Tell me how it feels, little man. demanded the deacon, his eyes locked on the pain-wracked face of his former apprentice. "What is it like to be a vessel too small to hold the magnificent potential of the empyrean?" He laughed. The suffering must be unspeakable. He moved levers and dials that had not been touched in over ten millennia, shifting the huge ma.s.s of the engine in place. In turn, the throb-bing hum of power drawn from the raging magma lake below them increased, feeding the ancient mechanism"s needs.
"You are such a fool, Torris. said the priest-lord. "I am almost saddened by the way I was able to draw you to me. How strange to think that on some level, I actually hoped you might be able to best me. I sup-pose that is the forlorn hope of every teacher, is itnot? That their prize student will one day exceed them?"
"Hate you. spat Vaun. "Heartless. He tried to muster the fire in his mind, but every ounce of raw flame he could call upon was instantly sucked away into the raging white discharges about him.
"Oh, you wound me. retorted LaHayn, clutching at the very real injury in his gut. "But never again. Like the errant son you are, you came back to have your revenge on the father figure in your pathetic, wasted life.
Blinded by your greed, your mindless desire for anarchy. Never once did you suspect that it was because I wished it!" He shouted the words. "You are here because I let you come, boy. I stayed the hand of the Sororitas on Groombridge, I allowed you to come here and play your foolish games with Sherring!"
Vaun shook his head. "Liar. His fists balled in helpless anger.
"Hard to accept, isn"t it?" LaHayn coughed and dabbed blood from his lips. "But it is the truth. I knew I would never bring you home by capture or coercion. I had to make you think it was all your idea!" He propped himself up on the lip of the podium. "Who do you think it was that ensured Sherring discovered the location of the keep? Whc was it that let him get away with his corruption ol the Mercutio"s crew and the secret arming of his forces in Metis? I did, you dupe. You gave me the excuse to destroy my most troublesome rival intc the bargain!" The priest smiled, showing blood flecked teeth. "I want you to understand this, boy. Every freedom you have ever enjoyed, every lib-erty and choice you think you had, all of it has been by my permission. Each day of your pathetic life, from the moment you took my hand outside that burning church, you have travelled only as far as my leash about your neck would permit-" LaHayn"s words cascaded into a hacking, painful cough. When he looked up again, a steely hate coiled in his eyes. "You were my greatest triumph, Torris. The strongest, the most powerful psychic killer I had ever fostered - but you are nothing compared to what I will become. You have outgrown your use-fulness, and it is time for the tool to perform its final task. He threw open his hands." The engine is ready, after a hundred thousand lifetimes - and you are the spark that will ignite it.
"Never. screamed Vaun, reaching into himself to pull every last iota of destructive energy from within.
"Never, never, NEVER]"
The engine howled with sympathetic feedback, and to the deacon"s shock, the rings released immense hammers of flaming psy-fire to the four corners of the black stone chamber.
Each planet has its legends of the apocalypse, the roots of superst.i.tion stretching back through time to the cradle of mankind. Some speak of murderous solar explosions, others of eternal winters or heav-enly raptures that would scour worlds clean; on Neva the myth of destruction was one of fire and brimstone.
The parables left behind by the long-dead first colonists foretold of a horrific day when the magma core of the planet would rage out of control and shatter continents with eruptions of molten rock.
Torris Vaun"s mind held onto those visions of cat-astrophe as his towering rage boiled inside him. The tight confines of the machine throne coiled about his body, tightening around his skin and pressing invisible forces into his brain - but at the same time, the resonating engine was filling him with impossible power, charging his crude flesh with reserves of psychic potential beyond anything he could comprehend.
His mind was drowning in a screaming sea of churning, raw emotion, the spinning rings slowly forming a conduit through him into the soul-shattering madness of warp s.p.a.ce. Vaun"s thoughts were slipping away from him, the matter of his skin and bone becoming less and less defined as the machine absorbed him. In moments, he would become a shade, a ghost of the man he was. With sudden, blinding clarity he understood what was happening to him, what it was that LaHayn had conspired to do. In the crudest, most basic sense the ancient psionic device was no different from any other engine. To fully bring itself to optimal capacity, it required a spark of ignition - a sc.r.a.p of human kindling to set it running to full power.
