Planetkill, page 24
Wulfe cursed him for a fool and ordered Last Rites through the town’s open gates with Dessembra’s vehicle following a steady ten metres behind.
As they passed into the town, Wulfe swept his pintle-mounted heavy stubber from right to left, covering the corners of the streets and alleyways they passed. Then he remembered that Garver was dead and that the tank’s right flank was open. ‘Stay alert, all of you,’ he told his crew. ‘Holtz, I want that heavy bolter covering side streets, windows, doors. Viess, same goes for the co-ax. I’ll keep an eye on our right.’
Fires still burned in some of the buildings. They passed walls bearing hastily scrawled slogans like What frakking Emperor? and Fine day for an apocalypse! Most of the stores and stalls had been looted. Rows of squat yellow habs sat silent and still, their windows shattered, their doors splintered. Lifeless bodies hung from blood-stained windowsills and balconies. The streets themselves were dotted with so many corpses that Last Rites couldn’t avoid them. Wulfe ordered Metzger to drive over them, grimacing every time a wet crunch sounded from underneath the tank. Many of the bodies on the street were women, their clothing shredded. The crack of laslocks and autopistols rang out frequently, sending frightened maldrothids up into the air, abandoning the rich pickings until things settled down.
All this carnage, thought Wulfe, is the work of man. There’s no sign of an ork hand in any of this.
Only recently, Ghotenz had been a town of dedicated, hard-working Imperial citizens. Foreknowledge of their doom had shattered that. Word of the coming end had unravelled their civilisation faster than any xenos invasion ever could have.
Dessembra’s voice broke through the static on the mission channel. ‘Turn left at the next corner, sergeant,’ she said, ‘then take your second right. Our objective awaits us in the church at the end of Procession Street.’
Wulfe relayed the orders to Metzger and the tank rolled on. The sound of gunfire was more frequent now. It was getting closer, too.
As Last Rites turned onto Procession Street, Wulfe’s jaw dropped. Up ahead, in the square at the end of the street, a violent riot was raging. The focus of the mob’s ire was a small Imperial church – a black two-storey structure with a proud golden aquila perched atop its central spire. Wulfe watched in horror as some of the rioters fired at the sacred icon. On the wide stone steps below, people shouted and jeered, and launched rocks and bottles at the building’s stained-glass windows.
‘They’re attacking the church!’ snarled Wulfe.
From her Chimera, Dessembra must have seen it too. ‘Forward, sergeant,’ she ordered. ‘They mustn’t get inside. Kill every last one of them if you have to.’
Last Rites charged down Procession Street.
The rioters turned. Many who saw her bearing down on them fled screaming into the shadowed side-streets, but others were more foolish. They swung their weapons around and began peppering her hull with small-arms fire.
Shots ricocheted around Wulfe, but he stayed in his cupola, anger galvanizing him. Setting his heavy stubber to full-auto, he swept the barrel from left to right, spraying the mob with enfilading fire. A hailstorm of lead cut through the apostate ranks, ripping into their unprotected bodies. Screams of pain filled the air. Those who weren’t killed or wounded leapt for hard cover then leaned out from stone corners to take hopeless pot-shots at the tank.
The left sponson rattled back at them, its heavy bolter chewing apart their inadequate defences, killing them in a blizzard of stone chips.
Behind him, Wulfe heard the rapid cracking of the Chimera’s multilaser and the chattering of her hull-mounted gun. Between them, the two Imperial vehicles unleashed an overwhelming barrage on the street and its buildings.
Less than a minute later, Wulfe ordered his men to cease fire. Procession Street was a silent, blood-soaked wasteland. The only think moving was the smoke that curled from the muzzles of Imperial guns.
With the mission clock never far from his mind, he glanced down at his pocket-chronometer. About seven hours left. Whatever the bloody Sororitas have come here to do, he thought, they’d better do it quickly. There was still the return journey to contend with. They couldn’t pass through Lugo’s Ditch again. That would be suicide.
‘Forward,’ he voxed to Metzger.
With the immediate threat neutralized, the two vehicles approached the church. Sister Superior Dessembra ordered them to a halt at the bottom of the steps. Seconds later, the Chimera’s rear hatch was thrown open and the three sisters hospitaller emerged into the dry afternoon air.
