We moved forwards, grinding resistance beneath our tracks, surging up the enormous marble stairs of the cathedral until we confronted the cyclopean brass doors.
Pulping flesh as we went, we stormed closer. A concentrated barrage of fire buckled the doors, our Baneblade smashed through them like a battering ram and we were within, moving through the enormous vestibule, confronting heretics and steel angels. We drove onwards crushing the resistance until we had gone as far as we could go. Our tanks could move no further; not even a Baneblade could smash the enormous stone and ceramite walls and columns.
Macharius barked another order. A blaze of anti-personnel fire cleared the area around us. We were surrounded by broken bodies and ruined, religious finery. Smouldering banners covered the walls. The temple drapes provided shrouds for corpses.
‘Everybody out,’ Macharius ordered. ‘We go on foot from here.’
It sounded insane but we had no other choice. If we were going to confront the evil at the heart of this we were going to have to do it on foot.
Document under seal. Extract From the Decrypted Personal Files of Inquisitor Hyronimus Drake.
Possible evidence of duplicity on the part of former High Inquisitor Drake.
Cross-reference to Exhibit 107D-21H (Report to High Inquisitor Toll).
It is far, far worse even than I had thought it was going to be. The forces of the Architect of Fate have manifested themselves on the surface of this world. The thin skin of mortal reality has broken and that which lurks beneath has become visible. I am making these notes in what may prove to be the final moments of my life in the hope that they may be found and benefit the Imperial force that comes after us.
Across the city, our forces are engaged with the forces of the heretics. I can see it play out on the huge battlemap that Macharius studies. In my mind’s eye I can picture the proud defenders of humanity surging into battle with hordes of heretics and swarms of manifest daemons, all the hungry horrors that serve the Changer of Ways. On a thousand streets, hundreds of thousands of men are locked in combat with the forces of evil. Thousands of Leman Russes and Chimeras and Manticores roar along roadways and across bridges, seizing the main transport arteries and pushing on deeper into the city. From what I overhear on the comm-net, tens of thousands are dying and far, far more are already dead.
Our greatest advantage is that our enemies appear to be confused and fighting piecemeal. They are everywhere across the city but their leaders are more concerned with their ritual than fighting a war. Macharius commands clearly and calmly and will win against the lesser forces, but that will avail us nothing unless we get to the cathedral and prevent the manifestation of what I fear will be an avatar of one of humanity’s greatest foes.
The awful truth is that we are not really being opposed. It is an illusion. All we are seeing is a side-effect of the Angel of Fire entering this world, and the token resistance of those worshippers who are in our way. It is not organised. Those who could have done that are busy elsewhere, masterminding the appearance of a daemon-god, abasing themselves before something dark and strange that they believe is coming to aid them, but which in reality is merely using them for its own purposes.
The skies swirl with daemons but that is nothing to what only a psyker can perceive. The sky above the hive is splitting. A great fissure in reality is opening. Something dark and terrible and majestic is moving through. I pray that we are in time.
We piled out of the hatches and swarmed down the sides of the Baneblade. Even that enormous, ancient presence seemed dwarfed by the cathedral.
The air smelled of brimstone and incense and a scent I remembered well from the factorum-foundries of my youth: molten metal. A strange light glowed around everything. Our surroundings looked too bright, but sometimes shadows that should not have been there rippled across walls, as if cast by something huge moving against a light which had no source in our world. It was eerie, unnatural and disturbing. Sometimes the shadow of the Horrors was visible as if they were just about to manifest.
Over everything was an oppressive sense of the imminence of something supernatural. I felt like I was in the presence of something greater than human, much greater. I was reminded of the moment when I had confronted the Titan in the rubble of the factorum but this was a thousand times worse. The ancient warmachine had been a being compared to which I was an insect. To the thing manifesting itself now, I was a microbe.
For a brief moment, I understood why the heretics were doing this and why they were so filled with worshipful awe. How many men can say they have been in the presence of a living god? Blasphemous as it sounds, the only comparable situation I can imagine is to stand before the Tomb Throne of the Emperor on galaxy-distant Terra and gaze upon the immortal being within.
For better or worse, I can say I have stood in the presence of the divine. It was evil but it was wonderful and terrible too; the sort of experience a man might only be vouchsafed once in a lifetime and then only after a long and arduous pilgrimage.
It did not take the heretics long to recover. They came at us from many of the arched entrances to the great vestibule. Macharius ordered us to hold the line. More and more of our own troops flooded in through the broken gates and soon the hall was filled with a vast swirling conflict. We had the advantage in that we had our vehicles for cover and their anti-personnel weapons cut down the incoming heretics. Of course, sometimes it went wrong and our own men were scythed into death as well. In the Imperial Guard such things are inevitable and accepted.
Ivan and Anton crouched down beside me. ‘What are we waiting for?’ Anton asked. ‘I thought every second was vital.’
‘Ask them, not me,’ I said pointing to Macharius and Drake. The general was surrounded by his personal bodyguard of elite troops. More men and women in the robes of the Inquisition came to join Drake. I was surprised to see other people as well. The high inquisitor talked to them as if they were more than common soldiers. Some of them were garbed as privates, some as officers and some wore the clothes of local civilians. Anna was with them, garbed in some sort of greyish battle-armour that fitted her like a second skin.
I understood what was happening now. These were Drake’s agents concealed within the body of our army and the local population. If I had needed any proof of how desperate things were, this would have been it. All of these agents were hidden in place, spies among the people of the planet and our own army, reporting directly to Drake.
‘Who are they?’ Anton asked.
‘They are spies, Drake’s agents,’ I told him.
‘Psykers?’ he asked.
‘I guess.’
‘There’s a bloody lot of them,’ he said and shuddered and I knew then what he was thinking. They had been there all the time, walking among us, unknown and undetected, agents of the Inquisition, armed with supernatural powers. It was not a reassuring thought, even if they were, at a time like this, on our side. More and more warriors and psykers assembled around us.
Drake was surrounded by his own bodyguard now. They seemed to appear out of nowhere but obviously had arrived with the main body of our troops. They were hard, competent-looking men in heavy carapace armour I associated with shock troops and storm troopers. They did not have the insignia of any regiment I knew though which was ominous enough. They were armed with lasguns bigger and heavier than ours. They glanced warily about, looking for threats. Somehow they managed to interpose themselves between Drake and his surroundings without ever appearing to. One of them saw me looking and glared at me hard. I smiled at him just to be annoying. Beyond him I could see Anna talking with Drake. The inquisitor looked distracted. She looked as calm as she ever did.