Soldiers of the Imperium, page 69
‘Macharius’ tears,’ Corwyn muttered, aiming his lasgun at Trooper Monsk’s likeness. Already, the old sergeant’s eyes were beginning to glaze. In the mist, the sounds of las-fire and shouting rose.
Vyse looked over to Aerand, the first hint of fear rising in the stoic captain’s expression.
‘Fire,’ she ordered, turning to Maltia. ‘Give me enough fire to turn this whole accursed planet to ash.’
The night glowed like the great primarch’s shrine on Sanguinala, the flickering spouts of flamers ringing Secundus Company like a moat. The company marched in ranks, condensed into a single, small block, safe for now in the shelter the cleansing flame afforded. At each corner of the formation, one of Lieutenant Nalus’ heavy troopers bore a flamer, spraying gouts of scalding promethium into the encroaching mists, holding back the myriad faces that now prowled those depths, and singeing the twisted forms of corpsewood trees as the company marched past.
While the flames afforded some blessed relief from that accursed substance, the mist itself had grown thicker at the fringes of the opening. A wall of solid white encircled the company like a gaping maw, ready to swallow the hundred troopers of Secundus Company the moment the light of their torches fell dark.
And fall dark they would. Soon.
A heavy flamer was an offensive weapon, designed to engulf and overwhelm any foe within seconds. The weapons, even well crafted and fastidiously maintained, were not designed for continuous defensive use. Three of the company’s flamers had shorted or run dry of promethium already, and Sergeant Maltia carried their only remaining spare, marching at Captain Vyse’s side.
Aerand had insisted the sergeant remain with the command squad after her performance in Trooper Monsk’s accursed grove. Whatever had allowed the woman to continue functioning when the rest of the company had fallen victim to the corpsewood’s assault could prove invaluable in the inevitable chaos to come.
Beside her, Vyse wore a mask of stone, leading the march herself at a breakneck pace. Every trooper behind her knew the bitter truth of the situation – either the company reached Providence before those remaining fires died out, or they would share the same fate as the faces in the mist.
‘Ghosts,’ Corwyn muttered, marching beside Aerand. ‘I’ve seen my fair share of monsters in this world, but never thought I’d be killed by a bloody ghost.’ Despite the fatality of his statement, the sergeant grinned. It had always been his most supremely valuable quality – the ability to maintain an unshakable good humour in even the most dire of straits. Aerand had never mastered that same skill.
‘Not ghosts,’ she muttered bitterly. ‘Psionic projections. Echoes. These are not lost souls wandering, unable to find rest. They are simply the creation of some psychic entity with a memory of those poor troopers’ faces and mannerisms.’
The distinction brought little comfort, perhaps, but she had already confirmed it a dozen times. The countless shades wandering the mists around them left no more mark on the fabric of the empyrean than would an unliving mound of stone.
‘Some psychic entity…’ Corwyn chuckled. ‘You spend five years at the scholastica psykana and you come back talking like an Adeptus Administratum curator. You mean a witch. One of the Witchbringer’s marsh priests?’
Aerand shrugged. Once again, the thought seemed ludicrous, yet she could think of no more plausible explanation. For a single psyker to manifest her will across such a space for such a long duration would require a power that she could scarcely imagine. Why waste such power on one-off murders and apparitions?
‘Perhaps. Perhaps all of them, together. Perhaps something else entirely.’
‘Something else? Like this Throne-cursed planet itself?’
Aerand paused, the thought striking a certain chord. ‘Something like that.’
Breaking ranks, she ventured to the edge of the formation, drawing up beside the Ebonwelter twins as they poured a gout of flaming promethium at a corpsewood tree as the company passed. It turned out the two troopers had not been taken, after all. Simply disoriented in the previous thick mist, but quickly able to find their way back when Captain Vyse had given orders to light up the night. The two corporals were lucky they had not been mistaken for mist corpses themselves, but Evrik and Tannius now manned two edges of the fire wall with stunning enthusiasm.
