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Cult of the Warmason – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter I

Kashibai felt the hum of heavy machinery pulse through the ceiling of rock above her. Was it a trick of the promethium lamps or were the walls of the tunnel visibly shivering? She found herself listening for the patter of pebbles and dust, the grinding groan that would presage a crack in the roof. Some small part of her heart sickened at the thought of Tharsis, capital city of Lubentina, smashing down on her head in all its sacred vastness.

Not for the first time, Kashibai whispered an imprecation against the atavistic dread she continued to hold for places such as the Cloisterfells. Even a segmentum away from the rolling plains of her home world, the old anxiety about being underground refused to die away completely. But if the fear lingered, it was only an echo of itself. No longer was it Kashibai’s master. The steely discipline of faith and duty had subjugated all fear. Anything, good or ill, that might compromise her usefulness to the Order of the Sombre Vow had been stripped away from her soul, leaving only the resolve to serve the God-Emperor of Mankind.

‘The Emperor is with me,’ Kashibai said. She pulled her gaze away from the roof overhead, looking across the winding tunnel down which they’d been advancing. She could see the black and crimson armour of her companions illuminated by the flickering lights bolted to the rock walls. A dozen Battle Sisters stealing through the ancient tunnels beneath Tharsis, impelled upon a mission of both mercy and violence.

Forsaken and shunned by Tharsis’ establishment, the Cloisterfells were far from deserted. Disgrace and reverses in fortune and integrity had forced many to eke out a troglodyte existence far from the sculpted spires and ornate sanctuaries of the city. Some of these wretches watched the Sisters from the doorways of hovels cobbled together from the garbage dumped into the underworld. Some of them gazed upon the armoured warriors with obvious fear; others considered the Adepta Sororitas with reverence and piety. Most, however, were so lost in the squalor of their circumstances that they simply stared with fatalistic dejection, indifferent to this intrusion into their shadowy world.

Appearances, however, belied the reality. Not all those who dwelt in the Cloisterfells were so resigned. Far from the attention of Lubentina’s leaders, buried away from the Emperor’s light and the Imperial Creed, strange ideas and curious ambitions festered. Sometimes the rot would erupt in a spate of crime and sedition that wafted up from the depths to defile the city above.

‘Be vigilant,’ Kashibai warned her squad through her helm’s vox-bead. ‘We’re near the objective.’ There was no need to elaborate. The staccato wail of a heavy stubber firing further down the tunnels was explanation enough. Kashibai pressed a finger to the brand upon her cheek, the sacred flower that symbolised the Adepta Sororitas. She whispered a short prayer and touched the purity seal bound to the trigger guard of her flamer. She accepted the caustic machine-spirit of her weapon and the danger of being so reckless as to fail to appease it before entering combat.

To the chatter of the heavy stubber there was now added the muffled roar of an explosive and the sharp crack of an autogun. Shouts, screams and animalistic shrieks drifted down the tunnel. The honour of leading the attack had been bestowed upon Kashibai and her squad.

Kashibai turned to her Sisters. ‘Our duty is before us,’ she said. ‘God-Emperor guide and guard our deeds.’ At her command, her squad quickened their pace, rushing ahead.

The noise of combat intensified as Kashibai’s warriors raced down the winding passage. They ignored the side tunnels that opened into the corridor, leaving them to the attentions of the second squad of Battle Sisters following behind them. The ramshackle shelters and their scruffy inhabitants were likewise bypassed. Kashibai would allow nothing to compromise the momentum of the advance. Such were the orders she’d been given.

Hurrying down the tunnel, the charge of Kashibai’s Sisters was drowned out by the swelling din of gunfire and violence that rolled down the passage. With startling abruptness the corridor opened into a wide gallery, a subterranean vault dozens of metres across and nearly half again as deep. At some point in its existence the chamber had been connected to the infrastructure of Tharsis. Great pipes and conduits slithered down from the ceiling and crawled along sections of the floor. Puddles of industrial effluvia seeped from one corroded pipe, the distinctive reek suggesting to Kashibai that the muck was a by-product of the incense manufactured to anoint the Warmason’s Cathedral and Lubentina’s numerous lesser shrines and chapels.

