LESSER EVILS

Tom Foster

As the lander cut through the last few layers of cloud, Lucan Vaughn checked his lasgun again.

Twenty years with a gun in my hand and I still don’t trust my weapons. A sudden blast of turbulence rocked the crew compartment, and his backpack thumped against his shoulders.

Nietzin, Vaughn’s second-in-command, had been standing by the door, watching their journey through the tiny window. As the turbulence shook them he staggered, staying upright with an effort. From his seat opposite Vaughn, Andus ‘Fane’ Garren laughed. Nietzin glanced at him, eyes bitter and hard. The engines rumbled around them.

Time to take control, Vaughn thought. He leaned round and pressed the intercom. ‘How long, Lao?’

‘Let’s see...’ Cornelius Lao sounded refined and bored. Vaughn knew it was a pose, picked up in his old career in a Navy fighter wing. ‘Just over ten minutes, I’d say.’

Vaughn closed the intercom and looked around the darkened cabin. ‘All right, ten minutes. Everyone check their gear and look ready. Anyone got any prayers to say, then now’s the last chance to say them.’

The flyer hit a fresh batch of turbulence and shuddered as if it were afraid. Opposite Vaughn, sitting next to Fane, Salia Tashac had screwed her eyes shut. There was a stripe of black soot smeared across the lids. Old habits die hard, Vaughn thought, his hands moving over his gun again. The Tallarn 43rd would probably have hanged Tash if they could catch her, but she still wore their warpaint. He wondered if she was praying or just bracing herself in case they fell out of the sky.

Vaughn unclipped his harness and stood up. He stepped to the door, and Nietzin leaned in to talk. The lieutenant was several inches taller than Vaughn, and his white hair brushed the roof. ‘All set?’ Vaughn asked.

Nietzin hefted the team’s plasma gun. ‘All set. Look, Lucan,’ he added, and the lines on his face seemed to deepen, ‘we’ve broken some laws before, but nothing like this.’

‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’ Vaughn glanced left, down the length of the cabin; Tash and Fane were not listening.

‘Nor did I.’ The ship rocked and Vaughn grabbed a strap hanging from the roof. It was all he could do not to fall on his comrade. ‘Not to begin with. But this is serious blasphemy, friend.’

‘Well,’ Vaughn said, ‘what do you want to do, go back and tell Harsek we were overcome by a sudden outbreak of mercy? You know I can’t do that.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ The older man paused. He seemed to realise that there was no point. The edge fell out of his voice. ‘I just wanted to say that I’ve got qualms.’

‘Me too. But what Harsek says, we do. It’s either us or them, you know that.’

‘It always is,’ Nietzin replied, his voice grim, and he drew back and checked the power dials on the side of his gun. ‘Never any other way.’

The intercom crackled. ‘One minute!’ Lao announced.

The flyer sank low, trembling. Through the window behind Nietzin’s shoulder, Vaughn saw the orange canyons and outcroppings of Rand XXI, and then towers and domes clinging to the rocks like spines on a monster’s back. As the flyer approached he made out individual buildings, then great stained-glass windows. At last he saw a round, landing pad, white as a plate, decorated with a huge fleur-de-lys. And then the flyer banked, twisted, and the legs struck the landing pad with a lurch that sent Vaughn reeling. The door dropped open in front of him and he cried, ‘Let’s move!’, and the strike team ran into the thin mountain air.

His boots hit the plascrete and suddenly he was in the open, ducking out from under the roaring engines of the flyer. Vaughn took in the fortress-priory before him, running along the ridge like a grey crest. In that same moment he saw the mountains in the distance, barren and red, and felt terribly exposed. Time to get to cover. He glanced back, saw the team behind him, and heard the engines start to rise into a roar.

At the far end of the landing pad, steps carved into the mountain led down towards the priory itself. A figure rose into view as it climbed the last few steps, robes and hair whipping in the breeze, the red bulk of a bolter held across an armoured chest.

A Sister of Battle. Vaughn was not sure he’d ever seen one before – at least, not at this range. She looked tougher than he’d expected, hard-eyed and callous. She was calling out something about landing clearance that she’d started to say on the steps, her voice raised above the engines and the wind.

‘You,’ Vaughn yelled, ‘Drop your weapon!’

It was pointless, of course. As soon as she saw them properly, the bolter was swinging up in her gauntleted hands, and as soon as she moved Vaughn’s men fired. Their guns were rigged for just this purpose, wired to hotshot power packs: a set of vicious cracks came from the right, and the Sister folded. She stood at the edge of the landing pad, doubled over. As Vaughn approached she looked up, and the blood running from her nose and mouth was shockingly red against her pale face. Then she fell onto the ground.

Vaughn reached the edge of the landing pad and looked down. It was a long climb on the stairs, and an even longer drop onto the mountainside. He’d never liked heights.

The dead woman’s armour had been polished until it shone like black marble. One of the lasgun shots had punched straight through her chest. The hole in her armour looked like a tiny stone thrown through a plate of tinted glass.

For a long moment Vaughn looked at her. Death had made her face as pale as a porcelain doll’s, the skin smooth and pallid as candle wax. There was a little prayer-scroll woven into her dark brown hair.

Then he but his boot against the dead woman’s hip and shoved her off the landing pad and into the abyss.