As one swept a cone of burning promethium along the company’s left flank, an uneasy grimace flitted across his face. In the wake of the flames the faces of a dozen mist corpses evaporated into steam, only to coalesce again a few seconds later. Aerand recognised none of the spectres that wandered the mists, but the effect was unnerving, nonetheless. A vivid reminder of the fate that might await them all. And despite her confidence that the spectres were not truly ghosts, she had no similar reassurances that they could not do the Cadians real harm.
Absent-mindedly, Aerand snapped her fingers, a small, golden flame gaining life within her palm. Whether the reprieve bought by the heavy troopers’ flamers or simply time was to thank for it, she could feel a flicker of power returning to her. Not enough to fully counter whatever waited in those mists, but perhaps enough to buy her comrades a moment’s respite, if need be.
Shutting her eyes, she tried, and failed, to enter the Third Meditation. The Emperor’s grace reached every corner of the galaxy, but she could not bring herself to feel it here. She settled instead for the simplest of soldier’s prayers.
‘God-Emperor, do not let your servant die. For then she cannot dispatch any more of your enemies.’
Tannius – or Evrik – Ebonwelter heard her mutter and turned towards Aerand with a glare. She grunted, sensing a wave of suspicion rushing off the young trooper. She did not blame him. For the ungifted, one psyker was the same as any other, and a witch muttering to herself while ghosts paraded through the mists would raise any reasonable Cadian’s hackles.
‘A prayer,’ she assured him. ‘To the God-Emperor.’
The trooper nodded, but his aura did not change, and a moment later, the flamer in his hands began to sputter. Aerand cursed, doubly so. Both for the Chaos about to engulf them all, then again for the fact that anyone within earshot would forever associate that flamer’s failure with her prayer.
‘Evrik, Tannius,’ she ordered, throwing just enough will into her voice to forestall any questions. ‘Cover down as best you can.’
As the twins assisted each other, one flamer sputtering in its death throes, the other unleashing a torrent of fire, Aerand sprinted to Vyse.
‘It’s about to get ugly, isn’t it?’ Sergeant Corwyn said, glancing over Aerand’s shoulder and assessing the situation.
‘Very,’ she replied.
Corwyn merely grunted. ‘Was only a matter of time. We’re walking blind through the wilds, Emperor knows how far from Providence. It’s a bloody miracle we made it this far.’
‘Pull the ranks tighter. Sergeant Maltia,’ Captain Vyse ordered, a grim finality in her voice. ‘Go fill that gap. We’ll double time for as long as those flamers stay lit, then stand and fight whatever comes through afterwards. As long as we can, at least.’
Sergeant Corwyn nodded, and turned to relay her orders, but before he could, Evrik Ebonwelter’s flamer died completely, and the waiting mist rushed in through the gap.
Like a raging stream overwhelming a dam, the thick, cloying cloud burst into Secundus Company in a torrent. Aerand had thought the fog was thick before, but as the wave rushed in, it nearly knocked her off her feet, and she found her lungs suddenly heaving just to breathe with the weight of the air around her. Her eyes burned with the rush of briny mist, and she blinked away tears to reveal a world of solid white.
A sea of faces swam in that indiscernible miasma, and a moment after the physical wave, the psionic force of the mist struck her in full.
Aerand fell to her knees, the cables on her neck instantly white-hot, her mouth dry as bone and suddenly full of blood. Despite her bridle, thousands of voices reached her ears unbidden, a cacophony loud enough to drown out even her own thoughts.
Before her, a dozen faces formed in the mist, twisted in various stages of agony. A cold, white hand reached out and brushed against her face, a sudden chill left behind in the spectre’s wake. The marsh corpses could not touch her, but the pain brought by the psionic force of thousands of dead crying out fought to bring her low. She was trained to resist this, she was protected… but the rest of Secundus Company would fall to this attack as readily as if the spectres had cut their throats.
Finding herself, Aerand breathed, then lifted her hands and raised a ring of flame around her. Golden fire flickered to life in a bastion wall, the mist retreating with an audible scream. Another breath, and the ring collapsed then re-formed, wide enough now to shelter several others in its embrace. Two troopers lay curled in the dirt beside her, one gasping for air, while the other shook slightly, a thin stream of blood trickling from his nose.
