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Soulfuel – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Soulfuel

Rob Sanders

Sanctus Shibboleth. Shrine world.

The tracks of the Adepta Sororitas Rhino transport thrashed through the devotional plazas and statue-lined arcades of the capital. The gothic magnificence of belfries and cathedra towered over the small column of armoured vehicles. Diligent, followed by Bel Canto and Fleur de Lys, sped through the sombre avenues of the shrine world night. Servo-skulls with psyoculus filters shrieked ahead of the Rhino column on high-speed repulsors, tracking the Battle Sisters’ witchbreed prey. While priests and choristers made their way back to their cells after last prayers, the bells of the capital rang with alarm. Terrified at the pursuit weaving through the streets, citizens took shelter in chapels and cloister houses.

Adrianna Verletz hauled herself up to the front of the Rhino. The compartment was bathed in the blood-red light of its interior. Leaning forward past Sister Laurentia, Verletz peered through the armaplas of the slit viewport. Her plate was midnight black, framed by the immaculate white of her order vestments. Her hair was cut into a harsh bob, half black and half white. While the white tresses lined the stern austerity of one half of Verletz’s face, the black framed a half marked with ink. Her skin was like a page from the Fede Imperialis – the battle prayer of the Adepta Sororitas. At the centre of the scripture, below her eye, was the larger symbol of the palatine’s order – an ebon chalice of skull and flame. While she anchored herself in the bumping compartment by one gauntlet, she held a long chain of adamantium rosary beads in the other, unconsciously worrying each one between her armoured fingertips. The transport bucked as it smashed through a line of statues.

‘Do you think Saint Jeronimus would forgive our trespasses?’ Emiliana Anatol said, coming up behind her palatine. The Sister Superior’s voice was modulated through the half-helm that covered her mouth and nose. The rest of her face was lost to the shadowy depths of her white hood.

‘I think that the saints,’ the palatine said, ‘would see fit to punish the witch and the heretics that harbour her – not those who hunt them in the Emperor’s name.’

Verletz pursed her inked lips as the head of a statue rolled across the roof of the Rhino. ‘Besides, statues can be rebuilt – faith is eternal.’

Sister Superior Anatol ducked down in the compartment. She was a full head or so taller than her palatine. Even with her head lowered, her hood touched the ceiling compartment.

‘Do you hear that?’ Anatol asked.

Verletz did. It was the most horrific sound she had ever heard, a ghastly shriek that bounced about the gargoylesque architecture of the shrine world capital. It reached through flag and stone. The palatine felt its high-pitched horror reverberate through the metal superstructure of the Rhino. She suffered it grinding upon her nerves, in her teeth, shredding its way into her very soul.

‘We’re close,’ she said. ‘The witchbreed is near.’

‘Stand by,’ Emiliana Anatol said to her Dominion squad.

Xenobia Nox was no ordinary witchbreed. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica Black Ship Divine Imperative had followed the rogue psyker across three worlds in the Maelstrom Zone. She had not been part of the Emperor’s tithe on Veritasium and Verletz had lost her on Catharchia Mundi. She would not lose her this time. Xenobia Nox’s run would end here on the Sanctus Shibboleth shrine world. The witch was soulfuel. She was promised to the Emperor to feed his voracious appetite. She would burn in the psychic fires of the Astronomican – her darkness casting a flicker of light across the benighted Imperium.

Like a banshee, the witch shrieked, the dread cacophony of her voice ripping through the city. All about the Adepta Sororitas’ Rhinos, spidery cracks started to feel their way across the ground and through the surrounding buildings.

‘Faster,’ Verletz ordered, prompting Sister Laurentia to gun the Rhino’s engine. Shredding the marble road surface, Diligent reached the end of the avenue. Sister Laurentia heaved back on the nest of levers in which she sat, throwing the armoured transport around. Swerving across a pillar-lined cloister, Diligent’s side hit the wall of the refectory house beyond. Thrashing the Rhino’s tracks, Sister Laurentia hurtled Diligent up the walkway.

‘Bel Canto, respond,’ the palatine spat into her vox-bead.

‘Clear,’ the Sister driving the black Rhino behind managed.

‘Fleur de Lys?’ Verletz said, but she could hear the thunder of collapsing masonry both across the vox channel and outside Diligent. For the longest time nobody responded. Then the palatine heard the crackle of static and coughing.

‘Fleur de Lys immobilised,’ a Battle Sister reported. ‘No casualties.’

Verletz grunted. They had been fortunate. The walls of mausolea either side of the avenue must have come down on them. ‘Disembark and follow on foot.’

‘Yes, palatine.’

Verletz could no longer hear the shriek of the psyker but its effects were everywhere to see. Pillars were cracking in half. Statues of Saint Jeronimus were toppling and the busy architecture of gothic structures was cascading down the walls of cathedra like an avalanche of stone.

Following the pack of servo-skulls, Diligent cleared the collapsing cloister before churning its way across the rubble and out onto a ceremonial plaza. Everything was a haze of dust and the cacophonous clang of devotional bells. As the beams of the transport’s lamps cut through the obscurity, the shadow of a falling structure passed through the murk. Diligent bounced on its tracks as a wall crashed down in its wake, crushing the Rhino behind. Verletz heard the scream of a Sister across the vox.

‘Bel Canto!’ the palatine called.

‘She’s gone,’ Sister Laurentia confirmed. ‘Brace!’

Suddenly, everything went dark. Verletz’s grip tightened on the compartment hand-holds and she bent her knees in expectation of a crash. She could hear the clang of a bell as a shrine tower toppled across their path. The palatine felt the torment of Diligent’s brakes shudder through the vehicle and the churning of its tracks. As the Rhino hit the tower, the impact threw the Sisters forward with the clatter of plate. After the tortured crunch of metal and the thunder of distant collapses died away, the blood-red compartment lamps flickered back on.

Verletz looked about the Rhino. Their blessed plate had largely saved them. Sister Laurentia was blinking blood from her eyes as an ugly gash across her forehead leaked down her face. Emiliana Anatol’s white hood was similarly stained red. The Dominion squad had fared little better, with bruised cheeks and Sister Bernadette’s broken nose. The palatine bit at a badly cut bottom lip, her perfect teeth tarnished by the injury. She flashed the whites of her eyes at the Sisters in the darkened compartment.

‘I want that witch,’ she told them.

The compartment was suddenly alive with the hum of the Sister Superior’s power maul. She pointed it at the door.

‘Disembark,’ Anatol barked through her half-helm, ‘and pursue on foot.’

Like lithe hunting hounds catching the scent of their prey, the Sisters of Battle tore out of the Rhino. The smoking transport was a smashed wreck. Its dozer blade was a mangled mess, while its forward hull was rent and split with the force of the impact. The destruction was nothing compared to Bel Canto, which had been turned to flattened scrap between the shattered plaza and the weight of the falling tower. Verletz didn’t want to think of the horror within its pulverised hull and the brave Sisters who had given their lives in the Emperor’s service. The Battle Sister traced the symbol of the Imperial aquila across her chest.

Within seconds, Anatol’s Dominion squad was away, their light-armoured step taking them swiftly across the ceremonial court. Verletz followed them. The Sisters were slender black shapes cutting through the haze, outlined in the brilliant white of their vestments.

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