Chapter 30

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Inside, the theater building was just as bleakly pathos-laden as the outside. Gigantism, hatred of rounded shapes and lines, carpets, tapestries, mosaic panels depicting battle scenes, and peaceful labor. Aquilas and other state symbols are everywhere the eye falls. Despite the remark about reduced combat value, Jennifer and Luct went with the unit. Olga struggled to move her feet, crimson light poured from everywhere, against it the sun that tried to peer through the wide windows faded, the yellow rays dying impotently, dissolving into the bloody glow. The theater seemed an oasis of tranquility and peace amidst the unfolding of the light of the world. But it was a grave peace.

There were corpses everywhere. Harmless, quite human, with no signs of terrifying changes. Just dead people, many, many dozens of them.

Olga felt a cast-iron heaviness flooding her skull. She wanted to lie down, to put her head on the floor, and relieve her back a little. The light that only she could see made her eyes ache and dry.

"Don't be afraid," Fidus said quietly. "Just don't be afraid of anything. The worst is over."

She wanted to say something like `yeah, sure', because Olga had learned the main lesson of life in the distant future: everything changes only for the worse. But the girl was too tired, and besides - what if the inquisitor was right after all? She did not want to jinx it. So she thought it best to remain silent.

"Death was above us and beneath our feet," recited Schmettau. "And wherever I looked, to the right or the left, my eyes fell upon the rotten sores of heresy."

"But we neither feared nor were afraid, for there is no disease on the body of the Imperium that cannot be cut out and scorched with a steady hand," concluded Kryptman.

"Yeah... We'll need a long time to clean up this mess," the Priest summed up.

"Emperor, have mercy and protect," whispered Savlar, folding his fingers into an aquila.

The theater was not just a tomb, it had been turned into one big altar. Olga even tried to close her eyes, to walk by touch, holding Fidus's hand, but she stumbled a couple of times and realized that she had to either look or beg into his arms. The girl had no doubt, Kryptman would accept, the temptation beckoned with incredible force. Olga imagined how easy and calm it would be to snuggle against the tall inquisitor's broad chest, to cover her face with the hood, feeling protected. To give, after all, a rest to her legs, which threatened to break at every step, shooting pain into her knees.

But she can't...

Although nothing seemed to threaten here - 'the dead don't bite' - Olga was well aware that things could change at any moment. In the Imperium, even death is not final and the dead are able to bite. The Inquisitor must be ready for battle, and for that, he needs his hands free. So the girl just took a tighter grip on Fidus' wide belt, leaning on it like a staff, it was easier to walk that way. She also tried to look, but not to see. To use her eyesight as a crutch, just to keep from falling, because to look was to let the terrible images into her mind, to give them a part of her soul.

There was blood everywhere. Apparently, the villains used it instead of paint, often literally, smearing it on the walls, on the floor, and even in places on the ceiling. But it was mainly the blood that was used to scribble various scripts. On the surface, the pictographs seemed miserable, primitive, like cave paintings, but it was physically unpleasant to look at them, making me dizzy almost immediately, weak at first, but quickly growing stronger.

And a lot of bodies.

Olga imagined that, in fact, they were dolls, mannequins. Someone had scattered them in a mess, dousing them with paint for a silly joke. There are enough fools in the world, not funny pranks either. Perhaps it was only this self-delusion that kept the girl from hysterics, it was too scary here.

"I think the whole local inquisition is going to trial," Kryptman reasoned, looking around and pursing his lips. "Along with the arbitrators."

"They'll go to the expense," Schmettau corrected. "It's a real, full-fledged cult. Look, all the volunteers are here. Hundreds of followers. You could miss that in a hive, but this icebox here... No. It's not a mistake, it's a disaster. It's total ineptitude."

"I don't think so," Fidus shook his head. "There could have been a focused impact here. A psyker strike that paralyzed the will of honest citizens. Or..."

Kryptman glanced at the three dead bodies, stacked in a star-shaped figure - a woman and two girls, judging by their resemblance, relatives. All three had their clothes soaked and crusted with blood, but their faces were clean, their postmortem masks stamped with delight and bliss.

"Or an induced hallucination. I think the latter. They may well have imagined that they went alive for His Throne, and in the meantime, the heretical knives were doing the work."

