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Wreck and Ruin – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter one

The broken steel gantry swayed and screeched.

Backed to its outermost end, the wounded man had stumbled to his knees. Alone, unarmed, he held one hand to the smoking hole in his belly. The other supported him as he crashed forwards, coughing blood.

He did not have long.

‘Aim!’ The sergeant’s bark was curt. It rang hollow, echoing loudly in the empty systems of pipes and conduits that towered around them, resonant in rust and decay.

Nine lasguns tucked into nine shoulders.

Nine tiny, red insects clustered on the man’s skull.

The man made no move; he didn’t protest, or try to defend himself. He’d led them a long chase, but it was over.

‘Hold your fire.’ A woman’s voice, cool and controlled.

The sergeant raised one hand from his weapon, and the squad paused.

A small, grey-robed figure stepped through them, her black boots ringing on the metal walkway. Even in her ceramite armour, she was barely as high as the heavy sergeant’s shoulder, but her poise and bearing spoke of complete authority. Her head was bare and her white-threaded dark hair was braided tightly down her back.

At her feet, an empty vat-tank stretched downwards into darkness. It had a mark stamped in its side – the cog-and-skull of Triplex Phall, and a line of Mechanicus numerals, noting its denomination. Somewhere at its base, there hissed the wash and seethe of liquid.

But the woman did not look down.

She said, ‘It’s over, Zale.’

The man did not respond. He was still coughing; his breath was harsh and ragged. Like the metal-stinking wind, it rose into the umber sky, and was gone.

‘Ma’am?’ The sergeant stood poised, his battered green armour-plates filthy with blown rust, his head still tilted into the rifle sight. She could feel his tension, his need to end this, once and for all. The squad’s lieutenant had already died on his knees – from the beginning, this entire mission had been littered with corpses – but such things were of little interest to her.

She took a further step forwards, her gauntleted fist closing. The band of her signet ring bit into her flesh.

She would take whatever action she deemed necessary.

Curtly, she repeated the order. ‘I said, hold your fire.’

‘Ma’am.’

The sergeant was a good man, solid. She felt his pressure on the trigger ease.

Satisfied, she raised her voice, let her accusation sound like a paean from the crumbling pipework. ‘Scafidis Zale, you are a heretic and a traitor, and there is nowhere left for you to run. You will surrender, or you will fall to the waters below, and there you will dissolve. You will beg me for pity as they eat your living flesh, but there will be no pity, Zale, not for you. Repent here, and I may yet grant you your future, and your continued service to the God-Emperor.’

From somewhere, far out in the mess of refineries, machines and galleries, there came the sounds of shouting, and running boots. There was the hiss and boom of lasgun fire, a rise of laughter, the noise of fists on flesh.

But she and the fallen man were intent only on each other.

Slowly, the injured Zale sank backwards until he was sitting on his heels. His hand was still on his belly, his head bowed.

The woman felt the sergeant tense. Rage and suspicion rose from his burly shoulders.

Still, she did not give the order.

She said, ‘Surrender, Zale.’

Feet sounded again, closer this time. Several of the soldiers twitched, but the noises soon clanged past them, and faded to echoes.

And then, at the far end of the gantry, Scafidis Zale began to unfold. Slowly, he came to his feet. He moved like a performer, taking command of his stage.

Nine points of light followed the motion.

He didn’t care.

Instead, he said one word, like a hiss of pure scorn…

‘Inquisitor.’

And he started to laugh.

Lycheate.

Once a forge world, a world of industry. Lycheate was a planet of refineries and manufactoria, of ferrous incinerators, of furnaces and vents, of the pulse and vein of living machinery. Once, Lycheate had thundered and rumbled with the fusion reactor deep at its core. It had been governed by its fabricator, and teeming with tech-priests, transmechanics, lexmechanics and enginseers.

