Soulfuel Read online

  Once aboard, the witch had been taken by storm troopers of the 133rd Pontificals. Subjected to regular purity and incorruptibility tests, the storm troopers had responsibility for security aboard the Adeptus Astra Telepathica vessel. Bridled, chained and shot up with powerful tranquillisers by Sisters of the Order Hospitaller, the mutant was placed in psychically shielded containment within the mournful dungeon-decks of the Divine Imperative’s hull.

  As the ship broke orbit, Verletz accompanied the prisoner and her escort down through the decks. While the upper levels were a hive of activity and the cloister decks filled with devotional observance, the containment holds were a living hell. There the occlusion fields maintained by Adeptus Astra Telepathica psykers and metaphysical machineries that Verletz barely understood disrupted the prisoners’ abilities. Beyond the draining oppression of the occluding sphere, the dangerous witchbreeds suffered the constant intrusion of klaxons and bursts of blinding strobe light within the isolating darkness of their cells. Denied rest and sanity, it was impossible for the psykers to summon their powers. Disorientated by regular movement between holding cells and supplied with food and drink laced with heavy sedatives, the witchbreeds were kept docile and pliable.

  With Xenobia Nox secured in an isolation cell deep within the bowels of the Black Ship, Verletz made her way to the bridge.

  Tyacke, as always in the full black robes and regalia of his dour organisation, received the details on the command deck with his usual stoic indifference. He had problems of his own. After raids by renegade Space Marines out of the Maelstrom, tithes from Sanctus Shibboleth, Veritasium and Catharchia Mundi had been below quota. The shipmaster was now hoping for better numbers from Nullhaven, where there was an Imperial Navy presence and less likelihood of raids by Maelstrom Zone pirates. Nullhaven, however, was a long haul across an area of space perilously close to the warp storm. Tyacke had been forced to hold station and wait on the debris-strewn edge of the system due to bad immaterial weather reported by the Black Ship’s Navigator. This had not improved the shipmaster’s mood, now being both off schedule and under allocation.

  To make matters worse, the Divine Imperative had taken on a passenger at Veritasium. Lord Inquisitor Orsino Quant. Lords of the ordos quite often made use of Adeptus Astra Telepathica Black Ships to move between worlds and while it was agreed that Inquisitorial representatives might look over incarcerated psykers for potential recruits, the reality was that it was simply convenient.

  Fortunately, Quant didn’t maintain a large retinue but still saw fit to bother Shipmaster Tyacke with his presence on the command deck. Quant was very short for an inquisitor and while hunched with furs and his ordo robes, he appeared even shorter when stood next to Verletz and her Sisters. With a beard, short and grey, and a disarming smile, Quant seemed to have an easy manner, which was more than could be said for the shipmaster. The blue twinkle of the inquisitor’s bionic eye and a furrowed brow lent him the appearance of a jeweller, squinting at everything and assessing its worth. Beyond a short staff, he forwent obvious weaponry – although Verletz did notice that his hands were crowded with ornate rings that could have such miniature devices built into them. The rumour aboard ship was that Quant had dealings with the Adeptus Astartes and had recently been tasked with monitoring redemptive Chapters formerly involved in the Badab War. Verletz had a hard time imagining the inquisitor intimidating a Space Marine.

  Quant had, however, taken a keen interest in Xenobia Nox upon her incarceration on board the Divine Imperative and had pressed both Shipmaster Tyacke and Verletz for information about her. While routinely whispering to his bowing attendants, the inquisitor had been particularly interested in the strange episode the psyker experienced after the palatine had silenced her. After considerable thought, the inquisitor despatched his attendants to the astropathic blister chamber on the top deck, and returned to pacing the bridge.

  Some hours later, after blessings from the preachers on the cloister deck, Verletz was recalled with some urgency. Rune-bank servitors and dark-robed officers of the command deck were animated and extra storm troopers had been stationed on the bridge. Inquisitor Quant and Tyacke stood beside a long-range augur monitoring station.

  ‘Shipmaster Tyacke,’ the Battle Sister said as she arrived. He did not look pleased.

