Anton looked on appalled. Ivan studied something in the middle distance. Corporal Hesse and the New Boy moved around, dispensing med-packs, applying sacred balm.
‘You know the worst of it?’ the soldier said.
‘What?’
‘I kept thinking, what if he was right? What if the Angel had blessed him and we were the heretics here and we were all going to be judged?’
‘Just as well your commissar got burned,’ Anton said. ‘If he was alive now you and he would be having words.’
‘You never know,’ the soldier said. ‘He might have agreed with me.’
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).
Walk in the Emperor’s Light.
Things are worse in this system than even I feared. The roots of heresy run deep. My agents have interrogated many of the locals and they have a faith in the Angel of Fire that is stronger even than their faith in the Emperor.
My necessarily brief attempts to grasp the history of the local cults have revealed some very disturbing things. The true Imperial cult in this system was long ago subsumed and subverted by the Cult of the Angel of Fire. Its priesthood was diminished until it played a minor role in ritual and rule.
Once I had hopes that the cult might provide a link between our force and the local community, that its leaders could be encouraged to take on the role of advocates for our ways and spearhead the reclamation of this world. This may prove more difficult than I had imagined. No priest of the cult of the Emperor has more than a limited role, and they are not respected by the populace as the priests of the Angel are. Worse yet their ritual and liturgy have been contaminated by long subservience to the Angel Cult. It will be a very long time before this can be changed.
I have prayed and warded my soul and studied the texts of this cult that have fallen into my hands. They are written in High Gothic like the testaments of the True Faith that superficially they resemble.
Many disturbing things have emerged. The role of the Emperor and His holy works has been relegated to the background. He is still portrayed as the font of wisdom and legitimacy, but His role in the parables is that of a remote and distant figure. All of the emphasis in the texts is placed on the part of the Angel of Fire and its saints and prophets. They are portrayed as the intercessors between humanity and the Angel just as the Angel is portrayed as the messenger between them and the Emperor.
This is not the worst of it. It has become obvious that many members of the Cult of the Angel are unbonded psykers. They have caused many casualties among our troops and shown themselves to be beings of considerable power. It is as if the cult deliberately encouraged and cultivated the use of psychic powers and promoted their wielders within its ranks. This raises many dreadful possibilities, not the least being contact with the daemons of Chaos. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the cultists of the Angel have been channelling power from somewhere and I have my suspicions as to the nature of the power on which they are calling.
When I consider the nature of the terrible sacrifices that were made and the structure of the cult who oppose us, I am reminded of many other worlds that have fallen to the most awful of heresies.
Despite the fact that the believers of this world claim to be following a power of light, there is a growing darkness here that needs to be opposed. I pray for the strength to do so.
‘You ready for when we meet the bastard?’ Anton asked, glaring around the interior of the Chimera. A score of troops looked at him. It was cramped in the compartment and his voice seemed too loud. There was no question of who the bastard was. He could only mean one person: a preacher of the Angel of Fire. The armoured troop carrier raced through the street. There had been another sighting and we had been sent out to break it up and take prisoners if we could.
I pumped the shotgun. It was audible within the armoured hull even over the roar of the vehicle’s engines. ‘What do you think?’
I had listened to all the stories. There were few things that the survivors always agreed on. Las-fire did not slow the psykers. It made them stronger. Grenades might work. They might not. No one really knew. All we knew was that the psykers died eventually but they took a lot more of our boys with them.
‘I think the best thing to do when we meet one is back right off,’ said the New Boy. He was looking serious now, more serious than he had ever done since he first joined us. A few weeks of fighting in the streets and listening to horror stories about rebel psykers had put him in a nervous frame of mind. He was doing his best not to show it.
‘You might well be right,’ said Corporal Hesse. He had raised his voice so that everybody could hear him. ‘If you see one of them, keep your distance. Don’t fire lasguns at him. Use any physical projectile weapons you have and wait for the heavy weapons to come up. They’ll take the bastard down.’
He sounded calm and confident but I knew him too well to be fooled. There was a shiftiness about his eyes and a refusal to meet my gaze that told me he knew that I knew as well.
‘They are getting stronger,’ the Understudy said. The words just came out in his odd rasping voice. They were toneless. He did not sound frightened but he did not sound particularly sane either.
‘Sir?’ said Corporal Hesse.
‘The psykers are getting stronger. The reports keep coming in. It came down from Headquarters. Something is making them more and more powerful. They are feeding on something or something is feeding them.’
Hesse kept looking at him, waiting for some piece of reassurance. None came. The Understudy just rasped on. ‘If we meet one, pin him down. Wait for heavy weapons, reinforcements or our own psykers. Split up. Don’t stay in groups. It just makes it easier for them to burn us down with area effects. Don’t take cover in the AFVs either. The last few of the Flame worshippers have been powerful enough to take out a Manticore.’
‘Anything else, sir?’ I asked. I had to admit I was curious in a morbid fashion.