Once, Lycheate had been orbited by dozens of small moons, each one rich with promethium and rare ores, drilled with mines and worked by helots. Shuttles and cargo scows had ferried those ores to the planet’s surface, where they’d been assayed and smelted and forged, and then shipped out across the Imperium, the lifeblood of all mankind.

Once.

But Lycheate’s moons had long since been stripped bare. Its steelworks were empty, its forge-temples abandoned to the seething swarms of human and xenos scum that had moved in there. The planet had become a vacuum – a sucking, steel-walled cesspit that pulled in the lost, the heretic, the mutant, the cultist…

All those who wanted to vanish, or who had nowhere else to go.

Inquisitor Istrix, however, had no interest in the denizens of this place. She had walked fearless through their filth, untouched and uncaring – this world was a sewer, worthy only of Exterminatus. And that would come. For now, Istrix had a greater purpose.

The inquisitor was focused purely on her quarry. She had hunted him, relentless, all the way from Terra itself, all through Scintilla and the mines on Sophano Prime, and finally out here, to the very edges of the Ultima Segmentum and the Calixis Sector.

Now, she had him.

And, as the wounded man came to his feet, his laughter ringing like the sounding of ancient hammers, Istrix gave thanks to the Emperor Himself that her long chase was over at last.

‘Inquisitor,’ he said.

‘Zale.’ Tiny, framed by the lost wealth of rust and decay, Istrix faced her foe. ‘There’s nowhere left to hide.’

But his laughter only grew.

Ever the entertainer, he flicked his fingers.

Screaming, the sergeant went over backwards, his lasrifle firing bursts of superheat at the pipework over their heads. Metal creaked and screamed and tore; debris plummeted past them, clattering and banging against the sides of the tank, splashing into the waters below. The sergeant had both hands clutched to his helmet; as he hit the walkway, he started to thrash, his feet hammering.

The noise was incredible.

Beside him, the lance-corporal turned on her fellows. Stepping back to use the lasrifle, too fast for anyone to react, she carved red light through three of her comrades, then turned the weapon on herself. Her last, mad laugh was cut off as the front of her helmet vanished in a hiss of steaming gore.

She toppled over the edge, and was gone.

No fool, the corporal barked an order. Five streaks of scarlet whooshed out at the figure on the gantry.

But Zale was up, now. He was uninjured, and moving.

Moving fast.

Still laughing, he gave another, extravagant gesture. With a roar, forge fires boomed to sudden life; the rise of heat was staggering, blistering. Swearing, the corporal threw up his arms and fell back.

The air shimmered and stank – fuel and fear and fumes.

In the blur of it, Zale wavered and was gone.

But Inquisitor Istrix did not move. She watched, impassive, as her grey robes ignited, as the scarred and grubby armour of the Astra Militarum began to char and smoke. Several of them were swearing, emptying water bottles or trying to smother the flames with their gloved hands. She could hear the corporal barking further orders, his nerve remarkably steady.

Again, lasgun fire streaked across the air.

She barked, ‘Hold your fire!’

The corporal echoed her order. The lasguns stilled.

She heard one of them mutter, her voice confused, ‘Corp?’

The words were across the squad’s private channel, but Istrix could hear them quite clearly in her vox-bead.

The man responded, his deep voice low, ‘You heard the inquisitor. Hold your fire.’

With a faint, cold smile, she took another step out onto the gantry, now swinging wildly from its overhead wires. The metal squealed in protest; it was already reddening to a dull, magma glow.

Her burning robes billowed in the rising heat.

+Issy.+

Zale’s laughter crawled into her ears, echoed through her skull. It took her brain apart, piece by piece; it touched old memories, the days of his training, now long-gone…

She could hear him in her head.

+You don’t have to do this.+

But he could not touch her; she belonged to the Emperor alone. He was a traitor, a failure – her failure. And he would surrender himself to Penitence.

That, or lose his soul.