The footsteps of the small detachment echoed echoingly beneath the vaults of the wide corridors like a cave. The metallic sounds of weapons echoed off the walls until they were trapped in the dense carpets with rich and tasteless embroidery.

"That's the problem, Fidus," Shmettau shrugged, the gesture so expressive that it showed through the thick spacesuit. "You think too much and don't do enough. Heresy is like a disease, it can always be justified, but the scalpel in the hand of the surgeon must still be sharp and ruthless. They have surrendered to evil, they have served evil, and that is enough. If impure emanations penetrated their souls, then they already had wormholes in them."

Kryptman shuddered at the insult, but the young inquisitor kept silent.

"And you're a jerk," Olga said quietly in Russian, looking into the back of the short and pot-bellied man. Not that she felt any special sympathy for Fidus, but the girl was somehow used to the fact that unkind words to Kryp were her personal and well-deserved privilege. And this same Shmatao said things that were hurtful and unfair.

"You rotten old goat."

The inquisitor suddenly turned around and looked at the girl very carefully, without the shadow of a smile or any expression on his fleshy face. Olga was thrown into a fever with the realization of her own carelessness.

"It seems quite here," the Priest thought aloud and shook his head as if reproaching himself for his choice of words. Indeed, 'quiet' sounded almost sacrilegious in a theater tomb.

"Rather yes," Kalkroit's silent companion unexpectedly agreed. He strutted about as calmly and confidently as an attendant, despite the melta, which, though specially assembled, must still weigh a great deal.

As if in response to their assumption, there was a rumbling, very artillery-like noise outside the theater. Several of the huge windows cracked, but the glass endure as if some force had strengthened the building.

"Again," Olga grumbled, "it's hitting me over the head again..."

Indeed, the ghostly glow trembled again, pounding in a quickened rhythm. It spread into the corners, killing the shadows, and echoed with an inaudible yet piercing scream.

"Emperor, protect me," Bertha leaned against the wall, covering her face with her hand, her fingers trembling visibly. The other squadmates were also visibly unwell. Servitor Luct's legs began to wobble as if his electric drives had malfunctioned. But who knows, maybe the mechanics really did break down. No wonder with such tests. Olga looked sympathetically at the living dead man, remembering how many useful things the servitor had already done. Only she and the tall inquisitor with the horrible scars on his bald head endured the astral scream relatively peacefully. Only her ears pricked and a heaviness crawled from her temples to the back of her head like drops of liquid and cold lead. Wakrufmann dropped her head in a surprisingly human way and fell to her knees, burying her fingers in the thick carpet. Luct silently helped the Martian to get up.

Olga inadvertently remembered that the 'cog' was not even fifteen years old yet. And then a very simple thought occurred to her - how long is a year on Mars?

"Third floor..." Demetrius adjusted the medical bag, touched the bandage on his temple. "How much further?"

"Probably all the way to the top," Fidus suggested.

"Yes, there's a great hall for solemn assemblies and moral performances," the Priest suddenly displayed a knowledge of the local architecture. "If anywhere to bring hecatombs, it's there."

"Bastards," Bertha spat just for a difference, not blood, but saliva, from sheer contempt.

Olga thought that, yes, really assholes - they should worship their vile rites as villains should, deep underground, so that normal people do not have to stomp up the stairs. But she decided to keep that argument to herself. Demetrius, who happened to be nearby, silently slipped a glucose pill into her hand, then handed out the same to the other companions, including the inquisitors. Schmettau simply took the pill and silently chewed it without any emotion, Pale nodded his thanks and suddenly asked:

"What are we going to do then?"

"Kill the psyker," replied Schmettau.

Olga wanted to tell the fat man what she thought of his cannibalistic nature, but she stopped herself as soon as she opened her mouth. No one was in a hurry to criticize the inquisitor, not even Kryp. No one told the evil and cruel idiot that he was an evil and cruel idiot. On the contrary, in the purificators' silence, one could read a general agreement, an almost vigorous approval.

"Probably some kind of barrier," Kryptman thought aloud. "We might have to break through it. If we can do that at all."

"The barrier... I don't think so," Essen retorted. "If the lass is right, it acts unconsciously."

Again Olga wanted to blurt out that it wasn't an 'it' but a poor baby, and again she kept the hot words on the tip of her tongue.

