The Impunitas hovers above the desolation and I feel the sights of her heavy bolters watching over me and the company standard. The Gauntlet I have despatched off across the necroplex to ensure that deadly pockets of auspex-defying entities do not haunt the mist. A second wave of abominations at this point would be tactically unlikely, based upon their presented behaviour, but prematurely devastating to corpse trains and combat-unprepared perimeters.
‘What of the Cholercaust – estimated time of planetfall?’ I put to the standard bearer. As we approach a seemingly resilient structure amongst the shattered and soot-stained landscape of destruction he achieves vox contact with the only vessel remaining in orbit around Certus-Minor. All other system ships departed under the protective wing of the Angelica Mortis with only the Adeptus Ministorum defence monitor Apotheon left behind.
‘The Apotheon confirms the first of the armada’s vessels breaching the asteroid field and entering the system core.’
‘How long?’
‘At present speed the advance vessels should reach Certus-Minor in a little under eight hours standard,’ Novah tells me. I imagine the lonely defence monitor holding station above the cemetery world with her tiny engines, the reinforced shielding of her bulbous Voss prow, her grim batteries of fat cannon and the underslung length of her powerful lance quad, nestling beneath the vessel’s armoured keel.
‘My compliments to the commander and cleric,’ I say, and mean it. The Apotheon has the best view of the Cholercaust in the system. They know what is coming. To hold position and charge weapons ready for engagement in the face of such suicidal odds is nothing short of adamantium nerve. ‘Tell him to ignore the cultships and freighters. Any damage his vessel can visit upon Traitor Astartes cruisers, frigates and gunships on the approach is most welcome.’
I think about wishing the captain luck but the words die on my lips. The Apotheon will be a boarder-ravaged wreck soon and the captain will shortly be dead. Since he knows this, it seems ridiculous to extend even the vaguest of optimistic wishes.
Novah spots something charred and leathery flapping in a depression nearby and moves off to plug the surviving thing with bolt-rounds. I advance up the smoking steps of the building before me – the only one in the immediate area not to have fallen in the bomb blast. Its exterior is cracked and scorched, but symbols in the stonework above the iron doors identify the building as the precinct house of the enforcers.
Putting a boot to the metal doors I enter cautiously. The inside of the building is untouched, protected by the thick walls of the precinct exterior. A perfect place for some otherworldly horror to hide from the Impunitas’s bombing run. The armoury is empty and a breeze from the open door disturbs vellum pages on the desks in the scriptoria. They float to the floor where they promptly begin to blotch and soak up blood recently spilt there. Several enforcers lie there also, one without a head and two others with ragged holes blown through their carapace and chests. Moving through the deserted precinct house, past the chastenoria, a booth-verispex and the provostery, I move down into the dungeon. An empty combat shotgun lies abandoned on the stairs. Here the cells are empty, bar one.
Sitting on a bench, behind thick adamantine alloy bars, is Proctor Kraski. The enforcer’s scuffed armour is ripped and blasted, while his head leans to one side and his mouth is open. Tobacco juice dribbles from the corner of his mouth and down through his beard, pitter-pattering on the polished cell floor. Something crunches under my boot and lifting it I find a key, clearly thrown out of the cell by Kraski after he locked himself in.
‘Proctor,’ I call, my voice bouncing unsettlingly around the cell block. Clutching the bars with my gauntlet, one power-armoured tug forces the simple lock and I step inside the cage. Grabbing Kraski by his shaggy hair I lift his head up. ‘Proctor,’ I call at him again. His eyes have rolled over white but seem to quiver a little as though he is fitting. Suddenly I find out why.
In the open mouth I see something horrible looking back out at me. Several spindly legs erupt from between the enforcer’s tobacco-stained teeth. An arachnoid being slips its tiny abdomen out of the opening and runs along my arm and across my armoured chest. All legs, the beast had crammed itself inside Kraski’s skull and devoured the contents.
Recoiling with revulsion, my pack slams into the bars of the cell. I knock the monstrosity onto the floor where it clearly considers scrabbling back at me. Dipping my hand into my holster I soon dissuade it with several floor-pulverising blasts from my bolt pistol. The horror scuttles across the floor and up the stairs before I’m even out of the cell. Holding the Mark II in both hands I smack my pauldrons into walls, aiming around corners – expecting the thing to jump at my face. The ground floor of the precinct house confronts me with a fresh nightmare of hiding places, but a swift staccato of bolt-rounds outside persuades me that the beast has fled the building.
Shouldering my way through the iron doors I see Brother Novah waving me to follow with the battle standard as he jumps from one piece of smouldering rubble to the next. I catch up with him at the boundary of destruction, where even a chapel-cryptia had weathered the bomb blast.
‘In here,’ Novah hisses, angling his bolter at a hole in the wall. Advancing through the brick-blasted opening, bolt pistol held before me, I creep into the darkness of the chapel-cryptia. Lowering the battle standard to get it inside, Novah follows. The interior – usually lit by candles – is a nest of shadows. A stained-glass portal above admits only gloom, and the centre of the chamber is dominated by a sunken stone stairwell down into a crypt. About the chapel are plinths bearing coffins of weathered stone, the brittle lids of which bear raised representations of minor Imperial saints. One is ajar.
Jabbing my Mark II over at the coffin, Novah and I move quietly through the chamber. We both freeze as our sensitive hearing picks up on a scuffling within the coffin. With Novah’s bolter aimed at the stone box, I count us down with ceramite fingers from three to one. Tearing off the lid with one hand I thrust my pistol into the darkness with the other.
There is a scream, which neither of us expect, and my finger twitches against the Mark II’s trigger. There is a young girl inside – alive and terrified; a dirty-faced cemetery worlder, hiding in the coffin. I hold my gauntlet up, as much an indication to her that we are no threat as an order to Brother Novah not to shoot. The foundling lets rip again with another shrill scream.
Following her eyes I see that she is looking at the battle standard and the rift-spider running down its shaft. Novah’s response is immediate. He smacks the banner against the floor, propelling the thing down into the darkness of the crypt.
‘Down!’ I yell at the shrieking child, prompting her to duck back into the stone coffin. Aiming my pistol down the steps I thumb the weapon to automatic and illuminate the thick darkness with a stabbing stream of firepower. The monster vaults straight back at me from the murk of the crypt, forcing me to drop the weapon. With my gauntlets out in front of me I hold the warp-strong thing at bay as it scrabbles for my face. ‘Novah!’