The Rose At War, page 25
‘How dare you!’ Istrix was thundering vehemence. ‘You accursed, filthy heretic!’
‘Ah, Issy. You’ve followed me all the way here. And now you’ve lost, and you don’t even know it.’
Below them, somewhere in the black and hard-edged shadows, machines were grinding into motion.
Augusta raised a prayer and it echoed from the metal roof like the call of a vox-coder trumpet.
She thought she saw the flickering of an oil-black cloak, thought she heard the almost soundless tick-ticking of Rayos’ data-prayer.
And then, in the outermost shadows of the factorum, joints and servos were moving, whining and scraping as they struggled through long years of rust.
Akemi said, with a sudden of rush of intensity, ‘Kastelans.’
A second later, Caia added, ‘Two, nothing else is in motion.’
‘Two is enough,’ Augusta commented, her tone flat.
‘You will not fire, Sisters,’ Istrix said. ‘This is pure intimidation, nothing more.’
‘Intimidation!’ Viola snorted the word, cocking the heavy bolter. ‘We’re surrounded!’
Somewhere behind them, the big ork loosed a belch.
Caught in a split-second of pure stillness, in the centre of the tornado of questions, between enemies before and behind, Augusta offered a final questioning prayer.
Guide me! Is this woman Your vessel?
It is Your work that she does?
Or is she tainted? Touched by Ruin?
Her darkness loomed at her, Subul’s mockery, her own doubts.
And then she remembered, again, the Kyrus’ chapel…
I am His daughter, my faith and weapons unquestioned, unquestionable; war is my craft and my study.
I am strong.
I am enough.
And, as the kastelans ground slowly up to full speed, as Zale raised his hands, laughing at the success of his crafted drama, as the ork scratched its belly and kicked its way over the fallen doors, Augusta did the unthinkable.
She offered her prayer.
She made her choice.
And she defied her orders.
‘Viola – fire!’
The thrice-blessed heavy bolter snarled into life with a sound like pure relief. Even as Istrix howled over the vox, the ork went backwards in a spray of gore, its hat flying free.
The fallen doors clattered as it fell down on top of them.
Viola shouted the words of the litany, less a hymn than a celebration of pure, focused violence – it had been building in the younger Sister ever since they’d landed on this cesspit of a planet.
And Augusta could feel the same thing, that rising need to let it go.
But not yet.
‘Cease fire!’ Istrix had turned on the Sisters, livid with incomprehension. ‘I gave you an order! Cease fire!’
Something in the Sister Superior wondered why the inquisitor was still so maniacally intent upon stopping them shooting – but there was no time for that now.
She had defied her superior. What happened next – victory or Repentance – was the will of the Emperor.
Bolter in her good hand, her shoulder still spiking with pain, Augusta continued to bark commands. ‘Caia, Akemi, take down the kastelans. Corporal, target the heretek – stop her activating anything else. And don’t let her out of your sight!’
She added her voice to Viola’s, felt the hearts of her squad rise – no more indecision, no more questions.
Just the pure, clean rage of battle.
From the fury…
This was what she had been called for!
Istrix was shrieking, spitting outraged fragments of words. She was hammering the heel of her free hand against the side of her skull – with a sudden, intuitive flash, Augusta understood something else, though she didn’t have time to realise it clearly.
The roar of combat was already raging round her. With the big ork down, nothing else was tough enough to get past the bottleneck of the doorway. Yet they still came, shoving towards their own deaths as if they could not help it. Viola kept firing, and kept firing, short staccato bursts. She must know the truth as well as Augusta did – when she ran out of ammunition, they would be on her.
And she had no Sister to cover her back.
At the balcony’s edge, Caia and Akemi were shooting at the lumbering, grinding kastelans. The things were still slow, and they had no ranged weapons – thank the Emperor! – but they had fists the size of tanks and one thump would be enough to crush a slow-moving Sister to the floor.
