Augusta did not see Rufus fall.
In the continuous shimmer of the rising heat, the Sister Superior had done her best to watch both the ex-soldiers, their shoulders shaking now, their breathing straining with sulphur and exhaustion. But she could not be everywhere, and the shout from Melia made her turn.
It was already too late.
The young medicae made no sound; he did not have time. He was a tiny tumbling silhouette, black against the firelight below.
And then he was a flash.
And then he was gone.
Augusta saw Mors stumble as the last member of his squad died before his eyes.
‘Decidit gloria.’ She answered his shock, his grief, with a gauntleted hand under his elbow, holding him up, with the words she’d learned when she’d seen for the first time a fellow Sister offer her life.
Decidit gloria…
Mors was shaking, she could feel it, but he took his own weight, picked the words up and repeated them, calm above the slavering heat.
Fall with honour.
Alcina gave a low impatient growl. ‘We must not pause here.’
A flare of ire rose in Augusta’s heart, just like the flare of fire they’d seen from below – they were warriors all, fighting servants of the God-Emperor, and they were stronger together. There was always a moment to find or pool their courage.
Yet Alcina was right, they could not linger here. Augusta ended her prayer, glanced at Mors, and gave the order to go onwards.
And so, with Rhea and Viola still at their head, they reached the end of the drawbridge, and the great, black wall that was Vastum’s central forge temple.
‘In times of fear,’ Augusta’s schola tutor had once told her, ‘you may rely upon two things. What are they? Your armour and your weapons? Yes? Anyone else have an answer? Your faith, Sisters, and your training.’
The old woman had been a warrior herself, and her lesson had stayed in Augusta’s heart – reflex was a powerful motivator. And now, as they moved carefully, skirmish formation, through a black stone archway and down through hollow corridors, she understood the wisdom of those words. Their faith was unquestioned, and it was manifest in every single one of these well-known actions, in the smooth operations of her assembled Sisters. Rhea and Viola worked well together – they had slotted into their roles as Sisters should. But Alcina…
Augusta was aware of her second’s eyes, always upon her back. They made her itch.
And that itch shamed her, despite its persistence – were they not all Sisters, in the service of the same light?
They went onwards.
Very soon, the corridor turned through an angle, the exact same sixty degrees as the outer tunnels – it seemed the temple, too, was crafted to hexagonal design. There were no numbers here, however, and Rhea and Akemi seemed to be moving on pure instinct, following the pipes and the stonework, as they headed for the building’s heart.
As they moved on inwards, they began to encounter cloisters, though nothing like Augusta had known before. Great arcs of conduits surrounded hexagonal spaces, each one with a rusting metal shrine at the centre, and its cog-and-skull engraved in the underlying stone. In other places, short steps led them upwards, and great steel portcullises were long rusted into place. They hung above the Sisters’ heads like teeth, ready to descend.
And then, at last, they came to the side door and the transept, and the heart of Vastum’s might and power.
The place where that central control node would be waiting for them.
Rifles, cannons, blasters.
The bright-white glow of phosphor and the blossoming red detonations of high-calibre rounds.
Half-hidden by the shadows of the doorway, the second rank of Rayos’ force laid down their fire.
Caia’s auspex was telling her – though the canoness already knew – that they would not advance.
But Ianthe was calling orders, pulling the Exorcists up, extended file, alongside the Immolators, and commanding the whole single rank to roll forwards, protecting the troop-bearers behind the advancing front.
This was not a battle for infantry.
Not yet.
It was, however, a battle for the Seraphim.
Down to four, the airborne Sisters swooped in under the edge of the door, and flew a straight strafing run all along the stationary line, each hammering down rounds from her twin bolters as she passed swiftly overhead.
The line of machines did not react. It was not human, it could not flinch or be distracted – but the damage was being done.
The Breachers and Destroyers, out at the flanks, were more vulnerable. Shots to their human heads took a severe toll, and already their fire was lessening. As the Seraphim reached the far end of the line, four of the waiting machines had been destroyed.
And the red tanks rolled in, relentless, trumpets blaring from the vox-coder, towards the standing line of their foes.
Any conscious enemy would surely have baulked, but the machines did not move. The canoness took cover, then shot a standing kastelan clean to the face, and watched it topple sideways, taking its nearest neighbour down with it. Blazing with righteousness, she targeted a second, and her streak of yellow fire struck its shoulder. It did not fall, but its cannon misfired and exploded, and sent a flash of light outwards through the black stone.
It let Caia see one thing very clearly – the height of the roof.
And it seemed Ianthe had seen it also.
