aquila standard, is suspended from a wall, and a sacred spot is marked on the floor beneath in yellow chalk.
The guildhall was not a consecrated building. The founding must have been the first time the young volunteers of Urbitane had seen that done. They'd made their vows to a yellow chalk cross and a dangling aquila.
Wrex was leading three fireteams of armed arbites, but I went in with Midas and Fischig first, quietly. Bequin and Aemos stayed by our vehicle.
Midas was carrying his matched needle pistols, and Fischig an auto shotgun. I clipped a slab-pattern magazine full of fresh rounds into the precious bolt pistol given to me by Librarian Brytnoth of the Adeptus Astartes Deathwatch chapter.
We pushed open the boarded doors of the decaying structure and edged down the dank corridors. Rainwater pattered from the roof and the marble floor was spotted and eaten by collected acid.
We could hear the singing. A couple of dozen voices voicing up the Battle Hymn of the Golden Throne.
I led my companions forward, hunched low. Through the crazed windows of an inner door we looked through into the main hall. Twenty-three dishevelled veterans in ragged clothes were knelt down in ranks on the filthy floor, their heads bowed to the rusty Imperial eagle hanging on the wall as they sang. There was a yellow chalk cross on the floor under the aquila. Each veteran had a backpack or rucksack and a weapon by their feet.
My heart ached. This was how it had gone over two decades before, when they came to the service, young and fresh and eager. Before the war. Before the horror.
'Let me try… try to give them a chance/ I said.
'Gregor!' Midas hissed.
'Let me try, for their sake. Cover me/
I slipped into the back of the hall, my gun lowered at my side, and joined in the verse.
One by one, the voices died away and bowed heads turned sideways to look at me. Down the aisle, at the chalk cross of the altar, Lund, Traves and a bearded man I didn't know stood gazing at me.
In the absence of other voices, I finished the hymn.
'It's over,' I said. The war is over and you have all done your duty. Above and beyond the call/
Silence.
'I am Inquisitor Eisenhorn. I'm here to relieve you. The careful war against the blight of Chaos that you have waged through Urbitane in secret is now over. The Inquisition is here to take over. You can stand down/
Two or three of the hunched veterans began to weep.
You lie/ said Lund, stepping forward.
'I do not. Surrender your weapons and I promise you will be treated fairly and with respect/
'Will…will we get medals?' the bearded man asked, in a quavering voice.
The gratitude of the God-Emperor will be with you always/
More were weeping now. Out of fear, anxiety or plain relief.
'Don't trust him!' said Traves. 'It's another trick!'
'I saw you in my bar/ said Lund, stepping forward. You came in looking/ Her voice was empty, distant.
'I saw you on the tannery roof, Omin Lund. You're still a fine shot, despite the hand/
She looked down at her prosthetic with a wince of shame.
Vill <file:///Vill> we get medals?' the bearded man repeated, eagerly. Traves turned on him. 'Of course we won't, Spake, you cretin! He's here to kill us!'
'I'm not-' I began.
'I want medals!' the bearded man, Spake, screamed suddenly, sliding his laspistol up from his belt with the fluid speed only a trained soldier can manage.
I had no choice.
His shot tore through the shoulder padding of my storm coat. My bolt exploded his head, spraying blood across the rusty metal eagle on the wall.
Pandemonium.
The veterans leapt to their feet firing wildly scattering, running.
I threw myself flat as shots tore out the wall plaster behind me. At some point Fischig and Midas burst in, weapons blazing. 1 saw three or four veterans drop, sliced through by silent needles and another six tumble as shotgun rounds blew them apart.
Traves came down the aisle, blasting his old service-issue lasrifle at me. I rolled and fired, but my shot went wide. His face distorted as a needle round punched through it and he fell in a crumpled heap.
Wrex and her fireteams exploded in. Flames from some spilled accelerants billowed up the wall.
I got up, and then was throw back by a las shot that blew off my left hand.
Spinning, falling, I saw Lund, struggling to make her prosthetic fingers work the unmodified trigger of Traves's lasgun.
My bolt round hit her with such force she flew back down the aisle, hit the wall, and tore the Imperial aquila down.
Not a single veteran escaped the Guildhall alive. The firefight raged for two hours. Wrex lost five men to the experienced guns of the Sameter Ninth veterans. They stood to the last. No more can be said of any Imperial Guard unit.
The whole affair left me sour and troubled. I have devoted my life to the service of the Imperium, to protect it against its manifold foes, inside and out.
But not against its servants. However misguided, they were loyal and true. However wrong, they were shaped that way by the service they had endured in the Emperor's name.
Lund cost me my hand. A hand for a hand. They gave me a prosthetic on Sameter. I never used it. For two years, I made do with a fused stump. Surgeons on Messina finally gave me a fully functional graft.
I consider it still a small price to pay for them.
I have never been back to Sameter. Even today, they are still finding the secreted, hidden bodies. So very many, dead in the Emperor's name.
MALLEUS
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