Table of Contents

The Horus Heresy Volume Two – Cover

The Horus Heresy Volume Two – Title Page

Descent of Angels – Cover

Descent of Angels – Title Page

The Horus Heresy

Dramatis Personae

Prelude

Part One – Caliban

One

Two

Three

Four

Part Two – Beast

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Part Three – Imperium

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Part Four – Crusade

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Legion – Cover

Legion – Title Page

The Horus Heresy

Dramatis Personae

Part One – Reptile Summer

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Part Two – The Halting Site

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

Battle for the Abyss – Cover

Battle for the Abyss – Title Page

The Horus Heresy

Dramatis Personae

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Mechanicum – Cover

Mechanicum – Title Page

The Horus Heresy

Dramatis Personae

Map

0.01

Principia Mechanicum

1.01

1.02

1.03

1.04

1.05

1.06

1.07

1.08

Systemae Mechanicum

2.01

2.02

2.03

2.04

2.05

2.06

2.07

Origens Mechanicus

3.01

3.02

3.03

3.04

3.05

3.06

Addenda

Tales of Heresy – Cover

Tales of Heresy – Title Page

The Horus Heresy

Blood Games – Dan Abnett

Wolf at the Door – Mike Lee

Scions of the Storm – Anthony Reynolds

The Voice – James Swallow

Call of the Lion – Gav Thorpe

The Last Church – Graham McNeill

After Desh’ea – Matthew Farrer

About the Authors

Legal

THE HORUS HERESY

It is a time of legend.

The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.

His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.

Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.

Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended.
The Age of Darkness has begun.

Dramatis Personae

The Order

Lion El’Jonson, Champion of the Order

Luther, The Lion’s Second

Zahariel, Knight Supplicant

Nemiel, Knight Supplicant

Ramiel, Training Master

Lord Cypher, Guardian of the Order’s traditions

Amadis, The Hero of Maponis, Battle Knight

Sar Hadariel, Battle Knight

Attias, Knight Supplicant

Eliath, Knight Supplicant

The Knights of Lupus

Lord Sartana, Master of the Knights of Lupus

The I Legion, ‘Dark Angels’

Israfael, Chief Librarian of the Dark Angels

The V Legion, ‘White Scars’

Sheng Khan, Leader of the Fourth Expeditionary Fleet

Kurgis, Battle-brother

Imperial Personae

Stenius, Captain of the Invincible Reason

Mistress Argenta, Fleet Astropath, Invincible Reason

Rhianna Sorel, Composer and Harmonist

Harlad Furt, Lord Governor Elect, Overseer of the Sarosh territories

The Saroshi

Lord High Exalter, Leader of the Saroshi Bureaucracy

Dusan, Saroshi exegetist

Prelude

It begins on Caliban.

It begins back before the Emperor came to our planet, before there was even the first talk of angels. Caliban was different then. We knew nothing of the Imperium and the Great Crusade. Terra was a myth; no, not even that. Terra was a myth of a ghost of a memory brought to us by our long-dead forefathers. It was an ephemeral and half-forgotten thing with no bearing on our lives.

It was the time of Old Night. Warp storms had made it impossible to travel between the stars and each human world was left to fend for itself. We had passed more than five thousand years in isolation from the rest of humanity. Five thousand years. Can you imagine how long that is? Time enough for the people of Caliban to develop our own culture, our own ways, drawing from the patterns of the past, but separate from what had gone before. Free from the influence of Terra, our society had developed in a manner more in keeping with the world in which we lived.

We had our own beliefs and customs, aye, even our own religions.

There’s precious little of it left now, of course. It was all swept away by the coming of the Emperor. It is amazing to me, but there are children born of Caliban today who have never even heard of the Watchers or ridden a mighty warhorse. They have never known what it is to hunt the great beasts. This is the sorrow of our lives. Over time, the old ways are forgotten. Naturally, those who came in the Emperor’s wake claimed this was all to the good. We are making a new world, a better world: a world fit for the future.

We are making a better world.

It is always the way with conquerors. They don’t say they have come to destroy your traditions. They don’t talk about banishing the wisdoms of your grandfathers, turning the world upside-down, or replacing your ancient beliefs with a strange new creed of their devising. No one willingly admits they want to undermine your society’s foundations and kill its dreams. Instead, they talk about saving you from your ignorance. I suppose they think it sounds kinder that way.

But the truth of it remains the same, regardless.

I am getting ahead of myself though, for at this moment in Caliban’s history, all these things were unknown to us. In time, the Emperor would descend from the heavens with his angels, and everything would change. The Great Crusade had not yet reached us. We were innocent of the wider galaxy. Caliban was the sum total of our experience, and we were content in our ignorance, unaware of the forces heading towards us and how much they would transform our lives.

In those days, Caliban was a world of forests. Except for a few places given over to settlement or agriculture, the entire planet was covered in primordial, shadow-haunted woodland. The forest defined our lives. Unless a man made his home in the mountains or lived near the coast, he could spend his entire life without once seeing an open horizon.

Our planet was also the domain of monsters.

The forests teemed with predators, not to mention all manner of other hazards. To use a word we didn’t know then, a word taken from the lexicon of Imperial Cartography, Caliban is a death world. There isn’t much here that is not capable of killing a man, one way or another. Carnivorous animals, poisonous flowers, venomous insects: the creatures of this world only know one law and that is ‘kill or be killed’.

Of all the dangers to human life, there was one class of creatures that was always viewed as being set apart from the rest. They were more fearsome and brutal than any other animal we knew.

I am talking about the creatures we called the great beasts.

Each great beast of Caliban was as different from its fellows as a sword is different from a lance. Each creature represented the only example of its kind, a species of one. Their diversity was extraordinary. An individual beast might appear to be modelled after a reptile, or a mammal, or an insect, or else combine the features of all of them taken together in chaotic collaboration.

One might attack with tooth and claw, another with beak and tentacle, another using horns and hooves, while yet another might spit corrosive poison or bleed acid in place of blood. If they had one dominant feature, it was that every one of them appeared to be crafted directly from the stuff of nightmares. Allied to that, they each possessed qualities of size, strength, ferocity and cunning that made them the match of any ordinary human hunter, no matter how well-armed he might be.

It would not be overstating the case to say that the great beasts ruled the forests. Many of the customs we developed on Caliban owed their origins to the beasts’ presence. For humanity to survive we had to be able to hold the beasts at bay. Accordingly, knightly orders were formed among the nobility to create warriors of exemplary skill and ability, armed to the highest standards, and trained to protect human society against the worst predations of these monsters.

They were aided in this by the persistence of certain traditions in the making of weapons and armour. Most of the technology our distant ancestors brought with them to Caliban had been forgotten in our isolation, but the knowledge of how to repair and maintain pistols and explosive bolts, swords with motorised blades, and armour that boosted a warrior’s strength and power had been preserved. Granted, they were relatively primitive versions and they lacked the reliability of the more powerful models later brought to Caliban by the Imperials, but they were effective all the same. We had no motor vehicles, so the knights of Caliban rode to war on the backs of destriers – enormous warhorses selectively bred over thousands of years from the equine bloodstock brought to our world by its first settlers.

In due course, the knightly orders went on to build the great fortress monasteries that still serve as many of the major places of settlement in modern Caliban. Whenever one of the beasts began to prey on a settlement, the leader of the local nobility would declare a hunting quest against the creature. In response, knights and knights-supplicant would come to the area from every land, seeking to prove themselves by killing the beast and completing the quest.

This, then, was the pattern of life on Caliban for countless generations. We expected it to continue indefinitely. We thought our lives would follow the same well-trodden path as the lives of our fathers and grandfathers.

We were wrong, of course. The universe had other plans for us.

The Emperor was coming, but the first currents of change in our society were already at work long before his arrival. Some time before the Emperor came to Caliban, a new knightly order had been founded among our people. It called itself simply ‘the Order’, and its members put forward the startling proposition that all men were created equal. Previously, it had been traditional for knights to be recruited strictly and solely from among the nobility, but the Order broke with accepted practice to recruit from all layers of society. So long as an individual could prove by his deeds and his character that he was worthy of knighthood, the Order did not care whether he was a noble or a commoner.

It may seem a minor matter now, but the issue sparked no small amount of turmoil and controversy at the time. Traditionalist diehards among the more established orders regarded it as the thin end of a wedge that they thought would inevitably bring the whole edifice of our culture crashing down, and leave us as easy prey for the great beasts. In one case, this issue even led to open warfare.

A group calling itself the Knights of the Crimson Chalice attacked the Order’s mountain fortress at Aldurukh and laid siege to it. In what would later be seen as one of the defining moments of Caliban’s pre-Imperial history, the knights of the Order sallied forth and counter-attacked before the enemy had completed their siege lines.

The resulting battle was decisive. The Knights of the Crimson Chalice were routed, and the survivors hunted down to the last man. With this victory, the future progress of the Order was guaranteed. Supplicants flocked to them from all walks of life and, within the space of barely a few decades, the Order had become one of the most powerful and well-regarded knightly groups on Caliban.

This was only the beginning, however. Whatever subtle changes were brought to our society by the rise to prominence of the Order were as nothing compared to what would happen when the Lion came to Caliban.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that Lion El’Jonson is one of the primarchs, wrought in gene-labs by the Emperor to lead the armies of his angels, but at the time he was far more extraordinary to us.

We were not an unsophisticated people, nor were we primitives. Imagine the effect, though, as word spread across our planet that a man had been found living wild, like an animal, in the deep forests of the Great Northwilds, his features handsome and beautiful beneath the matted hair and the mud caked to his body.

No one knew who he was, and he spoke not a word of human language. He had survived for years, naked and unarmed, in the wilderness of the most dangerous region on Caliban – a place where even fully armoured knights hesitated to venture unless as part of a larger group. Nor was it the end of the wonders associated with this strange figure.

In light of the details of his discovery, the wild man came to be called Lion El’Jonson, meaning ‘The Lion, the Son of the Forest’ in the old tongue of Caliban. Having been brought to human society, Jonson soon demonstrated a prodigious talent for learning.

He quickly assimilated human ways, learning the habit of speech within a matter of days. From there, his rate of progress increased exponentially. Within a few short months, he was the equal in mind of our finest savants. A month later, he had exceeded their greatest achievements and left them trailing in his wake.

He never spoke of his days in the forest, nor could he account for how he had come to be living there or where he had come from, but his powers of reason and intelligence seemed unaffected by his time in the wilderness.

His intellectual capacity was matched only by his physical power. None could match his strength or prowess in combat, and he swiftly mastered the skills of knighthood to be accepted into the Order.

As might be expected, given his abilities, Jonson rapidly ascended through the Order’s ranks. His achievements were legendary, and coupled with a natural talent to inspire intense devotion in others, his presence soon led to a marked upsurge in recruitment. As the number of knights within the Order increased, and new fortress monasteries were built to accommodate them, Jonson and his supporters started to press for a crusade to be mounted against the great beasts. Their proposal called for a systematic campaign to clear the beasts from the forests, region by region, until Caliban was finally free from their scourge.

Objections were raised to the proposal, of course. The Order was the dominant military power on Caliban, but it was still only first among equals in the eyes of the other knightly orders. Given the size of the scheme Jonson had put forward, it would require the actions of every knightly order working in unison to a common plan to have any hope of succeeding. This was no small undertaking, considering that the knights of Caliban had always been inclined to feud and squabble amongst themselves. Combined with this, the plan would also need the support of the wider nobility and the common population. In general, though, we are not the kind to easily follow after leaders on Caliban: each man has too high a regard for his own opinions.

Then, there were other problems. The faint-hearted said it would be impossible to truly clear the beasts from the forests. It was too grand a scheme, too much the product of hubris. Some viewed the great beasts with supernatural dread, believing that any plan of extermination would only awaken an apocalypse by uniting the beasts against humanity.

Finally, there were concerns, even among those who backed Jonson’s aims. Some of them counselled caution. Jonson had envisioned a span of six years from the beginning of his war against the beasts to victory, but even his allies thought this was not enough time to achieve the plan’s objectives. They feared he had failed to take full account of the human factor. He had forgotten that the plan would be carried out by individuals who did not share his own extraordinary mental and physical abilities. Jonson might be superhuman, but he was the only one of his kind on Caliban. His plan would not be carried out by supermen. The real, hard work would be done by mortal men.

In the end, Jonson carried the day. His supporters argued that the people of Caliban had skulked for too long behind the walls of their settlements. They had lived too much in fear of the beasts. Man was made to have dominion over the wilderness, they said, not vice versa. It was time to restore the world to balance, to end the reign of the beasts and give mankind dominion over the forests.

‘This is our world,’ he said. ‘It is not the world of the beasts. It is time we took our stand.’

So, the decision was made and Jonson would have his campaign. One by one, the beasts were hunted down and killed. They were driven from the forests. They were tracked to their lairs and destroyed. In one thing at least, though, some of those who had opposed Jonson were proven right, for it took more than six years to finish the campaign.

It took ten years of constant campaigning, ten years of hardship, ten years of friends maimed and lost, but ultimately it was worth it. Our cause was just, and we achieved our ambitions. Ten years, and not one of the great beasts remained.

It occurs to me that I have been slapdash in one respect in telling this story, for I have made no mention of the one man who could hold forth knowledgeably on all the topics before us. I have talked of Caliban, of Lion El’Jonson and of the campaign against the great beasts, but I have neglected to mention the most important player in our drama.

I am talking about Luther.

He was the man who found Jonson in the forest and gave him his name, the man who brought him to civilisation and taught him the ways of human society. He was the one who, through all Jonson’s exploits and honours, stood side-by-side with him and matched him. Luther had not Jonson’s advantages in matters of war and strategy. He was born a man, after all, not created to be more than human. Yet, as Jonson’s actions began to change the face of Caliban, Luther kept stride with him, equalling the wild man’s accomplishments with his own.

Too often, the Imperium portrays Luther as the devil. Some say he grew jealous of the Lion, for though the two of them had shared in many victories, it was always Jonson who was lauded for these triumphs. Others say Luther grew increasingly bitter at being so much in the Lion’s shadow. They say a secret seed of anger was born in Luther’s heart in those days, the seed of future hatreds.

But those who repeat such things are liars. Luther always loved Jonson like a brother.

I know Luther well, and you may be assured I am well-placed to comment on his secrets. Luther is the key to understanding so much of how our world came to be where it is today, but it is better if we do not speak too much of Luther now. It will only work to the detriment of my story. To begin a tale with too many secrets tends to cause confusion after all. In my experience, it is always better if you build towards these things more slowly.

Poor, poor Luther; we will get to him in time, you may be certain of that point. We will get to it all in time. I will account for everything in time.

For now, though, the stage of my story is set.

It is the tenth year of Jonson’s campaign against the great beasts. Nearly all the beasts have been killed, and only a few stragglers remain in the less hospitable and more thinly populated regions of the planet.

Once the last of the great beasts are gone, we will all be able to build new lives. We can found new settlements. We can clear the trees for fuel and lumber, and plant new fields. For the first time, we will have control over our existence in ways we never had before.

A golden age beckons our people.

It is before the Emperor came to our planet, and before the time of angels, but the old ways are already dying. The world of our childhood will not be the world of our future. Many are unhappy at the prospect, but it is entirely possible that the world we inhabit tomorrow will be like nothing we could have foreseen.

Change can bring out the worst and best in us, or something of both qualities at the same time. Some look to the horizon and fear the future, while others look and see it shining in welcome.

It is the tenth year of Jonson’s campaign and the world turns beneath our feet. Unknowing, we stand on the brink of a bright new age of progress. We stand on the brink of learning of the Emperor, of the Imperium. We stand on the brink of becoming angels, but, as yet, we know nothing of these things.

On Caliban it is a time of innocence, but already the storm clouds gather. It is said that a man should be wary of weeping angels, for wherever their teardrops fall, men drown.

This is the shape of our lives. These are the days that made us, that formed our conflicts and decided our future. This is a time of which much will be written, but little understood. The histories created by those who follow after us will be riddled with falsehoods and fabrications.

They will not know why we turned from the Lion.

They will know nothing of our motives, but you can know them. You can know it all. Come listen, and you will hear my secrets. Come listen, and we will talk of Luther and Lion El’Jonson. We will talk of schism and civil war.

We will give voices to the dead.

Come, listen, hear my secrets.

Let us talk of the Dark Angels and the beginnings of their fall.

One

It began in darkness. Zahariel’s eyes snapped open an instant before Lord Cypher’s men came for him. He awoke to find a hand descending to clamp across his mouth. They dragged him from his bed, put a hood over his head and tied his arms behind him. With that, he was hauled blindly down a series of corridors. When at last they came to a halt, he heard one of his captors knock three times on a door.

The door opened and he was pushed inside.

‘Who is brought before us?’ asked a voice in the darkness.

‘A stranger,’ Lord Cypher said beside him. ‘He has been brought here bound and blinded. He comes seeking entrance.’

‘Bring him closer,’ said the first voice.

Zahariel felt hands at his arms and shoulders. He was propelled roughly forward and forced to kneel. A shock ran through him as his bare knees met the cold stone floor. Unwilling to let his captors think he was afraid, he tried to suppress a shiver.

‘What is your name?’ he heard the first voice again, louder this time. Its tone was rich and deep, a voice accustomed to command. ‘Who are your people?’

‘I am Zahariel El’Zurias,’ he replied. In keeping with ancient custom, Zahariel recited his full lineage, wondering if it would be the last time he ever spoke the words. ‘I am the only living son of Zurias El’Kaleal, who in turn was the son of Kaleal El’Gibrael. My people are descended from the line of Sahiel.’

‘A nobleman,’ said a third voice. In some ways this voice was more arresting than the others, its tone even more magnetic and compelling than the first. ‘He thinks he should be allowed among us because his father was important. I say he isn’t good enough. He isn’t worthy. We should throw him from the tower and be done with it.’

‘We will see,’ said the first voice. Zahariel heard the telltale rasp of a knife being slid from its sheath. He felt the uncomfortable sensation of cold metal against his skin as a blade was pressed to his throat.

‘First, we will test him,’ said the voice in the darkness. ‘You feel the blade at your throat?’

‘Yes,’ replied Zahariel.

‘Know this, then, a lie is a betrayal of our vows. Here, we deal only in truth. If you lie, I will know it. If I hear a lie, I will cut your throat. Do you accept these terms?’

‘Yes, I accept them.’

‘Do you? Understand, I am asking for an oath. Even when I take the knife away from your throat, even when I am dead, even when this knife is rusted and dull and useless, the oath you make by its edge will still be binding. Are you prepared to make an oath?’

‘I am prepared,’ said Zahariel. ‘I will make the oath.’

‘First, tell me by what right you have come here? Who are you to claim entrance to our gathering? By what right do you claim to be worthy to stand among us?’

‘I have completed the first portion of my training and I have been judged worthy by my masters,’ said Zahariel.

‘That is a start. But it takes more than that to be welcomed among us. That is why you must be tested.’

Zahariel had known they would be coming for him. Master Ramiel had told him as much the previous day, though, as usual, the old man’s words were cloaked in shadows, concealing as much as they revealed.

‘You understand I cannot tell you much,’ Master Ramiel had said. ‘It is not the way we do these things. The initiation ritual is ancient. It pre-dates the Order’s foundation by thousands of years. Some even say our ancestors may have brought it with them from Terra.’

‘I understand,’ said Zahariel.

‘Do you?’ his master asked.

He turned to stare at Zahariel with quick, hooded eyes. In the past, Zahariel might have felt the need to look away under the intensity of his gaze, but now he met the old man’s eyes directly.

‘Yes, I think you do,’ said Master Ramiel, after a short pause. A smile creased his weathered face. ‘You are different, Zahariel. I noticed it in your face when you first joined our order.’

They were sitting in one of the many practice halls inside Aldurukh, where knights and supplicants spent their days honing the skills they needed to survive on Caliban. The practice hall was empty, the hour so early that even the supplicants were not yet awake. Ordinarily, Zahariel would also have been abed, but a message from Master Ramiel had brought him to the practice hall an hour before daybreak.

‘In the course of the next night, you will attend your initiation ceremony into the Order,’ said Master Ramiel. ‘During the ceremony, you will swear your oath of loyalty and will begin your journey to becoming a knight of the Order.’

‘Do you wish to take me through the procedures for the ceremony?’ asked Zahariel. ‘So I know what to expect?’

Ramiel shook his head, and Zahariel knew the old man had other things on his mind.

‘Despite the claims of some of our rivals, the knights of the Order are not entirely immune to the lure of tradition. We understand the vital role it can play in our lives. Human beings crave ritual; it gives meaning to everyday life and adds gravity to our deeds. More than that, it can even help us to understand our place in the world. Granted, we disagree with those who hold a religious view of such things. We see no supernatural significance in tradition, whether our own, or anyone else’s. In our view, the most important function of ritual and tradition is not to achieve any effect in the outer world, but to create stability and balance in the inner world of the mind. If tradition has any outer function at all, it is to create a sense of social cohesion. It might almost be described as the glue holding our society together.’

The old man paused again. ‘You are looking at me strangely, Zahariel. Have I touched a nerve?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel. ‘I’m just tired, master. I hadn’t expected a lecture on tradition at this hour in the morning.’

‘Fair enough; you’re right, I didn’t bring you here to discuss the social aspects of tradition. I am more concerned with the symbolism of some of the Order’s rituals. I want to make sure you understand their significance before they come for you.’

Master Ramiel rose to his feet and walked into the middle of the room. In accordance with the Order’s traditions, there was a spiral design inscribed into the floor of the practice hall, stretching from one end of the room to the other.

‘You know why this is here, Zahariel? The spiral?’

‘I do, master,’ said Zahariel, rising to join Ramiel. ‘The spiral is the foundation of all the Order’s sword work, as much a part of its physical doctrines as the Verbatim is the cornerstone to our mental disciplines.’

‘Indeed so, Zahariel, but it is so much more than that. From your first day, you have been made to walk the spiral on the practice hall floor, launching pre-set routines of attack and defence at different stages of your journey. Do you know why?’

Zahariel hesitated before answering. ‘I assumed it was an ancient sword ritual of Terra. Is that not so?’

‘Possibly,’ admitted Ramiel, ‘but by rigorously practising the spiral, endlessly repeating its patterns day after day for years until the movements become second nature, you will master an unbeatable system of self-defence.’

Master Ramiel began walking the spiral, his staff moving as though in an elaborate ballet of ritual combat. ‘The knights of the Order regularly defeat representatives from the other knightly orders in tourneys and mock duels. The spiral is the reason.’

At last, Ramiel reached the centre of the spiral and indicated the lines encircling him with a wide sweep of his staff. ‘Look at the pattern laid out before us. This room has been here ever since the monastery at Aldurukh was founded. You see how smooth the edges of the spiral are in places, worn down by the feet of the thousands of warriors who have walked its path since it was put here. But what is the spiral, Zahariel? What do you see here?’

‘I see attack and defence,’ Zahariel replied. ‘It is the path to excellence, and to the defeat of my enemies.’

‘Attack and defence?’ Master Ramiel slowly nodded his head as he spoke the words, as though considering them. ‘It is a good answer, as far as it goes. Spoken like a true warrior. But a knight must be more than just a warrior. He must be the guardian and guide of our people. He must protect them from all their enemies, not just the human and bestial ones. It is not enough to protect our people from the beasts, or from predatory warlords and bandits. The path to excellence is a far harder and rockier road than that. No, we must try to shield the population of Caliban from every threat that assails them. We must do our best to protect them from hunger and want, from disease and malnutrition, from suffering and hardship. Ultimately, I grant you, it is an impossible task. There will always be suffering. There will always be hardship, but for so long as the Order exists, we must strive to defeat these evils. The measure of our success in this case is not so much that we win the battle, but that we are willing to fight it at all. Do you understand?’

‘I think so, master,’ Zahariel answered, ‘but I do not see how it relates to the spiral.’

‘The spiral is an ancient symbol,’ Master Ramiel said. ‘They say it was found carved on some of mankind’s oldest tombs. It represents the journey we take in life. You are young, Zahariel, and so your experience of these things is limited, but I will tell you of a mystery of life that is revealed to a man as he gets older. Our lives repeat themselves. Time and time again, we face the same conflicts. We take the same actions. We make the same mistakes. It is as though our lives circle the same fixed point, repeating similar patterns endlessly from birth to death. Some call this “the eternal return”. That which is true for individuals is also true for the mass of humanity as a whole. One need only look at history to see that repeating the same mistakes is hardly the folly of individuals alone. Entire cultures and nations do exactly the same thing. We should know better, but somehow we never do.’

‘If this is true, if the spiral represents our lives, where does it lead?’ asked Zahariel, looking at the design on the floor beneath them. ‘The spiral never comes to an end. Every place where its lines should end, they turn back on themselves, creating a repeating pattern.’

‘What does it remind you of?’ asked Ramiel.

Zahariel cocked his head to one side and said, ‘It’s like a serpent swallowing its tail.’

‘An ancient symbol indeed,’ nodded Ramiel. ‘One of the oldest.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘It is a symbol of rebirth and renewal,’ said Ramiel. ‘A symbol of new beginnings and immortality.’

Zahariel nodded, though the sense of much of what Ramiel was saying was lost upon him. ‘If you are saying that our lives repeat themselves, isn’t that the same as the teachings of the religious diehards? They say after death our spirits are reborn in new bodies. They talk of their own spiral as well. They say it exists in the underworld, and that by walking it we choose the path of our rebirth. Is that true?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Master Ramiel.

Seeing the expression of Zahariel’s face, Ramiel smiled again. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Zahariel. I know it is commonplace among supplicants to view their masters as the font of all wisdom and knowledge, but there are limits even to my insights. I can only comment on the paths we walk in life. As to what happens after death, who can say? By its very nature, death is an insoluble mystery to us. No one has ever returned from its lands, at least not to my knowledge, so how can anyone define its nature? Are we simply a collection of physical processes that begins with birth and ends with death, or is there more to us than that? Show me the man who claims to have the answer to that question, and I will show you a liar.’

Without waiting for him to comment, Master Ramiel continued: ‘We are digressing, however. I called you here because I wanted to emphasise the symbolism underlying some of our traditions. I told you earlier that I couldn’t reveal too much about your forthcoming initiation ceremony. It would not be seemly for me to do so. It is better you experience the ceremony without preconceptions. I simply wanted to ensure you had some inkling that the outer circumstances of the ceremony, the ritual and its accoutrements, have a significance that extends beyond their mere physical aspect. All these things are symbolic. Remember, this is not just an initiation, but a ceremony of rebirth. Symbolically, you will be reborn from one state into another. You will make the transition from supplicant to knight, and from boy to man.’

‘Tomorrow, the old Zahariel will be dead,’ Master Ramiel said finally. ‘I wish my best to the new Zahariel. May he live a long and worthy life.’

It was more an interrogation than a test.

Zahariel knelt on the stone floor, his head hooded, his hands bound, and the knife still at his throat. He knelt, while his unseen captors hurled rapid-fire questions at him one after the other. At first, they questioned him at length about the Verbatim. They insisted he recite entire passages from memory. They made him explain each passage’s meaning. They asked him about his sword work, whether it was better to respond to a two-handed descending strike by evading the blow or by meeting it with a parry.

‘What kind of parry?’ the first voice asked after they had heard his answer. ‘Your opponent is right-handed and his blow comes at you on a high diagonal line. Do you deflect to your left or right? Do you follow with a riposte, a counter-slash, or a punch with your free hand? Should that hand even be free? Where is your pistol? Answer quickly.’

So it went on. They asked questions about warhorses, about hunting beasts, about pistols, swords, lances, strategy and wilderness survival. They asked him about the dangers of sweetroot flowers, the most secure places to seek shelter in the forest during an unexpected storm and how to recognise the difference between the tracks of a mellei bird and a raptor. They asked him to explain the decisions that needed to be made in setting up an ambush, what warning signs a commander should look out for when adopting a defensive perimeter, and what was the best way to attack an enemy who had the advantages of both higher ground and a fixed position.

‘What are the accepted grounds for challenging a knight from another order to a duel?’ the second voice, the one he knew was Lord Cypher’s, asked him. ‘What form should the challenge take? How do you choose your seconds? What about weapons? Where should the duel take place? Is honour the only consideration, or should there be others? Answer quickly.’

There were more men in the room, he was sure of it, but only three of his captors contributed to the interrogation. They handled it smoothly, as though each was well practiced in these situations, swiftly following every one of his answers with yet another question.

At times, attempting to confuse him, two of them would ask different questions in tandem, sometimes all three at the same time. Zahariel refused to be flustered or intimidated, he refused to let his confidence be undermined by the off-putting conditions. It did not matter that he could not see or that his hands were tied. It did not matter that there was a knife against his throat.

He would not fail this test. He had come too far. He would not fall at this latest hurdle.

‘This is a waste of time,’ the third voice said. ‘You hear me? We are wasting our time. This whelp will never be a knight. It doesn’t matter what his masters say. He doesn’t have what it takes. I have a sense for these things. I say let’s cut his throat and be done with it. We can always find another candidate for the path to knighthood, one that’s more worthy of the honour.’

The questions of the third man were always the hardest. Most of the time, he did not ask questions at all. Instead, he verbally abused Zahariel as though trying to denigrate him in the eyes of the others. Where the other two did not react when Zahariel answered a question correctly, the third man always responded with bile and sarcasm. More than once, he accused Zahariel of being ‘book-learned’ rather than a man of action.

He accused him of lacking staying power and fibre. He said Zahariel did not have the true inner resolve that was necessary to become a knight. Again and again, he tried to persuade his confederates that Zahariel was not what they were looking for.

‘He will bring shame to our order,’ the third voice said, during one particularly heated exchange with the others. ‘He will be an embarrassment to us. He is useless. We must be harsh in these things. One weak stone in a wall is enough to bring the whole structure crashing down. It is better to kill him, here and now, than take the risk that he may one day destroy us. He should have been drowned at birth like a tainted child.’

‘Too far,’ said the first voice, the one that held the knife against Zahariel’s throat. ‘You play your part, brother, but this is too far. The young man before us has done nothing to earn such disdain. You treat him too harshly. He has proved he is worthy to train further among us.’

‘He is worthy,’ Lord Cypher’s voice agreed. ‘He has passed the test. He has answered every question. I vote in his favour.’

‘As do I,’ said the first voice. ‘What of you, brother? Has he convinced you? Will you make it unanimous?’

‘I will,’ the third voice said, after what seemed like an eternity’s hesitation. ‘I have played my part, but I had no doubt about him from the outset. He is worthy. I vote in his favour.’

‘It is agreed,’ Lord Cypher said. ‘We will administer the oath. But first, he has been in darkness too long. Bring him into the light.’

‘Close your eyes,’ said the first voice as the knife was taken away from his throat.

Zahariel felt hands at the hood over his head, pulling it away. ‘Then wait a moment before you open them. After being in the dark, you may find the light blinding.’

The hood was lifted from his head and, finally, he saw his interrogators.

At first, all Zahariel could see were blurred shapes and outlines as the brightness of the room stabbed at his eyes.

Slowly, his vision was restored. The blurs coalesced into discrete bodies and faces. He could see a circle of knights in hooded robes surrounding him. A number of them held torches, and as the ropes were cut from his wrists, he looked up and saw the faces of his three interrogators gazing down at him.

As he expected, one of them was Lord Cypher, an old man that many of the younger supplicants felt was long past his prime.

Lord Cypher blinked and squinted at him through eyes that were already well on the way to succumbing to cataracts. The two other faces he saw belonged to far more impressive individuals. On one side stood Sar Luther, a hearty and robust figure who favoured Zahariel with a friendly smile, as though trying to encourage him not to be too intimidated by the solemnity of the occasion.

On the other was a man who was already a legend, who, rumour had it, would eventually become the Order’s next Grand Master: Lion El’Jonson.

In his first years with the Order, it was the closest Zahariel had ever come to Jonson, and he felt his senses and reason desert him at the incredible presence of the warrior. He towered over Zahariel, and the young man found himself staring intently at the magnificent, leonine specimen of physical perfection in unabashed awe.

Luther laughed and said, ‘Careful, boy, your jaw’s in danger of dropping off.’

Zahariel snapped his mouth shut, fighting to throw off his adoration of the Lion, with only moderate success. The Lion spent most of his time in the forests, leading his campaign against the great beasts, and only rarely returned to Aldurukh for any extended period. As such, it was an honour of unprecedented worth to be accorded the attention of such a senior figure, and to be inducted into the Order by such a mighty legend.

‘We should bring matters to a close,’ said Sar Luther. ‘I am sure our friend would like to get up off his knees sooner rather than later.’

As he spoke, Zahariel was struck by the resonance of Luther’s voice, knowing that its power would make men follow him into the depths of hell if he ordered them to march beside him.

He had been so astounded to see Lion El’Jonson standing before him that he had almost ignored Luther entirely. Belatedly, it occurred to him that he had been doubly blessed. His initiation ceremony had been officiated over by two of the greatest men of his era, Jonson and Luther. While it was true that Luther could in no way match Jonson’s extraordinary physical stature and musculature, he was every bit as exemplary and heroic a figure. In their own ways, they were both giants.

‘Your tone is inappropriate,’ said Lord Cypher, fixing his half-blinded eyes on Luther. ‘The initiation of a new member of the Order is not a time for levity. It is a sombre and serious matter. One might almost describe it as sacred.’

‘You must forgive my brother, Lord Cypher,’ Jonson said, placing one of his enormous hands on the old man’s shoulder in a placatory gesture. ‘He means no harm. He is simply mindful that we all have other pressing matters that demand our attention.’

‘There is no more important matter than the initiation of a new supplicant,’ remarked Lord Cypher. ‘The young man before us is still on the threshold. He has come forward into the light, but he has yet to take his oath. Until then, he is not one of us.’

The old man stretched out a hand for the knife in Lion El’Jonson’s grasp, the knife they had earlier pressed against Zahariel’s throat. Once Jonson had passed it to him, Lord Cypher put his thumb to the edge to test it.

‘Now is the time for the shedding of blood.’

He turned to Zahariel and brought the blade down upon his hand.

The cut went diagonally across his left palm, causing a moment of pain, but it was shallow and only intended to shed his blood for the purposes of the ceremony.

It was symbolic, just as Master Ramiel told him.

At the climax of the ceremony there was a taking of oaths.

‘Do you, Zahariel, swear by your blood that you will protect the people of Caliban?’

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Will you swear to abide by the rules and strictures of the Order and never reveal its secrets?’

‘I will.’

‘From hereon in, you will regard every one of our Order’s knights as your brothers, and never raise a hand against them unless it be in the form of a judicial duel or a sanctioned matter of honour. This you will swear against the pain of your own future death.’

‘Against my death, I swear it,’ he answered.

There was a particularly chilling moment in the oath-taking, for Lord Cypher held the knife up before Zahariel to enable him to see his face reflected in its surface beside the red smear of his blood on the edge of the blade.

‘You have sworn a blood oath,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘These things are binding. But now, you must go further.’

Lord Cypher turned the blade so that it was balanced in the flat of his palm. ‘Put your hand on the knife and swear to the most bloody and binding undertaking. This blade has already taken your blood. It has cut your palm. Let the knife be the guardian of your oaths. If by any future deed you prove that the words you have spoken here are lies, let the blade that has cut your palm return to slash your throat. Swear to it.’

‘I swear it,’ said Zahariel, placing his hand over the knife. ‘If my words here today are lies, let this knife return to slash my throat.’

‘It is done, then,’ Lord Cypher nodded, satisfied. ‘Your old life is dead. You are no longer the boy named Zahariel El’Zurias, the son of Zurias El’Kaleal. From this day forward there will be no more talk of lineage and the antecedents of your fathers. You are neither nobleman nor commoner. These things are behind you. From this moment on, you are a knight of the Order. You are reborn into a new life. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ Zahariel said, and his heart swelled with pride.

‘Arise, then,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘There is no further need to kneel. You are among brothers. We are all your brothers here. Arise, Zahariel of the Order.’

T wo

The wound to his palm would not leave a scar. It would heal in time, and within a few months there would be no physical sign that his hand had ever been cut. Strangely, to Zahariel, it was as if the wound was always there. It did not in any way pain or disable him. Afterwards, when he grasped the butt of his pistol, his grip would be as strong as it had ever been.

Despite this, Zahariel felt the presence of the wound even after it had healed.

He had heard that sometimes men experienced a phantom itch when they had lost a limb, a curious malfunction of the nervous system that the apothecaries were at a loss to explain. It was like that for Zahariel. He felt a vague and insubstantial sensation in his hand, at times, as though some part of his mind was reminding him of his oaths.

It was always with him, like a line in his palm, invisible to the eye, but present all the same, as though it was etched into his very soul. If he had wanted to give it a name, he supposed he would have called it ‘conscience’.

Whatever the cause, the sensation of the phantom wound in his palm would stay with him for the rest of his life.

In time, he would almost become used to it.

Zahariel and Nemiel had grown up together.

Barely a few weeks separated them in age, and they were related by blood. Though distant cousins, born to different branches of the same extended family of the nobility, their features were so alike they could be mistaken for brothers. They shared the characteristically lean faces and aquiline profile of their ancestors, but the bond they shared went far deeper than any accidental similarity of their features.

According to the monastic traditions of the Order, all the knights of the fellowship were counted as brothers to each other. For Zahariel and Nemiel though, the fact of their brotherhood went beyond any such simple platitudes. They had each thought of the other as a brother long before they had joined the Order as supplicants. In the years since, the bond between them had been tested countless times and proven true. They had come to rely on each other in a thousand small ways, even as their friendly rivalry spurred them on to greater heights.

It was natural that there was an element of competitiveness, of sibling rivalry, in the relationship between them. From the earliest days of their childhood, they had tried to outdo the other in every way possible. In any contest, they had each striven to be the victor. They each wanted to be the fastest runner, the strongest swimmer, the most accurate shot, the best rider, the most skilled swordsman; the exact nature of the test did not matter so long as one of them could beat the other.

Their masters in the Order had recognised the competition between them early on and had actively encouraged it. Separately, they might have been counted as average candidates for knighthood. Together, driven on by their mutual rivalry, they had become more impressive prospects.

Their masters said it quietly, for it was not the way on Caliban to give unnecessary praise, but Zahariel and Nemiel were both expected to do well and to rise far in the Order.

As the elder of the two, even if it was only by a matter of weeks, their competition was perhaps harder on Nemiel than it was on Zahariel. Sometimes, their rivalry felt like a race he could not win. Every time Nemiel thought he had finally beaten his rival, Zahariel would quickly prove him wrong by equalling and exceeding his achievements.

At some level, Zahariel recognised the important role his brother played in his triumphs. Without Nemiel to measure himself against, to strive to overcome, he might never have been granted entrance into the Order. He might never have become a knight. Accordingly, he could never begrudge his brother’s triumphs. If anything, he celebrated them as loudly as he did his own.

For Nemiel, however, it was different. In time, despairing of ever outdistancing his brother, he began to harbour secret reservations about Zahariel’s achievements. Despite his best efforts to control his thoughts, Nemiel found there was a small voice within him that wished Zahariel would not be too successful.

Not that he ever wished harm or failure on his brother, but simply that Zahariel’s triumphs would always be more limited in magnitude than his own. Perhaps it was childish, but the competition between them had defined their lives for so long that Nemiel found it difficult to outgrow it.

In many ways, his relationship with Zahariel would always be as much about rivalry as it was about brotherhood.

It was the nature of their lives.

In times to come, it would decide their fate.

‘If that’s the best you’ve got,’ taunted Nemiel, dancing away from Zahariel’s sword thrust, ‘you’d best give up now.’

Zahariel stepped in close, bringing his training blade close to his body and slamming his shoulder against his cousin’s chest.

Nemiel was braced for the attack, but Zahariel’s strength was greater, and the two boys tumbled to the stone floor of the training hall. Nemiel cried out at the impact, rolling and bringing his sword up, as Zahariel stabbed the ground where he had been lying.

‘Not even close to the best I’ve got,’ said Zahariel, panting with exertion. ‘I’m just toying with you.’

The bout had been under way for nearly fifteen minutes: fifteen solid minutes of sparring back and forth, lunge and feint, dodge and block, parry and riposte. Sweat drenched both boys. Their muscles burned and their limbs felt leaden.

A circle of their fellow supplicants surrounded them, each cheering on their favourite, and Master Ramiel watched over the fight with a mixture of paternal pride and exasperation.

‘Finish it, one of you, for the love of Caliban!’ said Ramiel. ‘You have other lessons to attend today. Finish it, or I will call it a draw.’

His last comment gave Zahariel fresh strength and purpose, though he saw it had the same effect on his cousin, no doubt as Master Ramiel had intended. Neither boy would settle for a draw, only victory would be enough to satisfy either of them.

He saw Nemiel’s muscles bunch in preparation for an attack, and lunged forward.

His sword stabbed out towards Nemiel’s stomach. The blade was dulled and the tip flat, but the weapon was still a solid lump of heavy metal in Zahariel’s hands that was capable of wreaking great harm upon an opponent. Nemiel’s weapon swept down and pushed the blow to the side, but Zahariel’s attack had never been about his sword.

With Nemiel’s blade pushed to the side, he carried on his lunge and hammered his fist against the side of his cousin’s head. The blow was poorly delivered, but it had the effect Zahariel was looking for.

Nemiel cried out and dropped his sword, as his hands flew to his face.

It was all the opening Zahariel needed.

He finished the bout by driving his knee up into Nemiel’s stomach, doubling him up and sending him crashing to the floor in a winded, head-ringing heap.

Zahariel stepped away from his cousin and looked towards Master Ramiel, who nodded and said, ‘Winner, Zahariel.’

He let out a great, shuddering breath and dropped his sword to the floor. It landed with a ringing clang, and he looked over to where Nemiel was picking himself up from his pain. Ramiel turned from the bout and marched resolutely towards the arched exit, leading his students towards their next gruelling lesson.

Zahariel held out this hand to Nemiel and said, ‘Are you all right?’

His cousin still had his hands clutched to the side of his head, his lips pursed together as he tried to hide how much it hurt. For a brief second, Zahariel was sorry for the pain he had caused to Nemiel, but he forced the feeling down. It had been his duty to win the bout, for giving anything less than his best would have been contrary to the teachings of the Order.

It had been two years since his induction into the Order, and the ninth anniversary of his birth had passed less than a month ago. Not that there had been any special reason for marking the day, but the instructor knights of the Order were very particular about marking the passage of time and keeping the census of ages and merits of its members.

Nemiel had turned nine a few days before him, and though they were alike in features and age, their temperaments could not have been more different. Zahariel could see that Nemiel had already forgotten the outcome of the bout, having learned how he had been defeated.

‘I’m fine, cousin,’ said Nemiel. ‘That wasn’t bad. I see what you did, but you won’t get me that way again.’

That was true, thought Zahariel. Every time he fought his cousin and employed a method he had used previously, he was roundly beaten.

You could beat Nemiel, but you could not beat him the same way twice.

‘Try not to be too disappointed,’ said Zahariel. ‘I may have won, but it wasn’t a pretty victory.’

‘Who cares about its prettiness,’ snapped Nemiel. ‘You won, didn’t you?’

Zahariel’s hand was still extended towards his cousin, who finally accepted it and hauled himself to his feet. He dusted his robes down and said, ‘Ah, don’t mind me, I’m just sore about getting beaten again, in front of Ramiel as well. I suppose I should think of all the times I’ve put you on your back, eh?’

‘You’re right,’ said Zahariel. ‘I think there’s something in human nature that makes us concentrate too much on our disappointments at times. We should remember how lucky we are.’

‘Lucky? What are you talking about?’ said Nemiel, as they followed the other students from the training halls. ‘You just beat me in the head, and we live on a world infested by killer monsters. How is that lucky?’

Zahariel looked at Nemiel, afraid he was being mocked. ‘Think about it; of all the eras of Caliban’s history, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the same period as men like the Lion and Luther. We are to take part in the campaign against the great beasts.’

‘Oh, well I can see how that would be considered lucky, getting to march into the forests and face a horde of monsters that could swallow us whole, or tear us apart with one sweep of their claws.’

Now Zahariel knew he was being teased, for Nemiel could always be relied upon to boast of how fearsome a creature he would slay when he was finally allowed to declare a quest, venture into the forest and prove his mettle against one of the great beasts.

Instead of backing down in the face of Nemiel’s teasing, he continued.

‘We’re here, supplicants of the Order, and one day we will be knights.’

Zahariel gestured to their surroundings: the high stone walls, the racks of weapons, the spiral on the floor and the giant mosaic on the wall depicting the Order’s symbol, the downward pointed sword. ‘Look around you, we train to become knights and eradicate the threat of the beasts from our world. The moment when the last beast is slain will be written into the annals of the Order and Caliban, and will be preserved for thousands of years. History is unfolding, and if we are lucky, we will be there when it happens.’

‘True enough, cousin,’ said Nemiel. ‘People will say that we lived in interesting times, eh?’

‘Interesting times?’

‘It was something Master Ramiel said once, you remember, when we were outside in the dark petitioning to join the Order as novices?’

‘I remember,’ said Zahariel, though in truth he remembered little of the night they had spent in the darkness beyond the safety of the gates of the Order’s fortress monastery, save for the terror of the great beasts, and of the night.

‘He told me it was a phrase from ancient Terra,’ continued Nemiel. ‘When people lived through periods of change, the kind of days when history is made, they referred to them as “interesting times”. They even had an expression: “May you live in interesting times”. That’s what they used to say.’

‘May you live in interesting times,’ echoed Zahariel. ‘I like it. The expression, I mean. It sounds right, somehow. I know knights aren’t supposed to believe in such things, but it sounds almost like a prayer.’

‘A prayer, yes, but not a good one. “May you live in interesting times” was something they said to their worst enemies. It was intended as a curse.’

‘A curse? I don’t understand.’

‘I suppose they wanted a quiet life. They didn’t want to have to live through times of blood and upheaval. They didn’t want change. They were happy. They all wanted to live for a long time and die in their beds. I suppose they thought their lives were perfect. The last thing they wanted was for history to come along and mess it all up.’

‘It’s hard to imagine,’ Zahariel said, picking up the sword he had dropped and returning it to the weapons’ rack. ‘Imagine anyone being that contented with their lot and not wanting to change it. Maybe the difference is that we grew up on Caliban. Life is so hard here that everyone grows used to blood and upheaval.’

‘Maybe things were different on Terra?’ suggested Nemiel.

‘Maybe, but maybe it’s because we take it for granted that our lives on Caliban are always about struggle. In comparison, Terra must be like a paradise.’

‘If it even exists,’ said Nemiel. ‘There are people who say it’s only a myth, made up by our ancestors. Caliban is where our culture was born, and Caliban is where it will die. There are no starships, or lost brothers on other planets. It’s all a lie. A well-meant one, created to give us comfort when times are bad, but a lie, nonetheless.’

‘Do you believe that?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Do you really think Terra is a lie?’

‘Yes, maybe… I don’t know,’ said Nemiel with a shrug. ‘We can look up at the stars in the sky, but it’s hard to believe anybody lives there. Just like it’s hard to believe a world could be so perfect that you’d never want it to change. You are right, cousin. Our lives are struggle. It’s all we can ever expect of things, on Caliban, anyway.’

Further discussions were prevented by Master Ramiel’s booming voice coming from the archway at the far end of the chamber.

‘Get a move on, you two!’ bellowed their tutor. ‘It’s an extra turn on the sentry towers for you two tonight. Don’t you know you’ve kept Brother Amadis waiting?’

Both boys shared an excited glance, but it was Nemiel who recovered his wits first.

‘Brother Amadis has returned?’

‘Aye,’ nodded Ramiel. ‘By rights, I should send you to the kitchens for your tardiness, but it will reflect badly on your fellows if you do not hear him speak.’

Zahariel sprinted alongside Nemiel as he ran for the archway, excitement flooding his young body with fresh vigour and anticipation.

Brother Amadis, the Hero of Maponis… His hero.

The Circle Chamber of Aldurukh was well named, thought Zahariel as he and Nemiel skidded through its arched entrance. Flickering torches hung, sending a fragrant aroma of scented smoke into the enormous chamber. The hall was already packed, hundreds of novices, knights and supplicants filling the many stone benches that rose in tiers from the raised marble plinth at the centre.

Mighty pillars rose at the chamber’s cardinal points, curving inwards in great, gothic arches to form the roof of the dome, a green and gold ceiling from which hung a wide, circular candle holder filled with winking points of light.

The walls of the chamber were composed almost entirely of tall lengths of stained glass, each one telling of the heroic actions of one of the Order’s knights. Many of these glorious panels depicted the actions of the Lion and Luther, but many more pre-dated them joining the order, and several of these depicted the warrior known as the Hero of Maponis, Brother Amadis.

One of the most senior knights of the Order who still participated in the Lion’s great quest to rid the forests of Caliban, Brother Amadis was known throughout the world as a dashing and heroic warrior, who embodied everything it meant to be a knight: not just a knight of the Order, but a knight of Caliban.

His deeds were epic tales of heroism and nobility, adventures every child on Caliban grew up hearing from the mouths of their fathers.

Amadis had personally slain the Great Beast of Kulkos and had led the knights in battle against the predations of the Blood Knights of the Endriago Vaults. Before the coming of Jonson, it had been assumed by many that Brother Amadis would eventually rise to become the Grand Master of the Order.

Such had not been the case, however. Though all believed that the position would be Jonson’s upon the successful conclusion of the beast hunt, Amadis had borne the Lion no ill-will, and had simply returned to the great forests to slay monsters and bear the honour of the Order to places near and far.

The number of youngsters presenting themselves before the mighty gates of Aldurukh had as much to do with his renown as it did the presence of the Lion. Zahariel remembered hearing the tales of him vanquishing the Blood Knights at the hearthfire on many a stormy evening. His father would always choose the darkest, most haunted nights to tell the tale, weaving a grisly tapestry of the horrors and debauched blood feasts of the knights to terrify his sons, before bringing the story to its heroic conclusion when Amadis defeated their leader in single combat.

‘It looks like everyone who’s anyone is here,’ said Nemiel, as they jostled for position among the stragglers in the topmost tier of the Circle Chamber. They elbowed past newly accepted novices and supplicants who had not served as long as they had. Grumbles followed them, but none dared gainsay a boy who had been part of the Order for longer. An unspoken, but wholly understood hierarchy operated within the Order, and its structure could not ever be broken.

At last they found their proper place, further forward than the inferior supplicants and behind or beside those of a similar rank and stature. Though the centre of the Circle Chamber was some distance away, the view afforded from the upper tiers was second to none in terms of its panorama.

The centre was empty, with a single throne-like chair set in the middle of the floor.

‘It looks like we made it in time,’ Zahariel noted, and Nemiel nodded.

Banners hung from the chamber’s roof, and Zahariel felt a familiar wonder envelop him as he stared at them, reading the history of the Order in their pictorial representations of honour, valour and battle. Gold stitching crossed ceremonial standards of green and blue, and red-edged war banners outnumbered the ceremonial ones by quite some margin. The entire roof was hung with banners; so many that it seemed as though a great blanket had been spread across it, and then slashed into hanging squares.

A hush fell upon the assembled novices, supplicants and knights at some unspoken signal, and Zahariel heard the creak of a wooden door opening, the metallic walk of a man in armour and the harsh rapping footsteps of metal on marble.

He strained for a better look, finally seeing the man who had made him want to become a knight. One man marched to the centre of the chamber in the burnished plate armour of the Order.

Zahariel tried not to feel disappointed at the warrior before him, but where he had expected a towering hero of legend, the equal of the Lion, he now saw that Brother Amadis was simply a man.

He knew he should have expected no more, but to see the warrior who had lived in his heroic dreams for as long as he could remember as just a man of flesh and blood, who did not tower over them like some mighty leviathan of legend, was somehow less than he had hoped for.

Yet, even as he tried to come to terms with the reality of seeing that his hero was after all, just a man, he saw there was something indefinable to him. There was something in the way Amadis walked to the centre of the chamber, as though he owned it, the confidence he wore like a cloak, as though he understood that this gathering was just for him, and that it was his right and due.

Despite what might have been perceived as monstrous arrogance, Zahariel could see a wry cast to Amadis’s features, as though he expected such a gathering, but found it faintly absurd that he should be held in such high regard.

The more Zahariel looked at the figure in the centre of the chamber, the more he saw the easy confidence, the surety of purpose and the quiet courage in his every movement. Amadis held tight to the hilt of his sword as he walked, every inch a warrior, and Zahariel began to feel his admiration for this heroic knight grow with every passing second.

Surrounded by knights of such stature and courage that it was an honour simply to be in the same room as them, Zahariel had assumed that such warriors knew no fear, but looking at the weathered, handsome face of Brother Amadis, he realised that such an idea was preposterous.

As a boy in the forests of Caliban, he had certainly felt fear often enough, but he had assumed that once he became a knight the emotion would be utterly unknown to him. Brother Amadis had faced terrible foes and triumphed despite fear. To know fear, real fear, and to gain a great victory in spite of it seemed a more noble achievement than any triumph where fear was absent.

Brother Amadis looked around, and nodded in quiet satisfaction at the quality of the men and boys around him.

‘If you’re expecting a long and inspiring speech, then I’m afraid I’ve none to give you.’

Amadis’s voice easily projected to the far reaches of the Circle Chamber, and Zahariel felt a thrill of excitement course through him at every word. Only the Lion and Luther had voices of such power and resonance.

‘I’m a simple man,’ continued Amadis, ‘a warrior and a knight. I don’t give speeches, and I’m not one for grand shows, but the Lion asked me to talk to you here today, though I’m no public speaker, that’s for sure. I have returned to Aldurukh and I will be working alongside the instructor knights for a spell, so I expect I’ll be seeing you all over the next few weeks and months before I return to the forests.’

Zahariel felt his pulse quicken at the idea of learning from a warrior such as Amadis, and felt wild, uncontrollable elation flood him.

‘As I said before, I’m not usually one for theatrics, but I do understand their value, to you and to me,’ said Amadis. ‘Seeing me here will drive you on to become the best knights you can be, because I give you something to aspire to, a reason to want to better yourselves. Looking out at your faces reminds me of where I came from, what I used to be. Many tales are told of me and some of them are even true…’

Polite laughter rippled around the chamber as Amadis continued.

‘As it happens, most of them are true, but that’s not the point. The point is that when a man hears the same things said of him often enough, he begins to believe them. Tell a child often enough that it is worthless and beneath contempt and it will start to believe that such a vile sentiment is true. Tell a man he is a hero, a giant amongst men, and he will start to believe that too, thinking himself above all others. If enough praise and honour is heaped upon a man, he will start to believe that such is his due, and that all others must bow to his will.

‘Seeing you all here is a grand reminder that I am not such a man. I was once a would-be novice, standing out in the cold night before the gates of this monastery. I too walked the spiral under the rods of instructor knights, and I too undertook a beast quest to prove my mettle to the Order. You are where I was, and I am where any one of you can be.’

Amadis’s speech seemed to reach out to Zahariel, and he knew that he would remember this moment for as long as he lived. He would remember these words and he would live by them.

The words of this heroic knight had power beyond the simple hearing of them. They seemed to be aimed directly at every warrior gathered in the chamber. Looking around, Zahariel knew that every knight, novice and supplicant felt that every word was for him and for him alone.

Thunderous applause and spontaneous cheering erupted in the Circle Chamber, the knights and supplicants rising to their feet. Such displays were almost unheard of within the walls of Aldurukh, and Zahariel was swept up in the infectious enthusiasm of his brethren.

He looked over at Nemiel, his cousin similarly caught up in the wave of pride.

Such was the power, strength and conviction in his words and delivery that Zahariel vowed, there and then, that he would be the greatest knight the Order had ever seen, the most heroic warrior ever to sally forth from the great Memorial Gate to do battle with the enemies of Caliban.

Despite the pride and hubris inherent in such vows, he made a silent oath that he would never lose sight of what it meant to be a knight, the humility that must accompany all great deeds and the unspoken satisfaction in knowing that doing the right thing was reason enough to do it.

Eventually, the applause died down, as Amadis lifted his arms and waved away the clapping and cheering.

‘Enough, brothers, enough!’ he shouted with a smile on his face. ‘This isn’t what I came here for. Despite my earlier words, I do seem to have given a bit of a speech, but hopefully it wasn’t too boring, eh?’

Three

The nightmare always began the same way. It was two years ago and he was seven years of age, one of nearly two hundred would-be aspirants who had come to the fortress monastery at Aldurukh seeking to be accepted as knights-supplicant by the Order. From whatever pleasant fantasy was drifting around inside his skull, the darkness would always come to wrench him back to his first day with the Order.

It had been mid-winter, the only time of year at which the Order recruited, and hundreds of children would arrive at the fortress, desperately hoping they would be among the handful chosen to start on the pathway to becoming a knight.

The rite of selection was the same for every one of them.

The guards manning the gates would tell the waiting aspirants there was only one way to be accepted for training within the Order. They must survive a single night beyond the gates of the fortress until dawn the next morning. During that time, they had to remain standing in the same spot. They could not eat, or sleep, or sit down, or take rest in any way. What was more, they were told they each had to surrender their coat and boots.

It had been snowing the day Zahariel took the test, and the snow lying in wide drifts against the walls of the fortress and upon the branches of the trees at the forest’s edge gave the scene a curiously festive appearance.

Nemiel had been beside him; the two of them had each decided they would become knights, assuming they managed to pass the test and were found to be worthy.

The snow was thick on the ground by the time the test started, and throughout the day, the snowfall continued until it had risen as high as their knees. Though the forest was several hundred metres from the walls of the fortress, the darkness beyond the tree line seemed to reach out from the haunted depths like a living thing, enveloping them in its silky embrace like an unwelcome lover.

As he dreamed, Zahariel turned in his sleep, the phantasmal cold making him shiver in his cot bed. He recognised the dream for what it was, but such knowledge did not allow him to break from its inevitable course. His extremities had grown so numb, he felt sure he would lose his fingers and toes to frostbite, and knew that in the morning after the darkness, he would wake and check to make sure his nightmare had not translated into the real world.

Throughout the test, the guards had done everything in their power to make the ordeal more difficult. They had wandered among the ranks of miserable, barefoot children, alternating between cruelty and kindness in their attempts to break them.

One guard had called Nemiel a pus-brained simpleton for even thinking he was worthy to join the Order. Another had tried to tempt Zahariel by offering a blanket and a hot meal, but only if he would first give up on his ambitions and leave the test.

Once again, Zahariel could see the guard’s face leering down at him as he said, ‘Come inside, boy. There’s no reason for you to be standing out here, freezing. It’s not as if you’d ever make it into the Order. Everybody knows you haven’t got what it takes. You know it, too. I can see right through you. Come inside. You don’t want to be outside once night comes. Raptors, bears and lions, there’re a lot of different predators come around the walls of the fortress at night. And there’s nothing they like more than to see a boy standing in open ground. You’d make a tasty morsel for the likes of them.’

So far, the nightmare had followed a familiar course, treading the paths of memory, but at some point, never the same one twice, it would deviate into madness and things of which he had no memory, things he wished he could erase from his mind as easily as his pleasant dreams were wont to vanish.

In this variation, Zahariel stood beside a fair-haired boy he had never seen before, in his nightmares or in reality. The boy was a youth of wondrous perfection and pride, who stood with ramrod straight shoulders and the bearing of someone who would grow into the mightiest of warriors.

A guard with a gnarled face and cruel orange eyes leant down towards the boy.

‘You don’t need to finish the test,’ said the guard. ‘Your pride and fortitude under pressure has attracted the attention of the Order’s Grand Master. Your fate has already been decided. Any fool with eyes can see you’ve got what it takes to be the chosen one.’

Zahariel wanted to cry out, to tell the boy not to believe the falsehoods he was hearing, but it was what the boy wanted to hear. It promised him everything he had ever desired.

The boy’s face lit up at the news of his acceptance, his eyes shining with the promise of achieving all that he had ever wanted.

Thinking the test was over, the boy sank, exhausted, to his knees and leaned forward to kiss the snow covered ground.

The cruel laughter of the guards brought the boy’s head up with a start, and Zahariel could see the dawning comprehension of his foolishness slide across his face like a slick.

‘Foolish boy!’ cried the guard. ‘You think because someone tells you that you are special that it must be true? You are nothing but a pawn for our amusement!’

The boy let out a heart-rending howl of anguish, and Zahariel fought to keep his eyes fixed straight ahead as the boy was dragged to the edge of the forest, red-eyed and crying, his face pale with shock and disbelief.

The boy’s cries were muffled as he was hurled into the dark forest, the tangled webs of roots and creepers dragging him deeper and deeper into the choking vegetation. Though the boy’s pained cries grew weaker and weaker, Zahariel could still hear them, echoing in unimaginable anguish long after he had been taken by the darkness.

Zahariel tried to shut out the boy’s pain as the weather grew colder and the number of aspirants standing outside Aldurukh dwindled as other boys decided it was better to bear the stigma of failure than to face the ordeal for a moment longer.

Some went pleading to the guards, begging for shelter within the fortress and the return of their coats and boots. Others simply collapsed, worn down by cold and hunger, to be carried away to fates unknown.

By sunset, only two-thirds of the boys remained. Then, as darkness fell, the guards retreated to their sentry points inside the fortress, leaving the boys to endure the long hours of the night alone.

The night was the worst time. Zahariel twisted as his dream-self shivered in the dismal darkness, his teeth chattering so violently he thought they might shatter. The silence was absolute, the boy’s cries from the forest stilled and the guards’ jibes and taunts ended.

With the coming of night, the silence and the power of imagination did a better job of terrorising the boys than the guards ever could. The seeds of fear had been sown with talk of predators prowling around outside the fortress, and in the still of the night, those seeds took root and sprouted in each boy’s mind.

The night had a quality that was eternal, thought Zahariel.

It had always existed and always would exist. The feeble efforts of men to bring illumination to the galaxy were futile and doomed to failure. He dimly perceived the strangeness of the concept as it formed in his mind, expressing ideas and words that he had no knowledge of, but which he knew were crushingly true.

Afterwards, it was the sounds that Zahariel feared the most.

The ordinary sounds of the forest at night, noises that he had heard more than a thousand times in the past, were louder and more threatening than any sounds he had heard before. At times, he heard sounds he swore were the work of raptors, bears or even the much-feared Calibanite lion.

The crack of every twig, every rustle of the leaves, every call and scream of the night: all these things sounded heavy with menace. Death lurked just behind him or at his elbow, and he wanted to run, to give up the ordeal. He wanted to go back to the settlement where he was born, to his friends and family, to his mother’s soothing words, to the warm place by the hearth. He wanted to give up on the Order. He wanted to forgo his knightly pretensions.

He was seven years of age and he wanted to go home.

As horrible and unearthly as the noises had been, it was the voices that were the worst part of the ordeal, the most loathsome invention of his nightmare.

Between the roars and the snap of branches, a million susurrations emerged from the forest like a cabal of whispering voices. Whether anyone else could hear them, Zahariel did not know, for no one else reacted to the sounds that invaded his skull with promises of power, of flesh, of immortality.

All could be his, if he would step from the snow-covered esplanade before the fortress and walk into the forest. Without the presence of the guards, Zahariel felt able to turn his head and look towards the tangled, vine choked edge of the trees.

Though forests carpeted much of the surface of Caliban and his entire existence had been spent within sight of tall trees and swaying green canopies, this forest was unlike anything he had seen before. The trunks of the trees were leprous and green, their bark rotten and diseased. Darkness that was blacker than the deepest night lurked between them, and though the voices promised him that all would be well if he stepped into the forest, he knew that terrors undreamt of and nightmares beyond reckoning dwelt beneath its haunted arbours.

As ridiculous as it seemed to Zahariel, he knew that this dream-shaped forest was no natural phenomenon, a region so unnatural that it existed beyond the mortal world, shaped by its dreams and nightmares, stirred by its desires and fears.

What lurked within its depths was beyond fear and reason, madness and elemental power that seethed and roared in concert with the heaving tides of men and their dreadful lives.

And yet…

For all its dark, twisting, horrid power, there was an undeniable attraction.

Power, no matter its source, could always be mastered, couldn’t it? Elemental energies could be harnessed and made to serve the will of one with the strength of purpose to master its complexities.

The things that could be achieved with such power were limitless. The great beasts could be hunted to extinction and the other knightly brotherhoods brought to heel. All of Caliban would become the domain of the Order, and all would obey its masters or die by the swords of its terrible black angels of death.

The thought made him smile as he thought of the glories to be won on the fields of battle. He pictured the slaughter and the debaucheries that would follow, the carrion birds and worms feasting, and the capering madmen that made merry in the ruin of a world.

Zahariel cried out, the vision faded from his mind and he heard the voices for what they were: the whisper in the gloom, the hinting tone, the haunting laugh and the jealous vipers that cracked the panels of tombs and composed the platitudes of his epitaph.

Even unmasked, the tempters of the dark realm of the wood would not leave him, and their blandishments continued to plague him throughout the night, until his feet were ready to carry him to willing damnation in the darkness.

In the end, as it always was, it was Nemiel that stopped him, not through any word or deed, but purely because he was there.

Nemiel stood at his shoulder throughout the nightmare, as he had on that cold, fearful night. Unbending and unbroken, his best friend stood by his side, never wavering and never afraid.

Taking heart from his cousin’s example, Zahariel found new strength fill him and knew that, but for the strength of his brotherhood with Nemiel, he would have faltered in his inner struggle. With the strength he drew from his presence, he refused to bow down to his fears. He refused to give in.

He had seen out the night with Nemiel beside him.

As the relentless logic of the nightmare gave way to memory, the sun rose over the treetops of the forest, and the dark whisperers withdrew. Only a dozen boys remained standing before the gates of Aldurukh, and Zahariel relaxed in his bed as the familiar pattern of reality reasserted itself.

Many of the other hopefuls had failed the test during the night and had gone to the gates to beg the guards to let them in. Whether any had heard the same voices as he had and ventured into the forest, he never knew, and as the first rays of sunlight reached their freezing bodies, Zahariel saw a gruff, solidly built figure emerge from the fortress and march towards them.

The figure had worn a hooded white surplice over burnished black armour, and carried a gnarled wooden staff at his side.

‘I am Master Ramiel,’ the figure had said, standing before the aspirants. He had pulled back the hood of his surplice, revealing the weathered face of a man well into his middle fifties. ‘It is my honour to be one of the Order’s masters of instruction.’

He raised the staff and swung it in a wide arc, indicating the dozen shivering boys before him.

‘You will be my students. You have passed the test set for you, and that is good. But you should know it was more than just a test. It was also your first lesson. In a minute, we will go inside Aldurukh, where you will be given a hot meal and warm, dry clothes. Before we do, I want you to consider something for a moment. You have stood in the snow outside the fortress for more than twenty hours. You have endured cold, hunger and hardship, not to mention other privations. Yet, you are still here. You passed the test and you endured these things where others failed. The question I would ask you is simple. Why? There were almost two hundred boys here. Why did you twelve pass this test and not the others?’

Master Ramiel had looked from one boy to another, waiting to see if any of them would answer the question. At length, once he had seen that none of the boys would, he had answered it for them.

‘It is because your minds were stronger,’ Master Ramiel had told them. ‘A man can be trained in the skills of killing, he can learn to use a knife or other weapons, but these things are nothing if his mind is not strong. It takes strength of mind for a man to hunt the great beasts. It takes strength for a man to know cold and hunger, to feel fear and yet refuse to break in the face of it. Always remember, the mind and will of a knight are as much weapons in his armoury as his sword and pistol. I will teach you how to develop these things, but it is up to you whether these lessons take root. Ultimately, the question of whether you will succeed or fail will be decided in the recesses of your own hearts. It takes mental strength and great fortitude of mind and will to become a knight.

‘There, you have heard your first lesson,’ Master Ramiel had said grimly, his eyes sweeping sternly over his new charges as though he was capable of seeing into their very souls. ‘Now, go and eat.’

The command given, Zahariel’s mind floated up from the depths of his subconscious towards waking as he heard a distant bell ringing and felt rough hands shaking him awake.

His eyes flickered open, gummed by sleep, his vision blurred.

A face swam into focus above him and it took a moment for him to recognise his cousin from the callow youth he had stood next to in his dream.

‘Nemiel?’ he said with a sleep drowsy voice.

‘Who else would it be?’

‘What are you doing? What time is it?’

‘It’s early,’ said Nemiel. ‘Get up, quickly now!’

‘Why?’ protested Zahariel. ‘What’s going on?’

Nemiel sighed and Zahariel looked around their austere barracks as supplicants dressed hurriedly, with grins of excitement and not a little fear upon their faces.

‘What’s going on?’ parroted Nemiel. ‘We’re going on a hunt is what’s going on!’

‘A hunt?’

‘Aye!’ cried Nemiel. ‘Brother Amadis is leading our phratry on a hunt!’

Zahariel felt the familiar mix of excitement and fear as he rode the black steed between the trees in the shadowy depths of the forest. He shivered as fragments of his dream returned to him, and he strained to hear any hint of the screaming or whispering that had dogged his latest episode of dreaming.

There was nothing, but then the excited jabbering of his comrades would have blotted out all but the most strident calls from the forest. Zahariel rode alongside Nemiel, his cousin’s open face and dark hair partially concealed by his helmet, but his excitement infectious.

Zahariel had been selected to lead this group, and nine supplicants rode behind him, each one also mounted on one of the black horses of Caliban. The root strands of any other colour of riding beast had long since died out, and only horses of a dark hue could be bred by the Order’s horse masters.

Like their riders, each horse was young and had much to learn, on their way to becoming the famed mounts of the Ravenwing cavalry. The knights of the Ravenwing rode like daring heroes of old, leading exponents of lightning warfare and hit and run charges, they were masters of the wilderness.

They could survive for months alone in the deadly forests of Caliban, heroic figures in matt black armour and winged helms that concealed the identity of each warrior.

To be one of the Ravenwing was to live a lonely life, but one of heart-stopping adventure and glory.

Five other groups of ten riders made up the hunt, spread throughout the forest in a staggered ‘V’ formation, with Brother Amadis roaming between them as an observer and mentor. They were many kilometres from the Order’s fortress monastery, and the thrill of riding through the forest so far from home almost outweighed the cold lump of dread that had settled in Zahariel’s stomach.

‘You think we’ll actually find a beast?’ asked Attias from Zahariel’s right. ‘I mean, this part of the forest is supposed to be clear isn’t it?’

‘We won’t find anything with you prattling on!’ snapped Nemiel. ‘I swear they can hear you back at Aldurukh.’

Attias flinched at Nemiel’s harsh tone, and Zahariel shot his cousin a curt glance. Nemiel shrugged, unapologetic, and rode onwards.

‘Pay no attention to him, Attias,’ said Zahariel. ‘He’s missing his bed, that’s all.’

Attias nodded and smiled, his natural optimism glossing over the incident with good grace. The boy was younger than Zahariel, and he had known him ever since Attias was seven and had joined the Order.

Zahariel wasn’t sure why he had taken the younger boy under his wing, but he had helped Attias adapt to the disciplined and demanding life of a supplicant, perhaps because he had seen something of himself in the boy.

His early years with the Order had been hard and if it hadn’t been for Zahariel’s guidance, Attias would undoubtedly have failed in his first weeks and been sent home in ignominy. As it was, the boy had persevered and become a more than creditable supplicant.

Nemiel had never warmed to the boy and made him the frequent subject of his often cruel jibes and scornful ridicule. It had become an unspoken source of antagonism between the cousins, for Nemiel had held that each supplicant should stand or fall by his own merits, not by who helped him; where Zahariel contended that it was the duty of each and every supplicant to help his brothers.

‘It’s a great honour for Brother Amadis to lead us on this hunt, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed it is, Attias,’ said Zahariel. ‘It’s not often we get to learn from such a senior knight. If he speaks, you must listen to what he says.’

‘I will,’ promised Attias.

Another of their group rode alongside Zahariel and pushed up the visor of his helm to speak. The helmets the supplicants wore were the hand-me-downs of the Order and only those issued to team leaders boasted an inter-suit communications system.

Zahariel’s helmet allowed him to communicate with the leaders of the other groups of riders and Brother Amadis, but his fellow supplicants had to open their helmets to be heard.

The rider next to him was Eliath, a friend of Nemiel and companion in his mocking games. Eliath was taller and broader than any of the other supplicants, his bulk barely able to fit within a suit of armour. Though his flesh was youthfully doughy, his strength was prodigious and his stamina enormous. Though what he possessed in power, he lacked in speed.

Eliath and Zahariel had never seen eye to eye, the boy too often taking Nemiel’s lead when shaping his behaviour towards his fellow supplicants.

‘Did you bring your notebook with you, Attias?’ asked Eliath.

‘Yes,’ said Attias. ‘It’s in my pack, why?’

‘Well if we do find a beast, you’ll want to take notes on how I gut it. They might stand you in good stead if you ever face one without us.’

A tightening of the jawline was the only outward sign of Attias’s displeasure, but Zahariel knew it was a jibe that was somewhat deserved. The younger boy would carry his notebooks with him at all times and write down every word the senior knights and supplicants said, whether appropriate or not. The footlocker at the end of Attias’s bed was filled with dozens of such notebooks crammed with his tight script, and every night before lights out he would memorise entire tracts of offhand comments and remarks as though they were passages from the Verbatim.

‘Maybe I’ll write your epitaph,’ said Attias. ‘If we do meet a beast, it’s sure to go for the fattest one first.’

‘I’m not fat,’ protested Eliath. ‘I’m just big boned.’

‘Enough, the pair of you!’ said Zahariel, though he took pleasure in seeing Attias sticking up for himself and Eliath taken down a peg. ‘We’re training for a hunt, and I’m sure Brother Amadis doesn’t consider baiting each other as part of that training.’

‘True enough, Zahariel,’ said a sanguine voice in his helmet, ‘but it does no harm to foster a little rivalry within a group.’

None of the other supplicants heard the voice, but Zahariel smiled at the sound of Brother Amadis’s voice, knowing he must have heard the exchange between the supplicants.

‘Healthy rivalry drives us to excel in all things, but it cannot be allowed to get out of hand,’ continued Amadis. ‘You handled that well, Zahariel. Allow rivalry to exist, but prevent it from becoming destructive.’

Over the closed communications, Zahariel said, ‘Thank you, brother.’

‘No thanks are necessary, now take the lead and assume scouting discipline.’

He smiled, feeling a warm glow envelop him at his hero’s praise. To think that a warrior as great as Amadis knew his name was an honour, and he spurred his mount onwards as he felt the responsibility of his command settle upon him.

‘Close up,’ he ordered, riding to the front of the group of supplicants and taking his place at the point of their arrow formation. ‘Scouting discipline from now on. Consider this enemy territory.’

His voice carried the strength of conviction that came from the approval of his peers, and without a murmur of dissent, his squad-mates smoothly moved into position. Nemiel took up position behind him and to the left, while a supplicant named Pallian assumed the same position on the opposite side.

Eliath and Attias took up position on either side of the formation, and Zahariel turned in the saddle to make sure his squad was lined up in position.

Satisfied that all was as it should be, he returned his attention to the terrain ahead, the thick trunks and heavy foliage rendering the forest a canvas of shadows and slanted spars of light. Leaf mould covered the ground, and the smell of decaying matter in the darkness gave the air a musty scent that was reminiscent of spoiled meat.

The ground was rocky, but the horses of the Ravenwing picked a clear path between the boulders and fallen tree trunks.

Strange noises drifted between the trees, but Zahariel had grown up in the forest, and he let the rhythm of the undergrowth drift over him, sorting the various calls of the wildlife of Caliban into those that were dangerous and those that were not.

Most of the great beasts had been hunted to extinction by the Lion’s great crusade, but several enclaves of lethal predators still existed, though they were far from any such places. Less dangerous monsters still lurked, unseen and unknown in almost every part of the world’s forests, but such creatures rarely attacked groups of warriors, relying on stealth and surprise to attack lone victims as they moved between the safe havens of the walled cities.

Amid the hooting, cawing cries of birds, Zahariel could hear the clicking, creaking noise of the forest, the wind through the high trees and the crunch of hooves over broken branches. Moving silently through the forest was virtually impossible for any but the Ravenwing, but still, Zahariel wished they could be riding in silence.

Even though the worst of Caliban’s predators were mostly dead, there was no such thing as a beast that could be easily overcome, even with such numbers.

They rode on for what seemed like a few hours, though without any sign of the sun above, it was difficult to judge the passage of time. Only the changing angles of the beams of light that penetrated the forest canopy gave any hint to how long they had been travelling.

Zahariel longed to communicate with the other groups of riders, but did not want to appear nervous or unsure of the course he was leading. This was supposed to be training them for going on a hunt of their own one day, and the idea that he did not know where he was going was not one he wanted to cultivate.

The paths through the forest were well-worn through countless training exercises, but so many existed that it was next to impossible to know which ones led to their destination. He and Nemiel had consulted the map before setting out, and their route had seemed simple enough in the walled confines of the fortress monastery. Out in the forest, however, it was quite a different proposition.

He was fairly sure he knew where he was and where their path should lead them, but it would be impossible to know if they had succeeded until they arrived. Zahariel hoped that Brother Amadis was nearby and would take note of how he was leading his fellows.

His thoughts were interrupted as they rode beneath low hanging branches into a shadowed clearing, the sound of the leaves brushing against his helmet startlingly loud in the silence of the forest.

Even as the thought struck him that the forest was silent, it was already too late.

Something dark and winged dropped from the trees, its body scaled and reptilian.

Claws like swords flashed, and one of his squad was dead, both he and his mount shorn in two by the ferocity of the blow.

Blood sprayed and horrified cries echoed from the clearing. Zahariel drew his pistol as the beast struck again. Another supplicant died, his armour torn open and his innards hooked from his belly. The horses were screaming, the scent of blood maddening them, and the supplicants fought to control their crazed mounts.

Cries of horror and anger resounded, but there was no sense to them. Zahariel turned his mount towards the beast. Its large body was easily the size of one of their horses, undulating as though a million serpents writhed beneath its glistening flesh. Its spiny head snapped and bit at the end of a long, snake-like neck, its jaws long and narrow, filled with razored fangs like the teeth of a woodsman’s saw. Its wings were filmy and translucent, edged in ridges of horny carapace and ending in long, barbed claws.

Zahariel had never seen its like before, and his momentary horror at its awful appearance almost cost him his life.

The beast’s wings slashed as though it were about to take flight, and one of the barbed hooks scored a deep groove across his breastplate, pitching him from the back of his screaming horse.

Zahariel hit the ground hard as he heard another anguished scream of agony. He struggled to rise, his movements awkward in his armour. He reached for his fallen pistol as a wide shadow engulfed him, and he twisted his head as the screeching, reptilian bird towered above him, its jaws wide and ready to snap him in two.

Four

Zahariel rolled as the beast’s beak stabbed downwards. He slithered onto his back and brought his pistol around. Three shots boomed from the barrel in a blaze of light and Zahariel was momentarily blinded by the brightness. The noise was deafening, his helmet only slightly muffling the sounds. He scrambled away from the beast on his backside, fully expecting every second to be his last.

He heard more shots, and as his vision cleared he saw Nemiel crouching behind a tree and pumping shots from his pistol at the beast as it clawed at the remains of Zahariel’s horse.

Blood like molten wax oozed from three neat holes in the beast’s chest, but if they had discomfited it, Zahariel could not tell, for it fought and roared as fiercely as it had when first attacking.

The beast’s wing shot out and clove through the trunk of the tree Nemiel was using for shelter and slammed into his cousin’s chest. Nemiel dropped to the ground, his breastplate cracked, but still whole, for the impact with the tree had blunted much of the force of the beast’s blow.

Zahariel scrambled to his feet as he saw the scattered remnants of his squad panic in the face of the monster. Eliath was pinned beneath his mount, the horse’s flank opened from neck to rump, and Attias sat petrified at the edge of the clearing. The young boy’s mount stood stock still, its ears pressed flat against its skull and its eyes wide with terror, rooting them both to the spot.

The beast turned towards Attias and let out an ululating roar, spreading its wings and bunching its muscles as it prepared to attack

‘Hey!’ screamed Zahariel, stepping from the cover of the trees and waving his arms above his head. ‘Over here!’

The beast’s head turned on its sinuous neck, its blood-frothed jaws opening wide and its black, soulless eyes fixing upon him. Zahariel drew his sword and aimed his pistol at the drooling monster.

‘Ho, ugly!’ he shouted. ‘If you want him, you have to take me first!’

He had no idea whether or not the beast understood the words he was saying, but there was little doubt that it understood the challenge of his actions on a primal, animal scale.

Without waiting for a response, Zahariel opened fire, the pistol bucking in his hand, and wet blooms of filmy blood burst from the beast’s chest. It screeched and lunged towards him, its head shooting forward like the thrust of a sword.

Zahariel leapt to the side, the blade of its beak slashing past him, barely a hand’s span from skewering him. Faster than he would have believed possible, the beast’s head twisted in the air to catch him a glancing blow just below his hip.

He flew through the air and slammed into a tree, the breath exploding from his lungs and his weapons tumbling from his hands as he fell to the ground.

Shouts and cries of terror sounded around Zahariel and he shook his head as he tried to get his bearings once again. He heard his squad crying out in fear and he spat blood as he pushed against the stinking ground and lifted his head.

Though his vision swam crazily, he saw Eliath finally drag himself from beneath his dead mount and Nemiel pick himself up from the beast’s blow to drag himself behind another tree. Attias had snapped from his horrified paralysis and had ridden his horse into the trees, the beast lumbering back towards the tasty morsel of boy and horse.

Zahariel used the tree next to him to haul himself to his feet, feeling a screaming pain in his twisted leg. He searched the ground for his fallen weapons, eventually spying the gleam of sunlight on the steel of his sword. He couldn’t see his pistol, and had no time to look for it.

He grimaced in pain as he swept up his sword and limped towards the clearing, as the beast’s jaws snapped out and bit Attias’s horse in two. The boy flung himself from the saddle just as the monster struck, and landed with a thud on a fallen log, rolling over it, and flopping to the ground in a heap.

Zahariel’s armour hissed as breaches in its structure caused it to fail, the mechanisms of its protective systems grinding and seizing. The full mass of the plate began to weigh heavily on him, and he grimaced in pain as the plates at his hip settled on his hurt leg.

‘Spread out!’ shouted Zahariel. ‘Get to the trees and spread out! Don’t bunch up!’

More pistol shots boomed, and Zahariel saw Pallian run forward to drag Attias back to the trees. The beast leapt over the dead horse and its beak shot out, catching Pallian by the shoulder and wrenching him from his feet.

The boy screamed as he was lifted high into the air, but his screams were cut short as his arm and most of his shoulder was bitten through. He fell, trailing a drizzling arc of blood from the ruin of his body, the curve of his arm moving down the beast’s throat with a horrid peristaltic motion.

Blood geysered from Pallian, and his screams filled the clearing, as the agony overcame the shock of the wound. The beast turned its head back to the fallen boy, its wing-claws slashing twice. Pallian screamed no more.

Zahariel cried out as Pallian was dismembered by the beast, and stepped into the clearing, his vision blurred with tears of pain and terror. He raised his sword and held it unsteadily before him as he faced the monster that he knew would kill him.

He knew that fact with cold certainty, but he could not allow others to suffer and die without at least trying to save them.

‘Get away from them, you bastard,’ he snarled. ‘These are my friends and they’re not for the likes of you!’

The beast looked up, and though its eyes were empty and cold, Zahariel could sense its monstrous hunger to kill. Beyond even what it needed to feed and survive, this creature needed to inflict pain, and took some primitive enjoyment from the act of slaughter.

The beast turned from Pallian’s body and let loose a tremendous roar as it saw Zahariel advancing towards it, his sword aimed at its heart. The beast’s wings rippled, and Zahariel knew what was coming. He brought his sword up as the creature’s right wing slashed towards him.

He swayed aside and swung his sword around in a downward arc that chopped into the wing where the claw began. Milky blood sprayed, and the claw was shorn from the beast, as Zahariel’s leg finally gave out beneath him and he dropped to one knee.

The beast howled in pain and drew back its injured wing, its jaws opening wide as it prepared to end his life. A shadow moved beside Zahariel as the beast lunged forward. The sight of its thousands of teeth filled his vision.

Even as he smelt the rankness of its gullet and saw the scraps of flesh stuck between its teeth, a silver steel blur slashed over his head, as an armoured figure rode past him with a thunder of hooves and a mighty war shout.

A long, heavy-bladed sword struck edge on into the beast’s mouth, the wielder’s strength and the beast’s momentum driving the blade through its jawbone and into the middle of its skull.

The sword juddered to a halt and the rider released the blade as he rode onwards, expertly wheeling his horse as the beast fell, its lunging body collapsing to the ground before Zahariel.

The rider rode alongside the beast’s skull. He drew a magnificent, rotary barrelled pistol and aimed it at a point between the monster’s eyes. Zahariel watched the hammer draw back and flinched at the percussive bang as the explosive bolt detonated with a hollow boom inside its head.

Viscous fluids leaked from the monster’s skull and the dark, predatory hunger in its black orbs of eyes was finally extinguished. A last, foetid exhalation gusted from the beast’s mouth, and Zahariel recoiled from the rotten stench.

He looked up as his saviour holstered his pistol. The man wore the dark armour and hooded white surplice of the Order, the front of which was embroidered with the symbol of the downward pointing sword.

‘You are lucky to be alive, my boy,’ said the knight, and Zahariel instantly recognised the commanding tone.

‘Brother Amadis,’ he said. ‘Thank you. You saved my life.’

‘Aye,’ said Amadis, ‘and by the look of it you saved the lives of your friends, Zahariel.’

‘I was… protecting my squad…’ said Zahariel, the last of his strength beginning to fade now that the battle was over.

Amadis swung down from his saddle and caught him as he fell to the grass.

‘Rest, Zahariel,’ said Amadis.

‘No,’ whispered Zahariel. ‘I have to get them home.’

‘Let me do that for you, lad. You’ve done enough for one day.’

‘You were lucky,’ Nemiel would say to him later, ‘but luck can’t be relied upon. It’s a finite resource. One day, it always runs out.’

For years afterwards, whenever Zahariel told the tale of their confrontation with the winged beast, his cousin would always make the same remark. He would say it privately, out of earshot of their brothers, in the arming chamber or beside the practice cages, as though he did not want to embarrass Zahariel in front of others, yet equally he was incapable of letting the matter rest.

Something about the whole affair seemed to have worked its way under Nemiel’s skin, as though the battle had become a source of subdued annoyance to him, even irritation. He never showed it in his face, nor let it invade his tone, but at times it felt as if he were chiding Zahariel in some way, as though he felt compelled to subtly make the point that all of his cousin’s later successes, all of his glories, had been built on a lie.

Zahariel would find this behaviour curious, but he would never raise the issue with his friend. He would do what Nemiel could not; he would let the matter rest. He would never question Nemiel’s words. He would listen to them, ignore the hidden bitterness, and accept they were well meant. For him to do differently might have endangered their friendship.

‘You were lucky,’ Nemiel would say. ‘If it wasn’t for luck and Brother Amadis, the beast would’ve killed us all.’

Zahariel could not disagree.

A week later, Zahariel was made to tell the tale of the fight to his fellow supplicants in the training chambers. Each time he told of how he had stood before the monster, it would always seem a far more thrilling affair than it had been in reality.

It would seem a story of high ideals and grand adventure to his listeners. It was not that he lied about the specifics of it in any way, but he would learn that repetition had a way of softening the edges of human experience. Each telling sounded like a fairy tale or fable.

During the mad, frenetic rush of battle, it had been a life or death struggle, a hard-won victory achieved through the action of blood, sweat and tears. It had been a close-run thing, and to the very end, Zahariel thought the winged beast would kill them all. He thought the last instants of his life were to be spent gazing in horror into the beast’s widening mouth as the black void of its maw expanded to swallow him whole.

If he were to be left any headstone or grave marker, it would take the form of a regurgitated bolus created sometime later, incorporating only those parts of him that were indigestible to his killer.

This was the end he expected. The creature had seemed too strong, too formidable, and far too primal a force to ever be killed.

But for Brother Amadis, those thoughts would have been correct.

He would keep these thoughts from his fellows when he told the tale. He would be asked to tell the story often, but he realised no one wanted to hear of his private doubts. They wanted to hear something more stirring, full of heroic exploits and the expression of valour, something that spoke of the inevitable triumph of good over evil.

It was human nature, he supposed, but his listeners expected him to be the hero of his story. They wanted him to be confident, wise, debonair, unflappable, dashing, handsome, charismatic, even inspiring. The truth was that at the time he had fully expected to fail. He had not allowed that thought to undermine his resolve, but it was there all the same.

No one wanted to hear that truth.

No one wanted to know their heroes could have feet of clay.

Occasionally, in the brief, quiet moments he would experience in the life ahead of him, he would wonder at the folly of human judgements.

To his mind, his victory had been more special precisely because he had been afraid.

His fellow supplicants, however, seemed to think it was improper to speak of the emotion at all. It was as if fear was a secret shame in every human heart, and his listeners wanted to be reassured that their heroes did not feel it, as though it meant they might one day be freed from their own fear.

It seemed to Zahariel that this was wrong.

The only way to overcome fear was to confront it.

To pretend it did not exist, or might somehow disappear one day, only made it worse.

Five

Years passed, and Zahariel’s standing within the Order grew. His fight with the winged monster of the woods had almost cost him his life, but it had been the making of him. The senior masters of the Order knew his name, and though the monster had been slain by Brother Amadis, the knight had ensured that every member of the Order knew of Zahariel’s bravery in fighting it.

The dead boys were buried with full honours, and life went on as before, with the supplicants training and living within the walls of the fortress monastery on the road to becoming knights.

Zahariel spent more time than ever honing his skills with pistol and blade, more than ever determined that he would not be at the mercy of another beast in his lifetime. The next time he faced a monster of Caliban, he would be ready to kill it without a moment’s pause.

As the latest lesson concluded, Master Ramiel said, ‘Always remember, you are more than just killers. Any fool can take a knife and try to push it into his enemy’s flesh. He may attempt to strike, feint and parry with the blade. Given some instruction, he may even become proficient. But you are more than that, or you will be. You are knights-supplicant of the Order, but in future, you will be the protectors of the people of Caliban.’

‘Fine words, eh?’ said Nemiel, moving to one of the rest benches and picking up a linen towel to mop his face.

‘Fine indeed,’ agreed Zahariel, ‘just as fine as the first hundred times I heard them.’

The lesson had been spent mastering the principle of the inner circle sword defence, and both boys were lathered in sweat from the sparring session. Though honours were still more or less even between them, Nemiel had begun to claw ahead in their perpetual rivalry.

‘Master Ramiel does love to quote the Verbatim.’

‘True, but I think he thinks we’re all like Attias, writing down every pithy quote we hear.’

‘Well, so long as we master the fighting, I can live with hearing a few repetitions now and again,’ said Nemiel.

‘I suppose,’ agreed Zahariel. ‘Next time we fight a beast, we won’t be so unprepared.’

A heavy silence fell between them. Zahariel cursed himself for bringing up the subject of the beasts, for it always served to remind Nemiel of how his cousin had won glory and plaudits for his role in protecting them long enough for Brother Amadis to kill it, when all Nemiel had won was time in the infirmary.

‘Do you think the beast was sentient?’ asked Nemiel.

‘What beast?’ replied Zahariel, though he knew fine well what his cousin meant.

‘The winged beast that attacked us in the forest all those years ago.’

‘Sentient?’ asked Zahariel. ‘I suppose that depends on what you think the term means. I think the beast was intelligent, yes. I really believe it. But was it truly sentient? I remember Brother Amadis saying that the true test of sentience was whether a creature was capable of planning towards the future, and using reason to solve its problems.’

‘So what do you think then, cousin?’ asked Nemiel. ‘Do you think the creature was sentient or not?’

‘I don’t believe I know. I think it’s too difficult for a human mind to understand the workings of an inhuman one, but I can only tell what it felt like to fight it.’

‘And what did it feel like?’ asked Nemiel.

‘It felt like the beast was a spider and I was a fly.’

Zahariel ran the oily rag through the barrel of his pistol, clearing it of the residue of repeated firing. The gun was starting to pull to the left, and it had let him down in the firing drills with the rest of the supplicants.

When he had pointed out the weapon’s fault, the knight armourer had simply recommended that he clean the barrel thoroughly before trying again. The implicit insult in the armourer’s comment had angered Zahariel, but he was still just a supplicant and had no recourse to answer back to a full knight.

Instead, he had politely thanked the knight armourer, and returned to the dormitories to break out his cleaning kit and meticulously clean every moving part of the weapon.

Not that he expected it to do any good. He suspected that the imperfection with the weapon was more to do with the weapon’s age than any impurities lodged in the barrel, for he was as fastidious with his weapons as he was with his armour, more so, in fact.

‘The armourer told you to clean your weapon more thoroughly, eh?’ said Nemiel, watching as Zahariel angrily sat on his cot bed, lifted another component of his pistol and began cleaning it with vigorous strokes of the cloth.

‘As if I don’t keep it clean enough already!’ said Zahariel.

‘You never know,’ said Nemiel, ‘it might help.’

‘I keep this weapon cleaner than anything else I own. You know that.’

‘True, but the armourers know what they’re talking about.’

‘You’re taking their side?’

‘Side?’ said Nemiel. ‘Since when did this become about sides?’

‘Never mind,’ snapped Zahariel.

‘No, come on, what did you mean?’

Zahariel sighed and put down the breech and the brush he had been cleaning it with.

‘I mean that you seem to be relishing this.’

‘Relishing what?’

‘That you managed to beat me in the firing drills,’ said Zahariel.

‘Is that what you think, cousin? That I need your gun to fail for me to beat you?’

‘That’s not it, Nemiel,’ said Zahariel. ‘I just mean–’

‘No, I understand,’ said his cousin, rising from the cot bed and making his way down the central corridor of the dormitory chamber. ‘You think you’re better than me. I see that now.’

‘No, that’s not it at all!’ protested Zahariel, but his cousin was already walking away, his pride ruffled. Zahariel knew he should go after Nemiel, but part of him was glad he had finally given voice to the irritation that his cousin took such relish in watching him fail.

He put the disagreement from his mind and continued cleaning his weapon, head down, putting the background noise of the dormitory from his mind as he focused his efforts on making his pistol shine as good as new.

A shadow fell across him, and he sighed.

‘Look, Nemiel,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I need to get this done.’

‘It can wait,’ said a sonorous voice, and he looked up to see Brother Amadis standing at the foot of his cot bed, dressed in full armour and white surplice. Amadis carried his winged helm in the crook of his arm, and his black cloak was gathered at his left shoulder.

Zahariel dropped the magazine feed onto his blanket and sprang to his feet.

‘Brother Amadis, my apologies, I thought…’ he began.

Amadis waved away his apology and said, ‘Leave the pistol and come with me.’

Without waiting, Amadis turned away and marched down the length of the room, each of the supplicants in the dormitory watching with awed faces as the heroic knight passed them.

Zahariel smoothed down his robe and quickly followed Brother Amadis towards the door. The knight was marching quickly, and Zahariel struggled to keep up.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘It is time for you to move deeper within the Order,’ said Brother Amadis. ‘It is time for you to see the Lord Cypher.’

The Lord Cypher.

It was not a name: it was a title of office given to the man responsible for preserving the Order’s traditions, and Zahariel felt nerve-wracking fear at the thought of being brought before the old man.

Might he offend the Lord Cypher through some inadvertent breach of the Order’s protocols? Might he have forgotten some ancient formality when presented to him that would forever dash his chance of ever becoming a knight?

Brother Amadis led him deeper into the heart of the monastery. Their path took them down into the dark catacombs that riddled the rock the fortress was built upon. They passed darkened cellars, forgotten chambers and ancient cells as they journeyed ever downwards and ever deeper into the ground.

The air was cold, and Zahariel saw his breath feather the air before him as he followed Brother Amadis into the darkness. The knight carried a flaming brand, the leaping firelight reflecting from the glistening rock of the tunnel they travelled along. Intricate carvings decorated the walls, depicting scenes of war and heroism that reached back many thousands of years.

Who had carved them, Zahariel could not say, but each one was rendered as a masterpiece, though none now travelled to see them.

At last their path took them into a long, vaulted chamber of dripping echoes and orange light. The walls were fashioned from enamelled bricks that reflected the light of the torch and threw back hundreds of reflections from the many candles spread throughout the chamber in a wide, spiral pattern.

The Lord Cypher stood at the centre of the spiral, his hood pulled up, and his surplice dark, as tradition dictated. A golden hilted sword protruded from beneath his robes, and his gnarled fingers were curled around the weapon.

‘Welcome, boy,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘It seems your peers judge you worthy to move upwards through our Order. Deep chasms lie beneath this rock, boy – deep chasms and deep places long forgotten by the world above. Mysteries lie entombed within this world and secret places that only the wise may know of. You know nothing of this, of course, but here you will take the first step on the road to knowledge.’

‘I understand,’ said Zahariel.

‘You understand nothing!’ snapped Lord Cypher. ‘Only by understanding where you have come from can you understand what will be. Now begin to walk the spiral.’

Zahariel looked over to Brother Amadis.

‘Don’t look to him, boy,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘Do as you are told.’

Zahariel nodded and began following the path of the candles, walking purposefully, but carefully.

‘Though our Order is nowhere near as ancient as many of the other knightly orders of Caliban, it has accumulated an impressive array of customs in the course of its history. I am the Lord Cypher of the Order. Do you understand what that means?’

‘I do,’ said Zahariel. ‘The man appointed to the role of Lord Cypher is expected to police those customs. He ensures that the Order’s rituals are preserved, and advises on matters of protocol as well as officiating at ceremonies.’

‘And my name, boy? Do you know it?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Why not?’

‘It is forbidden to know your name.’

‘Why?’

Zahariel paused. ‘I… I am not sure. I know that no matter the identity of the man appointed to the position of Lord Cypher, it is forbidden to call him by his real name once he takes up its mantle. I do not know why.’

‘Indeed. Why is often the most interesting question, but often the one not asked. Where, when, how and what are mere window dressing. Why is always the most important question, would you not agree?’

Zahariel nodded as he continued walking the spiral. ‘I agree.’

‘I have a variety of arcane titles: Master of Mysteries, Keeper of the Truth, the Lord of the Keys, or else simply Lord Cypher. Do you know why this is so, boy?’

‘No, my lord. It is simply the way things have always been with the Order.’

‘Exactly,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘It is the way things have always been with the Order. The value of tradition is that it guides us, no matter that the real reasons may have been forgotten. Beliefs and actions that have seen us prosper in the past shall serve us well in the present and the future. I have held this position for over twenty years, and though the role is usually given to one of the Order’s more venerable knights, as a younger man, I was chosen with the hope of infusing new blood into the role. Above all else, it is my task to maintain the Order’s customs as a living tradition, rather than allowing them to degenerate into ossified relics.’

Zahariel listened to the old man’s voice, its hypnotic rhythms lulling him into slowing his walk around the spiral. Soon he would be standing before the old man, his steps carrying him in tighter and tighter circles around the candles.

‘Yet my role is one of contradictions,’ continued Lord Cypher. ‘It is one of the most senior positions within the Order, and yet I hold very little real power. In many ways, my role as guardian of the Order’s traditions is symbolic. If that be the case, then who really holds the power of our Order? Quickly boy, before you reach the centre.’

Zahariel forced himself to concentrate, working through the obvious answers as his steps carried him inexorably towards the centre of the spiral.

The Lion and Luther seemed obvious candidates, but then he remembered something Brother Amadis had once said, and the answer was clear to him.

‘It is the masters of instruction, men like Master Ramiel, who keep the customs of the Order alive,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘Where then does my power lie?’

‘That you are close to the Order’s senior masters?’ suggested Zahariel, as he came to a halt before Lord Cypher. ‘Your opinions can always find an ear among those in power.’

‘Very good,’ said Lord Cypher, his face hidden in the shadows of his hood. ‘You kept your answers short and that is good. You’d be surprised how many candidates witter on incessantly during this walk of the spiral.’

‘Nervousness, I suppose,’ said Zahariel.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Lord Cypher, ‘it makes men talk too much, when it would be more impressive if they knew the value of silence and demonstrated how to use it. Your terseness gave you an aura of confidence, even when I know you did not feel it.’

That was certainly true, for Zahariel had felt his heart drumming wildly in his chest all through the walk, terrified of making a mistake, terrified he might stumble and fail in this test. Either his terror had not shown or the Lord Cypher’s poor eyesight had caused him to miss it. Whatever the truth, Zahariel accepted the old man’s compliment in the spirit it was offered.

‘I thank you, Lord Cypher,’ he said, bowing slightly. ‘If I was confident, though, it is because I have been well trained by my master.’

‘Yes, you are one of Master Ramiel’s students. That explains it. Ramiel has always been known for his good work. Did you know he trained under Master Sarientus, the same man who trained both Lion El’Jonson and Luther?’

‘No, my lord, I did not know that.’

‘Tradition, boy, learn it. Know it and understand it. Without it we are nothing.’

‘I will, my lord,’ promised Zahariel.

‘Maybe you will, but I see that you still have questions, eh?’

‘I suppose,’ admitted Zahariel, unsure as to whether he should voice such doubts. ‘I don’t quite understand what I have achieved by walking this spiral and answering your questions.’

‘For yourself, nothing,’ said Lord Cypher, ‘but we know more of you now. At each stage of a supplicant’s training we must decide whether or not to continue it and whether any such trainees have the mark of greatness that merits special attention.’

‘Do I merit such attention?’

Lord Cypher laughed. ‘That is not for me to say, boy. Another will decide that.’

‘Who?’ asked Zahariel, suddenly bold.

‘Me,’ said a rich, heavily toned voice of strength and power from the shadows.

Zahariel turned as a giant in a hooded white surplice stepped into the light of the candles, though he would have sworn that no figure had been standing there a moment ago.

The figure pulled back his hood, but Zahariel needed no further confirmation of the man’s identity.

‘My lord,’ he said.

‘Follow me,’ said Lion El’Jonson.

Lord Cypher retreated into the shadows as the Lion marched around the circumference of the chamber. Brother Amadis bowed his head as the mighty warrior passed him, and Zahariel was seized by sudden indecision.

After Lord Cypher’s monologue on the value of tradition, should he walk the path of the spiral in reverse or should he simply follow the Lion?

The decision was made for him when Brother Amadis said, ‘Best be quick, Zahariel. The Lion doesn’t like to be kept waiting on nights like this.’

‘Nights like what?’ asked Zahariel as he made his way after the Lion.

‘Nights where there are revelations to be made,’ said Amadis.

Unsure of what that meant, Zahariel moved past Amadis and hurried to catch up with the Lion, who appeared to be retracing the steps they had taken to reach this place. The Lion did not speak, but followed an unerring path upwards, along smoothly chiselled passageways, rough caverns and winding stairs hacked into the rock. Each step took them higher and higher, and where Brother Amadis had led him into the depths, it seemed the Lion was leading him into the heavens.

Zahariel’s breath heaved in his lungs, his legs tired after such climbing, though of course the Lion’s stride never faltered or changed in pace, despite the length and speed of their ascent.

Their climb led them into a narrow cylinder of curved bricks, within which was a tightly wound screw staircase that was barely wide enough for the Lion’s shoulders.

After another ten minutes, Zahariel could feel a chill breeze from above, and scented the fragrant aroma of the deep forests. He knew they must be close to the top of the tower. Ghostly moonlight grew in luminosity, and at last, worn by the journey, Zahariel emerged onto the top of the tower, a wide space high above the fortress monastery, ringed with regular crenellations along the parapet.

The tower was quite useless for defence, too slender and tall to play a part in any siege the Order might find itself subject to, but ideal for an eagle-eyed watchman or stargazer.

It was a clear night. The sky above Zahariel was a black, perfect dome studded with a thousand points of light. Zahariel stared up at the constellations and felt a deep, abiding sensation of peace that quite overcame his exhaustion.

He supposed it was a feeling born of satisfaction. For many years he had exerted every ounce of his will and strained every sinew in the hope of becoming a knight. Tonight, he could be one step closer to achieving his ambition.

‘It is good to look up at the stars,’ said the Lion, finally breaking his long silence. ‘At times like this, a man needs to take stock of his life. I find there is no better place to take stock than beneath the stars.’

The Lion smiled, and Zahariel found the smile dazzling.

It was clear that the Lion was trying to put him at ease, but Zahariel found it almost impossible to talk to him as though he was any other man. Jonson was too big, his presence too imposing.

A man could no more ignore his extraordinary nature than he could ignore the wind and the rain, or the transition from day to night. There was something similarly elemental about the Lion.

Lion El’Jonson was the apotheosis of all humanity’s dreams for itself. He was perfection given human form, like the first example of a new race of man.

‘The cleansing of the forest is entering its final stage, Zahariel. Did you know that?’

‘No, my lord, I had thought the campaign was likely to continue for some time.’

‘No, not at all,’ said the Lion, his brow furrowing slightly, though Zahariel could not be sure if it was in amusement or contemplation. ‘According to our best estimates, there are perhaps a dozen or so great beasts left in total, certainly no more than twenty, and they are all in the Northwilds. We have scoured every other region of Caliban and cleared out the beasts that were hiding there. Only the Northwilds are left.’

‘But that would mean the campaign is nearly over.’

‘Nearly,’ Jonson said. ‘At most it should take another three months. Then Caliban will finally be clear of the great beasts. Incidentally, you realise Amadis has asked that you be recorded in the annals of the Order as having assisted in slaying one of the last of them? A fearsome creature as well, from all accounts. Though Amadis killed it, you should be proud of your actions in the fight. You saved the lives of many of your brothers.’

‘Not all of them,’ said Zahariel, remembering Pallian’s screams as the beast tore him apart. ‘I couldn’t save them all.’

‘That is something every warrior must get used to,’ said the Lion. ‘No matter how skilfully you lead your warriors, some of them will die.’

‘It was only a matter of luck that I didn’t die,’ Zahariel said, ‘the sheerest chance.’

‘A good warrior will always take advantage of chance,’ said Jonson, looking up at the sky. ‘He should adapt to the changing circumstances of battle. War is all about opportunity, Zahariel. To be victorious, we must always be ready to take hold of opportunities as they arise. You showed initiative in fighting that beast. More than that, you demonstrated excellence, precisely as the Verbatim defines these things and sets them out as our ultimate aim. We cannot know what mysteries the universe holds, or what challenges we may face in the future. All we can do is live our lives to the fullest extent we can, and cultivate the virtue of trying to achieve excellence in all things. When we go to war, it should be as master warriors. When we make peace, we should be equally adept. It is not good for human beings to accept second best. Our lives are short. We should make merit of them while we can.’

Abruptly coming to silence, the Lion continued to stare up at the night sky, as Zahariel stood beside him.

‘I wonder what is in the stars?’ the Lion said. ‘The old tales say there are thousands, perhaps millions of planets out there, just like Caliban. They say Terra is one of them. It is strange, don’t you think, that every child born of Caliban knows the name Terra? We count it as the source and wellspring of our culture, but if the tales are true it has been thousands of years since we had contact with that source. But what if the tales are false? What if Terra is a myth, a fable invented by our forefathers to account for our place in the cosmos? What if our fathers’ tales are lies?’

‘It would be terrible,’ Zahariel said. He felt a shiver and told himself the night was growing colder. ‘People take the existence of Terra for granted. If it all turned out to be a myth, we might start to doubt everything. We would lose our moorings. We would not know what to believe.’

‘True, but in other ways it would free us. We would no longer need to be responsible to the past. The present and the future would be our only boundaries. Take the current campaign against the great beasts as an example. You are young, Zahariel. You cannot be aware of the bitter arguments, the threats and the recriminations that were directed towards me when I first advanced the plans for my campaign. All too often, I found that the causes of these objections were rooted in some dated custom that had long ago worn out its welcome.

‘Tradition is a fine ideal, but not when it serves as a shackle on our future endeavours. If it wasn’t for Luther and his fine oratory, I doubt the plan would ever have been approved. It is the same with so many issues that confront us today. The diehards and the sticks-in-the-mud oppose us at every step, irrespective of the value of the plans I put forward. They always make reference to the past, to tradition, as though our past was so filled with shining glories that we might actually want to preserve it forever. But I am not interested in the past, Zahariel. I think only of the future.’

Again, the Lion paused. Standing beside him, Zahariel wondered what Lord Cypher would make of this speech decrying the value of tradition. Might this be another test, one designed to see whether he would simply acquiesce to what the Lion was saying or stand up for the values of tradition.

As he looked upon the Lion’s countenance, he saw a strange intensity to the way he stared up at the sky, as if he loved and hated the stars at the same time.

‘Sometimes, I wish it was in my power to wipe the past away,’ the Lion said. ‘I wish there was no myth of Terra. I wish Caliban had no past. Look at a man without a past, and you will see a free man. It is always easier to build when you build from scratch. Then again, I look at the stars and I think I am too hasty. I look to the stars and I wonder what is out there. How many undiscovered lands? How many new challenges? How bright and hopeful might our future be if we could make it to the stars?’

‘Such a thing seems unlikely,’ said Zahariel, ‘for the moment, at least.’

‘You are right,’ said the Lion, ‘but what if the stars were to come to us?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Zahariel.

‘Truthfully? Nor do I,’ said the Lion, ‘but on nights when the stars are bright, I dream of a golden light, and of all the stars of the heavens coming down to Caliban and changing our world forever.’

‘The stars come down to Caliban?’ said Zahariel. ‘Do you think it means anything?’

The Lion shrugged. ‘Who knows? I feel I ought to know its relevance, but every time I think I sense a connection to the golden light, it fades and leaves me alone in the dark.’

Then, as though shaking off the last of such a dream the Lion said, ‘In any case, the stars are denied to us, so we will build the future here on Caliban. Still, if we are to be limited in that way, then we will not allow it to limit our vision. If we are only able to build our lives on Caliban, without access to the stars, then we will make this world a paradise.’

The Lion extended an arm, sweeping it in a broad gesture across the night-time panorama of dark forest and treetops below the walls of Aldurukh.

‘This will be our paradise, Zahariel,’ the Lion told him. ‘This is where we will build a bright new future. The campaign against the great beasts is only the first step. We will create a golden age. We will make the world anew. Does that sound a noble aim to you?’

‘It does, my lord,’ said Zahariel, the words coming out as a reverential whisper.

‘An aim worth committing our lives to?’ asked the Lion. ‘I raise this question, here and now, because of your youth. It is the young who will build this future, Zahariel. You have shown promise. You have the potential to be a true son of Caliban, a crusader, not just against the beasts, but against every other evil that ails our people. Does that seem a worthy purpose?’

‘It does,’ Zahariel replied.

‘Good. I am glad. I will look to see how you perform in the years ahead, Zahariel. As I say, I think you have potential. I will be interested to see you live up to it. Now, you have been kept from your duties long enough, I think.’

The Lion inclined his head, as though listening to the slight sounds drifting from the forest below. ‘I should return also, it is not good form if I am away for too long. People notice. My place in the Order is as much about forging bonds of brotherhood among the knights as it is being wise and canny in matters of war.’

A moment later, the Lion was gone, disappearing into the tower like a banished shadow. There was nothing showy or contrived about this sudden disappearance, for the habits of stealth simply came easily to Lion El’Jonson in a way that only a man who had lived alone as a youth in the forests of Caliban could know.

With the Lion gone, Zahariel looked at the stars high overhead.

For a while, he thought of what the Lion had said. He thought about the stars, about Terra, about the necessity to build a better world on Caliban. He thought about the golden age that Jonson had promised.

Zahariel thought about these things, and knew that with men like Luther and Lion El’Jonson to guide them, the Order could not fail to achieve this utopian vision of the future.

Zahariel had faith in the Lion.

He had faith in Luther.

Together, these two men – these giants – could only change Caliban for the better.

He was sure of it.

It occurred to Zahariel that he had been blessed with good fortune of the kind few men were granted in their lives. No one could choose the era in which they would be born, and where the majority of men struggled through times not unlike the times their fathers had known, Zahariel had been lucky.

As he saw it, he had been born in an age of great and momentous change, a time in which a man could be part of something bigger than himself, a time when he could devote his efforts in line with his ideals and hope to make an achievement of real significance.

Zahariel could not see precisely what the future might hold, he could not see his destiny written in the stars, but he had no fear of what it might be.

The universe, it seemed to him, was a place of wonder.

He looked to the future and was unafraid.

Six

The crusade against the great beasts was to continue for another year before the last bastion of monsters was ready to be assailed. The dense, tangled and lethal forests of the dark Northwilds remained to be purged of the monsters, yet this was the one place the warriors of the Order and its allies had not yet entered.

In part, this was due to the difficulty of mounting any organised, systematic hunt within its depths. Much of the forest was so dense as to be virtually impenetrable to riders, and even the hardy warriors of the Ravenwing would not ride within such places unless called to do so by their masters.

Settlements existed within the Northwilds, heavily defended villages with high walls built upon great rock plains or within the depths of wide hills, but these were few and far between, and populated by resentful people who bemoaned their lot in life without ever daring to improve it.

In truth, the real reason the crusade had not yet ventured into the Northwilds was the antipathy of the Knights of Lupus.

A knightly brotherhood known for its scholars and great libraries, the Knights of Lupus had vehemently opposed the idea of any campaign against the beasts, and had spoken out against Luther and Lion El’Jonson many years earlier.

Alone of the other orders who had voted against Jonson’s proposal to rid the forests of the great beasts, the Knights of Lupus had refused to go with the will of the majority once the matter had been decided. Instead, they had made warlike noises, threatening to launch their own counter-campaign of war against the Order and its allies.

In the end, Luther broached a compromise. The details of the agreement he made had never been revealed, but whatever terms had been offered, the Knights of Lupus had retreated to their mountain fastness in the Northwilds, and took no action against the Order.

For ten years, the Knights of Lupus had watched from their fortress as Jonson’s campaign achieved victory after victory. Region by region, the great beasts were cleared from the forests of Caliban.

As the years went by and the campaign came closer to realising Jonson’s ambitions, the minds of most people on Caliban turned to the beckoning of a golden age.

The Lion’s campaign had progressed to the very border of the Northwilds, long a Knights of Lupus stronghold, and the only region of Caliban left where the great beasts still existed.

Almost inevitably, when the Order entered the Northwilds there would be conflict.

A group of armed supplicants gathered in the centre of the training halls in the pattern of an outward facing circle, their swords extended before them in a defensive posture. Zahariel stood in the centre of the circle, back to back with Nemiel, while another class of supplicants surrounded them and watched their sword drills.

Brother Amadis walked a slow lap of the circle, his hands laced behind his back as he oversaw this latest training session of the Order’s supplicants.

The students gathered around the circle were a year or so younger than those forming it and were all armed with wooden training swords. Though blunt, each had a lead bar at its core, which would make any impact painful in the extreme.

‘You have trained in this manner for years,’ said Amadis, addressing the younger supplicants, ‘and you appreciate the defensive strength of the circle, but you do not appreciate its symbolic strength. Who within the circle can tell these students why we fight in this manner?’

As so often happened, Nemiel answered first.

‘By standing in a circle, each warrior is able to protect the man to his left. It’s a classic defensive formation to be used when heavily outnumbered.’

‘Indeed so, Nemiel,’ said Amadis, ‘but why the inner circle?’

This time, Zahariel answered, saying, ‘A circle is stronger with another circle inside it. It’s an old battle doctrine of Caliban.’

‘Correct,’ said Amadis. ‘The idea of concentric circles, each inside the other, has been the basis for the defences of all the great and abiding fortress monasteries of Caliban. By creating an inner circle to guard and watch over the wider grouping of warriors on the outer circle, the defence cannot be breached. Now attack!’

The younger supplicants threw themselves at the circle, their wooden blades stabbing and chopping towards the older boys. The boys in the outer circle fought well, deflecting the blows of their attackers with a skill borne of an extra year’s training, but they were outnumbered three to one and inevitably some strikes hit home.

Zahariel watched the battle unfold with clinical precision, turning on the spot with Nemiel always at his back as they struck out at any potential breaches of the circle. Swords clashed and clattered for ten minutes, but not a single breach had been made in the outer circle.

Amadis shouted names as he declared boys ‘dead’, and those boys limped from the circle holding bruised and broken arms, and nursing their shame, as the outer circle drew closer to keep their line intact.

Zahariel stabbed and cut as the younger supplicants threatened to overwhelm them and Nemiel did likewise on his blind side. The bout continued for another fifteen minutes, with no sign of the circle formation breaking, and then Amadis called an end to the session.

Both Zahariel and Nemiel were drenched in sweat, the battle having taken its toll on their reserves of strength. Fighting at such intensity for any length of time was difficult, but fighting at the inner circle was particularly draining.

Brother Amadis walked amongst the exhausted supplicants as he said, ‘Now you see the benefit of the inner circle and the strength we gain from its presence. Remember this when you go into battle and you cannot fail. It is a truism, but alone we are weak, together we are strong. Each of you will one day face battle and if you cannot look to your brother and know without thinking that you can trust him, then you are lost. Only when such bonds are ironclad do they mean anything, for the moment that trust is not instantly reciprocated the circle breaks and you are dead. Dismissed!’

The supplicants picked themselves up from the stone floor of the training hall, in ones and twos, wearing linen towels draped around their necks, and nursing tired and battered limbs.

Nemiel wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and said, ‘That was a tough one and no mistake.’

Zahariel nodded, too tired to answer.

‘He’s working us hard, eh?’ continued Nemiel. ‘You’d think we were actually about to go into battle or something.’

‘You never know,’ said Zahariel at last, ‘we might be. The representatives of the Knights of Lupus are due to arrive later today, and if what I hear is true, we might indeed be making war soon.’

‘On the Knights of Lupus?’ asked Attias, coming over with one of his notebooks tucked under his arm.

‘It’s what I hear,’ said Zahariel.

‘You got all that Brother Amadis said?’ remarked Nemiel as Eliath joined them.

‘I did,’ said Attias, ‘give or take a word or two.’

‘Maybe if you practised more swordplay instead of scribbling in your books you wouldn’t have left us open to attack,’ said Eliath, though there was no malice in the words, only good-humoured banter.

‘And maybe if you weren’t so fat, you’d have been able to avoid their attacks.’

The boys smiled at the familiar jibes, though they were spoken in jest rather than with malice. In the year since the attack of the winged beast in the forest, the four of them had passed beyond the rancour that had divided them and had become fast friends, the shared near-death experience bringing them closer than anything else could.

Attias had filled out into a fine figure of a boy, with handsome features, broad shoulders and taut muscles corded around his limbs. Eliath was still the biggest of them, his muscles bulging and powerful, any hint of fat long since burned from his slab-like frame, though he was still the least agile of them.

‘Seriously though, you think we might make war on the Knights of Lupus?’ asked Attias.

‘I don’t know, maybe,’ said Zahariel, wishing he had not brought the subject up. Brother Amadis had told him that Lord Sartana of the Knights of Lupus was travelling to Aldurukh to protest at the Order’s knights venturing into the Northwilds, and though he had not been told to keep the information to himself, he still felt like he was betraying a confidence in sharing it with his brothers.

‘Zahariel, Nemiel, get cleaned up and report to my chambers in fifteen minutes. Full dress surplice, weapons and ceremonial attire.’

Both boys looked up in puzzlement, surprised at the arrival of Brother Amadis.

‘Sir?’ said Nemiel. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The Lion wants the best of our supplicants on display when Lord Sartana walks into the Circle Chamber, and you’re it. Now hurry, he’s already here and apparently in no mood to dally. Move!’

Zahariel shifted nervously from foot to foot as he and Nemiel stood at the edge of the plinth at the centre of the Circle Chamber. They had marched in with Brother Amadis at their head a few minutes ago, thrilled and not a little honoured to have been allowed to follow him in through the western Cloister Gate.

The higher entrances to the chamber were for the lower ranked members of the Order, and only the senior knights were permitted to enter the chamber through the Cloister Gates.

Normally, supplicants and those lower in rank than a full knight were forced to enter and sit in the benches high above, but the senior members of the Order had granted special dispensation for this occasion.

The corridors and chambers of Aldurukh were fairly buzzing with activity, their little group passing knights, squires and supplicants rushing from place to place on no doubt vital errands in preparation for the arrival of Lord Sartana.

Ceremonial banners were being dusted off and hung from the roof of the chamber, the warlike banners of red and crimson replaced with those that recalled a legendary past, and conjured images of brotherhood and confraternity.

Robed and hooded members of the Order were filling the stone benches around the centre of the chamber, though no supplicants other than those accompanying senior brothers of the Order were present.

‘Is this Sartana really that important?’ whispered Nemiel, careful to keep his voice soft, for the Circle Chamber’s acoustics were incredible.

Zahariel nodded. ‘I think so. He’s the most senior member of the Knights of Lupus.’

‘I thought they had pretty much died out?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel, ‘though they are much reduced from their former glory, it’s true.’

‘What happened to them?’

Zahariel thought back to what he’d heard the seneschals talking about below the halls and chambers of the noble knights in the years after he had first joined the Order.

‘They were opposed to the Lion’s campaign against the great beasts, and retreated to their mountain stronghold while the Order and its allies began cleansing the forests. I heard that a significant number of their knights and supplicants defected to join the Order when they saw how successful the campaign was.’

‘They left their own brothers?’ asked Nemiel in surprise.

‘So they say,’ agreed Zahariel. ‘I imagine they must have been hard and joyless years for them, since the recruitment of new supplicants dwindled to barely more than a handful each season. Within a few years, perhaps another decade at most, the Knights of Lupus faced the real prospect that they would cease to be viable as a knightly order.’

‘How sad,’ said Nemiel, ‘to be on the brink of oblivion, not through glorious, heroic death or epic battle, but by obsolescence.’

‘Don’t write them off yet,’ said Brother Amadis, appearing at their shoulders. ‘There’s never more life in a beast than when it thinks it’s cornered.’

‘Brother Amadis, I have a question,’ said Nemiel.

‘Yes? Go on, but hurry, Sartana will be here soon.’

‘Zahariel tells me that the Knights of Lupus have almost no supplicants, that their numbers dwindle.’

‘That’s not a question,’ pointed out Zahariel.

‘I know, I’m getting there,’ said Nemiel. ‘What I mean to say is that is it not a little… well, brash to flaunt the Order’s supplicants before Lord Sartana like this?’

Amadis smiled and said, ‘Very perceptive of you, young Nemiel.’

‘So why do it?’

‘It is a good question, so I will indulge you,’ said Amadis. ‘In all likelihood, Lord Sartana does not come with conciliation in mind. I believe the Lion and Luther wish to make a tacit display that will speak of our strength in the years ahead.’

‘And if Lord Sartana can be made to think that he cannot oppose us, he will more readily agree to our warriors campaigning in the Northwilds,’ completed Zahariel.

‘Something like that,’ agreed Amadis. ‘Now be quiet, we are about to begin.’

Zahariel turned his gaze to the eastern Cloister Gate as two lines of hooded banner bearers entered, their faces cloaked in shadow and their steps ponderous. They parted, with grim solemnity, as they reached the edge of the circle, and followed its circumference until they formed a ring of banners around the plinth.

Each banner was planted in a cup sunk into the floor, and the banner bearers knelt behind them, heads bowed as the masters of the Order entered.

The Lion and Luther marched into the chamber, resplendent in black plate and flowing white cloaks that hung from bronze pins at their shoulders. The Lion dwarfed Luther as always, but to Zahariel’s eyes, both were cut from the same magnificent cloth. The Lion’s expression was grim, while Luther’s was open, but Zahariel could see the tension etched in the tight lines around his eyes and jaw.

The knights of the Order gathered in the benches stood and banged their fists on their breastplates at the sight of their most heroic brothers, the noise deafening as each knight displayed the proper respect for his betters.

The senior knights of the Order accompanied the Lion and Luther, including Lord Cypher and several of the highest ranked battle knights, the warriors skilled in leading armies and marshalling great numbers of troops. It seemed this was to be more than a tacit display of strength, but a very real show of martial might.

A warrior in gleaming bronze plate armour and a long wolfskin cloak stood alongside Luther. The skull and upper jaw of the lupine beast was fashioned into the peak of the warrior’s helmet, its front paws draped over the pauldrons at his shoulders.

This then was Lord Sartana, a powerful man with age-weathered features and a drooping, silver moustache. His eyes were heavy lidded and grey, and his expression one of belligerence. He was clearly all too aware of the none-too-subtle display of the Order’s strength. A trio of wolf-cloaked warriors accompanied him, each with a similarly bushy moustache and each older than many of the most senior knights of the Order.

The warriors reached the centre of the circle, and the Lion raised his hands for silence, which was duly delivered. Zahariel spared an excited glance at Nemiel at the sight of so many senior knights in such proximity.

The Lion turned to Lord Sartana and extended his hand, ‘I welcome you to the Circle Chamber, where brother meets brother without rank or station, where all are equal. Welcome, brother.’

To Zahariel’s ears the words sounded flat and devoid of meaning, as though the Lion had swallowed the bitterest ashes to speak them.

Lord Sartana clearly thought so too and disdained to accept the proffered hand. ‘I asked for a private meeting, my Lord Jonson, not… this!’

‘The Order is a place of honesty, Lord Sartana,’ said Luther, his voice conciliatory and soothing. ‘We have no secrets, and wish to be transparent in our dealings with you.’

‘Then why these blatant theatrics?’ snapped Sartana. ‘You think I am some simpleton to be impressed by your parade of new recruits and senior knights?’

‘These are no theatrics,’ said the Lion, ‘they are reminders of your brotherhood’s status on Caliban.’

‘Our status?’ said Lord Sartana. ‘So you agreed to this meeting simply to humiliate me, is that it?’

Luther stepped between the two warriors, eager to defuse the hostile atmosphere before things degenerated to a point where weapons might be drawn.

‘My lords,’ said Luther, again modulating his voice to sound entirely reasonable and placating. ‘Such talk is beneath us. We are here so that all may witness the fairness and justice of our talk. It must be seen that there is no dishonesty between us.’

‘Then let us speak of how your warriors have violated the treaty between us,’ said Sartana.

‘Violated the treaty?’ snapped the Lion. ‘What treaty? There was no treaty.’

‘Assurances were given many years ago,’ said Sartana, ‘by you, Luther. When you journeyed to our fortress, you claimed that Jonson gave an iron assurance that he would keep his warriors away from the Northwilds. As we both know, that has not been the case.’

‘No,’ said the Lion, an edge of anger entering his voice, ‘it has not.’ Zahariel wondered that any man could stand before such a threat. ‘Your men slaughtered a group of our hunters. Men with families were killed by fully armed knights, who sent a lone survivor back with the butchered bodies of his comrades.’

‘Those men had come to map the valleys on the edge of the Northwilds.’

‘The edges of your territories are home to beasts!’ said the Lion. ‘Beasts that still ravage our lands. The town of Endriago alone has suffered nearly two hundred dead at the hands of one! The time has come to finish the job and destroy the last of the great beasts.’

At the mention of Endriago, Zahariel felt Brother Amadis stiffen his stance, and saw that his hands had drawn into clenched fists.

‘You might clear the great beasts from the rest of Caliban,’ said Sartana, ‘but the Northwilds, and the lands of the Knights of Lupus were to be sacrosanct. We were promised that our lands would be a haven, and that the beasts there would be left in peace. This agreement had the force of a treaty. By sending your warriors into our lands you are an oathbreaker!’

‘Talk sense, man,’ said the Lion. ‘There was never any assurance made about leaving the Northwilds alone. What kind of sense would it make for us to do so? What would be the virtue of slaying the beasts everywhere else on Caliban, only to leave a pocket of the creatures still remaining? No, if there was any violation, it was by the Knights of Lupus when they killed the Order’s warriors. All the rest of it, these falsehoods and lies, are simply a flimsy pretext to justify your actions.’

‘Then you set the stage for war, Lord Jonson,’ said Sartana.

‘If that is what it takes to free Caliban of the beasts, then I do, Lord Sartana,’ said the Lion, and Zahariel could hear a fierce relish in his tone, as though goading Sartana into a war had been his intention all along.

‘I will not stop in the pursuit of my goal of ridding Caliban of the beasts,’ said the Lion, ‘and if your warriors try to stop me, it will be the end of them. Your order has fewer warriors and most have not set foot from your libraries in years. Do you really think you can stop me?’

‘Probably not,’ admitted Sartana.

‘Then why stand against me?’

‘Because in your monomaniacal quest to destroy, you will not be satisfied until you have all Caliban under your heel,’ said Lord Sartana. ‘The Knights of Lupus do not wish to be subject to your decrees. Now if this farce of a “discussion” is at an end, I will take my leave and return to my brethren.’

Without waiting for any dismissal, Lord Sartana turned on his heel and marched from the Circle Chamber, his wolf-cloaked acolytes following him.

A thunderous silence fell on the assembled knights of the Order at such audacity, each warrior looking to his neighbour as if to confirm that they understood the import of the words that had passed between the Lion and Lord Sartana, that they were as good as at war with the Brotherhood of Lupus.

Brother Amadis broke the silence, stepping from his position at the edge of the circle and calling out to the Lion.

‘My Lord Jonson!’ cried Amadis. ‘Is it true? Is Endriago attacked by a beast?’

At first, Zahariel wondered if the Lion had heard the question, for long moments passed before he turned to face Amadis. His face was set in stone, and Zahariel felt a shudder of fear pass along his spine at the look of warlike fury etched into his features.

Then, as though a ray of sunlight passed over his face, the vengeful anger was gone, and a look of deep concern took its place.

‘Brother Amadis,’ said the Lion, ‘I’m afraid it is true. Word reached us only yesterday. A beast has slain a great many of Endriago’s people, though no one knows yet what manner of creature stalks the dark forest.’

‘Endriago is the place of my birth, Lord Jonson,’ said Amadis. ‘I must avenge the deaths it has caused to my people.’

The Lion nodded and listened to Luther’s whispered comment, as Amadis dropped to one knee.

‘My Lord Jonson,’ said Amadis, ‘I declare a quest against the Beast of Endriago.’

Seven

Afterwards, Zahariel would always think of it as his finest moment. It was not that the years that followed would be short on glories, far from it. He would win his share of battles. He would be acclaimed and lauded by his fellows.

He would be honoured by the Lion.

He would know all these things and more. Yet, somehow, the moment he cherished most occurred on his homeworld of Caliban in the days before the Emperor came to their planet.

It was in the time before angels, in a time when he had been a young man on the verge of adulthood. Perhaps his age would play a part in making the recollection of those days more vivid in his mind later.

At the time, he had been just two weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday. The fact of his youth would add an extra gloss of glamour to his reminiscences. It would make his achievement seem more worthy somehow, more memorable. With his first step over the threshold of manhood, he had braved horrors and endured hardships that most men could never, nor would ever, survive.

One element would certainly set this moment apart from his later triumphs. He had not yet been made an angel. He had not yet become Astartes. It would make what happened all the more remarkable. It was one thing for a superhuman to succeed in such circumstances, it was quite another for an ordinary human being to do so, especially one who was only halfway through his teens.

Perhaps it was something else.

Perhaps, in the end, he would treasure the moment simply because it spoke well of his character. After his transformation into an angel, most of his memories of the days when he was still a man would become dull and hazy.

There were thousands of moments, important ones, he would forget altogether. He would have difficulty remembering the faces of his parents, his sisters, the friends of his childhood. The only matters fixed in his mind would be those relating to his time among the angels, as though in crossing the bridge from human to superhuman he had said goodbye forever to many of the things that had defined his earlier, human life.

Whatever the case, the memory would burn brightly in his mind throughout his days. He would keep it with him, through the centuries, as one of the few significant remembrances left to him from the time of his youth.

It would alter the course of his years in subtle ways, for it would help him remain true to his ideals. It would sustain him when every other hope was gone. He would always see it as one of the defining moments of his existence.

It was the beginning of his sense of himself, the seed-story of his personal myth.

It said these things to him. Once, he had been a man. Once, he had been a knight. Once, he had fought the good fight and protected the innocent.

Once upon a time, he had hunted monsters.

Almost five months had passed since Brother Amadis had set out on his quest to destroy the Beast of Endriago, and the time had dragged like a lead weight upon Zahariel. He missed the easy camaraderie of his hero and the sense that his worth and presence were valued and appreciated within the Order.

Though Master Ramiel was a teacher of great skill and wisdom, he treated Zahariel just like any other supplicant, which was how it should be, but after being singled out by Brother Amadis, he found it hard to adjust to being… ordinary.

Without the presence of Brother Amadis, the games of one-upmanship had resumed, with Zahariel, Nemiel, Attias and Eliath squabbling like young novices once more.

Zahariel had tried to keep Nemiel’s desire to best him at everything from annoying him, but try as he might, his cousin’s constant, niggling attempts to undermine him began to ossify into a core of resentment in his heart.

Since Lord Sartana’s visit to Aldurukh, a significant proportion of the Order’s strength had been diverted from the final stages of the campaign against the great beasts towards the conflict with this new enemy.

In a series of decisive engagements, the Knights of Lupus had been driven back to their fortress at Sangrula – Blood Mountain – which, according to wild rumours flying through the fortress monastery, was now under siege.

The boys had gathered over their afternoon meal to discuss the state of the war against the Knights of Lupus, and to bemoan their status as supplicants and hence their exclusion from the fighting.

‘I heard it said that they’ve started burning their own settlements so as not to let the Order’s knights capture them,’ said Eliath.

‘That’s true,’ said Attias. ‘I heard Master Ramiel say that to Sar Hadariel yesterday.’

‘Why would they do something like that?’ asked Nemiel. ‘That’s just stupid.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Attias. ‘It’s just what I heard.’

‘Perhaps because they’ve proved by their actions that they’re no more than treacherous turncoats and every moment of their continued existence is a stain on Caliban’s honour.’

‘That’s a bit of a harsh assessment, isn’t it?’ said Zahariel.

‘Is it?’ said Nemiel. ‘Then how come the Order has taken up the task of ending their existence?’

‘Has anyone stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, Lord Sartana was speaking the truth?’ asked Zahariel. ‘That maybe we did break our word to leave their lands alone?’

‘It crossed my mind,’ said Nemiel, ‘but what does it really matter now?’

‘What does it matter?’ repeated Zahariel. ‘It matters because we may be about to fight a war under false pretences, that we engineered this war to serve our own ends? Doesn’t that concern any of you?’

Blank faces gave him his answer, and he shook his head at their acceptance.

Nemiel leaned over the table and said, ‘History is written by the victors, Zahariel, and among the many bitter pills the losing side must swallow in any war is the fact that their sacrifices were all for nothing. Sartana’s claims about the Lion may well have been scurrilous, even outright fantasy, but the Order’s chroniclers were never likely to record them even if they were truth, were they?’

‘And the chroniclers of the Knights of Lupus?’

‘Are sure to die with their masters in the siege of their fortress.’

‘How can you be so blasé about this, Nemiel?’ asked Zahariel. ‘We’re talking about killing fellow knights.’

Nemiel shook his head. ‘No, we’re talking about killing our enemies. Whether they’re fellow knights or not is immaterial. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, in the heat and fire of war the initial cause of the dispute between us and the Knights of Lupus will soon be forgotten. Even the war won’t linger long in memory.’

‘That’s tragic,’ said Zahariel.

‘Such is the tragedy of human existence,’ said Nemiel, quoting from the Verbatim. ‘The lives of individuals are fleeting ephemeral things, lost amid the unforgiving, bloody tides of history.’

Zahariel shook his head. ‘Maybe so, but on Caliban, those tides flow more darkly than most.’

After the midday meal, the supplicants retired to the dormitories to gather up their weapons for afternoon practice under the remonstrative eye of Master Ramiel. Zahariel had been unsettled by the conversation over their meal, uneasy at the speed with which the knights of the Order had followed Jonson into war.

Surely it was every sentient being’s wish to avoid war, to take all possible actions to avoid the loss of life? Though youthful, Zahariel was wise enough to know that sometimes war and killing were unavoidable, but this war with the Knights of Lupus seemed to have begun with undue and unseemly haste.

As he lifted his serrated sword and buckled on his pistol belt, he heard a distant skirling trumpet call, a lilting refrain of three high notes that repeated over and over again. He looked over to where Nemiel and the others were readying their weapons, knowing that he knew the meaning of these sounds, but unable to connect that knowledge with his senses.

‘Brother Amadis,’ said Eliath, and suddenly sense and meaning was imparted to the trumpet blasts.

‘The Returning Knight,’ said Attias.

Zahariel smiled, recognising the infrequently heard melody that announced the return of a knight from a beast quest. So many of the great beasts had been killed and the crusade was almost at an end, hence the joyous notes were heard all too rarely these days.

The four boys ran from the dormitories, heedless of the thought that Master Ramiel would punish them for missing his lessons in swordplay and pistol work. The thrill of seeing Brother Amadis once again within the walls of Aldurukh outweighed the petty concerns of a timetable.

Others had also heard the trumpeter, though how the sound had carried through the fortress when its origin was high on the towers of the fortress was a mystery to Zahariel. Fellow supplicants hurried with them, and even a few of the younger knights made their way to the great gateway at the heart of the fortress, eager to be the first to greet the return of Brother Amadis.

Zahariel found himself once again in competition with Nemiel, his cousin pulling slightly ahead with a grin of triumph. Attias was behind him, and Eliath ran solidly at the rear of their little group.

The corridors wound down around the great bastion towers of the gateway, stone spirals lined with murder holes that led to the ground level. A sizeable throng had gathered, but still they were able to force their way to the front, as a booming echo drifted down from the darkness above.

Mighty chains juddered and shook off dust as heavy winches, pulleys and counterweights moved in an intricate ballet that opened the colossal Memorial Gates of Aldurukh. Massive portals of dark timber and bronze swung open on greased runners, iron wheels and bearings guiding them as they opened.

Bright light from a lifeless sky poured in, pooling on the stone flagged esplanade and spreading in a widening fan to illuminate the gloomy interior of the fortress monastery. Motes of dust spun like glimmering diamonds, dancing in the air as the passage of the great doors disturbed them.

Zahariel strained to see Brother Amadis, but beyond the blinding rectangle of light that built at the doors, he could see nothing beyond the dark smudge of the distant forest. Fellow supplicants pressed in around him, equally eager for a view, but Zahariel and his brothers kept their position with a mixture of strength and sheer bloody-mindedness.

At last a cry went up, and Zahariel saw movement in the gateway, the swaying silhouette of a rider making slow progress into the fortress. As his eyes adjusted to the glare from the bright sky beyond, Zahariel’s heart leapt as he recognised the distinct and unmistakable outline of Brother Amadis.

Even as he rejoiced in the return of his hero, he had a sudden presentiment that something was wrong.

Amadis held himself erect with the last reserves of his strength, for his surplice was drenched in sticky blood and his left arm hung loosely by his side, the bones clearly shattered.

His face was pallid and bloodless, and a growth of stubble that was practically a beard fringed his face in dark hair. Nor had his destrier escaped unscathed: several deep gouges had been carved in its chest and flanks, and whole chunks of its mane had been torn out. Its tail was missing, and a series of clotted gashes on its rump spoke of a desperate flight from something terrible.

Amadis’s eyes spoke of unimaginable pain and determination, and his head turned as though he sought something lost.

Knights rushed forward to aid the stricken hero and help him from his saddle. Their movement broke the spell of his condition, and a clamour of voices arose at the sight of the terribly wounded warrior.

Zahariel was swept forward in the press of bodies, a willing passenger in the advance of the crowd.

‘Get back!’ shouted a powerful, aged voice. ‘Give him some damn room!’

Zahariel saw Lord Cypher striding through the masses, parting them by force of personality and authority, and darted to one side to follow in the wake of his passing. Within a few moments, he had left his fellows behind and stood above Brother Amadis with Lord Cypher kneeling beside the wounded man.

Amadis fought to form words, but bloody froth built on his lips, bubbling up from pierced lungs.

‘Don’t speak,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘You’ll only make it more painful.’

‘No…’ gurgled Amadis. ‘…need to speak.’

‘Very well, lad. Do you have a valediction?’

Amadis nodded, and though Zahariel was horrified by Lord Cypher’s implicit assumption that Amadis was going to die, he had seen enough wounds to know that these ones were mortal.

Amadis nodded and Zahariel saw that the blood at the knight’s stomach was wet and still flowing, the flesh torn open and ropes of intestine pushing at the hand that vainly attempted to keep them within his body.

With his free hand, Amadis reached for his rotary-barrelled pistol and painfully slid it from its leather holster.

‘Zahariel,’ said Amadis.

Lord Cypher looked up and saw the boy, quickly beckoning him to kneel beside the dying knight. ‘Hurry, boy, and listen well, not many get to hear the last words of a knight of the Order. Those who listen to a valediction have a duty to the dead. Tradition, you see.’

Zahariel nodded, intent on the dying Amadis as he lifted the pistol towards him.

‘Take it, Zahariel,’ said Amadis, the creased lines of pain on his face easing as death stole upon him. ‘It’s yours. I want you to have it.’

‘I can’t,’ said Zahariel, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.

‘You must, it is my wish that you carry it with you,’ gasped Amadis. ‘It is my legacy to you. Remember me when you fire it. Remember what I taught you.’

‘I will,’ promised Zahariel, taking the blood-slick weapon from Amadis. Its weight felt heavy in his hand, heavier than a mere contraption of metal and wood ought to feel. It carried a weight of responsibility with it, a duty to the honourable warrior who had borne it before him.

‘It’s a good weapon… not failed me yet,’ coughed Amadis. ‘Don’t suppose it ever will now, eh?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel, suddenly very aware of the silence that filled the gateway.

‘Damn, but there’s no pain now, that can’t be good, eh?’

‘It means the end is near, lad,’ said Lord Cypher.

‘Thought so,’ nodded Amadis. ‘Damn Beast of Endriago got its claws into me. Big bastard too… a Calibanite lion… thought there was only one of them.’

‘A Calibanite lion?’ said Zahariel. ‘I thought Lord Jonson killed the only lion?’

‘I wish he had…’ said Amadis with a grimace. ‘Might not be lying here… I just wish…’

Whatever Amadis’s last wish had been, it would forever remain a mystery, for his eyes glazed over and a soft breath whispered from between his lips.

