. 'What a magnificent effort this year. This Blessing will be one for the ages.'

Miriya rounded on him. They're killing each other.

The portly man's expression shattered under the Battle Sister's leaden stare. 'But... But of course they are.

That's how it is done...' He forced a smile. 'Ah, of course. Forgive me. You must both be off-worlders, yes? You are both new to Neva=and the festival?'

What kind of blessing demands you force your people to kill one another?' challenged Miriya.

'F-force?' said the merchant. 'No one is forced, honoured Sister.' He fumbled in the folds of his robes and recovered a fold of long papers from a hidden pocket. 'The partic.i.p.ants in the reconstruc-tion are all willing... Well, except for a few irredeemables from the reformatory and some asy-lum inmates.' One of the papers was a dark crimson, and he peeled it from the pack to wave it at her. 'Every citizen who received one of these dockets in the clerical lottery knows they are obligated to take part in the great re-enactment. We are all more than ready to do our part in penance!'

Miriya s.n.a.t.c.hed the red paper from him. Then tell me, sir, why are you here and not down there?' She jerked a thumb at the melee below them.

The merchant's face coloured. 'I... I was happy to present the church with a substantial forfeit dona-tion in my stead!'

You bought your way out with coin? How lucky for you that your coffers are deep enough,' she sneered. 'If only others were so fortunate!'

'Now see here,' the n.o.ble retorted, attempting to maintain a level of superiority. 'Those who endure the Blessing are praised and rewarded. Our finest chirurgeons attend them in the aftermath, and those whose fort.i.tude is lesser are buried with hon-ours!'

Barely able to contain her anger, Miriya turned away, her hand dropping unconsciously to the grip of her holstered plasma pistol. The sound and fury of the confrontation set her teeth on edge, trigger-ing old, ingrained battle instincts.

'Celestine. Celestinel' The cry came from one of the merchant's retinue, and the name was picked up and repeated by the crowd.

From a hidden hatch in the walls of the cathe-dral, a winged figure in gold emerged to fly over the ampitheatre, swooping like a bird of prey.

Verity watched the girl garbed as the living saint race over the blood-stained sands, a fat set of pulley-wheels in the small of her back connected by gla.s.sy cables to a rig on the suspended catwalks. The grey-suited workers pulled at levers and tugged spindles to work her like a puppet, and in turn her wings of paper feathers fluttered and snapped through the air. A heavy bra.s.s halo hung about her head, decorated with yellowish biolumes, and she had an oversized replica of the Celestine's blessed weapon, the Ardent Blade, secured to one hand by tethers.

A dispenser tucked under her waist spat out a stream of paper slips, each one printed with a devotional message and a t.i.the voucher. People in the crowds tussled and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the air trying to pull them from the night winds.

The psuedo-saint fell low and her sword clipped the heads and torsos of a dozen men in eldar cos-tume.

The blade was just for show and too blunt to sever a limb; those it struck were concussed or reeled away with broken bones.

Verity watched, and she felt queasy. It was not that she was frail or unused to the sight of spilt blood, but the malicious theatre with which this spectacle was unfolding made her uncomfortable. On the moons where she served in the wards of the hos-pices, there had been stories of the things done in the Emperor's name on Neva - but there were always such stories on the outer worlds, and Sister Verity was never one to place too much credence in rumour and insinuation. She wished now that she had paid greater mind. The wanton disregard for human life at play here jarred with the very core of Verity's vow to the Order of Serenity and her life's work as a Sister Hospitaller. The oath she had sworn the day she entered the Sisterhood returned to her: First, do no harm to the Emperor's subjects. Take pain from those who revere Him, inflict it only on those who stand against His Light.This is a harsh universe. she heard the merchant remark to one of his cronies. 'It is not by chance that our church and our festival reflect the truth of that. After all, if no blood were shed this day, in what possible way could we hope to show the Emperor our devotion?'

A flurry of motion drew her eye. On the gantry a few metres below, the men in grey were panicking.

Aged, overworked metal snapped with a percussive crash and cables whipped free, slas.h.i.+ng one man across the chest and throwing another over the cat-walk's rail and down to his death. The girl playing Celestine was suddenly jerked out of her pattern of flight and reeled upward like a hooked fish. The sword dangled from her fingers, and in horror, Ver-ity saw where the gla.s.s cables looped about her head and neck. If the crowds in the stands under-stood or even cared what had happened, the Hospitaller had no idea but she saw clear as day the face of the costumed girl in abject terror as she started to choke.

Sister Verity reacted without conscious thought, and vaulted over the edge of the balcony. Boots sc.r.a.ping on stone, she slipped down the sheer face of the cathedral and landed on the catwalk. She was running to the trapped girl before she was even aware of Miriya calling after her.