‘How can anyone live in such a stink?’ Sister Reshma wondered. The sharpshooter of Kashibai’s squad, Reshma was close beside her leader as they entered the vault.

‘This isn’t living,’ Kashibai said. ‘Without the Emperor there is only existence, not life.’

In defiance of the stench, the shanties and scrap-huts of the under-dwellers littered the vault, squatting beneath the huge pipes and pressed between nests of conduit and cable. It was amidst the disorder of this slumland that a fierce combat now raged. The beams of lasguns flashed across the cavernous chamber, stabbing through flimsy walls and scouring corroded pipes. The bark of slug-throwers and autoguns smashed through the doors of hovels and ripped knots of cable from the walls. Somewhere the grisly blaze of a meltagun shot outwards to transform a shack into a snarling inferno.

‘We’ve found the missing patrol,’ Kashibai reported, as she gazed across the violent harvest strewn about the vault.

Mangled bodies wearing the green and gold of Lubentina’s local militia were sprawled amid the confusion of shanties or slumped beside the massive pipes. Far fewer in number were the bodies of their enemy, grubby men arrayed in a riotous assortment of coveralls and cloaks, the only unity of their appearance effected by the dominance of purple and red in their vestments. Whether they signified gang colours or the heraldry of some seditious political sect, Kashibai didn’t know, but she was grateful the malcontents so boldly announced themselves. It would enable her Sisters to identify the enemy from any slum-dwellers who’d been caught in the middle of the fighting. They’d come here to find the missing militia platoon, not massacre hapless bystanders.

‘Confirmation of contact,’ Kashibai repeated. ‘Heretics distinguished by purple and red costume.’

‘Are there survivors, Sister?’ The question crackled across the vox. Kashibai could detect the tension in Sister Superior Trishala’s voice. They’d descended into the Cloisterfells charged with rescuing the soldiers. If that duty was impossible, then the only penance to redress that failure would be to exterminate the heretics responsible.

‘None visible, but the heretics appear to be concentrating their fire on a cluster of shacks under some drainage pipes. God-Emperor willing, there are soldiers who haven’t succumbed,’ Kashibai said.

‘Relieve the pressure against any survivors,’ Trishala ordered. ‘Do all that is needful to draw the enemy away from that junction. Visit the Emperor’s justice upon them.’

Kashibai activated her flamer and swung the weapon around. She could see a clutch of figures stalking around the curve of a two-metre wide pipe, trying to flank a cluster of shanties where the intense discharge of las-beams bespoke a concentration of local militia soldiers. Before the slinking figures could rush the position, the Order of the Sombre Vow announced their presence upon the battlefield.

‘Emperor guide our wrath,’ Kashibai swore, motioning her squad forwards.

At Kashibai’s signal, the Battle Sisters fired upon the enemy. The roar of boltguns boomed through the vault as high-explosive shells slammed into their targets. Scarcely human shrieks rose from the stricken foe as flesh and bone were torn asunder by the devastating fusillade. The attempt to flank the militia strongpoint disintegrated, its impetus shattered by the sudden and brutal impact of the Sisters’ firepower. Creeping shapes collapsed as the bolters ripped through them, autoguns and pistols falling from dying hands. Prowling foes in coveralls crudely stained purple and red crumpled in the dark beneath the industrial pipes, their arms clawing at the air as vitality fled from their mangled frames.

Survivors of the Sisters’ initial volley swung about, seeking to extricate themselves from the gap between the huge pipes. The cover that had hidden them from the attentions of the local militia now acted as an obstacle to their escape, funnelling them into a killing ground the Adepta Sororitas were quick to exploit. Ten, twenty, even thirty of the enemy were shot down as Kashibai’s warriors poured their fire into the reeling foe. It was butchery, but of a sort that didn’t trouble the Sisters of Battle. Those who took up arms against the forces of the Imperium, who profaned the dominion of the God-Emperor by thought and deed, were entitled to neither mercy nor pity. Their lot was extermination without compunction or compromise.