Beside the Sisters, the Militarum soldiers had switched targets. Under the corporal’s commands, they were firing at the kastelans’ joints and visors, though they were making little impact.
Augusta could not see Rayos – the shadowy tech-priest had vanished.
And she still could not see Melia.
The Sister Superior aimed her bolter at the closest of the machines; saw its visor crack under the impact. She shot it again, and again. It jolted under the repeated rounds, but both machines were still moving, and faster with every step.
They stood fourteen feet at their armoured shoulders and, if they reached the wall, Augusta realised, they could just pull the whole balcony clean onto the floor…
Shards of pain still stabbed through her shoulder; she kept her injured arm to her chest and switched to shooting at the kastelans’ knee and elbow joints. Beside her, the corporal directed his squad to shoot at their fingers.
He must have reached the same conclusion.
Behind them, the heavy bolter clattered to a halt.
Viola raised the hymnal with a rush of defiance – she was trying to reload, but the city’s thugs had been smart enough to use the bodies as cover. Now they were up and through the doorway; they were piling past the fallen ork, knowing that they had to stop her before she raised the weapon again.
Augusta spun and bellowed, ‘Down!’
Viola dropped to a kneel, still reloading the bolter. The Sister Superior turned her fire on the crowd. She levelled short, controlled bursts as more and more of them tried to shove through the doorway.
She couldn’t stop them all – the doorway was too wide and the piles of bodies too high. And Viola was just too close. The crowd closed around the red-armoured Sister, and she fought them back with her fists and feet, and the butt of her weapon.
The Sister Superior stopped; she couldn’t shoot without the risk of hitting Viola.
But they had another problem.
The first of the kastelans had reached the balcony.
Its joints still grinding in protest, it gripped the edge and started to pull. Creaking and groaning, the ancient metalwork began to split, and to come away from the wall.
In her head, the Sister Superior could hear laughter, ringing and joyous – it tangled round her recitation of the hymnal. She sang louder, defiant, shutting it out.
The second kastelan reached the balcony’s edge, took hold.
With a protesting, metallic screech, the entire platform started to come loose.
Unaware of her danger, Viola was moving like a dancer, fluid despite her armour, punching and kicking with a relentlessness that was pure, loosed savagery. Augusta had another flicker of memory: Jatoya’s physical strength, and the training she had given to all of them.
She offered a fragment of thanks in a prayer.
Akemi and Caia were still shooting at the kastelans. They could hardly miss; the machines were right on top of them, their blank armour-eyes staring out of their helmets like dead things. The Sisters were doing damage – sparks flew as rounds hit, the Militarum troopers were still firing – but it was not enough, never enough.
The platform shrieked and screamed and juddered.
Augusta felt it lurch as it came away from the wall.
And then crashed to the floor with a noise like the end of the world, dumping all of them at the crisply booted feet of Scafidis Zale.
CHAPTER NINE
In thick, slow motion, Sister Melia watched everything.
She was concealed beneath the shadow of a vast and silent hopper – she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She was not restrained, but a heavy fog of lassitude had soaked into her limbs and her thoughts. It had robbed her of any energy, and left her listless and dull.
And there was something she’d forgotten, something…
Something like a light, maybe, but just beyond her field of vision.
She watched the balcony as it fell, watched the creaking, groaning metal as it collapsed to the floor. She saw the four scarlet-armoured figures as they fell with it. One rolled straight back to its feet, two others got up more slowly. The last one landed with a huge, metal door smashing down on top of it, edge-first.
It did not move again.
A flicker of concern went through Melia’s soul, but it soon faded, lost to the grey. Her distress was too nebulous, like trying to grip smoke – she understood that the red figures were important, but she couldn’t remember why.
Domine, libra nos…?
The words lingered, like some echo of her past.
To either side of her, the two gangers were grinning, watching the fight like it was some sort of gang battle. Whenever Zale spoke, they snickered obediently; he’d had no need to give them orders. As the kastelans moved towards the tumble of fallen figures, each ganger smacked his fist into his opposite palm, eager for more violence.
