RevelationIt overshadowed Babel City, looming
nearly a mile into the sky, lights flickering on its huge dark form, flickering
to and fro as the overseers that bore them whipped their slaves into a suicidal
frenzy of enthusiasm. It was growing every day now, a dark and vile god that
glared down at the world it had claimed for its own; a living monument to its
creator’s evil. The Tower spread over the ruins of the
Governor’s Palace, nearly a square mile wide at its base, but rising rapidly
in a multitude of spires, halls and shrines, open lakes of glowing liquid that
the foolish might just mistake for water, until finally it peaked in a central
spire that grew and grew with every passing moment, a great sinister claw poking
at the sky. And in the depths of the night, voices
whispered among the Tower’s exposed bones. Before it lay a gutted city, buildings torn apart and the rubble used to raise the uneven, jagged behemoth out of the vestiges of the Palace. Here and there hab-blocks emerged ominously from the wreckage, scorched and battered by gunfire, still inhabited by terrified loyal citizens, hungry, thirsty and sick but too afraid to venture out. Further away from the abomination, the city looked more normal at first, the hab-blocks here intact, generator buildings thrumming steadily, manufactorums belching smoke into the sky, little patches of everyday existence – but silent. Nobody walked the streets; nobody dared leave a building unless they had to. There was no traffic, there were no crowds, there was not a single sound in the… brakka-brakka-brakka… Not a single… brakka-
brakka- brakka Not a single sound, save for… brakka-brakka-brakka… Save for erratic gunfire from the tank traps that pointed inwards, towards the loathed Tower. Not to keep enemies out, but to contain them. The worn shotgun felt comforting in her hands – in times like these, it was good to have a weapon. She haunted the grey and empty streets, staring at blacked-out windows, remembering when they would have been thrown open at the passing of Imperial troops. Now though, they stayed tight shut, the owners not wanting to attract attention. A sound in the shadows, and she checked the pump-action reflexively, spinning and swinging the shotgun down… just a rat, or bird, or perhaps a falling stone. All clear. The shotgun was returned to its place over her shoulder, and she carried on walking and thinking. On the outskirts of the city, half a dozen kilometres away, tall men in black armour picked their way through the ruins. They held bright and shiny metal boltguns; their shoulders and knees were picked out in white, not very suitable for city fighting. But they knew no fear. They were space marines, Black Templars, eternal crusaders… and though they weren’t afraid, they were shocked to the core. “Marshal? Marshal Voss?” Darius strode through the camp smiling, the head of the ork warboss slung over his backpack vents, his armour and sword still stained with green blood. He’d killed it. On his own. Perhaps now Voss would get off his back… “You’re alive, I see. Did you find the warboss?” “One head, as promised.” His grin became a much wryer smile as he dropped the snarling thing onto Voss’ ops table. “So have I made the grade as Champion?” “That remains to be seen, brother. “ That was odd. Voss wasn’t usually that half-hearted in his spite. Something big was going on. “I hear you found someone in the drops. A human, alive and relatively unharmed.” “An Inquisitor of all things, marshal. He asked to see you as soon as we returned.” “I was hoping to ask the same of him. You may wish to attend the briefing. As our resident hero, you’ll need to know what you’re facing.” Again, he didn’t seem to mean it – it was routine sarcasm, without any real spirit in it. “Where is he, then?” “Marshal Voss, I presume?” Voss took him in with a glance. Despite his advanced years and lack of height – he couldn’t have been more than a hundred and sixty centimetres tall – this Gerallt had the look of someone who’d spent a lifetime in the field, his face and hands gnarled by years of war, close-cropped grey hair parted over a gravely wrinkled brow. Dressed in purple and muted grey clothes, well-padded adaptations of a stylishly cut kilt and trench coat over silk shirt and trousers. Around his torso, a dull metal plate and a strap or two that evidently served as another layer of armour, inscribed with the word ‘Purify’ in gothic type, an Inquisition medallion, and two more plates on his shoulders, the same purple shade as his kilt. The black cane tipped with white gold, which he leant on heavily – perhaps an old injury? Then Voss spotted the callipers fitted to his right leg: yes, an old injury, or maybe an unreliable bionic replacement. And there was one other notable thing about him. His eyes were completely white, without pupil or iris, just two white orbs. “Kroot,” said Gerallt by way of explanation. “The mercenary brutes tortured me four decades ago, and although my eyes and ears survived they never truly healed. Hence this.” His left hand, the one that didn’t hold the cane, tapped on a small black box bolted to his right shoulder