‘That’s a long way down,’ Fane said. He’d grown up in a hive city, where sunlight had been a rarity.

Vaughn ran onto the steps, and as he did the roar of the engines swelled up and Lao’s flyer heaved itself into the sky. The dirty white ship swung in the air, turned to the north and dropped out of sight behind the mountainside, following the canyons.

Vaughn began to climb down the steps, as quickly as he could without losing his balance. The thought of falling made him queasy, of bumping down a hundred hard stairs before dropping into the canyon. He heard his men hurry down after him, in a rattle of kit and armour plate.

Well, Vaughn thought, one thing’s for sure, there’s no going back now.

Two hundred steps so far. A slow fire was burning in his calf muscles. Behind him, Tash was the first to curse. Vaughn ignored her. As ever, he knew that it wasn’t her fault that she was hard to like.

The priory grew closer. He saw the details of the stained glass and the flapping banners. He made out the words ‘Imperator Deus’ in gilt lettering above the nearest pair of double doors.

By the saints, we’re exposed. A few bolter shells, one missile, and we’d be done for.

It wouldn’t even have to hit them, he realised. The force from a frag shell would knock the whole team over the edge. Despite the ache in his legs, he sped up.

As he ran Vaughn took out his monocular and studied the side of the priory. He wondered how the Sisters of Battle brought in their supplies: they wouldn’t make their own armaments, surely. Perhaps there was another landing pad, one he hadn’t been briefed about. That didn’t bode well. Or perhaps the Sisters carried all their gear down these stairs – backbreaking work, even if you didn’t fall into the canyon below. They’d probably think it was good for the soul.

The team kept up a good pace, even Nietzin. ‘You need me to carry you, old man?’ Fane demanded. Nietzin puffed out a curse in response. Vaughn’s gun bumped against his side.

As they approached the fortress, it occurred to Vaughn that he really didn’t know much about the Sisterhood at all. His knowledge was limited to awed rumours, a couple of mission briefings, and some dirty, heretical jokes he’d picked up in the Guard, the sort of thing that would get you into serious trouble with the commissar. He had no idea what to expect. He remembered his old company commander’s adage: When you don’t know the enemy, go in hard. You’ll either terrify them into surrender, or–

Or you’ll die serving the Emperor. Great.

‘Come on, people, pick it up!’ Vaughn snarled over his shoulder, and he quickened the pace once more.

If Harsek’s information was right – and Vaughn had his doubts about that – it would be ten standard minutes before anyone checked the landing pad. He visualised the little diagram, sketched with a blunt pencil on scrap paper like most of the best battle plans he’d made. To the east was the main body of the priory, the buildings rising in sanctity as they rose in height: domitarium, then scholarium and training chambers, and finally the dome of the Chapel Santissimus on the peak of the ridge. To the left, the lower buildings squatted on the rock: the refectorium, storehouses and hospital, where the less important matters of the body could be taken care of, overshadowed by the buildings of the soul.

The stairs flattened out. Together the team ran over a stone bridge broad enough to take a Baneblade tank, a sanctified banner flapping at either end. There were skulls on the banner poles, with letters scrimshawed into the bone. Vaughn didn’t stop to see whether they were the skulls of heretics or saints.

The building before them was grey stone, quarried off-world and barely decorated. A path ran around the edge, lashed by wind, its handrails little more than metal spikes linked by old rope. Vaughn jogged into its shadow, and the team followed him. His breath was still tight from running, but his body seemed to sigh. They were out of view of the main buildings now. It should be a bit further down the wall, he thought, remembering his sketch. Just a bit further – please, let it be here...

There it was. A metre across, hardly more than a bulkhead adorned with a plain fleur-de-lys of tarnished steel, the edges brushed shiny silver by generations of howling wind. Beside the door, to Vaughn’s relief, was a little keypad under a metal skull. The skull’s left eye shone red.

He looked back at Nietzin. ‘You know what to do,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘Fane, Tash, watch the sides.’

The older man took a plain grey data-slate from his thigh pocket. Nietzin turned it over in his hands, his lips moving. Then he leaned in and pressed the slate to the keypad. Slowly, he drew it down the lock.

Nothing happened. Vaughn checked his watch. By now, according to Harsek’s information, the guard from the landing pad ought to be checking back in at the dormitarium. Any moment now, the Sisters of Battle would begin to wonder where she had gone.

With a loud click, the skull’s red left eye went dead. Its right eye flared into bright green life. The door slid back, and they were looking into a tiny lift, just big enough to hold four men.

The lift shuddered and rattled as it descended, as if it had detected the presence of intruders and was trying to shake them out. Vaughn stood pressed against Nietzin, with Fane on his left and his lasgun held up beside his head as if presenting arms on parade. It occurred to him that if the lift jolted hard enough, the gun would probably go off and blast his ear away. These things were custom models, bought by Harsek’s dealer through some complex, back-alley arrangement: still, they couldn’t be much less reliable than the Departmento Munitorium versions he’d hefted back in the Guard.

‘We’ll come out in the storerooms,’ Vaughn said. ‘Once the lift stops, blast the controls and seal the doors shut. We’ll take the access stairs on the way back. There shouldn’t be anyone around – nobody to set off the alarms, that is. Then we make our way to the main cogitator. Once the main cogitator is out, we’ll head down to the cells. The cells will have powered doors – besides, each section of this place is probably airlocked. The last thing we need are the Sisters trapping us.’

