Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne Page 20

  A storm of fire pursued it – lascannon beams, bolter shots, most skipping just above the gunship’s tail fin or over the stubby wing tips. Crowl swung and jinked, throwing the vessel hard one way then jerking it back the other. A projectile smacked hard into the starboard wing, rocking the gunship over and nearly sending it careering into the approaching face of a hab tower. Crowl hauled on the control columns, dragging it high and left. The engines screamed, the cockpit shook, and they made the turn, their undercarriage cracking into the extremities of a comm tower and warping the struts.

  Clear of the tower’s edge, Crowl piled on the power and the Shade leapt into straight-line speed, streaking down the chasm between spire trunks. The drones kept pace for a while, firing sporadically, but soon they were back into Terran airspace and other vehicles began to cluster in front of them. At last the drones fell back, boosting upwards and swinging away towards the vast hulk of the Skhallax tower complex.

  Crowl maintained full speed for a while longer, weaving through the steadily growing volume of aircraft. Slate-grey spire flanks soared up around them, dully reflecting the raging infernos at their base, and the labyrinthine street levels were once more congested with the raucous progress of the pilgrim cavalcades.

  Revus steadily deactivated the bolter-array, checked over the ammunition levels, and sat back in his seat. ‘We didn’t learn much,’ he said, taking out his hellpistol to examine the power levels.

  Crowl slowly reduced power to the main engines, letting the Shade drop to coasting speed. The tactical readout on the console showed the last of the servitor-drones falling behind and swerving back into the ambit of the enclave.

  ‘We learned they were happy to kill us,’ Crowl said, thoughtfully. ‘Even, for a while, in the open. Consider that, Revus – they were prepared to down an Inquisition flyer within sight of major hab-spires. I could start to get offended.’

  He eased further down on the control columns, bringing the Shade within the main clusters of churning air traffic. The furnaces became more concentrated, making it seem as if they were flying down a volcanic crevasse.

  ‘Take the controls,’ Crowl said, letting go of the column. As Revus assumed flight-command, he reached for the vox-capsule retrieved from the interior. ‘What do we make of this? Has the Mechanicus hierarchy lost its mind? Or is this a local difficulty with Skhallax? That priest mentioned Quantrain – not the first time he’s come up.’

  Revus said nothing. His armour was peppered with fresh burns. A long gouge ran along his left shoulder-pad, tracing the path of a galvanic shot that had almost found its mark.

  ‘Time to see what we recovered,’ Crowl said, placing the capsule in a socket in his armour’s gorget and hearing the hiss of the data-shunt. His retinal feed brought up a cipher requester, and Crowl blink-matched it with his level clearance. There was a further hiss as the audex was reassembled. A second later, and a recording crackled out loud.

  ‘Summary report, Inquisitor Hovash Phaelias, the Ordo Xenos, Skhallax catacombs. I will be brief – I am detected and I fear their numbers are too great to evade. They have already killed Bors, and only I remain. I know not on whose orders they act, but I suspect Quantrain. The facts: this goes all the way to the Palace. I do not know the numbers, but we are betrayed from within. The cargo was taken here, I am sure of it, but the scheme has gone awry. There has been fighting. They have tried to contain it, but it has caused damage and they are struggling. I still do not know its precise nature, but that alone is justification for my concern. If it leaves this place I do not know where it is headed – I assume the Palace itself. Supposition – does the Feast make the Gate less secure?’

  Crowl listened grimly. Phaelias didn’t sound scared, only resigned.

  ‘If this audex device is uncovered, these are the salient points. Inquisitor-Lord Flavius Quantrain is a traitor to the Holy Throne. His agents are the primary facilitators and are behind the destruction of my retinue. I do not yet understand his motivation for corruption, but there is a link with the heretic known as the False Angel, in whose name the underhives are being mobilised for rebellion. Quantrain’s sponsors are within the Council of Terra. I say it again, Quantrain’s sponsors are within the Council of Terra. Every attempt I have made to probe further has been repelled. I venture the supposition, without firm evidence and subject to Level Nine doubt, that the Fabricator General of Mars and the Speaker of the Chartist Captains are prime movers.’