pad, with a green lens fitted to the front. “Auto-senses, supplementing the faded wreckage of my own and linked to a de-tox injector fitted to my back. I seem to find myself poisoned or drugged more and more these days.” “Which Ordo do you represent on Babel?” Voss cut across him, sitting at the ops table and motioning Gerallt to do the same. “Ordos and factions only hinder me. You may consider me a freelance inquisitor, if there is such a thing. My modus operandi is my own – and I prefer to rely on experience and fate than on doctrine.” The remark was calculated to irritate, and had Voss and Darius belonged to a chapter that followed the Codex Astartes it would have. “I see. So tell me, what do you have to do with orks and rebels, Inquisitor?” “I came here on a mission that has occupied me for several years now. I and several of my less liberal colleagues are searching for an ancient space-borne weapon of alien origin, something we believed to have lost in that fiasco at Daizann.” “Daizann was one of our finest campaigns! Darius, you were there…” “You could have blasted that damned planet out of existence instead of wasting so many lives there.” Darius’ fist slammed into the table and he glared at inquisitor and marine officer alike. “You weren’t there, marshal. You can’t hope to understand what it was like.” “And you cannot hope to comprehend the ways of daemons, my impetuous saviour.” Gerallt’s pallid eyes closed and he ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “It was vital that the daemon prince’s attentions were focused to prevent him escaping – the Black Templars performed that task with flair if not skill. I respect flair in a soldier, and particularly in a space marine. Anyway, we can discuss your doctrine later. What matters right now is this: we lost track of something; a weapon of great power that we had been following since the Gothic War. Since then my cell has split to seek it, the six of us dashing all over the galaxy. And now I think I have it. It is somewhere in this star system, perhaps even in orbit round this very world.” “Sensor sweeps have reported nothing out of the ordinary for days.” Voss sat back and glared, daring Gerallt to retort. He did. “The weapon is invisible to non-psychic sensors – and I don’t believe the Black Templars use those, do they?” Voss shook his head. “There you go, then. You’re bound to have missed it.” “What makes you think it’s on or near Babel? There are plenty of other galactic sectors you could hide a space weapon in.” “Because of a prophecy that I recovered from the Gothic Sector eighteen months ago. Listen to this.” Reaching into his coat, Gerallt produced a data slab and placed it down on the table, pressing the activation rune. A voice spoke from the slab, deep and resonant, but fragmented by the centuries. ‘There live two lords of Babel and they fight o’er single throne, one from a tower of iron, and one from a tower of stone. The Dark Star shall rise above them, a sword in every hand, with four feet upon the water and four upon the land. A lord of valour leads them and a lord of evil waits, for the champion of righteousness whose heart and spirit hates. From the stars barbarian fury, from the earth a cursed hand, a dagger dripping venom and a blade in brutish hand. There shall come a final battle ‘gainst the sword of hateful gold, a soul of holy vengeance and a heart of evil cold. And the crusaders they shall triumph though the battle will be hard, for the Eagle reigns on Babel from within the Tower of Guard.’ “All very salutary, Lord Gerallt, but it solves nothing.” “You think not? Allow me to explain my understanding of this. The two lords of the prophecy are the rebels’ leader and myself. The Dark Star is the weapon I seek – the description points to it. The part about feet refers to the components of the weapon, four of which are linked to the Materium, the others to the Immaterium. The ‘sword in every hand’ is a somewhat fanciful reference to its workings, which rely on the melding of material and immaterial to function. I am the lord of valour – egotistic, I know, but my previous exploits will bear me out – the rebel leader obviously the lord of evil, though I cannot for the life of me work out who the champion of righteousness is supposed to be, or what he hates and why. Barbarian fury and the brutish blade obviously refer to orks, the poison dagger the rebels. The reference to a final battle is the key to this whole sickening mystery, but I have no idea as to the meaning of this stanza.” “What about the last verse?” asked Darius, moving to Voss’ side. “I believe it to be a prediction of an Imperial victory, hard-fought but not undeserved. The crusaders the prophecy refers to are yourselves, the Black Templars.” “And the Tower of Guard?” “The Adeptus Arbites Precinct House.” Voss looked up sharply from studying his map and beamed at Gerallt. “You might just be right. According to our intelligence, the resistance against the rebels is being run from the old precinct tower in the suburbs.” “It is.” Gerallt nodded solemnly. “I should know; I helped to organise it. Nearly two-thirds of the population remain