The Inquisition War (59 page)

The faces beneath the masks had slanting eyes and sloping cheeks – a lethal, otherworldly loveliness.

Still masked, still projecting a fading fury, the banshee-female had fallen dead.

The other Banshee!

Even as Lex swung his heavy bolter, bolts from other armoured knights had caught the second alien.

The style of the aliens’ attack had become so frenzied and spectacular – and, provided one wasn’t intimidated, so self-defeating. These aliens were no longer reasoning beings. They were mere masks, shells of armour equipped with weapons.

T
HUS
L
EX’S COMPANY
had fought its way through the jungle, driving the seemingly suicidal eldar back, until trees gave way to a low plateau of bare granite. Upon that plateau towered a slim, graceful sub-light ship. Its iridescent fins could have been those of some exotic fish. A cordon of warriors wearing black armour guarded the ship. The surviving Banshees were now sprinting across the granite.

Voxing his men to pause in the shelter of the jungle’s fringe, Lex willed the optic sensors in his visor into telescopic mode.

The input into the visual node of his brain showed those black warriors to be armed with missile launchers. That coal-dark armour of theirs was crafted of interlocking plates embossed with metal skulls. It looked heavy, not flexible as were the suits of the banshee-bitches. The inky cuisses and greaves protecting thighs and calves were particularly sturdy, to steady the wearers against the recoil of those missile launchers. Vanes in the helmets might be equipment for locking on to a target. An antler-like bracket supported arm and missile tube.

Banshee-bitches were streaming towards the ship, and towards the cordon too. The aliens would block the path of missiles for about another thirty seconds – unless the black warriors fired irrespective.

This was a risk which Lex could only spare a couple of seconds to assess. Praying that he was making the correct intuitive, transcendent calculation – and not leading his men into a salvo – he ordered, ‘Switch to grenade launchers, and charge at will!’ With bulky gauntlet, Lex deftly threw the catch on his gun to deactivate the regular firing mechanism. His manipulation was fastidious, as befitted a Fist who could engrave minuscule scrimshaws upon a dead battle-brother’s finger-bones.

Ten squads of Space Marines with their sergeants powered their way from out of the trees, the pumping motion of their legs amplified through the fibre bundles which controlled their suits. Now that the auxiliary grenade tubes were primed, the guns could no longer fire bolts. Maybe it seemed that the Fists were rushing forward without loosing a single shot because they were now intent on capturing the aliens rather than killing them. Unimpeded now by jungle, already Lex’s company had covered half the terrain between themselves and the retreating Banshees.

‘And fire!’

Almost as a man, the Fists came to a halt – just as the black warriors were galvanizing into action, clasping their launchers. Almost a hundred frag grenades roared toward the fleeing Banshees and the cordon.

Lex prayed as he adjusted his gun to rapid fire again.

Eruptions. Detonations.

The impacting grenades exploded and fragmented in a myriad of directions. The hot rush of splinters peppered armour whether bone-white or black. Even those aliens who wore the stronger black armour weren’t entirely encased, as were Space Marines in their power suits. Splinters ripped flesh and bone. Banshees and black warriors were sprawling, juddering, dying. One warrior fired a missile – but upwards, into a dreary sky. The projectile fell far away.

Boltguns resumed their regular activity – then quit, since this activity was unnecessary.

Superheated gases began to billow from the vents of the fish-ship – roasting the dead and dying, surging against the Fists’ battle suits, harmlessly as yet. Some crew members inside the ship were about to boost it away from this place of disaster.

Lex powered towards a fallen rocket launcher. He snatched it up in his amplified grip and raced clear. A couple of sergeants retrieved other launchers. Blessedly, or due to stout craftsmanship, the launchers seemed largely undamaged by the spray of lethal fragments.

He and the sergeants withdrew to five hundred metres from the ship. One of the sergeants yielded the launcher to Librarian Kempka.

‘Everyone else back to the trees,’ Lex ordered, and the Fists decamped.

Kempka studied the lustrous bulky weapon, encased with alien runes. Since the firing tube was no longer in synch with its operator, arcane icons flickered incoherently in a display panel. There was a morphological logic to weaponry, just as there was an evolutionary necessity in the anatomy of a living creature – unless that creature were warped by Chaos. Kempka pointed a gloved finger at a jewelled intaglio button, and indicated elsewhere too.

