Graham McNeill: Killing Ground

'The dead are watching and you will all be punished.'

'Please,' begged Mesira. 'Why me?'

'You were there,' said the Mourner, as if that explained everything. 'You were there.'

'I didn't do anything. It wasn't me,' wept Mesira.

'You were there.'

'I—'

'You were there,' said the Mourner, turning towards her, 'and you will pay. You will all pay.'

Mesira Bardhyl hurled herself from her bed, screaming in terror and clawing at the sheets as she fought to free herself from them. She thrashed on the floor of the room, kicking and shrieking like a madwoman. Weeping, she curled into the foetal position, her palms pressed against the side of her head and her bitten-down fingernails clawing at her scalp.

She bit the flesh of her palm to stifle her screams, rocking back and forth on the floor.

Her eyes were closed tightly and it took an effort of will to open them.

The room was dimly lit, a weak glow from the haphazardly arranged lumen globes on the street outside filtering through the thin curtains twitching at the window. A stainless steel sink and toilet unit gurgled behind a privacy screen and stacks of papers fluttered on the table in the centre of the room.

Mesira remained on the floor until her breathing returned to normal and her heart rate slowed, before picking herself up using the edge of the bed to steady her shaking legs. Her whole body was trembling and she bent to lift the fallen sheet and wrap it around her skinny, wasted frame.

The vision was still fresh in her mind and she wiped away tears as she made her way to the table and poured a tall glass of raquir. Loose papers lay strewn across the table, a half finished report for Verena Kain detailing - empathic readings she'd made at a meeting between Governor Barbaden and community leaders. It was a breach of security to have them lying out like this, but she had left the Imperial palace early that day, unwilling to spend any more time in Barbaden's presence than she had to.

The sounds of the city drifted in through her window: the clatter of ramshackle ground cars, the raucous sound of drunks pouring from the bars and the occasional violent oath. She could sense the feelings and emotions drifting in the air behind the sounds, but shut them out, blunting her powers with another shot of raquir.

She poured another, knowing she would get no more sleep tonight and unwilling to close her eyes again after the horrors the Mourner had shown her.

In her dream he had turned his face towards her, his flesh dripping from his blackened skull as the heat of the flames roared hotter and brighter. She had wanted to look away. She had known with utter certainty that to see his face would drive her to madness, but her head was fixed in place and when she saw his eyes, cold and white like the heart of a dead star, she had seen horrors that went beyond even those of the Killing Ground.

Sloshing, corpse-filled tenders shuddered and bumped behind a heaving daemon engine that spurted blood and travelled on tracks of bone. Forests of dead children were impaled on jangling meat hooks. Entire planets were laid waste before a tide of screaming daemons, and galaxies were extinguished by the power that poured into this world from the insane geometry of the monstrous engine.

Dead souls writhed in the depths of its awful, daemonic structure and she could feel the immense warp energy surrounding it, a flood of power saturating the air and earth and water of Salinas with its presence. Whatever this horrifying machine was, it had seen unnumbered slaughters and brought with it the dread memories of every drop of blood spilled in its vile existence.

She had seen them all, every soul torn from flesh, every violation visited upon an innocent and every vile, unimaginable horror wreaked upon the living.

As clearly as if she had stood watching it, she saw the mighty daemon engine appear before the temple in the main square of Khaturian, its bronze, eagle-winged pediment sagging where the bombs had loosened it from the stonework: the building the Screaming Eagles had attacked with melta guns and then stormed with guns blazing and blades chopping.

Mesira closed her eyes, trying to block the memories of screams, the echoing bark of gunfire and the horrifying, unending whoosh of flamers. She moved from the table to stand at the window, looking over the cobbled streets of Barbadus and watching the few people that dared pass beneath her window. They walked by without looking up, for it was well known that Barbaden's pet psyker lived here, and no one wanted to attract her evil eye.

Anger touched her and she allowed her ability to reach out, feeling the ghost touch of the minds that filled the squalid tenements and ad hoc dwellings formed in the remains of a regiment's worth of vehicles that the Achaman Falcatas had abandoned to the elements.

Barbadus was a city built upon the bones of an Imperial Guard regiment's cast-offs.

With the conclusion of the campaign to quell the rebellious system, the planet Salinas had been awarded to the Falcatas, and the regiment had been permitted to keep the bulk of its armoured vehicles, for there had not been the means to transport most of them off world. However, without sufficient enginseers or tech-priests, most had swiftly fallen into disrepair and only a handful of companies were able to maintain their tanks and transports in working order.

Those that could not simply abandoned them, and it did not take long for the enterprising citizens of Barbadus to claim them. Families lived in and around these vehicles, making homes in what had once been instruments of war.

A Leman Russ battle tank could house a family of five once any unnecessary kit had been hollowed out, a Chimera even more. Many other vehicles had been cannibalised for parts and sheets of metal, and entire districts of Barbadus were constructed from the remains of those vehicles that had rusted solid, broken down or otherwise failed.

Her senses were filled with the simmering resentment that bubbled just below the surface of virtually every inhabitant of the city, and it was a resentment Mesira could well understand, for the invasion of the Achaman Falcatas had been brutal and bloody.

The new governor had even renamed their capital city after himself.

No wonder they hate us, she thought. I hate us too.

Though her empathic ability was normally confined to reading humans, Mesira could feel something very different tonight, as though she could sense the planet's deep anger. The air had a charged quality, a ripened sense of importance and impending confluence that she had not felt before and which frightened her a great deal.

Something profound had changed on Salinas, but the sense of it eluded her.

Were the images she had seen in the eyes of the Mourner real or allegories?

She was not skilled in interpreting visions and wondered if Governor Barbaden's astropathic diviners might know what to make of what she had seen.

No sooner had the thought of the Falcata's former colonel entered her mind than she felt a cold breath sigh across the back of her neck.

She shivered and spun around, her hand reaching up to her scalp.

A small figure of light stood in the far corner of the room, a young girl with her hands outstretched.

You were there.

Though he craved rest, Uriel was unable to sleep, the persistent sense that they were not alone still lingering at the back of his mind. After eating their fill of meat, both he and Pasanius had explored the empty chambers of the church, a crumbling vestry, some abandoned supply rooms and a number of private chapels in the transepts.

They had found nothing untoward and had then made a patrol circuit of the exterior of the church, climbing tumbled masonry and crossing angled slabs of broken roadway as they scouted the area around the temple. With only the two of them, it was impossible to completely secure such a large area, but they had found nothing to make either of them think there was anything living in the city besides themselves.