Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne Read online

  High above, the spire’s promethium furnaces burned, but that was not the source of the roar. Nor was it coming from the blazing fires. The noise – as deep as the lost oceans, as rich as boiling blood – came from the hundreds, thousands, of people assembled in that hall. They were shouting, screaming, raising their fists into the horrifically hot, smoky air and chanting some mantra that Spinoza could not make out. They were all armed – most with improvised weapons any hive-ganger could have accumulated, some with Militarum-issue lasguns, some with more lethal tools. All of them wore red over their regulation woollen shifts, a motley sea of cloak-scraps, dyed sashes, hoods and armour-pieces, glossy with slaps of thick paint. Looming over them all, massive and brooding, was the sign of the False Angel – the winged cadaver painting in blood, twenty metres high, scored into the walls and lit by the flames.

  ‘So many,’ murmured Khazad.

  For a moment, Spinoza froze, shocked by what she saw. Crowl would not have made this mistake. Crowl would have been more cautious. But then Crowl was not here to see it, and that, all things considered, was something to be glad of.

  They were already turning. They were already reaching for their guns, the light of feral hatred shining in their eyes.

  She holstered her pistol, reached for Argent, and kindled the disruptor field.

  ‘For Him on Earth,’ she voxed to the squad.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Even habituated to Terra’s superlatives, the airborne approach to the Palace never failed to elicit a tremor of awe. Dawn was not far off, though the skies remained as black as the void, a pall of smoke and smog that writhed like serpents around the mighty boles of the thickening tower clusters. The spires reared ever higher, the triumphal arches spanned ever more insane gulfs. Sightless aquilae stared out over colossal vistas, all now marked with the skull motifs of the Adeptus Terra. It was said that ten billion adepts were required simply to administer the precincts of the Palace itself. Crowl had always supposed that number to be hyperbole until he had first witnessed the approaches for himself, years ago. Seeing those mighty walls of age-tarnished adamantium rise on – up and up, sweeping like the shoulders of geologically impossible mountains into the spore-filthed sky, then the next, and then the next, each bastion bigger than the last – gave at least some credence to the figures.

  There was no respite from the immensity. Ten thousand years of hege­mony, of tithes dragged in from every planet in the vast realm of man, found its terminus here. The land itself was ruptured, bored deep down into the core to hollow out new oubliettes and warrens, just as deep as the towering behemoths above.

  The Shade powered on full thrust, heading due north. Gothic edifices with ornate rose windows passed in sequence, one after the other, hour after hour, until their number and expanse became numbing. The Palace itself, a temple-continent of titanic proportions, grew steadily larger on the northern horizon, its swollen profile backlit by perpetual storms. Blacker than the night behind it, the cyclopean Sanctum Imperialis rose into the lightning-barred sky, a dome of such mind-bending dimensions that it enclosed its own climatic system and had foundations delved far into the forgotten bedrock of Himalazian peaks.

  The pilgrim columns below them had swelled into a living ocean of red-robed humanity, surging up from the maw-gates and out onto the greater Avenues Immaculate, teeming in their millions, filling every scrap of empty rockcrete and marching forth in dirty, swaying ranks. There were far too many to count, far too many to halt – a host of the devoted dredged from every backwater world in the Imperium of Man and hurled into its heart of tarnished gold. They were dying in their droves even now, suffocated by the press of bodies, parched and withered from months without adequate food or water, bloated with contagion from the passage in stinking void-hulls, but still they tramped onwards, crying out for salvation, swinging the regulation blood-lanterns they had paid their last coin to obtain, gasping out hymns to the Sacrificed before their strength gave out and they were trodden underfoot by the thousands coming on behind.

  The arbitrators could only watch that progress now, hovering high in their Raptor crowd-suppression gunships, powerless against the current of blind fanaticism that surged onwards and inwards. Millions of troops from the Astra Militarum regiments had been mobilised to line the high places, all standing in ranks five deep, but they could all have emptied their lasgun power packs ten times over and made little more than a dent in those numbers.