She commanded the corporal to hold his position; walked three more steps out along the gantry. The roasting, searing heat clawed up at her from far below; the fall was hungry for her life. Her flapping robes burned higher; there was smoke in her eyes, her face. She felt her braid crisp and shrivel, burning like fuse wire; felt her skin start to soften.

Felt the holes opening in her flesh.

But she tightened her fist, feeling the signet ring.

There was no heat, no flame.

No forge.

The pain was nothing.

She said, ‘Your trickeries do not touch me, witch. The Emperor is with me.’

At the end of the walkway, his gold eyes now blazing with the lava-light of the glowing metal, his whole form rippling with power and illusion, Zale offered her a bow. Still laughing, he raised his hands, gestured again, tore a huge rent across the pipework to one side. Steam flooded out at her, hissing, then rose towards the brown and distant sky.

Somewhere up there, debris shone like the stars.

‘I can tear out your heart,’ he told her softly, ‘and you know it.’

‘This is nothing,’ she said. ‘Witchery. Illusion. The machine-spirits of this world are long dead.’

But Zale laughed like a daemon, his eyes still burning. Behind her, she heard a sudden, physical struggle, heard the corporal curse. Boots rang on the walkway, there was shouting, then a long, wailing cry as a second figure went over the edge.

She did not bother to turn.

‘Mistress.’ The word was a caress. ‘You never learn. How many lives will you throw away? How many more will you send to the Emperor’s glory, before you see the truth? I will not surrender to the torture you call Penitence.’

‘No more,’ Istrix said. ‘This is over.’ The awful heat yammered at her, searing her now-hairless scalp, hurting her lungs as she breathed it in. But she was stronger than this, better than this.

‘Then shoot me,’ he said to her softly. ‘If you can.’

She raised the bolter.

And, with an ear-splitting screech, the gantry fell away beneath both of them.

From its orbit of the jungle-planet Lautis, the Imperial frigate Kyrus had turned back to the vacuum of space. Called home by the astropaths, by the tides of the empyrean, it was returning to Ophelia VII, and to the Hallowed Spire of the Convent Sanctorum.

Behind the heaviness of the Kyrus’ reinforced bulkheads, securely defended by its void shields and gunnery decks, there lay an empty, decorous hollow, like a hole in its heart. Floored with rockcrete flags, walled with glassaic windows, each one lit by a cunning strip of exterior biolume, this was the ship’s chapel, silent and chill. Neat lines of pews could seat almost a tenth of the Kyrus’ full crew; rows of faces, each man and woman looking up at the altar, and at the broad banner of the aquila that hung above.

To one side of that central image hung the winged skull of the Imperial Navy, to the other, the twisting-fish symbol of the Kyrus herself.

Flanked by the imagery, lit by the ever-shining glow of the electro-candles, stood the golden stone statue of the God-Emperor. Thirty feet at His Imperial shoulder and framed by the aquila’s wings, He stared out over the nave, His gaze clear, His expression stern.

He demanded service. He accepted no compromise. He reminded every one of them of their faith, their courage, their sworn duty. And, from those rows of pews, the crew of the Kyrus could look upon Him, and leave this place uplifted, ready to carry His name out through the warp and to all corners of the Imperium.

They would fight and die for Him, to the last man and woman.

And they would do so gladly.

Now, however, the pews were empty. Under the false vault of the rockcrete roof, the cherubim circled silently, their cold, augmetic gazes eyeing the space below.

As the heavy hatchway clunked open, they blinked metal eyelids, recording every movement.

A lone figure stepped through.

It paused, silent. Bright in the chapel’s lume, its scarlet armour glittered, all ceramite and plasteel. Over this, it bore a black-and-white cloak, decorated with the symbol of the rose; the fabric billowed as it turned to close the hatch. A line of adamantine beads decorated its chaplet and, at its hips, there were slung a Godwyn De’az pattern bolter and a brutal, heavy-duty chainsword.

Its – her – head was bare, revealing a stern bob of steel-grey hair and a distinctive tattoo.

