Cult of the Warmason Page 6

  ‘Assign Sister Reshma to this hall,’ Trishala told Kashibai. She gave her a reproving look. ‘The Imperium is too vast for any individual to be vital or even important. The time of the primarchs and the saints is gone, all that are left are lesser beings. If your grox-herder fails and falls, another will take his place. So too with us all. The fact we have lives is of no significance to the God-Emperor. It is what we do with those lives that endows us with worth. Deeds are our measure, and the greater the sum of our deeds the more the Emperor’s light burns inside us.’

  ‘Each of us venerates the God-Emperor in our own way,’ Kashibai said.

  The expression on Trishala’s face made it evident she had no interest in entering a discussion on dogma. Stiffening her back, Kashibai snapped a hurried salute to her superior. ‘I will post Reshma to guard the Gauntlet’s Retreat.’

  Trishala returned Kashibai’s salute before leaving the balcony and marching off down the hall, following the rotation of passageways and antechambers that would lead her to the great narthex that opened out from the cathedral. Those she encountered in her circuit, pilgrims and petitioners alike, gave way before her. They pressed close to the ancient whorlwood panels that lined the walls, forgetting the curious vertigo imposed by the curl of those walls in their eagerness to avoid impeding the stern-faced Sister Superior.

  Sensing the anxiety rolling off the crowds, Trishala could only be thankful that she’d grown beyond such weakness. Uncertainty bespoke a lack of faith, just as fear indicated a lack of resolve. Those who truly embraced the Imperial Creed didn’t have such failings. They were firm and steadfast, unyielding in their convictions. No matter what was demanded of them, they looked to the Imperial Creed to dictate their choices. She appreciated the viewpoint Kashibai held, a belief in the ultimate mercy and justness of the Emperor. It wasn’t a wrong belief, but it was a naïve interpretation. The Emperor’s design was one that encompassed all the untold trillions of humans in the Imperium. To think that great design could be altered for the benefit of any individual was the worst kind of hubris.

  A last crowd of robed pilgrims parted before Trishala and she made the descent down the broad stairway that rippled its way to the obsidian floor of the narthex. Polished to a mirror-like sheen, stepping out onto the black surface was still a thrilling sensation. It was like walking across the cosmic space between worlds, an effect that was made all the more real by the thousands of tiny lights suspended from the hall’s lofty ceiling, their glow reflecting in the obsidian floor. At regular intervals, a hidden projector sent the hololith of an ancient warship flying through the illusory starfield, much to the awed admiration of the congregants.

  Trishala smiled at that. The artifices of the architects who’d laboured on the Warmason’s Cathedral were indeed remarkable, but there were places where their craftsmanship had been wanting. Even in a place as resplendent as the narthex there were discreet blemishes. An incongruously ponderous beam clawing its way down one wall, a crazily angled pillar, the outline of a doorway that projected a few centimetres from the middle of the ceiling. Within the upper levels of the cathedral there were even more instances of such oddities. Windows that stared into blank walls. Stairways that vanished into ceilings. Crude statuary that crouched in shadowy niches, their outlines as disturbing as they were indistinct. All were echoes of the ancient past, facets of a design Karim Das never implemented.

  An honour guard of Sisters flanked the gigantic bronze doors that opened from the narthex onto Cathedral Plaza. Standing nearly ten metres high, the doors had been cast to mimic the grain of some ancient Terran wood. Each portal was surrounded by plascrete castings of the Warmason’s sacred works, an assemblage of gargantuan fortresses and bridges rendered in exacting detail. Just above the doors, standing upon a projecting base of marble, was an effigy of Vadok the Builder, the principal aspect of the Warmason. The Sisters guarding the entrance were arrayed in white rather than their customary black, holding their bolters against their chests and maintaining an expression as stony as that of the Warmason’s statue. Though their pose might be statuesque, the guards were alert to their surroundings, keeping a vigil that was much more than simply symbolic.

  Emerging from the solemn confines of the cathedral, Trishala stepped into the bedlam of the plaza. The square was vast, fifty metres across at its widest and surrounded on all sides by the bulky stone buildings that hosted the many businesses that catered to the pilgrims who flocked to Lubentina. Some of the oldest structures were squat, blocky affairs, while others boasted heights of a dozen floors and more. Those closest to the cathedral had great load cranes and the skeletal frames of elaborate scaffolds rising from their roofs while those farther away displayed signs that alternately reminded those who gazed on them of their duties to the God-Emperor or advertised the services of some Lubentine enterprise.