  Revus, who could hear the testimony as well as Crowl, remained stony-faced. Gorgias’ eye dulled to a disbelieving auburn.

  ‘A final thing. If I should die here, the only one of my company now unaccounted for is the Shoba assassin Niir Khazad. She is as faithful a servant of the Throne as ever lived. I would see her preserved.’

  The audex feed began to corrupt. Crashes, muffled and in the distance, crackled in the background, as if something was trying to break down a sealed doorway.

  ‘No more time. I trust He will guide a loyal soul to this device, should it be needed. Ave Imperator! Death to His foes!’

  Another crash, closer this time, and the feed gave out.

  For a while, no one said anything. The Shade powered on, flying sub-optimally due to the gash in its wing.

  ‘Where to?’ Revus asked eventually. They were pulling back into the southern reaches of Malliax. Salvator was the next conurbation-zone in line, after which the grids marched onwards and onwards, steadily building up in magnificence until they reached the megaliths of the Outer Palace.

  Still Crowl gave no answer. Gorgias hovered concernedly, for once venturing no opinion.

  ‘He is Hereticus,’ Crowl said eventually, through a clenched jawline. The anger was palpable. ‘Quantrain is of my ordo. If this has any truth to it…’

  ‘Only guesses,’ ventured Revus.

  ‘More than guesses,’ said Crowl. ‘He was hunted. We are hunted.’ His face, normally severe, became as black as the thunderheads above them. ‘A hive-ganger reads a proscribed text and we skin him alive even though the harm is slight. A Lord of Terra leaves a trail of blood from here to the Holy Steps and we cannot touch him for fear of our damned souls. No, that will not be borne. He must answer for this, if I have to damn myself to hear his words.’

  ‘Then we seek him now?’ asked Revus, who would have spoken as coolly if he’d been ordered into the Eye of Terror.

  Crowl laughed. ‘He dwells inside – you understand this? Even I cannot enter the precincts without cause, and if we breathe a word of it…’ He broke off, suddenly remembering. ‘But it’s the Gate. The Feast ends at the Gate. That is the danger.’

  Gorgias began to get more agitated. ‘Burn-burn,’ he chirped. ‘Slay in toto hereticus maleficare.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Crowl. ‘For once we are in accord. Revus, set a course for the Imperial Palace. I care not if they aim every defence laser on the walls at us – we have to get there before the Rites conclude.’

  ‘As you will it,’ Revus acknowledged, turning the Nighthawk northwards. ‘But you know the guns will be active.’

  ‘You worry about the flying,’ said Crowl, already bringing up the vox-sequence that would – with luck – summon the attention of Navradaran. ‘I’ll worry about getting us in.’

  Hegain was not happy about the inclusion of Khazad into the hunting party. He looked at her with an expression of studied loathing, keeping a hand ostentatiously close to his hellgun butt. Khazad herself remained entirely indifferent.

  ‘And you are sure of this, lord?’ Hegain asked, his voice part-obscured by the roar of the grounded Nighthawk’s engines.

  ‘Perfectly, sergeant. She has the location of our target.’

  ‘I have a fix on the Militarum conv–’

  ‘That has been superseded. Check your helm-feed.’

  Hegain bowed, a little stiffly, and returned to the cockpit, his webbing rippling wildly against his a
rmour-plates as he stepped across the intake of the engines.

  Spinoza looked at Khazad. ‘Ready?’

  The assassin nodded, pushing her bobbed hair back and replacing her helm. ‘Is not far.’

  The two of them clambered into the crew-bay, leaving Hegain to pilot the gunship. The hatches slammed closed, the engines powered up to full tilt, and the interior swayed as they gained loft. Then they were plunging steeply, dropping over the side of the bridge and back down into the depths.

  ‘May be difficult,’ Khazad warned, inspecting the power unit on her sword. ‘Has many followers, down there. How many, do not know. Some trained well.’

  ‘How long have they been preparing?’

  ‘Long time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Do not know. But you know Feast is almost here.’

  Spinoza adjusted the fit of her gauntlet, knocked off-kilter during the combat. ‘Have you ever seen a ritual?’