And who knows what we’ll find waiting for us down there?

They nodded.

Fane said, ‘Seal off the sector, then make it ours. Like how we used to do it in the hive.’ His skin had always had a pallid, greenish tint, the result of years of living off synthetic food in a warren of bad light and polluted air. The weak red glow of the lift made him almost spectral.

The lift banged to a stop, shaking them against one another. Tash banged into Fane’s breastplate and she muttered a curse in some Tallarn dialect.

‘Keep sharp,’ Vaughn warned, and he hit the door button.

The door rumbled open and the team jabbed their guns into the aperture. Wordlessly, they scurried into the room, fanning out to cover the entire hall. Tash smashed the lift controls with her gun-butt and ran to catch up with the others.

The room was large, high-ceilinged, functional rather than sanctified. The metal walls looked scuffed and greasy. Four huge hoppers hung down from the roof, each three times Vaughn’s height. Only a glowing holo-image in an alcove looked more than just industrial. It showed a saint that Vaughn didn’t recognise giving a blessing, a power sword in her free hand.

They crept across the room, past the hoppers. No doubt they were for preserved grain or the like: even the pious had to eat sometime. The holographic saint cycled through her program, giving the same looped blessing as they hurried past, as if trying to mime a warning.

As they reached the door on the far side, Vaughn heard boots. He made a quick fist to halt the team, and they rushed to the door, two to each side. Vaughn glanced at Nietzin. Very quietly, the older man crouched down, laid his plasma gun on the floor and drew his knife. The sound of the boots rose, ringing on the metal floor, and a figure stepped into the room.

It was a girl, perhaps seventeen. She wore a wide-sleeved robe like a farm-worker’s smock, the hood down and the sleeves rolled up and pinned for practicality. She walked straight past them, muttering to herself as if trying to remember something.

She seemed extremely young to Vaughn – no, he realised, it was not her age as such, but the fact that she didn’t look very tough at all. He glanced left. Nietzin hadn’t moved.

Across the doorway, Fane waved his hand. Tash caught Vaughn’s eye and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask, Well, what now?

Fane pulled his knife. Vaughn raised his gun, took two long steps across the room and brought the butt down on the novice’s head.

She made a small Oof! sound from the air being knocked out of her. The girl dropped like a body cut down from a gallows.

‘Watch the door,’ Vaughn said. He crouched down and put his hand to the novice’s head. There was a little blood there, but no serious wound. He was surprised at how relieved he felt. When he stood up, Nietzin was looking at him.

‘Knocked out,’ Vaughn said, and Nietzin nodded as he sheathed his knife.

‘That was soft, old man,’ Fane said quietly. ‘You get soft, and then you get slow. You get slow, and then you get dead. Remember that.’

Nietzin stepped back. He had a family of his own somewhere, Vaughn knew. Harsek had rescued them from the same prison camp as Nietzin, making the old soldier his for life.

‘Tash?’ Vaughn said.

‘Sir?’

‘Gag her. Get her into the shadows. Come on, move!’

Tash pulled a couple of restraining ties from her pack. She looked only slightly older than the woman on the floor. Nietzin stooped to help her move the novice. Vaughn pulled his map out of his pocket.

‘Soft,’ Fane said as Tash and Nietzin laid the novice down.

‘If I want your opinion, I’ll let you know,’ Nietzin replied. ‘Let’s go.’

Below the storerooms, in a tiny chapel of its own, they found the cogitator. Saints and martyrs glowered down from the walls as if challenging the machine to betray them: there was no great love between the Sisters of Battle and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose cog-and-skull symbol stood out on the control panel.

‘You know how to make it work for us?’ Vaughn asked.

Nietzin smiled. A candelabra hanging down from the roof brushed his ruff of white hair as he approached the controls. He set his pack down and took out a small portable terminal, sheathed in red leather like an old book. ‘Data-djinn.’ He patted the terminal.

‘One of Harsek’s finest, I’m sure.’

Nietzin pushed wires into their ports. He mouthed a quick prayer. ‘And a little of mine. Forgive my less than total trust. Now, the machine spirits need to link...’

Vaughn stepped back and watched the chapel door. Nietzin knew his tech: it was detailed inquiry into old heretech that had got him sent to a penal colony in the first place. That and the things he’d started teaching his staff, ideas about free thought he’d learned from ancient, censored texts. But the old man knew his stuff. He’d soon have the facility under their–

A siren howled in the room above. Three pairs of eyes flicked to the roof. ‘Throne!’ Fane spat. The sound pumped on and on, a steady blast of sound.

Tash checked the settings on her gun. ‘That’s not good.’

‘That wasn’t me!’ Nietzin called over his shoulder. ‘We’re still making the connection. I just need a little while longer.’

‘You don’t have it!’ Vaughn snapped back. They know we’re here. They must have picked up the flyer, sensed us somehow. Maybe the lift was alarmed.

The siren roared on, muffled but furious, as if some monster was raging in the room above.

‘We’re in,’ Nietzin called. ‘The link’s sealing all emergency doors, cutting primary power to the defence lasers. It’s sending a message reporting fire in the dormitarium. That ought to confuse them. Right,’ he announced, pulling the terminal away, ‘The airlock to the cells is open.’ Nietzin pulled the plasma gun into his hands. If the siren bothered him, he didn’t show it.

