Empire from the Ashes

Chapter Forty

The firing eased as most of the attacking infantry marched away from the shattered ordnance depot. Three thousand men still surrounded it, but their orders now were to hold the heretics, not crush them. Their musketeers were conserving ammunition, and their artillery caissons were almost empty. Fresh ammunition wagons were on their way, but for now the Guardsmen concentrated on simply keeping the Malagorans pinned down.

Sean breathed a silent thanks for the lighter fire, but this was going to be tricky, and all of Folmak's regimental commanders and four of his six battalion COs were casualties. Losses among junior officers had been equally heavy, and getting the men sorted out took time. If the bad guys guessed what was coming and threw in an attack at just the wrong moment...

Folmak would retain what remained of his Third Regiment and half the First; the rest of the First would reinforce the Second for the breakout. The choice of units had been dictated by where the men were. The Third held what was left of the western wall, and they'd fall back to the main arsenal, covered by a hundred or so men already in the building, when Sean attacked to the east.

It was taking too long, he thought, but his people were moving as fast as humanly possible and then some. He crouched behind another pile of stone—this one had once been a workshop—and watched men filter into position around him. What had been regiments were now battalions, and battalions had become companies, but, one by one, officers raised their arms to indicate their readiness, and he drew a deep breath.

A dozen arlaks, double-shotted and loaded with grape for good measure, had been dragged into position under cover of the smoke. One man crouched behind each gun, watching Sean with intent eyes, and he slashed his arm downward.

A lethal blast screamed down the only eastbound street not blocked by flames as the gunners jerked their lanyards, then snatched up their own rifles. Shrieks of agony answered the unexpected salvo, and the torn, filthy survivors of B Company, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, First Brigade, lunged over the ruin of the depot wall with the high, shrill Malagoran yell.

The rest of the Second Regiment foamed in their wake, and Sean yanked Sandy to her feet and vaulted over the wall with the second wave. Tamman was ahead of them, leading B Company down the narrow street between two infernos which had once been warehouses, and rifles and muskets cracked in the hellish glare. The Malagorans charged through a cinder-raining furnace to strike the defenders before they recovered from the unexpected bombardment, and bayonets and pikes flashed in the bloody light of the flames.

Tamman crashed into the Guardsmen at B Company's head. A pike lunged at him, and he smashed it aside with a bio-enhanced arm and snatched the luckless pikemen bodily off his feet. The Guardsman wailed in terror, and Tamman hurled him away. More pikemen flew as the improvised projectile bowled them over, and Company B closed for the kill, firing as they came. A quarter of them went down, but the others carried through, and the blocking Guard infantry disintegrated before their bayonets.

"We're through, Sean!" Tamman yelled over the com.

"Don't stop to celebrate! Keep moving!"

The Second Regiment broke out of the fire-fringed street into the open on the heels of their foes. A reserve of two or three hundred Guardsmen looked up in astonishment as the ragged apparitions materialized, then took to its own heels in panic as the bayonets swept down upon it. Sean's column burst through the perimeter around the depot and vanished into the burning city, and Folmak Folmakson, listening to the fading sound of combat to the east as the last of his own men dashed into the arsenal, whispered a prayer for its safety.

Harriet MacIntyre stood at the rear of the army's encampment, white-faced and clinging to Stomald's hand as she watched mountains of smoke rise from the Temple. Her com was tied to Sean's, following her twin and her friends through the bedlam of the city's streets, and she longed with all her heart to be with them. But she couldn't be. She had to wait here, praying that they reached their objective. One hundred and ten kilometers further north, Brashan had abandoned his post aboard Israel and rode the cockpit of an Imperial fighter, poised just outside the computer's kill zone with a second fighter slaved to his controls. If Sean and the others could shut down the computer, he and Harriet could end the fighting in minutes... if they could shut down the computer.

