Legion of the Damned

have taken Kersh much to countermand the Sister and force his agenda, but he needed the Adepta Sororitas onside and so allowed the Palatine the illusion of a refusal.

From a maintenance portico, with a pair of magnoculars to his one useful eye, Kersh surveyed the declining roofline of domes, cupolas, spires, monuments and bell-gables that gave Obsequa City its distinct Ecclesiarchical character. Kersh looked out across the darkness, dialling through the optical spectra of the device. A thermographic representation of the city bleared into view. There were fires everywhere. Running battles between psychotic mobs and the Certusian Charnel Guard could be seen in the streets, the telltale glares of las-fire revealing the true scale of the problem. Kersh could hear the bark of enforcer shotguns even in the streets nearby and imagined Kraski’s men putting down fellow Certusians with scattershot and bitterness.

Out across the expanse of Necroplex-South, Kersh could see the throngs of cemetery worlders, with simple lanterns and flaming torches dotted through their numbers, pouring into the city along arterial lychways. Kersh had sanctioned the strategy but that wouldn’t have mattered. With the reports he was receiving regarding the nightmarish barbarism afflicting the burial ground communities, the corpus-captain had fully expected common Certusians to flock to the seeming safety of the planetary capital. Whether this was due to the spiritual sanctity they expected the relic-remains of the Ecclesiarch to provide, or the simple security offered by stone walls and thick narthex doors, was unclear. They had arrived in their thousands, and continued to do so. Much of the Charnel Guard were engaged in urban pacification and hastily organised ‘Misery Squads’ – so called for their unhappy duty of hunting and putting out of their misery cemetery worlders who had succumbed to the gall-fever and become a danger to themselves and other citizens. This left few ceremonial Guardsmen to man the city Lych Gates and process the stream of Certusian refugees. In response Kersh had despatched the Fifth Company’s serfs and bondsmen – including his own – to take charge of the admittance and temporary housing of the masses in the crowded city.

Kersh tracked the powerful lamps of a Scout bike surging up along the columns of cemetery worlders towards the city. Lifting the magnoculars at the roar of engines overhead, he watched the Thunderhawk Impunitas pass above the city and bank. With all three of the company’s remaining gunships now repaired and at his disposal, Kersh had ordered one standing by on the rockrete of the Memorial Space Port, one to remain with the Angelica Mortis in orbit and one to maintain constant airborne patrols of Obsequa City and the surrounding necroplex.

Lowering the magnoculars, Kersh turned his head. Beneath his boots he could feel the supernatural cooling of the stone. He heard it cracking and blistering. Behind him stood the revenant in its ghoulish black plate, rippling with the rachidian contours of rib and bone. It waited like a thing eternal, as though it had all the time in the universe.

‘Ready?’ the Scourge said finally and disappeared through the maintenance arch followed by his solemn and silent haunter.

Down in the basilica nave, surrounded by pillars crafted in the baroque likeness of Imperial saints, and under the stained-glass gloom of the God-Emperor sat upon the Golden Throne in lead-lined representation, the corpus- captain had called a gathering. Kersh walked past Erasmus Oliphant, the young pontifex holding his crippled side awkwardly in the simple throne his frater menials had brought in for his comfort. Palatine Sapphira stood by his side, flanking the throne with two of her cobalt-plated Sisters, each armed with their distinctive Godwyn-Deaz- pattern bolters. Behind them huddled a small group of confessors, priests and deacons who were either too loyal to their pontifex to flee, or had been too late to arrange passage off-world with their Adeptus Ministorum colleagues. Kersh heard the hurried scuff of boots on the polished marble floor of the basilica, noting a shabby and tired-looking Proctor Kraski and Colquhoun’s replacement, Lord Lieutenant Laszlongia, enter the chamber via a side-arch.