Vaughn nodded. ‘Let’s go get our girl.’

They hurried down two flights of emergency stairs. As Vaughn stepped out, a figure leaned around a buttress, bolter in hand, and let rip.

The wall beside him cracked and as he dropped the shells detonated, blasting chunks out of the rockcrete. He fired, hit the woman’s shoulder and saw the beam ricochet off her polished armour. Something roared behind him, and a pellet of superheated plasma blew straight through the Battle Sister. She fell dead. No amount of faith could override a wound like that.

A narrow window let a slit of sunlight into the corridor. Vaughn stepped over, tilted his head and saw little dark figures spilling out of the buildings further up the ridge. Voices carried on the wind. They must have caught the Sisters at morning prayers, for most of them were running out of the domed chapter-house at the far end of the complex.

‘We’ll use the connecting tunnels.’ It’ll be murder, he thought, but preferable to what’s outside. He thought of the narrow walkways on the mountainside, the long drop into the canyon if he slipped, and reflected that he’d rather take a bolter round to the chest than fall into the abyss.

Together they ran into another storeroom. A hulking figure lurched out of the shadow, metal arms raised. Vaughn put three las-shots through its chest, and as it dropped he saw that it was just a menial servitor. They left it lying on its back, broken but still moving. Its legs still paced the air like a fallen clockwork toy, its bloodless head turning from side to side.

Vaughn stopped and looked around the corner. A vaulted corridor had been carved into the rock, twice his height and seemingly endless. He recalled the map and Harsek’s briefing. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The Custodium Penetentia is down here. Tash, have you got the things?’

She nodded. ‘Medicae’s all ready, sir.’

‘Good.’ He peeked around the corner again. Fifty yards up the corridor, a Sister ran from one side to the other, her robes flapping behind her. ‘This is going to get nasty,’ he said. ‘Follow me and keep going. And if you can avoid being taken alive...’

Fane loaded a fresh power pack.

‘Right.’ Vaughn took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go!’

He ran out. bent over to present a smaller target. Vaughn reached the far wall and threw his back against it as gunfire roared down the passageway. He raised his gun and sent half a dozen las-rounds back in return, hardly bothering to aim. A tapestry fell from the wall, smouldering. ‘Iconoclast!’ a woman screamed over the gunfire. ‘Blasphemer!’

The vaults stood out slightly from the wall at the base. They gave about twelve centimetres’ worth of cover. The team worked their way forward, each firing across the corridor to pin the Sisters back up the corridor. The air was a lattice of bolter shells and searing hot beams. One of the Battle Sisters fell into the corridor clutching her gut and was dragged into cover by the ankles, howling as las-shots burned the floor around her.

Vaughn pointed. Ten metres further up, a doorway lead off to the right. ‘Down there!’

Tash was first. She sprinted out, weaving as she ran, and Fane and Nietzin covered her way with suppressing fire. Vaughn crept forward until he was nearly opposite the doorway, then leaped. He landed awkwardly, rolled and was inside.

Tash grinned at him. She was holding a grenade. She leaned around the doorway and hurled it back into the corridor. There was a loud, echoing bang. Plaster filled the corridor. Vaughn glimpsed a Sister carrying some huge gun, a heavy bolter perhaps, stumbling from the force of the explosion. Nietzin ran across the corridor and inside. Fane ducked in after him.

The room was little more than a landing over a set of stairs. They ran down the staircase into a bare, whitewashed room. A monitor unit stood at one end. Half a dozen screens flickered over the console, showing the cells of the penetentia.

‘You’re bleeding, old man,’ Fane said.

Nietzin ran a hand across his forehead. ‘A stone chip must’ve caught me. I’m all right.’

Tash was at the far end of the room, before a massive door. ‘Problem,’ she said, turning. ‘Bad problem.’

‘Like we didn’t have any before,’ Fane said.

‘The door to the cells is code-locked. We can’t get in.’

Nietzin cursed. ‘It must run off a different system to the main controls. Damn it!’

Vaughn glanced at the stairs. It would be a matter of seconds before the Sisters gathered their forces and resumed the attack. ‘Well,’ he snapped, ‘can’t you make it open?’

‘I’ll have to,’ Nietzin replied. ‘Otherwise we’re trusting on the Emperor to send us a miracle.’ His expression told Vaughn how likely he thought that would be.

There was sudden noise on the staircase. Tash ducked into the stairwell, and the flash of her lasgun turned the stairs into a blaze of strobing light. A voice cried out and an armoured body crashed against the wall.

‘There’s a load of them,’ Tash said. ‘It looks like they’ll – grenade!’

Something small and cylindrical bounced hissing down the stairs. Tash lunged, grabbed it, lobbed the cylinder back up the stairs and threw herself onto the ground. Vaughn ducked, raising his plated forearms across his face – and nothing happened.

Tash got up, blinking. Vaughn opened his eyes and saw a cloud of thick grey smoke spilling down the stairs. He smelt burning chemicals tinged with incense. The stuff seemed to clog his nose and mouth. ‘Smoke!’

He yanked his rebreather up, shoved it over his mouth. He saw Tash stumble back, retching as she pulled her mask on.