The merchant and his troupe of perfumed dandies actually broke out in laughter when the Hospitaller jumped, and it took much of Miriya's self-control not to toss one of them after her. Shooting them an iron-hard glare, she followed the woman down to the gantry, shouting her name, but Verity did not seem to hear her, intent instead on the luckless girl caught up in the wires beneath the catwalk.

The workers who had not been struck insensate or dead by the broken cables were of little use, and she forced them aside. The catwalk squealed and com-plained beneath her every footfall, flecks of dust trickling off ancient joints. The shattered pulley mechanism lowed like a dying animal, and Miriya's hand shot out to grab a support as the decking began to tilt. The framework was rife with rust and decay.

Verity! We are not safe here.' The Hospitaller was already pulling the girl up. -She was ashen-faced as she worked to unwind the cabling from the youth's pale, bruised neck. 1 think she may still live...'

In reply, the catwalk let out a shriek of buckling steel and listed sharply. All at once, the costumed girl fell away from Verity's grip and Miriya bounded forward to snag the Sister Hospitaller before she went along with her. Their hands met, the Battle Sis-ter clutching a handful of Verity's robes and then the gantry broke apart.

It was centuries old, and maintained as well as it could have been, but artisans and technicians were not the most favoured of castes on Neva and even in the ampitheatre of the Lunar Cathedral, there were never enough skilled hands to service all of the church's machinery. Steel and bodies fell through the air and crashed into the wood and fibre of the false eldar domes, straight into the middle of the arena.

Galatea's knuckles turned white where she gripped the stone bal.u.s.trade. 'In Kafherine's name, what is she doing?'

At her side, Sister Reiko peered through a small monocular. 'An accident, Canoness? I do not think this was intentional-'

'Now, this is an interesting development.' Gover-nor Emmel's words cut off Reiko's speech as he approached, his retinue trailing behind him and the lord deacon at his side. 'My dear Canoness, if your Battle Sister wished to take part in the games, she had only to ask.

'Governor, I fear that a mistake has been made. Galatea spoke quickly. 'Perhaps if you would con-sider a pause in the proceedings?'

Emmel made a face. 'Ah, that would not be pru-dent. The rules of the fete are quite clear on these matters.

The re-enactment must be played out to its conclusion without interruption. There would be much discord if I tried to halt it.

'Perhaps even a riot. ventured Dean Venik.

The governor cupped his ear. 'Listen, Canoness. Do you hear? The people are enraptured. They must think this is some surprise performance in lieu of the witch they were promised.

'Perhaps not a mistake after all. added LaHayn. The G.o.d-Emperor moves in mysterious ways.

Emmel nodded and clapped his hands. 'Oh, yes, yes. You may be right!' His eyes sparkled with the idea of it. 'I wonder, an actual Sister of Battle on the field? What a game that will be!'

'With respect, governor, Sister Miriya may be injured, and she was not alone. Sister Verity is a Hospitaller, not used to combat. Galatea's words were intense.

LaHayn accepted this with a dismissive nod. 'I am sure the Emperor will extend to her the protection her vocation merits.

Miriya hauled herself out of the ruins of the wooden set and winced in pain: her right arm was dislocated.

Gritting her teeth, she gripped her right wrist with her left hand and yanked. A sickening snap and a moment of sharp agony resonated through the Battle Sister's frame. She shook off the pain and coughed out metallic spittle.A groan drew her to where Verity lay. The Hospi-taller was uninjured but dazed, and Miriya pulled her unsteadily to her feet.

'The... the girl...' began Verity, but she fell silent when the other woman pointed a gloved finger at the wreckage. The teenager dressed as Celestine had broken the Hospitaller's fall and rested there in an untidy heap. Sightless, dull eyes looked up into the night sky. Verity knelt and closed the dead girl's eye-lids, whispering a verse of funerary rites over her body.

The roaring of the audience crashed around them, loud as ocean breakers on a storm-tossed sh.o.r.e. In among the players fighting the mock bat-tle, several of the imitation eldar had been startled by the sudden cacophony of metal that had dropped from the air, and they milled about, unsure of themselves. This close to them, Miriya could see that the weapons they bore were actually common projectile rifles and shotguns disguised to resemble the alien shuriken projectors. The Battle Sister knew the look in their eyes all too well. She had seen it before on the faces of heretic va.s.sals and slave-troopers, on cultists whipped into frenzy by their demagogues.

'Stay close to me. she hissed to Verity. 'They're going to fire on us.'

The Hospitaller shook her head. 'But why?'

Miriya ignored her and advanced, stepping off the pile of wreckage and holding up one hand, palm flat in a warding gesture. ^Ve have no part in your games. she said aloud, in a clear, level voice. 'Stand aside.