  A babble of hawking, haggling and arguing rose from the columns of stalls that edged the plaza, where vendors tried to sell pilgrims everything from flasks of sacred unguents and bundles of incense sticks to Lubentine prayer bells and hololiths of the Warmason himself. Most numerous of all, however, were those selling every manner of victual to the pilgrims as they completed their ascent of Mount Rama, whether they came by Ladder or Road.

  Trishala found her gaze lingering on a crew of labourers erecting a scaffold against the side of the cathedral. A truck loaded down with several rockcrete tombs was parked a small distance away, the symbol of the Tomb-cutters’ Guild etched into the sides of the cab. Though the rebels had seized the tomb-yards, the Guild had enough funerary receptacles stored across the city to keep busy for a few weeks yet. Except for the lowest levels of the cathedral, the whole of the structure was encased in rings of crypts and tombs. The graves were cemented against the towering cathedral, allowing the wealthy dead the chance to be ensconced near the Warmason’s relics. Such was the profusion of these attachments down through the centuries that new ones were now being layered atop older ones. The effect, to Trishala’s eyes at least, was like the encrustations of parasites upon the body of some marine leviathan. Indeed, watching the stacked tombs climb upwards it was easy to forget that the cathedral itself wasn’t situated vertically but rather projected at an angle over the further slopes of the mountain.

  How unlike the conventional towers of the Sovereign Spire. For all the roles the governor’s palace had played down through the centuries, it hadn’t been the subject of such confusion. Right or wrong, Murdan and the Cardinal-Governors before him had maintained a purity of vision and purpose. Turning away from the cathedral’s funerary encrustations, Trishala stared down upon Tharsis and the mighty tower at its heart. Palatine Yadav had summoned her to another council meeting. Her duty now was to disturb Murdan’s resolve and make him waver in the course he was set upon.

  It was a daunting prospect, but as Trishala looked past the Sovereign Spire and at the thick plumes of smoke rising from the tomb-yards, she had reason to believe it wasn’t an impossible one.

  ‘Impossible!’ Minister Kargil’s objection boomed through the council hall like a peal of thunder. He shook an accusing fist at Colonel Hafiz. ‘You can’t seriously propose that we flatten the tomb-yards with artillery? Do you have any conception of how much damage that would inflict on production? We have faithful from across the segmentum who have already paid for interment on Mount Rama. What should we tell them? “I’m sorry Sejanus but you can’t die, at least until the crypt-presses have been rebuilt.” Loyal, devout subjects of the Imperium have placed their trust in our ability to provide for their...’

  Hafiz slammed his hand down on the table, returning the minister’s glower. ‘Don’t prattle on about obligations and trust, minister. It is the money bloating your coffers that worries you. You’d hate to see that steady stream of wealth disrupted.’

  ‘Don’t act superior to me, Hafiz,’ Kargil snarled back. ‘Yes, I am worried about the prosperity of Lubentina, as should be everyone at
this table.’ He turned away from the colonel to regard the other councillors. ‘The services we’ve provided for the Cult of the Warmason have made this a rich world. Lubentina has built a reputation for itself as a monument to the glory of the God-Emperor. We have become a favoured shrine world, respected by the Ecclesiarchy for our exacting attention to efficiency and detail. All of that will be jeopardised if we submit to panic. Consider what would happen if some influential off-worlder were to come here to bury one of his household only to find us incapable of fabricating a tomb to his specifications. He would be certain to let others in his circle, his peers in society, know of the inconvenience he was subjected to. Lubentina’s reputation would be tarnished, and if enough visitors left here with such stories, the blotch upon our record might never be expunged.’

  ‘How much production is being accomplished with the tomb-yards in the hands of these cultists?’ one of the other councillors asked. ‘The disruption you describe has already happened. It seems to me that the colonel’s plan is the quickest method to resolve the situation.’

  Kargil shook his head. ‘It would take years to rebuild if we condone Hafiz’s operation. Years and considerable expense. Right now, such damage as has been caused to the facilities could be repaired in a few weeks, a month at worst.’ He spun back around and faced Hafiz. ‘What we need is for the colonel to compose himself, rally his troops and go back in there. How a rabble of mutants and heretics can overcome an organised and professional military force is a question we can set aside until after the conflict has been resolved.’

