LITANY VII
Inquisitor Feordervich stood in front of the throne weapons at the ready, waiting for what was to come next. Gloria would have preferred it if he had taken cover like the Stormtroopers. Her squad waited near the Inquisitor providing some support.
The sickly glow emanating from the throne grew brighter, and darker, darker in intelligence.
"We shouldn't be here."
Gloria didn't know who had spoken. She agreed hole heartedly. The Inquisitor was in command however and his orders were to be obeyed. The Inquisitor said nothing, patient. Gloria remained silent as well; she would back up commands given by the Inquisitor but if he said nothing to quieten dissent, neither would she.
Was anything happening in the Residence above? Gloria wondered while her mind was still free. A dead Comte was there, but somehow alive. Some kind of sorceress force had brought him up from below. There was danger. The horned reflection of Lady Morgana.
The area cast under by the glow encompassed the Inquisitor. He still did not move.
"Inquisitor?" Gloria took a step forward. She hesitated to approach the glow. Slowly her hand reached out and touched the Inquisitor's arm.
The Inquisitor turned around and Gloria's mouth fell open with dread, the scream caught in her throat. The Inquisitor's face was gone, melted, running down a white skull. The front of his clothes were falling to tatters as well.
Gloria fell back, throwing her body away from the light. She landed hard on her back as shouts and cries came from her Sisters and the Stormtroopers as they saw what the light had done to their leader.
They weren't looking at the Inquisitor as he, or his skeleton, raised its pistol and took aim at the Sister Superior.
All except Rachael. She saw the danger and turned the nozzle of her flamer the fraction it required to fall upon the Inquisitor instead of the throne. Pyromanic colour swallowed the Inquisitor and for a moment drove away the green.
"What the hell are you doing?" shouted the Stormtrooper leader, rushing out from his cover to the Sister.
"What do you think?" Rachael yelled back. "He wasn't one of us anymore!"
The Inquisitor had been reduced to a burning pile of bones and charred flesh on the ground.
"Gloria," Rachael turned to her superior, "What are we going to do?" she asked, clearly wanting to leave.
Gloria stood herself up. The glow had retreated a little, aware of the fire, but had deepened in intensity. Something was going to happen, soon and Gloria knew she wasn't capable of stopping it, not as she was. The decision was above her rank but with the Inquisitor dead, she was senior officer and now in command of the Inquisitor's task force. She held rank over even the best of the Imperial Guard soldiers.
"We leave, now!" Urgency was in her voice.
Relief washed over the faces of her Sisters and the Stormtroopers.
Without order the score of Imperial warriors fled the chamber and its mean glow. As soon as they had left the room the dread feeling lessened in their hearts. The runes around the doorway glowed as well in a rainbow multitude of colours.
They rushed along the corridor. Gloria held the rear along with Rachael; the latter recognising that her flamer could do something against the glow. It expanded until it took up the room but came no further out. Then the glow disappeared as they exited the corridor and turned a corner.
At the front of the disorganised group were a Stormtrooper and Sister Nicole. They sped around the corner and came to a shuddering halt. In front of them was one of Lady Morgana's maids, Sister Nicole recognised, with her head slightly bowed; her eyes could not be seen.
"What are you doing here?" the Stormtrooper asked roughly, stepping forward to push her out of the way.
Without looking up the maid backhanded the Stormtrooper snapping his neck loudly and sending the body spinning into the wall.
"What the?" Sister Nicole gasped.
The maid started to lift her face…
Before half of it was blasted away by a hellgun beam. The maid staggered but did not fall down. The group, bunched up at the corner, murmured in surprise. The maid stood upright. Foot long nails stretched out from her hand and a chilling smirk appeared on her lip, fire blackened skin around it. In the hole in her head blue and pink worms flipped and flopped about. She opened her mouth, wider and wider revealing rows of shark pointed teeth.
"Kill it!"
Hellguns and bolter explosions jerked the maid's body, a doll in the hands of an angry child. Blood did not issue from the dozens of wounds, more pink and blue globs that fell on the floor and splattered the walls and ceiling.
Then the maid exploded.
Everyone stood up after the chunks had settled. Except for Sister Nicole. A thin line of blood ran out of her lip and down the side of her cheek. A sharp piece of ribcage was impaled in her chest.
Rachael and Sister Emily fell on their knees beside her.
"Nicole, Nicole!" Sister Emily shook the body of her friend trying to rouse her. She wasn't dead… "No!"
Rachael closed her eyes feeling the sting at the corner of her eyes. Putting one hand on Sister Emily's shoulder she whispered into her ear: "She's gone, Em. And we have to go too."
