‘No reception party?’ Reoch said, both suspicious and insulted. ‘Or word from the choir-master?’
The facility appeared to be deserted. No robed astropaths. No adepts or station bondsmen. Not even servitors. ‘Where is everyone? Could the station have been attacked?’
‘No bodies, either,’ Zerberyn said, before adjusting his vox-channel. ‘Lasander?’
‘Captain?’ the Veteran Sergeant crackled back.
‘Are there any signs that the orks have already been here?’
‘Stand by,’ Lasander said, then a moment later: ‘The Athymian Astra shows battle damage down her flanks and engine column, but I’m assuming that was the cost of reaching the station. It doesn’t look like ork fire, though. Too precise. Arx Meridia itself is untouched.’
‘Make our announcement,’ Zerberyn said.
‘You might think we had already done that,’ Reoch commented.
The Fists Exemplar were traversing a scriptorium. A long, tall room, its walls were lined with bookcases stuffed with dusty tomes and scrolls. Desks and stools lay upturned all around. Above their heads, raised galleries and walkways projected from the shadows.
‘Arx Meridia matrix,’ Lasander’s voice boomed down the length of the cavernous chamber. It seemed that communications were being run through the facility’s vox-caster system. ‘This is the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Dantalion, First Captain Zerberyn in command. The Space Marines of the Fists Exemplar require an audience with the station choir-master. Present yourselves.’
Zerberyn slowed, the Space Marines of Squad Vasmir with him. The sergeant and Reoch took a few more steps before turning.
‘First Captain?’ Vasmir said.
‘What is it?’ the Apothecary asked.
‘I thought I heard something,’ Zerberyn told them. ‘Sergeant, auspex — give me a sweep of the surrounding chambers.’
With Reoch looking around and Sergeant Vasmir going to work on his multi-scanner, the First Captain heard the sound of the squad’s gauntlets creaking about the grips of their boltguns.
‘Multiple signatures,’ Vasmir called out. ‘Ambush pattern!’
The gloom of the scriptorium suddenly became a storm of las-blasts and fury. Cooking the air, criss-crossing beams of energy seared into the plate of the Fists Exemplar. With flash-scarring and smouldering craters decorating their armour, the Space Marines fell into an immediate defensive posture against one of the walls. Powerful las-beams burned their way across the hall from all directions. Surrounding their First Captain, Squad Vasmir took their positions, boltguns primed and ready.
‘What are your orders, my lord?’ Sergeant Vasmir called.
Zerberyn lifted his head to peer around the chamber. He could see dark shapes in carapace moving along the raised galleries and out of the gloomy corridors adjoining the scriptorium. They wore power packs on their backs, enhancing the effectiveness of their weaponry. The lenses of their helmets burned the red of judgement as they took cover and rested their lasguns against corners and on toppled tables. Zerberyn realised that if they had reached the end of the hall they would have been caught in a bloody ambush.
‘Captain!’ the sergeant urged.
‘Hold your fire,’ Zerberyn growled.
‘What?’ Reoch said, turning on his captain. ‘We’re being fired upon.’
‘This must be a misunderstanding,’ Zerberyn said. ‘I will not take the lives of loyal Imperial troops over an error of judgement. If your system was swarming with orks then you might be over-ready with your weapons yourself.’
Reoch drew his bolt pistol.
‘It is,’ the Apothecary said, ‘and I am.’
‘Sergeant?’ Zerberyn said.
‘They appear to be Inquisitorial storm troopers,’ Vasmir said before a stream of light tore over his head. ‘Probably from the Black Ship,’ he added.
‘What are the Holy Ordos doing firing upon us?’ Reoch asked.
‘Captain,’ Lasander said over Zerberyn’s helmet vox. ‘I am getting reports of firing aboard Arx Meridia. Do you require reinforcements?’
‘Negative,’ Zerberyn said. He didn’t want to add to the havoc and confusion within the station. ‘Stand ready, but do not intervene unless I send word.’
With the air warming around them and the floor cratered with glowing impacts, Zerberyn fired three shots into the chamber ceiling. As he expected, the highly trained storm troopers retreated behind cover as chunks of metal and plascrete cascaded down in front of them.
‘Troop commander,’ Zerberyn called, taking advantage of the break in the blazing ambush. ‘Stand your men down. I am Zerberyn, First Captain of the Fists Exemplar. I have information vital to my brothers securing Terra from the alien threat. It is imperative that I make contact with them. I need to commandeer the abilities of this station’s astropathic choir to do so.’
After a few moments of tense silence, the storm erupted again, with beams searing into stone and over their heads. One las-blast found its way to glance off Reoch’s pauldron, spraying the Apothecary’s half-helm with glowing cinders of ceramite.
‘Cease firing or die!’ Reoch called out.
‘Troop commander,’ Zerberyn repeated. ‘The credentials of your order will not be able to protect you from the Adeptus Astartes.’
‘My lord,’ Sergeant Vasmir said. ‘They’ve been isolated. They could have taken leave of their senses…’
‘Or have already surrendered themselves to the xenos faith,’ the Apothecary said, ‘for which there is only one cure.’
Suddenly the scriptorium was silent again. The gloom of the hall returned, with the lasrifles of the storm troopers snapping to a stop in unison.
‘Troop commander,’ Zerberyn called again.
‘He is not in command here, captain,’ a voice crackled across the vox-casters around them. ‘I am.’
‘Identify yourself,’ Zerberyn commanded.
‘Darghastri,’ the voice came again, ‘of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition.’
‘Then you will know, Lord Darghastri,’ Zerberyn said, ‘that we fight on the same side, for the same cause. That the Beast is our common enemy. Put aside your weapons and your men will not be harmed, I give you my word.’
‘Your word, eh?’ Darghastri said. ‘What would the word of a traitor be worth these days? Probably little more than a greenskin’s, I would think.’
‘Vasmir is right,’ Reoch said. ‘He’s gone insane.’
‘It is unwise to insult the Adeptus Astartes,’ Zerberyn told the inquisitor.
‘I dare say you are right, but you have fallen from the Emperor’s grace,’ Darghastri said.
‘Lord Darghastri,’ Zerberyn called. ‘The Adeptus Astartes are not in the habit of issuing warnings — but as a courtesy, I am doing so. To you, Lord Inquisitor. A final one. Lay down your weapons and surrender this facility to the Fists Exemplar, or suffer the Emperor’s wrath in bolt and blade.’
‘I can’t do that, captain,’ the inquisitor told him. ‘And neither can you. For the Emperor’s wrath is reserved for the enemies of His holy Imperium. For you, captain, and your traitor-hearted Space Marines.’
‘You shall pay the price for such accusations and false reports,’ Zerberyn growled.
‘At least the price shall not be my immortal soul,’ Darghastri said, before telling his storm troopers: ‘Destroy them.’
Zerberyn gritted his teeth behind the grille of his helm.
‘These servants of the Imperium have given themselves over to madness,’ he said to his men. ‘The order is given. Kill them. All of them.’
The Fists Exemplar advanced upon their new-found enemies. Like the closing of a ceramite trap, Zerberyn and his Space Marines turned the storm troopers’ ambush into a bolt-storm that rolled back towards the soldiers. The armour of the Fists Exemplar soaked up the blasts of lasrifles. With patches of their plate glowing with the insistence of gunfire, they hammered the troopers back with merciless bursts from their weapons. Beyond, they could hear urgent orders being called between the soldiers as they moved to take different positions about the end of the scriptorium.