The First Heretic

The first angel spoke, its voice deep and raw, filtered through hidden speakers in its facemask.

‘People of Monarchia, capital city of Forty-Seven Ten, hear these words. We, the warriors of the XIII Legion, are oathed to this moment, honour-sworn to this duty. We come bearing the Emperor’s decree to the tenth world brought to compliance by the Forty-Seventh Expedition of humanity’s Great Crusade.’

All the while, the dozen angels kept their weapons aimed at the kneeling civilians. Cyrene could see the muzzles were as charred as the vulture craft’s hull, darkened from firing shells of monstrous size.

‘Your compliance with the Imperium of the Man has held for sixty-one years. With the greatest regret, the Emperor of Mankind demands that all living souls abandon the city of Monarchia immediately. Moments ago, your planetary leaders were given the same warning. This city is to be evacuated within six days. On the final day, your planetary leaders will be allowed to send a single distress call.’

The crowd kept silent, but their stares were now of confusion and disbelief, not reverence. As if sensing a drift in their attention, the angel aimed its weapon into the air and fired a single shot. The gunshot banged like a thunder peal rolling around a valley, storm-loud in the silence.

‘No one is to remain in Monarchia by dawn of the seventh day. Go now to your homes. Gather your belongings. Evacuate the city. Resistance will be met with bloodshed.’

‘Where will we go?’ a female voice called from the transfixed crowd. ‘This is our home!’

The first angel turned his weapon, aiming directly at Cyrene. It took several seconds for the young woman to realise she’d been the one to speak. It took much less time for those near her to break and flee, leaving her in an ever-expanding patch of sudden isolation.

The angel repeated its words, its emotionless inflection no different from before. ‘No one is to remain in Monarchia by dawn of the seventh day. Go now to your homes. Gather your belongings. Evacuate the city. Resistance will be met with bloodshed.’

Cyrene swallowed, saying nothing more. Cries and jeers rang out from the crowd. A bottle crashed against one of the angels’ helms, shattering into glass rain, and as several others shouted out demands to know what was happening, Cyrene turned and ran. Where the crowd wasn’t already fleeing with her, she forced her way through the press of people.

The throaty chatter of the angels’ weapons started up a handful of seconds later, as the God-Emperor’s messengers opened fire on the rioting crowd.

Three days later, Cyrene was still in the city.

Like many of the people calling Monarchia home, Cyrene’s dusky skin was a legacy of her ancestors’ lives in the equatorial deserts, and she had handsome eyes of a light brown that were rather like burnt auburn. Sun-lightened hazel hair fell in tumbling locks over her shoulders.

At least, her more infatuated lovers described her in such terms.

This was the picture her mind painted, though she no longer saw it when she looked in the mirror. Now her eyes were ringed from two nights without sleep, and her mouth was soured by dehydration.

Exactly how things had come to this point remained a mystery. Across the city, resistance to the invaders had been ferocious for the hour or so it had lasted. The greatest massacre had taken place at the Tophet Gate, when the protests became a riot, and the riot became a battlefield. Cyrene watched from the haven of a nearby church, though there hadn’t been much to see. Citizens cut down and culled, all for the crime of daring to defend their homes.

A battle tank of cobalt and bronze fired at the Tophet Gate itself, and though the slaughter was a tragedy, this was raw desecration. Grinding the dead beneath its treads, the tank fired a salvo at the towering structure. Its cannons left pain-scars across Cyrene’s sight, but she couldn’t look away.