Zahariel’s head bowed and tears flowed unashamedly down his cheeks at the passing of this great hero. He gripped the pistol Amadis had given him in both hands, hot anger filling him at the thought of the knight’s killer still alive and roaming the dark forests.

Lord Cypher reached out and pressed his palm over the dead knight’s face, gently closing his eyes.

‘So passes Brother Amadis from the Order,’ he intoned with grim solemnity.

Zahariel looked up, as Lord Cypher placed a gnarled hand on his shoulder and pointed at the gun Amadis had given him.

‘That is more than just a weapon, boy,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘It is the weapon of a hero. It carries a weight of power and potency that your own pistol does not. You must do honour to the weapon and the memory of the man who gave it to you.’

‘I will do honour to it, Lord Cypher,’ said Zahariel. ‘Have no doubt about that.’

Lord Cypher’s eyes narrowed as he caught the vehemence in Zahariel’s voice. He shook his head.

‘No, lad,’ he said. ‘Anger and loss cloud your judgement. Do not say it, for it cannot be taken back once uttered.’

But Zahariel was not to be dissuaded, and he stood with the bloody pistol clasped tight to his breast.

‘My Lord Cypher,’ said Zahariel, ‘I declare a quest against the Beast of Endriago.’

‘You shouldn’t have declared a quest,’ said Nemiel.

It was three nights before Zahariel was due to set off on his quest. Knowing he would want to spend the next two days and nights in quiet meditation as he prepared for the journey, his fellow supplicants had chosen this as an opportune time to hold a feast in his honour.

There had been food and wine, and Master Ramiel had granted them special dispensation to hold the feast in the caverns below Aldurukh. The feast took place in torchlight, around a long table that they had carried down from the dormitory dining room.

The setting was in keeping with custom. According to Lord Cypher, if Zahariel succeeded in his quest, he would be reborn from one life into another, from a boy into a man.

‘Strictly speaking,’ Lord Cypher had said, ‘as these things are counted, you are currently suspended between life and death, your soul sojourning in the underworld until the decision of your future status is made.’

Zahariel had thought it superstitious nonsense, of course, tradition based on old myths, but Lord Cypher still paid service to their world’s ancient ways, and as a fellow witness to the passing of Brother Amadis, Zahariel had honoured his advice by seeking out an underground venue for the feast.

Despite the celebratory tone and surface cheer of the proceedings, Zahariel noticed a mournfulness underlying all that was said to him. His friends wished him well, but there was no hiding the edge of grief in their demeanour. It was an uncomfortable realisation, but eventually Zahariel understood that they were saying farewell with no expectation of ever seeing him alive again.

No one expected him to return from his quest except as a corpse.

‘You could have waited, Zahariel.’ Nemiel’s voice was insistent beside him. ‘You didn’t have to declare a quest on the beast that killed Amadis.’

‘Yes, Nemiel,’ said Zahariel, ‘I did. You didn’t see the life pass from him. I did.’

‘You know what the senior knights are saying?’ asked Eliath.

‘No,’ said Zahariel, ‘nor do I care. I have declared a quest, to no less a person than Lord Cypher. It cannot be taken back.’

‘Well you should care,’ said Nemiel, jerking his head towards the ceiling. ‘The things the knights are saying… They think it’s hubris. They don’t know why Lord Cypher is allowing you to take up this quest. He should know better. It’s a suicidal errand.’

‘You’ll have to be clearer, Nemiel,’ said Zahariel, gesturing to his goblet. ‘It could be I haven’t taken enough water with my wine, but I’m having trouble following you.’

‘I’m talking about the beast you’ll be hunting,’ said Nemiel, with a grimace of exasperation. ‘Up at the knights’ table they’re saying it’s a Calibanite lion, one of the worst predators of the woods. They say it’s taken more than two hundred lives already, and this is up in the Northwilds where there are hardly any people.’

‘A quest is supposed to be hard, Nemiel,’ said Zahariel. ‘It’s how we prove ourselves. It’s how we show we’re ready for knighthood.’

‘Hard, yes, but this goes way beyond that,’ countered Nemiel. ‘Everyone says this quest beast is worthy of the true heroes among us, like the Lion or Sar Luther. No offence, cousin, but you’re not one of them and you never will be. You don’t have the skills or experience to take down this beast, any more than I do. Everyone upstairs is saying you’re insane. I know you desperately want to be a knight, we all do, but if you ask me, you should have waited for a less dangerous beast. No one would have thought badly of you for it. There would have been no less glory.’

Zahariel shook his head. ‘It’s not about the glory, and I don’t care how people speak of me. You should know that about me by now.’

‘Aye, I know, but you must be able to see that this is madness? I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I thought it was suicide. You can see that, can’t you? Why did you take it?’

‘I’ve waited years for this,’ said Zahariel, speaking slowly and measuring his reply. ‘Ever since I was accepted as a supplicant by the Order I’ve dreamt about this moment. To be honest, it never occurred to me not to take up this quest. When Brother Amadis died, I could feel that it was right. I couldn’t wait for another. Besides, remember what Master Ramiel says, “You don’t choose your beast; the beast chooses you.” You should know that lesson well enough.’

Trying to defuse the tension, Zahariel smiled at Nemiel to show he was only joking, but his cousin was unwilling to soften his stance. Still annoyed, Nemiel stared back at him in frustration. Attias and Eliath sat in silence, seeing that to intrude on the cousins’ discussion would not be prudent.

‘It’s no laughing matter, Zahariel. This beast could kill you. Remember, I was there when the winged monster attacked us. It’s easy to think you’re immortal when you’re wearing armour and armed with a fine pistol and motorised sword, but our weapons and our artifice mean nothing in the face of such creatures. This isn’t something to be treated lightly. It’s a serious business.’

‘I know it is,’ replied Zahariel. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I realise the dangers of the quest ahead of me. I know the weight of it. But what you see as a terrible problem, I see as an advantage. You know the Order’s teachings as well as I do. In all our lessons with our masters, in all the combat drills and practice sessions, in all the mock duels and tourneys we have experienced since we came here, we have been striving for one thing: excellence. It is the only quality that gives any meaning to a man’s life. It is the only thing that makes us worthy of knighthood. It is the Order’s founding ideal. You know the words, “The life of mankind should be devoted to the pursuit of excellence in all its forms, both as a species and as individuals”.’

‘You don’t need to quote the Verbatim to me,’ snapped Nemiel. ‘Master Ramiel drummed it into both our heads. I know it by heart as well as you.’

‘Then you’ll remember something else that is written in it. “To help achieve and demonstrate this excellence, we will test ourselves to our limits. Only through the sternest challenges can we know the true shape of our character.” That’s what the Order’s teachings say: to our limits, the sternest challenges. I’d hardly be following those lessons if I had refused this quest because I was afraid I might find it too hard.’

‘Those are our ideals, yes,’ agreed Nemiel, ‘but we have to be realistic. If the stories about this beast are true, it’s the kind of creature that only a party of experienced knights could bring down. Even Lord Jonson was badly wounded before he brought his Calibanite lion down. It’s not a suitable challenge for a supplicant.’

‘You may be right,’ admitted Zahariel, ‘but when Amadis gave me his pistol I had to accept the quest. If we start trying to choose our quests on the basis of how easy we’d like them to be, we will be on the slippery slope to ruin. Anyway, let’s not argue. The decision is made, and it’s too late to change it. I’ve committed myself to this quest. The most we can do is share a drink and hope we both live to see each other again.’

Zahariel stood and lifted the goblet in his hand.

‘To the life tomorrow, cousin,’ he said, raising the goblet in a toast.

In response, Nemiel smiled in resignation and raised his own goblet.

‘To the life tomorrow,’ replied Nemiel, his eyes glistening with tears.

Eight

‘You take the trail eastwards,’ said the woodsman.

He led the way on foot down the forest path while Zahariel followed behind him on his destrier. ‘You keep going ’til you reach a piece of clearing just past an old tree that’s hit by lightning. It’s fire-black and split in two down the middle, you can’t miss it. That’s where the gathering party was heading. Course, it could be they never reached it. If they did, you should be able to pick up their tracks from there.’

The man’s name was Narel. Lord Domiel of Endriago had introduced Zahariel to him as he prepared to leave the frightened town through the splintered and heavily barricaded main gates.

Narel was one of the woodsmen who lived in the castle and worked the lands surrounding its walls. Braver than his fellows, he had agreed to lead Zahariel into the forest in search of the beast. Specifically, he had promised to show Zahariel the trail taken by a party of men and women who had failed to return after daring to venture into the forest yesterday to gather much needed firewood and foodstuffs.

‘People told them they was being foolhardy,’ Narel said. ‘They told them they’d likely run into the beast, but what was they to do? They all had youngsters, and plenty of mouths to feed back home. Winter’s coming, and if you want to stay alive you’ve got to gather food and fuel. It’s just the way things are out here. Besides, they was well-armed, and there was a dozen of them all together, so you’d think there’d be safety in numbers. There ain’t no safety in these woods now though, I guess, not from the beast.’

Narel was nearly half the age of Lord Domiel of Endriago, but it had swiftly become clear that the woodsman was as garrulous as his lord and master. All the way along the trail, as he guided Zahariel through the forest, Narel had yattered on incessantly. He had a tendency to talk quietly while constantly casting anxious glances at the trees and the undergrowth around them. The woodsman was clearly nervous, as though he expected the beast to leap out at them at any moment.

‘Course, those youngsters won’t get no food now,’ said Narel, checking for the twentieth time that there was a round in the breech of his bolt-action rifle and the trigger safety was off. ‘Could be they’ll starve, unless someone takes them in. Not me, though. I got sympathies, but me and the wife have got our own pack of hungry mouths. That’s the real tragedy of it, you ask me. Every time the beast kills, it makes another band of orphans. Killed more than a hundred and eighty people all told. That’s a lot of children having to go without mothers or fathers.’

Zahariel could understand the man’s nervousness. From what Narel had told him, he had known most of the beast’s victims, at least the ones that had come from Endriago. A number of them had even been his relatives. Given the size of the community and the extended kinship relationships that operated in Caliban’s more isolated regions, such a situation was not unusual.

Everyone in Endriago had lost neighbours, friends and family members to the beast that stalked the forests. In his short time in the castle, it had been obvious to Zahariel that fear of the beast was a palpable force within its walls. He would have been hard pressed to find a man, woman or child who was not terrified of the creature.

The people of Endriago no longer ventured outside their settlement unless it was absolutely necessary, and having seen the fury and depth of the claw marks on the castle gate, Zahariel was inclined to feel that such fear was entirely justified.

The beast had turned them into virtual prisoners behind the castle’s battlements, and this combined with Brother Amadis’s death, made Zahariel more determined than ever to kill the foul monster.

The current situation could not last forever. As Narel had said, the seasons were changing. Winter was on its way. Soon, the inhabitants of Endriago would be given a hard choice. Their food stocks would need to be replenished if they were to get through the bitterly cold months ahead.

Either they faced a slow lingering death through starvation, or they would have to enter the forest and risk the wrath of the beast.

The party of men and women that had gone out yesterday had already made their decision. It had ended badly for them, but there was an entire settlement whose further existence hung in the balance.

If the beast was allowed to continue unchecked, if no one hunted it down and killed it, there would be more tragedies in the forests around Endriago.

There would be more grief. There would be more orphans.

Many lives had already been taken, and no community could afford to suffer such losses indefinitely.

The weight of responsibility on Zahariel’s shoulders was enormous.

If he failed to kill the beast it was not just his own life at stake, it was the life of Endriago and all the families that dwelt within it.

‘Anyway, this is it,’ said Narel. He had halted partway along the trail, and looked at Zahariel with an expression of acute discomfort. ‘You remember I said I couldn’t take you the whole way. I mean, I would, but I got a wife and youngsters myself. You understand, right? I got people to look after.’

‘I understand,’ replied Zahariel. ‘I should be able to find my way from here.’

‘All right, then,’ nodded Narel.

The woodsman turned to begin the journey back to Endriago, glancing briefly over his shoulder at Zahariel before he left. ‘I wish you safe passage through the dark, Zahariel of the Order. May the Watchers guide you and comfort you. Be sure I will make an offering on your behalf tonight. It has been good to know you.’

With that, he walked away and did not turn back again.

Once the woodsman was gone and Zahariel had continued a little way ahead on the trail, he found his mind dwelling at length on the words Narel had said to him before he left.

It was obvious that Narel did not expect him to survive.

The woodsman had not used any of the standard expressions of farewell. There had been no mention of the ‘life tomorrow’ or similar phrases. In their place, he had made a curious decision in his choice of words. He had wished safe passage to Zahariel in the dark.

He had asked for the Watchers to guide and comfort him.

He had even gone so far as to promise to make an offering on his behalf. On Caliban, these were not the words that anyone would say to someone they expected see again. They were words of benediction, not of farewell.

According to one of the more commonly held beliefs about death on Caliban, once a person died his soul journeyed to the underworld where it would be made to walk a spiral path, which – depending on the deceased’s actions in life – would lead him either to hell or to rebirth. This was the source of the words Narel had said to him. They were from a well-known funeral rite, where, in the context of the ceremony, they were intended as a plea, asking for the guardians of the spirit world to intervene on behalf of the dead.

Zahariel took no offence at Narel’s words. He did not suspect they were anything but well-intentioned. There were no great cities on Caliban, but even by those standards the settlements of the Northwilds were comparative backwaters.

The old ways held considerable sway in places like Endriago.

By his own beliefs, Narel had probably thought he was paying Zahariel a great honour in attempting to ease his journey through the underworld, a prospect he no doubt saw as inevitable once Zahariel came face to face with the beast.

To Zahariel’s mind, though, the woodsman had been wasting his breath.

It was not a matter that was much discussed, at least not openly, but there were many interpretations of religion at the heart of Calibanite culture. On the one hand there was the planet’s traditional religion, still popular with much of the common population as well as with a few diehards among the nobility, which incorporated elements of both ancestor worship and an animistic folk belief said to be derived from the ancient wisdoms of the planet’s first human settlers. Its adherents believed that the forests of Caliban were alive with guardian spirits.

Of special significance to their beliefs were a class of shadowy unseen watchers who would sometimes choose to intervene in human affairs for their own mysterious and unknown purposes.

These ‘Watchers in the Dark’ were not said to be the only kind of supernatural creatures at large on Caliban. Among those of the traditionalist faith, it was claimed that the great beasts were evil spirits that had taken on physical form in order to create suffering and hardship among mankind.

With this in mind, it was not uncommon for individuals and families to make votive offerings to the Watchers in the Dark in the hope of persuading them to intercede in keeping the beasts away.

In contrast to such folk beliefs, however, the knightly orders of Caliban tended to follow a more agnostic creed. They rejected the influence of the supernatural altogether. If such entities as gods and spirits existed, it was argued they would be unlikely to intervene directly in human affairs.

It was said that such creatures would be so alien in their desires and perceptions they could never share mankind’s understanding of the world, much less be able to recognise when their help might be needed.

Instead, the philosophy of the knightly orders held that the real impetus that shaped a man’s life was the strength of his character, not the supposed actions of otherworldly forces. Accordingly, the different orders had committed themselves to developing the minds and bodies of their knights in keeping with ideals of human excellence that were particular to each individual order.

During his years as a supplicant in the Order, Zahariel had absorbed his masters’ prejudices in such matters, and had made them his own. He had no particular axe to grind with men like Narel, but he had little time for their beliefs. He did not believe in life after death or journeys into the underworld.

The great beasts of Caliban were extraordinary creatures, but he did not believe they were supernatural in origin. The Watchers in the Dark were a myth, and he did not believe in guardian spirits keeping benign watch on humanity from the shadows.

In their place, he believed in the powers of human wisdom. The actions of men like Lion El’Jonson and Luther, and their campaign against the great beasts, had convinced him that humanity was free to choose its own destiny. The human mind could make sense of the world and of the cosmos and, given a fair and equal choice, most men would choose to help their fellows.

Zahariel reasoned that men were intrinsically good, and, granted the opportunity, they would choose the best and brightest path from among the roads on offer. No man would ever willingly perform an evil act unless forced to it by circumstance.

Perhaps a man could be provoked to evil by hunger, fear or ignorance, but no one would willingly choose to act maliciously when presented with another, viable option.

No one would willingly have the darkness when they could have light.

Putting to one side his disquiet at the curiously bleak nature of Narel’s farewell and his ruminations on the nature of man, he concentrated his mind on the quest before him.

At that instant, he was more mindful of Narel’s directions than he was of any wider issues of fate or destiny. The woodsman had told him to head eastward along the trail in search of a clearing and a lightning blasted tree. Zahariel followed those directions, using the methods his masters had taught him to clarify his mind and turn his full mental resources to the task ahead. He urged his horse to quicken its pace down the trail.

Spurring his mount on, he rode towards his future.

Zahariel found the lightning blasted tree easily enough, the path leading him directly to its dead mass. Beyond the tree, a forest of mossy trunks spread out like a march of weathered menhirs. Darkness and shadows haunted the forest, and Zahariel began to understand a measure of the local superstitions.

The Northwilds had long been considered a forsaken place, too close to the mountain lairs of many beasts, too thin of soil to be tilled for much reward, and the forest was too dense to move through in safety. More than that, it had acquired a reputation for unexplained phenomena, strange lights in the forest, disappearances where people lost in the woods for days would return home decades older than when their loved ones had last seen them.

Yes, the Northwilds region was a place of mystery, but as Zahariel steeled himself for venturing into its depths, he felt the first stirrings of fear. Though he had claimed not to be afraid, he realised that his fear had been submerged beneath a layer of contempt for the beast and anger at the death of Brother Amadis.

How easy it was to scoff at the superstitions of the rustics dwelling in Endriago when surrounded by your fellows and the comforting shield of illumination. How easy it was to have that complacency and certainty stripped away by darkness and isolation.

Swallowing his fear, Zahariel urged his mount onwards, sensing that it too felt fear in this place. The trees were gnarled and old, older than any others he had seen, and apparently infected with some creeping sickness that caused them to weep a viscous sap that scented the air with a rank, bitter odour like spoiled fruit mash.

The trees passed by him as he rode into the shadowy depths of the Northwilds, and Zahariel felt a breath whisper past him like the last exhalation of a dying man. The ground under his horse’s hooves was spongy and noxious, toadstools and flaring weeds tangling the roots of the forest.

Zahariel rode deeper and deeper into the forest, feeling the emptiness of the place in the depths of his soul, an aching void that chilled him from the very centre of his heart to the height of his reason.

Suddenly, Zahariel felt utterly alone, and a crushing sense of isolation enveloped him.

More than simply the absence of people, this was a loneliness of the soul, an utter absence of any contact or connection with the world around him. In the face of this horrid feeling, Zahariel almost cried out at his insignificance.

How arrogant of him to believe that he was at the centre of the spiral. How conceited to believe that he could ever make a difference to the way the world turned.

His eyes filled with tears as the horse bore him onwards, the beast oblivious to the long, dark night of the soul he endured upon its back.

‘I am not nothing,’ he whispered to the darkness. ‘I am Zahariel of the Order.’

The darkness swallowed his words with a mocking silence, the words snatched from his throat as if by an unseen wind before they could breach the bubble of stagnant emptiness around him.

‘I am Zahariel of the Order!’ he yelled against the darkness.

Again his words were stolen from him, but his violent exclamation had, for a brief moment, turned the darkness assailing his soul away. Again he shouted, briefly recognising the danger of shouting while on the hunt for a dangerous predator, but more afraid of what might happen should this soul-deep numbness claim him.

His ride through the trees continued as he repeated his name over and over again. With every metre his horse bore him, he could sense an unseen malice and elemental power seeping from the ground, as though some barely suppressed source of malignant energy lurked deep, deep beneath the surface of Caliban. Like trickles of water that leaked from the caked mud of an animal’s dam, was there something that lay far beneath the surface of the world that exerted some dread influence on the life above?

No sooner had he formed the thought than he realised that he was not alone.

A gentle pull on the reins halted his destrier, and Zahariel took a long, cold breath of frigid air as he sensed the presence of a number of creatures observing him from the shadows of the trees.

He knows… he senses it…

He could not see them clearly, so completely were they cloaked in the darkness, yet he knew with utter certainty they were there, watching him from the dark.

Watching him from the dark…

He could see them from the corners of his eyes, little more than flitting shadows that vanished as soon as he turned his head to look directly upon them. How many there were, he could not say. He glimpsed at least five, but whether that represented the entire complement was a mystery.

Kill him… he is touched by it…

Whispers flitted between the trees, but Zahariel knew they were not whispers given voice by any human throat, or, truth be told, extant in a realm detectable by any of his five senses. He had the distinct impression of a conversation going on around him, and though the words, if such things had meaning in a discourse held without speech, were unknown to him, he understood their meaning perfectly.

‘Who are you?’ he shouted, striving to keep his voice steady. ‘Stop whispering and show yourselves!’

The shadowy watchers retreated further into the darkness at the sound of his voice, perhaps surprised that he was aware of them or that he had heard their wordless mutterings.

He carries the taint within him. Better to kill him now…

Zahariel’s hand slipped towards his sword at the threat, but a ghostly touch upon his thoughts warned him against such hostile action.

You waste your efforts, Zahariel of the Order. You cannot harm us with the weapons of this realm…

The voice echoed within his skull, and Zahariel cried out at the sound, the voice resonating as though the speaker was directly in front of him.

‘Who are you?’ he cried, regaining control of his senses and casting wild looks around the clearing. He saw nothing of his interlocutors, but spun his horse in a circle, his sword leaping to his hand.

‘Show yourselves!’ he again demanded. ‘I grow weary of these parlour tricks!’

Very well…

No sooner had the words registered in his consciousness than he caught sight of one of the unseen speakers.

A figure stepped from the darkness of the trees. It was no more than a few feet in height, and was swathed from head to foot in a hooded hessian robe that obscured every inch of its flesh. The darkness beneath its hood was more complete than that which surrounded Zahariel, and he had the conviction that were he to see the truth of what lay beneath its cowl, he would be driven irrevocably mad.

Its hands were clasped before it, each sunken in the opposite sleeve. Its posture was servile, though Zahariel detected no servility in its demeanour.

‘What are you?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Are you the Watchers in the Dark?’

That will suffice as an appellation for our purpose.

‘Purpose? What purpose?’ asked Zahariel.

Communicating with you in a manner you will understand. Humans require labels upon their world to make sense of it.

‘Humans?’ said Zahariel. ‘Such a word implies you are… not human, yes?’

Correct, we are of a species unknown to the majority of your race.

‘Then what are you?’

That is unimportant, but what is important is that you leave this place.

‘I cannot,’ said Zahariel. ‘I am sworn to hunt the beast that killed my friend.’

The creature you seek is not here, though it is close.

‘You know where it is? Tell me!’

Very well, but you must swear to leave here and never come back. These woods are corrupt and no good can come of humans being here.

‘Corrupt? Corrupted by what?’

The diminutive figure shook its head.

No, such things are not for humans to know. Your race already knows too much and seeks to tamper with things that should never be.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Zahariel. ‘What are you doing here?’

We are members of a brotherhood, much like yourself… a cabal dedicated to thwarting the most ancient evil.

‘What evil?’ asked Zahariel. ‘You mean the great beasts?’

No, they are but a symptom of a greater ill. I will not name this evil, suffice to say it is the bane of your race and will one day consume you.

Zahariel felt a chill steal upon him at the mention of this great evil the creature spoke of, a bone-deep knowledge that it spoke the truth. Its words carried the weight of ages within them, and though such a thing was surely impossible, Zahariel felt that this creature might very well be thousands of years old, if not older.

‘This evil. Can it be fought?’ he asked.

Of course, all evil can be fought.

‘Then let me help you defeat it!’ he cried.

The figure shook its head, and Zahariel’s spirits fell.

Evil such as this can never be defeated. It can be held at bay for a time, but so long as there are humans, it will exist.

‘Then what can I do to help?’

Leave. Go far from this place and never return.

Zahariel nodded, only too eager to be away, but unwilling to leave without discovering more about these… aliens.

‘How did you come to be here?’

Again, the figure shook his head, and Zahariel saw two more small figures emerge from the trees, their attire and posture identical to the first.

He asks too many questions!

His race is curious and that will be their downfall. We should kill him.

He had no idea which of the three was speaking, for their voices were multi-layered and swirled around his head like water draining through a sinkhole. Though the speakers were small, and in any physical contest Zahariel knew he could best them easily, he had no doubt that they possessed powers beyond his understanding and could snuff out his existence as easily as a guttering candle.

‘Why should you kill me?’ he said. ‘What harm have I done you?’

Individually, none, but as a race, your kind threatens to doom the galaxy to eternal suffering.

Zahariel’s mind spun with the implications of the creature’s words, that humans existed beyond the confines of Caliban and that an entire race of humankind inhabited the stars above. The sensation was exhilarating, and to know that many of the old myths must be true was like the finest wine dancing upon his tongue.

Emboldened by this new knowledge, he held out his sword and said, ‘I have already sworn that I would oppose evil to my Order, but I swear I shall do all in my power to stand against the same evil you stand against.’

He sensed the creatures’ approbation and knew that they had read the truth beyond his words.

Very well, Zahariel of the Order. We accept your oath. Now it is time for you to go.

Zahariel had a thousand more questions for these watchers, but contented himself with the knowledge he had already gleaned, sheathing his sword and turning his horse, as the Watchers in the Dark melted back into the undergrowth.

As the outline of the watchers blended seamlessly with the darkness, one last question arose in his mind as he recalled something one of the watchers had said.

‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘What did you mean when you said the taint was in me?’

At first, he thought he was to be denied an answer, but in the moment before they faded from view, a voice whispered from the shadows.

Look not to unlock the door that leads to easy power, Zahariel of the Order. Ride back to the lightning tree and you will find what you seek.

Then they were gone.

Zahariel rode from the depths of the forest, his spirits lifting, the leaden weight that hung upon his soul on the way in, growing less with each kilometre that passed on the way out. Something terrible had happened in this part of the forest, something so awful that guardians from another world had come to Caliban to watch over it.

Whether the evil they spoke of was still on Caliban or had left echoes of its malice behind, he didn’t know, and he suspected he was better off in his ignorance. He recognised that the danger of this part of the forest was more than just what might threaten his body, but was something of an order far more dangerous.

He had been made privy to secret knowledge, and if there was one thing the Order prided itself on, it was that its members could keep a secret. The things he had learned and the things he believed would remain locked in his heart forever, for no earthly means of interrogation would force him to divulge those secrets.

Zahariel thought back to his conversation with the Lion atop the tower and how the great warrior had wondered about the existence of Terra or any other inhabited world. He alone on Caliban knew the answer to that question, and the singularity of his position thrilled him.

His journey from the forest’s dark heart passed swiftly, his horse’s step light as it picked an easy path through the tangled weeds and closely packed trees. Even the shadows that had closed in on him before seemed to be lifting, as a diffuse glow of warm, afternoon sunshine broke through the canopies of the forest.

Eventually, the thick underbrush gave way to the beginnings of a hard-packed earth path, and Zahariel smiled as he recognised the track that he had ridden along many hours ago. His horse took the path without need of his command, and he rode through leafy arbours before emerging in the clearing with the blackened, lightning struck tree.

Lost in contemplation, the beast caught Zahariel almost unawares.

The creature sprang at him as if from nowhere.

It had hidden in the shadows behind a stand of twisted and ancient trees near the clearing’s edge. At first, as it charged through the foliage towards him, it was as though a monstrously spined rock had come to life.

Zahariel saw a dark, swift shape bearing down on him. The creature was huge and moved with impossible speed. Terrified, his destrier gave a sudden start and reared up in panic. He fought to stay in his saddle, gripping the reins tightly.

A Calibanite lion, and it was nearly on top of him.

Another second and it would tear him apart.

Nine

In one frozen, fear-extended instant, Zahariel saw a host of the beast’s anatomical details as it charged. Its body was wide and powerful, leonine only in the fact that it was a quadruped with a mane of blade-like spines growing from behind its armoured head. Each of its limbs was sheathed in glistening plates of natural armour that had the quality of rock, yet the pliability of flesh. Claws like knives extended from its front paws, and twin fangs, like the mightiest cavalry sabres protruded from its upper jaw.

Zahariel had wondered if the figures of how many people the beast had slain were inflated to better convey its horror, but in one terrible moment, he knew differently.

Only his instincts, honed by long hours in the shooting ranges of Aldurukh, saved his life.

Zahariel lifted the rotary-barrelled pistol that the dying Amadis had given him and fired a rippling salvo of shots, sending every bolt towards the centre of the lion’s mass as his teachers had taught him.

The bolts struck home, but the lion appeared not to feel the blasts as they hit its thick hide. The rounds from his pistol had explosive cores designed to detonate deep inside a target’s body, and had enough stopping power to kill almost anything, even a creature of such startling appearance and shape.

The lion shrugged them off as though it barely felt the impacts.

Roaring in fury, the lion lashed out with a bladed paw as it leapt.

The blow struck Zahariel’s destrier, punching through the animal’s side with an awful, bone-breaking crack. The destrier buckled as the lion eviscerated it, and Zahariel was flung bodily from his saddle, landing in a heap in the mud of the clearing.

Zahariel scrambled to his feet quickly as his horse collapsed, its innards spilling from its ruptured body in a flood of hot viscera. Distracted by such an easy kill, the lion’s attention was fixed on Zahariel’s dying mount.

Zahariel fired his pistol again, sending another fusillade at the lion as it took a bite of the screaming horse, the swords of its fangs tearing a great slab of meat from the beast’s rump. The armoured plates around the lion slithered across its body, sparks and chunks of resinous material flying as each bolt struck home without effect.

His gun clicked dry as he emptied the last shots from the magazine, and the lion let out a deafening bellow that was part roar, part howl. Zahariel hurriedly reloaded his weapon, as he backed away from the monster, horrified at the sheer power of it.

The lion prowled around the edge of the clearing, its eyes serpentine and coloured a vivid orange with black slits at their centres. The mane of blades at its neck pulsed with protean motion, each one cutting the air with lethal intent.

Zahariel kept moving, taking sideways steps in opposition to the huge beast. Its throaty growls and the ropes of drool that hung from its opened jaws spoke of its terrible hunger, and he tried not to think of being ripped apart by its fangs.

Though the creature was an aberration, a monster from his worst nightmare, he had the impression that it was glowering at him with dark amusement. Fighting back the onset of fear, Zahariel was reminded of the winged beast he had fought long ago, remembering the spider and fly analogy he had used to describe how the beast had made him feel. This creature displayed the same malicious enjoyment of the hunt, as though he were a meaty morsel to be savoured before being devoured.

His training told him to keep the lion at a distance and use his pistol to full effect, but his knightly code told him to charge the beast and meet it in the glory of close combat.

Keeping his pistol trained on the prowling lion, Zahariel drew his sword as he considered his options. Counting the magazine he had just loaded, he had two clips left for his pistol. There was more ammunition in a pannier hanging from the saddle horn of his thrashing mount, but it was out of reach. Assuming he did not charge into close combat, he had twenty-four shots at hand with which to kill the lion.

Ordinarily, he would have considered twenty-four rounds enough to defeat any foe, or any other creature in the universe, but the great beasts of Caliban were chimerical monsters, combining the worst aspects of several different species of animal into one foul body.

A sticky red liquid stained the front of the lion’s body where it had been hit by the bullets, but he did not know whether it was blood or some vile secretion. Even the chunks blasted from its rock-textured hide seemed to have closed over.

Without warning, the lion pounced across the clearing towards him with extraordinary speed. He dived to the side, bringing his sword around in a low arc to deflect the creature’s attack. Whirring teeth sliced into the creature’s hide and splattered Zahariel with gore.

The lion roared and twisted in mid-leap, its heavy hindquarters slamming into Zahariel, pounding him to the ground. He rolled as soon as he hit, keeping his sword extended upwards to avoid being torn apart by his own blade. The lion’s spines flared, and its heavy paws tore up the ground where he had fallen.

Zahariel stabbed with his blade, the whirring teeth cutting through the spines at the beast’s neck. Drooling fluids sprayed from severed blade spines, spattering his armour with hissing, acidic blood.

The lion spun and snapped at him with its enormous maw. Zahariel hurled himself to the side as powerful jaws slammed closed within centimetres of his torso. He fired as he dodged its attack, putting several bullets into its side. Again, the beast gave no sign of pain or shock, apparently immune to both.

Zahariel’s skin was already slick and dripping with sweat, and he could feel a tightness across his shoulders and down the length of his calves. His armour was equipped with mechanisms designed to keep him cool and support his movement, but they were no match for the exertions of his fight against the lion.

His life lay balanced on a knife’s edge, and the next few seconds would decide whether or not he lived to see another sunset. The time for caution had passed.

Sweeping his sword in a wide arc to gain a few moments of breathing space from the roaring fury of the lion, Zahariel suddenly leapt forward. Rolling as he hit the ground, he came up with Amadis’s pistol blazing, firing another salvo of shots as he ran screaming towards the lion.

For the briefest instant, the lion seemed almost surprised, opening its mouth in a loud bellow of rage. Zahariel and the lion charged towards each other, crossing the no-man’s-land between them in moments.

His proximity to the beast made his gorge rise. There was something loathsome, almost leprous about it. It was surrounded by a sickly scent of decay that he was not really sure was a scent at all, as though the creature’s inherent vileness was transmitting itself to every object in its vicinity.

Zahariel felt as if the beast’s aura of foulness had managed to seep into his pores through his armour. More than ever, its presence felt like a cancer at the heart of the world, a source of vile contagion that must be destroyed.

His hatred gave him strength.

Zahariel was at close range, standing toe-to-claw with the monster. He pumped two more bolt-rounds into it at point-blank range in the instant before they met in a melee. Then, as the lion swiped at him with its claws, Zahariel slipped nimbly under their clumsy grasp and thrust hard with his sword towards the creature’s wide chest.

The lion bellowed and as its mouth opened. Zahariel fired his pistol into the yawning chasm, angling his shots towards the roof of its mouth.

He thrust again and again, the blade skidding as its whirring teeth cut through the armoured outer layers of the lion’s hide. The lion’s slamming head hit him a thunderous body blow, and he crashed to the ground, hearing the horrific sound of bones breaking within his body.

Zahariel hit the ground hard, the wind knocked from his lungs as the beast smashed its front limbs down on his chest. Blade-like talons punched through the outer layers of his breastplate, and he screamed as the tips pierced the skin and muscle of his chest.

He could feel the pressure of the lion’s weight, its head centimetres from his own and its thick, acrid drool spattering his face. He could barely breathe.

The hand holding his pistol was still free, and he fired several shots into the lion’s belly at point-blank range.

He heard an ominous cracking noise as the seals on his armour gave way. The lion stood atop him, knowing he was pinned and powerless, and content to watch him suffer a slow, agonising death as it crushed the life out of him.

Zahariel felt as though there was an iron band around his chest, stopping him from breathing. The lion’s claws lifted him from the ground towards its mouth as it prepared to bite him in two. The great maw opened, and the wafting gust of corruption that blew from its impossibly wide gullet was the foulest thing Zahariel could imagine.

The long tusks of its upper jaw extended from its mouth, each one like an organic sword blade, hauling him towards his doom. He struggled uselessly in its grip, the talons of its paw wedged in his breastplate holding him stuck fast. He screamed in anger and fear, feeling his hatred of the beast coalesce into a bright ball of furious energy at his core. He spat into the creature’s mouth as the fangs descended upon him.

He closed his eyes as the fangs bit down, and felt an outpouring of his hatred explode from his body in a glittering halo of light.

Everything stopped.

Though his eyes were closed, he could see the shimmering outline of the lion, its every bone and internal organ laid bare to his sight as though lit from within by some strange pellucid sun. He could see the blood pumping around its body, the pulse of its heart and the foul energy that had brought it into existence.

The tableau was in motion, but glacially slow motion. Each beat of the lion’s heart was a dull, thudding boom, like the arc of an ancient pendulum. Its fangs still descended upon him, but their movement was so infinitesimally slow that it took him a moment to even realise they were moving.

Every bone and muscle in Zahariel’s body ached. His chest was on fire, and he could feel an aching cold seep into his bones as this new and unknown power flowed through him. He looked down at his flesh, seeing the veins and bones beneath his skin.

As he had suspected, the beast had fractured several of his ribs. He could see the splintered ends grinding together beneath the transparency of his breastplate.

He lifted his arm towards the beast, his hand passing through the ghostly outline of its translucent flesh as though it were no more substantial than smoke. He smiled dreamily as he saw that he still held Brother Amadis’s pistol, its mechanisms and internal workings laid bare to his newfound sight.

He pressed his pistol against the monster’s heart, within the ghostly outline of the beast’s body

He opened his eyes and pulled the trigger.

An awful snap of reality reasserted itself, as the beast died in a spectacular fashion.

Zahariel’s hand was buried in its flesh, his armoured vambrace penetrating its chest as though it had been implanted there. Its jaw snapped closed on his shoulder guard, the blades of its fangs punching through the plate armour and burying themselves in his body.

No sooner had its jaws closed than the lion’s chest expanded with internal detonations.

Fire built behind its eyes and portions of its flanks exploded outwards as ammunition blasted out from inside the monster’s body.

Its underbelly exploded in a wash of steaming entrails and it collapsed to the ground, bearing Zahariel down with it.

He groaned in pain, the weight of the beast incredible, and the pain in his shoulder like a furnace of torn muscle and blood. Every muscle ached, and he could feel a burning pain all the way down his ribcage.

Zahariel squeezed his eyes shut and bit down on his bottom lip as he pushed against the lion’s corpse, rolling it onto its side. Breath heaved in his lungs, and he cried out as his broken ribs ground against one another.

The pain in his shoulder was extraordinary, the lion’s fangs were still embedded in his flesh and armour. Taking a deep breath, he dropped his pistol and placed his hands on either side of the lion’s huge head. Its eyes were lifeless, yet its fearsome visage still had a monstrous power. Though he knew it was unquestionably dead, he half-expected the jaw to open once more and finish what it had started.

Faster was better than slower, and he screamed in agony as he wrenched the monster’s head backwards. The sharp fangs slid from his body, coated in his blood and, free of its toothy embrace, he slid backwards from its corpse.

Blood streamed from the puncture wounds in his shoulders, and he spent the next few minutes removing the armour plates and tending to the grisly injuries. He cleaned his wounds as best he could with supplies taken from the saddle bags of his broken and gored steed, and applied heavy, wadded bandages to his body.

Curiously, the pain appeared to have diminished, but he knew that was simply shock. Soon enough, it would return with interest. When he had done as much as he could for his poor, battered frame, he sank to his knees in exhaustion and finally allowed himself to think about how he had defeated the beast.

What strange power had allowed him to see the beast as he had? Had it been some aftereffect of his journey into the dark forest, some unknown energy that the Watchers had imparted to him?

Or was it something darker?

The Watchers had said that the taint was already in him.

Was this the manifestation of that taint?

Whatever it was, he could not explain it, and its utterly unknown quality terrified him more than the ferocity of the lion had. Whatever the cause of this strange, powerful eructation, he swore to keep it to himself. In Caliban’s ancient times, people had been burned alive for less, and he had no wish to end his days on a flaming pyre.

Swaying unsteadily, Zahariel got to his feet and gathered up his sword and pistol. It was customary for a supplicant to take some portion of his quest-creature as a trophy, but the explosions within the lion’s stomach had reduced much of it to gory fragments.

Searching among the grisly debris, Zahariel knew there was but one trophy he could take back to Endriago and then Aldurukh. Taking his sword, he set to work on removing the lion’s head from its body, the saw-toothed blade making short work of the job now that the strange, moving plates of chitinous armour were immobile.

At last the lion’s head came free from its body, and Zahariel turned towards the path that the woodsman had shown him what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Though dizzy from pain and blood loss, he was smiling as he set off in the direction of Endriago, dragging the heavy, fanged head behind him.

He wondered at what reaction his return would receive from Lord Domiel and Narel. He bore no grudge towards either man for doubting him and thinking the monster would kill him, he was simply happy to have proven them wrong. He had achieved all the aims of his quest. He had killed the beast, freeing the people of Endriago from their fear of it. At the same time, he had tested himself to his limits.

He had proved his ability. He had proved his commitment to the Order’s creed of excellence, and he had proved that he was worthy to be a knight.

But in the end, what mattered most was that he was alive.

Looking back at the beast’s head, he felt a deep and abiding sense of triumph. He had passed through his ordeal. He had succeeded in his hunt.

For the first time in his life, Zahariel felt he was truly worthy of the high standards he had set himself. He would never become complacent, not in the matter of proving his worth. He was made for the quest, whether it was given that name or not. There would always be another monster to slay, another battle to fight, another war to be won.

To the last heartbeat of his existence, he would never give up, he would never allow himself to falter. For the moment though, for this moment, he felt he had earned the right to a single instant of pride in his accomplishment.

Zahariel turned away from the clearing and began the long walk back to Endriago.

Ten

At Endriago, Lord Domiel gifted him a new destrier to replace the one he had lost to the lion. Having spent a week of much needed rest at the settlement in order to give his ribs and shoulder enough time to begin healing, Zahariel had eagerly begun his journey home as soon as the joyously happy citizens had let him and he was able to move without agonising pain flaring in his ribs.

Given the fact that he was repeating an earlier journey, albeit from the opposite direction, he knew which paths to take, and he managed to complete his journey to the Order’s fortress monastery much more quickly than he would have expected. Thirty-eight days after leaving Endriago, he could already see the towers of Aldurukh in the distance. By the thirty-ninth day, he was at the gates.

The last part of the journey would always seem the most significant to him. As he came closer to the fortress, a sense of joyous expectation rose within him, as he thought about what it would be like to see Nemiel and the rest of his friends again.

Granted, he still had to face the Order’s examiners and have his achievement verified, but with the lion’s head, he expected no problem. Zahariel anticipated his homecoming warmly, expecting a heartfelt welcome from his friends, all the more so because almost everyone he knew had thought he would most likely die on the quest.

Naturally, he could not comprehend fully what that meant. Life seemed wonderful to him. It was made all the sweeter because of the relative hardships of his recent ordeal. He had faced one of the worst beasts Caliban could produce and he had survived. He wanted to celebrate that feeling with his friends.

He could not know how sorrowfully they had spent the weeks since he had left Aldurukh. His friends had thought him dead. They had grieved for him.

In their minds they had all but buried him.

The fact that he had survived despite all the fears for his safety would lend Zahariel an extra glow of heroism in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, especially those who had been supplicants with him in the Order.

At the time of his return to Aldurukh, though, he did not realise these things.

‘We all thought you were dead,’ said Attias eagerly.

The younger lad held a box containing Zahariel’s few meagre personal possessions, trailing excitedly after him as he carried his bedroll down the corridor. ‘Everyone did. They all thought the beast must have killed you. There was even talk of having a funeral ceremony for you. That would’ve been funny, wouldn’t it? Imagine if you rode back, only to find out we’d already carved your name on one of the memorial tablets in the catacombs.’

It was late afternoon on the first day after his return to Aldurukh. A few hours earlier, Zahariel had entered through the great gates of the fortress to be met by cheering and the stamping of feet. Apparently, word of his impending arrival had already come down from the lookouts, for when the gates opened it seemed as if the entire population of Aldurukh was waiting to greet him.

As Zahariel rode into the courtyard, he saw knights, supplicants and seneschals all rejoicing at his safe return. The noise of their welcome had been deafening. It was a moment he would always keep with him, the end of his first great adventure, a moment of profound homecoming, when he finally felt accepted as an equal among the ranks of the Order.

Nemiel had been waiting for him when he arrived. He was the first to greet Zahariel, grabbing him in a great bear hug. Nemiel had talked to him, his mouth working at a frantic pace, but his words were lost to the sound of the crowd.

Afterwards, once the excitement had quietened down and Zahariel had reported to the gate keeper as was expected, he was given a time at which he should present himself to the Order’s examiners. In the meantime, he had been ordered to move out of the supplicants’ barracks. Half a dozen sleeping rooms were reserved in a little-visited corner of the fortress for those who had completed their quests, but had not yet been officially raised to the status of knights.

‘So, this is it,’ said Zahariel as he pushed open the door to his new room and looked inside. The room was empty. In keeping with the Order’s monastic traditions, it was little more than a spartan cell. There was a cot in the corner for him to sleep on, but other than that there were no furnishings, not even a chair.

‘I don’t suppose they expect you to be here long,’ jabbered Attias beside him.

Zahariel smiled indulgently, knowing that Master Ramiel was pleased with the boy’s progress.

‘You’re so lucky,’ Attias muttered. The boy said the words quietly, almost whispering.

‘Lucky?’ said Zahariel. He indicated the room around them. ‘I take it you’re going blind or haven’t you noticed our fine surroundings? You’ve seen my new room, Attias, and yet, you call me lucky?’

‘I wasn’t talking about the room,’ replied Attias.

Growing tired of holding the box, Attias lowered it to the cell’s floor. ‘I mean, you got to hunt one of the great beasts. You got to finish your quest of knighthood. I’m happy for you, really I am. You deserve it. You’ll be Sar Zahariel. You’ll fight wars and battles with the best of the Order’s knights, alongside heroes like the Lion and Sar Luther. You’ll make Master Ramiel proud. You’ll be a knight.’

‘And so will you, little one,’ said Zahariel. ‘I know it seems a long time away, but it won’t be long before you are given your own quest. A couple of years, that’s all it is. Follow your lessons, practise assiduously, and it will be here almost before you know it.’

‘But that’s just it,’ Attias shook his head. ‘By the time I’m old enough, things will have changed. The Order’s campaign against the great beasts will be over by then. There won’t be any left. And, without the great beasts, there won’t be any more quests. There won’t be any way to become a knight. You’ve done something I’ll never be able to, Zahariel. You’ve hunted one of the great beasts. I’ll never get that chance.’

As he spoke, Attias wore an expression of wistful sadness that was almost heart-breaking on the face of one so young. Attias saw a world in which there was no longer any way for a man to ascend to knighthood.

Instinctively, Zahariel rejected that bleak vision. He was an optimist and an idealist to the core of his soul. When he looked at the Order’s campaign against the beasts, he lauded its achievements. He was sure the future could only hold the things that Luther and the Lion had promised the people of Caliban before they began their campaign. When he looked to the future he saw peace and prosperity on the horizon. He saw an end to fear. He saw an end to suffering and want. He saw a better tomorrow.

When Zahariel looked to the future, he always saw the best of all possible worlds.

It was his curse.

‘You are looking at these things too darkly, my friend,’ said Zahariel. He smiled at the boy to reassure him. ‘I know every day people talk about the campaign nearly being over, but I suspect it may well last for a good while longer. Certainly, if the monster I fought is any kind of guide, I doubt the great beasts are about to give up and die. They will fight tooth-and-nail to survive, just as they always have. So, I wouldn’t worry too much, Attias. You’ve still got time to kill your beast, and you’ve got plenty of time left to become a knight.’

There was a slit window at the other end of the room, looking out across the treetops of the forest. Zahariel found his eyes drawn to it.

As had so often happened in the past, he briefly wondered at the dual nature of their world. From a distance, the forests were beautiful in a grim and forbidding way. Yet, inside those same picturesque woodlands, lived creatures that were the stuff of human nightmares, creatures like the one he had killed.

Zahariel loved Caliban, but he was not blind to its horrors. At times, it seemed as though they lived on a planet that was both hell and paradise simultaneously. Yet, the bond he felt towards his home and its forests was stronger and more powerful than almost anything else in his life. He loved his world unconditionally, whatever its flaws.

‘Do you know why people sometimes call this fortress the Rock?’ he asked suddenly. The view from the window, and the sight of the forests so far below them, had inspired him. He wanted to share his insight with Attias, to coax the boy from his sorrows.

‘It is because the name of the fortress is Aldurukh,’ answered Attias. ‘It means “Rock of Eternity” in one of the old dialects. Master Ramiel said that it was originally the name of the mountain we are standing on. Then, when the Order’s founders decided to build a fortress monastery at this site, they chose to use the name of the mountain for the fortress as well.’

‘That’s one reason,’ Zahariel said, ‘but there’s another as well. Think about the name, Aldurukh, The Rock of Eternity. The Order has other fortress monasteries, but this was the first. It is our spiritual home and the seat of all our endeavours. So, the founders gave it a name that mattered, a name that summed up exactly what they were trying to build here. This place is our rock, Attias. It is our foundation stone. As long as it endures, then some part of our ideals will always be alive. You understand what I am trying to tell you?’

‘I think so,’ nodded Attias, his face screwed up in an expression of concentration. ‘You are saying that even after the beasts are gone, the Order will still be here, and there will still be knights.’

‘Exactly,’ Zahariel agreed. ‘So, you see, there is no reason for you to look so sad. If it puts your mind at ease, look at it this way. It is our duty to protect people from the creatures that live in the forests. Even once the beasts are gone, that duty will not change. This is Caliban. There will always be monsters here.’

Master Ramiel was one of the first to congratulate him on becoming a knight. His former tutor clearly wanted to say more, but he was swallowed up by the throng of knights closing in from all sides to welcome Zahariel to the Order.

In contrast to the solemnity of the ceremony to induct him to the Order many years ago, his ascension to knighthood was marked by sudden pandemonium. It was a great moment in any man’s life to ascend to knighthood; a moment that each of the men present had known and shared.

They swept forward en masse to accept the latest newcomer to their ranks. Beneath the hooded surplices, Zahariel saw friendly and joyful faces.

Before he knew what was happening, he was grabbed by a number of the closest men to him. Confused, Zahariel felt them hoist him off his feet. Suddenly, through the action of a dozen knights in unison, Zahariel’s body was tossed into the air. He rose to above the level of their shoulders, before falling back to be caught in the hands of the same men who had thrown him.

He heard people laughing as they threw him up into the air again. His body tumbling in mid-air, Zahariel saw skewed kaleidoscope images of the faces of the men around him. They were all laughing. He knew some of them personally, but many were men who had only ever been stern and distant figures in his life.

He saw the Lion, Luther, Lord Cypher and Master Ramiel, all of them were either smiling or laughing.

Of all the sights he would see in his life, that one image would stay with him as the strangest and most improbable.

‘It is a tradition,’ Luther said to him, laughing as they shared a goblet of wine later, ‘the springboard, I mean. It is something we do for all the new men. Oh, but your face, that was the best part.’

They were in the main dining hall at Aldurukh. Much to Zahariel’s relief, his fellow knights had reverted to more prosaic methods of marking his initiation once they had finished throwing him back-and-forth into the air like a rag doll. A feast had been held in his honour, in which numerous celebratory toasts and words of congratulation had come his way.

Knights he had only ever seen before from afar had solemnly clasped his arm and called him their brother. Zahariel did not know whether it was because they respected his achievement in killing the Beast of Endriago, or simply that they treated all new knights in a similar fashion. Either way, he had found the reaction to his ascension to knighthood almost overwhelming.

It was a moving experience, made all the more memorable by the company he was keeping. Once the meal was over and the gathering had begun to mingle and separate into smaller groups, Luther had made a special effort to seek him out.

Evidently, he thought it important that Zahariel should properly enjoy the celebrations.

‘Yes, your face,’ said Luther, still laughing.

Sar Luther had a good humour to him that immediately put Zahariel at ease. ‘Really, it’s a shame you couldn’t see it for yourself. At first, when you were grabbed, you looked like you thought they were going to kill you. Then, when you realised what was really going on, I swear you looked even more frightened. At one stage, I thought you were about to piss your robes. Probably a good thing you didn’t though, considering you were in mid-air at the time.’

‘It was just… it caught me by surprise,’ said Zahariel. ‘I didn’t think–’

‘What? That we’d have a sense of humour?’ chuckled Luther.

He put a hand to his eyes as though wiping away tears of laughter. ‘No, well, people don’t. That’s what makes it so funny. By the way, you know I wasn’t joking when I called it a tradition. Granted, it’s not the kind you’d hear tell about from your masters or from Lord Cypher. But in many ways, the business of throwing the new initiate into the air like that is as much a tradition as anything else we’ve put you through over the years. We call it the “invisible springboard”. Think of it as an antidote to the dour seriousness of the initiation ceremony. It’s how we welcome you to the family.’

‘The family?’

‘The Order,’ explained Luther. ‘Do you remember what Lord Cypher said during your first initiation ceremony? We are brothers, every one of us, and brothers don’t spend all their time sitting around looking po-faced or bemoaning the hardships of the world. Sometimes, we need to blow off steam. We laugh, we joke, we play pranks on each other. We do the things real brothers do. Look around this room, Zahariel. Any man in here would be willing to die for you, and they’d expect you to be willing to do the same for them. Caliban is a dangerous place, and any of us could be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for his brothers. That doesn’t mean we can’t all laugh together at times. It helps to keep us sane. We all like a joke.’

‘Even him?’ Zahariel asked, glancing over at Lion El’Jonson standing head-and-shoulders above the other knights around him. There was a brooding sense of aloofness about the Lion that seemed more pronounced when he was seen from a distance. Zahariel remembered the conversation he had passed with the Lion atop the fortress tower, and the sense of isolation was curiously more palpable when the Lion was surrounded by people.

‘No, you have me there,’ Luther said. ‘My brother is a man alone. It has always been that way with him. It is not that he lacks a sense of humour. If anything, the reverse is true. You must remember that he is as much a genius as he is a great warrior. His mind is a subtle and complex instrument, and his humour is shaped by the same brilliance he exhibits in everything else he does. When my brother makes jokes, no one understands them. He tends to pitch them too high for us roughhouse types. They go over our heads.’

A look of sadness briefly passed across Luther’s face as he gazed at the Lion. Spotting it, Zahariel felt as if he had inadvertently intruded into a private sorrow. It made him more acutely aware of the strength of the bond between the Lion and Luther, an emotional attachment that reminded him of his bond with Nemiel.

It was clear that Luther was a remarkable man, perhaps more so even than most people gave him credit for. He possessed phenomenal talent in a number of fields, not least as a leader, a warrior and a huntsman. With the exception of Lion El’Jonson, Luther had completed quests against more great beasts than any man in Caliban’s history.

In any other era, Luther would probably have been acclaimed as the greatest hero of his age. He was a tireless champion of the people of Caliban, marked out as much by his inner qualities of humour and cool thoughtfulness in times of crisis as he was by the valour of his deeds. It had been Luther’s tragedy to be born in the same era as a man against whom all his endeavours would be judged and forever found wanting in comparison. From the day he had encountered Jonson in the forest and decided to bring him to civilisation, Luther had sounded the death-knell of his own legend.

From that point on, he had been condemned to live in the Lion’s shadow.

To Zahariel’s mind, it spoke even more highly of Luther that his affection for the Lion seemed genuine and unforced. Many a man in his situation might have been tempted to succumb to jealousy and begun to resent Jonson’s achievements. Not Luther, he was not of that ilk.

With true brotherly devotion, he had turned all his energies to ensuring that the Lion’s schemes met with every success. Luther was as much responsible for the campaign against the great beasts as Jonson, but as the campaign drew to a close it was not Luther who was receiving all the plaudits, but Jonson.

Zahariel could sense no bitterness in the man, for Luther had evidently accepted that his role in history was to be the bridesmaid to his brother’s triumphs.

‘My brother is a gifted man,’ said Luther, his eyes still on the Lion. ‘I suspect there has never been any other man like him. Certainly, no one alive today can match the range of his accomplishments. Did you know he is an excellent mimic?’

‘The Lion? No, I didn’t know that.’

‘He can imitate the sound of any animal on Caliban, from the hunting cry of a raptor to the mating call of a serynx. He also has a wonderful singing voice. He knows all the old songs, the folk melodies of Caliban. If you heard him sing Forests of My Fathers it would bring tears to your eyes, I promise you. As far as I know he has never tried to create original musical works of his own, but you can be sure if he did the results would be inspiring. My brother excels at whatever he turns his hands to, that is his tragedy.’

‘His tragedy?’ asked Zahariel, wrong-footed for a moment. ‘How is it a tragedy to be good at everything?’

‘Perhaps tragedy is too strong a word for it,’ Luther shrugged as he turned back towards Zahariel, ‘but you must remember that my brother is unique. He never speaks of his origins; they are as much a source of mystery to him as they are to everyone else. One might almost think of him as some god or demi-god fallen to earth, rather than a man born of woman like the rest of us. My brother is set apart through no fault of his own. His intelligence is so dazzling, so extraordinary, there are times when even I cannot follow his line of reasoning, and I have known him for years, long enough to grow accustomed to his thought processes.

‘Think how boring it must be for him,’ continued Luther. ‘Don’t misunderstand me: my brother loves Caliban and he loves the Order. But sometimes it must feel to him like he is a giant in a land of pygmies, both physically and mentally. Lord Cypher says that intellectual stimulation is based on the free discourse of ideas between equals, but my brother has no equals, not on Caliban. Here, in the Order, we give him an outlet for his energies. We give him camaraderie and a sense of purpose. We give him our devotion. We would follow him unto death, but these things are not enough in a man’s life. Even surrounded by friends and followers on all sides, my brother is still lonely. There is no one on Caliban like him. He is the loneliest man in the world.’

‘I never thought of it that way before,’ said Zahariel.

‘You probably shouldn’t think of it again,’ said Luther with a shake of his head. He raised the wine goblet in his hand and sniffed at it in mock appraisal. ‘Listen to me, it is a celebration and somehow I manage to make it mournful. I shall have to have words with the Order’s master vintner about the wines he serves at these functions. This one certainly inclines men to pensiveness where they should be jolly. To compound its flaws, it also leaves behind a vinegary aftertaste. And to think, when I came over here to talk to you, my only intention was to apologise for playing the devil.’

‘Playing the devil?’

‘When you first joined the Order and you were originally initiated,’ said Luther. ‘It is part of the ritual. You are asked questions by three different interrogators. One of the interrogators is given the task of trying to undermine and belittle the candidate for knighthood. He is expected to find fault with anything the candidate may decide to say or do. The negative interrogator is called “the devil”. It’s all symbolic of course, based on some old superstition. Lord Cypher could probably tell you more about it. I just wanted you to know that there was nothing personal in the fact that I played the devil at your ceremony. It is a ritual role, that’s all. It is chosen by lots, so it was sheer chance I happened to be called upon to do it. I never had any doubts about your abilities. I suspect you will go on to be one of our best and brightest.’

Luther extended a hand to clasp Zahariel’s forearm just below the elbow and Zahariel did likewise. It was a traditional gesture of friendship on Caliban.

‘I congratulate you, Sar Zahariel,’ he said, gazing over Zahariel’s shoulder at the knights around them. ‘I suppose I should take a stroll around the room. There are several other knights I need to see.’

Luther turned away, only to glance back at Zahariel before he went.

‘Oh, and Zahariel, if you ever need advice you know where to come. Feel free to call on me at any time. If you have a problem I will always listen.’

Nemiel had already spoken to Zahariel that night, as had Master Ramiel. Nemiel seemed thrilled that his cousin had finally become one of the Order’s knights. Having no great head for alcohol, Zahariel had sipped sparingly at his wine, but Nemiel had indulged his thirst more liberally.

Apparently, while Zahariel had hunted the Beast of Endriago, Nemiel had requested a beast hunt of his own. As if to prove that their competitive games were as alive as ever, Nemiel had returned to Aldurukh barely a week before Zahariel.

He was slurring his words by the time they were able to have a proper conversation, his friend holding forth with grandiose visions of both their futures.

‘You’ve made your mark already, cousin,’ said Nemiel, breathing out wine fumes as he swayed unsteadily on his feet, ‘we both have. We’ve proved we’ve got what it takes. This is only the beginning. One day, we’ll rise as high in the Order as it’s possible to go. We’ll be like the Lion and Luther, you and me. We are brothers in all of this, and we will re-make our world together.’

Master Ramiel had been more circumspect. As ever, Zahariel found it difficult to read his master’s face. After Nemiel had staggered away to slump into a nearby chair and fall asleep, Ramiel had come to offer further congratulations to his former student.

‘Sar Zahariel,’ his master said. ‘It has a pleasing ring to it. Remember, though, it is when a man has been made a knight that the hard work begins. Until this point, you were only a boy who wanted to be a knight and a man. Now, you will learn just how heavy both those burdens can be.’

Ramiel said nothing more and excused himself, leaving Zahariel to ponder the meaning of his words.

Zahariel wondered what his mentor had meant, recognising a sense of restlessness within him, something different from any subtle disquiet his master’s words had caused him.

Having devoted so many of his energies for so long towards becoming a knight, he felt a rumbling sense of discontent, a feeling of being incomplete.

He had achieved the ambition of his boyhood.

What new ambition would he find to guide his life?

Later in the evening, Zahariel found himself in conversation with Lord Cypher, the old man similarly in his cups and waxing lyrical on the subject of the various ranks and positions within the Order.

What had begun as a conversation on the solemn vows he would go on to swear as a knight had evolved, largely by the artifice of Lord Cypher, into a discussion of the upper hierarchy of the Order and his position within it.

‘Of course, that is why some think Ramiel will be made the new Lord Cypher when Jonson ascends to become Grand Master.’

‘I thought it was only rumour,’ said Zahariel, ‘about the Lion being made Grand Master, I mean. I didn’t think it had been confirmed?’

‘Eh?’ said Lord Cypher staring blankly at him in confusion. Eventually, after a pause of a few seconds, understanding dawned on his face. ‘Ah, I may have been too loose with my secrets, really, an unforgivable mistake for a man in my position.’

Lord Cypher sighed. ‘I must be getting older than I thought. Still, there’s no making a young man forget something once he’s heard it. Yes, you’re right. It hasn’t been confirmed, but the decision has been made, we just haven’t announced it yet. Jonson will be the new Grand Master and Luther will be his second-in-command. As for me, I shall be retiring from my duties in a couple of days. Then, it will be down to Jonson to choose my successor. Really, I have no idea who he’ll pick, but Master Ramiel would be a good candidate, don’t you think?’

‘Very much so,’ nodded Zahariel. ‘I think he would make a fine Lord Cypher.’

‘Yes, he would. That opinion is for your ears only, Zahariel, as is everything else I have just said. Don’t compound the dual faults of an old man’s memory and a slip of the tongue by telling everyone about it. It would only embarrass me, and make the Order’s hierarchy think they should have got rid of me a long time ago. Can I rely on your good intentions in this?’

‘Absolutely. You have my word that I will never repeat this conversation to anyone.’

‘Excellent,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘I am glad to see you understand the value of discretion.’

He gazed around for long seconds, his failing eyes taking in the scene of knights enjoying wine and conversation with each other. Then, without warning, the Lord Cypher turned away to leave the gathering.

Unaccountably, Zahariel was put in mind of an old bear shuffling into the forest to die.

‘The Order is in good hands,’ said Lord Cypher, offering the words as a parting shot over his shoulder as he moved away. ‘Between men like Jonson, Luther, Master Ramiel, and even youngsters like you, I am confident it will continue to thrive in the decades ahead. I doubt I will live to see it, but I am content all the same. It is time for one generation to give way to the next, as is the way of things. I have no fear for the future.’

It was the last time Zahariel would ever speak to the man who had been Lord Cypher at the time he joined the Order. For that matter, it was the last time he would ever see him.

In a few days’ time, a quest would be declared against another beast in the Northwilds in the vicinity of a settlement named Bradin. Having retired from his duties, the ex-Lord Cypher would petition the Order’s hierarchy to be allowed to take on the quest. They would accede to his request and the old man would ride quietly from Aldurukh early one morning while most of the fortress was still sleeping.

He would never be seen again.

Some would claim the beast he was hunting had killed him; others would say he had more likely been brought down by a pack of raptors before reaching the Northwilds.

The truth would never be known, but in the wake of his disappearance a place of honour would be set aside for him in the catacombs beneath Aldurukh. It was a small space, a rocky shelf no more than a third of a metre wide and half a metre tall, large enough to hold an urn full of ashes or some of the old man’s bones if his body were ever found.

His name would also be carved into the rock by the Order’s stonemasons.

This was the shape of days to come. Zahariel could not know what would happen in the future, any more than he could know he would never see the Lord Cypher, or rather, this particular Lord Cypher again.

Another individual would wear that title in the Order, and his true character would always be a mystery.

It was all a matter of the future.

For the moment, as the knights of the Order drank and celebrated together, the only thing left to complete Zahariel’s ascension to knighthood was to have his status confirmed by the Lion.

‘It has been a momentous night for both of us,’ said Lion El’Jonson. ‘You have become a knight, and I have learned I am about to become its new Grand Master.’

‘Our Grand Master?’ asked Zahariel. Mindful of the promise he had made to Lord Cypher earlier, and shocked that Jonson would even consider mentioning such a thing to him when the news was not yet common currency, Zahariel was lost for words. ‘I… ah… congratulations.’

‘Don’t act so surprised, Zahariel,’ said Jonson.

His tone was neither chiding nor unkind as he steered Zahariel away from the gathered knights towards a secluded corner of the great hall. Firelight and shadows played across the great warrior’s face, and Zahariel realised with a start that he doubted whether he had ever seen the Lion in daylight or without the refuge of shadows close by.

The revelries were dying down as the wine did its work, and as the Lion had approached him, Zahariel knew his part in the festivities was almost concluded.

‘Let’s not pretend you don’t know it already,’ said the Lion. ‘I couldn’t help but catch some of your conversation with Lord Cypher earlier. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but my senses are sharp, especially my hearing, almost preternaturally so. I heard Lord Cypher’s slip of the tongue. I know that you know I am to be made Grand Master.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Zahariel, bowing his head. ‘My finding out about it was entirely accidental. I assure you, I won’t repeat it to any–’

‘It’s all right, Zahariel,’ said Jonson, holding a hand up to silence him. ‘I trust your discretion and I realise you were in no way at fault. Besides which, it is already the worst-kept secret on Caliban. People tend to forget how good my hearing is. I have heard my impending promotion discussed by at least three dozen different people in the last few days, all when they think I am out of earshot.’

‘Then may I offer you my congratulations, my lord,’ said Zahariel.

‘You may,’ smiled the Lion, ‘and they are gratefully accepted, though in practical terms my new role will make little difference to my life.’

‘You are Grand Master of the Order,’ said Zahariel. ‘That must feel… important.’

‘Oh, I’ll grant you I’m proud to lead you all, but such was my role beforehand, though I did not have the title for it. How about you? Do you feel any different now that you are a knight?’

‘Of course.’

‘How so?’

For a moment, Zahariel was flustered, not quite knowing how he felt. ‘Honoured, proud of my achievements, accepted.’

‘And all of these are good things,’ nodded the Lion, ‘but you are just the same, Zahariel. You are still the same person you were before you killed the lion. You have crossed a line, but it does not change who you are. Don’t forget that. A man may be dressed up in all manner of fancy titles, but he must not let it change him or else ego, pride and ambition will be his undoing. No matter what grand title is bestowed upon you, to thine own self be true, Zahariel. Do you understand?’

‘I think so, my lord,’ said Zahariel.

‘I hope that you do,’ said the Lion. ‘It is an easy thing to forget, for all of us.’

The Lion then leaned conspiratorially close and said, ‘Did you know we two now share a brotherhood shared by no others on Caliban?’

‘We do?’ said Zahariel, surprised and flattered. ‘What brotherhood?’

‘We are the only warriors ever to kill a Calibanite lion. All others who tried are dead. One day you must tell me how you killed it.’

Zahariel felt a justifiable swell of pride and fraternity as the import of his killing the beast sank in. The tale of how Lord Jonson had slain a Calibanite lion was well known and was commemorated upon one of the windows of the Circle Chamber, but until now, it had not occurred to him that he had survived an encounter with so unique a beast.

‘I am honoured to share that brotherhood, my lord,’ said Zahariel, bowing his head.

‘It is one that will only ever comprise of you and I, Zahariel,’ said the Lion. ‘There are no others of their kind on Caliban. The great beasts are almost extinct and there will be no others like them on our world ever again. Part of me thinks I should be sad about that, after all, extinction is such a final solution don’t you think?’

‘They are beasts that exist only to kill, why should we not exterminate them? They would do the same to us were it not for the knightly orders.’

‘True, but do they do it because they are evil, or because it is the way they were made?’

Zahariel thought back to the beasts he had fought and said, ‘I do not know if they were evil as such, but each time I have faced one. I have seen something in its eyes, some, I don’t know… desire to kill that is more than simply animal hunger. Something in the beasts is… wrong.’

‘Then you are perceptive, Zahariel,’ said the Lion. ‘There is something wrong with the beasts. I don’t know what it is, but they are not just some other race of beasts like horses, foxes or humans, they are aberrations, twisted mistakes wrought from some early form that has not yet had the good grace to die out on its own. Can you imagine what it must be like to be so singular a creature? To go through life knowing, even on some animal, instinctual level that you are alone and that there will never be more of you. Think how maddening that must be. The beasts were not just driven by hunger, they were insane, driven to madness by their very uniqueness. Trust me, Zahariel, we are doing them a favour by destroying them all.’

Zahariel nodded and sipped his wine, too caught up with the Lion’s words to dare to interrupt him. A strange melancholy had crept into his leader’s words, as though he was recalling a distant memory that flitted just beyond the reach of recall.

Then, suddenly, it was gone, as though the Lion realised he had spoken unguardedly.

‘Of course, there will be some who are upset that you killed the last of the lions,’ said Jonson. ‘Luther, for one.’

‘Sar Luther? How so?’

Lord Jonson laughed. ‘He always wanted to kill a lion. Now he’ll never get the chance.’

As parties went, it had been a fine one.

Zahariel had enjoyed the company of the other knights. He had enjoyed the feeling that he could look at these men as his peers, and with it came a feeling of inclusion, of acceptance. Following his talk with Lion El’Jonson, Zahariel had returned to his fellow knights, where the talk had turned to the war against the Knights of Lupus.

All agreed that the war was in its final stages and that the final destruction of the rebellious order would be complete in the very near future.

He had enjoyed good food and wine, and he had enjoyed the expression in Master Ramiel’s eyes, the one that said he had made his teacher proud. Most of all, he had enjoyed the moment, for he knew that such triumphs were rare in a man’s life.

They must be handled with care, and then put away as memories for the future.

Eleven

‘War is a terrible beauty,’ the knightly poet philosopher Aureas wrote in the pages of his Meditations. ‘It is breathtaking and horrifying in equal measure. Once a man has seen its face, the memory of it never leaves him. War gouges a mark into the soul.’

Zahariel had heard those words often in the course of his training.

They were among the favourites of his former mentor, Master Ramiel. The old man had liked to quote them regularly, reciting the same few pithy sentences on a daily basis as he attempted to turn ranks of supplicants from fresh-faced boys into knights.

They had been as much part of his teachings as firing practice and extra sword drills.

Among those who had come to knighthood under Ramiel’s tutelage, it was said they went armed with an appreciation of fine words alongside the Order’s more usual weapons of sword and pistol.

Still, as often as he had heard the words, Zahariel never truly understood them, not until the final days of the war against the Knights of Lupus.

His first impression as he emerged from the forest, riding his destrier, on the night of the final assault was that the sky was alive with fire. Earlier in the day, he had supervised the gangs of woodsmen cutting timbers for siege engines in the forests on the lower slopes of the mountain.

His duties complete, he returned to camp at nightfall expecting things to be quiet.

Instead, he found his fellow knights of the Order about to attack the enemy fortress.

Ahead, in the distance, the fortress monastery of the Knights of Lupus sat on a brooding crag at the summit of the mountain, a towering line of grey walls and warriors. Surrounded on all sides by the concentric circles of the Order’s siege lines, the fortress was a masterpiece of military architecture, but Zahariel’s eyes were drawn to the extraordinary spectacle unfolding in the air above the two armies as they fired their artillery at each other across no-man’s-land.

The air was thick with flames of a dozen shapes, colours and patterns. Zahariel saw the short-lived green and orange flare trails left by tracer rounds, the streaming red haloes of burning incendiaries in flight and the smoky yellow fireballs of cannon bursts.

A bright tapestry of fire illuminated the sky, and Zahariel had never before seen its like.

He found it equally appalling and spectacular at the same time.

‘A terrible beauty,’ he whispered, the words of Aureas returning to him as he stared in wonderment at the startling sky. The colours were so exquisite it was easy to forget the fact that they portended danger. The same projectiles that burned through the heavens with such beauty would bring agony and death to some unfortunate soul when they reached their target.

War, it seemed, was full of contradictions.

Later, he would learn that there was nothing unusual in the sights he saw in the sky that night, but this was his first siege and he knew no better. Pitched battles were so rare on Caliban that his training had largely concentrated on close combat rather than questions of siege craft.

Since the coming of the Lion, the knights of Caliban rarely made war against each other, at least not in any major or systematic way. Normally, any conflict undertaken to resolve some issue of affront or insult would take one of the traditional forms of ritual combat.

A conflict of the kind he could see before him, where two knightly orders made ready to bring the best part of their entire strength to bear in a single battle, happened hardly once in a generation.

‘You there!’ called a voice from behind.

Zahariel turned to see one of the Order’s siege masters marching furiously towards him, his expression thunderous beneath his hood. ‘The assault is about to begin. Why aren’t you in position? Give me your name, sar!’

‘My apologies, master,’ said Zahariel, bowing from the saddle. ‘I am Sar Zahariel. I have just returned from the lower slopes. I was detailed to–’

‘Zahariel?’ the master cut him off. ‘The killer of the Lion of Endriago?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘So, it is not cowardice that kept you back. I see that now. Whose sword-line are you attached to?’

‘I am with Sar Hadariel’s men, master, stationed on the western approaches.’

‘They have been moved,’ said the master. He pointed impatiently to the siege lines to Zahariel’s right. ‘They are positioned for the assault on the south wall. You’ll find them over there somewhere. Leave your destrier with the ostlers on the way, and hurry up, boy. The war won’t wait on you.’

‘I understand,’ Zahariel said, dismounting. ‘Thank you, master.’

‘You want to thank me, do your part in the battle,’ growled the siege master as he turned away. ‘You can expect a hard time of it. We’ve been camped out here too long already, which means the Lupus bastards have had plenty of time to prepare to repel our assault.’

He paused to hawk up a glob of spit, before looking towards the enemy fortress with what seemed like an expression of grudging respect.

‘If you think you can see fire now, just wait until you’re charging those walls.’

If anything, the bombardment seemed to grow more ferocious as Zahariel hurried through the siege lines on foot. The enemy guns did not have the range to hit the Order’s emplacements directly, but their shells fell close enough to shower the forward positions with debris.

As Zahariel neared the front lines, he heard a series of sharp, high-pitched whines as shrapnel ricocheted from the plates encasing his body. The armour did its job, deflecting harm and keeping the meat and bone of him safe, but he was relieved when he finally saw Sar Hadariel’s tattered war banner fluttering from the maze of trenches around him.

He jumped down into the trench. Armoured warriors surrounded him in the semi-darkness, the black of their armour shimmering with reflected fire.

‘You made it then, brother?’ said Nemiel, the first to greet him as he landed.

The speaking grille of Nemiel’s helmet distorted the words, but Zahariel would have known his cousin’s voice anywhere. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether you had thought better of it and decided to go home.’

‘And leave you all the glory?’ said Zahariel. ‘You should know me better than that, brother.’

‘I know you better than you think,’ said Nemiel.

His cousin’s face was hidden within his helmet, but from the tone of his voice, Zahariel knew he was smiling. ‘Certainly, I know you enough to realise you probably rushed breathlessly over here from the moment you heard the bombardment begin. You can’t fool me, glory doesn’t come into it with you. It’s all about duty.’

Nemiel jerked a thumb towards the front of the trench and indicated for Zahariel to follow him. ‘Well, come on then, brother, let’s see what your high ideals have got you into.’

The remaining eight men of the sword-line were already standing beside the front trench wall, looking out into the open ground between the siege lines and the enemy fortress. As Zahariel approached, the flash of nearby cannon bursts illuminated them at irregular intervals.

Each man was armed and armoured in identical fashion to Zahariel, carrying a pistol equipped with explosive rounds and a tooth-bladed sword. They wore black plate armour and hooded surplices marked with the Order’s identifying emblem of a sword with its blade pointed downwards.

It was traditional for the knights of the Order to keep their white surplices spotless, but Zahariel was surprised to see that every other man in the trench was daubed in mud from head-to-toe.

‘You are too clean, brother,’ Sar Hadariel said, turning from his place at the trench wall to glance at him. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you? The Lion has issued instructions that we should blacken our surplices so we will not present as much of a target for the enemy gunners when the assault begins.’

‘I am sorry, sar,’ Zahariel replied. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘No harm, lad,’ shrugged Hadariel. ‘You know now. I’d be quick to rectify it if I was you. The word won’t be long in coming. When it does, you don’t want to be the only man wearing white in the middle of a night assault.’

Sar Hadariel turned to gaze back towards the enemy fortress, and Zahariel hurried to follow his advice. Releasing the belt that held the loose surplice in place, he lifted it over his head and stooped to soak the garment in the watery mud at the bottom of the trench.

‘I always said you were an original thinker,’ remarked Nemiel as Zahariel rose and put the surplice back on. ‘The rest of us just left them on and spent ten minutes smearing handfuls of mud over ourselves. You come along, take the surplice off and achieve the same effect in fifteen seconds. Of course, I’m not sure what it says about your talent for lateral thinking that it finds its fullest expression in solving the problem of getting yourself dirty.’

‘You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it,’ Zahariel shot back. ‘If you had, I’m sure you’d acclaim it as the greatest development in warfare since they started breeding destriers.’

‘Well, naturally, if I did it then it really would be clever,’ Nemiel said. ‘The difference is that when I come up with a good idea it’s through foresight and deep thinking. When you do it, it’s usually through plain luck.’

They laughed, though Zahariel suspected it was more a reaction to the tension they both felt than any particular humour in Nemiel’s words.

It was a familiar game, one the two of them had played since childhood, a game of one-upmanship that they turned to automatically as they waited out the nervous minutes until the assault began in earnest.

It was the kind of game played only by brothers.

‘They’re moving the siege engines forward,’ said Nemiel, observing the assault’s early stages. ‘It won’t be long now. Soon, we’ll get the signal. Then, we’ll be right in the middle of it.’

As though in reaction to Nemiel’s words, the enemy guns seemed to redouble their efforts, unleashing yet more fire into the sky. As the noise of the barrage grew to deafening proportions, Zahariel realised that Nemiel was right, the assault was beginning to move forward.

Ahead, in the no-man’s-land between the Order’s siege-lines and the walls of the fortress, he saw three anikols make their slow, incremental way towards the enemy.

Named for a native Calibanite animal that relied on its shell-like armour to keep it safe from predators, each anikol was a wheeled mantlet covered in an overlapping patchwork of metal plates designed to protect the men inside it from enemy projectiles. Powered by nothing more than the muscles of the dozen men who sheltered within it, the anikol was a necessarily slow and unwieldy siege weapon.

Its only advantage lay in its ability to soak up enemy firepower, allowing its crew to get close enough to lay explosive charges to breach the walls of the fortress. At least, such was the theory.

As Zahariel watched their advance, he saw a flaming missile arc through the air from the fortress battlements and crash through the lead anikol’s armour. In a fiery instant the siege-engine disappeared in a powerful explosion.

‘A lucky shot,’ said Nemiel, dragging his eyes from Zahariel’s scabbard. ‘They must have hit it at a spot where the armour was weak. They’ll never manage to hit the other two in the same way. One of the anikols will get through. Then, it will be our turn. The main thrust of the attack will be against the south wall of the fortress. Once the anikols have created a breach, we’ll be the first wave as we take advantage of it.’

‘All our eggs in one basket,’ said Zahariel.

‘Far from it,’ said Nemiel with a shake of the head. ‘At the same time, diversionary attacks will be launched against each of the north, east and west walls to divide the forces of the knights of Lupus and draw off their reserves, but that’s not the cunning part.’

‘What’s the cunning part?’

‘To further confuse the enemy, the diversionary attacks are each going to have a different character from the main assault. The attack on the east wall is to be made using siege towers, while the west wall assault will involve scaling ladders and grappling hooks.’

‘Clever,’ said Zahariel. ‘They won’t know which is the main attack.’

‘It gets better,’ replied Nemiel. ‘Guess who’ll be leading the assault on the gates of the north wall?’

‘Who?’

‘The Lion,’ said Nemiel.

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

As they watched the remaining anikols move slowly forward, Zahariel said, ‘I can’t believe the Lion will be heading the attack on the north gates. It’s only a diversion. You’d expect him to lead the main attack.’

‘I think that’s the idea,’ answered Nemiel. ‘When the Knights of Lupus see the Lion at their north wall, they’ll assume it’s the focus of our efforts. They’ll concentrate their troops there, allowing the real main assault an easier time of it.’

‘Still, it’s a terrible risk,’ said Zahariel, shaking his head in concern. ‘Without the Lion, the campaign against the great beasts would never have happened. And, he stands at least two heads taller than anyone else on Caliban. Even if enemy snipers don’t pick him out, there’s the chance the north assault will be overwhelmed for lack of numbers. I don’t know if the Order could stand losing the Lion. I don’t know if Caliban could.’

‘Apparently, the same points were made at the strategy meeting when the Lion put forward his plan,’ whispered Nemiel, leaning forward in a conspiratorial manner, though he had to shout to be heard over the continuing barrage. ‘They say Sar Luther was particularly opposed to it. Jonson asked him to lead the main assault, but initially Luther refused. He said he hadn’t fought side-by-side with him for all these years only to let the Lion go alone into the midst of a dangerous undertaking. He said his place was where it had always been, right by the Lion’s side, until death claimed them both. “If you die, Lion, then I die with you.” That’s what Luther said.’

‘Now I know you’re making it up,’ interrupted Zahariel. ‘How could you know what Sar Luther said? You weren’t there. You’re just spinning a tale and embroidering it too freely. This is all just camp gossip.’

‘Camp gossip, yes,’ agreed Nemiel, ‘but from a reliable source. I heard it from Varael. You know him? He was one of Master Ramiel’s students, but a year older than us. He heard it from Yeltus, who heard it from one of the seneschals, who knows someone who was in the command tent when it happened. They say Jonson and Luther had a furious row, but eventually Luther acceded to the Lion’s wishes.’

‘I almost wish he hadn’t,’ said Zahariel. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Luther is a great man, but when I heard we would be assaulting the fortress, I hoped to fight under the Lion’s banner. He inspires all those around him, and I can’t imagine a greater honour than fighting alongside him. I had hoped it would be today.’

‘There’s always tomorrow, cousin,’ said Nemiel. ‘We’re knights of Caliban now, and the war against the great beasts is not over yet, never mind the war against the Knights of Lupus. There’s every chance you’ll fight at Lord Jonson’s side sooner rather than later.’

In no-man’s-land, the anikols’ crews had abandoned their siege engines. Having placed their charges and set the fuses, they broke from cover and ran towards their own lines.

The enemy on the battlements opened fire when crewmen were in the open, and Zahariel saw at least half of the men fall before they reached the safety of the Order’s trenches. All the while, he crouched in his trench, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

When it came, the blast was spectacular.

The two anikols parked against the fortress walls disappeared in plumes of rising flames as twin explosions rocked the ground underneath him and briefly drowned out the noise of the bombardment. By the time the smoke and dust cleared, Zahariel could see that the anikols had completed their mission.

The outer wall of the enemy fortress was cracked and fire-blackened in two places. In one area it had held firm, but the other wall had collapsed, creating a breach.

‘Arm up,’ yelled Sar Hadariel to the men in the trench around him. ‘I want safeties off and swords bared. No quarter to the enemy. This is not a tourney or judicial combat. This is war. We take the fortress or we die. They are our only options.’

‘This is it, cousin,’ said Nemiel. ‘Here’s your chance to use that fancy sword of yours.’

Zahariel nodded, ignoring the thinly cloaked barb of jealousy in his cousin’s tone at the mention of his sword. His hand drifted instinctively to the weapon. The hilt and grip were plain and unassuming, bare metal and leather wound with a bronze pommel, but the blade… the blade was something special.

At Lord Jonson’s behest, the Order’s artificers had taken one of the sabre-like fangs of the lion that Zahariel had slain and fashioned it into a sword for him. Its sheen was a pearlescent white, like a tusk, and its edge was lethally sharp, able to part metal or timber at a single stroke. As long as Zahariel’s forearm, it was shorter than a normal sword, but its added potency more than made up for his reduced reach.

The Lion had presented him with the sword before they had set off for the fortress of the Knights of Lupus, and Zahariel had felt the connection of the brotherhood the Order’s Grand Master had spoken of as he had drawn the blade.

Luther and his fellow knights had congratulated him, but Zahariel had seen Nemiel’s jealous eyes linger on the blade as it threw back the sunlight on its smoothed face.

Zahariel heard the sound of a serynx horn, calling across the battlefield in a long, mournful tone, and drew his sword to the admiring glances of his fellow knights.

‘There’s the signal!’ shouted Hadariel. ‘Attack! Attack! Forward! For the Lion! For Luther! For the honour of the Order!’

Already, dozens of figures could be seen emerging from the trenches around them. Zahariel heard Hadariel’s battle cry taken up by hundreds of voices as more knights rose from their trenches and began to charge towards the fortress.

Zahariel recognised the sound of his own voice among the din, even as he leapt from the trench to join the charge.

‘You wanted to make history,’ shouted Nemiel beside him, ‘now’s our chance!’

With that, Nemiel took up the cry as it resounded through no-man’s-land.

‘For the Lion! For Luther! For the Order!’

Together, they charged into the breach.

Afterwards, in the annals of the Order, the chroniclers would record it as a decisive moment in the history of Caliban. The defeat of the Knights of Lupus would be characterised as a victory made in the name of human progress.

Lion El’Jonson’s leadership would be praised, as would Luther’s bravery in leading the main assault. The chroniclers would write fulsomely of the white surplices of the Order’s knights, of how they gleamed in the moonlight as their owners charged in daredevil fashion towards the enemy defences.

The reality was, of course, somewhat different.

It was his first taste of war, of mass conflict, of the life-or-death struggle between two opposing armies, and Zahariel was afraid. It was not so much that he feared death. Life on Caliban was hard. It bred fatalism into its sons. From childhood he had been taught that his life was a finite resource that could be snatched from him at any moment. By the age of eight, he had faced death directly at least a dozen times. In the Order, once he had completed his first year’s training as a supplicant, he had been expected to practise with real blades and live ammunition.

As part of that same training he had stalked many of the predators that lurked in the forests, including cavebears, swordtooths, deathwings and raptors. Finally, to prove himself worthy, he had undergone the ultimate test of his prowess, hunting one of the feared Calibanite lions.

He had confronted the creature and he had slain it, earning his knighthood.

War, though, was different from all these triumphs.

When a man hunted an animal, whatever its status, the hunt took the form of an extended duel, a contest of strength, skill and cunning between man and beast. In the course of a hunt, Zahariel would grow to know his adversary intimately. In contrast, war was an impersonal affair.

As he charged towards the enemy fortress beside his fellow knights, Zahariel realised that he could be struck dead on the battlefield without ever knowing the identity of his killer.

He might die and never see his enemy’s face.

It was strange, he supposed, but somehow it did make a difference.

He had always assumed that he would die facing his killer, whether it was a great beast, some lesser animal, or even another knight. The prospect of a death in the midst of battle, brought down at range by some anonymous foe, seemed almost terrifying.

Unnerved, Zahariel briefly felt icy fingers clutching at his heart.

He did not allow it to get the better of him. He was a son of Caliban. He was a knight of the Order. He was a man, and men feel fear, but he refused to surrender to it. His training as a knight included mental exercises intended to help steel his mind in times of crisis. He turned to them now.

He reminded himself of the sayings of the Verbatim, the tome from which flowed all the Order’s teachings. He reminded himself of Master Ramiel. He thought of the old man’s unblinking gaze, the eyes that seemed to drill into his soul. He thought of how disappointed the old man would be if he heard that Zahariel had failed in his duty.

Sometimes, it occurred to Zahariel, it is the height of bravery in a man’s life, simply to be able to put one foot in front of the other and continue in one direction even when every fibre of his being is saying he should turn and run the other way.

Even as Zahariel ran towards the breach in the fortress wall, he saw bright descending flares as flaming projectiles roared to earth to land among the mass of charging knights. He heard screams, the shrill cries of wounded and dying men rising above the tumult. He saw knights caught in the blast of incendiaries, their bodies wreathed in flame and arms flailing uselessly around them as they stumbled past his field of vision to their deaths.

According to the artificers, each suit was once capable of being sealed against its environment, but such days were now gone. A close enough strike from an incendiary and a knight was all but guaranteed a horrific death as the heat from the fire leaked through his armour.

Scores of knights were dying.

Dozens more screamed in pain as they were wounded.

The assault was faltering.

Twelve

The rubble- and body-strewn slopes of the breach were thick with fire and fury. The curtain of smoke twitched with the passage of bullets, and Zahariel heard the awful sound of their impacts on the knights’ steel plates. The air was filled with buzzing and whining as projectiles whizzed past him.

Zahariel’s tutors had schooled him on the different sounds bullets made as they passed and how to tell how close they were, but in the roaring hell of fire, smoke and noise in the breach, he couldn’t recall any of those lessons.

He scrambled over heaps of twisted rubble, broken slabs of masonry brought down by the explosions that had blasted the walls and piles of loose spoil that had been used as infill. Here and there, he saw the mangled body of one of his enemies, knights in shattered armour who lay broken and dead.

A shot ricocheted from his shoulder guard, sending him lurching off balance, but he quickly recovered from the impact and pushed on. Nemiel was beside him, scrambling up the slope of the breach with frantic energy, desperate to be the first to the top. Geysers of dirt were punched upwards by bullets, and coiling spirals flitted through the air as hails of missiles sawed from above.

Zahariel could see nothing of their enemies beyond smudged silhouettes and flaring muzzle flashes. Scores of knights were dead, but many more were still alive, wading through the weight of fire, and climbing the steep slope of rock and debris to get to grips with the Knights of Lupus.

The fear of death in this hellish ruin was great, but so too was the fear that his first battle as a Knight of the Order might also be his last. He had endured so much and fought so hard to reach this point that he did not want this inglorious, smoke-filled valley of rubble to be the site of his first and final charge.

Zahariel pushed on, the climb awkward due to his sword, but he was loath to climb to the top of the slope and meet an enemy without a blade in his hand. The ground shifted under his feet and he scrambled for purchase as he heard a hard thunk above him, as of timber on stone.

He looked up, seeing the shadow of something bouncing down through the smoke. Its sound was heavy and wooden, and he instantly knew what it was.

‘Get down!’ he yelled. ‘Everyone get down! A mine!’

‘No!’ cried another voice, a more persuasive one. ‘Keep going!’

Zahariel turned to see Sar Luther standing in the centre of the breach, bullets and flames whipping around him as though afraid to touch him. Sar Luther’s arm was extended, and Zahariel saw that he held his pistol aimed up into the smoke.

Luther’s pistol barked and the barrel of explosives vanished in a blinding white sheet of fire and noise high above them. The noise was incredible, and a cascade of shattered rocks tumbled down upon the knights of the Order.

Sar Luther looked down on Zahariel. ‘Up! Everyone get moving up! Now!’

Zahariel leapt to his feet as though the words were hardwired to his nervous system, and began climbing into the fire as though a pack of Calibanite lions were hot on his heels. The rest of his sword-line and a dozen others followed suit, the power of Luther’s words driving them onwards.

He saw Nemiel up ahead, and pushed himself harder, not caring about the danger or the fear. The storm of shells from above intensified and he felt a number of stinging impacts on his armour, but none serious enough to stop him. Zahariel glanced behind him to see how many of the knights still climbed.

The red edges of the banner of the Order were frayed and scorched, its fabric ripped with tattered bullet holes, but the banner still flew, and the warriors around it climbed on in the face of almost certain death and pain thanks to its presence.

Zahariel took pride in watching the banner fly above the noble knights of the Order, and returned his attention to the climb ahead of him.

He pushed on, following Sar Luther as he forged upwards, passing every other warrior with unimaginable courage and speed. Luther’s steps seemed to flow over the rubble, his every footfall helped, his every step as sure as though he walked on a parade ground and not some terrifyingly dangerous breach.

The knights around Luther followed his shining example and followed him. Zahariel went after him into the smoke and felt the slope beneath his feet growing less steep as he climbed. Shapes resolved from the smoke, and he heard a blood-curdling war cry as the Knights of Lupus charged with their distinctive battle howl upon their lips.

Fearsome warriors clad in wolf pelts and bedecked with fangs, the Knights of Lupus may not have been numerous, but each one of them was a great warrior, a fighter trained in the ways of combat and the pursuit of knowledge.

Zahariel ducked a swinging axe blade and thrust with his sword, the blade punching through his attacker’s armour as if through wetted parchment. The man screamed foully and crumpled, blood jetting from his midriff. He wrenched the sword clear and drew the pistol he had been given by Brother Amadis.

All around him was chaos, knights of the Order and the Knights of Lupus caught up in a swirling melee of hacking, roaring chainblades and booming pistols. Zahariel shot and cut and hacked his way through the midst of the hardest fighting, pushing through the screaming throng to reach Sar Luther.

Nemiel bludgeoned his way through the fighting, using brute force and adrenaline to defeat his foes rather than finesse. Even as the knights of the Order began to overwhelm the defenders of the breach, Zahariel wondered how the other assaults were faring.

Had the Lion already carried the north wall?

Could the siege towers already have overwhelmed the defenders of the east wall, or might the troops with grappling hooks and ladders be over the west wall even now? With the Lion’s meticulous planning, anything was possible.

The battle might already be won.

A sword crashed against his breastplate, the roaring teeth biting deep into the metal, before sliding clear and ripping upwards into the front of his helm. Zahariel jerked backwards, the teeth of the sword ripping out of the front of his helmet without taking his face with them.

Horrified at his lack of focus, Zahariel swung his sword desperately before him, buying precious seconds to pull his helm from his head and regain his bearings. A knight in grey plate armour, whose face was obscured by a silver helmet worked in the shape of a snarling wolf, danced back from his blows.

Zahariel shook his head clear of the shock of the blow as his opponent came at him again. The chain blade swung in a looping arc for his neck, but he stepped to meet the blow with his sword raised in a classic block. Even as he performed the move, he knew it was a mistake, his opponent luring him into the easy block just to wrong-foot him. The enemy knight’s blade seemed to twist in mid-air, the blade arcing for his unprotected neck. Zahariel threw himself back, the blade passing within a finger breadth of opening his throat.

He crashed onto his rump as the knight stepped in for the kill. Zahariel rolled away from the killing blow, swinging his blade out in a low arc. The edge of his blade sliced clean through the knight’s legs at mid-shin level, and the man toppled like a felled tree.

Zahariel rose to his feet as the knight screamed in agony, the stumps of his legs pumping blood into the dust. Zahariel put a pair of bullets through the man’s helmet to spare him further agonies and took a second to reorient himself with the battle.

Knights streamed over the breach and pushed out onto the walls, slaughtering all in their path. While protected behind their ramparts, the fact that the Knights of Lupus were few had mattered little, but with the Order within the walls of the fortress, numbers meant everything.

Everything Zahariel had read of sieges had told him that they were almost always long, drawn out affairs, battles that moved at a slow pace until a tipping point was reached and the battle ended in one brief and bloody frenzy.

This, Zahariel recognised, was the tipping point of this battle. No matter the success or failure of the diversionary attacks, the Order’s forces had broken open the fortress and nothing could stop them from achieving victory.

The Knights of Lupus, however, had clearly not read the same military manuals and were determined to fight to the last and prolong their death agonies.

‘Zahariel!’ shouted a voice from below, and he looked through the smoke to see Sar Luther within the fortress’s courtyard, beckoning him onwards. ‘If you’re quite finished.’

Zahariel set off once more, crossing the threshold of the breach and making his way down the inner face of the breach in short jumps down the screed of rubble. Knights were massing, and with the wall head clear, it was time to sweep through the fortress and eliminate the last of the defenders.

‘Form into sword lines, we’re going to move through the inner gates towards the keep,’ ordered Luther. ‘It’s sure to get messy, so stay alert! This is the end for the Knights of Lupus, so they’re going to fight like cornered raptors. Keep watching the flanks for an ambush and keep pushing forward! Now let’s go!’

Zahariel found Nemiel in the crush of bodies of the Order’s knights and smiled to see his cousin alive and well.

‘You made it!’ he said.

‘First across the breach,’ cried Nemiel, ‘before even Sar Luther! I’ll get my own banner for this.’

‘Trust you to think of glory,’ said Zahariel, forming up with the survivors of Sar Hadariel’s sword line.

‘Well someone’s got to,’ shot back Nemiel. ‘Can’t all be about duty can it?’

Only three other knights had survived to make it this far, and Zahariel was thankful that Attias and Eliath had not yet been elevated to knighthood and had been spared the horror of the battle. Sar Hadariel nodded as though in approval when Zahariel and Nemiel formed up with him.

‘Good work in staying alive, brothers,’ said the hoary veteran. ‘Now let’s get this finished.’

The great banner that had climbed the breach finally reached them, its fabric even more damaged in the fighting, yet strangely undiminished, as though the scars earned in its passage across the walls imparted some even greater gravitas to it. Zahariel had never fought beneath a banner, but the idea of fighting with the noble banner of the Order flying overhead gave him a sense of fierce pride that he had not felt before.

The banner wasn’t just a flag or identifying marker, it was a symbol of everything the Order stood for: courage, honour, nobility and justice. To bear such a symbol was a great honour, but to fight beneath it was something special, something Zahariel understood was of supreme significance.

‘Right!’ shouted Luther, pointing at the captured outer walls. ‘Be ready, we go soon!’

Zahariel followed Luther’s gesture and saw that the Order’s siege masters had turned the cannons, which had previously been killing their fellows, upon the inner walls to face the gates of the inner keep.

Luther’s hand swept down and the cannons fired in a rippling series of staccato explosions. The rampart was obscured in stinking clouds of smoke, and the air was filled with screaming iron and fire.

Fire and smoke erupted from the inner gateways, and huge chunks of rock and timber were hurled skywards.

‘Go!’ shouted Luther, and the knights of the Order set off once more.

An armoured tide of bodies charged towards the shattered ruin of the inner walls, smoke wreathing the destruction wrought by the captured cannons. More gunfire spat from the inner walls, but it seemed as though the majority of the enemy guns had been mounted on the outer walls, for the fire was sporadic and uncoordinated.

Some knights fell, but after the nightmare charge towards and up the breach, Zahariel felt as though this charge was almost easy. The noise was still incredible: pounding feet, cheering knights, booms of cannon fire and the snap and crack of pistol fire. Rubble crashed, and the cries of the wounded mingled, until all Zahariel could hear was one long, continuous roar of battle, a sound he would forever think of as the music of war.

Drifting smoke from the smashed walls enveloped them, and once again, Zahariel found he was charging in muffled isolation. The sulphurous taste of the gunsmoke caught in the back of his mouth, and his eyes streamed acrid tears.

Fires burned ahead, and he saw that the gates of the inner wall had been more comprehensively destroyed than he could have imagined. Nothing remained of the timbers, simply a ragged hole in the wall with splintered remains sagging from pulverised iron hinges.

‘For the Lion and the Order!’ shouted Luther as he leapt the heaps of rubble that had fallen from the torn edges of the gateway.

Zahariel and Nemiel followed, vaulting tumbled debris and burning timber as they charged through the shattered gateways. Beyond the smashed walls, the fortress’s inner precincts were so unlike anything he had ever seen before that Zahariel had trouble reconciling what he saw with anything resembling military architecture.

Rows upon rows of cages were arranged around the tall, turreted fastness of the inner keep, each one large enough to hold an entire sword-line’s steeds.

A complex series of rails, chains and gears were laid on the ground of the courtyard, running between the cages towards a raised platform before the gates of the keep.

Some of the cages were occupied, most were not, but it was what the cages held that repulsed Zahariel beyond words. Though his vision was blurred with smoke-born tears, he could see that many of the cages held a multitude of grotesque beasts: winged reptiles similar to the one he had first fought, chimerical monsters of tentacle and claw, howling monstrosities with multiple heads, spines and frilled crests.

A menagerie of beasts filled the courtyard, each one a unique specimen of its kind, kept alive for who knew what reason. The beasts thrashed at the bars of their cages, screaming, howling, roaring and bellowing at the noise of battle.

Perhaps a hundred or so warriors in grey armour, wearing the familiar wolf pelt cloaks of the Knights of Lupus, stood in a long battle-line before the walls of the keep, swords and pistols bared. Lord Sartana stood upon the raised platform at the centre of the battle-line, his helmet carried by a knight beside him.

The charge of the Order’s knights slowed at the sight of such a collection of beasts, horrified beyond words that anyone, let alone an order of knights would dare, or desire, to keep such a monstrous collection of abominable creatures.

Lord Sartana spoke, and it seemed to Zahariel that the sounds of battle diminished, though whether it was the drama of the moment or that the overall level of noise was lowering, he wasn’t sure.

‘Warriors of the Order,’ said Sartana, ‘these are our lands and this is our fortress. You are not welcome here. You were never welcome here. What might once have preserved our world is at an end.’

The Master of the Knights of Lupus reached for a long iron lever attached to a complex series of gears and counterweights that ran through the floor of the platform and connected with the rails and chains that ran throughout the courtyard.

‘For that you will die,’ finished Sartana, hauling on the lever.

Even before the lever had completed its journey, Zahariel knew what would happen.

With a squeal of metal, gears meshed, slave levers slid from locks and the gates to the beasts’ cages opened.

Free at last, the beasts roared from their imprisonment with furious bellows of rage, their varied limbs powering them into the open with prodigious strength. Who could know how long they had been caged, but whether that had any bearing on their ferocity would forever be unknown.

Zahariel found himself in a life or death struggle with a monstrous, bear-like creature with a thick coat of spines and a head of wicked horns and snapping jaws. Nemiel fought beside him, along with the remnants of Sar Hadariel’s sword-line.

A dozen more beasts slammed into the Knights of the Order, tossing bodies into the air with the horror of their charge. The courtyard echoed to the sounds of battle, but this was no battle of honour, fought with blades and pistols in the manner deemed appropriate by centuries of tradition and custom. This was brutal, bloody and desperate combat fought for no noble ideal, but simply for survival. Though the beasts were greatly outnumbered, they cared not for the fact that they would eventually be destroyed. The chance had come to strike back at humans, and whether they were the ones that had imprisoned them mattered not at all.

The bear creature roared and slammed one massive fist into Sar Hadariel’s breastplate, sending him flying through the air, his armour torn from his body like paper. Nemiel darted in and slashed his sword across the beast’s midsection, no doubt hoping for an eviscerating stroke.

The beast’s spines robbed the blow of its strength, and his cousin’s sword did little but cut through a number of them. Pistol bullets dug wet craters in its chest, but like all the beasts Zahariel had fought, it appeared to care little for pain.

Zahariel edged around the beast’s flank as it turned its piggy eyes on Nemiel.

It swiped with another massive paw, but his cousin was quicker than Sar Hadariel and rolled beneath the blow, firing his pistol as he went. Zahariel leapt forward and swung his sword two-handed at the back of the beast’s legs, making his best guess at where its hamstrings might be.

His sword easily parted the beast’s armoured spines and sliced deep into the meat of its leg. The monster howled and dropped to one knee, black blood jetting from the wound on the back of its leg. It threw back its head and howled in pain, waving its powerfully muscled arms as it fought for balance.

‘Now!’ shouted Zahariel, dodging further around the beast and stabbing his sword into its ribs. His sword sank hilt-deep into the monster, and as it shuddered in pain, the weapon was torn from his hand.

Its talons slashed for him, catching him a glancing blow, and hurling him back against the bars of its cage. Pistols boomed, and swords cut the beast. Slowly but surely, Zahariel’s brothers were winning the fight with the monster.

Its leg cut and useless, the knights could easily keep out of reach of the beast, evading its blows, and firing shot after shot into its body and head. Its roars grew feeble, and at last it pitched forward with a final roar, great gouts of blood erupting from its fanged maw.

Zahariel moved away from the cage and took stock of the battles raging around the courtyard. Dozens of knights were down, torn apart or bludgeoned to death by the beasts, half a dozen of which still fought. The sounds of battle echoed from the walls, and Zahariel could hear triumphant war shouts of the Order coming from all around him, drifting from all the compass points, telling him that the battle was won. Whether the assault on the south wall had been the main thrust or not, it seemed as though the attacks on every face of the fortress had been successful.

Zahariel ran to retrieve his sword from the beast he and his fellow sword brothers had slain, the blade buried deep in its chest. He braced his foot against the beast’s flank and slowly slid the sword from its prison of flesh.

‘That was a tough one, eh, cousin?’ said Nemiel, planting his foot on the beast’s body.

‘Indeed,’ replied Zahariel, wiping the blade on the creature’s rough fur.

‘Why do you suppose they were keeping them here?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Zahariel, ‘though it explains why they didn’t want us to move into the Northwilds.’

‘How so?’

‘This fortress would have been a staging post for any warriors venturing into the deep woods,’ said Zahariel. ‘They couldn’t very well have let other knights in and kept these beasts here.’

‘You think that’s why Lord Sartana wanted nothing to do with Lord Jonson’s quest to destroy the great beasts?’

‘Probably, though I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to keep beasts.’

‘No, nor I,’ said Nemiel, ‘but come on, there’re more to kill before we can move on.’

Zahariel nodded and turned back to the battles being fought around them.

Thirteen

Half a dozen beasts still fought, though many were clearly on their last legs, the Order’s knights darting in with long spears and pistols to administer the coup de grace to twisted freaks of mutant evolution. The Knights of Lupus had retreated within their keep, content to leave the beasts to do their work for them, and Zahariel felt a twist of hatred for the knights who had fallen so far from the ideals of honour and virtue that they would stoop to such a base tactic.

However, not all the beasts were struggling against the tide of knights. In the centre of the courtyard, a monstrous lizard-like creature at least three metres long and half again as wide stampeded through the knights like an unstoppable juggernaut. Its huge head was filled with grotesque, warped fangs that prevented its mouth from closing, and its eyes were horrific, distended orbs of milky blue that wept filmy mucus.

Its limbs were bulging with muscle, and its long tail was scabbed with growths, and ended in vicious spines that were covered in the blood of fallen knights.

Warriors with spears surrounded it, but its hide appeared to be proof against such weapons, the steel tips bouncing from its thick skin. Sar Luther fought to get close enough to reach its underbelly, but despite its massive size, the beast was agile and able to use its low centre of gravity to face any threat with unnatural swiftness.

‘Think we can lend a hand?’ asked Nemiel, hefting his sword over his shoulder.

‘I think we have to,’ said Zahariel. ‘We can’t get any further until it’s dead.’

Zahariel turned to the rest of their sword-line and pointed to one of the warriors. ‘Go check on Sar Hadariel, make sure he’s alive. The rest of you, with me.’

As one knight went to check on their leader, Zahariel led the rest towards the rampaging beast. As he watched, a knight rashly attempted to get beneath its snapping, twisted fangs to stab at its throat and was snatched up and bitten clean in two.

The beast swallowed one half with a quick gulp and tossed away the knight’s lower body. Zahariel was horrified by the casual swiftness of the knight’s death, and his grip on his sword tightened.

Another knight fell, bludgeoned from his feet by the monster’s tail, and yet another was crushed beneath a stomping foot. More knights rushed over to fight the last beast, but Zahariel could see they were throwing lives away in fighting this monster, for surely nothing born of Caliban could defeat such a terrible creature.

No sooner had he formed the thought than he saw the Lion lead a host of bloodied knights into the central ring courtyard of the keep.

The Lion had been a magnificent warrior, resplendent in his armour and glorious in his martial bearing, but the times Zahariel had seen him, he had been at peace.

Never before had he seen the Grand Master of the Order roused to war.

Zahariel had always known the Lion was taller than any other warrior of Caliban, such was the first thing anyone noticed about him, but to see him now, sword bloodied, hair unbound and the light of combat in his eyes, he realised that the Lion was larger than any man could ever, or would ever, be. His immensity was not just physical, but in his presence and sheer weight in the world.

No man, no matter how mighty, could match the terrible glory of the Lion.

With the fires of war at his back, the Lion was the most wonderful and terrible thing Zahariel had ever seen.

The Lion led his warriors towards the beast without pause, and his warriors followed without a moment’s hesitation or apparent fear. As if sensing that a worthy enemy had finally presented itself, the beast turned its horrific, lopsided head towards the Grand Master of the Order.

As it did so, Sar Luther snatched a long pole-arm from one of his warriors and dived forward, rolling beneath its snapping jaws and thrusting with the spear.

At the same time, the Lion leapt towards the beast, his sword slashing for one of its eyes. The beast’s head snapped to the side, deflecting the Lion’s blow as Luther’s spear thrust plunged into the soft flesh of its throat.

The beast screeched with a nerve-shredding shrillness that stunned every knight in the courtyard. The knights dropped to their knees and clutched their hands to their helmets as the agonising scream penetrated their skulls with its force. Even Luther, wedged beneath the beast, was laid low by the shrieking vibrations, though he kept one hand on his spear. Blood poured from the beast’s neck, arterially powerful, drenching the Lion’s second-in-command in gore.

Zahariel felt trickles of blood run from his ears as the beast’s cry ripped through the matter of his brain. His vision blurred and tears of agony squeezed from his eyes, but he fought to keep them open, for he was seeing something extraordinary.

Though the knights of the Order writhed in agony at the beast’s scream, the Lion seemed unmoved. Perhaps his senses were more refined than those of his warriors, or perhaps his heightened resilience allowed him to resist its effects, but whatever the cause, it was clear that he remained unaffected.

The Lion leapt upon the beast’s back, using the unnatural growths scattered around its body as hand and foot holds. The monster thrashed in pain, dragging Luther around beneath it as he held onto the spear haft for his very life.

Even as he wept in agony, Zahariel realised that watching his two brothers slay the beast was an honour. The Lion finally hauled himself atop the beast, and Zahariel saw a flash of silver steel as he raised his sword, point downwards, and thrust it into the beast’s skull.

None but the Lion could possibly have had the strength for such a feat.

The blade slammed down into the beast, the quillons of the Lion’s blade slamming into the reptilian surface of the beast’s hide. The monster’s struggles ceased abruptly, and the ear-splitting shriek that had so incapacitated the knights was cut off.

The beast reared up onto its hind legs with a sudden spasm, and the Lion was flung from his perch on its back. The spear haft was torn from Luther’s hand, and he scrambled back from the creature, his armour glistening with blood.

The sudden silence that followed the beast’s demise was strange and unnerving, the sudden absence of sound like the sudden and unexpected end of a storm that blows itself out in one apocalyptic thunderclap.

The knights began to pick themselves up from the bloody stones of the courtyard, incredulous at the scale of the battle they had just witnessed. The beast’s body heaved with one last reflexive breath and then was silent.

Lion El’Jonson came into view from behind the beast and the knights began to cheer at the sight of their heroic leader.

‘Jonson! Jonson! Jonson!’

As Zahariel watched the Lion receive their plaudits, Luther dragged himself to his feet from the lake of the beast’s spilled blood. Somewhere in the fighting, Luther had lost his helmet, and his face was the one portion of his flesh untainted by bloodstains.

The cheers for the Lion went on undiminished, and Zahariel saw a fleeting look of jealousy flash across Luther’s face. It was gone so quickly, Zahariel wasn’t even sure he had seen it, but the power of the emotion he had seen on Luther’s face was unmistakable.

The Lion raised his hands for silence, and the cheers of the knights died in an instant.

‘Brothers!’ he cried, pointing to the keep at the centre of the courtyard. ‘This isn’t over yet. The walls are carried, but the Knights of Lupus are not yet defeated. They lurk within their keep and must be dug out with fire and steel.’

The Grand Master of the Order swung his arms wide, indicating the slaughterhouse the courtyard had become, the dead knights and the defeated beasts.

‘Any man who stoops to allow such beasts to do his work is not worthy of life,’ said the Lion. ‘The Knights of Lupus have forfeited their right to mercy and are to be granted no clemency. We will break into their keep and leave none alive!’

The inside of the keep was eerily deserted, its halls hung with musty cobwebs and an air of desolation that Zahariel found depressing. He and Nemiel advanced down a narrow corridor of dressed stone and tapestries, their way illuminated by guttering lamps that hung from bronze fixtures.

The emptiness spoke of years of neglect, where the dust of abandonment had gathered and the passage of time had settled upon the keep. The sounds of fighting elsewhere could be heard distantly, but wherever the battle was being fought, it was far from here.

‘Where is everyone?’ asked Nemiel. ‘I thought this place would be crawling with warriors.’

‘I guess they must be elsewhere,’ said Zahariel. ‘It’s a big keep after all.’

Lion El’Jonson had smashed open the gates to the keep with one mighty blow from his sword, and the knights of the Order had poured in, spreading through the fortress in small groups to hunt down the last of their enemies.

Zahariel and Nemiel had taken the stairs to the upper levels, hoping to find some enemy warriors to vent their anger upon, but instead finding only empty halls, deserted chambers and echoing vaults that had long been shuttered and forgotten.

‘Wait,’ hissed Zahariel, holding his hand up for silence, ‘do you hear that?’

Nemiel cocked his head and nodded, hearing the same clatter of footfalls and scraping of furniture that Zahariel did. The young men looked at one another and made their way towards the wide set of double doors from which the sounds emanated, taking up positions on either side of the door.

The sounds of movement came again, and Nemiel held up his hand with three fingers extended. Zahariel nodded and counted down with his cousin as he curled one finger into his palm, then two and finally his third.

Nemiel spun around and planted his boot squarely on the junction of the two doors, splintering the lock and bursting them open.

Zahariel sprinted through the door, his sword and pistol extended before him, a ferocious war cry on his lips. He swung his pistol left and right, searching for targets, while keeping his sword tight to his body.

The enormous chamber within was vaulted, and edged from floor to ceiling in leather-bound books. Row upon row of books stretched into the distance, and wide tables at the end of each row were strewn with parchments and scrolls.

Vast quantities of information and literature were stored here, a library easily ten times the size of that held within Aldurukh. How long must it have taken to amass such a treasure trove of wisdom?

Zahariel had not believed there was such an amount of knowledge in existence, let alone that it all might be contained within the walls of this keep. Rows of square columns supported the arched roof, and Zahariel guessed that the chamber ran the length and breadth of the keep.

The chamber’s sole occupant, as far as Zahariel could see, was a lone man in white robes with grey hair and a drooping silver moustache. Zahariel recognised the man as Lord Sartana, the leader of the Knights of Lupus, who had been goaded to war by Lion El’Jonson in the Circle Chamber, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Lord Sartana looked up from his labours, the assembled pile of books on a table before an ornate wooden throne draped with wolf pelts.

‘So they send beardless boys for me,’ said Sartana. ‘How old are you? Fourteen, perhaps?’

‘I am fifteen,’ said Zahariel.

‘No respect for tradition, that’s what’s wrong with your Order, boy,’ said Sartana. ‘Not a fashionable opinion, I know. Not now, not when everyone is busy celebrating your damn crusade to clear the great beasts from the forest.’

‘With your death it will be over,’ said Zahariel, emboldened by the defeat he heard in Lord Sartana’s voice. ‘All that remains is the Northwilds.’

Lord Sartana shook his head. ‘It’ll all end in tears, mark my words. We haven’t even begun to pay for your foolishness yet. That price is still to be collected, and when it is, many will wish that you had never embarked on that course: too many thorns along the road, too many pitfalls and hidden traps.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Nemiel. ‘The Lion’s quest is the noblest of ideals.’

‘It is?’ asked Sartana, settling into the throne of wolf pelts. ‘Do you want to know where your Lion went wrong?’

‘The Lion is not wrong,’ said Nemiel with a growl of hostility.

Sartana smiled, amused at the threats of a teenage boy. ‘Your first mistake was that you lost respect for tradition. Civilisation is like a shield, designed to keep us safe from the wilderness, while tradition is the shield boss at its centre. Or, to put it another way, tradition is the glue that holds our society together. It gives shape to our lives. It lets everyone know their place. It’s vital. Without tradition, soon you are no better than animals.’

‘We keep to our traditions,’ said Zahariel. ‘The Lord Cypher ensures our traditions are upheld. It is you who have forgotten them… consorting with beasts.’

‘I think you will find that it was the Order that broke step with the other brotherhoods of knights,’ said Sartana, ‘when they started allowing commoners to enter their ranks. Imagine… recruiting knights from among the lowborn. Egalitarian claptrap, if you ask me. But that’s not the worst you’ve done. No, the worst element of all this is the Lion’s quest to kill off the great beasts. That’s the real danger. That’s the part we’ll all end up regretting.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Zahariel. ‘It’s the most glorious thing that’s happened on Caliban in the last century! Our people have lived in fear of the great beasts for thousands of years. Now, finally, we are removing their scourge forever. We are making the forests safe. We are changing our world for the better.’

‘Spoken like a true believer, boy,’ snorted Sartana in derision. ‘I see your masters have filled your head with propaganda. Oh, I don’t disagree that it sounds like a grand and worthwhile aim to clear the beasts from the forests. Too often, though, reality does not run in accord with our ambitions. We try to achieve one thing, only to find to our horror that we have achieved something quite different.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Nemiel as they edged closer to Sartana.

‘Let us assume for a moment that your campaign is successful. Let’s say you manage to kill all the beasts. After all, you’ve got off to a good start. Jonson and the rest have been at it for nearly ten years. Most of the beasts, if not all, must be dead. So, say you kill all the beasts. What then, boy? What will you do, then?’

‘I… we’ll make things better,’ said Zahariel, floundering for a moment to frame his reply to Sartana’s question. He had long taken it for granted that the Order’s campaign was a noble enterprise, perhaps the greatest in Caliban’s history, but he found it difficult to put all the things he felt about it into words once Sartana called him to account.

‘We’ll clear new lands for settlement, and for agriculture,’ he said. ‘We’ll be able to produce more food.’

‘The commoners will do those things, you mean,’ said Sartana, ‘but what of your kind, boy? What of the knightly orders? What will we do? You see the problem?’

‘No, I don’t. How can there be a problem when we’ve made our world a better place?’

‘I am surrounded by blind men,’ snapped Sartana. ‘I am an old man, yet I still seem able to look farther than any of the young men around me. Very well, if you can’t see the problem, let me explain it to you. First, though, a simple question. Why are there knightly orders on Caliban? What function do we perform?’

‘Our function? We protect the people,’ said Nemiel.

‘Precisely. At least one of you has sense. And, what do we protect them from?’

‘The great beasts, of course,’ said Zahariel. Abruptly, he saw where Sartana’s line of reasoning was heading. ‘Oh.’

‘Yes, the great beasts,’ smiled Sartana. ‘I can see the first glimmerings of understanding written on your face. For millennia, the Knights of Caliban have followed one sacred duty. We have kept our people safe from the great beasts. It is the way our lives have always been. It is the reason for our existence. It has been our war, a war fought in the forests of this planet for five thousand years. This is the way of things, boy. This is tradition, but not for much longer. Soon, thanks to the Order and Lion El’Jonson, the beasts will be no more. What then for the knights of Caliban?’

Lord Sartana fell silent for several moments, allowing time for his words to sink in with Zahariel and Nemiel before he spoke again.

‘We are warriors, boy. It is in our blood. It is in our culture. We are a proud and fearless breed. It has always been that way, ever since the first days of our ancestors. Conflict gives meaning to our existence. We hunt, we quest and we fight, and not just because the people of Caliban need our protection. We do these things because we must. Without them, there is emptiness at the heart of our lives, a void that cannot be filled no matter how hard we try. We do not do well with peace. We bridle at the lack of activity. It makes us feel restless and uneasy. We need to feel danger. We need our battles, the ebb and flow of warfare and the thrill of the life-or-death struggle. Without these things, we feel incomplete.’

‘That is a pessimistic outlook,’ said Zahariel.

‘No, it is a realistic outlook,’ said Sartana. ‘We need our beasts, boy. Why do you think my order was capturing them? We were trying to keep the race of beasts alive! There, I have said it. Perhaps it shocks you, but look honestly into your heart and you will see that we need our monsters because they help to define us. As long as there are beasts on Caliban, we are heroes, but if there are no more beasts, we are nothing. No, less than nothing.’

‘You were keeping the beasts alive?’ asked Zahariel, horrified beyond belief.

‘Of course,’ said Sartana. ‘Without the beasts, our war is over. What will become of us then? What of our future? What will be of the warrior when there is no more war? There lies the greatest danger, boy. Boredom will create unrest, and unrest can turn to anger. Without a war to keep us busy, we are likely to create one of our own devising. We will fall on each other like a pack of raptors. I will not live to see this, but I look to the future and I see only darkness. I see kinstrife and civil war. I see brother turning against brother. I see blood; all for the lack of having better ways to channel our anger, all for lack of the beasts. That is the future your Order is creating for us, though admittedly, your zealot of a leader was moved by the best of intentions.’

Both Zahariel and Nemiel had closed to within a sword length of Lord Sartana, and the leader of the Knights of Lupus smiled indulgently at them both.

‘No doubt you have orders to kill me.’

Zahariel nodded. ‘We do.’

‘I may be old, but I think it will take more than two boys to defeat me.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Nemiel.

‘No,’ said Sartana, drawing a long-bladed hunting knife. ‘We won’t.’

Zahariel aimed his pistol at Lord Sartana’s face, but the old man did not have violence towards them on his mind. Swiftly, the leader of the Knights of Lupus reversed the knife and rammed it into his body, the blade angled upwards to pierce his heart.

Zahariel dropped his weapons, rushing forward to catch Lord Sartana’s body as he slumped from his throne.

He lowered the dying knight to the cold stone floor of the great library as blood flooded from the grievous wound.

‘You know the expression about darkness, don’t you?’ hissed Sartana. ‘That the road into darkness is paved with men’s good intentions.’

‘I’ve heard it, yes,’ said Zahariel.

‘Perhaps someone should have mentioned it to the Lion,’ said Sartana with the last of his strength. ‘Good intentions or not, Lion El’Jonson will end up destroying Caliban. Of that I have no doubt.’

‘What will become of us?’ Lord Sartana had said, his face grim and foreboding. ‘What will be of the warrior when there is no more war?’

At the time, Zahariel had paid no great attention to the dying man’s words, so caught up was he in the excitement and terror of the day.

Sartana’s words might have been troubling, even unsettling, but it was not hard to dismiss them. Lord Sartana was old, tired, his features ravaged by age and weariness. It was easy enough to think of his warning as the unhinged ramblings of a mind already well across the border to madness.

It was easy enough to dismiss his words and they should have been no less easy to forget. Days and weeks passed following the destruction of the Knights of Lupus, and they returned once more to Zahariel to haunt him.

He would think of them often, and oft times he would marvel at their prescience.

In his darkest moments, Zahariel would sometimes wonder if their meeting that day had represented a missed opportunity. Perhaps he could have passed their message on to the Lion, or he could have been more aware of the force of emotion in Luther.

Zahariel might have understood that brotherhood was no guarantee of harmony; that no matter the closeness of the bonds between men, violence and betrayal were always possible.

A great many years had yet to pass before he would think of those words frequently.

He would wonder whether he could have changed the future.

By then, of course, it was far too late.

Fourteen

With the death of Lord Sartana, the Knights of Lupus ceased to exist. Their last knights were hunted down in the gloomy, abandoned corridors of their shattered keep and slain. No mercy was offered and none expected, for the defeated knights knew that there was no going back from what they had done.

The banners of the Order flew from the tallest towers of the fortress, and the fires of battle reflected from the gold and crimson woven into their ragged fabrics. Swords banged on shields, and the Ravenwing cavalry rode whooping circuits around the broken walls of the mountain fortress.

Cheers and honours were exchanged by the warriors of the Order, and a momentous sense of history stole over each man as the realisation of the closeness of their objective sank in. With the Knights of Lupus destroyed, the Northwilds were open to the Order, and the very last of the beasts could be hunted to extinction.

Zahariel watched as the fortress of the Knights of Lupus crumbled, its walls and keep pulverised by the massed cannons of the Order. No honour was to be accorded the fallen enemy knights, their corpses and effects gathered in the main keep and put to the torch.

The Lion had marched into the great library to find Zahariel and Nemiel with Lord Sartana’s body, and he had congratulated them both before turning his attention to the great volumes collected within the massive chamber.

After a cursory glance through several of the tomes gathered by Lord Sartana, the Lion had ordered them to rejoin their sword-line, and had busied himself with further exploration of his defeated foe’s collection. Entire wagon trains carried the books and scrolls back to Aldurukh for further study.

Zahariel turned from the burning fortress, saddened to see such a mighty edifice cast down, and wondering if all battles ended with this strange mix of emotions. He had survived and acquitted himself with honour, fought bravely and helped in the final victory. He had seen history take shape, and had witnessed the death of their greatest enemy, yet still there was a nagging sense of things undone and of opportunities missed.

Sar Hadariel was alive and would live to fight another day as had many of his sword-line. The butcher’s bill was steep, but not so steep as to render the victory sour, and already the loss of so many friends and comrades was being overshadowed by the glories won.

In the weeks of marching back to Aldurukh, the infamy of the Knights of Lupus would be magnified tenfold, their villainies growing from deliberate capture of beasts to vile experiments and corruption of the soul. By the time the Order’s warriors had returned home, their enemies had been turned into the vilest monsters, corrupt and beyond redemption. It had been a good and necessary war, the knights agreed, a war that had achieved great things, and had brought the freedom of all Caliban that much closer.

Yet amid the celebrations and honours bestowed, Zahariel could not forget the moment in the Circle Chamber when Lion El’Jonson had goaded Lord Sartana to war, the moment that war had been thrust upon them.

Yes, the Order’s campaign was on the verge of ultimate glory, but had its integrity been tainted at the last?

Had blood been shed in this battle for less than noble ideals?

Zahariel worried about such things on the ride back, unable to articulate his feelings even to those closest to him. He watched his brothers celebrate their great victory, and a shadow fell upon his heart as he watched the Lion revel in the honours heaped upon him for this latest victory.

Only one other in the Order appeared to bear such misgivings, and Zahariel would often catch Luther riding alongside his brother, and catch a hint of that same shadow in his smile and a chip of ice in the corner of his eye.

If Luther sensed Zahariel’s scrutiny, he made no mention of it, but the journey back to Aldurukh was melancholy for him, his achievements during the battle overshadowed by the Lion’s feats of arms.

Zahariel and Nemiel’s defeat of the beast in the courtyard brought them both honours, and each was rewarded with scrolls upon their armour to commemorate the deed. Nemiel had been overjoyed, and Zahariel had been pleased, but each time he thought back to the fight, he wondered why the strange powers that had manifested in the forests of Endriago had not reappeared.

Perhaps it was as he had suspected… that it had been his proximity to the dark heart of the wood, or the Watchers that had awakened some latent ability within him that now lay dormant. Or perhaps he had imagined it all and his mind had conjured some elaborate fantasy in the wake of his terrible struggle to explain how he had defeated the great beast.

Whatever the reason, he was glad that what had happened seemed now to be a distant memory, becoming less tangible with every passing day. He vividly remembered the beast’s death, but the specifics of that day, before he had fought it, were becoming hazier in his mind, as though a grey mist had descended upon his memory.

Life went on much as before with the knights of the Order, and Zahariel’s unease began to unwind, as Lord Sartana’s dying warning seemed increasingly like the groundless mutterings of a frustrated foe. Hunts were organised, and each day knights would ride into the forests to clear out the last pockets of beasts.

Each day brought fewer and fewer beast trophies, and it seemed as though the completion of the Lion’s grand vision had finally been achieved.

The Lion ventured into the forests only rarely these days, spending most of his time locked in the tallest towers of Aldurukh with the books taken from the fortress of the Knights of Lupus.

Eliath and Attias both fought and defeated their own beasts and ascended to the rank of knight, a day that brought much celebration to the halls of the Order. All four boys fought together in Sar Hadariel’s sword-line, venturing out into the forests time and time again to fight the planet’s predators and, hopefully, encounter one of the few remaining beasts.

Ravenwing scouts brought word that each section of the Northwilds had been cleared, and Zahariel had scoured their missives for word of the dark forests around Endriago for any sign of the malaise that had engulfed him during his hunt for the great lion, but whatever he had encountered in the depths of the forest appeared to have vanished.

Perhaps it had never existed and, try as he might, he could conjure no solid recollection of the words spoken to him in the forest, nor any cogent memory of those who had spoken them.

The world of Caliban still turned, life went on as before, and the knights of the Order moved closer to ultimate domination, until the angels arrived.

Light dappled the leaves of the high branches and spread a glittering shadowplay on the ground before the horses as the group of riders made their way along the paths of the forest. The air was fragrant, rich with the promise of balmy days and peace.

Zahariel held the reins loosely in his hands, letting the black horse set its own pace, and relaxed back into his saddle. The forests were no longer places of fear and horror to the knights of the Order, they were magical places of light and adventure. Fresh paths were being cut through them, revealing landscapes of unearthly beauty and natural majesty that had previously been denied to the populace of Caliban, thanks to the presence of the beasts.

Now, with the defeat of the lurking monsters in the darkness, their world was theirs for the taking. Beside him, Nemiel removed his helm and ran a hand through his hair, and Zahariel smiled at his cousin, glad to have him with him on this momentous ride.

Sar Luther had sent for them that morning, summoning them to the stables to select the finest mounts to ride on this, the last of the beast hunts. The Lion had been animated, eager to be on the last hunt, to see its completion, as though a fierce imperative burned in his breast that even he did not understand.

The opening portions of the ride had been made in relaxed, comfortable silence, each warrior content to enjoy the beauty of their world, now that it was theirs to call their own. The Lion and Luther led them as they had rode unerringly northwards, skirting settlements that were pushing further out from Aldurukh, now that the beasts had been exterminated.

The new Lord Cypher followed a discreet distance behind them, the role filled by a fresh, nameless warrior. Contrary to most people’s expectations, Master Ramiel had not been selected to take the previous Lord Cypher’s position, though who had was, of course, a mystery.

A number of new knights and even a number of supplicants brought up the rear, so that the procession was truly a representative slice of the Order’s members.

‘A strange group to lead into the wilds, don’t you think?’ asked Nemiel.

‘I suppose,’ replied Zahariel. ‘Perhaps the Lion wants this last hunt attended by men from all ranks of the Order, not just the senior members.’

‘You think we’re senior members?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel, ‘I think we’re up and coming youngsters who will soon make our mark on the Order.’

‘You have already done that, young Zahariel,’ said the Lion from the front of the column. ‘Remember, my hearing is very acute. You are here because of the brotherhood we share.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Zahariel, following the Lion as he rode into a wide clearing before a great cliff of glittering white stone that reared up on their left. Tumbling waterfalls plunged from its top in a cascade, to foam in a wide pool of churning water. Vibrant greenery stretched in all directions, and Zahariel felt peace spread through him, unaware of how empty his soul had become until it was filled.

‘Yes, this is the place,’ said the Lion from the front of their procession.

The Lion turned his horse, the mightiest beast ever bred by the horsemasters of Caliban, and addressed his warriors as they rode into the clearing before the waterfall.

‘You are all here because, as Zahariel rightly supposes, I desired all ranks of the Order to celebrate the conclusion of our mighty endeavour.’

Zahariel tried and failed to quell the blush reflex he felt reddening his face at this singling out for praise.

‘Caliban is ours,’ repeated the Lion, and Zahariel joined with the others in cheering the Grand Master of the Order’s pronouncement.

‘We have fought and bled for ten years, brothers, and each of us has seen friends and companions fall along the way,’ continued Jonson, ‘but we stand on the threshold of our greatest triumph. Everything we have fought for is within our grasp. We have made no mistakes and it is ours. This is our triumph.’

The Lion spread his arms and said, ‘A golden age beckons us, my brothers. I have seen it in my dreams, a golden time of new and wondrous things. We stand on the very brink of that age and…’

Zahariel glanced at Nemiel at the uncharacteristic pause in the Lion’s speech. Their leader looked off to their left, towards the forest, and Zahariel was seized by fear that they had been ambushed, though what manner of foe would dare ambush a warrior as fearsome as the Lion?

His first suspicion was that the last beast had somehow managed to sneak up on them, or that some rogue survivors of the Knights of Lupus had survived the destruction of their order to come seeking revenge.

But as his hand leapt to his sword hilt, Zahariel saw no such threat.

Instead, he saw a great bird perched on a stout branch of a tree, its feathers golden and shimmering in the afternoon sunlight.

A Calibanite eagle, its plumage vivid and perfect in this setting, regarded the warriors with regal grace, apparently unafraid of the gathering of humans. Such eagles were rare creatures, not dangerous, but regarded as birds of omen by the superstitious of Caliban.

The warriors of the group looked from the eagle to the Lion, unsure what to make of the bird’s sudden appearance.

Zahariel felt a shiver travel down his spine as the bird continued to watch them with its strange eyes. He glanced over towards the Lion, seeing an expression that spoke of fearful anticipation, a look of foreknowledge and hope that it had not been misinterpreted.

‘I know this,’ said the Lion, his voice barely more than a whisper.

As the Lion spoke, a strange wind blew, a hot and urgent ripple of air with an acrid aftertaste, like the tang that hung in the vicinity of the armourer’s forge.

Zahariel looked up, seeing something huge and dark roar overhead, a massive winged shape with glowing blue coals at its rear. Another passed overhead, and he cried out as the heat from their passing washed over him.

The knights circled their mounts, and Zahariel drew his sword as the mighty flying beasts roared overhead once more.

‘What are they?’ shouted Zahariel over the din of the roars that filled the clearing.

‘I don’t know,’ cried Nemiel. ‘Great beasts!’

‘How can that be? They are all dead!’

‘Apparently not,’ said Nemiel.

Zahariel glanced over at the Lion once more, seeking some sign that what was happening had been expected, but their leader simply sat in his saddle looking up at the behemoths as they flew over them.

Luther was shouting something at the Lion, but his words were lost in the screaming roar as one of the giant flying beasts blotted out the sun and hovered above them. Its terrible howls filled Zahariel’s senses and the hot, bitter tang of its odour was almost unbearable. A powerful downdraught scattered leaves, and bent the branches of the trees with its force.

The eagle took to the air and soared over the great pool at the base of the waterfall, the misting water catching on its wings as it flew, making them shine like beaten gold.

Zahariel followed the mighty bird’s course and looked up, shielding his eyes from the baleful blue glow on the hovering beast’s belly, as a horrific squealing, like metal on metal, built from above.

‘Put your weapons away!’ shouted Luther as he rode through their number. ‘Sheath your swords by the order of the Lion.’

Zahariel tore his gaze from the shrieking, stinking beast above them, incredulous that they should put themselves at such a monstrous disadvantage.

‘Sar Luther,’ he yelled over the noise and wind. ‘You would leave us unarmed?’

‘Do it!’ shouted Luther. ‘Now!’

Though it violated everything he had been taught, the power of Luther’s voice was enough to make him cease his questions and slide his sword home in its scabbard.

‘Whatever happens,’ shouted Luther, through the whirling hurricane that surrounded them, ‘do nothing until the Lion acts! Understood?’

Zahariel nodded reluctantly as he heard what sounded like distant shouts from above.

Then amid the noise and confusion, he saw shapes resolving from the howling winds and noise.

Dark shapes, armoured and descending on wings of fire.

Beside him, Luther shielded his eyes and said, ‘And the Angels of Darkness descended on pinions of fire and light… the great and terrible dark angels.’

Zahariel recognised the words, having heard the fables of ancient times when the heroic dark angels, mysterious avengers of righteousness had first fought the beasts of Caliban in the earliest ages of the world.

His heart leapt as the first of the fiery angels landed, his armoured bulk enormous, the detail of his form obscured by the smoke of his landing. Others landed beside him, until ten hulking giants stood before the Lion’s group. Zahariel was immediately struck by the similarity between the giants and the armour of the Order.

As the first of the giants took a step forward, he was struck by the similarity in size between him and the Lion. Though the Lion was taller even than this giant, there was a similarity in scale and proportion that was unmistakable.

The fearsome downdraught of air from the great flying beast dissipated the smoke of the giants’ arrival, and with its cargo apparently delivered, it moved off. The clearing was suddenly silent but for the crash of water in the pool behind them.

Though there was a fearsome martial power to each of these giants, Zahariel also saw a real sense of awe, a feeling that they had found something precious, with a value they had not previously dared believe.

The giant reached up to his helmet, and Zahariel saw that he was armed with a sword and pistol similar in appearance to his own, though of an order of magnitude larger than those employed by the Order.

A twist of a catch brought a hiss of escaping air, and the giant lifted clear his helmet to reveal a startling face of human proportions, though his features were more widely spaced and gigantic than most men’s.

The face was handsome, and an uncertain smile began to develop as the giant looked upon Lion El’Jonson. Curiously, Zahariel felt no fear, his apprehensions fleeing his body at the sight of the giant’s face.

‘Who are you?’ asked the Lion.

‘I am Midris,’ said the giant, his voice impossibly deep and resonant. He turned to his fellow giants and said, ‘We are warriors of the First Legion.’

‘The First Legion?’ asked Luther. ‘Whose First Legion?’

Midris turned to Luther and said, ‘The First Legion of the Emperor, Master of Mankind and ruler of Terra.’

Fifteen

‘It’s the machines,’ Nemiel said from his position on the battlements. ‘That’s what I find most impressive. What did you say they called them again?’

‘Crawlers,’ replied Zahariel.

‘Right, crawlers,’ nodded Nemiel. ‘They cut down the trees, pull out the stumps, and level the land afterwards, and all three tasks are completed by just one machine, controlled by a single rider.’

‘Operators,’ corrected Zahariel. ‘The men who work the machines are called operators or drivers, not riders.’

‘Operators, then,’ shrugged Nemiel. ‘I ask you, have you ever seen anything like it?’

Looking at the scene below them, Zahariel shared Nemiel’s sense of amazement. The two of them stood on the battlements at Aldurukh, gazing down at the forest. Except, there was no longer very much forest left, at least not directly in their line of sight.

As far as the eye could see, across the entire parcel of land below the northern slopes of the mountain, the ancient woodlands were disappearing.

From their vantage point, it was difficult to pick out much detail, but the scale of the operation unfolding below them was awe-inspiring.

‘If you ask me,’ said Nemiel, without waiting for an answer, ‘they look like insects, impossibly large insects, I’ll admit, but insects, all the same.’

Watching the machines at work, Zahariel agreed that there was something in what his cousin said. The restless activity below the mountain did put him in mind of the regimented movements of an insect colony, an image undiminished by the fact that the fortress battlements were high enough above the scene to make the people below them look like ants.

‘Can you imagine how long it would take to do that much work without the machines?’ asked Nemiel. ‘Or how many men and horses you’d need to clear that much land? I’ll say this about the Imperials, they don’t do things by halves. It’s not just their warriors who are giants, their machines are as well.’

Zahariel nodded his head absently in reply, his attention still riveted on the activities of the crawlers.

The last few weeks had set them all reeling.

By any standard, it had been the most remarkable period in the entire history of Caliban. Nearly six months had passed since Zahariel had become a knight. The campaign against the great beasts was over, the Knights of Lupus were dead and Lion El’Jonson had ascended to the position of Grand Master of the Order, with Luther as his second-in-command.

All these events, however, were as nothing compared to the coming of the Imperium.

The news had spread across Caliban like wildfire, within hours of the first sightings of Imperial flying ships in the sky. Soon, it had become known that a group of giants in black armour had come to Caliban proclaiming themselves as envoys of the Emperor of Terra.

They were called the First Legion, and they had been sent as messengers.

Zahariel well remembered the moment the Imperials had come to Caliban.

‘We are your brothers,’ the warrior who had introduced himself as Midris had said, as he and his fellows bent their knees and bowed their heads in front of the Lion. ‘We are emissaries of the Imperium of Man, come to re-unite all the lost children of humanity, now that Old Night is ended. We have come to restore your birthright. We have come to bring you the Emperor’s wisdom.’

Not all the Terrans were giants. In the aftermath of their arrival, it had become clear that the giants – or Astartes, as they were called in the Terran language – had come to Caliban as the pathfinders of a larger expedition. Once it was apparent that the people of Caliban were inclined to welcome them with open arms, more normally proportioned human beings had followed in the giants’ wake, like the operators responsible for the crawlers, along with historians, interpreters and those skilled in the arts of diplomacy.

Whether giants or normal men, the Terrans were united in one thing: they all spoke glowingly of their Emperor.

‘I wonder what he’s like?’ said Zahariel, apropos of nothing.

‘Who?’

‘The Emperor,’ said Zahariel, feeling a thrill of anticipation run through him. ‘They say he created the Astartes, and that he can read minds and perform miracles. They say he is the greatest man who ever lived. They say he is thousands of years old. They say he is immortal. What does a man like that look like?’

Earlier that morning, Imperial envoys had announced that their Emperor intended to visit Caliban. He was nearby, they said, no more than three weeks’ travel time away. With the agreement of the Order’s supreme council, it had been decided that a landing site would be cleared for the Emperor’s arrival in the forests below Aldurukh.

The crawlers the Imperials had brought with them had been put to work, and the ever-expanding clearing below was destined to become the place where the Emperor would first set foot on Caliban.

Zahariel was not alone in looking forward to the prospect of seeing the Terran Emperor in the flesh, his imminent arrival sparking most of the discussions that had taken place in knightly circles since the giant warriors had arrived. Few could credit the tales the giants told of their leader. If their stories were to be believed, the Emperor was the absolute embodiment of human perfection.

‘I’d imagine he’ll be at least ten metres tall,’ said Nemiel sardonically, ‘perhaps even twenty, if his followers are anything to go by. He’ll breathe fire and his eyes will be able to shoot out deadly rays like the beasts of legend. Perhaps he’ll have two heads, one like that of a man and one like that of a goat. How should I know what he looks like? I’m as much in the dark as you are.’

‘Be careful,’ warned Zahariel, ‘the Terran giants don’t like it when you speak of their leader like that. You’ll offend them.’

Like most Calibanites, Zahariel found it breathtaking that the Imperials not only had such extraordinary technology at their fingertips, but also that they seemed to take it so much for granted. Even the things his people held in common with the Terrans only served to underline the breadth of the gap between them.

The knights of Caliban were armed and armoured in the same style as the Astartes, but the motorised blades, pistols and power armour the Terrans were equipped with were demonstrably better and more effective in every aspect than the versions used on Caliban.