Tibold Rarikson swore vilely as fresh combat roared on his right. He didn't fully understand what Lord Sean and the angels intended, and he was aghast at the risk his commander was running, but he was a soldier. He'd accepted his orders, yet he bitterly regretted the loss of intelligence from the Angel Harry. Her reports had become increasingly general as the confusion and smoke spread, but they'd given him a priceless edge. Now she could no longer provide them, and the Guard had finally gotten around his flank.

His men gave ground stubbornly, fighting every span of the way, but the Guard pikes ground forward. He sent three relatively fresh regiments racing west from his reserve and hoped it would be enough.

"What—?"

High Priest Vroxhan whirled towards the window as shots sounded right outside the Chancery, and his jaw dropped as bullets spun men around in the Place of Martyrs. A heretic attack here? It couldn't be!

But it was happening. Even as he watched, ragged, battle-stained men erupted into the open, fell into line, and poured a devastating, steadily mounting fire into the single understrength Guard company in the square. He stared at the carnage, unable to believe what he was seeing, then looked up as he sensed a presence at his side.

"Lord Marshal!" he gasped. "Have they broken through Therah?"

"Impossible!" Surak jerked a spyglass open and raised it to his eye, then swore and closed it with a snap. "They're from the depot, Holiness. No one else could have gotten here, and there's a man out there who's so tall he has to be 'Lord Sean.' "

"What are they doing out here?"

"Trying to escape... or to divert reinforcements from the North Gate. Either way, there's not enough of them to be a threat."

"Can they escape?"

"It's possible, Holiness. Not likely, but possible, especially if they go south instead of trying to link up with Tibold."

"Stop them! Stop them!" Vroxhan shouted.

"With what, Holiness? Aside from your personal guard, my headquarters troop, and the detachment at the Sanctum, every man I have is headed for North Gate."

Vroxhan started to speak once more, then closed his mouth and watched the heretics finish routing the hapless Guard company and reform into column. As Surak had predicted, they headed south, and the high priest clenched his fists in sullen hate. They were getting away. The leaders of this damnable heresy were escaping him, and as soon as they were safe, the rest of their army would break off its attack. Bile rose in his throat, and he raised his eyes from the vanishing demon-worshipers to the huge, white block of the Sanctum. Why? he demanded of God. Why are You letting this happen? Why—

And then his thoughts froze in a sudden flash of terrified intuition. Escape? They weren't trying to escape! As if God Himself had whispered it in his ear, Vroxhan knew where they were headed, and his blood ran chill.

"The Sanctum!" he gasped. The lord marshal looked at him blankly, and Vroxhan grabbed him and shook him. "They're headed for the Sanctum itself!"

"The— Why should they be, Holiness?"

"Because they're demon-worshipers!" Vroxhan half-screamed. "My God, man! They serve the powers of Hell—what if their masters have given them some means to destroy the Voice? If we lose its protection, how will we stop the next wave of demons from the stars?"

"But—"

"There's no time, Lord Marshal! Signal the Sanctum detachment now! Tell them they must keep the heretics from entering, then send every man you can find after them!"

"But there's only your own guard, Holiness, and—"

"Send them! Send them!" Vroxhan shook the lord marshal again. "No! I'll take them myself !" he cried wildly, and whirled away from Surak.

Tamman led the way. His men didn't like it, and they kept trying to get past him, to put themselves between him and any possible enemies, but he waved them sharply back whenever they did. He wasn't being heroic; he needed to be up front to scout their path with his implants.

The chaos in the streets was even worse than he'd feared. There were few Guardsmen about, but thousands of civilians had fled the fighting, and most of them seemed to be headed for the Sanctum to pray for deliverance. In fairness, they had the sense to scatter the instant they saw armed men coming up behind them, but even with panic to spur them on, they took time to get out of his way. Worse, with so many civilians moving around, it was hard to spot any Guard formations he might encounter.

The column moved quickly, when it could move at all, but its progress was a series of breathless dashes separated by slow, wading progress through the noncombatants, and Tamman was sorely tempted to order his men to open fire to chase the crowds off faster. He couldn't, but he was tempted.

He crossed a small square and looked up. The huge block of the Sanctum loomed ahead of him. Fifteen more minutes, he thought; possibly twenty.