  ‘I need you to coordinate with the Pontificals,’ Tyacke told her, without taking his eyes off the rune-screen.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Verletz asked.

  Orsino Quant tapped a deck officer on the shoulder and pointed his stubby, ring-heavy fingers at the console rune-screen. ‘Bring it up on the lancet screens,’ he said.

  As the lancet screens crackled, the light grey orb of Sanctus Shibboleth and the Maelstrom-tinged void beyond were replaced with long-range pict-captures. Plastered across the screens were two different images. The quality was poor but Verletz could make out two piratical contingents converging on the Divine Imperative from different directions.

  Orsino Quant pointed with his staff up at a small flotilla of armed freighters and pirate raiders spreading out across the void.

  ‘Attack ships of Sargel the Sojourner,’ Quant said before jabbing the staff up at an Iconoclast-class destroyer running down on the Divine Imperative at ramming speed. ‘The Slaughterfest, cultship of the Jagged Oath and cannibal warband known as the Fleshmongers.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about traitors and renegades,’ the palatine said.

  ‘It is my business to know,’ Quant told her icily. ‘These pirates all take their orders from the Tyrant of Badab but operate in the Maelstrom Zone upon their own fell recognisance. The Fleshmongers sacked several star forts along the Phaestra Rift, dragging the living and the dead away to the slaughter decks on butcher’s hooks. Tales of Sargel’s deviancy are told across twelve sub-sectors.’

  ‘They fight for this Sargel?’ Verletz asked.

  ‘They fight for the Tyrant,’ Quant corrected her.

  Adrianna Verletz’s heart sank. While the Black Ship dare not risk a jump into the warp during such bad immaterial weather, the Red Corsairs rode the storm without fear. The monstrous Maelstrom was their home.

  ‘Can we send word for aid?’ Verletz asked.

  ‘I’ve sent word for reinforcements, but it will take time,’ the inquisitor said gravely. He tapped the deck officer on the shoulder. The lancet screens returned for forward orientation. On them Verletz could see Adeptus Ministorum monitors from the shrine world streaking ahead to meet the pirate threat. ‘The system ships and Shipmaster Tyacke here will do what they can. I will remain on the bridge and contact our reinforcements. Shipmaster Tyacke and I need you to take charge on the containment decks. You have your Sisters and the ship’s security forces. The enemy might simply be out for blood. They might be after the ship. They might want our cargo. We can’t let that happen.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Verletz. She had run down Xenobia Nox and the witchbreeds in the hold for her God-Emperor. They belonged to the Master of Mankind. Verletz went to leave. ‘Besides… they are not ours to give away.’

  Verletz didn’t have long to make preparations. Assembling her Sisters of Battle and the Pontificals on the cloister deck, she made a brief address. Standing in archways, before tapestries and altars, the Emperor’s servants cut a figure as solemn as the surrounding architecture. She had no words of glory for them. Life aboard a Black Ship was about service to the Emperor. It was grim work, not helped by their dungeon-like surroundings. The transported psykers and the measures taken to contain them created a perpetual aura of despair. Only the most resolute of the Emperor’s servants could endure such perpetual torment in his name and she told those gathered on the deck as much. She told them that many across the Imperium prided themselves on serving the Master of Mankind. Theirs, however, was a special service. Soulfuel gathered by their efforts and transported by their holy vessel went directly to the Emperor. Such labour reached far acros
s the Imperium as the guiding light of the Astronomican. It was as close to the God-Emperor as any might hope to come.

  Verletz asked Preacher Langella to conduct a blessing of the women and men pledging themselves to the defence of the Divine Imperative and of the weapons to be employed in such a venture. While Lieutenant Nugent and his Pontificals stood by in their black carapace and robes, their helm optics burning blue in the gloom of the cloister, their weaponry was blessed: hellguns and volleyguns, laid out on the deck with their battery backpacks. Slipping the packs on and priming the cabling on their rifles, they filed out to take their positions across the containment deck. They had their orders. They knew their duty.