Zahariel found the difference most visible when he compared the merits of his armour to that worn by the Astartes. Even beyond the gulf in physical stature, Astartes power armour was superior in every possible way. Zahariel’s armour protected him from blows and impacts, whether from the claws of predators or the swords of men. He could even close his helm to filter out smoke or other hazards to breathing like the deadly pollen of Caliban’s sweetroot flower.

In comparison, Astartes armour offered a much higher level of protection. It gave its wearer the ability to see in absolute darkness. It allowed him to survive extremes of heat and cold that would otherwise be unthinkable. It included its own separate air supply. Equipped with this technology, the warriors of the Astartes could survive and fight in any environment, no matter how hostile.

While such things seemed commonplace to the Terrans, among the people of Caliban they were regarded as little short of miraculous, even more so when it came to the wonders of Imperial medicine.

A few days after the Imperials had arrived, one of the Order’s supplicants had suffered an accident in training. A boy named Moniel had been practising walking the spiral with a live blade when he had slipped, inadvertently cutting into his knee with his sword as he fell.

The Order’s apothecaries had successfully managed to stem the flow of blood, saving Moniel’s life, but they could do nothing to save his leg. In order to prevent the flesh from turning gangrenous, the apothecaries had been forced to amputate the wounded limb.

It went without saying that anyone missing a leg could no longer hope to become a knight. Ordinarily, Moniel would have been returned to the care of his family in the settlement of his birth.

In this instance, however, the Imperials had intervened to ensure a happier ending.

Upon hearing of Moniel’s injury, a Terran apothecary had overseen his treatment, a treatment which, in this case, involved using esoteric methods to cause a new leg to re-grow from the stump where the old leg had been amputated.

Naturally, the Imperials did not call the world Caliban.

The Imperials had no way of knowing what name the people before them had given to their world. Nor could they know of Caliban’s culture. They had learned of the knightly orders, and it had been a source of surprise and delight to both cultures that the hierarchical structure of the knightly orders was very much like the structure of the Legions of the Astartes.

These were strange days, interesting times.

The battle halls of Aldurukh resounded daily to the clash of arms, supplicants and knights put through gruelling training rituals overseen by the Astartes. Giants in black armour marched the length and breadth of the halls every day, working with the Masters of the Order to gauge the level of martial prowess and character of every member of the knightly brotherhood.

Zahariel had fought three bouts already today, his skin bathed in sweat and his muscles burning with fatigue. He and Nemiel had passed everything the Astartes had put them through, pushed to the limits of their endurance.

‘I thought the training for the Order was hard,’ gasped Nemiel.

Zahariel nodded, hanging his head in exhaustion. ‘If this is what it takes to be an Astartes, then I’m not sure I’m up to it.’

‘Really?’ asked Nemiel, hauling himself erect and performing a few mock stretches. ‘I think I’m about ready for another few laps. Care to join me?’

‘All right,’ said Zahariel, climbing to his feet.

Though a great many of the Order’s warriors had filled the Battle Halls, Zahariel could not help but notice that it was only the younger knights and supplicants who took part in the Astartes trials. He and Nemiel were among the oldest present, and he wondered what bearing this had on the trials.

Day by day, the number of boys taking part in the trials had dwindled, as only the strongest and most dedicated were allowed to pass to the next stage. What the end result of these trials would be had been kept secret, but many believed they were competing for a place within the ranks of the Astartes.

Zahariel pulled at his hamstrings, and stretched the muscles of his calves and thighs before shaking off the lethargy of the morning’s training.

‘Ready?’ he said, calling Nemiel’s bluff.

His cousin wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction, and he nodded, wiping sweat-damp hair from his face.

‘Let’s go,’ said Nemiel, setting off at a comfortable pace. ‘Ten laps.’

Zahariel followed him, quickly catching up and settling into the pace set by his cousin. His limbs were tired and he had pushed his body to the extreme edge of its endurance, but this contest with his cousin had been going on for as long as he could remember and not even exhaustion would let him pass up the opportunity to compete against Nemiel.

They completed the first circuit of the Battle Hall without too much trouble, but by the end of the fourth, both boys were tiring, and their breathing had become ragged. In the centre of the hall, fresh bouts had begun under the watchful eye of the Astartes, and Zahariel noticed that their race had attracted the attention of a giant in a suit of armour more heavily ornamented than that of his brothers.

‘Tired yet?’ gasped Zahariel.

‘Not at all,’ wheezed Nemiel as they began their fifth lap.

Zahariel fought to control his breathing and ignore the pain building in his chest as he concentrated on maintaining his pace. He forced the despair at the idea of losing from his mind as irrelevant. He would not be second to Nemiel, and he would not be the first to break under the pressure of pain.

The Verbatim said that pain was an illusion of the senses, while despair was an illusion of the mind. Both were obstacles to overcome, and as he drew on his deepest reserves of strength, he felt a curious lightness to his flesh, as though his limbs were borne up by a wellspring of energy that he had not known he possessed.

By the seventh lap, Zahariel had begun to pull ahead of Nemiel, his newfound energy allowing him to put on a spurt of speed that broke their stalemate. He heard Nemiel’s laboured breathing behind him, and that empowered him further.

The gap between them grew wider, and Zahariel was buoyed up with the elation of victory as he cruised through the eighth and ninth laps. A second wind filled his limbs with energy, even as it seemed to sap his cousin’s will.

As he began the last lap, he saw Nemiel’s swaying back ahead of him and knew he could administer a final sting to his cousin’s pride by lapping him. Zahariel pushed harder and faster, digging deep into the last reserves of his determination, eating up the gap between them.

His cousin threw a panicked glance over his shoulder, and Zahariel wanted to laugh at the anguish he saw there. Nemiel was beaten, and that knowledge robbed him of whatever strength he had left.

Zahariel surged past his cousin and reached the finish line a full ten metres before his cousin. With the race run, he dropped to his knees, sucking in a great lungful of stale air and clutching at his burning thighs. Nemiel crossed the line with an unsteady gait, and Zahariel cried, ‘It’s over, cousin! Rest.’

Nemiel shook his head and passed on, and while part of Zahariel despaired at his cousin’s foolish pride, another part of him admired his persistence and determination to finish what he had begun.

Though he had not an ounce of strength left, Zahariel forced himself to stand and work through a series of stretches. Not to do so would result in his muscles cramping, and who knew when the Astartes would throw the next test at them.

He had just finished his first set when Nemiel lurched over the line with a strangled gasp and collapsed beside him, his chest heaving and sweat pouring from him in sheets.

‘You took your time,’ said Zahariel, an unaccustomed edge of spite in his voice.

Nemiel shook his head, unable, for the moment, to reply.

Zahariel offered his cousin his hand and said, ‘Come on, you need to stretch.’

His cousin waved his hand away, gasping for air and keeping his eyes squeezed shut. Zahariel knelt down and began massaging his cousin’s legs, working out the knots of tension in his muscles with hard sweeps of his fingertips.

‘That hurts!’ cried Nemiel.

‘It’ll hurt more if I don’t do it,’ pointed out Zahariel.

Nemiel bit his lip as Zahariel carried on with his ministrations, his breathing gradually becoming more even as his body began to recover from the exertions of the race. At last, Nemiel was able to sit up, and Zahariel began working the tension from his shoulders.

Zahariel said nothing, seeing the wounded pride in his cousin’s face and regretting the need to pile added humiliation upon him by lapping him. But Nemiel was old enough to deal with the blow to his pride. The pair of them had done the same all the years they had known each other.

Zahariel turned as he heard heavy footsteps behind him and saw the Astartes in the ornate armour.

‘You run a fast race, boy,’ said the warrior. ‘What is your name?’

‘Zahariel, my lord.’

‘Stand when you address me,’ commanded the warrior.

Zahariel stood and stared up into the face of the Astartes. His features were weathered and worn, though his eyes still spoke of youth. His armour was adorned with all manner of symbols that Zahariel did not recognise, and he carried a golden staff topped with a device that resembled a horned skull.

‘How did you win that race?’

‘I… I just ran faster,’ said Zahariel.

‘Yes,’ said the warrior, ‘but where did the strength come from?’

‘I don’t know, I just dug deep I suppose.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the warrior, ‘though I suspect you do not know where you dug into. Come with me, Zahariel, I have questions for you.’

Zahariel spared a glance back at Nemiel, who shrugged without interest.

‘Hurry, boy!’ snapped the warrior. ‘Or do your masters not teach alacrity?’

‘Sorry, my lord, but where are we going?’

‘And stop calling me “my lord”, it irritates me.’

‘Then what should I call you?’ asked Zahariel.

‘Call me Brother Librarian Israfael.’

‘Then where are we going, Brother Israfael?’

‘We are going elsewhere,’ said Israfael, ‘and there, I shall ask the questions.’

Elsewhere turned out to be one of the meditation cells where supplicants were sent to think upon whatever wrongdoing they had been deemed to have committed by the masters of the Order. Each cell was a place of contemplation, with a single window where the penitent supplicant could look out over Caliban’s forests and think on what he had done.

‘Have I done something wrong?’ asked Zahariel as he followed Israfael into the cell.

‘Why do you think that? Have you?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel. ‘At least I don’t think so.’

Israfael indicated that Zahariel should sit on the stool in the centre of the cell, and moved to the window, blocking out the meagre light with the bulk of his armoured body.

‘Tell me, Zahariel,’ began Israfael, ‘in your short life, have you been able to do… strange things?’

‘Strange things?’ asked Zahariel. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Then let me give you an example,’ said Israfael. ‘Have objects around you moved without you having touched them? Have you seen things in dreams that have later come to pass? Or have you seen things that you cannot explain?’

Zahariel thought back to his encounter with the Beast of Endriago and his vow to keep the strangeness of its defeat to himself. The people of ancient Caliban had once burned people in possession of such powers, and he could imagine the Astartes being no less strict with such things.

‘No, Brother Israfael,’ he said, ‘nothing like that.’

Israfael laughed. ‘You are lying, boy. I can see it as plain as day without any need for warp-sight. I ask again, have you encountered any such strange things? And before you answer, remember that I will know if you lie, and you will forfeit any chance of progressing further with these trials if I decide you are less than truthful.’

Zahariel looked into Israfael’s eyes, and knew that the Astartes was utterly serious. Israfael could have Zahariel thrown from the trials, with a single word, but he wanted to win through and prove he was worthy more than anything.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have.’

‘Good,’ said Israfael. ‘I knew I sensed power in you. Go on, when was this?’

‘It was when I fought the Beast of Endriago. It just happened. I don’t know what it was, I swear,’ said Zahariel, the words coming out in a confessional rush.

Israfael raised a hand. ‘Calm down, boy. Just tell me what happened.’

‘I… I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘The beast had me, it was going to kill me, and I felt something… I don’t know… my hatred for the beast rise up in me.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘It was as if… as if time had slowed, and I could see things that I couldn’t before.’

‘Things like what?’

‘I could see inside the beast,’ said Zahariel. ‘I could see its heart and skeleton. I could reach inside it, as if it was some kind of ghost.’

‘Terrorsight,’ said Israfael, ‘very rare.’

‘You know of this? What is it?’

‘It is a form of scrying,’ said Israfael. ‘The psyker uses his power to look beyond the realms of the physical and shifts part of his flesh into the warp. It is very powerful, but very dangerous. You are lucky to be alive.’

‘Is this power evil?’ asked Zahariel.

‘Evil? Why would you ask such a question?’

‘People have been burned in our history for having such powers.’

Israfael grunted in sympathy. ‘It was the same on Terra long ago. Anyone who was different was persecuted and feared, though the people who did so knew not what they were afraid of. But, to answer your question, boy, no, your power is not evil, any more than a sword is evil. It is simply a tool that can be used for good or evil depending on who swings it and why.’

‘Will it exclude me from the trials?’

‘No, Zahariel,’ said Israfael. ‘If anything, it makes you more likely to be chosen.’

‘Chosen?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Is that what they are for, to choose who will become an Astartes?’

‘Partly,’ admitted Israfael, ‘but it is also to see if the human strain on Caliban is pure enough to warrant its inclusion as a world that our Legion can recruit from over the coming years.’

‘And is it?’ asked Zahariel, not really understanding Israfael’s words, but eager to learn more of the Legion and its ways.

‘So far, yes,’ said Israfael, ‘which is good as it would be a hard thing for the primarch to have to abandon his world.’

‘Primarch?’ said Zahariel. ‘What is a primarch?’

Israfael smiled indulgently at Zahariel and said, ‘Of course, the word will have no meaning for you will it? Your Lord Jonson is what we know as a primarch, one of the superhuman warriors created by the Emperor to form the genetic blueprint for the Astartes. The First Legion was created from his gene structure and we are, in a sense, his sons. I know that much of this will make no sense to you now, but it shall in time.’

‘You mean there are others like the Lion?’ asked Zahariel, incredulous that there could be other beings as sublime as Lion El’Jonson.

‘Indeed,’ said Israfael, ‘nineteen others.’

‘And where are they?’ asked Zahariel.

‘Ah,’ said Israfael, ‘therein hangs a tale.’

Israfael then told Zahariel the most amazing tale he had ever heard: a tale of a world torn apart by war, and of the incredible man who had united it under his eagle- and lightning-stamped banner. Israfael spoke of a time, thousands of years ago, when mankind had spread from the cradle of its birth to the furthest corners of the galaxy. A golden age of exploration and expansion had dawned, and thousands upon thousands of worlds had been claimed by the race of man.

But it had all come to a screaming, bloody end in a time of war, blood and horror.

‘Some called it the Age of Strife,’ said the Astartes, ‘but I prefer the term Old Night. It has a more poetic edge to it.’

What had caused this monumental fall from grace, Israfael did not say, but he went on to tell of an empire broken, reduced to scrabbling fragments of civilisation clinging to the edge of existence by its fingernails, scattered outposts of humanity strewn throughout the galaxy like forgotten islands in a dark and hostile ocean.

Caliban, he explained was one such outpost, a world colonised in the golden age and severed from the tree of humanity by the fall of Old Night.

For thousands of years, the race of man had teetered on the brink of extinction, some worlds destroying themselves in feral barbarity, others falling prey to the myriad, hostile alien life-forms that populated the galaxy alongside humanity. Others prospered, becoming independent worlds of progress and light, beacons in the darkness to light the way for future generations of men to find them once more.

Then, as the darkness of Old Night began to lift, the Emperor began to formulate his plan to weave the lost strands of humanity back into the grand tapestry of the Imperium. Israfael spoke not of the Emperor’s origins, save to say that he had arisen long ago in the shadow of a war-torn land of brutal savagery, and had walked among humanity for longer than any man could know.

The Emperor had fought countless wars on the ravaged surface of Terra, finally conquering it with the aid of the first genetically engineered super-soldiers. They were crude things, to be sure, but they were the first proto-Astartes, which, now that Terra was his, had gone on to develop into more sophisticated creations.

All of which had inexorably led to the development of the primarchs.

The primarchs, explained Israfael, were to be twenty warriors of legend. Heroes and leaders, they would be the generals who would lead the Emperor’s vast armies in his grand scheme of conquest. Each one would be a mighty being, imbued with a portion of the Emperor’s genius, charisma and force of personality. Each would bestride battlefields like a god unleashed, inspiring men to heights of valour undreamt of, and campaigning across the stars to ultimate victory.

As Israfael told this portion of the story, Zahariel knew without doubt that Lion El’Jonson was such a being.

Israfael’s tale took on a more sombre tone as he went on to talk of every forge on Terra churning out weapons, war machines and materiel to supply the Emperor’s armies, even as the primarchs matured, deep within the Emperor’s secret laboratories.

But disaster struck before the Great Crusade, as many were already dubbing this grand adventure, could even be launched.

Zahariel felt his anger rise as he heard of a nefarious subterfuge that had seen the infant primarchs stolen from Terra and cast across the stars. Some had thought this would spell the end of the Emperor’s grand vision, but he had pressed on, resolute in the face of setbacks that would have crushed the spirits of a lesser man.

And so the Great Crusade had launched, pacifying the planets nearest to Terra in a whirlwind campaign that saw the Astartes blooded in wars beyond their homeworld. Having secured alliance with the priests of Mars and completed the conquest of the solar system, the Emperor turned his gaze into the great abyss of the galaxy.

As the last vestiges of the storms that had kept his armies at bay for so long finally abated, he aimed his starships into the void, and began the greatest endeavour undertaken in the history of humanity: the conquest of the galaxy.

Zahariel thrilled to tales of conquest and battle, and his heart leapt as Israfael spoke of how the Emperor had soon been reunited with one of his lost primarchs. Horus, as he was known, had grown to manhood on the bleak, ashen world of Cthonia and gladly took up command of the Legion of warriors that had been created from his genetic structure.

Named the Luna Wolves, Horus and his Legion had fought alongside the Emperor for many years, conquering world after world, spreading further and further from Terra as the Great Crusade moved ever onwards.

That brought Israfael’s tale to Caliban.

‘We were all set to despatch a scout force to Caliban when we received word from the Emperor that the entire strength of our Legion was to divert to this world, and that he would follow as soon as he was able.’

‘Why?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Was it because of the Lion?’

‘So it would seem,’ said Israfael, ‘though how the Emperor knew of his presence here is a mystery to me.’

‘Will it be soon?’ breathed Zahariel, unable to contain his excitement at the prospect of a man as mighty as the Emperor coming to Caliban. ‘Will the Emperor be here soon?’

‘Soon enough,’ said Israfael.

Sixteen

The days that followed were amongst the most tumultuous in the history of Caliban, seeing many changes wrought to the surface and to the people in an uncommonly short time period. Alongside the Astartes came all manner of men and women from Terra and other worlds with exotic sounding names.

A great many of them were non-military – civilians, administrators, scribes, notaries and taletellers. They spread far and wide in an apparently random swell of exploration, telling of the glory of Terra and the nobility of the Emperor’s mighty endeavour. Around hearth-fires and in newly constructed townships, they told versions of the tale related to Zahariel by Brother-Librarian Israfael.

The glory of the Imperium and the Emperor became the most oft-told stories of Caliban, supplanting more ancient myths and tales in the space it took to tell them.

Yet others came to the surface of Caliban, hooded figures of metal and flesh that were known simply as the Mechanicum. These mysterious figures guarded the technology of the Imperium and undertook frequent surveys of the planet from roaring flying machines.

Much was learned in these days beyond the histories lost to the people of Caliban over the thousands of years they had been separated from Terra. Technology and the advances of science, long absent from Caliban, were shared freely, and the people embraced such things with a vigour heretofore unseen on this grim and deathly world.

Freed from the tyranny of the beasts, the people of Caliban had the leisure to devote their attentions to the betterment of their society, utilising the technology brought by the Imperium to clear vast tracts of land for agriculture, open rich seams in the mountains to produce stronger metals, build more efficient manufacturing facilities and lift them from the dark age in which they had been living to a more enlightened age of illumination.

A great many of the new arrivals on Caliban were military personnel, and it was here that the first sources of friction were to emerge.

The Astartes had been welcomed by the general populace of Caliban as the ultimate embodiment of the knightly orders that already ruled their lives, and by the knights as inspirational figures of legend.

As much as the knights had welcomed the fact that the organisational makeup of the Astartes had closely matched that of the knightly orders, they were soon to find that there were more differences than similarities.

Where the knightly orders revelled in their differences and often resorted to combat to settle their feuds, the Legions were united in purpose and will. Such division could not be tolerated, and at the behest of the Lion and the Astartes, the individual knightly orders were disbanded and brought under the control of the First Legion.

Of course, such a drastic move did not happen overnight, and could not pass without dissenting voices, but when the Lion spoke in favour of the union of knights and the glory that would be theirs for the taking in the service of the Emperor, most such voices were stilled. Most, but not all.

More objections were raised when members of the other military arms of the Imperium descended to the surface of Caliban, the soldiers of the Imperial Army. The Astartes trials had already identified the likely candidates for selection to that august body, but the vast majority of the planet’s population would still be able to serve the Emperor in the army.

Where before military service had been an avenue open only to the nobility of Caliban until the inception of the Order, Imperial recruiters spread throughout the planet’s population, offering a chance to journey from Caliban and fight in the Emperor’s armies on a thousand different worlds. They offered a chance to travel, to see strange new worlds and to become part of history.

Tens of thousands flocked to join the Imperial Army, and the knights of Caliban grumbled that if the peasants were allowed to fight then where lay the nobility of combat? War was surely a noble endeavour, one fought between men of equal standing, and if the lowborn were given the chance to fight, what horrors might be enacted in such mass warfare?

When the aexactors of the Army had achieved their quota of recruits, thousands of camps were set up throughout Caliban where discipline masters and drill sergeants began training the adult population of Caliban in the ways of the Imperium’s war.

Within an unimaginably short time, the surface of Caliban was transformed from a world of sprawling wildernesses and castles to one of martial industry that rang to the beat of factory hammers and the tramp of booted feet as its populace geared itself up for war.

It was a time of great wonders and hope, a time of change, but no time of change comes without pain.

Zahariel and Nemiel walked the length of the outer walls of Aldurukh, their strides long and their shoulders held erect. Both walked a little taller than they had before, their confident bearing more proud than it had been the day previously.

Their armour was freshly polished, the black plates gleaming and reflective, and they had cleaned and polished their weapons as though their lives depended on it. No part of their attire, from their leather boots to the white surplices worn over their armour had been neglected, and both boys cut a fine figure as they made their circuit of the walls.

‘Interesting times, eh?’ said Nemiel, looking down on a troop of newly-invested soldiers as they marched across the vast plateau created by the Mechanicum’s crawlers in preparation for the Emperor’s arrival. Scores of groups drilled, marched or practised assaults in the glare of the noonday sun, and many more trained within the walls of the fortress, something that would have been unthinkable a month ago.

Zahariel nodded. ‘Didn’t you say that was supposed to be a curse?’

‘It was, but what else would you call these days?’

‘Wondrous,’ said Zahariel. ‘Uplifting, exciting.’

‘Oh, I won’t deny that, cousin,’ said Nemiel, ‘but aren’t you just a little unsettled by how quickly it’s all happening?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel, gesturing over the expanse of cleared land before the fortress. ‘I mean, look at what’s happening here. We’ve been reunited with Terra, something we’ve all dreamt of for… well, I don’t know how long, but as long as we’ve been able to tell tales of it. Everything we’ve wanted has come to pass and you’re questioning it?’

‘Not questioning it,’ said Nemiel, holding up his hands. ‘Just… I don’t know… expressing caution. That’s only sensible, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ allowed Zahariel, crossing his arms and leaning over the tall parapets. Pillars of smoke scored the distant horizon, and he knew that vast tracts of land had been cleared for the raising of giant factory complexes and worker settlements.

He had ridden out to one of those complexes a few days ago and had been shocked by the scale of industry the Mechanicum had unleashed: great scars ripped in the sides of the mountains and thousands of acres of forestland torn down to make way for construction.

Like it or not, the surface of Caliban would never be the same again.

‘Yes,’ said Zahariel at last, ‘it is happening very quickly, I’ll grant you, but it’s all for the greater good. As part of the Imperium, we have a duty to provide what bounty our world has to the Great Crusade.’

‘Indeed we do,’ agreed Nemiel, joining him at the wall, ‘but it’s a shame it has to be like this, isn’t it?’

Zahariel nodded as Nemiel pointed at the boxy structures dotted around the outskirts of the fortress: barracks, weapons stores, mess halls and vehicle parks. Ugly grey boxes on tracks were parked there, vehicles that were called Chimeras by the Imperials. They were noisy and uncomfortable to ride in, and they churned the ground they crossed to ruined mud.

There was no nobility to them, and even their very name struck a chord of unease in Zahariel after so long fearing such beasts in the dark forests of Caliban.

‘You can’t tell me you’re happy about sharing Aldurukh with any old peasant? The new Lord Cypher’s about to bust a gut at the thought.’

‘I’ll admit that it feels strange, but I truly believe it’s for the better. Come on, aren’t you glad that we’ve been selected for the final Astartes trials?’

Nemiel flashed a smile, and his cousin’s old arrogance resurfaced. ‘Of course, didn’t I tell you we’d be in there?’

‘Yes, you did, cousin,’ smiled Zahariel. ‘Once again you were right.’

‘It’s a habit,’ said Nemiel.

‘Don’t get used to it,’ warned Zahariel. ‘I have a feeling we’ll be wrong more than right, the more we learn of the Imperium.’

‘How so?’

‘Just the other day, I said to Brother Israfael that the Emperor was like a god. I thought he was going to have a seizure.’

‘Really?’

Zahariel nodded and said, ‘Aye, he clamped his hands on my shoulders and told me never to say such a thing again. He told me that it’s part of their mission to put an end to such mystical nonsense, gods and daemons and the like.’

‘They don’t believe in things like that?’

‘No,’ said Zahariel emphatically, ‘they don’t, and they don’t like others who do.’

‘That sounds a bit close-minded.’

‘I suppose,’ admitted Zahariel, ‘but what if they’re right?’

Nemiel turned from the wall and said, ‘Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but it strikes me that one should always have an open mind when it comes to the unknown.’

‘Since when did you become cautious?’ asked Zahariel. ‘You’re normally the first one to leap without looking.’

Nemiel laughed. ‘I know, I must be getting wise in my old age.’

‘You’re fifteen, the same as me.’

‘Then I suppose I’ve been listening more, recently.’

Zahariel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Listening to whom?’

‘People in the Order,’ said Nemiel. ‘Senior people.’

‘And what are these senior people saying?’ asked Zahariel.

‘Best you hear for yourself,’ said Nemiel, the earnestness in his eyes surprising Zahariel, who had only ever known his cousin to be flippant.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is a gathering tonight,’ said Nemiel, ‘a gathering I think you ought to be part of.’

‘Where?’

‘Meet me at the Cloister Gate of the Circle Chamber at last bells and I’ll show you.’

‘This sounds secretive,’ said Zahariel. ‘It sounds like trouble.’

‘Promise me you’ll come.’

Zahariel took his time in answering, but the look in his cousin’s eyes made the decision for him.

Zahariel said, ‘Very well, I’ll come.’

‘Excellent,’ said Nemiel, his relief obvious. ‘You won’t regret it.’

The echo of the last bell had barely faded when Zahariel found himself before the Cloister Gate, the lamp wicks turned down and the seneschals who swept the passageways absent for now. Though he couldn’t say why, Zahariel had chosen to avoid being seen by anyone, understanding without anything having been said that secrecy was the watchword for this journey.

He couldn’t deny there was an illicit thrill at the idea of this clandestine meeting, a sense of rebellion that appealed to his youthful spirit. The Cloister Gate was closed, and Zahariel checked to left and right to see if he was being observed, before padding across the corridor and flattening himself against the warm wood of the door.

He tested the handle, not surprised to find it unlocked, and gently pushed down on the black iron, pressing his back against the door to open it. The door creaked, and he winced at the sound, slipping through and closing it as soon as a wide enough gap had opened.

Zahariel pressed himself against the wood and turned to the centre of the chamber.

Little light filled the Circle Chamber, only a few candles burning low upon iron candelabras around the raised plinth’s circumference. The stained glass of the tall windows glittered in the flickering light, and the eyes of the painted heroes seemed to stare down at him in accusation at his trespass.

He silently asked their forgiveness as he ventured into the chamber, casting his gaze left and right as he searched for any sign of Nemiel. Shadows cloaked much of the chamber in darkness, the fitful light of the candles unable to reach much past the first few rows of stone benches.

‘Nemiel?’ he whispered, freezing in place as the acoustics of the chamber carried his voice to its furthest reaches.

He called his cousin’s name once more, but again, no answer was forthcoming from the darkness. Zahariel shook his head at his foolishness for agreeing to this meeting. Whatever game Nemiel was playing would have to be played without him.

He turned away from the stone benches and started as he saw Nemiel standing at the centre of the raised plinth.

‘There you are,’ said Nemiel with a smile.

Nemiel stood with the hood of his surplice raised, his features hidden in a wreath of dancing shadows. But for his voice and posture, it would have been impossible to tell who had spoken. Nemiel carried a hooded lantern which cast a warm light around the lowest level of the chamber.

Zahariel quelled his annoyance at his cousin’s theatrics and said, ‘Very well, I’m here, now what is it you want to show me?’

Nemiel beckoned him to climb up to the central plinth of the Circle Chamber, and Zahariel chewed his bottom lip. To climb the stairs would be to go along with whatever Nemiel had planned, and he sensed that a threshold would be crossed that might only be one way.

‘Come on,’ urged Nemiel, ‘you can’t keep the gathering waiting.’

Zahariel nodded and climbed the worn stone steps that led to the plinth where only the masters of the Order were permitted to walk. He felt curiously lightheaded as he climbed up and took his first step onto the smooth marble of the plinth.

Level with his cousin, Zahariel saw why he had not seen him when he had first entered the Circle Chamber.

Nemiel stood beside a stone staircase that wound downwards in a spiral through the centre of the Circle Chamber. Clearly, his cousin had climbed from whatever chamber lay below this one, though Zahariel had not known of the existence of these stairs or any secret place beneath.

‘Put your hood up,’ said Nemiel.

Zahariel complied with his cousin’s request and said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Below the Circle Chamber,’ said Nemiel, ‘to the Inner Circle.’

The interior of the stairwell was dark, only a fitful light from Nemiel’s lantern illuminating their descent into the depths. Nemiel led the way and Zahariel followed, his trepidation growing with every downward step.

‘Tell me where we are going,’ he said.

‘You’ll soon see,’ replied Nemiel without turning. ‘We’re almost there.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘Be patient, cousin,’ said Nemiel, and Zahariel cursed his cousin’s obtuse answers.

Knowing he would get nothing more from Nemiel, he kept his counsel as they continued, and he counted over a thousand steps before they finally reached the bottom.

The stairway opened up into a brick-walled chamber with a low, vaulted roof, which was bare of all ornamentation. Like the chamber above, it was circular, the stairway piercing the centre of its roof. A number of oil lamps hung from the ceiling at each of the compass points, and beneath each lamp stood a hooded figure in a white surplice.

The figures stood motionless, their features hidden in the shadows of their hoods, and their arms folded across their chests. Zahariel could not help but notice that each one carried a ceremonial dagger, identical to the kind used in the Order’s initiation ceremonies.

The surplices the figures wore were bereft of insignia, and Zahariel looked to his cousin for some indication of what was going on.

‘This is your cousin?’ asked one of the figures.

‘It is,’ confirmed Nemiel. ‘I’ve spoken to him and I believe he shares our… concerns.’

‘Good,’ said a second figure. ‘There will be consequences if he does not.’

Zahariel felt his anger rise and said, ‘I didn’t come here to be threatened.’

‘I was not talking about consequences for you, boy,’ said the second figure.

Zahariel shrugged and said, ‘Why am I here? What is this?’

‘This,’ said the first man, ‘is a gathering of the Inner Circle. We are here to talk about the future of our world. Nemiel tells us that you enjoy the special favour of the Lion, and if that is so, you might be an important ally to us.’

‘Special favour?’ said Zahariel. ‘We have spoken a few times, but we have no great closeness, not like the Lion and Luther.’

‘Yet you both rode with him when the angels came,’ said the third figure, ‘and you will march alongside him as part of his honour guard when the Emperor arrives.’

‘What?’ gasped Zahariel. That was news to him.

‘It will be announced tomorrow,’ said the first figure. ‘You see now why we had your cousin bring you here?’

‘Not really,’ confessed Zahariel, ‘but say what you have to say and I will listen.’

‘It is not enough that you listen. Before we go any further, we should be sure we are all agreed on our course of action. Once we are committed, there is no going back.’

‘Going back from what?’ asked Zahariel.

‘From stopping the Imperium taking Caliban from us!’ snapped the third man, and Zahariel saw hints of a hawkish face and prominent chin beneath the man’s hood.

‘Taking Caliban from us?’ said Zahariel. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We have to stop them,’ said the second figure. ‘If we do not, they will destroy us. All our dreams, our traditions, our culture will be torn down and replaced with lies.’

‘We are not the only ones who see these things,’ said the third man. ‘Do you know, I reprimanded a wall sentry today for being lax in his duties, and he talked back to me? I have never known the like of it. He said we didn’t need to guard the walls anymore, because the Imperium was coming to protect us.’

‘It was the same in my order before we were disbanded,’ growled the second man, and Zahariel realised that these were men of different knightly brotherhoods, not just from the Order. ‘The supplicants would not listen to their masters, too eager to submit to the Astartes trials. It is as if the entire world has gone mad and forgotten our past.’

‘But they are showing us the future,’ protested Zahariel.

‘Which only goes to prove the cleverness of our enemies,’ said the first man. ‘Imagine if they had been more honest about their intentions and made clear from the first that they intended to invade us. All Caliban would have risen up in arms, but instead, they were more subtle, claiming that they came to help us. They say they are our lost brothers, and we welcome them with open arms. It is a cunning stratagem. By the time the majority of our people realise what has really been going on, it will be too late to change things. The oppressor’s boot will already be at our throat and we will have helped put it there.’

‘True, but remember it also demonstrates their weakness,’ said the third man. ‘Keep that fact in mind. If they were confident they could conquer us easily, there would be no need for this subterfuge. No, our enemy is not as all-powerful as they would have us believe. To hell with their flying machines and their First Legion, we are the knights of Caliban. We destroyed the great beasts. We can drive these damn interlopers away.’

Zahariel could not believe what he was hearing. Hadn’t these knights heard of the Emperor’s Great Crusade? Knowing of the glory and honour that could be won, why wouldn’t anyone want to join it?

‘This is madness!’ said Zahariel. ‘How can you even think of making war against the Imperium? Their weapons are far superior and the walls of the fortress monasteries will be smashed down in a day.’

‘Then we will retreat to the forests,’ roared the third man. ‘From there we can launch lightning attacks and disappear back into the woods before the enemy can counter-attack successfully. Remember the words of the Verbatim. “The warrior should choose the ground on which he will fight with an eye to strengthening his own efforts and unbalancing the best efforts of his enemy”.’

‘We all know the Verbatim,’ replied the first man. ‘The point I was trying to make is that we cannot win this battle on our own. We need to rally the whole of Caliban against the invader. Only then can we hope to win this war.’

‘We need to create an event that will let the people see the true face of our enemy,’ said the second man. ‘We need to get them to look past all the surface smiles and mealy-mouthed words, to the evil hidden within.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ the first agreed, ‘and we must do it quickly, before our enemy can strengthen their hold on our world any further. I am sure, given long enough, the enemy will inevitably show its true colours to the people of Caliban. But time is not on our side. We may need to speed events along.’

‘What in the name of the Lion are you suggesting?’ demanded Zahariel.

‘I am saying it would help our cause if the enemy committed an act of terror so vile it would immediately turn every right-thinking soul on Caliban against them.’

‘Then you will be waiting a long time,’ snapped Zahariel. ‘The Imperium would never do something like that. You are wasting your breath and my time with this talk.’

‘You misunderstand me, boy,’ said the man. ‘I am saying that we should stage the act on their behalf and make sure they are blamed for it.’

There was silence as the others digested his words.

‘You want to create an atrocity and blame it on the Imperium?’ said Zahariel. ‘Nemiel? You can’t possibly agree with this!’

‘What choice do we have, cousin?’ responded Nemiel, though Zahariel could see that he was unconvinced by the words spoken in this secret conclave, and was as shocked as he was.

‘The Imperium is not to be trusted,’ said the first man. ‘We know they are plotting to enslave us and take our world for themselves. They are not men of honour. Therefore, I say we can only fight them by using their sly, underhand methods against them. We must fight fire with fire. It is the only way we will defeat them.’

‘You are talking about killing our own people,’ said Zahariel.

‘No, I am talking about saving them. Do you think it is better we do nothing? Especially when, by our inaction, we may be condemning future generations of Caliban’s children to slavery. Granted, the course I propose will result in a few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand deaths, but in the long term we will be saving many more millions of lives. More importantly, we would be preserving our planet, our traditions, and the way of life gifted to us by our forefathers. I ask you, is that not worth a few deaths?’

‘Those who die will be seen as martyrs,’ said the third man. ‘By the sacrifice of their lives we would be ensuring our planet’s freedom.’

‘Yes, that is a good way to put it,’ agreed the first, ‘martyrs. They die so that Caliban can be free. I know our views are not popular, Zahariel, but this will make them more palatable, so that when the time comes our people will fall into step behind us. This act will show our enemy in the worst possible light and incite hatred against them.’

Zahariel looked at the four men in disbelief, amazed they thought he might join with them in this madness. Of the four hooded men surrounding him, one had not yet voiced any opinion, and Zahariel turned to this figure.

‘What of you, brother?’ he asked the fourth man. ‘You have listened to this insanity and you have chosen to remain silent. It is not acceptable for you to stay quiet at such times. I must ask your opinion, brother. In fact, I demand it.’

‘I understand,’ said the fourth man after a short pause. ‘Very well, if you want my opinions, here they are. I agree with almost everything that has been said. I agree we must take action against our enemy. Also, given the strength of the forces arrayed against us, we must suspend the rules of honour. This is a war we cannot afford to lose, therefore we must dispense with scruples and commit acts we would normally find dishonourable.’

‘Well spoken, brother,’ nodded the first man, ‘but there is something else? You indicated you agreed with almost everything we said. With what do you disagree?’

‘Merely on a matter of tactics,’ said the fourth man. ‘You talked of staging an act of atrocity, creating an incident so terrible it will turn our people against the Imperium, but I would argue for a more straightforward attack.’

The atmosphere in the chamber seemed to Zahariel to become thicker and darker, as though the light fled from what was being discussed.

‘With a single act, we can deal a crippling blow to enemy morale,’ said the fourth man. ‘Perhaps, if we are truly fortunate, we might even win our war in one fell swoop.’

‘This act you speak of?’ the first man asked. ‘What is it?’

‘It is obvious, really,’ the fourth man said. ‘It is one of the first tactical lessons in the Verbatim. “To kill a serpent, you cut off its head”.’

Zahariel realised the truth a moment before the others. ‘You can’t mean…?’

‘Precisely,’ answered the fourth man. ‘We must kill the Emperor.’

The words echoed in Zahariel’s skull, but he could not quite believe that he had heard them. Yet, as he looked from one hooded figure to the next, he could find nothing to indicate that these men were anything but serious. He felt his gorge rise at such base treachery and wanted nothing more than to get as far away from this place as possible.

He turned from the gathered figures without a word and began to climb the stairs back through the darkness to the Circle Chamber above. From below, he heard raised voices and urgent imprecations, but he ignored them and carried on upwards.

Zahariel’s anger burned like a hot coal in his breast. How could these men have thought he would join them in their mad scheme? And Nemiel… had his cousin lost his reason?

He heard hurried footsteps on the stairs behind him, and turned to face the climber below him, sliding his hand towards the hilt of the knife at his belt. If these conspirators meant to do him harm, they would find him waiting with his blade bared.

A light built from below and shadows climbed ahead of his pursuer.

Zahariel drew his knife and braced himself to fight.

The light drew closer and he let out a breath as he saw that Nemiel climbed from below, the hooded lantern held before him.

‘Whoa, cousin!’ said Nemiel, seeing the knife blade gleaming in the darkness.

‘Nemiel,’ said Zahariel, lowering the knife.

‘Well that was… intense,’ said Nemiel. ‘Don’t you think that was intense?’

‘That’s one word for it,’ said Zahariel, resuming his climb as he sheathed his blade. ‘Treachery is another.’

‘Treachery?’ said Nemiel. ‘I think you’re making too much of this. It’s just some diehards venting some steam. They’re not really going to do anything.’

‘Then why did they get you to bring me here?’

‘To gauge your response I suppose,’ said Nemiel. ‘Listen, you must have heard the talk that’s doing the rounds now that the knightly orders have been disbanded. Folk aren’t happy with it, and they need to grumble. Any time there’s change, people like to grouse about it and fantasise about what they’d do.’

‘They were talking about killing the Emperor!’

‘Oh come on,’ laughed Nemiel, ‘how many times when we were in training did we say that we hated Master Ramiel and hoped that a beast would eat him?’

‘That’s different.’

‘How so?’

‘We were children, Nemiel. They are grown warriors. It’s not the same thing at all.’

‘Maybe it is different, but they’re not really going to try to kill the Emperor, it would be suicide. You’ve seen how tough the Astartes are, so imagine how much tougher the Emperor is. If the Emperor is as magnificent as the Astartes say, then he’s got nothing to worry about.’

‘That’s not the point, Nemiel, and you know it,’ said Zahariel as he continued to climb.

‘Then what is the point, cousin?’

‘If this is just talk, fine, I will forget you brought me here and that I heard treason plotted within the walls of our fortress, but if it’s not, I will make sure the Lion knows of it.’

‘You would renounce me to the Lion?’ asked Nemiel, hurt.

‘Unless you can convince the men below to cease this talk,’ said Zahariel. ‘It’s dangerous and could get people killed.’

‘It’s just talk,’ promised Nemiel.

‘Then it stops now,’ said Zahariel, turning to face his cousin. ‘You understand me?’

‘Yes, Zahariel, I understand,’ said Nemiel, his head cast down. ‘I’ll speak to them.’

‘Then we’ll say no more of this.’

‘Right,’ agreed Nemiel. ‘We’ll say no more of it. I promise.’

Seventeen

It began with a day like no other.

In all the history of Caliban, in the annals of the knightly orders, in the folktales of the common people, there would never be another day like it.

There would be other momentous days, it was true. There would be darker days ahead as part of an era of death and destruction, but this day was different. This was a day of joy. It was a day of happiness and excitement, a day of hope.

It was the day the Emperor descended from the heavens.

It would become known as the beginning of the time of angels.

At this moment, though, that name was unknown.

Giants, Astartes, First Legion, all these names would be used to refer to the newcomers, but as the day of the Emperor’s descent dawned, the people of Caliban resorted to a name with mythic resonance.

They called them Terrans once more.

It was a good name, for it spoke of humanity’s lost birthright and the origin of the first settlers who had come to Caliban. For two hundred generations, ever since the fall of Old Night, stories of ancient Terra had been told around the hearth-fires of Caliban. Now, those stories were real. They had been given visceral form in the armoured shapes of giants.

The moment of discovery, the moment when the Astartes made first contact with the people of Caliban, was already being mythologised. A vast tree of myth would sprout from the tiny seed of real experience. There would be different stories and competing legends. All too soon, the truth of how it actually happened would be forgotten.

But Zahariel knew he would never forget the truth of that day, for he had been in the deep forest with Lion El’Jonson and Luther when it had occurred.

That Luther had been the first to call them angels was true, for the Astartes had descended on pinions of fiery wings. It was a phrase uttered in the heat of the moment, provoked by wonder and amazement, but Jonson had remembered his words and kept them close to his heart.

Zahariel and the others in the riding party were already being pushed to obscurity, the story needing grander players than them to tell such lofty histories. In time, his name and deeds would be lost, and though his part in the story would soon be pushed aside in the countless retellings, he was not saddened, for he knew that the story was what mattered, not the players who stalked in its background.

In any event, the truth of the tale hardly mattered.

The people of Caliban wanted stories. They needed them. So much was changing in so short a period that they felt the need to be anchored back to reality. Zahariel knew that stories helped them to make sense of their lives.

Of course, there would be dozens of different stories all claiming to be the truth, but in some ways that made his exclusion easier. With so many versions of what had happened that day, each person could pick the one that suited them best. Some would be ribald, others reverential, some full of adventure and others more prosaic.

All would agree on one matter, however.

The name of this tale would remain the same. From the far northern mountains to the great oceans of the south, no matter the variation within the narrative, it would always be known by the same title.

It would be known as the Descent of Angels.

Following the arrival of the angels, wonders and miracles had been shared by those who had come from the stars. But greater even than those was news that the creator of the angels, the Emperor, would descend in all his glory.

In the wake of his arrival, nothing on Caliban would ever be the same.

Zahariel watched the tens of thousands of people as they filled the mighty arena, cleared before the walls of the Order’s fortress monastery. He had never seen such an assemblage of people in one place, and the presence of so many gathered in joy was like a roaring pressure in his head. Come to think of it, he had never seen such a vast open space before, the vistas of Caliban being primarily unbroken swathes of forest, but the machines of the Mechanicum had been thorough in their destructive creativity.

The enormous metal behemoths had rolled across the landscape, slicing down trees and stripping away their branches. Those same machines then swept across the land they had cleared once more, this time uprooting tree stumps and levelling the ground until the whole area was as smooth as the flat of a blade. The tree logs left over from the process were deposited in immense stacks by the side of the newly created clearing to be used as lumber, while the roots and branches were reduced to wood chip to be burned in massive bonfires.

It had been almost apocalyptic, the smoke, the red glow of the fires and the great metal machines so large as to be monstrous. Looking at them, Zahariel was put in mind of the great beasts of Caliban, though those monsters had been hunted to extinction.

Zahariel could hardly believe the good fortune that saw him here on this day of days, for the entire strength of the Order was assembled here, as well as senior knights from those knightly orders that had been gathered together under the banner of the Astartes.

He recalled the words of the hooded men in the room beneath the Circle Chamber and shivered, despite the heat of the day. He had not seen Nemiel this morning, and he was glad, for he was still angry that his cousin had dragged him to that dangerous conclave of rancorous malcontents.

To see such martial power gathered in one place was humbling, for though the knights of Caliban were strong and proud, they were as striplings compared to the might of the Astartes.

Towering giants, the Astartes were golems of men, though to call them men seemed a gross disservice, so removed were they from any common humanity. They soared above Zahariel, their armour burnished black and gleaming, and their voices so gruff and deep that it seemed wholly unnatural that they issue from human mouths.

Even without their armour, they were enormous, more so, for while encased in plate, Zahariel could almost believe that the majority of their bulk was artificial. Seeing them without their armour, such doubts were removed.

Midris had been the first of the Astartes to be seen without his armour, his body massive and lumpen, his flesh packed with too much muscle and hard bone as to be almost without shape or definition. Robed in a simple cream body-sheath, Midris had arms and legs like the great trees of the Northwilds, and the muscles of his shoulders rose to either side of his cranium without apparent recourse to a neck.

One Astartes was impressive enough, but over a thousand of them filled the great space, surrounding it like great black statues, and hundreds more ringed the great amphitheatre at the centre of the plain that had been bulldozed flat by the Mechanicum.

Today was the day the Emperor would descend to Caliban, and Zahariel could barely contain his excitement. Nemiel would be jealous of Zahariel’s inclusion in the Lion’s honour guard, but such was the lot of their friendship and rivalry.

His armour was polished to a reflective sheen, its ancient technologies hardly the equal of the Astartes’ mighty armour. But on this day of days, such differences hardly mattered.

The angle of the ground and the press of bodies around him as he marched through the crowd prevented him from seeing the Lion, but Zahariel knew the Grand Master of the Order was ahead of him without being able to lay eyes upon him.

Cheers and adoring faces pointed the way to the Lion as surely as an illuminated sign, and though it was unusual for their taciturn leader to walk amongst the common folk of Caliban, Luther had suggested it as a means of ensuring that the Emperor knew he was a man of the people, that he was loved by all.

An excited hubbub filled the air, for who would not want to see a being of such magnificence that he could command the likes of the Astartes and inspire such devotion in them? A being with the vision, drive and power to set out on the reconquest of the galaxy was surely to be revered, and perhaps even feared, for what singular purpose of violence must surely lie at his heart?

The thought had risen in Zahariel’s mind unbidden, and he recalled again the secret meeting of last night. His expression turned grim as he thought of the sentiments espoused there, but he satisfied himself with knowing that he had forestalled the seditious talk of the warriors gathered in the deep vaults of the fortress monastery with his threat of exposure to the Lion.

Seeing his gleaming armour, the crowds parted before him, and he nodded in appreciation at the respect accorded to his status as a knight of the Order. The sense of fevered anticipation among the people of the crowd was palpable, and their excitement passed to him so easily that it was like an electric charge running around his body. All here gathered knew they were witnesses to history, the passage of which only rarely allowed the ordinary man the chance to witness its unfolding.

At last he reached the outer circle of knights surrounding the Lion, and Zahariel felt his pulse increase as he stepped towards his fellows. Though much younger than most of them, they parted respectfully before him, allowing him to pass into the clear space between the outer and inner circles.

The senior masters of the Order gathered like supplicants around the Lion, their bearing regal and majestic, but still as children compared to the mighty warrior at their centre.

Zahariel had no doubt that Lion El’Jonson was the single most gifted and remarkable human being who had ever lived. Each time he looked at the Lion he felt exactly the same sensation, a sheer mass of presence that seemed to press inside his skull by some mystical osmosis to create a feeling of wellbeing and trust.

More than that, he felt something else entirely…

Awe, he felt awe.

The Lion was a truly imposing physical specimen. A giant, standing at a little under three metres tall, it was impossible to escape the suspicion that he had been cut from a broader canvas than the majority of men. His body was perfectly proportioned and entirely in scale with his height. He was powerfully built, lithe yet muscular.

Given that the people of Caliban had black hair for the most part, the Lion’s most arresting feature at first sight was the russet golden shade of his hair. The combined effect of his physical characteristics paled into inconsequence, however, in comparison with his more intangible qualities.

Jonson exuded a raw majesty, an unspoken aura of such magnetic authority that it was clear from the very first instance why Sar Luther had chosen to give him the name ‘Lion’. There was no other name that could ever have possibly fitted him.

He was the Lion. No word could have better described him.

As Zahariel approached, the Lion turned to him and gave a brief nod of his head, an unspoken acknowledgment of the brotherhood they shared.

Zahariel greeted his companions, knights who in years past had been distant, unreachable figures of authority and might. Now they were his brothers, by virtue and by valour. His past life of insignificance was over. His new life as a member of the Order had begun in blood and would no doubt end the same way.

‘At last we are assembled. We can go,’ said Lord Cypher, a note of impatience audible in his powerful tones.

‘There’s no rush,’ said the Lion, his voice deeply musical and filled with sonorous tones that seemed to seep beneath a listener’s skin and thrill the nerve endings below. ‘My… the Emperor is not yet arrived.’

‘Nevertheless we should be ready,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘The proper traditions and protocols must be followed as always. Now more than ever in these times of change.’

Zahariel smiled at the fresh tones of this new Lord Cypher and caught an amused glance from the tall, powerful warrior who stood next to the Lion.

Sar Luther had been Jonson’s boon companion and closest brother in all things since the day he had discovered the feral wildman in the forest. A great man, Luther was still dwarfed by the Lion’s stature, but his broad shoulders and open face were those of a man who bore no ill-feelings to his mightier brother.

‘Ready?’ asked Luther. ‘I have a feeling this might be an interesting day.’

‘Interesting…’ said Zahariel. ‘Let’s hope not too interesting.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Luther.

‘Nothing,’ replied Zahariel. ‘Just making conversation.’

Luther looked askance at him, sensing there was more to his comment than he was letting on, but content to allow him his secrets.

‘Come,’ said Lord Cypher, ‘it is time.’

Zahariel looked into the sky, seeing a dim glow building behind the clouds. An excited ripple spread through the crowd as heads turned to the skies. Only the Astartes encircling the mighty arena kept their gaze resolutely fixed on the crowd, and Zahariel had the distinct impression that they were looking for someone or something.

Even on a planet that had welcomed the coming of the Astartes and the Emperor, these warriors never relaxed their guard and never flinched from their duty, and Zahariel was filled with admiration for the great warriors from beyond the stars.

His musings were interrupted as the Lion set off towards the amphitheatre at the centre of the cleared space, a twin line of knights holding open a path through the cheering crowds. Zahariel almost missed step with the warriors around him, but recovered well enough for no one to notice his momentary hesitation.

Faces surrounded him, the people of Caliban wild and ecstatic to have been reunited with their ancestral brothers, the root race of their culture, and brightly coloured banners flew above their heads. They had lived in fear of the beasts for too long, and of the wars between the knightly orders and the countless other dangers that could part a man from his life, but now they had something to look forward to. An age of peace and prosperity beckoned, for what could the technology and resources of the Imperium not achieve?

With such tools available and such men to wield them, what undreamt of glories might be attained?

His mind filled with such heady thoughts that Zahariel almost missed the sudden vertiginous sense of cold purpose that slithered down his spine.

Dread suddenly seized him, for no reason that he could explain, until he saw the face that stood apart from the expressions of hope and wonder in the crowd.

The man stood out by virtue of the seriousness etched into his face, the intent written in every line and crease of his skin. His eyes were fixed on the marching honour guard, and even amid a sea of cheering faces, Zahariel could pick out the man’s face as he kept pace with them towards the arena.

There was something familiar to the cast of his features, but the memory of how he knew them eluded Zahariel until a shadow fell across the man’s face and he recognised the hawkish nose and prominent chin.

The question of how the man was able to move through the crowd with such ease was answered when Zahariel caught a glint of armour beneath a plain woollen cloak, and suddenly he knew where he had seen the man before.

He remembered the vaulted room beneath the Circle Chamber, the lanterns at the compass points and a hooded confraternity of flagitious discussion. Hooded surplices had been worn, but enough light had lit the interior of one hood to illuminate a face… a face that moved with sinister purpose towards the great podium where the Lion and the Emperor would meet face to face.

Thoughts tumbled through his mind like a body in a torrential river that bounced from the rocks as it was carried towards a roaring waterfall.

Fear rose in him as he realised that his words to Nemiel had clearly not been as convincing as he had thought, that the warriors gathered in the depths of the fortress had not been as swayed by his threats of exposure as he had supposed.

He turned to issue a warning, but the words were stillborn in his throat as he realised that he and Nemiel would be implicated in whatever mischief this man had in mind. Who would believe that their presence had been innocent, that he had been lured with promises of open discussion on the future of Caliban?

Zahariel felt a suffocating fear rise in his gullet and a hot rush of nausea settle in his belly as he realised with utter certainty that something terrible was soon to happen. Caught twixt guilt and fear, he made a bold decision and broke step with his brothers.

Surprised gasps greeted his departure from the honour guard, and he felt Lord Cypher’s angry glare on his back as he marched with grim purpose towards the line of knights holding back the crowds.

Each warrior wore an enclosing helmet and hooded surplice, but Zahariel could feel their surprise and shock in their sudden stiffening of pose. They parted before him, not knowing what else to do, and Zahariel scanned the faces and heads of the crowd as he pushed his way deeper through the mass of bodies.

For a terrible moment, he thought his quarry had evaded him, but caught the purposeful glide of the man’s head, moving against the direction of the crowd’s adoration.

Zahariel made his way forwards, one hand pushing people out of his way, the other gripping his sword hilt. A rush of emotions flooded him, a potent mix of fear and betrayal.

Didn’t this traitor realise the magnitude of what he planned? Didn’t he see the ultimate folly of his course?

As the distance closed, it seemed as though his target became aware of him. A hurried glance over his shoulder and their eyes met over the bobbing, smiling faces of the crowd. A light built in the heavens and heads were turned upwards in joy and rapture, but Zahariel had no time for such sights, his attention fixed on the man before him.

Though he moved with purpose, his posture was stooped, as though he bore some great weight, and his pace was slower, much slower, than Zahariel’s.

Aware of his discovery, the man pushed harder in an attempt to evade Zahariel, but as the crowd surged in response to the building light in the heavens, his passage was impeded to the point where forward movement was next to impossible.

Zahariel saw his chance and pushed through the press of bodies, sparing no thought to the damage he was doing as he cleared a path with fists and shoulders.

Angry voices berated him, but he ignored them, too intent on his prey.

The man tried to force a path through the crowd, but alerted to the presence of troublemakers in their midst, the people gelled before him, becoming an impenetrable barrier of angry faces and raised voices.

Zahariel reached out and grabbed a handful of the man’s cloak, turning him around and pulling him off balance. The light above him built, bathing everything in a golden glow, and it seemed as though a great, searing spotlight was trained upon them.

‘Get away from me!’ howled the man, his cloak pulled aside to reveal the shimmering glow of light upon his breastplate. As Zahariel feared, the man was a knight of the Order.

‘I won’t let you do this!’ said Zahariel, sending a thunderous left hook into the man’s face. He fell back, but the press of the crowd prevented him from falling.

‘You don’t understand,’ said the man, struggling in Zahariel’s grip. The crowd pulled away from them and Zahariel pushed closer to the man, pressed chest to chest with his adversary as they grappled. ‘It has to be this way!’

The man was broader and taller than Zahariel, older and more experienced, but his discovery had robbed him of conviction. He tried to turn away from Zahariel, tearing the cloak from his shoulders as he did so. Zahariel saw that the man carried a canvas satchel across his back that clearly bore some considerable weight.

Hampered by his burden, the knight could not fight as effectively as Zahariel, despite the clear difference in age and experience. Zahariel threw another punch at the man’s face, breaking his nose and sending a squirt of blood in a high arc.

More cries of alarm circled them, and Zahariel followed his punch by hooking his leg behind that of his opponent and slamming a shoulder into his chest.

The stricken knight fell, dragging Zahariel with him as they crashed to the ground, clawing and punching at one another. The satchel tore at the sudden movement of the heavy weight within, and six discs of bare, matt-finished metal clattered onto the ground.

They were simple in appearance, each no more than thirty centimetres across, a few centimetres thick, and equipped with a rubberised grip on one face. Though he did not know what they were called, he had learned enough in his time with the instructors of the Imperium to know that the pictographic symbols on their faces denoted explosives.

Zahariel’s elbow hammered the knight’s jaw as they hit the ground and he followed up the blow with a cracking right cross to the cheek.

‘It’s over!’ he yelled. ‘It was just talk! You were to stay your hand!’

His opponent could not reply, his face a wreckage of blood and broken bone, illuminated by the golden glow from the heavens. Even through the damage, his eyes widened in amazement, wet with tears.

Despite himself, Zahariel turned his head to see what might provoke such wonder in one so wounded, and his mouth fell open and slack as he saw a great floating city descending from the heavens.

Like a mountainous spire shorn from the side of some basalt landmass, the city was studded with light and colour, its dimensions enormous beyond imagining. A great, eagle-winged prow of gold marked one end of the floating city, and towering battlements like the highest towers of the mightiest citadel flared like gnarled stalagmites from the other.

His opponent struggled weakly beneath him, but their fight was forgotten as the crowd turned its full attention on the mighty vessel above them and the flock of smaller airships that surrounded it as it descended in fire and light.

Mighty winds whipped around the surface of the planet, whatever means the great spire utilised to stay aloft generating a terrifying, exhilarating downdraught of force.

Shadows played over him and he looked up to see the broad outline of a giant standing over him, its bulk massive and threatening.

Astartes…

Though no outward change had been manifested in the appearance of the Astartes warrior, Zahariel suddenly felt an overwhelming terror engulf him at the sheer physical threat.

Where before the Astartes had been benign giants, albeit with the clear potential for great violence, this potential was now unbound. A gauntlet seized his throat and yanked him from his opponent. His feet dangled and his throat ceased to draw air as the pressure on his neck increased.

The power in the Astartes was immense, and Zahariel knew that with a tiny fraction of movement, his neck could be snapped like kindling.

Through greying vision, Zahariel saw yet more of the Astartes warriors as they unceremoniously scooped up his fallen opponent.

‘What do you have, Midris?’ asked one of the newly arrived giants.

The warrior looked straight into his eyes and Zahariel felt the fury of the warrior’s hatred burning through the red lenses of his helmet as consciousness faded to blackness.

‘Traitors,’ spat Midris.

Eighteen

When Zahariel awoke, it was to find himself in a gleaming cell of bare metal walls illuminated with a soft, off-white glow that had no obvious source. He lay on a metal shelf set into the wall, and as he took a breath, he winced at the painful constriction in his throat. He remembered the Astartes Midris holding him at arm’s length like a piece of refuse and the feeling of anger that had radiated from the warrior like a physical blow.

He remembered the word traitor spat in his face, and he sat up quickly as he remembered the scuffle of bodies and the attempt on the Emperor’s life. Had the other conspirators also been present at the Descent of Angels? Had their vile plan succeeded?

Cold fear settled in his gut and he clutched at his throat as he fought for breath. Though he could not see it, he felt sure that his neck must be blackened with bruising from the pressure Midris had applied.

His legs dangled from the metal shelf and if this was a bed in a cell, then it was clearly designed for someone far larger than him. Looking around, he saw nothing to give any indication as to where the light was coming from or where there might be an exit. The walls were bare and smooth, gleaming and unblemished.

‘Hello,’ he rasped, the effort of speaking painful, rendering his shout little more than a wheezing gasp. ‘Is there anybody out there?’

He received no answer, and slid from the metal bed to the floor. He had been stripped of his armour and wore a simple penitent’s robe. Did this mean he had been judged guilty already?

Zahariel made a slow circuit of the room, the cell, and attempted to find an exit or some means of communicating with his gaolers. He found nothing obvious, and banged his fists against the walls, but heard little difference in the tonal quality that might indicate the existence of a door.

Eventually, by pressing his face to the cold wall opposite the shelf and looking along its length, he discovered a pair of vertical seams on the wall suggesting a door, though one without any clear means of opening.

He was no longer on Caliban, that much was certain. Was this one of the ships upon which the First Legion could travel between the stars? The walls hummed with a low resonance, and he could hear what sounded like a faint drumbeat that might have been the slow rhythm of the vessel’s mighty heart. Despite his current predicament, he had to admit that he was a little excited to have left the surface of the world of his birth.

He returned to the bed, frustrated at his inability to communicate with the outside world and protest his innocence. He had stopped the traitor from committing his act of atrocity, couldn’t they see that?

With nothing to distract his mind, his imagination conjured up all manner of dark possibilities.

Perhaps the Emperor was dead and his Astartes had wreaked terrible retribution on Caliban, razing its towns and fortresses with their great weapons.

Perhaps the knights of the Order were even now being held in cells like this, implements of torture used to extract confessions of guilt. As ludicrous as the idea of Astartes becoming torturers seemed, he could not shake the impression of hot brands, knives and all manner of terrible punishments that might be employed.

With nothing else to do, he lay back on the bed, but no sooner had he laid his head down than he felt a whisper of air shimmer across him. Zahariel looked up in time to see two Astartes enter the cell through the strange door. Both wore plain, unadorned black armour, and they hauled him from the bed without ceremony and dragged him from the cell.

Outside, Brother Israfael was waiting for him, together with another Astartes warrior in white armour, who wore an enlarged gauntlet on his right arm. They dragged him down the corridor, constructed of the same bare metal as his cell, though without the brightness of light that had woken him.

‘Please!’ he cried. ‘What are you doing? Where are you taking me?’

‘Be silent!’ said one of the Astartes who carried him, and he recognised the voice as belonging to Midris, the warrior who had hauled him from the struggling saboteur.

‘Please, Brother-Librarian Israfael, what’s going on?’

‘It would serve you best to remain silent, Zahariel,’ said Israfael as they turned a corner and dragged him towards an arched opening that led into a darkened chamber. Passing through the portal, Zahariel felt the temperature drop. He smelled a rank odour and saw his breath misting the air before him.

The only light came from the corridor he had been carried along, but as a door shut behind them, even that was taken away, and he was plunged into darkness. Armoured gauntlets hauled him upright, leaving him alone and blind in the darkness.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?’

‘Quiet,’ said a voice he didn’t recognise.

He jumped in surprise at the sound, for he was as blind as if his eyes had been plucked from their sockets. He heard footsteps circling him, but how many people were here was a mystery. He knew Israfael, Midris and the warrior in the white armour were here, as well as the other Astartes who had carried him, but were there others in the darkness too?

‘Zahariel,’ said Israfael from the darkness. ‘That is your name, yes?’

‘You know it is! Please, tell me what’s happened.’

‘Nothing,’ said Israfael. ‘Nothing has happened. The plot failed and the conspirator is being interrogated. We will soon uncover those who sought to do us harm and deal with them.’

‘I had nothing to do with it,’ said Zahariel, wrapping his arms around himself in fear. ‘I stopped him.’

‘That is the only reason you are not strapped to an excruciator table, having your secrets wrung from your flesh,’ snapped Midris. ‘Tell us everything and leave nothing out or it will go badly for you. Start with how you knew what Brother Ulient was planning.’

‘Brother Ulient? Is that his name? I didn’t know him.’

‘Then why did you pursue him in the crowd?’ asked Midris.

‘I saw his face in the crowd and… he looked, I don’t know, out of place.’

‘Out of place?’ asked Israfael. ‘Is that all? One face in thousands and you saw it?’

‘I felt something was wrong,’ said Zahariel. ‘I just knew there was something wrong in the crowd and he ran when I challenged him.’

‘You see,’ said Midris, ‘he lies. We must use pain to render his confession meaningful.’

‘Confession?’ cried Zahariel. ‘No! I’m trying to tell you what happened!’

‘Lies!’ spat Midris. ‘You were in on the plot from the beginning, admit it! You knew exactly what Ulient was planning and you panicked. You are a traitor and a coward!’

‘I’m no coward!’ snapped Zahariel.

‘But you do not deny being a traitor?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Zahariel. ‘You are twisting my words!’

‘Spoken like a true traitor,’ said Midris. ‘Why are we even bothering with this one?’

‘Because whether he is a traitor or not, he will know the identities of the other plotters,’ said Israfael. ‘One way or another he will tell us.’

‘Please! Brother Israfael,’ said Zahariel. ‘You know I am no traitor, tell them!’

The voices continued to circle him in the darkness, each one darting in like an unseen assailant to wound him with their accusations. As each barb came in, Zahariel felt his anger growing. If they were to kill him for some imagined treachery, then he would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him broken.

‘I have done nothing wrong,’ he said. ‘I am a knight of the Order.’

‘You are nothing!’ roared Midris. ‘You are a mortal who has dared to consort with the enemies of the Imperium. No fate is too harsh for one such as you.’

‘I stopped him, didn’t I?’ said Zahariel. ‘Or are you too stupid to see that?’

A hand shot out of the darkness to seize his throat, and though he could not see it, he gasped in pain as the gauntlet threatened to crush his already battered windpipe.

‘I will kill you if you speak out of turn again,’ said Midris.

‘Put him down, Midris,’ said Israfael’s voice. ‘I will look into him.’

Zahariel was dropped to the metal floor of the dark chamber and fell in a wheezing heap as he felt the presence of another warrior come near. He heard heavy footfalls and shivered as the temperature around him dropped even further.

‘Brother Israfael?’ he said hesitantly.

‘Yes, Zahariel, it is I,’ said Israfael, and Zahariel felt a bare hand settle on the top of his head, the digits massive and tingling with a strange internal motion.

He gasped as he felt a jolt of power snap through his body, as though a surge of adrenaline had washed through him. He fought against the sensation as he felt himself becoming drowsy and compliant. His defiance of this interrogation began to fade and he struggled to hold on to the feeling as he felt his memories being sifted through by some unknown presence within his mind.

Zahariel tasted metal, though his mouth was clamped shut in pain. His skull filled with bright light as whatever power Israfael was using seared its way through him.

He screamed, as white hot fingers brushed the inside of his skull, and he reached for the same power that had defeated the Beast of Endriago.

‘Get out of my head!’ he screamed, and felt the touch within him retreat at the force of his imperative. Blinking afterimages flared in his mind and he saw a glittering silver web of light form behind his eyes, the outlines of armoured warriors, their bodies limned with light in the same way as he had seen the beast.

Zahariel twisted his head and saw that the chamber was circular and an almost exact mirror of the structure of the Circle Chamber on Caliban. The edges of every surface trailed a nimbus of glittering light, like shimmering dust blown by unseen winds, and he saw the Astartes around him as clearly as though they were illuminated by spotlights.

‘I see you,’ he said.

He could see the warriors looking at each other in puzzlement, relishing their sense of unease at his burgeoning power. The glittering silver outlines of the Astartes faded and Zahariel had a fleeting impression of immense power pressing at the edges of his mind.

‘Careful, Zahariel,’ said a soothing, sourceless voice, one that eased the pain searing along his every nerve ending. ‘You are unschooled in such matters and it does not do to tap so recklessly into such power. Not even the most powerful of our breed can know the dangers of such things.’

Though he heard the words clearly, Zahariel knew they existed only for him; that Israfael, Midris and the others could not hear them. By what means they were transmitted into his head, he did not know, but he suspected it was the unknown power that had helped him to defeat the beast, one that the unknown speaker was also clearly imbued with.

No sooner had the voice soothed him than it vanished, and Zahariel gasped as Israfael said, ‘I can find what I need to know in your head without your consent, but what will be left of you afterwards will be less than you were, if anything remains at all. It would be better for you if you were to tell us everything you know willingly.’

The touch was withdrawn, and Zahariel let out a strangled moan as he collapsed to the metal decking of the floor.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’

Zahariel pushed himself to his feet and stood proudly before his accusers, determined to show no fear before their interrogation. He had faced the Lion, Luther and Lord Cypher in his ordeal of initiation to the Order and he would face this with the same determination.

The silver light that outlined everything began to fade and he told his tale in the dark.

He told them of the clandestine meeting between the conspirators in the chamber beneath the great meeting hall of Aldurukh, though Zahariel left out the part played by his cousin, knowing that to even mention Nemiel’s name would be to damn him in the eyes of the Astartes. Nemiel’s mistake had been naivety, as had his own, and he hoped these warriors would see that.

Better to be thought young and foolish than treacherous.

He spoke of the four hooded conspirators and how he had recognised the man in the crowd from the brief hint of his features that he had seen beneath his hood that night.

Zahariel then told them of the sensation of unease and cold purpose that he had sensed while walking alongside the Lion as part of his honour guard to meet the Emperor.

This time they did not question his recognition of Brother Ulient, though he could feel Brother Israfael’s interest once again piqued by his strange power to sense his presence and purpose.

They questioned him over and over on his story and each time he told them the same version of events. He could feel the presence of Brother Israfael lurking in the back of his head, his mind-touch filtering everything he said for lies or obfuscation. If Israfael sensed his vagueness in how he came to the room beneath the Circle Chamber he gave no sign of it, and Zahariel had a sudden feeling that Israfael did not want to delve too closely into that part of his story.

Zahariel had a sudden intuitive sense that Israfael wanted him to be exonerated, so that he might yet become one of the Astartes, so that he might further train him in the use of his powers. The thought made him bold and his tale surged with confidence.

Once again, he finished his tale with his tackling of Brother Ulient, and he sensed the hostility in the darkened chamber, which had once been terrifying in its intensity, diminish and change to a growing feeling of admiration.

At last, Israfael’s mind-touch withdrew and he felt a pressure he hadn’t been aware of lift from the lid of his skull.

A light began to build and this time it was from an external source. Glowing globes set into the walls of the chamber began to fill with light, and Zahariel shielded his eyes from the rising brightness as he saw his interrogators standing around him.

‘You have courage, boy,’ said Midris, all his earlier choler vanished. ‘If what you say is true, then we owe you a great debt.’

‘It is true,’ said Zahariel, wishing to be gracious, but still smarting from his harsh treatment at the hands of the warrior. ‘Just ask Brother Israfael.’

Israfael laughed and Zahariel felt a pleasurable vindication as the Librarian said, ‘He’s right, Midris. I sensed no lie in his words.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Have I ever been wrong?’

‘No, but there’s always a first time.’

‘He is not wrong,’ said a voice from behind Zahariel. He turned to see a tall figure, resplendent in a mighty suit of gleaming armour silhouetted in the doorway. The voice was the one he had heard in his head before he had begun his tale, its tones mellifluous and as deep as an ocean trench. Zahariel tried to see past the glare of the light behind the figure, but his eyes were still adjusting from the total blackness to the light, and he could make out little, other than the golden halo of light behind the armoured warrior.

Around him, the Astartes dropped to their knees, heads bowed against the figure’s magnificence, and much as Zahariel struggled to see the new arrival’s features, he knew that he was not worthy to do so.

‘Do not kneel,’ said the figure, seeming to carry the light with him as he entered the circular chamber. ‘Stand.’

The Astartes rose to their feet, but Zahariel remained rooted to the spot, his eyes locked on a portion of the floor. The light spread over the deck, rippling like golden water as it radiated from the armoured warrior.

‘It seems I owe you a debt, young Zahariel,’ said the golden figure, ‘and for that I thank you. In time you will forget this, but while your memories are still your own, I wished to thank you for what you did.’

Zahariel tried to answer, but found his mouth welded shut, his tongue lifeless on his palate. No power in the galaxy could have forced him to look up into the warrior’s face, and like the certainty that had gripped him as he looked into the darkness beneath the Watcher in the Dark’s hood, Zahariel knew that were he to look up, he would be driven just as mad.

He tried again to form words, but each time they formed in his mind they were snatched away like leaves in a hurricane. Zahariel could not speak, yet he knew that the wondrous figure knew his thoughts as surely as if they had been his own.

He felt the warrior’s presence like a vast weight pressing in on his mind, an immense strength and power that was only kept from snuffing out his existence because it was held in check by a will stronger than the rock of Caliban.

The power he sensed growing in his own mind, and that which he had brushed in Israfael’s mind, were like candles in a storm next to this warrior’s ability. Zahariel felt as though he was being smothered beneath an enfolding blanket, and the sensation was far from unpleasant.

‘He has a touch of power,’ said the warrior, and Zahariel felt his spirit soar at such notice, even as he feared the import of his earlier words.

‘He does, my lord,’ said Israfael. ‘He is a prime candidate for the Librarius.’

‘He is indeed,’ agreed the warrior. ‘See to it, but be sure he remembers nothing of this. No suspicion of any dissent must exist within the Legion. We must be united or we are lost.’

‘It will be done, my lord,’ assured Israfael.

Though the Lion was over half a kilometre away, Zahariel felt as if he could reach out and touch him. The senior members of the Order occupied the great podium where the Emperor had stood the previous week. Thousands of knights filled the parade ground, resplendent in polished suits of armour and proudly standing to attention.

The day had dawned bright and full of promise, the sky crisp and blue, the sun beaming and yellow. Names had been called, rosters taken and identities confirmed by hooded adepts in red with genetic testing apparatus.

Each of those called to attend this great gathering had been individually selected, chosen from the best of the best of Caliban’s martial caste of warriors.

Zahariel rubbed shoulders with knights whose courage had been proven beyond doubt, whose stamina, endurance and strength were the envy of those who had failed the Astartes tests. No other warriors on Caliban were as fearsome nor had the potential of those gathered here, and Zahariel felt justifiable pride in his achievements.

Events had passed in a blur since the Emperor’s great speech to the masses of Caliban and, try as he might, Zahariel found he could remember little of that moment: a fleeting vision of a warrior in gold, words that stirred his heart, and a sense of belonging that was stronger than anything he had ever known.

Ever since that day he had known, just known, that something big was coming, and when word had come from Luther that the Astartes had made their final selection for advanced training and genhancement to their ranks, Aldurukh had almost erupted in a riot as boys had raced to find out if they had been chosen.

Zahariel’s heart had been in his mouth as he perused the lists doing the rounds of the fortress monastery, though some nagging insistence in his mind had told him that he had nothing to worry about.

Sure enough, his name had been on the list, as had Nemiel’s, Attias’s and Eliath’s.

He had sought out his cousin, but it had taken him the better part of two days to find him.

Nemiel had been quiet and Zahariel could not understand his cousin’s reticence at the good news of their choosing. Once again, their brotherly rivalry had spurred them on to great things. As the day had gone on, Nemiel had relaxed around him, though Zahariel could think of no reason why his cousin should have been so anxious.

He had put it down to nervousness over the Astartes selection and forgotten the matter, for more important considerations had quickly overtaken any lingering worries over his cousin’s behaviour.

It had been announced that those chosen by the Astartes were to gather on the great parade ground before Aldurukh to hear the Lion speak and tell them of their destiny as warriors of the Emperor.

Only those chosen by the Astartes were to attend, and a palpable ripple of frenzied excitement flashed around the fortress in the space it took to give voice to the notion of what the Grand Master of the Order might say.

Zahariel and Nemiel had marched onto the parade ground with the others who had passed the Astartes trials, the pride and martial bearing of everyone around them filling them with a sense of brotherhood that far exceeded anything he had felt as part of the Order.

Though thousands filled the parade ground, Zahariel knew that this represented the elite of every knightly order of Caliban. Hundreds of thousands of knights had been tested, but only these few thousand had met the unimaginably rigorous standards of the Astartes.

The sense of anticipation as the knights had awaited the coming of the Lion was almost unbearable. The majority were younger than Zahariel, he and Nemiel representing the upper age group of those chosen, and he wondered what it was about the transformation into an Astartes that mandated such a young age for their members.

Then the Lion and Luther walked onto the stage, flanked by Lord Cypher and a robed cabal of Astartes in black armour, clad in the ceremonial, bone-white surplices of the Order.

To see these great warriors adopting the habits of the Order was gratifying indeed, and Zahariel turned in excitement to his cousin, embracing him in a spontaneous gesture of brotherly affection. All the hurt and jealous feelings between them seemed so absurd in the face of the new brotherhood they were about to join.

Even standing beside the Astartes, the Lion looked enormous, towering over the armoured warriors and dwarfing them all with his presence. A great amplification system had been set up to carry the Lion’s words to every corner of the parade ground, but the Lion needed no such apparatus, for his voice was tuned into the hearts and minds of every warrior gathered before him.

‘Brothers,’ began the Lion, forced to pause as the swelling cheers of the young knights threatened to drown out his words. ‘We stand on the brink of a new age for Caliban. Where once we stood on our little rock and thought that our world was only as far as the horizon, we now know that it stretches far beyond such petty visions. The galaxy opens out before us and it is a dark and forbidding place, but we are warriors of the Emperor and it behoves us to take his light into the darkness to reclaim our birthright.

‘Once, a lifetime ago it seems, I declared a great crusade to clear the forests of Caliban of the beasts, and that was a worthy aim. I see now that I was merely emulating a greater man’s dream, that of my father, the Emperor!’

A roaring cheer once again drowned out the Lion’s words, for where all of Caliban had been speaking of the Emperor as his father, it was the first time he had given voice to such a sentiment.

The Lion raised his hands to quell the rising emotions and continued. ‘We are part of something larger now, part of a brotherhood that encompasses more than just our planet, one that encompasses the entire race of man throughout the galaxy. The Emperor’s crusade is still in its infancy and hundreds, thousands of worlds remain to be liberated and brought back into the realm of the Imperium.

‘You have all been chosen to become part of the greatest warrior order the galaxy has ever seen. You will be stronger, faster and more deadly than ever before. You will fight in wars beyond counting and you will kill the enemies of mankind on worlds far distant from our beloved home of Caliban. But we will do these things willingly, for we are men of honour and courage, men who know what it is to have a duty that transcends personal concerns. Each of you was once a knight, a warrior and a hero, but now you are far more than that. From this day forth you will forget your past life. From this day forth you are a warrior of the Legion. Nothing else is of consequence. The Legion is all that matters.’

Zahariel gripped his sword hilt as the power of the Lion’s oratory washed through him, almost unable to contain his elation at the thought of taking the Emperor’s war to the farthest corners of the galaxy and being part of this brotherhood that stood at the brink of no less a task than the liberation of humanity’s birthright.

‘We are the First Legion,’ said the Lion, ‘the honoured, the Sons of the Lion, and we will not be marching to war without a name that strikes terror into the hearts of our enemies. As our legends spoke of the great heroes who held back the monsters of our distant past, so too shall we hold back the enemies of the Imperium as we set off into the great void to fight in the name of the Emperor.

‘We shall be the Dark Angels!’

Nineteen

They had made him a giant.

Long after he thought he was accustomed to the transformation, Zahariel found that aspects of his altered physiology still had the power to amaze him. It was always the little things that did it. He would become aware of some small detail – he would notice the span of his hand, feel the ripple of psychic energy in his body, or he would hear the rhythm of enhanced blood beating in his chest – and he would be reminded all over again of how much he had changed.

Once, he had been human. He had been a man, born of woman. Like all men, he had been constrained by physical limitations he took for granted. His muscles had been weak, his bones brittle, and his senses dull. He had expected his life to last him a matter of fifty or sixty years at most, in all likelihood not even that.

On Caliban, there were so many dangers. Even the merest cut could become infected and prove to be a fatal wound. He had been only human, and to be human is to be a slave to death by a thousand insignificant means.

The Imperium had changed everything. On the day he had been initiated into the Order as a knight, his rebirth had been an entirely symbolic process. With the arrival of the Imperium, it had become literal and real.

He had been made into a new man. His mind and body had both been altered, transformed into something more than human. Through the application of Imperial science and the marvels of gene-seed, he had been re-cast and re-created in a more warlike mould.

Brother Israfael had inducted him into the Legion’s Librarius, where he had learned of the warp, the hazards and the power that could be wielded by those skilled in such things. He learned that he was such a man, gifted with powers beyond the normal ken of humans, and that he was duty bound to use his powers in the service of the Emperor.

He had taken his first steps along a road that could lead to incredible power, but his first forays into such things were small and nowhere near as amazing as his encounter with the Beast of Endriago.

As much as his newfound abilities would forever mark him out as special amongst the Legion, he was first and foremost a warrior and it was in the crucible of combat that he would earn his renown.

He was no longer an ordinary man, nor was he simply an extraordinary warrior.

The Imperium had made him so much more.

They had made him for war. He had become a god of battle, a member of the Astartes.

He was a Space Marine, a Dark Angel.

He served in the Great Crusade.

He knew he was a small cog in a grander design, a walk-on part in the great drama of human history, but such notions did not trouble him, for the Imperium was a noble undertaking, a dream of a better universe, and he was part of the martial arm that gave it substance.

It was an optimistic time, a period of fine ideals. It was an age of discovery, and he was a part of it.

The early days were great days. Decades of conquest in the name of the Emperor.

Afterwards, Zahariel would look back on these years as the happiest of his life. He had a purpose. He had a mission. He was an instrument of the Emperor’s will, preparing to wage wars for the betterment of humanity.

Nor was he alone in these struggles. He did not do these things on his own. Throughout his transformation from man to superhuman, Nemiel was there beside him. The taletellers selected to accompany them from Caliban spoke of destiny, and Zahariel could only agree, for it seemed that he and Nemiel were fated to stand shoulder to shoulder throughout life’s travails.

From their earliest days on Caliban, their lives had always been linked, brothers even before they became angels. If anything, the process of becoming Astartes had only served to strengthen the bond between them. At times, it was as though one complete soul, split by accident of birth, was incarnated into two separate bodies.

He and Nemiel continued to complement each other perfectly like pieces of the same puzzle; Zahariel, despite everything, still the idealist and Nemiel the impressionable pragmatist.

Of the night beneath the Circle Chamber, neither spoke, understanding that to pick at that old wound would be to open a box of recrimination that could never be closed. It remained an unspoken barb in their friendship, always there between them, though Zahariel’s recollections of that night were hazy at best and faded with every passing day.

They had been part of the first generation of Astartes to be recruited from Caliban. More tellingly, they were among the first to wear the Legion’s new winged sword insignia at their shoulder, the first to call themselves Dark Angels.

Afterwards, this would set them apart from their peers. The older members of the Legion were all men from Terra who could remember a time before the Emperor’s First Legion had borne the name ‘Dark Angels’, while those that came after Zahariel and Nemiel’s generation had never known anything different.

For the moment though, a golden age lay ahead.

Their days were brightened by the prospect of fighting at the side of the Lion and Luther. They did their work as newly elevated angels well, assigned to serve in the 22nd Chapter under the leadership of Chapter Master Hadariel. They served their Legion and the Imperium to the limit of their abilities.

Caliban was in the past, and though they loved their homeworld and hoped to see it again one day, it was a distant dream. Their present, and their life in the Great Crusade, was all that truly mattered.

Their first major campaign was a time of great excitement, for this would be their chance to take the light of the Great Crusade to the wider galaxy, their first chance to prove their devotion and loyalty to the Emperor without another Legion breathing down their necks.

Dark Angels from the 22nd Chapter were to rendezvous with the Fourth Imperial Expedition Fleet, currently at high anchor around a world catalogued as ‘Four Three’ in the annals of the Crusade’s record keepers.

To the planet’s inhabitants, an advanced human culture that had managed to survive the long isolation of Old Night with much of their technology and society intact, their world had a different name.

They called it Sarosh.

‘So this is it?’ said Nemiel. ‘This is the reason we’ve crossed ten star systems? It doesn’t look like much.’

‘You should know by now that it doesn’t matter what a world looks like,’ Zahariel told him. ‘Do you remember training on Helicon IV? I seem to recall you weren’t too impressed with those worlds either until the shooting started.’

‘That was different,’ shrugged Nemiel. ‘At least then there was the chance we’d see action. They were new worlds. Have you read the briefing files? They expect us to wait for months, twiddling our thumbs while some bureaucrat decides whether or not to declare the planet compliant. We’re Dark Angels, Zahariel, not guard dogs. We were made for better than this.’

They stood by a view-portal on the observation deck of the strike cruiser, Wrath of Caliban. Through it, Zahariel could see the planet Sarosh, its size magnified by the enhancement technology cunningly concealed in the transparent substance of the portal window.

While Nemiel seemed to regard the blue ball of a world with ill-disguised disdain, its beauty struck Zahariel at once. He saw an expanse of turquoise seas, the broad landmasses of the planet’s continents presently hidden beneath a shifting layer of variegated cloud.

Set against the black backdrop of space and surrounded by distant shimmering stars, it could almost have been a round polished gemstone lying on a velvet backcloth amid a scattering of tiny jewels. He had seen many worlds from orbit in his time with the Crusade, but Sarosh was certainly one of the most striking.

‘I read the briefings,’ he said. ‘According to the reports, extensive areas of the planet are covered in woodland. I like the sound of that. It’ll be good to be in the forest again, to visit a world that brings back memories of Caliban.’

‘To do that it would have to be full of murderous predators, not to mention lethal plants and fungi,’ snorted Nemiel. ‘We’ve hardly been away for long enough for you to start getting nostalgic about Caliban. But you weren’t listening to what I’ve been saying about our mission. The point I’ve been making is that there’s no glory in it. They may call the Fourth an expedition fleet, but really it’s little better than a secondary deployment group. This is what they send in once the fighting is done and they need someone to see to the clean-up. They don’t think we’re ready yet.’

‘I heard you,’ said Zahariel, ‘and I understand your point, but I see it differently. Don’t take me wrong, I’d like nothing better than orders telling us we are about to be dropped into the middle of a firefight. You said it yourself. We’re Dark Angels. We are made for war. But duty comes first, and, right now, it is our duty to watch over the planet of Sarosh as it is brought to compliance.’

‘Duty,’ said Nemiel rolling his eyes in sarcasm. ‘It seems to me we’ve had this conversation before, about seven million times at the last count. All right, I concede the point. You’re right and I’m wrong. I’ll admit to anything, just so long as you don’t launch into another long speech about duty. You could bore a man to death on almost any topic under the sun. I heard you delivering some supposedly stirring words to your squad yesterday. I pitied them.’

‘It’s called oratory,’ Zahariel smiled, recognising a familiar argument. ‘Don’t you remember what it says in the Verbatim? “The arts of the warrior include not only the techniques of combat, nor simply the understanding of strategy and tactics, but also the study of every skill that may have bearing on the leadership of men in times of crisis.”’

‘I remember it,’ said Nemiel, his face growing suddenly stern. ‘But you need to remember we are no longer in the Order. All that is behind us. The old ways are dead. I’m serious. They died the day the Emperor came to Caliban and we learned of the Lion’s true nature. From that moment on, we became Dark Angels and we put the past behind us.’

‘Excuse me, honoured masters?’ a voice interrupted before Zahariel could reply. ‘I hope you will forgive the intrusion.’

Turning with Nemiel, Zahariel saw a seneschal standing behind them. The man wore a grey tabard over a black bodyglove, the tabard marked with the livery of the Dark Angels Legion. The seneschal dropped to one knee on the deck floor, his head bowed in respect.

‘Chapter Master Hadariel sends his regards,’ said the man, once Nemiel had given him the sign to speak. ‘He reminds you that the transfer of command will take place onboard the flagship Invincible Reason in two hours’ time. He emphasised that your presence is required at the ceremony, and that he expects you will comport yourselves in the best traditions of the Legion.’

‘Our thanks to the Chapter Master,’ said Nemiel. ‘Assure him we will be there at the transfer, properly dressed as befits the ceremony. We understand the importance of paying full respects to our brother Legion.’

The seneschal stood, bowed once more, and withdrew. As the servant walked away, Nemiel turned to Zahariel with the ghost of a smile playing across his features.

‘It seems the Chapter Master is anxious lest we embarrass him,’ he said, quietly so the seneschal would not hear it.

‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ answered Zahariel. ‘It is difficult for him. He is a great warrior, but he is not true Astartes. Even after all these years it must be hard to reconcile that fact, especially when we meet our brothers.’

‘True,’ said Nemiel as he made a sour face. ‘We can only hope that the White Scars appreciate his efforts.’

Zahariel raised his hand in quiet admonition. ‘Careful. Remember, our honour is at stake. If you say anything to offend them, it will reflect badly on Hadariel, our Chapter, and the Legion.’

Nemiel shook his head. ‘You worry too much. I’ve no intention of offending anyone, especially not the White Scars. They are our brothers and I have nothing but respect for them. Anyway, they had the right idea in leaving this planet and heading out to find real action. If I have cause for annoyance, it’s that someone chose us to take up their duties as guard dogs in their stead.’

Chapter Master Hadariel had briefed his senior officers around the wide table of the strategium on-board the Wrath of Caliban nearly three weeks earlier.

‘We have received new orders,’ he had said. ‘We are to split our strength. A portion of the Legion is to continue on to Pheonis, while the rest will go ahead to relieve the White Scars at a planet called Sarosh.’

‘So, an emergency call for aid, then?’ asked Damas.

Always inclined to open his mouth before he thought things through, Company Master Damas was the first to speak. ‘Our brother Astartes have bitten off more than they can chew, eh?’

‘No,’ said Hadariel, his face, like a mask, betraying no sign of emotion. ‘From all accounts, the situation at Sarosh is peaceful. It is more a matter of the re-disposition of forces. We are being sent to Sarosh to enable the White Scars to be moved on to duties elsewhere in the galaxy. They are a young and impetuous Legion, and their Primarch still craves the thrill of the hunt.’

It was Nemiel who gave voice to the question forming in the others’ minds. ‘Forgive me, Chapter Master, but it sounds like you are saying the White Scars are judged more important to the Crusade than the Dark Angels, that we’re being shunted sideways to a quiet posting just so the Great Khan’s followers will be free to find a real war.’

True to form, Damas jumped to conclusions. ‘The Lion would never agree to this!’

Hadariel slapped his open hand down on the table, the noise like a gunshot. ‘Silence! You speak out of turn, Master Damas. You show yourself too full of choler. One more outburst and I will relieve you of duty. Perhaps a few days’ meditation would restore the balance of your humours.’

‘My apologies, Chapter Master,’ said Damas, bowing his head. ‘I was in error.’

‘Indeed you were, and, what of you, Brother Nemiel?’

The Chapter Master’s eyes turned like a laser. ‘I would have thought you would know better. If I want your opinion on any subject, particularly as regards the interpretation of orders, I will ask for it. Is that understood?’

‘Perfectly, Chapter Master,’ bowed Nemiel in a more grudging fashion.

‘Good,’ nodded Hadariel. ‘As Damas says, you were both in error, probably more so than you realise. Our orders are from the Lion and Luther, and if our leaders tell us we can serve them best by travelling to Sarosh, we do not argue.’

‘This is a weighty duty,’ said Sheng Khan, the ranking leader among the White Scars. ‘There is no glory in it and no Astartes would gladly seek out this task. It is an onerous chore thrust upon us. There is no battle to be won here. Or, at least, not any battle of the kind we were made for. And, without battle, we lack all purpose. We are bereft. We are incomplete.’

Sheng Khan stood facing the Lion on the observation deck of the battle-barge Invincible Reason, flagship of the Fourth Imperial Expedition Fleet. Luther and a White Scar named Kurgis stood on either side of them as witnesses to the ceremony, while Astartes from both Legions, as well as a delegation of senior officers and dignitaries from various arms of the fleet, watched the exchange from a respectful distance.

Zahariel watched with Nemiel as the solemn ceremony of welcome played out the last of its rites and their Legion accepted the task of maintaining law and order on Sarosh.

‘Such is the way with duty,’ continued Sheng Khan. ‘It weighs down on our shoulders, but we feel its weight more keenly in our souls. Brother, do you accept this burden?’

The White Scar held out an ornate brass cylinder with a scroll rolled inside it.

‘I accept it,’ replied the Lion. He held out his hand and took the cylinder. ‘By my life and by the lives of my men, I swear to do honour in this matter by my Legion and the Emperor. Let these words be witnessed.’

‘They are witnessed,’ said Zahariel and his White Scar counterpart in unison.

‘It is good,’ nodded Sheng Khan.

The White Scar crossed his arms across his chest in the sign of the aquila, saluting Zahariel and his Chapter Master. ‘You are well-met, Lion El’Jonson of the Dark Angels. On behalf of the White Scars Legion, I bid you welcome you to Sarosh.’

They called it a ceremony, but it hardly merited the title.

To mark the transfer of command of the Fourth Imperial Expedition Fleet from the White Scars to the Dark Angels, a scroll was passed from hand to hand and an oath was made. If anything, meagre as they were, the trappings of ceremony attached to the event outweighed the substance of the transfer itself.

The Fourth was one of the smaller expedition fleets of the Great Crusade, incorporating seven vessels in total: the flagship Invincible Reason, the troopships Noble Sinew and Bold Conveyor, the frigates Intrepid and Dauntless, the destroyer Arbalest, and the White Scars strike cruiser Swift Horseman, soon to be replaced by the Dark Angels ship, Wrath of Caliban.

The handover of control between the two Legions had been carried out with due respect and reverence, but in reality the fact that there was an Astartes contingent present at all was something of an anomaly. Strictly speaking, the Fourth was still a second-line fleet. Lacking the firepower, training or resources to mount a full-scale military campaign against a hostile world, its job was to oversee the transition to compliance among worlds that had already shown they were friendly to the Imperium’s aims.

With Sarosh, however, there had been problems.

Initial contact with the planet had been made nearly a year earlier, and, on the surface, its people were friendly. They had welcomed the Imperium with open arms, loudly proclaiming their willingness to accept the Imperial Truth. Yet, in the twelve months since, little or no progress had been made in bringing the planet to compliance.

There had been no violence, and no outright acts of resistance, but each of the procedures embarked upon by Imperial envoys to effect compliance had so far ended in abject failure. Each time a new initiative was launched, the Saroshi government promised to do everything in their power to ensure it would be a success. And, each time, the promised support had failed to materialise.

The government would make fulsome apologies. They would make excuses, citing misunderstandings caused by the differences in customs and language as the reason behind the impasse. They would blame the intransigence of their own bureaucracy, claiming five thousand years of stable ordered society had left them with a bureaucratic system that was both enormously top-heavy and remarkably complex.

Certainly, there seemed to be some truth in their claims. Experienced Imperial envoys, who had overseen the compliance of many worlds in their time, would shake their heads in despair whenever the vexing question of the Saroshi bureaucracy was raised.

The problem was that the bureaucrats of Sarosh were part-timers. The planet’s laws allowed its citizens to set aside a generous part of their tax burden by agreeing to spend a proportion of their time working as bureaucrats.

Accordingly, the latest planetary census, compiled at three-monthly intervals on Sarosh, indicated that twenty-five per cent of the adult population held some form of bureaucratic position, with the remainder comprising those who had failed to pass the planet’s exacting Examination of Basic Bureaucratic Proficiency.

Based on the same census data, that meant there were currently more than one hundred and eighty million bureaucrats working on Sarosh.

With so many bureaucrats taking part in the process, Imperial envoys had found it almost impossible to get things done. It did not matter whether the planet’s government agreed to a measure; for it to be put into practice it still had to navigate the apparently endless levels of local bureaucracy, including various pardoners, petitioners, notaries, exemptors, signatories, exegetists, resolutionists, codifiers, prescriptors and agents proxy.

Worse, the system had grown so complicated in the course of the last five millennia, it was often the case that even the bureaucrats had no idea how to make it work. By common opinion among most of those charged with ensuring Sarosh was brought to compliance, in the last twelve months they had achieved almost nothing in the way of real progress. The planet was still as far from true compliance as it had been on the day it was first discovered.

The Swift Horseman had lain at high anchor above the planet through the entire process, as the fleet’s envoys struggled to make sense of Sarosh’s bureaucratic labyrinth. It was a hangover from the planet’s initial discovery, left behind in the hope that the presence of the Astartes might focus the minds of the Saroshi leaders and encourage them to complete the process of compliance quickly.

Instead, for twelve months, the White Scars had found they had to endure an extended period of enforced idleness.

It had not sat well with them. The fleet’s senior commanders had grown to dread the weekly strategic briefings when Sheng Khan would demand to know how much longer he and his men were to be expected to sit in space doing nothing. The White Scars leader seemed to reserve special contempt for Lord Governor-Elect Harlad Furst, the man assigned to oversee the Sarosh territories in the name of the Emperor once they were compliant.

‘If these people are compliant, then certify that compliance so we can leave this place!’ Sheng Khan was heard to roar at the governor-elect on more than one occasion. ‘If they are not compliant, tell me and we will go to war to show them their folly! You may choose it either way, just so long as you make a damn decision!’

In truth, Lord Furst and his functionaries had not made the decision. In a bureaucratic masterstroke, they had continually put off reaching any final judgement, utilising every excuse at their disposal in an attempt to delay the matter indefinitely, in precisely the kind of manoeuvring that often caused the Astartes to look with such disfavour on the growing non-military element accompanying the Crusade.

In such a way, twelve months had passed unproductively while the White Scars had grown ever more frustrated until at last, a signal was sent to Lion El’Jonson requesting that he and his Dark Angels be assigned to stand watch over Sarosh for an interval of two months to allow the White Scars to be moved on to other duties.

Meanwhile, a message was received by Lord Governor-Elect Furst pointedly reminding him that the Fourth Imperial Expedition Fleet was needed elsewhere and could not be expected to stay in orbit around Sarosh forever.

The message instructed Furst that he had been granted a period of grace. He had two months to decide the question of the planet’s compliance one way or another. If he failed to resolve the matter in that time he would be stripped of his governorship and it would fall to Lion El’Jonson to decide the fate of Sarosh as he saw fit.

Later, once the ceremony was over, it came time for the inevitable social formalities. The Astartes and the assorted dignitaries began to mingle and talk, as attendants in fleet livery circulated amongst them bearing silver trays overburdened with wine and food.

Always uncomfortable in such gatherings, Zahariel did his best to merge with the background. Before long, he was standing beside the wide vista of a panoramic view-portal, staring out at Sarosh slowly turning in the void, much as he had been a few hours earlier when he had stood with Nemiel on the Wrath of Caliban.

Perhaps it spoke volumes of the peculiarities of the Dark Angels’ mindset, but at that moment he was struck most by how much larger the observation deck on the Invincible Reason was compared to the one on the Wrath of Caliban.

Influenced in part by the monastic traditions of the Order, the Dark Angels tended to a spartan austerity in their ways. Every centimetre of space on a Dark Angels vessel was at a premium. From the fire control room overseeing operation of the ship’s main batteries, to the practice cages where the Astartes honed their skills, everything served a warlike purpose.

In contrast, the interior of this ship put Zahariel more in mind of a nobleman’s palace than it did a warship. He supposed there was an argument to be made that a ship should be decorated in keeping with the scope and wondrousness of the Imperium. Yet, to his eyes, to have layers of ornamentation choking almost every inner surface of the ship seemed overly elaborate, even ostentatious on a vessel made for war.

Naturally, the Dark Angels’ ships had their own share of decoration in an understated style, but the doors, walls and ceilings of the Invincible Reason were cluttered with gilded excesses. If a room was a conversation between the architect who built it and the people who made use of it, this observation deck was currently shouting in a dozen competing and raucous voices.

The deck was vast, with an immense vaulted ceiling reminiscent of the great ruined cathedrals of ancient Caliban. One entire wall was dominated by the view-portal that Zahariel was standing beside. More than sixty metres tall, the portal was composed of a number of tall arched panels like stained glass windows in some pagan house of worship.

It was not so much the view-portal itself, but what it represented. The observation deck might be decorated in a manner in keeping with the Imperium’s message, with frescos depicting some of its finest victories as well as mural portraits of every captain who had commanded the ship in her centuries of service, but equally it resembled many of the places of idolatry that the people of Caliban had brought to ruin in the planet’s earliest age.

‘It looks like a joygirl’s house of business,’ said a gruff voice behind him, offering a different perspective.

Zahariel’s enhanced sense of hearing had warned him of the approach of a brother Astartes. He turned and saw Kurgis facing him, two goblets of wine held dwarfed like thimbles in the White Scar’s hands.

‘I’m sorry? I don’t follow you, brother.’

‘This place,’ Kurgis inclined his head, indicating the grand sweep of the observation deck around them. ‘I was saying I think the same of it as you do, brother. There is too much glitter about it, too much that is golden. It is like the joygirl palaces in the cities of the Palatine, not a ship for warriors.’

‘Am I so transparent?’ asked Zahariel. ‘How could you know what I was thinking? Are you one of your Legion’s Librarians?’

‘No,’ said Kurgis. ‘I’m no psyker. Some men are gifted when it comes to hiding their thoughts from others; you could watch their faces for a thousand years and you’d never know what they were thinking. Not you. I saw the sour look you gave this place as you glanced around. From that, I could guess what was in your mind.’

‘It was an accurate guess,’ conceded Zahariel.

‘It helped that I could recognise the emotion. My thoughts were identical to yours on seeing this place. But enough of this, I have brought you a drink. When brothers meet, it is good they share wine and make a drinking oath.’

Kurgis offered him one of the goblets, lifting the other up in a toast.

‘To the Dark Angels,’ said Kurgis, ‘and to the Primarch Lion El’Jonson!’

‘To the White Scars,’ answered Zahariel, holding up his own goblet, ‘and to the Primarch Jaghatai Khan!’

They drained the goblets, and once he had finished his drink, Kurgis threw the goblet against a wall. The sound of the sharp crack as the metal cup shattered was greeted with a start by some of the dignitaries standing nearby.

‘It is tradition,’ explained the White Scar. ‘For the words of a drinking oath to have value, you must break the cup so no one else can swear an oath on it.’

He nodded in approval as Zahariel followed his example, shattering his goblet against the same wall.

‘You are well-met, brother. I wanted to talk to you, because we owe you our thanks.’

‘Thanks?’ said Zahariel. ‘How so?’

Kurgis indicated some of the other White Scars around the room. ‘You have set us free, you and your brothers. I am only sorry that such noble warriors must take up our former position, keeping lonely watch over this miserable dung heap of a world.’

‘We were happy to accept the assignment with good grace,’ said Zahariel. ‘It is a matter of duty.’

‘Yes, it is duty,’ said Kurgis, lifting a questioning eyebrow, an expression that emphasised the network of thin honour scars criss-crossing his cheeks. ‘But you are being diplomatic, brother. I know it. I am sure dissenting voices were raised when you received your orders. The Dark Angels are too brave and resolute a Legion to accept such a command quietly. As Sheng Khan said, it is a weighty duty and a hard one for Astartes to bear. We are warriors, all of us, the Emperor’s finest. We should be roaming the galaxy, making war on our enemies. Instead, we find ourselves forced to act as guard dogs.’

He stopped speaking abruptly, and stared at Zahariel closely.

‘What is it?’ the White Scar asked. ‘You are smiling. I have said something funny?’

Zahariel shook his head. ‘Not funny, no, it’s just that your words reminded me of something a friend said earlier. He also said we were being treated like guard dogs.’

‘He did? He is an intelligent man, this friend of yours.’

Kurgis turned to look back at the wider room around them. ‘You have brought a great many warriors with you, I understand? I only ask because I was surprised to see that your squads were led by your Chapter Master.’

‘We are led by the Lion and Luther,’ said Zahariel.

‘I know, but your line officer is Sar Hadariel, is it not?’

Following the direction of the other man’s gaze, Zahariel looked towards where Chapter Master Hadariel stood talking to Sheng Khan and some officers of the fleet.

Sheng and the warriors of his bodyguard were much taller than the Dark Angels Chapter Master, towering over him almost as much as Hadariel towered in his power armour over the ordinary human beings around him.

Zahariel noticed that Hadariel was gesturing with his hands as he spoke, making large movements as though in an attempt to demonstrate that he was not intimidated by the White Scars’ physical presence. It was a scene Zahariel had observed many times before, and he was not sure Hadariel was even aware he was doing it.

Not for the first time, he felt a surge of sympathy for his Chapter Master. In the time before the Emperor came to Caliban, Hadariel had been considered one of the most able battle knights in the Order. Zahariel remembered serving under him when they had made the final assault on the fortress of the Knights of Lupus.

It had been a good victory, an important one in the history of Caliban, but the coming of the Imperium had been a mixed blessing for Hadariel. He had been chosen to join the Dark Angels Legion by the Astartes, but in common with a large proportion of that initial intake, he had been too old to benefit from the implantation of gene-seed.

In its place, Hadariel and others like him, including Luther, had undergone an extensive series of surgical and chemical procedures designed to raise their strength, stamina and reflexes to superhuman levels. They were taller, stronger and quicker than normal men, but for all that they were not Astartes. They never could be.

‘It must be hard to be a man like Hadariel,’ said Kurgis.

‘Yes,’ agreed Zahariel. ‘My commander is an exemplary warrior. Despite not possessing the gifts of a true Astartes he has climbed far in the Legion.’

‘The Lion favours him from the old days?’

Zahariel shook his head. ‘The Lion does not play favourites. Hadariel became a Chapter Master purely on merit. If there is an element of sorrow to the situation it is that Hadariel has never seemed suited to the office.’

‘What do you mean?’

Zahariel wasn’t sure how much to say, for Kurgis was of a different Legion to his own and the Dark Angels valued their privacy, yet he sensed that the White Scar was a warrior he could trust. ‘In the years since his elevation, the mantle of leadership has sat poorly on Hadariel’s shoulders. He clashes repeatedly with his officers and fellow Chapter Masters, and has a tendency to take issue with every imagined slight, as if he’s convinced he is being subtly snubbed and insulted by all those around him.’

‘I suspect it boils down to the fact that Hadariel has never received gene-seed.’

‘Perhaps,’ agreed Zahariel. ‘Or perhaps his rise up the ranks has been fuelled as much by a desire to prove himself as by his devotion to the Imperial ideal.’

Zahariel did not add that rumour had it that the Lion had spoken with him sternly on the matter of his fractiousness. No matter his successes, it appeared that Hadariel could not escape his inner conviction that he was being looked down upon because he was not full Astartes.

‘It has always been Chapter Master Hadariel’s way to take the lead whenever our Chapter is sent to a new theatre of operations,’ said Zahariel. ‘He likes to be able to see things for himself.’

‘A wise practice,’ nodded Kurgis.

Kurgis glanced back towards the view of Sarosh through the portal, holding his gaze on the planet for long seconds as though weighing the words he was about to say.

‘Don’t trust them,’ said the White Scar.

‘Who?’

‘The people of Sarosh,’ Kurgis replied. He faced more fully towards the view-portal and indicated the planet. ‘You haven’t met them yet, brother, so I thought I should warn you. Don’t trust them, and don’t turn your back on them.’

‘I thought they were peaceful? According to the briefings, they have been welcoming from the first.’

‘They have been,’ agreed Kurgis, ‘but still, I would not trust them, not if you have sense, brother. And, don’t trust the briefings. Lord Governor-Elect Furst and his cronies have too much influence on what is written within them.’

He turned momentarily to grimace towards a silver-haired, medal-festooned dignitary holding court among a sea of sycophants off to the side of the deck.

‘That is the lord governor-elect?’ asked Zahariel.

‘In his day he was a great general,’ shrugged Kurgis, ‘or so they say. It happens sometimes. A man is made chieftain and, soon all that is important to him is his status. He becomes deaf to any voice that doesn’t try to soothe and cosset him. Before long, he only listens to those who tell him what he wants to hear.’

‘And that is what is happening on Sarosh?’

‘Without a doubt,’ said Kurgis, pursing his lips in frustration. ‘If Furst had any sense he’d ask himself why the Saroshi are stalling. If they truly wish to be part of the Imperium, as they claim, you’d think they would be ready to move the very stars to satisfy our requirements. Instead, there are always more delays, more intransigence. Don’t misunderstand me, they are unfailingly polite, the Saroshi. Whenever a new problem arises with the compliance process, they throw their hands in the air and wail like women mourning an elder’s death. To listen to them you’d think it was all accidents and bad luck. That is why I say don’t trust them. Either they are intentionally putting off compliance, or they are the unluckiest people in the galaxy. And, I don’t know about you, brother, but I don’t believe in luck, neither good nor bad.’

‘I agree,’ said Zahariel. He scanned the crowd of figures spread throughout the observation deck for unfamiliar uniforms. ‘I don’t see any Saroshi at this gathering.’

‘You’ll see them tomorrow,’ Kurgis told him. ‘A celebration is planned. The Saroshi intend to welcome your arrival on their world exactly as they welcomed our arrival a year ago. There will be a feast, entertainments and the like, both here on the Invincible Reason and down below on Sarosh. I am sure it will be… convivial. No doubt the Saroshi leaders will make many great promises. You will hear them tell you that compliance is just around the corner. They will say they are working night and day to achieve the tasks the Imperium has set them. They will talk fulsomely of their newfound devotion to the Imperial cause, of how happy they are that you have come to rescue them from their ignorance. Do not believe it, brother. I have always held that the true worth of a man is demonstrated by his actions, not his words. So far, by that mark, the Saroshi appear to possess no worth at all.’

‘You suspect their motives, then?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Do you think the Saroshi are delaying compliance for a reason?’

‘I don’t know. There is a saying on my homeworld, “If a man follows wolf tracks, it is likely he will find a wolf.” But I cannot offer you any proof of my suspicions, brother. I simply thought I should warn you in the spirit of comradeship. Be wary of these people. Do not trust them. Soon enough, the White Scars will be gone from this place. Sheng Khan has already ordered preparations to be made for us to get under way and head to our new duties. The Swift Horseman is to leave this system in four hours.’

Kurgis smiled, though there was no humour to it.

‘After that, you are on your own.’

Twenty

‘What are they like, your angels?’ Dusan asked her, his face hidden beneath an unblinking golden mask. ‘To hear their taletellers, the Dark Angels are fierce and warlike giants. They walk astride the stars and rain down destruction. Have they come to destroy us? Should we fear them?’

‘There is nothing for you to fear,’ replied Rhianna Sorel, inwardly cursing the Calibanite tale-spinners and their excesses. She almost frowned, but she reminded herself that Dusan could see her face even if she could not see his.

‘Yes, the Dark Angels make war on the Emperor’s enemies, but that does not include the people of Sarosh. You are part of the Imperium. You are our brothers.’

‘That is reassuring,’ said Dusan. He turned and gestured to the city with a sweep of his arm. ‘We have taken such pains to prepare for their arrival, to greet them. It would be a tragedy if they had come here to destroy all this. The city is beautiful, is it not? Is it worthy of your image-maker?’

‘It is more than worthy,’ she said, holding up the pict-recorder she wore on a strap across her shoulder. ‘With your permission, I’d like to take some picts before the light changes. They’ll give me some reference to work from later when I am composing.’

‘As you wish.’

They stood on a balcony overlooking the city of Shaloul, planetary capital of Sarosh. It had been nearly twelve months since Rhianna had come to Sarosh, but in that time she had rarely been allowed to journey to the planet’s surface. Despite the amicable attitude of the local people and the apparent benevolence of their culture, officially this world was not yet compliant. It was clear that the Imperial commanders were loath to let civilians down to the planet any more than they had to, though Rhianna suspected that the leaders of the Astartes had played at least some role in blocking civilian requests for access. She had no idea if the situation was the same in every fleet of the Crusade, but the Astartes with the Fourth seemed to resent any attempt to record native societies in their pre-Imperial states.

Rhianna was a composer. She had been told that the folk songs of Sarosh were characterised by haunting melodies incorporating the sounds of several traditional types of musical instrument that were unique to this world, but all her information came second-hand from conversations with Imperial Army troopers who had visited the planet more regularly than she had.

So far, she had heard nothing of Sarosh’s music herself. She had some idea in mind of a symphony combining Saroshi folk melodies with the bombastic musical forms that were currently the height of fashion in the Imperium. Until she heard the melodies, however, she had no way of knowing whether the idea was viable.

For the moment, she satisfied herself by taking picts of the city in search of inspiration.

Dusan was right. It was beautiful.

The sun was setting, and in response to the imminent fall of night the city began to show itself in its most alluring aspect as the glow-globes were lit. Unlike other cities, Shaloul did not possess any form of communal street-lighting system. Instead, by order of the city fathers, the inhabitants were furnished with three floating glow-globes each, to light their way whenever they left their houses.

Man, woman or child, every citizen of Shaloul was accompanied by the bright, hovering globes when they went outside. The effect from Rhianna’s vantage on the balcony, as thousands of people walked to the city’s eateries and drinking places, or simply stepped out for an evening stroll, was astonishing.

The entire city appeared to be alive with distant, bobbing points of floating light, like a gently eddying sea of earthbound stars. It was extraordinary, but it was only one of the city’s diverse wonders.

In contrast to many of the other settlements she had seen, whether on Terra or elsewhere in the galaxy, Shaloul was not crowded. It was a city of open horizons.

Nor was it dirty. From the first instant she laid eyes on it, it was plain that Shaloul was a city designed for ease of living. It was a place of wide boulevards and broad public spaces, of parks and greenery, of inspiring monuments and grand palaces.

Rhianna was accustomed to hive-cities, to the press and squalor of hab-life, to every dwelling being built in uncomfortably close proximity to its neighbours. Shaloul couldn’t have been more different.

It seemed a kinder, more contented place than any she had known before.

The Saroshi claimed their society had not known war for more than a thousand years, and certainly the architecture of their cities indicated nothing to disprove their claims. No walls enclosed the city’s perimeter and she had seen no obvious defences or fortifications.

On the few brief occasions when she had been given permission to visit the city, Rhianna had experienced none of the vague unease and nebulous sense of menace she usually felt when she explored the streets of an unknown city for the first time.

The streets of Sarosh felt safe and secure.

Perhaps it was the harmonious, well-ordered nature of Saroshi society that caused the Astartes to look with suspicion on any attempts to record it. To all intents and purposes, the city of Shaloul appeared to be a perfect place to live. So did the rest of Sarosh, for that matter. Perhaps the Astartes feared the comparisons that would inevitably be made between the past and the present, once the Imperium was granted its wish and the planet was made compliant.

It occurred to her that these were curious thoughts. She was as much a servant of the Imperium as the Astartes, yet she found herself almost doubting her mission. These people appeared perfectly happy with their lives. What right did they have to change them?

It was the city, she told herself. The place was bewitching. It wasn’t just the floating lights and the architecture. It was everything about it. The walls on either side of the balcony they were standing on were covered in a climbing plant with lustrous green-black leaves and brilliant purple flowers. It produced a heady scent, an intoxicating musk that mixed with the night air and seemed to have a calming, restive quality. It was easy to think of this world as paradise.

‘You are content?’ Dusan asked her.

‘Content?’

He pointed to the pict-recorder in her hands.

‘You have stopped operating your machine. You have all that you need?’

‘I have,’ she said, ‘but this machine records more than images. It can also record sound. I had hoped to hear some examples of your music.’

‘My music?’

It was impossible to see Dusan’s face beneath the mask, but the questioning note in his voice was obvious, as was his unfamiliarity with the grammatical forms of Gothic. ‘This is a metaphor, perhaps? I am not a musician.’

‘I meant the music of your culture,’ explained Rhianna. ‘I have been told it is exquisite. I was hoping to hear some.’

‘There will be musicians at the festival tonight,’ said Dusan. ‘In celebration of the Dark Angels’ arrival, our leaders have decreed a planet-wide holiday. I am sure you will hear music worthy of recording once we join the celebrations. Does this news please you?’

‘Yes, it pleases me,’ answered Rhianna.

She had noticed there tended to be a stilted quality to conversations with the Saroshi as they grappled with the nuances of a newly learned language. On some worlds visited by the Crusade there had been an adverse reaction among the local inhabitants when they were told that the Imperium expected them to learn Gothic and use it in all government business.

On Sarosh, though, they had warmly embraced the official Imperial language. Rhianna had already seen a few street signs on Shaloul written in Gothic, and she had been told that some of the great works of Saroshi literature were in the process of being translated.

It was another sign of the goodwill the local people had shown to the Imperium from the arrival of the first Imperial ships in orbit around their planet. Again, it brought home to her just how ridiculous the current situation was. Despite the warmth with which Saroshi society had greeted the Imperium, their planet had so far been denied the certification of compliance.

She had heard much muttering on fleet ships about Sarosh’s bureaucracy, but it seemed to her that Imperial bureaucracy was every bit as invidious. Time and again, the Saroshi had shown they were a friendly and peaceful people, eager to take up their place in the broader brotherhood of humanity.

How could anyone find reasons to distrust them?

Don’t trust them, Kurgis had told him. After less than a day spent in orbit around the planet of Sarosh, Zahariel felt there was every indication that the White Scar had given him good advice about its people.

He did not have any evidence to confirm it. It was more a gut feeling, a presentiment born of his awakening psychic potential.

If Zahariel had been called upon to give his opinion of the Saroshi, he could have cited precious little in the way of precedent to explain his distrust. Ordinarily he was inclined to be trusting. He was an honourable man, and it was one of his flaws that he occasionally fell into the trap of believing that everyone else was as honourable as he was.

Nemiel was the one with the suspicious mind, forever questioning the motives of those around him. Zahariel took individuals as he found them. He had a soldier’s innate dislike of hypocrisy and double-talk. Yet, with nothing to support his reaction, he found he distrusted the Saroshi from the moment he met them.

Perhaps it was the masks that did it.

It was the cultural norm for all adults and children on Sarosh to continually wear masks. Excepting their most intimate and private moments, the Saroshi went masked at all times, not just in public, but in their homes as well. Zahariel had heard tell of many surprising customs among the peoples of re-discovered worlds, but the Saroshi practice of mask-wearing was easily the most remarkable he had encountered.

The masks were rigid and made of gold. Covering the wearer’s face entirely, but not the ears or the rest of the head, each mask was shaped to show the same handsome and stylised facial features, identical for both men and women. They reminded Zahariel of the ceramic death-masks created in some cultures, cast from the faces of the recently deceased.

He had always found such death-masks to have a sense of emptiness about them. They recorded the dimensions and features of the face in question, but after death they were unable to record the true nature of their subject. There was something vital missing, a lack of expression and detail that reduced the death-mask almost to the level of caricature.

It was the same with the masks of Sarosh. Zahariel was sure that a poet would probably find some manner of poetic metaphor in the fact that the Saroshi confronted life from behind a mask, but he saw only a culture accustomed to keeping things hidden.

Zahariel was no poet, but he understood that the face was an essential tool of human communication; it revealed its owner’s thoughts and moods by a thousand minute signs. In communicating with the Saroshi, however, the Imperium was denied this source of information, and was forced to make do with blank, permanently smiling façades.

No wonder there had been such difficulty in bringing their world to compliance.

Then, there was the question of criminal justice on Sarosh or, rather, the lack of it.

Again, Kurgis had brought the matter to his attention.

‘They have no prisons,’ the White Scar had said to him during their meeting after the exchange of commands. ‘One of the surveyors noticed it as she was checking over the aerial picts of Shaloul. She checked through the maps of every other settlement on Sarosh and found the same thing: no prisons, nor anywhere else where prisoners could be kept.’

‘Not every culture imprisons its criminals,’ said Zahariel.

‘True,’ nodded Kurgis. ‘We didn’t on Chogoris. In the old days, before the Imperium came, we followed plains law. It was a harsh code, in keeping with the landscape. A man who committed a crime might be punished by being stoned to death. Or we might hamstring him, or leave him to die in the wilderness without water, food or weapons. If he had murdered another man, he might be enslaved and forced to serve the dead man’s family for a number of years until he had worked off the blood-debt. But the Saroshi consider themselves a civilised culture. In my experience, civilised men don’t like their justice kept so simple. They like to complicate things.’

‘Did anyone ask the Saroshi for an explanation?’

‘According to the Saroshi, crime is rare on their world. When a crime is committed, they punish the criminal by making him work more hours in their bureaucratic service.’

‘Even the murderers?’ frowned Zahariel. ‘That sounds unlikely.’

‘There’s something else. As part of the process of compliance, the calculus logi with the fleet asked to see the census data from Sarosh for the last decade. I have no head for figures, brother, but something I heard when the logi reported back to the fleet strategium has stayed with me. Based on the planet’s birth-rate and the number of deaths recorded in the census, it is estimated the population on Sarosh should be much bigger than the figure the Saroshi have reported back to us. When asked about this, the Saroshi government claimed the census data must be in error.’

‘What kind of figure are we talking about?’ Zahariel asked him.

‘Eight per cent,’ Kurgis told him. ‘Put that way it doesn’t sound much, I know, but if the calculations are right, it means more than seventy million people have disappeared on Sarosh in the course of the last ten years.’

It was a wonderful night. As Rhianna walked the streets and passages of the city of Shaloul she marvelled at the extraordinary sights she saw all around her. The festival Dusan had spoken of earlier was in full swing. The streets were crowded with masked revellers, the roadways made vibrant with colour as legions of lithe dancers swayed rhythmically along in outlandish costumes, trailing swooping kites and long paper streamers behind them.

She saw jugglers and painted clowns, contortionists and sleight-of-handers, mummers and mimics, tumblers and acrobats. She saw giants on stilts, sword-devourers and men breathing fire, and, above it all, she heard the music.

Strange sounds drifted to her from across the carnival throng. The songs of Sarosh were beautiful, yet perplexing. They switched mood constantly, alternating between complex patterns of harmony and discord, expressing conflicting emotions of sorrow and joy without warning.

She heard musical notes and key changes she never even knew existed, as though some special quality of the music had broadened the range of her hearing. Underlying it all, almost hidden, were the most startling rhythmic variations she had heard in her life.

Listening to the sounds of Sarosh, Rhianna understood for the first time just how perfect and splendid music could be. She had trained her entire life as a composer, but nothing she had written could compare to the astonishing sounds she heard echoing through these streets. It was an experience as heady in its own way as the perfume of the flowers had been on the balcony.

Dusan was beside her, his hand at her elbow, leading her through the crowds. Earlier in the day, when Rhianna had made landfall, they were told that the Saroshi authorities had assigned them each a guide to ensure they would not get lost. She supposed Dusan was intended to serve as her minder as much as anything else, following forever close at hand to keep her out of trouble.

Initially, when they met, she had asked him what he did for a living. He had told her he was an exegetist. As she understood it, he was a professional explainer. Due to the scale of bureaucracy on Sarosh, it was not uncommon for even relatively trivial matters of governance to become fiendishly complicated as dozens of bureaucrats had their say on the issue, each with a different interpretation of the planet’s statutes.

These situations sometimes escalated to long-running disputes lasting up to twenty years or more, long after all those involved in it had forgotten the question that had initially triggered the impasse.

In such occurrences, an exegetist was hired to research the causes of the dispute and explain it to the contesting parties to ensure they fully understood it.

It was a curious system, but whatever the byzantine complexity of local custom, Rhianna had suffered far less convivial escorts in the past. In the initial months of the Imperial presence, on the few occasions she had been granted permission to explore Sarosh, she had been accompanied by a half-squad of Imperial Army troopers stalking her steps like bored and ill-tempered shadows.

It had been embarrassing, not to mention difficult to establish a rapport with the local people when a fireteam of heavily armed men lurked just over your shoulder.

Thankfully, in recent months, at the urging of Lord Governor-Elect Furst, the fleet had adopted a more enlightened approach. The planet of Sarosh might not be officially one hundred per cent compliant, but it had been decided it was safe enough to permit Imperial personnel to walk about on their own without requiring a full military escort.

At the same time, in the hope of building bridges between the locals and the Imperials, Army and fleet commanders had begun to allow more of their men to visit Sarosh on shore leave.

‘This way,’ said Dusan.

At some point in the night, he had begun to steer her through the streets as though he had a specific destination in mind. His grip on her elbow had grown tighter, but she found she hardly noticed. Drunk on the music and the scent of purple flowers, she let him lead.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked him, dimly perceiving that her words sounded slurred.

‘There is a place where they make better music,’ he said from behind his mask. ‘It is just a little further.’

He began to walk faster, his hold on her arm forcing her to hurry her pace to keep up with him. Looking around, Rhianna became suddenly aware that they had left the main boulevards behind for a series of twisting, narrow alleyways.

It was dark. The glow-globes that had once floated above their heads had abandoned them, staying behind at some distant corner. They were alone in the night, the only light coming from the silver sickle of the moon high overhead.

Despite the darkness, Dusan did not miss a step. He seemed to know exactly where they were heading.

‘Dusan? I don’t like this.’ She found it harder to speak. Her tongue felt numb. ‘I want you to take me back.’

He did not answer. No longer in the humour to explain anything, he dragged her through the alleyways as a creeping paralysis spread through her limbs. She realised he had poisoned her somehow. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers.

Flowers. Perhaps that was how he did it. She was staggering, barely able to keep her feet, even less able to fight him.

‘Dusan…’ Her words sounded distant and hollow. ‘Why?’

‘I am sorry. It is the only way. The Melachim have decreed you are an unclean people. Your liar angels must not be allowed to pollute us. You will be our weapon against them and there will be pain, I am afraid. It seems cruel, I know, but be assured you serve a higher purpose.’

They turned a corner into a courtyard. Ahead, Rhianna could see a handcart of the kind used to sell bottled drinks to the carnival revellers. Two figures stood by the side of it, wearing baggy multi-coloured costumes covered in dangling knots and ribbons.

Seeing them, Dusan released his hold, allowing Rhianna’s body to fall unceremoniously onto the cobbled surface of the courtyard. She heard him snap out orders in his native tongue, and then she saw the two figures advance towards her.

There was something wrong in the way they moved. Whoever had made their costumes had tried to cover it, but Rhianna could see it clearly. They walked with an odd sideways gait, their knees and ankles flexing at peculiar angles.

Their mannerisms put her in mind of the movements of reptiles.

There was something unnatural about them. The closer they came, the more she became convinced they were inhuman. Paralysed, she could only watch as they drew nearer and looked down upon her. As the two strange, clownish figures bent forward to lift her between them, Rhianna saw the mask on one of them slip for a moment.

She saw his true face.

Despite her paralysis, she screamed.

Twenty-One

‘Not to seem dismissive of what is potentially a terrible human tragedy,’ said Nemiel, ‘but do you remember you told me there was a chance that seventy million people had gone missing on Sarosh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I think I know what happened to them. From the look of it, I’d say their leader ate them.’

He made the comment by private encrypted channel, vox to vox, so no one else could listen in on the conversation. For his own part, Zahariel was glad he was wearing his helmet. If not, the notables and functionaries crowding the deck might have seen his sudden smile.

Their exchange took place on the embarkation deck. A visiting delegation of government officials from Sarosh had come aboard the Invincible Reason via shuttle, and the Lion had insisted they be greeted with all due ceremony. Zahariel had been chosen to lead the honour guard for the Saroshi delegation, alongside Nemiel and a selection of men from the first squads of their respective companies.

It was a serious business, at least as far as the commander of the Legion was concerned.

Zahariel had never felt entirely at home at such high state occasions, but his devotion to duty meant he had accepted the task without argument. Still, it would have been easier to treat it with solemnity if it was not for his cousin’s voice in his ear, secretly denigrating the guests and deflating their pretensions.

‘I mean, look at him,’ said Nemiel, unheard by anyone but Zahariel. ‘He’s nearly as big as an Astartes, and that’s just his gut! If you ask me, these people should start calling him the lord wide exalter.’

It was true, the lord high exalter – to give him his proper title – was fat, almost stupendously so. Zahariel estimated him at a little under two metres in height, but the enormous girth of his belly was so pronounced that it made him look more like a ball with arms and legs than a man.

His stature seemed doubly unusual because every other Saroshi that Zahariel had seen to date tended to be slim and lithe in build. Whatever his misgivings about their habit of going masked, Zahariel had to admit that they were a graceful people.

Barring the extravagance of their golden masks, the Saroshi leaned towards simplicity in their garments, men and women wearing little more than sandals and a robe wrapped loosely around their bodies, held in place with metal clasps at the shoulder and a belt at the waist. From what he had learned, they cultivated the same simplicity in their daily lives, leading a quiet, peaceful existence that eschewed both war and violence.

According to Imperial surveyors, the only time the Saroshi showed any excess of emotion was during regular festivals of the kind currently being held on the planet’s surface to celebrate the Dark Angels joining the Imperial fleet.

During these carnivals, many of the normal rules of social behaviour on Sarosh were suspended, allowing for a temporary licentiousness, which had been a source of unexpected pleasure to those Army and fleet personnel granted shore leave to attend the festivities.

As an Astartes, he was above such concerns, but Zahariel understood there was widespread disappointment among some of the fleet’s officers that duty had forced them to be present during the ceremony to welcome the lord high exalter and his delegation when they would rather have been on Sarosh for the carnival.

Zahariel had ordered the men of the honour guard to form up in two lines facing each other, leaving a broad avenue between them for the lord high exalter and his entourage to pass down. The Lion had offered to send one of the Dark Angels Stormbirds to pick up the Saroshi party, but the high exalter had insisted on using his own shuttle, an ancient conveyance with over-sized engines that struggled to lift its mass from planetary gravity and had only now passed through the rippling integrity field that prevented the internal atmosphere from bleeding out into space.

Zahariel did not know quite what he had expected the most senior political leader on Sarosh to look like, but the waddling corpulent creature that emerged from the shuttle had never featured in his thoughts. Given that he had grown up in the harsh environment of Caliban, Zahariel had never even seen anyone who could be called fat until he had left his homeworld and visited other human cultures elsewhere in the Imperium.

Shockingly, unlike the rest of his people, the lord high exalter did not wear a mask. His face was exposed, revealing a sweating, florid featured, middle-aged man with a bullfrog neck, who seemed unable to move at anything faster than a slow processional stride.

There was a symbol drawn on his forehead in an indigo-coloured dye: a circle with two unevenly sized upturned wings at its base. In the style of some barbarian potentate, he was flanked on either side by young women bearing baskets of purple flowers, which were strewn in his path to be crushed to scented pulp by his ample tread.

‘Visitors aboard!’ called out Zahariel, switching his helmet vox to external address as the lord high exalter stepped between the twin ranks of Dark Angels. ‘Honour guard, salute!’

As one, the Dark Angels complied in a smooth motion, crossing their arms in front of their chests in the sign of the aquila.

‘Angels of the Imperium, we salute you,’ said the lord high exalter, waving a bloated hand as he passed. ‘Praise the Emperor and all his works. We welcome you to Sarosh.’

‘And may I welcome you to the flagship Invincible Reason, my lord,’ said the Lion, stepping forward to greet him. Behind him stood Luther, looking about as pleased to be at this ceremony as Zahariel felt.

The primarch of the Dark Angels wore his ceremonial armour, his surplice freshly pressed and starched with the symbol of the Dark Angels picked out in crimson thread. ‘I am Lion El’Jonson, legion commander of the First Legion, the Dark Angels.’

‘Legion commander?’ said the lord high exalter, raising a painted eyebrow. ‘You are the autarch here, then? These angels serve you?’

‘They serve the Emperor,’ corrected the Lion, ‘but if you meant to ask if I am their leader, then the answer is yes.’

‘I am pleased to meet you, master of angels. We have much to discuss. My people are very eager to become… compliant, I believe you call it. Too much time has been wasted already, lost to cultural misapprehension and foolish misunderstandings. Today, we can begin a new page in the relationship between us. Are the other leaders of your fleet present? I had hoped to address them all and make clear how ready we are on Sarosh to take the final steps to becoming full Imperial citizens.’

‘I am sure they will be glad to hear it,’ said the Lion as he turned to lead the lord high exalter away from the embarkation deck. ‘If you will follow me, I have arranged a reception where you can meet the rest of the fleet commanders. You can speak there and enlighten us with your thoughts.’

‘“Enlighten?” It means to bring light?’ the fat man smiled. ‘Yes, that is a good word. There is so much you do not understand about my people. I hope to bring light to you all.’

The embarkation deck of a starship was always busy, but the deck on the flagship Invincible Reason seemed almost quiet when the Lion, the lord high exalter, his entourage and the other dignitaries had left it.

Once they were gone, the work crews and servitors who constituted the deck’s permanent garrison returned to the routine tasks of maintenance that had been interrupted by the arrival of the Saroshi shuttle and the welcoming committee that had greeted it.

Free of the presence of interlopers standing uselessly about and cluttering their working space, the crews made up for lost time in ensuring that all currently unused aircraft were fuelled, ready to go and in good functioning order.

Zahariel remained behind in the embarkation deck, while Nemiel and his warriors had followed the primarch and the Saroshi envoys to where the fate of Sarosh would be decided.

Knowing that he and the rest of the Dark Angels would soon be deploying to the surface of Sarosh, regardless of the outcome of the talks between the Lion and the lord high exalter, Zahariel decided to remain on the embarkation deck to prepare for that deployment.

The deployment to a planet was fraught with danger, and a million and one tasks needed to be overseen before the Astartes would even encounter the enemy, if such was to be the Saroshi’s fate. Zahariel was soon lost in the details of his work, prepping his armour and weapons for the drop, and he did not hear the approaching footsteps until their owner addressed him.

‘It will be soon,’ said a friendly voice behind him.

Zahariel turned to see the powerfully armoured figure of Luther, still resplendent in his ceremonial armour, black and gilded gold. ‘The drop to the surface, I mean.’

‘I thought so,’ replied Zahariel. ‘That’s why I wanted to get a head start.’

Luther nodded, and Zahariel sensed that his commander wished to say more, but did not yet know how to broach the subject. Luther tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Let’s take a look at that shuttle, eh? The Saroshi one.’

Zahariel looked over to the battered old shuttle, having had little interest in it once it had disgorged its fat cargo.

‘It doesn’t look like much, does it?’ said Luther, walking across the deck.

Zahariel followed the Lion’s second-in-command and said, ‘Apparently the Mechanicum adepts scanned it on the way in. They said it was of an obsolete design well-known from before the Unification Wars on Terra, so they immediately lost interest.’

‘Ah, well they are immune to the romance of history, Zahariel,’ said Luther, walking around the battered shuttle with its oversized engines and bulbous front section. ‘I mean, it’s clearly thousands of years old. It must have taken generations of mechanics to keep it in a working state of repair.’

‘Then it should be in a museum,’ said Zahariel, as Luther ducked beneath a stubby wing and examined the underside of the conveyance.

‘Perhaps,’ agreed Luther. ‘It’s the last functioning relic of an earlier age. It might be the only vehicle on Sarosh still capable of trans-atmospheric travel.’

‘So why bother using it?’ asked Zahariel. ‘Why not accept the Lion’s offer of a Stormbird?’

‘Who knows?’ said Luther, frowning as he saw something puzzling. ‘Perhaps the Saroshi kept it running because they knew they would need it in the future.’

‘Need it for what?’

Luther emerged from beneath the shuttle on the far side from Zahariel, and he could see that the Legion’s second-in-command had gone utterly pale. His face was ashen, and he looked at the shuttle with a strange expression that Zahariel could not read.

‘Is everything all right?’ asked Zahariel.

‘Hmmm?’ said Luther, glancing towards the great, arched doors that the Lion and the Saroshi delegation had earlier passed through. ‘Oh, yes, Zahariel. Sorry, I was distracted.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Zahariel. ‘You don’t look well, my lord.’

‘I’m fine, Zahariel,’ said Luther. ‘Now come on, return to your battle-brothers, it’s not good to be too far from your fellows when you might be about to go into battle. It’s bad luck, you know.’

‘But I have things to finish here,’ protested Zahariel.

‘Never mind them,’ insisted Luther, leading him from the embarkation deck. ‘Go. Be with your company and stay there until I call for you. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Zahariel, though, in truth, he could not fathom the sudden change in Luther’s behaviour.

He left the Legion’s second-in-command at the door to the embarkation deck, watching as Luther stared in fascination at the Saroshi shuttle.

‘Is it your custom to pick smaller men for positions of authority?’ the lord high exalter asked blithely as he stood with a crowd of dignitaries beside the wide arch of the view-portal on the observation deck. ‘I ask this because I notice the man you call Chapter Master is not as tall as the men he commands. Also, there is the fact of these other men, the ones you call the leaders of your fleet.’

The high exalter gestured to the military officers, fleet captains and other Imperial functionaries assembled around them.

‘They are also smaller than your angels,’ he continued, with an expression that was open and guileless. ‘Is it your custom to let only those who were born as giants bear the brunt of the fighting, while the small men act as their officers?’

‘It is not a question of custom,’ answered the Lion in a diplomatic tone as Chapter Master Hadariel bristled in anger beside him. ‘Nor are all of us born as giants. The Dark Angels are members of the Astartes. We are a product of the Emperor’s science. We are given physical enhancements to improve our abilities.’

‘Ah, so you are changed,’ said the high exalter, nodding his head slowly. ‘You are vat-grown. Now I understand. But what of you, Sar Hadariel? You stand taller than most men, but you are not as tall as your warriors. Please, why is this?’

‘I was unfortunate,’ replied the Chapter Master. ‘By the time I was chosen, I was too old to be granted gene-seed. In its place, I was given surgery to modify my body and make me a better warrior.’

Nemiel stood at the other end of the observation deck with the rest of his squad, close enough to hear every word of their conversation with his enhanced hearing, wincing at the lord high exalter’s line of conversation.

The lord high exalter had no way of knowing how sensitive the Chapter Master was about the fact that he had not been given gene-seed. Inadvertently, the Saroshi leader had managed to broach the one subject most likely to lead to crossed words and some form of diplomatic breach.

It was to Hadariel’s credit that he had so far managed to keep any suggestion that he was offended by his visitor’s line of questioning from his face. Anxious to defuse any potential outburst from Hadariel, the Lion said, ‘May I take it, you have some understanding of such technologies? You used the word “vat-grown”. Does your culture have experience of genetic science?’

‘Yes, but I am here to discuss more important matters.’

Waving the question away with a dismissive hand, the lord high exalter turned to face the broad expanse of the view-portal behind him. He spread his arms wide, the gesture taking in the blue globe of Sarosh visible through the portal.

‘The world is beautiful, is it not? I have never seen it from this angle before. Granted, some of our historic books include picture-images of our world taken from orbit. But before today, the shuttle that brought me here had not flown for nearly a century. Even if I had ordered it to take me into space, the view-portals on the shuttle are no bigger than my hand. If it weren’t for the Imperium, I would never have seen the magnificence of the sight I see before me. I thank you for that. To look down on the world I have known, to see its seas and continents laid out before me, it has granted me a new perspective.’

‘It is only the beginning, my lord exalter,’ said Governor-Elect Furst. Perhaps sensing the tension, he pushed himself forward to stand beside the Lion. ‘You can scarcely conceive of the wonders we can bring to your world once it is compliant.’

‘Ah, yes. Compliance,’ grimaced the fat man. ‘An interesting choice of words. It refers to the process of conforming to a demand or proposal. Also, it means to become yielding, flexible, submissive. And if we do not submit, what then? Will you unleash your angels, lord governor-elect? Will you destroy us if we do not comply with your wishes?’

‘Well, I…’ said Furst, visibly squirming. ‘That is to say…’

‘It is not the governor-elect’s decision to make,’ interrupted the Lion, ‘it is mine. Your question implies a criticism of our ways, lord exalter. You must understand, the aim of this crusade is to re-unite all the lost fragments of mankind. We come to you as brothers. We have no wish to use force to bring about your compliance, but experience tells us that it is sometimes necessary. Occasionally, whether through ignorance or because they are controlled by an unsuitable regime, the people of a re-discovered world choose to oppose us. It makes no difference. We have come to rescue you. Whether or not you wish to be rescued is hardly material to the outcome.’

‘And what of our regime?’ asked the lord high exalter.

The Saroshi diplomat turned back from the view-portal to face the Lion and the ranks of Imperial commanders behind him. ‘What of the Saroshi government? Have you judged us to be unsuitable?’

‘The decision has not yet been made,’ said the Lion. ‘I must say I am pleased we talk so frankly. I had heard your people have a tendency to be… evasive on these matters.’

‘Yes, we were evasive,’ said the high exalter, holding the Lion’s gaze coolly, ‘until we found the time fast approaching when we were called upon to make a choice. I understand the Imperium does not worship any gods. In fact, you forbid it. Is this true?’

‘It is,’ said the Lion, caught unawares by his guest’s sudden change of tack, ‘but I do not see its relevance. I was told that you share our view of religion on Sarosh. You have no priesthood or places of worship.’

‘In that you are incorrect,’ said the lord high exalter. ‘Our temples are in the wild places, in the forests and the caves, where the messengers of our gods speak to their chosen representatives, the Ascendim. We are a pious people. Our society is founded on the divine mandate granted to the Ascendim. We have followed their dictates for more than a thousand years, and we have achieved the perfect society.’

‘Why am I hearing this now?’ snapped the Lion, looking around at the governor-elect and other Imperial dignitaries for answers, only to see that they were as mystified as he was.

He turned back to the Saroshi leader. ‘You hid this from us?’

‘We did,’ agreed the lord exalter. ‘We were aided in this by the fact that faith is a private matter among my people. When your first Imperial scouts came to our planet, there was nothing on our world for them to recognise as signs of religion, no grand temples or sacred precincts inside our cities. We keep our holy places hidden away, simply because the Melachim have ordered that it should be so.’

‘The Melachim?’ echoed the Lion, dumbfounded.

‘They are our gods. They speak to the Ascendim, the only ones who can hear their divine voices. They speak to them when they walk in the wilderness, away from civilisation. They tell the Ascendim what is to be done, and their word is relayed to the rest of our society. By such methods is the will of the gods made clear.’

‘This is foolishness,’ said the Lion, growing angry. ‘You are rational people, from a technologically advanced society. You must be able to see this superstition for what it is.’

‘You showed your true faces too early,’ said the lord high exalter. ‘When your scouts revealed themselves to us, they spoke eruditely of how you had thrown down religion and damned it all as childish superstition. From that moment, we knew you were evil. No society can make claim to be righteous if it does not acknowledge the primacy of divine power. Secular truth is false truth. When we heard that your Emperor preaches there are only false gods, we knew his real nature at once. He is a liar daemon, a creature of falsehood, sent by dark powers to lead mankind astray.’