"Faster! Faster!" Vroxhan shouted.

"Holiness, we can go no faster!" Captain Farnah, his personal guard's commander protested, waving at the civilians who clogged their path. "The people—"

"What do the people matter when demon-worshipers go to profane the very Sanctum of God?!" Vroxhan snapped, and his eyes were mad. He'd lost sight of the heretics while his guards mustered; they were up ahead somewhere, headed for the Sanctum. That was all he knew... and all he needed to know. "Clear the path, Captain! You have pikes; now clear the path!"

Farnah stared at him, as if unable to believe his orders, but Vroxhan snarled at him, and the Guardsman turned away. He shouted orders of his own, and within seconds Vroxhan heard the screams as the leading pikemen lowered their weapons, faces set like iron, and swept ahead. Men, women, even children were smashed aside or died, and the seven hundred men of Vroxhan's personal guard marched over their bodies.

The fighting on Tibold's right rose to a crescendo as the Guard threw his flank back eight hundred paces in a driving, brutal attack. But then the charging pikemen ran into pointblank, massed chagor fire, and the regiments Tibold had sent from the reserve crashed into them. It was the Guard's turn to reel back, yet they retreated only half the distance they'd come, then held sullenly, and now more Guard reinforcements were hammering his left.

He swore again, more vilely than ever. He was losing his momentum. He could feel the army's advance grinding to a halt amid the blazing ruins.

"Watch the wall! Men on the wall!" Tamman shouted as fifty musketeers suddenly rose over the parapet of the ornamental wall about the Sanctum. The square outside it was packed with civilians who screamed in terror as the Guardsmen leveled their muskets to pour fire into B Company's skirmish line, but Tamman's warning had come before they were in position. A withering blast of rifle fire met them, and, more horribly, the civilians between the two forces soaked up much of their own fire. Despite the cover of the waist-high parapet, they took heavier losses than the skirmishers, and then the rest of B Company came up with C Company in support, and their fire swept the wall clear.

Shrieking civilians stampeded madly, trampling one another in their terror, and Second Regiment drove across the blood-slick pavement for the gates. They were locked, but their delicate ivory panels and gold filigree were no match for the rifle butts of desperate men, and Second Regiment smashed its way through their priceless artistry like a ram.

Thirty or forty pikemen were trying to form up before the Sanctum's huge doors when the gates went down. They saw the "heretics" coming and fought to get set, but the Malagorans spread back out into a ragged firing line without orders. A sharp, deadly volley crashed out, and half the Guardsmen went down. The survivors fell back into the Sanctum itself, and Tamman started to lead his men after them, then skidded to a halt as Sean came up over his com.

"Trouble behind us, Tam! Five or six hundred men coming up fast!"

"I'm at the entry now," Tamman replied. "What do I do?"

"Secure the doors and put the rest of your men on the wall. We're going to have to detach a rearguard to keep these bastards off us."

"On it," Tamman agreed, and started shouting fresh orders.

"Holiness! The heretics!"

Vroxhan looked up at Farnah's shout, and then the first crackling musket fire rolled back from ahead. A bend in the street blocked his view, but he saw clouds of powder smoke and heard the screams of the wounded. Almost half his guard were musketeers, and they scattered into doorways and shop fronts, diving for cover to return fire while the pikemen jerked back around the corner to get out of range.

"Keep moving!" he snapped, but Farnah shook his head sharply.

"We can't, Holiness. They're inside the Sanctum's wall, and there must be three or four hundred of them with their damned rifles. We can't advance across the square against their fire. It's suicide."

"What do our lives matter compared to our souls?" Vroxhan raged.

"Holiness, if we advance, we die, and if we die, we can accomplish nothing to save the Sanctum," Farnah grated in a voice of iron.

"Damn you!" Vroxhan's hand slashed across the captain's face. "Damn you! Don't you dare tell me—"

He cocked his arm to swing again, but then he paused. He froze, oblivious to the naked fury on Farnah's reddened, swelling face, then grabbed the captain's arm.