‘Secure the area, Sergeant Wulfe,’ Dessembra called out as she stepped over a twitching body. Some of the wounded rioters were still alive, but only just. ‘Nothing must disturb us.’
Each of the women, Wulfe saw, carried a sealed ceramite case marked with twin insignia: the winged and laurelled Cadian Gate symbol of the 18th Army Group, and the distinctive fleur-de-lys of the Adeptus Sororitas.
‘Metzger,’ voxed Wulfe, ‘get her ready for a hasty exit. Holtz, stay sharp. Viess, use the co-ax. Siegler, get up into this cupola and man the stubber. Cover the blind spots. Nothing gets close enough to threaten the tank or the Chimera. Is that understood?’
With a quick check of the charge-pack in his laspistol, he leapt down from the hull of his tank and strode up the church steps after the three women. Halfway up, he turned to take a quick look at the tank’s right sponson. It was a mess of twisted, blackened metal. Wulfe shook his head. If there was anything left of Garver inside, it wouldn’t be much.
Loud creaking announced the opening of the church doors. Wulfe continued up the steps, stopped behind Sister Urahlis, and saw a thin, sallow-faced man in a burgundy robe peering out at them from within. Seeing the insignia on Dessembra’s robes, the man smiled and opened the door wider, ushering them in.
‘Frater Gustav,’ said Sister Superior Dessembra. ‘Tell me, does the man live?’
‘He lives, sister superior,’ replied Gustav in a high, scratchy voice. ‘I’ve been ministering to him in the undercroft, but I lack the skills to do much good.’
The sisters moved inside and Wulfe followed, stepping beyond the heavy wooden doors to find the church filled with people. They knelt on low wooden benches facing the glittering golden altar. They were deep in prayer.
The faithful, thought Wulfe. While the town fell into madness, they took shelter in this sacred house. That, at least, is as it should be.
On his left, Dessembra and the thin priest were talking as they descended a dark stone stairwell followed by the two sister-acolytes. ‘You did a great thing when you reported his whereabouts, frater,’ Dessembra was saying. ‘The man is critical to the war effort in this sector.’
Uninvited and unnoticed, Wulfe hurried after them, following them along a short, dark corridor to a gloomy chamber under the church.
There, in a room lit by hundreds of flickering candles, was the answer to a question Wulfe had first asked back in van Droi’s command tent: who were they expected to rescue? The man’s identity was no longer classified.
Captain Waltur Kurdheim, only surviving son of General Argos Kurdheim, lay groaning and shivering on a makeshift bed.
The captain’s aging father was a High Strategos in the Officio Tacticae. He’d been attached to Army Group Exolon for years. If anyone had the authority to send Imperial tanks on such a reckless mission for personal reasons, it was the hawk-faced old general.
Dessembra moved swiftly to the captain’s bedside and checked his pulse, then gestured sharply at Urahlis and Mellahd. ‘Quickly, sisters. Open the cases. I need 10cc’s of paralycium and 15cc’s of gamalthide.’
Wulfe crossed to the opposite side of the young captain’s bed. ‘By the Eye, sister superior,’ he said. ‘He’s in bad shape. What’s wrong with him?’
Dessembra looked up as if seeing Wulfe for the first time. ‘What are you doing here, sergeant? Get out at once. You mustn’t be in here. Get out, Throne curse you!’
Before Wulfe could respond, he felt a weak hand grip his forearm. It was Captain Kurdheim’s. Wulfe looked down into wide brown eyes filled with fear.
‘The frater betrayed me,’ rasped Kurdheim. ‘Don’t leave me to them, soldier. If you’ve any honour in you…’
Wulfe looked at the pale white hand on his arm. ‘Rest easy, captain,’ he said. ‘These women are sisters hospitaller of the Order of Serenity. Medical specialists. They’ve come to save you.’
Kurdheim pulled his hand away. ‘Fool,’ he coughed. ‘They’re my father’s lapdogs. He’s the only man they came to save.’
Wulfe looked at Dessembra, his frown communicating his confusion.
‘He’s badly wounded, sergeant,’ she said, pulling back the blood-stained sheets. Wulfe saw a big wet bandage on the captain’s side. ‘His company was lost four days ago on the far side of the Yucharian Mountains. It’s a miracle that he made it here. Now, please, step outside and let us do our work.’