  The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice knelt one by one before the preacher in their midnight plate and immaculate white vestments as Langella scattered them with blessed water. For her Battle Sisters, Verletz had ordered the armoury to outfit them with the heaviest weapons available: heavy flamers, bolters and multi-meltas. Against the renegade Space Marines of the Tyrant of Badab, they would need weaponry that could punch through the plate of an Adeptus Astartes warrior. Their belts weighed down with extra grenades and spare magazines for their bolt pistols, the Sisters left the deck under the eye of Sisters Superior Desiree and Anatol.

  While Emiliana Anatol’s breathing through the grille of her half-helm set a rhythm for orderly exit, Nastasia Desiree stopped Sisters to straighten their vestments and untangle belt feeds. From between the curtains of her grey bob, Desiree gave them the hardness of her eyes and the deep lines of her unsmiling face. As the last of the Sisters reported to their hold-points and gauntlets, Anatol and Desiree turned to their palatine.

  ‘The traitors try to rush us,’ Verletz said. ‘Overwhelm us. Overpower us. They will fail. You will ensure it. This is holy ground – blessed by good works carried out in the Emperor’s name. Traitors and renegades have no place here. Our blessed bolts and flame shall be the price of entry. Drive them back – and if you cannot, make them pay for every trespassing step. Let your plate be a wall forever standing and the flesh within an inviolable covenant, never broken. For what lies within these walls is only the Emperor’s to enjoy. It is a holy pact that neither you nor I can break. Fail not yourselves, your Sisterhood or the Master of Mankind.’

  ‘Yes, palatine,’ the pair answered.

  As they did so, Verletz heard the thunder of the Black Ship’s batteries as laser cannons rolled back on their rails in a broadside. That the palatine could hear gunfire from both starboard and port batteries was not a good sign. While the Black Ship’s powerful armament gave a good account of itself, enemy flotillas must have been closing in from both sides. A violent shudder passed through the Divine Imperative’s superstructure, and the Battle Sister stumbled forward. The Black Ship’s formidable shielding might be able to stand up to the broadsides of raiders and cultships but it would not be able to stop boarding torpedoes or suicidal ship-to-ship collisions at ramming speed.

  ‘It has started,’ she said to the Sisters. ‘Take your stations. Go.’

  The Sisters Superior jogged away, their plate clattering rhythmically as they went. Verletz had despatched Anatol to watch over Xenobia Nox with the last of her Sisters Dominion. The palatine’s orders were clear. Even if the renegades of Lufgt Huron were to reach the dangerous psyker, the Emperor’s soulfuel was to be denied them. Emiliana Anatol had orders to brain the witch with her power maul before she could be liberated. It was a grave duty and Verletz had entrusted it to the towering Anatol. Verletz and Sister Superior Desiree, however, were to coordinate the defence of the containment decks, the Sisters Retributor fighting to make sure it didn’t come to that.

  Klaxons erupted across the cloister deck.

  As the palatine jogged across, Langella draped the chains of his incense-streaming censers on a hook and grabbed the heavy blade of his Eviscerator chainsword.

  ‘Preacher,’ Verletz said. ‘With me.’

  Darkness. Smoke. Thunder. Bloody havoc spread down through the decks.

  Transhuman maniacs, the renegade Space Marines of the Tyrant were known for their merciless application of force. Bred for such boarding actions, the monsters swarmed various hangars and spread out from boarding torpedoes embedded in the Black Ship’s side. Their twisted minds were feverish and fearless, their warped bulk encased in desecrated plate. Like torrents of madness, their unstoppable advance swept through the decks and holds of the Divine Imperative. Adeptus Astra Telepathica crew and black-robed adepts died in their droves. They had number and determination, stoically holding sections and mobbing the advancing heralds of the Tyrant. They were nothing, however, before barbed chainblades and the flesh-mulching bark of renegade boltguns.