As the fish-ship rose on a surging tail of heat, Kempka and Lex and Sergeant Kurtz raised their launchers. The ship was fifty metres aloft. A hundred. It was beginning to speed up.

Let that ship rise a little further – so that momentum would carry its wreckage away from the vicinity of the Fists.

Where had the ship come from? A sub-light vessel! Librarian Kempka considered that it had come to this solar system through some sizeable warp tunnel. Perhaps its warriors had been exploring at random. Perhaps they had been prompted by some ancient archive.

Bracing themselves, locking armoured legs and torsos in position, the three men fired their missiles.

Recoil jarred Lex as his missile screeched upward. A bright little fireball bloomed against the ship. A second explosion immediately blossomed – and a third. The sky itself seemed to erupt.

The shock wave from the disintegrating ship knocked the sergeant and the Librarian off their feet, and almost tumbled Lex too. Even in his power armour he was bruised. Trees were bending their crowns. Molten metal was raining. The main mass of devastation was plummeting downward a full kilometre away.

The granite apron rocked on impact... Then there was peace.

A
ND THE PEOPLE
of Hannibal had been blessed.

After long separation, they were a part of the human Imperium once again. In due course preachers would come, and judges. Psykers would be hunted for extermination or pressed into service. The cult of the God-Emperor would flourish. The jungles and mammoths of this world would serve a purpose, not merely endure a stupid existence.

This had been work well done.

Lex’s finger-bones itched for more such loyal work.

A
T LAST, THE
robed inquisitor had joined Lex and the Librarian beside the windows which framed that awesome, serene sight of battleships.

Sapphires were sewn upon a scarred cheek. A tube puffed incense into a nostril. A lens in the socket of one eye reminded Lex nostalgically of Sergeant Huzzi Rork who had recruited Lex as a lad so long ago on Necromunda.

The captain of the Fists scrutinized this Inquisitor Baal Firenze courteously. In the inquisitor’s one natural eye there seemed such a callous, wily regard. As must needs be with a man who must clearsightedly and ruthlessly detect and unmask evil! By comparison, to be a Space Marine was virtually to be an innocent – no matter what slaughterous sights each mission brought. To be an Imperial Fist was to experience a constant purity of heart. An inquisitor, by contrast, must forever be assailed by impurity. Hence, Firenze’s nasal tube of virtueherb.

What did that shrewd scrutiny reveal to Baal Firenze concerning Captain Lexandro d’Arquebus?

Lex’s complexion was olive, nicked by duelling scars. A tattoo of a skeleton fist crushing a moon which dripped blood adorned his cheek.

Through his right nostril was a ruby ring. How dark and lustrous his eyes. How pearly his teeth. His crewcut hair was dusky. Those shining studs on his forehead...

With his enhanced musculature and ceramically reinforced bones Lex massed twice the bulk of Baal Firenze. Lex stood so graciously. A paladin!

Firenze wheezed. ‘Captain, your first name, Lexandro, signifies
man of law.
Your second name, d’Arquebus, alludes to an ancient firearm. With your boltgun you impose the Emperor’s will.’

How true.

Firenze continued: ‘We must impose our will upon a blasphemous alien construction in orbit around a once-human world. We must wrest secrets. We must bring grief so that the grip on secrets slackens. The greatest grief to most living beings is generally caused by the destruction of their children before their very eyes.’

The two Space Marines exchanged a fleeting glance of misgiving.

Blithely Firenze continued: ‘The alien construction in question will be hosting a baleful festival. Children often attend a festival. Do not hesitate to destroy the spawn of the eldar, who are already a dying race! Thus we will put these aliens and their construction to the
question
in the rigorous inquisitorial sense of
quaestio
, an investigation conducted by means of torment unto death. In this I represent the Emperor’s will, and you are the Emperor’s own Fists which execute that will.’

Firenze’s breath hissed as he exhaled odour of virtueherb.

Librarian Kempka had stiffened, and Lex felt a squirm in the guts. Why should this inquisitor refer to the annihilation of alien brats as if the pre-echo of their screams were a personal hymn of devotion? As if anticipation of their burning ashes were a kind of incense in his virtueherb-plugged nostril! Lex had certainly once participated in the eradication
ad ultimum foetum
of a rebellious governor’s family. On that occasion the killing of the whelps had been a vital necessity. Where was the urgent necessity here, amongst so many more pressing matters? Simply to demoralize? What a waste of the precious time of Marines!

