Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon Page 3

  ‘Of course.’ To Mannheim and Konev, I said, ‘I wish you luck. I hope my toxicity doesn’t prevent your message from being heard.’

  The precautions were futile. Von Strab had no more time for Mann­heim’s warning than he did for mine. I sought out Brenken in the barracks of the 252nd later in the afternoon. The regiment was preparing for the march through the streets of Infernus the following day as part of the observance of the Emperor’s Ascension. I found Brenken on the parade grounds, inspecting the companies. The losses on Basquit were already being filled out with new recruits. Brenken spotted me at the entrance to the barracks. The slight shake of the head she gave me told me what I needed to know.

  Disgusted, I left the barracks, plunging into the streets of Infernus. I pushed my way through the crowds. The streets at ground level were fifty metres wide, and too narrow for the flow of foot traffic. Vehicles moved at a crawl. On either side, the monolithic slabs of manufactoria rose for hundreds of metres. The air was grey with smoke and exhaust. Tomorrow, this and other major thoroughfares would be cleared for the marches and religious processions. All the quadrants of Armageddon’s hives would pause in their industry to observe the solemn day. This was true of even some regions of the underhive. Von Strab’s enforcement of the Feast, however, had more to do with emphasising his authority than his piety, such as it was.

  I pushed my way forward, walking with energy but no direction. I was trying to burn off frustration. Inaction before a threat was unacceptable, yet it was the position in which I found myself. My vision was filled with the smug features of von Strab. I barely saw where I was going. It was several minutes before I realised that something had changed in the foot traffic. More and more people were moving in the same direction. Over the snarl of vehicle engines and the deeper rumbles from within the manufactoria walls came the rising murmur of distress and wonder.

  I snapped to alertness. My hand brushed my holster, but there were no sounds of combat. And the people were heading towards the source of the disturbance, not fleeing it. I let myself be carried by the current of bodies.

  Whatever the rumour was, it had travelled far, wide and quickly. Hours passed. The collective anxiety around me intensified. People were swept up in anticipation and ignorance. The perpetual twilight of the lower streets of Infernus was darkening towards real night when I reached the square outside the Cathedral of Infinite Obeisance. It was one of the principal houses of worship in Infernus. It was gigantic, its portico alone almost half the height of the flanking manufactoria. Two Warhound Titans could have passed side by side through the open doors. The massive flying buttresses appeared to have shouldered aside the manufactoria to make room for the great bulk of the cathedral.

  The people flowed through the doors. The volume of the wailing and prayers I heard coming from inside could not be explained solely by the acoustics of the blackened stone.

  I moved forward with the crowd. Once past the threshold, it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the deeper gloom, and it was still another half hour before I had gone far enough into the cavern of the nave to see the cause of the anguish. Behind the altar was an immense pict screen, worthy of a battleship’s oculus. It had been erected as part of von Strab’s determination to have all of Armageddon celebrate as one on the following day. All of the major chapels would be linked by vox, and the congregations in the pews and in the streets would see their fellow celebrants by pict feed.

  The screen was active now, a day early. It showed a single exterior view, the colossal statue of the Emperor in Hive Helsreach.

  The statue was weeping blood.

  Crimson streaks ran from the corners of both eyes and down the noble visage. As I watched, a thick tear formed then trickled down from the right eye. It hung suspended for a moment from the statue’s lower jaw before falling into space. The crowd gasped when it dropped, and the wailing surged once more.

  I approached the screen, mesmerised. When I was level with the altar, a voice at my left shoulder said, ‘Overlord von Strab will ignore this omen too. You know he will.’

  I turned my head, tearing my eyes away from the pict feed. Canoness Errant Setheno stood beside the altar, towering over the shuffling crowd. The people flowed around her like a stream parted by a pillar. When I first encountered her, on Mistral, she had been a Sister Superior of the Order of the Piercing Thorn. We had both changed much since then. Her power armour was the most visible alteration. Once black, wrapped in a fine, rising spiral of red, for some time now it had been the grey of tombs. Her cape was grey too, instead of its former gold. There was no longer an Order of the Piercing Thorn. All trace of it, down to the heraldry on her armour, had been expunged. By her command, and at her hand.

