The Last Wall Read online

  The near facade came down with avalanche fury. Portions of the building fell in on themselves. Other sections of the wall smashed onto the Avenue of Martyrs, crushing the pilgrims, making them into burned offerings. Haas and the other Arbitrators crouched, angling their shields into a protective roof. Blazing wreckage crashed against the cera­mite. Haas crouched lower, absorbing the shock of the blows with her arms and legs. A heavy, burning hand tried to drive the Arbitrators into the pavement. They pushed back, shoving the rubble aside.

  The roar of the fire had lessened. Through her viewport, Haas saw that the worst of the conflagration had been smothered by the collapse. Hundreds of pilgrims had been crushed. She had no idea how many thousands had died in the buildings themselves.

  She could move forward now. There was shelter in the smoking ruin, the chance to regroup and return to the fray. She clambered over some low heaps of rubble. The others followed, their armour protecting them from the guttering fires. The smoke choked the entire street and Haas coughed, wishing for a rebreather.

  The suffocating air further smothered the flames of the panic. Many of the surviving pilgrims, bunched tightly in the street, were falling to their knees, retching. More powerful yet than the smoke was despair. It drained the urgency of terror from the crowd. It stole hope away and left the people motionless before their fate. On the other side of the street, the fire still towered from the tenement blocks. The collapse began there too.

  Destruction marched up and down the Avenue of Martyrs, but in its wake, it left a kind of order.

  Kord sounded like he was going to leave a lung on the pavement.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ he said.

  ‘And go where?’ Baskaline sounded no better.

  Haas’ vision swam. It was all she could do to remain upright. Baskaline was right, though. Any route they took would be back towards the fire. The space around the Arbitrators was fairly open. If they waited, the worst of the smoke would dissipate before too long.

  ‘Our duty is not complete,’ she reminded the others. Calm had been restored, for the moment. It fell to them to maintain it until they were ordered elsewhere.

  Time passed. The air cleared enough that each breath Haas took felt like swallowing hot sand instead of burning coal. Kord looked up. There was nothing to see through the smoke. Even so, he stared as if he could see the object of his hatred.

  ‘We need to bring the fight to the greenskins,’ he said.

  ‘We will,’ Haas reassured him.

  ‘I don’t just mean the Navy and the Guard. I mean all of us.’

  ‘Our oaths are different. We’re called to serve here.’

  ‘What good will that do? This could be our last stand. If we don’t stop the orks, there will be no law to keep on Terra.’

  ‘If the orks make landfall,’ Haas countered, ‘we’ll be needed as never before.’

  Kord had another coughing fit. ‘Things have changed,’ he said when he could speak again. ‘Everything has changed.’

  Haas shook her head and started forward to stand guard in the midst of the pilgrims, an unbending sign that the Emperor’s law still prevailed. She would not swerve from her oath of office until death took her. It was her anchor, because Kord was right. Everything had changed.

  And everything was ending.

  The galaxy shook. From Segmentum Solar to Ultima, from Tempestus to Obscurus, the Beast unleashed its forces against the Imperium. Star fortresses appeared simultaneously in system after system. A predatory monster with uncountable millions of heads descended on the worlds of humanity. The fleets and armies of exultant savagery struck and struck and struck. The Imperium bled from a thousand wounds.

  The worlds of Ultramar were spared the tectonic events of a star fortress extruding into near orbit. That was the only mercy. The first to be attacked were the agri worlds Tarentus and Quintarn. The skies over their cities turned black with ork drop-ships. Enemy cruisers devastated their orbital defences. Three companies of Ultramarines responded within hours, and they set the void on fire as a battle-barge and strike cruisers engaged the ork vessels.

