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.