That was the end of the blitz. Savlar tried to hum another prisoner song under his breath, but Schmettau measured him with a long glance and said as if he were reading from a sheet of paper: "Charles deo Coulian. Nostril plucking for insulting Her Ducal Lordship in verse. Thirty years' hard labor for recidivism and it was by no means Savlar Penitence. Wasn't it?"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I stomped on all the moons.." the noseless man whimpered as was his habit. "I'm a proper jailer, and I know nothing of your poems!"

"Oh, of course," agreed Schmettau, and his slightest smile was more insulting than any mockery.

For a few moments, Savlar walked sadly, like a scarecrow in a red overcoat, then suddenly straightened up, as if he had dropped ten years. Olga suddenly thought that the convict was still quite young and would have been a good-looking man if not for the mutilation.

"Two epigrams," the noseless man said with one half of his mouth. "They cost me a lot."

"The magic power of art," agreed Schmettau. "The material embodiment of the word. By the way, good epigrams, I liked them; they were scathing without being straightforward."

"Yes, it's a pity Her Grace didn't share your satisfaction," Savlar grinned even more wryly.

"What's the camouflage for?" Kalkroit asked.

"For security," Charles shrugged. "Everyone's scared of Savlars. So you have to shout, roll your eyes hysterically, and that's enough."

"Oh, Emperor," muttered the Priest. "Such naivety."

"What?" deo Cullian was confused, and even Olga smiled at the genuine surprise and confusion in the voice of the fake jailbird of the prison moons. "So you knew...?"

"Of course," snorted the Holy Man. "From the beginning."

"But why then...?" The Savlar stumbled back, silently opening and closing his mouth.

"Think about it," Bertha grinned.

Olga could not help smiling, the noise and pain in her head slightly subsided, although the crimson light still stabbed her tired eyes.

"We're getting close," she said quietly.

"I hate...stairs," the Priest muttered in two strides, catching between Luct's heavy footsteps. Wakrufmann walked silently, staggering occasionally, but with the tenacity of a soulless machine.

After a short pause, Demetrius suddenly remarked philosophically: "We go into the heart of evil and darkness, having conversations about lofty matters..."

"Come on," Kryptman cut him off. "That's it."

The upper hall was very different from Olga's usual layout. It was more like an amphitheater without seats or tiers, but with a slight slope of the floor. Instead of a stage, there was a half-meter-high square the size of a merry-go-round in a playground. Apparently, not full-fledged performances were played out here, but short miniatures like the 'Rose of St. Mina'. At first glance, the 'square' was burning hotly, and with such brightness that Olga even took a step back, thinking that everything was about to explode. Looking closer, the girl exhaled, realizing that she was faced with an illusion. Or rather, a ghostly fire, like the one that spilled over the theater. Crimson-yellow flickers flickered as if trapped in an invisible cage, weaving into a shield like a ball of thread, churning with thousands of tongues of flame. Kryptman threw a bolt into the flaming orb, and it crumbled to ash as soon as it touched the fire.

"After all, the defense," Fidus said dryly.

At the foot of the platform lay the bloodied body of a small woman with her belly cut open. Her face was stamped with the deepest horror and pain. Savlar immediately vomited, and Olga restrained herself with an unbelievable effort, though the bile was rising in her throat. Beside the woman lay the corpse of a man in a purple robe, embroidered with all manner of nastiness. Instead of hair, the man's head was a tangle of hundreds of tiny snakes. The long blade in his hand suggested that he was the priest who had murdered the woman and removed the unborn child from her womb. Apparently, he was not the only villain here, but the other bodies had been burned and fragmented to a state of utter indecipherability. Olga immediately recalled her appearance at the Ballistic Station in very similar circumstances - all around, remains as if put through a meat grinder.

"What to do now?" The Priest looked at the inquisitors, hoping that the professionals know how to act in a non-standard situation.

"We'll blow up the melta, that should help, remove the protection or weaken it," Kalkroit did not suggest, but introduced the plan of action, not a second doubting everyone's agreement. "Then we kill the psyker."

"And if it doesn't?" Bertha hesitated.

"Twenty-eight automatons with fully-charged specialized emitters leveling Warp penetration are climbing the outer wall of the building," Jennifer reported. "Their synchronized pulse may be sufficient to irreversibly disperse the consciousness of the intended psyker. The probability of success is tentatively estimated at fifty-eight and twelve-hundredths percent."