Zahariel made his way through the corridors of the ship to where the rest of his squad was currently billeted, running through the items he still needed to attend to before returning to the Wrath of Caliban and the drop to Sarosh. He had few illusions that they would be making planetfall soon, for Kurgis’s warnings that the Saroshi were not to be trusted still rang in his ears.

Even as the thought occurred, he wondered again at the strange expression he had seen on Luther’s face as he had come up from underneath the Saroshi shuttle, wondering what the Legion’s second had seen that had…

Had what?

Unnerved him?

Zahariel pictured Luther as he had come up, his face pallid and uneasy. What could he have seen that would unsettle a great warrior and hero such as Luther? The more he studied the image in his face, the more he let his mind drift, looking into the eyes of the man whose face was held in his mind’s eye.

He saw pain there and sadness, and years of living in the shadow of another.

Zahariel’s senses that were, even now, becoming surer and more sensitive, thanks to the training of Brother-Librarian Israfael, tried to make sense of the emotions and feelings coming off the image in his head.

Don’t trust them… and don’t turn your back on them.

Zahariel halted as a sudden wave of nausea swept through him. As an Astartes, he almost never suffered from any such feelings, his genhanced metabolism compensating for almost every sensation that might trigger such a reaction.

However, this was no physiological reaction, this was a sure and sudden sense of something deeply wrong.

Worse still was the sense that he was not the only one to realise that something was wrong, but that he was the only one who desired to stop it.

The embarkation deck was quiet and that, in itself, was unusual.

Zahariel stepped over the threshold of the blast door and scanned for the normal personnel, techs, Mechanicum adepts and loaders that should be filling the space with life and bustle.

The hiss and creak of the deck and the ever-present thrum that filled a starship were the only sounds, and Zahariel immediately knew that his suspicions had not been groundless.

Something was definitely wrong.

He crossed the embarkation deck towards the Saroshi shuttle and circled it, looking for anything out of place or otherwise unusual. As he had said while talking to Luther, the design was old and practically obsolete, the engines vastly oversized for such a small conveyance.

He ducked beneath one of the wings, crawling on all fours beneath the shuttle, hoping to see what had so unnerved Luther.

The underside of the shuttle stank of engine oil and hydraulic fluids, the plates of metal crudely bolted and welded together with little regard for the quality of workmanship. At first, Zahariel could see nothing unusual, and moved further along the belly of the shuttle.

He ducked his head around a loose plate and…

Zahariel turned back to look at the plate. The hinges holding it were rusted and stiff.

He shook his head as he realised that it was a miracle that this shuttle had even broken atmosphere, let alone expected to return.

As he stared at the open panel he suddenly realised what was wrong with the shuttle, at least partly. This was no orbital shuttle, for there was no heat shielding on the craft’s belly, this was a purely atmospheric craft, primarily designed to fly within the bounds of a planet’s airspace, which explained the oversized engines, presumably retro-fitted to allow their one craft to reach orbit.

Without heat shielding, anyone who tried to descend to a planet’s surface in this craft would not survive the journey. The craft would turn into a flaming comet as the heat of re-entry seared anyone inside to ashes before melting to nothing as it plunged to its death.

The people that had boarded this craft had clearly done so with no intention of ever returning to the surface.

That meant that their mission was one way.

Zahariel crawled from beneath the shuttle, horrified at the idea that they had been boarded by enemies who posed as friends. He looked at the shuttle, seeing it for the vile transport of the enemy it truly was.

‘But what could they hope to achieve?’ he whispered to himself.

Barely a handful of Saroshi had boarded the Invincible Reason, hardly enough to trouble even one Dark Angel, let alone a ship full of them.

So what purpose did this visit serve?

Zahariel circled the shuttle, tapping his fist on the battered fuselage, the softly humming engines and its bulbous front section. As he reached the front of the shuttle, he wondered again at the strange design of the craft, for its nose was surely a poor choice of shape for any craft designed for atmospheric flight.

Though he was no aeronautical engineer, he had learnt enough to know that aircraft depended on lift created by their shape and wings to keep them aloft, and that such a heavy-looking front section made no sense.

Looking more closely at the nose, Zahariel could see that it had been a later addition to the craft’s structure, the paint and workmanship different from the rest of the ship. He stood back and looked at the lines of the shuttle’s front, seeing now that the entire section had been added over and above where the original nose of the shuttle ended.

Zahariel took hold of one of the access hatches and pulled.

As he had feared, it was welded shut, but he knew that something dreadful was concealed within. He took a deep breath and gripped the release handle, pulling it with all his might.

Metal bent and buckled, and finally came free, the welded joint unable to withstand the strength of one of the Emperor’s finest. Zahariel tossed aside the ruined panel and stared into the gap he had torn in the front section.

Inside he saw a mass of thick blocks of dark metal fitted around a circular core about a metre across. Thick struts of the same dark metal protected the central core, and a procession of winking lights circled the device hidden within the secret compartment.

‘It’s a weapon of some sort,’ said a voice behind him, ‘an atomic warhead I think.’

Zahariel spun, his fist raised to strike the speaker.

Luther stood before him, his face a mask of anguish and regret.

‘An atomic warhead?’ asked Zahariel.

‘Yes,’ said Luther, coming closer and peering into the opened access panel. ‘I think the whole shuttle is nothing but one giant missile.’

‘You knew of this?’ said Zahariel. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

Luther turned away from him, his shoulders slumped as though in defeat. He turned back to Zahariel, who was shocked to see tears in his commander’s eyes.

‘I almost did, Zahariel,’ said Luther. ‘I wanted to, but then I thought of what would be mine if I didn’t: the Legion, command, Caliban. It would all be mine, and I would no longer have to share it with someone whose shadow obscures everything I do.’

‘The Lion?’ said Zahariel. ‘His deeds are great, but so are yours!’

‘Maybe in another age,’ said Luther, ‘one in which I did not share the same span of time as a man like the Lion. In any other age, the glory of leading Caliban from the darkness would have been mine, but instead it goes to my brother. You have no idea how galling it is to be the greatest man of the age and have that taken from you in an instant.’

Zahariel watched the words flow from Luther in a flood. For a decade and more, these feelings had been contained within a dam of honour and restraint, but the dam was crumbling and Luther’s true feelings were spilling out.

‘I never realised,’ said Zahariel, his hand sliding towards his sword. ‘No one did.’

‘No, even I did not; not fully,’ said Luther, ‘not until I saw this shuttle. I wouldn’t have to lift a finger. All I’d have to do is walk away, and everything I wanted would be mine.’

‘Then why are you back here?’

‘I ordered everyone out of the embarkation deck and walked away,’ said Luther, one hand covering his eyes as he spoke, ‘but I hadn’t gone more than a few steps before I knew I couldn’t do it.’

‘Then you’re here to stop it?’ asked Zahariel, relieved beyond words.

‘I am,’ nodded Luther, ‘so you can stop reaching for your blade. I realised that it was an honour to serve a warrior as great as the Lion, and that I was the luckiest man alive to be allowed to call him brother.’

Zahariel turned back to the shuttle and the deadly cargo it contained.

‘Then how do we stop it?’

‘Ah,’ said Luther, ‘that, I don’t know.’

‘You go too far,’ said the Lion, his hand going to the ceremonial sword at his side.

‘No, you do,’ responded the high exalter. ‘You are abominations, all of you,’ he snarled, his fat jowls wobbling. ‘The only reason I bear your presence is because I have been granted the honour of pronouncing the judgement of my people upon you.

‘Your Imperium is the work of evil men,’ said the lord high exalter. ‘Your words are falsehoods. You are craven and dishonourable, and your angels… your angels are the worst, the product of rutting beasts. You are liar angels. You are loathsome and unclean.’

‘Enough!’ roared the Lion.

The commander of the Dark Angels Legion was enraged, his hand gripping the pommel of his sword so tightly that his knuckles were white. ‘By the Emperor–’

‘I spit on your Emperor,’ said the fat man, and the gathered Imperials gave a collective intake of breath. ‘And I spit on you, Lion El’Jonson!’

The high exalter stretched out his arms, laid three fingers from his right hand on top of the five fingers of his left and touched them to the symbol painted on his forehead.

‘You are not men, nor worthy leaders. You are–’

He was not allowed to finish the sentence.

Before the lord high exalter could say another word, the Lion drew his gleaming sword and clove through the fat man’s shoulder and down into his ample gut.

Zahariel looked down at the device in the shuttle’s front section, as the blinking lights suddenly began to speed up, and a single pulsing red light lit up in the centre of the sphere. The engines of the shuttle coughed to life and a rising whine of ignition built from within.

‘Damn,’ said Luther.

Twenty-Two

The sequence of lights was speeding up, and a second red light had winked into life on the sphere at the centre of the device. A rising hum, felt in the bones as well as heard, built from the sphere, penetrating even the screaming roar of the engines as they gathered power.

The heat from the engines and the device was growing, and Zahariel and Luther were forced back from the shuttle as it began to lift from the deck as automatic systems kicked in, responding to some remotely activated signal.

‘How do we stop it?’ cried Zahariel over the roar of the shuttle’s engines.

‘I don’t know,’ shouted Luther, pointing at an inter-ship vox station on the wall of the embarkation deck, ‘but we have to warn the Lion!’

Zahariel nodded in understanding as Luther fought to reach the shuttle through the rippling heat haze that surrounded it and the growling wash of superheated air billowing from the engines.

Emergency lights flashed to life and a wailing siren sounded as deck systems registered the massive build up of heat and radiation.

‘I can’t get near it!’ shouted Luther.

Zahariel slammed into the wall of the embarkation deck and pressed the ‘all-decks’ stud, sending a warning to the entire ship.

‘Embarkation deck one reports hostile vessel on board!’ he yelled over the screaming din of sirens and the ever-growing roar of the shuttle’s engines. Even as he watched, the shuttle lifted from the deck in a blast of heat. Zahariel heard a scream of pain, and Luther staggered away from the… missile… for he could no longer think of it as simply a shuttle.

‘Repeat?’ said a voice through the vox-station. ‘Hostile ship?’

‘Yes!’ cried Zahariel. ‘The Saroshi ship! It’s a missile or a bomb of some sort!’

Luther staggered over to him, his armour blistered and scorched by the heat of the enemy weapon’s engines. Zahariel looked over to where the missile had lifted off, its nose angling as though homing in on some unseen beacon… some unseen beacon aboard their ship.

Blast doors rumbled open in response to the alarm, and work crews and emergency fire-fighters rushed onto the embarkation deck. Orange jumpsuited techs threw up their arms in response to the intense heat flooding the compartment.

Zahariel felt his skin blistering under the intense heat, and knew that they had seconds at best before the enemy missile’s primary thrusters ignited, filling the deck with killing plasma and thrusting its warhead deep into the belly of the ship.

In that instant he realised what he had to do.

He left Luther at the vox station and ran for the control panel further along the wall, ignoring the pain as his hair was burned from his scalp. Already his armour was bubbling as the paint melted, and his steps were becoming leaden and heavy as the heat fused the joints.

He pushed grimly onwards, knowing that he would only get one chance to save the ship and everyone on board.

His steps became slower and his armour heavier, but he fought the pain to reach the wall-mounted deck controls.

He glanced over his shoulder to see the missile fix on a point that would send it deep into the vitals of the ship, right where the Lion was meeting with the lord high exalter.

At last, Zahariel reached the deck controls and smashed his fist through the plexglas panel in front of the emergency controls. Desperately, he gripped the lock-down lever and hauled it shut. The blast doors at the deck’s perimeter began to rumble closed, but before they had even reached half way to the floor, Zahariel hammered his fist on the integrity field override stud.

More blaring sirens joined the ones already filling the embarkation deck with noise, but this one was louder and more strident than the others. A booming voice from overhead speakers blared into the deck.

‘Warning! Integrity field shutting down! Warning! Integrity field shutting down!’

Zahariel pressed the stud again, holding it down in an attempt to hurry the shut down procedure. Emergency crews ran for the closing blast doors in panic.

‘Warning! Integrity field shutting down! Warning! Integrity field shutting down!’

‘I know!’ shouted Zahariel. ‘In the name of the Lion, just shut down!’

As if in response to his words, the fizzing glow surrounding the generators along the edges of the wide entrance bay faded and the rippling haze of the stars steadied.

A howling gale engulfed the embarkation deck as the atmosphere and everything not fixed in place was explosively vented into space.

The sudden rush of air grabbed them like leaves caught on the wind and dragged them towards the opened bay.

Zahariel grabbed onto the railings that ran around the edge of the embarkation deck and held on for dear life as the howling rush of air bellowed towards the open bay. Crates, boxes of tools and gurneys of ammunition careened through the bay, spiralling towards the void of space as it decompressed.

The instant before his feet left the ground, he activated the magnetic soles of his boots, and the weight of his armour slammed to the deck, fixing him in place. Fuel pipes writhed like pinned snakes, and loose cabling waved and sparked in the gale.

The rigged Saroshi shuttle was caught in the rush of air, the power of the decompression gripping it tightly and hurling it from the ship just as its engines fired. Spiralling out of control, the missile corkscrewed wildly as it tumbled away from the ship.

Those techs and emergency personnel who had not yet reached safety were instantly blown into space, their bodies frozen and ruptured. Their screams were swallowed in the roar of escaping air.

Zahariel watched as the Saroshi shuttle spun away from the Invincible Reason, and he was suddenly blinded as the warhead secreted within it detonated.

Outside, in the cold unforgiving darkness of space, it seemed as though the battle-barge had given birth to a miniature sun. In less than a thousandth of a second, a brilliant ball of light appeared at its flank, flared to incandescence, and was gone.

Despite having been designed to withstand hostile bombardment by enemy guns, many of the view-portals on the ship’s hull shattered, fragments of toughened glass raining out into the void like glittering diamonds.

The blast wave thundered towards the ship, and only its automated damage control systems prevented further loss of life. Reacting to the abrupt decompression, blast proof panels slammed shut all along the ship’s length.

The ship shuddered as though in the grip of a great leviathan of the deep, yet more klaxons and warning lights coming to life in the wake of the explosion. The blast wave rolled over the ship, and Zahariel felt as though every bone in his body was being shaken loose.

At last, the terrible juddering ceased, and he collapsed to the deck, exhausted and groaning at the pain of his burns. He lay there for several minutes, the sirens, flashing lights and shouts of rescue crews sweeping over him without understanding.

‘Brother, are you injured?’

Zahariel turned his burned head and smiled as he saw that Luther was still alive.

‘I thought you were dead,’ said Luther, shouting to be heard over the shrill warning klaxons.

‘My armour saved me,’ he said.

‘It is a good thing you are lucky, Zahariel.’

‘What? Lucky? How do you come to that conclusion?’ asked Zahariel, his voice slurring as the balms of his armour sought to counteract his fierce pain.

‘Look around,’ gasped Luther. ‘Those Saroshi bastards nearly managed to kill the entire command hierarchy of the fleet, but you stopped them.’

Zahariel could only look at the broken bodies littering the deck and feel rage at the atrocity he saw before him, but as quickly as the emotion surfaced, he suppressed it. The mental conditioning the Astartes went through helped them to control their emotions and make the optimum use of them when they were needed.

Rage had its place in the heat of battle, but this was a moment for a cooler head. He pulled himself to his feet with Luther’s help and leaned on the wall, gasping for breath in the frigid air of the restored atmosphere.

Luther adjusted the comms-frequency of the wall vox-station, patching into the Invincible Reason’s command-net.

‘This is Luther of the Dark Angels,’ he said. ‘Multiple casualties sustained on the embarkation deck. I want medicae teams sent here immediately. Bridge command, are you receiving me?’

‘Aye, this is bridge command. Receiving, sir,’ said a grainy, static-washed voice. ‘We have reports of a hull breach on your level. Instruments record it as under control.’

‘That’s correct, bridge command,’ confirmed Luther. ‘The breach was the work of the Saroshi delegation brought onto the ship half an hour ago. The Saroshi shuttle on the embarkation deck was… was rigged with an atomic warhead. Any Saroshi forces left on board are to be arrested immediately. Lethal force is authorised.’

Luther spared a look at the destruction around them and whispered to Zahariel, ‘As of approximately one minute ago, we are at war with the Saroshi people.’

Another voice cut in over the voice of bridge command and Zahariel instantly recognised it as belonging to the Lion.

‘I want a strategium meeting with all commanders and seconds-in-command onboard the Invincible Reason in half an hour’s time. Is that understood?’

‘Understood, my lord,’ said Luther, sharing an uncomfortable look with Zahariel.

The attack on the Invincible Reason was just the beginning.

All across the fleet, and in the cities and lands of Sarosh, the Imperials found they were suddenly attacked by the people they assumed regarded them as heroes. They had come to liberate the Saroshi from their ignorance, to deliver them from Old Night. They had come to bring them the wonders of the Imperium, to show them marvels.

But the inhabitants of Sarosh had rejected the Imperium and everything it stood for. They rejected it with great violence, perpetrating appalling deeds of horror and bloodshed. They carried out dozens of atrocities, unleashing all manner of acts of terror.

More than a thousand Imperial Army and Naval personnel were on shore leave, enjoying the delights of the carnival, when the uprising began.

Some were murdered, but most of those affected were the victims of abduction. They disappeared into the night, gone without trace, leaving no evidence behind of where they had been taken or who had kidnapped them.

The situation was clearer when it came to the fate of the Imperial institutions already present on Sarosh. In the space of twelve months, even with compliance yet to be fully certified, a dozen different organs of government had been transplanted from the fleet onto the planet’s surface.

Naturally, Lord Governor-Elect Furst had established a residence in an appropriately palatial building in the administrative district at the heart of the capital city of Shaloul. Similarly, in preparation for the eventual transfer of powers, various offices of liaison had also been established in the vicinity.

At around the same time as the Saroshi shuttle exploded, an angry mob attacked the governor’s residence on Sarosh, as well as the nearby Imperial offices. Quickly overwhelming the few Army troopers who had been left on guard duty, the riot’s ringleaders dragged the Imperial functionaries out onto the streets and hacked them to death with axes and knives as the crowd bayed for blood.

Their bodies were spat on and dismembered, and then condemned to the fire as the mob set light to the Imperial buildings and cast the evidence of their outrage into the flames.

A few of the Imperials present on Sarosh managed to escape being murdered or abducted. Later, when these survivors told their tales, it would become clear that the entire population of the planet had exploded in a frenzy of bloodletting every bit as sudden and dramatic as the blast that nearly tore through the Invincible Reason.

The survivors would talk of a primal savagery that descended on the people of Sarosh without warning. One minute, the Saroshi had been their normal charming selves. The next, they had erupted into shocking, ferocious violence.

Yet, at the same time, there was never the suggestion that this violence was in any way wild or out of control. According to the survivors’ accounts, the opposite held true. There was a terrifying calmness in the manner in which the Saroshi went about the killings.

They were highly organised, as though each and every one of the thousands of rebels had earlier agreed on a specific role in the conspiracy, as well as an exact timetable by which all these tasks would take place.

Most frightening of all, and many who believed in the Imperial truth would find this especially troubling, was the almost machine-like perfection of this timetable. There would never be any definite proof of communication between the conspirators on Sarosh and their confederates elsewhere, yet, they appeared able to synchronise their actions to the very second.

Even when some part of their plan failed, their remaining agents seemed capable of adapting to new circumstances quickly, despite having no apparent means of communications with the rest of the rebels.

It was an enigma, though it was hardly the most pressing issue commanding the attention of the Dark Angels.

‘Mayday! This is Bold Conveyor! Our hull is ruptured and we are leaking atmosphere. Request transfer of all available work crews and medicae teams from other ships in the fleet. We need help here!’

‘This is Wrath of Caliban calling the flagship! We demand an immediate update on the current status of our commanders. Over.’

‘Intrepid calling! Mutineers have been subdued and the situation is under control.’

‘Arbalest, this is Invincible Reason. Retreat from high anchor position at once and relocate to anchorage beta or you will be fired upon as a hostile vessel. This is your final warning.’

The bridge of the Invincible Reason was alive with a confused babble of voices. As Zahariel entered the command area with Luther beside him, he was immediately struck by the tension in the air.

A dozen officers and ratings sat nervously at their stations, issuing terse instructions or holding conversations by inter-ship comms with the other vessels in the fleet. Zahariel recognised controlled desperation in the voices of the men around him.

It was the same sound he expected to hear in the voice of an army commander whenever the situation was fluid and the progress of the battle was uncertain. It was the sound of men holding fast to their duties even when they suspected that war was about to render their duty, even their lives, irrelevant.

It was the sound of warriors on the verge of panic.

That sound ceased as a rating called out, ‘Master on the bridge!’

Zahariel looked over to where another door to the bridge had opened and the Lion strode in, his face thunderous, and his sword bared and bloody. Zahariel had never seen the master of the First Legion looking so angry, and he felt a kernel of apprehension stir in his belly at the thought of the war that such a fury might unleash.

Nemiel walked alongside the Lion, his expression similarly furious, as they marched towards an officer in the uniform of a fleet captain, who stood talking to the ship’s astropath. Zahariel and Luther made their way painfully over to the conference of senior officers.

The fleet captain turned at the Lion’s approach and saluted sharply.

‘Captain Stenius,’ demanded the Lion without preamble. ‘What is the situation? I want an update.’

The captain turned to the blind woman beside him. ‘This is Mistress Argenta, the fleet’s senior astropath. I am happy to see you, Lord Jonson. I was hoping you would–’

‘Now, Captain Stenius,’ said the Lion, the tone of warning in his voice unmistakable.

‘Of course,’ said Stenius as he bowed and turned to the servitor manning a nearby bank of instruments. ‘Raise the shutters.’

A click, followed by a distant whirring noise, sounded as the blast shutters protecting the bridge’s observation blisters slid back into their recessed bays to reveal the scene out in space.

‘We lowered the shutters as a precaution,’ said Stenius. ‘What with the failed attack on us and the attack on the Bold Conveyor I decided it best to take the fleet to general battle stations. Fortunately, the worst of it seems to be over.’

‘The attack on the Bold Conveyor?’ said Luther. ‘What attack?’

The Lion turned at the sound of his brother’s voice and his eyes narrowed as he took in the wounded state of Zahariel and Luther. He said nothing of their condition, clearly filing it away to ask about later.

Zahariel looked through the observation blister into space, horrified to see bodies floating in the cold of the void. Hundreds drifted slowly past the ship’s observation blisters like some grotesque form of parade inspection.

‘We’ve had attempted mutinies on three ships,’ said Stenius. ‘In each instance, small groups of no more than half a dozen men launched attacks on the bridges of their ships. Mostly, the mutinies were suppressed before they could do any real damage, but on the Arbalest the mutineers managed to let off a torpedo salvo. They hit the Bold Conveyor and damaged her. The bodies you can see outside are casualties from the Bold Conveyor. Once the shooting started, I ordered the fleet to different stations to put more distance between each ship. Some of the bodies from the Bold Conveyor must have got caught in the backwash from our engines. That’s why they’re in orbit around us.’

‘How badly was the Bold Conveyor damaged?’ demanded the Lion.

‘Hull rupture,’ explained Captain Stenius. ‘Most of the dead were Army troopers who were sucked out into the vacuum when the torpedo hit.’

He shrugged. ‘It could have been worse. I’ve sent extra repair crews to the Bold Conveyor via shuttle. Early reports indicate that the damage isn’t bad enough to threaten her space worthiness, though it’s likely to be a few days before she’s fully operational again.’

‘So the situation in space is under control?’

‘For the most part, yes,’ answered Stenius, ‘but according to Mistress Argenta, that’s the least of our worries.’

A conference was held in the Invincible Reason’s staterooms, the senior members of the Dark Angels gathering to hear the words of Mistress Argenta. The Lion and Luther spoke in a huddled corner, their words unheard by anyone, though the intensity of their conversation was plain for all to see.

Brother-Librarian Israfael stood beside a robed member of the Mechanicum, and a number of servitors accompanied them both. The atmosphere was tense, and Zahariel could sense the urgent need in every man gathered here to strike back at the Saroshi.

He and Nemiel sat at the briefing table trying to make sense of the last few hours that had seen brother turn on brother and former allies take arms against them. Initial theories suggested that the mutineers on the Imperial ships had been drugged and rendered open to treacherous suggestion by a concoction distilled from the perfume of the plants that thronged every building and surface of the capital city.

This was a morsel of information to be digested later, for a much greater threat was apparently arising in the dusty hardpan of the deserts in the north of the main continental mass of Sarosh.

The Lion turned away from Luther abruptly, his face a mask of unreadable emotion as he took his seat at the head of the table. Luther took his seat at the table too, and Zahariel could read his features much more easily. Their second-in-command’s expression was one of despair and anguish.

‘We do not have much time,’ snapped the Lion, cutting through the babble of voices around the room. At his tone, every head turned in his direction and every voice was stilled.

‘Mistress Argenta,’ said the Lion. ‘Speak.’

The astropath took a hesitant step forward, as though being near the awesome figure of the primarch was too much for her to bear for any length of time.

‘You may have heard the high exalter talk of beings known as the Melachim during his outburst against the Imperium. It is my belief that this is the Saroshi name for a certain breed of xenos creature that dwells in the warp.’

‘How are they a danger to us?’ asked Nemiel. ‘Surely they are confined to the warp.’

‘Normally that would be the case,’ said the astropath, turning her blind eyes towards Zahariel’s cousin, ‘but the Astropathic Choir has become aware of a growing build up of psychic energy in the northern deserts, indicative of a major warp rift.’

‘And what is causing this?’ asked the Lion.

‘We do not know.’

‘Speculate,’ ordered the Lion.

‘Perhaps the natives of this planet have some way of focusing the energies of the warp by some means we are not aware of, my lord.’

‘For what purpose would they do this?’

‘It is said that if one has a host of strong enough will, it is possible to imbue it with the presence of a creature from beyond the gates of the Empyrean.’

‘And you think that is what’s happening here?’

‘If such a thing is even possible,’ pointed out Zahariel.

The Lion shot him a venomous look that shocked Zahariel. ‘We must assume that it is, for now. The treachery and deviousness of the Saroshi are without bounds. We must trust nothing from this point onwards and assume the worst.’

The Lion turned his attention back to the astropath, and Zahariel felt a wave of relief wash over him at being released from that hostile glare.

‘Mistress Argenta,’ said the Lion. ‘If the Saroshi can indeed summon some xeno beast from the warp, how bad might it get?’

‘If they succeed, it could be the worst thing you have ever fought.’

‘Why can’t we simply bomb the site from orbit?’ asked the Lion. ‘That would put paid to most threats.’

‘Not this one, my lord,’ said Argenta. ‘The psychic build up is already underway, and any attack that fails to halt that build up will be doomed to failure.’

‘Then how do we fight it?’

In response to the Lion’s question, Brother-Librarian Israfael stepped forward. ‘I may be able to answer that, my lord. Ever since our Legion fought on the bloody fields of Perissus, I have been working to develop a means of fighting such creatures. This was before you joined us, my lord.’

The Lion scowled, and Zahariel was reminded how much their primarch disliked being reminded that the Legion had existed before he had become its master.

‘Go on,’ ordered the Lion. ‘How do we fight this rising power?’

‘An electro-psychic pulse,’ said Israfael. ‘Of course, it is difficult to know precisely how it will interact with the energies being gathered, but I am confident it should disrupt the ambient psychic field and–’

‘Please, more slowly, Israfael,’ said the Lion, raising his hand with the palm facing outward to stem Israfael’s words. ‘I am sure you know what you are talking about, but remember we are warriors. If you want us to understand you, you will need to keep it simple and start from the beginning.’

‘More simply, of course,’ said Israfael, and Zahariel did not envy him being under the white heat of the primarch’s gaze. ‘I believe it may be possible to counteract the build up of psychic energy by detonating an electro-psychic pulse weapon in the vicinity.’

‘What is this “electro-psychic pulse weapon” you talk of?’ asked the Lion.

‘It is simply a modified cyclonic warhead,’ explained Israfael. ‘With the help of the Mechanicum adepts, we can remove the explosive part of the warhead and replace it with an electro-psychic pulse capacitor that will generate a massive blast of energy inimical to creatures composed of immaterial energies. As for destroying the psychic build up, ideally we need to detonate the device as close to the source as possible.’

‘I see,’ said the Lion. ‘What form will the device take? Obviously, it is a bomb, but can you adapt it to be dropped from a shuttle?’

‘No,’ said Israfael, ‘for the pulse of the blast must be directed by one schooled in the psychic arts.’

‘In other words, you need to be there when it detonates.’

‘I do,’ confirmed Israfael, ‘along with as many other brothers with psychic potential who can fight.’

The Lion nodded. ‘Begin work on adapting such a weapon immediately. How long do you estimate the work will take?’

‘A few hours at most,’ said Israfael.

‘Very well,’ said the Lion. ‘Begin at once.’

Twenty-Three

The Dark Angels of Zahariel’s squad gathered around the assault ramp of the Stormbird to listen to Sar Hadariel’s final mission briefing before taking the fight to the surface of Sarosh.

The Stormbirds gathered on the portside embarkation deck, ready to be unleashed on the planet below, and the assembled warriors were in a killing mood. The Lion would lead this attack personally, and though Zahariel was still in great pain from the attack on the Invincible Reason, his training in the Librarius had selected him for this mission despite his injuries.

Nemiel had been chosen to accompany the Lion’s squads, and even in the urgent fervour that gripped every warrior before battle, Zahariel was stung by his cousin’s inclusion in the group. Luther was not present, and Zahariel had been surprised by his absence, but had left the matter unremarked, seeing the Lion’s hooded expression when Sar Hadariel had mentioned their second-in-command.

‘This smacks of great danger,’ said Attias, and Zahariel was glad to hear the familiar voice of his friend. Attias had made a fine member of the Astartes, and was a valued and trusted battle-brother.

‘We always face danger,’ said Eliath, quoting some of the Legion’s teachings. Like Attias, Eliath had come through the training of the Astartes with honour and was one of the Legion’s best heavy weapon troopers. ‘We are Astartes. We are Dark Angels. We were not made to die of old age. Death or glory! Loyalty and honour!’

‘Loyalty and honour,’ echoed Attias. ‘Understand, I am not questioning the need for danger. I merely ask whether we should base our strategy in this theatre on the workings of an experimental device. If the bomb doesn’t work, what then? I’d hate to face an enemy with Eliath’s good looks as our only fallback weapon if it proves to be a damp squib.’

There was momentary laughter among the assembled warriors. Even from Eliath, whose squat, hardworn features and heavy-set build were the source of some occasional fun at his expense.

‘Better my good looks than your swordsmanship,’ responded Eliath, ‘unless you hope the enemy will be driven to distraction by the whistling sound your blade makes as it misses them over and over again.’

‘We are Dark Angels,’ said Hadariel, and the laughter stopped. ‘We are the First Legion, the warriors of the Emperor. You ask whether we should trust ourselves to the science of the Mechanicum and the wisdom of our Brother-Librarian? I ask you, how can we not? Is not science the Imperium’s guiding light? Is it not our bedrock? Is it not the stone on which the foundations of our new society have been built? So, yes, we will trust their science. We will trust our lives to it, just as we trust ourselves and all humanity to the guidance of the Emperor, beloved of all.’

‘I am sorry, Chapter Master,’ said Attias, chastened. ‘I meant no offence.’

‘You caused none,’ said Hadariel. ‘You simply asked a question, and there is no harm in that. If ever a time comes when the Dark Angels see reason to avoid questions, we will have lost our souls.’

Zahariel looked across the faces of the men surrounding him as he listened to the Chapter Master’s words. Some were men he had known back on Caliban, and the bond that existed between them as brothers and fellow warriors was as strong as ceramite, stronger, in fact, for where ceramite could be cut through with the right kind of weapon, he could never imagine the bond of loyalty he felt for his brother Astartes ever being broken.

‘The Chapter Master is right,’ said Zahariel, as words he had heard long ago returned to resonate within his skull. ‘We Astartes were made to serve mankind. We are Dark Angels and in the practice of war, we follow the teachings of the Lion. He tells us war is a matter of adaptation, and whoever adapts most quickly to changing circumstances and takes advantage of the vagaries of warfare, will be victorious. We have been presented with a powerful weapon with which to defeat our foe and we would be fools not to use it.’

‘So we will make use of the device,’ said Eliath. ‘I hope you will forgive my presumption, Chapter Master, but I have known you for long enough to know when there is a plan forming in your head. The device is only part of what we need. We also need a plan to help us put it into operation. Do you have a plan?’

‘I have a plan,’ agreed Hadariel.

Zahariel looked into the faces of his brothers and saw an expression of complete determination in each of them as Sar Hadariel outlined their plan of attack.

The Saroshi were doomed, they just didn’t know it yet.

It was midday, and the burning sun had reached its apex.

Among the indigenous folk of Sarosh, it was seen as a quiet time, a part of the day usually spent sleeping in the shade of their dwellings until the worst of the afternoon heat had passed. The planet’s newly arrived Imperial forces did not choose to follow the same routines however, least of all the warriors of the Astartes.

Four Stormbirds screamed over the desert, keeping low and fast as they flew towards their objective, a cluster of prefabricated buildings identified from orbit as Mining Station One Zeta Five.

In the lead Stormbird, Zahariel sat against the bucking fuselage of the aircraft as it tore through the air towards battle. All around him, Dark Angels sat clutching their weapons, ready to take a measure of revenge for the attack on their ships and people. The Saroshi had started this war, but the Dark Angels were going to finish it.

‘This is the Lion to all assigned units,’ said their leader’s voice over the vox, and despite the growing aloofness the Legion’s master had been displaying recently, Zahariel was still struck by the commanding tone of his voice. ‘Mission target is confirmed as Mining Station One Zeta Five. Initiate all mission protocols.’

Zahariel heard a flurry of vox-traffic as the relevant units responded in the affirmative.

The Stormbirds were heavily armoured assault shuttles, designed to ferry a complement of Astartes warriors into the middle of even the most ferocious of firefights.

Each was painted black and marked with the winged sword icon on its hull, in accordance with Legion heraldry.

‘We are ready, my lord,’ said Hadariel, and Zahariel could hear the relish in his Chapter Master’s voice. It was a relish shared by every man in the Stormbird.

Eliath sat across from Zahariel, his broad shoulders and thickset build making a flight seat a cramped proposition for him. His friend was an impressive physical specimen, even for an Astartes, and he saluted as he sensed Zahariel’s scrutiny.

‘Not long now,’ said Eliath. His friend was not wearing his helmet and had to yell to be heard above the roar of the craft’s engines. ‘Be good to strike back, eh?’

‘Aye, that it will,’ replied Zahariel.

‘How are we going to make the assault, Chapter Master?’ asked Attias.

‘We will be using jump packs for the descent,’ said Hadariel. ‘Our orders are to deploy from the shuttle at an altitude of five hundred metres to make a controlled combat drop. We’ll land in the area of open scrub north of the station. From there we will advance to clear the station building by building until we rendezvous with the approach of the Lion and his men from the south. Naturally, we can expect the enemy to respond. In fact, we are counting on it.’

Around the compartment, the Astartes listened to his words intently. From his own position, seated at the head of the troop compartment, Zahariel was struck by the almost reverential air with which the men of his company greeted the news.

‘Remember, our mission here is to fight through any resistance as quickly as possible and deliver the Brother-Librarian and his cargo,’ said Hadariel. ‘Once we have deployed from the Stormbirds, the pilots will ascend to a holding pattern ready to pick us up when they are given the order to begin the extraction. I want helmets on and all purity seals engaged. One Zeta Five is to be treated as a toxic environment.’

Zahariel could barely contain his excitement at the prospect of combat. He had been trained to counteract any fear, but as much as the Astartes were defined by fearlessness, they were defined equally by their aptitude for war.

Their bodies had been crafted to superhuman levels so that they would not just defeat the Imperium’s enemies, they would annihilate them.

The Astartes expected to face danger in the natural course of their lives; in fact, they welcomed it, as though without a battle to fight they were incomplete.

‘Finally, let us be clear on one thing,’ said Hadariel. ‘This is a mission of destruction, not capture. We are not interested in prisoners, so if there is anyone alive at One Zeta Five we do not stop fighting until they are dead.’

His words were punctuated by a trilling from the Stormbird’s inter-vox as a red light began to flash inside the compartment. Hadariel responded with a wolfish grin.

‘There’s the signal,’ he said. ‘We are approaching the target. Helmets on and activate your seals. And good hunting to all of you.’

Zahariel’s heart quickened at the prospect of action. ‘If we are not fighting within the next five minutes, I shall be disappointed,’ he said to Eliath and Attias.

He could feel his senses sharpening as the prospect of the drop came closer.

Eliath nodded in response to his words and gave the Dark Angel battle-cry. ‘For the Lion! For Luther! For Caliban!’

‘For the Lion! For Luther! For Caliban!’ repeated the Astartes, and the combined tenor of their words seemed to shake the metal bulkheads of the compartment. At Hadariel’s signal, they rose from their seats and filed towards the assault door at the back of the shuttle, ready for the drop to begin.

The Stormbird began to shake around them as the pilot decreased the shuttle’s speed in preparation for the drop. The assault doors opened and the red lights positioned all through the interior of the Stormbird turned green.

A continuous ringing tone sounded over the inter-vox: the signal to jump.

Zahariel was first down the ramp and he felt the air screaming around him, alongside the sudden feeling of weightlessness in the split-second before gravity caught hold of him and he activated his jump pack to compensate. Eliath, Attias, Hadariel and the others were right behind him, exhaust flares spreading from their packs like fiery wings as they descended towards the mining station five hundred metres below.

He missed Nemiel’s presence for a moment, but pushed such thoughts from his mind as he saw the dusty hardpan rushing up towards him.

It was time for war, time to let the Dark Angels fly.

As the angels descended, they were not met by anti-aircraft fire from ground-based batteries, or entrenched and heavily armed defenders. Their drop was unopposed, and Zahariel was thankful for such small mercies, remembering far worse training drops where live ammunition had been used to make things more ‘interesting’.

They made their landing in the area of open scrub in good order.

Having landed, the Dark Angels fanned out, advancing on the mining station at One Zeta Five in a loose skirmish line, helmets down and weapons at the ready. At first sight, it was as though they had entered a ghost town. The station was eerily quiet, though Zahariel’s senses were alert to the growling psychic presence buzzing at the edge of perception.

A ridge of high cliffs rose above the station to the west, but otherwise its perimeter was surrounded by open desert on three sides. In the centre of the station, over the minehead, there was the enormous drum of the cable-winch, designed to bring the miners up and down to the angled mineshaft that ran at a forty-five degree angle into the ground, as well as raising the ore they had mined to the surface. In turn, it was surrounded by a ramshackle collection of prefabricated huts, and the barracks used as sleeping quarters for the miners.

Wheeled ore-bins were dotted throughout the station, some overturned with their cargo spilled out. As Zahariel and his men moved from the outskirts of the settlement towards the admin buildings in the immediate vicinity of the minehead, they found all the intervening huts and barracks empty. One Zeta Five seemed to be deserted. The only sound Zahariel could hear was the terse back-and-forth of inter-squad vox. Beyond that, the entire area was silent.

‘There’s something here,’ he heard Hadariel say. ‘I can feel it.’

‘I agree,’ replied Zahariel. ‘There should be animal sounds, but all I can hear is silence. There’s something here and its frightened away the local fauna.’

Using the same channel, Zahariel heard Hadariel link comms with the squads on the other side of the station.

‘Hadariel to the Lion. Any sign of the enemy?’

‘Nothing so far,’ came the terse reply. ‘I can see their leavings, though.’

There was blood on the sand.

In some places it had hit the ground in small scattered droplets, in others it took the form of larger puddles, staining the soil and already starting to stink in the midday heat.

Here and there, Zahariel could see objects scattered around their advance.

Discarded auto-weapons, a las-torch, a broken comms-unit, detonator cord: all left lying in the sand. Zahariel glanced up at the sky, where the Stormbirds turned in wide and endlessly repeating circles, thousands of metres above them.

Zahariel suddenly became aware of a rising and repulsive odour like the slaughterhouse smell of rancid blood mixed with the cloying sickly sweet stench of rotten fruit.

He tried to shout a warning, but it was too late.

The prefabricated metal of the building nearest Attias ruptured as something massively powerful tore through it and leapt to the attack. Zahariel saw a glimpse of scales, vertically pupilled eyes and a fanged mouth opening wide.

The creature spat something in Attias’s face and his helmet erupted in hissing smoke as though doused with acid. It leapt upon the stricken warrior, its whip-thin arms wrapping around Attias as it tore at him with razor claws that sliced open its victim’s power armour like tinfoil.

It wrapped its forearms around Attias’s torso and there was a wet, awful sound as dozens of retractable claws hidden along the creature’s limbs emerged from inside muscular sheaths and stabbed through the warrior’s armour.

Attias dropped, his blood staining the sand as the monster leapt away, its strangely jointed legs propelling it over the rough terrain at an incredible speed. Bolter rounds chased it, exploding against the buildings of the mining settlement, but failing to hit their target.

Zahariel watched as the beast vanished from sight. There was something wrong in the way it had moved, its knees and ankles flexing at peculiar angles.

More gunfire erupted from around the compound and frantic cries came over the vox as more of the Dark Angel squads came under attack.

Choking back a cry of rage, Zahariel rushed to the side of his fallen comrade.

Attias’s helmet was a smoking ruin, the stench of scorched metal and skin sickening, even filtered through the auto-senses of Zahariel’s armour. Attias writhed in agony, and Zahariel fought to tear his helmet free. The helmet’s armour clasps had burned through, and Zahariel had no choice but to wrench the smouldering armour from his friend’s head.

The helmet came free from the armoured gorget and Attias screamed as the skin of his face came with it, ropes of flesh drooling like molten rubber from the remains of his helm.

‘Get back!’ cried the squad’s Apothecary, pushing Zahariel from his comrade’s convulsing body. The Apothecary went to work, the hissing tubes, needles and dispensers of his narthecium gauntlet the best chance of ensuring Attias’s survival.

Zahariel stepped away, horrified at the bloody mess where his friend’s face used to be.

Hadariel pulled him away. ‘Leave the Apothecary to his ministrations. We have work to do.’

Eliath stood next to Zahariel and said, ‘By the Lion, I’ve never seen the like.’

Zahariel nodded in agreement and slapped his hand on the heavy bolter his friend carried. ‘Keep your weapon ready, brother. These things move fast.’

‘What are they?’ asked Eliath. ‘I thought this was a human world.’

‘That was our mistake,’ replied Zahariel as more gunfire and vox-chatter cut through the shock of Attias’s wounding.

‘Hostile contact,’ reported another squad sergeant, ‘Reptilian beasts. Came out of nowhere. Fast moving, but I think we wounded it. One dead. Moving on.’

‘Understood,’ said the Lion. ‘Message understood. All units continue to the centre of the settlement.’

The strange reptilian beast attacked twice more, each time emerging from hiding to attack with unnatural speed and ferocity. Each time the monsters attacked, they would draw blood, but no more warriors fell to their ambushes, though many were forced to discard portions of armour as the xenos creatures’ acid eructations melted their Mark III plate.

The Astartes pushed deeper into the settlement, bolters chattering as they methodically advanced in an overlapping formation, one squad moving forward as another covered it.

The attacks grew more frequent as they drew nearer their objective, and as they gained the inner reaches of the settlement, Zahariel saw that the creatures had gathered in a mass of rippling, scaled bodies before the entrance to the mineshaft.

Zahariel felt his gorge rise at the sight of such unnatural beings, their anatomy twisted so far from the human ideal that he could think of no classification of form to assign them. Each limb was multi-jointed and appeared to move and rotate on a number of different axes. Their bodies were sinuous and rippled with iridescent scales that were translucent and somehow ghostly, as though their bodies were not quite… real.

‘What are they?’ asked Eliath.

‘Unclean xenos creatures,’ answered Hadariel.

Gunfire sounded from the three open sides of the settlement, and Zahariel saw the Lion emerge from behind a tall structure of rusted sheet metal. Once again, he was struck by his primarch’s physicality as he led the warriors of the Dark Angels from the front, his sword raised and the fury of battle in his eyes.

No sooner had Lion El’Jonson appeared than the xenos creatures set up a terrible keening cry, though whether this was in fear or anticipation, Zahariel could not say.

They surged forward in a boiling tide of scales and claws, and the Dark Angels charged to meet them.

Bolters blazed and exploded wetly inside the creatures. Each wounded creature fell to the sand and began dissolving into a pool of glassy, viscous fluid.

The two foes met in a storm of blades and claws. Zahariel was face to face with a screeching creature with an elongated head and rippling, coloured eyes with vertical slits. It hissed and bit at him with such speed that its first attack nearly took his head off.

He leapt back and fired into the creature’s belly, the bolt passing through before detonating. Wounded, the creature slashed at him with its claws and spat a gobbet of acid mucus towards him. He swayed aside from the acid, but took the brunt of the monster’s claws across his chest.

Zahariel cried out as its claws seemed to pass through his armour to slice the meat and muscle of his chest. The pain was intense and cold, and he gasped at the suddenness of it.

In the instant of contact he recalled the soul-numbing chill he had felt in the forests of Endriago just before he had encountered the Watchers in the Dark. This beast was just as unnatural as whatever the Watchers had been set to guard, and he knew with utter clarity that they were not simply another form of xenos creature, but something infinitely more dangerous.

Zahariel dropped his bolter and drew the sword fashioned from the Lion of Endriago’s tooth. The monster came at him again. He swept his sword through the creature’s slashing limb, and stepped in to cut upwards into its chest, the keen blade slicing the insubstantial meat of its body like a sopping cloud.

For all their speed and ferocity, the ghost-like monsters could not hope to stand against the relentless stoicism of the Dark Angels, who closed the noose of their warrior circles and slaughtered them without mercy.

Zahariel watched the Lion fight his way through the monsters as though possessed with a killing fury beyond imagining. His sword clove through the creatures, turning half a dozen to wet piles of jelly-like fluid with every blow.

Nemiel fought alongside the Lion, his skill nowhere near the sublime majesty of the primarch, yet no less determined. His cousin was a fine warrior and, beside the Lion, he looked every inch the hero he was.

Within moments of the battle starting, it was over, and the last of the creatures were despatched. Where before the mining settlement had rung to the sounds of bolters and screaming chainswords, silence now fell as the Dark Angels regrouped.

‘Secure the site,’ said the Lion as the last of the monsters was destroyed. ‘I want that Stormbird with Brother-Librarian Israfael’s weapon on the ground in two minutes.’

‘Where are we going next?’ asked Chapter Master Hadariel.

The Lion pointed to the yawning chasm of the mineshaft that plunged steeply into the flanks of the cliffs.

‘Underground,’ said the Lion. ‘The enemy is beneath us.’

Rhianna Sorel had been afraid on many occasions, but the fear that had gripped her since her abduction from the streets of Shaloul was like nothing she had ever known before.

When the soporific effect of the flowers had worn off, she had found herself bound and blindfolded as she was taken to some unknown destination, carried in a conveyance of some comfort into the searing hot deserts around the city.

Their destination had been a mystery, for her captors said nothing on their journey, but had fed and watered her over her protests. Wherever they were taking her and for whatever purpose, they clearly wanted her alive and healthy when they got there.

Her only method of telling the passage of time was that the heat of the day had diminished and that the night was cool and silent. She could hear footfalls around the vehicle she travelled in and the creak of its wheels, but the only sounds beyond that were the soft cries of the wind over the grainy sand.

Despite herself, she had slept, and upon awakening had been carried from her conveyance by a number of people. She wept as she feared the touch of the creatures she had seen wearing the masks during the festival of lights, but her bearers appeared to be human, inasmuch as they sweated and grunted like humans as they bore her onwards.

Her blindfold had slipped and she had caught sight of prefabricated metal structures, like those used to house workers in mining or agricultural settlements. Strange sounds surrounded her, odd shuffling movements that sounded like footsteps, but which had an odd, off-kilter rhythm that made her think of the strange creatures once more.

Her journey had continued underground, the cool, musty air of a cavernous passage unmistakable. A strange metallic taste hovered in the air, and an electric tension crackled in her hair and from the jewellery she still wore.

The metallic reek grew more powerful, the stink of it filling her nostrils, and she gagged on the cloth in her mouth. She had kept her eyes screwed tightly shut as her captors carried her deeper and deeper into the earth, terrified of what she might see if she attempted to discover where they were.

Then followed a series of transfers, as she had been handed reverently from one set of arms to another, until she had been laid against an upright slab of what felt like smooth stone.

She stood with her back to the slab of stone, the sound of a slow and terrible heartbeat booming in the air, as though she were trapped in the ribcage of some enormous beast. Her hands were untied, though they had been secured to the stone slab by some metallic clamps fixed with sliding bolts.

Hands gently cradled her face, and she shuddered at the touch.

She felt her blindfold being removed and blinked in the sudden light.

Before her, she saw a man in a crimson robe with a mask of gold, expressionless and unknowable, on his face.

‘Dusan?’ she asked, more in hope than in any expectation of being right.

‘Yes,’ said the masked man. ‘It is me you speak with.’

Even in this nightmarish situation it made her want to cry to hear a familiar voice.

‘Please,’ she cried. ‘What are you doing? Let me go, please.’

‘No, that cannot be,’ said Dusan. ‘You are to become the Melachim, a vessel for the ancient ones who dwell behind the veil. You will bring us victory against the unclean ones.’

‘What are you talking about? This doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Not to you,’ agreed Dusan. ‘You are godless people and this is a godly act.’

‘Your god?’ said Rhianna. ‘Please, let me go. I promise I won’t say anything.’

‘You lie with your words,’ said Dusan neutrally. ‘It is the way with your people.’

‘No!’ shouted Rhianna. ‘I promise.’

‘It makes no difference now. Most of your people are dead and the rest must soon follow when you host the Melachim. As I said, there will be pain, and for that I am sorry.’

‘What are you going to do to me?’

Though she could not see his face, Rhianna had the distinct impression that Dusan was smiling behind the immobile surface of his mask.

‘We are going to defile you,’ he said, pointing upwards. ‘Your impure flesh will be home to one of our angels.’

She followed his gaze and wept tears of blood as she saw the angel of the Saroshi.

Twenty-Four

The darkness of the mineshaft was no obstacle to the Dark Angels, their armour senses easily compensating for the utter blackness beneath the cliffs. Each step took them deeper into the planet’s surface and brought retribution for all the deaths suffered at the hands of the Saroshi treachery closer.

Zahariel felt the psychic power beneath the earth as an actinic tang in the roof of his mouth, an unpleasant taste of rancid meat and corruption. He glanced over at Brother-Librarian Israfael and saw that he too suffered the vile reek of the warp.

Israfael’s Stormbird had touched down barely moments after the Lion’s order had been issued, a team of servitors and Mechanicum adepts helping to deploy the modified cyclonic warhead from the aircraft’s interior.

Zahariel had been reminded of the bomb secreted in the Saroshi shuttle when he had first seen the device. It resembled an ovoid cylinder strapped to a hovering gurney with chain link restraints. Numerous wires and copper-plated tubes surrounded the device, and Zahariel could plainly see why it could not have been dropped from the air.

Without any words spoken, they had set off into the depths of the world, the Lion leading the way as the angels began their descent.

The going was easy, and Zahariel wondered what the Saroshi were doing beneath the world. Mistress Argenta had spoken of creatures being dragged from the empyrean and given material form, and though such things sounded like the dark nightmares of madmen and lunatics, the things he had seen on the surface had made him rethink that comforting delusion.

If such things were possible, what other kinds of creature might lurk in the depths of the warp? What manner of powers might yet exist there, of which humanity was not yet aware?

Their path wound deeper and deeper into the ground, and the Dark Angels travelled in silence, each warrior wrapped in a cocoon of his own thoughts. Zahariel kept company with his worries that an irreparable gulf had opened between Luther and the Lion, for the two warriors were normally inseparable, yet here was the Lion going into battle without his brother.

Zahariel had told no one of what Luther had told him in the moments before the Saroshi bomb had activated, and he feared for what the future might hold if that fact came to light. Indeed, it might have already come to the Lion’s notice, for little escaped his understanding.

He forced such gloomy thoughts from his mind as the Lion raised his hand to indicate a halt. The Lion sniffed the air and nodded.

‘Blood,’ he said. ‘Lots of it.’

The Dark Angels advanced more cautiously, their bolters held at the ready, fingers on triggers. Soon Zahariel could smell what his primarch had sensed earlier, and he gagged on the powerful scent of old, rotten blood. A dim glow built from ahead, and the passageway widened until it opened into a great archway that led into a cavern thick with a miasma of fine smoke.

Only as Zahariel approached did he realise that the smoke was in fact etheric energies, visible only to Israfael and himself. The rest of the Dark Angels appeared oblivious to the drifting clouds of smoke, the twists and curls of it imbued with agonised suffering and fear. Perhaps the Lion could see it too, for his gaze seemed to follow the drifting trails of pain and anguish traced in the smoke.

The Dark Angels entered the cavern, and the mystery of what had become of Sarosh’s missing population was a mystery no more.

The enormous space vanished into the distance left and right, illuminated by glaring strip lights hanging from the cavern’s roof. Steel walkways crossed an immense chasm that was filled almost to the brim with dead bodies. Millions of dead bodies.

It was impossible to say how many, for the depth of the chasm was beyond sight, but Zahariel remembered Kurgis of the White Scars talking of a figure in the region of seventy million missing people. Could this be the remains of so many?

It seemed inconceivable that so many dead could have been secreted here, but the evidence was right before them.

‘Throne alive!’ swore the Lion. ‘How–’

‘The missing people,’ said Nemiel. ‘Zahariel, so many…’

Zahariel felt his emotions rushing to the surface and quelled them savagely. An Astartes was trained to control his emotions in a combat situation, but the sheer volume and density of the fear emanating from the endless chasm of the dead was overpowering.

‘Steady, Zahariel,’ said Israfael, appearing at his side. ‘Remember your training. These emotions are not yours, so shut them out.’

Zahariel nodded and forced himself to concentrate, whispering the mantras he had been taught by Israfael over the years of his transformation into an Astartes. Gradually, the feeling subsided, only to be replaced with a towering sense of furious righteousness.

‘We move out,’ said the Lion, heading for the nearest of the gantries crossing the chasm. His footfalls on the metal echoed loudly in the cavern, and the Dark Angels followed their primarch further into the depths.

Zahariel kept his gazed averted from the ocean of corpses, though he could not completely shut out the anguished echoes of their deaths. Whatever came next, whatever death and destruction the Angels of Death visited upon the heads of the Saroshi, it would not be nearly enough.

Rhianna’s screams came from the heart of her being, for the sight above her was so hideous, so unnatural that it defied any understanding. The entire roof of the cavern was covered with what appeared to be a creature of translucent mucus, its surface gelatinous and festooned with a million unblinking eyes.

It occupied the roof of the chamber like some enormous parasite, hundreds of metres in diameter, and it seemed to shift and ooze so that its boundaries were fluid. Dripping tendrils like writhing tentacles hung down from the body of the vast, amorphous… thing that filled the air with nonsensical hissing, hooting and buzzing sounds.

Stars glistened within its body, distant lights of long dead galaxies swirling in its depths, like morsels devoured in ages past and not yet digested. Her breath came in short, painful gasps as she fought to hold on to her sanity in the face of something so utterly wrong, something that plainly should not be.

‘What… what…?’ she gasped, unable to force her mind to think of the right words.

‘That is the Melachim…’ breathed Dusan, his voice full of reverence and love. ‘It is the angel from beyond that will defile your flesh and wear it as a cloak to walk amongst us.’

Rhianna wept, and as the trails reached her lips, she knew that she wept blood.

‘No, please… don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t.’

Dusan nodded. ‘Your vocabulary is incomplete. We can. We will.’

‘Please stop,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

The Saroshi cocked his head to one side, as though digesting her words and trying to find the meaning.

‘Ah,’ he said, pointing to the masked figures that surrounded her. ‘You have misunderstood. It has already begun.’

Once across the gantries that spanned the chasm of bodies and into the narrow tunnels that plunged into the deep, Zahariel felt the echoes of the dead begin to fade. They were still there, pressing at the walls of his skull, but he could feel them recede. At first, he was grateful for this, but then he realised that they were simply being drowned out by something stronger and more insistent.

It felt as though a hammer had been taken to his head.

Zahariel dropped to one knee, a blinding spike of pain shooting through his head as if someone had jammed a hot skewer into his ear.

Brother Israfael staggered under the psychic assault, but remained on his feet, the psy-damping mechanism wired into his helmet protecting him from the worst of the pain.

‘My lord!’ gasped the Librarian. ‘It has begun… the creature from the warp. It is attempting to pass fully into our world.’

‘You’re sure?’ asked the Lion.

‘I’m sure,’ affirmed Israfael. ‘Right, Zahariel?’

‘It’s definitely coming,’ said Zahariel through gritted teeth.

‘Then we have no time to waste,’ said the Lion, turning and picking up the pace.

Zahariel used the cavern walls to pull himself upright, his mental wards no use against the force of the power filling the air around him.

Nemiel reached out to him and said, ‘Here, brother, take my hand.’

Zahariel gratefully accepted his cousin’s hand. ‘Just like old times, eh?’

Nemiel grinned, but Zahariel could sense the awkwardness behind the gesture. He hauled himself to his feet and tried to shake off the dread feeling building in the pit of his stomach.

The Lion was already some distance ahead and Zahariel had to jog as fast as he was able to catch up. Every step was painful, his wounds and burns from the embarkation deck not yet healed, despite his speeding metabolism. Worse than this was the psychic pain that seeped into his very pores, against which his armour offered no protection.

The deeper the Dark Angels ventured into the depths, the more insistent the sound became, and Zahariel hoped that Brother Israfael’s device could defeat it. He spared a glance over his shoulder to ensure that the hover gurney and its servitors were keeping pace with the Astartes.

The lobotomised servitors appeared not to feel the soul-deep anguish of this place, and Zahariel envied them. The electro-psychic pulse weapon gleamed in the half-light, and he shivered at the fearsome potential he could feel in the warhead.

From ahead, Zahariel could hear the sounds of voices and a throbbing noise that reverberated through every sense and even those beyond human understanding.

A sickly light, unhealthy and life-draining, filled the chamber ahead, spilling into the tunnel that the Dark Angels descended like a slick. The Lion was first into the cavern, with Nemiel a close second.

Brother Israfael followed the primarch, and the remainder of the Dark Angels swiftly joined their battle-brothers.

A wave of revulsion flowed through Zahariel as he emerged into the cavern, though he was not the source of that emotion. It washed from the robed figures that surrounded an upright slab of dark, veined stone as they chanted and sang a hideous chorus around a screaming woman bound to the slab.

Zahariel followed the howling gaze of the Saroshi’s prisoner and felt a crawling, sick horror as he saw the source of the monstrous evil that dwelled in this forgotten, red-lit cavern beneath the world.

Its jelly-like body was like that of some deep ocean trench-dweller, shimmering, apparently fragile, and lit from within by bursts of coloured, electric light. A million eyes stared out from its hideous form, and he could feel its raw hunger as a gnawing ache in his chest. Even as he watched, the outline of the creature was fading, but instead of a sense of triumph, Zahariel knew that it was close to achieving its goal of translation.

Where others, including Zahariel, remained paralysed by the horrific sight of the creature above, the Lion was already in motion. His pistol shot down two of the robed and masked figures as they chanted, and his sword flashed into his hand as he charged.

Seeing their primarch in action spurred the Dark Angels to follow, and with a fearsome war cry they leapt to the attack.

Pistols blazed and swords glittered in the dead light of the monster above, but as each of the masked chanters died, Zahariel sensed a dreadful amusement course through the air.

The masked figures made no attempt at defence, and Zahariel was seized with a sudden conviction as to why, as he looked into the agonised eyes of the woman bound to the upright slab.

Her face was stretched in a soundless scream, her eyes empty and glassy, as though filled with black ink. Dark power floated in her eyes, and as Zahariel looked into her, something inhuman looked back.

Zahariel raised his pistol, but even as the monstrous essence of the creature on the roof of the cave began to pour into its host, something of the woman surfaced for the briefest second, and a moment of connection passed between them, more profound than Zahariel had ever experienced before, or ever would again.

She simply said… Yes.

Zahariel nodded and pressed down the trigger.

A trio of bolts erupted from Zahariel’s pistol and crossed the space between him and the woman in a heartbeat. They penetrated her skin and muscle, and went on to punch through her ribcage with equal ease.

As the mass-reactive warheads within the shells detected an increase in the local mass, the explosive charges inside detonated.

Zahariel watched as the three shells blasted the woman apart, her ribcage blown out, and her stomach opening like the bloom of a red rose. Her skull ceased to exist, expanding in a confetti of blood and brain fragments.

A terrible, ageless scream of frustration filled the chamber, echoing throughout all the realms of existence simultaneously as a creature older than time was thwarted in its ambitions.

But such a creature was not to be denied its spite.

As the spinning chunks of the woman’s flesh flew through the air, a grotesque crackling sound ripped through the chamber and each piece froze, in defiance of gravity and every natural law of man.

The creature on the cave roof had faded to almost nothing, its slithering viscosity a distant memory, and the masked figures were slain to a man, but the hunks of blasted flesh still hung in the air.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded the Lion. ‘What did you do, Zahariel?’

‘What needed to be done,’ he replied, the pain in his body and the ache of sorrow in his heart making him insubordinate.

‘Now what?’ said Nemiel, staring in revulsion at the floating chunks of raw meat.

‘The creature is not yet defeated,’ cried Israfael, running towards the modified cyclonic warhead. ‘Stand ready to fight, Dark Angels.’

‘That thing had better work, Librarian,’ warned the Lion.

‘It will,’ promised Israfael. ‘Just give me time!’

No sooner had the Librarian spoken than the woman’s flesh hissed and vanished, leaving brightly glowing holes in the air. Horrid light seeped from the holes, multi-coloured and unclean, and Zahariel knew that what lurked on the other side was pure and undiluted evil.

Without warning, a host of tentacles emerged from the light, writhing like striking snakes towards the Dark Angels.

A trio of whipping appendages speared straight for Zahariel.

He slashed at them with his sword, severing them all in one smooth movement. With his other hand, he fired his bolt pistol and sent a salvo of rounds towards the empty space from which the tentacles had appeared.

He heard a shriek, the noise deep and inhuman, like the sound of one of the beasts of Caliban. The familiarity was terrifying.

The battle was hardly a few seconds old and already the enemy was right on top of them. As the Dark Angels moved to form a circle with their primarch, the number of attacking tentacles multiplied with extraordinary rapidity.

Each was two or three times the thickness of a human arm, several metres long, and strong enough to crush the ceramite outer plates of Legiones Astartes power armour. Some were tipped with talons of bone and curved like the blade of a scythe, while others seemed made for gripping and constricting prey, or were lined with retractable claws.

The tentacles did not appear to be attached to anything, but simply floated in the air, the broad end of each disappearing into bright nothingness as though they belonged to some manner of disembodied, invisible creature that only needed to show itself in parts.

‘It’s like fighting ghosts!’ shouted Zahariel.

‘Aye,’ replied Nemiel, slashing his blade through another tentacle. ‘But these ghosts can kill!’

As if to prove the point, one of their number was jerked from his feet and dragged through the glowing rent from which the tentacles emerged. A battle-brother nearby reached out to save his comrade and was in turn eviscerated by a taloned claw.

The worst of it was the one-sided nature of the battle. An enemy fully capable of killing them attacked, yet it was difficult for them to respond in kind. Zahariel cut at the tentacles while aiming his bolt pistol at the point where they emerged from the air.

How successful such tactics were, however, he did not know. Did severing a tentacle inflict a mortal wound on the creature it belonged to, or were the tentacles as disposable as human hair?

Eliath’s heavy bolter barked a staccato rhythm that punctuated the screaming noise of battle with a booming counterpoint. Where his shells struck, wet liquid, possibly blood, splashed, but no matter how badly the tentacles were mutilated, more always appeared.

Sometimes, Zahariel heard screams from beyond the glowing tears in the air, but it was impossible to know whether they were of pain or some manner of triumphant hunting cry.

Fighting them, Zahariel was reminded of the tales of his childhood, of fairytale monsters like daemons and devils.

He was fighting invisible monsters. It was not hard to think of these creatures as something beyond the ken of human understanding, creatures from the primordial depths returned to punish man for his hubris.

‘Israfael!’ bellowed the Lion. ‘Whatever you are doing, you had better do it faster!’

‘Just a moment longer!’ cried the Librarian.

‘A moment may be all we have!’

‘We will hold the line,’ shouted Nemiel, ‘until the Great Crusade is ended!’

There was bravado in Nemiel’s tone, but Zahariel knew that the Lion was right, they had moments at best. Another two warriors were down and the brutal arithmetic of combat meant that the rest of them would soon follow.

The tentacles were relentless, pressing the Dark Angels with no time to rest or think.

Zahariel saw a tentacle suddenly fly to attack Brother Israfael. He responded with a fast cut from his sword, slicing through the tip of the tentacle and forcing its invisible owner to swiftly withdraw it.

As quickly as one disappeared, however, more tentacles took its place.

Zahariel recalled something he had read about one of the ancient myths of Terra, about a creature called the Hydra, which was capable of growing two new heads to replace each one that was severed.

In the legend, the hero of the story had defeated the monster by applying fire to the cut end of each of its necks to cauterise them before the heads could grow again. Zahariel could only wish that something as commonplace as fire could defeat this dread foe.

‘Zahariel!’ called Brother Israfael. ‘Now!’

He turned at the sound of his name, watching as Brother Israfael mashed the activation stud on the warhead’s firing mechanism.

A colossal bass note erupted from the device and a titanic wave of psychic force erupted from the warhead in an ever-expanding halo. The Dark Angels were swatted from their feet by the blast and Zahariel felt the force coalesce in his mind alongside the iron will of Brother Israfael.

Knowing what he had to do, Zahariel focused every ounce of his psyche and took hold of the electro-psychic force, turning it to his own ends, wielding the power as a technician wields a plasma cutter.

He felt the force within him grow and take flight, and he relished the fearful potential that flowed through his veins. Fierce fires blazed in his eyes, and as he stared at the tentacles emerging from the streaks of light in the air, they snapped shut.

More screeches filled the chamber, but Zahariel and Israfael blazed with pure white light, the power of a million suns flowing through them, shaped by their will. As though they were fire-fighters in a hangar blaze, they washed their borrowed power around their comrades, destroying the waving tentacles and sealing shut the tears in reality from which they had emerged.

Within moments, though it felt like an age, the chamber was silent once more, the battle was over, and the angel of the Saroshi had vanished.

Zahariel cried out as the power of the electro-psychic blast faded, and he collapsed as the fuel of his body was spent. He lay still, letting his breathing return to normal after the fury of battle and the exhilarating, yet exhausting, channelling of so much power.

He looked over to Brother Israfael and smiled wearily.

‘Is it over?’ asked the Lion.

Brother Israfael nodded. ‘It’s over, my lord.’

The Dark Angels gathered up their dead and made their way back to the surface of Sarosh, winding their way back through the cramped tunnels, over the chasm of the dead and up through the galleries of the mineshaft.

Afternoon had given way to night and the air was cool. The freshness felt good on their bare skin, as helmets were removed, and great draughts of fresh air were sucked down into heaving lungs.

The Stormbirds returned to pick up their charges, and Army units were summoned to secure the tunnels beneath the Mining Station One Zeta Five, though no one expected them to find anything hostile now that the angel of Sarosh was no more.

Zahariel was exhausted beyond words, his entire body aching and battered, though his thoughts were clear and fresh, uncluttered by echoes of sacrifice and the loathsome touch of a creature from beyond the veil.

The Lion had said nothing on their journey to the surface, keeping his own counsel, not even offering words of praise to his warriors.

As they boarded the Stormbirds, Zahariel felt a strange sensation of unease along his spine, and he turned to discover its source.

Lion El’Jonson was looking straight at him.

Epilogue

Zahariel watched as the Invincible Reason diminished in the viewing portal, the Stormbird streaking through space towards the Wrath of Caliban and disgrace.

Barely six hours had passed since the victory at Mining Station One Zeta Five, and events had moved with such rapidity upon their return to the expedition fleet that he could scarcely believe what had happened at all.

No sooner had the warriors of Zahariel’s company returned to the Invincible Reason than they had been issued with new deployment orders.

A declaration from the Lion announced that the flow of new recruits from Caliban was not proceeding as swiftly as was hoped. Therefore, experienced Astartes were to return to the homeworld with all speed to ensure that the recruitment of new warriors was put back on track.

The Great Crusade was entering a new and vigorous stage, and the Dark Angels needed fresh warriors to take the light of the Imperium onwards.

As to the pacification of Sarosh, the fight had gone out of its inhabitants following the battle beneath Mining Station One Zeta Five, the knowledge of their world’s avenging angel’s demise travelling the globe in the time it took the news to reach the expedition fleet.

Army units from nearby expedition fleets, as well as a demi-legion of Titans from the Fire Wasps, were en-route to crush any last resistance, and all that remained was to implement full compliance once the last smouldering coals of rebellion had been smothered.

Zahariel studied the deployment order to see who was being sent back to Caliban. He saw that Nemiel was to remain, and had sought out his cousin before the allotted hour for departure.

But Nemiel was nowhere to be found, and Zahariel had done his duty as ordered, reporting to the embarkation deck with the rest of the warriors earmarked to return home.

The sense of crushing dejection was total, and though there was no outward stigma attached to their departure from the fleet, every warrior knew the truth of it in his heart.

The Lion did not want them with him, and that was the greatest hurt of all.

Brother-Librarian Israfael was there, as was Eliath and the wounded Attias, as well as hundreds upon hundreds of other loyal warriors.

Their contribution to the Great Crusade had been so small, so insignificant in the scale of what was to come, that Zahariel doubted the chroniclers would even bother to record the short war on Sarosh.

The Great Crusade would continue, though it would continue without Zahariel.

Worse than that, it would continue without the man sitting furthest away from any other in the Stormbird.

It would continue without Luther.

THE HORUS HERESY

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

~ Dramatis Personae ~

The Primarchs

Alpharius, Primarch of the Alpha Legion

The XX Legion ‘Alpha Legion’

Ingo Pech, First Captain

(Ma)Thias Herzog, Captain, Second Company

Sheed Ranko, Captain, Lernaean Terminator Squad

Omegon, Lord, Effrit Stealth Squad

Imperial personae

Teng Namatjira, Lord Commander

Jan Van Aunger, Master of the 670th Expedition Fleet

Sri Vedt, Uxor Primus of the Geno Five-Two Chiliad

Honen Mu, Uxor

Rukhsana Saiid, Uxor

Hurtado Bronzi, Hetman

Kaido Pius, Hetman

Dimitar Shiban, Hetman

Peto Soneka, Hetman

Franco Boone, Genewhip

Nitin Dev, Major General of the Zanzibari Hort

Kolmec, Bajolur

Dinas Chayne, Bajolur-Captain of the Lucifer Blacks

Eiman, Companion

Belloc, Companion

Wilde, Lord of the Crescent-Sind Sixth Torrent

Ismail Sherard, Khedive of the Outremars

Amon Jeveth, Princeps of the Legio Xerxes

Gan Karsh, General of the Regnault Thorns

Den Dang Keyat Shere

Non-Imperial personae

John Grammaticus

Gahet

Slau Dha

G’Latrro

‘God has given you one face and you make yourself another.’

– attributed to the dramaturge Shakespire, fl. M2

‘Of the fabulous hydra it is said, cut off one head and two will grow in its place.’

– antique proverb

‘No one is enough of a fool to choose war instead of peace. In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.’

– attributed to the chronicler Herodotus, fl. M0

‘War is simply the galaxy’s hygiene.’

– attributed to the primarch Alpharius

My name is Hurtado Bronzi.

There, I’ve said it. I’ve said it and I can never take it back. The secret is out.

Ah. The rest? Well, if I must, sir. My name is Hurtado Bronzi, a hetman (which is to say, a senior captain) of the Geno Five-Two Chiliad, Imperial Army, glory of Terra, beloved of the Emperor. I am an Edessa-born man, proud of my liberty, Catheric by devotion, a brother to two sisters and a brother. My ears hear only the orders of my estimable Lord Commander Namatjira, my hands know only the purpose of the Emperor and the correct business of a carbine laser, my mouth… well, my mouth knows a great deal more, and knows when not to say it.

Because he has taught us to be scrupulously secretive. No, I will not be drawn to say his name. I said, he has taught us to be scrupulously secretive. That is his way, and we love him for it. The greatest gift he has bestowed upon us is to share his secret with us.

Why? Because we were there, I suppose, at Tel Utan and Mon Lo Harbour and now the Shivering Hills. If it hadn’t been us, it would have been others.

Why are you whispering? I can hear you whispering. What don’t you want me to hear? What secrets are you plotting?

Pain? Is that it? Is that all you have to offer me? Well, yes, it does open secrets. Some secrets, some mouths. What have you planned for me? Ah, I see. Well, if you must. I won’t welcome it. What will it be? Eyes? Genitals? The gaps between my toes and fingers? First, you should know–

Nnnhhhhh!

Oh. Merciful–

Mhh. Quite the expert, your little man. Quite the expert. He’s done this before, hasn’t he? No, wait, I–

Nhhhhghhh!

Beloved Terra! Ahh. Shit. Nhh.

That little bastard. Let me finish, please! Let me finish what I was saying.

Please? Yes?

All right, then. This won’t work. This simply won’t work. Because I’m telling you it won’t.

I will not tell you anything. It doesn’t matter what you do to me, really it doesn’t. Burn me all you like, my mouth is shut.

Because that’s all he asks of us. The only thing. I can tell you who I am, and who I was, but I can’t – I won’t – betray his confidence.

Gnnhhhhhhh!

Oh shit! Holy fire! Bastard!

Mhhhh…

What? What? Ask what you like. Burn me again, if you must.

My name is Hurtado Bronzi.

That’s all you’re getting.

One

Tel Utan, Nurth, two years before the beginning

The Nurthene uttered some of the usual gibberish before he died. He pointed at his enemies with his dust-caked fingers and jabbered, spitting out curses on their families and dependants, and particularly miserable dooms on the heads of their children, far away. A soldier learns how to ignore insults, but there was something about the Nurthene way of cursing that made Soneka blanch.

The Nurthene lay on his back on a slope of dry, red sand, where the blast had thrown him. His pink silk robes were stiffening in places where his blood was drying rapidly in the late afternoon sun. His silver breastplate, with its engraving of stylised reeds and entwined crocodilia, winked like a mirror. His legs lay in a limp position that suggested his spine was no longer properly connected.

Soneka trudged up the dry bed of the wadi to inspect him. A terribly dark, terribly blue sky met the red horizon. The sinking sun picked out the facing edges of rocks and boulders with a bright orange sheen.

Soneka was wearing glare-shields, but took them off out of courtesy so that the Nurthene could see his eyes. He knelt down, the small gold box around his neck swinging like a pendulum.

‘Enough with your curses, all right?’ he said.

The troop stood around him on the slope, watching, their weapons ready in their hands. The desert wind brushed their embroidered, waist-length coats and made them flutter. Lon, one of Soneka’s bashaws, had already snapped the Nurthene’s falx with his liqnite, and flung the broken stump away over the rim of the wadi.

Soneka could still smell traces of the liqnite spray in the warm air.

‘It’s over,’ he told his enemy. ‘Will you speak to me?’

Looking up at him, grains of sand stuck to his face, the Nurthene murmured something. Bubbles of blood formed at the corners of his lips.

‘How many?’ Soneka asked. ‘How many more of you are there in this sink?’

‘You…’ the Nurthene began.

‘Yes?’

‘You… you are carnal with your own mother.’

At Soneka’s shoulder, Lon raised his carbine sharply.

‘Relax, I’ve heard worse,’ Soneka told him.

‘But your mother is a fine woman,’ said Lon.

‘Oh, now you lust for her too?’ asked Soneka. Some of the men laughed. Lon shook his head and lowered his carbine.

‘Last chance,’ said Peto Soneka to the dying man. ‘How many more?’

‘How many more of you?’ replied the Nurthene in a dry whisper. His accent was strong, but there was no denying that the Nurthene had mastered the Imperial language. ‘How many more? You come from the stars, in your droves, and you do nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing, except prove the universal presence of evil.’

‘Is that what you think of us?’ Soneka asked.

The Nurthene stared up at him. His eyes had gone glassy, like the sky at dawn. He burped, and blood welled up out of his mouth like water from a borehole.

‘He’s dead,’ observed Lon.

‘Well spotted,’ said Soneka, rising to his feet. He looked back at the men gathered on the slope behind him. Beyond them, two Nurthene armoured vehicles were burning, sweating soot and smoke up into the blue sky. From the other side of the wadi, Soneka could hear sporadic las-shots.

‘Let’s dance,’ Soneka said.

From the rim of the wadi, looking west, it was possible to see Tel Utan itself, a jumble of terracotta blocks and walls capping a long, loaf-shaped hill ten kilometres away. The intervening landscape was a broken tract of ridges and ancient basins and, in the sidelong evening light, the basins had filled with shadows so black they looked like pools of ink. Soneka felt a comparable blackness in his heart: Tel Utan was proving to be their nemesis. For eight months, it had held them at bay, through a combination of terrain, tactics, stoicism and plain bad luck.

The Geno Five-Two Chiliad was one of the oldest brigades in the Imperial Army. An elite force of one thousand companies, it had a martial tradition that stretched back through the time of the Great Crusade and into the era of the Unification Wars that had preceded it. The geno was a proud member of the Old Hundred, the Strife-era regiments that the Emperor, in his grace, had maintained after Unification, provided they pledged loyalty to him. Many thousands of others had been forced to disband, or had been actively purged and neutered, depending on their level of resistance to the new order.

Peto Soneka had been born in Feodosiya, and had served, in his youth, in the local army, but he had petitioned eagerly for transfer into the Geno Five-Two, because of their illustrious reputation. He’d been with the geno for twenty-three years, achieving the rank of hetman. In that time, they hadn’t met a nut they couldn’t crack.

There had been tough dances along the way, of course there had. Off the top of his head, Soneka could mention Foechion, where they had slogged toe to toe for six weeks with the greenskins in lightless, frozen latitudes, and Zantium, where the dragonoid cadres had almost bested them in a series of running battles and ambuscades.

But Nurth, Tel Utan in particular, was as stubborn as anything they’d ever met. Word was the lord commander was getting edgy, and no one wanted to be around Namatjira when that happened.

Soneka pulled his glare shields back on. He was a lithe, slender man of forty-two years standard, though he could pass for twenty-five. He had a striking, angular head, with hard cheek and jaw lines, a pointed chin and a generous, full-lipped mouth full of gleaming white teeth that women found especially attractive. Like all of them, his skin had bronzed in the Nurthene light. He made a signal, and his bashaws brought the troops in along the rim of the wadi and down into the dry basins beyond. Geno armour followed them, bounding along on their treads, and spuming wakes of red dust behind them as they churned out across the basin floor. Soneka’s Centaur was waiting, its engine revving, but he waved it on. This was a time for walking.

There was half an hour of daylight left. Night, they had learned to their cost, belonged to the Nurthene. Soneka hoped to run his troop as far as the forward command post at CR23 before they lost the light. The last tangle with the Nurthene had slowed their advance considerably. Dislodging them from this country was like pulling out splinters.

Soneka’s troops looked very fine as they strode forwards. The geno uniform was a bulky, tight-buckled bodyglove of studded leather and armour links, with a waist-length cape of yellow merdacaxi, a Terran silk, much rougher and more hard-wearing than the pink silks of the Nurthene. The ornate leather armour was marked with devices and trimmed with fur, and the backs of their capes were richly embroidered with company emblems and motifs. They carried lightweight packs, munition slings, long sword bayonets, and the bottles of their double water rations, which clinked against the liqnite cylinders they had all been issued with. Standard weapons were laser carbines and RPG sowers, but some men lugged fire poles or support cannons. They were all big men, all genic bred and selected for muscle. Soneka was slight compared to most. Their headgear was spiked helms, either silvered steel or glossy orange, often edged with brims of fur or neck veils of beaded laces. The glare shields were goggle-eyed: bulbous, paired hemispheres of orange metal with black slits across them.

Soneka’s troop was coded the Dancers, a name that they’d owned for almost eight hundred years. In those last few minutes of daylight, the Dancers were going to take the worst beating they had ever known.

‘So, who’s that?’ asked Bronzi quietly. ‘Do you know?’

Bashaw Tche, busy with the wrapper of a ration, shrugged. ‘Some kind of something,’ he grunted.

‘You’re a world of use, you know that?’ Bronzi replied, punching Tche in the arm. The bashaw, of the regimental uterine stock and considerably bigger in all measurements than Bronzi, gave his hetman a tired look.

‘Some kind of specialist, they said,’ he volunteered.

‘Who said?’

‘The Uxor’s aides.’

The Jokers had reached the CR23 forward command post about an hour earlier, and had been billeted in the eastern wing of the old, brick-built fort. Chart Referent 23 was a Nurthene outpost captured two weeks before, and lay just eight kilometres from the Tel. It formed part of the ‘noose’ that Lord Commander Namatjira was tightening around the enemy city.

Hurtado Bronzi, a sixty-year veteran possessed of boundless charisma and a stocky body going to seed, leaned out of the billet doorway and took another deliberate stare along the red brick passageway. At the far end, where it opened out into a central courtyard, he could see the newcomer standing in conversation with Honen Mu and some of her aides. The newcomer was a big fellow, really big, a giant dressed in a dust-grey mail sleeve and a head shawl, with a soot-dulled bolter slung over his shoulder.

‘He’s a sizeable fugger, though,’ said Bronzi, idly toying with the small gold box dangling on the chain around his neck.

‘Don’t stare so,’ Tche advised, gnawing on his bar.

‘I’m just saying. Bigger than you, even.’

‘Stop staring.’

‘He’s only where I happen to be aiming my eyes, Tche,’ Bronzi said.

Something was going on. Bronzi had a feeling in his water. Something had been going on for the last few days. Uxor Honen was unusually tight-lipped, and had been unavailable on several occasions.

The man was big. He towered over Honen, though everyone towered over her. Even so, he had to be two twenty, two twenty-five maybe. That was gene-build big, Astartes big even. Honen was looking up at him, craning up, nodding once in a while at a conversation Bronzi couldn’t catch. Despite the fact that she was conferring with a giant, Honen’s posture was as tenacious as ever: spiky and fierce, like a fighting cock, full of vigour and attitude. Bronzi had long suspected Uxor Honen’s body language was a compensation for her doll-like physique.

Bronzi looked back into the billet hall. His Jokers were busy sacking out, drinking and eating, playing bones. Some of them were cleaning off weapons or polishing armour scutes, wiping away the red dust that had slowly caked on during the long day in the field.

‘Think I might go for a little stroll,’ Bronzi told Tche. The bashaw, munching, simply stared down at the hetman’s feet. Bronzi was still fully armoured, but he’d taken off his boots when they’d arrived. His thick, dirty toes splayed out through the holes in his woollen socks.

‘Not cutting a dash?’ Bronzi asked.

Tche shrugged.

‘Well, fug it.’ Bronzi pulled off his embroidered cape, his webbing and his weapon belt, and dumped them on the baked earth floor. He kept hold of his water bottles. ‘I just need a refill,’ he said.

Bronzi padded out into the passageway, his water bottles dangling from his pudgy fingers. He was disappointed to see that the giant had vanished. The Uxor and her aides were heading away across the courtyard, talking together.

Honen turned as Bronzi wandered into the yard. The air was still warm and the day’s heat was radiating out of the shadowed brick. Evening had washed the sky overhead a dark, resiny purple.

‘Hetman Bronzi? Was there something you wanted?’ she called. The words came pinging out of her mouth like tiny chips of ice.

Bronzi smiled back amiably, and waggled the empty water bottles. ‘Going to the pump,’ he said.

Uxor Honen pushed through her waiting aides and came towards him. She was such a tiny thing, built like a girl-child, compact and slight. She wore a black bodyglove and a grey wrap, and walked on heeled slippers, which served only to emphasise her lack of stature. Her face was oval, her pursed mouth small, and her skin so very black. Her eyes seemed huge. At twenty-three, she was exceptionally young, given her level of responsibility, but that was often the way with uxors. Bronzi had a bit of a thing for her: so perfect, so delicate, so much power emanating from her tiny frame.

‘Going to the pump?’ she asked, switching from Low Gothic to Edessan. She often did that. She made a habit of speaking to the men, one on one, in their native tongues. Bronzi supposed these displays of linguistic skill were meant to seem cordial while emphasising her formidable intelligence. Where Bronzi came from – Edessa – funnily enough, that was called showing off.

He switched with her. ‘For water. I’m out.’

‘Water rationing was done earlier, hetman,’ she said. ‘I think that’s just an excuse to be nosey.’

Bronzi made what he hoped was a loveable shrug. ‘You know me,’ he said.

‘That’s why I think you’re being nosey,’ Honen said.

They stared at one another. Her enormous eyes slowly travelled down to his stockinged feet. He saw her fighting a smile. The trick with Honen was to appeal to her sense of humour. That was why he’d left his boots off. Bronzi tried to hold his stomach in and still look natural.

‘Hard, isn’t it?’ she smirked.

‘What’s that now?’

‘Holding that gut of yours in?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, uxor,’ he replied.

Honen nodded. ‘And I don’t know why we keep you around, Hetman Bronzi,’ she remarked. ‘Isn’t there a mandatory fitness requirement any more?’

‘Or a weight threshold?’ suggested one of her aides: four blonde, teenage girls, who gathered around Honen with wry smiles on their faces.

‘Oh, you may mock me,’ Bronzi said.

‘We may,’ agreed one of the aides.

‘I’m still the best field officer you’ve got.’

Honen frowned. ‘There’s some truth in that. Don’t be nosey, Hurtado. You’ll be told what you need to know soon enough.’

‘A specialist?’

Honen shot a questioning glance sidelong at her aides. She reached out to them with her ’cept too. They all looked away, recoiling from the touch of the scolding ’cept, concentrating on other things. ‘Someone’s been talking,’ Honen announced.

‘A specialist, then?’ Bronzi pressed.

‘As I said,’ Honen answered, turning her attention back to him.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ said Bronzi, rattling his water bottles together as he gestured. ‘I’ll know when I know.’

‘Get your men settled,’ she told him, and turned to go.

‘Are the Dancers in?’ he asked.

‘The Dancers?’

‘They should be in by now. Peto owes me a payout on a wager. Are they here yet?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘No, Hurtado, not yet. We’re expecting them soon.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘then I request permission to take a foray team out, on a ramble, to find out what’s keeping them.’

‘Your loyalty to your friend does you credit, Hurtado, but permission is not granted.’

‘It’ll be dark soon.’

‘It will. That’s why I don’t want you rambling around out there.’

Bronzi nodded.

‘Are we clear on that? No clever or ingenious misinterpretations of that order forming in your mind this time?’

Bronzi shook his head. As if.

‘There’d better not be. Goodnight, hetman.’

‘Goodnight, uxor.’

Honen clicked away on her heels, sending out a command with her ’cept. Her aides paused for a moment, scowling at Bronzi, and then followed her.

‘Yeah, stare at me all you like, you blonde bitches,’ Bronzi murmured.

He padded back to the billet. ‘Tche?’

‘Yes, het?’

‘Get a foray team up and ready in ten minutes.’

Tche sighed at him. ‘Is this sanctioned, het?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely. The uxor told me personally that she doesn’t want some fug-fingered ramble blundering around out there, so tell the boys it’s going to have to be sharp and professional, which will make a change for them.’

‘Not a ramble?’

‘I never ramble. Sharp, Tche, and professional. Got it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Bronzi pulled on his boots and redressed his weapon belt. He realised he needed to take a leak. ‘Five minutes,’ he told the bashaw.

He found the latrine, a stinking cement pit down the hall, unbuckled his armour and sighed as his bladder emptied. Nearby, men were showering in the communal air baths, and he could hear singing from one of the other troop billets.

‘You’ll stay put tonight,’ said a voice from behind him.

Bronzi tensed. The voice was quiet and hard, small yet powerful, like the super-gravity coal of a dead sun.

‘I think I’ll finish what I’m doing, actually,’ he replied, deliberately not looking around, and deliberately keeping a tone of levity in his voice.

‘You will stay put tonight. No fun and games. No bending the rules. Are we clear?’

Bronzi buckled up, and turned.

The specialist stood behind him. Bronzi slowly adjusted his stance until he was looking up at the man’s face. Terra, he was huge, a monster of a man. The specialist’s features were hidden in the shadows of his dust shawl.

‘Is that a threat?’ Bronzi asked.

‘Does someone like me need to threaten someone like you?’ the specialist replied.

Bronzi narrowed his eyes. He was a lot of things, but timid wasn’t one of them. ‘Come on then, if you want some.’

The specialist chuckled. ‘I really admire your balls, hetman.’

‘They were only out because I was taking a leak,’ said Bronzi.

‘Bronzi, right? I’ve heard about you. More barefaced cheek in you than all the arses in the Imperial Army.’

Bronzi couldn’t help but grin, though his pulse was racing. ‘I could mess you up, son, I really could.’

‘You could try,’ said the specialist.

‘I would, you know?’

‘Yes, I have a feeling you might. Don’t. I’d hate to damage a friend. Let me be clear. There are things going on tonight that you must not mess with. Don’t let me down by pissing around. Don’t get involved. You’ll understand soon enough. For now, right now, hetman, take my word on this.’

Bronzi kept his stare going. ‘I might. I might trust you, if I could see your face or know your name.’

The specialist paused. For a moment, Bronzi thought he was actually going to pull down his shawl and show his face.

‘I’ll tell you my name,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘My name is Alpharius.’

Bronzi blinked. His mouth went dry. He felt his heart pounding so fast it trembled his torso.

‘Liar. You liar! That’s a pile of crap!’

A sudden, brilliant flash made the chamber blink white for a second. A deep, reverberative boom reached them.

Bronzi ran to one of the slit windows. Outside, in the dark, he could see the flashes and light blooms of a major battle flaring behind the ridge. The percussive crump and slap of explosions rolled in. One hell of a firefight had just kicked off along the wadi rim less than ten kilometres away from the post. It was concussive, bending the air, bending sound.

Behind Bronzi, men were rushing up, scrabbling around the windows to see out. There was chatter and agitation. Everyone wanted a look.

‘Peto…’ Hurtado Bronzi murmured. He turned away from the window slit and the rippling light show, pushing his way back through the mob of men to find the specialist.

But the specialist had already vanished.

The world had come off its hinges. For the first few seconds, Peto Soneka thought his company had been caught up in some sort of freak hail-storm. Thousands of luminous projectiles were raining down out of the twilight into the basin, like spits of fire or a cloudburst of little shooting stars. Every one exploded in a searing fireball as it impacted. The overpressure was knocking men to the ground. Soneka reeled as fiery detonations went off all around him like grenades. The bang of the first few impacts had deafened him.

He saw men thrown, burning, into the air by blooming flashes. He saw three of his company’s tanks quiver and then explode in whickering storms of shrapnel fragments as the sizzling pyrophoric deluge struck them.

It wasn’t a freak hailstorm. Despite the Dancer’s scouts and recon, despite their auspex and modar, despite their careful deployment and marching cover, despite the omniscient monitoring of the expedition fleet in high orbit, the Nurthene had surprised them.

The Nurthene were of a tech level several points down the scale from the Imperium. They possessed guns and tanks, but still favoured blades. They should have been easy to overrun.

But from the opening actions of the expedition war, it had become clear that the Nurthene had something else, something the Imperium entirely lacked.

Lord Commander Teng Namatjira had described it, in a moment of infuriation, as air magick. The name had, perhaps unfortunately, stuck. Air magick was why Nurth had held off the might of an Imperial Army expedition for eight months. Air magick was why a Titan cohort had been decimated at Tel Khortek. Air magick was why a Sixth Torrent division had disappeared into the desert sink at Gomanzi and never returned. Air magick was why nothing flew above Tel Utan, why every attempt to destroy the place with air strikes, missiles, orbital bombardments and troop drops had failed, and why they were being forced to assault the place on foot.

It was Peto Soneka’s first direct taste of air magick. All the horror stories that had leaked back from regiment to regiment and company to company were true. The Nurthene had lore beyond the Terran range. The elements obeyed them. They were casters-in of devils.

A shockwave threw Soneka over on his face. He had blood in his mouth and sand up his nose. He rose on his hands and saw a geno trooper curled up beside him, blackened by heat, smouldering. In the rapid strobe light of multiple explosions, he saw other corpses scattered around him. The sand was burning.

Bashaw Lon came running out of the flashing air. He was yelling at Soneka. Soneka could see Lon’s mouth working, but heard nothing.

Lon hauled Soneka to his feet. Sound was coming back, but only in short bursts.

‘Get… to… the… we… impossible!’ Lon yelled.

‘What? What?’

‘…much… of… to… the… fugging idiots!’

The hail suddenly ceased. Blinking around at the devastation, Soneka heard snippets of the abrupt quiet too: blurts of crackling fire and the screams of men, cut up and mixed with baffling, numb seconds of profound deafness.

‘Oh fug!’ Lon cried, suddenly, awfully audible.

The Nurthene were on them.

Nurthene infantry – called ‘echvehnurth’ – swarmed out of the shadows and pits of the enclosing night, and poured into the firelight. Their swirling pink robes and silver armour shone in the flames. Their falxes whirled. Several of them carried aloft kite-tailed banners showing the water-reed and river reptile badge of the Nurthene royalty.

The falx was an astonishingly proficient and barbarous weapon. Two and a half metres long, it was essentially a hybrid spear, a scythe straightened out. Half its length was a straight handgrip, the other half a long blade with a slight bias hook, the inside curve of which was razor sharp. Spinning and sweeping a falx like a flail, an expert echvehnurth could lop off limbs and heads, and even bisect torsos. The blades went through almost any metal. Only liqnite could break the blades, but it was impossible to use it in combat. Liqnite canisters came out when the fight was done, to neuter the fallen weapons of the enemy. A spray of liquid nitrogen froze the metal brittle so that it could be shattered underfoot.

Echvehnurth rushed at them from the ditches of the sink. The first Dancers they met were scythed down by the long, whirling blades like tall corn. Arms and heads flipped into the air. Arterial blood squirted. Truncated bodies fell like sacks. A few carbines fired, but it was hardly a proper reply.

Soneka started running forwards. ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ he howled. ‘Gun them down. Use your guns. Don’t let them in!’

They were in already. The night sand was littered with geno corpses and body parts. There was a fine haze of blood in the warm air. Soneka could taste it. His hearing was back, and his ears were filled with the hiss and chop of butchery, and the screams of his men.

He kept running. He fired his carbine one-handed, drawing his sword bayonet in the other. An echvehnurth ran at him and Soneka blew his face off. The man cartwheeled backwards. A falx swung and Soneka sidestepped, kicking its owner’s feet out from under him so that he fell on his back. Soneka ran the Nurthene through with his bayonet.

He dropped on one knee, raised the carbine to his shoulder, its barrel resting on the fork of his blade grip, and picked off two more of the charging enemy with aimed shots. Their pink robes trailed out as they crashed backwards. Lon was beside Soneka, along with three other men, firing in sustained bursts. Their shots made bright darts in the air. Echvehnurth toppled and fell, one on fire, another with his ribcage blown wide.

‘Dancers, Dancers! This is the Dancers!’ Soneka yelled as he fired. ‘CR19! We need help here. Immediate. Major incursion!’

‘Stand by, Dancers,’ he heard an uxor’s voice reply. ‘We are aware. Retasking units to your position.’

‘Now!’ Soneka yelled. ‘Now. We’re being slaughtered!’

One of the men beside him suddenly fell sideways, split in two from shoulder to groin. Pressurised blood escaped in all directions at once. Soneka wheeled and saw an echvehnurth spinning his falx back from the blow to strike again. Soneka slashed with his sword bayonet in an attempt to block.

The long blade of the falx, just a blur of blue metal in the violet twilight, went through Soneka’s hand in a line across the base of the thumb, severing his fingers, his thumb and the upper half of his palm, and snapping the grip of his sword bayonet. The blow was so clean that there was no pain at first. Soneka staggered backwards, watching the thin sprays of blood jetting out of his ruined hand.

The falx circled again, tracing a glitter in the air.

It did not land.

Another falx blocked it. Blade struck blade, and the attacking falx shivered away. A dark figure slid into view and killed the echvehnurth with a single, explosive shot.

The newcomer was a huge brute done up in a dark mail sleeve, his head and shoulders swathed in a shawl. He carried a falx in one hand and a boltgun in the other.

He looked down at Soneka. ‘Courage,’ he said.

‘Who are you?’ Soneka whispered.

Lon had run to Soneka’s side. ‘Get this man’s hand bound,’ the big man told the bashaw. He turned back to the fight, rotating the falx expertly in his left hand like a baton.

He wasn’t alone. As Lon wrapped his hand, Soneka saw that a dozen anonymous men had entered the fight, coming out of the darkness like phantoms. Each one of them was inhumanly large, his face hooded in a desert shawl. Each one carried a bolter and a falx.

They moved with a speed that was not human, and struck each blow with a force that was not human. In a matter of minutes, they had carved the heart out of the echvehnurth attack. Their boltguns roared and pumped like thunder, blowing pink silk and silver into blood-caked pieces.

‘Astartes,’ Soneka gasped.

‘Stay with me, het, stay with me,’ Lon whispered.

‘They’re Astartes,’ Soneka said.

‘You’ve lost a lot of blood. Don’t go to sleep on me!’

‘I won’t,’ Soneka promised. ‘Those men… those things… they’re Astartes.’

Lon didn’t answer. He was staring at the horizon.

‘Holy Terra,’ he whispered.

Tel Utan had caught fire.

Honen Mu watched the city burn from an upper window of the CR23 post. Every once in a while, a building cooked off and blew out in a streamer of fire. Rising smoke hazed the clear night sky. Her aides winced and oohed at every snap of flame. She could feel their responses through her ’cept.

She nodded, finally. ‘May I inform the lord commander?’

‘You may,’ said the specialist, waiting behind her. ‘I will make a report to him personally, of course, but you should have the pleasure of transmitting this news to him first.’

Honen turned from the window. ‘Thank you. And thank you for your work.’

‘Nurth isn’t done yet. There is much to do,’ the specialist told her.

‘I understand.’

The specialist hesitated, as if he slightly doubted this.

‘Our paths may not cross again, Uxor Honen Mu,’ the specialist said. ‘There are two things I want to say. The Emperor protects is one of them. The other is a word of admiration for the Geno Five-Two. You have bred good soldiers, in the finest genetic tradition. You ought to know that the old genic legacy of the Chiliads was an inspiration the Emperor acknowledged in creating us.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Honen, surprised.

‘Ancient history, pre-Unification,’ said the specialist. ‘There’s no reason you should. I must go now. It has been a pleasure making war with you, Uxor Honen Mu.’

‘And with you… though I still don’t know your name.’

‘I am Alpha Legion, lady. Given your ’ceptive powers, I think you can guess it.’

The specialist left the post through the back halls, walking through shadow. He moved silently and quickly. Near the north gate, he stopped in his tracks, and turned slowly.

‘Hello again,’ said Hurtado Bronzi, stepping out of the darkness with his carbine aimed at the specialist’s chest.

‘Het. My compliments. That was a genuine feat of stealth.’

Bronzi shrugged. ‘I do what I do.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘I do hope so,’ said Bronzi.

‘Does that thing have to be aimed at me?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I feel a lot more comfortable like this. I want some answers. I have a feeling only gunpoint is going to get them for me.’

‘Gunpoint will simply get you killed, het. All you need to do is ask.’

Bronzi bit his lip. ‘You’ve taken the Tel, I see.’

‘Yes.’

‘Fancy work. Kudos to you. Did it have to cost so many lives?’

‘Meaning?’ asked the specialist.

‘I heard the Dancers got cut to ribbons tonight. Was that part of your plan?’

‘Yes, it was.’

Bronzi shook his head. ‘Fug, you admit it. You used my friends as cannon fodder and–’

‘No, het. I used them as bait.’

‘What?’ Bronzi’s hands shook on the grip of the carbine. His finger tightened on the trigger until it found the biting point.

‘Don’t look so shocked. Life is all about secrets, and I’m prepared to share one with you. Honesty is the only really valuable currency. I’ll tell you this truth, on the understanding that you trust me.’

‘I can do that,’ said Bronzi.

‘The Nurthene are quite toxic in their power. No conventional assault was going to break them. They are possessed by Chaos, though I don’t expect you to know what that word really means. My men needed to get into Tel Utan, and that meant forcing the Nurthene into a distraction. I regret that your friends, the Dancers, were the ideal choice, tactically speaking. They drew the main force of the Nurthene aside so we could enter Tel Utan. I did ask my men to spare and protect as many of the Dancers as possible.’

‘That’s honest, I suppose. Brutal. Callous.’

‘We live in a brutal, callous galaxy, het. Like for like is the only way we can deal with it. We must make sacrifices. And no matter what others say, sacrifices always hurt.’

Bronzi sighed and lowered his weapon a little. Suddenly, it wasn’t in his hands any more. It was bouncing off the far wall, broken in two.

‘Never aim a weapon at me again,’ said the specialist, suddenly in Bronzi’s face, pinning him against the wall.

‘I w-wont!’

‘Good.’

‘Are you really Alpharius?’ Bronzi gasped, aware that his feet were swinging in the air.

With his free hand, the specialist pulled back his shawl and allowed Bronzi to look upon his face.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

When Soneka woke up, flocks of casevac fliers were dropping into the flame-lit ruin of the basin, wing lamps flashing. The whole night was lit up by the burning doom of Tel Utan.

Soneka looked around, blearily. His hand hurt like a bitch. Air crews were bundling the walking wounded and the stretcher casualties up the ramps of the waiting ships.

Soneka looked up at Lon. ‘How many?’ he asked.

‘Too many,’ said a voice.

Three dark figures stood nearby, like a tragic chorus. They were silhouettes in the firelight, their bolters slung across their bodies, their shawls drawn up.

‘Too many, het,’ said one.

‘We regret their loss,’ said the second.

‘War requires sacrifices. A victory has been achieved, but we take no pleasure in your losses,’ said the third.

‘You… you’re Astartes, aren’t you?’ Soneka asked, allowing Lon to help him to his feet.

‘Yes,’ said one.

‘Do you have names?’ Soneka asked.

‘I am Alpharius,’ said the first.

Soneka inhaled hard and dropped quickly to one knee, along with Lon and the other geno men.

‘Lord, I–’

‘I am Alpharius,’ said the second figure.

‘We are all Alpharius,’ said the third. ‘We are Alpha Legion, and we are all one.’

They turned, and walked away into the billowing smoke.

Two

Visages, Nurth, five weeks later

They retired, and spent the last of the summer at Visages, playing bones and other games, sitting out in the heat. Some of the men rode servitors off into the veldt and hunted big game, while others broke the local livestock, and raced them up and down in the dust.

Visages was simply their name for it. Officially called CR345, or Tel Khat in the local dialect, it was a cluster of dwellings in a northern wadi where the ground was littered with broken diorite heads. Some were as large as tank wheels, others as small as beads. No one knew who had carved the faces, or why they had done so in so many contrasting scales, or why the sculptures had been smashed and the heads alone scattered as spoil.

Nor did anyone care.

There was wine, sent as a reward for their pains by Namatjira, and peck in bountiful quantities, courtesy of the same source.

They diced and raced and gambled, played sphairistike, laughed out their pain, and swam in the warm blue pools hidden in the cliff-face caves.

Soneka’s hand healed. Field surgeons had cut back the wound, and packed it with basal sensors and motor plugs so that it could later accept a machine graft. He flexed it every day, and sensed fingers that had been and would be again, interim, phantom fingers.

There was a rumour that the Nurth War was ending and they would soon make shift for a new zone. Soneka didn’t believe it. He sat around in the Visages billet with Dimitar Shiban, a Trinacrian-born het who had been injured the same week as Peto. The flesh of Shiban’s chest and neck was swollen and knotty with buried shrapnel. Like Soneka, he owned a deep hatred of the Nurthene’s weaponised magick.

‘I have been dreaming lately,’ he said one day, as they sat around on an awning-covered terrace. ‘In my dreams, I hear a verse.’

They had each sniffed a pinch of peck from the gold boxes around their necks, and Soneka was pouring wine from a gombroonware ewer.

‘A verse, huh?’ asked Soneka.

‘I’ll tell you how it goes, shall I?’

‘You remember it, then?’

‘Don’t you remember your dreams word for word?’ Shiban asked.

Soneka thought about it, then shook his head with a smile. ‘Never,’ he said.

Shiban shrugged. ‘Fancy that,’ he said.

‘This verse?’ Soneka prompted, sitting back to sip his wine.

‘That? Oh, it goes –

From the hagg and hungrie goblin

That into raggs would rend ye,

And the spirit that stands by the naked man,

In the Book of Moones defend ye!’

Shiban broke into laughter as soon as he had finished his rendition.

Soneka looked at him. ‘I know that,’ he said.

‘You do?’ chuckled Shiban. ‘Really?’

‘My mother used to sing it to me when I was a boy. She called it the Bedlame Song. There were other verses that I now forget.’

‘Really? What does it mean?’

Soneka shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

Shiban’s company was coded the Clowns, and their banner was a howling skull clad in white and rouge vaudevillian greasepaint. Shiban had been hurt by a Nurthene splinter bomb during a wadi fight east of Tel Utan, and he’d been obliged to leave the Clowns under the field command of his head bashaw, a man Soneka came to know as ‘Fugging Strabo’.

As in, ‘I hope that fugging Strabo is keeping his head’, and ‘Beloved Terra, let fugging Strabo not be getting my poor boys killed.’

‘You worry too much, Dimi,’ Soneka told him.

‘Oh, so you’d be happy leaving your troop in the hands of your bashaws would you?’

Soneka empathised. Due to the bad mauling the Dancers had taken, the entire company had been retired to Visages, injured and healthy alike. Shiban, however, had been sent north with thirty or so wounded of his Clowns, the rest of the company deemed intact enough to continue operations. Soneka wondered how he would have felt if he’d been forced to leave the Dancers with Lon. He trusted Lon with his life, Shah and Attix too, all the Dancer bashaws. Still, he appreciated Shiban’s edginess.

They were sitting, feet up, under the awning in the late sun of an endless afternoon. They were playing the head game, a pastime of their own devising.

A man ran up the dusty slope towards them, a Clown, stripped to the waist, red-faced and sweating from too much exertion in the sun.

He saluted in front of the two reclining officers.

‘Sirs!’

‘Hello, Jed,’ said Shiban. ‘Let’s see it.’

The Clown, Jed, held out a diorite head. It was chipped and incomplete, about the size of a grapefruit. Soneka really missed grapefruit.

Shiban looked at Soneka. Soneka raised a considering eyebrow.

‘Put it in place, Jed,’ Shiban invited.

The Clown walked across the hot sand in front of the awning, panting hard, and bent down over the line of heads laid out in the sun. They were arranged in graduating size, seed- and pea-sized at one end, fist- and apple-sized at the other. The head Jed had brought was clearly the largest. He set it down triumphantly at the end of the row.

‘Point, Clowns,’ said Shiban.

Soneka nodded graciously.

‘Get a cup, Jed,’ said Shiban, and the Clown ran off eagerly to help himself to the cold wine on the stand behind them.

Shiban took a pinch from his gold box, sniffed, and sat back. He sighed. ‘The lho’s good,’ he said, ‘but I miss the combat fix.’

Soneka nodded.

Shiban had a face like a monkey, with a long brow, a long upper lip and a button nose. His tanned forehead was high, and his long white hair poured down off the back of his head like a cascade. The shrapnel bumps covering his throat and chest were the sort of thing a man couldn’t ignore. The warty mass was quite fascinating. The medics had drained and lanced some of them, but the rest, they had advised, would work out in time. He looked like he had a goitre of blisters.

As he had told it to Soneka, Shiban had surprised a Nurthene war party in the business of planting bombs. During the firefight that had resulted, the Nurthene had set the bombs off, killing themselves and wounding Shiban and his men. Some of that shrapnel was organic. Some of it was Nurthene bone.

‘I hear there’s fighting at Mon Lo,’ Shiban said.

‘I heard that too,’ said Soneka.

Another man ran up. It was Olmed, a Dancer. He held out the head he was carrying.

‘Place it,’ said Soneka.

Olmed took it to the line. His diorite head was bigger than any of them, except the one the Clown had just placed.

‘Adjudication!’ Shiban called.

The Munitorum aide emerged from the cool gloom of the doorway in the terracotta building behind them, a long-suffering look on his face. The hetmen had been calling him outside all afternoon. This time he brought the digital measure without being told.

‘Again with this, sirs?’ he asked.

Shiban waggled his fingers at the row of heads. ‘My dear friend, we value your impartial judgement.’

The aide trudged out into the sunlight and applied the measure to the heads while Olmed stood, breathing hard, watching, his torso gleaming with sweat.

The aide straightened up and turned to face the hetmen, reclining side by side in the shade.

‘Oh, don’t keep us in suspense,’ Soneka said.

‘The head is smaller by eight microns than the head at the line end,’ the aide sighed, ‘but it is larger by two microns than the one behind it.’

Olmed punched the air and did a little victory dance. Shiban tutted. Soneka grinned.

‘Point, Dancers,’ he said. ‘Olmed? Do the honours.’

Olmed nestled his diorite head into position at the head of the line, picked up the head Jed had brought, and threw it with all his strength out into the open field below them, where it was immediately lost again amongst millions of its kind.

‘Help yourself to a cup,’ Soneka told Olmed. He glanced at Shiban. ‘Sundown in, what? Eighty minutes?’

‘Everything still to play for,’ Shiban replied, confidently.

‘I think,’ said a voice from behind them, ‘you have far too much time on your hands.’

Soneka leapt up from his canvas recliner. Hurtado Bronzi stood in the shadow of the awning, smiling at him.

‘Hurt, you old bastard!’ Soneka cried, embracing his friend. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘A matter of twenty crowns and interest growing,’ Bronzi replied, grinning.

‘This is Dimi Shiban,’ Soneka laughed, gesturing across at his companion, who was rising to his feet

‘I know Dimi Shiban,’ Bronzi said, embracing the Clown het and slapping his back. ‘Zantium, eh?’

‘I seem to recall you being there,’ said Shiban. ‘How’re you doing, you fat fugger?’

‘Well, well.’

‘Have some wine,’ Soneka offered.

‘Oh, all right,’ Bronzi replied. His armour was caked in dust. He yanked off his cape and his webbing, and sat down.

‘So, this game? It has rules?’

‘Many, many rules,’ said Shiban.

‘And there’s money at stake?’

‘Money and wine,’ said Soneka, pouring a glass for his old friend.

‘Two teams,’ said Shiban, ‘Clowns and Dancers, five men each side. They scour the fields and bring back heads. The heads go in a line, by size. Retrievers win a cup of wine for each head. Incentive, you see? Sundown ends the game. Team with the largest head in the row wins.’

‘So just get your boys to roll in one of those big buggers,’ Bronzi said, pointing at the boulder-sized heads resting in the sand a hundred metres away. ‘Game over.’

‘Ah, but this is a game of finesse,’ Soneka said.

‘Really?’ Bronzi smiled, sipping from his wine cup.

Shiban nodded. ‘If a team brings in a head that is demonstrably smaller than the largest, but larger than the next in line, the larger head gets thrown out.’

A very broad grin spread across Bronzi’s face. ‘A game of finesse indeed. Who’s winning?’

‘I am,’ said Soneka.

Bronzi took out his purse. ‘Four crowns on Shiban by sundown,’ he said.

Soneka won that day’s head game in the very last minutes before dark, when Bashaw Lon casually wandered in with a head that displaced the Clowns’ latest triumph. Lon bent his back and cast the Clowns’ usurped head back out into the field where it had been found. Bronzi lost his four crowns. According to the rules of the game, Shiban bought wine for both teams.

‘So what are you really doing here, Hurt?’ Soneka asked, later on.

‘Let me see that hand of yours,’ Bronzi replied, and studied Soneka’s wound as it was displayed. ‘Hnh. You’ll be good.’

‘Hurtado? I asked you a question.’

‘I got a furlough,’ Bronzi said, sitting back in the still of the evening. The air went cold very suddenly after dark on Nurth, closing in like lapping black water. They huddled in around the lamps and the peat-fired heaters. ‘Five-day pass, signed by Uxor Honen herself. Just wanted to come check on you.’

‘That’s not it,’ said Soneka.

‘Why is that not it?’

Soneka smiled, and waved to Lon to bring them a fresh bottle. ‘Since when did Hurtado Bronzi not have a secret agenda, huh?’

‘You wound me, Peto, you wound me. Can’t I come here selflessly to look up an old friend and enquire of his welfare?’

Soneka stared at him, a wry smile on his face, waiting for the punch line.

‘All right,’ Bronzi admitted, ‘there was something else.’

‘Excuse me, het?’ a voice cut in.

They looked up. A Munitorum aide, the very same aide whose time and patience they had abused so thoroughly during the afternoon’s game, was standing beside them.

‘Yes?’ asked Soneka.

‘The staff medicae apologises for this interruption. Sir, there is a dead Dancer she would like you to identify.’

Casevac had brought the corpse to the cold store at the far end of the Visages camp. The cold store was a long, mud brick building throbbing with refrigeration units. Soneka and Bronzi wandered up in the chilly dark, aware of the stars draping overhead like dust on a desert shawl.

The frozen, stiff bodies of geno dead were piled up inside like firewood. Each one was wrapped in a plastek shroud. Pairs of bare, pallid feet stuck out of the ends of the stacked shrouds, decorated with toe-tag labels. The hets walked in past them, ignoring the gross stink of embalming chemicals.

The corpse in question was waiting for them in the next room. Not yet preserved, it was laid out on a stainless steel gurney, with drip-trays slotted in to catch the noxious seep. It had been dead in the desert for several weeks, and it had bloated. The face was lost in one raw, black graze, the uniform frayed and faded, the torso limp and slack where gut gas had previously bloated it.

Soneka and Bronzi stood in the chilly light, and shivered as they regarded it.

‘That’s no Dancer I know,’ said Soneka. His words made smoke in the sub-zero air.

‘Oh, but he’s certainly one of yours, het,’ the staff medicae insisted. Medicae Ida was a tall woman, wearing a long surgical gown, the apron front of which was smeared with stains. She’d been a combat uxor in her youth, but age and experience had seen her graduate to the medicae branch as her perceptive skills dulled. Bronzi wondered if Ida missed her uxorhood, missed her command of geno men. It seemed so, from her tone.

‘He’s not,’ Soneka insisted, peering down at the corpse.

‘Well, I don’t know how you can tell that, sir,’ Ida said. ‘His face is missing.’

‘He’d know,’ said Bronzi.

‘Where was he found?’ Soneka asked, placing a hand on the corpse’s wax-cold shoulder. A surgical cloth had been spread over the abdomen to obscure the ravages of the autopsy.

‘The Tel Utan wadi,’ Medicae Ida replied.

Soneka shook his head. ‘He’s not one of mine. I’m not missing anyone. The lists were in weeks ago.’

‘But he is wearing Dancer insignia,’ Ida insisted. ‘Here, the collar pins, and here, the brooch.’ She pointed. ‘He is dressed as a Dancer.’

‘Have you tissue-mapped him?’ Soneka asked.

‘Not yet,’ Ida admitted.

‘Then you’ll see the truth. This isn’t one of my men.’

Senior Medicae Ida sighed. ‘I know that, het. I just wanted you to confirm it, before I–’

‘Before you what?’ Bronzi demanded.

‘Before I alert the Chiliad uxors. Hetman Soneka, is there any reason you can think of why one of your men would have no heart?’

‘What?’

‘No heart?’ Ida repeated emphatically.

‘What the fug did he have in there then?’ Bronzi asked, nodding at the corpse’s covered chest.

‘A cadmium centrifuge,’ replied Senior Medicae Ida gently. ‘The subject has undergone some extreme and non-standard organ modification. His liver was… well, I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘What is going on here?’ asked Soneka.

‘I don’t know.’ Ida replied. ‘I was hoping you might.’

‘There’s something else,’ she added. She pulled back the surgical cloth.

For a moment, all they could see was the scissor-snapped sternum and the splayed ribs, caked black with blood.

‘Here,’ she said, pointing.

On the dead flesh of the corpse’s hip there was a small brand, partially obliterated by a shrapnel puncture.

‘What is that?’ asked Soneka, squinting at it. ‘Is that a snake?’

‘Maybe,’ said Bronzi, bending down to look for himself. ‘A snake… or some kind of reptile.’

Soneka told the medicae to place a guard on the corpse and send someone to wake up the post commander. He went back outside with Bronzi.

‘Insurgent?’ Soneka asked.

Bronzi nodded. ‘Has to be. That mark.’

Soneka didn’t reply. Crocodilia and other forms of aggressive reptile were the most persistently recurring of all Nurthene emblems.

‘Have they the art to change a man inside like that?’ Bronzi asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Soneka replied, ‘but since that night outside Tel Utan, I could believe them capable of anything.’

Bronzi wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Listen, Peto, the reason I came here today, it’s about that night. I wanted you to know that I didn’t hang you out to dry.’

‘I never thought you did, Hurt.’

‘Really, though. I was all for taking a force out to support you. I was warned off.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Soneka.

Bronzi looked at him strangely. ‘What does that mean?’

Soneka walked a few steps away and stared out into the great bowl of the moonlit desert. Sky and land alike, both dark, had a sheen across them, a haze produced by airborne dust. ‘My men were used as a tactical sacrifice to break Tel Utan open. Lon and a few others know, but I’ve told them to stay tight-lipped. I’ve kept the information quiet for reasons of morale.’

‘How do you know this?’ asked Bronzi.

‘Because the men who sacrificed us told me to my face,’ said Soneka.

‘And me,’ Bronzi replied. ‘You saw them, then? The specialists?’

‘The Alpha Legion,’ said Soneka. He looked at Bronzi. ‘So many stories, over the years, and then to meet them, the most secret and cunning of all the Astartes.’

‘I was this close to him,’ Bronzi said, ‘as close as I am to you. He warned me off, and told me why, and then told me to keep my mouth shut about the whole thing.’

‘Who?’

‘Alpharius!’

Soneka smiled. ‘They were all called Alpharius, Hurt.’

Bronzi shook his head. ‘This was the primarch, Peto. I swear it! I saw his face.’

‘I believe you,’ said Soneka. ‘Terra, but what kind of war are we fighting here?’

‘A war of lies and disguise and dissembling,’ Bronzi answered. ‘Why else would that Legion be involved?’

‘I’m not entirely sure of the significance,’ said Koslov, the post commander. He was a brigadier in one of the Crimean support regiments charged with running the campaign’s rear party operations.

‘Neither are we,’ said Bronzi, ‘but the fact remains that we have the body of an unidentified combatant showing signs of non-standard anatomical work and a brand mark like a reptile.’

‘We know that subversive and covert tactics are being employed in this zone,’ said Soneka.

‘How do you know that?’ asked Koslov.

‘That’s classified,’ Bronzi said carefully.

‘If the Nurthene have infiltrated our companies, high command needs to know about it,’ Soneka went on. ‘The body needs to be examined, so that others like it can be identified. This could break the war, man. This could be one of the key reasons those devils have us on the back foot all the time.’

Koslov took a deep breath and stood up behind his camp desk. The habitent was sparsely equipped, and lit only by a pair of lumen packs.

‘Far be it from me to argue with two frontline hets,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’

Soneka and Bronzi agreed that Honen Mu was the first point of contact. If infiltration was widespread, they had to tread carefully. They had to start with someone they knew they could trust; someone, as Bronzi pointed out, who had dealt with the specialists and therefore understood the gravity of the matter.

Koslov granted them access to the Visages post’s main vox transmitter, and personally activated the command-grade cryptogrammics using a biometric key he carried around his wrist.

‘The channel is secure,’ he told them, and left the chamber.

Bronzi picked up the speaker horn and threw the transmit switch.

‘CR23, CR23, this is Joker Lord broadcasting in encrypt, stop.’

The vox speaker emitted a series of dull, metallic clicks, and then settled into a deep background hiss. Bronzi repeated his signal.

Ten seconds passed and then the answer came. ‘Joker Lord, Joker Lord, this is CR23 reading you encrypted, stop.’ The voice was cold and clear, as if the speaker was standing in the next room. Apart from a slight trebly quality caused by the cryptogrammic coding, they couldn’t have asked for a stronger, purer link.

‘CR23, I need to speak to Uxor Mu urgently, Code Janibeg 5, stop.’

‘Confirm code, please, stop,’ the vox answered him. The connection was so clean, the words sounded as if they were polished.

‘Confirm Code Janibeg 5, stop.’

‘One moment, Joker Lord, stop.’

Another wait. Two minutes of liquid hiss this time. Bronzi glanced at Soneka.

‘Joker Lord, Joker Lord. This is Honen. Bronzi, this had better not be one of your entertainments, stop.’ The tone was sharpened by the digital overlay of the cryptogrammics, but there was no mistaking Honen Mu’s spiky attitude.

‘It’s not, uxor. Trust me and listen. I’ve got a body here. I’m pretty convinced it’s a Nurthene infiltrator, surgically altered. I think we’ve been compromised. Requesting your advice, stop.’

A pause. ‘Give me more information to work with, Bronzi, stop.’

‘Uxor, I think this stiff needs to be examined by tech-adepts, a full work-up. We could be looking at a huge security breach. I’m thinking, maybe to scare up a lifter to my position, and I’ll baby-sit the specimen up to the fleet, stop.’

‘Stand by, Joker Lord, stop.’

Bronzi lowered the speaker horn. ‘She’s wary,’ he said.

‘Can you blame her, Hurt?’ Soneka asked. ‘The number of pranks you’ve pulled over the years?’

They were both beginning to sweat, despite the night chill. The massive vox-caster rig kicked out a fug of heat exhaust, and the air in the chamber was close.

They waited for over five minutes, so long that Soneka began to pace. Then the vox cycled up again.

‘Joker Lord, Joker Lord, this is CR23, respond, stop.’

Bronzi picked up the horn and waited until all five green lights on the console had re-lit, indicating full-strength cryptogrammics.

‘CR23, this is Joker Lord, stop.’

‘What is your position, Bronzi, stop?’

‘CR345, uxor, stop.’

‘Listen to me, Bronzi. I can’t risk an air extraction from where you are. There are some details I can’t go into, even via encrypt. Suggest you get transport and move fast and light. I’m checking the charts now… Yes, leave Tel Khat and head west along the Sarmak Trail. If you don’t mess around, you should be able to get to CR8291 by dawn. I’ll divert a cavalry squadron to pick you up there and escort you in. Did you get all that, stop?’

Bronzi nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. ‘Understood, uxor, stop.’

‘Is this workable, Bronzi, stop?’

‘Absolutely, stop,’ Bronzi replied.

The link leaked out an ambient hiss for a moment. ‘CR23? Bronzi? I need you to tell me who knows about this, stop.’

‘Say again, stop?’

‘Who knows the details of this incident, het, stop?’

Bronzi frowned. ‘Me, the post commander, the duty medicae, maybe a couple of staffers, stop.’

‘Understood, thank you. I’m sorry, Bronzi, but we need to keep this close for now. Are you ready to move, stop?’

‘Yes, uxor. Joker Lord out.’

The lights went out and the hissing died away. Bronzi threw the vox-caster’s power-down switches and got up.

‘All right then,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you mention me?’ Soneka asked.

‘What?’

‘When she asked who knew, why didn’t you mention my name?’

‘Because you’re staying here,’ Bronzi told him.

Bronzi had a few words with Koslov, and a pair of Crimean noncombatants were sent to bring a transport up from the hard standing behind the main dwelling cluster of Visages. Then Bronzi strode off to the billet he’d been given. Soneka followed him.

‘What do you mean I’m staying here?’ Soneka asked as Bronzi quickly repacked his haversack.

‘Don’t start.’

‘Bronzi?’ There was a warning tone in Soneka’s inflection. Bronzi stopped what he was doing and looked around at his old friend.

‘Was it just me, or did Mu sound seriously weird?’

‘She was just being wary. I said that.’

Bronzi shook his head. ‘Something’s up. I need you to be my joker, Peto.’

‘What?’

‘My ace in the hole. If anything goes wrong, you’ll still know what I know. That’s why you’re staying here.’

‘Nothing’s going to go wrong,’ said Soneka.

Bronzi laughed. ‘How many years have we been soldiers, Peto?’

‘Enough to know that covering your arse is never a waste of time,’ Soneka replied. He shook his head. ‘We’re worrying about nothing.’

‘No,’ said Bronzi. ‘We’ve found ourselves in a war of lies, disguise and dissembling. We’re worrying about everything.’

Soneka didn’t look convinced.

‘Come on,’ Bronzi rumbled. ‘That’s why the Geno Five-Two has survived this long. We fight smart, we always have. Brains have got us out of more scrapes than balls.’

‘In your case, I’d hardly trust either.’

Bronzi winked. He wasn’t going to rise to the bait. He lashed up his haversack and swung it onto his shoulder.

‘Don’t go alone,’ Soneka said.

‘I won’t. I’ll take Dimi Shiban with me. I can trust him, and he knows how to handle himself if there’s an outbreak of stupid.’

‘Good. All right.’

‘Let’s be off, then,’ said Bronzi.

The transport Koslov provided was a Scarab-pattern carrier, a medium-sized armoured speeder with a troop hold for stowage and a stern-mounted auto turret. Its long, gently curved hull had been sprayed in a desert tan, but as it slid towards them out of the night on its powerful suspension fields, it looked like a desert phantom, cold and moonlight blue. The delivery crew dismounted, leaving the engines running. Medicae Ida loaded the wrapped body into the hold and made it secure.

‘I can provide a driver,’ Koslov offered.

‘No need,’ Bronzi replied, tossing his haversack in through the open hold hatch. ‘I can handle one of these babies.’

‘You’re infantry,’ Koslov said.

‘I’m a Renaissance man,’ Bronzi replied. ‘There are few things in this galaxy I can’t turn my hand to.’

‘And entirely mess up,’ Soneka said.

Shiban ran up to join them out of the cold darkness. He was lugging a pack and a twin-barrelled las carbine.

‘What’s this about?’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you once we’re moving,’ Bronzi said. ‘All secure, doc?’

Medicae Ida jumped down from the hold and sealed the hatch behind her.

‘I’ve secured it in ice blocks, but it will deteriorate. Get it into stasis as quickly as you can.’

‘The organs?’

‘Individually packed in vacuum sealed bags in the hopper under the gurney.’

‘Thanks, doc,’ Bronzi smiled. Shiban was already climbing aboard through the cabin hatch.

Bronzi looked back at Soneka. ‘I hate goodbyes,’ he said, ‘so fug off.’

Soneka laughed. Bronzi turned away, and then swung back round to face Soneka. His face was solemn. ‘Look, Peto, there is one thing. One thing I just want to say.’

‘What is it, Hurt?’

Bronzi looked him in the eyes, all seriousness.

‘Peto, have you got that money you owe me?’

The speeder kicked up dust like a gauzy bridal train and slipped away into the cold desert night. Koslov, Ida and the noncombatants turned away and walked back into the post.

Soneka stood out in the chilly darkness, under the enveloping cloak of the sky, and watched until all traces of the speeder had vanished into the endless black.

They ran the Scarab into the west, along the old trail, using only auspex and the low-light viewers wired to the dashboard. The viewers showed the world like a green moonscape, but they had only a one hundred and ten degree forward spread, so when Bronzi or Shiban turned their heads too far left or right, the ghostly view vanished in a wash of fizzle and telemetry junk.

The Scarab coasted well, and made eighty kilometres per hour over the clearest terrain. Bronzi loved grav-effect transports, and always tried to secure them for his Jokers when dismount assaults were on the cards. He let Shiban drive for the first three hours, through the tipping point of midnight. The stars came out over the desert rim with a rare magnificence, heightened by their viewers.

‘You ever going to tell me what this is about?’ Shiban asked.

‘No,’ said Bronzi.

Three hours before sunrise, Bronzi took the stick. The world ahead of him was a jumbled, fast-moving path of lime-cast furrows, with the occasional emerald crag looming for a moment before it was lost behind them. Shiban sat back, reclining in the shotgun seat, and took a pinch from his box. Then he played with the auto-turret controls, impelling the sense-net to target the stern guns at passing rocks and crumbling slopes of sand rock.

‘Set it on auto-serve and get some kip, Dimi,’ Bronzi suggested.

Shiban yawned, and promptly fell asleep, rocking in his leather cradle.

Bronzi envied him. It had been years since he’d been able to manage the old geno trick of crash-sleep, the hypno-suggestive shut-down that allowed a man to catch a wink under any circumstances. Bronzi had been trained that way, but the knack had left him.

He kept his hand closed around the bucking stick and watched the ghost-green world outside flash by.

The sun came up, a slow, terrible firestorm rising from the south. All of the landscape’s shadows stretched out, long and painful, and Bronzi took off the viewer. White light filtered in through the cabin’s chipped and crazed windows, and he decided to rely on auspex alone. Twenty kilometres now. The cursor on the cab’s lightmap display moved slowly towards its destination.

Soneka woke with a start. Nothing special there. The dull, afterglow of pain in his hand had woken him that way every morning since he’d arrived at Visages.

He sat up on his bunk. Dawn light, already hot and bright, speared in through the gaps around his rattan blind. He’d been having the strangest dream. He’d been playing the head game with Dimi, and Lon had brought him a good piece. He’d taken the diorite head out of Lon’s calloused hands, and looked down at it to judge it.

The carved face had been Hurtado’s. It had grinned up at him.

‘Tell me this, Peto,’ the head had said, ‘all these broken heads, are any two faces alike, or are they all different?’

‘I don’t know, Hurt. Get out of my dream.’

‘It’s important. Do they all look the same? Are they all different? Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t it?’

Soneka had lobbed the head away into the wide scree field of broken heads. He’d done it with his left hand. His left hand had had fingers and a thumb.

‘Fug,’ Soneka said, coughing. He had dust in his throat. That was par for the course at Visages.

He looked down at his incomplete hand and felt the missing fingers waggle.

He had slept naked. He pulled on his breeches, socks and boots, and went out into the early light bare-chested. A hard rind of sun was cresting the edge of the crags. The sky was off-white, like old ivory, and the landscape was a pink wash, broken by hard black shadows bending to evade the sun. It was going to be a hot one. He could already feel the air baking. The local livestock, some of them still saddled from the previous day’s racing, wandered free, grazing the patchy grasses. Soneka walked towards the well, rubbing his face with his good hand. He needed a shave; a shave and a grapefruit.

The livestock all looked up at the same time. They stared in the same direction, some of them still chewing, and then broke and scattered.

Geno instinct pulled Soneka back into the cold shadows of one of the terracotta huts. He looked around, suddenly very alert. Where were the sentries, the perimeter guard, the overnight patrols?

The pink wash of the landscape moved. Semi-visible figures scurried forwards out of the desert rim.

Soneka swallowed hard. He turned and ran back through the shaded maze of dwellings towards the post commander’s habitent. He wanted to raise the alarm, but he didn’t want the enemy to know he’d raised the alarm. Koslov had a silent signal device that trembled every post resident’s wrist cuff.

Soneka slipped into the hot darkness of the habitent. Koslov sat at his camp desk, staring at Soneka in surprise.

‘Commander!’ Soneka whispered. ‘Emergency alert now!’

Koslov didn’t move. He continued to stare back at Soneka with the same look of mild surprise.

‘Commander Koslov?’

Koslov’s eyes did not follow Soneka as he moved forwards. They continued to stare at the tent flap where Soneka had entered. Koslov didn’t move at all.

Soneka threw himself sideways.

The falx swung by the echvehnurth concealed behind the inner tent flap missed the hetman by a matter of centimetres. The blade chokked through the groundsheet into the dirt beneath. Soneka rolled and came up on his feet. The Nurthene yanked his long blade free and charged him.

‘Alarm! Alarm!’ Soneka began to shout. ‘Enemy in the camp!’

He dived headlong over the desk to avoid the lunging blade, and fell into Koslov. Koslov toppled backwards off his seat, his camp table collapsing under Soneka’s weight. Blood ebbed slackly out of Koslov’s nose and mouth. He continued to stare, in mild surprise, at the roof of the tent.

Soneka rolled off the still-warm corpse, and fumbled frantically to release Koslov’s service pistol from its holster.

The Nurthene whirled his falx so high it ripped a slit in the tent roof. He swung it down. Soneka threw himself to one side. The descending blade cut clean through Koslov’s left shoulder.

‘Alarm!’ Soneka yelled again, diving away. Outside, he heard shouting, and the sudden, sporadic bark of las weapons.

Soneka threw a saddle bag at the advancing Nurthene, and the whispering falx struck it aside. He scrambled backwards, hurling a writing case. The falx splintered it, and a shower of pens, nibs and blotting patches spilled out. Soneka ducked again, and the falx tore a wide gash in the tent wall.

Geno training took over. As he landed, Soneka groped for a weapon, any weapon, and found a writing quill that had fallen out of the writing case. Soneka seized it, tested its weight automatically, and threw it like a dart, underhand.

It embedded itself, nib first, in the echvehnurth’s left cheek. The Nurthene yelped and lurched backwards. Soneka leapt up and grabbed the haft of the falx. He kneed the Nurthene in the groin. Now the bastard really staggered. He howled. His grip on the falx weakened.

Soneka tore the weapon out of the echvehnurth’s hands and swung it. The echvehnurth’s head rolled clean off his shoulders in a puff of blood. The body folded up, and the head bounced off the ground sheet beside it.

Gripping the falx, Soneka strode across the habitent to the master alarm control. He smacked it, and sirens began to wail all across the Visages post.

He walked back to Koslov’s body, staked the falx blade down in the ground, and pulled out the service pistol, a heavy las model.

Two Nurthene raiders burst in through the habitent mouth and Soneka shot them both in the face. They walloped over on their backs, their silver plates dotted with droplets of blood.

Pandemonium had erupted outside the command tent. The waking Imperial troops, roused by his shots and the blaring sirens, were scrambling to fight off the Nurthene intruders. The dawn air whizzed with gunfire and the swukk of impacting blades. Soneka heard awful wails of pain.

With the pistol in his good hand, he went outside into the baking air. A Nurthene ran at him, falx raised. Soneka blew the man’s throat out with a single shot and dropped him on the sand. All around him, las carbines rattled on auto. The shouts and yells were deafening. He ran towards the cold store.

Bodies littered the ground outside the mud brick building: Imperial soldiers, mostly half-dressed, sliced into pieces. He went inside, and shot down the two Nurthene he found there. One fell forwards against the stacked, frozen bodies in their shrouds, and wrenched off his breastplate as he slid down. The breastplate landed in front of Soneka, rattling to a stop. He saw the engraved reed emblems and the snapping crocodilia.

‘Get. Out,’ a voice gasped. ‘Run.’

He turned. Medicae Ida stood behind him. She clutched at the falx that stapled her through the chest to the cold store wall. Her gown was soaked in blood. Her own, for the first time.

‘Medicae!’ Soneka yelled.

‘Too late for me,’ she wheezed, and died.

A Nurthene raider burst in behind them, and Soneka spun around, firing a shot that silenced the man forever.

More followed, falxes raised. Soneka began to shoot. By his weapon’s digital display, he had twenty shots left. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…

Bronzi brought the Scarab to rest and hit the dampers. The sun was up, fierce and bold.

‘Wake up,’ he told Shiban as he unstrapped his harness. Shiban groaned.

Bronzi jumped down out of the speeder and looked around. His stomach was grumbling. Where the hell was Honen’s promised cavalry? The cratered desert spread out all around him in the burning light of the rising sun.

He saw a figure toiling up the trail towards him, a tall figure wobbled by the heat haze. Bronzi waited, two minutes, three. The figure came closer, becoming properly visible.

It was a Space Marine in full battleplate. The armour was indigo-blue, trimmed in silver, with green markings on the immense shoulder plates.

‘Great god,’ Bronzi murmured.

The towering Astartes came to a halt ten paces from Bronzi and the speeder. Soft red light glowed like embers in its eye slits as it read and targeted him.

‘Bronzi, we meet again,’ the helmet speaker crackled.

‘Sir?’

The Astartes held its massive boltgun close against its armoured chest.

‘I warned you. You really do know how to stir up trouble, don’t you, Hurtado?’

Bronzi blinked. ‘I don’t understand. This is important! This is–’

‘None of your business, but you’ve made it your business, which is a colossal mistake, and a shame, because you’re a decent fellow. There’s only one option.’

‘What the fug are you talking about?’ Bronzi cried, wishing, very suddenly, he’d brought a weapon with him.

‘Back right off, you son of a bitch,’ Shiban declared, moving out from behind the cover of the hovering tank, his double-carbine raised to his shoulder and aimed squarely at the armoured figure.

‘Dimi, don’t!’ Bronzi yelled.

‘No one threatens my friends,’ Shiban growled back. He edged forwards, his weapon fixed steadily on the figure in indigo armour.

The Astartes turned its visor slowly to regard Shiban. The soft red ember-light flickered in its eye slits.

Far too fast for Bronzi to follow, the Astartes wheeled and fired its bolter. Dimitar Shiban, who remembered his dreams word for word, left the ground and exploded as he travelled backwards, showering blood and meat in all directions. His twisted carcass hit the ground and lay still.

‘Oh god! Oh Terra! No!’ Bronzi yelled.

The Astartes switched its aim back to Bronzi. Bronzi sank to his knees in the dust.

‘Please…’ he murmured.

‘As I said,’ the Space Marine remarked, stepping forwards, its bolter aimed, ‘there is only one option.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Bronzi pleaded.

‘For the Emperor,’ the Astartes replied.

Three

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, two days later

Though John Grammaticus was over a thousand years old, he had only been Konig Heniker for eight months, and he was still getting used to the idea.

According to his file, and as far as any Imperial methods of scrutiny were concerned, Konig Heniker was a fifty-two year-old man from a region of Terra known as the Caucasus, and he served in the Imperial Army as an intelligence officer attached to the Geno Five-Two Chiliad.

Grammaticus still thought of himself as essentially human. He had been born human, raised as a human, and he had been human when, to all intents and purposes, he had died for the first time. Definitions became a little more complicated after that. One thing was certain: at some non-specific point after his first death, probably as the result of a slow process rather than a sudden change of heart, he had stopped being quite so steadfast in his devotion to the interests of his birth species.

He was still unashamedly fond of the human race, and was a stout apologist for its less edifying qualities, but he had been with the Cabal for a long time, and they had shared the Acuity with him, at least in part. These days, he saw what his birth race had once been wont to call ‘the long view’.

Grammaticus was one of the last few humans still working as an agent of the Cabal. Over the centuries, the Cabal had recruited a good many human go-betweens, but most of them were long dead, forgotten or disavowed.

The Cabal had been recruiting human agents for as long as there had been humans to recruit, a fact that Grammaticus always found particularly hard to reconcile. At the very start of human history, before writing, before Ur and Catal Huyuk, before Mohenjo-daro and Thebes, before the construction of the lost monuments, the Cabal had visited Terra and encountered a breed of unprepossessing, unpromising mammalian hominids busy making its first axe marks on the trunks of ancient woodland trees to mark out its first boundaries.

The Cabal had seen some particular quality in those mammalian hominids. They had recognised that the hominids would one day rise, inexorably, to play a pivotal role in the scheme of all things. Mankind would become the greatest weapon against the Primordial Annihilator, or it would become the Primordial Annihilator’s greatest weapon. Either way, the Cabal decided that the unprepossessing mammalian hominids developing on that backwater world were not a species to be dismissed.

Grammaticus knew that this fact frustrated most of the Cabal’s inner circle. They were Old Kinds, every damn one of them, and regarded all the upstart species of the galaxy as inferior ephemera. It pained them to accept that their destiny, all destinies, lay in the purview of creatures that had been simple, single-cell protocytes when the Old Kind cultures were already mature.

Gahet had once told Grammaticus that the Cabal had made its first subtle advances towards the human species long before the advent of the Age of Terra. Gahet had said this bitterly, and more bitterly still had admitted the Cabal’s repeated failure to apply influence on human development.

‘You’ve always been feral, stubborn brutes,’ Gahet had said, ‘shockingly dogmatic in your self-worth. We tried to direct you, and influence your course. It was like…’

Gahet had paused, allowing his mind to select an appropriately humanocentric simile. ‘It was like commanding a tide to turn back,’ he finished.

Grammaticus had smiled. ‘We are a headstrong people, aren’t we?’ he had replied, with no little pride. ‘Did you not think it might have been easier to cull us before we grew teeth?’

Gahet had nodded, or at least, he had flexed his secondary nostrils in a mannerism that equated to a nod. ‘That was not our way then. We all deemed such notions as gross barbarism. All of us except Slau Dha, of course.’

‘Of course. And now?’

‘Now I regret we did not abort you when we had the chance. Destruction has become our only tool in latter days. I miss the subtle methods.’

Almost all of the humans recruited down the years had proved to be unviable or flawed. Most had been disposed of. Grammaticus believed that he had succeeded where so many others had failed because of his gift.

John Grammaticus was a high-function psyker.

‘The uxor will see you, Het Heniker,’ the subaltern in the fur shako announced.

‘Thank you,’ John Grammaticus replied, and got up off the wooden chair at the end of the corridor. He walked down the hall towards the briefing room door, straightening his double-breasted jacket and cape. He undid the collar buttons of his shirt. It was almost noon and the terracotta palace was sweltering. Situated fifteen kilometres outside Mon Lo Harbour, the palace had been commandeered as a control station for the advance. Its ancient walls held the day’s heat like an oven. Reed screens soaked in water had been fixed over the windows to keep the palace interiors cool and fresh, but they were beginning to dry out.

John Grammaticus had no physiological need to perspire, but he permitted his body to do so. Every other human around was sweating freely, and he didn’t want them to notice that he wasn’t like them.

He knocked at the door.

‘Come!’