"Wait! Let them hold the walls!"

"What do you mean?" Farnah half-snarled, but Vroxhan was already turning away.

"Bring half your men and follow me!"

Sean looked back as the rifles began to crack. He hated himself for leaving those men to hold that wall without him, yet he had no choice. They could hold it as well without him as with him, but only he, Sandy, or Tamman could access the computer.

They had only thirty men with them, the survivors of B and C Companies' original two hundred, as they clattered into the Sanctum. The original command bunker had been encircled, over the centuries, with chapels and secondary cathedrals, libraries and art galleries. It was a crazed rabbit warren of gorgeous tapestries and priceless artwork, and bloody boots thudded on rich carpet and floors of patterned marble as they pounded through it.

"Left, left, left," Sean muttered to himself as he felt the energy flows of the ancient command complex through his implants. "It has to be to the left, damn it, but where—"

"Got it, Sean!" Tamman shouted. "This way!"

Tamman swung sharply left down a stairway, and Sean caught Sandy's hand and half-dragged her after their friend, eyes gleaming as walls of marble and paneled wood gave way to bare ceramacrete. The command center was buried beneath the bunker, and boots and combat gear clattered in the deep well of the stairs. Here and there a man lost his footing and fell, but someone always dragged him back up, and the gasping urgency of their mission drove them on.

"Hatch!" Tamman yelled, and the men behind him suddenly slowed as they beheld the great, gleaming portal of Imperial battle steel. The Sanctum's guardians had ordered the computer to close the hatch, and for just an instant, religious dread held the Malagorans, but Tamman was oblivious to it as his implants sought the access software, and he grunted in triumph.

"No ID code," he muttered in English as Sean and Sandy pushed up beside him. "Guess the guys who set up this crazy religion figured the priesthood might forget it. Let me—ahh!"

His neural feed found the interface, and the Malagorans sighed as the huge hatch slid silently aside. They stared into the holiest of Pardalian holies, and their eyes were awed as they gazed at the man who'd opened the way.

"Come on!" Sean drew two pistols and shouldered past Tamman.

"Blasphemer!" someone screamed, and a sledgehammer punched into his breastplate as a musket roared, but the tough Imperial composites held. One of his pistols cracked viciously, and High Inquisitor Surmal's head exploded. His corpse tumbled back into the depths of the main display, blood pooling under the glitter of holographic stars, and Sean looked around quickly. None of the equipment was proper military design, and the Pardalians hadn't helped by covering the walls with Mother Church's trophies. Banners and weapons from the Schismatic Wars were everywhere, making it almost impossible to pick out details, and he snarled. Damn it, where the hell had they hidden—?

"There, Sean!" Sandy pointed, and Sean swallowed a curse as he saw the console. The bastards hadn't just switched the neural interfacing off; they'd physically disconnected it from the computer core.

"Tam, you're our best techie. Go! Get that thing back on-line!"

"Gotcha!" Tamman dashed across the command center, and Sean turned back to the men crowding through the hatch behind him. "In the meantime, let's get some security set up here. We need to—"

"Sean!" Sandy screamed, and he whirled just as a tapestry on the opposite wall was ripped aside and a musket flashed fire through the sudden opening. The ball whizzed past his head by no more than a centimeter, and he saw more men filling a five-meter-wide arch.

A tunnel! A goddamned tunnel into the command center!

Even as the thought flashed through his mind, he had time to wonder whether the original architect had installed it, or if it had been added by the Church's founders... and to realize it didn't really matter.

"Take 'em!" he bellowed. "Keep them off Tamman's back!"

His men answered with a snarl, and rifles barked like the hammer of God. Choking smoke filled the command center's vaulted chamber as muskets blazed back, yet for the first few seconds it all went the Malagorans' way, despite the surprise of their enemies' sudden arrival. They were spread out, able to pour more rounds into the arch than the Guardsmen could fire back, but three hundred men crowded the tunnel, pressing forward with fanatic devotion, and there was no time to reload.