‘Up,’ Aerand ordered, with all the will she could manage. One soldier stood, and blinked, then reached down to help his companion rise.
Another breath, and the circle grew wider still. Vyse. Corwyn. Maltia. Bless that sergeant. Somehow the woman still stood on her feet. Maltia shook herself, and suddenly her flamer roared to life, joining Aerand’s psychic flame to force the mist back even further.
Shaking, Aerand tried to force her will farther forward, only to find the resistance increasing the larger her ring of flame grew. As if she had drawn the attention of something in that miasma, she found the exertion of holding even what she had gained suddenly almost beyond her abilities.
‘Can you push it wider?’ a voice asked quietly beside her.
Aerand looked up at Captain Vyse, and her haggard expression must have spoken for her. The captain stared out into the mist, where myriad faces clawed and scraped against a precariously thin wall of golden flame.
‘You’ve done well enough, adept. I trust you’ll hold them for as long as you can.’
‘Until the last drop is spilled,’ Aerand whispered.
Vyse smiled sadly at the use of the 900th’s regimental motto. ‘Every last one,’ she replied.
Closing her eyes, Aerand cast her mind into the empyrean, the familiar iridescent waves overlaid atop the world around her. The surface of the warp churned like the sea in a storm, being rocked by her exertions and the emotions of the living souls close by. Beyond that, however, within the waiting mists, the immaterium was shrouded by that same white veil.
To cast such a pall, not only on the material world, but also the empyrean itself, was almost unthinkable, and Aerand shivered again at the strength of whatever lay behind that force. Desperate, she cast her mind even further, and for the first time felt something alive in those depths.
Something she recognised.
Aerand recoiled, her mind retreating from the touch of something dark, and unmistakably ancient. Her thoughts flashed back to her vision in the warp chamber at the scholastica, the same swimming, dark force coiling in the mists around her.
At the back of her mind, a voice attempted to speak, low and quiet, and almost unintelligible. Aerand steeled her mind and cut off its attempts, her bridle raging with the effort.
As long as she could. That was all she had promised, but against such a force, that might be only a few breaths.
The weight of the mists pressing down against her, Aerand felt her strength flag. At the edge of the circle, Vyse and Corwyn had gathered their few remaining troopers with Sergeant Maltia in the lead. The heavy trooper’s flamer burned at one edge of the circle, pushing back the white and forming a thin corridor before her.
A foolhardy but valiant plan. With no other options, they were going to try to push their way forward, shielding themselves as best they could with that single remaining weapon. Aerand would assist them as much as she was able.
Closing her eyes once again, she searched desperately for any sign of the familiar glow of the Astronomican. There was no magic in it, no additional source of power, but perhaps that beacon’s purity might allow her to find some remaining untapped power within herself. Or at the very least, when she died, overwhelmed by that darkness, she would die with the Emperor’s music in her ears.
Within the mist, she found the faintest of glimmers. Focusing all her energy on it, she willed it to grow brighter, but found it drawing closer, instead. Desperately, she listened for any hint of the Astronomican’s familiar music, but found only the grating clamour of myriad overlapping whispers.
Aerand’s eyes flashed open.
Only feet away, at the edge of the mists, a shrouded face hung looking out at her. Shadow and light danced across the tepid apparition, like viewing the waxy skin of a corpse beneath water. Unlike the other ephemeral ghasts, there was a permanence to this particular mist corpse. Something substantial about it in both the physical world and the world underneath.
Aerand forced her mind towards its weak empyreal anchor and felt herself unceremoniously thrown back.
Lord psyker, a voice raged above the ghastly chorus. You should not have come here.
For a moment, something grey and cold glimmered with life where the apparition’s eyes might have been, before the fabric of the immaterium shifted beneath it. Fire coursed across Aerand’s skin as her vision blurred for the span of a moment. A shadow rose before her, looming over the apparition as if summoned. A shadow that seemed to draw her to it like gravity. In the back of her mind, the whispers only grew, and she felt herself rising slowly to her feet.
