Tales of the Amber Vipers Chapter 200
Verina blinked as reality stuttered. Her head swam and her feet stumbled as she sagged on a bulkhead, gasping for breath. Confusion filled her as she tried to get her head to stop swirling, struggling to understand what was happening. Slowly her senses returned, vision settling as she began to piece together her situation. She was lost, in an unknown part of the ship and had no idea how she had got here. What was worse was that she had not been sleeping, she had been awake and giving orders on the bridge, then a moment later she had appeared here.
A cold sense of dread settled in her guts as she realised she had blacked out and the other Verina had taken control of her once more. She had struggled to suppress that hated reactionary squatting in her soul and come to fear her nights, when sleep made her vulnerable. Yet she had thought her waking hours were safe and secure. Now it seemed she was not safe anywhere. The other had done something to her while she was awake, catching her in a moment of distraction and taking over her body.
Verina replayed the last few hours in her mind, recalling the frantic battle in the storm. They had bested the Imperials, by a far narrower margin than she was comfortable with and regrouped. She remembered giving orders to replenish the slave-ratings of the lower decks with captives torn from Imperial wrecks and then to set course out of the storm and resume their search. The Imperials were crippled and would have no course save to run, when the Revenge would swoop down upon them and reclaim their sovereign. So this distraction had come at the worst possible moment.
Verina scanned the area and found herself in some form of loading dock. It was one of the numerous tiny cargo bays that dotted the nooks and crannies of the Battlebarge, one more forgotten corner in the city-sized ship. Dead servitors slumped in their final repose as dusty hoists and forklifts lay moribund and inert. Thick chains hung dry and unoiled, their connections seized solid with dried-out unguents. There was a smell in the air of age and antiquity like a buried tomb opened for the first time in millennia. Judging by the state of the place this bay hadn't been used in centuries, long before the faithful claimed the ship for themselves.
Verina shook her head and reached for her vox, intending to signal Dylun and call for directions back to the bridge. But she stopped her hand. Dylun couldn't know what was happening to her, nobody could. They would deem her mad, they would remove her from command and then she would never see the Emperess again. She would be denied the sweet succour of her presence, never again to bathe in that golden radiance. The mere thought made Verina's guts clench and her fingers tremble. To be away from her god was painful. Every second she ached to be near her sovereign, it was a throb in the back of the head and a thirst that was never quenched. She needed the Emperess back; she had to experience that rush, no matter what deceptions and lies she had to tell to get it.
Verina turned on her heel and took a step towards the open doors but before she did so she paused. Trapped in the dust on the floor were her iron-shod footprints, but alongside them were other sets. Smaller and less defined but clearly tracks. Her eye saw they were many and overlapping, the passage of numerous people. Someone else was here, someone not Verina.
Cautiously she drew her weapons, silent as one could be in power armour. She strained her ears and caught the faint echo of voices from not too far away, words repeated loudly enough to ring into the bay. Carefully Verina turned and crept nearer to the chanting, heart in her throat. She knew not what this was but it had to be bad, why else gather in an abandoned bay where none would see. She heard men and women's voices raised in anger, a louder speaker crying out some phrases to be repeated by a small crowd. Not a good sign.
She reached the wall and pressed along it till she came to a doorway. It was small and unimpressive and she leaned over a hair to gaze within. What she found was a small chapel, an auxiliary shrine where Blood Talon serfs could receive blessings between work shifts and moral indoctrination in the creeds of their Transhuman masters. It was subtly different from a typical Imperial fane, the dead Emperor was portrayed upon the far wall, sitting upon the Golden Throne, but he was not the centre of attention. The chapel was dominated by a statue of the Primarch Sanguinius, leaping into the air with his wings spread wide. He was clad in gold and bore a long spear in hand, that perfect face turned upwards to gaze into the heavens as if flying towards a future nobler than any could imagine. The symbolism was obvious, the adoration of the winged mutant above the pathetic corpse of Terra. It seemed even the Blood Talons had recognised the unworthiness of their dead god and given their devotions to a nobler role-model. The hypocrisy of their condemnation of the Emperess was laid bare and gave her a small moment of amusement.
Yet the voices within left her cold. Standing on the base of the statue a man in a petty officer's uniform was shouting, "We have been deceived, they lied to us!"
A score of ratings and labourers, some from the ship others from Lutum, roared, "Liars!"
The man continued, "They cast a spell upon our eyes but we have broken free and we shall make them pay!"
"Make them pay!" the ragged band cried.
"We put our faith in the wrong soul but no more, we have cast off our chains and embrace the truth. What is the truth?!"
"The Emperess is no god!" they cried.
"What shall we do?"
"Kill her!" they screamed.
"Death to the False Emperess!" the petty officer yelled.
"Death to the False Emperess!" the crowd roared.