  ‘Flesh-cutting? I see evidence. In underhive. They leave bodies.’

  ‘What purpose? For strength? Some kind of sorcery?’

  Khazad laughed. ‘You are asking me? I was running, the whole time. Maybe they like it. Some do, and that is all.’

  The Nighthawk picked up speed, angling further into the dive. The crew-bay vibrated, shaking the troops in their restraint harnesses. Those troops riding in the main bay with Spinoza kept their gaze somewhere else, studiously ignoring the assassin in their midst.

  ‘So what is this place?’ Spinoza asked.

  ‘Underground,’ said Khazad. ‘Where else? They move here just soon, driven out somewhere else. They learn lessons. Is guarded.’

  ‘I want him alive,’ said Spinoza.

  ‘No doubt he wants same for you.’ Khazad chuckled, a surprisingly gritty rasp behind her vox-mask. ‘I can get us close. But there will be fighting. They are not fools.’

  A clunk from the hull signalling lumen power-down was followed by the engine pitch changing. Hegain had pushed the Nighthawk into approach mode, and the angle of the deck began to swing back towards horizontal.

  ‘Coming in close to it now, lord,’ came Hegain’s voice over the internal comm.

  ‘Prepare for full deployment,’ said Spinoza. ‘We seal the craft.’

  ‘As you will it.’

  The Nighthawk spun around on its central axis, then crunched to the ground, its landing gear flexing under its weight. The bay doors hissed open, and Spinoza leapt out at the head of the exiting storm troopers. Hegain was last out, sealing the Nighthawk’s cockpit before hefting his hellgun and catching up.

  They ran on into the dark. Enormous metal vanes marched away from them, each one the size of an Imperator Titan, ranked a hundred metres apart. Vast snarls of power ducting hung in tangled silos from the high roof, patched, re-patched and welded. The floor was a tight metal lattice under which an empty gulf fell away into the deeps below. The air was fervid, parched, swaying with heat, and the walls growled with the expulsion of subterranean energies.

  ‘Heat processor,’ said Khazad, running hard.

  The weight of a hive-spire soared over their heads, floor after floor of it. The coolant shafts, some of them kilometres long, ran along the entire height of the structure. Vast power plants churned vats of viscous fluids through the arteries of the towers, channelling the excess into great exhaust vents placed high up in the wind-ripped summit zones. Down here was the core machinery itself, fuelled by arthritic old promethium furnaces and driven by pile drivers the height of a multistorey hab-unit.

  Hegain issued battle-sign signals, and the ten-strong squad fanned out. Below them, masked by the lattice floor, plumes of flame flared up in the chasms – discharge from the great engines. A spire-class heat exchanger system matched the size and complexity of a line battleship enginarium, and had the crew to match. Thousands toiled in the sweaty dark, slaved to the arcane machines that kept the air above from becoming completely toxic and the temperatures from becoming routinely lethal.

  Khazad led them further on, further down, and they passed between buttress-columns encased in scaffolding. Labour gangs looked up blearily from their work, holding sputtering arc-welders in calloused, unprotected hands. Industrial servitors lumbered blindly out of their path, hauling sleds piled with girders.

  They reached the edge of a wide circular shaft, its rockcrete lip eroded into fragile chunks. ‘Down there,’ Khazad said, uncoupling a clamberwire feeder. ‘Old cooler wells.’

  Spinoza nodded, gesturing to the squad to retrieve rappel wires. ‘How far down?’

  ‘Thirty metres. No more.’

  The storm troopers activated grappling hooks, primed the counters for distance and clamped them to the shaft’s edge. Spinoza could see internal ladder-cages snaking down into the gloom, clinging to the inside curve in spidery lattices of steel. She leaned over the edge for a split second, studying the pattern of the ladders and gauging a route down. The base of the well shaft was lost in shadows.

  Her fingers flickered battle-sign to Hegain – two charges, blind-flash, three second delay – then she gave the order to go in.

  The two flash-charges spun down into the well, tumbling out of view. The storm troopers leapt over the edge after them, their rappel lines pulling taught and paying out fast. Spinoza kicked out against the inner wall as she shot down, one eye kept on the rolling timers.