He went in. The chamber was long and broad, with pillars flanking the walls to support the tiled ceiling. The tops of the pillars had been carved to resemble the fronds of reeds, or snapping crocodilia, both common features in Nurthene architecture. A folding steel table had been set up in the centre of the room, and Uxor Rukhsana stood at the head of it, her four aides ranged on either side of the table beside her.

‘Uxor,’ Grammaticus said. ‘Good to see you.’ He tapped his throat. ‘I apologise for the unbuttoning, but this objectionable heat.’

‘Quite all right, Konig,’ she replied. Her aides all nodded accordingly. They were all female, all aged between thirteen and sixteen, uxors in waiting. Their ovaries had already been harvested for the Geno Five-Two Chiliad stock banks. They were now honing their ’cept powers, and acting as a support buffer for their assigned uxor.

Grammaticus found the operational structure of the Geno Five-Two Chiliad quite fascinating. Formed during the savage continental wars that had engulfed Terra at the end of the Age of Strife, the geno had proved to be a most effective and adaptable force. No wonder the Emperor had permitted them to endure after Unification. No wonder he had looked upon their system and stolen from it.

The geno practised genic mustering. Grammaticus had been thoroughly briefed on this. Genic mustering had been an essential tool during those caustic years of atomic hurricanes and drifting rad clouds. The core of the regiment was the uxors, a bloodline of latent psychically sensitive females. The females had their eggs harvested at puberty, and from them the heavy-built uterine soldiery of the unit were vat-grown, using the genetic codes of several proven, robust agnate gene-pools notorious for their martial merit. The geno grew tough warriors, but they complemented their brute strength and kept the pool clean by importing smart, proven field commanders from other forces. The hetmen were always non-stock individuals who excelled at tactics and strategy.

The uxors, at the top of the Chiliad’s command tree, were no longer capable of carrying children of their own to term. This, in ways not entirely understood, freed their minds, and allowed them to operate as perceptives, operational coordinators who could appreciate, as Gahet had put it during the briefing, ‘the behaviour of their children’.

At best, the uxors were weak psykers. Each one was capable of a rudimentary talent known as the ’cept, enough to enable their forces in the field and supply them with some insight. They burned out quickly. By twenty-six, twenty-seven, they were done as uxors, and restricted to other duties. During their active phase as perceptives, they were always accompanied by aides, uxors in training, whose raw psychic talent bolstered the ’ceptive power of their uxor even as they learned from her.

None of the females in the chamber possessed a fraction of John Grammaticus’s talent.

As he sat down at the end of the table opposite Uxor Rukhsana, he reached out. Instantly, he tasted feeble, immature ’cepts, chitter-chatter minds, the moist, unwholesome mental architecture of the pubescent aides. The technical inability to conceive made most uxor-aides gruesomely promiscuous. Grammaticus was repelled by the lurid, shallow thoughts that washed towards him. The aides were all thinking about the next soldier boy they’d hump, or how fabulous it was going to be to become an uxor.

Rukhsana was different. Grammaticus looked down the table towards her. For a start, she was a woman, not a girl; a startlingly appealing woman. Her lips were full, her long, straight, blonde hair centre-parted, her eyes heavily lashed and exotically grey. A master sculptor could not have improved upon her cheekbones. She was also twenty-eight, and at the end of her uxor service. He could feel that she hated this fact. She was broken by the thought that she would soon be something else: a medicae, a Munitorum commander, a cartomancer, an uxor emeritus.

Her powers were ebbing. Her ’cept was waning and weakening.

‘What do you have for me, sir?’ she asked.

Quite a voice. Even the aides took notice. Husky. No, silky, like honey. Grammaticus knew that he was a little in love with her, and allowed himself to relish the fact. It had been a long time, seven hundred years, give or take, since he had permitted himself to respond to a human female in any way other than physical need.

‘Well, I have plenty, uxor,’ he replied, taking out the document case from under his arm and opening it.

‘You’ve actually been in Mon Lo Harbour?’ asked one of the aides, looking right at him. Grammaticus felt a wash of admiring lust.

‘Yes… what’s your name?’

‘Tuvi, sir,’ the girl said. She was the most mature of Rukhsana’s aides, about nineteen. Tuvi clearly found the idea of a daring intelligence officer quite intoxicating.

‘Yes, Tuvi. I made cover as a merchant called D’sal Huulta, and spent the last four days gathering evidence in the inner quarters of the town.’

Amongst other things, he thought.

‘Wasn’t that terribly dangerous?’ asked another of the aides.

‘Yes, it was,’ said Grammaticus.

‘How were you not unmasked by the infidel enemy?’ asked Tuvi.

‘Be quiet,’ Rukhsana told her girls. ‘Intelligence operatives are hardly required to give away their tricks.’

‘It’s all right, uxor,’ Grammaticus smiled. He looked at Tuvi and said, ‘El-teh ta nash el et chey tanay.’

‘What?’ Tuvi replied.

‘It means,’ Grammaticus told her, ‘I speak the local language as a native does, in Nurthene.’

‘But–’ Tuvi began.

‘My dear, I’m not going to tell you how, so please don’t ask. If I might continue?’

Tuvi looked as if she was going to say something else.

‘Let the man speak, Tuvi,’ Rukhsana snapped. ‘Heniker?’

‘Oh, of course. Well, the location itself… as we know, the Nurthene have no orbital or interplanetary technology, nor have ever possessed such means. However, the area known as Mon Lo Harbour, though flooded and used for maritime shipping, was originally constructed as a setting down point for starships.’

Uxor Rukhsana blinked. ‘For starships?’ she echoed.

He was taking a slight risk in sharing this information, but John Grammaticus’s mind was finely trained to sort and appraise data. He knew exactly what he could give up and what he couldn’t. He believed it mattered very little if the Imperials found out that Mon Lo had once been an extraplanetary set-down. It was a halting site, in fact. The Cabal used to visit here, long ago. That’s why they knew about the Nurthene culture.

‘For starships, uxor.’

‘Are you sure?’ Uxor Rukhsana asked.

‘Absolutely,’ Grammaticus replied. ‘I have excellent sources.’

‘And when you say “originally”, Konig, what does originally mean?’

‘It means something between eight and twelve thousand years ago, enough time for sea-levels to change, for flood plains to rise, and for a massive, stone-cut extraplanetary harbour to fill with water and become a harbour of a more traditional nature.’

It was eleven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six years, in fact, and the construction work had taken eighteen months. Grammaticus felt it wise to fudge the precision of his knowledge.

The aides started speaking all at once.

‘That would place construction during the Second Age of Technology,’ said one.

‘Around the time of the First Contact Event, and the first Alien Wars,’ said another.

‘Is there any evidence as to which xeno form might have been responsible?’ asked another.

‘Do the Nurthene know of its provenance?’ asked Tuvi.

‘Tuvi frames the best question,’ said Grammaticus, shutting down the chatter. ‘Do they know? Well, I don’t believe they do. They possess myths and legends, as all cultures do, and some of them contain elements that might be interpreted as containing some race-memory of xeno contact or intervention. But until the Six Hundred and Seventieth Expedition came along, the Nurthene believed they were alone in the galaxy. Remember, the Nurthene don’t even realise they were originally colonists from Terra.’

‘That is the true misery of this war,’ Rukhsana nodded. ‘They do not recognise us as kin.’

Grammaticus felt her discomfort. Kinship meant so much to the geno uxors. Indeed, he found this aspect of the Emperor’s Great Crusade especially troubling. In its youth, mankind had spilled out across the stars, colonising thousands of worlds, forming the first human stellar community. Then the Age of Strife had come down, like the blade of a guillotine, and for the better part of five thousand years, warp storms had rendered interstellar travel impossible. The out-reaches of Man had become cut off, beleaguered, isolated. In that turmoil, many offshoots had entirely forgotten who they were or where they had come from. Such was the case with Nurth.

When the Emperor, a figure long foreseen by the Cabal, had finally unified the anarchic fragments of Terra, he had undertaken a Great Crusade – oh, how telling was that title! – to seek out, and reconnect with, the lost outposts of the human race. It was astonishing how often the lost worlds resisted those overtures of reconnection. It was unconscionable how many times the roving expedition fleets had been forced to go to war with the very cultures they had set out to rescue and embrace, just to bring them to what the Emperor had euphemistically called compliance. It was always, so the official line went, for their own good.

John Grammaticus had met the Emperor once, close on a thousand years before. The Emperor had been just another feudal warlord then, leading his thunder-armoured troops in an effort to consolidate his early Strife-age victories, and pave the way to eventual Unification. Grammaticus had been a line officer in the Caucasian Levvies, a significant force inveigled by truce and pact to support the Emperor’s assault on the territorial holdings of the Panpacific Tyrant, Dume.

After a bloody conquest at Baktria, Grammaticus had been one of a hundred Caucasian officers invited to a Triumph at Pash, hosted by the retinues of the thunderbolt and lightning army. During the festivities, the Emperor – even then he had been known only by that objectionable epithet – had grandly toured the tables to personally thank his foreign allies and the leaders of the mercenary clans. Grammaticus had been one of hundreds present to receive his grateful handshake. In that moment of contact, he had seen why the Emperor was a force to be reckoned with: a psyker of towering, unimaginable strength, not really human at all by any contemporary measure of the fact. Grammaticus, who had never met anyone else like himself, had shuddered, and felt like a drone insect in the presence of its hive king. The Emperor had felt Grammaticus in the same passing second of contact. He had smiled.

‘You have a fine mind, John,’ he had said, without having to ask Grammaticus his name. ‘We should talk, and consider the options available to beings like us.’

Before any such conversation could happen, Grammaticus had died, that painful, stupid first death.

Looking back, Grammaticus wondered if he would ever have been able to influence the Emperor’s course if he’d lived. He doubted it. Even then, in that tiny moment of connection, it had been clear that the Emperor was never going to turn away from the road of catastrophic bloodshed he was set upon. One day, he would unleash upon the galaxy the most dreadful killing machines of all: the Astartes.

How ironic it was that Grammaticus’s current task was to broker cooperation with one of those fearsome Astartes Legions.

Gahet had once remarked to Grammaticus that the Emperor was the only human who would have ever made a viable addition to the Cabal’s inner circle. ‘He sees the long picture of it,’ Gahet had said. ‘He understands the vast, slow cycle, and is content to allow it to run its course. He appreciates the epochal dynamic of true and thorough change.’

‘Have you ever met him?’ Grammaticus had asked.

‘No, John, I haven’t.’

‘Then you have no idea what a bloodthirsty bastard he really is.’

Gahet had smiled. ‘That’s as may be, but he understands that the Primordial Annihilator is the true enemy of everything, so perhaps we need a bloodthirsty bastard on our side?’

‘Konig?’

‘I’m sorry, uxor,’ Grammaticus said.

Rukhsana smiled down the table at him. ‘You were quite lost in thought.’

‘I was. I apologise. Where was I? Uhm, it is my belief that the extraplanetary harbour was built by some xenos kind several hundred years before this world was colonised by the original human out-ships. As far as the Nurthene are concerned, it has always been here.’

‘So it is an intriguing aside, and not pertinent to our combat evaluation?’

‘Indeed not. But for all their parochial mindset, the Nurthene have an appreciation of extraplanetary matters. They have lived in fear of first contact, of discovery by beings from other worlds. In their doctrine, our arrival proves to them the universal presence of evil. There is no dealing with them.’

‘None at all?’

‘No, uxor.’

He wanted to tell her that they were dealing with a human culture that had succumbed to the corruption of the Primordial Annihilator, but he knew she simply wouldn’t understand what Chaos meant. Very few humans did. Grammaticus did, because he had shared the Cabal’s Acuity. He had a feeling, deep in his gut, that the Emperor knew all too well.

So why hadn’t he told any of his children? Why hadn’t he forewarned them about the deathless abomination they would encounter if they ventured out into the stars?

The briefing turned to matters of fortification and placement. Grammaticus had brought the plans he had carefully hand drawn.

Discussion began on the best practice of attack on Mon Lo. Tuvi surprised him by suggesting the most perceptive tactical solutions. She would be a full uxor soon, with a pack of aides of her own. Rukhsana let her lead the plotting, nodding contentedly at her step-daughter’s excellence.

As the talk went to and fro, Grammaticus decided, wilfully, it was time to switch places. He put himself behind Rukhsana’s eyes – she was far too preoccupied to resist or even notice – and looked back down the table at himself.

He saw what she saw: a well-made man of mature years, strong in the back and arms, with a very handsome face and grey hair. The man wore a scarlet dress coat with ornate double frogging down the front, and he was perspiring very slightly.

Not bad, thought John Grammaticus, not bad at all. It wasn’t the body he’d been born with, but at least it pretended to be from the Caucasus, which was where the first John Grammaticus had been born, towards the end of the Twenty-Ninth Millennium.

‘If we are going to commit to an attack,’ Tuvi was saying, ‘we need to know more about the enemy disposition in these lines, and along the north wall here, and here.’

‘I wasn’t able to collect data,’ Grammaticus replied, ‘but you’re right. I’ll be going in again tomorrow. In three days, I should have the information you need.’

‘Good,’ said Rukhsana. She paused. ‘You’re going inside again?’

‘I think it’s necessary, uxor.’

‘Then may the Emperor protect you,’ Tuvi said, and several of the aides echoed her.

Oh, I’m quite sure he won’t, Grammaticus thought.

‘That’s all for today,’ Rukhsana told her aides. ‘Be off with you. I’ll finish the brief myself.’

Grammaticus sensed annoyance and disappointment as the aides filed out.

The door closed behind them. There was a long silence.

‘Where were we?’ Uxor Rukhsana asked.

‘You were about to undress,’ he said in demotic Scythian.

‘Was I indeed?’ she laughed, answering in the same language. ‘I had no idea you were fluent in my native tongue, or knew me to be of Scythian extraction. You’re very clever, Konig.’

You don’t know the half of it, he thought. I’m fluent, instantly, in every tongue, every language I encounter. It’s my particular talent, and my curse.

‘I’m sorry to be forward,’ he said, again in Scythian, ‘but I’ve seen the way you look at me.’

‘And I’ve seen the way you look at me, sir.’

‘Is it so bad?’

Rukhsana smiled. ‘No, Konig, it’s flattering. But I’m no aide-cadre hussy. I’m not about to disrobe for some sordid little tryst in this briefing room. I’m not sure I’m going to disrobe for you at all.’

Grammaticus allowed a smile to cross Heniker’s face. ‘My dear uxor,’ he said, ‘the simple doubt expressed in that sentence is all I could ever ask for.’

In the old times, in the time of inchoation, races built their fastnesses in places of safety, and left the darker places unexplored. It had been the primitive instinct of man to behave this way. It had kept him safe from the wolf and the sabre-cat. Grammaticus wished his species had kept hold of this instinct, and not forsaken it. The darker places were darker places for a reason. He was fairly certain it was the eternal influence of the Emperor that had quashed that particular taboo.

He thought of Terra’s old maps, with their quaintly phrased notations of warning, here be dragons. That had always been a shorthand motto of man’s ignorance of the darker places of his universe.

‘What did you say?’ Rukhsana asked, rolling over sleepily.

‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘You said something about dragons, Konig.’

‘I may have.’

‘There are no dragons, Konig.’

It was late afternoon. The palace compound had sweltered out another day, so close to the sea everyone could smell it, yet so far away its cooling influence did not reach.

The sex had been exceptional. The emotional intimacy had almost reduced him to tears. He hated allowing himself to get so close. Seven hundred years was a long time, long enough for him to forget the consequences of proper connection. He had felt her hunger, her appetite to prove she was still something of significance even though her uxorhood was sloughing away like dead skin.

He had allowed himself to love her, and allowed her to reciprocate, and now he faced up to the consequences of that decision.

‘Konig?’

She didn’t even know his real name. He wanted to tell her.

‘Do you have to go back in?’ she asked, rolling over and lying sidelong. Her lithe, naked body made him stir, but he resisted the temptation.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sure we can do the rest of the tactical plan with drone spotters and the fleet appraisal.’

‘You can’t. You need me in there.’

+John.+

‘Oh no,’

‘Oh no, what?’ she asked, sitting up.

He rose to his feet. ‘Nothing, my love.’

‘My love. That sounds very serious.’

+John.+

Not now.

‘You’ve gone quite pale, Kon. Are you all right?’

He paced away from the bed, barefoot, towards the wash room. ‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine. I just need a sip of water.’

Rukhsana rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Don’t be long,’ she called.

Grammaticus entered the wash room, closed the door behind him, and paused for a moment, head down, leaning his hands on the edges of the stone basin. ‘Not now, really not now,’ he moaned softly. The stone was cool under his palms. He poured some water into it from the jug. All the while, he could feel the old, chipped mirror hanging on the wall behind him.

He turned around.

Gahet looked out at him from the mirror’s cloudy surface.

+You have taken a wrong step, John Grammaticus. The intimate bond you have made with this female is impairing your mission.+

‘Go away.’

+John, you are risking everything. You know what’s at stake. What are you doing?+

‘Being human for a change,’ Grammaticus replied.

+John, we have eliminated agents for less.+

‘I’m sure you have, not in the old days, but in these latter days. I’m sure you have.’

+I am not threatening you, John.+

‘Yes, you actually are,’ he told the mirror.

+The galaxy must live.+

‘Right, right, and can’t I be allowed to live in it a little?’

Gahet’s face faded slowly.

Grammaticus rinsed his face in cold water from the stone basin.

‘Bastards,’ he spat.

Before dawn, in a cool, mauve twilight, the escort arrived to take Grammaticus back to the insertion point. He had already been up for an hour, ritually packing and re-packing his small bag. He told the escort to wait with the vehicle, and finished his chores, sipping tepid black caffeine and eating some preserved fruits and spelt bread left over from the night before.

She surprised him by waking up.

‘Were you planning on leaving without a goodbye?’

‘No,’ he lied.

‘Good.’ Rukhsana brushed a strand of long, blonde hair off her face and looked him up and down. He had dressed in a simple desert suit of soft brown kidskin, with Army-issue boots and a canvas jacket.

‘You don’t look much like a native.’

‘That part comes later.’

All she was wearing was the sheet from the bed. ‘Well, goodbye, then. The Emperor protects.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ he agreed.

‘Try to come back,’ Rukhsana said. ‘I’d like to see you again.’

‘I’ll come back,’ he replied, not lying this time, ‘because I want to see you again.’

Uxor Rukhsana smiled and tilted her head slightly to one side, regarding him. ‘There’s something about you, Konig. It’s as if you see right into me.’

‘That’s because I do,’ he said.

The escort, a young geno company bashaw and three sleepy troopers, were waiting for him in the rear yard of the palace compound. The ride was a light speeder, the hull of which had been sand-blasted back to bare metal by the environment.

‘Sir,’ the bashaw saluted as Grammaticus walked out of the lit doorway into the darkness of the yard with his bag over his shoulder. It took a second to place the man’s background accent… Yndonesia, Purwakarta Administrative District, perhaps one of the Cianjur hives.

‘What’s your unit?’ Grammaticus asked in Bahasa Malay. The bashaw blinked in surprise and smiled.

‘Arachne, sir,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t know you were a Pan-Pac, sir.’

‘I’m not. I’m from all over.’

They got in and rode out of the yard, and through the descending levels of the ancient desert palace, via checkpoints, gateways and night-watch barricades where sentries lurked beside sputtering braziers, their rifles hooked through their folded arms. Papers and biometrics were routinely checked.

The Nurthene had a subversive streak. Experience had taught the Imperial Army that the Nurthene had spies of their own, saboteurs too. It felt odd to be a spy checked on the way out.

Outside the palace perimeter, the speeder picked up velocity and coasted along the bombed-out avenues and dust-dressed streets of the township surrounding the compound. The sun was threatening to rise behind the passing ruins. Grammaticus sat back in the rear seat, trying to relax, trying to compose his focus into identity immersion, feeling the breeze of motion against his face. He began to regret making a connection with the young bashaw. The officer, sitting up front, kept leaning around and talking to Grammaticus about places in Cianjur that Grammaticus had never visited, nor had any wish to visit. Grammaticus had been in Cianjur once, long ago. He’d been there as part of an army that had burned the place down, five hundred years before the settlement that the bashaw had grown up in had even been planned.

He closed his eyes and thought of Rukhsana.

It’s as if you see right into me. There was too much truth in that. His mind saw into everything. It made him think of the thing he tried never to think about: that day, long ago, meeting the Emperor, shaking his hand, tasting the power, and seeing, behind the glamour of that handsome, noble, healthy face, seeing…

Just for a nanosecond.

Seeing…

‘Are you quite well, sir?’ the bashaw asked. ‘You went rather pale all of a sudden. Is it motion sickness?’

‘No. I’m fine. Absolutely fine,’ Grammaticus replied.

They came up out of the ruins, and followed the rutted dispersal tracks around the back of the dug-in Imperial lines. The sun was rising, crisping the lower edge of the sky. In the lea of the earthworks, for kilometre after kilometre, gun emplacements made sulking silhouettes against the dawn, and millions of bivouac tents covered the ground like blisters, breakfast fires glowing. They passed standards and banners hanging limp in the slowly heating air.

‘That’s my lot,’ the bashaw called out as they shot past a particular standard. Grammaticus turned his head to look, and saw Arachne, a mousy but surprisingly large bosomed girl, if the banner’s image was any guide, weaving her complex web of fate and destiny.

The insertion point was an outfall of the city’s antique sewer system some eighteen kilometres west of the palace. It had been exposed by shelling about three months earlier, and was well guarded. Apart from the geno sentries, automated gun-servitors watched it, unblinking, day and night. The Nurthene guarded the other end just as proficiently, but Grammaticus wasn’t going all the way to the other end.

The bashaw introduced him to the point officer, a ruddy-faced hetman called Maryno. Maryno wanded the servitors to default/passive, and stood watching with the bashaw as Grammaticus slithered down the shattered embankment into the maw of the outfall.

Darkness, as had so often been the case in his life, embraced him.

Ten kilometres and ninety minutes later, he pulled himself out of a run-off vent not far from the rising walls and banked towers of Mon Lo Harbour.

He had already switched off his lamp, and left it in the bag, along with his canvas jacket and army boots, stuffed behind the loose bricks of a culvert.

His journey along the dark chute had provided him with almost enough time to complete his identity immersion. He was no longer Konig Heniker. He was D’sal Huulta. In all, he had taken very few real measures to disguise himself: a wrap of pink silk over his desert suit, felt shoes in place of the army boots, a desert shawl expertly pulled around his head. His skin was tanned, though not as dark as the average Nurthene, and a strict Nurthene observer of the Pa’khel would have worn his hair tied in a net under his shawl, and anointed his scalp, armpits, groin and belly with scented oil.

Grammaticus never went to such extremes, even though his Imperial spymasters recommended he should. He knew that his mind was more than capable of smoothing over most epistemological blemishes. Besides, the anointing oils smacked of a ritual offering to the Primordial Annihilator, something he was not prepared to undertake.

He fastened the hooked knife worn by all Nurthene to his under-belt, then strapped on the broad over-belt with its three pouches for fluid, mineral salt and currency. He washed his hands in the trackside dust to blacken his fingernails. Apart from the knife, he carried no weapon, except, of course, for the ring.

The sun was crawling up into the sky, having revealed itself during his trek through the dank underworld. He felt its searing heat on his head and shoulders, but he was near the sea, close enough to both feel and smell it. Fresh winds came in from the harbour shore, snaking in across the desert outland. He sniffed moisture. He began to walk towards the banked towers and enamelled walls of the port city.

Others were doing the same. War or no war, life went on. Straggles of traders and merchants, some with trains of pack animals, were heading into Mon Lo from the hinterland, hoping to do business at the city markets. Migrant workers were walking to the port in search of employment. Refugees and displaced citizens were coming to the gates, fleeing the Imperial advance. Grammaticus fell in with them.

As he walked, Grammaticus began the psychic litany in his head, the final progression towards immersion in another dialect and culture base.

I am John Grammaticus. I am John Grammaticus. I am John Grammaticus pretending to be Konig Heniker. I am Konig Heniker. I am Konig Heniker pretending to be D’sal Huulta. I am D’sal Huulta. I chey D’sal Huulta lem pretending. El-chey D’sal samman Huulta lem tanay ek. El’chey D’sal samman Huulta lem tanay ek…

‘Who are you, fellow?’ one of the echvehnurth warriors at the city gate asked as he approached. The echvehnurth had been resting his falx against his silver breastplate, but now he raised it. Some of his companions did likewise. Others were stopping and searching some water merchants heading in out of the desert through the ancient arch.

‘I am D’sal Huulta,’ Grammaticus replied in demotic Nurthene, making the obeisance of all-the-sunlight to the echvehnurth. ‘I am a merchant.’

Falx held ready across the left shoulder to strike, the echvehnurth stared at Grammaticus. ‘Show me your palms, your face, and your brands.’

Grammaticus made as if to do so.

+I’m safe and you’ve seen all you need to reassure you,+ he sent at the same moment.

The echvehnurth nodded, and waved him into the city, already sweeping the incomers for his next subject.

Grammaticus had shown him nothing.

Mon Lo was waking up. As a city girded to the expectation of assault, it never truly slept, but its habits followed a circadian ebb and flow.

The outer walls were well defended by squadrons of echvehnurth, by iron mortars and bombasts, and by platoons of the regular nurthadtre ground troops. They loitered in unruly, spitting gatherings around the heavy steps of the city’s thick walls, or stood on the wall’s fighting platforms, watching the distant, unmoving enemy through spyglasses.

Deeper in the city, the rhythmic pulse of life was easier to discern. Markets woke up. Merchants announced their wares. Morning devotions were declaimed by strong-lunged priests. Water-carriers called their services as they wandered the plazas and the winding, cobbled streets and lanes.

Grammaticus retraced his steps, trying to recall the specific layout of the place as he had experienced it the first time. Passing merchants and elders nodded and made the all-the-sunlight gesture to him as they acknowledged his status.

He made the gesture back.

Grammaticus wanted to get into the northern suburb, an area called Kurnaul, so he could get a good look at the city’s north wall. Tuvi would appreciate his efforts. He stood aside to let a grox-cart trundle past. Street washers cleaned the cobbles with bristle brooms and pails of water, using spades for the animal dung. They sang as they worked.

The faience-tiled walls of the port city glimmered around him in the morning sun, showing reeds and reptiles in mosaic. The Nurthene had no street names, just pictorial emblems. He looked at a particular symbol, a great monitor lizard delineated in cherry red tiles, and knew, with a trained certainty, that he had never seen it before. He’d made a wrong turn. Mon Lo was so complex, so interwoven, it was hard to recall the specific plan. It was like Arachne’s web; mousy, big-bosomed Arachne.

He was the needle, he fancied – her needle, moving through the net of fate.

He halted and took a moment to consider. His internal compass was out. He checked with the rising sun and established where east was. He slowed his breathing, and allowed himself to perspire for a minute, just to stabilise his body. He had his bearings again. He’d just gone a street too far west, that was all. Karnaul district was over to his left.

Except it wasn’t. He halted again, refusing to allow panic to dig in.

A water-carrier came up to him and offered a ladle of water.

‘No, thank you,’ Grammaticus said.

‘God love you anyway,’ the carrier replied, moving on.

Grammaticus shuddered. What the water-carrier had actually said literally translated as, The Primordial Annihilator immolate your living soul.

What’s wrong with me? Grammaticus thought. Last time I was here, I slipped easily from street to street. This time, I’m behaving like an amateur. My head is swimming. This is… this is stupid.

He crossed through two more busy streets, looking for familiar landmarks. It felt as if Kurnaul district was further away than ever. It was as if something was distracting him, baffling his abilities.

On impulse, he reached into the bag of mineral salts hooked to his broad over-belt, and closed his fingers around the memeseed hidden in the salt inside. The seed was the size of an earlobe, set into a small silver clasp. Gahet had given it to him. The seeds, fruited from some xenotype tree on a world somewhere in the Cabal’s range of influence, were psychically sensitive. If they grew warm, or desiccated in any way, it was a sign that psychic activity was close by.

Grammaticus looked at the memeseed. It was always a little warm and dry, because it reacted to his own talents. In his hand, the seed was positively hot, like a burning coal. It had shrivelled in its setting.

He was in trouble. The memeseed screamed a warning that something was nearby, perhaps something hunting him.

‘D’sal? D’sal Huulta?’

Grammaticus looked over his shoulder and saw a portly merchant waving to him. The man had been standing in conversation with a group of his brethren on the steps of a counting house, but he left them to hurry over. Grammaticus quickly put the memeseed away.

What is his name? His name? You’ve met him before.

‘D’sal, my good fellow,’ the portly merchant declared, making the all-the-sunlight gesture and adding a bow. ‘I have missed your face at the market these last few days. What news of the fire-brick deal we sketched out on our last meeting? Has your supplier delivered?’

H’dek. H’dek Rootun. That was his name.

‘H’dek, my good fellow, I am pained to respond that my supplier has become a goat’s maw,’ Grammaticus answered politely, ‘taking more than it gives. It turns out I can’t deliver on that fire-brick deal. I apologise.’

H’dek waved his pudgy hand. ‘Oh, don’t worry! I quite understand. In these times of hardship and oppression, with the alien siege at our door, things like this happen.’

He looked at Grammaticus more earnestly. ‘You have my fetish, my gene-print? Yes? Good, we can deal in future! I look forward to receiving your envoy.’

‘I am always your servant, H’dek,’ Grammaticus mumbled. He made the sign of all-the-sunlight, and added the gesture of the moons-entire as he ended the meeting.

He strode on down the length of the street feeling as uneasy and lost as before. Then he hurried into an open square, where the foot traffic was lighter, hoping the freedom of the space would give him room to clear his head, and perhaps even identify the source of the psychic activity the seed had detected. Clarity obstinately refused to come.

Grammaticus paused, and slowly raised his eyes.

He was standing in the Pa’khel Awan Nurth, the square of the pre-eminent temple in Mon Lo. High above him on the temple’s tympanum, a bas-relief frieze showed the four properties of the Primordial Annihilator: death, ecstasy, mortality and mutability, blending together into one, huge, ghastly symbol of unity.

What gross mistake had led his feet here, what clumsy mis-turn? This was the last place in the city he would have visited voluntarily.

The tympanum symbol seemed to pulse, to throb, pressing his eyeballs back into their sockets. Sunlight flared and buzzed. He gagged, and forced hot reflux back down into his gut. His previous visit hadn’t been anything like this. It was as if the city had become aware of him, and his role as an intruder, and had become a web, spun to trap him. Someone, something, was playing with him.

The vomit wasn’t going to stay down. He hurried off into an alley away from the temple precinct, and bent over in the shadows to release the acid liquid. It rushed out of him in a geyser. He barely had time to drag his head shawl off.

He sank to his knees, trembling and spitting.

Two figures, two men who were just dark shadows, were moving down the alley towards him. They weren’t rushing, but there was a purposeful, urgent stride to their gait. Grammaticus got to his feet and made off in the opposite direction, with equal purpose, not quite running.

Three more figures rounded the opposite end of the long, winding alley, and came towards him. What were they? Militia? Echvehnurth? Agents of the Pa’khel Awan, the temple’s zealous doctrinal clerics?

The alley had a couple of side turnings along its length. Grammaticus took the first, and broke into a run as soon as he was out of sight of the figures closing in on him. He reached a dead end, a closed courtyard behind some tall, fine town houses. He heard footsteps approaching behind him. He tried the doors, and found all of them bolted, except a heavy gate of painted wood, where green reptiles intercoiled and made helical patterns. Grammaticus pushed the gate open and ducked into the blessed cool and darkness of the room beyond it. He closed the gate, and drew the bolt across to hold it. He waited, listening to the muffled footsteps and voices outside.

A gigantic hand, gloved in steel, reached out of the darkness and picked him up by the neck. It turned him around and slammed him back against the wall, holding him by the throat.

Grammaticus was being throttled, his feet kicking off the ground. The steel hand pressed him back against the wall. Terracotta brickwork ground into his back.

‘I have a suspicion,’ a deep voice said, coming out of the darkness, ‘you’ve been looking for me, John Grammaticus.’

It knew his name.

‘Th-that’s possible,’ Grammaticus gasped, ‘though it m-might depend upon who you are.’

‘My name? You know my name, you treacherous bastard. My name is Alpharius.’

Four

House of the Hydra, Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, continuous

The pounding blood vessels in Grammaticus’s head felt as if they were about to burst. His windpipe had closed.

+Let me go,+ he sent, desperately.

The steel-gloved hand released its grip, and Grammaticus fell awkwardly onto the tiled floor. Hurt and dazed, he forced his mind to work fast. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the cold blue darkness of the chamber.

He could see the giant shadow of his captor, and the hot, red glow of a visor, but he could not read a mind. Something was screening it. Nevertheless, his urgent commands were getting through.

+Step back, and keep your hands away from your weapons.+

The giant shadow above him took a step backwards.

‘Stop him doing that,’ the shadow’s deep voice growled.

There was someone else in the room, in this bolthole that had not been safe at all. Grammaticus saw the second person as a hooded figure, though he could not actually see the man with his eyes. The figure was hooded in his mind.

Grammaticus tried to rise. A piercing liquid squeal, like a wet finger sliding on glass, stabbed into his neocortex. Pain fired through his autonomic nervous system and sizzled down his spine. He grunted and fell back against the wall.

‘He is fierce. Strong and well protected,’ the hooded figure said out loud.

‘Too much for you?’ asked the giant shadow.

‘No.’

‘Then keep him down.’

The squeal increased in power. Grammaticus convulsed.

‘We’re going to have a conversation, John,’ the giant shadow said, bending down and looming close. ‘I want some truth out of you, or so help me, I’ll simply crush your psyk-cursed skull. Yes? Are we clear?’

Grammaticus nodded. The agony was immense. He could feel blood running out of his nose and over his top lip.

‘Good. Shere is going to release you. That will be nice, won’t it? When Shere releases you, no mind tricks. Are we still clear?’

‘Yes,’ Grammaticus hissed, his throat bruised and sore.

‘Let him go, Shere,’ the giant commanded.

The squeal went away and took the worst of the pain with it. Grammaticus slumped forwards onto his hands, gasping.

‘Lights,’ the giant’s voice ordered.

There was a brief pulse of telekinetic effect, and several dozen wax candles arranged around the room spontaneously lit, a decent pyrokinetic display. The light from the candles was soft and yellow. It showed Grammaticus a shuttered greeting room, typical of Nurthene houses, with a faience-tiled floor and mosaic walls that snagged the candlelight like water. It also showed him his antagonists: an armoured trans-human giant and a standard human in black whose face Grammaticus couldn’t see, even though the man wore no physical mask or hood.

‘Your name is John Grammaticus?’ the giant asked.

‘If you say so.’

‘I can get Shere to start again, if you prefer.’

Grammaticus shook his head. Spots of his blood dappled the tiles around him. ‘Yes, my name is John Grammaticus. You already knew that.’

‘Look at me,’ the giant commanded.

Grammaticus looked up. The giant was clad in power armour, the metal and ceramic wargear of the Legiones Astartes. The armour was a rich indigo-blue with silver edging. Green heraldry had been marked on the shoulder plates. The helm was the very latest, baleen-snout version. Dull red light shone inside the visor slit. To the left of the towering Astartes stood the mind-hooded figure, small by comparison.

‘No, me,’ said the Astartes. ‘Look at me. Ignore my psyker. Better.’

‘I–’ Grammaticus began.

‘Quiet,’ said the Astartes, raising a massive index finger. ‘You’re going to tell me what I want to know, not what you want to say.’

Grammaticus nodded.

‘You’ve been looking for me. That’s why you keep coming into this city. You knew I’d be here.’

Grammaticus nodded again.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Because we invited you here,’ Grammaticus replied.

‘You invited me here? Who’s “we”?’

‘The Cabal I work for.’

The Astartes turned to look at the hooded figure. ‘Once again,’ he said.

The squeal speared into Grammaticus’s head and made him shriek.

‘What is the Cabal?’ the Astartes asked.

Grammaticus sobbed. He could barely answer. ‘They… I don’t know… they are eternal and… and they…’

‘That’s not really very good,’ said the Astartes. ‘Maybe I should just shoot you.’

‘The Cabal is… the Cabal is the only hope!’ Grammaticus pleaded.

‘Go on.’

‘Please!’

‘Stop it now, Shere,’ the giant instructed.

The squeal died back.

‘Whose only hope?’ asked the Astartes.

‘Mine. Yours. Mankind’s,’ Grammaticus sighed.

‘You’re talking about the Imperium?’

Grammaticus shook his head. ‘Broader than that. The species.’

‘The Imperium is the species,’ the giant replied.

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ Grammaticus asked. ‘The worlds you’ve seen, the worlds you’ve been obliged to bring to compliance… worlds like this one, sapling shoots of human culture, cuttings from the root plant. The human race is far, far more than the militant tribe that is spilling out from Terra to accomplish the Emperor’s vision.’

The Astartes drew his boltgun. Grammaticus did not actually see it happen. One moment, the hefty weapon was holstered at the giant’s hip, the next it was in his steel fist, aimed at Grammaticus’s head.

‘Are you insane?’ the giant asked. ‘Are you blind? Look at me. I am an Astartes warrior, oathed to this moment and sworn to serve the Emperor. Why would you say something that sounds so perilously close to treason?’

‘I apologise if that’s how it sounded. I meant no disrespect.’

The boltgun remained aimed at him. ‘You said this Cabal of yours invited us here. Explain that.’

Grammaticus swallowed. ‘Of all the Astartes Legions, the Cabal believes the Alpha Legion to be most receptive to its message.’

‘Why?’

‘In all truth, sir, I do not know. I am simply a go-between. The Cabal wanted the Alpha Legion to become involved in the compliance war here on Nurth, so that it could see the evidence for itself.’

‘See what, John?’

Grammaticus straightened slightly and looked boldly at the muzzle of the gun aimed at his face. ‘What was at stake. The real enemy. Not the Nurthene, but the Primodial Annihilator that holds sway over them.’

The Astartes slowly lowered his weapon. ‘You’re talking about their warp-magick?’

‘It’s not–’ Grammaticus began. ‘May I stand, sir? This floor is cold.’

The snouted helm nodded. Grammaticus rose to his feet. The Astartes still towered over him.

‘It’s not magick. It’s not some fanciful trickery. It’s the visible manifestation of a deep power – a universal, pervasive abomination.’

‘Chaos,’ the Astartes replied. ‘If that is what your masters wanted us to see, they have wasted your errand. We already know of Chaos, and have numbered it in the litany of xenos hazards.’

Grammaticus shook his head sadly. ‘The simplest name for it is Chaos. You’ve numbered it in the litany of xenos hazards, have you? Then you know it only as a child knows the world. It has always been and will always be, and compared to it, nothing – not mankind, not the Imperium, not the Emperor’s mighty design – is of any consequence. Unchecked, it will poison and stagnate the galaxy. Fuelled and driven, it will destroy everything. The Cabal wanted you to see it properly, to see it with your own eyes, so that you would take its message seriously.’

He paused. ‘And it needed you to see it quickly.’

‘Why?’ asked the giant.

‘Because a great war is coming.’

‘A war against what?’

‘Against yourselves,’ said Grammaticus.

The giant Astartes stared at Grammaticus for a moment. Grammaticus heard the dull click of his helmet vox operating. A private conversation was taking place. Grammaticus waited. The candle flames trembled. A tiny green house lizard scuttled across the tiled floor and up a wall.

The giant turned back to look at Grammaticus.

‘What is the message your Cabal wants us to take so seriously?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I was simply sent here to propose a dialogue.’

The Astartes looked over at the mind-hooded man. ‘I am called for,’ he said. ‘Take him to the parlour and stay with him. Do not allow him to play any tricks.’

The psyker nodded.

The Astartes went over to the wooden gate, unbolted it, and stepped out into the sunlight. Just before the gate closed, Grammaticus saw that the intercoiled green reptiles painted on the wood were dragons, each one with three serpentine heads. Hydras.

‘This way,’ said the psyker to Grammaticus.

He followed the psyker through the rooms of the house, rambling chambers and hallways that followed no more logical a scheme than the streets of Mon Lo. All the rooms were dark and shuttered, and dust sheets covered the few pieces of furniture. This was a place of convenience, Grammaticus decided, a safe house. He had been meant to open that painted gate all along.

The psyker led the way with a single fluttering candle.

‘You contrived to bring me here?’ Grammaticus asked. ‘You baffled my mind and got me lost, so I could be directed to this house?’

‘Not on my own,’ the hooded man replied. ‘You are a powerful being. We’ve been aware of you, these last few weeks, operating here, shadowing us, watching us. We thought it was time to ask why.’

‘You’re not Astartes.’

The man turned and looked back at him but, despite the candlelight, Grammaticus could still not resolve his face. ‘The Alpha Legion uses any and all instruments to get its work done. I am honoured to serve them.’

The psyker took Grammaticus into a dark sitting room where several low couches and upholstered stools had been brought into use, their dust sheets folded and put away. A golden ewer of Nurthene wine, some small silver-dished mazers, and an earthenware bowl of preserved fruit stood on an inlaid table.

The psyker nodded slightly and the many candles arranged around the room’s surfaces spontaneously lit. The sudden light made a couple of little house lizards skitter into the shadows.

‘I do hate lumen and glow-globe light,’ the psyker said. ‘It kills the darkness. Candles illuminate it.’

‘And darkness is just another instrument of the Alpha Legion?’ asked Grammaticus.

Though he could not see the man’s face, Grammaticus understood that the psyker was smiling. ‘You really have been watching us carefully, haven’t you?’ the psyker said.

‘It’s my job,’ Grammaticus replied.

‘Help yourself to wine, to a bite of food,’ the psyker offered, sitting down on a couch and putting the candle he was carrying down on a low table.

Grammaticus poured some wine into one of the silver drinking bowls. He needed something to wash his mouth with, but would have preferred water. As he sipped from the mazer, he focused his limbic system to negate the effects of the alcohol.

He took a seat opposite the psyker. ‘You’re called Shere, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a gifted pyrokine. It’s a technique that never manifested in me.’

Shere shrugged. ‘You get what you get, John. I’m far more impressed by your particular talent. Logokinetic skill. That’s rare.’

‘You can read that in me?’

‘Of course,’ said Shere, ‘but I can’t understand it. Is it any language, or just specific groups?’

‘I’ve never encountered a tongue I couldn’t master.’

‘Including xenos?’

Grammaticus smiled. ‘They’re not so hard. It depends on the organ they use for speech. I can understand some, but am unable to respond in kind because I lack the necessary biology to manufacture reciprocal sounds. And some are just abstruse. The eldar have a particular verb form that always trips me up.’

‘And you can tell where a person is from, just by their speech?’ Shere asked, deftly switching from Low Gothic to Sinhala.

‘Nice try,’ said Grammaticus in fluent Sinhala, ‘but your palatal voicing gives you away. You are speaking Sinhala well, but I read Farsi vowels underneath, and something else. You are Uzbek or Azerbaijani.’

‘Uzbek.’

‘And the something else, the long diphthongs, that’s a trace of Mars, isn’t it?’

‘I spent eight years growing up in the habitats of Ipluvian Maximal. You’re very good. I presume, as a result, you are very good at reading the truth?’

Grammaticus nodded. ‘I am. It is particularly hard to lie to me, a fact which I hope you’ll mention to your masters when you report this conversation back to them. I excel at recognising truth, so I am not unwittingly conveying someone else’s lies to the ears of the Alpha Legion.’

Shere chuckled. ‘You may recognise the truth, John. We have no guarantee you are transmitting it.’

‘That’s a decent point, I suppose,’ Grammaticus replied, taking another sip from the mazer cradled in his fingers.

‘How did you invite them?’ Shere asked. ‘They’ll want to know.’

‘It’s taken about a decade,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Agents like me have been planting seeds and suggestions for a while now. Using Imperial codes and cyphers, we’ve logged reports and bulletins into the Crusade’s data-architecture, certain things that we thought would tantalise the Alpha Legion. We diverted a few orders, reversed a few command communiqués. Little by little, we made sure that when the time came for the Six Hundred and Seventieth Expedition to request assistance in prosecuting the Nurthene campaign, it would be the Alpha Legion that responded to Lord Commander Namatjira’s plea.’

‘Great Terra,’ Shere breathed, ‘that’s astonishing. The level of influence, of access… the strategy, the patience. Incredible! Such subtle manipulation!’

‘That’s the Cabal’s way, Shere,’ Grammaticus replied. ‘Strategy, subtle influence, the long view. They’re very good at it. They’ve always been very good at it.’

‘They could have simply asked.’

Grammaticus laughed. It hurt his bruised throat. ‘That’s not their way! Besides, would the Alpha Legion have said yes?’

‘Not in a thousand years,’ Shere agreed. ‘Look, I’d be careful how I explained that to them, if I were you. The Alpha Legion prides itself on knowing everything. They prize knowledge above all things, and hate the idea of anyone knowing more than they do. That’s how they win their battles. In fact, the only thing they hate more is the idea that they’re being manipulated.’

‘So noted, thank you. I had already foreseen that as a stumbling block.’ Grammaticus put the empty mazer down on the tray by the ewer. ‘You’re no slouches when it comes to manipulation, though. You got me, today. From the moment I entered Mon Lo, you were misleading me, clouding my mind, pulling me to where you wanted me to be.’

‘Well, not quite,’ said Shere.

‘Don’t be so modest, you admitted it to me just now.’

Shere looked up at Grammaticus in the candlelight. His lack of a coherent face was hard to look at, but Grammaticus could read alarm. ‘John, I’m not being modest. Yes, we led you here, but only once we had located and identified you. That was just before you entered the temple square, on Red Monitor Street. Before that, we weren’t aware of you at all.’

‘No,’ said Grammaticus, ‘it was before that. I–’

Shere got up. ‘John, are you telling me that you were being influenced from the moment you entered the city today?’

‘I–’

‘This is important, John! Was something on to you right from your point of entry?’

Grammaticus swallowed. His guts suddenly felt as if they were full of ice. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Damn,’ Shere murmured. ‘That wasn’t us. That wasn’t us. They made you.’

‘Shere, I–’

‘Be quiet, please. We may have just been seriously compromised.’

Shere walked over to the parlour door and bent his head, talking urgently into a vox microbead. Grammaticus waited, his head spinning slightly. An awful creep of realisation was coming over him. The Cabal and the Alpha Legion had not been the only forces playing games that morning.

Shere looked over at Grammaticus, his conversation over. ‘We’re moving,’ he said. ‘We’re getting out of here.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s as bad as I feared. The city’s gone quiet. The Nurthene identified you and used you as a lure to draw us out.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Grammaticus said.

‘Your apology hardly counts for anything. Come on.’

Footsteps were thumping up the hallway outside. The door opened and three men came in. Two were standard humans, dressed in mail sleeves and head shawls, carrying crude pattern lascarbines. The third, attired identically to the other two, was a gene-big beast lugging a bolter.

‘We’re quitting the house,’ the gene-giant told Shere. ‘Is this the wretch who blew our operation?’

Without waiting for confirmation, the gene-giant turned and advanced towards Grammaticus.

‘Leave him, Herzog! Please, sir!’ Shere called out. ‘He’s valuable. Pech told me to watch him and keep him safe.’

‘Shame the rodent couldn’t do the same for us,’ the gene-giant growled. ‘All right, let’s head out. Double time.’

They flanked Grammaticus and hurried him down the hall. Scared as he was, Grammaticus sorted the data that had just come his way. The gene-giant was called Herzog, apparently. Grammaticus could smell the whiff of Astartes about him. The other two, the mail-sleeved standard humans, suggested to Grammaticus that the Alpha Legion used all sorts of non-Astartes operatives to accomplish their missions, not just specialists like the psyker Shere. What had Shere said? The Alpha Legion uses any and all instruments to get its work done. Grammaticus risked a quick surface read of the men’s minds, and saw they were soldiers of the Imperial Army, though there was something definitely non-standard about the biological samples he was getting. He dared not risk a deeper probe.

And that other thing Shere had said: Pech told me to watch him and keep him safe. He could only have meant the armoured giant, but the giant had identified himself as Alpharius. Was that another lie? How did the names connect?

They reached the ground floor of the house. Herzog raised a hand to activate his link.

The shutters opened. They banged aside, one by one, opening each window in turn, spilling hot, hard daylight into the closed house. Grammaticus flinched at each opening, feeling the residual pulse of the telekinetic power responsible. A trio of minute green house lizards danced in over an open sill.

‘Damn,’ Herzog murmured.

More lizards skittered in, running like water over the sills, some falling onto the floor with little plips. Inside five seconds, they were pouring in like a flood, thousands of them, rushing over the window ledges and under the doors, flowing as if dumped out of handcarts.

‘Back up! Upstairs!’ Herzog ordered.

They thumped back up the staircase. The tide of lizards behind them quickly covered the tiled floor of the hall and began to pour, like green water disobeying gravity, up the stairs.

Grammaticus could feel a malevolence in the air, a pervading touch of cloying heat and rage, the trademark of an angry, potent psyker.

‘We’re in trouble,’ he whispered. The others ignored him, except for Shere, who glanced in his direction. For a brief second, Grammaticus saw Shere’s face, the face of a startled young man with fine features. Shere was so unnerved he was letting his psyk-hood slip.

Rivers of pattering lizards were pouring in through the upper windows too. The shutters on the first floor had been yanked open. Tiny, sinuous green shapes rippled across sheet-wrapped furniture and spilled along the tiled flooring.

‘Oh hell’s teeth,’ one of the mail-sleeved operatives gasped.

‘Second floor!’ Herzog ordered. ‘Make for the bridge!’

Herzog’s mind was unguarded by distraction. Grammaticus skimmed its surface and saw that the bridge was a brick walkway linking the house to its neighbour. He started to run. They all started to run. Behind them, the swarming lizards filled the hallways, making no sound except for the plick-plack of their billion sticky feet.

The running men, led by the Astartes, reached the second floor. The torrent of lizards was running up the walls, coating the ceiling with a carpet of scurrying bodies.

‘Arkus! Delay them!’ Herzog yelled out.

‘Why me?’ one of the mail-sleeved operatives wailed.

‘Just do it. Broad burn!’

The operative turned, adjusting his lascarbine to the widest emission setting. He started to fire, blasting unfocused washes of energy back down the stairs, singeing and crisping the wriggling mat of advancing lizards. Tiny, smouldering bodies dropped off the ceiling and walls. The hand-painted wallpaper crisped. Arkus kept firing, cooking thousands of squirming shapes, adjusting his aim rapidly to check each front of the swarming plague in turn.

It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. They reached him, and he screamed and jiggled as they rushed up his legs and his body, covering him. He started to flail wildly, enveloped by tiny, biting, snapping green shapes. He lost his footing and fell, crashing down the staircase into the main body of the green torrent. In seconds, his form was lost from view, submerged in the writhing flow.

Ignoring the grim demise of his operative, Herzog ran down the hallway, his moving weight creaking the old floorboards. He reached a door, and halted, preparing to kick it in.

Before he could, the door splintered in towards him, throwing him backwards. A snout, two metres long, shoved its way through the shattered opening. Shere yelped.

The crocodilian was a massive thing, the sort of creature that simply had no business existing on the second floor of a domestic house. It rammed its way forwards, its colossal skull swinging left and right as it came on. Its huge, scuted body and immense tail trailed back across the bridge into the neighbouring building. The house shook under its gigantic mass as it moved.

Herzog tried to drag himself back out of its path. Shere retreated, slipping over on the scurrying house lizards that were darting underfoot. Grammaticus grabbed him and hauled him to his feet, smacking the wriggling, biting things off Shere’s robe with his bare hands.

The remaining operative fired twice at the advancing monster. The crocodilian lunged forwards, extending its white-scaled neck, and took the operative like a grazer at a waterhole, snatching him up in a huge V of jaws. The man tore open, screeching, as the jaws shook him apart like a straw doll.

Herzog, on his back, fired his boltgun, and blew out one of the crocodilian’s eyes. It thrashed in pain, slamming its vast body to and fro into the walls of the bridge and the corridor, shattering plaster and shaking the building. The mangled corpse of the operative tumbled out of its jaws and it snapped forwards, seizing Herzog by the leg. Mail rings cracked and pinged away as the gigantic teeth bit down.

Herzog roared.

Grammaticus had never heard an Astartes cry in pain before. He decided he never wanted to hear the sound again. He pushed Shere aside against the moving wall of lizards and adjusted his ring. It was an Old Kind digital weapon, a gift from Gahet.

He triggered it. An incandescent blue beam lanced out from it and exploded the crocodilian’s braincase in a wet blast of meat, bone and tissue.

‘Come on!’ Grammaticus yelled.

Herzog pulled his leg free of the ruptured jaws, and got to his feet. Limping, he led Grammaticus and Shere across the bridge. They had to clamber over the apparently endless bulk of the dead crocodilian. It was still twitching.

They reached the stairs of the neighbouring house and headed down. Herzog’s leg was badly lacerated from the bite, and he was faltering. Behind them, they could hear the advancing patter of the lizard tide. The first few green shapes were appearing above them, scurrying out across the ceiling, some falling like drops of water down the stairwell around them.

‘Where did you get that?’ Herzog yelled at Grammaticus.

‘What?’

‘That weapon!’

‘Does it matter?’

‘You could have used it on us earlier,’ Shere said, scrambling down the stairs beside Grammaticus.

‘The fact that I didn’t might persuade you that I’m serious,’ Grammaticus replied.

They snatched open the main street door of the house, and came out into bright sunlight, and into the middle of a gun battle. Two Astartes warriors in full power armour – one of them, Grammaticus was certain, the giant who had questioned him earlier – were exchanging shots along the dusty, sunlit street with gangs of nurthadtre ground troops. Crowds of braying Nurthene civilians were urging the nurthadtre on, hurling cobbles and other missiles. Half a dozen mail-sleeved operatives, anonymous in their desert shawls, were supporting the outnumbered Astartes. Las-rounds and ballistic loads streaked up and down the narrow thoroughfare.

‘Pech?’ Herzog called out.

The armoured giant glanced around. So, not Alpharius then, Grammaticus thought, unless ‘Pech’ was some nickname or surname unknown to the Cabal.

‘Get out, Thias!’ the giant yelled. ‘We’ll hold them here and rendezvous as soon as we can!’

‘For the Emperor, Pech!’ Herzog shouted, pausing to add his bolter fire to the fight for a moment.

‘Let’s go!’ he declared, turning to face Shere and Grammaticus.

They began to run again, covering the sun-heated cobbles, the sounds of the firefight behind them echoing along the overhanging walls.

‘Where to?’ Grammaticus found the courage to ask.

‘To wherever is safe,’ Herzog replied. He was still limping badly.

‘I don’t think there’s anywhere safe for us in this town,’ Shere grunted.

‘No, neither do I,’ agreed Herzog, ‘thanks to him.’ He glared at Grammaticus.

‘This was not my doing,’ Grammaticus insisted as he ran. He checked his stride suddenly, flinching as he sensed the stomach-churning ripple of psyker activity again.

Shere had felt it too. ‘What–’ he began.

The street ahead of them split as if torn open by a fierce earthquake. The road surface burst upwards, and cobblestones flew like hail.

A vast monitor hauled itself up out of the ground in front of them, pulling its bulk free of the cloven street and the earth beneath. Cobblestones, hardcore and soil spilled out around it as it emerged. Its skull alone was the size of a lifepod. Its tongue, long, dry and forked, flickered in and out of its extravagantly massive maw. The tongue was as pink as Nurthene silk. The monitor was covered in cherry-red scales. They could smell the carrion stink of its jaws, feel the tremor of its advancing steps.

‘Here be dragons,’ Grammaticus whispered.

‘What?’ Shere yelled.

Here be dragons. It was no longer a quaintly phrased notation of warning, no longer the shorthand motto of man’s ignorance of the darker places of his universe. Dragons were real, not ambiguous scrawls on fading maps.

Grammaticus could see into it, past the giganticised body it wore, past the scale and flesh and muscle of the varanidae-genus form it had chosen, or been instructed, to take. He could see the absolute fury of its daemon heart.

Herzog began to fire, slamming bolt after bolt into the red monster’s head. Blood splattered from the snout, and two or three teeth were blown out of their sockets. The dragon lunged.

Shere screamed and lashed out with his pyrokinetic talent, and flames swirled along the reptile’s back and flanks in wild, flaring streams. The immense beast began to thrash as its scales scorched. Flames travelled down its length, engulfing it in a molten inferno too bright to look at. Its whipping, burning body and tail convulsed furiously and smashed into the surrounding buildings, bringing down their facades in thunderous torrents of brick and dry mortar.

Dust rose in solid, gagging walls. Grammaticus lost sight of Herzog and Shere. He began to run. Behind him, the death throes of the burning dragon sounded as though they were demolishing the entire city.

Grammaticus kept running. He didn’t look back.

Five

Mon Lo Harbour, three days later

‘Why is the city screaming?’ asked Namatjira. No one had an answer for him, nor had they an answer to his next question, which was, ‘Why is this offensive turning into a total farce? Anybody? Anybody?’

They shifted uncomfortably, the high officers of the Imperial Army regiments at the Mon Lo front. Namatjira had summoned them to attend him in the largest meeting hall of the terracotta palace, and they were wary of his displeasure. Lord Commander Namatjira had a famously choleric temper.

He also had one of the finest martial records of any Army commander in the Great Crusade: one hundred and three successful campaigns of compliance, the last twenty-four of which had been achieved as commander of the 670th Expedition Fleet. Nurth was to have been the expedition’s twenty-fifth, making it officially Six-Seventy Twenty-Five, or the twenty-fifth world brought to terms by the 670th Fleet.

That achievement now looked to be in serious jeopardy.

Namatjira was a tall, dismayingly handsome man, with heroic features like the noblest classical statue, and skin so black it possessed a smoky sheen. He wore a frock coat of chrome plate armour over a deepwater blue uniform, and black riding boots with ornate chrome spurs. A floor-length cloak of painted silk hung off one of his shoulders, and a soldier standing to his left carried his fur shako with the reverence ordinarily accorded to a holy relic.

The soldier was a veteran of the feared Lucifer Blacks, so-called because of their coal-dust velvet coats and jet body plate. The Lucifers, an Ischian-raised elite brigade as old and celebrated as the Byzant Janizars or the Sidthu Barat, were all but extinct. Most of their strength had been depleted in the last years of the Unification Wars and, lacking the structural resilience of the Geno Chiliad, they had never rebuilt. During the Crusade, they had served a ceremonial role, providing companion retinues for distinguished commanders like Namatjira.

Five other Lucifers stood behind the lord commander, their hands on the pommels of their sabres. One carried a standard from which dangled the many laurels and sun disks, all stamped out of sheet gold, that enumerated Namatjira’s triumphs. Another held the golden lead of the lord commander’s pet thylacene – a regal, lithe beast with a dappled and striped mahogany pelt.

‘Anybody?’ Namajira asked.

There were almost a hundred high officers and uxors in the chamber, the senior unit commanders of the serried forces deployed at Mon Lo, some three-quarters of a million men. The two dozen uxors represented the Geno Five-Two, and stood solemnly amongst various dress-uniformed officers of the Zanzibari Hort, the Crescent-Sind Sixth Torrent, the Regnault Thorns, the Outremars, and a clutch of support and auxiliary detachments. No one seemed especially willing to risk framing a response.

Towards the rear of the gathering, Honen Mu watched the lord commander carefully. She had only arrived in Mon Lo the day before, bringing with her the geno forces freed up by the conclusion of the Tel Utan offensive. She’d arrived in time to see the dispiriting disaster Mon Lo was turning into, and was therefore thankful that Namatjira could not direct his wrath at her. What was happening at Mon Lo had not occurred on her watch.

She pitied Nitin Dev. A major general in the Zanzibari Hort, and a damn fine warrior in Mu’s experience, Dev held overall field command of the Mon Lo theatre.

Namatjira looked directly at Dev. ‘Major general?’ he asked. ‘Anything to say?’

There was a pause. Lord Commander Teng Namatjira seldom toured a fighting zone in person, except to join the victory celebrations at the end of a compliance war. He preferred to orchestrate his campaigns from orbit. For him to make the drop to the surface, to risk exposure by visiting the sharp end of things, was a very big, very telling detail.

‘No, my lord,’ said Dev. ‘I haven’t.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, my lord. I cannot add anything to what you already know.’

Honen Mu narrowed her eyes in admiration. The major general had balls of steel. Many times, she’d seen officers whine and dissemble and make excuses when brought to task by their superiors. Dev was making no attempt to wriggle out of this. He was taking it face on.

Namatjira gazed at the major general. Dev stood stiff and straight-backed, his eyes as glossy and black as the tight folds of the durband that secured his spiked helm to his head. Without expression, Dev half-drew his sabre with his right hand, his left hand clutching the top of the scabbard, and waited. Dev was showing he was prepared, at a simple nod from the lord commander, to snap his sword blade against the braced scabbard, to symbolise his disgrace and discharge, forfeiting forever his rank and rights. It was a brave offer.

‘Perhaps later, Major General Dev,’ Namatjira said, mildly. Dev resheathed his sword. The lord commander stepped forwards and the gathered officers parted to let him through. He strode down the chamber through the midst of them, heading towards the windows at the far end. His Lucifers followed him. The thylacene padded with them, lean as a coursing hound, its tongue lolling from its long, rapacious jaws.

‘Eight months,’ Namatjira said as he walked, ‘eight months we’ve had to slog at this world, and still the sorcerous bastards confound us. I thought we’d finally broken the deadlock when Tel Utan fell. I thought we were about to prise victory from their dead hands at last. But now this, this nonsense. It’s as if we’ve taken a backwards step. No, a dozen backwards steps. It feels like this bloody war is only just getting started and, Terra knows, it’s cost us enough already. It’s cost us blood, it’s cost us men, it’s cost us time. They’re barbarians! This should have been over and done inside two weeks!’

He stopped in his tracks halfway down the chamber. The Lucifers halted smartly and stood with him, eyes front. The thylacene pulled up sharp on the golden lead and sat. Namatjira turned slowly, running his gaze across the gathered commanders on either side of him.

‘It has been my recent privilege,’ he said solemnly, ‘to have shared communication with the First Primarch. Do any of you know where Lord Horus is, just now?’

No one answered.

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Namatjira. ‘Great Lupercal is fighting on a rock called Ullanor. He stands at the Emperor’s side, at our most glorious Emperor’s side, and together, for the benefit of our future, they are making war upon the greenskins. The bestial monsters have gathered in unprecedented numbers, and the Emperor has met their attack head on. Can you imagine that? Ullanor may prove to be the single most important combat in the history of our new Imperium. We may, in time, regard Ullanor as the defining victory of the Crusade, the moment mankind confirmed his mastery of the void, the moment our xenos adversaries turned tail and fled forever.’

Namatjira hesitated before continuing. He was still turning slowly, watching them all, his eyes shining with passion. ‘And in the thick of it, the First Primarch finds enough time to contact the Crusade commanders, to check on their progress and encourage their efforts. What do I tell him? What? Do I tell him, Good luck with the greenskin horde, we’re having a terrible problem with a bunch of subhuman peasants?’

He let the words hang. He raised his hand and gestured towards the ceiling with outstretched fingers. ‘Out there, immortal combats are being waged in the name of humanity. The stars are quaking with the Emperor’s might. Yet this is the best we can do?’

He started walking again, and reached the window. The chamber was high up in the palace, and afforded a good view out towards the city of Mon Lo.

The officers and uxors gathered in behind him. There was no doubt, even from that distance, that the city was screaming.

According to Honen Mu’s sources, the port city had started its eerie screaming during the early morning, three days previously. Within half an hour, the besieging forces had realised something momentous was afoot. Dark clouds, like the stain of vapour from a slumbering volcano, had spread above Mon Lo, and a wind had picked up. Oddly, despite the wind, the cloud cover in the broad sky above had slowed down, as if the planet had become retrograde on its spin. All of the astrotelepathic resources of the fleet had gone blind, or suffered sudden trauma shock. Word was, a powerful psychic force had been born in Mon Lo, the last bastion of the Nurthene.

The city had begun to emit a howling scream, a scream audible to both the regular soldiery camped outside, and the minds of the fleet’s wounded sensitives. The screaming, both acoustic and psychic, sounded like the anguish of the damned.

The uxors and their aides had suffered particular discomfort, but everyone had been affected. Vox-links had been impaired, and many Army units had been rendered nervous and undisciplined. Assuming that some calamity had stricken the city, Major General Dev had ordered an immediate attack to take advantage of the situation. The attack had stalled when significant portions of the besieging force had simply refused to advance.

Other stories had surfaced: plagues of lizards and frogs had been seen around the city’s sewer outfalls, and petals of sloughed snakeskin had blown into the Imperial lines on the wind. Forward observers claimed to have seen giant things, great saurian shapes, moving around in the dust storms that had whipped up outside the city walls. Orbital scans revealed that the basin of Mon Lo harbour had turned pink overnight, perhaps due to algae infection, and that the pink stain was spreading out of the harbour area into the open sea.

Still, through it all, the plangent screaming had continued.

Quitting the main chamber, Namatjira retired to his private quarters. He left one of his Lucifer Blacks to announce a list of the persons he wished to meet with personally.

‘Attend! Major General Nitin Dev,’ the Lucifer called out in his thick, Ischian accent, ‘Colonel Sinhal Manesh, Colonel Iday Pria, Princeps Amon Jeveth, Uxor Rukhsana Saiid, Uxor Honen Mu.’

Honen Mu froze. What?

‘Do you know what this is about?’ Honen Mu asked Rukhsana as they walked briskly along the hall to the lord commander’s quarters. They didn’t know one another especially well, having served in different theatres during their careers. Honen was much younger and much shorter than the long-limbed Rukhsana. She was also much stronger, perceptively, and rather despised Rukhsana, though she didn’t mean to. The older uxor was in the last days of her command, and her ’cept powers were eroded. To Honen Mu, Rukhsana embodied the inevitable frailty that awaited all uxors.

‘I have no idea, Mu,’ Rukhsana replied.

‘This is a mess, though, isn’t it?’ Honen Mu replied, scampering her little feet to keep pace with Rukhsana.

‘Oh, quite a mess indeed. I understand you had some success, though. Tel Utan?’

Honen Mu shrugged. ‘I was lucky.’

‘Define luck, sister.’

Honen Mu glanced up at Rukhsana. Rukhsana’s strong features were almost entirely veiled by her long, blonde hair.

‘That is, I’m afraid, confidential,’ Honen replied.

They had left their respective bands of aides waiting in distant anterooms. At the end of the corridor, a stern Lucifer opened a door and let them into the Lord General’s suite. Namatjira sat on a low couch, with data-slates and furls of reports scattered around him. The thylacene lay at his feet, and he scrunched at its scalp and neck with his fingers, making it tilt its head back and purr. Major General Dev lurked in the background like a reprimanded schoolboy. Lucifer Blacks flanked the room.

Princeps Amon Jeveth was leaving as the uxors arrived, heading back to his Titan legio with a fierce scowl on his face. Colonels Manesh and Pria were standing to attention as they weathered Namatjira’s abuse.

‘Not good enough,’ Namatjira was saying. ‘Not good enough, sirs. Your forces baulked and refused to obey a direct order. I want to see some damn discipline!’

‘Yes, sir,’ they mumbled.

‘Proper damn discipline! You hear me? You hear me? I aim to bring this compliance to a swift and brutal end, and when that end comes, I want your men in at the kill, no questions. I tell you to advance, you advance! Do not fail me the way you did Dev.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get out of my sight.’

The officers hurried away. The thylacene opened its huge jaws and yawned languidly. Namatjira studied a data-slate one of the Lucifers handed to him, and then looked up.

‘Uxors,’ he smiled. ‘Come close.’

They came forwards, side by side. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I want to build the full picture here. Rukhsana, I’m told you were responsible for reconnaissance and scouting at Mon Lo?’

‘That was my role, sir.’

‘You had agents in the field?’

‘I did, lord commander,’ Rukhsana said. ‘Most of them were long-range observers and spotters.’

Namatjira consulted the data-slate. ‘But you had at least one intelligence officer inside Mon Lo the morning this hubbub began?’ He waved his hand distractedly in the direction of the window.

Rukhsana pursed her lips and looked down. ‘Yes, sir, I did. Konig Heniker.’

‘Heniker? Yes, I know him. He’s a reliable man. What happened to him?’

‘He had entered the city covertly once already, sir, and briefed me afterwards. His intelligence was of good quality. He inserted that morning, very early, intending to collect data on the Kurnaul and north wall areas. He never came back.’

‘Ah, I see,’ the lord commander sighed. ‘Thank you, Uxor Rukhsana.’

Honen Mu stiffened. The ’cept link between uxors was never that strong, especially between a fading veteran and a blossoming youngster, but Honen Mu could feel it all the same, a cloying dampness in the mind. Rukhsana was lying or, if not lying, shielding some truth.

She looked at Rukhsana. The other woman did not meet her eyes. She turned to go.

‘You might as well stay, Uxor Rukhsana,’ Namatjira told her. ‘You’ll hear of this soon enough.’

He looked at Honen Mu. ‘Uxor Honen. My compliments. You, of course, know something these others do not. Tell them, because it’s about to become common knowledge.’

Honen Mu cleared her throat. ‘Tel Utan was taken thanks to the secret contrivance of the Alpha Legion,’ she said.

Major General Dev’s mouth dropped open. Rukhsana blinked.

‘That’s right, the Astartes have sent forces to assist us,’ Namatjira said. ‘Not before time. Lord Alpharius has committed units to help us break this struggle. We will meet with him tomorrow, openly.’

Namatjira rose to his feet and looked at them. ‘In his messages to me, the Lord Alpharius has confided that the First Primarch personally urged the Alpha Legion to assist with this compliance. Furthermore, he has recognised that there is something about Nurth that defies conventional attack, and claims to possess special techniques that will remediate the Nurthene’s ghastly wizardry. Those techniques seemed to work at Tel Utan, as Uxor Honen will testify. Let’s hope they work here too.’

Namatjira looked around at Major General Dev. ‘So it’s all right, Dev,’ he smirked, ‘the Astartes are coming to rescue your reputation.’

‘I’ll take care of my own reputation, thank you, sir,’ Dev replied.

‘Good man, well spoken. Mu? You’re the only one of us who has dealt with the Legion face to face. What do you make of them?’

‘I have found them to be highly effective, sir,’ Honen replied. ‘They are Astartes, after all.’

Namatjira nodded, but seemed unconvinced. ‘I cannot help wishing,’ he remarked, ‘that it was a different Legion coming to our side. One of the first, the old breed. Lord Alpharius and his warriors are comparative newcomers, with only a few decades’ experience. I know, I know, they’re Astartes, and our beloved Emperor does not found a Legion without full confidence in its abilities, but still…’

‘What is it that troubles you particularly, sir?’ Honen asked.

Namatjira frowned. ‘They’re not like the other Legions. They don’t fight like the other Legions. They practise war in the most insidious way. Guilliman has said to me, on more than one occasion, that he finds their methods underhand and discreditable. They are sly and devious, and unnecessarily opaque.’

‘Perhaps,’ Dev ventured, ‘that is why Lord Horus thought them ideally suited to this devilish war?’

Namatjira nodded. ‘Perhaps. All I know is, they were already operating here, undisclosed, before I knew anything about it. Name me one lord commander who would be pleased to discover other men fighting his wars for him, without invitation, consultation, or consent?’

‘It certainly lacks respect,’ replied Dev, ‘for them to have got involved without your knowledge, sir.’

‘Respect be damned!’ said Namatjira. ‘What about strategy? How can I properly orchestrate a war if I don’t know what a part of my force is up to? The potential for contradiction and misunderstanding is unacceptable. It amounts to manipulation, and that’s the Alpha Legion’s trademark. I do not appreciate being played.’

He sat back down and stared thoughtfully at his pet. ‘It makes me wonder about this present fiasco. I do hope it’s not significant that the moment the Alpha Legion embroils itself in my affairs, things go to hell in a land speeder.’

There were preparations to be made. The lord commander dismissed them, and Major General Dev left the room with the two uxors.

‘Dinas?’ Namatjira called when the door had closed behind them.

One of the Lucifer Blacks moved quickly to his side. The Blacks did not walk, they padded, as silently and fluidly as cats. As if recognising an alpha male, the thylacene got up and moved out of the man’s way.

‘Uxor Rukhsana?’ the Black asked.

Namatjira grinned. ‘You noticed it too?’

Dinas Chayne looked identical to the other Lucifer Blacks in the room. The brigade made no great show of rank or duty markings. Only an expert in Late Strife-era regimental ephemera would have recognised the trio of embossings on his left shoulder plate that identified him as a bajolur-captain. ‘It was obvious in her body language, sir,’ Chayne said. ‘The set of her head, the position of her feet.’

‘Hiding something?’

‘Undoubtedly.’

Namatjira nodded. ‘Yes, I thought that. Place her under scrutiny. These are depressing times, Dinas, when we have to watch our own shadows.’

‘There are shadows in our shadows, sir,’ Chayne replied, citing an old Ischian proverb. ‘This war has become a business of counterfeit and duplicity. We manipulate, and are in turn manipulated.’

The lord commander shook his head sadly. ‘It is the latter I seek to avoid. Place her under scrutiny.’

‘Uxor?’

Rukhsana stopped in her tracks and looked back. The palace hallway was busy with mustering troops and servants hurrying with platters of food. A servitor was lighting the night lamps. Honen Mu stood a few steps behind Rukhsana, staring at her.

‘Was there something else, Mu?’ Rukhsana asked.

‘I’m sorry you lost your agent,’ Mu said.

‘So am I.’

‘Is… is everything all right?’ Honen Mu asked.

‘What do you mean?’

The tiny girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know you, uxor, but I am your friend. I sensed a tension in you back there.’

Rukhsana combed her long, straight hair back behind her ears with her fingers. ‘We were called to attend an angry lord commander, uxor. I think tension may have been inevitable.’

Mu nodded.

‘Are you accusing me of something?’ Rukhsana asked.

‘Of course not. I was simply offering my support, uxor to uxor. If support were necessary.’

‘It’s not. But, thank you.’

They nodded to each other.

‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘Tomorrow.’

Honen Mu stood and watched Rukhsana walk away until she was lost in the crowd. Then she turned and went to locate her waiting aides.

They rose like hungry fledglings as she entered the anteroom, snapping and yabbering all at once.

‘Settle!’ Mu ordered.

‘What’s happening?’ Nefferti asked.

‘What did the lord commander say?’ Jhani wanted to know.

‘Settle!’ she repeated, snapping with her ’cept.

They fell quiet. ‘Tiphaine?’ Mu said. The oldest of her blonde aides looked up brightly.

‘Yes, uxor?’

‘Go and find Boone for me.’

‘Boone? Really, uxor?’

‘Just go and do it, girl,’ Mu snapped. Tiphaine darted away, slamming the anteroom door behind her. The other aides began whispering and chattering to one another.

I will not see the Chiliad disgraced, Mu thought to herself, I simply will not permit it. If there is canker in our ranks, I will root it out before it comes to light. The Geno Chiliad, worthy Old Hundred, will clean its own house. I will not leave it to others to purify us of contamination.

‘Uxor?’ Jhani called.

‘What?’

‘There is a hetman waiting to take audience with you. He has been waiting three hours.’

‘A hetman? Which hetman?’ Mu asked.

‘Soneka of the Dancers,’ Jhani replied.

Mu walked into the side room where her aides had left Soneka waiting. Rush lights flamed in the wall brackets, and myrrh had been left burning in small scoop bowls. The shutters had been lifted, so that the cold and clear night air could be admitted. Through the window, Mu could see the distant outline of Mon Lo, shimmering in the darkness. The dull echo of its screaming came in on the wind.

‘Peto,’ she said.

He rose to his feet from a low couch. He had been cleaned up a little, but there was no disguising the fact that he was thin and unshaven. His clothes were ragged and ill-used, and he had been given a non-issue canvas jacket to wear.

‘Uxor,’ he nodded.

She went straight over to him, and hugged him, her small embrace barely encircling his upper arms.

‘Oh, I thought you were dead!’ she cried into his chest.

‘So did I,’ he admitted.

She stepped back to look at him. ‘I was told Tel Khat was a massacre! A surprise attack… they said no one made it out of the Nurthene ambush.’

‘Virtually no one did,’ he replied. ‘I got lucky. With Lon and Shah and about a dozen others, I fought my way out. It was a terrible day. We were…’ he paused. ‘We were almost dead, every step of the way. We fled into the hills behind the Tel, and laid low in the cave pools for a day and a night. When the place went quiet, we dared to come out. The Nurthene had gone. Everyone we found had been butchered. So we trekked across country, made it to CR668, and picked up a transport there.’

Mu sat down on one of the couches and reached out with her ’cept. Nefferti came in immediately.

‘Food and wine, girl, right now,’ Mu ordered.

Nefferti ran off to do her uxor’s bidding.

‘They’ve brought me food and wine already, Honen,’ Soneka said, sitting down on the couch opposite her.

‘You’re starved. You need more,’ she replied. ‘You say Lon made it? Shah?’

He nodded. ‘Both of them, eight other troopers. We lost Attix, Gahz, all the other bashaws. It was a slaughter.’

He wiped his good hand across his mouth. A faltering smile appeared from under it, as if by some conjuring trick. ‘The Dancers have danced their last, I’m afraid, uxor.’

She hung her head. ‘At least you’re alive.’

‘At least that.’

He drew a breath and stared at her. ‘What happened about the body, Honen?’ he asked quietly.

‘About the what?’

‘The body.’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Peto.’

He frowned at her. ‘Yes, you do. The thing Bronzi voxed you about from CR345.’

‘Voxed? When was this?’

His eyes grew narrower. ‘About a week ago, the day before the massacre. Bronzi spoke to you on encrypt for several minutes.’

Honen Mu returned his look cautiously. ‘I swear on the Emperor’s life, Peto, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I took no call from Hurtado.’

She looked at him as if he were slightly mad.

Peto Soneka felt an odd sensation, as if the world were gently swallowing him up. The last five days had been little short of hell, but he’d weathered everything by focusing on one thought. Bronzi’s words.

My ace in the hole.

‘Where’s Bronzi?’ Soneka asked.

‘Look,’ said Honen Mu. ‘There seems to have been an unfortunate lapse in the channels of communication. Why don’t you start from the beginning, Peto?’

There’s been no lapse, Soneka thought. We spoke to you. I heard your voice on the vox-set. You were the only one who knew. And the next day Tel Khat was annihilated. Oh shit, you’re part of it.

The chamber door opened behind Mu.

‘Uxor? You sent for me?’

Mu looked around. Franco Boone stepped into the room. He ambled forwards, smiling at Mu, then blinked in surprise as he recognised Soneka.

‘Dancer het? God’s grace have me, I thought you were dead, man!’

‘Apparently not,’ Soneka said, forcing a smile onto his face. Franco Boone, the genewhip? What the hell is he doing here? Unless… he’s part of it too.

‘We were just talking,’ Mu said. ‘Peto was telling me how he’d survived the ambush.’

‘I’d like to hear that myself,’ Boone grinned. ‘Juicy stuff, I bet. What happened, Soneka? I heard it was bloody.’

He sat down on the couch beside the uxor, looking at Soneka eagerly. Boone was a powerfully built man, with a nose like an axe’s blade and a small tuft of black beard on his chin. He was uterine, but his abnormally high IQ, an atavistic aspect that was occasionally generated by the Chiliad’s genic pool, had qualified him for the special role of genewhip. Genewhips were the strict regulators of the Chiliad’s ethos, specially empowered to maintain levels of conduct and morale, and to enforce discipline and punishment. In another age, Boone might have been called a political officer.

Peto Soneka decided it was time to shut up.

‘It was bloody, sir. But I’ve been out in the desert a long time,’ he said, ‘and I fear a lack of food has addled my brain, not to mention the wine the uxor’s aides have been plying me with. Forgive me, I am all out of sorts. I’ll tell you the story some other time.’

‘Peto?’ Mu said. ‘What was that other matter? Something about Bronzi and a body?’

Soneka shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I think I may be slightly delirious. I keep doing that. Lon’ll tell you. I keep talking about dreams as if they’re real. It’s the fatigue. Forgive me, uxor, I need sleep.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll find a billet and dream this off. Tomorrow, you may get more sense out of me.’

‘Peto? Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked.

‘Good rest to you, uxor,’ he said, and closed the door behind him.

Soneka strode away down the hall. He was perfectly wide awake. His world was unravelling from a point he didn’t think it could possibly unravel from.

Just for the time being, he realised, there was no one he could trust.

‘Would you like to explain that curious moment?’ Boone asked, once Soneka had gone. Boone helped himself to a cup of wine from the tray Nefferti had just brought in.

‘I’m not sure I can,’ said Honen Mu. ‘I think Soneka was a little too tired for his own good. He was saying something about Bronzi.’

Boone smiled. ‘And a body, as I heard it.’

‘I know. It makes no sense. The poor man, he must be so strung out.’

‘Soneka wasn’t why you summoned me, then?’ Boone asked, leaning back and sipping his wine.

‘Not at all.’

‘So why am I here, exactly?’

Mu told him of her encounter with Uxor Rukhsana.

‘She was clouding something with her ’cept,’ Mu said. ‘Something she didn’t want the lord commander to know. If there’s treachery within the Chiliad, we have to deal with it ourselves, for the sake of our regimental honour. This must not become an exterior issue.’

Boone nodded.

‘You don’t seem surprised, Franco.’

‘Someone’s been playing games with us since we arrived on this damn planet,’ Boone said. ‘I’ve been aware of it, all the genewhips have. Insurgency. The enemy is trying to pick us apart from within, by means of guile and subterfuge. Subterfuge is like an iceberg. All the real weight is hidden under the surface. Let me look into it. I’ll find out what Uxor Rukhsana is hiding.’

Rukhsana entered her quarters and bolted the door behind her. She went into the bedchamber and froze.

John Grammaticus slowly lowered the laspistol he had been aiming at her.

‘Terra’s sake!’ she mumbled.

‘Sorry.’

‘I’m going out on a limb for you here, Kon.’

‘I know. You didn’t tell anyone?’

She made a face at him. ‘No.’

‘No one knows I’m here?’

‘No!’

He nodded and sat down on the end of the bed, the pistol across his lap. ‘I’m sorry, Rukhsana,’ he said.

He’d been saying that a lot, ever since he’d sneaked back into her chambers two nights previously. The man she knew as Konig Heniker had been dirty and dishevelled, and clearly distracted by an experience he didn’t want to discuss. He’d told her, briefly, that things had gone wrong in Mon Lo, and that he’d had to extricate himself quickly. He hadn’t been willing to add much more, except to say that his cover had been compromised and he didn’t know who he could trust besides her.

‘I believe I’ve been quite patient, Kon,’ she said.

He looked up at her. ‘You have. You certainly have.’

Rukhsana shrugged. ‘This feels more and more like something I shouldn’t be doing. Concealing you here, denying all know-ledge of you… it feels like treason.’

‘I suppose it might.’ Grammaticus knew that he was asking a lot of her, and he was uncomfortably aware that she was only his ally because of the intimacy they had shared. She was now risking her career. She was risking execution. He had never meant for her to become involved in his business. The bond between them had grown out of honest attraction. He had not courted her just to use her.

But you’re quite prepared to use her now, aren’t you, he thought to himself, and despised his own weakness.

Almost all of his instincts screamed at him to get out, to get off Nurth and fade into the background, to segue back through the fleet from one false identity to the next, the way he’d got in. But that would mean abandoning the mission, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to do that, because he knew how vital it was. A chance remained. He was still ideally placed, despite the set-backs, to accomplish the goal. With time, the sort of time he might buy from a sympathetic uxor, he could broker the contact and put the Cabal’s scheme into play. It would require sacrifices. Grammaticus wanted to make certain Rukhsana wasn’t one of them. He owed her that much.

Which meant he had three choices: abort and get out, use her cruelly, or bring her in on the truth.

‘I can’t hide you much longer, Kon,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Why don’t you go to the lord commander?’

‘I can’t.’

‘When are you going to tell me what this is about?’ Rukhsana asked.

Grammaticus rose to his feet, stared at her, and carefully considered his choices.

Six

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, the next day

The sky was sapphire, the dusty earth cinnamon. Under the alien sun, the expedition’s Imperial Army forces formed a corridor. To one side, the Geno Chiliad, the Zanzibari Hort; to the other, the Outremars, the Sixth Torrent, the Thorns. Ranks of armoured warriors stood ready, ninety deep, their banners and standards fluttering in the wind. Battle tanks and armoured speeders elevated their weapon mounts in salute. Horns bawled into the morning. Kettle drums clattered incessantly. Amon Jeveth’s Titans formed a towering backdrop, backlit by the scalding Nurthene sun.

Overhead, the slow skies turned. The wind made a reptilian hiss, and the noise of the drums almost drowned out the sounds of screaming coming from the city ten kilometres away.

Namatjira was wearing gold plate armour, with a fan of ostrich feathers around his head, and a ten-metre cape of peacock eyes held out behind him by his slaves. Liquid gold had been delicately painted onto his face by his cosmeticians, and it had dried to form a tissue-thin mask. He held a silver Mughal mace in one hand, the sunlight glinting off its many jewels, and a golden ritual saintie in the other. The torso of his armour was engineered with two extra pairs of cybernetic limbs, and these spread to clutch a pair of daggers and a pair of sabres. Six arms extended, Namatjira resembled the death goddess of ancient Sind myth.

The Lucifer Black companions surrounded him, swords drawn, holding stiff, ritual poses of defence. The thylacene lay at Namatjira’s feet in the dust, licking its coat. A marsupial tiger from Taprobane, it was one of the many lost species back-ginered from DNA samples during the Unification Era. Namatjira’s pet was called Serendip. It gazed out at the day’s heat with hooded, disinterested eyes.

Major General Dev stood at Namatjira’s right hand in bronze battle armour, his durband crimson and his spiked helm silver. Dev carried a gurz and a long-handled sword. Next to him stood Lord Wilde of the Torrent, his platinum wargear glittering with rubies and emeralds. Lord Wilde’s augmetic eyes were glowing green slits in his white ceramic face mask. He personally carried the vexil-standard of the Torrent, a four-metre golden pole surmounted with a diamond-checked tail and the gilt crest of the Pontus Euxinus. Third in line was General Karsh of the Regnault Thorns, his ritual chrome armour so thwart with spikes and recurve barbs that he seemed more the embodiment of a vicious trap than a person.

To Namatjira’s left stood Khedive Ismail Sherard of the Outremars, a congenital dwarf dressed in graphite grey robes and a brow-circlet of titanium. His stature belied his level of influence in the Army and the hierarchies of Terra. Though the Outremars had supplied just five thousand foot soldiers to Namatjira’s expedition, far fewer than the Chiliad, the Torrent or the Thorns, they were the backbone of the Imperial Army, accounting for almost seven per cent of the Army’s overall numbers.

Outremar troops served in almost all expeditions and martial hosts, and their khedives, all dwarfs of the same blood dynasty as Sherard, were famed for their tactical insight and discipline. The Grand Khedive, Sherard’s great uncle, was one of the Emperor’s foremost advisors and confidants. Khedive Sherard stood on a small grav disk, suspended half a metre above the sand. The train of his grey robe, cut with a batwing edge, was held out behind him by eunuchoid slaves, each slave pulling taut a point of the batwing so that it seemed as if Sherard was spreading great pinions to ascend into the sky.

Beside him stood Sri Vedt, who held the rank of Uxor Primus of the Geno Five-Two units attached to the expedition. She was sheathed in a red burqua, and escorted by thirteen of her most senior uxors, including Honen Mu and Rukhsana Saiid.

Forty burnished servitors held long poles supporting billowing white canopies above the expedition commanders, shielding them from the sun’s bite.

A transatmospheric craft slid down out of the blue, roared over the assembled multitude, and settled with a whine of dampers at the end of the long troop corridor. The drums stopped playing. The horns stopped braying. There was silence apart from the crack of the canopy sheets and the distant screaming of Mon Lo.

A figure emerged from the craft and began to walk down the corridor towards the waiting commanders.

Namatjira nodded and, as one, the vast host of men dropped to their knees. Banners, flags and standards sloped forwards in deference.

The lone figure came closer, trudging down the sand of the corridor, nodding in respect to the men bowed down on either side of him.

The figure wore silver-edged indigo power armour. He was fully a third taller than the tallest geno warrior in the muster.

There was an awed hush. It took almost eight minutes for the Astartes to walk down the entire corridor to Namatjira. In that eternity, the only things that moved were the wind-caught banners, the slow-turning clouds, and the Astartes himself.

Ten metres short of Namatjira and his commanders, the Astartes stopped. Slowly and deliberately, he removed his left gauntlet and dropped it onto the hot sand. Then he unlocked his helm, drew it up over his face, and dropped that as well. His head, revealed, was noble: hairless, powerful, copper-skinned. His eyes were as bright as the sapphire sky.

He drew his gladius with his right hand, and sliced its edge across the palm of his bared left hand. Tossing the short sword aside, he knelt, holding out his left hand to Namatjira. Blood dripped from the deep palm wound onto the sand.

‘Respected lord,’ he said, his head on his chest, ‘worthy and appointed master of the Six Hundred and Seventieth Expedition, I pledge my forces and my allegiance to you, recognising you as the proxy of our beloved Emperor in this theatre. It is my honour to add the Alpha Legion’s strength to your fighting force. United, may we annihilate our common foe. To this end, I offer tribute in blood.’

Namatjira spread all six of his arms and allowed the Lucifers to take his weapons from him. One of them also removed the golden glove sheathing Namatjira’s real left hand. Namatjira stepped forwards, his slaves releasing his long cape of peacock eyes so that it floated out behind him on the breeze. He stroked his bare left hand down one of the spikes of Karsh’s armour, then held it out, dripping, to meet the proffered hand of the kneeling Astartes.

Their bloody palms pressed together and gripped tightly.

‘I receive your tribute,’ Namatjira replied, ‘and respond with my own blood. The expedition rejoices that you have joined us. Welcome. I am Namatjira and this is my pledge. For the Emperor.’

The hands parted. The Astartes rose to his feet. He towered over the lord commander.

‘I am Alpharius. For the Emperor, my lord.’

‘Really? Are you?’ Grammaticus murmured to himself. Two kilometres away, he was observing the great meeting through a high-power scope from the flat roof of the terracotta palace’s kitchen block. He kept low, carefully avoiding the eyesight range of the palace sentries, the jamming module attached to his belt non-invasively blocking the field sensors and the stationed gun servitors.

His scope was a quality piece, an eldar long-gun sight, another gift from the Cabal. It resonated the images back into his eye, almost as though he was standing at Namatjira’s shoulder.

He could not hear their words from that distance, of course, but he read lips as well as any high-function logokine.

I am Alpharius. For the Emperor, my lord.

Grammaticus’s perception was so acute and specialised that he could even lip-read accents. ‘Alpharius’ was speaking in common Low Gothic, with a rising spur on the middle syllables of Alpharius and Emperor that hinted at a Gedrosian or Cyrenaican basal slant. But the cursal lip motions suggested something akin to Mars hivecant, or even Odrometiccan.

The Cabal had briefed him well, but the problem was that virtually nothing was known about the Last Primarch. Unlike all the other primarchs, Alpharius had never publicly identified his home world. Furthermore, no definitive portraits of him were extant. The Cabal had procured many images, but they were clearly contradictory. It was as if Alpharius had many heads.

The face Grammaticus was watching through the powerful viewer agreed, at least, with a few of the historical portraits. There was a certain likeness in the cast of features to both Horus Lupercal and the face the Emperor wore, which made sense if the gene-legacy theory was true.

Even from a distance, Grammaticus could accurately gauge height and mass. The being he was observing was substantially larger than either Herzog or Pech, the bona fide Alphas that Grammaticus had encountered in Mon Lo.

Maybe, maybe this was the genuine article.

The thought of Mon Lo washed angst back into him, unbidden. His hands began to fidget and shake. The dragon had been in his mind, and in his dreams, ever since his escape. Of course, he wasn’t afraid of it because it was a dragon or, at least, he was no more afraid of dragons than any rational human being might be. The real, deep fear that chilled his soul was knowing what the dragon represented.

He dulled his mind as he felt another psychic pass. Shere was still alive, out there, scanning for him from time to time like a passing spy drone. Grammaticus curled his mind away like an armadillo every time one of Shere’s probes came close.

The sun beat down. In the distance, he could hear the screaming. This was no life for a thousand year-old man. Grammaticus was beginning to think he had been a fool to accept the Cabal’s gift of reincarnation. He began to wish, honestly and absolutely, that his first death had been his only death.

I wish you’d left me there, bleeding out on the asphalt at Anatol Hive. Why did you bring me back, and sleeve me in new flesh? Why? For this?

The Cabal made no answer. They had made no approach to him at all since his return from Mon Lo. From the moment he’d stolen his way back into Uxor Rukhsana’s quarters, he’d spent hours gazing into mirrors and dishes of water, waiting for Gahet, or one of the others, to contact him via flect conduit.

They had not come to him.

My life has been long, he considered, but it is too short for this.

He trained the scope back towards the distant meeting.

Silent in the hard sunlight, Dinas Chayne scaled the terracotta wall and slipped his black armoured form over the parapet onto the roof of the kitchen block. The most recent sensor sweep of the area had picked something up.

Or rather, it hadn’t.

There are shadows in our shadows, sir. He remembered his own words.

Chayne had been on his way to search Uxor Rukhsana’s quarters while she was out attending the great meeting when the security post had flagged the anomaly. The sensor sweep had revealed a vague blank on the roof of the kitchen block, a dead spot that the sensors seemed unable to read or probe. The adepts manning the security post had dismissed it as an imaging artefact, but Chayne had not been so quick to judge. In his opinion, the reading suggested someone or something well-veiled, a presence announced by its very absence.

Dinas Chayne was a wary man. He had been a soldier longer than he had been an adult. Born on Zous, one of Terra’s myriad lost colonies, a planet that had been locked in a brutal global war for almost a century, Chayne had grown up on the losing side. Its economy bankrupted by the war effort, its industry shattered by saturation bombing, its menfolk decimated, his birth-nation had begun to turn, in desperation, to its remaining assets. It conscripted its womenfolk and its children. Aged eleven, Chayne had found himself wearing the uniform of the National Youth, carrying an autorifle, and en route to a border outpost to fight. The youngest soldier in his company had been seven. The troop leader had been a boy of fourteen.

They had held the outpost for twenty-six months. The troop leader had been killed after three weeks, two days shy of his fifteenth birthday. Perhaps seeing something only children could see, the troop turned to Chayne for leadership. Barely twelve years old, Chayne had taken command. By the time he turned thirteen, he had killed sixteen men in open combat, and was a hardened, emotionally extinct veteran of that hopeless conflict.

Then the fleet of the Imperial expedition had arrived in close orbit. The war was crushed out in six days, and Zous itself brought to compliance in six weeks. It was one of Namatjira’s earliest actions. The brutalised child soldiers were gradually rounded up during the subsequent cleansing campaign, and the fiercest of them paraded before Namatjira for his amusement.

The lord commander had always said that there had been something in Chayne’s face that had marked him out from the other pugnacious, filthy war-urchins. Dinas Chayne wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he had been placed in the ward of a Lucifer Black officer, to be raised as his surrogate son.

Aged eighteen, Chayne had joined the Lucifers. Twenty years later, he served as the bajolur of Namatjira’s companion bodyguard, and was one of the most decorated and respected warriors in the regiment.

Namatjira had a good eye for natural born warriors.

Chayne crouched low, drawing his short, curved sword of folded Toledo steel. The palace sensors were feeding directly into his visor, conjuring subtle green tactical displays in front of his eyes. There was the blank, the absence. Twenty metres left, at the rim of the roof.

He coiled like a cat, and pounced.

The rim of the roof was vacant. There was no one there. Nothing.

No, not nothing. On the low parapet, there was a scrap of paper, held down by a small white stone.

The scrap read: Better luck next time.

‘Hey, we’re missing everything,’ said Lon, nudging him.

Soneka woke. ‘What?’

‘We’re late. It’s started. We should get out there, het. The regiments have assembled to greet the Astartes.’

Soneka sat up. He was in the hospital wing of the terracotta palace, where he’d taken a cot to be with the last of his men, the last ten Dancers. The wing was sweltering hot and smelled of stale urine.

‘You all right, het?’ asked Shah.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘We may not be a company any more,’ said Lon, ‘but I say we go out there and stand in the line like men. Like Dancers.’

‘Yeah!’ agreed Gin.

‘You got the flag?’ asked Lon.

Shah nodded. He’d been carrying the Dancers’ tattered standard like a bedroll since Visages.

‘Good,’ said Lon. ‘Let’s go. You coming, het?’

Soneka was busy getting dressed. He was sweating. He couldn’t find his socks.

‘Yes, I’m coming, all right?’

‘The Astartes have already landed,’ said Sallom, gazing out of the chamber window. ‘Hell, there’s an awful lot of flag waving and how d’ye do going on out there.’

‘Well, it’s Astartes, isn’t it?’ said Shah. ‘What do you expect?’

Soneka reached his good hand under his stained pillow in search of his socks. His fingers struck something hard.

‘Did one of you put this here?’ he asked.

‘Put what where?’ asked Lon.

Soneka held up a small, diorite head, one of the many hundreds of thousands that had given Visages its name.

The last of the Dancers all shrugged.

‘Must have been me, then,’ Soneka decided.

He already regretted the note. The note had been stupid. Cocky. Yes, cocky was the word. Gahet had forever been reproving Grammaticus for his arrogance and his over-confidence in his logokine powers. A Cabal agent should never bait the killers stalking him, especially if those killers were good at their job. Grammaticus knew enough about the Lucifer Blacks to realise they were terribly good at their job. He’d been a fool to taunt them like that. What had he been thinking?

That I’m immortal and nothing can kill me? Mon Lo had shown him how spurious that assumption was. You just can’t resist it, can you, John? That’s all it is. You can’t resist showing off?

They’re not that good, Grammaticus thought. Not compared to me.

‘You can’t come in,’ the aide was insisting. ‘Uxor Rukhsana is away at the Grand Welcome. Her quarters are private.’

Grammaticus stepped back into the shadows of the colonnade and listened. He had been slipping his way back to the sanctuary of Rukhsana’s private quarters, the only place he felt safe. The palace was quiet, with almost everyone outside for the arrival of the Alpha Legion. Coming back along the hallway, he’d heard the voices ahead.

Three cowled and robed men stood at the door of Rukhsana’s quarters, confronting the aide. Their leader was saying, ‘You don’t understand, aide. I am Tinkas, surveyor of fabric for the expedition fleet. It’s my duty to systematically assess and evaluate all properties captured or commandeered by the expedition. I am in the process of surveying this palace. The work must be done, by order of the fleet master.’

He showed the aide some kind of paperwork.

Don’t let them in, Tuvi, Grammaticus willed.

The girl wavered. ‘This really isn’t a good time, sir. My uxor’s privacy is–’

‘I simply need a moment to scan and assess. It’s quite un-invasive. A measurement or two. We’re not interested in the contents of the chambers. We will be discreet.’

Tuvi, they’re not who they say they are. Be cautious! I’ve met Tinkas, and he doesn’t wear a robe nor is he anywhere close to that height. You’re being deceived.

‘Well, I suppose,’ Tuvi said.

Damn it, Tuvi! Grammaticus began to move. As the hooded men shuffled into the uxor’s quarters past the aide, Grammaticus headed back down the colonnade and climbed out through the last archway. He clambered up onto the roof, and crossed the tiles, running low, heading for the far side of the block.

‘Give us a moment,’ the surveyor of fabric told Tuvi, and she nodded, waiting outside.

The door pulled shut behind her. Franco Boone pulled back his cowl. ‘Two minutes,’ he told his fellow genewhips. ‘Two minutes before that little bitch suspects something. Quick and clean, no messing about.’ The men, Roke and Pharon, spread out and began to search the apartment area.

‘Boone!’ one of them hissed. Boone hurried into the bedchamber. Pharon was holding up a canvas jacket, soiled and dirty.

‘Since when does an uxor wear something like this?’

‘Bag it and hide it under your robe,’ Boone replied. ‘We’ll test it for genic elements.’

‘Here!’ the other genewhip called urgently. Boone went into the dressing room, and found Roke staring at a dresser top crowded with bowls and dishes of water.

‘What the hell is this about?’ Roke asked.

‘Is that you, Rukhsana?’ Grammaticus called, walking out of the wash room into the bedchamber, naked. He froze at the sight of Boone and his men, and grabbed at the bedspread to cover himself.

‘Who are you?’ Grammaticus yelped.

Boone hesitated, startled. ‘Uhm, surveyor of fabric, we–’

‘Genewhip Boone? Is that you?’ Grammaticus growled.

‘Do I know you, sir?’ Boone asked, quite taken aback.

‘I should think so!’ Grammaticus snapped. ‘Kaido Pius!’

‘Oh, good grief! Yes! Sorry, Hetman Pius,’ Boone stumbled. ‘Sorry, sorry, didn’t recognise you with your clothes off.’

‘What the hell are you doing in my uxor’s chambers, Genewhip? Sniffing around?’

‘We had a lead, a lead about a–’

‘A what?’

Boone paused. He smiled. ‘All right, you got me, het. My hands go up. I wanted to check on Uxor Rukhsana because of information received.’

‘What sort of information?’

‘That she might be carrying on.’

‘She is,’ smiled Grammaticus. ‘With me. It isn’t just the aides who like to put it about, you know?’

‘Shouldn’t you be out at the Great Welcome, het?’ Pharon ventured.

‘Yes, I should,’ Grammaticus grinned. ‘But it’s much more fun being in here. Shouldn’t you be out at the Great Welcome?’

The genewhip looked at his feet.

‘Well, I believe we’ve just embarrassed each other,’ Grammaticus said. ‘Me being here and you… coming in here unauthorised. So what say we forget this ever happened?’

Boone nodded. ‘That’s a splendid notion, het.’

‘Is that my jacket?’ Grammaticus asked. ‘Toss it over here. I’ve been looking for that.’

Pharon threw the jacket to him.

‘All good?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘All good,’ Boone nodded.

‘Good. Now get the hell out of here and I’ll forget you ever tried this.’

‘You won’t tell the uxor?’ Boone asked.

‘Would I?’

Boone and his men left fast.

Grammaticus sighed and sat down on the bed. In looks and build, he was nothing like Kaido Pius, het of the Carnivales. It was amazing what a confident, clear tone of voice could do. Such was the strength of a logokine. A logokine’s voice could tell you what you were seeing in defiance of your eyes and your better judgement.

But it had cost him. Exhausted, Grammaticus flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He knew a blackout was coming.

He embraced it, even though he knew there would be dragons in it.

Outside, the Great Welcome was dispersing. Namatjira, with all ceremony, was leading Alpharius and the senior commanders towards his pavilion to discuss forward planning. The vast troop marshals were spilling back towards their billets and positions.

Coming out into the sunlight, Franco Boone paused. Walking back through the palace, he’d had a mind to find Uxor Mu and remonstrate with her for sending him on a fool’s errand. How clumsy to have embarrassed a distinguished het like that!

Now he was in the open, a mist of doubt filled his head. The encounter in the uxor’s quarters took on a disquieting, dream-like gloss. He found he could barely remember the actual exchange.

‘Something the matter?’ asked Roke, walking at his side.

‘Kaido Pius, right?’ Boone asked.

Roke nodded. ‘Bare-assed. Takes all sorts, I suppose.’

‘Rukhsana is a tempting prospect,’ put in Pharon, the other genewhip.

Boone nodded. There wasn’t a man in the Chiliad who’d disagree with Pharon’s appraisal. ‘But it was Pius, wasn’t it?’

Roke and Pharon looked at the senior genewhip and laughed.

‘Are you getting peck that’s stronger than we get?’ Roke chuckled.

‘The question stands,’ said Boone. ‘Was that Kaido Pius?’

‘Yes, Franco!’ Pharon laughed.

‘Then explain that to me, would you?’ Boone asked, pointing.

Through the crowds of dispersing troopers, a hundred metres away, the Chiliad company of Carnivales was breaking ranks to head for their station. Pikes and banners had lowered, the men moving in easy groups, chatting, laughing, taking pinches of peck from their golden boxes.

In the midst of the huddle, joking with his bashaws, was Kaido Pius.

‘Peto? Peto!’ Kaido Pius cried in delight. He pushed past his bashaws to embrace Soneka.

‘Good to see you,’ Soneka gasped, clenched in a serious bear hug.

‘Good to see you? Good to see you, he says!’ Pius cried to the bashaws. ‘We thought you were dead!’

Soneka smiled, and embraced each of the bashaws in turn. ‘I very nearly was,’ he said.

‘You got out of Visages, then?’ Pius asked.

Soneka nodded. ‘I did. Just.’

‘Where have you been hiding yourself?’

‘The hospital wing. I’m staying there with Lon and the others. Hey, Lon, Shah! Come over here!’

Pius shook his head. ‘Shameful, that’s what it was. When we heard about Visages, we were shocked. My boys have drunk to the Dancers’ memory several times.’

‘Thanks for that, Kai,’ said Soneka. ‘Glory, it’s good to see you.’

Pius looked at Soneka. ‘Come back with us to our billet. We’ll drink and talk of old times.’

‘Later, Kai, I’ll come and find you. Where are you posted?’

‘Line fifteen north, under Uxor Sanzi’s ’cept.’

‘I’ll join you later, all right?’

‘We’ll look out for you, Peto!’ Pius cried, already disappearing in the moving mass. Soneka was pushing on, through the shambling ranks, past the banners of the Threshers and the Arachne.

He could see another banner, up ahead, above the moving tide of troopers.

The Jokers.

Soneka pushed his way forwards until he reached the ranks of the Jokers. He had a terrible, queasy feeling.

‘Hurtado?’ he whispered.

Fifty metres away, through the flowing throng, Bronzi turned and looked back at him. The Jokers’ het was flanked by Tche and Leng, his massive bashaws.

For a moment, through the moving crowd, their eyes locked. Soneka and Bronzi.

‘Hurt? You’re alive! For Terra’s sake! Hurt!’

Bronzi frowned. Then he turned away and was lost in the tide of bodies.

‘Hurt?’ Soneka stood still, as the river of soldiers flowed around him. He wondered if he should follow Bronzi.

He decided that was probably a very bad idea.

Seven

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, the evening of the day

Dinas Chayne had been intent on scouring the palace for the author of the insolent, provocative note. He had not risen to its bait, or allowed himself the distraction of anger, but it had usefully focused his mind. Chayne held a frightening grip over his emotions, a skill he’d mastered between the ages of twelve and thirteen. He did not allow emotions to rule his behaviour, ever. Instead, he channelled them as fuel for his actions.

He returned to the security post to review all the feeds from the palace’s sensor lattice, but one of the adepts had brought him a coded message from the lord commander, summoning him with immediate effect. The lord commander was holding his first meeting with the Master of the Alpha Legion in his pavilion, and wanted the Lucifer Black bajolur to witness and observe the proceedings.

‘Have this run through full genic and biometric testing,’ he told the adept, handing him the note. ‘Report to me, directly on my link. Misplace this evidence, and I’ll have you shot.’

The adept hurried off to do Chayne’s bidding, a sick and anxious expression on his face.

Chayne made his way to the pavilion. A vast edifice of void-shielded silk marquees, it had been erected on a low tel south of the palace precinct. The first streaks of evening were discolouring the sky, and the shadows had gone soft and long, as if they were melting. Thousands of filament lights, in crystal shades, had been strung like climbing ivy around the structure of the pavilion, and they twinkled in the dusk like the lights of a distant hive. They reminded Chayne of the god-walls of the Imperial Palace on Terra, the mountainside bastions and soaring ramparts illuminated by billions of slit windows, and the great beacons of light that sent vast beams of radiance into the top of the sky. That was a monument no man could see without experiencing an emotional response, not even Chayne. In the older days, it was said that the antique Great Wall of Zhongguo could be seen from near orbit. The Imperial Palace could be seen from Mars.

Chayne entered the pavilion via the security portal, and submitted himself for checking and searches. On Sameranth, two years earlier, a security detail at the pavilion portal had waved him through, not wishing to interfere with a Lucifer Black. Chayne had ordered the detail’s immediate execution. A Lucifer Black uniform could be stolen or copied. No one could be given access to the lord commander until he had proved he was who he appeared to be.

Chayne paused briefly in one of the outer tents to converse with Eiman and Belloc, two of his most trusted Lucifers. He explained the business of the note to them, and told them to return to the palace and continue the search. Their conversation, to an outsider, would have seemed odd. There was nothing convivial or comradely about it. Brief statements and instructions were exchanged or given. Lucifer Blacks related to one another in a dry, utilitarian shorthand, dealing only in facts. They expected one another to fill in any speculative blanks, and make their own conjectures.

Chayne had already decided what the note meant, and was fully confident that Eiman and Belloc had grasped the implications too, from the bare facts he had relayed. As had been suspected, a process of espial was active at Mon Lo, within the weave of the Imperial fortifications. The spies were good, able, intelligent and well equipped. Their loyalties were unclear. Chayne had suspected the Nurthene, but no Nurthene would have left a note in Low Gothic, unless the Imperials had massively underestimated the enemy’s capacity for psychological warfare.

The note meant many things, but most of all it meant over-confidence, and that was a fatal weakness in any person. A weakness of emotion. It was quite a feat to be able to sneak out from under the piercingly vigilant lattice of an Imperial security system, but it was altogether something else to acknowledge that you had been there, to leave a trace, a signature, a calling card. Why evade detection, seamlessly in this particular case, if you then admit that evasion by taking credit for it? Two motives occurred to Chayne: someone wanted to goad him and play games with him, or someone was so sure of himself, the gamesmanship was part of the sport.

Either way, over-confidence. A fatal flaw.

The note itself, that little scrap of paper, would tell him everything he needed: the choice of language, the use of language, the phraseology, the psychology of meaning, the pen weight, the handwriting, the paper source, the type of stylus, the ink residue, the gene residue, the fibre trace, the note’s position, the type and origin of the stone left to weigh it down.

The spy, Chayne’s prey, had betrayed himself in a hundred different ways, simply by being cocky. And that cockiness was the biggest lead of all.

Chayne removed his black helmet, slid it under his arm, and entered the main chamber of the glowing pavilion. Inside, lords of mankind were speaking with demigods.

‘Kon, my love?’ the dragon crooned, and licked his forehead with its red tongue.

John Grammaticus forced his way out of the dragon’s biting jaws and woke up. Rukhsana smiled down at him, stroking his cheek.

‘Damn. What time is it?’ he asked.

‘Night has fallen, Kon. Lord Alpharius is dining in the pavilion tent with the lord commander.’

Grammaticus sat up quickly, blinking. ‘Damn! I have to go. I have to be there.’

‘Be here with me instead, Kon.’

‘I wish I could.’

He began to get dressed. She sat back, sullen and rebuffed. She glanced around.

‘I think someone’s been in here,’ Rukhsana observed.

‘Yes. The genewhips,’ he said, nodding.

‘Terra!’ she asked. ‘What were they looking for?’

‘Me,’ he smiled.

A slow smile extended across Namatjira’s lips. ‘I’m no expert,’ he said, ‘but you can’t all be Alpharius.’

Alpharius, or at least the giant who had presented himself as Alpharius to the lord commander at the Great Welcome, tipped back his head and laughed.

‘Of course not, lord. My Legion is one body, and we share everything. Identity can be used as a weapon, so we turn one face against the enemy. However, we are friends here.’

Surrounded by his Lucifer Black companions, Namatjira stood at one end of the tented chamber, the senior commanders of the expedition grouped around him in a crescent. The filament lamps covered the pavilion ceiling like stars, and lumen banks underlit the tent walls. Striped and spotted animal pelts had been laid out across the floor as rugs, overlapping and luxurious. Serendip, Namatjira’s thylacene, had laid itself down on a speckled hide at the end of its slack, gold lead.

Facing them were four Astartes in indigo-blue plate. Foremost, Alpharius, his helmet still doffed, his copper skin lustrous in the golden light. The other three had joined him for the meeting, though no one, as Chayne would later discover to his consternation, could say from where.

Chayne slipped in through a flap at the rear of the chamber, behind Namatjira’s entourage. Through a slit in the folds of the pavilion’s walls, he could see gangs of liveried servants awaiting the order to hurry in with trays of sweetmeats, wine and fruit. Chamberlains were holding them at the ready.

‘I am Alpharius,’ said the copper-skinned giant, repeating the pledge-claim he had made at the Great Welcome. ‘I have brought with me Ingo Pech and Thias Herzog, my first and second captains.’

Two of the Astartes behind him stepped forwards, removed their helmets with a click-hiss of collar locks, and bowed. They were shaven headed and copper-skinned too. A simple human glance would have read all three as identical triplets.

Chayne did not make a human glance. He appraised them, quickly and efficiently. Not identical triplets, not non-identical triplets, or even uterine brothers. The immediate similarities were strong but superficial. Alpharius was considerably taller than both of his captains. What was more, there was an evident ethnic derivation in the build of his cranium, a slope of the forehead, a mass of the brow. Chayne had been in the presence of Horus Lupercal, and he’d seen that distinctive physiognomy before. There was something about the eyes too. Alpharius’s eyes were cold blue, and shone with an arctic intelligence that made Chayne shudder slightly.

Of the other two, Herzog was ever so slightly the taller. Chayne gauged their heights using the angles of the guy wires and sheet planes of the pavilion behind them. Herzog and Pech were not related either. Chayne counted eighteen points of dissimilarity between the comparative angles of their skulls, their eyes, their lips, the structure of their cheeks, the muscles of their necks, their noses and, most especially, the fingerprint-precise lobes of their ears. Herzog was older by twenty years. Pech was smaller, but stronger and smarter. There was a very slight but telling shadow around Herzog’s scalp that suggested his hair was of a darker natural colour, and that he shaved his head to resemble his primarch and his fellow captain. Herzog’s eyes were blue, like his primarch’s, but Pech’s were gold-flecked brown.

‘Welcome, captains,’ Namatjira said.

The Astartes nodded.

‘And the other?’ Namatjira asked.

The fourth Astartes had remained at the back of the group, his helmet in place.

‘That is one of my common troopers,’ Alpharius said. ‘He is simply here as an escort. His name is Omegon.’

The warrior bowed, without removing his helmet.

The first lie, Chayne thought. Omegon is no common trooper.

Chayne estimated Omegon’s stature, once again using the geometries of the tent structure as a scale. The Astartes was at least as big as the primarch himself.

Who are you? Chayne wondered. What are you pretending to be?

‘Let us talk of Nurth, my lord,’ said Pech, ‘and of how we finish this war.’

Namatjira smiled. ‘This compliance,’ he corrected.

‘It is a war, sir,’ Pech replied, ‘as I’m sure the stalwart soldiers of the Imperial Army would attest. Let us not dress it up in political terms. Let us not skip over their sacrifices.’

Major General Dev and Lord Wilde of the Torrent coughed to suggest their gratitude at Pech’s acknowledgement of their efforts. Some of their huscarls and high officers clacked their swords against their shields in approval.

Namatjira snapped up a hand quickly for silence.

‘Of course it’s a war, sir,’ the lord commander said, acid in his tone. ‘Men die. My men die. But this is still an action of compliance, or are you questioning the Emperor’s design?’

Pech shook his head. ‘No, lord. I appreciate that the Emperor upholds a teleological scheme for the future of man, and I will endeavour to uphold it.’

‘He chases a utopian ideal,’ Herzog put in.

‘He wishes to unify and perfect humanity through the intense application of martial violence,’ said Pech.

‘We have no quarrel with that approach,’ said Herzog. ‘It is the only proven way man’s destiny has ever been advanced.’

‘Even if utopian goals are ultimately counter-intuitive to species survival,’ Pech added quickly.

‘Any political ambition that is inherently impossible to achieve is ultimately corrupting,’ said Herzog.

‘You cannot engender, or force to be engendered, a state of perfection,’ said Pech. ‘That line of action leads only to disaster, because perfection is an absolute that cannot be attained by an imperfect species.’

‘Utopia is a dangerous myth,’ said Herzog, ‘and only a fool would chase it.’

‘It is better to manage and maintain the flaws of man on an ongoing basis,’ said Pech.

‘We say this only to recognise the blood debt of the Imperial Army, that suffers and dies, resolutely, in the pursuit of that goal,’ said Herzog.

There was a long silence. Just as the blades began to batter the shields again, Alpharius said, ‘I encourage my men to explore the philosophy of bloodshed, lord. I like them to understand the intellectual structure that informs their killing. The Emperor, my love and my life, seeks to set mankind in place as the uppermost species of the galaxy. I will not dispute that ambition, neither will my captains. We simply recognise the procrustean methods with which he enforces that dream. A utopian ideal is a fine thing to chase, and to measure one’s achievements against. But it cannot, ultimately, be achieved.’

‘Are you suggesting the Emperor’s design is… wrong?’ Namatjira asked.

‘Not in the slightest,’ replied Alpharius.

‘My Lord Alpharius,’ said Lord Wilde in his piercing, blade-keen voice, ‘how do we combat the Nurthene… magick?’

‘My Lord Wilde,’ said Alpharius, ‘we don’t. We extinguish it.’

The trays of food were heavy. There was no telling how much longer they’d be forced to stand there in the tented wings of the main pavilion space. The worst of it was, he simply couldn’t hear. The voices in the main tent were muffled. Grammaticus realised that he should have brought a listening aid.

He thought he’d be close enough to hear the proceedings for himself. He needed a revised plan quickly, or the significant risk he was taking would be for nothing.

‘Sir?’ he whispered.

One of the chamberlains came down the line to him.

‘What’s the matter, boy?’ the chamberlain asked. Some of the other platter-laden servants in the line looked around.

‘How much longer, sir?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘As long as it damn well takes,’ the chamberlain replied.

‘Sir,’ said Grammaticus, ‘this sauce is curdling. It needs to be set on the heat again, or it will spoil. I dare not, for my life, serve bad food to the lord commander and his guests.’

The liveried chamberlain nodded. ‘Back to the kitchens with it. Be quick. They’ll be calling for us soon.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Grammaticus, and left the line, running with his platter towards the back flap of the tent’s service entrance.

Outside, in the dark, he paused, and dumped the platter and its contents into a spoil bin.

No one noticed him. Outremar guards were distantly patrolling the edge of the pavilion’s perimeter. He slipped into the dark blue shadows of the desert night.

Grammaticus pulled off the servant’s tabard and discarded it. He hadn’t disguised himself as one of the feast servants in any detailed way, trusting his logokine to get him by. But knowing he would be under scrutiny for several minutes, he had stolen a tabard to wear over his tight, armoured bodyglove to reinforce his logokine disguise.

He took a pair of low-light goggles from his thigh pouch and put them on. The world around him was instantly rendered in fuzzy, caustic shades of red and ochre light. He read the rows of taut cables that stretched from the side of the pavilion like millipede legs, anchoring it to the ground. Between these physical lines, he made out the web of intangible ones: the sensor beams and harmonic tripwires that protected the skirts of the great tent. Invisible to the naked eye, these thin beams would set off a multitude of alarms if tripped. Grammaticus adjusted his goggles to pick them up, tuning them to a harmonic value he’d cribbed from Rukhsana’s code book without her knowledge or permission.

He skirted forwards, along the flank of the pavilion, looking for another way in, ducking under and stepping over the rigid cables and the ghost beams alike. In several places he had to stoop or even crawl to avoid breaking the luminous strands. Most projected diagonally down from small emitters attached to the lip of the tent’s roof, but others followed the ground, or ran parallel to the pavilion, snaking between emitters spiked in the sand. The goggles guided him. This endeavour was a great deal more demanding than evading the field security lattice on the kitchen block roof. The beams were active and live. Three times, he froze, realising he was about to interrupt a beam with a leg or a shoulder.

There was no obvious vent or egress. Grammaticus found an open spot and knelt down. He put his ear against the skin of the tent, using its taut acoustics to bring the voices inside to him.

He could hear voices in conference. Lord Namatjira’s tone was easy to detect, as was Lord Wilde’s. Grammaticus identified the voice that had to belong to Alpharius, and listened to the way it sounded for the first time. There was a quality to it that was quite distinctive.

They were talking about the Nurthene magick and how to combat it. It both amused and distressed Grammaticus to hear the condescension in the primarch’s tone as he explained the notion of Chaos to the lord commander and his retinue. What he was saying was such an over-simplification. The Alpha Legion barely understood the nature of Chaos, yet here was its leader presuming to teach even less well-informed souls about it. The Alpha Legion were the ones who had to learn, and soon.

Grammaticus was concentrating so hard on listening that he detected the Lucifer Black behind him with only seconds to spare.

Grammaticus stood up and turned. The Lucifer, who had come up behind him quite silently, was raising his sabre to strike.

‘Fool!’ Grammaticus hissed. ‘It’s me!’

The Lucifer stopped in his tracks, and quickly lowered his sword.

‘Chayne?’ he asked. ‘Sir?’

‘Yes!’ Grammaticus snapped. ‘Return to your patrol.’ Chayne. Grammaticus logged the name in his memory for future reference.

‘Apologies,’ the Lucifer replied. ‘I obey.’

The Lucifer turned to melt away into the night. He hesitated.

Shit, thought Grammaticus. His logokine skills had wrong-footed the Lucifer Black for a moment, but only a moment. Clearly, the elite companions possessed iron-willed, unsuggestible minds. The Lucifer had already questioned the encounter, and realised he had been tricked.

The Lucifer Black was armoured. Grammaticus was not. Grammaticus couldn’t count on landing a clean, quick kill-blow, nor could he risk using his digital ring-weapon. The energy flare would set off every alarm within ten metres.

As the Lucifer turned back, Grammaticus threw a wolf-paw jab that crushed the vox-hub bulge on the side of the Lucifer’s jet-black helmet, preventing him from signalling an alert. The Lucifer began to shout, but his voice was muffled by the helmet’s padded snout. Grammaticus rammed another jab in under the chin of the helm and crushed the man’s larynx, rendering him mute.

Grammaticus briefly hoped that the larynx punch might also prove to be a killing strike, but the Lucifer was made of stronger stuff. His sabre was still drawn, and he slashed at Grammaticus. Grammaticus blocked the blade with the adamantium strips woven into the forearm sleeves of his bodyglove, and drove the palm of his right hand flat into the Lucifer’s breastplate, a tension-reflexive strike that the eldar called the ilthrad-taic, or ‘breathless touch’. The Lucifer lurched, his breastplate cracking. As he stumbled backwards, Grammaticus looped his left hand around the Lucifer’s right wrist, and whip-snapped it, forcing the sabre out of the man’s grip. It landed on the sand, a bare centimetre short of one of the ground-level sensor beams.

The Lucifer was not yet done. Grammaticus had been forced to close tightly, and the Lucifer head-butted him. Grammaticus lurched backwards, pain engulfing the centre of his face as the helm crunched into him. He staggered, and barely avoided an overhead beam. The Lucifer fumbled and drew his sidearm, his broken right wrist forcing him to use his left hand, across his body. As soon as the laspistol came clear of its holster, Grammaticus threw a spin kick that sent it skidding away into the night beyond the tent. He flinched as the tumbling weapon passed between two strands of the invisible security web.

This had to end, fast, before something got tripped. They were so tightly boxed in it was like fighting inside a spider’s web, and any wrong move would bring the spider pouncing down on them.

The Lucifer threw a steel-shod fist at Grammaticus, who ducked left, and chopped a passing body-blow into the Lucifer’s ribs. Grammaticus’s hands, trained and subcutaneously strengthened though they were, were already sore and bloody from punching armour. Grammaticus tried to get behind the Lucifer, but the Lucifer caught him and clenched him in a chokehold. It would have finished the fight, except that the Lucifer was struggling with just one working hand.

Grammaticus grunted and corded his neck muscles to ward against the Lucifer’s choke. Training and experience told him there was one clean way out of the hold, a body throw that would hurl his opponent up and over him. But his goggles saw a sensor beam running right in front of them. If he threw the Lucifer, his opponent’s body would land across the beam.

He kicked back hard instead, and the back of the Lucifer’s head struck against one of the taut, diagonal guy wires of the pavilion. The impact snapped the Lucifer’s head forward, and he involuntarily butted the back of Grammaticus’s skull. Grammaticus winced, but the choke-hold broke. He swung around, dazed by the blow, and shot out a straight-fingered jab.

The middle and index fingers of John Grammaticus’s right hand punched through the left lens of the Lucifer’s helmet and popped the eye behind it. The Lucifer, gurgling through his useless throat, fell backwards against the tent side and slid down in a heap.

Grammaticus paused, crouching low, ready to sprint away if the impact raised an alarm.

No alarm came.

Grammaticus began to straighten up.

The Lucifer flopped forwards, matter dripping like glue from his ruptured eye socket, and began to crawl across the sand.

Grammaticus realised the Lucifer was dragging himself towards one of the ground level beams, his armoured hand clawing out to break it.

He threw himself onto the Lucifer’s back, grappling with him, trying to pull the arm back. The Lucifer was monstrously strong. He dragged Grammaticus with him as he crawled across the sand, straining to reach the harmonic tripwire.

Vicing an elbow around the reaching, straining arm of the man underneath him, forcing it to pull short, Grammaticus drove another jab into the man’s spine. Something cracked. Still, the Lucifer heaved himself forwards, ten centimetres from the beam, five, the outstretched fingers shaking as they groped for the invisible cord.

Grammaticus saw the Lucifer’s discarded sabre lying on the sand beside them. He grabbed it, simultaneously wrenching the man’s reaching arm back and up with all of his strength. He hacked with the sabre, and took the Lucifer’s limb off mid-forearm.

The Lucifer convulsed under him. He reached out towards the beam with his stump, but he was well short of touching it. Grammaticus hastily clamped his left palm around the severed stump and compressed to stop the jetting arterial spray from hitting the beam and accomplishing what the Lucifer’s outstretched hand had not.

The armoured body under him went into spasm. Grammaticus pinned it down with his legs and kept the stump clenched tight. He felt the hot blood surging against his palm.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

The Lucifer trembled. Grammaticus put the tip of the sabre against the nape of his neck, in the tiny gap between helmet lip and collar armour, and pushed. The blade slid clean through the neck and bit deep into the sand beneath.

The Lucifer went still. Grammaticus waited until the pressure pulse against his palm finally ebbed away, and then let go of the stump. The truncated arm flopped onto the sand.

Grammaticus rose to his feet. The stench of blood in the night air was overpowering. Some of it, a little of it, was his own. His fists were swollen and mangled. Blood seeped from his battered face, and pain made him see double. His skull throbbed from the blows it had taken. He was sure his nose was broken.

He tried to steady himself. He felt sick. There was no chance of him continuing with his surveillance now. The Lucifer would be missed soon enough. Grammaticus had to get away, fast.

He moved away from the body, stepping over the tracery of sensor beams his goggles revealed, and stumbled away into the desert and the enfolding night.

Dinas Chayne paused. Alpharius was busy talking to Namatjira and the assembled lords about ‘warding countermeasures’. Chayne wasn’t listening any more. A signal light was flashing on the jet-black cuff of his suit.

He slipped back behind the gathering and made his exit through the service tent.

Outside, under the Nurthene stars, he put his helmet back on and triggered the vox.

‘Chayne. You signalled?’

‘Vital trace from Zeydus lost.’

‘Report his last position.’

‘West side of the pavilion, twenty metres north of the West Porch.’

‘Route two men to that position. From the reserve, not the ones stationed with the lord commander.’

‘I obey.’

Chayne moved off down the west side of the huge pavilion, carefully stepping over and around the light-beams his visor showed to him. He drew his sabre.

‘Trouble?’ a voice asked from behind him.

Chayne whirled. The tip of his blade made a tiny ching as it grazed against the chest plate of the Astartes who had appeared, miraculously, behind him.

The huge armoured warrior looked down at the sabre tip pressing against his chest armour.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Very quick. Dinas Chayne, isn’t it?’

‘You know me?’ Chayne asked.

‘The Legion likes to know everyone.’

‘You’re Omegon.’

The Alpha chuckled, his laughter carried oddly by his helmet speaker.

‘You’re good, Dinas Chayne. We heard this about you. Yes, I’m Omegon. I saw you leave the tent in a hurry.’

‘You saw me?’

‘I was watching you. You, you were watching me. Don’t pretend you weren’t now.’

‘I won’t.’

‘We love the same things, I think, Dinas.’

‘Such as?’

‘Caution. Secrecy. Stealth.’

‘How do you know my name?’ Chayne asked. ‘The names of the Lucifers are never published.’

‘Oh, come on, Dinas. Do we look like amateurs to you?’

‘No.’

‘You can put that away, I think,’ said Omegon.

Chayne withdrew his sabre. The tip had actually buried itself in the Astartes’s chest plate and it took a tug to remove it.

‘Any other man I’d have killed for less,’ said Omegon, looking down at the dent, ‘and, by the way, that’s all you get.’

Chayne shrugged.

‘Why did you leave the pavilion in such a hurry?’

‘One of my men is down.’

‘Let’s see, shall we?’

The Alpha Legionnaire led the way. Chayne realised, with alarm, that the Astartes was cheerfully striding through the serried sensor beams, breaking them without setting any of them off. Chayne followed, hopping and stepping over the harmonic tags.

‘Something on your mind?’ Omegon called over his shoulder.

‘You are invisible to our security lattice,’ Chayne replied.

‘Like I said, Dinas, do we look like amateurs to you?’ He paused. Two men were approaching, the two Lucifers Chayne had sent for. Chayne raised a hand to indicate they should stay back.

Omegon crouched down. ‘Is this your man?’ he asked.

Zeydus lay face down beside the tent wall in a patch of blood-stained sand. His left arm had been severed above the wrist, and he had been pinned to the ground with his own sword. The hilt of it was almost flat to the nape of Zeydus’s neck.

‘Yes,’ said Chayne. He bent down beside the Astartes.

‘Quite a fight,’ said Omegon, pointing idly. ‘His assailant crippled his vox to mute him. Right wrist is snapped, probably a disarming move.’

Omegon wrenched the sabre out and rolled the corpse. ‘Muted him too, larynx punch. The eye’s gone as well. Spine’s snapped, between the third and fourth vertebrae. See? Someone did a good job here.’

Chayne nodded. Zeydus had been one of his best.

‘I thought you Lucifers were meant to be tough?’

Chayne bridled.

The Astartes laughed. ‘Relax. I know you’re tough. I just meant, whoever did this, he did it with his bare hands.’

‘What?’

‘That blood there, on the vox bulge. That’s the assailant’s. He crushed it with his fist.’

‘You can read that?’

‘Rudimentary typing via optics. Yes, I can read that. We should take a sample for proper genic analysis. But on first look, I’d say your man was taken out by an unarmoured human.’

Chayne straightened up.

‘Tell me, Dinas,’ said Omegon, looking up at him, ‘who do you know that could do a thing like that?’

‘No one,’ Chayne replied. His reply was honest, but he had his suspicions.

All along the earthwork of the Imperial fortifications, huge watch fires crackled, and a million campfires twinkled between them. Overhead, a cloud-scudded night sky turned slowly, retrograde.

The night air was hot. Around their campfire, under their lank banner, the Carnivales were laughing, and passing the bottle.

‘So Lon made it?’ Kaido Pius asked.

Peto Soneka took a swig from the bottle that came by and nodded. ‘He did, like I said.’

‘Good old Lon,’ laughed Tinq, one of Pius’s bashaws. ‘Nothin’ll ever kill Lon.’

Soneka nodded, took another pull from the bottle, and handed it on. Behind him somewhere, men were playing loud Gnawa on hand drums and ghimbris. Someone had thrown incense flakes into the campfires, and sweetened the smoke.

‘Ah, but it’s good to see you, Peto,’ Puis said, taking a swig of liquor and then belching triumphantly.

‘You too, Kai,’ Soneka laughed.

‘What will you do?’ asked Bashaw Jenz.

Soneka shrugged. ‘I dunno. Find another outfit that can use a few officers? I’m not worried about myself. I just want to make sure Lon and the others get placed all right.’

‘Room for you all here,’ said Pius.

Soneka shook his head. ‘No room for two hets like me and you in this outfit, Kai,’ he chuckled. ‘We’d end up fighting to the death.’

‘Maybe,’ admitted Kaido Pius.

‘You know it.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You know it, Kai. Terra, you’re a good friend and generous to a fault. I thank you for that. But I’m gonna hold out, maybe rebuild the company, maybe petition the uxors for a new one. Fug, what is this we’re drinking?’

‘Jenz’s homebrew,’ Pius replied, regarding the bottle he was clutching groggily. ‘It’s basically pure alcohol–’

‘With a secret mix of herbs and spices,’ Jenz added. ‘My gene-da’s special recipe!’

‘You gene-da clearly had sanity issues,’ Soneka told him.

Pius snorted.

‘I’ve been meaning to catch up with Hurt,’ said Soneka. ‘I haven’t seen him since I got here. He’s around right? The Jokers are here?’

Pius nodded. ‘Yes, Bronzi’s here.’

‘The Jokers are camped at line ten south, I think,’ said one of the bashaws.

‘What about Dimi Shiban?’ Soneka asked, trying to make the question sound natural. ‘You seen him?’

No one had. Despite the liquor in his system and the blazing fires, Soneka felt cold.

‘Well, my friends,’ he said, getting to his feet unsteadily. ‘I have to drain now, secret mix or no secret mix.’

Pius and his men laughed and booed Soneka as he meandered away from the campfires in search of the latrine trench. The raucous Maghrebi rhythms of the Gnawa fell away behind him, and the hot, scented smoke thinned into cold, spare desert air.

‘That’s Soneka,’ said Roke, passing the night-vision scope to Boone.

Boone took a look for himself, training the scope down the embankment towards the field of campfires.

‘Yup. So he’s hanging out with Pius, is he?’

‘He’s got no one else to hang out with,’ said Roke sourly. ‘All of his Dancers are bones in the desert.’

‘We should have ourselves a word with Peto Soneka, I think,’ said Boone.

‘Why?’ Roke asked. ‘We’re watching Pius, aren’t we? Pius is the one you’ve got the twitch about.’

Boone shrugged. ‘I know. But Soneka was acting real funny last time I saw him, and now he turns up here, breaking bread with the very man we’re watching. I got a twitch, all right, Roke. Come on.’

Boone signalled to Pharon, and the three genewhips moved off quietly down the slope.

Soneka stood on the clapboards over the latrine pit, undoing his fly with his one good hand, wrinkling his nose at the rising stink of ammonia. He swayed as he urinated. Behind him, the Carnivales huddled around the crackling fires laughing and shouting. Amber smoke hazed up into the soft darkness of the backwards sky.

Something made Soneka look around. He buttoned up quickly, dearly wishing he could clear his swimming head.

A man was walking towards him along the edge of the latrine gutter, a silhouette backlit by the dancing campfires of the billet behind them.

‘Who’s that?’ Soneka called out. ‘Who is that?’

He hoped Kaido would hear him, but the men around the campfires were making too much noise.

‘How’s it going, Soneka?’ the man asked.

The man was in shadow, but his teeth glinted in the distant firelight as he smiled.

Soneka knew him. Pharon, one of the genewhip’s bulls.

‘I’m fine,’ said Soneka. He turned to walk away in the opposite direction and found Roke blocking his path.

‘What is this?’ Soneka asked, though he was sure he knew all too well. He began to sober up very quickly.

‘You and Pius, you’re tight?’ asked Roke.

‘Of course,’ said Soneka warily. ‘We’ve known each other a long time.’

‘You know him well, then?’

‘Yes,’ said Soneka. The line of questioning was not going where he had expected it would. He braced himself for whatever verbal trap they were trying to lead him into.

‘So you know about him and Uxor Rukhsana, then?’ asked Pharon.

‘What about them?’

‘You know,’ Roke leered.

‘Kai and Rukhsana?’ That almost made Soneka laugh. ‘You’ve got that wrong. If they were carrying on, we’d all know about it.’

‘Why?’ asked Roke.

‘Because… because if Kaido Pius had nailed something that fine, he’d be bragging about it to everyone.’

‘Maybe Kaido Pius isn’t who he seems,’ Pharon said, coming in closer behind Soneka. ‘We met Kaido Pius earlier today, at least, we think we did.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Soneka. ‘Have you boys been at the homebrew tonight?’

‘What’s going on with Pius?’ Roke asked, unamused.

‘What’s he into?’ asked Pharon. ‘You know him. What’s he got involved in? Are you involved too? Is that why you’re being so evasive?’

‘I’m… I’m not.’

‘What’s the story, Soneka? How come you survived Visages when every other bastard there got cut to ribbons? Someone looking out for you? Someone tip you off?’

‘Listen, you–’ Soneka began.

‘What’s all this stuff about a body?’ Roke asked. Soneka sank his shoulders, as if about to cave and confess to something. As Roke leaned in, Soneka caught him by the arm and pushed him into the latrine pit. There was a splash followed by furious, spluttered curses. Pharon lunged at Soneka, and took Soneka’s left elbow in the teeth for his trouble.

Soneka began to run. Pharon came after him, hurling as much abuse as his floundering partner down in the pit.

Soneka scrambled up the embankment in the dark, and found the billet road. Torch beams chased him.

‘Stay right there, Soneka!’ a voice called out. Soneka knew it. Genewhip Boone. He started to run away from the beams and heard the crack of a laspistol. A bright puff of dust lit up the ground near his feet.

‘Next one goes in your head, Soneka!’ Boone yelled. ‘Stay right where you are!’

Soneka didn’t slow down. He sprinted along the billet road, looking for cover. Blazing lights suddenly came on and blinded him. He skidded to a halt, shielding his eyes against the glare. He heard the rumble of a turbine engine. A door opened.

‘Get in!’ a voice yelled.

Soneka blinked. Behind the headlights, he saw Bronzi glaring at him from behind the wheel of a battered staff speeder.

‘Just get in, Peto,’ Bronzi repeated, ‘for fug’s sake.’

Soneka got in and the speeder ripped away into the darkness, leaving the pursuing genewhips far behind.

Eight

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, continuous

‘Where are we going?’ asked Soneka after a while. Bronzi was driving in silence, steering away from the Army billets and out along a crude track that ran into the scrubland south of the terracotta palace.

‘Bronzi?’

‘Don’t ask questions, Peto,’ Bronzi replied.

‘I think I will. This–’

‘Is bigger than you, Soneka, so shut the fug up. You’re supposed to be dead.’

‘You don’t seem too delighted to discover I’m not.’

‘Of course I am,’ said Bronzi. ‘You’re my tightest friend. Of course I’m pleased you’re not dead. But this complicates things.’

‘What things?’

‘Just shut up, all right? Just consider this to be your old mate rescuing you from the unpleasant attentions of the genewhips.’

‘How did you know they were onto me?’

‘Because I’ve been shadowing you all day.’

They left the established track, and went cross country, following dry watercourses between the dusty tels. Bronzi ramped up the speeder’s lift. The vehicle’s main lamps picked out the thorn scrub and dunes in their path in a frosty glare. The further they got from the lights and fires of the vast Imperial encampment, the bigger and blacker the night sky became, and the lonelier it felt.

After twenty minutes, Bronzi decelerated, and aimed the speeder along a deep wadi. At the end of an arid creek stood an old ruin, a place that might have once been a temple or, just as easily, a bier for livestock. Someone had lit a fire inside.

Bronzi stopped the speeder and killed the drive.

‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Follow me. Don’t be an idiot. I can protect you, but only so far. Please bear that in mind.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying they wanted to kill you to keep things tidy. I asked them to give you a chance. So this is my reputation on the line, along with your life. Don’t fug this up for either of us by being stupid.’

They walked across the sand from the speeder to the ruin. Soneka could smell fuel bricks burning. The flame light inside the place flickered and danced the shadows.

They went inside. A small fire of fuel bricks and dry thorn sheaves was blazing in the middle of the baked earthen floor. A man sat beside the fire on a lump of tumbled stone, cleaning his fingernails with a dagger.

‘This is Thaner,’ said Bronzi.

Thaner looked up at them, his face expressing very little interest towards either of them. He wore the uniform of a bajolur in the Outremars. His face was blemished down the left side by an old las-burn. Even without the burn, his face would have been mean and tight.

‘You took your sweet time,’ he said.

‘Yes, well, I got it done,’ Bronzi replied.

‘You’re Soneka?’ the man asked, still fiddling the tip of his blade along his fingernails.

‘Yes.’

‘You came out of Visages alive?’

‘Yes.’

The man pursed his lips. ‘That makes you either tough as a bastard or very lucky.’

‘Little of both, maybe.’

Thaner rose to his feet and sheathed his dagger. He brushed dust off the front of his uniform.

‘I’m going to ask you a few questions,’ he told Soneka. ‘You give me the right answers, things will be thoroughly civilised. You give me the wrong ones, no amount of tough bastardy or luck is going to see you out of here.’

Soneka smiled. ‘Did they change the rules? I don’t remember there ever being a time when an Outremar bajolur got to threaten a geno het like that.’

‘Yes, they changed the rules, all right,’ said Thaner. ‘Trust me.’

‘I have no reason to trust you,’ Soneka replied.

‘Yes, you do,’ said Bronzi. ‘Me.’

The fire crackled.

‘I’m waiting,’ said Soneka.

‘Who have you told?’ Thaner asked. ‘About the body at CR345?’

‘No one.’

‘Come on, you’re not fooling me. Who have you told?’

‘No one,’ Soneka insisted. ‘Not even my men, the ones I got out of Visages with. Bronzi knew. I knew. Everyone else who knew about it died at Visages. Except Dimi Shiban, and I don’t know what happened to him.’ Soneka looked at Bronzi. ‘What happened to Dimi, Hurt? You’d be the one to know that. What happened to him?’

Bronzi stared at the floor and didn’t answer.

‘So you haven’t told anyone, that’s what you’re saying?’ asked Thaner.

Soneka nodded.

‘What about Uxor Mu?’

Soneka shrugged. ‘All right, yes. I spoke to her about it when I got in yesterday. But she already knew.’

‘Did she?’

‘Bronzi and I voxed her from CR345 and–’

‘When you told her,’ Thaner cut in, ‘did she act like she knew about it?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ Thaner nodded.