  The change in the armour, though striking to the few of us who had known her since those early days, was a surface transformation. The most profound alteration was in her face. Her eyes had been an unnerving, uniform gold since our struggle against the daemon Ghalshannha on Mistral. That was the first of the deep changes. They had continued, slowly, but inexorably, reaching their climax in the wake of the tragedy of the Piercing Thorn. Her face had been blasted of emotion as completely as her armour had been of colour. It was immovable as stone, cold as the void. Instead of altering her features, time and darkest experience had hardened them, like metal folded and hammered and refolded in a forge of war. There was more forgiveness in the faces of the sculpted saints in the cathedral.

  Setheno was a powerful ally in combat. But I could not say her presence was welcome. It was yet another omen of disaster. After the destruction of the Piercing Thorn, she had become the canoness without an order. I wasn’t sure if the journey she had embarked upon was penitence or a crusade. Perhaps both. The experience was certainly a penitential one for those who crossed her path, or that of her ship, the Cobra-class destroyer Act of Clarity.

  ‘Canoness,’ I said. ‘I hesitate to ask what brings you here.’

  She watched the statue weep. ‘Signs and portents,’ she said. ‘A disturbing reading of the Emperor’s Tarot aboard my ship, among others.’

  ‘We have had one here, too. When did you arrive?’

  ‘At dawn. I was very nearly lost in the immaterium.’

  ‘The storm is worse, then.’

  ‘No vessels have translated in-system after mine.’

  ‘So we are cut off.’ I hoped Mannheim’s alert had been sent in time. ‘You have met with Overlord von Strab?’ I asked.

  ‘Briefly. He was not receptive to what I had to say.’

  Von Strab’s will was impressive. I could think of very few individuals capable of being dismissive of Setheno. I cursed. ‘You’re right. He will find a way to rationalise the omen of these tears.’

  ‘It may be that the Emperor weeps because of von Strab’s intransigence.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ve been unable to think what our course of action must be.’

  ‘If anyone could find a solution, commissar, it would be you. You are unable because there is none. Overlord von Strab is immovable. What is coming is inevitable. We cannot stop it. All we can control is how we respond when the enemy arrives. But the first move belongs to the foe.’

  I thought about the chant I had heard on Basquit. Ghazghkull, Ghazghkull, Ghazghkull. Then, the word had meaning only for the orks. Now my dread was that it would soon have terrible meaning for the Imperium. We had lost the initiative. I knew this with the certainty of faith. I met Setheno’s cold, golden stare and said, ‘Then we must pray that the first move is not the decisive one.’

  1. Isakov

  The battleship Reach of Judgement was a cathedral of war. Over ten thousand metres long, and two thousand abeam, it may have been more the size of a city, even supporting its own chapel rising from the stern end of the superstructure. And yet, it was a cathedral. Every weapons battery, every Fury interceptor, Shark assault boat and Starhawk bomber in its launch bays, every m
ember of its crew of one hundred and fifty thousand, even every bulkhead and rivet – they made up a whole whose immensity was devoted to a single, sublime act of worship: war in the Emperor’s name. Along its length, above each gun port, statues of saints stood guard, each thirty metres high. Its great arches and its stained armourglass were one with the cannons. No city could boast such unity of force and purpose. It was the massive embodiment of sacred war.

  It also had the gravitational force of command. The cruisers and escorts that made up the battle fleet moved in concert with it. Together they were a collective fist that could smash civilisations to ash. The Reach of Judgement was a ponderous vessel. It was slow to turn and to accelerate. But once it was set on its course, nothing could stop it. For Admiral Jakob Isakov, his vessel travelled along the straight line of the Emperor’s will.

  And now, at the centre of the fleet, it manoeuvred to create an impassable barrier against the enemy heading for Armageddon.