  Seated beside Palatine Yadav, Trishala listened to Kargil’s speech with a steadily mounting outrage. The minister refused to hear anything that would jeopardise his expected profit margins. Playing the hypocrite, he accused Hafiz of ignoring the long-term effects of his strategy while blissfully ignoring the hazards of his own. Without decisive action, the uprising would grow.

  ‘The enemy is more than mutants and cultists,’ Trishala said. ‘They are a xenos infestation. You have heard Colonel Hafiz describe what he saw in the tomb-yards.’

  Palatine Yadav leaned forwards, his eyes roving across the table, meeting the gaze of each councillor. ‘Hearken to Trishala’s warning,’ he said. ‘I must confess that I was in error when I dismissed her concerns before. Since that time I have conducted research of my own and come upon an account in the Book of Domitian where he describes the fall of a planet in the Segmentum Obscuras. The invaders were a breed of xenos that used an uprising among the labour-caste to prosecute their conquest.’

  Trishala clenched her hands tight while Yadav recited the downfall of that perished world. She felt her heart pounding faster inside her chest, a cold tingle ripple through her skin. She could picture every­thing the palatine was describing, all of it to the last detail. It was what had happened to her own home world of Primorus.

  When Yadav finished his recitation, most of the councillors had a troubled look on their faces. Kargil wasn’t one of them. ‘An interesting parable, your grace, and I agree that there are similarities to our own circumstances. But Domitian identifies the xenos blight as genestealers. Now I am no authority on xenobiology, I leave that subject to the perverted minds who think it a fit topic for human contemplation.’

  ‘What man knows the intrigues of the xenos?’ Yadav cautioned. ‘Who can say how many methods the alien may use to usurp the domain of man?’

  ‘All due respect to your position, your grace, but I cannot believe the situation is as dire as you describe,’ Kargil said. ‘Hafiz wants to turn the tomb-yards into a moonscape and you sound like you want to call the Inquisition down here to burn out anyone who so much as sold one of these cultists a new set of boots.’

  From his throne, Cardinal-Governor Murdan’s voice lashed out with a question. ‘Is that what you’re proposing, Yadav?’

  The palatine rose from his seat and bowed to Murdan. ‘It is, your excellency. It is my conviction that this problem is beyond our capacity to deal with alone. If I may, I should advise that we make an appeal to the Imperial authorities for help restoring order.’

  ‘Your proposal is rejected,’ Murdan declared bluntly. The thin governor leaned out from his voluminous robes and gave Yadav a reproving look. ‘However this trouble arose, whatever its nature, we will resolve it on our own. Minister Kargil worries over the economic aspects of this situation. My fears are for the souls of all those devout pilgrims whose faith in the Emperor might be shaken if we show weakness. If we call for help, it will be saying that our own trust in the Emperor’s mercy is wanting, that we didn’t have faith enough to allow our own convictions to see us through our time of crisis. They will wonder at the lack of faith shown by a shrine world and then the cancer of doubt will claw its way into their minds. They will think that if even Lubentina was uncertain of the Emperor’s protection, then how much less deserving must their own worlds be.’ Murdan closed his eyes and raised his face towards the ceiling. ‘No, there will be no weakling’s cry for aid.’

  ‘Excellency, it is no weakness to gather the instruments to achieve victory,’ Trishala said, standing to address Murdan. Yadav whispered to her, fairly begging her to sit down before she did anything to provoke the governor. She ignored his entreaty and continued, ‘There is only one measure of weakness, and that is failure.’

  Murdan’s eyes bored into Trishala’s. ‘There are different measures of failure. If you win the battle but lose the war, of what value then is your victory?’ He swung around and motioned to Colonel Hafiz. ‘When you’ve assembled your artillery, target the waste-runs and any other connection from the tomb-yards to the Cloisterfells first. After that, I don’t expect to hear that so much as a kerbstone is left intact.’

  ‘But your excellency!’ All the colour had drained from Kargil’s visage as he heard Murdan’s orders.