You are the spark. The priest-lord"s words echoed in the blazing halls of his mind. It was inconceivable for Vaun to contemplate that the energy surging about him was only the primer for the engine"s true millionfold capacity. He tried in vain to hold the thought in his mind but the conception of it slipped away, leaking out. The psyker was drowning in sun-fire, dying by degrees as the killing light subsumed him. The fear and terror at his predicament were burning out of Vaun, leaving nothing in their place but raging anger, at LaHayn, at himself, at the Battle Sisters and at his hated homeworld. The murderous loathing rose up like a black tide as he accepted the brutal truth - he had been used, played like an instrument by that unspeakable old monster, turned to do the deacon"s mad bidding even when he believed that his life was his own. And now he was going to die for his mentor, he would vanish and disintegrate into pure psychic energy so that LaHayn could take the power of the engine for him-self.
Vaun allowed himself one last moment of regret: he had forged such great plans from the day he hadlearned of the psi-engine"s existence. The psyker pirate wanted to turn it to his own cause, to make himself unstoppable against the Inquisition or any other foe that would stand against him. He did not care about the wars between LaHayn"s precious Emperor and the mad beasts of the Chaos G.o.ds -all he wanted was to aggrandise himself, to plunder any world he cared to and shatter those that dis-pleased him. All that was ashes now, and in moments he would be too.
He thought of the boy Ignis, dead now, his face lit with callous glee at the thought of a planet"s death. I"ll give you that, lad, he told the ghost-memory. We"ll have revenge yet.
Below on the pulpit, LaHayn wheezed and shouted something angry and incoherent. The d.a.m.nable priest could see Vaun"s refusal to go qui-etly reflected in the flashing dials of his arcane console. The psyker forced a laugh out of the necrotic flesh of his throat and drew inward, gather-ing in the very last mental embers of his own violent ident.i.ty. The spinning rings clattered against each other with showers of sparks; the engine was not designed to hold an unwilling sacrifice.
Vaun let the memories of those ancient death-myths fill him and with one final effort, he plunged his raging spirit into the thundering magma core and let it loose.
Without warning, the black earth around them rang like a struck gong. The Canoness stumbled and barely regained her footing, one of her Celestians snapping out a hand to steady her. In annoyance she shook off the woman"s grip and barked out a command. "Report.
Her words barely carried over the sullen, grinding rumble of rock on rock, and high over their heads loose basalt pebbles flickered and shifted.
"Seismic activity," came the voice from the com-mand vehicle. Auspex detects energy surges inside the keep.
The cracking of stone broke around them and Galatea threw herself aside as fissures cleaved the ground around her. She watched in mute horror as a shallow pinnacle of black rock detached itself from the sheer valley wall and dropped into the midst of a Dominion squad. The Battle Sisters were not given enough time to scream. Others threw themselves from the path of tumbling boulders and avalanches of dark sand. Those too slow to react paid with their lives.
Ahead of them, the open maw where the keep"s broad iron portcullis had been breached ground against itself, shedding a rain of dusty particles. For a moment it seemed as if the tremors were falling, but then they rose again, twice as powerful.
"It"s getting worse. said the Celestian at her side, voicing the Canoness"s thoughts for her.
Galatea tabbed the control stud that changed the vox channel and broke into the frequency used by the transport flyers. They were still close by, orbiting on station. "Heed me," she snapped, "pilots report, what do you see up there?"
She turned her face to the sallow sky and frowned. Something seemed wrong about the clouds around the citadel.
They were moving even though there was little wind, spinning into odd, ring-like formations.
"Eruptions in all quadrants." The flat voice of a flight servitor informed her without emotion or inflection. "Pyroclastic flows sighted in several areas. Volcanic disturbance increasing exponentially.
"Impossible. snarled the Sororitas. This zone is seeded with magma stabilisers. There hasn"t been an eruption on Neva for a thousand years.