They moved like servitors, mindless – but she could no more have drawn her flamer on them than she could have reached for her hidden fleur-de-lys blade…
Her gauntleted hand twitched in her lap, as if it were missing something.
Yet there was only the fog, only the grey. She was safe in the grey, it was like a blanket. Like strong, stone walls, the big machines couldn’t touch her, wouldn’t notice her. Here, she could rest.
Yet still, Sister Melia was sure that she’d forgotten something…
On the factorum floor, Augusta rolled back to her feet, bolter still in hand. The nasty stab of pain in her shoulder kept her head clear and sharp; she took in the scenario with a glance. Akemi and Caia were both getting up, but the falling doors had smashed Viola to the ground, and she wasn’t moving.
A roll call in the vox did not get a response from the younger Sister.
Around Viola’s still form were the city’s tumbled thugs. Some were getting up, dazed, others groaned in pain or did not move at all. Several more were still in the doorway, hiding in cover, their weapons aimed at the scene below.
They did not fire.
Corporal Mors was upright, Rufus with him; their lasrifles were aimed at the thugs, making them keep their heads down. Adriene was moving, but more slowly; Lucio stared sightless at the roof, his helmet tumbled off and his young face etched with a final expression of shock.
By the angle, his neck was broken.
The Sister Superior had a split-second to take all this in – then her line of light was blocked by something small, armoured, and lividly angry.
Istrix stood in front of her, her face etched in bright scarlet and white, cross-hatched scars. A nimbus of hair had stood up from its braid – it had given her a halo, gleaming shock-white in the lumens.
‘I told you, I told you!’ Istrix’s words were a spittle-filled snarl. ‘I told you not to fire!’
Augusta inhaled, closing her teeth on a flare of livid and absolute fury.
She recited her Oath of Ordination, striving for calm.
Fides est armis meus mihi telum erudiens.
My faith is my armour, my training my weapon.
Smirking as if at some glorious, private joke, Zale lifted a hand to halt his various minions.
The looming kastelans ground to a halt.
Between them, the witch stood back with his arms folded, his attitude curious, and his confidence tangible – whoever won, this was still his game, and he was still in control.
But the Sister Superior spared all of this barely a glance. There was a bolter-muzzle right in her face, a small, round void of death.
Istrix’s words were vicious. ‘You are a traitor, Sister, just as much as he is. You have undermined my authority at every turn. You have refused my orders, taken initiatives to which you were not entitled. I am His word, His blade, and His law.’ She thundered the last sentence. ‘And I expect to be obeyed!’
Around them, the tableau had halted. Caia and Akemi flanked Augusta, weapons out, one to either shoulder; Viola, still, had not moved. Mors and Rufus were each dropped to one knee, covering the thugs, the kastelans and Zale himself. Adriene had joined them, though there was a trickle of scarlet down one side of her face.
Nothing moved, nothing seemed to breathe. Everything held still, mesmerised by the confrontation between the tiny, furious inquisitor and the calm, steel-cold solidity of the veteran Sister.
Augusta said, her tone pure steel, ‘I follow my mandate, guided by His wisdom.’ She pointed her bolter at Zale. ‘This witch must die.’
But Istrix was beyond hearing, beyond understanding. ‘Do you doubt my authority, Sister? My orders? Do you doubt His power? It is His voice I hear, His instructions I follow! He has brought us here! And He will tell me when to open fire!’ She trembled with intensity. ‘Heretics and betrayers, all of you! You are the denizens of Ruin! There is no faith! No loyalty! No trust! You are all fallen! All damned! I will kill you all! I will bring this whole planet to destruction with you still on it! You will blow to pieces like the moons–!’
‘Then why don’t you?’ Zale spread his arms. His voice soft, he said, ‘Come on, my lovely. My Issy. My mistress. Do as He bids you. After all,’ and his smile was glorious, ‘you always have.’