  The hab-zones fell behind, and the Shade flew almost alone, broadcasting its exempted status on every vox-channel to ensure it remained unmolested by the shoals of watch-craft. Revus piloted it down a long, long channel between high towers, two kilometres wide, flat at its base and lined with immense statues on either flank. Far ahead loomed the greatest of the triumphal arches outside the Inner Palace perimeter – the great road that led to the first of the Great Gates, one of three portals into the sanctus sanctorum, where He yet dwelt in the agony of immortality, striving every hour with the infinite will of hungry gods for the souls of His people.

  The outer wall emerged through veils of drifting smog – a long screen of blackened iron, higher than a hive-spire, its bulwarks formed from the adamantium piers of the First Palace, its feet resting on foundations hewn by the primarch Rogal Dorn. Those battlements now overlooked the pinnacle-fields of the world-city, but had once gazed out over nothing but mires of carnage, and still bore the scars. By decree of the High Lords, the marks of battle had never been erased, and now pocked and disfigured the gothic outer curtain, their edges eroded by the gnawing winds but always there, a reminder to the weak in faith of the consequences of ambivalence.

  ‘We’re being tracked,’ Revus reported, edging the Shade a little higher.

  ‘How many active weapon locks?’

  Revus glanced at the console. ‘Three hundred and seventy-four.’

  Crowl smiled. ‘They’re doing their job.’

  He activated the comm-bead at his neck and scrolled through the access ciphers. Crowl’s retinal feed glowed with lists of runes, sliding smoothly across his visual field.

  The wall drew closer. The processional way was packed with both foot-traffic and the sanctioned walkers of the Ecclesiarchy. An immense tracked land-train ground its way onwards, its ranked chimneys spewing thick black clouds of smoke, its sloped prow crushing any pilgrims dull-witted enough to stagger into its path. Priests floated above their flock on grav-pulpits, roaring out injunctions across overlapping vox-augmitters. Halfway along the route, two Warhound Titans of the Legio Ignatum stood sentinel, their guns garlanded with banners, their blunt cockpits facing one another across the swollen river of bodies.

  ‘We have a challenge,’ said Revus.

  ‘Maintain course. I am working on it.’

  The Shade powered on, passing over the Titan sentinels, a lone speck of black against the hosts below. More challenge runes flashed up on the console, most from arbitrator command-fortresses, some bearing Astra Militarum markings, a few with classified origins.

  The wall drew closer. More detail filled out the auspex screens. Their target, the Lion’s Gate, could just be made out as a floodlit haze among the coal-black surrounds, glinting from the slivers of lightning, its base stained dull red from the millions of blood-lanterns at its feet.

  Long shadows fell across them. More craft were slowly descending, heavier variants of the crowd-suppressor gunships, their thrusters straining and their gun-banks swinging around to track.

  ‘Seven hundred active locks,’ said Revus calmly. ‘In a moment, one of them will engage.’

  ‘Maintain course.’

  Crowl worked through the comm-protocol channels, scanning for a lock of his own. Even with Navradaran’s cipher-keys, opening a line was not simply a matter of finding a frequency – a billion comm-beads were opening and closing every second, swamping the ancient relay towers and filling the night air with hails of static. Cro
wl negotiated the symbolic gateways, appending his own ordo respond-codes and then threading through signatory synapse paths.

  By Terran standards, the landscape around them was open, a vast field of plazas and stepped terraces. The Lion’s Gate had been the great voidport of the capital world, hundreds of square kilometres across, capable of receiving massive Crusade-era drop-ships. During the Great Heresy, legend told the site had seen some of the fiercest fighting as Traitors and Loyalists had slaughtered one another for control of the prime landing sites, and even now many of the old stages were revered centres of devotion, hallowed across the millennia and protected by the Ministorum, the original crumbling rockcrete preserved under high vaults, the scorch tracks and mortar craters meticulously tended by armies of slaved menials.

  ‘Energy spikes detected,’ Revus noted, bringing them into line with the Lion’s Gate itself, its bulk still half shrouded in shadows.

  ‘Noted,’ said Crowl, working hard. ‘Maintain course.’