"It appears we are overdue, then. Galatea"s eyes narrowed. She could see it now, hazy gossamer waves in the air as plumes of heat might rise from a campfire. They radiated out from the tower to all points, and with each new pulse the rasping earth twitched again. A distant crash of noise reached them in the black arroyo as another peak some kilo-metres distant blew itself apart, the upper quarter of the jagged stone tooth disappearing into a vast blot of grey ash. Sulphurous fumes turned her, coughing, from the fractures in the ground.
Within them she saw the dim glow of lava marching inexorably upward.
"What is happening in there?" She asked the ques-tion aloud, not just of herself but also of the shuddering ma.s.s of the stony fortress.
"Your grace?" The Celestian gave her a searching look. "Shall we go on?"
Galatea"s order was on the tip of her tongue when a fresh shudder ran through the stone and earth. With a sound that drove nails of pressure into their ears, the rock beneath the treads of a fully loaded Rhino troop carrier gave way. The slab-like armoured vehicle skidded against the tilting plane of ground it lay upon, jets of smoke blasting from the exhaust pipes as the driver tried to fight the sud-den incline. Women threw themselves off the roof and leapt as best they could from open hatches, but in grotesque slow motion the tank sank backward into the crevice with a howl of tortured steel. Half a dozen Battle Sisters, dead in the blink of an eye.
The earth"s torment did not lessen. Now it moved like something alive, trembling and shaking. Galatea staggered again as she shouted into the gen-eral command channel. "All who hear, heed me. Fall back from the keep. All Sisters are to withdraw in skirmish lines, no delays, fleet of foot!" She threw a nod to her guardians and the Celestians drew close to her. "Pilots, execute recovery operation immedi-ately!"
There was a dull reply from one of the coleopters. "Landing zone is unstable. We may not be able to make a touch-down-"
"You"ll do it, or by Katherine"s eyes I"ll see you whipped. The retort ripped at her throat with each breath of tainted,h.e.l.lish air. "I"ll sacrifice no more Sisters to this blighted place." Galatea panted and coughed. Her troops were already donning their helmets and she did the same, sealing out the foul atmosphere. Inside her armour, a blessed draught of recycled air came to her and she swallowed it with a wheeze. Her optics caught sight of a flyer dropping low, thrusters flaring through the spreading drab haze. She waved a squad bearing injured women past her, once again shifting her vox frequency to the select channel used by the Imperial Navy. "Mer-cutio, respond. This is Canoness Galatea, notae gravis."
"Mercutio," came the cool tones of the warship"s commander. "We are monitoring your situation from our orbit at high anchor, milady. Is there busi-ness for us?"
"Aye. she replied. "The church has need of you.
"What are you doing?" bellowed the deacon. "You cannot defy me. This is the will of your G.o.d!" He spat with bilious anger, blood flecking his lips, pain knifing him in the stomach. The gold and bra.s.s frame of the pulpit shuddered with every humming pulse of misdirected power that flashed from the clashing rings.
Furious with frustration, LaHayn slammed his fists against the ornate panel before him. This was not supposed to happen. The subject was supposed to die quietly, willingly, giving up his mind-essence to set the engine to speed!
"Curse you, Vaun, you arrogant insect!" About the chamber, stone pillars fell into rubble and elaborate obsidian statues ten millennia old were dashed to pieces. Through the open gates to the keep"s volcanic core, the leaden lake of magma was alive with crashes of escaping gas and heavy, torpid waves.
"No. the psyker"s words were distorted and length-ened, pulled like tallow into a dull drone. "Curse you!
LaHayn could make him out in the depths of the energy nimbus, a pale and paper-thin shade of the insolent rebel that had faced him in the Lunar Cathedral, and yet still Vaun resisted him. From the corner of his eye, the priest-lord saw movement on the floor of the engine chamber, but disregarded it. The last of Vaun"s pathetic band of escapees or some surviving member of his own servant cadre? It mat-tered nothing to him now. He pulled at a nest of bronze levers and the pulpit lurched forward, a coiled armature unfolding beneath it. The golden podium came up and into the edge of the aura field, setting showers of sparks glowing in the air.
"Destroy it all. moaned Vaun. "Revenge. Beaten you!