"I won't," Sister Emily said. "I won't leave her here."
"We don't have any choice," the Stormtrooper commander said. "We have to get out of here."
"That was the blind maid; the closest to Lady Morgana," Gloria said.
"Then she's responsible and I'll kill her!" Sister Emily's voice was full of hate. She stood up quickly and ran down the corridor by herself.
"Em!" Rachael called out after her and looked at Gloria.
"At least she's going the right way," the Stormtrooper said and followed, his men behind.
"This can't continue like this or we'll all get killed." Gloria pounded her fist against the wall.
"We better leave too and get to our power armour," Sister Verona urged. She wouldn't feel comfortable, or safe, until her body was enclosed in the red shield.
They left the two casualties of war behind with regret. They would come back and recover them later, they all told themselves. First they had to survive the sudden nightmare. The genestealers and mutants had been one thing, alien, monsters, but killable easily enough. What was happening now was utterly different. Murderous light, maids turning to horrors. Walking corpses. What would be waiting for them above?
That was what they didn't want to think about. Had the rest of the maids changed the same? Was there green glow there? Had anything happened to their comrades in arms, were they coming down to rescue them?
"Sister Marie, Sister Marie?" Gloria tried to raise the Sister she had left upstairs. There was no reply. The Sister Superior's heart sank and she feared for the worst. Sister Helen she had left to guard over Lady Morgana as well. She tried to remember how many maids the Lady had in her service. But there could have been more, ones she hadn't seen.
What was going on? The Governor in league with aliens, his wife with something far more macabre. Had each known of the other or not? How long had each been in the hands of the enemy of Mankind?
Firing up ahead.
Sister Emily.
Their pace increased.
Flaming barrels joined Sister Emily; she was kneeling at the base of the stairwell that lead back up to the Residence. Coming down the stairs were Lady Morgana's maids. Each had a manic grin on her face and held an odd assortment of hand weapons such as swords, a cleaver, saucepan and a duster. Multicoloured pus oozed from the holes Sister Emily's bolter had already opened. None had fallen.
Red laser fire added to her weapon and the barrage rocked the front rank of maids. One fell and rolled down the stairs, her body seeming to come apart with each bumping rotation. Her severed head reached the line of Imperial warriors first, blue and pink seeping out.
The heavier weight of fire had an affect. The maids' bodies rocked and jerked. Everone remembered that they exploded and inched back, pressed into the wall, as the maids inexorably came further down the staircase.
Rachael joined the firing line, hellguns and bolters, and added her own purifying flames scouring the stairs.
When she stopped the maids were gone.
Instead were liquid masses of horrific appearance, having huge razor sharp teeth maws, twisted-arm claws and worse. One raised an appendage, open mouthed and from it in pyrotechnicolour imitation of Rachael's flames came a swirling blast.
The horror's licking flames melted away the right side of a Stormtrooper who caught most of the blast. The others could see inside his body, the failing organs and bones. Just like the Inquisitor. The Sister's were somehow were unscathed.
Gloria leapt through them all, powersword singing in her arms, and landed in front of the horrors, the skirt of her habit flying around her knees, Ikon' skull facing the foe with determination. She sliced the blue-coated sword horizontally from right to left and cleaved it through two horrors. Their bodies vanished in a shower of pink and blue sparks raining down on the Sister Superior, harmlessly.
Howling two more taloned horrors lashed out at Gloria and their sharp claws tore through her habit and bit into her flesh. Gloria grit her teeth together and hacked the arm off one from the body and slammed the sword's pommel between the eyes of the second staggering it. The one-armed spectre tried to sink its teeth into her but the righteous Sister moved too quickly and it too exploded in sparks.
There were more however, three more to fight and Gloria took them on alone, destroying each one in turn with her sword. Blood seeped from the cut in her arm and a slash across her cheek.
"Gloria, are you mad?" Verona said rushing up to her, forgetting rank. Rachael was a moment behind, slowed by the bulk of her heavy flamer.
"It was the only way. Our guns would have done nothing and we would have all been killed," was Gloria's response. She felt it to be true. "There will be more upstairs."
"Then what are we going to do? You can't kill them all by yourself." It was the Stormtrooper. His face was especially grim.
"While I still draw breath I can kill." Gloria answered.
"But what about the rest of us?"
Gloria had no answer.
"We'll do our duty to the Emperor," Rachael said for her. "And find a way to fight them."
"We should have taken the Inquisitor's weapons," said a Stormtrooper. "He would have had some good gear that would kill these things."
"And are you going to go back and get them?" his commander responded.