  The wall now filled the forward viewers, rising like a cliff-edge above the old void stages, its parapets spiked with gun-lines. The immense portal doors, each one over two hundred metres high, were closed and had been for ten thousand years. The two door faces were embossed with beaten ceramite, sculpted into representations of the battles that had taken place. Idealised Angels of Death clashed in bas-relief, their blades glimmering under an accumulated patina of ages. In the very centre, where the immense bosses swelled out, were two greater figures – the Holy Primarch Jaghatai Khan, and a nameless daemonic monster wielding a scythe.

  ‘Now in interdict,’ said Revus, his voice as passionless as ever. ‘They tell me they will open fire in five seconds.’

  Crowl could see the truth of it. Atop the closest parapets, linked lascannons were swinging around to gain a clear shot. The Shade’s console was swimming with warning runes, its main comm-intake clogged with challenge hails. Inquisitorial markers would buy them a little time, but not much.

  He pushed on, filtering and mind-sorting, progressing through levels of symbolism. The key was there, locked down amid a thicket of overlapping astrological cartographs.

  ‘Time’s up,’ said Revus, noting the power surge on the lascannon battery. He neither slowed nor deviated course.

  Then Crowl broke through, and his rune-feed blinked into a >transmit invitation. ‘You wanted to see me,’ he voxed. ‘Call off your dogs.’

  The lascannons remained lit, their power coils swollen with electro-static. The Gate swam closer, its surface details now visible to the naked eye. For a moment longer they coasted, high above the artificial plains, angled towards one of the many armoured ship-access portals cut into the doors themselves, their every movement tracked by silent gun barrels.

  Then the lascannons swung away. The coils powered down, and the closest shadowing gunships peeled clear.

  ‘You are early, inquisitor,’ came Navradaran’s voice, not through the teeming comm-channels but direct into his armour’s audex system.

  ‘I have news of Phaelias,’ said Crowl. ‘And of others – I must speak with you.’

  There was a pause. ‘Follow the markers. Once inside, do not deviate – the guards will not give a warning beyond the wall.’

  Ahead of them, one of the ship-access portals folded in on itself, sending a shaft of red-gold light bleeding out into the poisoned atmosphere. Revus shifted trajectory to match it.

  ‘Not very friendly,’ he remarked.

  Crowl stared ahead, watching as they crossed the threshold and the Inner Palace unfurled before them in all its terror and splendour.

  ‘We’re just getting started,’ he murmured.

  It was not a cell, not a cabal, not a rabble. It was an army.

  At the far end of the cavern, past the heaving crowds, half lost in the swirl of smoke and the ripple of the fire, was a great archway and a raised stage. A red-robed, masked figure stood there, arms raised, flanked by dozens of ogryn-breeds and armoured honour guards, surrounded by a halo of vox-augmitters. He had been addressing the crowds, whipping them into mania, but now he turned towards the interlopers into his subterranean kingdom, pointing them out with a dark gauntlet, his reflective facemask mirroring the leaping flames.

  ‘Your persecutors!’ he cried out, his vox-pattern fractured by a distortion filter. ‘Take them.’

  The crowd rushed at them, spilling over themselves to get at the intruders. Hegain and his troops backed off, firing steadily, dropping the first rank of cultists into a tumbling pile of bodies. Spinoza whirled around, only to see their retreat cut off by fresh troops emerging from the portal behind them. Guards in what looked like heavy carapace armour blocked other exits higher up, preparing to open fire. There was no cover, no escape route, only a seething mass of rage coming at them, eyes-wide and desperate.

  Khazad swung her powerblade in practice-arcs. ‘He is nexus,’ she voxed, nodding up at the stage.

  Spinoza was still frozen with indecision. There were more of them than she had thought possible. Hundreds more.

  Get a grip, she told herself, angrily.

  Stay where they were and they would die swiftly for nothing. Somehow get to the cult-master, and perhaps something could still come of this.

