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  Soulfuel – Rob Sanders

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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.

  As the Battle Sisters ran towards the epicentre of destruction, collapsed buildings settling and the air thick with masonry dust, Verletz could hear the slosh of promethium in the flasks of the flamers carried by the Dominion squad. While Emiliana Anatol ran with her maul in one gauntlet, she held up a Godwyn-De’az-pattern boltgun in the other, its scope and elongated barrel bouncing against her pauldron. Slipping a pair of bolt pistols from their thigh-holsters, the palatine took off after the Sisters.

  Sprinting through the devastation, the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice hurdled broken statues. Skidding down scree, they slid across the surface of shattered masonry and weaved through demolished architecture. With their plate rattling to every thudding step and robes flowing after them, the Sisters of Battle spread out, running through clusters of dazed priests and civilians. They knew who they were looking for; what they were looking for.

  ‘Target sighted,’ Sister Bernadette called out across the vox. Through the clearing haze she had spotted the psyker. Dressed in the ragged remains of a pilgrim’s stolen attire, the witch smouldered with ethereal energies that streamed in her wake like the sky trail of a comet. She moved like a savage, scrabbling and sprinting through the devastation she had wrought. It had not saved her, however. The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice were mere steps behind. While robed figures pulled pilgrims from the rubble and wandered in confused prayer, the psyker raced through the ruin like a wild animal.

  Xenobia Nox. Heretic. Witchbreed. Abomination.

  Putting her talents to dread use, the mutant’s monstrous shriek could not only be heard but felt across the spiritual plane. It brought buildings crashing down and toppled those unfortunate enough to be in close earshot. As Verletz ran through the wreckage she was forced to pick her footing carefully. There were bodies everywhere, their clothes soaking up pools of dust-thick blood.

  The Dominion squad closed on the fleeing psyker like a flock of raptor birds hunting their prey. They would not fail their mistress. Xenobia Nox would be taken and taken alive. With Sister Bernadette nearing the witch, the Battle Sisters converged upon their target. Verletz hurdled from mound to mound of rubble, then jumped through an obliterated stained-glass window and slid down the side of a crumbled wall.

  ‘Anatol!’ Verletz shouted, her bolt pistols held at her sides.

  The Sister Superior skidded to a stop and brought up her boltgun. Aiming through the remains of the window, she blasted off a bolt. The shell shattered the plinth of a smashed statue. A second thudded into cracked marble flagstones. As the psyker darted back and forth, simultaneously attempting to escape the closing net of Battle Sisters and the Sister Superior’s aim, she disappeared behind the remnants of a wall. Blasting off two more rounds through the bottom of the wall, Anatol was rewarded with a brief shriek of pain. It was a soul-stabbing moment of horror for all who could hear it. Verletz’s heart missed a beat but, like the Dominion squad, she ran on towards their quarry.

  They found the witchbreed trying to hide behind the wrecked colonnade of a demolished cloister. As Verletz walked the last few steps, the Dominion squad swiftly formed a four-point perimeter around the psyker. Unleashing crossing streams of righteous flame from their weapons, they boxed Xenobia Nox in. She was going nowhere without having the flesh burned from her bones. As the palatine got closer, she saw that at least one of Sister Superior Anatol’s bolts had found their mark: the witch had been clipped in the left knee. Unable to run, Xenobia Nox was scrabbling about the column for cover.

  Verletz approached with both bolt pistols up.

  ‘That won’t save you, mutant,’ she seethed above the flames. Firing off bolts alternately from each pistol, the palatine blasted the column to a stump, forcing Xenobia Nox to crawl this way and that, finding a stream of flame in her path in every direction. ‘Nothing can. You were once the Master of Mankind’s and God-Emperor willing, you shall be again. He has use for you, witchbreed. Though your flesh might be wretched, your inner light burns bright. Such spiritual sustenance has been seen fit for the Master’s table. He will feast on your wayward talents and drink deep in the fires of your soul.’

  As Emiliana Anatol came up behind, she handed her boltgun to one of her Dominion squad members.

  ‘Secure the prisoner,’ Verletz commanded, holstering her pistols. Her gauntlet returned to worrying the beads on her adamantium rosary. As a Sister provided a brief break in the streaming flame, Anatol was admitted to the fiery enclosure, chains and manacles jangling from her belt. The Sister Superior brought her power maul humming to life and pointed it at the psyker.

  ‘Submit,’ Anatol said, her modulated words thick with hatred.

  Xenobia Nox pulled back her ragged hood. Beneath was a bald, earless head and face as pale as alabaster. Her eyes were inky black and the mutant’s mouth was full of shark-like teeth. She snapped like a feral thing, an unintelligible stream of utterance flowing from her lips. It was certainly not a language the Sisters recognised.

  ‘I was hoping you would say that,’ the Sister Superior said. She swung the crackling maul down, smashing the psyker onto the ground. Blood ran down the side of her horrific features but the mutant pulsed with the resilience of the warp.