uncorrupted, but most of those have fled to outlying settlements. All those left in the city are resistance fighters, rebels or those who can no longer leave.” “Then our course is clear. We’ll link up with the resistance and then launch an attack on whatever it is they’re building on the palace ruins. Agreed?” “Agreed.” The old inquisitor shook Voss’ hand, wincing as the servo-aided gauntlet closed around his bony appendage. “The resistance need our help.” Further into the ruins of Port Babel now, all traces of habitation left behind, she stopped outside the precinct house, perhaps ten storeys high, the roof and upper portions of the walls folded in on themselves. The doors were hanging off their hinges and blocked by mounds of steel and rubble, but it was not to the doors that she went. She headed around the fortified courtyard at the base until she reached a human-sized patch of slightly fresher paint, and knocked softly in a pattern as ancient as the human race – tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap. “Name and clearance?” said a voice, a cold and bitter-sounding voice. “If you don’t know my voice by now, Marl, you’re a slower learner than I thought. It’s me, Cerys – now open up!” “My apologies, commander – you did say to ask everyone.” The patch of fresh paint slid backwards with a grind of steel on rockcrete, and as it moved a little to the side, the woman in grey slipped through. Within ten seconds, there was no sign the hole had ever opened, save for the slightly brighter shade of codex grey. On the other side there was a tunnel carved through the rockcrete foundations of the precinct tower, just high enough for an average human to walk through with bent head, as Cerys was currently doing. After perhaps ten metres, the tunnel grew wider, taller, and rose, until within fifteen of the entrance it had emerged within the half-wrecked precinct house itself, chinks of sunlight visible high above. The cold-voiced man was waiting for her; he looked just as grim as he sounded, a tall bulky type dressed in arbitrator’s uniform of carapace armour and open-mouthed helmet, an Arbites shotgun at his feet and a comm. mouthpiece protruding from his helmet. Cerys nodded a greeting and unbuckled her own helmet, dropping it gratefully onto a peg in a row of twenty. There were perhaps ten of these rows in the chamber, of which three were full and two more scattered with visors, goggles, masks, anything that could cover the head against the fumes in the city proper. She was a brunette, hair braided close to the skull, her face drawn and prematurely aged by dust and grime, but she looked around thirty underneath it all. The shotgun she unstrapped and hung with her helmet, gazing at it with sad pale brown eyes. “Regretting things already?” “Never. It’s us or them, Marius – and they’d do worse than kill us if they captured us.” “But if you saw someone you knew? Friend or family? Turned? Could you kill them?” Marl pressed home his point, moving away from the security board. “Could you?” “I don’t have many friends outside the Arbites – and most of those are dead or gone by now. Family? I’m not even from Babel. The only one of them I ever knew was my father.” “Was he an arbitrator?” “He moved around a lot. When he dropped me off here he was running a trading operation into the Core Worlds, but that was in trouble; and he’s not the kind of person who can stick one job for long. He’s probably forgotten me by now.” “Lord-inquisitor?” Gerallt turned on the spot, and saw the youthful marine addressed as Darius following him out of the spaceport tower. “Can I do anything for you?” He fell into step with the armoured giant, his artificial leg hissing and groaning as they walked. “Why are you really here?” “Come again?” The inquisitor’s blind eyes turned to regard Darius; the auto-sense unit did likewise. “That prophecy didn’t sound too ancient or worthy to me, sir. I think you made it up to convince your superiors Babel was important.” He repeated his question, somewhat more forcefully this time. “Why are you here?” “Officially, it is to seek the weapon and the source of the trouble here – and to investigate the prophecy, which for your information is genuine. As I said, I found it on Arx in the aftermath of the Gothic War, left behind by the Chaos forces. Now that the orks have been removed, ore convoys should be making it out of the temporary spaceports further out – that’s one objective achieved. The weapon? Well, I don’t know if it’s really here, but it was a lead I couldn’t fail to follow up. My reputation as an inquisitor depends on my finding it.” “And unofficially?” “Babel means a lot to me. My past is tied to this planet – my past and my future.” Gerallt dodged past Darius before he could press for any other answers, and headed for the airstrip where a Thunderhawk was sweeping down with the Crusade’s two Vindicators on board. Darius followed him with his eyes, and distantly heard him berating the guide-servitor. ‘I’m going to find out about you, Gerallt,’ he resolved as the mass bell rang from the tower. ‘See if I don’t.’
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