  ‘We take the leader,’ Spinoza ordered over the vox. Hegain responded instantly, moving alongside her and Khazad, and the three of them charged directly into the oncoming mass. The assassin pirouetted as she sprinted, somersaulting high before crashing into the first wave of cultists. Her powerblade whistled, taking two heads clean off before she was in close, kicking out, jabbing, cutting.

  Spinoza took a more direct route, letting her armour absorb the sting of incoming lasfire and laying about her with Argent. The storm troopers pushed out on either flank, protecting her as they had been trained to, cutting down more cultists with each precise volley. They were brutal, direct, punching hard to break bones before twisting around to loose las-bolts at close range.

  The shock of the assault broke the initial onslaught. These were ordinary mortals – sick, weak, given no special training and possessing little decent equipment. The Inquisition’s soldiers cut a swathe through the crowds, pushing hard towards the dais where the False Angel waited for them. He made no move to evade them, but stood in full view, watching calmly as they steadily cut his servants down.

  Then the first storm trooper fell, dragged to the ground by more than eight cultists at once, his gun ripped from his hands and his power pack wrenched over. That broke the formation’s unity, and soon three more of Hegain’s force were bogged down, fighting for their lives as the crowds clawed at them.

  ‘Further,’ Spinoza urged, watching the great stage draw closer. She cracked the skull of a cultist, kicking the body away, then whirled to face the next.

  Khazad was fighting less fluently now – something had taken a gouge out of her. Hegain shouted out his frustration as the pace dragged and more heavily armoured guards waded into the fray. They pushed on, but it was hard graft, and another two storm troopers were hauled down by a forest of fanatical hands.

  Fifty metres to go. Spinoza twisted around, trying to spy anything – anything at all – that could get her close. All she saw was the heaving tide coming at her, their faces marked with ritual cuts, their skin pierced, their teeth glittering in the dark.

  Crying aloud, she slammed Argent round in a wide circle two-handed, dragging four of them out of her path. She shoved her way towards one of the great iron braziers. While Khazad and Hegain took the fight to the cultists, she stowed the crozius, took out her laspistol and took aim at the figure on the dais. For a moment, they were staring at one another. His facemask was a polished mirror, his robes edged with gold. He made no move to get into cover, and the two targeting lines in her armour’s helm slid to intersect over his forehead.

  ‘May your soul burn for eternity,’ Spinoza breathed, and fired.

>   The shot was aimed true, lancing into the man’s head. Just before impact, though, a ripple-pattern of blue light cocooned him, spidering out and flexing like plastek.

  ‘Force shield,’ Khazad spat, fighting hard now but no longer making progress.

  Spinoza pushed back to join her embattled comrades, taking up Argent again. She could almost see Crowl’s patient, cynical face gazing at her in disappointment, and that made her furious.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ she cried out loud, felling another two cultists. She hacked and she punched out, but still the weight of bodies kept pressing in, dragging at her, scratching at her, screaming with inchoate loathing.

  Hegain went down, then more of his troops were smothered. Then Khazad was finally dragged off her feet, and Spinoza turned to face a burly man with studs glittering across a blood-streaked forehead. She cracked Argent across his face, hammering two-handed now, spinning around to meet the attacks as they closed in on her. For a few moments longer she hewed them down, her armour deflecting every impact, the disruptor field of her maul flaring in the shadows.

  Then something hit her hard on the back of the head, and she staggered. Las-bolts impacted along her torso, knocking her to one side, and she felt a hammer-strike across her spine. She tried to spin round, to bring the crozius to bear, but then she was taking more hits and her helm-visor erupted into static. Argent was ripped from her grasp, another heavy blow came in, and she was thrown onto her back. She tried to get up, but the muzzle of a gun was rammed into her gorget-seal, pressing into the flesh beneath. She tensed, ready for the shot, but it never came.

  Slowly, messily, her visor-field cleared. She blinked the fuzz of tactical data away, and found herself staring at the mirror-helm of the cult leader. He was bending over her, weaponless, though his acolytes still swarmed close on all sides, all guns aimed at her. Her hands and feet were held down by them, and more gun muzzles pressed up against her.