A buzzing, ripping sound came from above. Boots clattered on metal stairs. A Sister of Battle charged through the smoke like some furious spirit, holding a long metal shield in front of her. Nietzin’s plasma gun blasted straight through shield and woman, and the hail of fire from Fane’s lasgun tore the soldier behind her apart. Then a great bull of a woman, almost Nietzin’s height and far broader, rushed them. A brazier on her backpack threw coals out behind her; inscribed skulls hung around her neck. In her hands was a roaring chainsword more than a metre long.

‘Die!’ she bellowed. Fane leaped back, lasgun forgotten, grabbing for his lucky pistol. Nietzin peered down the plasma gun, struggling to get a sight.

‘Die, filth!’

The sword was too big for the room, perhaps too big even for her. She swung the blade as if to hurl it away, and Vaughn ducked low and the sword whipped over his head, smashing out half the monitor screens in a shower of sparks. The shock jarred the woman’s arms. She staggered back, swinging the weapon up like a fisherman hauling in a net. Tash dropped and rolled out of the way, and as the Battle Sister swung her ponderous weapon, Nietzin fired.

He missed her. The plasma shot caught the chainsword halfway down the blade and blew it apart. Fragments tore across the room like shrapnel. Fane dived onto the floor. Like a thrashing snake, the chain whipped through the air, hit the wall, flicked back and struck its owner in the thigh. She bellowed, dropped and Fane pounced on her.

The room was almost silent then. Fane looked up. His pistol, an ornate, flashing thing worthy of a hive-gangster, was pressed against the woman’s head.

‘You want me to kill her?’ Fane’s rebreather distorted his voice.

Beneath him, the woman struggled and gasped. Her own mask had fallen down, but she seemed at least partly immune to the gas. She was muttering between her teeth, snarling out some catechism that Vaughn couldn’t understand.

She didn’t look like any soldier he’d ever known. Back in the Guard, he had encountered occasional commissars with the rabid look that she now wore, like an enraged animal caught behind bars. But not many of them. The Sisters knew how to fight, he thought – they were experts – but they made him think more of lunatics than soldiers.

‘Not yet,’ he replied. He pulled his rebreather down. ‘We’ve got the prioress!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘Stay back or we’ll kill her!’

The woman on the ground managed to control herself enough to speak. ‘I have no fear of dying,’ she proclaimed. Her voice was deep and loud, a preacher’s voice. ‘The Emperor shall shield me!’

It was the prioress herself. Vaughn glanced at the doorway. Tash was watching the stairs. A voice, surprisingly high and feminine, called down, ‘Touch the prioress and you’ll die!’

‘Tash?’ Vaughn said, ‘Throw me the cuffs.’

He looked down at the prioress. ‘Now,’ he said, snapping a pair of excruciators closed over her wrists, ‘it’s time to act like a martyr and endure.’

She was silent for a moment. All the rage seemed to have gone out of her. Perhaps, Vaughn thought, she was gearing herself not to dish out pain, but to receive it silently. ‘I did not expect to be taken alive,’ she said.

Fane shoved the barrel of his pistol into the flesh of her thick neck, and she pulled away from him; as much from his leering face than his gun. ‘Woman, who cares what you think? If I pull this trigger, your brain will be so much red mist, understand? All of your holy talk, it’s all the same to me. You don’t become a martyr unless you’re dead.’

‘Leave it,’ Vaughn said. He met the ex-ganger’s eyes for a moment, and there was something in them beyond casual viciousness and amusement in snuffing out life. For a moment Vaughn wondered if Fane had some deeper argument with the Ecclesiarchy. Whatever it was, it was getting in the way of the job. ‘Fane. I said leave her be.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Fane replied, making it sound a threat. He holstered the pistol and stood up. ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you, holy or not.’

The prioress looked back at him as if he was not quite human. ‘You’ll burn,’ she replied, and the calm in her voice worried Vaughn more than her anger.

‘Go and help Tash cover the stairs,’ Vaughn said. ‘Well, what’re you waiting for?’

‘Right,’ Fane said. He sounded disgusted at having to obey.

Tash waited by the stairs, crouched down to get a better view. She would have looked sullen and morose even without the black soot across her eyes. She looked round, met Vaughn’s glance, then scuttled over as Fane took her place. Tash ducked down beside the prioress, tiny next to her armoured bulk, and reached into her pack.

‘Keep this woman away from me,’ the prioress declared. ‘She is... tainted.’

‘Sedative,’ Tash replied, filling a syringe. ‘This won’t hurt you, but it’ll slow you down.’ She pushed the syringe into the prioress’ neck. The woman simply glared at her, as if challenging her to do worse. ‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Tash added, ‘I don’t like you either.’

Vaughn looked at the prioress. ‘We need you to open the doors,’ he said.

The prioress shook her head. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ she replied. ‘What’s down there in the cells has to stay here. I suppose you’re looking for treasure,’ she added. ‘Relics to sell to some seedy prelate, or to melt down for gems. I can tell you that what’s down there won’t get you rich, that’s for sure. You’ll be lucky if she only kills you.’

‘A possible emergent psyker,’ Vaughn replied. ‘I know.’

‘You know?’ The prioress glared at Vaughn, as if her stare could burn him. ‘And you came to liberate her? She’s open to the warp. If a daemon was to possess her – Thor protect us–’ Understanding crept across her face. ‘You’re cultists, aren’t you? Servants of the Ruinous Powers.’ As best as she could with her wrists tied, she made the sign of the aquila across her chest. ‘Salvate me, Imperator.’