  Far to the galactic west, in the Segmentum Tempestus, the forge world Lankast convulsed. The geologic tides unleashed by the ork moon above it tore open vast chasms that traced jagged paths hundreds of kilometres long. Lava flows spread over the land. Entire hive cities were wiped away, hundreds of millions of lives vanishing into waves of molten rock. And in the more stable regions, on the high continental plateaus, surrounded by new seas of fire, Iron Father Bassan Terak shouted the hatred of the Red Talons. They met the ork siege of the colossal manufactoria with a rage that had its own volcanic force. Third Company’s Predator tanks hit the ork ranks with the relentlessness of a mechanised, moving wall. The orks countered from orbit. Heedless of their own casualties, they hurled rocky masses to the surface. Meteor strikes pummelled the manufactoria and iron chimneys a hundred metres tall collapsed. The eruption of the furnaces was a solar flare. The Red Talons advanced still. They had no choice. There was nothing behind them now but flame.

  But it was Klostra, a planetoid not much larger than the star fortress that closed in on it, that suffered the most important attack. The inhabitants of its colonies prepared for the invasion they knew they could not stop, the invasion whose blow would resonate as far as Terra.

  Two

  Terra – the outer palaces

  The sub-orbital took Wienand, Rendenstein and Krule as far as a nondescript Administratum region in the south-east sector of the Imperial Palace, half a hemisphere away from the centres of governance. Wienand trusted Krule’s judgement in his choice of the flight. If he believed none of Veritus’ agents were aboard, his track record suggested he was correct. The transport had the advantage of taking her in the general direction of her destination. She didn’t tell Krule where she wanted to go, though. She didn’t trust him that far.

  The flight landed just as the moon appeared. The transport hub shook. Panic spread. Wienand transmuted the shock of the event into determination instead of despair. She and her escort managed to descend from the hub into the warrens of the underhive faster than the waves of terror. Deep below, where the star fortress could not be witnessed directly, the fear was attenuated. Once the tremors subsided, something like the desperation of normal life continued, though anxiety roiled the air.

  In the warrens of the underhive, Wienand wished for something more lethal than her laspistol. Rendenstein and Krule were weapons in themselves. Wienand knew how to handle herself, but she was more dependent on the technology of death than the other two. After the assassination attempt against her on the Avenue of Martyrs, there had been no question of resupply. Anything taken from her quarters would put the lie to her apparent death. Rendenstein and Krule had moved the corpse of Aemelie, her body double, from her quarters to an alcove just off the Avenue, not far from the site of the skirmish. The intent was to make it seem that she had managed to drag herself that far after the battle. None of the assassins had survived, and there had been enough disorder for bystander accounts to be contradictory. Veritus would have good reason to believe she was dead. Aemelie’s subdermal microbeacon implants would fool bioscans, whose readings would indicate Wienand’s DNA. Only the examination of a physical sample would reveal the deception.

  ‘Does Veritus use body doubles?’ Rendenstein asked, the same thought occurring to her.

  ‘If he doesn’t, he’s a fool.’

  ‘He didn’t strike me as one.’

  ‘No.’ Veritus would learn the truth, but not right away, and that was good enough. A temporary death, and the time to make her move, was all she asked.

  They stopped at an intersection of passages. They were in a zone where the functional abutted the decrepit. The walkway mechanisms still worked. Conveyors of horizontal, interlocking iron bands, they clanked, rattled and screeched as they hurried serfs along the kilometres to th
eir duties. The frescoes on the walls were black with grime. Above and below was more of the tangle of mechanised conduits. Tarps of varying size were suspended from the girders, forming patchy ragged ceilings. They were rough sleeping areas, the closest thing more than a few of the serfs knew to a home, makeshift sleeping posts that were turning permanent for souls whose lives had become unending drudgery broken only by the briefest rest periods. At least they still had an official, if tenuous, existence from the Administratum’s perspective. Not much further down in the underhive was the realm of the forgotten, where survival was so desperate a game that the line between human and animal had been erased. Wienand planned a visit to those depths. If he were looking for her, Veritus would find her trail even more difficult to pick up down there.

  ‘Which way?’ Krule asked.

  ‘South.’ Wienand indicated the walkway.

  ‘If you’ll wait a moment, ma’am?’

  She nodded, and he disappeared into the shuffling crowd, scouting ahead.