The canoness’ voice snapped the order, ‘Exorcists! Missiles, on my word!’
The greatest concentration of numbers was at the very back. Caia didn’t know if Rayos was here with her troops, or simply picking up the projected data as they fought, but wherever she was, she must surely be defended.
Perhaps she was still human enough to wish to see this for herself.
But the line of machines was still shooting, and the incoming barrage was taking a toll.
Their own Immolator crunched and buckled at the impacts of heavy arc rifles and torsion cannons. One lopsided Kataphron was armed with a colossal plasma weapon – Caia had not seen its like before, but the glow of its power and the spit of its fire were tremendous. It struck one of the advancing Exorcists clean to the nose and the vehicle simply detonated, the blast immense in the enclosed space.
Above the blast, one of the Seraphim was caught in the updraft, but she rode the current with extreme skill, came back down swooping at the Breacher and spattered its head across its metal shoulders.
Still, the tanks rolled on. Still, the line facing them neither moved nor recoiled. Overhead, the arcs of the two surviving Exorcists’ missiles seemed like shooting stars in the darkness.
And where they struck, the damage was immediate. Explosions rocked the cavern; Caia’s lenses flicked in their antidazzle as the confusion of noise and pressure almost knocked her back.
The air was full of blood and smoke and oil and death.
Still, the tanks did not stop. And as they reached full speed, the canoness shouted, ‘All drivers! Ram!’
Their own Immolator struck the legs of the kastelan before it. It was slow, like some lumbering giant; its great fist went to grab and crush them, but the strike missed as they rolled onwards. As it tried to balance and turn, the blast of Ianthe’s plasma pistol hit it in the side and it twisted into a complete fall, crushing the Breacher beside it to metal and pulp.
In the vox, Caia could hear Sister Nikaya, the power of her hymn carrying her and the Seraphim forwards on another swoop-and-kill. They were sticking to the far flanks, out of the line of fire of the incoming vehicles.
But another kastelan was ready for them. Sharper than its fellow, it timed Nikaya’s strafe and it met her, head-on, with one massive fist.
Steel met steel; the jump pack coughed and guttered. At the noise, Ianthe’s voice caught on a furious crescendo. For a split second, nothing seemed to happen, Nikaya seemed to almost hang in the air… and then her jump pack flickered and went out completely, and she fell, down and down, and into the darkness. In the turmoil, Caia could not see where she’d landed, and the auspex was too confused to pick one contact out of the mess.
The canoness was shouting, now, livid and furious, snapping orders of war and retribution.
Rhene was moving, but Ianthe took a moment to bark, ‘No! Stay where you are! You are necessary and I cannot lose you!’
To Caia’s either side, the other two Immolators were still rumbling on, their heavy tracks carrying them insistently forward, and aiming their full rate of fire at the standing machines. They could hardly miss, and the machines were taking significant damage, but they were close, now, almost upon them. One of the Breachers coughed flame, but the fire fell back from the Immolator’s armour. The other one lowered its heavy cannon to shoot point-blank.
The impact crunched the Immolator to a dead stop. Still shooting, straining to see, Caia thought that something had come loose from the front of the vehicle and was jammed in its tracks. The cannon was already powering up to shoot again, but the Breacher jerked and faltered under a hail of incoming rounds.
‘Their flesh is their weakness!’ Belatedly, Caia realised that the canoness had been giving commands for the last few moments. ‘Strike them in the head if you can!’
Fervently, Caia lifted her voice and continued to shoot, her smaller bolter seeming to do little damage. By contrast, the canoness’ pistol was ferocious, every hit a kill, every kill a celebration, every celebration a prayer.
The second line of machines was almost down, and the Order was still moving, still pressing forwards.
But Rayos, it seemed, had not finished with them yet.
The forge temple was silent, and ruddy with the sullen glow of lava-light. It was a great vaulted hollow, cracked to the core, isolated by the yawning depths of its moat, and by the huge, hollow height of the mountain that encased it… and it carried an odd sense of unease that was making the Sister Superior sweat.
‘Rhea,’ Augusta said, her tone showing nothing of her tension. ‘Do you know what you seek?’
‘Yes, Sister.’ Rhea sounded edgy, but she showed no hesitation. ‘We must find the focus of this building’s lost faith.’
‘We will stay together,’ Augusta said. ‘I do not trust this place enough to split our strength. Viola, stay with Rhea. Akemi, Mors, with me. Alcina, Melia, watch our backs.’
‘Aye.’ The formation closed tight, weapons bristling in every direction. At Rhea’s indication, they headed through the transept for the wide space visible ahead.