‘No. That’s not us.’ The accusation stung Vaughn. He knew about the renegades on Tranch and the Siege of Vraks, about the murders and rituals they were said to have carried out. The idea of being mistaken for such creatures disturbed him. ‘Listen to me. We’re not cultists and we’re not traitors. But we’re taking her with us, understand? I don’t care how much that seems like sacrilege to you. Once we’re gone you can atone for losing her all you need. But she comes with us, and that’s that.’ Vaughn drew his bolt pistol. ‘Get the doors open. Now.’

For a moment she looked uncertain, and then a sort of hard calm came over her features. ‘No.’

‘I’m warning you–’

‘You’ll get nothing.’ She raised her chin, as if she was about to spit. ‘You can do with me as you want. I belong to the Master of Mankind. Better that I should die a thousand times than let you in there. In the name of the saints, I shall endure as Lord Thor endured the agonies of Vandire–’

‘Hey!’

They looked round. The prioress stopped in mid-rant, like a broken vox-caster. For once, Nietzin was smiling.

‘Ladies, gentlemen: one miracle,’ he said, and the door to the cells slid open.

Sister Cerra, 22, entered the Sisterhood at 14. Completed Novice and Cantus stages, in the process of Constantia training in preparation to become a full Sister.

Vaughn marched down the dark corridor, turning the words over in his mind. Down here, with the cells and rats, you needed something else to think about.

Reports of minor psychic phenomena towards end of Cantus training. Suspected psychic anomalies intensified over past year: four months ago, removed for spiritual reclamation and purgation of the soul.

The walls were rough and damp, the air clammy. At his side Nietzin, who knew more about the Emperor’s penal system than Vaughn, looked tired and grim.

Four months down here. I’d rather be shot.

Chanting came from ahead. The low drone made Vaughn’s skin prickle. He checked his gun without breaking stride, then glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Fane shoved the prioress along. Despite the shot of pacifier serum that Tash had given her, she seemed hardly less alert than before. No doubt about it, the Sisters of Battle were tough.

‘This is not for you,’ she said. ‘You should not look upon our work here.’

‘Shut up.’ Vaughn stopped before a broad door. The view-slit was padlocked shut, sealed with a prayer-text and a red lump of wax.

Tash came forward to the door, tugging her medical bag into her hands. Vaughn glanced at Nietzin, and nodded.

The big man kicked the door as if to stamp it down. It burst open and Vaughn ran in, gun up. ‘Nobody move!’ he shouted, and he stopped, horrified.

A figure stood at the far side of the room. It wore a loose white gown, the arms raised like wings. The head lolled: the hair was cropped. There were symbols painted onto her scalp in what looked like blood. Two hooded figures knelt before the girl: one read from a book, the other swung a small censer as she chanted. Neither looked round.

Vaughn stared at the scene for a moment, taking in details. The room reeked of incense. He saw that the girl’s arms were raised by chains; that her skin was pale and raw; that the wall on the left was covered in a mass of parchments. Devices hung from pegs on the wall: whips; saws; long pins attached to sacred parchments; a thing like a mixture of a stylus and soldering-iron; and other items that, even after years in the worst parts of the Imperial Guard, Vaughn had never seen before.

One of the robed figures started to rise.

‘I said don’t move!’ Vaughn yelled.

Nietzin blasted the first chanter. Superheated blood spattered the wall, hissing on the parchments. The second robed figure took a step backwards. The older man sidestepped, so as not to risk hitting the girl. Then he blew the second chanter’s head into steam. The censer clattered on the stone floor.

‘Torturers,’ Nietzin said, as if that explained everything.

‘It’s a ritual, you fool,’ the prioress spat. Vaughn could see the effort in her face, fighting down the effects of the sedative. ‘Her powers have to be locked inside her to stop them getting out – sealed with fire. A creature like that draws the warp. The right sigils need to be cut into the flesh, to trap the power of the warp inside–’

‘That’s enough,’ Vaughn said. ‘Get her down.’

Tash hurried past, syringe in hand, and sank it into the girl’s neck. Then she started to help Nietzin unfasten the chains.

‘I called it in,’ Nietzin said. ‘Ten minutes to extraction.’

Nobody moved in the corridor. ‘Careful,’ Vaughn said. ‘Careful...’

He crept back down the passage, his eyes flicking from wall to wall. Nobody stood behind the buttresses, waiting for the moment to attack. They can’t have gone, he thought. The Sisters of Battle would never give up like that.

Tash followed, then Nietzin, watching the two prisoners. A dose of torpor had rendered Sister Calla drowsy and confused, but at least compliant. If she did have psychic powers, she didn’t show them. Saints be praised for that, Vaughn thought. He glanced back as they hurried down the corridor. The prioress glared at him through a haze of drugs like a furious drunk.

As they drew near to the cogitator-chapel, a set of harsh metallic coughs broke the air, rising into a single, massed roar. Fane yelled, ‘Chainswords!’

A figure dashed around the corner, hardly armoured, only half-clothed, waving a whirling blade over its head. Smoke belched from the weapon’s exhausts. A voice screamed from behind a mask of parchments wrapped bandage-styled over the face.