Soneka cleared his throat. The flickering fire was beginning to play tricks on him. He kept tensing, as if seeing things out of the corner of his eyes, shadows in the shadows around the edges of the ruin. There was something – someone – out there.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why she decided to deny it. I assumed she was confused, or had her own agenda. I–’

‘She denied it because she didn’t know about it,’ said Thaner.

‘But Bronzi spoke to her. I heard her voice.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Thaner.

‘I did!’

‘You really didn’t,’ said Bronzi quietly. He put his hand on Soneka’s arm. ‘It was an intercept. We weren’t speaking to Mu at all.’

‘That’s not possible,’ said Soneka. ‘She used the codes, the encrypts, all the–’

‘They’re way ahead of us,’ said Bronzi. ‘Peto, they know all the codes. They listen to us.’

Soneka turned to look at Bronzi. ‘Who’s “they”, Hurt? What the hell is this?’

Bronzi glanced at Thaner.

Thaner shook his head.

‘One of you had better start making sense,’ Soneka growled.

‘Peto…’ Bronzi warned.

‘I’m serious with this, Hurt! Someone explain this now. What happened to the body? Did you deliver it?’

‘Yes,’ said Bronzi. ‘I made the rendezvous. I handed the body back to the people who’d made it.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ snapped Soneka. ‘I don’t know what the fug that means, Bronzi. What happened to Shiban? Where is he? Is he dead?’

Bronzi stared at Soneka. There was a hard look in his eyes. ‘He was dead before he got on the transport,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what that means either,’ Soneka growled.

‘That wound he took, the shrapnel wound here,’ Bronzi said, gesturing towards his throat. ‘Some of it was bone, Nurthene bone.’

‘I know. That happens,’ said Soneka.

‘You don’t know, Peto,’ said Bronzi, uncomfortable. ‘It was in him. It was in him and it was just a matter of time before it turned him. They knew that. They shot him. They would have had to anyway.’

‘You keep saying they. Who the fug is they?’

‘We don’t have to tell you anything we don’t w–’ Thaner began to say.

Peto Soneka had always been quick. The snub-nosed laspistol was in his hand and aimed at Thaner before either he or Bronzi had a chance to react.

‘Start explaining this mess now,’ Soneka ordered. ‘Right now.’

‘Oh, Peto, come on–’ Bronzi moaned.

‘You shut up. Don’t think I won’t aim this at you too.’

‘Put it away,’ said Thaner.

‘I want answers first,’ said Soneka.

Thaner sighed. Keeping his hands clearly open, so Soneka could follow what he was doing, he reached down to his midriff and untucked his tunic. He pulled the garment up, along with the vest beneath, and exposed the corded muscle of his right hip. Soneka could see the brand mark quite clearly.

‘Oh… shit,’ Soneka murmured.

‘The body was one of our people,’ said Thaner, lowering his tunic. ‘It got recovered from the field before our retrieval teams could locate it. We needed it back.’

‘It was dressed as one of my men,’ said Soneka.

‘It was a Hort sergeant called Lyel Wilk,’ said Thaner, matter-of-factly. ‘He was operating as one of your men.’

Soneka had a million questions, and knew every single one of them had an ugly answer. None of the questions would form in his mouth. He was struck dumb by the sensation of the universe as he knew it grinding out of joint around him. Since that bloody dawn when Visages had been sacked, and most especially since his meeting with Honen Mu the night before, total dislocation had been looming. Now everything he trusted tore away and revealed nothing: no answers, no explanations, no single thing he could trust or recognise.

Simple panic seized him. He aimed the pistol at Thaner’s head and squeezed the trigger. Something crunched into him from the side and the shot went wild as he fell. The something was Bronzi. Bronzi had punched him.

Before Soneka could begin to process that information, Thaner had kicked the pistol out of his hand. It skittered away into the crawling shadows. Thaner put a second kick into Soneka’s gut to keep him down. It was a brutal blow. The air crashed out of Soneka’s lungs and he felt a deep, internal pain that could only be organs rupturing.

‘He’s no use to us,’ Soneka heard Thaner tell Bronzi. Thaner drew his dagger.

‘Don’t!’ Bronzi warned.

‘He’s a liability. We can’t use him.’

Gasping, agonised, Soneka writhed. He saw Thaner coming towards him, dagger held low for the old jab and twist.

‘We’ve taken him this far,’ said a voice. ‘Why don’t we show him the rest? If he still objects, you can put that in his heart, Thaner.’

Soneka’s lungs began to work. He sucked in air, choking, tears streaming down his cheeks.

‘Peto?’ Bronzi was calling. ‘Peto, look at me. Peto?’

Soneka looked up. Bronzi had pulled up his own shirt. His right hip was a good deal more upholstered in flesh than Thaner’s, but the brand was exactly the same.

‘Oh glory,’ Soneka wheezed. ‘No… not you too, Hurt…’

‘It’s the mark of the hydra,’ the voice said. ‘It’s the mark we bestow upon our friends, the friends we can trust.’

Soneka heard heavy footsteps crunch across the hard-baked floor towards him. A shadow fell across him, blocking out the light of the fire.

Even in silhouette, Soneka recognised it. An Astartes in full plate.

‘Alpha Legion…’ Soneka whispered.

‘Exactly.’ The Alpha Legionnaire knelt down over Soneka. ‘I believe you’re a good man, Peto – honest and trustworthy. I think we could be friends. I have no wish to kill you, but I will, without compunction, if you maintain this stance of resistance.’

‘Then stop lying to me,’ Soneka moaned, his voice shrunk by pain.

‘I’m not, Peto.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Alpharius.’

Peto Soneka started to laughed. It was a ragged, painful sound. ‘Lies, lies, more lies. I know for a fact that Lord Alpharius is in the grand pavilion right now, meeting with Lord Commander Namatjira. You’re lying to me, so you might as well kill me now and get it over with.’

‘Give me your blade, Thaner,’ said the Astartes.

‘For the prosecution of Mon Lo, I will require full access to, and use of, your astrotelepaths, sir,’ said Alpharius.

‘Why?’ asked Lord Namatjira.

The assembly was seated at the low couches, as servants brought in the feast. Namatjira marvelled at the nimble finesse with which the Astartes manoeuvred food into their mouths using their huge gauntlets. Despite their bulk and crude size, these beings were dextrous and refined.

‘Psychic power is a key weapon in denying the Nurthene menace,’ said Pech.

‘This menace…’ Namatjira said. ‘You have spoken already of this force of Chaos, but I fear it sounds like dark age nonsense and superstition.’

Alpharius smiled, expertly shucking a piece of shellfish that was dwarfed by his motorised glove. He slid the pink flesh into his mouth. ‘You have seen it at work, my lord. How do you account for it? Lord Wilde insists on referring to it as magick.’

‘It’s not magick,’ said Herzog.

‘And yet it is,’ said Pech. ‘It is the very quantity that mankind has called magick since the very start of his history.’

‘What Ingo and Thias mean,’ said Alpharius, ‘is that there is a primal power in our galaxy that defies comprehension. It is foul and it is powerful, and it exists sidelong to our frame of reference. It resides in the warp.’

‘And this, you say, is Chaos?’ asked Namatjira.

‘We use the word Chaos, but that term is very imprecise. It is a primordial force, and may be used by those who have fallen under its influence.’

‘You’ve seen it before?’

‘Yes, my lord, once or twice. It is a cosmic bane, a toxic effect that flows freely in some places. It subverts the mind and the will, it corrupts.’

‘Will it corrupt us?’ asked Namatjira.

‘Of course not!’ Alpharius laughed, shelling another piece of seafood. ‘It is not some kind of plague. But it is deeply ingrown in the Nurthene society. It gives them access to many skills that we would consider occult. Psykers are our best defence against Chaos. They will allow us to extinguish the enemy’s advantage here. For the same reason, I would like the Geno Chiliad to be deployed at the front of our assault when it comes.’

‘For what same reason?’ asked Namatjira.

‘The Chiliad uxors are rudimentary psykers. That will lend us an advantage.’

‘So be it,’ said Namatjira. He looked at Alpharius. ‘I’m trusting you, lord primarch. I’m trusting you to make a clean fist of this debacle.’

‘Your trust is not misplaced, sir,’ replied Alpharius.

Dinas Chayne appeared behind Lord Namatjira, and whispered in his ear.

Namatjira nodded. ‘My apologies, lord primarch. Much as I find this conversation fascinating, I must withdraw now. There are matters to attend to.’

Alpharius nodded. ‘I understand. I too, must go. Omegon has signalled me. Thank you for this feast, sir. It was a true and warm welcome.’

They rose. A hush fell.

‘Everyone,’ Namatjira called out, ‘everyone, please continue to enjoy this evening. Let nothing spoil your hard-won relaxation. My Lord Alpharius and I must withdraw to consider the days ahead. Eat and drink to your surfeit!’

Approval ran around the vast tent.

‘It has been my pleasure to meet you all,’ said Alpharius. ‘I am convinced that, together, we will finish this compliance in under a week. Ladies, gentlemen, feast well.’

He raised his cup and drank deeply.

A servant took Alpharius’s empty cup from him. ‘Lord commander?’ Alpharius nodded graciously to Namatjira.

‘I have learned a great deal tonight, Lord Alpharius. My view of the cosmic order has been altered. I hope we may speak further on this subject.’

‘Of course.’

‘Terra rest you and the Emperor protect you,’ said Namatjira.

They left the pavilion in opposite directions. The carousing continued behind them.

By the south porch, Namatjira exited into the cold night. His Lucifers were waiting for him.

‘Report,’ said Namatjira. ‘Have you uncovered anything on Uxor Rukhsana?’

‘No,’ said Chayne. ‘But there is definitely a foreign agent at work in our midst. The spy has slain one of my men, right outside the pavilion. He’s too close and too good. We need to purge our ranks at once.’

Namatjira nodded. ‘See to it. You have my full sanction. By the way, what did you make of the Astartes, Dinas?’

Dinas Chayne looked back at his lord and commander coldly. ‘Every single one of them was lying,’ he said.

At the west porch, Alpharius, Pech and Herzog strode out into the night. Omegon was waiting for them. He had dismissed the perimeter guards so they could be alone. The four hulking armoured figures fell into step and began to cross the open dunes towards their lander in the cool, violet darkness.

‘How was I?’ asked the Astartes who had played the role of Alpharius all night.

‘Imperial,’ Pech replied.

‘Masterful,’ said Herzog. ‘But then, you do have a certain advantage, Omegon. Besides, I think you enjoy playing the part of primarch.’

‘Don’t we all?’ chuckled Pech.

‘So, Sheed,’ said Omegon, glancing at the Astartes who had worn the name Omegon in his place that evening. ‘What’s the story?’

Sheed Ranko, master of the Alpha Legion’s Terminator elite, was an especially large Astartes, who doubled well for both Omegon and Lord Alpharius in diplomatic circumstances. He shrugged his massive, plated shoulders. ‘Grammaticus was here, trying to spy on the meeting. He took out a Lucifer Black.’

‘He’s good, then?’ asked Omegon.

‘He’s very good,’ Herzog assured.

‘But he’s hurt,’ said Ranko, ‘busted up. I typed his blood.’

‘Get a match?’ asked Pech.

‘Yes. Konig Heniker. Apparently, one of the Army spies. Deep cover agent, specialist.’

‘He’s Grammaticus?’

Ranko nodded. ‘I think so. He’s a sly one, and very capable. The Lucifers are scared of him, and very little scares those wily bastards. We have to find him, and before they do. I’ve told Shere to hunt for him.’

‘What are we waiting for?’ asked Herzog.

‘Where’s Alpharius?’ Omegon asked.

‘Out in the dune wastes,’ Sheed Ranko replied. ‘Tidying up another loose end.’

Nine

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, just before dawn the next day

By sheer strength of will and the straining muscle power of his arms, John Grammaticus forced open the jaws of the dragon that was swallowing him and tumbled out of its furnace maw onto the cold sand.

He was too weak to fight any more, but that was all right. The dragon had gone away, as all dream things do when a person wakes.

Grammaticus lay shivering for a while in the basin behind the lonely tel. The injuries he’d taken the night before were worse than he had realised. His hands were torn raw, and most of his fingers refused to bend, either because they were too swollen, or because they were broken. His forearms were striped with blue bruises from deflecting the Lucifer’s sabre blows, despite his sleeve armour. His face was sore and throbbing, swelling out around the bridge of his shattered nose and half shutting his eyes. His nostrils were black with caked blood and the back of his head was a contusion too tender to be touched.

He’d been in pain the night before, but he’d also been warm, and fuelled by adrenaline. Sleeping rough had reduced his core temperature and robbed him of every sensation except nausea and aching hurt.

After his confrontation with the Lucifer, Grammaticus had fled into the desert. There had been no sense or safety in heading for the terracotta palace. Grammaticus knew he was now being hunted by at least two formidable enemies, the Alpha Legion and the lord commander’s companion retinue. He’d found a place to shelter out in the dune sea, and had gone to sleep speculating on how best to resume his mission.

However, in the freezing dawn, shivering and hurt, Grammaticus was starting to believe his mission was no longer viable. What little chance there might have been to redeem himself and finish his work had probably vanished. He feared he was too hurt and too compromised to risk continuing. Perhaps it was time to abandon the mission and get out. The Cabal would just have to find another way of accomplishing its designs.

He got up, unsteadily. Thin light was beginning to pour over the horizon as dawn sliced its way into the sky. It would be bone-chill for another hour or so, then the sun would rise fully, like a bleach spot on pink blotting paper, and the land would bake. And then he would be dead.

But John Grammaticus had not fled blindly into the empty desert quarter. He read charts as well as he read lips. Before immersing himself in the Mon Lo offensive, he’d spent three days reconnoitring the desert edge twenty kilometres south of the palace. He’d methodically dug in contingency bolt holes, each one ready to play its part in whatever exit strategy he might be forced to use.

Yes, he decided, it was time to go now, more than time. He’d done his best, and he’d failed. He’d been a fool to stay on as long as he had, especially after the business with the dragon. His expectations had reduced to three, simple possibilities. He could escape, alive, and attempt to persuade the Cabal his failure on Nurth was not an eliminating offence. He could escape, and hide from the Cabal for as long as his wits held out. Or he could die in the desert. The Cabal was not the forgiving master it may have once been, but the first option seemed the best, nevertheless. He prayed he was still useful enough as a toy to be spared.

He walked west for a kilometre, glanding a little boost to wake himself up and sharpen his senses. The chemical boost helped numb the throb in his arms, his knuckles and his skull. As his mind cleared, he took stock, and verified his position using landmarks that he had patiently memorised during his reconnoitre: a pile of six, flat stones; a pronghorn skull, decades old; a patch of scrub that looked like a map of the old Crimea.

In just under fifteen minutes, he found the pool.

It lay at the bottom of an especially deep wadi, a slick of leftover winter rain that the long summer had not yet quite evaporated. The pool was less than a metre deep at its centre, and the water had reduced down to a brackish, brown silt. It was unpotable, but pure enough to clean himself with. He winced as the mineral salts in the water burned and sterilised his wounds.

He groaned through gritted teeth as he sluiced the liquid against the back of his skull with his wounded hands.

The first rays of the rising sun began to stab into the cold blackness of the gulley like laser spears. Grammaticus gingerly traced the wadi wall around to a place marked with two lumps of onyx. He dug the sand away clumsily with his damaged hands and pulled out the kitbag he’d buried there.

It was a standard Army clip-lock satchel, woven from waterproof canvas. Inside were two litre bottles of rehydration fluid, a pack of ration bars which he began to eat immediately, a medicae capsule, a collapsible knife, a laspistol with two spare charge clips, three chemical flares, an autolocator, a clean bodyglove, rolled up around a plastek-wrapped sheaf of documents, and a write-enabled data-slate.

He sat down, munching on one of the ration bars and taking the odd swig of fluid from one of the bottles. He sorted through the documents: two pre-prepared alternate identities, along with two sets of blanks that he could make up quickly using the genic traces loaded into the data-slate.

He ran through one of his exit strategies. The food and fluid would get him as far as his next cache of supplies, eight kilometres south. Then he’d use the autolocator to call in a rescue ship from the fleet. The flares would help the ship find him. They’d be all too keen to pick up a precious Geno Five-Two hetman lost in the desert edge, and that was precisely what one of his pre-prepared documents said he was. He’d been careful to make up a set using the ident of a het missing and lost during the last few weeks. Peto Albari Soneka, het of the Dancers, missing in action since the CR345 raid. Grammaticus idly practised a Feodosiyac accent. He could carry that off, no problem.

By the time anyone realised he wasn’t Peto Soneka, he’d have vanished behind two or three other stolen identities and become lost in the data labyrinth of the fleet. Then, what? A berth on a supply vessel heading towards the core regions? Something simple. Something unfussy. A hundred ships came and went every day, servicing and supplying the huge demands of the advancing 670th Fleet. He’d be gone on one of them before anyone knew it, and on some backwater colony, ninety light years away, he’d step off and disappear forever. Forever.

He thought about using the medicae capsule to tend his injuries, then considered that dirty wounds would reinforce any survivor story he attempted to weave.

Grammaticus sighed and began to repack his bag. He tried not to think about Rukhsana Saiid any more. Gahet, that old bastard, had been quite right. That had been a wrong step. It hadn’t impaired his mission so much as it had impaired her chances of survival. It was likely that she would pay the price for his disappearance. Once again, he despised his own weakness. He had used her so badly, so knowingly, and yet the sad truth of it was that he had genuine feelings for her. Perhaps, once he was back in the fleet and functioning under a new identity, he might arrange to have her recalled. He’d get her out and take her with him. Of course, that risked exposure… perhaps too much exposure.

‘I am a coward,’ he told the desert out loud, tears on his cheeks.

‘You are,’ the desert replied.

Grammaticus leapt to his feet, his heart pounding. He fought to get his broken fingers to take hold of the laspistol, and aimed it.

At nothing.

He snatched around, chasing the source of the voice, the pistol braced.

+Show yourself!+ he sent.

‘I’m right here, John.’

He looked down at the stained pool. The Cabal was using it as a flect. It wasn’t Gahet this time. This time, they’d sent Slau Dha.

‘You’ve been quiet a long time,’ Grammaticus said boldly, despite the fact that the vision of Slau Dha terrified him. ‘I called for you, and no one answered. Now you come?’

Slau Dha nodded. His reflection was extraordinarily pure, like a hologram cast up from the pool’s water. The autarch gazed at Grammaticus through the slits of his glinting, bone-white helm. He was as slender as he was tall. The white feathers of his giant wings caught the advancing light. A few metres in front of the towering white figure stood G’Latrro, Slau Dha’s little xshesian interpolator.

‘What do you want, lord?’ Grammaticus asked.

Slau Dha murmured something.

‘He wants to know why you’re giving up, when we’re so close to our goal,’ G’Latrro translated into Common Ppfif’que, quite unnecessarily. Grammaticus spoke the eldar tongue well enough.

‘I’m compromised. You must understand that. I can’t get any closer. I can’t do what you want me to do.’

Slau Dha did not reply. He continued to stare at Grammaticus.

‘You are terminating your mission?’ asked the little xshesian in Ppfif’que.

Grammaticus switched to the eldar tongue, ignoring the hunched insectoid and looking directly at the autarch. ‘I said, I can’t–’

‘He knows what you said, John,’ said G’Latrro. The xshesian had to move its mouthparts rapidly and nimbly to approximate human speech sounds. ‘He thought the Cabal had trained you well. Briefed you fully. Shared its Acuity with you.’

‘You did, but–’

‘He thought you understood how vital this gambit was.’

‘I do, but–’

‘Why are you giving up, John?’

Grammaticus shook his head and tossed the laspistol back onto his pack. ‘I’m no good to you. This situation is no longer viable. I’ve tried to get close to the Alpha Legion, and I can’t. They’re too wary. You should deploy another agent, and try elsewhere. Another Legion, perhaps?’

‘Are you planning for us now, John Grammaticus?’ G’Latrro chose not to translate Slau Dha’s question. Instead, he relayed it straight. The question was simple, but framed in the eldar accusative form, it felt like a death threat.

‘I would not presume, lord,’ said Grammaticus, shuddering.

‘Two years, sidereal, that’s all we have before it starts,’ G’Latrro said, relaying Slau Dha’s whispers. ‘A decade, maximum, before it ends. This is our window. Our one chance to turn your feckless race into an instrument of good.’

‘You’ve never liked humans much, have you, “honoured lord”?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘Mon-keigh,’ the autarch said, contemptuously.

‘You are weed-species, afterbirth, runts,’ the xshesian glossed.

‘No, tell me what you really think,’ Grammaticus said.

Slua Dha muttered. ‘You are the blight of the galaxy, and you will be its doom or its deliverer,’ G’Latrro relayed.

‘I do so love our conversations,’ Grammaticus smiled. ‘It’s so rewarding to speak to a being who perceives my entire species as a momentary aberration in the galaxy’s evolution.’

‘Aren’t you, just?’ asked Slau Dha, in thickly accented Low Gothic.

‘You know what? Fug you, you uptight eldar bastard. Piss off and hide in whatever corner of the cosmos you deem safe. Leave me alone. Stop flecting up and abusing me.’

Grammaticus spat. His spittle landed in the pool and caused a ripple that spread out and broke around Slau Dha’s armoured shins.

‘John?’ asked G’Latrro. ‘Whatever made you think he was flecting himself here?’

Grammaticus backed away quickly, stammering. ‘No, no… no!’ The autarch took a step towards him, past the cowed xshesian, roiling the pool’s sediment with his feet.

Grammaticus lunged for his pack, but the eldar, as had been the case since the start of time, was far too fast. A blur of white, it reached him in a second and seized him by the throat. Long, bone-armoured fingers bit into Grammaticus’s neck and pinned him down.

‘Please! Please! Aghh!’

Slau Dha tightened his grip on Grammaticus’s throat.

‘Do not plead, mon-keigh.’

‘Ghnn! You came… you came here in person?’

‘Yes, John,’ said G’Latrro, coming up behind them. ‘Lord Slau Dha came here in person because it is that important.’

‘Two years, that’s all we have,’ said the insectoid, relaying the white giant’s almost inaudible whispers. ‘Two years, John. The Cabal has seen this clearly, compounding our farseer and visionist talents. Even the drahendra have seen this, and you know how slowly they move.’

Grammaticus nodded. The drahendra was the most silent and inscrutable faction represented in the Cabal. Sentient, energised dust, virtually extinct, the last of them existed as membrane skins around dying gas giants. Even they perceived the rapid reshaping of universal destiny.

‘We’re all going to die. Only mon-keigh kind can alter the pattern.’

‘I wish he’d stop calling us that,’ Grammaticus told G’Latrro, rubbing his bruised throat.

‘It will be called a heresy,’ Slau Dha replied through his interpolator. The insectoid’s mouthparts twirled feverishly. ‘It will halt your species’ growth in its tracks. Even your glorious Emperor will be lost in it.’

‘Lost?’

‘He will die, John.’

‘Oh glory. You’re sure?’

‘It has been farseen. He will die forever. And his eternal death is the one thing we wish to prevent. Tiny thing though he is, you Emperor is a pivotal player in this.’

‘And Horus?’

‘A monster. Not yet, but soon. A monster to engulf all monsters.’

‘Can’t you stop it? Engage with another Legion, perhaps?’

‘John, we have tested them all, one by one. The Dark Angels first, more than a century ago. There is too much inherent corruption in them. The gene-seed weakness in all of the older Legions has been exacerbated by the need to keep them up to strength for the Great Crusade. They have all, one way or another, weakened themselves. They are vulnerable. But the Alpha Legion, the last, the latest… they are still pure enough. Green, receptive to change.’

‘Surely…?’

‘John, listen to him,’ said G’Latrro. ‘He let the Cabal into the Black Library, so they could read this truth. He broke all the ancient edicts to make that happen. It is predetermined. The Cabal has exhausted hundreds of other agents trying to recruit the Astartes.’

‘Human agents?’

‘Yes, John. Human agents. Agents of all species. John, the Alpha Legion is our last hope. They are latecomers. Their gene-seed has not been diluted by the Terran and Alien Wars. John, we must–’

Slau Dha spoke, cutting his interpolator off. ‘Your first death,’ he said, speaking in the eldar tongue, knowing Grammaticus had no need of an interpreter.

‘My first death,’ Grammaticus answered in kind. ‘Anatol Hive. I never asked you to save me, autarch. You chose to do that, remember? You chose to re-sleeve me in flesh and make me your agent. Don’t you dare start calling in favours that I never asked for.’

There was a long silence.

‘I must, John,’ Slau Dha replied.

He began to whisper again.

‘This is no longer about the mission,’ G’Latrro translated. ‘The mission is still vital, but another factor has entered the scheme, an unpredicted one.’

‘What?’ asked Grammaticus.

‘It is something previously invisible to the Cabal’s Acuity. The Cabal chose Nurth as an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the effects of the Primordial Annihilator to the Alpha Legion. It turns out it is, perhaps, too much of a demonstration.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Grammaticus. ‘What do you mean?’

‘This is why I have come in person,’ said Slau Dha quietly.

‘We have lately discovered,’ said G’Latrro, ‘that the Nurthene possess a Black Cube.’

Ten

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, later that morning

Chased by her aides, Honen Mu strode out into the bright sunlight that was bleaching one of the terracotta palace’s wide inner yards. She walked like she always walked, as if she was late for something important and nothing would stop her.

Other uxors, along with senior hets, were gathering in the yard, chatting in small groups or reading data reports. The morning briefing with Sri Vedt and Major General Dev was due to start in half an hour, and expectations were high. With the full strength of an Astartes taskforce now in play, commanded by the Legion’s primarch, no less, everyone anticipated a swift escalation in operations, a major assault, most likely, and soon. It was common knowledge that the lord commander was entirely pissed off with the Mon Lo theatre, and expected the Alpha Legion to take it quickly and cleanly, and so end his troubles.

Her aides were all gabbling at her. The day was bright, but cold, thanks to a blustery wind blowing in off the desert. The sky seemed to be moving backwards even more slowly than before. The vapour stain above Mon Lo was as dark and immobile as ever, but the screaming seemed to have diminished a little, or had at least been baffled by the desert wind. The sound lurked at the edge of hearing, like tinnitus.

Honen Mu came to a halt. ‘Shut up,’ she snapped with her ’cept, and her aides shut up. ‘One at a time now,’ she instructed.

‘Two attempted incursions along the earthwork overnight,’ said Tiphaine. ‘One at CR412 around midnight, repulsed by a contingent of the Outremars after a patchy firefight, the other at CR416, seen off quickly by the Knaves Company.’

‘Losses?’

‘None on either occasion, uxor,’ said Jhani.

‘Force estimations?’ Mu asked.

‘Both incursions were made by nurthadtre raiders,’ Leeli said, ‘numbering no more than thirty individuals. Lightly armed skiritai units, desert rogues, each force probably led by an echvehnurth elite. They melted back into the desert as quickly as they could.’

‘They are testing our lines, probing for weaknesses,’ said Jhani.

Honen Mu looked at the girl snidely. Jhani hung her head. ‘Which, of course, you had already appreciated, uxor,’ she murmured.

‘Anything else?’ asked Mu.

‘There are sketchy reports that a spy was driven away from the pavilion last night,’ said Tiphaine.

‘Define “driven away”,’ said Mu.

‘An insurgent agent got close to the pavilion during the lord commander’s meeting with the Astartes,’ said Nefferti. ‘He was discovered, and fled, probably into the desert.’

‘This is unconfirmed?’ asked Mu.

‘It is simply a rumour. The lord commander’s staff seem unwilling to admit that such an outrage occurred.’

‘No wonder, an agent getting that close…’ said Mu.

‘The rumour also suggests that said agent may have taken out a Lucifer Black,’ said Erikah.

Honen Mu redirected her gaze at Erikah. The girl did not shy away from Mu’s hard stare. Mu liked Erikah’s strength. Far younger than Tiphaine, Mu’s senior aide, the youngest of them all, Erikah showed great promise. She reminded Mu of herself: unabashed, strong, wilful.

‘The enemy agent killed a Lucifer?’ Mu asked.

Erikah nodded. ‘Right outside the tent wall and no one inside heard anything. Of course, the lord commander’s staff is denying this, but you know how word gets around.’

‘I happen to know a bajolur in the Outremars who said he saw the body being whisked away,’ said Leeli.

I can imagine how you happen to ‘know’ the bajolur, thought Mu. ‘Shit,’ she whispered. ‘A Lucifer got burned?’

‘Though the lord commander’s staff has refused to comment on the rumour,’ said Tiphaine, ‘operational security has been beefed up to Code Order Six as of midnight last night.’

Mu nodded. Code Order Six was the highest of the standing security impositions.

‘We have learned that the lord commander has authorised the Lucifer Black companions to conduct a full security purge on all Army units,’ said Jhani. ‘Everyone should make themselves available for interrogation by the companions at short notice. The lord commander is clearly keen to root out the spy in our midst before any assault begins.’

‘That’s exactly what I would do,’ Mu sighed. I need to clear things up before that happens, she thought. I need to clean the Chiliad ranks quickly and effectively, before the damn Lucifers find our regiment wanting. I know in my bones that a weakness resides within us. Rukhsana, Rukhsana, that silly bitch, she’s hiding something, and I will find it before our entire Old Hundred is shamed and disgraced.

She looked up at the sky, and watched it slide back on itself, slowly and unnaturally, like a pict feed of ice collapsing into melt water played in reverse. The desert wind tugged at their cloaks.

‘Uxor?’ asked Nefferti.

‘Wait here, please,’ Mu said, and strode off across the yard. Her aides lingered where they had been told to linger, whispering and nattering.

‘Genewhip,’ Mu said.

Franco Boone looked around at her. He had been standing in conversation with uxor Sanzi and her aides.

‘Uxor,’ he nodded. ‘I was just about to come looking for you.’

‘A word,’ said Mu.

They walked away from the gathering throng, to the south side of the yard, under the shade of the colonnade.

‘Something stinks,’ said Boone, keeping his voice low.

‘Go on,’ she replied.

‘Let me ask you this,’ said Boone. ‘Uxor Rukhsana? You told me she was covering something. Could it be an affair with Het Pius?’

Mu gazed at him. ‘Maybe, I don’t know why she’d hide it. Who would care?’

Boone shrugged. He took hold of the golden box hanging around his neck and took a pinch of peck. ‘The thing is,’ he said, sniffing, ‘we went to scope out Rukhsana’s lodgings, to follow up on your lead. We found Het Pius there, bold as brass and twice as naked.’

Mu laughed. She felt relieved. If that was all it was, if that explained Rukhsana’s behaviour, then she had been worrying for nothing. ‘There’s your answer,’ she said. ‘I apologise for putting you to such trouble.’

Boone’s dark look had not gone away. ‘The trouble’s only just started, uxor,’ he said. ‘As it turns out, it couldn’t have been Pius, unless Pius can be in two places at once. Whoever it was, they fooled me and two of my best bulls good and proper.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mu. Suddenly, despite her cloak, she felt how cold the wind was and shivered.

‘Neither do I, lady,’ said Boone. ‘I spent last night surveilling Pius. Guess who I saw with him?’ Boone scratched the tip of his axe-blade nose, and gave her a significant look.

‘You’ll have to tell me, Franco,’ she replied.

‘Soneka.’

She stared at the genewhip. ‘Well, of course. They’re old friends.’

Boone shook his head. ‘Soneka’s got suspicious written all over him, Mu. He got out of Tel Khat alive, and came to you with stories, what was it? About a “body” and Hurt Bronzi? Soneka, Pius, the pieces don’t fit.’

‘I’m sure they do,’ she assured him.

Boone shook his head again. ‘Not in any way I feel comfortable with, uxor.’

Mu pursed her lips and glanced up at the slow sky, squinting at the light. ‘Peto’s story was a fabulation,’ she said. ‘He admitted it himself. He was delirious after his ordeal and–’

‘We approached him for a quiet word,’ Boone cut in. ‘Just a quiet word. He fought us off and fled.’

Mu didn’t reply.

‘He’s hiding something,’ said Boone. ‘Soneka’s in league with Pius, or whoever it is that’s pretending to be Pius. I’d laugh it off, but we’re in the deep and stinky here. The companions are closing us down. A purge. If they dig up any real dirt, our heads will roll, literally. You know how forgiving Namatjira can be. He’d merrily eviscerate the geno if it meant making an example of a traitor.’

Mu looked at Boone so directly that he was forced to avert his gaze. ‘Franco, Peto Soneka is not the problem. He’s a good man, a damn good man, who’s been through hell these past weeks. He was shaken and delirious when we spoke to him. He’s no spy. He ran because you scared him. I’d stake my life on it.’

Boone finally found the bottle to look straight back at her. ‘He ran, Mu. He fought us off and ran. He vanished, and as of this morning, Bronzi’s missing too. His bashaws don’t know where he is. They haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since dawn yesterday. He’s dropped off the scope. I swear, they’re in it together, Mu… Soneka, Pius and Bronzi, three of our best hets. We’re not talking junior gee-tards here. They’re encrypt-cleared hets – they know the Army’s entire playbook. If it turns out they’ve gone over, the scandal will finish the regiment.’

Honen Mu pulled her cloak around her to fend off the worst of the wind. ‘Franco, would you please come with me?’ she asked.

She led him along the colonnade to a shadowy stone stairwell that led up onto the flat roof of one of the buildings overlooking the yard. Up on the roof, the wind was stronger and the light brighter. Two men were waiting for them at the edge of the roof space. They got to their feet as Mu and Boone approached.

Boone blinked in consternation and drew his sidearm. ‘Hurtado Bronzi, Peto Soneka… consider yourselves under detention and–’

‘Put that away, Franco,’ said Mu. ‘They’re here under their own recognisance. They asked me to arrange this meeting, so that they could speak to you directly.’

Boone lowered his gun, but did not put it away. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said.

‘Genewhip,’ Bronzi said, making a casual but respectful namaste in Boone’s direction. ‘My old friend Peto has an apology to make to you. Haven’t you, Peto?’

Soneka nodded. ‘I was a fool to run last night, really, a complete fool. I was a little bit crazy. My mind was all over the place. I’m sorry for that, Genewhip Boone.’

‘Not good enough,’ said Boone.

‘He’s telling the truth,’ said Bronzi. He fished out a sheaf of documents from his belt pouch. ‘Look, see? Medicae reports. They signed off on him this morning after an exam. Combat fatigue.’

‘Likely story,’ Boone snorted, bringing up his sidearm again.

‘Look, I spent the last day and a half looking for him,’ said Bronzi, ‘because he’s my best friend and I didn’t want to see him swinging in the wind. He’s messed up, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ asked Boone.

‘His company got hammered at Tel Utan. Then the remnants of them were slaughtered at Tel Khat. It’s no surprise Peto’s suffering from combat fatigue,’ said Mu.

‘That kind of trauma would make anyone run if genewhips started pressing the wrong buttons,’ Bronzi added. ‘Your men were suggesting that the Tel Khat Massacre was all his fault.’

Boone lowered his weapon. ‘I suppose…’ he began. He snatched the papers out of Bronzi’s hand and skimmed them. The sheets flapped in the wind.

‘I don’t want Bronzi or my uxor making any excuses for me,’ said Soneka. ‘I can stand on my own two feet. I’m sorry I cut rough with your bulls, genewhip. Terra, I really am.’

‘I didn’t want to see Peto hang when he hadn’t done a thing, Boone,’ said Bronzi. ‘Like I said, I spent the whole of yesterday out looking for him, and when I found him, I persuaded him to turn himself in, to make peace with you and smooth this trouble out.’

‘With my full sanction,’ said Mu. ‘Hurtado brought the matter to me early this morning, and explained the facts.’

‘Hurt convinced me that it was better to turn myself in and face you,’ said Soneka. ‘I realise I should never, ever have run. That made me look guilty as hell.’

Boone holstered his weapon. He glared at all three of them, and thrust the paperwork back into Bronzi’s hands. ‘All right. All right, but I’m still not happy.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ said Soneka.

‘That’s why we’d like to offer you something in return,’ said Bronzi, ‘by way of recompense for your trouble, and in gratitude for your understanding.’

‘Like what?’ asked Boone sourly.

‘Kaido Pius,’ said Soneka. ‘Hurt and I are his oldest friends. We can get stuff out of him that you genewhips would never manage, about him, Uxor Rukhsana, whatever dirt there is.’

‘Just give us a day or two,’ said Bronzi. ‘We’ll report back and give you everything we’ve found.’

Boone looked at Uxor Mu. ‘I don’t trust either of them.’

‘I trust them with my life,’ Mu said. ‘They are two of my best hets. Let them loose, Franco. They’ll find the canker in our midst. If they play us for fools, I’ll kill them myself.’

‘She would,’ said Soneka.

‘She really would,’ Bronzi agreed.

Boone grinned. ‘No doubt of that, but if you two bastards are tight with Pius like you say, why would you sell him out?’

‘If Kaido’s betrayed the Chiliad,’ said Soneka, ‘it wouldn’t matter if he was my brother. I’d skin him alive.’

‘Company first, Imperium second,’ said Bronzi. ‘Geno before gene.’

‘All right,’ said Boone. ‘Two days, then I bring hell down on your heads.’

‘That’s fair,’ said Bronzi.

‘Totally fair,’ Soneka agreed.

Boone turned to leave, and then turned back. ‘Soneka? I’m truly sorry for your anguish. A company is a hard thing to lose.’

‘Indeed it is, genewhip,’ Soneka replied.

Boone left them on the roof and returned to the yard. Honen Mu regarded the two hets. She brushed wind-blown hair out of her eyes.

‘I have to go to the briefing,’ she said.

They nodded. ‘Thank you for doing this,’ said Soneka.

‘An uxor looks out for all her charges,’ she replied, and then paused. ‘Don’t let me down. Don’t make me regret sticking my neck out today.’

‘We won’t, Honen,’ said Bronzi.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I want the Chiliad’s house swept clean in twenty-four hours, before the companions start picking at our loose threads. Start with Rukhsana. Like I said, she’s covering something. That’s why I sent Boone after her in the first place.’

‘If we find anything, you’ll be the first to know,’ said Soneka.

‘And we can all go and tell Boone together,’ smiled Bronzi.

‘As a matter of interest, do you think Pius is compromised?’ Mu asked.

‘Kaido?’ asked Bronzi. ‘Not for a moment.’

‘And Rukhsana?’

Bronzi shrugged.

Mu turned to go. ‘Oh, Peto,’ she said, ‘your medicae papers not withstanding, are you fit for posting?’

‘We only got the papers to convince Boone,’ said Soneka. ‘I’d actually rather be working.’

She nodded. ‘With Shiban gone, the Clowns need an acting het, especially if we’re about to go in. I’ll get the warrants drawn up, a temporary assignment for you and your bashaws until I can bring in a permanent new het. Maybe you can go up the line and make an overture later today? They desperately need licking into shape before we go hot. There’s–’

‘Fugging Strabo,’ said Soneka, nodding. ‘I know.’

She smiled. ‘Good. Excellent. Well, carry on.’

She walked away, her heels clacking on the cinder roof, and disappeared down the stairwell.

Bronzi looked over at Soneka and grinned. ‘Shiban’s mob. That’s–’

‘Ironic,’ Soneka finished.

Bronzi chuckled and stroked his belly. He looked out from the roof at the distant, hadean vista of Mon Lo.

‘You think we fooled them?’ asked Soneka.

Bronzi held up his hand. The middle and index fingers were crossed.

‘I mean, I’m new to all this,’ said Soneka.

‘I’m hardly a veteran,’ Bronzi replied, ‘but, yes, I think we’re good. We’d better get on with it.’

He turned to go. Soneka put out a hand to stop him. It was his ruined, truncated hand, and for some reason, Bronzi found this terribly telling.

‘I’m not prepared to countenance anything that betrays the geno,’ Soneka said, ‘and absolutely nothing that would hurt Mu.’

‘Then we’re on the same page, aren’t we, Peto?’ said Bronzi. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

In the shuttered darkness of his private cell, Dinas Chayne sat in meditation. The cell, deep in the subterranean layers of the palace, was damp and cold, but Chayne had not lit the small iron firebasket, nor any of the tapers.

He liked the cold. The cold had been his friend on Zous as a child warrior, especially during the last, long, hard winter of his thirteenth year. The cold had sharpened his wits, and forced him to steel himself. The cold was a tool that a man, or a boy, could use to temper himself.

Breathing slowly, Chayne took apart the facts, and built them back up one by one. Uxor Saiid. The Alpha Legion. Omegon. The note. His dead Lucifer. The astonishing skill of the elusive spy. The astonishing arrogance of the elusive spy. There, the arrogance suggested that the spy was confident in his cover.

Where does a spy hide? In plain sight. How does he operate? Without drawing attention to himself, by being what he is naturally, to avoid question and comment. The best way of doing that was to be exactly what you claimed to be. It made the cover story so much easier to run.

The best cover a spy could have was to be a spy.

Chayne had already decided to pay a visit to Uxor Saiid. He’d had his men watching her since the lord commander’s order, to no great result. Now that Namatjira had sanctioned a security purge, Chayne felt duty bound to stop being reactive and bring her in for interrogation.

The morning briefing would end in thirty minutes. She’d be on her way back to her quarters. He would meet her there in person, and show no mercy. She was the key, somehow. She’d covered something during her meeting with the lord commander. She’d covered for someone.

Chayne had photographic recall. Breathing ever more slowly, his heart rate down to an inhuman level, he replayed the moments of the meeting.

‘Rukhsana,’ Namatjira had said. ‘I’m told you were responsible for reconnaissance and scouting at Mon Lo?’

‘That was my role, sir.’

‘You had agents in the field?’

‘I did, lord commander,’ Rukhsana had replied. ‘Most of them were long range observers and spotters.’

Namatjira had consulted the data-slate. ‘But you had at least one intelligence officer inside Mon Lo the morning this hubbub began?’ He had waved his hand distractedly in the direction of the window.

Rukhsana had pursed her lips and looked down. ‘Yes, sir, I did. Konig Heniker.’

‘Heniker? Yes, I know him. He’s a reliable man. What happened to him?’

‘He had entered the city covertly once already, sir, and briefed me afterwards. His intelligence was of good quality. He inserted that morning, very early, intending to collect data on the Kurnaul and north wall areas. He never came back.’

‘Ah, I see,’ the lord commander had sighed. ‘Thank you, Uxor Rukhsana.’

Dinas Chayne opened his eyes in the dark. It was so obvious, so obvious! He’d been a fool to miss it.

The best cover a spy could have was to be a spy.

There was a knock at the door behind him. He ignored it. His men knew better than to disturb him during meditation.

Another knock came. The alert cursor on the cuff of his armour, stacked on the floor in front of him, began to wink.

‘Who is it?’ Chayne called.

‘Eiman, sir. We have something.’

‘Wait.’

It took forty-six seconds for Dinas Chayne to fully clothe himself in his jet-black armour.

He opened the door. Eiman was outside, along with Treece. They were fully armoured, and stood flanking a nervous young man, the adept from the security post that Chayne had handed the note to the night before. The adept was clearly terrified at the thought of disturbing a Lucifer Black.

‘Tell me,’ said Chayne.

‘Sir, I have completed the tests you ordered. I have run a comparison check on the handwriting base of all expedition personnel. I have a match, sir. It’s–’

‘Konig Heniker,’ said Chayne.

The adept blinked in astonishment. ‘Yes. How could you possibly know that?’

Chayne pushed the adept out of his way and began to stride along the corridor. Eiman and Treece fell in behind him.

‘Instructions?’ snapped Eiman.

‘Eight men,’ said Chayne. ‘Close down Uxor Saiid’s quarters and bring her to me. Her spy is our spy.’

They crossed the upper courts of the palace, through bustling streams of servants carrying sacks of manioc and blondleaf to the kitchens, past a marching band rehearsing on a small quad, past a group of artillery officers being briefed on a sunlit terrace. They hurried up the stairs to Rukhsana’s quarters.

The day’s heat was building, and the warmth was beginning to ooze from the brickwork. Slaves were soaking the reed window screens with water.

They knocked sharply at the door of Rukhsana’s accommodation.

An aide answered the door, and called for her uxor as soon as she saw who it was. Uxor Rukhsana came at once.

‘What’s this about?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘So sorry to disturb you, uxor,’ said Soneka. ‘I think there’s been some kind of clerical glitch. I’ve just been issued temporary command of the Clowns, and I’m on my way up the line to meet with them. The thing is, there’s a been screw up. The warrants I’ve been given say that the Clowns have been transferred to your purview.’

‘That’s not right,’ Rukhsana said. ‘The Clowns come under Honen Mu’s ’cept.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Soneka, shrugging, ‘but she’s off somewhere, and I need to get this sorted urgently. If you wouldn’t mind accompanying me, you could authorise the warrants, and I could get on with my job.’

Rukhsana frowned. ‘Soneka, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, uxor.’

‘And Bronzi?’

‘Good day to you, uxor,’ Bronzi smiled.

‘Something’s obviously gone very wrong,’ she said.

‘Would you mind?’ Soneka asked.

‘Of course not,’ she said. She fetched a long desert shawl from the anteroom and told her aides to wait. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ she said to Tuvi.

The hets escorted Rukhsana along the upper colonnade of the palace, overlooking the terraced yards. The sun was biting through the slow, unwinding clouds.

‘So much confusion these days,’ she said, pulling on her shawl.

‘Oh, it’s terrible,’ Bronzi agreed.

‘It’s the scale of the operation, I suppose,’ Rukhsana said. ‘I sometimes wonder if Tactical and Provisional is entirely on top of the job.’

‘Must be a nightmare, logistically,’ Soneka said pleasantly. ‘Look, I really do appreciate this, uxor,’

‘I heard about the Dancers, het,’ she said. ‘I am truly sorry. They were a great company.’

‘War happens,’ Soneka replied, with an appreciative nod. ‘I’m just glad to be getting back on the horse. Gives me a sense of purpose. Besides, we’re going to need every unit on top form in these coming days, and without Shiban, the Clowns are unravelling.’

‘Peto will whip them into shape,’ Bronzi grinned.

She hesitated. ‘Forgive me, Het Bronzi, I’m not entirely sure why you’re here?’

‘Moral support,’ Bronzi said, making a polite namaste. ‘Peto was anxious about disturbing you this morning.’

She looked at Bronzi, as if not entirely convinced.

‘Strange,’ she began, ‘he doesn’t look like the sort to lack–’

She fell silent. Something had caught her eye. She pushed past them both, went to the stone rail of the colonnade, and gazed down into the terraced yards below.

‘What’s going on down there?’ she asked quietly.

They joined her at the rail, and looked down. Below them, on the far side of the upper yard, eight figures in black armour were hurrying up the staircase to the summit levels, rushing like shadows in the shade of the tiled mantle roof.

‘Some nonsense, I’ll be bound,’ said Bronzi.

‘Those are Lucifer Blacks,’ she said.

‘Yes, I think they are,’ said Soneka. ‘Sorry, could we get along? My driver’s waiting.’

‘They’re heading towards my quarters,’ she said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Bronzi replied confidently. ‘They’re probably responding to an alert from the watch station up in the tower.’

‘No,’ she said, firmly. She turned to stride back the way they’d come. Soneka was blocking her, a calm, reassuring smile on his face.

‘It’s nothing, uxor. Let’s go, shall we?’ he said.

She glanced to her right. Bronzi had closed in too.

‘What is this?’ she asked, realising that she was trapped between two very capable geno hets.

Soneka looked at Bronzi.

Bronzi nodded quickly.

‘What the hell is this?’ she demanded.

‘Heniker,’ said Soneka.

Rukhsana froze.

‘Heniker sent us,’ said Bronzi. ‘The companions are on to you. He sent us to get you out.’

‘Please,’ said Soneka. ‘There’s very little time.’

She stared at them both.

‘Heniker?’ she asked.

Bronzi nodded. Without hesitation, she allowed them to lead her away down the colonnade. The three of them began to run.

Tuvi and the other girls flinched as the doors to the chamber flew open. Lucifer Blacks burst in, training their weapons.

‘I demand to know–’ Tuvi began.

‘Shut up,’ said one of the companions, pointing his weapon directly at her.

Dinas Chayne entered the room, moving forwards between his braced and aimed men.

‘Rukhsana?’ he asked, his voice issuing from his grim helmet’s loudspeaker. The aides cowered in terror. The youngest of them whimpered.

‘Where?’ Chayne hissed.

They were all too scared to reply. Chayne made a quick gesture, and four of the companions broke forwards to search the adjoining rooms.

Chayne looked directly at Tuvi, who was comforting the youngest aide, a girl, barely thirteen years old.

‘You are the leader. Where is your uxor?’ he asked.

Tuvi swallowed and returned his gaze defiantly.

‘She’s not here,’ Tuvi said. ‘She was called away on geno business.’

‘Called away?’ asked Chayne, taking a step towards her and lowering his weapon.

‘A het came. A het who needed her authorisation or something,’ Tuvi replied.

‘Which het?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Tuvi.

‘It may have been two hets,’ said one of the other girls.

‘It may have been,’ said Tuvi, ‘I didn’t really see.’ Tuvi was an ambitious girl, but she was also careful. Until she understood exactly what was going on, she didn’t want to give out any more information than necessary. Despite her youth and her hunger for command, she also firmly believed in the adage Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene. She had been raised that way.

Chayne reached out with his left hand, and took hold of her face. She moaned quietly and closed her eyes. It looked as gentle as a lover’s touch, but the compression pain he was exerting was immense.

‘How long ago?’ he asked quietly.

‘Ten minutes. N-no more than ten.’

‘Who did she go with?’

The grip had made Tuvi quickly re-evaluate her priorities. ‘S-Soneka,’ she said.

At ground level, to the east of the palace sprawl, Army pioneers had excavated a deep ramp, and removed the side wall of a giant ceremonial chamber to provide a vast depot for vehicles. The excised wall section had been replaced by load-bearing, pneumolithic girders, and fortified with flakboard and ballistic pumice. Trucks and transports toiled in and out along the ramp all day long in a haze of dust, under the direction of artificer banksmen and other security personnel. The engine fumes gathered in the roof space, slowly sucked away by powerful vent systems that had been bolted under the vaults. Lumen rigs hung from brackets all the way down the chamber. The place echoed with rivet guns and pressure drivers.

‘That one,’ said Bronzi, hurrying back to them. Soneka and Rukhsana came out from behind a turreted trans-trak painted in Thorn livery, and crossed with him to an armoured scurrier dressed in desert pink. Bronzi popped the hatch and they climbed in. Bronzi clambered forwards into the tight cockpit space.

Bronzi had checked the vehicle out for use at the depot station. If he’d used his own biometric key, or Soneka’s, or even the uxor’s, klaxons would have been sounding already. Instead, he’d used the key they had given him.

Soneka closed the hatch behind them, and strapped in beside Rukhsana. She was pale with panic, but containing her agitation.

‘Go, Hurt,’ Soneka said.

Bronzi gunned the engines and brought the scurrier to life. It rose on its twenty sets of calliper legs and spurred forwards, leg units running in syncopation, racing it across the earth floor like a giant centipede.

They passed out under the gate. A banksman flashed their biometric signature, and waved them enthusiastically on with his luminous wand.

They ran up the ramp, followed the rampart wall to the west exit, and headed out into the desert.

The scurrier’s mode of ambulation provided a soft, rolling sensation of travel, despite the high speeds Bronzi was making across the dunes. The wind was raising a spume of fine dust from the crest of every slope. Bronzi checked the navigation display. It was only a kilometre or two. Not far, not far at all…

‘Is Konig all right?’ Rukhsana asked Soneka.

‘Konig?’

‘Heniker,’ she said.

‘Oh, sorry. I only really know him as Heniker.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘Yes, he’s fine.’

‘Really fine?’

‘Yes.’

She thought about that. He could tell she didn’t trust him at all.

‘How are you involved?’ she asked.

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘I think you can,’ she insisted.

‘I can’t, really,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, uxor, it’s an Army intelligence thing.’

She stared at him hard. ‘Army intelligence? Is that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘But–’

‘But what, uxor?’

It wasn’t an Army intelligence thing. It was a Cabal thing. She realised that she was going somewhere to die. She tried to swallow the dry knot in her throat.

‘I’m only doing this because I love him,’ she said.

‘Heniker?’

‘Yes, Heniker.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ Soneka said. He looked bothered and uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I really didn’t. Look, we–’ he began.

‘Get set, we’re there!’ Bronzi called out.

The scurrier rippled down a bank of soft sand into a deep wadi, and came to a halt. The sun was at its zenith, burning like a low-set las. The light was hard and there were no shadows.

‘What were you saying to me?’ asked Rukhsana.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Soneka, ‘that’s all. There’s no time to say anything else. We’re out of time.’

‘So am I, I think,’ she replied.

He watched her as she unbuckled and got up.

‘I never meant to hurt you, Rukhsana,’ he said. ‘Please, this is for the best.’

‘I hope so.’ She smiled at him, a brave, intoxicating smile despite the shadow of terror in her expression. ‘But I don’t hold out much hope,’ she added.

Bronzi opened the hatch, and they climbed out into the baking hole of the wadi basin. There was no one around. Bright sunlight burned the sand and the tops of their heads.

‘Come on,’ said Bronzi, glancing around impatiently.

‘While we’re waiting,’ said Rukhsana, ‘why don’t you explain that lie you sold me? As a last favour, so to speak. I’d like to know what I’m getting into. Tell me about Konig. How do you know Konig?’

‘It’s like I said,’ Bronzi replied, awkward and unsettled.

‘Oh, Hurtado, please credit me with some intelligence,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing like you said.’

There was a soft, sifting sound, the sound of sand pouring away onto sand.

Four Astartes, concealed beneath the dunes around them, rose to their feet, the sand sliding off the contours of their armour as if they were rising up out of concealed trap doors.

‘Is this her?’ asked one.

‘Yes, lord,’ Bronzi replied.

Soneka realised that Rukhsana had begun to tremble badly.

‘We’ll take her from here,’ said another of the Astartes.

‘Oh, glory,’ Rukhsana whispered. ‘Please…’

‘It’s all right,’ Soneka told her urgently. He looked at the giant warriors coming towards them. ‘It will be all right, won’t it?’

‘You’ve done your job, friend,’ one of them told him, ‘and we thank you for it. We’ll take it from here.’

‘But–’ Soneka began.

‘We’ll take it from here, operative,’ the giant reassured him. The Astartes put out a huge paw around Rukhsana’s tiny shoulders, and led her away across the sand.

She looked back, once. ‘Peto!’ she called.

‘I’m sorry. I–’ he called out.

But she was gone in the deep shadows of the wadi’s base.

One of the Alpha Legionnaires strode over to them.

‘Good work,’ he said.

Bronzi nodded.

‘Will she be all right?’ Soneka asked.

‘Of course,’ the Astartes said, his voice deep. ‘She’s with us.’

‘That’s not what I was asking,’ Soneka said.

‘Will we be all right?’ Bronzi asked, looking up at the giant.

‘Did you do what we told you to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you use the biometric?’

‘Yes,’ said Soneka.

‘Then stick to the story, and it will be fine,’ replied the legionnaire. ‘Trust me, and thank you.’

He turned to go, and then looked back, his huge form stark in the sunlight. ‘You did the right thing. If things turn bad, we’ll get you out. You’re us now.’

He walked away. In under two minutes, the Alpha Legionnaires had vanished into the desert, leaving no trace.

Bronzi looked at Soneka. He grinned, but Soneka could tell the grin was forced. ‘Scary bastards, right?’

‘Scary bastards,’ Soneka agreed. They began to trudge back to the scurrier.

‘Something on your mind?’ Bronzi added.

Soneka shook his head.

‘You don’t like this, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t,’ Soneka said.

They got back into the scurrier and headed back towards the palace. Half a kilometre from the west exit, a shadow flickered across them, and the scurrier’s target alarms started to ping.

‘Scurrier, scurrier,’ the vox crackled. ‘Come to a halt and open hatches. We have you at weapons lock.’

Bronzi threw the leg brakes and killed the spinal drive. The scurrier rocked to a standstill.

‘Get out. On the deck. Now!’ the vox demanded.

Bronzi looked at Soneka. ‘Sure you know how to play this?’ he asked.

Soneka nodded.

They unlocked the hatch and got out, falling on their faces in the glaring sunlight, a few metres from the vehicle with their hands behind their heads. A blizzard of sand was being kicked up around them by a circling Jackal gunship. A second gunship settled nearby on roaring turbofans, like a giant skeletal raven. Its occupants ran towards them.

‘Get up!’

Soneka and Bronzi got up, hands locked behind their necks in submission. Lucifer Blacks surrounded them, weapons aimed. The air was so thick with winnowing dust from the hovering gunship that Bronzi and Soneka were coughing hard.

‘Het Hurtado Bronzi and Het Peto Soneka?’ the nearest Lucifer demanded.

They nodded, hands knotted behind their heads.

‘You are under arrest, by order of the lord commander.’

‘Is this about Uxor Rukhsana?’ Bronzi shouted, above the wash of the gunships.

‘Of course it is.’

‘Then can you tell me,’ Bronzi yelled back as the companions started to herd them towards the gunship, ‘where the fug has she gone?’

Eleven

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, that evening

‘So?’ asked Namatjira, looking up from his desk.

‘We’ve let them both go, sir,’ said Dinas Chayne.

‘Why?’

‘Their story checks out. The hets went looking for Uxor Rukhsana, chasing the same suspicions as us. They got her into a vehicle, to take her away from the palace for private interrogation. The geno like to protect their own, sir.’

Namatjira put the quill he had been using back into its power well, and rose to his feet, tapping his left index finger against his pursed lips. It was a modest gesture, designed to give the impression that he was pondering, but Chayne knew it was a mechanism the lord commander employed to curb his temper. He watched as Namatjira wandered towards the chamber window, into the pool of soft light cast by the setting sun. The light made his long, gold-embroidered robe glow.

‘But the vehicle,’ Namatjira asked, ‘wasn’t it swiped out on a blank biometric? To avoid detection?

Chayne shook his head. ‘The biometric was Bronzi’s. For some reason, it didn’t read cleanly in the scanner. I am advised that this is occurring quite often, scanning glitches, caused by the pervasive dust. Now we’ve checked it, it evidently was Bronzi’s.’

‘And Rukhsana?’ Namatjira asked. He patted his thigh, and his thylacene got up from the rug and trotted over to him. ‘What about her?’

‘She broke free and fled into the dunes.’

‘She broke free from two frontline hets?’

‘I believe they underestimated her resolve, sir,’ said Chayne. ‘When we questioned them, the hets both seemed frankly embarrassed that she had escaped. They were searching for her when we found them.’

‘Do you believe any of this, Dinas?’

‘I have no reason not to, lord. The facts match up perfectly. However, I will admit that I am uneasy whenever that happens.’

‘You have them under scrutiny?’

‘Yes, lord.’

Namatjira sank down into a crouch, and tenderly scrunched the thylacene’s ears with both hands. It closed its eyes in pleasure. ‘What about Rukhsana?’

‘We’re questioning her aides, but they don’t seem to have been aware of any indiscretion, and we’re searching for the uxor, obviously.’

‘Can she survive in the desert?’

‘Without supplies or protective clothing, no, not more than a day. I expect all we’ll find of her is her bones.’

Bronzi poured znaps into two glass cups and handed one to Soneka. Bronzi held out his glass to clink, and Soneka did so reluctantly.

‘Here’s to the skin of our fugging teeth,’ said Bronzi, trying to make light of it. He’d been trying to make light of it for a long time. Soneka’s mood was low, and Bronzi hated that.

‘Here’s to Rukhsana,’ Soneka replied. ‘May some power protect her from the fate we delivered her into.’

Bronzi shrugged, and drank to that instead. ‘They’ll treat her well enough, Peto,’ he said. ‘They only want answers.’

‘They are not sentimental creatures, Hurt,’ Soneka replied. ‘They use any means they can to achieve their goals. They let my Dancers get slaughtered, just to throw the enemy off guard. What on Terra makes you think they’ll use Rukhsana any less clinically?’

Bronzi couldn’t come up with an answer.

Soneka took another sip and regarded his glass. ‘This comes so easily to you, doesn’t it, Hurt? Why is that?’

Bronzi sniffed. ‘I don’t know. It’s the Astartes, I suppose. To be chosen by them, to be singled out by them for service, that’s an honour in my book. The Astartes are the image of the Emperor, whom I adore, and to whose work I have devoted my life. To serve them is to serve Him. There is no finer duty.’

‘Whatever happened,’ Soneka asked, ‘to Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene?’

Bronzi made a sour face, and lifted his meaty shoulders. ‘That’s just something we say, isn’t it?’

‘I thought it was something we believed,’ Soneka replied.

Bronzi finished his drink and poured another. ‘The Emperor is the Emperor,’ he said, ‘and the Astartes are his chosen, the brightest and the best. I’m comfortable working for them.’

‘Provided they’re on our side,’ said Soneka.

Bronzi snorted. ‘What does that mean?’

Soneka shook his head. ‘Nothing. I have a gut dislike of this sordid intrigue, Hurt. I’m a soldier, not a spy, and lately I’ve been wondering which of those words best describes the Alpha Legion.’

Bronzi shook his head and decided it was high time to change the subject. He looked Soneka up and down, approvingly.

‘Formal looks good,’ he said.

‘Been a while,’ Soneka replied, adjusting the cuff of his dress uniform.

‘When are you off?’

‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’

‘The Clowns are lucky to have you,’ said Bronzi.

The chamber door behind them opened without any knock. Mu marched in, followed by Franco Boone.

‘Drink?’ Bronzi asked lightly. She glared at them both. Boone walked past Mu and helped himself.

‘That was your idea of delicate, was it?’ Mu asked.

‘Well, we proved she was up to something, didn’t we?’ Bronzi answered.

‘You were arrested and interrogated by the Lucifers,’ Mu growled.

‘Who, please remember, let us go without charge,’ Bronzi countered.

‘How did Rukhsana escape?’ Mu asked.

‘How would you have escaped us, Honen?’ Bronzi asked playfully. ‘Because, you know you would have.’

Mu hesitated.

‘Uxors can be quite tenacious when they want to be,’ Bronzi continued, taking the bottle out of Boone’s hand and pouring himself another drink.

‘Have you come to arrest me?’ Soneka asked the genewhip, ‘Or can I go meet my new unit?’

‘You’re all right,’ Boone said. ‘I’d have liked a cleaner end to this matter, but it’s worked out decently. Rukhsana was a bad seed, but the Chiliad has saved face.’

‘How?’ asked Mu, in a mocking tone.

‘These two were caught in the act of chasing her,’ Boone said levelly, knocking back his drink, ‘clear proof that we were trying to clean our own house and root out corruption. In the circumstances, their arrest was probably the best thing that could have happened. It may have been by accident or downright incompetence, but Bronzi and Soneka have protected our regimental reputation.’

‘Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene,’ Bronzi chuckled. Soneka shot him a hard look.

‘What?’ asked Bronzi.

Soneka put down his glass and lifted his pack. ‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘I’ll walk you down,’ Mu said.

‘March in fortune, Peto, and take the Clowns with you,’ said Bronzi.

Soneka nodded, and left the chamber with Mu.

‘Fancy another?’ Bronzi asked Boone.

Boone stared back at the het, hard-eyed. ‘Pius? He’s clean?’

‘As the proverbial,’ Bronzi replied. ‘Whoever Rukhsana was in bed with, he was playing games with you. A subliminal veil, a mind trick, maybe? I don’t know. Pius is solid.’ Bronzi waggled the bottle. ‘So?’

‘Go on then,’ said Boone.

They walked down into a lower courtyard where the last of the Dancers were waiting beside a fat-wheeled transport in what remained of the daylight. Soneka nodded to Lon, and let Shah take his bag and stow it in the transport’s panniers. The driver started up the truck’s engine.

‘Is there anything you’re not telling me, Peto?’ Mu asked, looking up into his face.

‘Like what?’

She shrugged. ‘Hurtado is a rogue, and I wouldn’t put anything past him, but you, het, you’re as straight as a die. You always have been. I don’t believe you’re capable of subterfuge. If you are, it must come with effort, so spare yourself that effort. Is there anything?’

‘No. No, not at all.’

She nodded. ‘Good. Get on your way. Whip the Clowns into shape, and march in fortune. I’ll look for your preliminary report tomorrow.’

‘Yes, uxor.’

‘If they give you any grief, call me in to straighten them out.’

‘Thank you. It won’t be necessary.’

‘Don’t let the Dancers haunt you, Peto,’ she said. ‘You’re not carrying some curse that will infect the Clowns too. New start, fresh page. Get the Old Hundred fit, and ready for the hell that’s about to break.’

‘I will.’

Mu smiled. She paused, and then stood up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘I know you will,’ she said.

Soneka climbed into the transport, and it rolled away down the yard towards the gate.

The tiny, childlike figure of Honen Mu stood in the lengthening shadows and watched until it was out of sight.

‘So we’re Clowns now, are we?’ asked Lon over the grumble of the transport’s engine.

‘Seems so,’ said Soneka. They rocked in their seats as the vehicle lurched along the uneven track.

‘You all right there, het?’ asked Shah.

‘Yes,’ said Soneka. ‘Why?’

‘You keep rubbing at your hip. You got a sweat sore or a dust blister?’

‘No,’ Soneka said, shaking his head. ‘It’s just this damn formal jacket chafing.’

Soneka turned aside and looked out of the dirty window vent at the passing desert, which was staining with a startling maroon hue as the sun finally slipped out of the sky.

The hydra brand on his hip was still raw and fresh.

The cave was cool, and remarkably angular. Rukhsana presumed it had been cut out of the rock with meltas or some kind of precision drill. It was a cube, ten metres by ten, lit by a series of lumen orbs placed around the base of the walls. The light they gave out splashed up the dark walls and made her feel as if she was under water or on some airless moon. The air smelled of dust and cold stone. The air smelled of hopelessness.

She was shivering and terrified, and the terror magnified her body’s reactions, reinforcing the drop in its core temperature. She tried to slow her breathing.

They had seated her on a wooden stool, her hands cuffed behind her back, in the middle of the cave. Then they had left her alone.

It felt as if hours had passed, but she suspected that it was merely a few minutes.

A figure came in through the cave’s only egress.

He was larger than it was possible for any regular human male, a giant: an Astartes giant. He was dressed in a simple dark bodyglove that somehow emphasised his huge build and muscular strength more pointedly than any suit of power armour could have. His head was bare, noble, hairless, powerful, copper-skinned. His eyes were as bright as a sapphire sky.

He came across the cave floor slowly, and stood in front of her. She looked up at him.

‘Uxor Rukhsana Saiid?’ he asked. The sound of his voice made her think of slow, glowing embers. His words issued as gently as honey dripping from a spoon.

‘Yes.’

‘I am Alpharius, Primarch of the Alpha Legion.’

‘I know who Alpharius is,’ she replied, feeling a tremor of panic in her chest that she could barely control.

‘Do you know why you’re here?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘Say why, please.’

‘Konig Heniker,’ she said. ‘You’re looking for Konig Heniker, and you think I know where he is.’

‘Do you, uxor?’

She shook her head, dearly wishing her hands were free so that she could press them against her chest and persuade her heart to slow down.

‘We’ll see. Do you know what Konig Heniker’s real name is?’

Rukhsana looked up at the giant sharply.

‘I see you do not. No one could fake a response like that. Your beloved Konig’s real name is John Grammaticus.’

‘John?’

‘Grammaticus. John Grammaticus. What about the Cabal, uxor? What do you know of the Cabal?’

‘I don’t know what that is,’ she replied.

‘I see you do. Just as you couldn’t have faked the first response, you couldn’t conceal the second. You know about the Cabal.’

Rukhsana bit her lip. ‘He mentioned it, that’s all.’

Alpharius stared down at her. His expression was almost benign. ‘Help me help you, uxor. Where is Konig Heniker?’

‘I don’t know, I really don’t. He was with me for a while, but he vanished, yesterday, just after the Grand Welcome. I don’t know where he is.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Alpharius. He nodded. A much smaller, robed figure entered the chamber and came to stand at the primarch’s side. Rukhsana blinked and tried to focus. Though she could see the robed figure plainly, she could not resolve its face.

‘This is Shere,’ said Alpharius. ‘He will help you exorcise your doubts.’

‘Brace yourself,’ he added.

The central security centre of the terracotta palace was a large, low-ceilinged chamber filled with whirring and flashing cogitators, and bustling adepts. The heat-stink of the machines was acrid and harsh. Cooling systems had been rigged along the walls.

At nightfall, the duty rotated. Adepts arrived in their russet cloaks, and took over from the rostered operators on duty, signing in their biometrics as they took over machine stations.

He sat down at his appointed machine, his biometric accepted. The departing operator he was replacing bade him goodnight.

‘Salutation, Adept Ahrum,’ the screen display read.

That was good. That’s who he was.

Adept Ahrum typed in his access codes. Data flowed in a sudden gush across his lithographic screen. He pulled his russet robe closer, and leaned in to study the graphics.

‘Attend!’ the senior adept on the chamber’s central dais cried out, and all the operators stiffened.

‘Carry on,’ said Dinas Chayne as he walked into the room and went to join the senior.

Adept Ahrum risked a glance over his shoulder. Chayne stood in quiet discussion with the senior adept on the dais. He was barely five metres away.

Adept Ahrum decided to continue with his work.

He typed quickly, using his stolen biometric clearance to pull up confidential material. Uxor Rukhsana… official scrutiny… actions of the Lucifer Blacks in the last fifteen hours…

Oh Rukhsana… oh, my love, what have I done to you?

‘You,’ said a voice at his shoulder.

Adept Ahrum looked up quickly. Dinas Chayne was standing over him.

‘Sir?’ Ahrum asked.

‘Why are you accessing this material?’ Chayne asked.

‘I was told to, sir, by my superior. It is a request from the Uxor Primus of the Geno Chiliad.’

‘Trying to clean house, I suppose,’ said Chayne.

‘I imagine something like that. The Chiliad are very conscious of the fact that they have been found with a traitor in their ranks.’

Chayne nodded. ‘All right. Carry on. Process your findings to the Uxor Primus, but copy me the details first.’

‘Sir?’

‘That’s an order.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Chayne turned away and went to resume his conversation with the senior adept.

Adept Ahrum continued to type. He pulled up the interrogation report submitted by the companions that afternoon. There were two names.

He depressed his station key and rose to his feet. Both the senior adept and Dinas Chayne looked over at him.

‘Adept?’ the senior adept asked.

‘Request permission to access the docket archive.’

‘On you go, Ahrum,’ nodded the senior adept, and turned to continue his conversation.

Adept Ahrum left the chamber. In the hallway outside, he threw off his russet robe and ditched his biometric. John Grammaticus tucked them away in an alcove out of sight and walked away down the corridor in the lamplight.

Two names. Soneka. Bronzi.

Dinas Chayne cut the senior adept off suddenly.

‘That man. That station,’ he said, pointing to the vacated cogitator.

‘Ahrum, sir?’ asked the senior adept. ‘He’s a sound fellow, good at his work. What is your problem, sir?’

‘Something about him. Something familiar,’ murmured Chayne.

‘Sir?’

‘I’ll be right back,’ said Chayne, and left the station. Outside, the hallway was empty.

Twelve

Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, black dawn

The first person to realise that something was terribly wrong was a subahdar in the Zanzibari Hort called Lec Tanha. Tanha had woken early, before first light, with a sore head and an ardent wish to continue sleeping. A solid sort, dependable, he had pulled on his boots and his cape, and climbed the bank of the earthwork from the camp to oversee the watch change.

He took a restorative pinch of peck. It was an eerie time of day, with the first daylight milking into the sky. A loose wind was blowing, scudding the land between the vast earthwork and the besieged city with a spectral fog that moved like crop smoke.

Tanha checked his sidearm, took another little furtive pinch, and conversed with two of the duty officers. He entered the observation redoubt, a fortified platform on the lip of the earthwork. The redoubt was open to the sky, and the wind riffled Tanha’s hair. He took out a set of field glasses, and aimed them at Mon Lo.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, sniffing.

‘What’s what?’ replied the redoubt’s vox-officer.

The distant, wind-baffled screaming still sounded like tinnitus. There was a scent on the wind that smelled like wormwood.

‘That smell,’ Tanha said.

‘Damned infidels are burning something,’ said the vox officer. ‘Incense?’

‘No,’ said Tanha. ‘Something else.’

He looked up and listened into the windy air. A distant sound was mingling with the tinnitus. Tanha put his hand against the sand-bagged edge of the redoubt’s parapet. He felt a deep, ominous trembling.

‘Get the major general on the vox,’ he said quickly.

‘What,’ the vox-officer replied. ‘At this hour?’

‘Get Dev on the line now!’ Tanha ordered.

The vox-officer scrambled to his set. Tanha raised his field glasses again and looked down into the wreathing fog bank.

Subahdar Lec Tanha saw what was coming towards them.

He managed to speak, in a desperate, fearful stammer, the first two syllables of his wife’s name.

Then he died.

A kilometre to the west, and exactly thirty seconds later, Dynast Cherikar, a senior commander of the Regnault Thorns Second Division, turned sharply to his tribune, Lofar.

‘Can we usually hear the sea from here?’ he asked.

The tribune shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

‘But you heard that? A wave striking a beach?’

Lofar looked dubious. ‘I heard something,’ he conceded. They were walking the top of the earthwork, on a standard morning patrol. Cherikar turned and looked towards the east. A great cloud, like mist or spray vapour, had enveloped the top of the earthwork a kilometre away. It was hanging in the air, like a pale hill that had not been there before.

‘What is that?’ Cherikar asked. Lofar did not reply. The duckboards under their feet had begun to shake.

The dynast and his tribune instinctively raised the spikes of their armour, barbing themselves with the psycho-receptive steel quills that gave their regiment its name. Studded all over with lethal blades, they drew their weapons, and turned to meet the onslaught.

The beautiful, mechanised blade systems of their ancient warsuits did not save them, nor did the weapons in their hands.

‘Get up!’ Tche roared. ‘Get up now!’

‘Go away or I shall kill you,’ Bronzi told his bashaw, and turned over in his bed roll.

Tche kicked his hetman squarely in the arse, which was presenting a reasonably generous target area.

‘Get up!’ Tche shouted.

Bronzi got to his feet, rubbing his offended backside, blinking in the half-light of the frame tent. His mind was addled, trying numbly to distinguish bits of memory that were real from pieces of dream that were not.

He was reasonably sure that geno bashaws didn’t usually wake their hets with a boot in the seat of the pants.

‘What?’ Bronzi asked.

Tche stared at him. There was a token of anxiety in the bashaw’s eyes, the sort of look that no man as big and well-muscled as Tche should ever have the need to display. ‘Get up, het,’ Tche repeated.

Bronzi was already heading for the tent flap, hopping as he tried to run and put on his boots simultaneously. He could already hear it, plain as day.

The murmur.

From a distance, war made a particular sound. The quake of the ground, the throb of engines, the rattle of weapons, the thump of detonations, the holler of voices; it all blended together into a kind of ominous murmuring, the feral grumbling of a monster waking over the next hill.

Hurtado Bronzi had heard the murmur dozens of times in his life. It had always augured days that he was lucky to live through, or hours that he could never forget.

Outside, first light was on them. Commotion ran through the camp as the Jokers scrambled to readiness. Bronzi looked up at the sky. The slowly turning clouds were staining pink, like blood in water or Nurthene silk. He could smell wormwood on the wind’s bad breath. To the east, what looked like a vast, slowly creeping dust storm had shrouded the Army lines, obscuring even the dark shoulder of the earthwork.

Bronzi pushed through his swarming men, yelling out orders, and calling for a vox. Bashaws spread out from him like shrapnel from a grenade, conducting and relaying those orders in unequivocal tones, putting rigidity and structure into a company caught on the back foot.

Still calling for a vox, Bronzi hauled himself up the ladder of one of the observation derricks. Halfway up, he looked down at Tche, and called his name. Tche tossed his scope up to him. Bronzi caught it one-handed, uncapped it, and scanned east.

Adjacent to the Jokers’ encampment, an Outremar infantry group was assembling from its tents and billets with the same kind of mad scramble that beset the geno. Beyond that, yes, now he saw it.

Veiled by the dust, the sporadic flash-flash-flash of explosions looked like someone flicking a signal lamp behind a dust shawl. The blasts were ripping off as quickly and frenetically as firecrackers. He could hear heavy weapons chattering and the bass drum beat of artillery positions waking up. Drums too, real drums, beat wild and rapid tattoos. A few seconds later, las-batteries in reboubts to the south-east began spitting incandescent shooting stars north into the dust cloud, adding their squeals to the communal murmur.

Bronzi saw movement in the filmy edges of the advancing dust storm, and resolved it into shapes, figures.

‘Holy fug,’ he whispered.

Once, during his childhood in Edessa, Bronzi had witnessed a blight swarm on the move. For centuries, great tracts of Osroene and the Mesop Delta had been seeded with genic cereals as part of the Emperor’s program to improve food yield for the regenerating world, and surge years of insect over-breeding were triggered every few decades by over-abundant harvests. The swarm had darkened the sky, turning day to night, a dense river of locusts seventy kilometres long.

He had never forgotten the sound of a trillion wings, a purring noise like the murmur of war. He had never forgotten the sight.

He was reminded of it forcibly.

The Nurthene were spilling out of the roiling haze in huge numbers, a blight swarm of charging infantry and racing cavalry sweeping in over the earthwork and down across the Imperial lines like an avalanche. Echvehnurth warriors led the host, their whirling falxes glittering in the curiously dull light. A tide of nurthadtre followed them. Through the dust and broken light, their pink silks looked black, like the bodies of milling, teeming locusts. Bronzi saw swaying standards of reeds and crocodilia, banners of lizard skin trailing like friable green metal, nodding totem staves depicting scale, tooth and biforked tongue.

There was no regimentation, no order of battle. Nurthene cavalry charged along in the midst of the massed foot troops. He saw individual lancers, whooping and howling, mounted on galloping monitors the size of grox. Giant caimans, dull as coal, their scutes and teeth plated in gold, trudged forwards, bearing howdahs full of echvehnurth archers on their broad backs. Primitive gunpowder rockets whooped out of the host like fireworks, exploding amongst the Army encampments. Fletched darts fell like rain.

The murmur was no longer a murmur. It had become a roar.

Bronzi leapt off the derrick ladder and landed amongst his men. Whichever Army component had been camped east of the Outremar infantry group’s billet had already been swallowed up by the Nurthene storm, and Bronzi had seen enough to know that the Outremars were falling in droves, falling like genic crops beneath a hungry blight swarm, as the storm swept on across their position. Bronzi reckoned that he had less than five minutes before the Nurthene assault reached him.

‘Akkad formation!’ he bellowed to his bashaws. ‘Six lines, cannons to the front! Mortars to the ridge there! Relay this! Relay it!’

The Jokers moved like an intricate mechanism, forming structures across the land south of the earthwork. Two lines of alternating pike and carbine rifle solidified along the northern edge, behind the livestock corrals and the latrines. Cannon crews grimaced as they struggled to heave their heavy weapons, ammo crates and tripods to new positions. Men ran past him, lugging the iron tubes of mortars across their shoulders.

‘Forwards! Forwards!’ Bronzi yelled at the rifle cadres. He was waving his sabre above his head. Tche appeared, and passed Bronzi a vox-horn.

‘Jokers, Jokers, Jokers!’ Bronzi yelled. ‘Mass incursion at CR88 and eastwards. Reporting mass assault at this time! We are preparing to resist! Support requested!’

‘Joker lord, we are aware,’ the vox replied. ‘Stand ready. March in fortune. We are redeploying strengths to your position.’

‘Standing by,’ Bronzi snapped. He tossed the vox-horn back to Tche. ‘Get the fugging banner aloft!’

Bronzi looked back at the doom rushing to engulf them. He realised it wasn’t the crowing enemy forces that he really feared, despite their numbers, but the slow dust cloud that came with them and disgorged them, towering ten times higher than the earthwork ramp.

It was like a mountain about to fall on him.

The chamber of the terracotta palace secured for central operations had turned into an undignified scrum of shouting, gesticulating personnel. A crowd of uxors and senior officers had invaded the place, demanding information as they jostled to get a look at the main strategy display, a hololithic chart table that dominated the centre of the room. Some of them were half-dressed, their eyes puffy with sleep; some were still buttoning tunics or fastening robes. Around the chamber walls, the vox adepts of Tactical and Provisional called out reports from their cogitator stations in voices that overlapped the queries of the crowd.

‘Incursion reports CR88 and eastwards!’

‘Massive numbers!’

‘Support stations engaging! We have–’

‘No response from CR89 and CR90!’

‘Get a station report from the 4th Hussars!’

‘Reporting losses at CR91 and–’

‘Say that again! Again!’

‘Losing your feed, CR90–’

‘CR93 reports contact!’

‘Silence!’

Major General Dev entered through the west door. ‘Take your places and behave according to your ranks,’ he snarled. Uxors and officers alike, cowed by his tone and his authority, fell silent and straightened respectfully.

Dev’s adjutant took the major general’s helm and sword from him, and Dev stepped forwards to the table, peering at it.

‘They took us by surprise?’ he asked.

‘Completely, sir,’ said the senior adept.

‘Assessment?’ the major general asked, leaning on the edge of the chart table and peering down. The glow from its surface underlit his face.

‘We’re still waiting for orbital appraisal,’ the senior adept replied. ‘There is an atmospheric peculiarity that–’

‘I’m not waiting for orbitals,’ said Dev sharply. ‘Someone give me a decent assessment!’

‘A major incursion has breached the earthwork in an eleven-kilometre line between CR88 and CR96, Wadi Ghez, so-called the Little Sink,’ said Sri Vedt, the Uxor Primus, tracing her finger across the hololithic chart. ‘I cannot appreciate precise numbers, but it feels like tens of thousands.’

‘I would concur with the Primus,’ said Uxor Bhaneja. ‘Their forces struck eight minutes ago, and overwhelmed the earthwork by sheer dint of numbers.’

‘And took us by surprise?’ asked Dev. ‘A force that size? They just sneaked up a division of warriors and dropped them on us? Doesn’t that seem unlikely?’

‘They are cloaked by a vapour cloud,’ said Uxor Sanzi. ‘That must surely be more than the dust produced by their movements. The cloud struck the earthwork first, with a kinetic force akin to a tsunami.’

‘More air magick?’ suggested a Torrent officer.

‘Do not,’ said Dev, raising a finger to him, ‘do not let the lord commander hear you utter those words.’

The Torrent officer made a quick namaste and backed away.

Dev glanced towards the uxors around the table. ‘Thank you for your frank appraisal, uxors. How accurate should I consider them to be?’

‘Our ’cepts are sharp,’ said Uxor Sanzi.

‘We feel this,’ added Uxor Bhaneja. ‘I have a company at CR90, the Jacks. I ’cept that they are already dead.’

Dev nodded. ‘I am sorry for your loss, Uxor Bhaneja.’

Bhaneja nodded back and, tearful, accepted Sri Vedt’s consoling embrace. ‘Everyone will be mourning losses before the day is out, sir,’ said Sri Vedt.

‘We are mobilising the armoured cavalry at CR713,’ Dynast Kheel of the Thorns announced, ‘and the Outremar reserves at Tel Sherak.’

‘Sri Vedt has directed four geno companies to move along the line to support the forces at CR88,’ said Honen Mu. ‘More are needed, in my opinion.’

‘Provided they bring their armour support,’ put in a Hort officer. ‘Armour’s what we need–’

‘Armour will not suffice,’ Mu responded. ‘A muscular infantry riposte will be quicker to deliver. These are low tech warriors with blades and black powder bombs, and–’

‘Stop wasting time with debate!’ Kheel growled, rounding on the tiny uxor. ‘This is a shambles! There is no unification of command!’

Honen Mu looked Kheel straight in the eyes, or at least what she could see of them beneath the bulging thorns of his visor.

‘I believe, Dynast,’ she said levelly, ‘that Major General Dev is in charge.’

‘That was my understanding too, Kheel, so stand down and bite your tongue,’ said Dev with a brush of his hand. ‘Senior, where are the nearest Titans?’

‘Princeps Jeveth has already ordered the three Titans closest to the incursion forward to engage,’ the senior adept replied.

‘Bless that old goat for not waiting for an order,’ Dev nodded. ‘We need to bring the weight of the Hort and Torrent forces in to dam this flood.’

He began to track deployment lines across the glowing chart, conferring with the adepts and officers. Sri Vedt watched, approving of his decisions, gently correcting any detail she ’cepted as unwise.

Mu wondered if it was complacency that had cost them. Besieging forces often suffered from that flaw. The expedition had bested an entire world, and driven the last of its resistance back into one city to die. No one had expected the Nurthene to go back on the offensive.

No, it wasn’t complacency, she decided. She reminded herself that the Nurthene did not think the way Imperial humans did. Their actions were determined by values quite alien to Mu and her kind. Driven to the brink of defeat, the Nurthene had not resigned themselves to an inevitable fate.

They had fought back, the way any cornered beast would.

We have underestimated the creatures of this world too many times in this campaign already, Mu thought. Please, let us not be about to do that again.

The stink of wormwood was oppressively strong, and the roar of the approaching host had become so great that Bronzi could no longer hear the voices of the men around him raised in prayer.

He glanced left and right, surveying his lines. The Jokers had done him every credit. Despite the extremity of the moment, and the haste with which they’d been obliged to assemble, the company had formed up perfectly. They were ready, pikes and carbines held at their shoulders.

Bronzi was prepared to bet that the Jokers were going to be the first Army unit to meet the enemy assault that morning with any kind of coordination or discipline. How the Jokers gave account of themselves in the next thirty minutes would therefore be critical. There was no possibility of the geno company men defeating the assault, but if they delayed it, or slowed it down, it would most likely decide how the rest of that damnable day would go.

A full company of Outremar regulars, flying the Samarkand banner, had rushed up into position on the Jokers’ right flank, taking up a line across the billet road and a broad valley to the south that faced the desert. A second Outremar unit, smaller, but armed with weapon servitors, was moving up behind them, and the vox said that a Sixth Torrent armour unit with infantry support was a minute or two behind the Jokers.

The Jokers’ left flank was the earthwork wall. Skilful placing by Bronzi and his trusted bashaws had spread the Jokers along the higher banks and mounds of the uneven terrain in the billet grounds. They were getting decent tactical instruction over the vox, and the ’cept was with them. Bronzi could see how his men were tightening and adjusting their structures slightly as Mu’s wisdom touched them.

Bronzi nodded to himself. His company was as ready as it would ever be. He raised his sabre and held it aloft. There was a sharp crackle of gunlocks releasing.

The tidal wave of enemy warriors was less than a quarter of a kilometre away, the dust storm rolling with it. Dozens of Outremar soldiers fled before it, chased out of their overrun position. They ran frantically towards the geno line, past rows of abandoned tents and empty dugouts. The poor fools were doomed, Bronzi realised. They were in the line of fire, and he could not afford to stay his men for long enough to allow the Outremars to reach safety.

War forced choices on a man, unpleasant choices. At Tel Utan, the Alpha Legion had demonstrated how clinically such choices should be made. Compassion was a liberal folly that spared a life so that a hundred others might die as a consequence.

Bronzi looked up at the company banner, hanging limp and heavy in the dry air. He studied the figure on the banner, the cosmic joker, the trickster god Trisumagister, capering in his motley, a belled wand in one hand, a spillglass in the other. The Joker god knew all too well how wanton and feckless fortune could be, and how quickly time ran out for those who dallied with her affections. Bronzi believed he knew Dame Fortune just as well. You paid for her time, and took her service, and knew that she would be with another man the moment the fancy took her.

The sky overhead had darkened so much that it had turned the colour of arterial blood.

‘Geno!’ he yelled.

Full-throated, the men echoed the word.

The time was on them.

Bronzi rotated his sabre in the air, making quick, cutting sweeps. The first signal.

On the low ridge to his right, the company mortar teams began to drop shells into their angled tubes and step back, heads turned aside. A plosive, hollow plunk-plunk racket began. Mortar bombs whizzed up and over onto the enemy formation, expertly ranged. Bronzi observed the thumps and flashes as they struck with a nod of satisfaction. Each blast cast up white smoke and flailing bodies.

He sawed his raised sabre back and forth. The second signal.

The tripod-mounted cannons and crew-served weapons began to chatter and pulse tracer and blinding las at the oncoming foe. Sections of the leading ranks were demolished. Smoke and bloody steam furled back across the Nurthene press and chunks of shredded meat rained down on them. Bronzi saw echvehnurth elite judder and disintegrate as the heavy fire ripped through them. He saw a galloping monitor tumble over, disembowelled, crushing its rider under its rolling back.

Bronzi chopped his sabre straight down. The third signal.

The rifle lines opened fire. The lingering peal of muzzle cracks sounded like snapping twigs. Firing row by row, coordinated by the yelling bashaws and Mu’s ’cept, the ranks of riflemen aimed, fired, re-aimed, fired.

The effect was devastating. Five hundred Anatolian lascarbines, hefty pulse repeaters developed from the ubiquitous Urak-1020 combat gun that had been the workhorse of every Strife-Age warlord’s army, trained and fired by professional soldiers drilled to perfection, blazed at the Nurthene. The Jokers were especially famed for the quality of their marksmanship, a fact that Bronzi took a great deal of personal pride in. Every Joker rifleman was a crack shot by Army standards. There wasn’t a damn one amongst them who couldn’t hit a moving gamebird at nine hundred metres. Bronzi regularly fielded requests from other regiments asking for the loan of a rifleman or two to conduct training programmes. He bitterly regretted that Giano Faben and Zerico Munzer, his two best marksmen, were not at his side that morning. He’d loaned them as tutors to a Gedrosian regiment on Salkizor fifteen months earlier. The last he’d heard, they were en route back to him by pack ship, training tour over.

Giano and Rico were missing all of the fun, the lucky bastards.

The fusillades expertly slaughtered the first eight ranks of the Nurthene host, bringing down infantry and reptile riders alike. Though a handful of the fleeing Outremars had been clipped too, Bronzi was gratified to see that his men’s vaunted skill had spared most. Frantic Outremar survivors were dashing into the geno lines, weeping and screaming for sanctuary.

Tche looked at his het.

‘Keep them firing,’ Bronzi mouthed over the din. ‘Sustain order until there is no distance left.’

Tche nodded.

Bronzi lifted his sabre and held it out straight in front of him at head height. The fourth signal.

The pikemen, laced in between the rows of rifles, took a step forwards with their left feet, and declined their weapons into a murderous fence. Strengthened by sheathes of gravimetric force, the telescopic pikes extended until each one was ten metres long. The pikemen kept the arches of their right feet braced over the grav counterweights in the spikes at the bases of their hafts.

The las-spines on the tips of the pike blades began to sizzle with cising power.

Run onto that, you bastards, Bronzi thought, then you’ll discover how badly a geno company can maul you.

As if obeying his will, the Nurthene host did exactly that.

The front edge of the vast blight swarm spilled across the last few metres of open ground, losing men to the sustained rifle volleys at every step. Ten metres, five, two, and still they came, despite their losses. For every Nurthene casualty, there were two more men behind to take his place, and die in turn, and be replaced by four.

The Nurthene reached the pike fence.

The first of them were split apart, sectioned and chopped. The next waves became impaled, bodies skewering onto pike blades like living souvlaki. The geno pikemen leaned into the weight and multiple impacts, some grunting as their elongated poles hoisted whole bodies off the ground, writhing like speared fish, others struggling and collapsing as the crude mass of corpses pulled their pikes down. Gravitic counterweights shorted out under the demands put on them, and hafts splintered as the gravimetric sheaths supporting their outlandish lengths evaporated. Pikemen started to use broken sections of their weapons to jab and flay at the pressing tide.

Now we’re in it, Bronzi thought.

The concussion of the Nurthene charge meeting the geno line sent a ripple of shock back through Bronzi’s ordered files. For a moment, the Jokers held, like a dam before floodwaters, but the pressure built rapidly. The Nurthene piled in, hundreds upon hundreds of them, packing tighter and tighter against the geno barrier. In the gaps where the pike fence had broken, Nurthene warriors lunged and shoved and stabbed. Jokers fell down, cut open by whirling falxes, or toppled against the rows behind them. Carbines fired, point-blank and scattershot. Pressed back by the layer of the dead and dying in the buffer of the front ranks, the Jokers tried to maintain structure. The dead of both sides formed a ghastly ridge, which the Nurthene urgently scrambled over.

‘Blades, blades!’ Bronzi yelled.

Bashaw Fho, one of his senior men, turned to relay the order. An iron dart punctured his head and he dropped on his face. Nurthene arrows were suddenly coming down like torrential rain. Every man in Bronzi’s field of vision was struck by a dart. Bronzi felt one slice his right thigh and another embed itself in his left boot.

He roared and threw himself forwards, sabre in one hand, Parthian revolver in the other.

Sense departed. Instinct took over. He fired his pistol, and saw an echvehnurth’s head spray apart. He stroked with his sword, and took the top off a skull. Something hit him in the gut. Winded, he wheeled, and eviscerated a Nurthene with his blade. He shouldered another aside with his bulk, and shot the devil in the head to make it count. Turning, he stabbed another through the chest, and had to twist hard to pull his sword free.

Twenty seconds in and his gun was out. He threw it at a Nurthene and snorted as it bounced off the man’s skull. He drew his other sidearm, a shot-loaded back-up piece with a pepperpot snout of six barrels.

The Nurthene cavalry came crashing through the dense forest of fighting bodies with an indiscriminate momentum that trampled both Nurthene and Imperial underfoot. The reptile riders bucked and lurched above the heads of the infantry, like horsemen driving their steeds across a swollen river. Pikes caught some, hooking them out of their saddles, and the riderless beasts ploughed on, snapping and thrashing. More iron darts whizzed down out of the haze, dropping men by the dozen. The churned soil bristled with embedded arrows as if it was sprouting some strange new crop.

The first of the monstrous caimans lumbered into view out of the swirling vapour. Bronzi had never seen animals so enormous: dull-eyed heads the size of ground speeders, bodies the bulk of Imperial tanks. Their tails seemed to go on forever. From the ornate howdahs and fighting platforms on their massive backs, Nurthene archers in blue silks and silver mail fired salvo after salvo of iron darts from small, double-curved bows.

The caimans were inexorable. Their black scales shrugged off small-arms fire and snapped pike hafts, and they simply ran over anything that got in their way.

Bronzi sheathed his sabre, and took aim with his pepperpot. The clothes on his back felt heavy, and he knew it was due to the weight of the blood soaking into them. He lined up on the howdah of the nearest crocodilian, and discharged all six barrels at once.

Bronzi made up his own cartridges, tight packing them with twists of monofilament wire, adamantium shot and pebbles of xygnite putty. Six of them were enough to explode and shred the howdah and everything in it. Flying shot and wire injured the animal too. It rocked, and shifted its slow bulk in a slovenly pain response. Bronzi broke open his pepperpot, the smoking cases ejecting automatically, and rammed in six more with shaking fingers.

The caiman was turning towards him, flicking men into the air with its vast snout. Bronzi clacked the stockless weapon shut and re-aimed, the ball of his right thumb wedged into his cheek. He fired again, and the tiny, lethal debris of his rounds blew out the creature’s throat and right shoulder in a shower of meat and blood. It crashed over, its snout gouging into the ground like a ploughshare and its hindquarters kicked out in spasm. The tail whipped around and three dozen bodies, caught in its stroke, flew into the air.

He was about to reload, but there was no opportunity. Two echvehnurth came at him with their falxes. He managed to block the first swipe with his spent weapon and then let go of it to wrestle with the Nurthene. The man was screaming at him, but Bronzi had hold of his falx, and jerked him close to dish out a head-butt that crushed the man’s nose. The Nurthene became more pliant and Bronzi used his grip on the falx to heave the warrior around as a shield. The other echvehnurth had committed a swing of his falx at Bronzi, and the blade cut through his kin’s back instead.

The falx belonged to Bronzi suddenly. He pulled it out of the dead fingers, rotated it, and thrust it at the second echvehnurth. The long blade plunged in through the man’s left cheek, and the tip came out of the back of his head. Bronzi jerked the unfamiliar weapon free, and slashed wildly at a third echvehnurth who was closing to his left. The blow missed, but the echvehnurth toppled over dead anyway.

Tche grabbed Bronzi by the shoulder. His pistol shot had slain the enemy warrior.

‘Back, het!’ Tche yelled. ‘We have to get back!’

Bronzi knew Tche was right. It was turmoil. All semblance of row and order had vanished, and the Jokers were being broken up into melee units as the Nurthene poured in. The mortar positions had been abandoned and overrun, and over to the right flank, the Outremars seemed to have collapsed entirely.

The rolling wall of dust that came in with the Nurthene like a shroud was washing softly in across the Jokers’ stand.

They had done all they could. It felt to Hurtado Bronzi that they had been fighting for thirty or forty minutes, but in fact it had been little more than ten. The ’cept was urging the geno fighting men to fall back and reposition.

‘Do it!’ Bronzi yelled to his bashaw. ‘Disengage and fall back!’ He was nursing a fancy that his men could pull away and regroup as skirmishers to harry the Nurthene flanks.

But the dust was enveloping them, and there were Nurthene warriors everywhere. He realised that they would be lucky to get away alive.

There was no sign at all of Lord Namatjira’s infamous rage. He patiently studied the minute by minute reports Tactical was providing in a composed, reflective manner. It was a curious trait, one that had undoubtedly contributed positively to Namatjira’s ascent to the highest military rank. In the grip of a genuine crisis, a glacial calm surrounded him. Lord Namatjira had no time or energy to waste on tirades or recriminations. Those would come later, after the fact. In the heat of open war, a cold, analytical focus was required.

‘Our first line of resistance, which included the Jokers geno company, has been smothered,’ Major General Dev told him. ‘Outremar 234, Outremar 3667 and the Hort Eighteenth have all been lost or put to rout.’

Namatjira nodded. Major General Dev and the senior officers waited for him to speak. From all sides came the low murmur of the adepts and the hum of cogitators.

‘The Titans?’ Namatjira asked.

‘Six minutes from contact,’ Lord Wilde replied. ‘They should turn this around.’

Namatjira turned and strode out of the chamber. His retinue followed him. Chayne paused, and nodded to Dev, indicating that he should follow.

Bounding with the vitality of a much younger man, Namatjira took the stairs up to the observation deck two at a time, holding up the skirts of his rakematiz robes. His Lucifers jogged double time to keep up.

They came out into the open air, into the curdled dawn. A large, low-walled terrace in the upper part of the palace precinct had been turned over to distance observation. Heavy scopes and detection grids had been erected along the parapet, and tall clusters of vox-masts stood like pollarded trees in the centre of the terrace area. The observation crews made respectful namastes as the lord commander appeared.

‘Carry on’, he told them, with a solemn nod that seemed almost respectful. He walked across to the east-facing section of the parapet, and two adepts bowed and stood aside from a high-gain optical scope mounted on a tripod servitor.

‘I wanted to see for myself,’ Namatjira said quietly as Dev joined him.

‘Yes, lord.’

Namatjira peered into the scope’s viewer, and carefully adjusted the resonance as he turned it slowly from left to right.

The crest of the earthwork rampart filled the skyline to the north-east. To the south, in the broad road gully that Imperial pioneers had constructed beyond the palace walls, a steady line of transports and tanks were churning east along the track, heading into the incoming storm. A flock of Jackals whined overhead in tight formation, and turned south-east to begin strafing passes. Despite the scope’s powerful resolution, Namatjira couldn’t see the enemy, but he could see the vast veil of rolling vapour that mantled them and filled the sky.

‘Extraordinary,’ said Namatjira, straightening up. He looked at Dev. His eyes were bright, almost excited.

‘When a man finds war commonplace, it is time for him to retire from service,’ said Namatjira. ‘This reminds me why I am content to serve the Emperor for a while longer.’

‘Sir?’ asked Dev. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because it’s a challenge, Dev, a revelation. The enemy has done the unexpected, and that tests us. In all of the predictive scenarios, did we ever consider that the enemy might launch a full-scale counter-offensive?’

‘No, sir. Petty raids and line assaults, perhaps, harrying attacks along our picket, but nothing like this. We didn’t realise they had the manpower left.’

‘They have taught us a lesson about expectation,’ said Namatjira. ‘We have them besieged, we have them outnumbered, and we hold a clear advantage in technology. Yet they have invaded us.’

‘An act of desperation,’ suggested Dev. ‘We are about to take their world from them. This is a last stand, perhaps, a last effort to drive us out.’

‘And a brave one,’ Namatjira replied, ‘yet it plays to our advantage.’

Dev hesitated. ‘Our advantage, sir?’

‘They have broken the siege. They have come out into the open and demanded a pitched battle. We will give them that. We will annihilate them. Nurth will be an Imperial dominion by nightfall. After months of grinding, nuisance war, they have handed us a swift and comprehensive final victory.’

Dev nodded.

Namatjira glanced up at the slow-turning sky. ‘It’s almost as if that is their intention,’ he mused. ‘For all the losses we may take, initially, to their brute assault, they must know our superior firepower will ultimately slaughter them. It is almost as if they are committing suicide as a race. It is almost as if they want to die, in one last firestorm, rather than linger on to ignominious defeat.’

Namatjira turned back towards the stairs. ‘Commit the Hort and the Torrent in full order to follow the Titans in and crush the enemy. No quarter, major general.’ He paused. ‘By the way, where are the Alpha Legion?’

‘I… I don’t know, sir,’ said Dev.

‘Signal them, major general,’ said Namatjira. For a second, a tiny flash of his carefully suppressed rage showed itself. ‘Inquire as to their status and ask, respectfully, if they intend to join us.’

There was a distinct possibility that Hurt was already dead.

Soneka stood on the brow of a dune hill eight kilometres west of the battle, and felt the presentiment sink in. He felt it in his marrow. Hurt was dead. Tactical had informed him that the Jokers had been caught right in the path of the enemy onslaught. He had twice requested permission to draw the Clowns in along the southern service track to support the front line, but had been denied both times. The Clowns were to hold their position. ‘At this time, we do not know if the enemy will attempt to penetrate our line in other locations.’

Soneka knew that made sense. The Army had to maintain a defence formation right along the earthwork wall, or be guilty of the most basic military sin. Besides, at the rate the dust cloud was creeping in, the Clowns would be in it too, in no more than an hour.

Yet he dearly wished he could go to his friend’s aid.

He’d had less than eight hours to get to know his new command. The transport had delivered Soneka and his bashaws to the Clown billet long after dark the night before. The Clowns had already begun their fireside revels, and had welcomed their temporary commander with vocal enthusiasm. It had turned into a late night under the stars, fuelled by the Clowns’ bottomless supply of znaps.

Soneka had spent two hours talking with Strabo, fugging Strabo, who turned out to be a far more competent and likeable man than Dimi Shiban had suggested. Strabo had done his best to keep the company functioning and viable in the absence of a senior genic het. By the end of their chat, Soneka had felt a grudging admiration for the bashaw, who had evidently been holding the Clowns together with a glue composed of charisma and coercion. They spoke of Shiban, and Soneka related some of the things that had passed between him and Dimi at Tel Khat. He chose not to tell Strabo the truth of Shiban’s demise. How could a man explain that a fine officer like Dimitar Shiban had been executed by the Alpha Legion, and not have it sound like treason?

Soneka stared out across the dawn landscape. Where the sun should have risen, the ominous pall of vapour hung across the skyline. The sky had congealed into a slick of brown and amber clouds, all wandering slowly against the wind and common sense. The vapour was brighter than the sky, a creamy mass like a deep desert dune caught in noon sunlight. Soneka could smell something on the wind, a resiny smell like myrrh or wormwood.

He had been thinking about Shiban a lot in the last few days. Should he have noticed some change in him, some tell-tale sign that Shiban was not himself? How did one detect the trace of Chaos? The Alpha Legion, if they were to be believed, had some infallible method.

If they were to be believed. Soneka tutted to himself. After all this, and I’m still not inclined to trust them.

Drinking with Strabo the night before, Soneka had remembered an idle conversation he’d had with Shiban at Visages. It had meant nothing at the time, but in hindsight, Soneka wondered if it was some kind of sign or symptom.

From the hagg and hungrie goblin

That into raggs would rend ye,

And the spirit that stands by the naked man,

In the Book of Moones defend ye!

‘I know that,’ Soneka had said.

‘You do?’ Shiban had replied. ‘Really?’

‘My mother used to sing it to me when I was a boy. She called it the Bedlame Song. There were other verses that I now forget.’

‘Really? What does it mean?’

Soneka had shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

He still had no idea, except for the awful feeling that it had been the shards of Nurthene bone lodged in Dimi Shiban’s throat shaping the words, and not Dimi Shiban at all.

Those shards of bone had been polluting his friend, corrupting him. The Alpha Legionnaires had seen it instantly, and turned their weapons on him. Chaos had laced its poison claws into Dimi Shiban’s soul.

If that was true, why did Soneka know the verse? Why had his mother known it to sing it to him?

‘Sir?’

Soneka snapped out of his thoughts and looked to his left. Lon was approaching, carbine swinging from its long strap.

‘Any news?’ Soneka asked.

Lon shook his head. ‘Command repeats its instruction to hold here. Two units of Outremars are moving in from the east to cement this as a rearguard defence position.’

Soneka nodded. ‘Thank you. Let’s make ready to slot them in.’

‘Oh, and Strabo wants you, sir,’ Lon added.

Soneka looked back along the ridge of the dune. The Clowns were assembled in file order, facing the gauzy wound in the dust cloud where the sun should have been climbing. Their shouldered pikes glinted in the toxic light, and the company banners hung like moribund kite sails. Strabo was picking his way up the cinnamon dust of the dune towards them, followed by two riflemen, and a tall man wearing the uniform of a geno het.

Soneka did not recognise the het.

‘Sir,’ said Strabo, arriving and saluting. ‘This het has just reached our position and requests a moment of your time.’

‘His name?’

‘Uhm–’ Strabo began.

‘Shon Fikal,’ the het said, sticking out his hand. Soneka took it and shook it. The name meant nothing.

‘Could we have a word in private?’ Fikal requested.

Soneka nodded. He looked back at Lon. ‘Have the Clowns present,’ he ordered, ‘Akkad formation, with Lycad reserve lines. When they get here, draw the Outremar forces around to the south, and have them draw in along our left flank. Then we’ll meet with their officers. Relay that to all, especially–’

‘Fugging Strabo?’ Strabo asked.

Soneka grinned. ‘Yes, especially him.’

Lon and Strabo laughed, and turned back down the hill to the waiting company.

‘Shon Fikal?’ asked Soneka, drawing the het aside, ‘and what company does Shon Fikal serve?’

The het shrugged. ‘You may know me better by another name, sir,’ he said. ‘Konig Heniker.’

Soneka stared at him. His hand began to move towards his holstered sidearm.

‘No need for that,’ said Heniker. He looked Soneka in the face. ‘My real name is John Grammaticus, and I need to get a message to the Alpha Legion. It’s my understanding that you can arrange that.’

‘Your understanding?’

‘Don’t be coy. Is it true or not?’

‘Possibly,’ Soneka replied carefully.

‘Let’s hope so. And quickly. This is the Black Dawn, and we have very little time left.’

Bronzi reached a tel two kilometres south of the fighting line with about half of his company. They were all exhausted and caked in dust. It had taken thirty minutes of brutal skirmishing to break through the edges of the host pouring across them. Their heads were ringing from the demented melee, and Bronzi knew he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t clear his mind or stop his hands from shaking.

Two Outremar units had made it to the tel, fragments of demolished strengths, along with a score of Torrent gunners who had been forced to abandon their artillery and flee. Bronzi took charge of the lot of them, reporting numbers and position to Command. He had his bashaws check that the bewildered gunners were armed, even if it was simply with a knife or a broken wheel spoke.

Through his scope, Bronzi could see a long fan of Imperial armour drawing up across the desert from the west, trailing individual wakes of dust from their churning tracks. They were Zanzibari Hort, in full force, pushing up from the marshalling fields at Wadi Suhn. He wondered why they seemed to be hanging back. It was Major General Dev’s habit to plunge his fast armour into enemy infantry cohorts like heavy cavalry, and they were certainly gathering in significant enough numbers to make a difference, but they seemed to be dawdling a kilometre or so west of the enemy rush.

The explanation appeared.

Dull giants loomed out of the west through the ochre dust, trudging slowly up out of the great Ahn Aket wadi. They rose into view out of the desert sink, burnished monsters that walked like gods. Jeveth’s Titans had reached the fighting line.

There were three of them. The driving dust was such that their distant shapes were obscured from view several times, despite their scale. Bronzi could hear the occasional metal creak or squeal of their vast, lumbering chassis. They strode through the waiting formations of Hort armour at a relentless pace dwarfing the heavy tanks and gun platforms and, line abreast, advanced on the Nurthene host.

The first of them began to fire.

Bronzi winced and lowered his scope. The pulsing flashes of the Titan’s limb mounts were dazzling bright, and left a neon after-image on his retinas.

‘Great Terra,’ he murmured.

Fat beams of luminous energy began to rake out of their cannons, and were quickly supported by huge, pumping bolts of light like shooting stars, and sooty blurs of hard ordnance. The Titans seemed to smoke from head to foot, but it was just dust coming off them. The sustained recoil vibration of their weapon arrays was so great that the dust and sand accumulated during their trek to the front was shaking off their vast, plated forms in powdery swathes.

Bronzi could hear the shriek and wail of their las weapons, and the brisk thunder of their machine cannons. The sounds rolled to him, out of synch with the flashes and light bursts. He’d seen Titans at war before, and the sight never failed to fill him with awe. He was always unprepared for the astonishing rapidity of their rate of fire, the zipping, torrential pulse and spit of green, amber and white light that unloaded from their forearms and shoulders.

The ground ahead of their slow advance began to ripple and distort as it sprouted sudden forests of blooming dust, thrown-up earth and writhing fireballs. A juddering, flickering carpet of destruction spread out before them, billowing dark smoke and vapourised sand back into the edges of the pale fog that the Nurthene had brought with them. Bronzi could feel the relentless plosive concussion of the onslaught quaking his viscera. The ground was shaking.

The men around him started to cheer and bellow, but Bronzi could feel their dismay. It was not a scene that a man could witness without an involuntary shiver of fear.

He wondered how many of the screaming enemy had perished in the first second, how many in the second, or the third. It was impossible to see, even with his scope. He could resolve nothing except the churning smoke, the serried flicker of furious impacts, the sudden chains of fireballs, igniting and expanding and overlapping. For a split second, he glimpsed a dark shape that had to be a giant caiman rise up out of a flurry of detonations, and then crash back like the hull of a sinking ship.

The smell of wormwood had gone. In its place was the reek of superheated gases, of fycelene, of molten, vitrified sand and of burning flesh.

The Titans ploughed on, stepping through the seething, burning devastation they had wrought, like men walking through low mist. Their bombardment did not relent. Behind them, the Hort armour began to spur forwards, and Bronzi heard the distant slap and howl of tank guns beginning to hammer.

The Titans reached the edge of the Nurthene storm cloud, and waded into its pale fog. For the first time since dawn, that ominous pall began to recoil and fold back on itself, as if the three huge war machines were a fresh breeze out of the desert, slowly blowing the stain away.

Soneka led Heniker, or whatever his name was, down the wadi to where the company’s support vehicles sat. He felt a deep unease, as if he was embarking on some unconscionable betrayal. He also knew it was far too late to consider such niceties. He’d made a choice, and he had to live with it.

‘They’re looking for you,’ he said.

‘Who is?’ asked Heniker.

‘Everyone,’ Soneka replied.

‘I know. I also know who I want to be found by.’

‘The Astartes?’

Heniker nodded.

‘Why?’ asked Soneka.

‘It’s complicated. The simple answer is that I believe they will listen to me. Your masters in the Imperial Army would simply execute me as the Nurthene agent they believe I am.’

Heniker looked at Soneka with a strange smile. ‘Except, they’re not your masters, are they?’ he asked. ‘Not any more. I mean, you don’t answer to them first, do you?’

Soneka did not reply.

‘How did that happen?’ Heniker asked. ‘Have you been an operative for a long time, or was it a recent thing? Did they co-opt you or coerce you?’

‘That’s enough.’

‘I’m simply interested, interested in how they work, how their mechanism functions.’

‘You’re not asking the right man,’ Soneka told him. ‘Just wait here.’

Heniker nodded and remained where he was. Soneka walked over to an open-topped staff-track, and told the driver to go for a walk.

‘Sir?’

‘I need to use the vox,’ said Soneka. ‘Clearance only.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the man said, and jumped out of the cab. He wandered away in the direction of a group of drivers sitting in the shade of a transport.

Soneka switched on the track’s vox-unit and let it warm up. He kept glancing over at Heniker, but the man showed no sign of disappearing. When the vox was up to power, Soneka reached into his pocket and took out his biometric. He looked at it for a moment. It would be an easy thing to slot it in, contact Mu, and make a report. An easy thing: Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene. Was it really too late for that now?

He sighed, put the biometric down on the top of the set, and typed a seven digit channel code into it instead. The vox whispered for a moment, and then a voice answered.

‘Speak and identify.’

‘Lernaean 841,’ said Soneka.

The vox murmured. As Soneka watched, the encryption lights on its display lit up, one by one.

‘Speak.’

‘Is this link secure?’ Soneka asked.

‘You can see that for yourself.’

‘Is this link secure?’

‘Yes, Peto. Be assured of it. Do you have information for us?’

Soneka swallowed. ‘I have Konig Heniker.’

There was a pause.

‘Repeat, Peto.’

‘I have Konig Heniker,’ Soneka said.

‘In your custody?’ asked the vox.

‘In my company. He surrendered himself to me ten minutes ago. He says he has a message for you. Vital, apparently.’

There was another pause.

‘What is your location, Peto?’

Soneka read out his chart referent.

‘Bring him to us.’

‘I can’t just–’

‘Bring him to us.’

‘Listen to me, I am on active station. My company is in the field. Have you seen what’s going on out there?’

‘We have.’

‘I can’t just leave my post, I have a duty–’

‘Yes, you have,’ the vox said. ‘There is no alternative. Trust us. Bring Heniker to CR583 immediately. We will cover you.’

‘I–’ Soneka began.

‘Is that understood?’

‘Look, it’s not as if I can–’

‘Is that understood?’

‘Yes,’ said Soneka quietly.

‘Please confirm that this is understood.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Soneka.

‘Please confirm the chart referent.’

‘CR583.’

The link went dead. The encryption lights faded out, one by one.

Soneka sat back and exhaled hard. He keyed off the set, retrieved his biometric, and got out of the track.

‘Well?’ asked Heniker. ‘You look unhappy.’

‘Don’t talk to me. Just shut up and follow me.’

They slogged back up the soft drift sand of the wadi, and Soneka made Heniker wait while he called to Lon.

‘What’s up?’ Lon asked, jogging over.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘What?’ Lon laughed. ‘Go? Go where?’

‘I can’t explain. It’s… it’s classified.’

Lon stared at him. ‘Classified? What are you talking about, het? Are you Army Intelligence all of a sudden?’

‘Something like that.’ Soneka jerked his head in Heniker’s direction. ‘Listen, Lon, I think this guy’s got information,’ he whispered. ‘I think he might even be one of the spies everyone’s gossiping about.’

‘What?’

‘Just listen. I need to deliver him to the genewhips or someone.’

‘How long are you going to be?’ asked Lon.

‘Half an hour. I don’t know. You’re in charge. Tell Strabo you’re in charge, my authority.’

‘You’ve only been with the Clowns a few hours,’ Lon began.

‘Then they’re not going to miss me much, are they?’ Soneka replied. ‘This is important. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.’

The bashaw looked unhappy. Finally, he shrugged his heavy, heterosis-magnified shoulders. ‘Whatever you think best, sir,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Does Uxor Mu know about this?’ Lon asked.

Soneka shook his head. ‘I can’t trust the vox, not even encrypted.’

‘And if she asks for you? If Command asks for you?’

‘Tell them to stand by. Tell them I have left my station to deal with a critical matter, and that I will report to her as soon as I can.’

Lon nodded.

‘March in fortune,’ Soneka said.

‘You too, het.’

Soneka requisitioned a light scout vehicle from the supply line, and they headed south-west across a patch of open desert that resembled a dried seabed. The daylight had taken on an even more unsettling cast, and the sky had turned the colour of beaten copper.

‘It’s not getting any lighter,’ muttered Soneka as he drove.

‘You noticed that?’ Heniker replied.

‘What’s going on? What’s a “black dawn”?’

‘Something unexpected. Something vile. The Nurthenes’ last gift to you.’

‘To me personally?’

Heniker laughed. ‘To the Imperial expedition.’

‘Interesting choice of words,’ Soneka replied, fighting with the wheel as they shook over the uneven crust. ‘It implies you are not Imperial.’

‘I’m not.’

Soneka risked a glance at him. ‘What the hell are you, then?’

‘I’m human. At least, human enough for your needs. I’m not the enemy, you have to understand that. I’m fighting for the same cause as you.’

‘Which is?’

‘The survival of the species. My one wish is to save the human race from the slow and tormenting death that is about to overtake it.’

‘It would be great if you started dealing in specifics,’ said Soneka.

‘There’s a war coming,’ said Heniker.

‘We’re at war all the time. It’s the natural state of mankind in this era.’

Heniker looked out at the desert scrub flashing past. ‘This is a special kind of war. It will make all others seem futile and small. The Imperium is simply not prepared for it.’

Soneka checked the chart display, and turned them a few points west, along the edge of a great sink, where the wind was lifting white sand off the rim like steam.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Heniker said.

‘You can try.’

‘Is Rukhsana alive?’

Soneka hesitated before answering. ‘Yes, I think so. She was when I last saw her.’

‘The Astartes got you to deliver her to them, didn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Soneka, ‘for her own safety.’

‘If that’s what they said,’ Heniker remarked, ‘it must be true.’

‘She–’ Soneka began. ‘I’m sorry. I was reluctant to bring her to them, and I have regretted it since. Army Intelligence was close to taking her. They had discovered the link between you and her.’

Heniker nodded.

‘Peto Soneka–’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. It’s funny. Not long ago, I’d almost decided to be you.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Soneka.

‘I’m talking about borrowing identities from the dead. But it turns out you’re not dead.’

CR583 was a ruined Nurthene bastion on a sandstone crag overlooking a wide dune sea. The crag ran north in jutting steps, and joined the lip of the continental shelf where it dropped away into the Mon Lo coastlands. The dimpled expanse of the dune sea stretched away to the south, and had turned silver grey in the malevolent light, like a sheet of chainmail spread out and stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no heat, just a cold, restless wind.

Soneka brought the scout vehicle up under the shadows of the crag, and they dismounted. The bastion was one of a chain of ancient Nurthene watchtowers that had once guarded the threshold of the open desert, but it had been abandoned and left to ruin centuries before the expedition arrived. It was built of large hardstone blocks, sagging and crumbling in places. The upper levels were gone, and blank spyholes looked out over the dunes like empty eye sockets.

They clambered up the slopes of weathered scree and jumbled boulders. Many of the larger fragments were blocks from the tower that time had pulled down. The place was full of chilly echoes. As their boots disturbed loose pebbles and stones, the clatters repeated around them, spectral and hollow.

‘This feels wrong,’ said Soneka, drawing his pistol.

‘They’re just not taking any chances with me,’ Heniker told him.

Soneka looked up at the crude walls of the bastion above them. He didn’t seem convinced.

They clambered up a little further, to the foot of the bastion.

‘There, you see?’ said Heniker. ‘This is the right place.’ He pointed. A small but distinct mark had been heat-scored into the face of a loose block just ahead. The symbol matched the one branded on Soneka’s flesh.

‘Another house of the hydra,’ Heniker muttered.

‘What?’

Heniker pushed past him, and climbed up a bank of sand silt to the tower’s open gateway. As he passed the marked block, he touched it. ‘Still warm,’ he called back. ‘They haven’t been here long.’

They walked under the heavy stone lintel of the gate and entered the tower. Its internal floors and staircases had gone, leaving an empty sleeve of stone open to the sky. It took a moment for their eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. Through the window slots and open roof, they could see patches of cold, dull sky.

‘Hello,’ said Heniker.

‘Hello, John.’

Two Astartes stood in the darkness, waiting for them. They were in full war-plate, but their helmets were off. In the half-light, Soneka realised that he couldn’t tell them apart. They were like twins.

‘Herzog, Pech,’ Heniker said, nodding to them.

‘How–’ Soneka began.

‘John Grammaticus is a marvellously perceptive being,’ said a deep voice behind them. A third Astartes came out of the shadows.

‘Alpharius,’ said Heniker. Soneka heard the confidence slip slightly from the spy’s voice.

‘Can you be certain?’ asked the third Astartes.

Heniker recovered his composure slightly. ‘Yes. I have heard your voice before, at the pavilion. I never forget a vocal pattern, and your build is appreciably larger than that of your captains. You are the Primarch Alpharius. Lord, it has taken a great deal of time, effort and trouble to meet you.’

‘From the way you have evaded us, John, it would seem that you were keen to postpone that moment,’ Alpharius observed.

‘Things have changed,’ said John Grammaticus. ‘More than ever, I need to speak to you, and you need to listen.’

‘Then let us withdraw and speak,’ said Alpharius. The two towering captains stepped forwards and flanked Heniker, leading him towards the tower’s doorway. Heniker looked back over his shoulder at Soneka. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Soneka shrugged. The Astartes led Heniker out of the tower.

‘Well done, Peto,’ said the armoured giant.

Soneka holstered his gun, and made a solemn namaste. ‘I must return to my unit, lord,’ he said. ‘The quicker I can resume my duties, the–’

‘No, Peto. I’m sorry. You can’t.’

‘Why not?’ Soneka asked.

‘Peto, there is a question you haven’t asked yourself.’

‘And that is?’ Soneka replied.

‘How did Konig Heniker know that you were an operative of the Alpha Legion? How did he know how to find you?’

Thirteen

The last day on Nurth

It was cold underground. Soneka had believed the deserts of Nurth to be arid and waterless, but deep in the rock cisterns and chutes, moisture gathered on the walls and dripped off the ceiling like black saliva.

The tunnels they followed were fresh cut, no more than a few weeks old. The walls and floor displayed the tell-tale marks of fusion borers and rock cutters. How long had the Alpha Legion been here, Soneka wondered, and just how much careful preparation had they made before revealing themselves formally?

Quite suddenly, as it seemed to Soneka, they left the darkness of the tunnels and the echoes of their footsteps behind, and came out into the open air. He looked around, blinking.

They had emerged into a deeply scooped bowl of rock. A crown of fossil-dry cliffs rose all around. Overhead, the copper clouds bloated and knotted into tumorous shapes, and there was a foul reek on the wind. Even the Astartes seemed to notice the way the climate was rapidly deteriorating, as if the planet was sick and distempered.

‘This world is unravelling,’ remarked Grammaticus.

Alpharius cast him a look. It was Soneka’s first opportunity to see the primarch’s features in daylight. His face was handsome and strong, his scalp clean shaven. In the strange light, his dark skin appeared greenish grey and his eyes hard tungsten.

John Grammaticus was busy studying the details of their surroundings. He could not see Shere or any of the Alpha Legion’s pet psykers, but he could feel at least two of them close by, watching him, ready to shut him down if he ventured so much as a millimetre outside his own skull.

In the rock bowl below, Grammaticus saw twenty Alpha Legionnaires, the most he had seen in one place. They were armouring into their plate, checking their bolters, and uncasing support weapons from steel drop canisters. A dozen or so regular humans moved amongst them, assisting with the armour fittings, or fetching munition packs and tools. Most of the regulars were dressed in Army uniforms of various kinds, but some wore the shawls and robes of local desert costume. None of the Astartes or the operatives looked up as the party emerged from the cliff tunnel.

On the far side of the deep bowl, a heavy drop-ship crouched on thick claw-footed stanchions under dense camouflage netting. The drop-ship was of a non-standard pattern, or at least no pattern Grammaticus was familiar with.

John Grammaticus could feel the low throb and warble of powerful vox transmitters. He could smell communication all around him: encrypted flows, eddies of communication, estuaries of data flowing into information seas. The Alpha Legion was on a war footing, and this place had to be just one of many bolthole reserves preparing to mobilise.

Time was running out…

‘My lord primarch–’ Grammaticus began.

Ingo Pech shot him a hard look, and Grammaticus fell silent. Alpharius turned and walked away from them, down the stone litter of the slope to the floor of the basin where his warriors were making ready. One of them rose, half-armoured, and began to speak with him.

Grammaticus watched with mounting interest. They were too far away for him to overhear, and the angle was wrong for him to lip read, but he could discern their body language. Moreover, he could compare them. The warrior Alpharius had gone to talk to was big, even by the standards of hybrid vigour exhibited by Astartes. He matched the primarch in every dimension. Their body language duplicated, down to the slightest gesture. And their faces… they were like twins.

Grammaticus wondered if he had been wrong, or deliberately misled, in his identification. Who was the primarch here? Who was Alpharius? How many layers of deception had the Legion woven about themselves?

‘Who is that?’ he asked Pech.

‘Who do you mean?’ the first captain replied sullenly.

‘The brother speaking with Alpharius.’

Pech looked at Herzog, who shrugged.

‘Omegon,’ Pech said.

‘Omegon?’ Grammaticus echoed.

‘Commander of the stealth squad,’ Herzog said. He and Pech laughed, as if at a private joke.

Grammaticus realised he knew what it was. His eyes widened. He knew he had to test this. He reached out with his mind.

A telekinetic scream tore into his head and blew the roof off his skull. He squealed, and fell on his face.

No, you don’t, said a voice. The voice belonged to Shere.

Soneka started forwards in alarm. Heniker had suddenly convulsed and collapsed.

‘It’s all right, Peto,’ said Pech calmly. ‘He just got a little too inquisitive.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Soneka. ‘He didn’t do anything.’

‘Nothing you could see,’ Herzog advised.

Heniker lay on his face in the dust, twitching and moaning. Blood leaked out of his ears.

‘Have you killed him somehow?’ Soneka asked.

‘It’ll take more than that to finish the likes of him,’ said Herzog. He raised his heavy bolter in a manner that suggested he knew at least one reliable alternative.

Soneka pushed past the massive second captain and bent down beside Heniker. Herzog laughed at the affront, and glanced at Pech. ‘Het’s got some balls.’

‘That’s why I picked him,’ Pech replied.

Soneka rolled Heniker over into the recovery position, and made sure his airway was clear. Froth drooled from the corner of the downed man’s chewing mouth.

‘Just breathe, Heniker,’ he said. ‘Just breathe slowly.’

‘I know…’ the man gurgled.

‘Shush.’

‘I know,’ Heniker insisted, in a wet voice. ‘I know how to recover from a psychic attack. Give me a moment.’

He opened his eyes. One had become very bloodshot. ‘It’s John, sir.’

‘What?’

‘My name, my real name, it’s John. It always has been.’

Soneka nodded.

Alpharius and the warrior he had been talking with were walking up the slope towards them.

‘Time to talk, then, John Grammaticus,’ said Alpharius.

‘He’s hurt,’ Soneka protested.

‘He’s sound enough,’ said the Astartes at Alpharius’s side.

Alpharius raised a hand. ‘Your sympathy does you credit, Peto. Thank you.’

With Soneka’s assistance, John Grammaticus rolled over and sat upright, wiping his mouth and looking up at the towering figures.

‘You’re so alike,’ he said.

‘It plays to our strength,’ said Alpharius. ‘Anonymity in shared identity. We all make an effort to look alike.’

Grammaticus chuckled and coughed. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘To the eyes of non-heterosic humans, all Astartes look alike,’ Herzog said.

‘You cannot read our features, or distinguish our dissimilarities,’ said Pech. ‘To you, we are inhuman things stamped out of a single mould.’

Grammaticus shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant either.’ Leaning on Soneka, he rose to his feet. ‘You’re too alike. More alike than the rest. Face, voice, build, mannerisms. Like twins.’

‘You cannot possibly read or distinguish the subtle differences in–’ Alpharius began.

‘No, I can. I really can. That’s what I do,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Yes, you all look alike, to simple human eyes. They look alike to you, don’t they, Peto?’

‘Every one of them.’ Soneka replied.

Grammaticus nodded. ‘You look the same to Peto, but I can see. Him, he’s three, maybe three and a half centimetres taller than the man beside him. He has heavier cheekbones. He has a thicker neck, and a propensity to grow hair. Those two are alike, except around the eyes, where it is telling.’

‘Gene stock traits,’ said Pech.

‘No,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Cosmetic efforts to resemble one another. Except you–’ he looked at Alpharius and Omegon. ‘You really are identical.’

‘The differences between us are simply too subtle for you to detect,’ Omegon said.

‘I doubt that. I really doubt that. Which one of you is Alpharius?’

‘I am,’ said Alpharius.

‘Very well, let me rephrase the question,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Which one of you is the primarch?’

Alpharius smiled. ‘I think it’s high time we started asking the questions, John. You came looking for us, hunting for us, and you found us. Then you did everything you could to evade us. Now you come to us again. Why?’

‘I was sent to broker terms with you, with the Alpha Legion,’ Grammaticus replied.

‘This would be by the Cabal you described?’ Pech asked.

‘Yes. They sent me. I knew the endeavour would be dangerous, and that you would resist me, so I was wary. However, matters have shifted, and I come to you openly.’

‘Does the Cabal know of your change in tactics?’ asked Herzog.

‘The Cabal ordered me to change my tactics,’ Grammaticus replied. ‘Brokering of terms can come later. I’m here to warn you. This world has about a day of life left in it. You must flee before it overwhelms you.’

‘We’ll head west,’ said Bronzi. Tche nodded, holding the chart flat against the face of a boulder.

‘West it is,’ he agreed.

‘The service track’s probably–’

Tche shook his head. ‘No, down the wadi and through there. The dry bed. Any further north and we risk getting caught up in this.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Bronzi said. ‘It’s all over, bar the body bagging.’

‘Is it?’ asked Tche. ‘Have you seen the sky?’

‘Fug the sky,’ said Bronzi.

‘Yeah, well, the wadi will keep us clear of any potential action, that’s all I’m saying,’ Tche retorted.

‘Hm. I like that thinking,’ Bronzi admitted. The elements he had gathered around him were too weak and unfocused to get swept up in the main brawl. If he could conduct them west as far as the palace, or at least its environs, the uxors could redeploy them properly to strengthen other sections.

‘All right, we’re moving out,’ Bronzi told his senior bashaw. ‘Wake ’em up and tell ’em where to go.’

Tche ran forwards, calling out instructions. The other bashaws became alert and started to relay them. The Jokers got to their feet obediently, gathering their kit and weapons. The Outremar troopers looked befuddled at the orders.

‘Get lively and move!’ Bronzi yelled at them. ‘Come on, girls, it’s time to go!’

Most of them, the Jokers included, had spent the last forty minutes watching a spectacle they would tell to their grandchildren. Titans and Hort armour, laying into the enemy with full military power, it was the stuff fireside tales were made of, the stuff that made grandpa or great-grandpa seem bigger than life.

An incredible sight, the Titans blasting all hell out of the landscape, slowly advancing into the vapour flume with the tanks of the Zanzibari Hort at their gigantic heels. Bronzi couldn’t begin to guess how many thousand tonnes of munitions had been delivered into the enemy ranks. If there was a Nurthene left alive, he’d be surprised. The Imperial Army, combined with a Titan Legion from Terra’s fraternal twin, Mars – Emperor bless the Mechanicum! – had done what it was designed to do. It had crushed, it had obliterated.

It had overwhelmed Nurth’s last ditch effort.

The great show had disappeared from view. The Titans and their support line of heavy tanks had vanished into the vapour’s haze. Bronzi could still hear them firing, still see the flash, and feel the distant over-pressure thump of their detonations.

The Nurthene storm, the veil that had so comprehensively overwhelmed the earthwork line at dawn, was folding back and dissipating. Bronzi imagined fields of burning sand, littered with dead Nurthene and exploded reptile carcasses, imprinted with the smouldering footprints of Titan monsters.

‘Come on. Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Get off your arses, you idiots! Let’s move! Down the valley and west!’

He looked up.

He suddenly realised how black and lightless the day had become.

‘The Nurthene possess a device known as a Black Cube,’ Grammaticus said.

‘Explain the term,’ Pech insisted.

‘I can’t. I don’t understand it. I only know what it does. It’s a device, an ancient device. Older than you can conceive, a weapon constructed before the rise of man. The Cabal believes that they were used in ancient wars between the first-comer races, in the galaxy’s youth.’

‘Another portentous myth with no basis in–’ Herzog started to say.

‘Listen to me!’ Grammaticus cried out. He was using his voice at its most formidable and persuasive. There was no longer any time for restraint. He had to make them listen and understand. Modifying his tone and pitch with a skill finessed over centuries, he made Soneka start, and the Alpha Legionnaires stare at him. ‘The Cabal believes there are no more than five of these infernal devices left in existence,’ he said. ‘It is a weapon of Chaos ritual. A Black Cube, once activated, manufactures a Black Dawn. From that point, no life on the planet is safe.’

‘How is a Cube activated?’ asked Pech.

‘By blood,’ said Grammaticus. ‘By the sacrifice of blood. Don’t you see, the Nurthene want you to kill them. They want you to slaughter them. That activates their weapon.’

A gust of foul wind swept around the rock bowl. Down in the bottom of the basin, the armouring Astartes and their operatives had stopped in the midst of their activities. Some had risen to their feet. They were listening too. ‘How do we stop it?’ asked Alpharius.

‘You can’t, not now,’ said Grammaticus.

‘Then what?’

‘You must abandon this enterprise,’ said Grammaticus. ‘You must quit this world immediately and retreat to a point of safety. There is still a chance to save the Alpha Legion. Furthermore, if you are persuasive enough, there is still a chance to save the expedition forces.’

‘Namatjira won’t just–’ Alpharius began.

‘You’re a primarch!’ snapped Grammaticus. ‘One of you is, at any rate. Use your influence, and even a lord commander will listen! Either that, or cut your losses and leave them to their doom. The important thing is… the Alpha Legion is far too valuable a resource to be lost in such a senseless manner.’

‘You’re here to save us, then, are you, John?’ asked Omegon.

‘Why do you care so much?’ asked Alpharius.

Grammaticus sighed. ‘Because I was sent here as an ambassador to open a dialogue between you and the Cabal. I’ve told you this already. I told it to Pech, I’ve said it until I’m sick of the words. The opportunity for subtle persuasion has gone. Come with me, flee this world, escape this doom, and I will take you to a place of revelation.’

‘I don’t run from a fight,’ said Alpharius. ‘I am committed. I don’t just cut my losses and walk away when I’m oathed to a moment.’

‘Don’t you?’

Grammaticus and the Astartes glanced at Soneka.

‘Did you speak, Peto?’ Pech asked.

Soneka hesitated. ‘Yes. I said… I meant… that’s what you do. That’s what I’ve seen you do.’

Alpharius’s eyes narrowed. ‘Peto?’

‘Pragmatism, unsentimental pragmatism, seems to be your defining quality. I’m not, forgive me, I’m not questioning your honour or courage, but you do what you have to. You do whatever is necessary to accomplish the greater goal.’

Alpharius took a step towards him. ‘Have you suddenly become an expert on the Alpha Legion’s military ethics?’

Soneka shook his head. ‘I only report what I’ve seen with my own eyes. Without qualm or reservation, you do whatever is necessary to win. The Dancers I left in the sand at Tel Utan will attest to that.’

‘You make us sound clinical and ruthless,’ said Alpharius.

‘You are the most effective fighting mechanisms Terra has ever produced,’ said Grammaticus behind him. ‘Is that so bad a description?’

There was a long silence, broken only by the breath of the noxious wind. Alpharius stared at Omegon, then nodded curtly. He turned to Herzog and Pech. ‘Signal the Legion to stand down and prepare for immediate withdrawal. Rapid evacuation pattern, unit by unit, standard reconstitution policy.’ Alpharius glanced at Grammaticus. ‘What is a safe distance?’

‘The edge of the system would be prudent,’ Grammaticus replied.

Alpharius turned back to his captains. ‘Standard reconstitution policy,’ he continued, ‘in the heliopause. Do it now.’

They both saluted and moved off urgently, muttering streams of orders into their suit mics.

‘Signal the lord commander, and tell him I will attend upon him in thirty minutes,’ Alpharius told Omegon. Then he turned to face Grammaticus.

Grammaticus looked up into the primarch’s eyes.

‘If it turns out that you have played us in any way, John,’ Alpharius said. ‘If this proves to be a trick or a ruse, I will personally oversee your execution, and then I will hunt out and exterminate your precious Cabal.’

‘That, sir, is entirely reasonable,’ replied John Grammaticus.

One

Vicinity of 42 Hydra, five months after the fall of Nurth

The lock plate beside the hatch knew his hand, read it with a soft blink of light, and the hatch slid open. He picked up the heavy canvas satchel, slung it over his shoulder, and stepped through.

‘Good day to you, John,’ he said.

John Grammaticus smiled. ‘Hello, Peto. Is it another day already?’

‘Already indeed,’ replied Peto Soneka, putting the satchel down on the steel table.

‘One would hardly know,’ said Grammaticus, true to form. It had become a refrain between them, varying only slightly from day to day, a shorthand of comradeship.

The cell was crude, but large enough for a man to waste hours in it pacing up and down. A cot, two chairs, the table, a basin in the wall and a chemical toilet were its only features. There were no windows, and the lights were on permanently. After weeks of quiet complaint, Grammaticus had been allowed an eyeshade so that he could simulate night.

Soneka never closed the hatch behind him. It remained open for the duration of each visit, tantalisingly open. A deliberate psychological effect, he presumed. Soneka did not close the hatch behind him, because he had been told not to close the hatch behind him.

With its recycled air, the lingering scent of the toilet and the bad lights, the cell was charmless and unpleasant, but despite the environment he was required to live in, Grammaticus was always clean and respectable. They gave him a change of clothes every three days, and he washed at the basin. His beard had grown out bushy and grey in a distinguished manner, like an old general’s. They had not permitted him a razor.

Soneka opened the satchel and started to take out its contents.

‘What do we have today?’ asked Grammaticus, with false brightness.

‘Cold meat and cheese,’ Soneka told him, lifting out small parcels wrapped in waxed paper, ‘a jar of pickled capers, a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread and the usual vitamin supplements.’

‘A veritable feast,’ said Grammaticus.

‘The cheese is particularly welcome,’ Soneka agreed.

They sat down, on either side of the table, and began to share out the food. Soneka took two plates, two cups, two bowls, two paring knives and two spoons from the bag, and set the bag on the floor. Grammaticus used one of the knives to slice the block of rindy cheese and share it out. Soneka pulled the cork plug out of the wine bottle, and poured measures into the waiting cups. They moved around one another, dutiful and relaxed, like a married couple that know each other’s ways intuitively. Five months of shared meals would do that.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Soneka asked, passing one of the cups to Grammaticus.

‘Peto, I haven’t slept well in a thousand years,’ Grammaticus replied, ‘but I shan’t complain. I have reason to believe my mission is about to be completed.’

‘Really?’

Grammaticus took a bite of bread, sipped his wine as he munched, and placed the cup in the centre of the table between them. He pointed at it.

‘What?’ asked Soneka, adding a slice of cheese to his hunk of bread.

‘The ripples, Peto, the ripples.’

Some distant vibration, too subtle to be felt, was being transmitted up through the deck into the table and the cup. Tiny, concentric ripples pulsed out across the surface of the wine like a sensor pattern.

‘The drive rate has altered,’ said Grammaticus. ‘I think we’re firing the engines to retard towards translation.’

Soneka put a couple of fat capers in his mouth and nodded back with a grin. ‘We’ll be translating in the next hour. Nothing much gets past you, does it, John?’

Grammaticus, chewing another mouthful, raised his eyebrows sardonically.

When they were done with the meal, Soneka refilled the satchel and nodded goodbye to Grammaticus. As he closed the hatch behind him, he saw Grammaticus staring back at him from his seat at the table.

Soneka felt his profound loneliness return the moment the hatch had sealed. Though he could not, in all fairness, describe Grammaticus as a friend, the Cabal’s agent was the closest approximation to real human company that Soneka had experienced in half a year.

Living amongst Astartes was a strange experience, and the novelty had long since worn off.

The first captain was rehearsing close combat techniques in his chambers. Dressed in a sleeveless bodyglove, he stepped and turned smoothly through a sequence of passes, blocks and ripostes using a hardwood practice sword. Around him, eight operatives echoed his moves in perfect unison. The matching precision was impressive to watch. Soneka stood in the hatchway for a while, observing the session, until Pech signalled a halt with a brief nod.

The operatives filed out past Soneka. One of them was Thaner, the man Bronzi had taken him to on that fateful night. Thaner acknowledged Soneka with a slight tilt of his head.

There was no camaraderie between operatives. Each of them existed in his own quiet, driven world of service and duty. Soneka had not expected to engage with the Astartes, for they were a breed apart, and the distinctions between them and regular humans perfectly obvious, but the behaviour of the operatives puzzled him. They were all human still, humans drawn together for a common purpose, but they shared nothing. Soneka had never known a company of men to remain so disparate. The normal habits of military comradeship were missing. No one ever spoke of who they had been or where they had come from; no one ever shared a drink or a humorous story. In their way, they seemed less human than the Astartes.

Pech beckoned Soneka over.

‘How is John today, Peto?’ he asked, placing his practice sword back on the rack.

‘Much the same as ever – contained, patient. He has deduced that we are at the point of arrival. That seems to have lifted his spirits slightly.’

Pech nodded. ‘Anything else?’

Soneka shrugged. ‘Yes, one thing. He didn’t ask me about Rukhsana today.’

‘No?’

‘I can’t remember a day in the last five months when he hasn’t. I always tell him he’ll be allowed to see her in time, but today, he didn’t ask.’

‘Well, at least you didn’t have to lie,’ Pech replied.

‘There is always that.’

Pech began to buckle on a pair of heavy boots. ‘I want you by my side for the next few days, Peto,’ he said. ‘Operations are about to begin, and I need you on hand to furnish me with any insight you might have concerning Grammaticus. You’ve spent more time with him than anyone else.’