  On the bridge of the Judgement, Isakov sat on the command throne in an elevated pulpit set against a massive pillar in the the rear of the bridge. The pillar rose to meet the point of the Gothic vault forty metres above. Levels upon levels of work stations surrounded the deck in arched galleries. Over a thousand crewmembers and servitors powered the nerve centre of the battleship.

  ‘Mistress of the Augur,’ Isakov said, ‘what are the readings?’

  ‘Increasingly unreliable, sir,’ Eleza Haack answered. ‘But the displacement is unmistakeable and growing.’

  ‘Can you extrapolate its size?’

  ‘It is massive. We can say nothing more precise.’

  ‘Very well. Orders to the fleet: maintain formation. Weapons free. As we have no information of an Imperial force approaching the Armageddon System, our visitors are presumed hostile. When they translate, open fire.’ He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Vox, send a message to Princeps Mannheim. Tell him he was right.’

  2. Yarrick

  Mannheim turned from the vox operator to me. ‘The credit is yours, commissar.’

  I shook my head. ‘The effort was collective. And there is no credit to be had before the enemy is stopped.’

  We had been in the augur station of Infernus’s spaceport, at the western edge of the hive, since before dawn. It was a circular space occupying the peak of a tower overlooking the landing pads. The stained glass of the lower floors here gave way to an armourglass dome sprouting antennae like spines. The tower was far from the tallest in the hive, but the transmissions were received through the sludge of cloud cover clearly enough. That was more than could be said for astropathic messages. The choir of Infernus was located in the midpoint of the tower. I had stopped there before joining Mannheim and Setheno in the station. They had attempted to send the Princeps’ message. Master of the Choir Genest was doubtful about their success. What little they were still receiving was so fragmented and distorted by the storm that it caused psychic wounds without being interpretable. Genest looked worn, even by the withered standards of an astropath. His face was wary too, as if he guessed that he was being used to go behind von Strab’s back, and very much hoped not to have confirmed that suspicion.

  My presence in the augur complex was not official. I was there thanks to Mannheim’s invitation and under the auspices of ­Setheno’s unofficial but powerful authority. It would take the direct intervention of the overlord to counter any demand she made.

  And while we waited for Isakov to confront the enemy, each of his messages taking hours to reach us from the edge of the system, the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension was under way across Armageddon. I could guess with what fervour and solemnity the rites were being observed this year, as the statue in Helsreach continued to weep blood. While the processions and prayers filled the streets and chapels of the hives under constant reminders of the overlord’s beneficence and vigilant eye, von Strab was using one of the most sacred traditions of the Feast to his own benefit. It is said false judgements are impossible on this day. The practical result of this belief is the irreversibility of pronouncements made during the Feast. My faith in the Emperor is absolute, but I have seen too many crimes committed in his name. Von Strab used the tradition of infallible justice to settle scores real and imagined. His grip on the planet was so strong it could hardly be consolidated even further. But he still used the day to underscore the futility of challenging him.

  At least he was busy. His attention elsewhere, we had some room to act.

  The vox operator reported that the fleet had completed its manoeuvres. It was in position at the Mandeville point.

  I became conscious of Setheno’s gaze. ‘You don’t believe this will be enough, do you?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  She shook her head. To Mannheim she said, ‘Have you long been acquainted with Admiral Isakov?’

  ‘I consider him a friend.’

  ‘Then I am sorry.’

  ‘He isn’t lost yet,’ Mannheim said, though there was little hope in his voice.

  Setheno didn’t answer. I watched the banks of augur stations. I willed the news to reach us faster.

  Though I dreaded what it would be.

  3. Isakov

  In the Reach of Judgement’s great oculus, Isakov saw the void tear. The wound was greater than any he had ever seen. No single ship could cause such a rift. No fleet would need one. It slashed across the real space, jagged and blazing with the blood of the materium. The flesh of the void peeled back, and the raging non-light and anti-colours of the warp burst across the blockade. And still the wound widened.