Tash shot her dead, three las-blasts straight through the chest. As the Sister fell, her saw nicked her unarmoured leg and threw gore across the wall. More devotees ran out, whirling chainswords and yelling praises and threats, and Vaughn’s men cut them down.

Someone howled behind him. He spun round, expecting a trap, and saw the prioress leap at Sister Cerra. Even half-drugged, her hands tied, the prioress could fight. Cerra was down in a second, clubbed by two heavy fists. The prioress locked her thumbs on Cerra’s windpipe.

Vaughn didn’t hesitate. He emptied half his gun’s power pack into the prioress’ side.

He turned and fired down the corridor, covering Nietzin as he reloaded. Someone screamed and fell by the chapel doorway. A novice armed with an autogun leaned around one of the buttresses. Fane snatched his pistol from his belt, raised it and aimed in one motion and put four rounds into her chest.

The corridor was suddenly quiet, full of smoke and blood. Nietzin hauled Cerra to her feet. ‘Quickly,’ Vaughn said, and they picked their way between the bodies, towards the stairs. One of the Sisters, hit in the leg, was slowly crawling towards her gun. Vaughn kicked it out of reach.

The prioress lay on her back behind them, dead eyes staring upward. She had joined the long list of martyrs of the Imperium.

The lift was fast, but it was too much of a risk. They took the access stairs instead. It was hard, slow going. Vaughn’s knees soon ached from climbing. Their boots seemed to ring out an invitation to be ambushed on the metal stairs. Sister Cerra staggered beside Tash, a thin strand of drool hanging out of her mouth, until Fane, muttering about having to do the hard work, grabbed Cerra and hauled her along after him, half-carrying her up the stairs. Nietzin paused, puffing, met Fane’s eyes and started up again before the inevitable mockery began. They kept on, covering the way forward and the stairs behind, winding their way towards the surface. ‘Come on,’ Vaughn snapped, ‘Come on!’

He tried to remember how many Sisters the briefing had said there would be. By now, everyone capable of bearing arms would have been called in to fight. Surely there couldn’t be many more power-armoured Sisters. They’ll be waiting, he thought. It’s what I’d do: set a trap. Somewhere between here and the landing pad...

At last the stairs ended. They looked out onto a small hall, empty except for a door on the far side. Vaughn tore it open, Nietzin covering him, and they stepped out into fresh air and strong wind.

They crept down the side of the building. Vaughn glanced around the corner. The landing pad was empty. Vaughn peered towards the chapel through his monocular and saw small dark figures moving down the ridge; some robed, some armoured. He saw staves, censers, heavy bolters and meltaguns. The whole damned priory had turned out to fight.

The moment we step out, we’re dead.

The landing pad was wide open, and covered by a dozen big guns. For a moment he wondered if the flyer would turn up to rescue them at all.

Thrusters roared beneath him. The flyer rose up beside them, its engines setting the ropes on the handrail flapping wildly. A hatch dropped open in the flyer’s battered flank, and Lao’s voice came droning out of the speakers mounted under the wings.

‘Climb in – come on, hurry up! If you think I’m landing here you must be bloody joking.’

The flyer tore up through the sky. Vaughn watched the atmosphere thin out and darken as they reached its upper limit. Flames licked at the window as the ship left Rand XXI behind for good.

He looked over at Tash. As team medic, she was sitting beside the girl they had rescued, monitoring her status with a device somewhere between a narthecium and a psi-tracker. The novice herself sat with her mouth slightly open, gazing at a point behind Vaughn’s head. She looked like a doll, or a broken servitor.

Sister Cerra. Vaughn wondered if that was her original name: a lot of the Sisters of Battle changed their names when they joined the Adepta Sororitas. He felt too tired to care.

‘Watch her,’ he said. ‘Wake me up if anything changes.’ Then Vaughn rested his head on the wall, and the rumble of the engines coaxed him into sleep.

The others woke him up in the docking bay. The Solar Tradewind still looked like a merchantman inside. In truth, it was something between a Q-ship and a research vessel. Aching, Vaughn unbuckled himself and followed the others down into the bay.

Petarmus waited for him. His clothes were creased and his hair ruffled, as if it was he who had only just woken. He was Vaughn’s equal and opposite, the leader of Inquisitor Harsek’s other team of acolytes, the one the crewmen of the Tradewind called the left hand. The left hand watches the right, Vaughn thought, as a pair of medics wheeled a stretcher into the bay.

‘Welcome back,’ Petarmus said. ‘Good to see you’re alive.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You can tell your team they’ve got six hours. There’s a crate of amasec in the mess.’

‘I’ll let them know.’

‘Lord Harsek wants to see you in an hour. He says to make yourself presentable first.’

‘I will.’

Petarmus nodded. ‘He’s up in his garden, tending the spinethorns or whatever he does up there.’ Vaughn made to leave. ’Good work on getting out alive, by the way. There’s not many that cross the Sisters and walk away.’

Vaughn checked in his gear, washed, changed his clothes and slept for twenty minutes in his quarters. He sat on his bed and looked the room over. It didn’t seem like much for fifteen years of military service, of one sort or another. Travel the galaxy, serve the Throne. I could have missed the Guard tithe, worked out my time in a weapons factory instead of ending up here. Still, I did do something worthwhile; for once, I saved a life. If I’d have left her down there, she’d be dead by now; staked out and burned as a witch when the exorcism failed to take hold. For once, there had been no balancing out, no trading of a few lives to save many more. He had done the right thing, without doubt.

