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.
She felt hands seize her helm and twist it off. The air tasted of sweat and madness.
The False Angel crouched down, reached for his own helm and removed it in turn. The face beneath was male, human, not obviously distorted by corruption. A single tattoo marked his left cheek, but otherwise the flesh was unmarked.
‘You have been hunting us, daughter,’ the False Angel said. Free of the vox distortion, his voice was even, well spoken. An up-hiver, then, not gutter trash from the toil-zones. ‘You have brought us pain.’
He gave a signal to one of his bodyguards, who brought out a long syringe. Spinoza pushed back against her captors, but was held firm.
The False Angel brought the needle up to her neck.
‘I exist only to protect the righteous and punish the sinful,’ he said, smiling sadly. ‘There is so much you do not yet understand, and it is time you were enlightened.’
Then he inserted the needle into her neck and depressed the plunger. For a moment she felt only the pain of the wound, and spat into his face.
‘The Emperor protects,’ she hissed.
The False Angel smiled, letting the spittle run down his cheek.
‘Indeed He does,’ he said, withdrawing the needle carefully. ‘If you would only let Him.’
Then the true pain hit. Spinoza felt her back arch, her limbs go taut, and a crushing weight sink over her. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she saw the roof of the cavern, far, far above her.
‘The… Emp…’ she spat out.
Then the darkness fell, and her consciousness slipped away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The long gallery was high up on the eastern face of the Basilica Torrentes. Narrow panes of stained glass slowly burned with variegated colour as the dawn sunlight pierced the clouds, throwing bars of gold over a thick crimson carpet. The far wall was a mess of gold leaf tracery, piled on top of itself in ever greater profusions of baroque exuberance. Astrological devices clustered about images of warrior-knights placed amid starships set amid fabulous bestiaries, on and on for the two hundred metres of the gallery’s length — a frieze that must have taken decades to complete.
It was also fantastically ugly, Crowl thought. Revus hadn’t missed out on much, down in the reception vaults keeping a watchful eye on the docked Shade. The inquisitor’s boots sunk deep into the pile of the carpet — an odd sensation, after a lifetime treading the hard asphalt and rockcrete of the lower hives. By his side walked Navradaran, towering over him, his near-silent power armour glinting in the dawn light. The heel of his spear glided over the surface, never once brushing the fabric.
They were alone, the two of them. The gallery echoed softly, insulated against the roar of Terra’s streets, a gilt-edged haven from the press of the unwashed.
‘You have spent a long time in Salvator, Crowl,’ the Custodian said, his voice just as sonorous as before.
‘I like it there.’
‘You have a fortress.’
‘I inherited it.’
‘How often do you come to the centre?’
‘Rarely.’ Crowl looked up at the windows, each one adorned with the records of battles fought half a galaxy away. Most of the world-names he did not recognise. ‘Not easy to gain admittance, from the outside.’