"The odds are even better than one to one," Priest strongly approved of the plan. "But what if it doesn't work?"

"Let's get a coordinate reference and call the pot..." Schmettau looked at Jennifer. "The Martians have an orbital strike. With everything, they've got. Now that the nature of the impact is clear, I think they can..."

Kalkroit sighed and cut himself short. "But we won't have time to leave," the Priest wasn't asking either but assuming.

"Well... basically, yes," agreed Schmettau.

"Well, so be it," sighed the monk.

"Where's the small one going?" the Holy Man wondered. "Hey, where are you going?"

While the meeting was going on, the girl took a step toward the platform. A hesitant, timid one. Then another. And again, and again. Overcoming her fear, clenching her fists, she moved her feet as if her boots were shod with lead, but still, she walked with the tenacity of a true warrior. Kryptman stepped after her, caught up with her, and caught her by the lanyard at the back of her belt. Pale and Schmettau looked at each other.

Olga turned around and looked silently at Fidus, the crimson-yellow light illuminating her face like a tragic mask. The girl seemed surprisingly calm, like a person who had not just decided on some action, but rather knew exactly what to do in the circumstances only one way, she had literally one and a half steps to touch the fiery sphere.

"You'll die," Fidus shook his head. "The veil will kill you... at best."

"But I'll try," Olga said with discreet but stubborn determination. "I'm going to try."

Kryptman turned her toward him and took the girl's thin, pale fingers in his broad, strong hands.

"No need," he said quietly. 'There's no point in overcoming so many dangers just to die. It's foolish. It's useless."

"What if we were hit from above by Martians? Would that make sense?"

"Yes. We are here to stop the evil force that kills people and defiles their souls. The Emperor has sent you, and He hardly wants you here to die for nothing."

"How do you know what He wants?" Olga asked very quietly and very seriously, looking up at the inquisitor.

"Well, well," the Priest muttered indefinitely and suggestively, and Schmettau grimaced.

"No, really, how?" insisted the girl. "What if he didn't want us to die? Or maybe he didn't want us to kill, but to save the baby?"

"No," Kryptman shook his head slowly and sadly. "We are inquisitors. And purificators. We can't afford pity. It always turns out to be a greater loss."

"You can't..."

The girl freed herself from the Inquisitor's handshake, took one last step back toward the flaming veil. It was as if the fire sensed something alive approaching, twitching its bright flagella as if it wanted to consume the object.

"But I can."

"Without her, we'll be screwed just like everyone else in town," Berta murmured. "We've got to stop that crazy little brat."

It was as if Olga heard her words and took another quick step. Now a wall of living light sparkled literally behind the girl. Savlar swore, realizing that it was too late to catch the blonde. Olga sniffed her nose and blew her nose, not at all heroically, trying to free herself from the blood clots.

"Don't touch her," Schmettau ordered in a low voice. "Perhaps that would be better."

"I won't stop you," Fidus said sadly. "I promised to protect you, not decide for you. But what you're doing is stupid. And wrong. A lot of people died so we could come here and stop..." He gestured broadly around the amphitheater, which had been turned into an altar. "Now you can nullify their sacrifices. Make them useless."

"Or the opposite."

The girl turned and raised her hand, the red-gold glow reaching out to her fingers, throwing out the thinnest strands like tentacles.

"You all look a lot like..." Olga shrugged her skinny shoulders, where the torn and dirty overalls hung like a hanger.

"Some kind of..." she was silent again for a moment. "Angry."

"Wha...?" didn't understand Schmettau, and Fidus thought - it was worth risking his life to see the incredible, surprise of Kalkroit Schmettau.

"You're mean. Unkind," Olga explained, and Kryptman realized that the girl was speaking quite seriously.

"No," Olga hastened to clarify. "Of course, you live in such a world. Everything here tends to be different, wrong. The danger is always around. Demons. Devils. Machine spirits. You can knock on hell's door and they'll open it for you, and gladly. Kids play with that ugly emperor of yours and toads, and then they all disappear, just like that. Because someone somewhere has cast a spell. Yes... you are evil and cruel because you live in an evil and unkind universe."

At the word 'ugly,' Kalkroit puffed up, the noseless Savlar laughed outright, and the Priest muttered something along the lines of 'flogging, a lot of flogging...' The tall inquisitor, named Essen Pale, made an indescribable face as if he were trying to suppress a chuckle.