"Enough," Gloria ordered. "The maids were waiting for us. More maybe, but Lady Morgana – or whatever she really is – might have thought that enough and there will be no other ambush or trap."
"This is just like the Eye of Terror campaign, before I joined you guys," said another Stormtrooper. "Man, I wish the Marines were here."
Gloria led, sword in both hands. They met no resistance at the top of the stairs and the corridor was empty as well. Still, they advanced slowly and quietly to the entrance of the secret corridor which lay fully open. Gloria peered out, the door behind her head, and saw nothing. She stepped through and checked the other direction. It was empty too and the men and women filed out. The Stormtrooper commander stood next to Gloria.
"What now?" he whispered.
"We have to get our armour." Gloria didn't know where they were. The others did. "How far?" she asked Verona.
"In a waiting room on the other side of the main entrance. If we run a minute or two; a cautious approach, it could take half an hour," was Verona's answer.
"Half an hour?" the commander breathed. That would be an eternity.
"I doubt we have that much time." Gloria said. An uneasy sensation had settled down on her again. That all the fighting so far had just been a small prelude to what was really going to happen. "Your men are going to have to hold off any attack while we activate our power armour." When we get there, if.
"We'll do our best, Sister," the commander said. That was all he could promise in this time of fear.
They got moving again, avoiding the larger halls and rooms where the chance of sentries would be higher. The roundabout way brought them to the kitchen. Inside was what none of them wanted to see, or remember later.
Blood was everywhere. Pools on the floor, on benches, on the wall. Dripping from the ceiling. Lit gas flames boiled pans and bubbling the red source of life boiled over the side, steaming as it touched the unnatural flame. More than one Stormtrooper and Sister vomited. Gloria covered her mouth. Rachael grimaced and walked to one of the pans.
"Careful."
Rachael didn't need to be told. She peered over the lip of a large pan and stepped back suddenly causing the others to raise their weapons. She had seen the dismembered body of a human, she couldn't tell if man or woman because the skin had been boiled off, globs of fat simmering.
"Don't look in anything," she warned them.
The continued slowly through the macabre room and could not help but see the gnawed bones, and pieces of what had to be comrades hanging from racks and on trays. A large oven cooked a pile of bodies. A pile of heads circled around and around, eyes popped by microwaves. Their bloated tongues oozed out of open screaming mouths.
"How could this have happened so fast? We have not been gone for long."
No one could answer. They were all thinking if they would be added to the pantry.
Luck held for them and they continued to have safe progress through the Residence. It was quiet, deathly so. That they were the only ones alive not just in the building but on he planet.
Could the horrors have slaughtered the entire population of the world?
Then there was just one last corridor to cross and door to open. On the other side waited a chance of survival. None thought that the power armour had been moved. They didn't want to think that, it would lead to despair. They had to hope.
"How are we going to do this?" the commander asked Gloria.
"Quickly this time. I will go first again, then half your squad followed by my Sisters then the rest of your squad. It is your squad's responsibility to eliminate resistance and give my Sisters time to don their armour."
"How long will that take? I don't like having to be the fall – our weapons didn't do anything to those things."
"I know," Gloria sighed. She looked at the anxiously waiting faces of the men and women, their lives now firmly in her hands and she felt, strongly, that she would not see them again in this life. Her heart weighed heavily. "But those are my orders. It takes a few minutes for a Sister to don her armour and activate it. You must give us that much time otherwise we will fail."
"Minutes?" the commander said unhappily.
"Yes. A Sister must activate the suit with a set of commandments. Only when the litanies are complete and correct will the armour enclose about her and become fully operational. Otherwise any woman could use it and that would be disastrous. It is even more stringent for the Marines; each suit is genetically tied to its wearer."
"Thanks for the long explanation."
The instructions were relayed. As a reassuring measure the Sisters swapped their bolters with the Stormtroopers hellguns. While the Sister's were prepping their armour they would not be able to use weapons at all. Rachael handed over her heavy flamer reluctantly. "Use it well," she told the Stormtooper who nodded. The gambit was risky and all pressed their lips firmly together.
"Go!"
Gloria ran out first, bare feet making no noise on the carpet. She held the sword one handed, the other reaching for the handle of the door. Behind her came the Stormtroopers, four of them, clutching their exchanged bolters tightly. She reached the door and pausing for only a moment to recite the Emperor's Grace, she closed her fingers around the door's knob, turned it, and thrust the door inward.
"My dear." Lady Morgana said, smiling at her serenely. "You didn't think I would forget about you, did I?" Her smile vanished, replaced with a look of hate and she thrust the knife she held in both hands into Gloria's stomach.