"Never. snarled the deacon, coiling the line of an onyx rosary in his hand. It was difficult: his blood slicked his fingers and made die links slippery. "Not by a wastrel... witch like you. You"re just the ember to prime the pump!" At last he pulled the box-shaped holdout gun into his grip, clasping the ornate surface.
With infinite care, he aimed the ornamental weapon at his old pupil"s face. "No escape this time." LaHayn"s thumb pressed down on a bejewelled trigger b.u.t.ton and the little gun released a hollow thunderclap.
LaHayn heard the crackle as Vaun desperately tried to thicken the air between the muzzle and his skull. He saw the recognition of failure dawn on those pallid features, and with a grating shout of victory, he basked in the glorious moment of the kill. The psycannon bolt lanced through Vaun"s fad-ing mental shields as if they were nothing more than cloth. It entered his skull through the nasal cavity and travelled into the meat of his brain, shed-ding needles as it did. The penetration core ruptured inside him, imploding. With nothing to animate his flesh any more, Torris Vaun, the corsair of Neva, hated criminal and witchkin lawbreaker, died with a feeble gasp. His final release of mental energy melted into the psi-engine and the machine glowed white.
The deacon let the spent gun and rosary drop from his fingers, clattering away to the floor below him. He rocked with shallow, pained laughter, clutching at the edges of the pulpit. He had left ruddy fingerprints everywhere his hands touched the shining metal. "It is done. he told himself. "Every great endeavour requires a sacrifice." Taking a shaky step, LaHayn moved towards the edge of the podium. The spinning rings were within arm"s reach, throwing rays of warmth across him each time they pa.s.sed. He was smiling, tears shining on his face even though every movement was like fire in his belly. But no, he had come too far, struggled too long to die on the very cusp of his destiny. He felt the hand of the G.o.d-Emperor upon him, beck-oning him forward.
"I will do it, master. he said aloud. "I will do it for your glory."
Something heavy and dangerous thrummed past his head and set him off-balance. The priest-lord cried out and grabbed at the ivory relief carving of the Imperial eagle on the crest of the pulpit, a single heartbeat away from falling short. He turned his gaze downward and saw, like ants crawling around the foot of a giant, the figures of Sister Miriya and her d.a.m.nable companions. The woman raised a pistol and he knew that she had drawn a bead between his eyes.
Viktor LaHayn. she intoned. You are bound by the law of the Imperial Church. Stand down and submit to chastis.e.m.e.nt or you will be executed for your heresy against our G.o.d.
He could do nothing else but laugh at her.
Miriya ignored Ca.s.sandra"s muttered cursing. She could see how easy it had been to miss with her bolter shot - the air danced around the high metal pulpit in shimmering waves and cascades of glow-ing blue symbols tumbled silently about them like falling snow. For the moment, the rolling havoc of the volcano had subsided, but the lava flow still rumbled at their backs, ready to turn violent again at a moment"s notice. All of them had witnessed Vaun"s murder.The peculiar disintegration of his body set them aghast, but Miriya ordered them closer. The witch was dead, and that was one less deed for them to fulfil. Just LaHayn remained, mad and wounded and commanding this insane mecha-nism that only the Emperor Himself could master -if the heretic was to be believed.
He looked down at them, a b.l.o.o.d.y horror in ruined robes. The Celestian had seen men and women live far longer than they should have with stomach wounds such as his, weeping and praying that death would take them and spare them the agony. LaHayn"s face was a ma.s.s of conflicts: rapture, pain, hate and elation.
"B-bear witness," he croaked, "think yourselves as lucky as Alicia and the Brides of the Emperor when they were brought before Him after the Apostasy... You will see. You will see!"
"Kill him," hissed Isabel. "Before it is too late, kill the d.a.m.ned heretic!"
But there was something, some tiny fragment of Miriya"s soul that could not break the awe she felt before the spinning rings of the engine. She could not give voice to the manner in which she knew, but with a certainty that was as solid as the stars in the sky, she knew that LaHayn was correct about one thing. This machine was not the creation of man, but of her G.o.d-Emperor. The truth of that froze her blood in her veins.