Wulfe trusted Dessembra about as far as he could throw an auroch, and he liked her even less, but he could find no legitimate excuse to stay. He left as ordered, but a nagging voice remained in his head. Something wasn’t right. Captain Kurdheim hadn’t seemed confused at all. His eyes had been sharp and bright, despite his obvious pain. And the fear in them... Wulfe knew real fear when he saw it.
Rather than return to his tank, he stationed himself on the other side of the undercroft door. The sisters would need help, he rationalised, in carrying the young captain up to the Chimera.
Moments later, the screams began. The first was so sudden and unexpected that Wulfe almost leapt into the air. He burst back into the undercroft with his laspistol drawn, but what he saw stopped him dead.
Captain Kurdheim lay under his sheets as before, only now they were utterly drenched with blood. The whole chamber stank of it. Transparent tubes snaked out from under the sheets to a boxy medical device that sat in an open case on the floor. The young captain was screaming through gritted teeth as some kind of thick, viscous substance was being siphoned from his paralysed body and collected inside the machine.
As Wulfe stood stunned and horrified, following the flow of the grey-pink fluid down the transparent tubes, he saw four pale shapes in the shadows by the foot of the bed.
It can’t be, he thought. Throne above, it can’t!
It was difficult to tell in the low light, but they looked uncomfortably like severed hands and feet.
Wulfe raised his pistol towards the ceiling and fired off a shot. The crack of ionised air was deafening in the small chamber. The women started. Frater Gustav let out a frightened whimper.
Dessembra spun to face Wulfe, anger twisting her fleshy features. ‘I told you to stay outside, you dolt. Don’t interfere!’
‘Ball-rot, sister,’ Wulfe spat back. ‘That man is a Cadian officer and, from the sounds of it, you’re torturing him to death. You’d better have a damned fine explanation for this.’
‘You’re out of your depth, sergeant. I was assured by your superiors that you’d comply.’ Dessembra turned to Sister Mellahd. ‘Show him our orders.’
‘But they’re classified, sister superior,’ protested Mellahd.
‘Do it, blast you, girl!’
The shapely young Sororitas bowed to her superior, then lifted a rolled parchment from one of the ceramite cases and held it out to Wulfe. ‘It’s all here, sergeant,’ she said. ‘See for yourself.’
Without lowering his weapon, Wulfe looked over the scroll. What he read filled him with outrage. The young captain was right – these women hadn’t come to save him at all.
They’d come to save his father.
The scroll avoided naming General Kurdheim’s particular condition – perhaps it was a source of some embarrassment – but it was very specific about the nature of the cure. Fresh marrow had to be extracted from his son’s living body. The scroll listed drugs approved for the procedure, but Wulfe couldn’t find any anaesthetics among them. A line in bold red script said something about anaesthesium denaturing important elements of the extracted marrow, but the medical jargon was far too deep for Wulfe to tackle. It was clear, however, that Exolon High Command had given full authorisation to this horrific operation. Penalties for failure were listed at the bottom. Anyone interfering in the retrieval of the young captain’s bone marrow would be executed publicly as a traitor.
‘This is sick,’ said Wulfe. ‘He’s conscious, for Throne’s sake.’
Dessembra spoke without turning. ‘The captain will make this sacrifice for his father, whether he wishes to or not. General Kurdheim is an important man. His survival is critical to our success in this sector. His son, on the other hand, is expendable. Think logically, sergeant, and you’ll see that it makes perfect sense.’
Thick fluids continued to drain from Kurdheim’s body, sliding down the transparent tubing and into the humming machine. Something clogged one of the tubes and Sister Urahlis moved forward to adjust it. As she did so, the captain howled in agony.
Wulfe’s face was twisted with pity and rage. This was too much. He pointed the barrel of his laspistol straight at the captain’s head and said, ‘I can free you from your misery, sir. Just say the word! Order it!’
