and I, racing as fast as we could through the disorienting spirals and imbricating segments of the dying saruthi edifice.
As we ran, I reported the situation to fleet command, but had no reply or way of knowing if they'd understood me. Then I tried Titus Endor, but the vox was dead.
Moving at speed, the place became even more of a four-dimensional maze, but I had in my mind now the engram I had taken from Dazzo, the memory trace of the route to the xenos Necroteuch he had ripped from the block.
By my estimation – and it could hardly be trusted – we were approaching the heart of the edifice. Perhaps not the physical or geographic heart, but that part of the dimensional construct buried most deeply in the interlocking lamina of warped space and time.
There were more saruthi here, skittering and clicking around on their silver limb-braces without purpose or response. The smell of liquorice filled the warm, glowing tunnels and tiled chambers.
We heard screaming ahead of us, and the thump of gunfire.
Titus? Titus! It's Eisenhorn! Do you read?'
The vox coughed into life. 'Gregor! For the love of the Emperor! I need-'
It broke again. More shots.
We hurried through a tetragate and almost at once had to dive for cover as las- fire flurried around us. The chamber we had entered was by no means the largest we had found in the place, but it was singular. Dark, and gloomy, it lacked the radiance that shone from the walls and floors elsewhere. The lustrous material that composed the rest of the edifice was here grey and dissected, as if dead.
Another block, like the one Heldane had been propped up against but many times the size, rose from the ashy floor, streaked with oily, greenish matter that ran down its flanks and pooled at the base. An asymmetrical shelf jutted from it, just above the height of an average human, and a blue octahedron sat upon it, glowing internally.
The xenos Necroteuch. Dazzo's engram immediately confirmed it.
The chamber stank with its evil, the liquorice smell, so rich and cloying it made us gag. Behind and above the main pillar, warped sculptures of metal, bone and other organic materials grew from the walls and curving roof. Vicious hooks on filthy chains dangled from these outgrowths. This was not saruthi handiwork but a touch of pure Chaos, spawned by the Necroteuch, infecting the xenos fabric of its sanctum.
Smaller pillars, irregular and unmatched, dotted the floor around the main block. In between them, a gunfight was raging. The three of us ran from the exposure of the lit tetragate and found shelter behind the nearest of the smaller blocks. Las-shots wove in and out of the stone shapes, ricocheting and rebounding.
Titus!'
'Gregor!' He was twenty metres away, a third of the way into the chamber, huddled behind a block and firing his laspistol at figures closer to the Necroteuch's resting place.
I glimpsed Locke, and eight or nine heretic troopers.
I looked to either side of me at Bequin and Midas. 'Choose your targets/ I told them. We began to fire in support of Endor, dropping at least one of the heretics. As they reeled from the salvo, Endor leapt up and ran forward. A las-shot clipped him and blew him back against a stone upright.
I ran forward myself, firing my bolt pistol which I had braced in both hands. I blew chunks from the blocks ahead of me, and hit at least one of the enemy gunners. I reached Endor.
He was wounded in the chest. It would be fatal if we couldn't get him clear quickly. I pulled him into cover, and waited while Bequin ran up through the rows to my side.
'Pressure, here!' I said, showing her, my hands wet with my old friend's blood. She did as she was told.
I became aware of thunderous noises from beyond the chamber. The place shook. More thunder rolled and a section of the curved ceiling suddenly splintered and collapsed, cascading wreckage down, allowing cold exterior light to shaft in. A second later, three more holes ruptured and burst through the roof, and from outside I could hear the muffled hammering of bombardment.
'Midas!'
He was already moving up to my left, ditching his needle rifle for the pistols in the tight confines. Lethal Glavian needles hissed through the air. The ground continued to shake. A further section of roof came down.
Leaving Endor with Bequin, I ducked from pillar to pillar, braving the deluge of shots. Midas and I switched to our earpiece links and Glossia.
'Thorn ushers Aegis, a tempest sinister/
Aegis attending, tempest in three.'
I counted the three beats and ran forward as Midas hurled his frag grenade to my left before opening fire with both pistols.
The flash and bang of the blast obscured the bombardment outside for a moment. A heretic was flung upwards, limbs flailing, and glanced brokenly off a pillar before hitting the ground.
Midas's 'tempest' of covering confusion had allowed me to get within ten metres of Locke. I could no longer see him, however. Keeping my grip on my bolt pistol, I drew my power sword in my left hand and came around the block.
Locke and one of his men had chosen the exact same moment to plough forward into me. We broke from cover and came face to face in the narrow gap between pillars. My pistol's first shot missed the lunging Locke and tore the left arm off his accomplice. Before the wailing man had even hit the ground, Locke's laspistol had put a round through the meat of my right arm. A long-bladed dagger flashed forward in his other hand. We slammed into each other. I tried to sweep my power sword around, but it struck something and Locke side-stepped. The basket hilt of his dagger smashed into my face and knocked me over onto my back. With a grin that he knew 1 could never copy, he raised his laspistol to fire down into my brain.
Two tonnes of xenos-quarried stone pillar, sliced through at hip-height by my power blade, crushed him into the flaking ground.
I rose.
Gorgone Locke was still alive. His belly and pelvis were smashed under the fallen pillar and his arms were pinned. He gazed up at me through blinking, bewildered eyes.
'Gorgone Locke, in the eyes of the Holy Inquisition, you are thrice damned by action, association and belief/ I said, beginning the catechism of abolition.
'N-no…' he whispered.
As I completed the exclamation, I cut the mark of heresy into the flesh of his brow with the tip of my sword. By the time I had finished, he was dead from his crush injuries.
The shattering chamber still shook. On their long chains, the hooks swung. Dust and fragments dribbled down from the tears in the roof, falling through the bars of cold light. I reached down and found the pearl polyhedron in Locke's blood-soaked coat. The primer. 1 slipped it into my pocket and turned to see Midas approaching.
The last of his rats have fled/ he said, holstering his pistols. He looked down at the dead ship master. 'So perish all heretics, eh?'
I reached up with on hand to take the xenos Necroteuch from its shelf – and found myself unable to move. Some enormous psychic force froze me rigid.
'So perish all heretics indeed/ said a voice. 'Turn him so he can see me/
Involuntarily, I swung round, my hand still raised in the act of reaching out. I saw Midas, also paralysed and rigid, his dark features locked in a rictus of dismay.
Konrad Molitor, my brother inquisitor, was standing before me, smiling. His three hooded servants were at his side.
'Such valour, Gregor. Such dedication. I thought you'd be the one to find the