Eradication of the flanking force relieved the immediate menace to the local militia holdouts, but it turned the violent attentions of the enemy upon Kashibai’s squad. The local militia patrol had numbered a hundred soldiers when it went missing over ten hours before, losing vox contact with the surface after a brief report of contacting hostile elements. Only a considerable force would challenge such an incursion into the Cloisterfells, much less spring an ambush so ferocious as to find those soldiers cut off and surrounded. The creeping assault party had been but a small part of the enemy’s strength. Now the Sisters felt the full fury of the foe.

Out from the cluster of huts, a riot of gunfire blazed away at the Sisters. Autoguns, lasrifles, stubbers and shotguns all barked away from among the shanties. A lance of searing light scorched a hideous gouge across the slums, shearing through shacks and conduits like a daemon’s fiery claw. Sister Bishaka dropped to the ground as the cleaving laser came at her, slashing through the wall of the shanty she’d been using for cover.

‘Cover her,’ Kashibai told her squad, redirecting their fire to the enemies targeting Bishaka. While she crawled back towards her comrades, rounds from a slug-thrower glanced off her power armour. A burst from Sister Reshma’s bolter shredded the side of a shack and reduced the shooter to a gory mess.

‘I should have settled that faithless cur once I recovered my bearings,’ Bishaka complained as she reached the squad’s position.

‘In His beneficence, the Emperor has provided enough heretics for us to share,’ Reshma declared.

An autocannon now added its vicious fire to the assault, its shots obliterating entire shacks, sending burning debris bouncing off the ceiling overhead. Entire swathes of the slums were being flattened by the furious assault. Between the autocannon and the scything beam of the big laser, the enemy seemed intent on depriving the Sisters of any measure of concealment.

Except from one quarter. Kashibai was swift to notice that there was a several-metre wide strip that was being ignored by the brutal retaliation. At once her suspicions were aroused. Her Battle Sisters had already experienced something of their opponents’ penchant for ambush and misdirection. Here, she felt certain, was another sampling of the foe’s skulking methods.

‘Watch my left,’ Kashibai told Sister Reshma. Among the warriors of her squad, there was none who married accuracy and speed so well as Reshma. If her suspicions played out, speed would be more important than precision. ‘The rest of you continue to return their fire. Keep their attention fixed on you.’

Orders given, Kashibai swung her flamer towards the undamaged strip of shacks. ‘The Emperor protects,’ she intoned as she thought of the under-dwellers who might still be hiding in the shanties. The choice between compassion and duty was never a comfortable one, but the demands of duty would brook no hesitation. The shanties were being spared by the enemy deliberately to cover their own purposes. She was certain they were using the strip as a corridor to bring fighters directly against the Sisters.

With a searing roar, fire erupted from the nozzle of Kashibai’s gun. Liquid flame jetted out across the shanties, immolating those closest to the Battle Sisters and setting those further back ablaze. Screams of horror and anguish rose from the conflagration. Reeling shapes stumbled out from the smoke and flame, bodies wrapped in orange tongues of fire. Reshma’s bolter cracked away, picking off those who tried to flee the havoc wrought by Kashibai’s flamer. A few lasguns and autopistols growled from behind the crackling mass of fire, striving to silence Kashibai before she could inflict further damage.

‘Well struck, Sister,’ Bishaka called out.

‘Too well,’ Reshma declared. ‘They’re going to rush your position.’

Tightening her grip upon the flamer, Kashibai sent another scorching blast into the slums, prosecuting her campaign against the enemy assault force. More screams rang out, and figures dressed in purple and red scrambled away from the burning ruins, smoke rising from their scorched clothes and seared skin. Reshma maintained her grim vigil, dropping enemy after enemy with crippling shots, pitching many back into the very flames they’d sought to escape, leaving others wounded and writhing in the shadows.

Their assault broken, the enemy now loosed an even more abandoned barrage against the Sisters. Autocannon and laser joined with the smaller weapons in assailing the position adopted by Kashibai’s squad. Slivers of rock gouged from roof and floor glanced off the black power armour that protected the Sisters. A stony splinter struck Reshma’s helm before spinning away into the gloom.