Still, they had seen no servitors, no guards, not so much as a cogitator or a floating servo-skull…
But the sweat that slid down Augusta’s spine left a shudder as it passed. Unlike the headless corpse of the great cathedral upon Lautis, this space did not feel empty. It felt full, full of heat, full of potential and hostility, full of data, full of writhing streams of information that still moved across the air–
It felt like it was watching them.
‘There.’ Rhea’s indication was unnecessary, they could all see the wide stone steps that led up to the central altar. It was not a stone plinth, a place of electro-candles and effigies; it looked more like a construction, a great layering of furnaces and walkways and steel steps, a tech-priest-made machine-spirit that should have been the Omnissiah’s strength on this, His distant world…
But it lay dead, its furnaces cold, its walkways sagging. Like Lycheate itself.
And then, a piece of it moved.
The third rank of Rayos’ defences.
Still no sign of the heretek herself, just her massed machines, line after line of them, ranks of foes that the Sisters must cut their way through.
Yet these, Caia thought, looked different. They were clean-lined, and better made. They stood straight, their weapons strong. They lacked the writhing of wires, the exposed joints, the poorly made tracks, and the old welds across their steel bodies.
Almost instinctively, Caia understood that the previous two ranks had been built in haste – that, for the weeks since the Sisters’ arrival, Rayos had been concentrating on massing her force.
These machines had been made correctly, with more care, and time. As if they had been made by something–
‘These are older,’ the canoness said, finishing Caia’s thought. ‘Rayos could not have built–’
They did not have time to discuss the fact.
The air was alive, and the massed machines were opening fire.
Rayos.
Augusta recognised the heretek from their previous mission – small, for a tech-priest, malign and misshapen. Her half-human face bore a slick of recent burn scars and one blue eye, and she wore a familiar black-shimmer cloak. She moved to the head of the steps as if she could deny the Sisters access to anything she chose.
‘Sister Superior,’ she said.
Her voice, too, was recognisable, that same chill, analytical scorn. When Rayos spoke in human words, it felt like the heretek was lowering herself to the level of inferior beings.
In response, Viola aimed the heavy bolter, the weapon the best answer she could give. Melia’s flamer gouted a belch of fire, as if it were eager for a second try.
‘Heretek,’ Augusta answered.
The tech-priest shifted, clicking. ‘You have come far, Sisters. Two-hundred-point-one-four miles. We have watched you. We have calculated your every move. Your every response has been within expected parameters. And you have arrived precisely on schedule.’
Augusta was aware of Sister Rhea, auspex in hand, searching for the mechanism. She saw Rayos note the motion; saw the minute tilt of her head, its angle exact. It looked almost like amusement.
‘Your questing will avail you nothing,’ Rayos said. ‘You will perish here, all of you. And your weapons and equipment will be valuable.’
Augusta closed her hand on her chainsword. She wanted this over, wanted to slay this accursed heretek, but she dare not make a mistake. Alcina’s eyes were on her, and Rayos…
The fallen tech-priest knew how to calculate the odds.
She must know that she could not take on all six Sisters by herself.
And she’d said, ‘we’.
The Sister Superior came forwards, right to the bottom of the steps. She was looking for the concealed force, the gun emplacements, the backup or reinforcements that were giving Rayos this mathematical confidence. She said, pushing, ‘We are cutting your army to pieces.’
‘Not my army, Sister,’ Rayos said. Again, that tilt of almost amusement. ‘My vanguard.’
What?
Augusta felt Alcina tense; the clatter of her armour was audible.
Rayos said, ‘You have erred. Your assault is destroyed. There is a ninety-four-point-eight per cent chance that your canoness will perish.’
‘By the Light!’ Alcina’s voice. Her boots sounded on the stone. She was moving, but Augusta did not turn. The Sister Superior was fixed on Rayos at the top of the steps, her black cloak glistening like a living thing.
‘Your odds are nothing, heretek,’ Augusta said. ‘We will bring His light back to the darkness. Viola!’
The younger Sister shifted, and Augusta could feel her eagerness to fire – a crackle of faith and fury that defied the pure logic of the corrupted temple. One directed burst from the thrice-blessed heavy bolter would splatter Rayos’ remains across the forge-works behind her.
Then something said, ‘Sororitas.’
The Order’s tanks were losing.
Drawn forwards by the machines ahead, they had allowed a flanking manoeuvre to close in about them. Their line was enveloped at both ends, and they did not have the weapons to face a front that long.
Still standing, still broadcasting righteousness and ferocity, the canoness was a one-woman army, the bright blasts of her plasma pistol taking down machine after machine. Caia stayed behind her, her smaller bolter seeming to do no damage, but she kept firing nonetheless.