"Hit 'em! Bottle 'em up!" Sean roared, and charged as the first Guardsmen broke out into the open.

His Malagorans charged at his heels, but the Guardsmen were charging, too. They'd left their pikes behind, unable to get through the tunnel with them, but their pikemen carried swords, maces, and battle-axes, and their musketeers hurled themselves forward with clubbed weapons.

"Malagor and Lord Sean!" someone howled.

"Holy God and no quarter!" the Guard bellowed back, and the two forces slammed together in a smoke-choked nightmare of hand-to-hand combat.

Sean rampaged at the head of his men, and his slender sword carved an arc of death before him. No unenhanced human could enter its reach and live, and he hacked his way towards the arch. If he could reach it, bottle them up inside it... But his men weren't enhanced. They couldn't match his strength and speed, and too many Guardsmen had gotten into the control center. They swirled about him, and he grunted in anguish as something slammed into his thigh from behind. His enhanced muscle and bone held, but blood oozed down his leg, and unenhanced or not, if they swarmed him under—

He fell back, cursing, strangling an enemy with his left hand even as he cut down two more with his sword, and someone swung a mace two-handed. It clanged into his breastplate and rebounded, staggering him despite his enhancement, but once more the Imperial composite held. Steel clashed and grated all about him, men screamed and died, and a Guardsman loomed suddenly before him, sword thrusting for his throat, and there was no time to dodge.

He saw the point coming, and then a battle-ax split his killer from crown to navel. Blood fountained over him, and he gasped in surprise as Sandy bounded past him. The ax she'd snatched from the trophies on the wall was as tall as she was, and she shrieked like a Valkyrie as she swung. She'd lost her helmet, and her brown eyes flashed fire as she cut a second man cleanly in half, and another voice screamed in horror.

"Demon! Demon!" it wailed as they realized she was a woman.

Guardsmen who'd been howling, fanatical warriors the instant before shrank from her in terror, and she snarled.

"Come on, then, you bastards!" she yelled in Imperial Universal, and a fresh wail of terror went up as the Guardsmen recognized the Holy Tongue in the mouth of a demon. She cut down another man, and for just a moment, Sean thought she was going to pull it off. But the men still in the tunnel couldn't see her. Ignorance immunized them against the terror of her presence, and the weight of their bodies drove the others forward.

Fresh pressure pushed the Malagorans back, and Sean and Sandy with them. Their infantry formed a wedge behind them, fighting to cover Lord Sean's and the Angel Sandy's backs, and they lunged forward once more while bodies flew away from them. Under any other circumstances, the Guardsmen probably would have fled from their "superhuman" foes, but the tunnel behind them was packed solid. They had to fight or die, and so they fought, and the howling bedlam of combat filled the command center.

Behind his friends, Tamman worked frantically, hands flying as he fought to reconnect the neural interface. He'd never seen one quite like this, and he was working as much by guess as by knowledge. Despite his total concentration on his task, he knew the Guardsmen were grinding forward. Sean and Sandy were worth fifty unenhanced men when it came to offense, but there were only two of them. Some of the Guardsmen were slipping past them, circling around to get at the merely mortal Malagorans behind them, and despite the reach advantage of the Malagorans' bayoneted rifles, they were going down. So far none of the attackers seemed to have noticed Tamman, but it was only a matter of time before one of them—

There! He made the last connection, flipped his neural feed into the console, and demanded access. There was a moment of utter silence, and then an utterly emotionless contralto spoke.

"ID code required for implant access. Please enter code," it said, and he stared at the console in horror.

Sean gasped as another mace crunched into his left arm. The mail sleeve held and his implants overrode the pain and shock, but the blow had hurt him badly and he knew it. He staggered back, and Sandy whirled around him, graceful as a dancer as she swung her huge ax with dreadful precision. Sean's attacker went down without a scream, and he lashed out with his sword and killed another man before he could hit Sandy from behind.