A Space Marine was a warrior of honour. He was the cutting edge of the Emperor’s sword of valour. Where was the dignity in slaughtering defenceless juveniles? To be a superhuman Space Marine was the most virtuous of destinies. To scourge rebels and aliens with death. And to suffer in so doing.

Oh, the
lure
of pain! This was a flaw in the gene-seed of the Fists – praiseworthy in that it made Fists stauncher, yet seductively suspect too.

Pain, enjoyed within oneself: that was almost a virtue. Yet not pain enjoyed by proxy, in the agonies of others. Could that be Firenze’s flaw?

Necessarily Lex must obey this inquisitor, or else Lex would be a heretic! Yet to be led by a sadist was so at variance with a Fist’s most precious secret sentiments.

Perhaps Firenze was simply being effusive? The inquisitor proceeded to discourse about eldar warp-gates and about other matters – with a hint, just a hint, of possible abominations which brave Space Marines might encounter and for which Lex must prepare his men without corrupting them by so doing.

T
HE
L
IBRARIAN HAD
stiffened anew – and Lex was minded to say that he himself had once encountered the sort of abomination to which Firenze alluded, and that he had been privileged to retain his memories, unexpurgated. Aye, memories of the corruption of a certain Lord Sagromoso by a deity known as Tzeentch...

A distate for Firenze disinclined Lex to confide such matters in the inquisitor.

Were Lex’s men being led by Firenze to confront something daemonic?

Firenze had merely alluded. Perhaps he was testing Lex’s fidelity. Such matters were forbidden secrets.

F
IRENZE REJOICED DARKLY
. A company of hardened veterans who had recently fought eldar warriors – with sublime success. Accompanied by a powerfully psychic Librarian, should there be any Slaaneshi manifestations... Men of a Space Marine Chapter with a strange furtive relish for pain, according to Inquisition archives... Ideal!

‘Y
OU ARE PRECIOUS
men,’ Firenze told Captain d’Arquebus. ‘And I am accompanying you all the way, of course. First in the troopship. Then in one of the boarding torpedoes—’

Naturally Firenze would accompany the assault force, ‘—since perhaps we will not return here.’ His statement implied much to a wise battle veteran.

It implied that if need be, this battleship,
Imperial Power
, and those two other combat-cathedrals visible in the void nearby were... expendable. Sacrificeable, along with their tens of thousands of engineers and officers and pilots and gun crews and servitors. The three battleships would stage an attack upon the alien construction and whatever vessels guarded it, not so as to destroy the construction as swiftly as could be, but to provide a massive distraction whilst the Fists carried out their penetrating questioning surgical raid.

Afterwards, the battleships would be at liberty to destroy, to the extent that the ships remained spaceworthy. By that time, thousands of casualties might have entered the sea of lost souls.

Thus, at least, the galaxy did not overfill to bursting point with people! Nor with aliens, either. War forever weeded the Emperor’s pastures.

The two other battleships seemed by now like ivory cameos displayed upon black velvet in a reliquary of night studded with diamonds which were stars; and Lex’s twin hearts – the one he’d been born with, and the extra one implanted by Imperial Fist surgeons – were tranquil.

F
IRENZE HAD TAKEN
his leave, to consult with the captain of
Imperial Power
.

Kempka confided to Lex, ‘I am troubled.’

Lex nodded. ‘Aye, and perhaps with good reason. If this inquisitor reiterates such remarks to our battle-brothers at large about slaughtering alien brats, I fear the brothers will defy him.’

‘Justifiably defy him, by Dorn!’ Kempka’s hand formed a fist, then relaxed. ‘Maybe Sir Baal was merely being effervescent. But I suspect that a huge number of mortal lives are shortly to be sacrified by way of diversion in order to place us in position.’

‘Yet never the lives of our brothers, unnecessarily,’ growled Lex.

Kempka hesitated. ‘The inquisitor seemed to hint that there may be a vile occult element in what awaits us.’

‘I understand you, Brother Librarian. Believe me, I do. Such a thing, I have endured and survived in the past. All of our men will be shielded. Ach, is this inquisitor deploying us as part of an –
experiment!
With highest authority, to be sure!’