Another Immolator lost, another detonation that made after-images spark across the Sisters’ vision. And there were foot-troops, now, skitarii and servitors, faster than the lumbering machines and moving in close.
But the Repressors, too, were firing – the Sisters inside were opening up through the weapon-ports even as the storm bolters on the vehicles’ tops moved to keep the skitarii at bay.
As the foot-troops closed about the lead Immolator, the canoness was over the edge of the hatch and right in the middle of them, her chainsword now in her other hand and whipping through two of them at a time. She sent them toppling and reeling, sparking as they fell.
She sang as she cut them to pieces, her voice incensed with fury.
In her ten years of service, Caia had never seen anything fight like Elvorix Ianthe.
She shot at them herself, those that were close enough – the battle was rapidly becoming a blur. The vehicles were still driving slowly forwards, clean over the top of anything foolish enough to get under their tracks, but the sheer weight of numbers was proving too much. Aloft, three Seraphim were changing tactics and picking careful targets – swooping in to alpha-strike a single machine and bring it down, and then moving onto the next.
Steadily, they stopped one end of the line.
But it was not enough.
The canoness, in the vox: ‘Where are your squad, Sister Caia? They should have reached the temple!’
‘I do not know!’ Caia had no answer, and could only pray. ‘I do not know!’
‘Sororitas.’
The voice was rusted with age, strained with disuse.
It made a shock of pure cold go down Augusta’s spine.
Almost on top of them, something was moving.
The Sister Superior turned, bringing blade and bolter to cover the motion.
And stopped.
By the Throne!
The thing was big – huge – and it loomed like part of the shadows. As it shifted, it creaked and groaned as if it were somehow unused to motion. The temple’s sense of data, unseen in the air, coalesced about it like some invisible aura.
Viola glanced, but she kept her heavy bolter on Rayos, ready to fire.
‘Hold your fire.’ Augusta’s command was swift. The new figure was strange, oddly hunched. It moved sideways, one step at a time, almost as if it were in pain. And it seemed wrong, somehow, twisted with age and rust.
‘Sororitas,’ it said, again. The word was a machine-whisper, a flicker through the empty temple. It was a hiss like a bellows, like the escaping of steam. It sounded as if it were decaying from the inside.
Augusta stared. Watching it, she had a leap of understanding, a sudden sensation of everything making sense – as if the Emperor Himself had revealed to her the answer…
She said, ‘Vius.’
The figure stopped. It said, its voice scraping, ‘Designation Incaladion Tech-priest Dominus 01-Vius.’ It wheezed like metal laughter, like fingernails rasping down a new set of armour. ‘Vastum belongs to me.’
‘Vius.’ The echo was Akemi. ‘The inquisitor told us. After the Mechanicus abandoned Vastum, it was Vius who first landed–’
‘That would make him two centuries old,’ Viola answered her sceptically.
‘Data – uploaded and preserved,’ Vius said. ‘Metal – worked and preserved. Only flesh falters. Incaladion awaits my return.’
‘You want to go home,’ Augusta said. ‘That’s why everything still bears the Incaladion mark.’
Again, that rusted wheeze that might have been laughter. Unlike Rayos, Augusta could see no flesh upon this figure, nothing that remained of his once-human body. She wondered how he retained his emotions… such as they were.
Humour…
…and vengeance.
‘You will not leave here,’ she told him.
Vius hissed. ‘You err, Sister Superior. Your every move has already been calculated. You are here to shut down the Emanatus field.’
‘And what’s to stop us?’ Viola asked him, her tone harsh. ‘You?’
There was a long, full pause. In the far distance, the sound of gunfire had started up again. Vius twitched his metal skull to one side, a mocking parody of listening, and came further forwards, his huge frame looming over them.
An odd heat radiated from his cloaked body. This close, he was genuinely daunting, his hunched figure far bigger than the Sister Superior, bigger even than Alcina, armour and all. And when he shrugged his multiple shoulders, letting his black cloak puddle to the ground, his vast array of limbs and weapons made him look like some colossal stalk-eyed insect, poised and ready to strike.
The air of the temple seemed to move around him, ready to do his bidding.
‘Flesh is weak,’ he said. ‘You cannot reach the control panel. You will not leave here.’
He lifted one arm, and a surge of gunnery skulls rose with the motion, surrounding the Sisters with their broad and toothy grins. Rayos still stood at the top of the steps, and her cloak, too, had puddled to the floor.
You cannot reach the control panel.
You will not leave here.
The heretek dominus would tear them all to screaming pieces.