"Sean! Sean, it's ID-coded!" He heard the voice, but it made no sense, and he hacked down another enemy. "Goddamn it, Sean, it's ID-coded!" Tamman bellowed, and this time he understood.

He turned his head just as Tamman hurtled past him. His friend's sword went before him, and Sean and Sandy followed. They forged forward, killing as they went, and this time there were three of them. Tamman took point, with Sean and Sandy covering his flanks, leaving a carpet of bodies in their wake, and at last, the Guardsmen began to yield. The sight of three demons—and they must be demons to wreak such carnage—coming straight for them was too much. They scattered out of their way, and Tamman reached the archway. His sword wove a deadly pattern before him, building a barricade of bodies to block the arch with the dead, and even with the weight of numbers pressing them forward, no man could break past him.

"Watch his back, Sandy!" Sean gasped, and turned back to the combat still raging in the command center. Only ten of his men still stood, but they'd formed a tight, desperate defensive knot in the center of the huge chamber, and he flung himself into the rear of their attackers.

The Guardsmen saw him coming and screamed in fear. They backed away, unwilling to face the demon, and their eyes darted to the arch by which they'd entered. Two more demons blocked it, cutting them off from their companions, but the main hatch was open, and they took to their heels, trampling one another in their desperate haste to escape with their souls.

The sounds of combat died. The tunnel was so choked with bodies no one could get to Tamman to engage him, even assuming they'd had the courage to try, and Sean leaned on his sword gasping for breath while the cold, hideous knowledge of failure filled him.

They'd come so close! Fought so hard, paid such a horrible price. Why hadn't it even occurred to him that the interface would be ID-coded?!

"Tam!" he croaked. "If the interface's coded, what about voice access?"

"Tried it," Tamman said grimly, never looking away from the tunnel while the surviving Malagoran infantry hastily reloaded and turned to cover the main hatch. "No good. They took out the regular verbal access and set up a series of stored commands when they cut out the interface. We could spend weeks trying to guess what to tell it to control the inner defenses!"

"Oh, God," Sean whispered, his face ashen. "God, what have we done? All those people—did we kill them for nothing?"

"Stop it, Sean!" Sandy was splashed from head to toe in blood, and her eyes still smoked as she rounded on him. "We don't have time for that! Think! There has to be a way in!"

"Why?" Sean demanded bitterly. "Because we want there to be one? We fucked up, Sandy. I fucked up!"

"No! There has to be—"

She froze, mouth half-open, and her eyes went huge.

"That's it," she whispered. "By all that's holy, that's it!"

"What's 'it'?" Sean demanded, and she gripped his good arm in fingers of steel.

"We can't access without the ID-code, but you can—maybe!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Sean, it's an Imperial computer. A Fourth Empire computer."

"So?" He stared at her, trying to comprehend, and she shook him violently.

"Don't you understand? It was set up by an Imperial governor. A direct representative of the Emperor!"

Comprehension wavered just beyond his grasp, and his eyes bored into hers, begging her to explain.

"You're the heir to the throne, second only to the Emperor himself in civil matters, and you've been confirmed by Mother! That means she buried the ID codes to identify you to any Imperial computer in your implants!"

"But—" Sean stared at her, and his brain lurched back into motion. "We can't be sure they were ever loaded," he argued, already turning to run towards the console. "Even if they were, it's going to take me time to work through them. Ten, fifteen minutes, minimum."

"So? You got anything else to do right now?" she demanded with graveyard humor, and he managed to smile.

"Guess not, at that," he admitted, and stopped beside the console.

"They're reforming on the stairs, Lord Sean!" one of the Malagorans called, and he turned, but Sandy shoved him back towards the console.

"You take care of the computer," she told him grimly. "We'll take care of the Guard."

"Sandy, I—" he began helplessly, and she squeezed his arm.

"I know," she said softly, then turned and ran for the hatch. "You, you, and you," she told three of the Malagorans. "Go watch the arch. Tam, over here! We've got company!"

"Here they come!" someone shouted, and Crown Prince Sean Horus MacIntyre closed his eyes and inserted his neural feed into the console.