LaHayn stabbed a finger at her. "You see it. You know it is real. Understand me, girl, once I embrace the engine I will be remade. That is its ultimate pur-pose, to rewrite the book of life. I want this gift, I am destined for it!"
Verity shook her head, desperate to deny him. "You cannot interfere with the work of our Master.
The cleric tipped back his head and revealed the base of his skull. The familiar bolus of the silver sphere implant was visible beneath his skin. "Oh, but I can.
You are no psyker. retorted Ca.s.sandra.
"In moments, I will be. The greatest of them.
"No..." murmured Miriya. The concept of such a thing was too much for her to take in.
"Yes" he roared, spitting blood. "Oh yes! I shall ful-fil our G.o.d"s will. I shall travel to Terra and awaken Him, and we will transform mankind in His image..." His voice cracked. "Listen to me. All the pieces are in place.
The keys found, the codes bro-ken, the a.s.sumption is upon me. Consecrate it with your faith, dear sisters.
Watch me take up the man-tle lost by blessed Malcador and become the Second Sigillite!"
Miriya"s breath caught in her throat and her hand wavered. LaHayn invoked the name of the Emperor"s first-chosen adjutant, the secretive administrator-priest selected in the days of the Great Crusade, the man who - so the legends said - had been the first human being to bear the mark of the soul-binding ritual that forever connected him to the Father of Mankind.
Malcador had perished thousands of years ago and no man had ever dared to try and take his t.i.tle. It was written that the Sigillite was one of the most powerful psykers in creation, second only to the mental might of the Emperor. That the deacon believed he might stand in Malcador"s place was either blasphemy of the highest order or the folly of lunacy.
Her aim steadied and her finger tightened on the plasma gun"s trigger. Viktor LaHayn, in the name of Holy Terra, consider your life forfeit.
The priest-lord threw his body from the podium as she fired. There was the shriek of clashing ener-gies and then the chamber turned white with pain.
The burning light sent Verity to the floor, pressing her face to the stone to stop her from being blinded. Isabel was not as swift and she fell to her knees with an animal howl on her lips. The white flash rolled away and Verity resisted the urge to claw at her eyes, blinking furiously. Every glowing ember in the chamber felt like a needle through her skull.
She staggered, off-balance, almost falling over the p.r.o.ne Battle Sister. Her gaze travelled upwards even though some inner voice screamed not to do so.
The motion of the spinning rings had changed. Slower now, more languid, they turned and dropped close to the ground, coming about one another, crossing and re-crossing. As they moved, their orbit was tethered by lines of invisible force to a glittering shape at the hub of motion. Suspended there in a rack of red-gold light, the Lord High Deacon Viktor LaHayn was screaming in silence. His face reflected a merging of two polar opposites - utter, inchoate fear and rapturous joy. By turns his aspect showed one and then the other, waxing and waning through each emotion.
White particles gathered about the places in his stomach and torso where he had been injured - Miriya"s shot having hit its mark, for all the good it had done - and gradually tapes of flesh and new muscle were gathered out of the air to repair him.
Verity sensed the Sister Superior stumbling to her feet. A flash of plasma from her gun darted into the nimbus of the engine, but once within it slowed to a crawl, the white fury of the sun-hot gas dissipat-ing. Ca.s.sandra fired too, her bolt sh.e.l.ls puffing into powder where they struck. The Hospitaller sniffed. The air was growing colder by the second, patches of frost blossoming on the stone floor in defiance of the fact that a live volcano rumbled only a few metres distant. Icicles crackled as they formed on the walls and the podiums about the chamber. Her breath emerged in pops of vapour, and the chill crept into their bones.
Miriya grimaced. "Hard to kill, this priest....""He"s drawing energy from the air itself!" Verity suddenly understood. "Preparing.
"That shall not come to pa.s.s. growled the Sorori-tas. "Sisters. Curb the witch!"
Ca.s.sandra drew the gunmetal ingot of a snub bolter pistol from a holster in the folds of her robes and pressed it into Verity"s hand. Take this, and use it. No oaths or excuses now.