  The witch brought her head back up, spitting and seething like a thing possessed.

  A gruel of blood and spittle dribbled from her mouth. She looked up at Anatol with a heretic’s hatred. When Xenobia Nox opened her pale lips, it was her banshee’s shriek that proceeded from them. The sound had been terrible enough from a distance. Here, in the presence of the witch herself, the Sisters of Battle suffered as they never had before.

  The appalling sound passed straight through Adrianna Verletz. It reverberated through her plate. It shivered through her flesh and turned her bones to ice. The sound was abomination heard and felt. It shredded the nerves and curdled the soul. Verletz felt the rapid thud of her heart in her chest and her stomach flip. The Battle Sisters doubled over to retch, dropping their weapons to grab their heads with their gauntlets.

  The banshee scream seemed to go on forever. Over the vox-bead, Verletz could hear the Sisters from Fleur de Lys confirm the terrible sound from their position and Divine Imperative requesting an ill-timed update on the pursuit. Time passed with a terrible sluggishness. Verletz closed her eyes. The psyker’s shriek was everything. It scalded her ears. It burned on her thoughts like oil on water. It scorched her soul.

  When she opened her eyes again, Emiliana Anatol and the Dominion squad were on their knees. Verletz didn’t know how much time had passed but Xenobia Nox was back on her feet, starting to move. Blood dribbled from Verletz’s ears and streamed from her eyes like tears. Nearby, Sister Bernadette was suffering in a similar way, except rich red trails also leaked from her nose. She was retching blood now and holding her head with both gauntlets as though the psyker’s shriek might destroy her skull.

  Blinking blood, Verletz saw that Xenobia Nox was now limping towards her – the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice unable to do anything to stop her escaping.

  The witchbreed paused before Verletz and gave her the darkness of her eyes. Flaring her horrid nostrils in derision, the mutant hobbled on past the Battle Sister unchallenged.

  A righteous fury built up within Adrianna Verletz. She was furious both at herself and for her Emperor. Xenobia Nox was a blot upon humanity. She needed erasing. The palatine had promised the psyker to the Master of Mankind and she wouldn’t fail him. Not even if it cost the Battle Sister her own soul.

  Drifting her gauntlets down from the torment in her skull, Verletz let her armoured fingertips tap against the grips of her bolt pistols. She would not kill the psyker – no matter how tempting t
he prospect. Allowing her hand to reach down to her rosary beads, she snatched up the adamantium length in a fevered grip. Turning, the palatine launched the rosary around like a whip. The beads wrapped tightly about Xenobia Nox’s throat, stopping the psyker in her tracks. With a snarl on her cut lips, Verletz hauled the mutant back to her.

  The witch gagged. The terrible shriek died in her constricted throat as the heretic tore at the adamantium beads. Verletz held the loathsome creature to her – crushing the psyker against her blessed black plate as she wound the remaining length of the rosary beads about Xenobia Nox’s jaw and bald head, locking her fang-filled mouth shut.

  Verletz held her there for a moment. The silence was sweet. Like a salve for the soul, the palatine drank it in, savouring the absence of the psyker’s howl. About her, Emiliana Anatol and her Sisters Dominion got unsteadily to their feet, while through the murk of dust and darkness, the Sisters from Fleur de Lys arrived. They stared at their palatine, with her bloodshot eyes and flushed face.

  In her grasp, the psyker was shaking. Her oily black eyes had flipped over white while their lids trembled. At first the Sister of Battle thought that she had choked the witchbreed, but as the creature’s lips went to work silently on some desperate curse or incantation, Verletz felt the unpleasant sensation of psychic powers at work. She had experienced a similar spiritual chill when in the presence of astropaths, sending their messages across the expanse of the void. Within moments, it was over and the mutant’s eyes rolled back over black.

  With a shove of disgust, Verletz sent the mutant stumbling at the Battle Sisters.

  ‘Soulfuel,’ she told them. ‘For the God-Emperor’s pleasure. Take this witch back to the ship and keep her silent. I don’t want to hear another word out of her mouth.’

  Verletz’s report to Shipmaster Tyacke had been brief. After her Sisters had secured the prisoner, Xenobia Nox had been transported to the Black Ship Divine Imperative. Like a mighty cathedral, the immense cruiser never failed to make an impression upon the Battle Sister. The Divine Imperative was three years into a long tour of sectors bordering the galactic core, two of which Verletz had spent aboard. The Black Ship’s hull contained thousands of cheerless Adeptus Astra Telepathica personnel and the witchbreeds they collected as part of the Emperor’s tithe. The miserable psyker-stock were destined for Ancient Terra, to feed the Master of Mankind’s insatiable appetite and stoke the spiritual fire of the Astronomican. It was a holy duty and Verletz took pride in the fact that she was doing the Emperor’s good work.