  On the containment decks, Verletz pledged to do better – for her Battle Sisters and her God-Emperor. Patching through to different holds and dungeon-decks, the palatine coordinated a bloody defence. Creed-thumping priests, silent storm troopers and Battle Sisters acting with cool resolve, carried through the insanity by their training and their faith. The renegades hit them from starboard and port, from every hangar, hatch and torpedo-rent breach. Bulkheads were locked off, corridors filled with smoke and the fat beams of hellguns warmed the air. Preachers buried eviscerating blades in crimson-plated monsters, while the labyrinthine passageways of the containment holds rang with the sharp crack of Godwyn-De’az-pattern boltguns, delivering absolution and death to the Tyrant’s heretics. The palatine’s forces were spread thin across the sections and it was all they could do to deny the Red Corsairs easy entry to the containment holds.

  Outside, Verletz could hear the excruciating sound of hulls scraping alongside one another, and could feel the knock and tremble of enemy vessels making contact with the Black Ship. The Divine Imperative’s formidable gunfire had done what it could. The closing pirate flotillas had run the gauntlet of the cruiser’s broadsides, individual raiders and cultships turned into shattered derelicts of glowing scrap. As the mayhem on the Black Ship’s decks testified, small pirate raiders laden with cultists and renegade Space Marine shock troops had successfully boarded the Black Ship and flooded the fat cruiser with armoured killers. Verletz had led a small contingent of Battle Sisters and storm troopers towards one of the Black Ship’s security hangars – a place where witchbreeds were admitted to the ship and processed. Now renegade Space Marines were trying to overrun the hangar and punch their way through to the containment sections.

  Just as the palatine thought their predicament couldn’t get any worse, she and her Sisters were thrown forward across the deck. Verletz steadied herself. There was a lull in the gunfire being exchanged ahead as both Battle Sisters and renegades were thrown from their aim by the impact.

  ‘Another raider?’ Sister Desiree asked.

  ‘Too big,’ Verletz replied. Whatever had slammed into the Black Ship was bigger than a Corsairs raiding ship. The palatine changed the channel on her vox-bead. ‘Inquisitor, what’s happening?’

  ‘We’ve been chased into an ambush,’ Inquisitor Quant told her. In the background, Verletz could hear the shipmaster roaring orders across the command deck. ‘Straight into the embrace of a third vessel. The Tyrant’s Claw.’

  ‘You know this vessel?’

  ‘Aye,’ Quant returned grimly. ‘I know it. It belonged to the Astral Claws but now it’s a flagship raider for the Red Corsairs. Lufgt Huron’s Third Captain will be in command – Nassial Voightek. Voightek is credited with destroying the gene-stocks of the Marines Errant on Vilamus. They call him the First Among Equals.’

  By the time the Battle Sisters arrived at the hangar deck, the renegades had breached the integrity field maintaining atmospheric pressure and were landing their barbaric attack craft inside the ship. Adeptus Astra Telepathica deck crew and enginseers were sealing the blast door to the hangar. The noise coming from the other side of the door suggested the Red Corsairs were butchering any Imperial security forces unlucky enough to hav
e been in the hangar beyond.

  ‘Open it!’ Verletz commanded. A single blast door was not going to stop the Tyrant’s monsters; they had to be purged from the ship. As the security bulkhead shuddered open, Sister Desiree and Lieutenant Nugent led the way through the anchored landers and cargo pallets with their forces. Outside, Verletz could see Red Corsairs fast-paced raiders, armed freighters and battle-scarred system ships in the void, all bearing the perverse sign of the Tyrant, running alongside the Black Ship. A small swarm of modified landers and cargo lighters were surging in towards the open hangar. They landed with wild abandon, skidding to a stop across the deck – their engines roaring. Smashing aside Adeptus Astra Telepathica security transports as they sparked to a halt, the crafts’ bay doors began to open.

  Already, Nugent’s Pontificals were assuming cover and lancing the battered, blood-red craft with supercharged beams from their hellguns. Verletz wasn’t about to wait for the renegades to establish a hold point. Running straight for the smoke-streaming attack craft, the palatine heard the boots of Sisters Retributor pounding across the deck behind. Snapping a pair of grenades from her belt, Verletz slid to a stop before the opening bay door of a modified cargo lighter. Inside she could see hordes of cultist soldiers – primed with their barbaric weapons, all bearing the cult scarification of vicious claw marks across their faces. As they howled at the sight of Verletz, the Sister of Battle tossed the grenades into the compartment.