He walked down the corridor, to the mess room.

‘Hey, Vaughn,’ Fane said, working at the bottle top of an amasec flask with his knife, ‘Vaughn!’

‘What?’

‘Guess what I prayed for last night. Go on, guess.’

Vaughn shrugged. ‘The good grace to keep your mouth shut.’

‘I prayed for the saints to send me to a planet full of women. And you know what? I got what I asked for! The saints have a sense of humour, that’s for sure!’

Vaughn was surprised how much Fane’s blasphemy angered him. Nietzin shook his head and muttered something about people getting what they asked for.

Fane was in the first stage of drunkenness. Later on, he’d be wildly pious, ready to fight anyone he suspected of doubting the sanctity of the Blessed Quivvar Nog. Then he’d pass out. He might be trash, Vaughn thought, but at least he was predictable.

Vaughn caught the lift up to the main garden. The servitors knew all of Harsek’s acolytes by sight, but they still scanned his iris. The lift carried Vaughn away from his men, into Harsek’s private domain. Gears ground under him, until the lift stopped smoothly and the doors rattled apart.

He stood at the edge of a huge, domed room. The ceiling glowed with turquoise light. Vaughn walked into warm air alive with the chirruping of alien insects. Xenos plants covered the ceiling, crawled up the walls towards the dome. A floater-seed as big as Vaughn’s head bobbed past.

He walked in carefully. The garden was beautiful, at a distance. Close up, he saw poisonous plants, strangling vines and worse: Catachan brainleaves, spikers, even a massive creeper-tree tethered to the side of the dome. As it felt Vaughn’s footsteps it flexed its roots like a thug cracking his knuckles.

In the centre of the garden stood a bespectacled old man . He came towards Vaughn with a smile on his face, wearing a plain brown robe. Inquisitor Harsek, whose word had burned entire worlds, had no great aura of power. There was nothing obviously sinister about him, but as ever, Vaughn fought down the need to retreat, the need to hide from Harsek’s calm, knowing eyes. ‘You’ve done an excellent job,’ Harsek said.

Vaughn did not relax. He bowed, quickly and formally. ‘Thank you, my lord. My men did well.’

‘No need for formality,’ Harsek replied. ‘Or false modesty. This girl is ours now. Thank you.’

‘Will they cure her?’ Vaughn asked. No doubt, he thought, Harsek would have his men probe around in Cerra’s mind, digging out whatever they required in furtherance of their master’s plans. Then, once they acquired what they needed and made the rest of her safe, they would dump her on one of the more stable-minded civilised worlds, to eke out a safe, boring existence with a trillion other nobodies. That was much the way Vaughn himself hoped to end up, once his service for the Inquisition was done: comfortably anonymous, a billion kilometres from here. After all, he reflected, if they had wanted Cerra dead they could simply have left her with the Sisters of Battle.

‘Cure her? Goodness, no.’ Harsek whipped a pair of pruning shears from his belt and flipped them open like a butterfly knife. He stooped over a bush, snipping at the fronds. ‘One doesn’t cure a psyker. But they can be contained, put to good use. Only the Emperor can perform soul-binding, but there are other ways. The risk of a psyker drawing the attention of the Ruinous Powers never goes, of course, not entirely, but the danger can lessen a little, depending on how she’s used.’

At the mention of the Ruinous Powers, Vaughn made a quick, instinctive aquila across his chest.

‘But you managed to get her at her prime,’ Harsek added. ‘Just how we need her.’

For a moment, Vaughn thought he might just nod, salute Inquisitor Harsek and walk away. How did the saying go? A servant’s greatest contentment is the knowledge that his master’s task is done. But he had never quite followed that mantra. ‘How do you mean? If you don’t mind me asking, my lord.’

‘Of course. You’re always free to ask. And I’m always free not to answer.’ Harsek dropped the shears into a pocket in his robe. ‘She is an emergent psyker, undoubtedly. The presence of such a person draws warp entities the way blood in the water draws sharks. But there are some sharks worth studying, yes?’

Vaughn strained his memory to remember what a shark was. Ah, yes. ‘So, she–’

‘Would draw the attention of more interesting prey.’

‘Isn’t that dangerous?’

‘For her, yes. Fatal, probably. But for us... vital.’

Vaughn felt his face harden. ‘But she’s innocent, surely.’

‘Innocent?’ Harsek looked rather surprised, as if he had not expected to encounter the word in these surroundings. ‘Hmm. That’s not really a term I tend to use. I find it rather unhelpful. I prefer to think in terms of... purity of motive. Yes, that’s the best way of putting it.’

Vaughn made no attempt to hide his expression. There was no point in doing so. Harsek wouldn’t need to read his face to know what he was thinking.

‘Don’t be like that,’ the inquisitor said, his voice still gentle. ‘You didn’t waste your time – quite the opposite, in fact. She’s innocent, you’re innocent – so am I. We may do awful things sometimes, but our motives remain pure. The galaxy has yet to find a way to sully them.’ He smiled and took off his spectacles.

Vaughn knew that he would not tell his men any of this, especially Nietzin. For all they would know, Sister Cerra had been healed and set free.

‘I’ll remember that, my lord,’ Vaughn replied, and he turned and walked away.