"But..." and again Olga stumbled, slowly, carefully choosing words, confused finally, and waved her hand, blurted it out. "It still needs a little kindness sometimes. Just a little kindness."

She looked around at all the co-adventurers with a single eye that glowed on her dirty and bloody face like a shard of clear sky.

"He's not bad," the girl shook her head. "He's just an unhappy and abandoned baby. He's scared, he must be in pain. He's very lonely and he's screaming in terror. It's not his fault he screams... such..."

"It's not his fault," Kryptman said quietly. "But that doesn't make him any less dangerous. The baby has killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands... And will kill many more."

"Not at all," Schmettau inserted without any expression. "An area with a population of several million has been hit by a psyker attack. Even if only half of them were victims, there are at least hundreds of thousands."

"Or so," Fidus agreed, unhappily. "It's not a baby, it's a source of terrible danger. We can't think of him as a baby. Pity is not a luxury for those who stand guard over the Imperium."

"Now I see the son of the father," Schmettau grinned wryly. "It's a pity that only now."

"And you're ready to kill the baby?" Olga looked at Fidus questioningly.

"Yes," Kryptman answered at first, automatically, habitually, and then hesitated. He hesitated and repeated. "Yes. If there's no other way."

"And I don't want to, I can't do that," the one-eyed girl said simply, without any challenge. She looked into Kryptman's face, repeated: "A bit of kindness."

And took a step.

The tall assistant with the melta rushed after her, but he was stopped by Schmettau with a decisive gesture. Essen looked perplexed at the patron, and Kalkroit explained in a whisper: "If she passes the veil... If she can carry a baby... Then we won't need the potheads."

Pale nodded guiltily, clearly embarrassed by his clumsiness. The Savlar shrieked as he hugged his bald head, expecting death or a fit of insanity, but nothing happened. Bertha cursed. Kalkroit looked at the tech-priestess with a look of mild embarrassment.

"I beg your pardon," he said, ceremoniously. "No disrespect intended. A euphemism, so to speak."

"A euphemism is a descriptive expression that is neutral in meaning and emotional load," Wackrufmann reported, not turning her sickle skull away from the flames that Olga entered. "The word 'potheads' is not 'neutral'. But I accept your apology. It is difficult for people to refrain from angry passions and hasty expressions dictated by the envy of imperfect flesh."

Schmettau gritted his teeth but remained silent.

Minutes went by, nothing happened. And Kriftman was thinking, how it wasn't like those Picts about the heroic struggle against hostile forces' intrigues. Wrong place, wrong people, wrong plan, everything is wrong. And yet, here they were, here and now, where His chosen servants had not reached.

"Here we are..." he whispered.

" ... And here we will stay, with or without victory," echoed Schmettau.

"And if we are not victorious," Essen finished his quote. "It will be plucked from the jaws of evil by those who follow us and through our bodies."

"Holy shit," Bertha whispered, pointing with a trembling hand at the fiery veil. "It can't be... Look..."

Fidus expected anything from an explosion to the arrival of a demon prince. But everything happened quietly and very... ...peaceful. The all-consuming fire weakened, lost its colors as if it had run out of fuel at once. It flickered, then vanished, as if it had never existed. On the rounded platform, bending slightly from the weight, stood Olga, clutching the small bloodied body to her chest. The baby seemed alive and silent, that was all that could be said about it, the baby was not even tied up with an umbilical cord. Olga bowed her head and whispered something softly, softly, in an unfamiliar language, and in time with her words the crimson glow - now everyone could see it - was dying, trying to hide in the shadows, melting, unable to live without the energy of fear and horror.

Olga looked at the purificators, who were lined up in an uneven semicircle near the platform, smiled and said with childish surprise:

"Boy. And heavy. Seems healthy, just... hungry, I guess."

"Madonna and baby," Kryptman whispered.

"What?" The Holy Man didn't understand. He too spoke in a whisper, as if he was afraid of disturbing the moment with a loud and inappropriate word.

"A woman with a child. It's from the history of prehistoric Terra," Jennifer suddenly explained, her metallic voice seeming to change its timbre, lower and bassier. "A very old image."

"Move aside," Kalkroit commanded curtly, and took a step, raising his melta pistol, which leaves no chance for the victim, especially at this distance.

"In His name, we came here, in His name we will end it all."

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