  ‘He must know you want to reach the Inquisitorial Fortress,’ Rendenstein said.

  ‘Of course he does. But knowing that and seeing its location are not the same thing.’

  ‘What do you intend?’

  ‘We’ll have to lose him at some point.’

  ‘Permanently?’

  Wienand shook her head. She wasn’t interested in testing Rendenstein’s killing prowess against Krule’s. No matter the outcome, Veritus would be the only winner of that battle. Krule had cost her a valued operative, but he had also saved her life. Her allies were in short supply. Vangorich was one she could count on with more certainty than her fellow inquisitors for the moment.

  ‘If the opportunity arises to part with his company, we’ll take it.’

  ‘And if that moment doesn’t come?’

  ‘We’ll deal with that when and if we have to.’ She sighed, thinking of what she had seen in the sky. ‘We’re at a stage where having Krule in the heart of the Fortress wouldn’t be the worst of all scenarios. We have to reach it.’ Shoring up her political strength against Veritus was no longer the most important consideration. Nor was her survival. What mattered was the contingency that she could authorise. It was needed now. She cursed the High Lords for having let things reach this pass.

  Krule returned after a few minutes. ‘Looks clear,’ he said.

  They headed off down the walkway, moving as quickly as they could through the crowds, the floor carrying them on for several kilometres.

  ‘It would be useful to know the extent of Veritus’ control,’ said Krule.

  Wienand had been thinking that through. ‘The attempt to kill me is actually a good sign.’

  ‘You’re still a threat,’ Rendenstein said.

  ‘Yes. If my influence had been neutralised, he wouldn’t have bothered. I don’t think Veritus likes needless internecine killing any more than I do.’

  Krule’s grin was not a reassuring one. ‘So more attacks would be a good omen.’

  ‘They would be delightful.’

  At the next intersection, Wienand went right. An elevator platform large enough to hold a hundred at once took them down. At the third level, they got off, and she chose another walkway, still heading south. The crowds were thinner here. This route served fewer active centres. Krule offered to recon ahead again. ‘No point,’ Wienand told him. His earlier absence had given her the few minutes she’d wanted to speak alone with Rendenstein. ‘If there’s an ambush, we’re better off together.’

  The downside to taking the routes she knew was that they might also be familiar to other, hostile elements of the Inquisition. She couldn’t lose herself forever in the mazes of the outer reaches of the Imperial Palace, and she couldn’t hand over her agency to Krule. She might well not reach the southern ice cap in time as it was. Her best hope was to catch another sub-orbital from a point where Veritus wasn’t looking. Another few hours of travel, if all went well, would take her to the next flight hub.

  All did not go well. After ten minutes, the walkway they were on ground to a halt. The serfs using it groaned, then carried on trudging. A few hundred metres on, at the next junction, there was another mechanical conveyor moving at an uneven, jerking pace in about the same direction.

  ‘That will do,’ Wienand told the other two, and they took it.

  The walkway passed almost immediately under a low, narrow arch. Krule and Rendenstein had to duck. On the other side they emerged in a long hall formed by rockcrete foundations on either side, and coming to a rounded vault a dozen metres overhead. There was a floor here, just below the level of the walkway. It was covered with the detritus of centuries, though at first glance, Wienand thought she was looking at a disused cemetery.

  The space was filled with statuary. There were warriors and ecclesiarchs, Adeptus Astartes and High Lords of the past, and many imposing figures that likely had been intended to be the Emperor. None were complete. Many were unfinished, flawed material betraying the artists with splits and cracks. Others had been damaged beyond restoration. There was a vagueness to them all, whether their features had been destroyed or never set down. They were not gigantic. No single piece was so large that it could not have been transported by a group of unaided humans. Some of the chunks, though, were fragments of huge works. A finger two metres tall thrust from one heap, pointing at the walkway in accusation. A head as big as a man lay face-down on the dark floor.