The costumed men were all dressed in the same warped outfits, so it was unclear if there were any ranks or hierarchy among them. They shot nervous glances at the women and at each other. Miriya saw a path she could take, up and behind the wreckage of the stage to where the gates in the arena walls would lead to safety.

'Don't run. she whispered. 'If we run, they'll attack.

They're just ordinary people. insisted Verity.

Miriya made eye contact with one of the alien-attired men, catching sight of his gaze through the triangular slits in his plumed helmet. 'That doesn't matter.

She saw the thought forming in his mind before the man was even aware of it, her hand tearing away the peace-bond ribbon wrapped around her pistol holster. A dozen camouflaged weapons came about to bear on them and Miriya shoved Verity out of the firing line, her gun clearing its leather as shot and sh.e.l.l spat into the air.

'Death to the humans!' The call exploded from the lips of the false eldar, and the crowd watching them roared once again.

Automatic training bom from decades of hard, unswerving service in the name of the Emperor took over.

Miriya's gun barked, the ear-splitting shriek of supeheated plasma bolts drowning out the dull rat-tle of lead shot. It became a rout, every trigger-pull marking a critical hit, no single charge from the energy pistol wasted as the costumed men screamed and died. Paper and cloth in garish oranges and greens were stained with dark arterial crimson. Hel-mets made out of softwood splintered and broke.

The Battle Sister heard the pellets clattering off her power armour, as ineffectual as hailstones against the black ceramite sheath. A chance ricochet nicked a line of stinging pain across her cheek and she ignored it, turning and firing again in a single fluid motion.

When all the a.s.sailants lay dead or bleeding their last into the dust, Miriya closed her eyes and prayed for silence but she was denied it, the air about her filled to overflowing with the deafening adulation of the congregation.

Verity grabbed at her arm and turned her about. The Hospitaller was furious. "You didn't need to kill them!'

she shouted, her voice barely audible above the crowd. 'Why did you do that?'

The other players in the reconstruction were gath-ering to them, pathetic remnants in their tattered and b.l.o.o.d.y costumes. Some dragged injured com-rades with them, others limped and showed wounds that were wet and ragged. Miriya shook off Verity's grip with an angry snarl and jerked her chin at the penitents.

'Help them.'

The Hospitaller left her there and took to ripping bandages from torn robes. Miriya surveyed the dead arranged around her, Verity's question ringing in her mind. What madness was this, that these people would force her to end their lives, all in the name of a brutal game? There were other ways to show devo-tion to the Golden Throne that did not require such a wasteful sacrifice. Was life valued so little on Neva?

The vox speakers struck up again with a fresh bar-rage of song, beginning with a stern rendition of the grand hymnal from Enoch's Castigations. Miriya cast her gaze upward, searching the dark sky for somesign, some explanation. Her thoughts were a churn of confusion, a state that was unacceptable for a Sister of Battle. Her skin crawled, and she found that all she wanted at this moment was to purify herself with a purgatory oil and take prayer in the convent's chapel. What cursed luck has brought me to this madhouse, she asked herself?

A handful of bright dots crossed the night above the ampitheatre, moving with purpose and great speed towards the towering Lunar Cathedral. Just as it had moments before when she locked gazes with the gunmen, Miriya's honed combat sense rang a warning in her mind. 'Aircraft,' she said aloud, 'in attack formation.

As if they had been waiting for her to voice her thoughts, the flyers suddenly split apart and swept away in pairs towards different points of the com-pa.s.s. The closest duo dipped low and came into the nimbus of the floating lamp-blimps. They were coleopters, vessels with a ring-shaped fuselage enclosing a large spinning fan that kept them air-borne. The unmistakable shapes of boxy weapons pods hung on stubby winglets.

No alarm cry would have warned the people in the crowds, and they watched the flyers with disbe-lief, perhaps believing them to be yet another surprise addition to the Games of Penance. In the next second panic and terror rose up in a wave as fountains of firebombs spat from the coleopters and fell in orange trails towards the stadium. Every-where they landed, great b.a.l.l.s of black smoke and yellow flame bloomed, immolating hundreds. The aircraft wove through the mayhem they seeded, strafing the panicked people, while above them another lone s.h.i.+p dropped out of sight on the Tier of Greatest Piety. Whoever these killers were, they were landing men on the upper levels of the church tower.

Lasers lanced out of the observation galleries, questing after the darting s.h.i.+ps and missing. Miriya a.s.sumed the shots were being fired by the gun servi-tors she had seen serving the n.o.bles earlier. She swore a gutter oath recalled from her childhood. How in Terra's name had such a thing been allowed to happen? Were the planetary defence forces sta-tioned in Noroc so lax that any terrorist could idle into the city's airs.p.a.ce unchallenged?