Her eyes wild, Istrix was gripping the bolter in both hands now, her shaking increasing. There was a nerve-spasm ticking under her eye; her teeth were gritted. She looked like she was fighting something.
Augusta said, ‘Shoot him, inquisitor. Or I will.’
The corporal’s voice interjected: ‘She won’t shoot him, Sister. She can’t.’
Augusta said, ‘What?’
‘It’s the thing I couldn’t tell you,’ he said. He wasn’t looking at her; he still had his lasrifle trained on the thugs. ‘Why she shot the lieutenant.’ Realisation broke over Augusta like an ice-cold tide. In that second, even as the corporal spoke, the final question was answered, and she understood the thing she’d missed, right from the beginning…
‘He put it together,’ Mors said, ‘when he saw her cutting the scars into her own face. Zale’s been in her head all along – playing with her, torturing and tormenting her. She thinks she’s hearing the Emperor, doing His bidding. The lieutenant confronted her. And she shot him. Commanded the rest of us to say nothing, on our oath to Him.’
Oh, of course…
It explained why Istrix had walked them straight into the initial ambush, why she’d specifically sought out Rayos, why she had persistently refused to let them open fire…
Explained what – and why – the Militarum soldiers could not tell them.
Zale had been playing with them all, all along – he’d probably let Mors see him at the smeltorium.
So that he could lead them all here.
Just like he’d lured Mors’ squad into a confrontation, and then murdered them…
Just like the signal from the broken moons…
Wrecker.
Playing them, reeling them in.
Too late, Augusta realised the wisdom of her own teachings:
Everything has its Operandus.
Zale had played his game expertly…
And, if the Sisters were not strong enough to withstand him, he might even have won.
The Sister Superior found that she, too, was shaking. Not from fear, but from the sheer brutality of the realisation, and from the rise of anger it brought with it…
They had failed.
Istrix had been weak, and she had faltered in her faith…
And Augusta had not challenged her, despite knowing full well that she should have done.
Perhaps the Penitence should be hers…
But not until the witch was dead.
‘You betrayed us.’ Ice-calm, Augusta spoke to Istrix. ‘Led us into a trap. You have surrendered your soul, Istrix, your faith and your honour.’ Her squad continued to cover the witch; she turned her own bolter on the inquisitor. ‘You are a tool of Ruin, nothing more. You have turned your back upon Him, and opened your soul to the darkness.’
Istrix had bitten her lip. She was spitting blood and froth and outrage. ‘I have not failed! I will slay you all! You will feel His wrath! His strength! His light!’
‘She’s mad,’ said Akemi softly, her tone awed.
Augusta stepped forwards, placed her bolter beneath the woman’s chin, forcing her head back. ‘You are fallen, Istrix. Your life is forfeit. You–’
A weapon barked.
The inquisitor collapsed.
Augusta rocked on her heels, startled, but the shot had not been hers. It had not even been a bolter – it had been a single streak of heat, a sizzling hole bored clean through the side of the woman’s skull.
Istrix lay on the floor, her mouth open, her scars pale. Smoke rose from her eye sockets. Blood pooled round her head like a corona.
Carefully, the corporal raised his hands, but he did not release his rifle.
Rufus and Adriene glanced at each other, then at the Sister Superior. They, too, raised their arms.
But the group had a more immediate problem.
Zale was swearing, savage and vicious and livid; his kastelans were moving again.
‘No! What have you done? What have you done?!’
And Augusta’s mind exploded.
As the battle began, Sister Melia watched.
She watched the kastelans as they lumbered into motion once more, felt the heavy stamping of their great feet. She heard the gangers chuckling, heard the continuous, monotone tick-ticking of Rayos’ heretek prayer. She was aware of the three red-armoured figures that stood against the remains of the city horde, and against the huge might of the looming machines.