  ‘In every test of faith, there must be sacrifice,’ Murdan declared. He looked back to Trishala. ‘Sentiment can be afforded no place in the decisions rendered by authority. When the thing must be done, let it be done.’

  A disruption at the entryway drew eyes away from Murdan. Soon a servant in the governor’s livery was escorting an anxious Captain Debdan to where Colonel Hafiz was seated. There was a brief exchange of whispers, then the colonel addressed the council in a grim tone.

  ‘More cultists have broken onto the surface,’ Hafiz said. ‘They’re reported in the prayer-binders’ quarter, the incense factories, and there have been sightings around the reliquary mills. In all, seven different outbreaks, each effected simultaneously with the others.’

  The colonel’s crisp report brought shocked murmurs from the council. Several of the men who’d supported Kargil’s restrained approach now took up Yadav’s position and clamoured for a call for aid to be dispatched.

  ‘Lubentina will handle its own affairs,’ Murdan snapped, unmoved by the appeals cast upon him. ‘There will be no cry for help.’

  ‘All respect, excellency, but the situation has changed,’ Yadav said.

  Murdan nodded. ‘Indeed it has,’ he conceded. His next words sent an icy chill through the veins of all within the council room. Even Trishala found herself shocked by the brutal pragmatism of the Cardinal-Governor.

  ‘Now there is much more work for Hafiz’s artillery,’ Murdan declared.

  Chapter IV

  Agonised screams, shrieks of horror and rage, the snap of lasguns and the bark of autoguns, the sinister whine of power picks and shock mauls, the rumbling crash of collapsing walls, the dull groan of tanks and transports. The streets of Tharsis were filled with a maddened riot of sound, a bedlam that thundered through the air. An auditory confusion that overwhelmed the senses, consuming the very concepts of discipline and obedience, leaving behind only the raw savage urge to fight and to kill.

  Behind the cover of a toppled rockcrete obelisk, Bakasur sat in the dust of destruction and focused his mind upon the awesome powers that were
the Great Father’s legacy to him. Already the smell of smoke and blood and burning promethium had faded to nothingness. The images before his eyes had become shadowy blurs, the immense aberrant warriors charged to act as his protectors were only dark blotches to him now. He turned his focus upon the sounds, deadening them one after another, closing them off and sealing them away as though he were locking doors inside his brain. The noises were the hardest stimulus to reject, for the loudest of them were things not merely heard but came upon him as tremulous vibrations he could feel in his bones. It needed exacting concentration to separate himself from the din of battle. Fortunately the magus was equal to such a strain.

  For an instant Bakasur felt a terrible cold and then his consciousness was soaring beyond his body. As he looked down upon himself he was struck by how frail he appeared next to the hulking aberrants. Such a delicate vessel to invest with so many gifts and to entrust with so many things. A terrible fright sped through his mind, a crackle of doubt that he should prove unworthy of all that depended upon him. After all, he wasn’t one of the Inheritors. His was a flawed physicality distorted by the taint of lower life. Whatever the powers of his mind, he could never transcend the limitations of his flesh. Not until he rose with the Great Father into the stars for the ascension that would bring him rebirth.

  The magus willed himself away from his physical form, chiding himself for the mammalian affectations that caused him to linger over his body. This sense of self was a distraction, a dangerous delusion that would be lifted from him in time. Then he would be one with the Great Father. Then he would be redeemed.

  Bakasur’s consciousness sped across the battleground. A district of chapels and shrines, their ponderous ornamentation now scarred by gunfire, the greenery of their grounds trampled beneath boot and tyre. He saw a brigade of soldiers in tan uniforms deployed about the pillars of a small temple, a heavy bolter barking away from where it had been concealed under an archway. He watched as a cadre of purple-garbed cultists approached the strongpoint from the left only to be mowed down by the snarling bolter and the flashing lasguns of the planetary militia. Only two of the hybrids reached the cover of a smashed groundcar lying in the street, the rest of their band ending up strewn before the temple in gory disarray. In death, however, the half-human cultists had achieved their purpose. They’d distracted the soldiers from the menace that now fell upon them from the opposite flank. A shrieking rush of Inheritors raced across the temple grounds and charged among the pillars, ripping and tearing with their deadly claws and sharp fangs. To sacrifice their lives for the Inheritors was the noblest purpose that could be asked of any who served the Cult of the Cataclysm.