‘They’ll most likely be accompanied. It seems they have acquired retinues now, guardians who are just as prepared to throw away their lives as the heretic preachers. Some of them will be carrying combustible pyrite. They’ll throw themselves among us and the psyker will detonate the package.’
This was new. ‘Not heard of that one before,’ Anton muttered.
‘That’s because none of the units who have encountered them have survived. The intelligence was only put together afterwards by field investigation units.’
The Chimera lurched just like my stomach. This was not the sort of thing that I wanted to hear. None of us did. The Understudy just kept talking. ‘It seems they have found a way to keep their psykers alive and still inflict enormous casualties on us.’
In one way it was good or it ought to have been. It should have made the preachers less frightening. It showed they had some regard for their own lives. It didn’t though.
‘There are other reports,’ the Understudy added, almost as an afterthought. Every man present was silent. All of us stared at him. Anton licked his lips. ‘These have not been confirmed but it seems that some of the pyrite carriers have been transformed.’
‘Transformed, sir?’ Hesse asked.
‘They become monsters of living flame; avatars of the Angel of Fire, some of the reports call them.’
‘He really doesn’t want us here, does he, sir?’ Anton said.
‘Who, Antoniev?’
‘The Angel of Fire, sir.’
‘It does not matter what the Angel of Fire wants,’ the Understudy said. ‘It matters what the Emperor commands.’
I believed him. The way he said it, you had to. The Chimera ground to a halt. The metal blast doors were thrown open.
We deployed into the street.
They were waiting for us to show up. Our Chimeras had rumbled up to the plaza where a heretic was preaching sedition. Around us massive hab-blocks loomed. Great sign-boards still showed images of the Angel of Fire, flickering animated scenes from its holy books, miracles performed by its saints, burning-headed fanatics exhorting belief.
Nearby a group of enforcers waited. Either the crowd was too large for them or, more likely, because they were locals the majority of them did not want to take action.
We took up position, covering them with our lasguns. The locals looked at us. I could see that the vast majority of them were edgy, stuck in that no-man’s-land between fear and anger. A bunch of them were armed but they did not like the idea of facing units of fully trained soldiers with armoured back-up.
There was something else though, something in the air, a feeling of anticipation, of hunger maybe. Or maybe that is just my imagination looking back on the thing. It seemed to me that an ominous presence hovered over everything. The Understudy gestured for us to advance. We moved towards the crowd. For a moment, they stood their ground but then their nerve broke and they split apart. Small channels appeared in the midst of the mass of people. We moved forwards at a run, wary, wanting to seize the leaders and get this over with. As we did so the crowd began to scatter, all except the core of ringleaders who waited for us, smirking. I think we all knew what was coming. I was very glad I had a shotgun and not the standard issue las-weapon.
‘Behold the Unbelievers,’ said a tall man with the unmistakable aura of authority. ‘They have come from beyond the stars to die here.’
‘Oh shut it,’ shouted Anton. ‘I am sick of listening to your sort.’
It was not the smartest thing to do but Anton had never been the smartest man. The heretic glared at him and raised an arm and a halo of flames played around his head. ‘You are doomed, stick man, and you are blessed. You will be purified by the sacred fires of the Angel. He will burn the sin from your soul.’
He gestured at Anton. I pulled the trigger of the shotgun. The shell broke up en route to its target, coming apart in a spray of molten metal. It never reached the heretic priest but burning hot pellets landed amid his followers. They grimaced but they did not shriek. They were prepared for martyrdom.
My shot distracted the priest. The bolt of fire he threw at Anton went off target, creating a splashing puddle of flame at the skinny bastard’s feet. Anton leapt back as if his boots were on fire. Despite orders, a bunch of the lads opened up. Many of the heretics went down. Our boys were not being entirely stupid. They were not shooting at the priest but his followers. A group of them went down. One of them exploded. He was obviously wearing a pyrite shirt. The wash of flame swept out over them. The priest laughed and shouted praises to the Angel.
About half of the heretics were down. The remainder were transformed. They became larger and far more terrifying. They burned like dry wood but they kept moving and shrieking and laughing like madmen. Halos of flame surrounded their charring bodies, making them seem much larger. You could see a moving man in the core of an infernal monster. They came closer. The sickly sweet smell of burning flesh filled the air along with the muted blast-furnace roar of the strange magic that animated them still.
‘Disperse,’ the Understudy shouted. ‘Don’t let them close! Don’t let them grab you!’
The boys did not need to be told twice. They fanned out. The crowd was already in motion, trying to get as far away from the burning fanatics as possible. I took aim and fired at one of the blazing figures. The shell hit him in the chest. What was left of the human being within flew apart. It was as if I had shot at a statue made of ash. The flames surrounding him momentarily flickered but then pulled back together again. There was no martyr left now, only an elemental that burned ever brighter as if consuming the soul of the dead man for fuel.
