‘It cannot betray,’ said Crowl. ‘It is the enemy.’
‘There were guarantees, for what it is worth,’ said Rassilo. ‘Bargains made. Many souls were handed over, and I do not like to think what happened to them. All for this one, to come here, to confer with us and advise us on the Project.’
‘The Project?’
‘Forged in desperation. Tell them that as well. Tell them if there had been any other way, then even this would not have been countenanced.’
‘You are speaking in circles. Tell me plainly.’
‘They cannot repair the Throne. You understand that? You see what that means? So they are searching for something else, something beyond the understanding of the Martian Priesthood. Embassies have been sent. Treaties made. Technology, souls, planets — all have been traded. To judge if… they could truly help us, one would have to be brought here, to speak to those charged with maintaining what remains, to be shown the faults. And though we knew the risks, and we knew there were those on the Council who would never agree to it, the order was given.’
Crowl listened with mounting disbelief. ‘Then you have damned yourselves,’ he said.
‘We have. But consider the alternative.’
‘Only rumours.’
‘Yes, rumours. But from the mouths of High Lords. Could you discount them? I could not.’
Crowl swallowed painfully. He could feel blood trickling down the inside of his breastplate, and his head became light. He gripped the hilt of Sanguine harder.
‘Kill it here.’
‘I cannot. It goes with me.’
‘Your orders are void. The Palace is roused. You will never make it.’
‘I must.’
‘Damn you, Adamara!’
‘Remain vigilant — it hungers for both of us.’
He could sense himself slipping. The xenos was aware, and began to twitch under Rassilo’s scrutiny. If he aimed at the xenos then Rassilo would disable him. If he shot at Rassilo then the xenos would leap at his throat. His head swam, and a numb prickling broke out below his knees.
‘You could recant, even now,’ he ventured. ‘I would be your advocate.’
Rassilo laughed. ‘Erasmus,’ she said, sadly. ‘For a clever man, how little you know.’
‘More than you, it seems.’
She looked at him, and there was a terrible regret on her refined face.
‘Maybe it was ever thus,’ she said.
Then she swung to aim at him.
Instinctively, Crowl fired, sending a bullet through her forehead. Even before her body hit the ground, before he could twist around to face the xenos, it went for him, leaping with frightening speed and sending them both tumbling across the stone. Crowl struggled, feeling the stench of terror sink over him, but felt something spiked bite into his ribcage.
He cried out, thrusting with both gauntlets. Sanguine skittered away, teetering on the edge of the chasm, and then the xenos was on top of him, its horrific face just inches from his.
‘Clever man,’ the thing echoed, its eldritch voice a bizarre corruption of a human’s. ‘This will hurt.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There was an insanity to it. The storm troopers had been given their orders and so obeyed them, even though it was getting them systematically killed. Spinoza saw the evidence of it as she ran between them — the bodies flung through the air, the echoing crackle of power glaives whistling to and fro like butcher’s knives. By the time she closed on Gloch’s position, weaving through the web of las-bolts, it was clear this would not last for much longer.
Khazad was still on her feet — just. She traded blows with the much larger Gloch, giving ground, smashed and battered back away from the epicentre of fighting and into the shadows.
‘Murderer!’ she spat, her voice shaking with hatred. ‘Traitor!’
Gloch said nothing, parrying her power sword with his own blunt blade before firing at her again with his autopistol. A shot connected with her dropping shoulder, sending her sprawling across the floor. He followed up, ready to issue the killing blow.
Spinoza caught up and swung the maul, slamming him off his feet and straight into a column. Gloch’s armour took the brunt of the impact, but still he struggled to turn to face her.
‘Leave her,’ Spinoza ordered, standing between Khazad and him.
Gloch grinned, a gruesome sight in the flashing dark with his helm half hanging off. ‘So you did know where to find me,’ he laughed. ‘Good. I thought you had promise.’
He leapt towards her, firing again while keeping his blade raised. Spinoza veered away from the shot, balanced to swing the crozius two-handed. Gloch’s blade swept in close and she smacked it away, wrenching it from his hands with a heave of power-armoured strength.
He reeled from the blow, levelling his pistol again, but she never let him get enough space, following up with a flurry of wild blows that crunched and cracked into his carapace plate. She flailed out hard, feeling every impact with grim relish. The crozius fizzed as blood boiled off the disruptor field, and she kept on going, driving him back and back until he was pinned against the same column as before, slamming into it and still trying to get a shot.
She drove Argent into his gun-hand, grinding it hard against the stone and pushing downwards. With a cry of pain, Gloch let the gun fall from his grip, and it bounced across the dust. Spinoza released the pin only to drive her maul crossways into his chest, breaking his breastplate open and hurling him to the ground. Then she dropped down to him with her fist clenched and punched once, twice, until his chin was broken and blood poured down freely to the gorget seal.
‘I told you,’ Spinoza growled, readying for the final blow, ‘to leave her.’
He tried to speak, but she hit him so hard that his head snapped back sickeningly, more bones breaking, and he lolled weakly into unconsciousness.
Then she was running again, weaving back across the chamber as the las-bolts flew and the cries of anger and pain rang out. Khazad had dragged herself out of the centre, leaving a long trail of blood on the floor. Spinoza crouched down beside her.
‘Preserve yourself,’ she said. ‘Justice will be done, Crowl will see to it.’
Khazad grinned at her, and only then did Spinoza see just how badly she had been wounded. ‘Already has.’
She reached out, her arms shaking, and seized Spinoza with an uncertain grip. Her power sword lay in the dust, still burning.
‘Watched you do that,’ she slurred. ‘True Shoba.’
Then she went limp, her grip loosening, and her hands fell away. Spinoza let her down gently, then turned.
Rassilo’s storm troopers were still suicidally taking on the Custodians, though there was no sign of the inquisitor herself. Spinoza ran a quick check for her signal, and found nothing. She was gone, Crowl was missing. Gloch was out cold, Khazad was near death. Lermentov, if he still lived among all the confusion, had no authority.
That left her.
Spinoza strode back into the heart of the fighting, making no attempt to hide herself from the oncoming Custodians. She fed the maximum flare-pattern to Argent, sending a cloud of gold flooding out across the entire crypt.
‘Enough!’ she roared, using the full spread of her armour’s vox-augmitters. ‘Soldiers of the Inquisition, stand down! Damn you all, stand down!’
For a second longer, they kept fighting. That was all the time they needed to determine that their master was no longer present and that the order came from the highest ranking member of the ordo left standing. The lasfire shuddered out, the advance halted, the chamber sank back into echoing silence.