The Saint stood her ground, panting. Her ghost wings were fading and flickering, as if the power sustaining them was ebbing. Blood dripped off her armour. They went to her side, but she flung a hand to warn them back.
‘It’s still strong,’ she gasped. ‘Impossibly strong. But it’s still not full-grown. It wants my power. It wants to feed on me, so it can fully form and then–’
‘Then?’ asked Sancto, fighting back his pain. ‘Then what?’
‘Then it will do the Anarch’s bidding and raze this city and everything in it,’ said the Beati.
She took a step forwards.
‘I won’t let that happen,’ she said.
‘Wait!’ Auerben yelped.
‘You’re hurt,’ said Gaunt.
‘That hardly matters,’ she said. ‘The Emperor is with me.’
She took another step. The pitch of the woe machine’s keening intensified again, the sawing shriek filling the air. Its intricate, churning patterns of leaden darkness and polished black grew more fierce. It surged to meet her.
A storm of heavy las-fire blocked it. Multiple weapons unloaded into it at full auto.
Gaunt turned. Baskevyl and Kolea were advancing across the chamber, flanked by Dalin and the men from Baskevyl’s search squad. All of them were unleashing heavy, accurate suppression fire. Squad drill, close focus fire-team pattern. Twelve lasrifles emptying sustained destructive force into the abomination.
The woe machine roiled backwards like an angry mass of flies. Baskevyl’s men were reloading as they came, switching out dead cells for fresh ones as they ran dry, maintaining the punishing fusillade.
The woe machine retreated further. Darkness and fluid shadows spread out around the walls. Its thousands of individual, razor-sharp cutting teeth chipped and rattled against the ancient stone walls. The temperature dropped. They heard stone blocks scrape and grind as it threatened to warp the undercroft reality again.
‘Is it hurt?’ Gaunt asked.
The Beati nodded.
‘Hold fire!’ Gaunt yelled to Baskevyl. ‘Let’s get in close. Save whatever you have left until we–’
‘What is it?’ Kolea asked.
Gaunt looked at him. ‘I–’
‘Sir?’
‘I was wrong,’ Gaunt said to him. ‘I was wrong, Gol. I’m so sorry. It’s a woe machine. We brought it with us all the way from Vervunhive.’
He could see Gol Kolea’s face twitch as he fought to control his reaction.
‘Yoncy?’ he asked very quietly.
‘It never was her, Gol,’ said the Beati. ‘She was never real.’
Dalin uttered a slow moan of anguish. He dropped his rifle and fell to his knees in the flood.
‘That can’t be true,’ he mumbled. ‘That can’t be true. It can’t.’
‘That’s Yoncy?’ Kolea asked, his voice dull.
‘Oh, throne, Gol…’ Bask exclaimed, heartbroken.
‘That?’ Kolea said. He stepped forwards. Baskevyl tried to hold him back, but he shook his dear friend’s hand away.
‘The warp has tricked us all,’ said the Beati. ‘Lies are its first weapon–’
‘Feth that,’ said Kolea, staring at the seething mass of darkness. ‘I had a child. A child. I swore I’d–’
He stepped closer.
‘I loved you, Yoncy,’ he said. ‘I would have done anything to… to…’
The howl of the saw barked at him.
‘Yeah. You know me,’ said Kolea. ‘You were human long enough. You know me. Can you kill me? Your papa? Eh? I think the warp made you too human. There’s too much human in you still.’
The razor storm shivered. Its frenzy decreased.
‘Yoncy?’ Kolea called. He held out his hand. ‘You come back now, you hear? Come back to me. Come back to papa.’
The darkness shifted. Shadows folded, shearing and twisting into new patterns of darkness. A smaller shape formed. A vague human shape inside the buzzing cloud of thorns.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Kolea. ‘That’s good.’
He looked at the Beati. When he spoke, just the one word, there was a tiny break in his voice.
‘Now,’ he said.
The Saint’s green wings reignited with power, brighter than before, and she plunged her blade into the shadow.
The darkness exploded.
Deaf, blind, dumb, insensible, they were all hurled backwards into the consuming void.
Fifteen: Into Fire
Zhukova gestured, and Criid moved the fire teams forwards. The air in the vent stank of sulphur and it was so warm and close, it made their lungs tight. All of them were streaming with sweat.
The entire environment felt toxic in the worst way. Every now and then, a rank breath of air would rumble along the duct from far below. Criid kept expecting a super-hot vent of gas to come boiling up and roast them where they stood.
‘Down from here,’ Zhukova said. A wide vertical duct connected to the horizontal one they had been following. Rusted grip rails ran down one side, for use by servitor work crews. The drop glowed with bioluminescent algae.
‘You sure?’ asked Obel.
Zhukova had been tracing the pattern on her palm with her index finger. She coughed and nodded.
Maggs peered down the drop.
‘Straight down?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Zhukova. ‘Fifty metres or so. It meets the main thermal outflow. We can intercept the hostiles.’
‘How do we get the support weapons and flamers down that?’ asked Ifvan.
‘Carefully,’ said Criid.
She swung over the lip, got her feet on the first grip rail and looked at them.
‘Come on,’ she said.
Pasha stopped pacing. She looked over at Spetnin at the arcade hatch.
‘It’s getting quieter out there,’ he said. ‘No more assaults in the last few minutes.’
Pasha nodded. ‘We’ve given them long enough. Ready up. We’re taking that Gnosis Repository.’
Her squads prepped weapons. Pasha re-checked the antique sleetgun she had spent the last few minutes examining. She was confident that she understood its function. She’d taken a satchel of shells from one of the skitarii corpses. She was going to need decent stopping power.
At the compression hatch, Mora’s squad was ready, lined up for fast assault. At her nod, Ludd punched the hatch key.
The compression hatch sighed on its hydraulics and opened.
The Gnosis Repository was quiet. The bodies of their dead lay where they had fallen. Mora’s team led the way, moving quickly, weapons hunting for movement. Elam’s first squad followed, with Ludd. Pasha led the third assault element inside.
Nothing moved. No fire came their way from the ducting network at the far end.
Ludd glanced into the open crypt-safe.
‘Etriun,’ he said.
Pasha glanced in at the versenginseer’s corpse, face up on the crypt floor. Her brow crinkled with distaste.
‘Keep moving,’ she instructed.
Mora’s squad approached the Repository’s far end. Steam guttered from several sub-ducts that had been forced to release pressure. The heavy lid of the main down-duct had been forced, and lay on the deck. Broken locking bolts were scattered on the ground around it.
Pasha pushed forwards and leaned over to peer down the duct.
‘Feth’s sake,’ said Elam. ‘Don’t just go sticking your head in there!’
She regarded him sarcastically.
‘Head still attached,’ she told him, gesturing to her neck. ‘The enemy is in there, and running. I pray to Throne that Tona and Lunny have got their strength down in front of them. We box them in like rats in a pipe. So, Asa, I am going to stick more than just my head in there.’
She heaved herself out onto the duct’s access ladder, a metal frame that ran down into the darkness below.