Beast Krule fired back at the sniper, a salvo of three bolts. From this range Wienand would have thought the shot impossible, but the trio of bolts arced over the crowd and dropped into the window. Krule had some kind of optical imaging and had even allowed for the decay rate of the bolts’ internal propellant. The flash of detonations illuminated a gaunt, shocked face within the dorm cell.
Wienand rolled to her feet, pulling free her laspistol. Other figures were converging on them from the crowd. Some of the pilgrims were rooted in horror, others were screaming, while many were trying to push their way back into the packed throng, trying to get away. The old woman had crawled over to her husband and was cradling him in her arms, a patch of wet red spreading through the crude grey weave of her smock.
‘Watch out!’ Wienand’s warning came just in time as a woman in a dark red Imperial Guard uniform lunged from the crowd at Krule, her hand clutching a gleaming power sword. The Assassin turned just in time, the shimmering blade slicing through the folds of the robe around his neck but missing flesh. Krule snapped out his right hand, fingers extended. The woman’s throat disappeared in a welter of foaming blood.
Another assailant dressed in the same manner, tall and lean, erupted from the panicked people to Wienand’s right. The inquisitor fired and there was a flash of light as a conversion field absorbed the energy of the las-shot. She didn’t have time for another, but Krule was there again, a kick snapping the legs from under the man, shattering shin bones. The Beast was on top of him in moments, driving reinforced fists through his chest and ribs.
Someone barrelled into Wienand from behind. She squirmed and twisted as she fell, firing the laspistol point-blank into the person’s gut. Hot breath warmed the inquisitor’s neck as the two of them hit the ground hard, forcing the air out of Wienand’s lungs. She stared into the red lenses of a pair of bionic eyes inches from her face, and was distantly aware of a sharp pain just above her right hip.
Suddenly the weight on Wienand was lifted away. The man seemed to rise into the air, blood drops falling from the blade of the long knife in his left hand, a scorch mark on the flak armour covering his torso beneath the layers of a preacher’s vestments. At first Wienand thought it was Krule who threw her assailant a dozen feet, but the robed, hooded figure was too slender. Her saviour stooped down, extending a hand with well-manicured fingernails and a small tattoo of a skull between thumb and index finger that Wienand recognised immediately.
‘Rendenstein? I knew you were alive!’
Wienand’s aide nodded inside the hood and stepped past, delivering a skull-smashing punch to a man swinging a maul at Beast Krule’s exposed back. The Assassin reared up, bloodied hands flinging gore. He spun around but stopped himself as he pulled back his right fist.
‘That’s the last of them,’ growled Vangorich’s agent. He looked at Rendenstein and his eyes widened. ‘That I know of. There’ll be more soon, ma’am. We should go.’
‘Arbitrators!’ snapped Wienand, spying a knot of blue-armoured enforcers with shock shields and power mauls shouldering their way through the crowd a few dozen feet away. ‘This is no time for answering awkward questions!’
Krule led the way and Rendenstein took the rear, Wienand wedged protectively between the two enhanced warriors. They headed away from the incoming Arbitrators and found the shelter of an arched entranceway to one of the transit tenements.
Krule hit the steps inside at a run, going up two floors before turning along one of the landings and sprinting along its length to another stairwell, where he ascended again. Wienand wasn’t sure if he was heading somewhere specific or simply navigating at random, but after five minutes of hard running that had the inquisitor’s heart thrashing in her chest and her lungs burning, the Assassin finally came to a stop beside the open door of a pilgrim cell. He stepped inside and reappeared a moment later.
Wienand was almost doubled up, choking down huge gulps of air. She hadn’t realised the price her body had paid for the past few years being dormant on Terra. Rendenstein stepped past to guard the other side of the doorway, her skin as porcelain-like as usual. Krule glanced at the inquisitor’s aide with a look of appreciation before concentrating on Wienand.
‘All clear, ma’am,’ said Beast, taking Wienand by the arm and leading her into the room. It was a bare chamber about ten feet square, with a low pallet bed in one corner, a washstand with rusted taps in another and a bedside table in which had been left a tattered copy of the