The local militia survivors tried their best to support Kashibai’s squad, intensifying the volleys of las-fire they were directing at the enemy positions. It was a gallant if fruitless effort. Kashibai knew it would need more than a few embattled soldiers to break their foe. Fortunately such a force was near at hand. While Kashibai’s squad had been holding the enemy’s attention, a second squad of Sisters had been taking the field. Keeping to the perimeter of the vault, they’d kept to cover while circling around the combat, biding their time until they were in position to strike.

‘Sister Kashibai, we are starting our advance,’ Virika announced across the vox. ‘It would be a disgrace if we allowed you to keep all the heretics for yourselves.’

‘You are welcome to claim your portion,’ Kashibai replied, wiping blood from her brow. ‘Emperor grant you good hunting.’

The boom of frag grenades revealed that Virika’s squad was moving into the slum. Clouds of debris rose from demolished shacks while steam and sludge gushed from damaged pipes. Howls of surprise rang out across the cavernous chamber, almost subhuman in their sound. The thunderous snarl of Sister Nagina’s heavy bolter silenced the cries nearest Virika’s squad, raking across the concealed enemy and the shacks hiding them.

The barrage that had only moments before seemed nigh overwhelming now began to falter. The autocannon had been silenced, either eliminated by Virika’s Sisters or else withdrawn by the enemy. The fury of the smaller weapons lessened as gunmen fell to grenades or retreated away from the threat they presented. The big laser made a few spiteful stabs at Kashibai’s squad, nearly managing to strike Sister Mridula with one of its shots. Kashibai tried to gauge how far back the vicious laser might be sited, but a far closer menace soon presented itself.

Directly before Kashibai was the strip of slums her flamer had turned into a burning inferno. All about the edges of the conflagration were the smouldering bodies of those caught by the fire or dropped by Reshma’s speedy shots. Even being grazed by a bolter’s shell was enough to cripple an ordinary man, much less leave him with the ability to fight. Kashibai had discounted the wounded left by Reshma as posing no further threat. Now she discovered a reason to rue her assumption.

Lunging out from the smoke was a huge man, his skin blackened by the flames, his clothes reduced to steaming strips of rag. Blood gushed from a ghastly wound in his side, a fist-sized hole punched through his abdomen by Reshma’s bolter. Instead of lying down to die, however, the urge to kill drove the brute back to his feet and sent him charging straight towards the woman who’d shot him. Before Reshma could react, the man was attacking her, swinging a crackling power pick at the Sister. The energised mining tool slammed into her, tossing her armoured body into the air like a child’s doll.

Kashibai swung around, ready to burn the pick-armed thug with her flamer. The sight of Reshma sprawled on the floor restrained her. It was just possible her comrade’s power armour had blunted the force of the blow. If she still lived, a blast from the flamer might finish her.

The hulking brute turned away from Reshma. He glared at Kashibai from the charred crust of what face he had left. She shuddered at the impossible viciousness of that gaze, the depthless hate that shone in his blemished eyes. She drew back, intending to scorch him from an angle that wouldn’t see Reshma in harm’s way. Again she underestimated the grisly vitality of her foe. By rights the thug should be dead on his feet, barely able to move with that wound in his side. Instead the man rushed at her even more quickly than he’d charged at Reshma.

The other Sisters in Kashibai’s squad were trying to suppress the sporadic shots coming at them from behind the pipes and hovels. It was left to Kashibai to deal with her hulking attacker. The injuries he’d suffered made him seem scarcely human. His body was disfigured by the knots of muscle that rippled beneath his charred skin, a physique of such grotesquery that she doubted even a lifetime in the ore-mines of Lubentina’s polar reaches could inflict upon human flesh. The man’s head seemed at once both compressed and elongated, as though his skull had been squeezed from the sides until its very shape became distorted. The broad hands that clenched the power pick were bound about in thick windings, crude mittens that couldn’t quite hide the alarming fact that he had only three thick, stumpy fingers on each extremity.