  The charges went off in a flare of pure white, lighting up lichen-encrusted foundation stones. The storm troopers were protected by their helm-visors, but howls of sudden pain from below gave away the presence of unshielded guards.

  Spinoza dropped to the ground, cutting free of the wire and sweeping around with her weapon. Six human-normals and an abhuman writhed on the rockcrete floor, their eyes streaming. Storm troopers dropped down among them, finishing them off with pinpoint shots to the head. A locked metal portal had been cut into the north wall of the shaft, and Hegain was already laying charges down the centre groove.

  The limpet-mines blew with a muffled crump, and the right-hand slide-door collapsed in a shower of glowing chunks. Hegain was first through the breach, hurling a nerve-charge through the jagged opening and then piling in after it. Spinoza was next, shadowed by Khazad.

  They emerged into a long corridor cut from solid rock. The walls around them were vibrating, as if some massive machine were turning under their feet. Three more guards lay on the floor, choking on the green blooms of nerve gas and scrabbling at their bloated throats. The squad raced on, their lenses glowing amid the luminous clouds. Another gate was blown, another guard-point swept aside before the defenders even knew what was coming. They passed chambers bored deep into the rock on either side, some piled high with ration crates, others lined with racks of weaponry. Most of it looked to be scavenged hive-ganger grade, but there were Militarum-issue lasguns too, plus strongboxes for krak and frag charges.

  They pushed on, breaking down a long sloping tunnel before an ogryn-breed abhuman suddenly reared up ahead of them out of the gloom, bellowing, filling up the narrow corridor with its unnatural, stimm-swollen bulk. This one had chainblades clamped over its fists, the power lines running directly to cortex-boxes implanted in its hunched spine. The monster roared with drug-spiked fury, dropped its bulbous shoulder and charged. One of Hegain’s troops sent a shot into its neck, tearing a slice through its flapping flesh, but that barely slowed it. The creature crashed into another trooper, slamming him against the tunnel wall and sending its blades whirring into his twitching body.

  Spinoza opened fire with her laspistol, hitting it direct in its drooling face and making it stagger. Hegain powered ahead, switching from his gun to a combat knife and leaping up into the reeling mass of slab-muscle. The blade slashed left, right, then up, carving into the abhuman’s ribs and spraying them both with black blood before he dropped back to evade the mutant’s flailing fist-saws. More las-beams whickered ou
t, then Khazad darted in close, slashing her power sword. The bloodied mutant, half-blind and flecked with its own blood, reached out to grasp her in its growling blade-hands, but she darted inside its reach, angled her blade up vertically and pushed, sending the tip up through its chin and into its skull.

  The vast body mass shuddered, impaled on the snarling power blade, before Khazad withdrew with a flourish and leapt back as the abhuman crashed, choking, to the ground.

  ‘Faster now,’ ordered Spinoza, sighting another guard racing into the corridor at the far end and picking him off with a long-range shot.

  By then the walls were drumming around them. It was getting much, much hotter. It felt as if the entire cavern were burning up. They reached a T-junction and swept to the right, unimpeded now, but the dull clamour was growing.

  ‘What is that?’ she voxed, sprinting towards a doorway at the end of the last tunnel.

  No answer came. Khazad was close on her heels, but said nothing. Perhaps old processor-cells were still active down here, burning away on the other side of the thick walls – all the better to block augur sweeps and comm-lines.

  ‘Multiple signals,’ reported Hegain from his portable auspex as they neared the door. ‘Interference, interference, but I am… Holy Throne. Not interference. Fall back!’

  But by then Spinoza had kicked the last door down, gun in hand, and burst through. Khazad came with her, her sword spitting. The storm troopers followed – down to nine now – spilling out into the open, hellguns aimed outwards.

  Then they stood there, breathing heavily. Ahead of them, cavern walls rose up sheer, hewn from the world’s crust either by nature or by some forgotten ancient artifice. Twin rock faces were hung with banners, all crude depictions of bloody angels. Fires thundered in pierced metal barrels, hurling columns of angry red illumination up against the stone. The vault must have been fifty metres wide, but it swept back as far as the eye could see, a long chasm rent within the earth’s deeper skin.