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Mercy – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Mercy

Danie Ware

The cathedral’s corpse was vast.

Standing in its hollow heart, its darkness vaulted huge above her, Sister Superior Augusta rested one scarlet-gauntleted hand on the bolter at her hip. She said nothing, only scanned this icon of the Emperor’s might, searching for motion, for threat, for any remaining gleam of His Light.

But there was nothing.

This was Ultima Segmentum’s darkest corner, and little reached out here.

Beside her, the missionary Lysimachus Tanichus was speaking in hushed tones. ‘From the last years of the Age of Apostasy, sister. Or so they say.’ His sibilance coiled in the dark, like echoes of millennia.

Augusta gave a brief acknowledgement and walked carefully through the debris. The air was hot here, clammy with the overgrown jungle-marsh outside; twisted creepers had penetrated the cathedral’s crumbling walls and they writhed across the stonework like the tendrils of Chaos itself. Sweat itched at the fleur-de-lys tattoo on her cheek.

‘Sisters.’ She spoke softly into the vox at her throat. ‘Roll call.’

Five voices came back through the darkness. Augusta’s retinal lenses tracked their locations: blips deployed in a standard sweep-reconnaissance pattern. Her squad were experienced – all except one – and she had complete trust in their worthiness, and in their love for the Emperor. Together, they had carried fist and faith across every segmentum of the galaxy.

Tanichus, fiddling with his rosarius, spoke again. ‘The Emperor’s light had not touched this world in millennia, sister, not until I came here, carrying His name. The local townspeople told me of the cathedral. It’s a part of their mythology–’

‘I trust you’ve brought them Truth,’ Augusta said. Her authority was unthreatened by the missionary, but she needed to listen – the brief from the canoness on Ophelia VII had listed this world as a potential staging point for Chaos, invading from the Eye of Terror, for witchkin or renegades, for marauding xenos of every kind. Augusta was a twenty-year veteran, her bobbed hair and stern gaze both steel-grey, and her experience made her both sharp and wary.

‘Me serve vivere, sister,’ Tanichus said. ‘I live to serve.’

‘Sister Jatoya,’ Augusta said into the vox. ‘Anything?’

Her second-in-command responded, ‘No, sister. If there’s anything here, it’s well hidden.’

‘Check everywhere.’

‘Yes, sister.’

‘Very well.’ Her touch still on the bolter, eyeing the decaying statues and pillars above her, Augusta gestured for Tanichus to keep speaking.

But he told her only what she already knew: his history with the townspeople, and their rumours of the cathedral. The town held the place taboo, but they’d told Tanichus their local myth – that the ruin had a guardian, an armoured stone icon with a bloodied flower upon its chest. And Tanichus had carried word of this back to the Ecclesiarchy, and to the Sisters.

A member of the Order of the Bloody Rose, Augusta had volunteered for the mission immediately – with the cathedral’s age, it was possible that the icon could be Saint Mina herself. ‘The Emperor has called me,’ she’d said to the canoness. ‘And I must go.’ Perhaps for more political reasons than visionary ones, the canoness had agreed.

Her boots crunching over ancient, fallen masonry, Augusta climbed the steps towards the high altar. Ruin or not, she paused before the top and dropped to one armoured knee, her black cloak billowing and her hand tracing the fleur-de-lys on her armour.

‘Quantus tremor est futurus, quando attingit locum Lucis.’

How great the fear will be, when the Light touches this place!

She felt the missionary shiver as he, too, knelt. Tanichus was a talker, a good man to carry the Emperor’s word, but she was His daughter, and her task was clear.

She would find this icon.

‘Did the townspeople tell you anything further?’ she asked, coming back to her feet. ‘You lived with them for several months.’

‘Only superstitions,’ he told her. ‘If this is your patron saint, sister, then we must find her without their help.’

Augusta nodded. She gave her squad orders to structure their search, to move in a standard skirmish pattern throughout the cathedral’s cloisters and side-rooms. Sister Viola, the youngest, she ordered to stand guard at the fallen doors. Viola was new from the schola; she was high-hearted and eager to prove herself and that was all very well… but Augusta wanted her close.

‘Yes, sister.’ Viola, bolter in hand, returned to the doors and took her position, watching the huge and muggy writhe of the outside jungle.

Over the vox, the Sister Superior recited the Litany of Mettle. Whatever was here, they would find it.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Anna Steinbauer.

Mercy © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Mercy, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-882-2

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