In the blink of an eye, Dessembra had positioned herself between the pistol and the paralysed officer, blocking Wulfe’s shot. ‘The marrow must be taken from a living body,’ she said, her eyes boring into Wulfe’s. ‘Do you want to give him peace, sergeant? Do you really want to cut this operation short prematurely? Think about it. You’re gambling with the lives of your crew. You saw the paper. If we don’t get back to Banphry before that first rock hits, we die. If we return without the marrow, we die. And if you return without me, I can promise you that the Commissariat will be waiting for you. And you will die.’
Wulfe’s hand was shaking. He itched to kill this woman. How could such a monster claim to serve the righteous Golden Throne? Do it, his conscience urged. Kill her. End this man’s agony and punish this dreadful woman for the lives she’s already cost Gossefried’s Gunheads.
But Wulfe knew he couldn’t condemn his crew. To kill Dessembra was to kill all of them. And, as Dessembra watched the realisation show on his face, she knew she had him. With an infuriating grin, she said, ‘Leave this chamber now, sergeant. We’ll be finished shortly. Have the vehicles ready to move out on my word.’
Hating himself for it, Wulfe holstered his pistol and turned from the room. As he walked stiffly up the stone stairs, he tried to block out the captain’s screams, but it was hard. The young man was yelling Wulfe’s name over and over, cursing him to the darkest corners of the warp.
Ghotenz, East Vestiche,
17.17 local (6 hours 30 minutes to Planetkill)
Wulfe emerged from the church to find the sun low on the western horizon. The sky was filled with a watery glow, casting the ravaged town in hues of reddish gold. In front of Last Rites, dozens of townsfolk had gathered, kneeling with their hands on top of their heads while Siegler covered them with the pintle-mounted heavy stubber.
Wulfe climbed his tank to stand on the engine decking, just behind the turret, and said, ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Locals, sir,’ said Siegler. ‘They presented themselves while you were inside. Waving white flags, they were. They’ve come to ask for help.’
‘After the attack on the church?’
‘They say they had nothing to do with the riots, sir. Busy defending their homes.’
A dark-skinned man kneeling at the front of the group eyed Wulfe, spotted the silver pips on his lapels and said, ‘Forgive me, sir, but would you be the officer in charge?’ He was middle-aged, muscular and wore the uniform of a town custodian.
Law enforcement, thought Wulfe. Where was he during the riot?
‘I’m no officer,’ he replied. ‘But I’m in charge, after a fashion.’
‘Then, may we stand?’ asked the custodian. ‘There are elders among us. We’ve not come to threaten you or your men.’
Without lowering his voice, Wulfe said, ‘Keep them covered, Siegler.’ Then to the crowd he said, ‘Stand if you wish.’
Slowly, they got to their feet. Some needed help to rise. The custodian took a step closer to Wulfe’s tank and said, ‘Ships have been crossing the sky in greater numbers than usual today. Some of the merchants fled west, talking about evacuation, and we’ve all heard about the asteroids and the coming end. We thought…. Have you come to help us?’
Wulfe had to lie. He knew that much. Last Rites still had to make it out of here in one piece. Let these people believe whatever they wanted if it served that purpose. False hope was better than genuine despair, wasn’t it?
‘We’ve come to Ghotenz on other business,’ said Wulfe, ‘but I can tell you that a Naval lifter is scheduled to arrive here later this evening. Have no fear. The ship will come in plenty of time. But you must be ready to leave.’
Excited muttering swept through the crowd. Wulfe tried not to look at them for fear of seeing relief on their faces. In the last twelve hours, his self-respect had been eroded almost to nothing. He had begun to hate himself, and there was more to come.
‘You’ll each have a personal cargo allowance of twelve kilograms,’ he told them, cementing the lie. ‘It’s not much, I know, but it’s better than nothing. No weapons of any kind may be taken aboard. No plants or animals are permitted.’
‘Where should we gather?’ asked a woman on the right. ‘We don’t want to waste any time.’
‘The bhakra fields south-west of the town seem best suited to a landing,’ said Wulfe. ‘I recommend that you assemble there.’
‘This is wonderful news,’ said another woman behind the custodian. ‘Praise the Emperor!’
The rest of the crowd took up the cheer.
Automatically, Wulfe did the same, but there was a bitter taste in his mouth. ‘You should return to your homes now,’ he called down to them. ‘Our vehicles will be leaving momentarily and our way must be clear.’