‘I don’t pretend to know him,’ Soneka replied. ‘He hardly takes me into his confidence.’

‘None of us knows him,’ said Pech, pulling on a heavy, knee-length robe. He sighed. ‘Sometimes I wish we’d just ripped the secrets out of his head. Shere might have enjoyed that.’

Soneka was aware that the Alpha Legion had strenuously debated the best way to handle Grammaticus. It had been decided that it wasn’t prudent to risk damaging or killing their only link to the Cabal.

‘We have come all this way,’ Pech said, ‘and we still don’t know if he’s lying.’

‘He wasn’t lying about Nurth,’ said Soneka.

Five months before, Nurth had died, exactly as John Grammaticus had said it would. The final day, which had never properly dawned, had dragged out, darkening and thickening, into a primordial night. The atmosphere had congealed into a toxic caul of ash and soot, and hurricane winds had flayed the surface of the world and boiled the oceans.

Lord Namatjira had at first categorically rejected Alpharius’s instruction to abandon Nurth. He had laughed derisively in the primarch’s face at the very idea of giving up on the hard-won victory presently in his grasp. His scornful laughter had grown hollow as conditions worsened, however, and it had become clear, even to him, that it would be suicide to remain. Gripped by a fury as fierce as the gathering damnation storms, Namatjira had ordered the retreat.

Turmoil had followed. No force the size of the 670th Expedition could be deployed or withdrawn easily, even under emergency protocols. Waves of landers and heavy lifters braved the vicious windshear to set down at makeshift extraction points where Army companies had hastily gathered. Imperial strongpoints and vehicles were abandoned. Entire units, struggling to make their way to evacuation rendezvous, were lost forever in the encroaching blackness. Some lift ships, fully laden, failed to make it back through the blizzarding atmospheric wrath to orbit. Others returned to the fleet with their holds empty, having been unable to locate a landing site or anything worth rescuing.

The panic-fuelled nightmare of evacuation had finally been called off after seventeen hours. Almost half of the expedition’s strength failed to make it off Nurth alive. The logistical difficulties of extracting heavy vehicles meant that armour companies suffered particularly heavy losses. Princeps Jeveth openly denounced Namatjira. A lack of specialist super-lifters resulted in six of his Titans being left behind. A week after the fall of Nurth, Jeveth detached his force from the 670th Expedition and returned to Mars, warning the lord commander that he might never expect collaboration from the Mechanicum again.

No one in the Imperial fleet ever laid eyes on the object that slew Nurth. No confirmation was ever made of its size, construction, or process, nor even if it was actually a cube at all. No one could account for its effect, or properly explain exactly the manner of the doom it unleashed, except that it was likened to some invasive disease, a plague that swept through organic and inorganic structures alike.

Imperial minds felt it, however. Its molten hiss escaped the failing edges of Nurth’s atmosphere and bit corrosively into the astrotelepathic orders of the fleeing expedition fleet. It triggered madness and delusion. The uxors of the Geno Chiliad felt it less profoundly, but they felt it all the same. Privately, they agreed that it sounded like the mewling and squealing of some daemon, awakened and trapped in the lightless, broiling cinder pit that Nurth had become.

Peto Soneka still dreamed about the havoc of that day. He no longer slept well at all. When he wasn’t dreaming about the roiling black clouds sweeping in to annihilate them all, he dreamed uneasily of diorite heads, and the verses lodged in Dimi Shiban’s throat.

Two

High anchor, 42 Hydra Tertius, the next day cycle

Grammaticus was dressed and ready when Soneka arrived. He sat at the metal table, exhibiting a sort of anxious excitement.

‘I imagine he’s ready to speak with me,’ said Grammaticus.

‘He is.’

‘Finally,’ said Grammaticus, and got to his feet. ‘We’re at high anchor?’

‘At high anchor above Forty-Two Hydra Tertius. An interesting choice of location, John.’

Grammaticus smiled. ‘It was selected very particularly, as a token of respect for the Alpha Legion. Do they approve?’

‘I think the name just makes them suspicious. Then again, everything makes them suspicious.’

Grammaticus laughed, but Soneka could hear the nervous edge in it. ‘John,’ he said, ‘I don’t really understand what this is about, but if you want things to go your way, if you want your mission to succeed, you have to get yourself together. You’ve been in here too long. You’re wired. Try to calm down. Please don’t be hyper, or joke around with them.’

Grammaticus nodded and cleared his throat. He took a deep breath. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the advice. I am a little tense.’

They left the cell together. Grammaticus took one last look back, as if he fully expected to see himself still in it.

Soneka led him down the dull metal hallway of the detention block, past the blank hatches of other cells, and through two cage doors that slid open when he waved his hand in front of the lock plates.

‘How is the hand?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘Better than the old one,’ Soneka replied.

They walked out into one of the battle-barge’s main spinal corridors. The deck was mesh, and the corridor was so large that a tank might have been comfortably driven along it. The gunmetal walls, banded with horizontal bars of frosty mauve lights, seemed to stretch away forever. Their footsteps echoed on the metal. There was no one else around.

‘They trust you,’ Grammaticus remarked.

‘What?’

‘To send you to fetch me, with no escort.’

‘This is an Astartes battle-barge, John, one of the most fortified and secure warships in human space. Where exactly would you run to?’

‘Good point. They do trust you, though,’ said Grammaticus. ‘Did you ever wonder why they let you do this?’

‘Do what?’

‘Fraternise with me? Eat lunch with me every day?’ Soneka made a sour face. ‘I don’t ask. In almost all respects, I’ve been as much of a prisoner as you.’

‘You must have thought about it,’ Grammaticus pressed.

‘I suppose,’ said Soneka, ‘they believe you’ll relate to me better than to any of them, human to human.’

‘Or whatever it is I am,’ Grammaticus chuckled.

Soneka glanced at him. ‘Actually, I asked their permission. They’re not like me. They don’t even eat, or not that I’ve witnessed. For the first few days, I’d dine alone, and then bring you your food. It seemed stupid not to combine the two events.’

‘And they said yes?’

‘They said yes,’ Soneka agreed. ‘Of course, it quickly occurred to me what they were really after. They wanted me to build a rapport with you, the sort of rapport that none of them could fashion personally.’

‘Didn’t they worry that I might somehow… influence you?’

Soneka looked Grammaticus in the eyes. ‘I think they were actually hoping that might happen.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Grammaticus.

‘You wouldn’t dare try anything with an Astartes, but with a lowly operative? I believe they were interested in what they might learn about you if you did try something.’

Grammaticus pursed his lips. ‘That’s remarkably perceptive of you, Peto. So, do you think you’ve fallen under my thrall?’

Soneka shrugged. ‘How could I tell? I know you’re a dangerous man, John, and that you can achieve with words what a lord commander couldn’t with Titans. My impression has been that we’ve always talked as friends. I doubt you’d admit otherwise.’

Grammaticus nodded. ‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ he said.

A little further on, Grammaticus stopped and looked over his shoulder.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Soneka.

‘I thought,’ Grammaticus began. ‘I thought I heard–’

‘What?’

‘I thought I heard her calling out to me,’ he said.

‘It was your imagination, John,’ Soneka told him.

In the long walk from the detention block to the briefing chamber, they saw no signs of life, except for a pair of polished arachnoid servitors working at a wall panel and a busy cyberdrone that zipped past high overhead and vanished into the distance of the vast corridor.

The hatch was a huge blast shield, with the emblem of the hydra graven on its oiled surface. Soneka had seen many parts of the barge during his time on board, and all of them had been spare, functional and utilitarian. This was the only piece of decoration he had come across.

As they approached, the hatch opened, lifting a thick, toothed base up out of slots in the deck. It rose like the gate of a portcullis.

The chamber beyond was almost pitch black, but they could both sense how large it was. Twenty metres in front of them, illuminated by a single amber glow-globe, Alpharius sat on a heavy, undecorated steel throne. He was wearing his full armour, and his helm sat on the broad arm of the throne beside his right hand. He stared at them.

‘Approach.’

‘John Grammaticus, lord,’ said Soneka.

‘Thank you, Peto. Stay, please.’

Soneka nodded, and stepped to one side.

‘John,’ said Alpharius.

‘Great lord,’ Grammaticus replied.

‘I believe there will be a reckoning,’ said Alpharius. ‘Your cooperation is expected.’

‘And will be given, to the best of my abilities,’ Grammaticus said.

‘We stand at high anchor above the world you selected,’ the primarch said. ‘The expedition fleet is about nine hours behind us. As soon as it has arrived and recomposed, we will commence surface deployment.’

Grammaticus swallowed briefly. ‘That suggests a war footing, as does your armour.’

Alpharius nodded. ‘I don’t venture into the unknown unarmed, John. You told me that this Cabal of yours asked you to bring me here. You say they wish to talk of weighty matters. I welcome discourse, and enjoy the stimulation of meeting new minds and new ideas, but I am no fool. The Imperial Army and my forces will assemble and make ready. At the slightest sign of disingenuity or betrayal, your Cabal, if it is really here, will face extreme sanction.’

‘You must do as you see fit, lord,’ said Grammaticus. ‘In the spirit of cooperation, I would say that the Cabal does not find threat postures especially endearing. It would prefer to undertake its dealings with you without the duress of a military presence. However, I believe the Cabal will make allowances. They appreciate that you are a warlord, and that you will behave according to your nature. It is, after all, precisely your nature that interests them.’

Alpharius nodded again. ‘Then we have a first measure of understanding.’ He raised his left gauntlet.

There was a series of deep, mechanical thumps, and light began to shaft into the chamber, as the entire starboard wall began to retract into the roof. Soneka realised that a row of immense blast shutters was gradually opening to reveal a vast stellar observation port. The light, soft yellow but bright, like a summer’s haze, poured under the opening shutters, and slowly flooded the chamber.

The briefing chamber was as large as he had expected, with a black grille floor, heavy bulkheads of bare metal, and a vaulted roof. Everything in it was bathed in the smoky golden radiance that streamed in from outside. Along the inner wall, behind Alpharius’s spare, cyclopean throne, thirty-five fully plated Alpha Legion Astartes stood like monumental statues. They had been there all along, silent in the darkness.

They were all captains or squad leaders. Soneka recognised Pech and Herzog by their company marks, Omegon in his almost black armour, and Ranko in the monstrous plate of the Cataphractii. They were illuminated, in the golden light, like some elysian vision.

Grammaticus had seen them too. Soneka saw the pang of undisguised fear in his eyes.

Alpharius rose to his feet. The shutters ground to a halt, fully open. The view through the giant observation port was as impressive as the revealed post-human warriors. The vault of space, more profoundly deep than Soneka had ever seen it, was thick with distant stars that shone like motes of dust in sunlight. Radiant streamers of gas, as delicate and multicoloured as moth wings, lay across the star field like veils, causing some stars to glitter like faceted jewels, and others to fog and blur like uncut stones.

Nearby, perhaps only a hundred and fifty million kilometres away, lay a pale red sun, the local star and the source of the bathing yellow sunlight that made both the view and the chamber seem as if they were set in amber. Closer still, looming below them, was the night-side of a planet.

Alpharius pointed at the star. Hololithic graphics immediately lit up across the observation port, outlined the star, and contoured it. Numerical columns rapidly scrolled up the port, followed by block statistical data.

‘Freeze there. Dim radiance and magnify by six,’ said Alpharius. The hololithic projection blinked, and centred a glare-adjusted magnification of the star on the port display.

‘Forty-Two Hydra,’ said Alpharius. ‘It’s an old, population two star with poor metallicity. Its life is reaching an end. Forty-Two Hydra, would you care to comment, John?’

Grammaticus looked lost for words.

‘Lord?’ said Soneka.

‘Speak, Peto.’

‘As I understand it, Forty-Two Hydra was selected as a mark of homage to the Legion. An inside joke, if you will. I believe that, in hindsight, John possibly regrets the flippancy of the gesture.’

Alpharius nodded.

‘That,’ Grammaticus said, coughing but recovering some composure, ‘that is the case, lord. No disrespect or mockery was intended.’

‘Is this typical of the symbolism and nuance we can expect from the Cabal?’ asked Pech.

‘No,’ said Grammaticus.

‘Good,’ said Omegon, ‘because it’s childish.’

‘Forty-Two Hydra has six planets,’ Alpharius continued. ‘The third one, designated Forty-Two Hydra Tertius, being the one you directed us to, John. We sit in orbit above it.’

‘Above Eolith,’ said Grammaticus.

‘Repeat?’

‘Eolith,’ said Grammaticus. ‘The Cabal’s name for this world, Forty-Two Hydra Tertius, is Eolith.’

‘So noted. Isolate and enlarge.’

The graphics returned the star to its original position, and then surrounded the dark globe below them, sectioned it, and brought it up into the centre of the port. More graphics spooled across the projection.

‘Small and unremarkable,’ said Alpharius, ‘it is wracked by pestilential weather and acid precipitation. Uninhabited, according to our vital sweeps, auto-probes detect only basic xenofauna.’ He paused. ‘Distinguish,’ he ordered.

The display revealed the surface of the planet in terms of mottled topographic imaging, and then overlaid that with a graphic of striated weather patterns. The world looked like a grey, flecked iris.

‘A backwater, in other words,’ said Alpharius, ‘and utterly hostile to human life. And yet…’ He paused again. ‘Enlarge.’

The display rapidly magnified a small section of the world and outlined it: a circular whorl of white vapour like an island in the streaked grey cloud mass.

‘In the southern hemisphere,’ Alpharius continued, ‘we read a zone three hundred kilometres in diameter that possesses a rudimentary human bearable atmosphere. What are the chances of that?’

‘What, indeed?’ Grammaticus replied.

‘Would you care to explain?’ asked Alpharius.

Grammaticus took another breath to steady himself and remain calm. ‘That is the venue. Elemental processors were activated there about five years ago, to prepare the area for your visit. They’ve barely had time to manufacture a decent micro-climate, but it’s sustainable enough.’

‘Atmospheric engineering?’ asked Herzog.

‘Yes, sir,’ Grammaticus replied.

‘Magnify specific,’ Alpharius instructed. The boxed image of the white vapour blinked half a dozen times as the scale enlarged, resolving details of cloud masses, and then individual formations, until the view looked down through wisps of trailing white cloud at surface details. Soneka peered hard. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing: a range of hills, mountains perhaps, cold and grey, seen from directly above, and deep pockets of valley shadow. In the middle of the frame, nestled amongst the higher peaks, lay some sort of indistinct pattern, the outline of some structure.

‘I find this particularly interesting,’ said Alpharius. ‘This structure reminded me of something.’ He looked back at the port and raised his hand. ‘Display and compare archive record N6371.’

A second graphic box appeared beside the first, showing another orbital image, taken under different conditions. It was clearly another world. A network of graphic lines rapidly linked areas on both boxes, until it was evident that hundreds of contextual similarities had been identified. The boxes then shuffled and overlaid. The surface structures matched with an unnerving precision.

‘Archive N6371,’ said Alpharius, ‘is an orbital view of Mon Lo Harbour.’

There was a long silence.

‘A structure of that type was the epicentre of an atmospheric deluge that almost annihilated us,’ said Alpharius, ‘and you take us to its twin on a world where atmospheric manipulation is already under way.’

‘I can see how that looks bad,’ Grammaticus admitted.

‘John!’ Soneka hissed.

Grammaticus glanced at Alpharius, and bowed his head respectfully. ‘Forgive me, lord.’ He walked across to the port and stopped when he was close enough to point out individual details.

‘They are the same, because both worlds are halting sites,’ he said.

‘Define the term,’ demanded Pech.

‘Of course,’ said Grammaticus. ‘The Cabal is extremely old, and composed of various… what you would term xenos breeds. They have no shared origin or homeworld. Since the earliest days, the time of their formation, they have been nomadic, moving from one world to the next, like the court circuits of the old kings of Terra.’

‘How long do they stay in one place?’ asked Omegon.

‘However long they want, sir,’ Grammaticus replied, ‘however long they need. Over the ages, they constructed halting sites on the many worlds that formed their long, orthotenic routes. Landing zones, you see? On some worlds, Nurth being a good example, local populations later inhabited the sites in ignorance of their original purpose.’

‘That implies a significant span of time,’ said Pech.

Grammaticus nodded sadly. ‘I need you to appreciate the duration and extent of the Cabal’s activities. The halting site at Mon Lo was constructed nearly twelve thousand years ago. The one here on Eolith is considerably older, about ninety thousand years. It was the Cabal’s previous visits to Nurth, and their understanding of the culture developing there, that caused them to select it as a place to demonstrate to you the–’

‘Wait,’ said Alpharius. ‘Did you just say ninety thousand years?’

‘Yes, lord primarch.’

Alpharius seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘Continue.’

‘I… I’ve rather lost my thread, sir,’ said Grammaticus. ‘There is little left that I can explain. The Cabal has prepared the venue, and you have come to meet with them. I suggest…’ He cleared his dry throat again, ‘I suggest you get on with it. I’m your key, sir. You must take me to the surface and–’

‘A moment,’ said Omegon. He broke from the rank of watching Astartes, and walked over to the observation port. For a moment, Soneka feared that the warrior was intent on doing some harm to Grammaticus, but instead, he stared pensively down at the dark world below them. He uncoupled his helm and removed it.

‘You’ve enticed us here, John Grammaticus,’ he said, ‘with vague stories of an impending cataclysm that threatens to engulf mankind and the cosmos, and the role we might take in preventing it. I would like to know a little more before this Legion commits to even a landing.’

Grammaticus laughed out loud.

Omegon looked down at him sharply.

‘I’m sorry, Lord Omegon,’ Grammaticus said, failing to stifle his giggles, ‘but you have brought an entire, militarised expedition fleet across parsecs on the basis of my “vague stories”. As I see it, you’re committed fairly comprehensively already. Stop prevaricating.’

Omegon glared down at the human. ‘First Captain Pech said you described the impending cataclysm as a war against Chaos.’

‘I did, sir,’ said Grammaticus, ‘though the war against Chaos has been raging since the galaxy’s infancy. However, the human species has now become the focus of the war, and the Imperium its chosen battlefield. The Cabal have foreseen that what will happen in the next few years will be pivotal to the destiny of all races.’

Omegon turned and looked back at the planet. ‘Pech related something else you said, back in heathen Mon Lo. He said you called what was coming “a great war against yourselves”. That would seem to describe a civil war, John Grammaticus.’

‘Yes, it would,’ said Grammaticus, still staring up at the giant.

‘Civil war in the Imperium is an impossibility,’ said Alpharius, walking forwards to join them. ‘It simply could not happen. The Emperor’s plan is–’

‘Utopian,’ Grammaticus cut in and finished boldly, ‘and therefore predicated to fall short of its goals. Please. The Alpha Legion is the most pragmatic and subtle of all the Legions. You are not blinded by Imperial dogma like the others. You are not hidebound by Guilliman’s ideals of conduct, or rooted in frenzied tribal tradition like Russ’s warriors, nor are you stalwart lapdogs like Dorn’s famous men, or berserk automatons like Angron’s monsters. You think for yourselves!’

‘That is the closest thing to heresy that has ever been spoken in my presence,’ said Alpharius quietly.

‘And that’s why you’re listening to me,’ said Grammaticus, with a grin. ‘You recognise the truth when you hear it. You only recruit the cleverest and brightest. You think for yourselves.’

He stood between the giants, rising to his scheme. Soneka smiled as he saw John Grammaticus’s confidence return.

‘The Emperor chases a Utopian ideal,’ Grammaticus announced, ‘which is fine as far as it goes. It ignites and drives the masses, it gives a soldier something to focus on, but perfection is only ever an ideal.’

‘We have considered these issues,’ said Pech quietly.

‘And?’ asked Grammaticus.

‘We have come to appreciate that Utopian goals are ultimately counter-intuitive to species survival,’ Pech replied.

‘No power can engender, or force to be engendered, a state of perfection,’ said another captain, ‘because perfection is an absolute that cannot be attained by an imperfect species.’

‘It is better to manage and maintain the flaws of man on an ongoing basis,’ said Pech.

Grammaticus bowed. ‘Thank you for that appraisal. I applaud you for your insight.’ He looked up at Alpharius. ‘Sir, the Imperium is about to implode. At the halting site on Eolith, the Cabal awaits to show you how best, as the First Captain so eloquently put it, to manage and maintain the flaws of man.’

Alpharius let out a deep sigh. He gazed down at Grammaticus. ‘I wonder, years from now, will I regret not executing you at this moment?’

‘Civil war, sir,’ Grammaticus cautioned, ‘think of it.’

Alpharius shook his head. ‘I am. John, my brother primarchs have their feuds and rivalries, they bicker at times, and fall out with one another, the way any close kinsmen might. I’ve come to that family only lately, and already I know the fashion of it. Roboute, for example, despises me, and I ignore him. It may lead to bruises at some stage, but not blood. For a civil war to ignite, primarch would have to be drawn against primarch in blood. That would never happen, John. It is simply inconceivable. Now that the Warmaster leads us, we–’

‘Warmaster?’ asked Grammaticus sharply.

‘Horus Lupercal is Warmaster,’ Alpharius replied.

‘Since when?’ Grammaticus asked. There was a queasy look on his face.

‘Four months ago, after the Great Triumph on Ullanor. The Emperor retired from the Crusade and named his first son as Warmaster. I regret I could not attend the ceremony, but the retreat from Nurth and the business you presented to me was occupying my time. To be fair, I shun such occasions. I sent envoys.’

‘Horus is already Warmaster?’ Grammaticus whispered. He sat down heavily upon the deck, and bowed his face. The massive Astartes looked down at him as if he was a child throwing a tantrum.

‘What’s the matter, John?’ asked Omegon.

‘Already,’ Grammaticus murmured, shaking his head. ‘So soon. Two years, he said, two years. We haven’t got two years.’

‘John?’

Grammaticus refused to look up at the Astartes around him. Soneka stepped forwards and scooped him back onto his feet. Grammaticus was trembling.

Wiping his mouth, Grammaticus looked up at Alpharius. ‘Horus is the catalyst. Please, lord, escort me to the venue. Take whatever retinue you choose. I will be your shibboleth. I will conduct you to the presence of the Cabal, as intermediary, and vouch for you. This is the way it has to be done. There is no more time. Horus is Warmaster. Oh, glory, Horus is Warmaster.’

‘Peto, conduct John back to his cell,’ Pech said.

Holding Grammaticus upright, Soneka replied with a firm nod.

Grammaticus began to struggle. ‘I have to go down first. I have to open the way!’ he cried.

Soneka placed him in a tight arm lock, and led him towards the hatch.

‘We will commit a landing party to the venue zone as soon as the fleet has arrived to support us,’ Alpharius said.

‘You’re wasting time!’ Grammaticus yelled, fighting with Soneka. ‘You’re wasting valuable time!’

‘Remove him,’ said Alpharius.

Soneka palmed the lock of the cell open and threw Grammaticus inside.

‘I don’t appreciate the bruises, John,’ he said, rubbing his arms.

‘You don’t appreciate anything, Peto,’ Grammaticus growled, getting to his feet. ‘Horus is Warmaster. Do you know what that means?’

Soneka shrugged.

‘It means that our timing is out! It means the war has already begun for all intents and purposes. Peto, you’ve got to help me. I need to get down there, down to the surface. I need to pave the way. The Alpha Legion mustn’t be allowed to go blundering in. It’ll ruin everything. The Cabal will not respond to military intimidation. Please, Peto.’

‘I can’t help you, John.’

+Please, Peto!+

Soneka recoiled as if he’d been stung. ‘Ow! Don’t do that again!’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Grammaticus murmured. ‘I’m sorry, Peto. Look, you have to help me get down to the surface.’

‘The primarch has ordered otherwise. I can’t do that.’

‘Peto…’

‘I can’t!’

‘For Terra’s sake,’ Grammaticus said, sitting down on his cot. ‘The Alpha Legion has to be recruited before it’s too late, and I have to open the way.’

‘I have no leverage,’ Soneka said.

‘You hate it here!’

Soneka nodded. ‘Yes, I fugging do. I’ve never been so lonely in my life. I trust the Alpha Legion less and less, and I positively despise my fellow operatives. I don’t understand what I’ve become caught up in, but I loathe it, day after day.’

‘So help me!’

‘How?’

‘You’re in a position of trust! They trust you!’

Soneka shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry, John, I just can’t.’

‘Peto!’ Grammaticus yelled.

Peto waved his new hand and the hatch slammed shut, cutting Grammaticus off.

Soneka walked back down the grim iron corridors of the detention block. At the far end of the hallway, where he could no longer hear Grammaticus’s angry shouts and pounding fists, he leant against the wall and slid down into a crouch.

‘Peto?’

He hadn’t heard the cage doors slide open. He sprang up, rubbing his eyes.

‘Was he difficult?’ asked Pech. ‘Did he try his tricks on you?’

Soneka nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you all right?’ Pech asked. ‘Are you still up to the job? I can assign another operative to Grammaticus if you prefer.’

‘No, sir,’ Peto Soneka replied. ‘I can do this. You’ve given me a duty to perform, and I’ll see it through to the end.’

Ingo Pech nodded. ‘Do it,’ he said.

Three

High anchor, 42 Hydra Tertius, fourteen hours later

An automated voice was blaring out across the principal embarkation deck of the carrier Loudon. ‘Move up to designated markers! Move up to designated markers! Boarding by company will commence in thirty – three zero – minutes!’

Buzzers sounded, and the announcement repeated, fighting with the cacophony of machine noise and shouts echoing around the vast platform.

Swathed in cascades of steam and fanfared by raucous sirens, the next bank of drop-ships rose up from the service bays on the through-deck elevators. Flight crews in russet overalls ran forwards to detach the undercarriage bolts with power ratchets, and servitors strutted up, tool limbs raised, to uncase and activate the autoguidance arrays built into bulges under the drop-ships’ cockpits. Overhead, the hangar’s primary hoist system swung a brace of hook-nosed escort fighters down the length of the deck to the stern catapult rails. There was a sudden, thunderous bellow of tank engines starting up. A row of forty, twin-barrelled assault tanks, drawn up along a line of thick yellow chevrons painted on the deck, began revving their turbines and snorting fumes from their exhausts, as service crews began to lower the cargo ramps of the massive bulk lifters.

‘Move up to designated markers!’ the automated voice repeated.

Hurtado Bronzi signed the data-slate with a flourish, and removed his biometric from the slot in its side.

‘Your company stands certified, het,’ the liveried weaponsmith said formally, taking the slate back. ‘March in fortune.’

Bronzi made the old salute of the Unity fist against his chest, nodded, and turned back to his unit.

‘You heard the call,’ he yelled. ‘Designated markers. Move your arses!’

‘Designated markers!’ Tche repeated.

The Jokers hoisted their heavy kit and weapons, and advanced from the check station onto the main platform. Shouting and waving their arms, the bashaws shepherded them into positions on the red-painted sections of decking.

‘Request permission to furl the company banner for embarkation,’ Tche said.

Bronzi nodded. There was a fire in his belly, for the first time in months. His appetite was back.

He looked along the length of the giant platform. His bashaws were lowering the standard, and the pikemen had temporarily set their long weapons on the deck beside them. Forty metres to his left, the Carnivales had drawn up along their markers, and beyond them, the Troubadours. To his right, the 41st Zanzibari Hort were streaming forwards to their line. The air smelled of gun oil and engine smoke. Somewhere, diligently but futilely, a marching band was playing in competition with the general racket.

Honen Mu and her aides, all carrying small kit bags and dressed in foul-weather gear, advanced across the open deck towards him.

‘Het Bronzi,’ Mu said.

He made a namaste. ‘My beloved uxor. You look especially fragrant and, uhm, waterproof, today.’

The aides sniggered.

‘Operational?’ she asked, remaining composed.

‘We have just been certified,’ he replied. ‘We’re ready to ramble, uxor. When do we get to find out where?’

‘Any moment, Bronzi,’ she replied. She appreciated his annoyance. Namatjira had kept the details of the operation close to his chest – a mistake, in her opinion. After the disaster of Nurth, the lord commander should have been working to rebuild morale. Instead, he had become even more poisonous than usual. The odium of defeat, she suspected, but there was no excuse.

The expedition fleet had reassembled at the edge of the Nurthene system twenty-eight hours after the final collapse of the evacuation effort. From there, they had made shift to Empesal for refit and recovery. A brief furlough had been granted in the souks and circuses of Empesal, but for nothing like long enough. Word had spread that Namatjira was in close discussion with the high officers of the fleet, and some new operation was already being planned. There was a rumour that the entire expedition might be despatched to Sixty-Three Nineteen, to support the Luna Wolves in the compliance war that they were to undertake there. That, Mu believed, would have suited well. All thoughts of failure and loss, the bitter smirch of Nurth, would have been quickly expunged by the glory of serving alongside the new Warmaster and his noble Legion.

However, Namatjira had evidently made other plans. He had declared that the expedition would be mounting an operation in concert with the Alpha Legion, and ordered immediate embarkation, an act so premature that nearly eight thousand Army casualties had to be left at Empesal, unfit for service, along with four carriers with refits and repairs still pending.

To remedy the diminished strength of the 670th Expedition, Namatjira hastily enfranchised two brigades of Lusitan heavy infantry and an armoured cavalry company from Pramatia, together with their carrier ships and tenders, and sixteen fleet auxiliary and fire support vessels. When the expedition departed Empesal, its strength stood at about two-thirds of the force that had begun the Nurthene compliance. Even with Jeveth’s Titans gone, it was a considerable presence.

And, of course, there was an Alpha Legion battle-barge at the head of the convoy.

Namatjira had subjected his forces to a four and a half month shift to an undisclosed location. Onboard training continued as usual, but morale had wilted quickly. No one would say where they were going, or what manner of undertaking they would be expected to make. Namatjira seemed not to care. It was as if he had something to urgently prove, or wished to throw himself back into the field after the Nurthene debacle. Mu privately speculated that he was borrowing a little too much of the Alpha Legion’s pitiless pragmatism.

A week before arrival, Namatjira ordered his forces to begin preparations for ground assault, and announced that the mission target had been designated as 42HtX.

This was greeted with general puzzlement. According to form, the campaign should have been officially labelled Six-Seventy Twenty-Six. Evidently, they were not heading for a compliance action. 42Ht was a planetary code, and the X indicated Extraordinary Operations. Namatjira informed his officer caste that he had committed the expedition to support the Alpha Legion in a classified undertaking, and that Alpharius had obtained direct permission from the Warmaster for Extraordinary Operations status.

Only the demands of deployment preparation, the daily routine of weapons certification and fitness tests, kept their minds, collectively, from wondering what the hell they were all getting into.

Mu turned to Tiphaine, who opened the black leather wallet she was holding, and took out a sealed packet of papers. Mu took it and handed it to Bronzi.

‘Your operational orders,’ she said.

‘At last,’ Bronzi said. He held the packet up to his ear and shook it experimentally. ‘What does it say?’ he grinned.

Mu resisted the temptation to grin back. ‘I have no idea. We all get to read the details at the same time. You’ll brief in transit. Get ready for last moment ’cept counsel as I get up to speed.’

‘This is going to be fun, isn’t it?’ Bronzi asked.

‘It rather depends on your definition of fun, Hurtado,’ she replied.

He shrugged his heavy, armoured shoulders. ‘Well, you know… dropping blind into a place we don’t know, to go up against we know not what, with no advanced tactics? That sort of thing.’

She returned his grin with a mordant look. ‘Then yes, this is going to be fun,’ she agreed.

Namatjira held out his arms, and the eunuch dressers slid on his full-length gloves and buttoned them around his shoulders and armpits. The gloves formed the sleeves of his dark tan leather doublet. He flexed his fingers to settle them into the gloves, as another dresser draped a cape of fur and zebra skin over his left shoulder, securing it with a golden fibula.

He extended his right hand, and the Warden of the Seal carefully slid the heavy signet onto his middle finger. The ring was gold, with table-cut rubies at the shoulders, and a large, square bezel that bore, in intaglio, the crest of the office of lord commander. The band of the ring contained a biometric authority. Until the moment Namatjira had been ready to put it on, the ring had been secured in a stasis box, carried by the Warden’s men-at-arms. No chances were taken. The ring had legal force in and of itself.

Snare drums were rapping a tattoo in the stateroom beyond the lord’s private wardrobe. Namatjira looked in the full length mirror, and then turned to his escort. One of the Lucifer Blacks carried the lord commander’s ceremonial hand-and-a-half sword, another his golden cap helm with its high crinière.

Dinas Chayne entered the room, and saluted.

‘Is he here, Dinas?’

‘His ship has just docked.’

Namatjira snapped his fingers, and the dressers, the attendants and warden and his men hurried out through the servants’ door.

The lord commander turned and marched through the ormolu archway into the stateroom, his companions in perfect step at his shoulders.

Namatjira’s flagship had been named Blamires after a Concussion Age void navy commander that the lord commander particularly admired. The Blamires was one of the best appointed and technically sophisticated vessels in the Imperial fleet. The stateroom he strode into was as long and broad as a cathedral’s nave, paved in black and white tiles, and walled with gold caryatid pillars and tall crystal mirrors. The high roof displayed scenes from the Age of Unification in fresco form. The ceremonial band’s tempo intensified at the lord commander’s approach, and the honour guard of six hundred Outremar Lancers snapped to present arms.

Halfway down the stateroom, Major General Dev, in full dress uniform, stood waiting with Jan Van Aunger, the master of the fleet, and eight senior adepts in long emerald robes. Dev stood to attention as Namatjira came to a halt in front of him. The drumming ceased the moment Namatjira stopped walking.

‘Lord commander,’ said Dev, ‘the forces of the expedition stand ready for deployment. We await your authority.’

Namatjira nodded. ‘Master Van Aunger?’ he asked.

The venerable fleet master, robed in ermine and segmented mirror-steel, made a namaste. ‘The fleet abides, lord commander,’ he said, ‘all components and sub-components report smooth running. The escort squadrons are ready for launch. Target solutions for the surface coordinates have been supplied to the siege frigates, rail gun platforms, and all long range ordnance. We can commence orbital bombardment at your discretion.’

‘Thank you, Master Van Aunger. The bombardment will only be undertaken if necessary.’

Van Aunger frowned. ‘As I have advised you, sir, the bombardment should precede the drop. We can’t very well hammer surface targets if our troops have already–’

‘Thank you, Master Van Aunger,’ said Namatjira. ‘You have your instructions.’

Van Aunger stuck out his chin bullishly, but said nothing, and stepped back.

‘Lord commander?’ Dev said gently, indicating the small jade coffer that one of the elderly adepts was holding on a velvet cushion.

‘A moment, major general,’ said Namatjira. On cue, a fanfare of horns sounded outside the stateroom and the double doors at the far end opened. Alpharius, alone, in full war-plate, gleaming and polished, strode through, and came down the stateroom towards them. His armoured bulk was so massive that the black and white tiles creaked like ice as they took each step.

‘My lord primarch,’ said Namatjira, bowing. ‘Welcome aboard.’

‘Lord commander,’ Alpharius responded, making the sign of the aquila, and then unlocking his helmet. He removed it, and held it under his arm. ‘Your message said that you wished to speak with me.’

‘Our business commences,’ said Namatjira.

‘Let us pray it is fruitful,’ Alpharius agreed. In the silvery radiance of the grand stateroom, his eyes seemed as green as the jade coffer on the adept’s cushion.

‘I am about to issue authority,’ said Namatjira. ‘Is there any reason why I should not?’

‘No, sir,’ Alpharius answered. ‘The objective must be sectioned and secured as rapidly as possible. You estimated three days?’

‘Three days, lord primarch, unless we encounter unexpected difficulties of terrain or climate, or previously unidentified sources of resistance.’

‘There has been no supplementary data suggesting that, sir,’ replied Alpharius.

‘Then we will proceed,’ said Namatjira.

‘For the Emperor,’ said Alpharius.

‘For the Emperor!’ the honour guard barked with one voice.

At a gesture from the major general, the adept carrying the jade coffer brought it forward to the lord commander, and knelt down. A second adept opened the coffer’s lid with a small silver key. As soon as the lid lifted, the receiver of the biometric scanner inside opened like a flower and dilated.

Namatjira reached in and pressed the bezel of his signet ring into the receiver. There was a whirr and a brief pulse of light.

‘Authority confirmed,’ the adept said. Another fanfare sounded and sirens began to blare in the depths of the flagship below.

Namatjira withdrew his hand, and the adepts closed the coffer and stepped back.

‘Lord primarch, the forces of the Six Hundred and Seventieth Expedition are deploying,’ said Namatjira.

‘Thank you. Now, what did you want to speak about?’ asked Alpharius.

‘Oh, that. Let us withdraw. Privacy, I think, would be best,’ Namatjira replied.

Another buzzer sounded.

‘Ten minutes!’ Bronzi yelled above the hangar’s uproar to his waiting company.

He looked at Mu. ‘Our beloved lord general is cutting it fine. At this rate, we’ll be making it up as we go along.’

She did not respond to his bait.

He tried again. ‘I half expect to open the packet and find a note saying “Have a good time, see you soon”,’ he said.

Mu grinned, very slightly.

‘Uxor?’ said Jahni.

Mu turned. Genewhip Boone came jogging across the pad towards them. ‘Authority has finally been issued,’ he called as he approached.

‘At last,’ said Bronzi. He tore open his order packet with his teeth. Mu took hers from Tiphaine, and opened it rather more demurely. They were both silent as they read.

‘Well?’ asked Boone.

‘Land and hold,’ said Bronzi.

‘It doesn’t seem too bad,’ said Mu.

‘Open dropzone, mind, and the terrain looks ropey,’ said Bronzi.

‘It doesn’t seem too bad,’ Mu repeated.

‘We’re not far off the five-minute buzzer,’ said Boone. ‘Anything you want to catch before it’s too late?’

Bronzi shook his head.

‘Then march in fortune,’ Boone said, and ran on to the next company.

Mu turned to her aides, who gathered around her, and began her ’cept briefing. Bronzi took another look at his orders, checked he hadn’t overlooked anything, and ambled over to his men. They all turned to him. Those that had been sitting down on the deck got to their feet.

‘Jokers!’ he shouted. ‘Today’s benediction from his highness the lord commander comes in the form of an orbit to surface drop, into open country, for seize and hold purposes.’

There weren’t too many groans.

‘Terrain is said to be moderately contoured with moisture, which I think is Tactical’s way of saying precipices with waterfalls.’

The men laughed.

‘We’d better expect rugged geography, which means the drop is going to be tricky. Watch what you’re doing, especially those lugging heavyweight kit. I don’t want anybody coming off the ramp onto a slope or scarp and going over. No broken necks, please, no broken legs or ankles, not even sprains, I’m looking at you, Trooper Enkomi.’

More laughter.

‘Full dispersal when we hit. Vishnu formation. Uxor Mu will ’cept your markers. Get down, get to those markers, and dig in. The object of the exercise is the seizure of territory. Once we’ve got our feet dry, we’ll advance as per my instruction as the situation allows. Plan is, we’ll be marching in country on this one, my lucky lads, so let’s hope none of you skimped on the endurance training.’

More groans.

‘Remember, my Jokers, a dropzone is like a woman. Land on her firmly, and make sure you have the vital parts located before you get going.’

The men laughed again.

‘If the drop goes according to plan,’ Bronzi continued, ‘we’ll have the Carnivales west of us, and a unit of light armour to our east. Of course, the drop will not go according to plan, because they never do, so expect to be facing the wrong way with your heads up your arses. All right, settle, it wasn’t that funny, Zhou.’

The men quietened down.

‘This isn’t a ramble,’ Bronzi declared. ‘This is a serious operation. Extraordinary, don’t you know? So no backsliding, no idling, no thinking with your pants on backwards, no tarting about, and no mistakes. You’re the geno’s own Jokers, best in the Chiliad, so be sharp, be alert, and be what the trickster god created you to be. Which, in case you didn’t know, is to be the best fugging assault infantry to ever come out of Terra. Questions? Lapis?’

‘Will it be cold?’

‘Fug me on a stick!’ Bronzi shook his head. ‘Yes, so bring mittens and a scarf, Lapis, you pretty little girl.’

The men laughed loudly, and Trooper Lapis fended off playful slaps and jabs.

‘Calm down,’ said Bronzi. ‘In all honesty, it looks like it’ll be pissy damp and cold. Scans show open land, little shelter, and steady precipitation, which is rain to you, Trooper Kashan. Hands up anyone who ignored this morning’s standing order and didn’t put on his boot liners and underglove, or sleeve his weapon? Better still, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know how stupid you decided to be when you got up today. If you get trench foot or crotch rot, if you freeze, or you find your fugging weapon won’t actually fire, then it’s your hard boo-hoo, and the genewhips will see you later. Anything else?’

Tche raised his hand.

‘Tche? Is this going to be a sensible question, or something about the availability of local fruit produce like last time?’

‘I like fruit,’ Tche protested.

‘Good for you. Your question?’

‘The one thing you haven’t covered, het,’ Tche said. ‘What hostiles can we expect to meet and greet?’

The Jokers whooped and roared aggressively.

Bronzi raised a hand for quiet. ‘Excellent point, excellent point, Tche. There’s a reason I haven’t covered it. According to the specs, our target world is uninhabited. There are no hostiles.’

This provoked the rowdiest chorus of all.

‘That’s right, that’s right… we’re dropping dirtside for a nice walk in mountain scenery,’ Bronzi yelled above it. ‘Now shut up! That’s better. What’s the first rule of common soldiering? Trooper Duarte?’

‘Always assume that anyone in a position senior to you isn’t telling you everything?’

‘That’s my boy. There’s more to this than meets the eye, so don’t get slack.’

A buzzer sounded, crude and brazen, across the vast deck.

‘That’s it!’ Bronzi yelled. ‘The five-minute buzzer! Pick up your stuff, pick up your arses, and leave all your complaints and regrets on the carrier, they’ll still be here when you get back. Jokers, are you with me?’

‘March in fortune!’ they yelled back.

‘Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene!’ he shouted. ‘Now get the fug on with it!’

He strolled back towards Honen Mu. Her briefing had finished, and the aides had gathered into a tight huddle, discussing tactical variations in fierce, low voices.

‘No hostiles?’ he remarked to Mu. ‘That’s just got to be bad data, right?’

Mu shrugged. ‘There’s another alternative. This is a seize and hold. The lord commander is asking us to make a section of territory secure. I’m tempted to suppose there’s something valuable down there, and we’re being sent in to secure the ground so that it can be recovered.’

‘Something valuable like what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the lord commander’s congenial side?’

Bronzi blinked.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘You made a joke, uxor,’ he beamed. ‘An actual, proper, honest to goodness joke.’

She looked back at him. Her mouth wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were. ‘Yes, well, don’t tell everyone, or they’ll all want one,’ she said.

The deck quivered and they heard the distant rumbling squeal of the plasma catapults at the stern end of the platform discharging.

‘That’s the first of the escort fighters away,’ said Bronzi. ‘It won’t be long now. Nervous?’

‘Why would I be nervous, Hurtado?’ Mu asked.

He hunched his shoulders. ‘It’s not often that the uxors get to ride down with us soldier types at the sharp end of things. You usually follow on with the support lines.’

‘Operational requirements,’ she replied. ‘We can’t provide you with reliable ’cept coverage from orbit.’

‘Uh huh. So, I was thinking… I could arrange to sit next to you, and hold your hand if it gets bumpy,’ Bronzi offered.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she replied. ‘I’ve made my share of combat drops. March in fortune, Hurtado.’

‘’Cept me well, Honen,’ he replied.

She made a half bow and returned to her girls.

Bronzi took one last look around the vast carrier deck. An electric munition train clattered past. Four flight crewmen were frantically working to replace a faulty hydraulic on the nosegear of a nearby lander. Another pair of hook-nosed escort fighters whined by overhead on the primary hoist. The tanks had finally started loading, and more armour pieces had drawn up on the ramp from the lower deck, waiting to advance to the wait line for boarding.

He did what he always did before a drop, his private ritual. He pressed his fingertips to his lips, and then bent down and touched his fingertips against the deck.

‘Let us all see you again,’ he whispered. ‘Let us all come back safe.’

He rose. He pulled his order packet out of his pocket, and made one final check to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

It turned out he had.

Tucked inside the vellum sleeve, along with his sheaf of orders, was a small green sliver that he at first assumed was a leaf.

He realised that it was a wafer-slim piece of metal machined to resemble a lizard’s scale. On it, in Edessan, was written a brief, whimsical phrase, which translated as ‘Your father cheers, your mother cries, that is the lot of the soldier’. Beside the phrase was the embossed brand of the hydra.

Bronzi stroked his thumb across the raised image. He put the green scale in his pocket and walked towards the waiting drop-ship.

Namatjira led Alpharius into the forward lookout of the flagship Blamires. Vast petal-form ports glazed the side walls of the triangular chamber and met in a sharp apex overlooking the kilometre of prow projecting ahead of them.

‘Give us the room,’ Namatjira snapped, and the servants and ensigns hurried out. Chayne closed the hatch behind them and stood guard, his hands behind his back. Alpharius turned and looked pointedly at the Lucifer.

‘He goes where I go,’ Namatjira explained, helping himself to a flute of frost wine from a side cabinet. ‘Dinas has the highest clearance.’

Alpharius nodded. ‘Very well,’ he allowed.

‘A toast, lord primarch? Or is that contrary to your regimen?’

‘Why not?’ the primarch replied.

Namatjira poured a second glass, and handed it to Alpharius. The sub-servos of the primarch’s gauntlet hissed and whined as they adjusted to the subtle act of gripping the flute without shattering it.

Namatjira walked towards the starboard side of the ports. His thylacene lay snoozing on the bank of seats under the windows. ‘That’s the Maskeleyne,’ Namatjira said, pointing with the same hand that was holding the glass. ‘A heavy carrier, very versatile. That, behind it, you see, is the Tancredi, an Outremar vessel.’

Alpharius came and stood behind him. The view from the lookout was humbling. The plates of the ports had self-tinted to reduce glare, and diminish the blaze of the local sun. Space fell away beneath them and soared away above. A trillion, trillion stars glimmered in that endless night. To the starboard side of the Blamires lay the eclipsed target world, a massive globe with a peal of light just slipping off its shoulder. Off to the flagship’s starboard, a formation of mainline vessels hung, gleaming, in the target world’s shadow, laid out in a chain astern, across several thousand kilometres.

‘That’s the Agostini,’ Namatjira went on, ‘and behind it, the siege frigate Barbustion. Behind that, the carrier Loudon–’

‘I know the names and indicatives of all the fleet vessels,’ said Alpharius.

Namatjira smiled and turned to face him, taking a sip of his wine. ‘I’m sure you do, sir, but, oddly, I cannot name your great barge.’

He glanced back at the ports. ‘That’s it there, isn’t it?’ he asked, pointing towards a dark blur seven hundred kilometres off the Blamires’s starboard bow. ‘That shielded object?’

‘We do not name our ships,’ Alpharius said. ‘We simply designate them with serials.’

‘Oh, and what is that barge’s designation?’ asked Namatjira.

‘Beta,’ replied Alpharius.

‘Ah. I am forced to wonder what Alpha is doing this day,’ Namatjira grinned.

‘It is occupied elsewhere,’ Alpharius replied.

Namatjira turned back and looked the giant figure up and down. ‘Well, to business. My lord primarch, I summoned you because I find I have some misgivings.’

‘Misgivings?’ Alpharius asked.

‘You made a firm commitment to me, sir, at Empesal. You swore that this undertaking would absolve the shame of the Nurth fiasco. You promised it would present me with the opportunity to make reparations for that loss, and restore my dignity and reputation in the eyes of the Council of Terra.’

‘I stand by that promise,’ Alpharius said.

Namatjira wandered over to one of the window couches, and sat down. He took another sip of his wine.

‘As you explained it to me,’ he said, ‘the purpose of this mission is to acquire information vital to the continued security of the Imperium. The Emperor, you said, will thank me and reward me for securing this valuable intelligence, and bringing it to his attention. I might even expect a place on the High Council. I can only speculate as to what this information could possibly be.’

He paused. ‘And that’s where my misgivings begin. I can only speculate, because you won’t tell me. I think it’s high time you let me a little deeper into your confidence.’

‘I see,’ said Alpharius.

‘You just watched me issue my authority and mobilise my forces in your service, Lord Alpharius,’ said Namatjira, with a slight tone of menace. ‘I deserve to know more.’

Alpharius pursed his lips, and set his flute down, untouched. ‘You were willing enough,’ he said, ‘when I co-opted your expedition for this venture. My word was sufficient guarantee then.’

‘Well, it turns out, it isn’t any more,’ said Namatjira.

‘That’s a pity,’ said Alpharius.

‘What is the nature of this information?’ asked Namatjira. ‘What does it concern? Where is it, and how do we secure it? Who has it? How did you learn of its existence and its location? What could possibly be so important, so valuable, so revelatory, so damn secret, that the fate of all human culture depends upon it?

‘You will know precisely what I choose to tell you, Namatjira,’ said Alpharius.

‘My lord commander said he needs to know more,’ Dinas Chayne stated quietly, but firmly. He took a step forwards.

Alpharius slowly turned his head and looked at Chayne. ‘Or what, companion? I hope for your sake that you don’t presume to threaten me.’

Chayne did not move.

Alpharius ignored him and looked down at Namatjira. ‘I had heard that the Lucifer Blacks were remarkably brave. I didn’t realise they were clinically insane.’

‘Step back, Dinas,’ said Namatjira with a casual flick of his hand. ‘My Lord Alpharius understands the burden of command. He knows full well that the paramount responsibility of a man in my position is the security and welfare of his forces, and it is his solemn duty to disengage those forces from any undertaking that he deems unwise or reckless. Isn’t that right, my lord?’

Alpharius said nothing.

‘I will not put my soldiers in harm’s way without a very good reason,’ said Namatjira, ‘a very good reason, and a reliable source of intelligence. I would be derelict in my duty otherwise.’

Alpharius gazed through the ports for a moment, and contemplated the dark world below. ‘In the course of the Nurth campaign,’ he said quietly, ‘my infiltration networks encountered the agent of a xenoform faction. The faction calls itself the Cabal. The agent claimed that the Cabal was in possession of certain information vital to the Imperium of Man. No evidence or provenance was offered, but the Cabal had clearly put a great deal of effort and ingenuity into making contact with me. They extended an invitation to meet with them, so that this information could be transmitted. Forty-Two Hydra Tertius is the site chosen for that meeting.’

‘Are you saying that this whole endeavour was inspired by the baseless tattle of some xenos spy?’ asked Namatjira. ‘Dear me, sir, I thought you were shrewd.’

‘I never said I believed him,’ Alpharius replied. ‘While there’s even a chance that his story is true, we cannot afford to ignore it. If it’s a lie, then we’re here, in force, to locate and suppress a dangerous xenoform power that has the means and skills to attempt manipulation of the Imperium. This is how I presented it to the Warmaster, and it is on this basis that he granted this expedition Extraordinary status. Lord commander, we may be about to save the Imperium, or go to war to exterminate an insidious alien menace.’

Namatjira rose to his feet. ‘And which do you suppose it is, sir?’

Alpharius shook his head. ‘I make no guesses, lord, but there is one significant fact. It was the agent who first warned me of the Black Cube. But for that warning, we would all be dead.’

‘And this agent?’ asked Namatjira.

‘He was operating inside the Imperial Army in an extremely capable and efficient manner. He got remarkably close to the centre of things.’ Alpharius looked over at Chayne. ‘He slew one of your men, companion.’

‘Konig Heniker,’ whispered Chayne.

‘That’s right,’ said Alpharius. ‘That was one of the identities he adopted, at least. My operatives captured him on the last day of Nurth’s existence. He’s in my custody.’

‘Well,’ murmured Namatjira. He lit up a very careful and benevolent smile. ‘I feel my misgivings ebbing away. Thank you for your disclosure. This will, of course, remain entirely classified.’

‘I expect no less,’ Alpharius replied. He turned and walked towards the hatch. ‘I take it our conversation is done?’

‘One last thing,’ Namatjira called to him. ‘If the story is true, and this meeting takes place, I will, naturally, be there at your side.’

The lord commander didn’t wait to see how Alpharius might respond. He turned to the windows. ‘Oh, look. There they go!’ he cried out jauntily, and pointed. Bright sparks, like meteorites, had begun to sear down out of the carriers behind them.

Alpharius opened the hatch and left the lookout.

‘Dinas?’ Namatjira said. ‘In the light of the primarch’s comments, please re-examine all the data we have on Konig Heniker.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Namatjira took a sip of wine and tilted his head to one side reflectively, watching the drop-ships fall. ‘I believe it will be instructive to learn how the picture fills in now that we have more pieces of it,’ he said, ‘particularly in terms of the Astartes and their manipulation networks.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Chayne replied.

The drop-ship lurched and fell. Metal spalling from the release claws showered backwards in a glittering tail behind it.

They began to pull two Gs, three. The airframe began to vibrate. Bronzi held out his hand and Mu took it. She squeezed it.

‘Here we go,’ Bronzi said.

Four

Orbital, Eolith, continuous

Soneka opened the cell hatch and stepped inside. He put his satchel down on the steel table.

‘What? More cheese?’ asked Grammaticus snidely. He was sprawled on the cot, dispirited.

‘Get up. Quickly,’ Soneka said.

‘But we haven’t eaten our lunch,’ said Grammaticus.

‘Shut up and get up,’ Soneka told him. He looked back at the open hatch and the corridor beyond it. ‘Hurry.’

Grammaticus sat up, frowning. ‘What’s going on, Peto?’

‘Just follow me.’

Soneka turned towards the cell door and peered out cautiously. Grammaticus rose to his feet.

‘Peto? What is this? Has the primarch agreed to let me drop with him and–’

Soneka looked back, his eyes narrow. ‘Will you shut up? I’m doing what you asked. Keep a lid on it. Shere is everywhere.’

Grammaticus blinked in surprise. ‘Oh,’ he managed to say.

‘Just follow me and keep quiet,’ said Soneka. He opened the satchel over his shoulder and drew out a laspistol.

Grammaticus looked at the weapon as if he’d never seen one before. ‘Oh my word,’ he murmured. ‘Peto, Peto just stop for a moment and look at me. Look at me. Control word Bedlame.’

Soneka turned and faced him. His eyes were vacant.

‘What’s your name?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘Peto Soneka.’

‘What are you doing right now, Peto?’

‘Your bidding, John.’

‘Glory!’ said Grammaticus. He stepped back, his hand to his mouth, staring at Soneka. ‘I didn’t think it had worked,’ he said, laughing in surprise. ‘I really didn’t think it had worked. All those lunches, five months of casual lunchtime conversations, dropping a weighted tell-word in, now and then. I thought you were resistant.’

Soneka remained blank.

‘Peto, I’m truly sorry to have abused you this way,’ said Grammaticus solemnly. ‘I want you to know that. We’re friends, I’d like to think. You have shown me great kindness. I hope one day, you will see the broader picture, and forgive me for doing this to you. Do you hear me?’

‘Your voice, I can’t fight it,’ growled Soneka, glassy-eyed. ‘Every day, I could feel you doing this, and I couldn’t fugging fight it. You took advantage of my disaffection. You’re a bastard, John Grammaticus.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. Can you get me off this barge?’

‘I can do my best,’ replied Soneka.

‘Thank you, Peto, thank you. Control word Bedlame.’

Soneka blinked awake and steadied himself against the cell wall. ‘What the fug was that?’ he asked. ‘I was dizzy for a moment.’

‘You were saying something?’ Grammaticus cued.

Soneka shook his head. ‘Come on, I was saying. We’ve only got a small window. The fleet is deploying.’

‘Already?’

‘Come on, John.’

They hurried down through the quiet detention block to the cage shutters. Soneka waved his hand and the cages withdrew.

‘What’s your plan?’ whispered Grammaticus. ‘How do we reach the surface?’

‘Drop pod,’ Soneka replied. ‘They’re all primed and certified for the Legion’s landing. We’ll head for the bay on underdeck eight. I checked the deployment schedule, and they have been assigned for the second landing wave in six hours’ time, so it should be quiet. But there’s something we have to do first.’

‘What?’ asked John Grammaticus.

‘Something you’ll thank me for. Something I need to do,’ Soneka replied.

They turned onto the vast spinal corridor, and came face to face with a maintenance servitor. The servitor jolted, whirring as it studied them, upper limbs raised in query.

‘This section is monitored and private. Show me your authority,’ the servitor’s vox-speaker rasped.

Soneka shot it through the head. The servitor issued a thready whine, and clattered sideways against the wall, smoke trailing from its exploded cranium.

‘Run,’ Soneka said.

They ran until they were hoarse and out of breath, and cut away from the main spinal corridor into a maze of sub-halls and gloomy compartments. The strips of mauve lighting made it feel like twilight in an empty city. No alarms sounded, but the air was pregnant and still, as if it was about to explode with noise.

‘Where is everyone?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘In the arming chambers, preparing for deployment,’ Soneka replied. He beckoned Grammaticus towards a heavy hatch shutter.

‘Here,’ Soneka said.

Grammaticus put his hand to his temple. An expression of pain, wonder and realisation filled his face.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘I hear her.’

‘I know,’ said Soneka.

‘She was calling out to me, all the time, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you, Peto,’ Grammaticus whispered. He looked as if he was close to tears.

Soneka faced him, and put a steadying hand on his shoulder. ‘John, listen to me, this will be a shock. The Alpha Legion interrogated her, and damaged her in the process.’

Grammaticus looked at Soneka. ‘I understand.’

‘I hope you do,’ said Peto Soneka, and waved his new hand in front of the shutter’s lock reader.

The hatch opened. In a corner of the small dark room beyond, something stirred and whimpered.

Grammaticus pushed past Soneka and crossed the room, holding out his hands reassuringly.

‘Hush, hush,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. It’s me.’

Snivelling and trembling, Rukhsana looked up at him, with wild eyes. She was pressed into the corner, her legs pulled in, and her arms wrapped around her body. Her robes were tattered. She looked at his face and cried out.

‘Rukhsana, Rukhsana, it’s just a beard. I’ve grown a beard.’

She put her hands over her eyes.

‘Rukhsana, it’s all right,’ Grammaticus whispered. He touched her gently, and she recoiled. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeated.

‘Please be quick, John,’ Soneka hissed.

Grammaticus embraced Rukhsana and rocked her. She buried herself against his chest and began to cry.

‘What the fug did they do to her, Peto?’ he asked.

‘They let Shere have her. He went into her mind, looking for you and for any information on the Cabal,’ Soneka replied. ‘The process shattered her sanity. She’s been like this since Nurth, five months ago. I’ve brought her food every day, and tried to keep her clean and healthy, but she’s little more than feral.’

‘Oh, Rukhsana,’ Grammaticus whispered, hugging the uxor to him and tenderly stroking the lank blonde hair that had once glowed like spun gold.

‘John, please, we haven’t got much time,’ Soneka urged. He stood in the doorway, watching the corridor outside. Grammaticus coaxed Rukhsana to her feet, and led her across the dark chamber, keeping her tight against his side.

‘I’ve got her,’ he said. ‘Lead the way.’

Underdeck Eight was an extensive space of industrial metal, thick pipe work, violet lighting and oily shadows. There was a constant background murmur of engines and the barge’s heavy atmosphere plants. Every now and then, a distant sound of tools or machine shop activity echoed back to them. So much pipe and duct work ran along the roof space, the access ways felt low and claustrophobic.

Soneka brought them to a long hallway that had eight massive blast hatches in its left-hand wall. Gigantic rotor fans turned lazily in the roof cage.

The identical blast hatches, each one large enough to accept a large transport vehicle, all stood open, waiting. They stopped outside the first of them, dwarfed by the hatch frame, and looked inside. Four armoured drop pods sat in an oily black launch cradle, like bullets loaded into a revolver’s drum. The chamber was lined with greasy black hydraulics. Feed lines were attached to the pods, and steam wreathed up slowly from the cradle mechanism.

‘This’ll do,’ said Soneka quietly. He nodded towards the adjacent hatches. ‘They’re all the same, four in each.’

‘Whatever you say, Peto. This is your plan.’

Soneka led them over to the far side of the hallway. Rukhsana remained clenched against Grammaticus’s side. He watched as Soneka woke up a large cogitator system built into the bulkhead. Soneka called up several pages of data, touch flicking through them, moving from one menu to the next.

‘What are you doing?’ Grammaticus asked.

‘I’m checking that the navigation systems are programmed for the venue zone. Yes, that’s good. Set. Right, I just have to countermand the launch notice.’

‘What?’

Soneka gestured at the waiting pods behind them, and then carried on moving through screens and data scrolls. ‘When one of these launches, a notification will flash up immediately on the excursion monitor on the bridge. I’m cancelling that instruction. They’re going to know we’re gone soon enough, and it won’t take them long to realise a pod’s missing, but I’d like to postpone discovery for as long as possible.’

‘You can do that?’ asked Grammaticus, impressed.

Soneka smiled and held up his new hand. ‘They trust me, remember? They’ve given me the highest clearance, built in.’

‘More fool them,’ Grammaticus grinned.

‘This should only take a couple of minutes,’ said Soneka. ‘Down on the right, there’s a locker store. We’re going to need three sets of foul-weather gear. See what you can dig out.’

Grammaticus nodded and hurried to oblige, as fast as Rukhsana would let him. They came back after five minutes with a bundle of suits tailored to fit operatives. Soneka was ready.

Together, the three crossed back through the huge blast hatch and clambered into one of the pods.

Soneka waved his hand. The massive blast hatch began to close. Hazard lights started to flash around the chamber, and a low electrical hum filled the air, mounting in intensity.

Five

Eolith

The first thing that hit them was the stench. It was vile and unexpected, like wet rot, like liquescent decay. It permeated the cold wet air. As soon as they had spread clear of the fumes from the howling drop-ships, it was all they could taste.

The Jokers ran forwards, fanning out across the slick, wet rocks. Some were gagging, or complaining about the reek.

‘Don’t be babies! Get on with it!’ Bronzi yelled. He sniffed. ‘Fug me, that’s awful,’ he said to himself.

The banner was up. The company was extending in a line away from the landing zone where the drop-ships waited, lifting spray from their idling jet wash.

Bronzi got his bearings.

They were in a flat-bedded valley between two lines of rock hills that were curiously regular, like plinths or flat roofed towers. It was cold, but the dampness was worse. The air seemed wet, less than rain, less than drizzle, just a swirling, particulate moisture. He could feel it on his skin like cold sweat. The Jokers were already soaked. Capes had gone lank, and armour gleamed with droplets.

The sky was low and dense with squally clouds. The terrain was grey rock, a hard stone rendered slippery by the accumulating wetness. The stone seemed to have a natural propensity to split and shear in quadrilateral plains, forming blocks and steps that looked unnervingly like they’d been cut by a stone mason rather than geology. Bronzi realised that the rock’s planar property explained why the hills looked so much like cubic buildings. He’d never seen such a geometrically rigid landscape. It was dominated by straight verticals, hard edges and flat surfaces. He felt like he was standing in the jumbled heap of some giant child’s building blocks.

To the west, more drop-ships were whining down out of the cloud cover. Tche signalled that the Jokers were clear, and Bronzi sent an instruction to the pilots. Hatches began to slide shut, and ramps retract. The sound of the engines rose in pitch as the drop-ships prepared to lift off.

Bronzi moved forwards through his extending ranks, mindful of planting every step carefully. Underfoot, the flat stone felt as spongy as bone marrow. Cavities had filled with black water, like rock pools.

‘Some order please, ladies!’ Bronzi barked at the Jokers. A couple of them had already slipped over, much to their chagrin.

‘What isn’t this?’ Bronzi roared.

‘A fug-fingered ramble!’ they chorussed back.

‘Could have fooled me,’ he muttered.

Men began to call out as they pushed forwards into the lower levels of the cubic hills. They’d found things. Bronzi went to look, and Mu and her aides followed him, stepping from block to block as if they were paving stones.

There were dead things amongst the stones. Drooling black matter, putrescent jelly, and bits of bone and quill lay in pool cavities or on flat blocks. Some were as large as men, some as small as rats. It was impossible to tell what they had been in life. No real structure remained, no anatomy. Local xenofauna, Bronzi presumed. It was as if some great tide had rolled out and left strange marine life forms behind to rot. That’s what the stench reminded him of: beached fish, decomposing on a rocky shore.

Mu bent down to examine a few of the congealing horrors.

‘Any thoughts?’ Bronzi asked.

‘The brief said this zone was an artificially generated climate,’ Mu said. ‘I suppose these are the remains of fauna types abundant in the planet’s natural climate. They died here as the air, pressure and chemistry changed.’

The aides had all pulled up the hoods of their foul-weather suits, and buttoned collars up over their mouths and noses. Bronzi saw the anxiety and revulsion in their eyes. Huddled in their hoods, they looked like a scholam outing that had ended up in entirely the wrong place.

The Jokers advanced steadily into the hills, ignoring the litter of organic decay. Signals came in reporting that their supporting units were on the ground and advancing. No scan by eye, device or ’cept could detect any contact ahead. So far, the humans were the only living things on that abyssal shore.

‘Keep scanning,’ Bronzi called as he puffed and climbed up the blocks. A man behind him slipped over on his arse with a hard thump.

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t see that, Tsubo,’ Bronzi growled. ‘Oh, fug!’ he added. Reaching for a handhold, he’d dipped his fingers into something slimy and gristly. He shook the gloop off in disgust. The fish gut reek was noxious.

‘Is it turning out to be as much fun as you hoped?’ Mu asked him.

‘Ha ha,’ he replied.

They could see a good distance from the tops of the hills. A jumbled valley of grey blocks and glinting black pools fell away below, and stretched north, into the shadows of a great, dark wall of monolithic cliffs, split by gorges. The scale of the child’s building blocks had increased. In places, they could detect the long, white ropes of cascades falling down rock faces. At the feet of the cliffs, vapour gathered like white smoke.

‘When you said precipices with waterfalls, I thought you were joking,’ said Tche.

‘So did I,’ Bronzi replied glumly. He checked his locator against the maps from the order packet. Mu did the same.

‘The notation says they’re called the Shivering Hills,’ Bronzi said.

‘How long to get up there?’ she asked.

‘A day, if we find a decent gorge or vent to follow.’

‘Well, that’s where they want us, so we’d better get going.’

He nodded. ‘Are you ’cepting anything?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she replied, ‘but I’m cold and uncomfortable, and that doesn’t help. This is… a difficult circumstance.’

‘I’d prefer a good, honest war,’ said Bronzi. ‘You know where you are when someone’s shooting at you. This is just getting creepy. Waiting for something to happen, that’s just going to rack up the spooks. See what you can do to keep the men level.’

‘Understood,’ she replied.

‘Tche!’ Bronzi called.

‘Yes, het?’

‘Ten-minute halt here. Then we’re going to head out across the valley. Tell the boys to have a drink, and a pinch of peck if it makes them feel jollier.’

‘Yes, het.’

Bronzi wandered along the rocks away from the main group. He slipped the green metal scale out of his pocket and studied it again. The phrase ‘Your father cheers, your mother cries, that is the lot of the soldier’ had been used to make it personal to him. It bore a code, standard Alpha form. He quickly substituted each letter for its numerical place in the alphabet, combined them as he had been taught, and ended up with two, seven-digit channel codes.

Bronzi clambered up a line of blocks to the nearest vox officer, and borrowed his field set. He slipped on the headset, tapped in one of the codes and waited.

‘Speak and identify,’ said a voice.

‘Argolid 768,’ Bronzi said.

‘Are you deployed, Hurtado?’

‘I’m on the surface.’

‘You are not alone. You were given the codes so that you could remain in contact during this event. Check in every two hours. We will inform you if you are required to take any specific action. Consider yourself on standby.’

‘Understood.’

The signal finished. Bronzi erased the code from the vox-set’s log, and carried the device back to its owner.

They left the drop pod in the clutch of the scorched rock that had caught it, and moved west along a line of grey, buttress hills in the wet murk.

Rukhsana seemed to have recovered a little composure. Grammaticus believed that seeing him again had settled her mind slightly. She insisted on staying at his side and holding onto his hand.

The foul-weather kits were bulky and cumbersome, but they were glad of them. Stones dripped, and every surface shone with liquid. The place stank of rot and organic decay.

Soneka had brought a locator. ‘How far do we have to go?’ he asked.

Grammaticus took the device from him and activated it. He watched the display resolve, and turned slowly, checking other readings.

‘Two hours, maybe three,’ said Grammaticus. ‘We’ll keep heading west.’

Soneka looked at the chart display. ‘You know where you’re going, right?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Grammaticus. ‘The Imperial landing forces will be concentrating on the Shivering Hills.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s where the halting site is, and they’ll assume the Cabal is there.’

‘Isn’t it?’ asked Soneka.

Grammaticus laughed. ‘Peto, the Cabal is as cautious about this meeting as the Astartes are. The Cabal is all too aware of mankind’s propensity for shooting first, especially when it comes to xenoforms. Until the members of the Cabal are certain that the Alpha Legion hasn’t simply come here with the sole purpose of exterminating them, they’re not going to show themselves. Would you wait in the open for a stranger whose intentions were unclear?’

‘Not really,’ said Soneka.

They scrambled down a slope of loose rocks onto a series of wide, cubic blocks. Grammaticus helped Rukhsana all the way. Every now and then, he reached out with his mind, and looked into hers in an attempt to monitor her wellbeing. There was nothing there, nothing he could read, just a blizzard of thought, noise and panic.

‘So the Cabal is staying out of the way?’ Soneka asked.

Grammaticus looked back at him. ‘The halting site is just an inert structure, a series of well-founded platforms and deep stone pilings designed to support the mass of the Cabal’s vessel when it visits. Alpharius showed us the scans, and there was no vessel there, a slight logic flaw that he didn’t seem to appreciate.’

‘So?’

‘Alpharius should have listened to me,’ Grammaticus said. ‘He should have come down here with me, instead of landing a full military expedition. I’m the passport, you see, Peto, the matchmaker. I make contact, bring them together, and make sure both parties are comfortable. Then they talk. That’s how it was supposed to go.’

‘But Alpharius is far too wary?’ mused Soneka.

‘Exactly. He doesn’t like unknowns. If he doesn’t know something, it means he can’t trust it. He likes to be in control all the time.’

They ascended a slope through scrolls of drifting vapour.

‘On the other hand, the Cabal is very circumspect when it comes to humans,’ added Grammaticus. ‘I’m afraid to say they have a fairly poor opinion of mankind.’

‘Why?

‘Humanity is a young race, a barbaric upstart child in the eyes of the Old Kinds, but, by the stars, it’s vigorous and massively successful. It is spreading out and annexing the galaxy faster than any race has ever done before. It thrives like weeds, and finds purchase in even the harshest climes. The Cabal has been forced to recognise that mankind is a serious player on the galactic stage, and can no longer be ignored or sidelined, and, of course, they’ve seen what’s coming.’

‘This war you talked about?’

Grammaticus nodded. ‘A civil war. It will tear the Imperium apart. The Cabal doesn’t especially care about that. What matters is that a civil war in the Imperium will unleash Chaos. The Primordial Annihilator, the power they have fought to deny since the start of all ages, will use humanity’s terrible conflict to gain final ascendancy.’

‘They want the war prevented, then?’ said Soneka.

‘It’s too late for that. They want the war won the right way.’

‘Let’s rest for a minute,’ said Soneka. ‘The uxor looks tired.’

Rukhsana looked especially pale. She was trembling from the cold. Grammaticus sat her down on a stone block. ‘It’s all right, Rukhsana my love. Everything is going to be all right.’

She looked up at him. ‘Konig?’ she asked.

‘Yes, yes! That’s right, Rukhsana. It’s Konig. It’s me.’

‘Konig,’ she repeated, and then gazed out over the misty rocks.

‘You know where the Cabal’s hiding?’ asked Soneka.

‘Yes,’ said Grammaticus.

‘We go to them, make contact…’

‘We go to them, make contact, reassure them that the Alpha Legion means to listen, and then I’ll go back to Alpharius.’

‘Go back?’ Soneka asked, incredulous.

‘And bring him here.’

‘He might just execute you, John.’

Grammaticus shrugged. ‘I can’t worry about that. This is too important. This is about deciding what the future will be about for everyone.’

Six

Carrier Loudon, orbital

‘Which of you men is Franco Boone?’ Chayne asked.

The six Chiliad genewhips standing in conversation in one of the hangar deck’s check stations turned to look at him. Alarm flashed across their faces for a second as they realised that the question had come from one of the lord commander’s companions. Chayne had shuttled to the Loudon in full Lucifer Black armour.

‘I am,’ said Boone.

‘We will converse,’ said Chayne. ‘Come here.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Boone, ‘but I’m a little occupied. We’re marshalling the second wave for drop. Come back in a couple of hours.’

Boone turned back to his fellow genewhips, and they continued to compare and check their data-slates.

‘I believe,’ said Chayne, ‘that you understood my instruction to be optional, Franco Boone. It was not. We will converse. Come here.’

Boone tensed. His men looked on in concern, as Boone turned and walked across to the Lucifer Black.

‘What?’ Boone asked. He was a big man, but he had to look up into Chayne’s visored face.

‘We will converse, Franco Boone.’

‘So you keep saying. What about some courtesy, sir? Remove your helmet so that I can see your face.’

‘Why?’ asked Chayne.

‘Because that’s what men do when they converse.’

Chayne didn’t move for a moment. Then he raised his hands, unlocked his helm seals, and took the helmet off. He tucked it under his arm. His face was drawn and hard, and his eyes chilled Franco Boone’s soul.

‘Thank you,’ said Boone. ‘Your name? You seem to know mine.’

‘Chayne, bajolur, companion guard.’

‘Well, Chayne, bajolur, companion guard, how can I help you this day?’

‘You can walk with me for a moment, you can answer my questions, and you can dispense with the verbal sport.’

Boone shrugged. They began to walk along the edge of the vast deck, past shouting flight crew and rattling tools. An autoloader cart zipped past them.

‘This is a busy day for us, bajolur,’ said Boone. ‘Get on with it.’

‘What can you tell me about Peto Soneka and Hurtado Bronzi?’

‘Why?’

‘I simply require you to answer the question, genewhip,’ replied Chayne.

Boone frowned. ‘They’re two of the Chiliad’s most respected hetmen. One’s downstairs on Forty-Two Hydra Tertius, the other was lost on Nurth.’

‘During the last week of operations on Nurth,’ said Chayne, ‘both came under suspicion of treasonous behaviour.’

‘They did,’ Boone replied. ‘I was gunning for the pair at one point, and I believe you arrested and questioned both of them. They were clean. We both found that.’

‘I am reviewing the case material,’ said Chayne.

‘Why?’ asked Boone. ‘One of them’s five months’ dead, for fug’s sake.’

‘New data has been gathered,’ Chayne told him. ‘It casts doubt on the stories they told us.’

‘Look, Chayne…’ Boone began. He paused. ‘One moment, bajolur.’ Boone took a step aside. ‘You. You men there!’ he yelled out across the deck. ‘Pick up your kit, you idiots. It’s blocking the service strip. Come on, you gee-tards. You know the drill. Stay behind the cue line!’

The men from Mannequin Company hurried to oblige.

Boone turned back to the Lucifer. ‘You were saying? New data?’

‘New data,’ Chayne replied.

‘What sort of new data?’ asked Boone.

‘That’s classified. It’s beginning to appear that Het Soneka and Het Bronzi were not so innocent after all.’

‘Listen to me,’ Boone growled, looking the companion in the eye. ‘You’d better have some fugging watertight facts before you come down here dragging the reputations of two of my hetmen through the gutters.’

‘Ah, the famous Chiliad loyalty,’ said Chayne. ‘How does it go? “Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene”? I was told to expect that you’d close ranks.’

‘We look after our own, companion, and I’m not sure I like what you’re implying,’ Boone answered.

Chayne nodded. He knew when to be forthcoming with a morsel of information. ‘There were spies at work on Nurth, Boone. We assumed they were Nurthene agents. It now appears that they were part of the Alpha Legion infiltration network.’

‘Hurt and Peto? Never!’

‘Why never?’

‘I’d have known. I knew them both,’ Boone exclaimed.

‘I have identified the spy at the heart of the business,’ said Chayne. ‘He was using the name Konig Heniker, and operating under the guise of an Imperial agent. Uxor Rukhsana Saiid was running him during the Nurthene operation. Bronzi and Soneka were arrested after an attempt to remove her from the palace. Was that the Chiliad covering itself, I wonder?’

Boone felt his mouth drying up. He breathed deeply, and steered the Lucifer Black out of the path of a trundling servitor truck laden with ground attack missiles. He led Chayne into a nearby repair shop where crews were working on service parts.

‘Get out,’ he told the men.

They withdrew, puzzled.

Alone, Boone turned to Chayne. ‘Of course the Chiliad covers itself. We see a weak link, we clean house. Saiid was in bed, literally, I believe, with the spy. Soneka and Bronzi were simply covering our arses. I sanctioned them. You can’t blame the Chiliad for that. We cleared up our own dirty laundry.’

‘I won’t blame you, Boone,’ Chayne replied. ‘Tell me about Strabo.’

‘Fugging Strabo?’ Boone asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘Why is he called that?’

‘I dunno. It’s a long standing joke. Do you Lucifers make jokes, Chayne?’

‘Never,’ Chayne replied.

‘Why am I not surprised?’ Boone replied. ‘All right, what’s Strabo got to do with anything?’

Chayne walked away towards the shop’s workbench and inspected some of the tools idly. ‘He made a report, after the extraction from Nurth.’

‘I think he may have,’ Boone said.

‘Don’t be coy, Franco Boone,’ Chayne said. ‘With the lord commander’s personal authority, I have accessed the Chiliad’s private record base.’

‘That’s illegal,’ Boone spat. ‘You’ve no right!’

‘Council of Terra edict 1141236a, powers of search and inquiry, as governed by the martial process,’ Chayne responded. ‘During war operation, the authority of any lord commander, or commander holding a position of equivalent authority over an expedition or similar task force, or equivalent mandate, may be allowed, under suspicion or general threat of insurgency, to seize, audit, copy, access and otherwise examine any data files compiled and stored by any military section of a regiment under his purview. That’s my right. Tell me about Strabo.’

‘It was nothing,’ said Boone, miserably. ‘Strabo was head bashaw of the Clowns. They’d lost their het. Soneka was sent in as proxy, to see them through. As Strabo reported it, Soneka left the Clowns on station under bashaw command during the last few hours of the Nurth campaign.’

‘Why?’ asked Chayne. ‘Isn’t that rather unusual?’

Boone shrugged. ‘According to Strabo, Soneka just took off. Strabo, and bashaw Lon, who’s a much more reliable source, said that Soneka had taken a spy into custody, and was personally escorting him to us genewhips. Then Nurth came down around our ears and no one ever saw him again.’∫

‘Thank you,’ said Chayne.

‘That’s it?’ asked Boone.

‘One last request,’ said Chayne. ‘Supply me with the surface drop coordinates of Het Bronzi.’

‘Why?’

‘He is not working for us, genewhip,’ said Dinas Chayne, ‘and he hasn’t been for a long time.’

Seven

Eolith, continuous

They scaled a steep slope of jumbled rock littered with decomposing residue. Soneka saw poking ribs and split fatty blubber, filled with liquid putrescence. The stench was intolerable.

‘Come on, just a little further,’ Grammaticus urged. He had become imbued with a boyish vigour. Soneka and Rukhsana followed on behind him, Soneka clasping the uxor’s hand now.

‘Down here!’ Grammaticus called. They followed him down into a depression between leaning stone blocks. A cave of sorts lay before them, its basin flooded with black liquor between the scattered slabs.

The cave was cold and had an odd echo. Grammaticus leapt from stone to stone to avoid the stagnant water, hopping from one raised block to another as if they were stepping stones in an ornamental water garden. Soneka and Rukhsana followed him.

The cave opened out into the most enormous chapel of stone. Moisture dripped and trickled down out of the arched roof. There was a wide stone shelf in the centre of the space, like a stage. The wet rock shone like glass. Grammaticus helped Peto and Rukhsana up onto it.

‘This is it?’ asked Soneka, looking around at the ominous shadows, dubiously.

Grammaticus nodded.

‘What happens now?’

‘Wait, Peto, wait,’ Grammaticus replied. He turned in a slow circle, gazing up at the walls. He seemed to be listening for something. ‘I can’t feel them,’ he murmured. ‘Where are they?’

‘I may have to flect,’ he decided after a moment.

‘You may have to what?’ asked Soneka.

‘Flect! Flect!’ Grammaticus said, as if everybody understood what the arcane term meant. He jumped off the stone platform and bent down beside a rock pool. He skimmed the surface of the water with his fingers. ‘Please, please,’ he mumbled.

Nothing happened.

‘Come on!’ he snapped, flicking his fingers across the water.

It suddenly went very cold.

Rukhsana pulled herself against Soneka.

+There is no need to flect, John Grammaticus.+

Grammaticus looked up at the cave roof. ‘You hear me? You’re here?’

+We’ve been here all along, John.+

‘Show yourselves!’ Grammaticus called out.

‘Oh fug me,’ Soneka breathed, holding Rukhsana close. She was crying and agitated.

Shapes were beginning to appear around the platform of rock, alien forms cohering into place. Soneka swallowed hard as he saw the inhuman nature of the things solidifying in front of him: ghastly shapes, mockeries of creation, a gathering of the most disturbing xenosforms. Some were pallid, multi-limbed entities, others whispered their respiration through fluttering mats of gelatinous pseudopods. Others were stalk things, or crouching vulpine shapes, or asymmetric insects. Some were horned, or boneless, or armoured in bizarre environment suits. A giant mollusc uncurled, glistening, from its vast shell. Two spavined avian creatures hopped forwards and peered with bright, curious eyes. Something mechanical rose up on four, club-footed limbs. One entity seemed to be nothing more than a beam of discoloured light. An imposing eldar in pearl white armour, somehow the most terrifying thing of all with its oh-so human shape, walked to the front of the congregation.

Grammaticus opened his arms wide, and bowed. ‘Hello, my masters,’ he sighed.

An insectoid scuttled out in front of the mighty eldar and writhed its mouth parts.

‘Greetings, John,’ G’lattro announced in perfect Low Gothic.

‘My friend, hello,’ Grammaticus replied.

‘Who have you brought with you to this place?’ asked G’Lattro.

‘Rukhsana Saiid, who is my heart love, and Peto Soneka, my friend,’ said Grammaticus. ‘I have come to arrange the meeting. The Alpha Legion awaits. I’m tired, sirs. This has been a long and punishing task, but it is done, and the Alpha Legion, though painfully cautious, is ready to hear what you have to say.’

Slau Dha, the autarch, murmured something.

‘The autarch wishes to understand why you have brought mon-keigh things with you,’ G’Latrro piped. ‘Where are the envoys of the Astartes Alpha Legion?’

‘I had to improvise,’ Grammaticus said. ‘The Alpha Legion is not easily manipulated. I could not allow suspicion and mistrust to debase this meeting. I did not want a misunderstanding to lead to bloodshed. Now that I have vouched for their intent, we can contact them directly and–’

‘Mon-keigh!’ Slau Dha boomed abruptly.

Grammaticus turned. Peto Soneka was aiming his laspistol right at him.

‘Peto?’ Grammaticus said, incredulously. ‘Control word bedlame. Bedlame!’

Soneka laughed. ‘You really thought that had worked, didn’t you, John?’ he asked. He tossed the locator to Rukhsana.

‘Got it, Peto,’ she said. She activated the beacon setting.

‘Rukhsana?’ Grammaticus stammered. ‘No!’

Stained light blinked and flickered all around the cave. There was a chorus of rapid, harmonic chimes. One by one, around the edges of the chamber, Alpha Legion warriors appeared in the shivering light display, weapons already trained. The teleport delivery left a dry, gritty scent in the air. In less than four seconds, fifty Alpha Legionnaires were covering the Cabal from every angle. The members of the Cabal jostled and quivered, and jabbered in consternation. Slau Dha glared and reached for his weapons.

‘Stand where you are and make no attempt to resist,’ Omegon ordered, bolter aimed. He adjusted channels. ‘We’re secure.’

Light wafted. Alpharius materialised, with Shere at his side.

The primarch walked forwards. ‘Cabal,’ he said. ‘We meet at last, on my terms.’

Eight

Eolith, continuous

‘There’s a ship approaching,’ said Mu. Bronzi called the company to halt and looked up into the saturated cloud cover. He couldn’t see anything.

‘There’s no drop due,’ he said, ‘and we haven’t been notified of air support. I can’t see anything.’

‘It’s there,’ she insisted, staring up into the sky. Her ’cept had caught its approach.

A dot appeared out of the clouds, and swooped down across the block valley, trailing vapour. It was a Jackal gunship.

‘What does he want, I wonder?’ asked Tche.

The gunship made two passes over the Jokers’ position, and then banked in and hovered down to settle on the flattest patch of rock in the immediate vicinity.

As soon as its claws bit into the ground, figures dismounted from the side hatch and ran towards the waiting geno company.

‘Lucifer Blacks?’ Mu murmured uneasily.

Bronzi felt a shudder of panic. ‘No, no,’ he whispered.

The three companions, armed and armoured, covered the ground sure-footedly, and reached the Jokers. They came to a halt in a row, apparently oblivious to the surly glares of suspicion that they were getting from hundreds of big, genic soldiers.

‘Hetman Bronzi,’ said the lead companion. ‘Identify Hetman Bronzi.’

A murmur ran through the company. Bronzi realised that he was trembling. There was absolutely no way he could run or hide from this. He did the only thing he could.

‘That’s me,’ he called, walking out of the huddled troops to face the Lucifers. One of them immediately stepped forwards and disarmed him. Bronzi didn’t fight.

‘What the fug do you think you’re doing?’ Tche exclaimed.

‘Hetman Bronzi,’ the lead companion announced, ‘you are detained by order of the lord commander. You will come with us.’

The Jokers started to yell and protest, spilling forwards out of their lines in outrage.

‘Keep your places!’ Bronzi yelled. ‘That’s an order! Keep your places! This is just a misunderstanding, and we’ll get it cleared up!’

‘You will come with us now,’ the lead companion demanded.

‘No,’ Honen Mu snapped, striding out to stand beside Bronzi. ‘I can’t allow this. You cannot remove my hetman during an operation.’

‘Your objection is noted, uxor,’ said the companion, ‘but it is overruled. Step back.’

‘This is a disgrace!’ Mu yelled. ‘How dare you–’

‘Step back, uxor,’ the companion repeated.

‘Don’t provoke them, Honen,’ Bronzi told her gently. ‘I’ll get this sorted out and be back as quickly as I can.’

‘What is this about, Hurtado?’ she asked, horrified.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Bronzi, what have you done, you silly old dog?’ she pleaded.

‘Nothing,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve done nothing.’ He clasped her hands in his and looked down into her eyes. ‘I’ll come back, Honen. Look after my Jokers for me, all right?’

‘Hurtado…’

He bent and kissed her cheek, and then let go of her hands and allowed the companions to walk him back to the gunship.

He never looked back.

As she watched him walk away, Honen Mu had the most profound feeling that she’d never see him again.

‘This is not how it should be!’ Grammaticus roared.

‘Be quiet,’ said Alpharius.

‘No!’ Grammaticus spat, turning to face the primarch. ‘This is exactly the sort of confrontational duress I was trying to avoid. This is no way to deal with the Cabal. You cannot turn your guns on them and force them to–’

‘I can do anything I want,’ said Alpharius, ‘and what I want is to be in control of this situation. Your Cabal has persistently and covertly schemed to manipulate the Alpha Legion. That is no basis for trust. I’ll hear them out, but I will not let them use my Legion, or lead it into a trap.’

‘It’s not a trap!’ Grammaticus wailed.

‘Not any more it isn’t,’ Omegon agreed.

Grammaticus put his head in his hands and backed away. He looked up, and saw Soneka and Rukhsana.

‘You used me,’ he sighed in disbelief.

‘No more than you thought you were using me, John,’ Soneka replied, ‘and you did try very hard to do that.’

‘But–’ Grammaticus said.

‘This is what my lord wanted, and this is what I delivered for him,’ said Soneka. ‘He wanted to see where you would go, given the chance.’

‘And you too,’ Grammaticus murmured, looking at Rukhsana. ‘It was all a sham.’

She opened the throat of her protective gear and revealed the pendant hanging there. ‘Psionic scrambler, Konig,’ she said. ‘It made my mind seem as if it were out of joint.’

‘Oh, Rukhsana, why?’ he begged.

Playfully, she continued to unbutton her suit, and pulled the seam aside to show half of her right breast. The hydra brand appeared like a beauty spot on her pale skin.

Grammaticus looked away and sank to his knees.

‘Who speaks for the Cabal?’ Alpharius asked, advancing across the platform towards them.

‘They will all speak through me,’ clicked G’Latrro. ‘Lord Alpharius, our agent is correct. This is no way to conduct business. The Cabal deplores your aggression.’

‘But they want to talk to me, so they’d better get used to the situation and begin,’ Alpharius replied. ‘I have limited patience. What is so important that you’d go to such lengths to draw me here?’

The Cabal’s interpolator did not reply. Behind him, in low, odd tones, the Cabal members consulted one another.

‘Stay sharp,’ Pech said to Shere, his boltgun trained on the aliens. ‘Any sign of trickery…’

Shere nodded. ‘There is psychic activity, but it is purely communicative. None of it is active.’

‘Let me know if that changes,’ said Pech.

The buzzing, mumbling stir of alien voices ceased. G’Latrro looked up at Alpharius.

‘The Cabal will speak, though it resents the position you have placed it in,’ it said. ‘It is typical of human zeal and belligerence.’

‘Begin,’ said Alpharius.

‘The Cabal will deal directly with the primarch of the Astartes Alpha Legion,’ G’Latrro stated.

‘You are,’ said Alpharius.

‘With the entire primarch,’ said the insectoid.

Alpharius paused. ‘You are,’ he repeated.

‘A show of trust is perhaps in order on your part, seeing that you hold us at gunpoint?’ said G’Latrro. ‘A token to signify that true secrets can be shared between us?’

Alpharius glowered for a moment, and then nodded. Omegon, in his gleaming, blue-black infiltrator armour, walked slowly over to stand at Alpharius’s side. Soneka and Rukhsana exchanged brief glances of confusion. Grammaticus looked up, fascinated.

‘Cut off one head and two shall grow in its place,’ said G’Latrro. ‘Alone amongst the genic sons of the Terran Emperor, you are the only twins. You are both the primarch, one soul in two vessels.’

‘The fact is not known outside our Legion,’ said Omegon.

‘It is our most closely guarded secret,’ said Alpharius.

‘How did you know?’ asked Omegon.

The insectoid’s mouthparts twitched. ‘Through a careful study and comparison of the known primarchs that has lasted for decades. It became clear to us that the oldest and the youngest sons were the most significant of all. Horus, for what he will do, and you for what you will undo.’

‘What will Horus do?’ asked Alpharius.

‘He will let the galaxy burn,’ said G’Latrro. ‘He will ignite the civil war.’

‘You speak heresy!’ Omegon growled.

‘Exactly so,’ the interpolator replied.

Alpharius shook his head. ‘This is futile. Like your agent before you, you speak of a coming war and a great doom. You describe a division that could not possibly happen. Horus Lupercal is Warmaster. He is the Emperor’s right hand, and the most loyal of all. What he does, he does for the Emperor.’

‘I believe you intend to sow the seeds of dissent with these wild tales,’ Omegon told the interpolator. ‘You wish to undermine the foundations of the Imperium.’

‘They are not wild tales,’ said G’Latrro.

‘They are baseless and offensive to us!’ Omegon snapped. ‘You supply no specifics, you deal in vague pronouncements.’

‘It has been farseen,’ said G’Latrro.

‘Again with this!’ Alpharius laughed. ‘Some vision, some shamanic dream? A worthless prophesy, a hollow auguring! It all means nothing! You cannot know the future, and therefore you cannot show us any proof.’

‘Yes, we can,’ said G’Latrro. ‘If that is what you need, we will share the Acuity with you.’

‘How exactly is that done? asked Omegon warily.

‘It cannot be accomplished here,’ said G’Latrro. ‘We must first bring our vessel to the halting site, and transfer to it with you. As a matter of trust, we will allow you to escort us, under guard. We need you to know, Alpharius Omegon. We need you to see.’

‘Do it,’ said Alpharius and Omegon simultaneously.

Nine

Orbital, Eolith, three hours later

They took him to a cell in the brig deck of the Blamires, and had him strip. Then they made him watch as they shredded his clothing and dismantled every piece of his equipment.

After that, they locked him in an iron restraint chair.

They did not speak once the entire time. After a while, when he realised that they weren’t ever going to answer him, he stopped asking questions. From that point, the processing continued in silence.

The hatch opened. Dinas Chayne entered the cell, accompanied by a burly officer of the brig and two assistants in floor-length plastek aprons. Chayne conversed quietly with the three companions who had brought Bronzi in and processed him.

He turned to the painfully restrained hetman.

‘Hurtado Bronzi.’

Bronzi said nothing.

‘You are detained on suspicion of being a covert operative of the Astartes Alpha Legion,’ said Chayne. ‘The lord commander takes a dim view of spies, and of internecine espionage. If you are found to be working for the Astartes, it will be considered a gross act of disloyalty to your regiment, the Imperial Army, the expedition, and the lord commander. Do you have anything to say?’

Bronzi flexed his throat and jaw against the iron bars trapping them. ‘This is a mistake,’ he said. ‘This is wrong. You’ve got the wrong man.’

Chayne remained impassive. He walked across to the metal side table where the debris of Bronzi’s clothing and kit sat in boxes. He reached into one, and produced the green metal scale. He held it up to make sure Bronzi could see it.

‘I don’t know what that is,’ Bronzi said. ‘You’ve planted it there.’

Chayne returned the scale to the box and walked back to his prisoner. He pointed his right index finger at the brand mark on Bronzi’s right hip.

‘And that, hetman? Did I plant that too?’

Bronzi scowled.

‘You are in no position to equivocate, Bronzi,’ said Chayne. ‘Tell me. Tell me your secret.’

Bronzi gritted his teeth. Very slowly and deliberately he said, ‘My name is Hurtado Bronzi.’

He looked at Chayne, and winked. ‘There, I’ve said it,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve said it and I can never take it back. The secret’s out.’

‘Don’t annoy me, Bronzi,’ said Chayne. ‘Tell me the rest.’

‘Ah. The rest?’ said Bronzi. ‘Well, if I must sir…’

All the deep range scopes began to sound contact alerts. Van Aunger, master of the expedition fleet, got up from the leather throne in the middle of the Blamires’s wide main bridge and strode across to the tracking station.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘Contact echo, sir,’ the tracking officer replied. ‘An object just appeared on the scopes, inbound to Forty-Two Hydra Tertius.’

‘Appeared?’ Van Aunger repeated.

‘I don’t understand it, sir,’ the tracking officer replied, adjusting his control panels with fast, expert hands. ‘There are no energetic or magnetic profiles that would suggest a real space translation. The object just appeared. I speculate that it was previously cloaked.’

‘Track it and project, full assessment,’ Van Aunger ordered.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the officer.

‘General quarters!’ Van Aunger called out. ‘Shields and batteries to stand by!’

A klaxon started to sound. The bridge staff, over a hundred officers, bustled to their stations, their voices overlapping as they exchanged data and instructions.

‘Trajectory projection!’ the tracking officer announced.

‘Main display,’ Van Aunger replied.

The primary hololithic display lit up with a complex graphic diagram of the planet, the position of the fleet components, and the sweeping vector of the object.

‘That will take it directly to the venue zone,’ Van Aunger murmured. ‘Have you identified vessel type or designation?’

‘Negative, sir,’ the tracking officer replied. ‘It doesn’t even read like a vessel. It’s inert on all scans. It’s… oh Terra…’

‘What?’

‘I’m marking it in excess of point eight superluminal, and it’s big, sir. It’s at least as big as we are.’

‘Battle stations!’ Van Aunger cried. ‘Raise shields!’

The klaxon changed tone immediately. Van Aunger activated his vox-wand.

‘My Lord Namatjira,’ he said.

‘What’s going on, fleet master?’ the lord commander’s voice came back.

‘An unknown craft of significant displacement is about to cut right across the fleet inbound to the planet.’

‘Mobilise the picket,’ Namatjira ordered. ‘Interdict it now.’

‘It’s moving too fast, sir,’ Van Aunger said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Fleet master, I want you to–’

Namatjira’s voice was lost in a wash of static. Every screen on the bridge stations suddenly milked out, and the main lights died. In the darkness that followed, a violent vibration shook through the mighty flagship for a few seconds.

The lights came back on. One by one, the screens came back to life.

‘–an Aunger? Van Aunger?’ Namatjira’s voice blurted from the vox. ‘What in the name of the Emperor just happened?’

‘It went past us, sir,’ replied Van Aunger. ‘Whatever it was, it just went right past us.’

Honen Mu cried out. When Tche turned to look, he thought she’d slipped over on the wet rock. Then he saw that her aides were down too. He ran back over the flat topped rocks to reach her.

He began to feel it too, through the ’cept. All the men felt it, and they had come to a halt.

‘What is it? What is it, uxor?’ he asked.

She was down on her hands and knees, shivering with pain. ‘I don’t know,’ she gasped, shaking her head. Huddled on the ground behind her, her aides were sobbing and wailing.

Thunder rolled. Tche and the Jokers looked up at the overcast sky and the thick banks of cloud.

‘Is it a storm?’ asked one.

More thunder, deep and heavy, shook out. The echo it left rolled down the wide valley that the Jokers were still only half-way across.

A wind began to pick up, strong and lusty, and wet cold. Their banners and capes flapped. Spray lifted off the puddles and pools in the rocks around them.

Thunder sounded again, as if the sky was splitting. This time, Tche and his men saw lightning flare above the clouds, back lighting them. The pulsing discharges made it look as if the clouds were on fire inside.

The men started to point at the sky and cry out. ‘Holy fug,’ Tche mumbled.

A city was falling out of the sky on top of them.

At first, it was a great copper dish, half as wide as the visible sky. Streaks of luminous white and blue pulsed out from the centre of the dish, to its rim and back. The rim was turning like a spinning top, and flashing with iridescent patterns. The dish passed overhead, plunging them into shadow. It made an infrasonic murmur that quaked their internal organs and made them involuntarily squeal in fear. There was a smell of ozone, and sizzling bolts of forked lighting seared down from the clouds all along the length of the valley.

The copper dish, so vast that the very size of it was terrifying, swung in over the monolithic black cliffs of the Shivering Hills, and slowly descended. Now, they could see its upper surface, where giant copper structures resembling fans and leaves bloomed like a cyclopean, abstract water lily from the top of the dish.

It sank lower and lower, until the spinning dish was obscured by the cliffs. There was a colossal boom that shook the ground under them, and caused splinters of rock to topple over and come crashing down the face of the black cliffs. The dish had set down somewhere beyond the hill line. They could see the golden fans and petals of its upper structure rising above the Shivering Hills like the spires and monuments of some heavenly city.

Stray lightning continued to spark and flicker in the clouds, but the wind dropped as quickly as it had risen.

Tche helped Mu to her feet. Blood was seeping from her left nostril. They gazed in silent awe at the gilded shapes of the new skyline.

‘What… what is it?’ Tche asked.

Honen Mu had no answer for him.

Namatjira slowly studied the orbital pictures.

‘It’s huge,’ he murmured.

‘A xenosform vehicle of some kind,’ nodded Van Aunger. ‘I’m afraid we can’t determine any details apart from its size. It is resistant to our probes.’

‘It has landed precisely at the location Alpharius instructed me to secure,’ said Namatjira.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Van Aunger, ‘inside the Shivering Hills area, at the heart of the atmospheric anomaly, and directly upon structures that our scans identified as artificial.’

‘So,’ the lord commander mused, ‘the Cabal has arrived and shown itself.’

‘My lord?’ asked Van Aunger.

Namatjira looked up from the pictures. ‘Return to the bridge, fleet master. Set the fleet to a war footing. Charge all main battery weapons, and target that object. You will only commence bombardment on my instruction.’

‘Sir, we have significant ground troop deployments adjacent to that craft,’ said Van Aunger. ‘They would most likely be caught in any orbital bombardment we unleashed. I told you this, lord commander, before the day began. I told you that bombardment tactics would–’

‘Charge all main battery weapons and target that object,’ hissed Namatjira. ‘Is that too complex an order for you? Should I break it down? Target that object! If that’s beyond you, expect to be stripped of your mastery with immediate effect. I understand Admiral Kalkoa is eager to rise to fleet command.’

Van Aunger glared at Namatjira, made a sullen namaste and left the lookout.

Namatjira sat down on one of the window couches, and stroked the flank of his gene-bred pet.

Chayne entered the lookout, and dismissed the companion on duty.

‘Did you see?’ asked Namatjira.

Chayne nodded. ‘The Cabal is clearly more potent than we feared.’

‘They’re not playing by Alpharius’s rules either,’ said the lord commander. ‘This is not the schedule the primarch told me to expect. He anticipated that our ground forces would have the area surrounded and in our control before–’

He paused.

‘Sir?’ asked Chayne.

‘Unless he lied to me,’ said Namatjira. ‘Unless he is already making contact with the Cabal and learning their precious secrets for himself.’

Namatjira rose. He crossed the lookout and poured a flute of wine, sipped it, and then dashed the glass against the window ports with a snarl of fury.

‘He plays us!’ he growled. ‘He plays us and uses us! Everything he promised me, the honour, the glory, the Emperor’s gratitude, was that all lies too?’

Chayne shrugged. ‘I have not trusted the Astartes Alpha Legion from the start, sir. They do not practise the codes of nobility and honour shown by the other Legiones Astartes. I believe their operation and conduct should be reported to the Council of Terra, pending censure or dissolution. It wouldn’t be the first time a Legion has overstepped the mark, after all. They must be stopped and held accountable before they become too powerful.’

Namatjira nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Agreed, and I will be the one to bring the matter directly to the Emperor’s attention. Perhaps then I can salvage some of my reputation. We need to find them culpable, Dinas. We need firm evidence of their miscreant nature. I need to know precisely what they’re doing, and what infernal compact they are making with these xenoform bastards.’

Chayne poured another drink, and handed it to his master. ‘Thank you, Dinas,’ Namatjira replied. He began to pace.

‘We already have evidence of their espionage, sir,’ said Chayne. ‘I have detained an officer of the Geno Five-Two Chiliad, and have manifest proof that he has been working as an operative of the Alpha Legion.’

‘In our own damn ranks?’

‘The man is Bronzi, sir. It is shocking to discover that the Alpha Legion has infiltrated at the highest operational level.’

Namatjira nodded. ‘That’s a start. Good. You have interrogated him?’

‘He is resisting us, my lord, stoically, but my men are very skilled and patient. I do not know how much longer a man, even a man of Bronzi’s considerable constitution, can withstand such levels of pain.’

‘Get me a link to the primarch, Dinas,’ Namatjira said, ‘person to person. Let’s see what new lies he chooses to spin me, and see if we can’t establish his location while we listen to them. Prepare the Lucifer Blacks for teleport assault.’

Chayne saluted.

‘And Dinas?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Show this Bronzi no mercy,’ said Namatjira. ‘Break him mind, body and soul, and pluck his secrets from him.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ replied Dinas Chayne.

Ten

The Acuity

Soneka had never travelled by teleport before. It wasn’t an experience he’d care to repeat. It made him feel sick and disoriented, as if he’d been put back together the wrong way around.

The Astartes showed no sign of being remotely discomforted.

The teleport arrays of the battle-barge had relocated them all, Imperials and Cabal aliens alike, from the dank cave to a wet rock platform at the halting site, just below the gilded lip of the Cabal’s anchored vessel.

The landing at the halting site had churned up the local atmosphere. It was raining hard, and a vapour like steam was rising from the cubic blocks and the oil-black pools. The encircling cliffs of the Shivering Hills surrounded them in a ring forty kilometres in diameter. The water particles in the air had created a fabulous half rainbow over the steaming bowl of the halting site.

The Cabal’s immense vessel, dazzling with gold and copper reflections, was too vast to comprehend. Soneka looked at it for a while, seeing it as a budding flower, opening its fimbriate petals to the sky, or a crown of oddly twisted thorns.

He realised at length, that it was simply too big, too alien, too unparalleled, for his mind to accommodate without collapsing into madness. He looked away. He’d seen enough of the extraordinary for one lifetime.

‘It’s…’ Rukhsana mumbled. ‘It’s… simply…’

‘I know,’ Soneka said, and gently turned her aside to look at the rim of black cliffs through the rain. ‘It’s best not to look at it for too long.’

‘What have we got ourselves into, Peto?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘I really don’t know any more. We’ve played our parts. I don’t believe we matter at all now. A great destiny is being shaped, I think. Can’t you feel it, the weight of future ages hanging over us?’

She nodded, and hooked her rain-plastered hair off her face. ‘Absolutely,’ she said.

‘This is a task for stronger minds,’ said Soneka, ‘post-human minds, not our weak brains. We have to trust the Astartes to do what they were created to do. We have to trust them to keep our species safe.’

‘Do you trust them, Peto?’ Rukhsana asked.

‘We both carry their mark, uxor,’ he said. ‘I think it’s far too late to ask that question.’

She looked around. A considerable way away, down the rainswept platform, Grammaticus sat hunched under the guard of an Astartes.

‘He hates us,’ she said.

‘Of course he does,’ said Soneka, ‘we betrayed him.’

‘That was hard to do,’ she said. ‘To use him–’

‘He’s used everybody, every step of the way,’ Soneka replied. ‘He’ll get over it. It may not have gone the way he’d have liked it to, but we got him what he wanted.’

‘No, you have to understand, I loved him,’ she said, ‘or I thought I did, and I thought he loved me. I didn’t understand what he was, even when he told me to my face. I didn’t understand the scale of it all.’

‘You were never supposed to,’ said Soneka. ‘Pawns are never supposed to perceive the game as a whole.’

A golden ramp, like a curving tongue, had extended from the rim of the Cabal vessel to meet the edge of the stone platform. The Astartes, bolters ready, had begun to steer the huddle of alien sentients up into the craft. Some whimpered or murmured as they were herded along. Slau Dha, the great autarch, walked with his crested head up, ignoring the trained bolters.

‘Signal relayed from the battle-barge,’ Herzog said to Alpharius.

‘Content?’

‘Lord Commander Namatjira requests personal vox audience. He worries that you have begun the meeting without him.’

‘Tell him I can’t be reached at this time,’ said Alpharius. ‘Tell him to maintain position and keep his forces on standby.’

‘He won’t like it,’ said Herzog.

‘That’s his problem,’ Omegon replied.

‘I probably shouldn’t tell him that, though, should I?’ asked Herzog.

‘Tell him I appreciate his patience, and I will contact him directly,’ said Alpharius.

They boarded the copper craft. Its internal compartments bore no relation to a ship of human design. Odd spaces opened out into curious chambers, or turned back on themselves like a maze. The walls glowed softly with inner radiance. In places, the ceiling seemed to soar away forever. Soneka felt muddled and uncomfortable.

The air smelled like burnt sugar and fused plastek.

They were left alone for a while in a chamber formed from three golden petals.

‘What’s that noise?’ Rukhsana asked.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ said Soneka.

‘It’s in my ’cept then, like a swarm of bees.’

First Captain Pech appeared and strode over to them. ‘The primarch has called for you, Peto,’ he said.

‘Me?’

‘He needs you. Follow me.’

Soneka glanced at Rukhsana. ‘Go on,’ she urged.

Pech led him through the luminous halls of the Cabal vessel to a chamber where Alpharius, Omegon and Shere were waiting.

‘My lord?’ asked Soneka.

‘The Cabal is about to display the Acuity to us, Peto,’ Alpharius told him. ‘As far as we can tell, it’s a perception device, a means of temporal lensing, based on eldar principles of farseeing.’

‘Yes, lord. I don’t really understand anything you just said.’

‘We are about to have the future revealed to us,’ said Omegon.

‘Sirs, why did you send for me?’ asked Soneka.

‘I need to determine, as accurately as I possibly can, the viability of what they are about to show us,’ said Alpharius. ‘I have suggested that the witnesses should be Omegon and myself, Shere from the psyker perspective, and you as an unmodified human. Do you consent?’

‘Sir, I–’

‘Do you consent?’ demanded Omegon. ‘We haven’t got time to waste.’

Soneka nodded. ‘I will do whatever I can, my lords,’ he replied.

‘Thank you, Peto,’ said Alpharius. ‘We’re ready,’ he called out.

A wall that had seemed solid parted like smoke. The four men walked into the chamber beyond, side by side.

It was dark, and lit by a ruddy glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Ahead of them, a monolithic slab of silver light shivered in the darkness.

+I am Gahet.+

‘I am Alpharius, primarch of the Twentieth Legion Astartes,’ Alpharius replied.

+Welcome. Let us know the others, and your other self.+

‘I am Omegon, primarch of the Twentieth Legion Astartes,’ said Omegon.

+Welcome. Den Dang Keyat Shere, welcome.+

Shere bowed.

+Peto Soneka. Welcome.+

‘Hello,’ said Soneka. ‘You’re inside my head.’

+I am.+

‘That’s not entirely pleasant,’ said Soneka.

‘Oh, get a backbone, het,’ snapped Omegon.

+You are prepared to observe the Acuity?+

‘Yes,’ said Alpharius. ‘Any tricks will result in our bolters dismantling this vessel piece by piece. Are we understood?’

+Yes. You are a violent species, human. You threaten quickly. The violence will come later, and will be entirely your business.+

‘Get on with it,’ said Omegon.

+We have battled to deny the Primordial Annihilator for longer than you have been evolved. Chaos cannot be permitted to gain control of the galaxy.+

‘This fact has already been established, Gahet,’ said Alpharius.

+The human race is virile. It thrives, unruly and edacious. It is, in its ignorance, especially susceptible to the influence of Chaos. The Primordial Annihilator has buried its fingers into mankind, intending to turn it into a weapon.+

‘Mankind will resist,’ said Alpharius.

+You will not know how to resist. The Primordial Annihilator is cunning. It will trigger civil war within the Imperium of Man, and bring all creation crashing down. See.+

The slab of silver light trembled and opened. They saw what was inside it. It felt as if they were falling from orbit onto a burning world. Shere began to weep.

+This is our veridical testimony. This is the future as it will happen. The great war will erupt across the firmament and engulf the human race. The stars will go out. The Annihilator will rise.+

‘No,’ said Omegon bluntly. His eyes were wide.

+You cannot deny it, Omegon. It is a process already under way.+

‘You damn liar!’ Omegon roared, and looked away from the Acuity’s vision.

+I cannot lie. I do not lie. The human race will become the absolute masters of teratogeny. They will create the greatest monster of all – Horus!+

Soneka’s mind was numb. What he had witnessed made the sight of the giant copper craft seem unremarkable.

‘How… how do we stop this?’ he asked with a trembling voice.

+You don’t, but the Alpha Legion is perfectly placed to control and direct it.+

‘Explain!’ Alpharius demanded.

+The civil war brought against the Emperor by Horus Lupercal will end one of two ways. Either Horus will win, and Chaos will triumph, or the Emperor’s forces will prevail and drive Chaos into retreat.+

‘The Alpha Legion has always, always, been for the Emperor,’ Alpharius stated.

The slab of silver light flickered.

+Regard, then, the future. Horus wins, and Chaos triumphs, a terrible prospect, but likely. The Cabal sees a scintilla of honour remaining in bright Lupercal. He will secretly hate himself for the atrocities committed in his name. If he wins, his fury will accelerate, along with his self-loathing. He will immolate the human species inside two or three generations. The self-destructive, redemptive urge in Horus will drive him to exterminate mankind in shame. Even his closest allies will war against him in a final armageddon. Chaos will burn brighter than ever before, and will then be extinguished. Its great victory will flare, and then gutter, as the dying Imperium takes it to the grave. The races of the galaxy will be spared, through the sacrifice of the human race.+

‘Horus will not be allowed to win!’ Omegon retorted.

+Consider the alternative, Omegon-primarch. This is what we have farseen. The Emperor will give his life to achieve victory. He will fall, at Terra, striking Horus down. This will be his destiny. See.+

The silver light shimmered. They saw the magnificence of the Golden Throne, and the howling rictus of the wizened cadaver locked inside it.

‘Oh my lord!’ Soneka cried.

+If the Emperor wins, stagnation will seize the Imperium. It will seek to perpetuate itself, over and again, across thousands of years, but it will decay, slowly and surely. It will decay, and gradually allow Chaos to seep back in and consume it.+

‘Victory… is defeat?’ asked Alpharius softly.

+If the Emperor wins, Alpharius, Chaos will ultimately triumph. Ten, twenty thousand years of misery and rot will follow, until the Primordial Annihilator at last achieves ascendancy.+

‘This is the choice?’ asked Omegon. He laughed bleakly.

+The slow, inexorable conquest of Chaos, or a brief period of terror and frenzy. Creeping damnation, or a bloody century or two as the human race rips itself apart, and expunges Chaos from the galaxy. This is the choice we present to you. The human race is a weapon. It can save the galaxy or destroy it.+

‘This is hardly a choice at all, Gahet,’ said Alpharius.

+I pity you, human. It is not, but you are pragmatic, that is your abiding virtue. You see the long view. You make the hard decisions. Alpharius, the stagnant future must be denied.+

‘How do we do that?’ asked Omegon. ‘How do you propose we do that, you alien bastard?’

+It is perfectly simple, Omegon. The Alpha Legion must side with the rebels. You must ensure that Horus wins.+

‘Never!’ snarled Omegon.

‘It is unthinkable!’ Alpharius yelled.

+Then see the result. See it. See it for yourselves.+

The silvery glow shivered again. They flinched. They saw it all, in the space of a moment.

The Acuity showed them everything.

Omegon and Alpharius staggered backwards, screaming.

Shere burbled furiously, and then fell down, stone dead, his mind destroyed.

Soneka sank to his knees and wept.

Eleven

42 Hydra

They came back out into luminous halls that would never seem so bright again. The future came with them, like a shroud. Alpharius and Omegon were silent and expressionless. Ashen, broken, Soneka carried Shere’s corpse in his arms.

The Astartes were waiting for them, their bolters still covering the furtive, whispering members of the Cabal.

‘My lord?’ Pech began. ‘What did–’

Alpharius raised a hand for silence. He looked at his twin, and they stared into each other’s eyes for a long time.

Soneka set Shere’s body down upon the deck. Rukhsana came over to him.

‘Peto? Your face!’ she whispered. ‘What was it? What did you see?’

Soneka shook his head. He couldn’t speak. She put her arms around him.

‘He saw the Acuity.’ John Grammaticus was standing behind them. ‘It is a terrible thing, isn’t it, Peto? Quite terrible, and wonderful too.’

‘Wonderful?’ Soneka burst out, pulling away from Rukhsana. ‘How can you call it that?’

‘Because in all the horror, it offers a chance,’ said John Grammaticus. ‘One pure, simple chance to save, to spare, and to protect.’

Soneka stared at him. ‘I don’t think much of the chance, John,’ he replied.

Slau Dha stepped forward to face Alpharius. The Astartes followed him with their weapons, but he ignored the threat.

‘Well?’ he asked, in halting, thickly-accented Low Gothic. ‘What is your response, mon-keigh? Do you have the strength to make this choice, or are you just as weak and self-serving as the rest of your vermin species?’

Alpharius gazed at the autarch levelly. ‘I stand for the Emperor,’ he replied. ‘In all things, I am loyal to Him, and I cannot break that bond. He has many great ambitions, and the noblest of intentions, but I know that above all else, He is determined to stand firm against the rise of Chaos. He has always known the truth of it. The overthrow of the Primordial Annihilator is His greatest wish. So what I do, autarch, from this moment on, I will do for the Emperor.’

Slau Dha nodded. He turned and walked away.

‘Lord Namatjira continues to plague us with demands,’ said Herzog. ‘He is becoming quite agitated. He insists that you report to him immediately and make full disclosure.’

‘Does he indeed?’ Alpharius replied.

Herzog nodded. ‘He’s beginning to make veiled threats too, my lord, accusations of treason or worse. I believe we must make some kind of response before he loses all patience and embarks upon a regrettable course of action.’

‘We will make a response,’ said Omegon.

Alpharius glanced at his twin.

‘If we are to prevail in the task ahead of us,’ said Omegon, ‘we must be secure and committed. We cannot let our hand be seen too early, or have our undertaking betrayed. Secrecy is, as always, our most potent weapon.’

‘Agreed,’ said Alpharius. He bowed his head, and was silent and pensive for a moment.

‘So?’ asked Omegon.

Alpharius looked up at him. ‘Do it,’ he said.

‘Still no response from the primarch or any of his officers, my lord,’ announced the master of vox. ‘His barge also refuses to acknowledge our repeated hails.’

Namatjira nodded. The bridge of the Blamires had grown increasingly quiet. The tension was palpable.

‘Repeat the message,’ Namatjira ordered.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said the master of vox.

The lord commander turned to Van Aunger. ‘I’m going to withdraw to my chambers,’ he said, ‘and compose a statement of censure regarding the Astartes Alpha Legion. If we have not received a satisfactory reply by the time I’m done, you will send the statement directly to Terra.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Van Aunger.

‘At that time, I will issue one final notice of intent, and if it is not answered, we will begin total bombardment of the surface zone.’

‘Sir, I–’ Van Aunger protested.

‘Shut up and listen, Van Aunger!’ Namatjira growled. ‘Total bombardment of the surface zone. Furthermore, you will position appropriate heavy cruisers to challenge and cripple the battle-barge.’

Van Aunger shook his head in dismay. ‘They are Astartes, my lord. What you’re proposing amounts to war against our own.’

‘The lord commander does not believe they are our own any more, fleet master,’ said Dinas Chayne.

Namatjira turned to leave the bridge, but a call from the tracking officer stopped him.

‘Sir, the Astartes battle-barge has just slipped high anchor.’

‘What?’ demanded Van Aunger, hurrying to the station. ‘Show me.’

‘It’s coming about, sir,’ the tracking officer gabbled. ‘It’s turning in towards the fleet formation.’

‘Those duplicitous bastards,’ murmured Namatjira.

‘That’s an attack vector!’ Van Aunger cried. ‘Full shields! Battle stations!’

‘The barge has opened fire, sir!’ a deck officer shouted. ‘The Cantium has taken direct hits! The Solar Wind too! It’s open to the void!’

‘Return fire!’ Van Aunger ordered. ‘All vessels with a viable target solution on the barge Beta fire at will!’

‘The carrier Loren has gone, sir! The Tancredi and the Loudon both report damage!’

‘It’s just one ship,’ barked Namatjira.

‘It’s an Astartes battle-barge, you cretin!’ Van Aunger spat at him. ‘It’s ploughing through the centre of the fleet like a hot knife!’

The deck shook as the Blamires began to fire its primary batteries.

‘Eight direct hits recorded on the target vessel,’ the master of ordnance sang out.

‘Yes!’ crowed Namatjira, clenching a fist.

‘The Beta is not slowing down,’ said the tracking officer. ‘Function does not seem to have been impaired.’

A shrill siren began to sound, slicing through the battle klaxons.

‘Teleport signature!’ a bridge officer howled. ‘Full spread of teleport flares throughout the midsection! We’re being boarded!’

Internal hatches blew open in a welter of flame and flying metal. Bolter rounds ripped out of the smoke choking the hallway, and cut down crew personnel as they tried to flee.

The Astartes appeared, striding relentlessly out of the fire, their indigo-blue armour reflecting the rippling flames. Their bolters roared as they switched left and right methodically, covering every side tunnel and passageway.

‘Repulse! Repulse!’ shouted Major General Dev, sword in hand, trying to rally two platoons of Hort infantry. ‘Open fire!’

The troopers began to blaze shots down the length of the hallway. Dev thought he glimpsed an armoured figure staggering back, but bolt-rounds seared out of the swirling smoke and destroyed two of the troopers beside him. Covered in their blood, Dev tried to pull his men back to cover. ‘Keep firing!’ he yelled. He grabbed his vox. ‘Repulse squads to decks eight and nine! Heavy weapons! We need heavy weapons!’

They drew back along the hall, and into an assembly chamber. Bolt-rounds chased them, and cut down three more men. Forty Outremar heavies were running forwards through the chamber to support them.

‘Up! Up! Up!’ Dev yelled. ‘Come on! Hold the fugging hatchway! Keep them back!’

The deck shook with a series of loud blasts from somewhere below.

‘Give me that fugging launcher!’ Dev screamed, throwing down his sword and snatching the heavy weapon out of the hands of one of the Outremars. He began to pump rocket grenades out through the chamber hatch.

Light blinked and flickered in the chamber behind them. Coalescing matter swirled, and twisted the eddying smoke. Six Alpha Legion Astartes materialised, their weapons firing on full auto. The major general and his men perished in seconds.

‘Something’s happening,’ said Tche urgently. ‘Something bad.’

Honen Mu gazed up at the sky. The bright flashes and sparks beyond the cloud cover were not lightning. It was orbital fire. The fleet had engaged.

‘I can’t raise the carrier, or the flagship,’ the Jokers’ vox officer reported.

‘Keep trying,’ she ordered.

‘What is it?’ asked Tiphaine. ‘What’s happening up there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mu replied.

Everyone winced suddenly. ’Cept pain shot through the uxor and her aides. Its iridescent rim turning slowly, the giant copper disk rose up behind the crags of the Shivering Hills, and ascended straight up into the sky. It vanished into the low cloud.

Mu sat down on a flat block of stone. It had begun to rain, fierce and cold. She could already smell the minute change in the air. Whatever purpose the atmospheric zone had been created for was done with. It was no longer needed, and it was being allowed to dissipate. She had no idea if the process would take minutes, days or weeks, but the caustic atmosphere of 42 Hydra Tertius would flood back and restore climactic equilibrium.

Honen Mu perceived that no one would be coming for them. The Jokers, and all the other ground assault units, would still be in the zone when the poison storms of 42 Hydra Tertius reclaimed it.

Then other decomposing remains would be left, drowned and scattered, across the lonely cubic rocks.

Twelve

Blamires, orbital

Dinas Chayne placed a firm hand on Namatjira’s arm.

‘Now, my lord,’ he insisted.

‘No, Dinas,’ Namatjira snapped, pulling away.

‘The security of the flagship can no longer be guaranteed,’ said Chayne. ‘The companions must escort you to the safety of your sanctuary launch.’

The bridge was shaking. Every man at every station was shouting above the wail of the sirens. There was a distinct smell of smoke.

‘Target it again!’ bellowed Namatjira. ‘Again!’

‘We cannot break its shields,’ Van Aunger yelled back.

‘We just lost the Barbustion!’ someone yelled.

‘The Loudon is reported as on fire and drifting!’ called another voice.

Namatjira walked up to Van Aunger and slapped him hard across the face. ‘Destroy that barge, you piece of shit!’

Van Aunger recoiled, spitting blood from his lip. He balled his fist to swing back. Chayne took him by the throat. Van Aunger gagged.

‘You will not raise your hand to the lord commander,’ said Chayne. ‘Complete your orders.’

He let go. Van Aunger fell to the deck, gasping. ‘All weapons,’ he coughed. ‘All weapons, sustained fire. Everything we’ve got, damn it, before–’

‘Contact!’ the tracking officer cried. ‘A second contact!’

They stared at the jumping graphics on the main display. A vessel was shown tracking towards the rear of the fleet mass.

‘Where did it come from?’ Van Aunger asked.

‘It just appeared on the scopes, sir. It was concealed behind the planet.’

‘That’s another barge,’ said Van Aunger in a low voice. ‘That’s another fugging battle-barge!’

‘The Alpha,’ whispered Namatjira.

‘It has opened fire!’ the tracking officer yelled.

‘Now, my lord,’ said Chayne.

This time, Namatjira allowed Chayne to lead him away.

‘Noisy… out there…’ Bronzi muttered through the blood oozing out of his mouth.

‘Shut it!’ ordered the officer of the brig. He exchanged a worried look with his two assistants in their blood-spattered aprons. The thump of explosions and the crackle of gunfire was impossible to ignore.

Bronzi began to laugh, but it turned into a wet, ragged cough.

‘They’re coming… they’re coming for me, you see? I knew… I knew they would.’

‘Shut up!’ the officer snarled, and viciously tightened one of the cage screws.

Bronzi screamed.

He coughed out more blood. ‘My name… my name is Hurtado Bronzi…’ he wheezed. ‘That’s… that’s all you’re getting…’

The cell door slammed open. Two figures in black bodygloves burst in. Peto Soneka shot the officer of the brig twice through the heart with his laspistol, and then pumped several more rounds into his twitching corpse. Thaner decapitated one of the assistants with an expert slice of his falx, and then drove the long blade through the other’s belly.

He tugged the weapon out. The man collapsed.

‘Get him out of the restraint,’ said Soneka. Thaner started to undo the heavy clasps and bolts.

‘Peto?’

‘Hang on, Hurt. You’re a mess.’

‘You… came for me…’

‘A personal favour granted by the primarch,’ Soneka said.

‘You… came for me…’ Bronzi repeated.

‘We look after our own,’ said Thaner.

They pulled him out of the cage. He couldn’t stand, so they carried him between them, his meaty arms, blood-soaked, around their shoulders.

‘Hurry,’ said Thaner.

‘Signal the teleport,’ said Soneka.

Thaner nodded.

‘We’re going to get you out, Hurt,’ said Soneka. ‘We’ll get you to the barge and patch you up. Just hang on.’

‘It’s… good to see you, Peto,’ Bronzi murmured.

‘And you, Hurt.’

‘If it’s so good… to see me… why do you look… so fugging grim?’

‘Later,’ said Peto Soneka. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

One end of the flagship’s vast carrier deck was ablaze. Chayne and a squad of six Lucifer Blacks ran Namatjira through the smoke and across the wide deck space towards the armoured sanctuary launch.

‘Prepare for immediate departure,’ Chayne cried into his vox. ‘The lord commander will be aboard in twenty seconds!’

‘I don’t believe he will,’ said Alpharius.

The primarch had emerged from the dense smoke pouring down the carrier space. He stood, gladius drawn, between the companions and the launch.

The Lucifer Blacks were armed with laspistols and sabres. Without hesitation, they rushed him, firing as they came.

Las-rounds pinged and flashed off Alpharius’s armour. Some left scorched and dented holes. He drove in to meet the charge. One swing of his sword broke the back of the first Lucifer. Alpharius wheeled and crushed another’s skull with his left fist.

Blades sawed at him from all sides. He blocked with his sword, and the gauntlet of his left hand. A sabre shattered. The gladius stabbed clean through the chest of a companion, and ripped free. Blood spattered out in a wide arc across the deck.

Blocking another sword stroke with his gladius, Alpharius delivered a crushing punch with his left hand that sent one of the remaining Lucifers flying backwards. He grabbed another, and broke his neck with one twist of his armoured fingers.

Chayne swung his sabre in, and it was barely blocked by the primarch’s sword. He altered his attack dynamic. Alpharius had to take a step backwards to defend against Chayne’s extraordinary swordsmanship. The primarch parried and thrust, but Chayne dodged the strike, and ran his sabre into Alpharius’s side. The tempered blade, as strong and sharp as any metal known to man, punched under the side of the power armour, through the segmented layering, and deep into Alpharius’s torso.

Alpharius looked down at the wedged blade. A tiny amount of blood oozed out.

‘Hmh,’ he murmured. He stared at Chayne, who knew he could not pull the sword out.

‘That’s all you get,’ said Alpharius, and split him in half.

Alpharius sheathed his gladius, and dragged the sabre out of his torso. He tossed it away, and walked through the litter of bodies to where Namatjira was kneeling on the deck.

‘Please! My lord primarch! Please, I beg you!’ Namatjira pleaded, his hands making a desperate namaste.

Alpharius drew his boltgun.

‘Why?’ shrieked Namatjira. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘For the Emperor,’ said Alpharius, and pulled the trigger.

Epilogue

Cabal

The copper dish spun out through the darkest part of the void. John Grammaticus walked its silent halls for the last time.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Slau Dha.

‘Away. It’s over. I’m done.’

‘There will be other tasks.’

‘Not for me,’ said John Grammaticus.

‘The Cabal is grateful for your efforts,’ said Slau Dha.

‘I bet that was hard to say,’ Grammaticus replied, scornfully.

He walked away from the autarch.

‘You were successful, mon-keigh,’ said the eldar lord. ‘Why do you not seem satisfied?’

‘Because of the measure of my success,’ said Grammaticus. ‘I successfully signed the death notice of the human race.’

‘John?’ Slau Dha called out. ‘You are heading in the direction of the external hatches. John?’

John Grammaticus ignored him and kept walking. He felt he deserved it.

It wouldn’t be his first death, but he hoped it would be his last.

THE HORUS HERESY

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

~ Dramatis Personae ~

The Ultramarines Legion

Cestus, Brother-captain and fleet commander, 7th Company

Antiges, Honour Guard, Battle-brother

Saphrax, Honour Guard, Standard Bearer

Laeradis, Honour Guard, Apothecary

The Word Bearers Legion

Zadkiel, Fleet Captain, Furious Abyss

Baelanos, Assault-captain, Furious Abyss

Ikthalon, Brother-Chaplain, Furious Abyss

Reskiel, Sergeant-commander, Furious Abyss

Malforian, Weapon Master, Furious Abyss

Ultis, Battle-brother

The Mechanicum of Mars

Kelbor-Hal, Fabricator General

Gureod, Magos, Furious Abyss

The Space Wolves Legion

Brynngar, Captain

Rujveld, Battle-brother

The Thousand Sons Legion

Mhotep, Brother-sergeant and fleet captain, Waning Moon

The World Eaters Legion

Skraal, Brother-captain

The Saturnine Fleet

Kaminska, Rear Admiral, Wrathful

Venkmyer, Helmsmistress, Wrathful

Orcadus, Principal Navigator, Wrathful

One

Bearers of the Word/Let slip our cloaks/The death of Cruithne

Olympus Mons burned bright and spat a plume of fire into the sky. Below the immense edifice of rock lay the primary sprawling metropolis of Mars. Track-ways and factorums bustled with red-robed acolytes, pursued dutifully by lobotomised servitors, bipedal machine-constructs, thronging menials and imperious skitarii. Domed hab-blisters, stark cooling towers and monolithic forge temples vied for position amidst the red dust. Soaring chimneys, pockmarked by millennia of endeavour, belched thick, acrid smoke into a burning sky.

Hulking compressor houses vented steam high over the industrious swell like the breath of gods from arcane blasting kilns carved into the heart of the world; so vast, so fathomless, a labyrinthine conurbation as intricate and self-involved as its fervent populous.

Such innumerate, petty meanderings were as inconsequential as a fragment of coal in the blast furnaces of the mountain forges, so great was the undertaking of that day. Few knew of its significance and fewer still witnessed the anonymous shuttle drone launch from the hidden caldera in the Valles Marineris. The drone surged into the stratosphere, piercing cloud-like crimson smog. Through writhing storms of purple-black pollution and wells of geothermal heat that hammered deep bruises into the sky, it breached the freezing mesosphere, the drone’s outer shell burning white with effort. Plasma engines screaming, it drove on further into the thermosphere, the rays of the sun turning the layer into a blazing veil of relentless heat. Breaking the exosphere at last, the shuttle’s engines eased. This was to be a one-way trip. Preset tracking beacons found their destination quickly. It was far beyond the red dust of Martian skies, far beyond prying eyes and questions. The shuttle was headed for Jupiter.

Thule had orbited the shipyards of Jupiter for six millennia. Suspended high above the gaseous surface of its patron planet, it dwelled innocuously beyond the greater Galilean moons: Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. It was an ugly chunk of rock, its gravity so weak that its form was misshapen and mutated.

Such considerations were of little concern to the Mechanicum. What place did appearance and the aesthetic have in the heart of the machine? Precision, exactness, function, they were all that mattered.

Though of little consequence, Thule was to become something more than just a barren hunk of rock. It had been hollowed out by massive boring machines and filled with conduits, vast tunnels and chambers. Millions of menials, drones and acolytes toiled in the subterranean labyrinth, so great was the deed that they were charged to perform. In effect, the dead core of Thule had become a giant factorum of forge temples and compressors, a massive gravity engine its beating heart. This construction extended from the surface via metal tendrils that supported blister domes, clinging like limpets to the rock, and pneumatic lifter arrays. Thule was no mere misshapen asteroid. It was an orbital shipyard of Jupiter, and one that had guests.

‘We stand upon the brink of a new era.’ Through the vox-amplifier built into his gorget, Zadkiel’s voice resonated powerfully in the gargantuan chamber. Behind him, the exo-skeletal structure of Thule shipyard loomed large and forbidding against the cold reaches of space. Here, within one of the station’s blister domes, he and his charges were protected from the ravages of the asteroid’s surface. Solar winds scoured the rock, bleaching it white, the inexorable erosion creating a miasma of nitrogen-thick rolling dust.

‘A red dawn is rising and it will drown our enemies in blood. Heed the power of the Word and know it is our destiny,’ Zadkiel bellowed as he delivered the sermon, animated and fervent upon a dais of obsidian. Scripture carved into his patrician features and bald skull added unneeded gravitas to Zadkiel’s oratory. His grey, turbulent eyes conveyed vehemence and surety.

His fists encased in baroque gauntlets, Zadkiel gripped the edge of the lectern and assumed an insistent posture. He wore his full battle armour, a fledging suit of crimson ceramite yet to bear the scars of conflict. Replete with the horns of Colchis, in honour of the primarch’s home world and the symbol of a proud and distinguished heritage, it represented the new era of which Zadkiel spoke.

The Word Bearers Legion had been denied their true nature for too long. Now, they had shed the simulacra of obedience and capitulation, the trappings of compromise and denial. Their new power armour, fresh from the forges of Mars and etched with the epistles of Lorgar, was a testament to that treaty. The grey-granite suits of feigned ignorance were destroyed in the heart of Olympus Mons. Clad in the vestments of enlightenment, they would be reborn.

A vast ocean of crimson stretched before Zadkiel, as he stood erect behind his pulpit of stone. A thousand Astartes watched him dutifully, a full Chapter split into ten companies, each a hundred strong, their captains to the fore. All heeded the Word.

The Legionaries were resplendent in their power armour, bolters held at salute in their armoured fists, clutched like holy idols. Zadkiel’s suit was the mirror-image of those of his warriors, although sheaves of prayer parchment, scorched trails of vellum writ over with litanies of battle, and the bloodied pages ripped from sermons of retribution were affixed to it. When he spoke, it was with the zealous conviction of the rhetoric he wore.

‘Heed the power of the Word and know this is our destiny.’

The congregation roared in affirmation, their voices as one.

‘We have our lance of vengeance. Let it strike out the heart of Guilliman and his weakling Legion,’ Zadkiel bellowed, swept up by his own vitriolic proclamations. ‘Long have we waited for retribution. Long have we dwelt in shadow.’

Zadkiel stepped forward, his iron-hard gaze urging his warriors to greater fervour. ‘Now is the time,’ he said, smashing his clenched fist down upon the lectern to punctuate the remark. ‘We shall cast off falsehoods and the shackles of our feigned obeisance,’ he snarled as if the words left a bitter taste in his mouth, ‘let slip our cloaks and reveal our true glory!

‘Brothers, we are Bearers of the Word, the sons of Lorgar. Let the impassioned words of our dark apostles be as poison blades in the hearts of the False Emperor’s lapdogs. Witness our ascension,’ he said, turning to face the great arch behind him.

A vast ship dominated the view through the hardened plexi-glass of the blister dome. It was surrounded by massively over-engineered machinery, as if the scaffold supporting the hordes of menials and enginseers had been built around it, and thick trails of reinforced hosing bled away the pneumatic pressure required to keep the gargantuan vessel elevated.

Cathedra soared from the ship’s ornate hull, their spires groping for the stars like crooked fingers. So armoured, it could withstand even a concerted assault from a defence laser battery. In fact, it had been forged with that very purpose in mind.

Its blunt bullet prow, and the way its flanks splayed out to encompass the enormous midsection, spoke of strength and precision. Three massive crenellated decks extended from it like the sharpened prongs of a stygian trident. Twin banks of laser batteries gleamed in dull gunmetal down its broadsides. A single volley would have annihilated the loading bay and everyone in it. Cannon mounts sat idle on angular blocks of metal filled with viewpoints that hinted at the myriad chambers within. The rapacious bristle of the defensive turrets along the dorsal and ventral spines, and the dark indentations of the torpedo tubes, shimmered with violent intent.

Spiked antenna towers punched outward from multitudinous sub-decks, interspersed with further weapon arrays and torpedo bays. The ship’s ribbed belly shimmered like oil and was replete with dozens of fighter hangars.

At the stern, the huge cowlings of the exhausts flared over the deep glow of the warming engines, primed to unleash enough thrust to force the warship away from Thule. Like chrome hexagons, the engine vents were so vast and terrible that to stare into their dormant hearts was to engulf all sense and reason in a fathomless darkened void.

Finally, sheets of shielding peeled off the prow, revealing a massive figurehead: a book, wreathed in flame, wrought from gold and silver. Words of Lorgar’s choosing were engraved on the pages in letters many metres high. It was the greatest and largest vessel ever forged, unique in every way and powerful beyond reckoning.

Such was the sight of it, like some creature born from the depths of an infinite and ancient ocean, that even Zadkiel fell silent.

‘Our spear is made ready,’ Zadkiel said at last, his voice choked with awe. ‘The Furious Abyss.’

This ship, this mighty ship, had been made for them, and here in the Jovian shipyards its long-awaited construction had finally reached an end. This was to be a blow against the Emperor, a blow for Horus. None could know of the vessel’s existence until it was too late. Steps had been taken to ensure that remained the case. The launch from little known, and even less regarded, Thule was part of that deceit, but only part.

Zadkiel turned on his heel to face his warriors.

‘Let us wield it!’ he extolled with vociferous intensity. ‘Death to the False Emperor!’

‘Death to the False Emperor,’ his congregation replied like a violent blast wave.

‘Horus exultant!’

Discipline broke down. The assembled throng bellowed and roared as if possessed, smashing their fists against their armour. Oaths of hatred and of devout loyalty were shouted fervently and the building sound rose to an unearthly clamour.

Zadkiel closed his eyes amidst the maelstrom of devotion and savoured, drank deep of the zealotry. When he opened his eyes again, he faced the archway and the landscape of the Furious Abyss. Smiling grimly, he thought of what the vessel represented, and he imagined its awesome destructive potential. There was none other like it in all of the Imperium: none with the same firepower; none with the same resilience. It had been forged with one deliberate mission in mind and it would need all of its strength and endurance to achieve it: the annihilation of a Legion.

In the darker recesses of the massive loading bay, now an impromptu cathedra, others watched and listened. Unfeeling eyes regarded the magnificent array of soldiery from the shadows: the product of the Emperor’s ingenuity, even perhaps his hubris, and felt nothing.

‘Curious, my master, that this Astartes should exhibit such an emotional response to our labours.’

‘They are flesh, Magos Epsolon, and as such are governed by petty concerns,’ remarked Kelbor-Hal to the bent-backed acolyte stooped alongside him.

The fabricator general had purposely taken the long journey from Mars to Thule aboard his personal barge. He had done so under the pretence of a tour of the Jovian shipyards, overseeing atmospheric mining on the surface of Jupiter, reviewing the operations on Io, and observing vehicle and armour production within the hive cities of Europa. All of which would explain his presence on Thule. The truth was that the fabricator general wanted to witness this momentous event. It was not pride that drove him to do it, for such a thing was beyond one so close to absolute communion with the Omnissiah, rather it was out of the compulsion to mark it.

One endeavour was much like any other to the fabricator general, the requirements of form and function outweighing the need for ceremony and majesty. Yet, here he stood swathed in black robes, a symbol of his allegiance to the Warmaster and his commitment to his cause. Had he not sanctioned Master Adept Urtzi Malevolus to forge Horus’s armour? Had he not also allowed the commissioning of vast quantities of materiel, munitions and the machines of war? Yes, he had done all of this. He had done it because it suited his purposes, the burgeoning desire, or rather intrinsic programming, within the servants of the great machine-god to gradually become one with their slumbering deity. Horus had unfettered Mars in its pursuit of the divine machine, countermanding the Emperor’s chastening. For Kelbor-Hal the question of his allegiance and that of the Mechanicum was one of logic, and had required mere nanoseconds of computation.

‘He sees beauty where we see function and form,’ the fabricator general continued. ‘Strength, Magos Epsolon, strength made through fire and steel, that is what we have wrought.’

Magos Epsolon, also robed in black, nodded in agreement, grateful for his overlord’s enlightenment.

‘They are human, after a fashion,’ the fabricator general explained, ‘and we are as far removed from that weakness as the cogitators aboard that ship.’

Immensely tall, his ribcage exposed through the ragged edge of his robes with ribbed pipes and tendril-like servos replacing organs, veins and flesh, Kelbor-Hal was anything but human. He no longer wore a face, preferring a cold steel void implanted with a curious array of sunken green orb-like diodes in place of eyes. A set of mechadendrite claws and arms stretched from his back, like those of an arachnid, replete with blades, saws and other arcane machinery. His voice was devoid of all emotion, synthesised through a vox-implant that droned with artificial coldness and indifference.

As Kelbor-Hal watched the phalanx of Astartes boarding the ship through the tube-like umbilical cords that snaked from the vessel’s loading ramps to the blister dome, their bombastic leader swelling with phlegmatic pride, the internal chron within his memory engrams alerted him that time was short.

Dully, the Furious Abyss’s thrusters growled to life and the great vessel strained vertically against the lifter clamps. A low, yet insistent hum of building power from the awakening plasma engines followed, discernible even through the plexi-glass of the blister dome. With the Astartes and their crew aboard, the Furious Abyss was preparing to launch.

A data-probe snicked from the end of one of the fabricator general’s twitching mechadendrites and fed into a cylindrical console that had emerged from the hangar floor. Interfacing with the device, Kelbor-Hal inputted the code sequence required to launch the ship. A series of icons upon the face of the console lit up and a slowly building hum of power resonated throughout the launch chamber.

Lead Magi Lorvax Attemann, part of the coterie of acolytes and attendant menials who had gathered to observe the launch, was permitted to activate the first sequence of explosions that would release the Furious Abyss. He did so without ceremony.