Recidivists, Verina realised, she had stumbled upon a cell of the dissidents and backsliders, those who had lost faith in their sovereign and returned to their blinkered devotions. These mad fools would enslave them all to the corpse of Terra, laying the yoke of ignorance upon them all. A cell of traitors in their ranks, brought together and organised into a force that would attack from within. They couldn't have done this alone though, there had to be other cells, working in the shadows. That was how it went with Heretics, small cells working to the orders of a hidden mastermind, some higher Traitor plotting to destroy the faithful. They had to be stopped, Verina had to find and end this mastermind before they enacted whatever plot they were scheming. She reached for her vox but the motion betrayed her. Perhaps it was the shifting of shadows, perhaps the creak of her power armour but a man looked about and his eyes went wide as he spotted her lurking in the door and screamed, "We are discovered!"
Instinct took over and Verina stepped into the doorway, raising her weapons as she cried, "Heretics shall all die!"
"Kill her!" the petty officer screamed.
Instantly the crowd turned upon her, bearing down with mad hate in their eyes and drawing short dirks from their tatty clothing. They were unarmoured and poorly equipped, but they outnumbered her twenty-to-one and had the strength of fanaticism on their side. Combat instincts honed in the Chantry-barracks took over and Verina stepped back, placing the narrow doorway between them to limit the number who could come at her at once. They threw themselves into the narrow space, jostling to get through, only to be met by the bark of her bolt pistol.
Mass-reactive shells hit the first man through the door and burrowed within, knocking him back. A heartbeat later they detonated, exploding his chest cavity in a shower of entrails and viscera that painted those behind him red from head to toe. A woman was given pause, screaming as intestines wrapped themselves around her face, only to meet a similar fate as three bolt-rounds end her life. Those at the front were shocked by the violent deaths but those behind rammed into them, forcing them to advance. Verina gave no respite, blowing them apart with short bursts of her pistol, each hit killing a dissident outright. She would have killed them all, except her ammunition was limited and ran out with a dull clunk.
With no time to reload she clamped her pistol to her hip and took up her chainsword. A burly man leapt at her, face covered in blood only to be cleaved apart by spinning chainteeth. Like meat on a butcher's slab he was sheared in twain, power-armour enhanced strength giving Verina might enough to push her sword right through him. Blood fountained high, painting her torso red and splattering her face, making her curse that she had not taken time to don her helmet.
With a scream of rage the rest of the dissidents piled in, hacking and stabbing with her short knives. Verina had no time to think and fell back on her combat instincts, hacking and stabbing as she had been trained to do. The Adepta Sororitas had drilled into her the rhythm and patterns of chainsword fighting and her arms moved of their own accord, reflex and instinct guiding her blows. Arms were lopped off, necks opened, guts eviscerated and hearts torn out by her spinning blade. In return knives chipped and scored her plate, seeking vulnerable joints to draw blood. Verina denied them by being in constant motion, never relenting in her assault. Speed and surety of motion were as effective defences as Ceramite and where they paused and tried to think of how to attack she was already killing, striking constantly and showing no mercy.
A wasted and starving man came at her screaming, "Death to the False Emperess!"
"Ave Imperata!" Verian yelled back as she decapitated him.
"For the Golden Throne!" a woman shrieked as she tried to sink a knife into Verina's neck.
"In Her name you die!" Verina shouted as her armoured boot shattered a knee and her sword sliced the spinal column apart on the way down.
Verina kicked the dying scum off her blade and spun to find the next attacker, only to discover none remained. Behind her a circle of dead and dying foes lay strewn across the floor. Blood pooled and mixed as hearts beat their last, spilling vital fluid out from vicious wounds. Verina had beaten them, a trained Sister of Battle proving superior to an unruly mob of fools.
Verina saw the petty officer upon the ground, his guts opened up by a terrible rent in his abdomen. He was gushing vitae liberally and going pale as hypovolemic shock stole his life. His death was certain, but not swift enough to spare him pain. Verina placed her boot upon the man's shoulder and held her sword over his neck as she spat, "Tell me who put you up to this and I will end your suffering."
The man blinked woozily as he slurred, "I don't understand."
"Who brought you together?" Verina barked, "Who found you and encouraged this madness?!"
"But…" he groaned.
"Tell me who betrayed the Emperess!" Verina barked, "Who is the mastermind?"
The man frowned in confusion as he whispered, "You are."
Verina's heart skipped a beat as a cold hand of dread seized her chest. Denial ran through her, a stubborn refusal to accept the words rising in her soul. He was lying, he had to be lying. Verina's anger surged and she drove her sword into his throat, tearing his head clean off. She drew back her blade and spun about to finish off the rest, taking the heads of all those who yet drew breath. She rejected the words that painted her a Traitor, ending their lies with the edge of her sword. Not one was spared and with every blow she seethed, "Lies, it's all lies. It isn't true, it can't be true. It's impossible!"