  Isakov winced. He clutched the arms of the throne, his fingers whitening with tension. Cries shook the bridge as a wave of pain crashed through it. It was a torment of the soul, a response to a greater agony. The warp itself was screaming, as if the thing that had traversed it wounded even that infernal realm, and must be expelled. There was a final blast, a final shriek of tortured materium and warp, and the enemy had arrived.

  The space hulk was immense. A moon had appeared before the fleet, dwarfing the warships. It was a world of twisted metal, forged of uncountable vessels. Freighters, colony ships, cruisers and transports had been fused into a mass that was graveyard and fist. The ships were barely recognisable, but portions of superstructure and shattered bows emerged from the conglomeration, fragments of identity drowning in the mass. The hulk looked as if a great fleet had been caught in the grip of a terrible gravitational force, and the moment of collision had been frozen in time. The surface of the misshapen behemoth was a patchwork of mountain ranges and canyons, all of them metal. The ship carcasses had been twisted by the warp into melted, writhing shapes. But the hulk itself was not dead. Furious energy boiled out of canyons. New constructions, crude but indestructible, pushed upwards between the iron ruins. Barbaric icons with snarling, fanged visages thousands of metres across gaped in hunger at the Imperial fleet. It was a thing of creative destruction, all of its grand deaths transformed by a savage vitality.

  ‘Orks!’ someone called out.

  ‘Orks…’ Isakov muttered, transfixed by the icons. He had never seen a hulk like this. More than the size chilled his blood. In those icons, he saw signs of an ambition and ability many orders of magnitude beyond what he knew of the greenskins. He had the unshakeable conviction that these orks had not just traversed the warp, they had enjoyed it.

  And now they came for Armageddon.

  ‘Uncatalogued space hulk detected,’ came the dead voice of a servitor slaved to a cogitator. ‘New designation to be assigned.’ There was a brief pause as the cogitator combed through databases and arrived at the correct nomenclature for the monster. ‘Space hulk designated Alveus Alpha Alpha Sextus.’

  Isakov grunted. So dry a name. So harmless. It was a serial number. It did not reflect the horror he saw closing in on the fleet.

  Alveus Alpha Alpha Sextus was so huge, Isakov did not realise at fi
rst how fast it was moving. There was a slight impression of increasing size, but it filled the void as if it were a planet. Then the tocsins blared, and the shouts came from stations across the width and height of the bridge. Calls of horrifying readings of mass, of dimensions, of speed, of proximity, of direction. The portents of doom.

  ‘Fire,’ Isakov roared. ‘Fire, by the Emperor!’

  The order was unnecessary. The fleet was already acting on his prior command. Every forward-facing battery on every ship had opened up. A swarm of torpedoes streaked towards the hulk. Isakov listened to simultaneous countdowns. One marked the progress of the ordnance towards the enemy. The other tracked the shrinking gulf between the beast and the fleet.

  Seconds to go before the shells struck. High explosives many metres long, hurled in such profusion that they would have gutted any capital ship. Kill it, Isakov willed. Kill it now, and I will rejoice at the consequences. The destruction of something so vast would take out much of the blockade too. Perhaps all of it. There would be no evading the cataclysm. But the sacrifice would be worth it.

  ‘Vox,’ he said, ‘remain in constant communication with Infernus. Let them know everything that happens.’

  The cannon fire hit Alveus Alpha Alpha Sextus. A few seconds later, so did the torpedoes. Hundreds of explosions peppered the surface. The holocaust that erupted was of a scale that beggared comprehension. The firestorms would have wiped great cities out of existence. Thousands upon thousands of tonnes of metal melted and vaporised. The bones of once-proud vessels spun off into the void, torn free of the space hulk’s gravity. This was not destruction: it was cataclysm. An entire Imperial Navy fleet had fired on a single target.

  Some of the fires spread and kept burning. Others winked out. The space hulk kept coming.

  The fleet kept up its barrage. The bridge of the Reach of Judgement shook with vibrations so deep they rang like thunder.