She said, though there were only the cherubim to hear, ‘In the name of Mina and the Golden Throne, I am the willing daughter of the God-Emperor. I come to listen, and to do His bidding.’

Sister Superior Augusta Santorus touched the fleur-de-lys on the front of her armour, and bowed her head.

The cherubim blinked again, their eyelids clicking.

As if by their signal, servitors whirred from their resting places. Augusta lifted the bolter from her belt, unclipped the sword, and laid both in the offered brass trays.

The soldiers of the Imperial Navy had no requirement to lay down their sidearms, but she, as outlined in the Accords of Deacis VI, entered His presence with humility – bare of weapons, and with her head bared to His Light.

Slowly, she walked up the aisle.

But she did not look up.

Since their departure from Lautis, Augusta had visited the chapel often. Not just offering the daily prayers of herself and her squad – and those soldiers of the Navy who’d wished to attend – but at other times, when the hollow was quiet, and she could focus her concentration.

Augusta was the commander of her squad, a veteran warrior of twenty years’ experience. She had fought battles against xenos, daemon and heretic; she had pursued the foes of mankind to the very edges of space, and she had slain them all.

But there was a darkness upon her heart that would not leave her, and that had brought her, once again, into His presence.

It defied her comprehension – their previous mission had been a success. Upon Lautis, they had faced a greater daemon, and had banished it back to the warp. They had freed the jungle-planet from the daemon’s cultist followers, and had secured the ruined cathedral for their Order, the Order of the Bloody Rose. The Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests and servitors arriving aboard the Tukril now held the building safely, and were beginning its reconstruction.

The Kyrus had accompanied them, and had waited to assure their security. And now, the old frigate was taking the Sisters back home.

Her boots loud in the chapel’s silence, Augusta reached the altar rail. The cherubim followed her movements, sharply watchful.

She knelt, her grey bob of hair falling forwards over her face.

Though they had defeated it, the Lautis daemon had left her with nightmares. It had infected her thoughts, plagued her dreams with Chaos and Ruin, with images both fearful and bloody. For long Solar weeks after its expulsion, she and the other members of her squad had awoken sweating, and had knelt in midnight prayer…

Fortitudo est certa clara meo.

My strength must be unfailing, my sight clear.

Augusta did not fear the spewed-forth creatures of the warp. Yet Lautis had seen the deaths of two members of her squad – Sister Kimura, in the battle against the orks, and Sister Jatoya, her second and right arm, smashed by the daemon’s axe.

Her lips moved in prayer: the Litany of Divine Guidance.

Domine deduc me mi Imperatoris.

Guide me, my Emperor.

In twenty long years of battle, Augusta had lost troops before. Her Sisters had been slain, but they had died with courage and honour and they stood now at His feet…

Levis est mihi.

Show me to the Light.

…but her darkness did not diminish. She recalled the words of the cultist’s leader, Subul, the man who had summoned the daemon.

‘I can feel it in you, Sister! I can feel your anger. Let it go. Revel in it! Like your saint before you, like your whole blood-armoured Order, you revel in rage, in the pure fury of the battlefield. You belong here! Lose your foolish faith, and join the darkness!’

For a moment, she dared raise her eyes to Him, framed by the light of the electro-candles…

But it was too much. His expression was too austere, His judgement too stern. She was His daughter, her faith and weapons unquestioned, unquestionable; war was her craft and her study. Anger, grief – these were permitted, within proper confines. The loss of her discipline was not.

Shamed, she lowered her gaze, back to the gleam of her armour, blood-red against the rockcrete floor.

Whatever mission called them, it was His will, and they would praise His name, with hymn and blade and bolter, just as they had always done.

We are strong, she told herself. We will not fail.

Yet, as she completed her litany and came back to her feet, she wondered at the shadow that still lurked so deep, and at what it may mean for the future.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Nemanja Stankovic.

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