Suddenly, the flames before her gained a new life, her paltry ring of fire erupting into a raging inferno. Golden flame coursed through the fog, pushing back the mist corpses like a charging regiment, until clear air surrounded the entire company. Rushing forward, Vyse and Corwyn roused the troopers to their feet, those well enough to stand lifting those who could not.
The flames continued expanding, leaving charred groves of corpsewood trees in their wake, until suddenly, they reached a massive rockcrete gate, and a man in grey robes, bearing a massive corseque, standing vigil just outside it.
Aerand stumbled past Confessor Javard Libertinum, assisted by Sergeant Corwyn and a second trooper whose name she had not yet learned. The grim-faced ecclesiarch met her gaze only briefly, muttering in High Gothic as he read from a massive yellowed volume, its cover bound in human bone. In his other hand, a brilliant, sunburst-topped corseque was planted in the earth just beyond the gate’s stone foundation.
‘This is the last one,’ Sergeant Corwyn said as they passed, another trio of troopers carrying a litter at their side.
The confessor simply grunted, then returned to his homily. At his side a pair of attendants gently wafted incense from a silver brazier. Along with thick, oily smoke and the scent of conifer needles, the faintest ripple emanated from the clergy, causing the warp itself to quiver like hot air over a flame.
And just as she had pressed back against the mists with the energy the immaterium channelled through her, so that cloud of roiling white recoiled from the confessor’s ritual, though the effort seemed to tax the man far less than it had her. The grace of the God-Emperor Himself made concrete in a way she could not hope to comprehend. For now, such holy mysteries meant precious little to her, and her mind pounded with far more urgent needs.
Water. Sleep. Food. In that order.
‘He’s held vigil outside the Sun Gate for the last day and a half,’ the trooper supporting her muttered to Corwyn. ‘Since the moment the mists began to surround Providence.’
Aerand sighed. Let the confessor hold his vigil until he died if he liked. Perhaps the man did not need rest, but she certainly did.
As they passed beneath the massive arch of rockcrete separating Providence from the wilds beyond, the sodden mess of Secundus Company came into full view. Fewer troopers than there should have been. More lying on cots than standing, it seemed. Already, Vyse prowled the small courtyard, irate, rousing those that could stand, and leaving the rest for Argos, the company’s chief medicae. The veteran trooper circled the wounded with a bioscanner and a pouch of bloodied instruments, patching what he could and rapidly dispatching the remaining casualties in the direction of the regimental chirurgeon’s tent.
‘What a bloody mess,’ she muttered to herself. Along a side street the company’s five remaining Sentinels groaned beneath the ministrations of their harried pilots. Secundus Company would take weeks to recover from this, if it ever managed to recover at all.
‘Aye,’ Corwyn muttered, reading the guilt written across her face. ‘And a mess I’m damned grateful to have.’ The veteran trooper fixed her with steely violet eyes. ‘I don’t even want to know the rumours that will be floating around by morning, but Vyse and I know exactly what happened out there, even if the captain is too proud to admit it. Without you there wouldn’t be a mess at all, just one hundred more faces waiting out in that mist. Would have been a shame to end up dead less than a hundred yards from Providence’s gate.’
He glanced over at the waiting row of deceased troopers, strips of cloth already bound across their eyes in the traditional Cadian fashion. A ritual that had travelled along with the 900th from Cadia herself. A final chance to be free from the sight of the roiling Eye of Terror overhead. It was a symbolic exercise only, now, and nothing more than the dim glow of cold moonlight trickled through Visage’s almost impenetrable cloud cover. But symbols were all that remained of Cadia. Symbols and the hardened troopers who continued them, and Corwyn took seriously this company sergeant’s final, most important duty to his soldiers.
‘You’ll be all right?’ he asked, clearly anxious to leave her and attend to his duties.
‘Yes,’ Aerand sighed, probing the man’s aura gently. There was an honesty there, refreshing as always, but beneath the sergeant’s gratitude and concern, a darker flavour waited. He might recognise that she had saved his life, but he still harboured fear and suspicion beneath that. Prudent, on his part, if painful for her.