Verity swallowed a gulp of frosty air and nodded, holding up the weapon. At her side, Isabel aimed through bloodshot, blurry eyes. All of them opened fire at once, sh.e.l.ls and plasma bolts flaring darkly against the nimbus of the rings.
LaHayn"s head jerked, as if he noticed them for the first time. The Hospitaller could see where his thin mane of silver hair was leaving him, the shape of the implant clearly visible as it pulsed beneath his skin.
Her stomach knotted in pure loathing. The man had done it, with deliberate intent he had turned himself from a pure-strain human being into a psychic aberration. Just like the crawling wisps of frost vapour about their ankles, verity sensed the deacon"s burgeoning powers reaching out, tracing tendrils of insubstantial mind-stuff. There was a pressure behind the bridge of her nose, as if an iron rod was being forced into her brain. She kept firing, the bolt pistol making her bones jar with every dis-charge.
Insects.
The word tolled through the four women and made each of them cry out in pain. Verity"s eyes flooded with tears and she blinked as they chilled upon her icy cheeks.
"Don"t falter," shouted Miriya, her throat catching. "For the G.o.d-Emperor-"
I Am Your G.o.d Now. The impact of the voice was a physical blow, cracking the newly formed ice sheets.
You Will Be The Last To Defy Me.
"Have faith!" The Sister Superior was weeping bro-kenly as she said it.
There were still shots in the gun, but for all the effort Verity put into squeezing the trigger, noth-ing happened. Hopelessness, sharp as a razor, cut across her soul.
From the rings came a hoop of perfect gold light, crackling with dark spheres of exotic radia-tion. The ephemeral circle radiated out across the engine chamber and struck the four Sisters, violat-ing their minds with terrifying ease. It was the manifestation of the priest-lord"s will to break them.
Verity felt as if her bones had turned to water. She sagged, struggling just to stay on her feet, abruptly weighted down with a dreadful, heart-breaking despair. Suddenly everything seemed meaningless, her every thought and deed for noth-ing, her life a waste of breath and blood. She was dimly aware of Isabel behind her, crying like a child and lamenting. Ca.s.sandra, always tall and strong, as hard as steel, she too slipped to her knees on the rimes of h.o.a.rfrost and folded in on herself, becoming small and pathetic inside the hollows of her armour.
"Throne, no. The Hospitaller couldn"t be sure who it was that cried out, but she saw Miriya blur-ring, coming closer. She felt like she was drowning in misery, every pore of her body clogged with grey desolation, each breath hollow and leaden: It was him, she raged inside, LaHayn is doing this to us, turning our dark fears upon us!
"We must resist," wept Miriya, shaking Verity by her shoulders. "We cannot let him stop us."
Try as she might, the Hospitaller only saw a blurry dark shape in Sororitas battle armour, and the face of her poor, dead sibling looking back at her.
"Lethe, Lethe," she sobbed. "Don"t leave me. Please. I"m lost without you."
Inside her heart, the cavern of sorrows she had held at bay after her sister"s death yawned wide and swallowed her whole.
Miriya shook her head, struggling to break the priest-lord"s telepathic hex, but the force of his mind clung on and coiled about her psyche. Every-where she turned she saw the faces of the dead, the marching regretful corpses whose lives had been entwined with hers on the field of duty. Lethe and Iona, Portia and Reiko, they stalked her with mournful aspects and empty souls, crying her name, accusing her with sorrowful whispers. And there were more beyond them, ranks of those she had fought alongside in the past and survived: Sister Rachel in the bombed out ruins at Starleaf, killed by a Traitor Guard laser sniper, Nikita and Madeline lost in the catacombs of Pars Unus, and more and more. Her Battle Sisters and her victims surround-ing her, beating her down with each deathly wail. Her mind reeled, on the verge of shattering.
She fell to the icy floor and cried out in pain as something sharp lanced into her palm. The agony snapped her thoughts into clear focus for a second. There, buried in the heel of her hand was a golden aquila charm on a broken onyx chain. A sign!
She whirled about, pulling on her last reserves of devotion, brandishing her pistol and snarling. "I deny you. You are false, priest. I name thee traitor!"