With the mortals to his back, the corpus-captain stepped out before his Excoriator brothers. Kersh had assembled the significants of the Fifth Company, as well as the silver-haired squad whip of the Tenth Company Scouts, Silas Keturah. The whips of Squads Cicatrix, Castigir and Censura all stood in assembly, with squad second whips standing behind them. Uriah Skase held himself with unusual stiffness, his shoulders reclined, chestplate thrust forwards and fingers interlaced behind his back. Kersh wasn’t fooled by the chief whip’s seeming respect and attention. The Scourge had seen the stance before and had indeed indulged in it himself. It came from a rawness and sensitivity of the back, where flesh itself had been flayed during the worst of ‘the purge’s’ attentions. As Kersh suspected, Skase had continued to punish himself – pushing ritual observance beyond its primarch-communing function and into the dark realms of a shame-cycle and flagellation for flagellation’s sake. Whips Ishmael and Joachim demonstrated no such deference, pretend or otherwise, and instead busied themselves with furtive glances and conspiratorial mutterings between themselves and the second whips.

Kersh stood, anger slowly building in the tautness of his scarred face as he waited for the squad whips to present themselves to their corpus-captain. While they did, with insolent tardiness, the Scourge’s eye fell across Ezrachi and the skull-helmed Chaplain Shadrath on the opposite side of the nave. Keturah was with them. Last in line was Techmarine Dancred with his Thunderfire cannon, Punisher, which seemed to follow him everywhere. Only the Librarian, Melmoch, was missing. Brother Micah, the company champion’s young face a nest of cuts, stitches and bruising, took his position at his corpus-captain’s side. Beside him was Brother Novah, Brother Toralech’s hasty replacement as company standard bearer. Young, like Micah, but quiet and uncertain, Novah held the battered and tattered standard of the Excoriators Fifth Company in one hand. Micah had assured Kersh that he was a first class warrior, and having originally fought in the same squad as the champion, was one of the few brothers he could trust. In the darkness of the aisle, the armoured revenant melted into the shadows.

‘Brothers,’ the corpus-captain began, ‘I have gathered you here to share my resolutions, so that we may commit to a course of action and see it through.’

‘Rumour has it,’ Skase interrupted, his voice echoing about the basilica’s columns, ‘that we are abandoning our pursuit of the renegade Alpha Legion and pointlessly garrisoning this pile of grave dust.’ Murmurs of assent proceeded from the Excoriators about him.

Kersh would not be drawn.

‘Chief whip, I have called members of this company to order and you will respect that.’

‘I only–’

‘Hold your tongue, damn it!’ Kersh roared at him. ‘When I want your insights I will be sure to ask for them. In the meantime you will act in accordance with your rank and responsibility, sir.’

The chief whip tensed and bridled, but Kersh saw Ishmael grab at his wrist. Skase shook free of the squad whip’s grasp but remained silent, his jaw rigid with anger and eyes glistening.

With similar difficulty, the corpus-captain continued.

‘The Angelica Mortis confirms that the Keeler Comet has passed Certus-Minor. I think we can assume that the comet’s infernal influence is responsible for the mayhem and bloodshed on the planet surface. The cemetery world will pass through the comet’s tail in the next eighteen hours, however, and only the Emperor knows what might happen then. Long range sensors and pict-scans confirm that an enemy armada has reached the outskirts of the system, trailing the comet at sub-light speed. We can assume this to be the Cholercaust Blood Crusade. We have little intelligence to go on in respect of the armada’s numbers or composition. I won’t lie to you. No world has survived the Cholercaust’s attentions. The dead tell no tales. Estimates vary wildly from fifty to a thousand vessels. The Imperial Navy has verified sightings of cruisers belonging to the World Eaters…’ Kersh allowed confirmation of their dread enemy to sink in before continuing. ‘So we can assume Traitor Legionaries to be at the head of their numbers.’

The clockwork whir of Brother Dancred’s face preceded the Techmarine’s contribution. ‘You intend the Fifth Company to remain on Certus-Minor?’

Kersh paused.

‘I do, brother.’

A ripple of discontent washed through the squad whips and their seconds. ‘Corpus-Commander Bartimeus’s estimates place the Keeler Comet on a trajectory for the Segmentum Solar. We cannot afford the Blood Crusade’s further progression, nor allow its strength to grow by another conquered world. Not with Ancient Terra as a possible future target.’

‘What about the Vanaheim Cordon?’ Squad Whip Joachim ventured, his young eyes boring into the corpus- captain.

‘Be under no illusion,’ Kersh told them all, ‘the decision to stay is mine and mine alone. I will not surrender