Mutant! The unclean word rang through Kashibai’s mind. The bestial nature and prodigious endurance of her enemy were explained. A mix of righteousness and disgust filled her as she met the brute’s attack. She felt the sizzling impact of the pick course down her arm as she parried the man’s assault with the barrel of her flamer. She winced as the barrel collapsed under the blow, nearly bent in half by the fury of the energised tool. She would offer a eulogy for the weapon’s machine-spirit when she returned to the convent. Allowing she survived to do so.

Kashibai’s right arm felt numb from the impact of the power pick, but her left was unimpaired. Deftly she plucked the combat knife from her belt and drove the blade up into her foe’s wound. She felt the blood of her antagonist – hideously cold and viscous – spurt across her face as she plunged the knife upwards, trying to dig her way to any organ vital enough to put the brute down.

The monstrous foeman screeched an atavistic cry of pain. The power pick fell from his hands as agony pulsed through his immense frame. But he failed to fall, refused to die despite the Sister’s stabbing blade. One three-fingered hand came whipping around, smashing across Kashibai’s face. The blow knocked teeth from her jaw and sent her tumbling to the ground. The thug glowered down at her. He reached into the wound in his side, plucking the knife from where she’d left it embedded in his flesh.

Before the brute could spring at Kashibai, the armoured figure of a Battle Sister interposed, setting herself between the subhuman hulk and the fallen woman. The rescuer wore a mantle of black silk over her ornately adorned power armour, purity seals and campaign honours fixed to her gorget, the badge of the Adepta Sororitas marked in gold upon her pauldrons. No helm concealed her dusky countenance nor hid the vengeful aspect that now possessed those features. Her eyes were like pits of iron as they matched the enemy’s glower.

‘Your breath has defiled this world long enough, filth,’ the warrior spat. The bolt pistol she held in her left hand barked once, bursting apart the brute’s shoulder and spilling him to the floor.

From where she lay on the ground, Kashibai cried out a warning to her commander. ‘Sister Superior! He’s still moving!’

True to Kashibai’s warning, life yet clung to the brute. He was crawling towards the power pick, reaching for it with his disfigured hand.

Sister Superior Trishala was in action even before Kashibai’s shout. Smoke still issued from the barrel of her bolt pistol when she moved against her stricken foe. In her right hand she held a gleaming sword, its guard fashioned in the shape of the aquila, its pommel aglow with the frightful energies ready to be unleashed by the blade. Even as the thug’s fingers closed about the grip of the pick, Trishala’s power sword was chopping down. The man’s malformed skull was reduced to pulp beneath the coruscating aura of blue light that rippled down the power sword’s blade.

Kashibai had regained her feet when Trishala turned away from the slain brute. The Sister Superior frowned when she noted the state of Kashibai’s flamer. ‘Virika’s squad is pressing them back on the left,’ Trishala said. She handed Kashibai her bolt pistol. ‘I need your squad to close the gap. Catch them between two fields of fire. By the Golden Throne, we’ll purge these mutants from Tharsis.’

‘Wasn’t our objective to find and relieve the militia patrol?’ Kashibai asked.

Trishala’s gaze remained a thing of ice and iron. ‘I’ve been unable to make contact with them over the vox. The platoon’s vox-caster must be unusable or the underground is interfering with transmissions. If we can’t coordinate with the survivors, then the safest way to extricate them is by exterminating these heretics.’ She noted that Kashibai was looking past her to the sprawled body of Reshma. Sister Pranjal had broken from cover to drag her injured comrade to cover. ‘Make an appreciation of her wounds,’ she said, ‘but understand that duty comes first. She must be left behind and you can spare no one to linger with her. We will need every gun.’

Kashibai felt Trishala’s command cut into her. She knew Trishala was right, but that only made it worse. She handed the bolt pistol back to the Sister Superior. ‘I’ll take Reshma’s bolter,’ she said.

‘We’ll need every gun,’ Kashibai said, echoing Trishala’s words.

Click here to buy Cult of the Warmason.

For Lindsey, who has sharp eyes and cunning wit.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland.

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