Foolishly I shot at it again. It was exactly like putting a shell into a flame. It went straight through and out the other side. The priest was shrieking instructions to his surviving minions now. The monster I had fired upon rushed straight towards me, a roughly humanoid outline of roaring flame. From the retreating crowd guns opened up. The fanatics were not alone after all and we had walked right into an ambush.
There was not a lot I could do. I turned and ran, knowing that agonising death was at my heels. I seemed to hear the roar of its flames coming ever closer. I heard something else above that. The scream of aircraft engines. It seemed like support was coming our way although what it could achieve against the supernatural horror following me I was not at all sure.
I cursed the thing and turned at bay, wanting to at least face the thing that killed me. It wasn’t there. Some idiot had opened fire on it with a lasgun and it was racing towards them, not in the least affected by the blindingly bright bolts. As I watched it enveloped the shooter and turned him into a human bonfire. Whoever it was died screaming.
Autogun bullets kicked up dust at my feet and reminded me that the elemental martyrs were not the only threat. A small group of local gangers were taking pot-shots at me, for all the world as if they were in some plaza tormenting pigeon-bats. I turned the shotgun on them. It discouraged them from their sport. Permanently.
Things in the plaza were chaotic. Our lads had dispersed. The elementals chased them down. In the centre of it all, the priest of the Angel of Fire chanted his strange litany. There was an evil exultation in his voice. An aura of flame played around his head. Wings of fire emerged from his back.
Hate twisted my guts, pure visceral loathing for the fanatic and what he was doing. Mad rage filled my mind. I strode towards him, fumbling at my belt for a grenade. I had a clear run at him. His pet fire daemons were busy slaughtering our lads. I was never going to get a better chance.
He saw me but it troubled him not a jot. I was beneath his notice now that he was filled with the spirit of his master. He had to control his pets while they slaughtered my comrades. One lowly Guardsman was not something that made him feel threatened. I lobbed the grenade at him. It exploded in the air near him, detonated by the aura around him. The force of the blast sent him staggering back. The elementals flickered like a dying blaze. I thought if I can only keep this up I have got him. Then I looked into his blazing eyes and I knew that I had run out of time.
At that point there was a sound like thunder. I flinched, convinced that the heretic had blasted me with his fiery power. I closed my eyes expecting a surge of agony to rip through my body. Instead, I saw the huge black-armoured figure of a Space Marine before me. He had charged the priest with a chainsword and lopped off a limb. Whatever power protected the heretic from our weapons, it was not enough to save him from the wrath of the Emperor’s chosen. An enormous wave of psychic power smashed down from above. Looking up I saw another Space Marine standing in the doorway of a Thunderhawk gunship. This one’s face was visible. Elaborate skull-mask paint concealed his features. A bolt of power emerged from a black spot on the Imperial psyker’s forehead. It warred with the flaming shield around the heretic psyker, suppressing it, while his comrade chopped the heretic down.
With the death of the priest, the elementals dissipated. The Space Marines smashed into the crowd. There was only a score of them but they did more damage in a few seconds than our entire company had done in the entire battle. A few heartbeats after their arrival the remainder of the heretics were in flight or surrendered, demoralised by the onset of the Death Spectres.
I stood and watched, awed by the power and majesty of the Emperor’s angels. One of them passed me and clapped me gently on the back. Maybe it was an accident. I like to think he had seen me standing my ground and was complimenting me on my bravery. Hopefully he did not notice that my eyes were closed as I faced death.
Looking at the scene of carnage, listening to the distant rumble of bolter fire, I realised this had been a trap for the heretics and we had been the bait. It wa
s the battle of the factorum all over again albeit on a smaller scale. I could not find it in my heart to resent that fact. At least the High Command had given us a chance to survive which was more than the previous companies who had encountered the priesthood of The Angel of Fire had got. The Death Spectres had saved us.
I looked around to see if any of the others were still alive. I found them clustered around a Space Marine watching him with slack-jawed awe. They looked as if they expected him to perform a miracle before their very eyes. Personally I would not have been surprised if he had. There was something vastly reassuring about the presence of these massive, black-armoured figures. I felt safe in their shadow. While they were there nothing could harm us. No threat was too terrible to be faced. They radiated power and confidence. You felt something of the distant majesty of the Emperor himself. These were his chosen.
Guardsmen reached out to touch their armour as they passed. It was a thing they would tell their comrades in decades to come. Others bent their knees as they would before a priest. I doubt the Death Spectres noticed.
Even as I watched I heard the massive figure say something into the comm-net. I moved closer and I heard something about a hulk moving in-system.
The Death Spectre gestured to his comrades and they returned to their vehicles and departed. There was something urgent in their manner as if they had been summoned to some new and important duty. Within minutes they were gone and the only sign they had ever been there were the corpses they had left spread across the square.
The Guardsmen watched them go in silence. The locals did too, such as had been spared. Dozens of them were on their knees babbling and praying for mercy or forgiveness. It seemed they had for once witnessed a force as capable of filling them with awe as the minions of the Angels of Fire.