  Though the space had the shape of a building interior, it seemed to have come into being as a result of architectural happenstance, born of the juxtaposition of other structures. It had never had a purpose. It was a tunnel through which the walkway passed, and it had gradually accumulated the cast-off statuary. What must have begun as a random act had become a tradition, and then faded away. An air of abandonment hovered over the hall. The lumen strips were few and old. Many were missing. The lighting was deep night broken by weak pools of yellow.

  ‘We’re alone,’ Krule said.

  Wienand could see no serfs on the metal path before them. She looked back. No one had followed them onto the walkway.

  ‘This is a disused conveyor,’ she realised. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere still active.’

  ‘Then why is it functional?’ said Rendenstein.

  ‘It shouldn’t be.’

  ‘It’s for our benefit,’ Krule said.

  Of course. It would be nothing to stop a target’s walkway, then activate one that no one other than the target would choose to take.

  They’d found her.

  Krule jumped over the walkway’s right-hand railing. Wienand followed, with Rendenstein right behind. They landed between two piles of statues. Stern, unformed faces frowned and heroic limbs reached for nothing. The floor crackled with shards of ceramic and marble.

  ‘Keep going,’ said Krule.

  Wienand moved on through the mounds of broken art. She looked back after a few steps. Krule had vanished.

  ‘There.’ Rendenstein pointed to a deeper patch of darkness in the wall. Another corridor. Wienand nodded and hurried forward. She didn’t worry about making noises. Her enemies knew she was here. Just as they reached the passage, she heard the crunch of footsteps behind them.

  Her anger at having fallen for the trap passed, replaced by cold venom.

  What she and Rendenstein moved through now was not a true corridor. It was a narrow gap between facades. The rockcrete floor gave way to metal struts. Footing was treacherous. The light was even dimmer. The gaps between the struts grew wider. A slip meant a fall into blind depths. Wienand advanced another few steps, then stopped. The next gap was too wide to jump. She turned to face her enemy, laspistol in hand. Rendenstein moved to the other side of the passage. She balanced on the rusted struts, ready to leap.

  In the gloom of the passage, the main hall looked brighter. Wienand saw the attack coming. The assassins knew they had her c
ornered. They had no need for stealth now.

  There were five of them. They wore loose cameleoline robes. They would have been almost impossible to spot in the shadows and abandoned art. As they closed in, their camouflage covered them in shifting patches of dark and grey. When they were a few metres from the entrance to the passage, a statue came to life behind them. Krule had been more still and hidden yet. The two rearmost assassins, a man and a woman, jerked to a stop. Their heads snapped back, mouths open wide for air they would never draw again.

  The other three hit the passage at a run. One turned as Krule drew his bloodied fists out of the upper spines of his victims. She laid down a suppressive burst of las-fire. The other two kept coming. One, she saw, was Audten van der Deckart. He fired his pistol and an expanding cloud of silver-white burst from its muzzle – a web, the protein filaments expanding to fill the passageway. The tangling, adhesive cloud slammed Rendenstein against the wall, covering her like a cocoon.

  Wienand dropped low. The bottom edge of the cloud clipped her. She lost her footing and fell between the struts. She dropped into nothing, then jerked to a sudden halt as the webbing caught her left hand and welded it to the struts. The weight of her body pulled at the web, and the fibres began to cut through her flesh. She clung hard to the strut, trying to work with the web instead of against it. A constriction of pain and steel enveloped her arm.

  She still held her pistol. She fired upwards and hit the legs of van der Deckart’s companion. The man pitched forward. He reached for a strut and missed. His scream as he fell went on for a long time.

  Van der Deckart leapt from footing to footing with a raptor’s grace. He holstered his webber and pulled out a short-bladed power sword. He danced out of the way of Wienand’s shots and raised the blade to bring it down on her head.

  Rendenstein tore through the web. Her body was a dense crosshatching of lacerations. The web had sliced through her skin and subdermal armour, but her reinforced skeleton and musculature could punch through walls. Van der Deckart leapt out of the way of her lunge. She fell on all fours, limbs balancing on three different struts. Van der Deckart came back at her.