In the Militant Fire’s observation dome, Galatea Haas looked out into the void as vessels beyond counting began to travel in concert. The ork moon was straight ahead. It was not drawing closer yet. Even so, it seemed larger. She looked at its surface, and pictured fighting there. She tried to will the Fire past the ork defences to the commencement of the invasion. Until moonfall, there was no action she could take that would at least give her the illusion of mastery over her fate. For now, she had to wait, and place her life in the hands of Narkissos and his crew.
There was no sign of Kord. He had barely set foot out of the cargo bay since their arrival. Haas exchanged a look with the soldiers a few paces to her right. They wore the mustard uniform and red sash of the Jupiter Storm. Beneath her armour, so did she. All the Crusaders aboard the Militant Fire had been inducted into that regiment. Braylon Gattan was a captain in the 546th Jupiter Storm, and the lone officer of that rank on the Fire. Beside him was his commissar, Deklan Sever, quite a bit older. They nodded to her. They were feeling the same hard impatience. At least she was here, she thought, on this ship. At least she was part of a massive move against the orks. She was glad. She had no regrets.
Behind her, the speech continued. Tull built to a crescendo of fervour. The ship moved faster, as if it too were responding to her words. The Armada, brought into being by the determination of the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, gathered momentum. Its formation became more and more defined. It was no longer a confusing cluster of disparate vessels. It took on the shape of a wide spearhead. The ships became the components of the great weapon.
‘The strength of Terra approaches the enemy, carrying dread before it,’ said Tull.
It left dread behind it, too.
On Terra, the people knew that many, perhaps most (but by the Throne, please, not all) of the heroes of the Proletarian Crusade would die. But if those deaths were exchanged for an end to the hellish moon, then they would be celebrated. It was not the deaths that were dreaded. It was their futility.
The fleet did not carry dread within it. There was too much determination.
But it did carry desperation.
Desperation given the shape of metal, given power, given impetus, given speed — but little armour and few weapons — the Armada moved away from its orbital position. The greatest civilian mobilisation in Terra’s history swept towards the orks.
Fourteen
Wienand and Rendenstein approached the main gates, striding along the centre of the Sigillite’s March. The time for secrecy was past. Even if their arrival was not expected, trying to gain access to the Inquisitorial Fortress by any means other than the direct one would be suicidal. What was more, Wienand was clear on the message she wanted to send. She had nothing to hide. She was not a fugitive. She, and no one else, was the Inquisitorial Representative to the Senatorum, and it was in that capacity that she was here, beneath the polar ice cap, in the vast caverns that housed the concentrated might of the Inquisition.
The March ran in a straight line through a cave big enough to swallow a battleship. They were too far underground for the endless cold of the surface to reach them. Even so, the air in the cavern was icy. Wienand’s breath misted. The sound of her boot heels was hollow with chill.
The Sigillite’s March was a hundred metres wide, and a thousand long. The wiring embedded in the flagstones formed a massive interlocking system of hexagrammic wards. The density of the sigils was such that the path as a whole functioned as a gigantic null generator. Iron pillars rose every ten metres, their powerful lumen globes turning the March into a shining road through darkness. There were no barriers on either side, only the shadows of the cavern. The brilliant light of the March was another primary defence. It made conventional weapons pointless. The individuals who walked the March were blind to anything beyond its edges, but eyes in the dark watched them. To travel the kilometre of the March was to be vulnerable at every leveclass="underline" psychic abilities shut down, in the open, unable to see potential attacks.
For Wienand, the fifteen-minute stroll was a declaration of faith in her position. She was announcing to the many who watched that she was confident about reaching the doors unharmed. Rendenstein walked one step behind her, arms at her side, hands open. She didn’t have to be carrying a weapon to be considered a threat. She had to keep her movements as innocuous as possible.
‘This is difficult for you, I know,’ Wienand said when they were halfway along.
‘I don’t like being neutralised. There’s no way for me to protect you here.’
‘This is the one place I don’t need protection.’
Rendenstein grunted, sceptical.
‘That wasn’t a lie,’ Wienand reassured her. ‘If something was going to happen, it would have already.’
‘That makes me feel so much better.’
‘It should. It means we have arrived safely, and that there is a solid chance that the purpose of the journey will succeed.’
Rendenstein didn’t reply. Wienand glanced over her shoulder. Her bodyguard looked thoughtful.
The main doors to the Fortress loomed ahead. They were built into a wall that extended into the cavern’s night in both directions. The doors expressed both the Inquisition’s power and its secretive nature. They were massive, wrought iron in appearance, though those were plates fixed to adamantium. The rosette of the Inquisition occupied the centre of the two doors, bisected by the seam between them, and extended to their full ten-metre height.
There was no practical reason for the doors to be so monumental, so authoritative. No one would ever see them except the inquisitors, or those rare prisoners, as unfortunate as they were privileged, whose sight of the door was their assurance of execution once their usefulness was at an end. The Inquisitorial Fortress was a keep that not only had never been stormed, it had never been besieged. But it was prepared. And it would announce to any foe the folly of attack, and the respect that was due to the servants of the Imperium within.
A lone figure waited for Wienand, standing before the base of the rosette. He was in full dress plate. His ceramite carapace armour was draped by a cloak of crimson and black. A sash of the same colours crossed his chest from left shoulder to the sheath of his sword. Gold wards marked his pauldrons and chestplate, and there were more on his plasma pistol’s holster.
‘Greetings, Castellan Kober,’ Wienand said.
‘Inquisitor Wienand,’ he answered. His stance, his expression, his tone and his words were neutral.
She had expected Henrik Kober to be her main obstacle. He wouldn’t deny her entry, but he might have the clout to block anything she tried to accomplish. The position of Castellan was a rotating one, changing every year or upon the death of the serving inquisitor. The office had no formal political power over other inquisitors. Its mandate was the defence of the Fortress. The administrative authority that followed from that was considerable, and so, then, was the indirect influence wielded by the Castellan. The yearly rotation ensured that none of the holders of the appointment had the time to establish personal dominance to any degree that couldn’t be undone by the next Castellan. But for that year, there was clout.
Wienand decided to force the issue immediately. There wasn’t time for subtlety. She had heard Tull’s speech during the final leg of her journey. ‘Are we going to be in conflict?’ she asked.
‘There have been serious questions raised about you.’
‘But no charges,’ she said, noting that he hadn’t answered her question.
‘Not yet,’ he admitted. Then he said, ‘Inquisitor van der Deckart is dead. Inquisitor Machtannin has been assassinated. And there has been an attempt on Inquisitor Veritus’ life.’