Unbidden, another, darker thought rose to the surface of her mind. Was this some other part of Neva's dogma of atonement and suffering, a ran-dom attack thrown at the innocent as some kind of penance? She shook the idea away and sprinted towards the arena's edge, where elevator cages would carry her back up to the galleries of the cathedral.

Verity came after her. 'Where are you going?' To fight a real enemy,' she retorted. 'You may join me, it you can stomach it!'

CHAPTER SIX.

The men of the Noroc city watch would later report that the terrorist coleopters had come from the south and the west, flying in the nap of the earth along valleys or over the scudding white tops of shallow waves.

Too low to the ground for detection by conventional sensors, hulls daubed with black paint and running lights blinded, the aircraft threaded into the air over Noroc and went about their business. In the throes of the festival, where sacramental wines were flowing freely and hymns were blotting out the sound of everything else, not many eyes turned from their devotions to maintain watchfulness. In the days that followed, the enforcers would have their hands full, in both mat-ters of arrest and punishment as well as purging its own officers guilty of inattention.

A good percentage of the men in the flyers had previously visited Noroc, some had even been born there.

All of them were chosen because they knew the city well enough to wound it. Torris Vaun had gathered them all in the hold of a chilly, echoing transport barge as they crossed the coastal waters, goading them into readiness. Some of these men brought their own codes and morals to the fight, with big talk of striking against the moneyed theocrats in the name of the people, but most of them, like Vaun himself, were in the game for the fire and the havoc. They wanted anarchy for the sport of it, because they thrived on it.

The rockets dropped from the coleopters were stolen from Imperial Guard regiments, elderly area enial munitions pilfered from bunkers where they aited for rebellions and uprisings that never ame... until now.

The warheads broke open in right plumes that made miniature daybreaks wher-ver they struck, and where people did not die from moke and flame, they smothered each other in anic.

he air inside the Lunar Cathedral was hot with ter-or. Many of the n.o.bles had fled to the lower levels find their carriages and draymen destroyed by _;plosion and firestorm, and they milled about and ecame frantic, some of them starting small scuffles s their frustrations boiled over. On the higher lev-Is, in the vaulted s.p.a.ce of the chapel proper and e galleries that ranged above it, barons and upper echelon priests took to gathering in small, terrified packs with their gun servitors surrounding them, bleakly waiting for invasion, destruction or salva-tion.

The flyer that approached the Tier of the Greatest Piety executed a running touch-and-go, its wheels barely kissing the careworn granite for ten seconds before it took off again, thrusting away to enter a wide, lazyorbit of the conical tower. It left behind a squad of rag-tag men with no single uniform or look to them. All that united these killers was a cal-lous, predatory antic.i.p.ation, that and the absolute loyalty they showed to their leader.

Vaun dropped a pair of battered night vision gog-gles from his eyes and pointed with both hands. 'Get in there, and make some trouble.

The men obeyed with harsh laughter and ready violence. Rink jogged to keep up with him. 'We gonna kill them here, then?'

'Patience. replied the other man. 'It's a nice evening. We'll see how things play out.

The big thug's eyes glittered. 'I wanna do the priest.

Vaun shot him a hard look. 'Oh no. That one's for me. I owe him. The criminal's hand strayed to an old, hateful scar beneath his right ear. 'But don't worry, I've got something in mind for you.

The rattling cage was little more than a basket of steel mesh, but it clambered doggedly up the stone wall of the cathedral, cogged teeth picking their way past oval service hatches cast from fans of bra.s.sy leaves. Oil and sparks spat at them as the elevator slowed and halted, presenting them to the observa-tion level. Miriya came through the hatch leading with her pistol, and Verity was close behind, virtu-ally throwing herself out of the lift. The clattering machine seemed to have unnerved the Hostpitaller - and after the accident with the falling catwalk, it was perhaps no surprise that she was newly afraid of Neva's ill-maintained mechanisms.

There were bodies. Mostly they were servitors, and by the pattern of the kill shots they had been tar-geted by weapons aimed from a moving platform beyond the balconies. Miriya recognised the distinc-tive wound patterns of sh.e.l.ls from Navy-issue heavy bolters. The bodyguards had died under the guns of the coleopter as it strafed the tower with random cascades of fire. With a degree of delicacy that seemed out of place among the carnage, Verity stepped lightly over the bodies of a few aristocrats, giving each a murmured prayer verse.

The Celestian saw one of the perfumed women they had crossed earlier in the evening, her only bouquet now the copper of spilt blood.

'Sister, how many times have you given last rites?' The question came from nowhere.