Lines of explosions, like stitches of fire, rippled along the side of the dock. Lifters, assembly arrays and webs of scaffolding fell away into the darkness, where magnetic tugs waited to gather the wreckage. Slabs of radiation shielding lifted from the ship’s hull. The last dregs in the refuelling barges ignited in bright ribbons of fire.

The plasma engines roared, loud and throaty, scorching a blue swathe of fire and heat across the surface of Thule. A new star was rising in the darkling sky, so terrible and wonderful that it defied expression. It was a thunderous metal god given form, and it would light the galaxy aflame with its wrath.

At last the Furious Abyss was underway. As Kelbor-Hal watched it lift majestically into the firmament and registered the heavy thrum of its engines, a single tiny vestige of emotion blinked into existence within him. It was an ephemeral thing, barely quantifiable. Accessing internal cogitators, interfacing with his personal memory engrams, the fabricator general found its expression.

It was awe.

The drone ship waited deep within the heart of Thule, accessed through a series of clandestine tunnels and lesser-known chambers. As it made its approach, the still toiling menials and servitors paid it no notice, programme wafers ensuring that they remained intent on their work. So, the shuttle passed them by slowly, unchallenged, unseen. Once through the myriad tunnels, the drone waited for several hours docked in a small antechamber that fed off the vast gravity engine at the asteroid’s core.

An hour earlier, Fabricator General Kelbor-Hal’s personal barge had departed the station, the head of the Mechanicum leaving his subordinate, Magos Epsolon, to organise the clean up after the launch of the Furious Abyss. It was to be the last vessel that left Thule.

Pre-programmed activation protocols abruptly came on line in the servitor pilot slaved to the drone shuttle. A mix of chemicals, separated within the body of the servitor pilot became merged as they were fed into a shared chamber. Once combined, the harmless chemicals became a volatile solution capable of incredible destructive force. A second after the solution became fully merged a small incendiary charge ignited their fury. The immediate firestorm engulfed the ship and spread out, the growing conflagration billowing down tunnels and through access pipes, incinerating labouring menials. When it struck the gravity engine the resultant explosions began a cataclysmic chain reaction. It took only minutes for the asteroid to break into flame-wreathed fragments. There was no time to flee to safety and no survivors. Every adept, servitor and menial was burned to ash.

The debris field would spread far and wide, but the asteroid was far enough away, locked at the farthest point of its horseshoe orbit, not to trouble Jupiter. It would not escape notice, but it was also of such little consequence that any investigation would take months to effect and ratify. None would discover the thing that had been wrought upon the asteroid’s surface until it was much, much too late.

Much technology was lost in Thule’s destruction. It was a steep price to pay for absolute and certain secrecy. In the end, the fabricator general’s will had been done. He had willed the death of Thule.

Two

Hektor’s fate/Brothers of Ultramar/In the lair of the wolf

It was dark in the reclusium. Brother-Captain Hektor kept his breathing measured as he prosecuted another thrust with his short-blade. He followed with a smash from his combat shield and then twisted his body out of the committed attack to make a feint. Crouching low, blackness surrounding him in the chapel-like antechamber, he spun on his heel and repeated the manoeuvre in the opposite direction: swipe, thrust, block, thrust; smash, feint, turn and repeat, over and over like a physical mantra. With each successive pass he added a flourish: a riposte here, a leaping thrust there. The cycles increased in pace and intensity, the darkness enveloping him, honing his focus, building to an apex of speed and complexity, at which point Hektor would gradually slow until at peace once more.

Standing stock-still, maintaining control of his breathing, Hektor came to the end of the training regimen.

‘Light,’ he commanded, and a pair of ornate lamps flared into life on either wall, illuminating a spartan chamber.

Dressed in only sandals and a loincloth, Hektor’s body was cast in a sheen of sweat that glistened in the artificial lamplight. The curves of his enhanced musculature were accentuated within its glow. Indulging in a moment of introspection, Hektor regarded the span of his hands. They were large and strong, and bereft of any scars. He made a fist with the right.

‘I am the Emperor’s sword,’ he whispered and then clenched his left. ‘Through me is his will enacted.’

Two robed acolytes waited patiently in the shadows, cowls concealing their augmetics and other obvious deformities. Even without being compared to the tall slab of muscle that was an Astartes, they were bent-backed and diminutive.

Hektor ignored their obsequiousness as he released the straps affixing the combat shield to his arm and handed it over along with his short-blade to the acolytes. He looked at the ground as his attendants retreated silently into the shadow’s penumbra at the edge of the room. An engraved ‘U’ was carved into the centre of the chamber, chased in silver on a circular field of blue. Hektor stood in the middle of it, in exactly the position that he had started.

He allowed himself a smile as he beckoned his attendants to bring forth his armour.

A great day was fast approaching.

It had been a long time since he had seen his fellow Ultramarines. He and five hundred of his battle-brothers had been far from their native Ultramar for three years, as they helped prosecute the Emperor’s Great Crusade to bring enlightenment to the galaxy and repatriate the lost colonies of man by fighting the Vektates of Arkenath. The Vektate were a deviant culture, an alien overmind that had enslaved the human populous of Arkenath. Hektor and his warrior brothers had shattered the yoke that bound their unfortunate human kin and in so doing had destroyed the Vektates. The human populace owed fealty to the Imperium, and demonstrated it gladly when they were free of tyranny. It had been a grim war. The Fist had been involved in a brutal ship-to-ship action against the enemy, but had prevailed. Repairs had been conducted on Arkenath, as well as the requisitioning of a small tithe of men, eager to venture beyond the stars, to help replenish elements of the ship’s crew. Once the war was over, Hektor and his battle-brothers had been summoned to the Calth system and the region of space known as Ultramar. At long last, they would be reunited with their brothers and their primarch.

Hektor was full of pride at the thought of seeing Roboute Guilliman again, his gene-father and noble leader of the Ultramarines Legion. The deciphered messages from the Fist of Macragge’s astropaths had been clear. The Warmaster himself, mighty Horus, had ordered the Legion to the Veridan system. Guilliman had ratified the Warmaster’s edict and instructed all disparate Ultramarine forces to muster at Calth. There they would take on supplies and rendezvous with their brothers in preparation to launch a strike on an ork invasion force besieging the worlds of neighbouring Veridan. A short detour to the Vangelis space port to take on some more battle-brothers stationed there and the campaign to liberate Veridan would be underway.

Fully armoured, Hektor strode down an access tunnel and headed towards the bridge. His ship, the Fist of Macragge, was a Lunar-class battleship, named in honour of the Ultramarines’ home world. Deck hands, comms-officers and other Legion serfs bustled past the Astartes down the cramped confines of one of the vessel’s main thoroughfares.

The faint hiss of escaping pressure greeted Hektor’s arrival on the bridge as the automated portal allowed him entry, before sliding shut in his wake.

‘Captain on the bridge,’ bellowed Ivan Cervantes, the ship’s helmsmaster. Cervantes was a human, and despite being dwarfed by the mighty Astartes, he remained straight-backed and proud before the glorious countenance of his captain. Cervantes snapped a sharp salute with an augmetic hand; his original body part had been lost on Arkenath, together with his left eye, during the boarding action against the Vektates. The bionic replacement glowed dull red in the half-light of the bridge.

Screen illumination from various consoles threw stark slashes into the gloom, the activation icons upon them grainy and emerald. Crewmen, hard-wired directly into the vessel’s controls from access ports bolted into their shaved scalps worked with silent diligence. Others stood, consulting data-slates, observing sensor readings and otherwise maintaining the Fist of Macragge’s smooth and uninterrupted passage through real space. Lobotomised servitors performed and monitored the ship’s mundane functions with precise, circadian rhythm.

‘As you were, helmsmaster,’ Hektor replied, climbing a short flight of steps that led to a raised dais at the forefront of the bridge, and sitting down at a large command throne at its centre.

‘How far are we from Vangelis space port?’ Hektor asked.

‘We expect to arrive in approximately–’

Warning icons flashed large and insistent on the forward viewport in front of the command throne, interrupting the helmsmaster in mid-flow.

‘What is it?’ Hektor demanded, his tone calm and level.

Cervantes hastily consulted a console beside him. ‘Proximity warning,’ he explained quickly, still poring over the data that had started churning from the console.

Hektor leaned forward in his command throne, his tone urgent.

‘Proximity warning? From what? We are alone in real space.’

‘I know, sire. It just… appeared.’ Cervantes was frantically consulting more data as the organised routine of the bridge was thrust into immediate and urgent action.

‘It’s another ship,’ said the helmsmaster. ‘It’s huge. I’ve never seen such a vessel!’

‘Impossible,’ barked Hektor. ‘What of the sensorium, and the astropaths? How could it have got so close to us, so quickly?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know, sire. There was no warning,’ said Cervantes.

‘Bring it up on the viewscreen,’ Hektor ordered.

Blast shields retracted smoothly from the front viewscreen, revealing a swathe of real space beyond. There, like black on night, was the largest ship Hektor had ever seen. It was shaped like a long blade with three massive decks that speared out from the hull like prongs on a trident.

Points of intense red light flared in unison down the vessel’s port side as it turned to show the Fist of Macragge its broadside. The light illuminated more of the ship, so that it stretched the entire length of the viewscreen. It was even larger than Hektor had first assumed. Even several kilometres from the Fist of Macragge, it was rendered massive in the glow of its laser batteries

‘Name of Terra,’ Hektor gasped when he realised what was happening.

The terrible vessel that had somehow foiled all of their sensors, even their astropathic warning systems, was firing.

‘Raise forward arc shields!’ Hektor cried, as the first impact wave struck the bridge. A bank of consoles on the left suddenly exploded outward, shredding a servitor with shrapnel and all but immolating one of the deck crew. The bridge shuddered violently. Crewmen clutched their consoles to stay upright. Servitor drones went immediately into action dousing sporadic fires with foam. Hektor gripped the arms of his command throne as critical warning klaxons howled in the tight space, and crimson lightning shone like blood as emergency power immediately kicked in.

‘Forward shields,’ Hektor cried again as a secondary impact wave threw the Astartes from his command throne.

‘Helmsmaster Cervantes, at once!’ Hektor urged, getting to his feet.

No answer came. Ivan Cervantes was dead, the left side of his body horribly burned by one of the many fires erupting all across the bridge.

What was left of the crew worked frantically to reroute power, close off compromised sections and find firing solutions so that they might at least retaliate.

‘Somebody get me power, lances, anything!’ Hektor roared.

It was utter chaos as the carefully drilled battle routines were made a mockery of by the sudden and unexpected attack.

‘We have sustained critical damage, sire,’ explained one of Cervantes’s subordinates, blood running freely down the side of his face. Behind him, Hektor saw other crewmen writhing in agony. Some were prone on the bridge floor and not moving at all. ‘We’re dead in the void.’

Hektor’s face was grim in the gory glow of the bridge, a burst of sparks from a shorting console casting his features in stark relief.

‘Get me an astropath.’

‘A distress call, sire?’ asked the crewman, fighting to be heard above the chaotic din. The silhouettes of his colleagues rushed back and forth to stem the damage, desperately trying to restore order in spite of the fact that it was hopeless.

‘We are beyond help,’ Hektor uttered with finality as the Fist of Macragge’s systems started failing. ‘Send a warning.’

Cestus knelt in silent reflection within one of the sanctums in the Omega quarter of Vangelis space port. The vast orbital station was built into a large moon and based around several hexagonal blisters into which docks, communion temples and muster halls were housed. A labyrinthine tramway connected each and every location of Vangelis, which was organised into a series of courtyards or quarters to make navigation rudimentary.

The bustling space port was crammed with traders, naval crewmen and mechwrights. A large proportion of its area had been given over to the Astartes. Vangelis was a galactic waymarker and small numbers of Astartes involved in more discreet missions used it as a gathering point.

Once their objective was completed, they would congregate at one of the many muster halls designated for their Legion and await pick-up by their battleships. Though little more than a company from any given Legion would be expecting transit at any one time, sectors Kappa through Theta were at the complete disposal of the Legions. Few non-Astartes were ever seen there, barring ubiquitous Legion serfs and attendants, though occasionally remembrancers would be granted brief access in concordance with maintaining good relations with the human populous.

Cestus drank in the darkness of the sanctum and used it to clear his thoughts. He was fully armoured, and pressed his left gauntlet against the sweeping, silver ‘U’ emblazoned on the cuirass of his power armour, symbol of the great Ultramarines Legion, whilst keeping his head bowed.

Soon, he thought.

He and nine of his battle-brothers had been on Vangelis for over a month. They had been acting as honour guard for an Imperial dignitary at nearby Ithilrium and were consequently separated from the rest of their Legion. Their sabbatical had passed slowly for Cestus. At first, he had thought it curious and enlightening to mix with the human population of the space port, but even bereft of his power armour and swathed in Legionary robes he was greeted with awe and fear. Unlike some of his brothers, it wasn’t a reaction that he relished. Cestus had kept to Astartes quarters after that.

The fact that transit was inbound to extract them from Vangelis and ferry him and his brothers to Ultramar and their primarch and Legion filled Cestus with relief. He longed to embark on the Great Crusade again, to be out on the battlefields of a heathen galaxy, bringing order and solidity.

Word had reached them that the Warmaster Horus had already departed for the planet of Isstvan III to quell a rebellion against the Imperium. Cestus was envious of his Legion brothers, the World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor’s Children who were en route with the Warmaster.

Though Cestus craved the esoteric and was fascinated by culture and erudite learning, he was a warrior. It had been bred into him. To deny it was to deny the very genetic construct of his being. He could no more do that than he could go against the will and patriarchal wisdom of the Emperor. Such a thing could not be countenanced. So, Cestus sought the seclusion of the meditative sanctum.

‘You have no need to genuflect on my account, brother.’ A deep voice came from behind Cestus, who was on his feet and facing the intruder in one swift motion.

‘Antiges,’ said Cestus, sheathing his short-blade at his hip. Normally, Cestus would have rebuked his battle-brother for such a disrespectful remark, but he had formed an especially strong bond with Antiges, one that transcended rank, even of the Ultramarines.

It was a bond that had served the battle-brothers well, their whole much more than the sum of their parts as it was for the Legion in its entirety. Where Cestus was governed by emotion but prone to caution, Antiges was at times choleric and insistent, and less intense than his brother-captain. Together, they provided one another with balance.

Battle-Brother Antiges was similarly attired to his fellow Astartes. The sweeping bulk and curve of his blue power armour reflected that of Cestus, together with the statutory icons of the Ultramarines. Pauldrons, vambrace and gorget were all trimmed with gold, and a gilt brocade hung from Antiges’s left shoulder pad to the right breast of his armour’s corselet. Neither Astartes wore a helmet; Antiges’s fastened to a clasp at his belt, whilst Cestus’s head was framed by a silver laurel over his blond hair, his battle helm cradled beneath his arm.

‘A little on edge, brother-captain?’ Antiges’s slate-grey eyes, the mirror of his closely cropped skull, flashed. ‘Do you desire to be out amongst the stars, commanding part of the fleet again?’

As well as a company captain, Cestus also bore the rank of fleet commander. During his sojourn on Ithilrium that aspect of his duty had been briefly suspended. Antiges was right, he did desire to be back with the fleet, fighting the enemies of the Emperor.

‘At the prospect of you lurking in the shadows, waiting to reveal yourself,’ Cestus returned sternly and stepped forward.

He managed to maintain the chastening expression for only a moment before he smiled broadly and clapped Antiges on the shoulder.

‘Well met, brother,’ Cestus said, clasping Antiges’s forearm firmly.

‘Well met,’ Antiges replied, returning the greeting. ‘I have come to take you away from here, brother-captain,’ he added. ‘We are mustering for the arrival of the Fist of Macragge.’

It was a short journey from the sanctum of Communion Temple Omega to the dock where the rest of Cestus’s and Antiges’s battle-brothers awaited them. A narrow promenade, lined with ferns and intricate statuettes, quickly gave way to a wide plaza with multiple exits. The Ultramarines, who spoke with warm camaraderie, took the western fork that would eventually lead them to the dock.

Turning a corner, at the lead of the two Astartes, Cestus was hit square in the chest. The impact, though surprising, moved the Astartes not at all. He stared down at what had struck him.

Quivering amidst a bundle of tangled robes, a litho-slate clasped reassuringly in his hands, was a scholarly-looking human.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Antiges demanded at once.

The pale scholar cowered beneath the towering Astartes, shrinking before his obvious power. He was sweating profusely, and used the sleeve of his robe to wipe his head before casting a glance back in the direction he had come from in spite of the monolithic warriors in front of him.

‘Speak!’ Antiges pressed.

‘Be temperate, my brother,’ Cestus counselled calmly, resting his hand lightly on Antiges’s shoulder pad. The gesture appeased the Ultramarine, who backed down a little.

‘Tell us,’ Cestus urged the scholar gently, ‘who are you and what has put you in this distemper?’

‘Tannhaut,’ the scholar said through ragged breaths, ‘Remembrancer Tannhaut. I only wanted to compose a saga of his deeds, when a madness took him,’ he blathered. ‘He is a savage, a savage I tell you!’

Cestus exchanged an incredulous look with Antiges, who turned back to fix the remembrancer with his imperious gaze once more.

‘What are you talking about?’

Tannhaut pointed a quivering finger towards the arched entrance of a muster hall.

A stylised rendering of a lupine head was etched into a stone panel beside it.

Cestus frowned when he saw it, knowing full well who else was on the space port with them at that time.

‘The sons of Russ.’

Antiges groaned inwardly.

‘Guilliman give us strength,’ he said, and the two Ultramarines strode off in the direction of the muster hall, leaving Remembrancer Tannhaut quailing behind them.

Brynngar Sturmdreng’s booming laughter echoed loudly around the muster hall as he felled another Blood Claw.

‘Come, whelplings!’ he bellowed, taking a long pull from the tankard in his hand. Most of the frothing, brown liquid within spilled down his immense beard, which was bound in a series of intricate knots, and swept over the grey power armour of his Legion. ‘I’ve yet to sharpen my fangs.’

In recognition of the fact, Brynngar displayed a pair of long incisors in a feral grin.

The Blood Claw Brynngar had just knocked prone and half-conscious crawled groggily on his belly in a vain attempt to get clear of the ebullient Wolf Guard.

‘We’re not done yet, pups,’ Brynngar said, clamping a massive armoured fist around the Blood Claw’s ankle and swinging him across the room one-handed to smash into what was left of the furnishings.

The three Blood Claws left standing amongst the carnage of broken chairs and tables, and spilled drink and victuals, eyed the Wolf Guard warily as they began to surround him.

The two facing Brynngar leapt in to attack, their shorter fangs bared.

The Wolf Guard drunkenly dodged the swipe of the first and hammered a brutal elbow into the Blood Claw’s gut. He took the punch of the second on his rock-hard chin before smashing him to the floor with his considerable bulk.

A third Blood Claw came from behind, but Brynngar was ready and merely sidestepped, allowing the young warrior to overshoot, before delivering a punishing uppercut into his cheek.

‘Never attack downwind,’ the bawdy Wolf Guard told the Blood Claw rolling around on the floor. ‘I’ll always smell you coming,’ he added, tapping his flaring nostrils for emphasis.

‘As for you,’ Brynngar said, turning on the one who had struck him, ‘you hit like you’re from Macragge!’

The Wolf Guard laughed out loud, before stomping a ceramite boot in mock salute of his triumph on top of the last Blood Claw, who had yet to stir from unconsciousness.

‘Is that so?’ a stern voice from the entrance way asked.

Brynngar swung his gaze in the direction of the speaker, and his one good eye brightened at once.

‘A fresh challenge,’ he cried, swigging from his tankard and delivering a raucous belch. ‘Come forth,’ Brynngar said, beckoning.

‘I think you’ve had enough.’

‘Then let us see.’ The Wolf Guard gave a feral grin and stepped off the inert Blood Claw. ‘Tell me this,’ he added, stalking forward, ‘can you catch?’

Cestus hurled himself aside at the last moment as the broad-backed chair flew at him, smashing into splinters against the wall of the muster hall. When he looked up again, he saw a broad and burly Wolf Guard coming towards him. The Astartes was an absolute brute, his grey power armour wreathed in pelts and furs, numerous fangs and other feral fetishes hanging from silver chains. He wore no helmet, his long and ragged hair swathed in sweat together with a beard drenched in Wulfsmeade, swaying freely about his thick shoulders.

‘Stay back,’ Cestus advised Antiges as he hauled himself to his feet.

‘Be my guest,’ the other Ultramarine replied from his prone position.

Adopting a crouching stance as dictated by the fighting regimen of Roboute Guilliman, Cestus rushed towards the Space Wolf.

Brynngar lunged at the Ultramarine, who barely dodged the sudden attack. Using his low posture to sweep under and around the blow, Cestus rammed a quick forearm smash into the Space Wolf’s elbow, tipping the rest of what was in the tankard over his face.

Brynngar roared and came at the Ultramarine with renewed vigour.

Cestus ducked the clumsy two-armed bear hug aimed at him and used Brynngar’s momentum to trip the Space Wolf hard onto his rump.

The manoeuvre almost worked, but Brynngar turned out of his trip, casting aside the empty tankard and using his free hand to support his body. He twisted, using the momentum to carry him, and landed a fierce punch to Cestus’s midriff when he came back too swiftly for the Ultramarine to block. An overhand blow followed as Brynngar sought to chain his attacks, but Cestus moved out of the striking arc and unleashed a fearsome uppercut that sent Brynngar hurtling backwards.

With the sound of more crushed furniture, the Space Wolf got to his feet, but Cestus was already on him, pressing his advantage. He rained three quick, flat-handed strikes against Brynngar’s nose, ear and solar plexus. Staggered after the barrage, the Wolf Guard was unable to respond as Cestus drove forward and hooked both arms around his torso. Using the weight of the attack to propel him, Cestus roared and flung Brynngar bodily across the muster hall into a tall stack of barrels. As he moved backwards, Cestus watched as the rack holding the barrels came loose and they crashed down on top of Brynngar.

‘Had enough?’ Cestus asked through heaving breaths.

Dazed and defeated, and covered in foaming Wulfsmeade, a brew native to Fenris and so potent that it could render an Astartes insensible should he drink enough, Brynngar looked up at the victorious Ultramarine and smiled, showing his fangs.

‘There are worse ways to lose a fight,’ he said, wringing out his beard and supping the Wulfsmeade squeezed from it.

Antiges, standing alongside his fellow battle-brother, made a face.

‘Up you get,’ said Cestus, hauling Brynngar to his feet.

‘Fair greetings, Cestus,’ said the Wolf Guard, when he was up, crushing Cestus in a mighty bear hug. ‘And to you, Antiges,’ he added.

The other Ultramarine backed away a step and nodded.

Brynngar put his arms down and nodded back with a broad smile.

‘It has been a while, lads.’

It was on Carthis during the uprising of the Kolobite Empire in the early years of the crusade that the three Astartes had first fought together. Brynngar had saved Cestus’s life that day and had been blinded in one eye for his trouble. The venerable wolf had fought the Kolobite drone-king single-handed. The mighty rune axe, Felltooth, which Brynngar wielded to this day, had part of its blade forged from the creature’s mandible claw by the rune-priests and artificers of Fenris in recognition of the deed.

‘Indeed it has, my noble friend,’ said Cestus.

‘Drunk and brawling? Are the drinking holes of this space port insufficient sport, Brynngar? Did you build this muster hall for just such a purpose, I wonder?’ said Antiges with a hint of reproach.

Lacquered wood panelled the walls, and a plentiful cache of barrels, filled with Wulfsmeade, were stationed at intervals throughout the hall. Huge, long tables and stout wooden benches filled the place, which was empty except for Brynngar and the groaning Blood Claws. Tapestries of the deeds of Fenris swathed the walls. The muster halls of the Ultramarines were austere and regimented; this one, fashioned by the artisans of Leman Russ’s Legion, looked more like a rustic longhouse from the inside.

‘A pity you could not have joined in sooner,’ Brynngar remarked. ‘Perhaps tomorrow?’

‘With regret, we must decline,’ Cestus replied, secretly relieved; he had no desire to go a second round with the burly Space Wolf. ‘We leave today for Ultramar. War is brewing in the Veridan system and we are to be reunited with our brothers in order to prosecute it. We are heading to the space dock now.’

Brynngar smiled broadly, clapping both Astartes on the shoulder, who both felt the impact through their armour.

‘Then there is only one thing for it.’

Antiges’s expression was suspicious.

‘What is that?’

‘I shall come to see you off.’

With that, the Wolf Guard turned the two Ultramarines and, putting his massive arms around their shoulders, proceeded to walk them out of the muster hall.

‘What about them?’ Cestus asked as they were leaving, indicating the battered Blood Claws.

Brynngar cast a quick look over his shoulder and made a dismissive gesture.

‘Ah, they’ve had enough excitement.’

Three

God of the Furious Abyss/Psychic scream/Visions of home

Coralis Dock was one of many on Vangelis. A wide, flat plain of plate metal stretched out from its many station houses and listening spires, ending in a trio of fanged docking clamps where the various visiting craft could make harbour and take on or drop off cargo.

Arriving at the main control hub of Coralis, the three Astartes found themselves in a tight chamber that overlooked the dock. Thick, interwoven cables looped from the ceiling and dim, flickering halogen globes illuminated the bent-backed menials and cogitator servitors working the hub. A backwash of sickly yellow light thrown from numerous pict screens and data-displays fought weakly against the gloom.

An azure holosphere was located in the centre of the chamber, rotating above a gunmetal dais. It depicted Vangelis space port in grainy, intermittent resolution and a wide arc surveyor net that projected several thousand metres from the surface.

A large, convex viewport confronted the Astartes at the far wall through which they could see the magnificent vista of real space. Distantly, writhing nebulae patterned the infinite blackness with their iridescent glory and fading suns. Starfields and other galactic phenomena were arrayed like the flora and fauna of some endless obsidian ocean. It was a breathtaking view and stole away the fact that the recycled air within the control hub was sickly and stifling. A machine drone accompanied it from the space port’s primary reactor located in the subterranean catacombs of Vangelis. The insistent hum of latent power could be felt through the reinforced plasteel floor. It was hot, too, the stark industrial interior barely shielded against the dock’s generatorium.

Saphrax was already on the command deck of the control hub, consulting with the hub’s stationmaster, when the other Astartes arrived. Saphrax was the honour guard squad’s standard bearer, and the Ultramarines honour banner was rolled up in its case slung over his back. The rest of Saphrax’s battle-brothers were below at the hub’s gate, preparing for their imminent departure.

‘Greetings, Saphrax. You know Brynngar of the Space Wolves,’ said Cestus, indicating the brutish Wolf Guard who gave a feral snarl.

‘What news?’ the brother-sergeant asked his banner bearer.

‘Captain, Antiges,’ said the Ultramarine to his battle-brothers. ‘Son of Russ,’ he added for Brynngar’s benefit. Saphrax was a bald-headed warrior with a long scar that ran from his left temple to the base of his chin: another souvenir from the Kolobite. Cestus often mused that none in the Legion were as straight-backed as Saphrax, so much so that he seemed permanently at attention. Dependable and solid, he was seldom given to great emotion and wore a stern expression like a mask over chiselled stone features. Pragmatic, even melancholic, he was the third element to the balance that existed between Cestus and Antiges. Even so, the banner bearer’s mood was particularly dour.

‘We have received an astropathic message,’ Saphrax informed them.

There were three astropaths in residence at the hub, and more in the space port at large. They were sunk into a deep, circular vestibule, just below floor level, and swathed in shadow. Dim lights set into the edge of the vestibule cast weak illumination onto their faintly writhing forms. A skin of translucent, psychically conditioned material was draped over the trio of astropaths like a clinging veil. Beneath it, they looked like they were somehow conjoined, as if feeling each other’s emotions as one being. Other, less obvious, wards were also in place. All were designed to safeguard against the dangerous mental energies that could be unleashed during the course of their duties.

Withered and blinded, the wretched creatures – two males and a female – like all of their calling had undergone the soul-binding ritual; the means by which the Emperor moulded and steeled their minds, so that they might be able to look into the warp and not be driven insane. Astropaths were vital to the function of the Imperium; without them, messages could not be communicated over vast distances, and forces could not be readied and co-ordinated. Even so, it was an inexact science. Messages both sent and received by the Astra Telepathica were often nought but a string of images and vague sense-impressions. Wires and thick cables snaked from the vestibule, slaving the astropaths to the control hub, where their ‘messages’ could be logged and interpreted.

‘It started fifteen minutes ago,’ said the stationmaster, an elderly veteran of the Imperial Army with cables running from under his shaved scalp, plugged into the command ports of the consoles set above the astropathic chamber. ‘We’ve only received fragments of meaning, so far. All we know for certain is that they come from a distant source. Thus far, only part of the message has reached us. Our astropaths are endeavouring to extract the rest as I speak to you.’

Cestus turned to regard the stationmaster and in turn the gibbering astropaths. Beneath the protective psy-skin, he could see their wasted bodies, swaddled in ragged robes. He heard the hissing of sibilant non sequiturs. The astropaths drooled spittle as they spoke, their sputum collecting against the inner material of the skin enveloping them. Their bone-like fingers were twitching as their minds attempted to infiltrate the empyrean.

‘Falkman, sire,’ said the stationmaster by way of introduction with a shallow bow. His right leg was augmetic and, judging by his awkward movements, most of his right side, which was probably why he had been sidelined to age and atrophy at Vangelis, no longer fit to taste of the Imperium’s glory on the battlefield. Cestus pitied his fragility and that of all non-Astartes.

‘Could it be a distress beacon sent from a ship?’ Antiges broke through Cestus’s thoughts with his assertive questioning.

‘We have been unable to discern that yet, sire, but it is unlikely,’ said Falkman, his face darkening as he turned to Saphrax.

‘The nature of the message was… broken, more like a psychic cry delivered with extreme force. With the warp in tumult the energy used to send it was unpredictable,’ said Saphrax, ‘and it was no beacon. There was a single message; the pattern does not repeat. We think perhaps it was an astropathic death scream. ‘And that is not all.’

Cestus’s gaze was questioning.

Saphrax’s face was grim.

‘We have yet to receive word from the Fist of Macragge.’ The banner bearer of the honour guard let the words hang there, unwilling to voice what was implied.

‘I will not make any negative conclusions,’ Cestus replied quietly, unwilling to give in to what he feared. ‘We must believe that–’

The three astropaths slaved to the control hub began convulsing as the full force of the psychic scream made its presence felt. Blood spurted inside the psy-skin covering them and looked hazy and bright viewed from outside it. The wasted limbs of the astropaths pressed against the material, forcing it tight, their muscles held in spasm as they writhed in agony. Cogitators set around the hub above them were spewing reams of data as the astropaths fought to control the visions rushing into their minds.

Smoke clouded the already hazy interior of the psy-skin as it rose from their decrepit bodies. Consoles sparked and exploded as wrathful electricity arced and spat. It earthed into the wizened frames of the astropaths, carried by the wires and cables, now little more than human conductors for its power. As one, they threw their heads back and a backwash of pure psychic force was unleashed in a terrible death scream that resonated throughout the room. The astropaths became a conduit for it, the strength of the psychic emission made many times more powerful by the volatile state of the warp.

Walls shuddering against the onslaught, the lights of Vangelis space port went out.

The bridge of the Furious Abyss was like a sprawling city in miniature. The banks of cogitators were like hive-stacks rising above the streets formed by the exposed industrial ironwork of the deck. The various bridge crews sat in sunken command posts like arenas or deep harbours. Three viewscreens dominated one end of the bridge, while a raised acropolis at its heart was formed by the captain’s post. A strategium table stretched out before it from which he could raise an orrery display, showing the ship and its foes wrought in rotating brass rings.

High above the sprawling bridge was a decked clerestory where the astropathic choir of the mighty warship were slaved. The vaulted space was shared by the Navigator’s sanctum, concealed in an antechamber so as to be secluded whilst traversing the perils of the warp.

The command throne, raised upon a hard-edged pentagonal dais, was the seat of a god.

Zadkiel was that god, looking down upon a city devoted to him.

‘Listen,’ Zadkiel bade those kneeling before him in supplication. The dulcet roar of the Furious Abyss’s plasma engines, even dulled by the thick adamantium plating surrounding the ship’s hull and interior, was like a war cry.

‘Listen and hear the sound of the future...’ Zadkiel was on his feet, sermonising, ‘…the sound of fate!’

Three warriors, true devotees of the Word, heeded Zadkiel’s rhetoric and stood.

‘We pledge our service to you, Lord Zadkiel,’ said the tallest of the three. He had a voice like crushed gravel and one of his eyes was blood-red, surrounded by a snarl of scar tissue. Even without the injury, his granite slab of a face would have made him a figure of fear even among his fellow Word Bearers. This was Baelanos, assault-captain and Zadkiel’s private terror weapon. A potent warrior, Baelanos lacked imagination, which made him the perfect follower in Zadkiel’s eyes. He was obedient, deadly and fiercely loyal, all fine qualities in an underling.

‘As do we all,’ Ikthalon interjected blithely. Another Astartes, Ikthalon was a company chaplain, demagogue and expert torturer. Unlike Baelanos, he wore his helmet in the presence of his commander, a skull-faced piece of armour with a pair of discreet horns on either side of the temple. Even through it, Ikthalon’s thinly veiled contempt was obvious. ‘Perhaps we should address the matters at hand, brother,’ he counselled, lingering sarcastically on the last word.

Zadkiel sat back down in the command throne. It was sculpted to accept his armoured frame, as if he had been born to take command of this bridge, to be the god of this warship.

‘Then let us tarry no further,’ he said, his viperous gaze lingering on Ikthalon.

‘Sensorium reports that the Fist of Macragge was destroyed and all weapon’s systems tested successfully, sire.’ It was Reskiel who spoke. He was a youth compared to the other Astartes on the command dais, gaunt of face with a keening hunger in his black eyes, a strange quirk of his birth. Reskiel was a veteran of many battles, despite his age, and he wore the newly fashioned studded armour of his Legion proudly, keen to baptise it with the scars of war. He was widely regarded as Zadkiel’s second, if not in an official capacity – that honour fell to Baelanos – and made it his business to know all the happenings aboard the Furious Abyss and report them to his master. Where Baelanos was the dutiful lapdog, Reskiel was the eager sycophant.

‘It was as expected.’ Zadkiel’s response was terse.

‘Indeed,’ said Ikthalon, ‘but our astropaths also suggest that the stricken ship, though smitten by our righteous fury, managed to send out a distress call. I would not like to think that all our caution at commissioning the vessel’s construction in the Jovian shipyards has been undone so swiftly and needlessly.’

Zadkiel allowed a flutter of emotion to cross his features for a moment at the news. He considered drawing his power mace and staving in Ikthalon’s skull for his persistent insubordination, but in truth, he valued the chaplain’s council and his Word. Though he was a barb in Zadkiel’s side, even since the Great Crusade had been in its infancy, he did not couch expressions with sycophantic frippery as Reskiel was prone too, nor was he so singled-minded that he was unable to convey subtlety and the need for delicacy when required like Baelanos. Zadkiel did not trust him, but he trusted his Word and so he was tolerated.

‘It is possible that a message reached a way station, or some isolated listening spire at the edge of the segmentum, but we are well underway and there is little that any vessel can do to prevent our destiny. So it is written,’ Zadkiel said at last.

‘So it is written,’ the assembled commanders intoned.

‘Reskiel, you will maintain a close watch on the sensorium. If anything should stray into surveyor range, I want to know immediately,’ Zadkiel ordered.

‘It will be done, my lord.’ Reskiel bowed obsequiously and retreated from the dais.

‘Baelanos, Ikthalon, you have your own duties to attend to,’ Zadkiel added, dismissively, not waiting to watch them depart as he turned to regard the viewscreens before him.

‘Engines,’ said Zadkiel, and at once the central viewscreen blinked into life, the bridge lights dimmed and the image on the screen lit the miniature city in hard moonlight. It showed the Furious Abyss’s cavernous engine room, the prostrate cylinders of the plasma reactors dwarfing the crewmen who scrabbled around them in their routine duties. The crew wore the deep crimson of the Word Bearers; they were servants of Lorgar just as the Word Bearers were, devoted to the primarch’s Word and grateful for such a certain place in the universe.

They did not know the details of the Word, of course. They were ignorant of the web of allegiances and oaths that Lorgar had created among his brother primarchs, or of the mission that would seal the inevitability of the Word Bearers’ victory. They did not need to know. It was enough for them that they laboured under the wishes of their primarch.

Amongst the piteous menials, a tall figure stood out. Looming from the darkness, he was swathed in black robes and bore the cog symbol of the Mechanicum around his neck on a chain of bolts.

‘Magos Gureod, you are to keep us at a steady speed, but be ready to increase our plasma engines to maximum capacity.’

‘It will be done,’ the magos replied, his artificial voice relayed through a series of synthesisers. Gureod’s face was hidden by the massive cowl over his head, but a pair of blinking red diodes was vaguely discernible in the void where his eyes should have been. Odd protrusions in the sweep of his long robes suggested further augmetics, and his withered hands, crossed over his abdomen, offered the only clue that Magos Gureod was indeed human. At the order, he withdrew into the shadows again, doubtless heading for the sanctum and deep communion with the machine spirit.

Turning to another screen, Zadkiel uttered, ‘Ordnance.’

The crowded munitions deck was displayed there. Weapon Master Malforian was in residence, barking harsh commands to crews of sweating orderlies and gang ratings, toiling in the steam-filled half dark of the cluttered deck. Full racks of torpedoes stood gleaming, fresh from the Martian forges. The ordnance deck stretched across the breadth of the Furious Abyss beneath the prow, and like the rest of the ship it was wrought in a bare industrial style that had an elegance of its own.

Realising he was being summoned, Malforian attended to his captain at once.

‘Keep broadsides primed and at ready status, Master Malforian,’ Zadkiel instructed him. ‘The test against the Fist of Macragge was to your satisfaction, yes?’

‘Yes, my lord. Your will shall be done.’ The lower portion of the weapon master’s face was supplanted by a metal grille and he spoke in a tinny monotone as a result; most of his jaw and chin had been destroyed during the early years of the Great Crusade while he was aboard the Galthalamor, fighting the ork hordes of the Eastern Fringe. The vessel, an ancient Retribution-class battle cruiser, was all but annihilated in the conflict.

Zadkiel dismissed the weapons master and blanked the pict screens. Coding a sequence into his command throne, Zadkiel felt the hydraulic pistons at work in the dais as he was slowly, majestically, raised above the bridge and brought level with the massive viewport overlooking the vessel’s prow. The endless expanse of real space stretched beyond it. Somewhere within that curtain of stars was Macragge, home world of Guilliman’s Legion. It was the stage of his destiny.

‘Navigator Esthemya,’ said Zadkiel, staring into the infinite.

‘My lord,’ a female voice chimed through the vox set into the command throne.

‘Take us to Macragge.’

‘Vectors are locked, captain,’ Esthemya informed him from the secluded cocoon in the clerestory, a hard-edged blister that was surrounded by spines of data medium like the spires of a cathedral.

Zadkiel nodded, turning to face the viewscreen in front of him as the Navigator went to her duties.

The infinite gaped before him, and Zadkiel was acutely aware of the power that lay beyond the veil of real space and the pacts he had made to harness its limitless strength. Before the countenance of his enemies, aboard this mighty vessel, he would be god-like. There was no other ship in existence that could do what the Furious Abyss was destined to do. It alone had the power to achieve the mission that Kor Phaeron had charged them with. Only the Furious Abyss could get close enough, could endure the awesome defences of Macragge to unleash its deadly payload.

Icons in his command throne lit up with the acquisition of their new heading, bathing Zadkiel in an aura of his own personal heaven.

‘Like a god,’ he whispered.

Every emergency klaxon had gone off at once in the control hub of Coralis Dock at Vangelis space port. Cestus could barely hear the thoughts in his head. Light flickered sporadically from the warning readouts on every command surface, casting the darkened control hub like some monochromatic animation. The astropathic choir bucked and kicked, and spat blood beneath the psy-skin in a collective seizure.

‘Station captain, report,’ bellowed Cestus.

Falkman was reeling, trying to tear the cables from his skull as they pumped a screaming torrent of information into his mind.

Brynngar went to the side of the human at once, preventing Falkman from ripping out more cables, determined that the station master would do his duty.

‘The hub reactor is overloading,’ the station captain snarled through gritted teeth, trying desperately to hold on. ‘The psychic jolt must have started a chain reaction in our electrical systems. The reactor must be shut down or it will destabilise.’

Cestus’s face, lit up intermittently in readout flares and the bursts of warning strobes, held a question.

‘The resulting explosion will vapourise the station, this dock and all of us.’

The Ultramarine captain turned to the assembled Astartes in the control hub.

‘Saphrax, stay here and maintain control over the situation,’ he ordered with a meaningful glance at Falkman. ‘Try to salvage whatever you’re able to from the astropathic choir.’

‘But my captain–’

‘Do it!’ Cestus would not be argued with, even with a battle-brother so seldom disposed to querying orders as Saphrax. ‘Whatever was in that message was important; I can feel it in my very marrow. It must be recovered.’

‘What of the rest of us?’ asked Antiges, barley registering the flying embers of sparks spitting across the chamber.

‘We’re going to save the dock.’

‘You are no Techmarine. How do you plan on shutting down the reactor?’ Brynngar shouted against the din, sparks showering him from cogitator cables above.

Although the Space Wolf’s face was almost next to Cestus’s ear, the Ultramarine could only just hear him. The droning reactor was a thunderous pulse in the subterranean access tunnels. After verbally guiding the Astartes to an antechamber below the control hub and a reinforced access portal that would lead them to the reactor, Falkman had neglected to provide them with the necessary instruction to shut the device down, the fact of his passing out from shock a major contributing factor to the oversight.

Usually, this area of the dock would be thronging with menials and engineers, but the rapid outflow of escape reactor radiation had prompted an evacuation alert. The Astartes had passed a number of fleeing tech adepts as they’d made their way down to the reactor. Those that were left were either dead or critically injured. The Astartes ignored them all, immune to their pleas for help with the safety of the entire dock at stake.

‘I am hoping a solution will present itself,’ Cestus replied as they made their way through the cramped tunnel. The corridor the Astartes were in spiralled around the main reactor shell down to the power source at the base of the station.

‘To think the Legion of Guilliman are regarded as master strategists,’ said Brynngar with bellowing laughter.

‘Directness is a valid strategy, Space Wolf,’ Antiges reminded him, shouting to be heard above the horrendous noise of lurching metal, as if an inner storm was at play within the conduit. ‘I would have thought one of the Sons of Russ would find it familiar.’

Brynngar’s amused response was raucous and deafening.

Shouldering past the last of the surviving crewmen and panicked tech adepts as they fled, Cestus led the Astartes to the reactor chamber. Only one of the Emperor’s Angels, replete in his power armour, could hope to survive the reactor’s intense radiation at such close range. Like his battle-brothers, Cestus had donned his helmet before entering the tunnel. Extreme radiation warning icons flashed insistently in the lens display. Time was running out.

Atmospheric pipes fractured and sprayed freezing gas across a pair of gargantuan blast doors closing off the interior of the reactor shell from the rest of the station. Doubtless, they’d been activated as soon as the psychic power surge from the astropaths had hit. The servos on the massive door had shorted and were a tangled mass of wires and machinery.

‘Prepare yourselves,’ cried Cestus, ignoring the subzero gas. He seized the edge of the blast door in an effort to prise it open.

‘Stand back,’ snarled Brynngar, using his bulk to muscle the Ultramarine aside. He hefted Felltooth with practiced ease, sweeping the rune axe around in a lazy arc.

‘No sport when the enemy stays still,’ he growled and split the blast door in two with one mighty swing, sparks cascading from the blade.

Stowing the weapon, Brynngar peeled back the rent metal with both hands, making a space wide enough for the Astartes to enter.

The reactor was a swirling mass of glowing blue-green energy, rippling in on itself as it drew in power from the plasma conduits looping around it like eccentric orbits around a star. It pulsed, streaked with black and purple, and chunks of scorched machinery tumbled into it. A hot blast of air, tingling with radiation, washed over them in a back-draught. More warning runes flickered against Cestus’s helmet lens, transmitted through onto the display from the acute sensor readouts on his armour.

‘Now what?’ shouted Antiges above the howl of the reactor.

Cestus watched the writhing mass of energy, taking in the confines of the small chamber that housed it and the control console, all but destroyed by its wrath.

‘How many charges do you have?’

‘A cluster of fragmentation and three krak grenades, but I don’t understand, captain,’ Antiges replied, his perplexity concealed by his helmet.

‘A full belt of krak,’ Brynngar growled. ‘Whatever you are planning, lad, we’d best be about it,’ he added. Being blown to smithereens by a malfunctioning reactor was not the death saga he wanted for his epitaph.

‘We prime the chamber with set charges, everything we’ve got,’ said Cestus with growing conviction, ‘and bury it.’

‘That would cause catastrophic damage to the station,’ Antiges countered, turning to regard his captain.

‘Yes, but it would not destroy it,’ said Cestus. ‘There is no other choice.’

Cestus was about to detach the grenades from his clip harness when the reactor abruptly collapsed like a dying star imploding into a black hole. In its place a glowing sphere of deep purple blossomed, flickering like an image on a faulty pict screen. Purple lightning licked from the surface, playing over Cestus’s armour. He took a step back.

Yowling static flared suddenly into life and the Astartes were floored by the wave of noise. A bright flash lit the entire chamber, overloading their helmet arrays in an instant. There, amidst the intense flare of light, Cestus saw an image, so fleeting and indistinct that it could have been an illusion from the overwhelmed optics in his helmet. He blinked once, seeing only white haze, and shook his head, trying to recapture it. The flare died down and when Cestus’s vision returned the afterglow haunted the edge of his retinas, but the image was gone and the reactor was dead. The core had turned dark. Cracks of static electricity glowed over its surface. It shrank and became abruptly inert. The warning lights inside the reactor shell dimmed and went out.

Elsewhere on the station, secondary and tertiary reactors, registering the loss of the primary reactor, diverted power to the dock, allowing the tech-seers time to make the necessary repairs. The storm had howled itself out.

‘What in the name of Terra just happened?’ asked Antiges, a cluster of frag grenades still in his hand.

‘Mother Fenris,’ Brynngar breathed at what he had just witnessed.

‘Did you see that?’ asked Cestus. ‘Did you see it in the blast flare?’

‘See what?’ Antiges replied, relieved that they didn’t have to collapse the reactor chamber after all.

Cestus’s posture displayed his shock and disbelief as sure as any facial expression disguised by his armour.

‘Macragge.’

Shards of broken images flashed on the psy-receiver, what was left of the astropathic transference from the psychic scream.

Falkman, looking gaunt and haggard from his earlier experience, but otherwise intact, pored over them, running analysis protocols and clarity procedures with what little machinery still worked in the hub. Saphrax stood pensively beside him, awaiting the return of his captain.

‘Brother-captain!’ he said with no small amount of relief as Cestus and the others emerged from the tunnel, their armour scorched black in several places.

When Cestus removed his helmet, his face was ashen and a cold sweat dappled his brow.

Saphrax was taken aback; he had never seen a fellow Astartes, certainly not his captain, look so afflicted.

‘The astropathic message,’ Cestus stated coldly, going to the psy-receiver before Saphrax could verbalise his concern. ‘What’s left of it?’

‘All is well, brother,’ said Antiges, following in his captain’s wake and placing his hand on the banner bearer’s shoulder, though his tone was anything but reassuring.

Brynngar waited further back, deliberately distancing himself, and stony silent as if processing what had happened in the reactor. He touched a fang totem attached to his cuirass with an inward expression.

‘There is little left,’ confessed Falkman, who, though he had managed to restore lighting and some of the basic functions of the hub, had failed to recover the entire astropathic message. ‘I need to get one of the logic engines functioning if I’m to decipher it with any degree of certitude, but this is what we have.’

Cestus glared at the pict-slate of the psy-receiver as the broken images cycled slowly: a gauntleted fist wreathed in a laurel of steel, a golden book, what appeared to be the hull of a ship and a cluster of indistinct stars. Cestus knew of a fifth image. Though his rational mind told him otherwise, in his heart, the Ultramarine knew what he had seen – the range of mountains, the lustrous green and blue – it was unmistakable. He also knew what he had felt: a sense of belonging, like coming home.

‘Macragge,’ he whispered, and felt suddenly cold.

Four

Divine inspiration/A gathering/Contact

Mhotep stared into the water, so still and clear its surface was like silver. The face that stared back at him had hard and chiselled features with a handsome bone structure, despite the velvet cowl that partly concealed it. Hooded eyes spoke of intelligence, and skin, so tan and smooth that it was utterly without imperfection, suggested the nature of his Legion: the Thousand Sons.

Mhotep was dressed in iridescent robes that pooled like deep red liquid around him as he knelt with head bowed. Stitched in runes, his attire suggested the arcane. He was at the heart of his private sanctum.

The ellipse-shaped chamber had a low ceiling that enhanced the sense of claustrophobia created by the sheer volume of esoteric paraphernalia within. Stacks of scroll cases and numerous shelves, replete with well-thumbed archaic tomes, warred for space with crys-glass cabinets filled with bizarre arcana: an oculum of many hued lenses, a bejewelled gauntlet, a plain silver mask fashioned into an ersatz skull. Upon a raised dais, there was a planetarium in miniature, rendered from gold, the stellar bodies represented by gemstones. Gilt-panelled walls were swathed in ancient charts in burnished metal frames, cast in the azure glow of eldritch lamps.

A red marble floor stretched across the entire room, engraved with myriad paths of interlocking and concentric circles. Runes of onyx and jet, etched into the stone, punctuated the sweeping arcs without regularity. Mhotep was at the nexus of the design, at the point where all of the interweaving circles converged.

A chime registered in a vox-emitter built into the sanctum’s entry system, indicating a guest.

‘Enter, Kalamar,’ said Mhotep.

A hiss of escaping pressure accompanied the aide as the door to the sanctum opened and he shuffled into the room.

‘How did you know it was I, Lord Mhotep?’ asked Kalamar, his speech fraught with age and decrepitude.

‘Who else would it be, old friend? I do not need the prescience of Magnus to predict your presence in my sanctum.’

Mhotep bent towards the bowl, plunging both hands into the water to lightly splash his face. As he came back up, he withdrew his cowl and the lamp light reflected from his bald scalp.

‘And I need no sophisticated augury to divine that you bring important news, either,’ Mhotep added, dabbing his face with his sleeve.

‘Of course, sire. I meant no offence,’ said Kalamar, bowing acutely. The serf was blind, and wore ocular implants; the augmetic bio-sensors built into his eye cavities could not ‘see’ as such, but detected heat and provided limited spatial awareness. Kalamar supplemented his somewhat unorthodox visual affliction with a silvered cane.

‘My lord, we have docked at Vangelis,’ he added finally, confirming what his captain already knew.

Mhotep nodded, as if possessed of sudden understanding.

‘Have the Legion serfs prepare my armour, we are leaving the ship at once.’

‘As you wish,’ Kalamar said, bowing again, but as he was retreating from the sanctum he paused. ‘My lord, please do not think me impertinent, but why have we docked here at Vangelis when our journey’s end lies at Prospero?’

‘The paths of destiny are curious, Kalamar,’ Mhotep replied, looking back down at the bowl.

‘Yes, my lord.’ Even after over fifty years in his service, Kalamar did not fully understand his master’s cryptic words.

When the Legion serf had gone, Mhotep rose to his feet, his voluminous robes gathering up around him. From within the folds of his sleeves, he produced a stave-like object, no longer than his forearm and covered in arcane sigils.

Stepping away from the circle, a single eye was revealed at its centre as he took a bizarre course through the labyrinthine design of the room. It represented the wisdom of Magnus, Primarch of the Thousand Sons Legion and gene-father to Mhotep. Locked in his cabalistic route, Mhotep arrived at an ornate, lozenge-shaped vessel and reverently placed the stave within it. The vessel was much like a gilded sarcophagus, similar to that in which the rulers of ancient Prospero had once been entombed. The item secured, Mhotep sealed the vessel shut, a vacuum hiss of escaping pressure emitting from its confines, and inputted a rune sequence disguised within the sarcophagus’s outer decoration.

‘Yes,’ uttered Mhotep, the task done, absently caressing a scarab-shaped earring, ‘very curious.’

‘It is a low turn out,’ muttered Antiges beneath his breath.

Within the stark, grey ferrocrete austerity of the Ultramarines muster hall three Astartes awaited Cestus and his battle-brothers. The three were seated around a conference table inset with a single arcing ‘U’. A huge tapestry, depicting the auspicious day when the Emperor came to Macragge in search of one of his sons, framed the scene. Clad in glorious armour of gold, a shining halo about his patrician features, the Emperor stretched out his hand to a kneeling Roboute Guilliman, who reached out to claim it. That day, their primarch had been truly born and their Legion’s inception cemented.

Even now, and rendered as mere artistry, Cestus could not help but feel his heart lift.

‘With such short notice, I had expected less,’ the Ultramarine confessed, approaching the gathering with Antiges. Cestus’s battle-brother had briefed his captain on the attendees. Brynngar he knew, of course, but the two others, a Thousand Son and a World Eater, he did not.

Cestus and Antiges were joined by four more of their brothers – Lexinal, Pytaron, Excelinor and Morar, for the sake of appearances. The rest, Amyrx, Laeradis and Thestor, were with Saphrax on a separate duty. The Ultramarines had called the gathering, so it was only proper that they arrived at it in force to show their commitment.

‘Greetings brothers,’ Cestus began, taking his seat alongside his fellow Ultramarines. ‘You have the gratitude of Guilliman and the eighth Legion for your attendance here this day.’

‘As is well,’ said a bald-headed Astartes with richly tanned skin, ‘but we beseech you to illuminate us as to your plight.’ His voice was deep and powerful. Clad in the panoply of the Thousand Sons Legion, a suit of lacquered dark red and gold power armour, as angular and proud as the monuments of Prospero, he cut an intimidating figure. Antiges had already informed Cestus that the Thousand Son was Fleet Captain Mhotep.

Darkly handsome, bereft of the usual battle scars and functional facial bionics wrought by years of unremitting warfare, this Mhotep had a curious, aloof air. His shining eyes seemed to bore into Cestus’s very soul.

Not all of the assembly were so respectful of his obvious power.

‘The Great Wolf values silence over idle chatter, so that he might heed wise words otherwise lost in needless interrogation,’ snarled Brynngar, the animosity he felt towards the son of Magnus obvious.

It was the Wolf Guard, already pledged to Cestus’s cause, together with Antiges, that had summoned the Legions on Vangelis to this meeting. They had done so with passion and curt request, divulging little of what Cestus needed of them. The Space Wolf had at first railed against the inclusion of the Thousand Sons to be their potential sword-brothers in this deed. The conflicting character of the two Legions did not lend itself to a ready accord, but Cestus had reasoned that they needed every soul, and Mhotep had answered the call. What was more, he also had his own ship, a fact that only served to bolster the small fleet he was trying to assemble.

The captain of the Thousand Sons ignored the Space Wolf’s thinly veiled insult and leant back in his seat with a gesture for Cestus to proceed.

The Ultramarines captain told the assembly of his squad’s scheduled extraction from Vangelis by the Fist of Macragge, and of the astropathic message that had very nearly wrecked the control hub of Coralis dock. He even confided in them his fears that some unknown enemy had destroyed the ship, but he did not mention his experience in the reactor core. Cestus was still processing what he had seen. Visions were the province of sorcery and to divulge that he, an Ultramarine, had witnessed one would undermine his credibility and arouse suspicion as to his motives.

‘Perhaps this deed was committed by an alien ship. Ork hulks have been fought and crushed by my Legion as far as the Segmentum Solar,’ said a voice like iron. Skraal was a World Eater, an Astartes of the XII Legion, and the third of the invited warriors, including Brynngar.

He wore battered Mark V power armour, rendered in chipped blue and white, the colours of his Legion, clearly eschewing the Corvus pattern suits worn by his battle-brothers. The armour was heavily dented in several places, sporting numerous replacement parts, and the battlefield repair work was obvious. Formed of basic materials, the plates were held together by spikes, the manifest studs clearly visible on the left pauldron, greaves and gorget. The helmet rested on the table next to the warrior. It was similarly adorned and bore a fearsome aspect of blade and ballistic damage that revealed bare, grey metal beneath.

Skraal’s face was the mirror of his armour, crosshatching scar tissue a map-work of pain and suffering. A thick vein across his forehead throbbed as he spoke. His bellicose demeanour, coupled with a nervous tic beneath his right eye, gave him the outward appearance of being unhinged.

The World Eaters were a fearsome Legion. Much like their primarch, Angron, they were a primal force that fought with fury and wrath as their weapons. Each and every warrior was a font of rage and barely checked choler, bloody echoes of the battle-lust of their primarch.

‘That is possible,’ said Cestus, deliberately holding the gruesome warrior’s gaze, despite Skraal’s obvious belligerence. ‘What is certain is that a ship of the Emperor’s Astartes has been attacked by enemies unknown and for some nefarious purpose,’ he continued with building anger and got to his feet. ‘This act cannot go unreckoned!’

‘Then what would you have us do, noble son of Guilliman?’ asked Mhotep, ever the epitome of calm.

Cestus spread his hands across the table, laying his palms flat as he regained his composure. ‘Astropathic decryption revealed a region of space that has been identified by the station’s astrocartographer. I believe this is where the Fist of Macragge met its end. I also believe that since the ship was headed for the Calth system and a rendezvous with my lord Guilliman, it is possible that their attacker was heading in the same direction.’

‘A substantial leap of logic, Ultramarine,’ Mhotep countered, unconvinced by Cestus’s impassioned arguments.

‘It cannot believe that the very ship carrying five companies of my battle-brothers and en route to Calth was destroyed before reaching Vangelis in a random act of xenos contrition,’ Cestus reasoned, his need for urgency fuelling his frustration.

‘How are we to find this slayer vessel, then?’ asked Skraal, thumbing the hilt of his chainaxe, the urge for carnage obvious. ‘If what you say is true, and the distress call you received from the vessel is old, the prey will be far from that location.’

Cestus sighed in agitation. He wished dearly that he could make his brothers see what was in his heart, what he knew in his gut. For now, though, he dared not, at least, not until he could make some sense of what he had seen. There was no time for delay.

‘Our position on Vangelis bisects the route of the Fist of Macragge; the route it would have taken to Calth. In short, it is ahead of the site of its demise. If we make ready at once, it is possible we may be able to catch the enemy’s trail.’

Silent faces regarded him. Even Brynngar did not look certain of the Ultramarine’s reasoning. Cestus realised that it was not logic that guided him on this course, but instinct and inner belief. The image of Macragge seen for an instant in the flash of the reactor burned fresh in his mind, and he spoke.

‘I do not need your aid in this venture. I have already sent one of my battle-brothers to commandeer a vessel from this very station and I will take it to the site of the Fist of Macragge’s last transmission. With luck we can pick up a trail to follow and find whoever is responsible for what happened to it. No, I do not need your aid, but I ask for it, humbly,’ he added, pushing the seat back and kneeling reverently before his fellow Astartes with head bowed.

Antiges was aghast at first, but then he too left the table and kneeled. The other Ultramarines followed his lead, and soon all six of Guilliman’s sons were genuflecting before the rest of the council.

‘The sons of Russ do not refuse an honour debt,’ said Brynngar, getting to his feet and laying Felltooth upon the table. ‘I will join you in this endeavour.’

Skraal stood next and set his chainaxe with the Space Wolf’s rune blade.

‘The fury of the World Eaters is at your side.’

‘What say you, son of Magnus?’ Brynngar growled, his savage gaze falling upon Mhotep.

For a moment, the Thousand Son sat in calm reflection, considering his answer. He laid his ornate scimitar with the other weapons, its gilded blade humming with power as he unsheathed it.

‘My ship and I are at your disposal, Ultramarine.’

‘Bah! This council’s greatest opponent; I should like to know why,’ said Brynngar.

Mhotep smirked with amusement at the Space Wolf’s rancour, but refused to be baited.

‘You all know of the events at Nikea concerning my primarch and Legion, and the sanctions placed upon us that day,’ the Thousand Son said plainly. ‘I am keen to foster improved relations with my fellow Legions and where better to start than the vaunted sons of Roboute Guilliman.’ Mhotep nodded respectfully at the final remark, a deliberately weak attempt to cover the slight.

Cestus cared little for the discord between the two Astartes and arose, Antiges following his example.

‘You do me great service this day,’ Cestus said with genuine humility. ‘We meet at Coralis dock in one hour.’

The Saturnine Fleet had existed before the Great Crusade, carving out a miniature empire among the rings of Saturn. Its strength and longevity had been based on a tradition of navigational skill, essential to negotiate the infinitely complex puzzle of the rings. Its rolls of honour noted the first time it had encountered the warships of the fledgling Imperium. Its admirals saw a brother empire, based on the demonstration of power and not just empty words or fanaticism, and signed a treaty with the Emperor that still held pride of place in the Admiralty Spire on Enceladus. Its ships had accompanied the Great Crusade to all corners of the galaxy, but their spiritual home had always been in the rings, the endless circle of Saturn boiling above them.

The Wrathful was a fine ship, Cestus admitted to himself as he stood upon the bridge alongside Antiges. It was old and lavish, panelled and decorated with the heritage of a naval aristocracy that pre-dated the Imperial Army and its fleets. Its bridge looked like it had been lifted from a naval academy on Enceladus, all dark wood map tables and glass-fronted bookcases, with only the occasional pict screen or command console to break the illusion. A ring of nine viewscreens was mounted on the ceiling, where they could be lowered to provide an all-angles view of what was happening outside the ship. The command crew were in the dark blue brocaded uniforms of the Saturnine Fleet, all starch and good breeding.

In commandeering this vessel, Saphrax and his battle-brothers had performed their task well.

‘Rear admiral,’ said Cestus as he approached the captain’s post, a grand throne surrounded by racks of charts.

The throne rotated to reveal Rear Admiral Kaminska. Cestus could almost see the proud heritage etched upon her face: strong jaw, fine neck, high cheekbones, with a slight curl to the lip that suggested acute arrogance.

‘Captain Cestus, it is an honour to serve the Emperor’s Astartes,’ she responded coolly. Saphrax had described the admiral’s reaction to the acquisition of her ship to Cestus as he and the rest of the Ultramarine honour guard had boarded. It was prickly and vociferous.

She gave a near imperceptible nod by way of acknowledgement. The gesture was all but lost in the high collar of her uniform and the thick, furred mantle that hung around her shoulders. Admiral Kaminska was a stern-faced matriarch. A monocle over her left eye partly obscured a savage scar that cracked that side of her face. The monocle’s sweeping chain was set with tiny skulls and pinned to the right breast of her jacket. She carried a control wand at her waist, secured by a loop of leather, and a naval pistol sat snugly in a holster at her hip. Gloved hands bore a lightning flash emblem made from metal; they were tense and gripped the supports of her command throne tightly.

‘The Wrathful is an impressive ship,’ said Cestus, attempting to dispel the fraught atmosphere. ‘I am glad you could respond to our summons.’

‘Indeed it is, Lord Astartes,’ Kaminska said in clipped tones. ‘It would be a great pity to sacrifice it upon the altar of futile vengeance. As for your summons,’ she added, face pinching tight with anger, ‘it was hardly that.’

Cestus held his tongue. As an Astartes fleet commander, it was within the remit of his authority to take command of the ship. For now, he decided he would allow the admiral some leeway. He was sketching a suitable reproach in his mind, when Kaminska continued.

‘Captain Vorlov of the Boundless has also requested to accompany us, although you’ll find he is of a more placid demeanour.’

Cestus had heard of the vessel, and of Captain Vorlov. It was a warhorse ship of the fleet, its combat scars too numerous to count. Its star was in decline, as better, more powerful ships made their presence felt in the greater galaxy. Cestus suspected that the Boundless had been docked at Vangelis for some time, its role in the Great Crusade somewhat diminished, and that Captain Vorlov did not wish to submit to atrophy just yet.

‘Very well,’ said Cestus, deciding against rebuking the admiral. He had, after all, taken her ship for a mission of dubious reasoning. Her attitude, he told himself, was to be expected.

‘You have your heading, admiral. There is little time to lose.’

‘The Wrathful is the fastest vessel in the Segmentum Solar. If your enemy is out there in the void then we will catch him,’ Kaminska assured him, and whirled her command throne back around to her instrument panels.

Admiral Kaminska bristled furiously as the Astartes departed the bridge. She had come to Vangelis to effect repairs and take on supplies and replacement crew. She had been looking forward to a week or so of recuperation. Yet, at the word of the Emperor’s Angels, lord regents of the galaxy it seemed, she and her ship were pressed back into service with barely a moment’s notice. ‘By the authority of the Emperor of Mankind’, those words were an unbendable edict that Kaminska could not refuse. It was not that she resented serving – she was a dutiful soldier of the Imperium who had distinguished herself on numerous occasions for its greater glory – no, she took umbrage at the fact that this particular mission was fostered on hunches and, as far as she could tell, whimsy. It did not sit well with Kaminska, not at all.

‘Lord admiral, the escort squadron is in position,’ said Helmsmistress Athena Venkmyer. Her long hair was tied up severely, and her shoulders were forced to attention by the brocade of her uniform.

‘Good,’ Kaminska replied. ‘Screens down!’

The ring of viewscreens descended and glowed to life. The bright, hard gleam of Vangelis was visible from the assembly point, surrounded by a fuzzy shoal of lesser lights: satellite listening spires, fleets at anchor and orbital debris. A distant sun was a brighter point, automatically dimmed by the viewscreens’ limiters.

Icons blinked onto the screens, showing the positions of the other ships in the makeshift fleet. The four escorts – Fearless, Ferox, Ferocious and Fireblade – were flying in a slanted diamond around the Wrathful. The vessel of the Thousand Sons and Captain Mhotep, the Waning Moon, was a short distance away. Even at this distance, the Astartes craft was impressive, a sleek dart of red and gold. The Boundless, a cruiser like the Wrathful, but fitted out with decks for attack craft, was further out, still making its approach.

Satisfied that they were about ready to disembark, Admiral Kaminska flicked a control stud on the arm of her throne and the bridge vox-caster opened up. ‘Loose escort pattern, keep the Waning Moon in our lee. Advance to primary way point, plasma engines three-quarters.’

‘Three-quarters!’ came the yell from Helms-mate Lodan Kant at the engine helm.

‘Mister Orcadus, the Terraward end of the Tertiary Core Transit if you please,’ said Kaminska, having opened up a line to her principal Navigator.

‘At your word, lord admiral,’ was the dour response from the Navigator’s sanctum.

The Tertiary Core Transit was the most stable warp route from Segmentum Solar to the galactic south-east. It would take them to their destination expediently, and hopefully allow the Wrathful to gain some ground on whatever foes, real or imagined, awaited them in the void. It was also the route that any void-farer, if he or she did not want to take a four to five year detour, would take to arrive at the Calth system. The Astartes had been very specific about that. Admiral Kaminska would have liked to question it, but there was no bringing the Emperor’s Angels to account on such a triviality. She would defer to the Astartes’s order, since he was in charge. It would have been unseemly to do otherwise. Kaminska resolved to discover the truth later.

The Wrathful’s engines kicked in, banishing the admiral’s thoughts to the back of her mind. She could feel the vibration through the panelled floor of the bridge. The escort squadron moved into formation on the viewscreens, followed by the Waning Moon and the Boundless.

Whatever was out there, they would find out soon enough.

‘There is an energy trail here. It’s degraded but discernible,’ said Principal Navigator Orcadus’s voice from his inner sanctum on the Wrathful.

The Imperial ship and her fleet had reached the region of real space as indicated by the co-ordinates provided by Captain Cestus, the supposed site of the destruction of the Fist of Macragge, in short order. They found no sign of the Ultramarine vessel. There was merely a faint energy trace that matched the Fist of Macragge’s signature. Unlike battles on land, where evidence of a fight could be seen clearly and obviously, conflicts in space were not so easily identifiable. Wrecks drifted, ships could be caught and destroyed in black holes, space debris drawn into the gravity well of a passing moon or small planet, even solar wind could scatter the final proof of a battle ever having taken place. So it was that Kaminska had instructed her Navigator to search for whatever energy traces remained behind, those last vestiges of plasma engine discharge that lingered in spite of all other evidence dissipating due to the ravages of space.

‘By Saturn, the output must have been massive,’ Orcadus continued with rare emotion. ‘Whatever ship left this wake is gargantuan, admiral.’

‘It is possible to follow it then?’ Kaminska asked, swivelling in her command throne to regard Captain Cestus standing silently alongside her.

Orcadus’s reply was succinct.

‘Yes, admiral.’

‘Do it,’ Cestus told Kaminska grimly, his expression far away.

Kaminska scowled at what she perceived as arrogance, and returned to her original position.

‘Then do so. Set radar array to full power, Mister Orcadus. Take us onward.’

‘Brotherhood,’ said Zadkiel, ‘is power.’

Surrounded by novices in the sepulchral gloom of the cathedra, he loomed high above the assembly within a raised pulpit of black steel.

‘It is at the core of all authority in the known galaxy, and the source of humanity’s dominion. This is the Word of Lorgar, as it is written.’

‘As it is written,’ echoed the novices.

Over fifty Word Bearers had gathered for the seminary and knelt in supplication before their lord, wearing grey initiate robes over their crimson armour. The cathedral’s ceiling soared on stone-clad struts overhead, adding acoustic power to Zadkiel’s oratory, and the air was as still and cold as a vault. The floor, tiled with stone pages cut with passages from the Word, emphasised that this was a place of worship. It was the very thing that the Emperor had forbidden in his Legions. Idolatry and zealous faith had no place in the Master of Mankind’s new age of enlightenment, but here, in this place, and in the hearts of all Lorgar’s children, faith would be honed into a weapon.

One of the initiates stood among the congregation, indicating his desire to respond.

‘Speak,’ said Zadkiel, quelling his annoyance at the impromptu interruption.

‘Brother can turn on brother,’ said the novice, ‘and thus become weakened. Where, then, is such power?’

In the half-light, Zadkiel recognised Brother Ultis, a zealous youth with ambitious temperament.

‘That is the source of its true power, novice, for there is no greater rivalry than that which exists between siblings. Only then will one seek to undo the works of the other with such vehemence, giving every ounce of his being to claim victory,’ Zadkiel said, arrogantly, enjoying the feeling of superiority.

‘Upon gaining mastery over his kin, that brother will have forged a mighty army so as to overthrow him. He will have plumbed deep of his core and unleashed his hate, for in no other way can such a victory be achieved.’

‘So you speak of hate,’ said Ultis, ‘and not brotherhood at all.’

Zadkiel smiled thinly to conceal his impatience.

‘They are two wings on the same eagle, equal elements of an identical source,’ Zadkiel explained. ‘We are at war with our brothers, make no mistake of that. In his short-sightedness, the Emperor has brought us to this inexorable fate.

‘With our hate, our devotion to the credos of our primarch, the all-powerful Lorgar, we will achieve our victory.’

‘But the Emperor holds Terra, and in that surely there is strength,’ Ultis countered, forgetting himself.

‘The Emperor is brother to no one!’ cried Zadkiel, stepping forward as his words crushed Ultis’s challenge easily.

Silence persisted for a moment, Ultis shrinking back before his master as he was being chastened. None in the cathedral dared speak. All were cowed by Zadkiel’s obvious power.

‘He lurks in his dungeons on Terra,’ Zadkiel continued with greater zeal, but now addressing the entire congregation. ‘The eaxectors and bureaucrats, the flock of Malcador, who run Terra’s regency, they shy away from all ties of brotherhood. They sit on a pedestal, above reproach, above their brothers, above even our noble Warmaster!’

The crowd roared in ascent, Ultis among them, kneeling once more.

‘Is that brotherhood?’

The novices roared again, gauntleted fists pounding the breast plates of their armour to emphasise their fervour.

‘These regents create a stale, meaningless world where all passion is dead and devotion is regarded as heresy!’ Zadkiel spat the words, and was suddenly aware of a presence in the shadows behind him.

One of the Furious Abyss’s crew, Helms-mate Sarkorov, a man with delicate data-probes instead of fingers, was patiently awaiting Zadkiel’s notice.

‘My apologies, lord,’ he said, once he had crossed the few metres between them, ‘but Navigator Esthemya has discovered a fleet of pursuing vectors in our wake.’

‘What fleet?’

‘Two cruisers, an escort squadron and an Astartes strike vessel.’

‘I see.’ Zadkiel turned back to the congregation. ‘Novices, you are dismissed,’ he said without ceremony.

The assembled Word Bearers departed in silence into the shadows around the edge of the cathedral, heading back to their cells to ruminate on the Word.

‘They are gaining ground, my lord,’ said Sarkorov once they were alone. ‘We are powerful, but these ships are smaller and outmatch us for speed.’

‘Then they will reach us before we arrive at the Tertiary Core Transit.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘They will, my lord. Should I instruct the magos to force the engines to maximum power? It is possible we could make warp before we are intercepted.’

‘No,’ said Zadkiel, after some thought. ‘Maintain course and keep me updated as to the fleet’s progress.’

‘Yes, sire,’ replied Sarkorov, saluting and then turning sharply to return to the bridge.

‘My Lord Zadkiel,’ said a voice from the gloom. It was Ultis, concealed by the shadows, but now stepping into the light at the centre of the cathedra.

‘Novice,’ said Zadkiel, ‘why have you not returned to your cell?’

‘I would speak with you, master, of the lessons imparted.’

‘Then illuminate me, novice.’ There was the slightest trace of amusement in Zadkiel’s tone.

‘The brothers of whom you spoke, you were referring to the primarchs,’ Ultis ventured.

‘Go on.’

‘Our current course will bring us into conflict with the Emperor. To the unenlightened observer, it would appear that the Emperor rules the galaxy and the throne of Terra cannot be usurped.’

‘What of the enlightened, novice, what do they see?’

‘That the Emperor’s power is wielded through his primarchs,’ Ultis said with growing conviction, ‘and by dividing them, the power of which you spoke is realised.’

Zadkiel’s silence bade Ultis to continue.

‘It is how Terra can be defeated, when Lorgar’s brothers join with him, when we bring war to those who will inevitably side with the Emperor. We will yoke our hatred and use it as a weapon, one that will not be denied!’

Zadkiel nodded sagely, suppressing a prickle of annoyance at this precocious, yet insightful, youth. Ultis, however, had overreached himself. Zadkiel saw the naked ambition in his eyes, the flame within that threatened to devour Zadkiel’s own.

‘I merely seek to understand the Word,’ Ultis added, exhaling his fervour.

‘And you shall, Ultis,’ Zadkiel replied, a plan forming in his mind. ‘You will be an important instrument in the breaking of Guilliman.’

‘I would be honoured, lord,’ said Ultis, bowing his head.

‘Truly blind men like Guilliman are few,’ Zadkiel counselled. ‘He believes religion and devotion to be a corrupting force, something to be abhorred and not embraced as we followers of the Word do. His pragmatic retardation is his greatest weakness and in his dogmatic ignorance we shall strike at the heart of his favoured Legion.’

Zadkiel spread his arms wide to encompass the cathedral, its high vaults and fluted columns, its pages of the Word, its altar and pulpit. ‘One day, Ultis, the whole galaxy will look like this.’

Ultis bowed once more.

‘Now, return to your cell and think on these lessons further.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Zadkiel watched the novice go. A great passage in the sermon of the Word was unfolding and Ultis would play his part. Zadkiel turned back to the pulpit, behind which was a simple altar. Zadkiel lit a candle there for the soul of Roboute Guilliman. Blind he might be, but he was a brother of sorts, and it was only right that his future death be commemorated.

Aboard the Wrathful, on one of the ship’s training decks, two World Eaters clashed furiously in a duelling pit. It was one of several arenas in a much wider gymnasium that was replete with dummies, weights and training mats. Weapon ranks lined the walls. The Astartes had brought their own stocks of training weapons with them, and sword-breakers, short-blades, bludgeons and spears were all in evidence. It appeared that the concept of simple training was anathema to the duelling sons of Angron. Amidst the storm of blades and unbridled blood-lust the World Eaters fought as if to the death.

Armed with unfettered chainaxes and stripped to the waist, wearing crimson training breeches and black boots, their muscled bodies revealed gruesome welts and long, jagged scars.

With a roar, they broke off for a moment, and began circling each other in the sunken chamber of the pit. White marble showed up dark splashes from where the gladiators had wounded each other early on in the contest. A narrow drain at the centre of the pit was already clogging with blood.

‘Such anger,’ Antiges commented, overlooking the contest from a seated position at the back of the auditorium before which it was staged.

‘They are Angron’s progeny,’ said Cestus, alongside him, ‘it is their way to be wrathful. Properly employed, their wrath is a useful tool.’

‘Yes, but their reputation is a dire one, as is their lord’s,’ replied Antiges, his expression stern. ‘I for one do not feel at ease with their presence on this ship.’

‘I have to concur with my brother, Captain Cestus,’ added Thestor, who was watching the show alongside Antiges. The burly Astartes was the biggest of the honour guard. Unsurprisingly, his bulk went well with his role of heavy weapons specialist. The rest of the honour guard were nearby, except for Saphrax, watching the ferocious display with mixed interest and disdain. Thestor echoed the thoughts of all his brothers when he next spoke.

‘Was it necessary to bring them with us at all?’ he asked, his gaze shifting back from his captain to watch the fight. ‘This is the business of the Ultramarines. What has it got to do with our Legion brothers?’

‘Thestor, do not be so narrow-minded as to think we do not need their aid,’ Cestus chastened the heavy-set Astartes, who glanced over at his captain. ‘We are a brotherhood: all of us. Though we each have our differences, the Emperor has seen fit for us to conquer the galaxy in his name together. The moment we seek our own personal glories, when we abandon solidarity for pride, is the moment when brotherhood will be shattered.’

Thestor regarded the floor when his captain had finished, shamed by his selfish remarks.

‘You may take your leave, Thestor,’ said Cestus. It wasn’t a request.

The big Astartes got to his feet and left the training arena.

‘I agree with you, Cestus, of course I do,’ said Antiges, once Thestor had gone, ‘but they are like savages.’

‘Are they, Antiges?’ Cestus challenged. ‘Are Brynngar and the wolves of Russ not savages, too? Do you hold them in such disregard also?’

‘Of course not,’ Antiges replied. ‘I have fought with the Space Wolves and know of their courage and honour. They are savages in their own way, yes, but the difference is that they are possessed of a noble spirit. These sons of Angron are blood-letters, pure and simple. They kill for the simple joy of it.’

‘We are all warriors,’ Cestus told him. ‘Each of us kills in the Emperor’s name.’

‘Not like them we don’t.’

‘They are Astartes,’ Cestus said, biting out his words, and turning on his battle-brother. ‘I will hear no more of this. You forget your place, Antiges.’

‘I apologise, captain. I spoke out of turn,’ Antiges replied after a moment of stunned silence. ‘I only meant to say that I do not approve of their methods or their deeds.’ At that, the Ultramarine turned back to watch the battle.

Cestus followed his battle-brother’s gaze. The Ultramarine captain did not know either of the World Eaters in the duelling pit. He knew precious little of their leader, Skraal. This was ritual combat. No slight, no besmirching of honour had occurred to bring it about. Yet it was bladed and deadly.

‘I do not, either,’ Cestus admitted, watching as one of the combatants nearly lost his arm to a wild swing of his opponent’s chainaxe.

The Ultramarine had heard stories from his fellow Legionnaires about the so called ‘cleansing’ of Ariggata, one of the World Eaters’ more infamous battle actions. The Legion’s assault on the citadel there had reputably left a charnel house in its wake. Cestus knew full well that Guilliman still sought a reckoning with his brother primarch, Angron, concerning the dire events of that mission, but this was no time for recrimination. Necessity had forced Cestus’s hand, and whether he liked it or not, this is what he had been dealt.

Skraal led twenty World Eaters on the Wrathful and Cestus was determined to make the best use of them. Brynngar had brought the same number of Blood Claws, and while they were raucous and pugnacious, especially when forced into idleness in the confines of the ship, they did not harbour the same homicidal bent as the bloody sons of Angron. Mhotep was the only Astartes not aboard the Wrathful. He had his own ship, the Waning Moon, but no squads of Thousand Sons, just cohorts of naval arms-men at his command.

Barely fifty Astartes and the vessels of their makeshift fleet, Cestus hoped it would be enough for whatever was in store.

‘What troubles you, brother?’ asked Antiges, their brief altercation swiftly forgotten. The Ultramarine finally turned his back on the battling World Eaters, deciding he had seen enough.

‘The message at Coralis dock sits heavily on me,’ Cestus confessed. ‘The clenched fist, crested by a laurel crown represents Legion… our Legion. The golden book – I don’t know what that means, but I saw something else.’

‘In the reactor flare,’ Antiges realised. ‘I had thought I was hearing things when you asked us if we’d seen anything.’

‘You were not, and yes, I saw it in the reactor flare, so fleeting and indistinct that at first I believed it was my imagination, that my mind was articulating what my heart longed for.’

‘What did you see?’

Cestus looked Antiges directly in the eyes.

‘I saw Macragge.’

Antiges was nonplussed. ‘I don’t–’

‘I saw Macragge and I felt despair, Antiges, as if it presaged something terrible.’

‘Signs and visions are the province of witchery, brother-captain,’ Antiges counselled warily. ‘We both know the edicts of Nikea.’

‘Brothers,’ a voice broke in before Cestus could respond. It was Saphrax, come from the bridge where Cestus had instructed he maintain a watch on proceedings.

Both Saphrax’s fellow Ultramarines turned to him expectantly.

‘We have made visual contact with the ship from the site of the Fist’s destruction.’

‘That is a Legion ship, captain. You are not suggesting that a vessel of the Imperium fired upon one of its own?’ Admiral Kaminska warned the Astartes.

Following Saphrax’s report, Cestus and Antiges had made for the bridge at once. What they saw in the viewscreen when they got there had stunned them both.

The vessel they tracked in the void was of Mechanicum design and clearly made for the Legion. It was bedecked in the iconography of the Word Bearers.

It was the largest ship that Cestus had ever seen. Even at a considerable distance it was massive, easily three times the size of the Wrathful, and would have dwarfed an Emperor-class battleship. It bore an impressive array of weapons; tech-adepts aboard the Wrathful had suggested port and starboard broadside laser batteries and multiple torpedo tubes to the prow and stern. It was the monolithic statue towering at the vessel’s prow, however, that gave Cestus the most concern: a gigantic golden book, the echo of the fragmented image in the astropathic message on Vangelis.

‘We’re at extreme strike range,’ said Captain Commander Vorlov. ‘What are your orders, admiral?’

‘Hold them back,’ said Cestus, deliberately interrupting Kaminska. ‘They are our Legion brothers. I am certain they will be able to account for themselves. They may have information regarding the Fist of Macragge.’

Vorlov was a paunchy man with jowls that wobbled independently of the rest of his body. He had a gnarled red nose that spoke of long nights drinking to keep away the cold of space, and dressed in the heavy furs typical of his Saturnine heritage. His presence filled the viewscreen through which he was communicating with the bridge of the Wrathful. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.

‘No point rattling the sword without reason,’ Cestus muttered to Antiges, who nodded his assent. ‘Hang back and keep them within range, but do not approach. Admiral Kaminska, bring the Wrathful in at the lead. Keep the Waning Moon and the escort fleet in our wake.’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ she said, swallowing her annoyance and her pride. ‘Relaying orders now.’

The tension around the bridge was palpable. Brynngar, having joined them a moment before, growled beneath his breath.

‘What is your plan, Cestus?’ he asked, eyes locked on the viewscreen and the mighty vessel visible beyond it.

‘We draw in close enough to hail them and demand to know their business.’

‘On Fenris, when stalking the horned orca, I would swim the icy depths of the ocean taking care to stay in the beast’s wake,’ Brynngar said with intensity. ‘Once I drew close enough I would slip my baleen spear from my leg and launch it into the orca’s unprotected flank. Then I would swim, long and hard, to reach the beast before it could turn and impale me on its horn. Within its thrashing swell I would seize upon it and with my blade pare its flesh and gut its innards. For the orca is a mighty beast, and this was the only way to be sure of its demise.’

‘We will hail them,’ Cestus affirmed, noting the savagery that played across Brynngar’s features with unease. ‘I won’t commit us to a fight over nothing.’

‘Admiral,’ the Ultramarine added, turning to Kaminska.

‘Helms-mate Kant, open up a channel to the vessel at once,’ she said.

Kant did as ordered and indicated his readiness to his commander.

Kaminska nodded to Cestus.

‘This is Captain Cestus of the Ultramarines Seventh Chapter. In the name of the Emperor of Mankind, I am ordering you to state your designation and business in this subsector.’

Static-fringed silence was the only reply.

‘I repeat: this is Captain Cestus of the Ultramarines Seventh Chapter. Respond,’ he barked into the bridge vox.

More silence.

‘Why do they not answer?’ asked Antiges, his fists tightly clenched. ‘They are Legionaries, like us. Since when did the sons of Lorgar fail to acknowledge the Ultramarines?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps their long-range vox is out.’ Cestus was reaching for answers, trying to deny what he had known in his heart ever since Vangelis, that something was wrong, terribly, terribly wrong.

‘Signal one of the frigates to make approach,’ Cestus ordered after a brief silence, eyes fixed on the viewscreen like every other soul on the bridge. ‘I don’t want to come in with our cruisers,’ he reasoned. ‘It might be perceived as a threat.’

Kaminska relayed the order in curt fashion and the Fearless closed on the unknown vessel.

‘I shall follow them in,’ said Mhotep from a second viewscreen on the bridge. ‘I have half a regiment of Prospero Spireguard standing by to board.’

‘Very well, captain, but keep your distance,’ Cestus warned.

‘As you wish.’ The viewscreen went blank as Mhotep took active command of the Waning Moon.

A tactical array abruptly activated, depicting the closing vessels that were virtually lost from sight in the viewport. The Word Bearers ship was a red icon on the display surrounded by sensor readings of the approaching frigates, little more than green blips in its presence.

‘This reeks,’ snarled Brynngar, who had begun prowling the bridge with impatience, ‘and my nose never lies.’

Cestus kept his eyes on the tactical array.

Macragge. The image of his Macragge, seen as part of the astropathic warning in the reactor core, came to mind once more. How were the fates of this vessel and his home world entwined?

The Word Bearers were his brothers; surely they had nothing to do with the destruction of the Fist of Macragge? Such a thing was unconscionable.

Cestus would have his answers soon enough.

The Fearless had reached its destination.

Five

A line is drawn/Silver Three down/Open book

‘Your orders, captain?’ came the vox from the ordnance deck.

Zadkiel sat back on his throne. The feeling of power was intoxicating. The battleship was his to command, like an extension of his body, as if the torpedo tubes and gun turrets were his hands. He could simply spread his fingers and will destruction on the enemy.

‘Hold,’ said Zadkiel.

The central viewscreen showed the closing vessels: a frigate with a strike cruiser in its wake. The frigate did not interest the Word Bearer captain, but the cruiser was an entirely different prospect: fast, well-armed and designed for precision attacks and boarding actions. It was painted in the livery of the Thousand Sons.

‘Magnus’s brood,’ said Zadkiel, idly. Astride his command throne, he glanced at a supplementary screen that depicted a tactical readout of the ship. The Furious Abyss’s archive had identified it as the Waning Moon. It had many battle honours, and had followed the Thousand Sons Legion across half the galaxy prosecuting the Great Crusade. ‘I have always admired their imagination.’

Assault-Captain Baelanos was standing behind the command throne.

‘They’re within range, sire.’

‘There is no hurry, captain,’ said Zadkiel. ‘We should savour this moment.’ Additional readings flicked up on the viewscreen. The Waning Moon was showing life-signs equivalent to a full regiment of troops gathering at the boarding muster points.

‘Helms-mate Sarkorov, open up a clandestine channel to the Waning Moon,’ Zadkiel ordered.

‘At once, my lord,’ came the reply from deep inside the dark city of the bridge.

After a moment, Sarkorov added.

‘Channel is secure.’

‘On screen.’

The central image was replaced with a view of the Waning Moon’s gilded bridge. The Astartes in the command throne, which was massively ornate and inset with numerous jewels and engraved runes, looked up in mild surprise. He had light brown skin and hooded eyes, with a face that spoke of discipline and resolve.

‘This is Captain Zadkiel, addressing you from the Furious Abyss. Am I speaking to the captain of the Waning Moon?’ asked Zadkiel.

‘You are. I am Captain Mhotep of the Thousand Sons. Why have you not responded to our hails?’

‘No, captain, I demand to know what this display of force means,’ Zadkiel said, unwilling to be interrogated by his brother Astartes. ‘You have no authority here. Disengage at once.’

‘I repeat, why have you not responded to our hails and what do you know of the Fist of Macragge and its fate?’ Mhotep was relentless and would not be cowed.

‘I do not appreciate your tone, brother. I know nothing of the vessel you speak of,’ Zadkiel replied. ‘Now, disengage.’

‘I do not believe you, brother,’ said the Thousand Son with certainty.

Zadkiel smiled mirthlessly.

‘Then I shall give you the truth. Great deeds are unfolding, Captain Mhotep. Lines will be drawn. Flame and retribution is coming, and those who are on the wrong side of that line will be burned to ash.’ Zadkiel paused for a moment, allowing his words to sink in.

Mhotep remained impassive. The Thousand Sons were quite the experts at concealing their true emotions.

‘We are on a secure channel, Captain Mhotep, and the Legion of the Word have ever been supporters of your lord Magnus. The events of Nikea must rankle.’ That got a reaction, near imperceptible, but it was there.

‘What are you suggesting, Word Bearer?’

Hostility now, the icy reserve was thawing at the mention of what many in the Legion regarded as Magnus’s trial and that what happened at Nikea was performed by a council in name only.

‘Lorgar and Magnus are brothers. So are we. What side of the line will you stand on, Mhotep?’

The retort was curt. The Thousand Son’s face was set like stone.

‘Prepare to be boarded,’ he said.

‘As you wish,’ replied the Word Bearer.

The vox link to the Waning Moon was cut.

‘Master Malforian,’ said Zadkiel, levelly.

The ordnance deck flashed up on the viewscreen, a deep metal canyon beneath the prow crowded with sweating ratings hauling massive torpedoes.

‘My lord.’

‘Fire.’

A spread of torpedoes flew from the Furious Abyss towards the Waning Moon, which had positioned itself before the massive ship’s prow. Starboard, a bank of laser batteries lit up at once, and beams of crimson light stabbed into the void. They struck the Fearless and the frigate was broken apart in a bright and silent flurry of blossoming explosions.

‘Throne of Terra!’ Cestus could not believe what he was seeing through the Wrathful’s viewscreen. Powerless, and benumbed, he watched the Fearless fragment like scrap as a firestorm ravaged it, hungrily devouring the oxygen on board and turning it into a raging furnace. It was over in seconds, and after the conflagration had died all that remained was a blackened ruin. Then the torpedoes hit the Waning Moon.

‘Sharks in the void!’ cried Helms-mate Ramket from the sensorium on the bridge of the Waning Moon. The crew were all at battle stations, carefully monitoring the actions of the Word Bearer ship. The lights in the elliptical chamber were dimmed as was protocol for combat situation, and the tiny blips that represented the ordnance launched by the Furious Abyss glowed malevolently on one of the bridge’s tactical display slates.

‘Evasive manoeuvres. Turrets to full! Withdraw boarding parties to damage control stations!’ Mhotep scowled and gripped the lip of the command console in front of him. Shields were useless against torpedoes; he had to hope their hull armour could bear the brunt of the Furious Abyss’s opening salvo.

‘At your command, my lord,’ came Ramket’s reply.

Warning runes flashed on multiple screens at once, presaging the missile impacts. Mhotep turned again to his helms-mate.

‘Open a channel to the Wrathful,’ he ordered as the first of the torpedoes hit, sending damage klaxons screaming as a massive shudder ran through the bridge.

‘Mhotep, what’s happening out there?’ asked Cestus over the ship-to-ship vox array.

‘The Fearless is gone. We are taking fire and attempting to evade. The Word Bearers have turned on their own, Cestus.’

A burst of crackling static held in the air for the moment combining with the din of relayed orders and cogitator warnings.

When he finally spoke, the Ultramarine’s voice was grim.

‘Engage and destroy.’

‘Understood.’

The bridge of the Wrathful moved to battle stations, Kaminska barking rapid orders to her subordinates with well-drilled precision and calm. The professionalism of the Saturnine Fleet’s officer class was evident as the weapons were brought to bear and shields focused prow-ward.

‘How shall we respond, lord Astartes?’ she asked, once they were at a state of readiness.

Cestus fought a cold knot of disbelief building in the pit of his stomach as he watched the spread of blips on the tactical display move into attack positions.

The Word Bearers have turned on their own.

Mhotep’s words were like a hammer blow.

His words, the words that Cestus had spoken earlier on the training deck to Thestor and Antiges, of brotherhood and the solidarity of the Legions, suddenly turned to ash in his mouth. He had admonished his brothers for even voicing mild dissent against a fellow Legionnaire, and now, here they were embattled against them. No, they were not World Eaters. They were not the murderous, blood-letters that Antiges had described. They were the devout servants of the Emperor. Ostensibly they were his most vehement and staunchest supporters.

How far did this treachery go? Was it confined merely to this ship, or did it permeate the entire Legion? Surely, with the vessel crafted by the Mechanicum it had the sanction of Mars. Could they be aware of the Word Bearers’ defection? Such a thing could not be countenanced. With these questions running through his mind like a fever, Cestus could not believe what was happening. It did not feel real. From disbelief, anger and a desire for retribution was born.

‘Break that ship in two,’ Cestus said, full of righteous conviction. He could feel the ripples of shock and disbelief passing through the non-Astartes as the full horror of what they had witnessed sank in. He would show them that the true servants of the Emperor did not tolerate traitors and any act of heresy would be summarily dealt with. Cestus’s feelings and the ramifications of what had transpired would have to wait and be rationalised later. ‘Relay astropathic messages to Macragge and Terra at once,’ the Ultramarine added. ‘The sons of Lorgar will be held to account for this. Admiral Kaminska, you have the helm.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ Kaminska said. Trying her best to maintain her cold composure in the face of such developments, she swivelled the command throne as the screens around her shifted to show every angle around the ship. ‘Captain Vorlov, are you with me?’

‘Say the word, admiral.’ Vorlov’s enthusiasm was obvious, despite the static flickering through the fleet’s vox array.

‘Take the lead behind the Waning Moon. If they stay on the Astartes ship, swing up in front of them. Give them a bloody good broadside up the nose, and scramble attack craft. Keep their gunners busy. I’ll send what’s left of our escorts with you. In the name of Emperor.’

‘At your command, admiral,’ replied Vorlov with relish. ‘Main engines to full, all crew to battle stations. Watch my stern, admiral, and the Boundless will pick this swine apart! In the name of Emperor.’

‘Mister Castellan,’ Kaminska barked, terminating the vox link with the Boundless. The Wrathful’s Master of Ordnance appeared on screen, toiling ratings just visible behind him on the gun decks.

‘A lance salvo to their dorsal turret arrays and engines, if you please,’ said Kaminska. ‘Load prow plasma torpedoes, but hold in reserve, I want something up our sleeve.’

‘At your command, admiral,’ came the clipped response from Master of Ordnance Castellan, who snapped a curt salute before the screen blanked.

Cestus watched as the organised chaos of battle stations unfolded. Every crewman on the bridge had his own role to play, relaying orders, monitoring sensorium and viewscreens, or making minute adjustments to the ship’s course. One of the tables on the bridge unfolded into a stellar map where holographic simulacra were moved around to represent the relative positions of the ships in the fleet.

‘Traitorous whoresons,’ snarled Brynngar, ‘it’ll be Lorgar’s head for this.’

Cestus could see the hairs on the back of the Space Wolf’s neck rise. In this fell mood and with the dimmed battle stations gloom, he took on a feral aspect.

‘Scuttle her and I’ll lead the sons of Russ aboard,’ he growled darkly. ‘Let the wolves of Fenris gut her and I’ll tear out the beating heart myself.’

Brynngar hawked and spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the deck as if what was transpiring in the void had left a bitter taste. There were a few raised eyebrows, but the Wolf Guard paid them no heed.

Cestus’s reply was terse. ‘You’ll get your chance.’

Brynngar roared, baring his fangs.

‘I can no longer sit idle,’ he snapped savagely, turning on his heel. ‘The warriors of Russ will make ready at the boarding torpedoes. Do not make us wait long.’

Cestus couldn’t be certain if the last part was a request or a threat, but he was, for once, glad of the Wolf Guard’s departure. His mood, since they’d hit the void and encountered the Word Bearers had grown increasingly erratic and belligerent. The Ultramarine sensed that the wolves of Russ did not relish such encounters. The fact that Brynngar was so eager to spill the blood of fellow Astartes only caused Cestus greater discomfort.

At war with our Legion brothers, the very idea scarcely seemed possible, yet it was happening.

Cestus watched the space battle unfold with curious detachment and felt his sense of foreboding grow.

The Waning Moon had burned its retro engines to kill its speed, and fired all thrusters on its underside to twist upwards and present its armoured flank to a second torpedo volley shimmering towards it.

The first torpedoes missed high, spiralling past the ship to be lost in the void.

A handful detonated early, riddled with massive-calibre fragmentation shells from the defence turrets mounted along the flank of the Waning Moon.

Several found their mark just below the stern. Another streaked in with violent force, and then two more amidships. Useless energy shields flared black over the impact points as hull segments spun away from the ship, the torpedoes gouging their way through the outer armour.

‘Damage report!’ shouted Mhotep above the din of the bridge.

‘Negligible, sire,’ Officer Ammon answered from the engineering helm.

‘What?’

‘Minimal hull fractures, my Lord Mhotep.’

‘Sensorium definitely read four impacts,’ confirmed Helms-mate Ramket watching over the readouts.

Embedded deep in the hull of the Waning Moon, the outer casing of each torpedo split with a super-heated incendiary and six smaller missiles drilled out from their parent casing. They were ringed with metallic teeth and bored through the superstructure of the strike cruiser as they spun. Drilling through the last vestiges of hull armour, the missiles emerged into the belly of the vessel and detonated with a powerful explosive charge. With a deafening thoom-woosh of concussive heat pressure, the gun decks were ruined. Ratings and indentured workers died in droves, burned by the intense conflagration. Heaps of shells exploded in the firestorm, throwing lashes of flame and chunks of spiralling shrapnel through the decks. Master Gunner Kytan was decapitated in the initial barrage, and dozens of gunnery crew met a similar fate as they scrambled for cover as the gun-decks became little more than an abattoir of charred corpses and hellish screaming.

The Waning Moon shuddered as explosions tore through its insides. A destructive chain reaction boiled through the upper decks and into crew quarters. Stern-wards, detonations ripped into engineering sections, normally well shielded from direct hits, and ripped plasma conduits free to spew superheated fluid through access tunnels and coolant ducts.

Damage control crews, waiting at their muster points to douse fires and seal breaches, were torn asunder by the resultant carnage from amidships. Orderlies at triage posts barely had time to register the pandemonium on the gun decks before the blunt bullet of a warhead thundered through into the medicae deck and annihilated them in a flash of light and terror.

Chains of explosions ripped huge chunks out of the Waning Moon’s insides. Like massive charred bite marks, whole sections were reduced to smouldering metal and hundreds of crewmen were lost to the cold of the void as the vessel’s structural integrity broke down.

‘Report that!’ ordered Mhotep, clinging to his command throne on the bridge as sections of the ship collapsed around him, revealing bare metal and sparking circuitry. The lights around the bridge were stuttered intermittently as the Waning registered power loss and damage across all decks. Mhotep’s crew were doing their best to marshal some semblance of order, but the attack had been swift and far-reaching.

‘Massive internal and secondary explosions,’ replied Officer Ammon, struggling to keep pace with the warning runes dancing madly over the engineering helm, and snapping off further reports. ‘Plasma venting from reactor seven, gun crews non-responsive and medicae has taken severe damage.’

‘Tertiary shielding is breached,’ said Mhotep as the ship-to-ship vox crackled into life.

‘Mhotep, report your status at once! This is Captain Cestus.’ The impacts had shaken the vox array and the Ultramarine’s voice was distorted with static.

‘We are wounded, captain,’ said Mhotep grimly. ‘Some kind of Mechanicum tech that I have never seen before burned our insides.’

‘Our lances are firing,’ Cestus informed him. ‘Can you stay engaged?’

‘Aye, son of Macragge, we’re not done yet.’

A further crackle of static and the vox went dead.

The bridge of the Waning Moon was alive with transmissions from the rest of the ship: some calm, reporting peripheral damage to minor systems; others frantic, from plasma reactor seven and the gun decks, and there were those that were unintelligible through raging fire and screaming: the last words of men and women dying agonising deaths.

‘Be advised, captain, they are coming about.’ Principal Navigator Cronos was eerily calm as his voice came through the internal vox array. Mhotep scrutinised the tactical holo-display above the command console. The Furious Abyss was changing course. It was suffering lance impacts from the Wrathful and was turning to present its heavily armoured prow to the aggressors.

‘What folly from this Bearer of his Word,’ Mhotep intoned. ‘He thinks we will flee like the jackal, but his only victory is in raising the ire of Prospero! Mister Cronos, bring us across his bow. Gun decks port and starboard, prepare for a rolling broadside!’

The Waning Moon rotated grandly, as if standing on end in front of the Furious Abyss. The Word Bearer vessel had not reacted, and its blunt prow faced the damaged strike cruiser.

Deep scores, like illegible signatures, were seared into the prow armour of the traitors’ ship by the Wrathful’s laser batteries. An insane crosshatch of crimson lance beams erupted between the two vessels with pyrotechnic intensity as they traded blows, silent shield flares indicating absorbed impacts.

Errant bursts glittered past the Waning Moon as it opened up its gun ports and the snouts of massive ship-to-ship cannon emerged. Behind them, sweat-drenched ratings toiled to load the enormous guns and avenge their dead. They chanted in gun-cant to keep their rhythm strong, one refrain for hauling shells out of the hoppers behind them, another for ramming it home, and yet another for hauling the breech closed.

The signal to fire reached them from the bridge. The rating gang leaders brought hammers down on firing pins and inside the ship, thunder screamed through the decks.

Outside, jets of propellant and debris leapt the gap between the two ships. A split second later the shells impacted, explosive charges blasting deep craters into the enemy vessel.

The bridge of the Furious Abyss stayed calm.

Zadkiel was pleased. His ship, the city over which he ruled, was not governed by panic.

‘My lord, should we retaliate?’ asked Helms-mate Sarkorov.

‘For now, we wait,’ said Zadkiel, content to absorb the punishment as he sat back on the command throne watching images of the Waning Moon’s assault on the viewscreens above him. ‘There is nothing they can do to us.’

‘You would have us sit here and take this?’ snarled Reskiel at his master’s side.

‘We will prevail,’ said Zadkiel, unperturbed.

Dozens of new contacts flared on the viewscreens, streaking from the launch bays of a ship identified as the Boundless.

‘Assault boats, sire,’ Sarkorov informed him, monitoring the same feed. ‘Escorts are closing.’

Zadkiel pored over the hololithic display.

‘They intend to attack from all angles and confuse us, and while we weather this storm, their assault boats and escorts will pick us apart.’ Zadkiel provided the curt tactical analysis coldly, his face aglow in the display.

‘What is our response?’ asked Reskiel.

‘We wait.’

‘That’s it?’

‘We wait,’ repeated Zadkiel, his voice like iron. ‘Trust in the Word.’

Reskiel stood back, watching the fire hammering in from the Waning Moon, and listening to the dull thuds of explosions from within the Furious’s prow.

The attack craft wing of the Boundless swept in tight formation through the veil of debris building up from the damage to the two ships ahead of them. The Waning Moon and the Furious Abyss were locked in the Spiral Dance: the long, painful embrace that saw one ship circle another pumping broadsides into the enemy as it spun. Like everything else in space the Spiral Dance had its own mythology, and to a lifelong pilot of the Saturnine Fleet it meant inevitable doom and the spite of one ship lashing out at the enemy in its death throes. It was desperation and tragedy, like a dying romance or a last stand against vast odds.

The fighters, ten-man craft loaded with short-range rockets and cannon, streaked past the Waning Moon, the pilots saluting their fellow ship as custom dictated. They locked on to the Furious Abyss, the squadron leaders marking out targets on the immense dark red hull already pocked with lance scars and broadside craters from the battering the Wrathful had given it. Shield housings, sensor clusters and exhaust vents all lit up on the tactical display in a backwash of emerald light. Targeting cogitators locked on and burned red.

Silver Three, flown by Pilot Second-Class Carnagan Thaal, matched assigned approach vectors and built to full attack run speed. Through the shallow forward viewscreen, Thaal could see the Furious Abyss criss-crossed by laser battery barrage, its prow a flickering mass of smouldering metal.

He ordered his weapons officers to lock on to their target, a stretch of gun turrets along the Furious’s dorsal spine. The port guns obeyed, the lascannon mounts swivelling into position.

The starboard guns did not move.

Pilot Thaal repeated his order through the ship’s vox. His co-pilot, Rugel, checked the array, but found nothing amiss.

‘Rugel, go down to the armaments deck and align those guns,’ Thaal ordered, deciding there was enough time before they hit their final approach vector.

The co-pilot nodded and tore out the wires attaching him to his seat and the console in front of him, and swung around in his chair.

‘Scell, what are you doing?’ Thaal heard his co-pilot ask and turned to get a good look at what was going on.

He started when he saw Weapons Officer Carina Scell standing there with her autopistol in her hand. Thaal was about to tell her to get back to her post and get the damn cannons locked on when Scell shot him in the face.

She took Rugel in the chest, stepping forward to deliver the shot point-blank. Bleeding badly, the co-pilot scrabbled to get his sidearm out of its holster.

‘It is written,’ Scell said, and shot him twice more in the head.

Silver Three continued on its attack vector. Scell headed below decks to finish her work.

‘Silver Three’s down,’ said Officer Artemis on the fighter control deck of the Boundless. The deck ran almost a third of the length of the Boundless to accommodate the numerous tactical consoles.

Captain Vorlov, his face awash in the reflected ochre glow of datascreens, paid it little heed as he prowled the ranks of fighter controllers. Attack craft were always lost. It was the way of the void.

Vorlov continued his tour, preferring to witness first-hand the actions of his fighters rather than make do with the fragmented reports filtering through to the bridge. The Boundless was a dedicated carrier for attack craft and his duties were here, listening to the fates of his fighter wings. His helms-mate was perfectly capable of keeping the ship running in his absence.

‘Any defensive fire?’ asked Vorlov of the nearest control overseer.

‘None yet,’ said the overseer, whose shaved scalp was festooned with wires feeding information from each controller into her brain.

‘But we’re in range of their countermeasures,’ said Vorlov, a thought occurring to him. ‘You! What took down Silver Three?’

The controller looked up from his screen. ‘Unknown. The pilot went off my screen. Possible crew casualties.’

‘Non-standard transmissions from Gold Nine,’ said another controller hunched over his screen. He held one of his earphones tight against his head and winced as he tried to hear more clearly. ‘Some kind of commotion aboard ship, sire. They’re not responding to protocols.’

‘Bring them in. The rest of you, report any further anomalies!’ Vorlov harrumphed in annoyance and leaned forward on his cane. The Saturnine Fleet had the best small craft pilots this side of the galactic centre. They didn’t just flake out during a firefight.

‘Gold Nine is lost, captain,’ reported the controller. ‘I detected small-arms fire in the cockpit.’

‘Get me word on what the hell’s going on or I’ll have your commission,’ barked Vorlov at the overseer.

‘Yes, captain.’

‘Fragmented reports are coming in from Silver Prime,’ interrupted yet another controller. ‘They say they’ve lost control of the engine crew.’

‘Get all this on air!’ shouted Vorlov. The overseer fiddled with a couple of settings and cockpit transmissions crackled through the deck’s vox-caster.

‘…gone insane! He’s barricaded himself in the aft quarters. Esau’s dead and he’s venting the bloody air. I’m pulling out from attack vectors and going down there to shoot him.’

‘I am the light that shines always. I am the lord of the dawn. I am the beginning and the end. I am the Word.’

‘Agh, I’m… I’m bleeding out… Heral’s dead, but I’m not going to make it.’

‘Gold Twelve just opened fire on us! We’re hit aft-wards, pulling back and venting engine three.’

Vorlov was assailed by the desperate voices and distorted screams, dozens of them, all from experienced assault pilots, all tinged with fear or disbelief, or pain. Reports of colleagues sabotaging engines or murdering crew, ranting paranoia and delusion spewed forth from the vox. Vorlov couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His wings were in total disarray and the glorious attack run he had envisaged had failed utterly without the enemy firing off a shot. He had never even read about such a thing in the histories of the Saturnine Fleet.

‘It’s as if they’re going mad, captain,’ said the overseer, struggling to keep her voice level, ‘every one of them.’

‘Abort!’ shouted Vorlov. ‘All wings! Abort attack run and return to the Boundless!’

‘We are successful, lord,’ the sibilant voice of Chaplain Ikthalon said through the vox array. ‘The supplicants have effectively neutralised their fighter assault.’

‘You are to be commended, chaplain. Ours is a divine purpose and you have ensured your name will be remembered in the scriptures of Lorgar,’ Zadkiel replied coldly from the command throne, before turning to address Helms-mate Sarkorov.

‘Let the escort craft close and then open the book.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Sarkorov relayed the order at once.

Zadkiel watched a close-up of the sector of space through which the Boundless’s attack wings were flying. Fighters were already tumbling, glittering short-lived explosions as their colleagues shot them down. Others were spiralling off-course. The pathetic assault was in ruins.

‘Behold,’ Zadkiel said to his second standing alongside him, ‘the power of the Word, Reskiel.’

‘It is indeed humbling,’ Reskiel replied, bowing deeply to his lord.

Zadkiel found the obvious toadying distasteful. Even so, this was a great moment, and he allowed himself to bask in it before returning to the vox.

‘Ikthalon, how many supplicants did we lose?’

‘Three, Lord Zadkiel,’ the chaplain replied. ‘The weakest.’

‘Keep me appraised.’

‘As you wish.’ Ikthalon said, and terminated the link.

Zadkiel ignored the impudence and sat back in his command throne to watch the damage control reports flicker by. The prow was mangled, chewed up by the Waning Moon’s broadsides and torn by the lances of the Wrathful, but the prow was merely armour plating and empty space. It didn’t matter. It could soak up everything they could throw at it for hours before the shells penetrated live decks. Even then, only Legion menials would perish, the unaugmented humans pledged to die for Lorgar.

‘This is the Fireblade,’ came the transmission intercepted by the Furious Abyss’s advanced sensorium from one of the approaching escort ships. ‘We’ve got a clear run. Lances to full.’

‘On your tail, Fireblade,’ came the reply from a second frigate.

‘Master Malforian, bring turrets to bear and reload ordnance,’ said Zadkiel. He followed the blips of the escorts as they negotiated the graveyard of fighter craft, intent on helping the Waning Moon finish off the Furious.

Zadkiel allowed himself a thin smile.

‘The fighters are lost,’ said Vorlov. His face was ruddy with frustration as it glowered out of the viewscreen on the bridge of the Wrathful.

Almost to a man, the crewmen of the ship were watching Captain Vorlov’s report of the total failure of the attack run.

‘What, all of them?’ asked Admiral Kaminska.

‘Twenty per cent are en route back to the Boundless,’ said Vorlov. ‘The rest are gone. Our crews turned on each other.’

‘You think this was a psychic attack, captain?’ asked Cestus, suddenly glad that Brynngar was off the bridge.

‘Yes, lord, I do,’ Vorlov breathed, fear edging his voice.

This was a worrying development. All the Legions knew full well what had been decided on Nikea, and the censure imposed by the Emperor on dabbling in the infernal powers of the warp and the use of sorcery. The Ultramarine turned to Admiral Kaminska.

‘What of our remaining escorts?’

‘Captain Ulargo on the Fireblade is leading them in,’ she replied. ‘No problems so far.’

Cestus nodded, processing everything unfolding on the bridge.

‘Maintain lance barrage from the Wrathful and the Waning Moon. Captain Vorlov, add the Boundless’s from distance and let the escorts engage. No ship, however massive, can withstand such a concentrated assault.’

‘At your command, my lord,’ Vorlov returned.

Cestus turned to regard Kaminska, seething at her command throne.

‘As you wish, captain,’ she responded coolly.

The Fireblade stitched the first volleys of lance fire down against the upper hull of the Furious Abyss. It had nothing like the firepower of the fleet’s cruisers, but up close it could pick its targets, and each lance fired independently to blast off hull plates and shear turrets from their emplacements with fat bursts. Defensive guns retaliated in kind and shots blistered against the Fireblade’s shields, some making it through to the escort’s dark green hull. The Fireblade twisted out of arcs of fire and sent a chain of incendiaries hammering down into the dorsal turret arrays. Silent explosions blossomed and were swallowed by the void, leaving glittering sprays of wreckage like silver fountains.

The Fireblade’s hull was resplendent with kill markings and battle honours. It had done this many times before. It was small, but it was agile and packed a harder punch than its size suggested. Behind it was the Ferox, its younger sister ship, using the heat signatures of the Fireblade’s strikes to throw bombs and las-blasts through the tears opened up in the upper hull.

The Fireblade finished its first run and corkscrewed up over the Furious’s engine housings, letting the heat wash of the battleship’s engines lend a hand in catapulting it void-wards before it lined up for another pass.

Below the two escorts, the last of the squadron, now just the Ferocious with the dramatic and sudden demise of the Fearless, was making its run along the underside of the massive vessel, pouring destruction into the ventral turrets. All three remaining escorts came under fierce fire, but their shields and hull armour held, their speed too great to allow a significant number of defensive turrets to bear at once and combine their efforts.

Captain Ulargo, at the helm of the Fireblade, commented to his fellow escort captains that the Word Bearers appeared to want to die.

Another broadside thundered from the Waning Moon as the strike cruiser turned elegantly, keeping level with the Furious Abyss’s prow. The void was sucking fire out of the prow, so it looked like the head of a fire-breathing monster made of smouldering metal.

The enormous book that served as the ship’s figurehead was intact. Slowly, silently, the metal book cracked open and folded outwards.

The massive bore of a gun emerged from behind it.

The end of the barrel glowed red as reactors towards the rear of the ship opened up plasma conduits to the prow and the weapon’s capacitors filled. Licks of blue flame ran over the ruined prow, ignited by the sheer force of the building energy.

The prow cannon fired. A white beam leapt from the Furious Abyss. At the same time thrusters kicked in, rotating the Furious a couple of degrees so that the short-lived beam played across the void in front of it.

It struck the Waning Moon just fore of the engines. Vaporised metal formed a billowing white cloud, like steam, condensing into a silver shower of re-solidified matter. Secondary explosions led the beam as it scored across the strike cruiser’s hull, until finally it was lost in the shower of debris and vapour as its energy expended and the glowing barrel began to cool down in the vacuum.

Further explosions rippled across the Waning Moon in the wake of the crippling barrage, and the rear third of the strike cruiser was sheared clean off.

Six

The void/Squadron disengage/A way with words

The pace of space battles was glacially slow. Even when seen through viewscreens it was carried out at extreme ranges, with laser battery salvoes taking seconds to crawl across the blackness.

The battle had been raging for over an hour when the cannon on the prow of the Furious Abyss fired its maiden shot. The broadside from the Waning Moon had crossed a gulf of several hundred kilometres before impacting on the enemy ship’s prow and that had been point-blank by the standards of ship-to-ship warfare. The Boundless’s fighter wings had flown distances that would have taken them across continents on a planet’s surface.

When something happened quickly, it was a sudden, jarring occurrence that threw everything else out of kilter. The slow ballet of a ship battle was broken by the discordant note of a rapid development, and all plans had to be re-founded in its wake. An event that could not be reacted to, that was over too quickly to change course or target, was a nightmare that many ship captains struggled to cope with.

It was unfortunate for the captains of the Imperial fleet, then, that the death of the Waning Moon happened very quickly indeed.

‘By Titan’s valleys,’ gasped Admiral Kaminska on the bridge of the Wrathful. ‘What was that?’

The instruments on the bridge suddenly lit up as one as an intense flare of light filled the forward viewscreen.

‘Massive energy reading,’ came the confused reply from Helmsmistress Venkmyer. ‘Energy sensorium’s blind.’

‘Did the Waning Moon just go plasma-critical?’

‘There were no damage control signs that suggested major engine damage. They’d got the reactor-seven leak locked down. Maybe a weapons discharge?’

‘What weapon could do that?’

‘A plasma lance,’ replied Cestus.

Kaminska turned to face the Ultramarine, whose grim expression betrayed his emotions.

‘I did not know such a device had been wrought and fitted,’ he added.

The admiral’s initial shock turned to stern pragmatism.

‘My lord, if I am to risk my ship and the souls onboard, I would have you tell me what we are up against,’ she said, with no little consternation.

‘I have little idea,’ Cestus confessed, staring into the viewscreen, analysing and appraising tactical protocols in nanoseconds as he considered Kaminska’s question. ‘The Astartes are not privy to the secret works of the Mechanicum, admiral.’ The Ultramarine sensed the challenge from Kaminska, her growing discontent, and was determined to crush it. ‘Suffice to say that the plasma lance was developed as a direct fire close-range weapon for ship-to-ship combat. In any event, it matters not. Your orders are simple,’ said Cestus, turning his steely gaze upon Admiral Kaminska in an attempt to cow her veiled truculence. ‘We are to destroy that ship.’

‘They are Astartes aboard that ship, Cestus, our battle-brothers,’ Antiges said quietly. Until now, the fellow Ultramarine had been content to maintain his silence and keep his own council, but events were unfolding upon the bridge of the Wrathful and out in the wide, cold reaches of real space that he could not ignore.

‘I am aware of that, Antiges.’

‘But captain, to condemn them to–’

‘My hand is forced,’ Cestus snarled, suddenly turning on Antiges. ‘Know your place, battle-brother! I am still your commanding officer.’

‘Of course, my captain.’ Antiges bowed slightly and averted his gaze from his fellow Ultramarine. ‘I would request to leave the bridge to inform Saphrax and the rest of the squad to prepare for a potential boarding action.’

Cestus’s face was set like stone.

Antiges met it with a steely gaze of his own.

‘Granted.’ His captain’s curt response was icy.

Antiges saluted, turned on his heel and left the bridge.

Kaminska said nothing, only listened to what Cestus ordered next.

‘Raise Mhotep at once.’

The admiral turned to regard her helms-mate monitoring communications with the Waning Moon.

‘We cannot, sire,’ Kant replied. ‘The Waning Moon’s vox array is not operational.’

Kaminska swore beneath her breath, turning to the tactical display in the hope that a solution would present itself. All she saw was the massive enemy ship manoeuvring for a fresh assault against the Boundless.

‘Captain Vorlov,’ she barked into the vox, ‘this is the Wrathful. She’s heading for you next. Get out of there.’

There was a crackle of static and Vorlov’s voice replied, ‘What is this monster you have us hunting, Kaminska?’

There was a slight pause, and suddenly Kaminska looked very old as if the many juvenat treatments she’d undertaken to grant her such longevity had been stripped away.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I never thought I’d hear you at a loss for words,’ said Vorlov. ‘I’m breaking off and hitting warp distance. I suggest you do the same.’

Kaminska looked at Cestus. ‘Do we run?’

‘No,’ said Cestus. His jaw was set as he watched the debris from the Waning Moon rain in all directions as the ship’s hull split in two.

‘That’s what I thought. Helmsmistress Venkmyer, relay orders to engineering to make ready for full evasive.’

The bridge of the Waning Moon was in ruins. Massive feedback had ripped through every helm. Crewmen had died as torrents of energy had hammered through their scalp sockets and into their brains. Others were burning in the wreckage of exploded cogitators. Some of them had got out, but there was little indication that anywhere on the ship was better off. There was smoke everywhere, and all sound was swamped by the agonising din of screaming metal from the rear of the ship. The ship’s spine was broken and it could no longer support its own structure. The Waning Moon’s movement was enough to force it apart with inertia.

The blast doors had buckled under the extreme damage inflicted upon the stricken vessel and would not open. Mhotep had drawn his scimitar and cut through them with ease, forcing his way out of the bridge.

Engineering was gone, simply gone. The last surviving readouts on the bridge had been tracking the engines as they spun away below the ship, ribbons of burning plasma and charred bodies spilling from the ship’s wounds like intestines.

No order had been given to abandon ship. Mhotep hadn’t needed to give it.

‘Captain, power is falling all across the ship,’ shouted Helms-mate Ramket, his voice warring against the din of internal explosions somewhere below decks.

‘We are beyond saving, helms-mate. Head for the starboard saviour pods immediately,’ Mhotep replied, noting the savage gash across Ramket’s forehead where he’d been struck by falling ship debris.

Ramket saluted and was about to turn and do as ordered when a sheet of fire rippled down the corridor, channelled through the Waning Moon’s remaining oxygen. It flowed over Mhotep in a coruscating wave, spilling against his armour as it was repelled. Warning runes within his helmet lens display flashed intense heat readings. Ramket had no such protection, and his scream died in his burning mouth as the skin was seared from his body. Smothered by fire, as if drowning, Ramket thundered against the deck in a heap of charred bone and flaming meat.

Mhotep forced his way through the closest access portal and hauled it shut against the blaze. The fire had caught on the seals of his armour and he patted them out with his gauntleted palm. He had emerged from the conflagration into one of the ship’s triage stations, where the wounded had been brought from the torpedo strikes on the gun decks. The injured were still lying in beds hooked up to respirators and life support cogitators. The orderlies were gone; ship regulations made no provision for bringing invalids along when abandoning ship.

They had given their lives to the Thousand Sons. They had known that they would die in service, one way or another. Mhotep ignored the dead and pressed on.

Beyond the triage station were crew quarters. Men and women were running everywhere. Normally, they would know exactly where to head in the event of an abandon ship, but the Waning Moon’s structure was coming apart and the closest saviour pods were wrecked. Some were already dead, crushed by chunks of torn metal crashing through the ceiling or thrown into fiery rents in the deck plates. In spite of the confusion, they stood aside instinctively to allow Mhotep clear passage. As an Astartes and their lord, his life was worth more than any of theirs.

‘Starboard saviour pods are still operational, captain,’ said one petty officer. Mhotep remembered his name as Lothek. He was just one of the many thousands of souls about to burn in the void.

Mhotep nodded an acknowledgement to the man. The Thousand Son’s own armour was still smouldering and he could feel points of hot pain at the elbow and knee joints, but he ignored them.

Abruptly, the crew quarters split in two, one side hauled sharply upwards in a scream of twisting metal. Lothek went with it, smashed up into the ceiling and turned to a grisly red paste before his mouth had even formed a terrified scream.

A huge section of the Waning Moon’s structure had collapsed and given way. Its inertia ripped it out of the ship’s belly and air shrieked from the widening gaps. Mhotep was staggered by the unexpected rupture and grabbed the frame of a door as air howled past him. He saw crewmen wrenched off their feet and dashed against torn deck plating that bent outwards like jagged, broken teeth. The tangled mass before him gave way and tumbled off into the void, over a dozen souls screaming silently as they went with it. Their eyes widened in panic even as they iced over. They gasped out breaths, or held them too long, and ruptured their lungs, spewing out ragged plumes of blood. Hitting space, their bodies froze in spasm, limbs held at awkward angles as they drifted away into the star-pocked darkness. The scene was bizarrely tranquil as Mhotep regarded it, the swathe of black-clad nothing silent and endless where distant constellations glittered dully and the faded luminescence of far off suns left a lambent glow in the false night.

Gravity gave way as the structure was violated.

Mhotep held on, armoured fingers making indentations in the metal, as the last gales of atmosphere hammered past. A corpse rolled and bumped against his armour, on its way to the void. It was Officer Ammon, his eyes red with burst veins.

They were dead: thousands all dead.

Mhotep felt some grim pride, knowing that, had they seen it would end this way, the crew would all still have given their lives to Magnus and the Thousand Sons. With no time for reverie, the Astartes pulled himself along the wall, finding handholds among shattered mosaics. With the air gone, the only sound was the groaning of the ship as it came apart, rumbling through its structure and up through the gauntlets of Mhotep’s armour. His armour was proof against the vacuum, but he could only survive for a limited time.

The same was not true of anyone else aboard ship.

Mhotep passed through the crew quarters. In the wake of its demise, the Waning Moon had become an eerily silent tomb of metal. As power relays failed, lights flashed intermittently, the illumination on some decks made only by crackling sparks. Gobbets of blood broke against Mhotep’s armour as he moved, and icy corpses bobbed with the dead gravity as if carried by an invisible ocean. The Astartes shoved tangled bodies aside, faces locked in frozen grimaces, as he fought his way to a pair of blast doors and opened them. The air was gone beyond them, too, and more crewmen floated in the corridor leading down to the saviour pod deck. One of them grasped at Mhotep’s arm as the Astartes went past him. It was a crewman who had emptied his lungs as the air boomed out and had, thus, managed to stay conscious. His eyes goggled madly. Mhotep swept him aside and carried on.

The starboard saviour pods were not far away, but the Thousand Son had to take a short detour first. Passing through a final corridor, he reached the reinforced blast door of his sanctum. Incredibly, the chamber still retained power, operating on a heavily protected, separate system from the rest of the ship. Mhotep inputted the runic access protocol and the door slid open. The oxygen that remained in the airtight sanctum started to pour out. Mhotep stepped over the threshold quickly and the door sealed shut behind him with a hiss of escaping pressure.

Ignoring the damage done to the precious artefacts within the room, Mhotep went straight to the extant sarcophagus at the back of the sanctum. Opening it with controlled urgency, he retrieved the short wand-stave from inside it and secured the item in a compartment in his armour. When Mhotep turned, about to head for the saviour pods, he saw a figure crushed beneath a fallen cry-glass cabinet. Shards of glass speared the figure’s robed body, and vital fluids trickled from its bloodless lips.

‘Sire?’ gasped Kalamar, using what little oxygen remained in the chamber.

Mhotep went to the ageing serf and knelt beside him.

‘For the glory of Magnus,’ Kalamar breathed when his lord was close.

Mhotep nodded.

‘You have served your master and this vessel well, old friend,’ the Astartes intoned and stood up again, ‘but your tenure is at an end.’

‘Spare my suffering, lord.’

‘I will,’ Mhotep replied, mustering what little compassion existed in his cold methodical nature and, drawing his bolt pistol, he shot Kalamar through the head.

The saviour pod deck was situated next to the hull, a hemispherical chamber with six pods half-sunk into the floor. Two had been launched and another was damaged beyond repair, speared through by a shaft of steel fallen from the ceiling.

Mhotep pulled himself down into one of the remaining pods. Contrary to naval tradition, he would not be going down with his ship. In his chambers, just prior to docking at Vangelis, he had seen a vision of himself standing upon the deck of the Wrathful. This was his destiny. The hand of fate would draw him here for some, as of yet, unknown purpose.

Mhotep engaged the icon that would seal the saviour pod. It closed around him. There was room for three more crew, but no one was alive to fill it. He hit the launch panel and explosive bolts threw the pod clear of the ship.

He watched the Waning Moon turning above him as the pod spiralled away. The aft section had burned out and was just a black flaking husk, disappearing against the void. The main section of the ship was tearing itself apart. The fires were mostly out, starved of fuel and oxygen, and the Waning Moon was a skeleton collapsing into its component bones.

In the distance, thousands of sparks burst around the Furious Abyss, as if it were at the heart of a vast pyrotechnic display.

Mhotep was as disciplined as any Thousand Son, and Magnus made the conditioning of his Legion’s minds the most important part of their training. He could subsume himself into the collective mindset of his battle-brothers, and as such was rarely troubled by emotions that did not serve any immediate purpose.

He was disturbed. He very much wanted to exact the hatred he felt on the Furious Abyss. He wanted to tear it apart with his bare hands.

Perhaps, Mhotep told himself, if he was patient, he would find a way to do that.

The fighters had come from nowhere.

With the violent death of the Waning Moon, the remaining escort ships, the Ferox and the Fireblade, were locked in a deadly duel with the massive enemy vessel. Even with the Boundless in support and the Wrathful inbound they would not last long against the Word Bearer battleship. The frigates would have to use their superior speed to endure while aid arrived. That advantage was summarily robbed with the appearance of crimson-winged fighter squadrons issuing from the belly of the Furious Abyss in an angry swarm.

It was impossible for such a ship, even one of its impressive size, to harbour fighter decks and the weapons system that had destroyed the Waning Moon. This fact had informed every scenario the escort squadron’s captains had developed for any reaction to their attack runs. The Furious Abyss, however, was no ordinary ship.

The destruction of the Waning Moon, appalling as it was, had at least given the escort ships the certainty that the Word Bearers would not have the resources for attack craft. That was before the launch bays had opened like steel gills down the flanks of the battleship, and twinkling blood-slick darts had shot out on columns of exhaust.

Captain Ulargo stood in a corona of light on the bridge of the Fireblade. The rest of the bridge was drenched in darkness with only the grainy diodes of control consoles punctuating the gloom. Arms behind him, surrounded by the hololithic tactical display and with vox crackling, the terrible choreography of war played out with sickening inevitability.

‘Ferox engaged!’ came the alert from Captain Lo Thulaga. ‘Multiple hostiles! Fast attack craft, registering impacts. Shutting down reactor two.’

‘Shield your engines, for Terra’s sake!’ snapped Captain Ulargo, watching the grim display from the viewport.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ retorted Lo Thulaga. ‘I have fighters port, aft and abeam. They’re bloody everywhere.’

The Ferox spiralled away from its attack run on the underside, pursued by a cloud of vindictive fighters. Tiny explosions stitched over the hindquarters of the escort ship, ripping sprays of black debris from the engine housings. Turrets stammered back fire from the belly and sides of the Ferox, but for every fighter reduced to a bloom of plasma residue there were two more pouring fire into it.

It was like a predator under attack from a swarm of stinging insects. The Ferox was far larger than any of the fighters, which were shaped like inverted Vs with their stabiliser wings swept forwards. Individually its turrets could have tracked and vaporised any of the enemy before they got in range, but there were over fifty of them.

‘I cannot shake them,’ snarled Captain Vorgas on the Ferocious, his voice ragged through the vox.

‘They’re bloody killing us!’ yelled Lo Thulaga, whose voice was distorted by the secondary explosions coming from the escort’s engines.

Ulargo wore a disgusted expression. In his entire career, he had never backed down from a fight. He hailed from the militaristic world of Argonan in Segmentum Tempestus, and it was not in his nature to capitulate. Clenching his fists, he bawled the order.

‘Squadron disengage!’

Fireblade pulled away from the Furious Abyss, followed by the Ferocious. The Ferox tried to pull clear, but the enemy fighters hounded it, darting into the wake of the escort’s engines, risking destruction to fly in blind and hammer laser fire into its engineering decks.

One of the reactors on the embattled frigate melted down, its whole rear half flooding with plasma. The forward compartments were sealed off quickly enough to save the crew, but the ship was dead in the void, only its momentum keeping it falling ponderously away from the upper hull of the Furious Abyss. The fighters circled it, flying in wide arcs around the dead ship and punishing it with incessant fire. Crew decks were breached and vented. Saviour pods began to launch as Lo Thulaga gave the order to abandon ship.

The Furious Abyss wasted no time sending fighters to assassinate the saviour pods as they fled the stricken Ferox.

The Ferocious pulled a dramatic hard turn, ducking back towards the enemy battleship to fox the fighters lining up for their attack runs. It strayed into the arcs of the Furious Abyss’s ventral turrets, and a couple of lucky shots blew plumes of vented atmosphere out of its upper hull. The fighters closed and targeted the breach, volleys of las-fire boring molten fingers into the frigate. Somewhere amidst the bedlam the bridge was breached and the command crew died, incinerated by sprays of molten metal or frozen and suffocated as the void forced its way in.

The remaining turrets on the Furious Abyss targeted the fleeing Fireblade, the last vessel of the escort. Most of the battleship’s attention was away from the frigate, representing as it did a mere annoyance. Its vengeful ire was focused squarely on the Boundless.

‘The Ferox and the Ferocious are gone,’ Kaminska stated flatly, watching the blips on the tactical display blink out. ‘How on Titan can that thing support those fighter wings?’

‘The same way it has a functioning plasma lance,’ said Cestus, grimly. ‘The Mechanicum know more about what they’re doing than they are letting on, and are ignoring Imperial sanctions.’

‘In the name of Terra, what is happening?’ Kaminska asked, seeing the enemy battleship turn its cross hairs on the Boundless.

For the first time, the Ultramarine thought he could detect a hint of fear in the admiral’s voice.

‘We cannot win this fight, not like this,’ he said. ‘Bring the Boundless in, we need to regroup.’

Kaminska cast her eye over the tactical display. Her voice was choked. ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘Damnation!’ Cestus smashed his fist hard against a rail on the bridge and it buckled. After a moment, he said, ‘Contact your astropath, and find out what is keeping that message. I must warn my lord Guilliman at once.’

Kaminska raised the astropathic sanctum on the ship-to-ship vox, even as Helmsmistress Venkmyer relayed disengagement protocols to engineering.

Chief Astropath Korbad Heth’s deep voice was heard on the bridge.

‘All our efforts to contact Terra or the Ultramarines have failed,’ he revealed matter-of-factly.

‘By order of the Emperor’s Astartes, keep trying and you will prevail,’ said Cestus.

‘My lord,’ Heth began, unmoved by the Ultramarine’s threatening tone. ‘The matter is more fundamental than you appreciate. When I say our efforts have failed, I mean utterly. The Astronomican is gone.’

‘Gone? That’s impossible. How can it be gone?’

‘I know not, my lord. We are detecting warp storms that could be interfering. I will redouble our endeavours, but I fear they will be in vain.’ The vox went dead and Heth was gone again.

Antiges’s return to the bridge broke the silence.

‘We must return to Terra, Cestus. The Emperor must be warned.’

‘What of Calth and Macragge? Our Legion is there, and our primarch; they are in imminent danger and the ones who must be warned. I do not doubt the strength of our battle-brothers and the fleet above Macragge is formidable, as are its ground defences, but there is something about this ship… What if it is merely the harbinger of something much worse, something that can be a very real threat to Guilliman?’

‘Our primarch has ever taught us to exercise pragmatism in the face of adversity,’ Antiges reasoned, stepping forward. ‘Upon our return, we could send a message to the Legion.’

‘A message that would never reach them, Antiges,’ Cestus replied with anger. ‘No, we are the Legion’s last hope.’

‘You are letting your emotion and your arrogance cloud your judgement, brother-captain,’ said Antiges, drawing in close.

‘Your loyalty deserts you, brother.’

Antiges bristled at the slight, but kept his composure.

‘What good is it if we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of loyalty?’ he urged. ‘This way, we at least stand a chance of saving our brothers.’

‘No,’ said Cestus with finality. ‘We would only condemn them to death. Courage and honour, Antiges.’

Cestus’s fellow Ultramarine saw the vehemence in his eyes, remembering his conviction that he knew some terrible peril was creeping towards Macragge and the Legion. His brother-captain had been right thus far, and suddenly Antiges felt shamed that his dogged pragmatism had so blinded him to that truth.

‘Courage and honour,’ he replied and clapped his hand upon Cestus’s shoulder in an apologetic gesture.

‘So, we follow them into the warp,’ Kaminska interrupted, assuming that the matter was settled. ‘We feign flight and get on the ship’s tail as soon as it readies to go into the Tertiary Core Transit,’ she added.

Cestus was about to give his assent when Helms-mate Kant delivered a report from the sensorium.

‘Impacts on the Boundless.’

The Boundless took longer to die than the Waning Moon.

Another volley of torpedoes sailed out from the Furious Abyss, this time in a tight corkscrew like a pack of predators arrowing in on the prey instead of spread out in a fan.

High explosives tipped the torpedo formation. They penetrated shields and used up the first volleys of turret fire from the Boundless.

The main body of the torpedoes were the same kind of bore-header cluster munitions that had ripped into the Waning Moon. A few magnetic pulse torpedoes were part of the volley, too. They ripped through the sensors of the Boundless and blinded it. There was no longer any need to conceal the full arsenal of the Furious Abyss.

Cluster explosions, like flowers of fire, blossomed down one flank of the Boundless. Shock waves rippled through the fighter bays, throwing attack craft aside like boats on a wave. Refuelling tanks exploded, their blooms lost in the torrents of flame that followed the first impacts. Fighter crews that had survived the madness of the attack runs were rewarded by being shredded by shrapnel or drowned in fire. The flank of the Boundless was chewed away as if it were ageing and decaying at an impossible rate, holes opening up and metal blackening and twisting to finally flake away like desiccated flesh.

The final torpedo wave had single warheads that forced enormous bullets of exotic metals at impossible speeds. They shot like lances from their housings, shrieking right through the Boundless and emerging from the other side, sowing secondary explosions of ignited fuel and vented oxygen, transfixing the carrier like spears of light.

Finally, the Furious Abyss took up position at medium range from the Imperial ship. It paused, as if observing the wracked vessel, sizing up the quarry one last time before the kill.

The plasma lance emerged, the energy building up and the barrel glowing. The surviving crew of the Boundless knew what was coming, but all their control systems were shot through. A few thrusters sputtered into life as the Boundless tried desperately to limp away from its would-be executioner, but the carrier was too big and badly wounded.

The plasma lance fired. It hit the Boundless amidships, at enough of an angle to rip through to the plasma reactors. The entire vessel glowed, the heat of the fusing plasma conducted through its structure and hull.

Then the plasma overspilled and, spitted like prey on the solid beam of the plasma lance’s light, the Boundless exploded.

From his imperious position on the bridge of the Furious Abyss, Zadkiel watched the burning wreck of the enemy cruiser flicker into lifeless darkness.

‘Glory to Lorgar,’ said Reskiel, who was standing behind him.

‘So it is written,’ Zadkiel replied.

‘Two vessels remain, my lord,’ added his second, obsequiously.

Zadkiel observed the tactical display. The remaining cruiser was intact, and the final escort being pursued by the Furious Abyss’s fighter wings would probably also escape.

‘By the time they get to Terra, it will be too late for any warning,’ Zadkiel said confidently. ‘The warp is with us. We risk far more tarrying here to hunt them down.’

‘I will instruct Navigator Esthemya that we are to enter the warp.’

‘Do so immediately,’ confirmed Zadkiel, his mind on the transpiring events and their impending foray into the empyrean.

Reskiel nodded and activated the ship’s vox-casters, transmitting Zadkiel’s relayed orders into the engine rooms and ordnance decks. ‘All crew, make ready for warp entry.’

‘Reskiel, have Master Malforian load the psionic charges,’ Zadkiel said as an afterthought. ‘Once we are in the warp, you will have the bridge. I will be inspecting the supplicants in the lower decks. Ensure Novice Ultis attends.’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ said Reskiel, bowing deeply. ‘And if the Ultramarines try to follow?’

‘Commend their souls to the warp,’ Zadkiel replied coldly.

The Wrathful went dark, to simulate the diversion of its power to the engines for escape. The entire bridge was drenched in shadow. The crew was stunned into sudden silence and, for a fraction of a second, stillness, as they struggled to comprehend what they had witnessed.

Kaminska was as quiet as the ship. She gripped the arms of her command throne tightly. Vorlov had been her friend.

‘A saviour pod jettisoned from the Waning Moon before its destruction, admiral,’ announced Helms-mate Venkmyer at the sensorium helm, breaking the silence.

‘Can you tell who is on board?’ asked Cestus, alongside the admiral, watching impotently as the Word Bearer vessel grew farther and farther away as the Wrathful made its mock retreat.

‘Lord Mhotep, sire,’ Venkmyer replied. ‘He’s on his way to us. I’ve instructed crews to be ready to retrieve him when he docks.’

‘Antiges, have Laeradis join the dock crews. Mhotep might be injured and in need of an apothecary.’

‘At once, brother-captain.’

Antiges turned and was about to head off again when Cestus added, ‘Disband the boarding parties and return to the bridge. Instruct Brynngar to do the same on my authority. Bring Saphrax and the Legion captains with you.’

The other Ultramarine nodded and went to his duties.

Saphrax arrived on the bridge with Antiges as ordered. Brynngar and Skraal joined them, feral belligerence and unfettered wrath increasing the already knife-edge tension.

With this many Astartes present, the bridge of the Wrathful felt very small. Saphrax wore his ceremonial honour guard armour, the gold of his armour plates glinting dully. Skraal, on the other hand, made do with little in the way of decoration. Cestus could not help noticing the kill-tallies on his chainaxe, bolt pistol and armour plates: a testament to violence. Killing was a matter of pride for the World Eaters and Skraal had several names etched on his shoulder pad, around the stylised devoured planet symbol of his Legion.

‘Battle-brothers, fellow captains,’ Cestus began as the Astartes present took position around the dead tactical display table. ‘We are to enter the empyrean and give chase to the Word Bearers. Our Navigators have discerned that they are on course for a stable warp route. Following them won’t be a problem.’

‘Though, facing them will,’ said Saphrax, ever the voice of reason. ‘That ship destroyed two cruisers and the same in frigates. What is your plan for overcoming such odds?’ It wasn’t an objection. Saphrax was not given to questioning the decisions of his superiors. In his mind, the hierarchy of command was absolute, and much like the Ultramarine’s posture, it would brook no bending.

‘If we go back to Terra,’ said Cestus, ‘we could try to raise the alarm. If the warp quietened then we could get a message to Macragge and forewarn the Legion.’ Cestus knew there was no conviction in his words as he spoke them.

‘You have already decided against that course, haven’t you, lad,’ said venerable Brynngar.

‘I have.’

The old wolf smiled, revealing his razor-sharp incisors. There was something stoic and powerful in the steel grey of his mane-like hair and beard, implacability in the creamy orb of his ruined eye and the ragged scars of previous battles. But for all the war-like trappings, the obvious martial prowess and savagery, there was wisdom, too.

‘When the sons of Russ march to war, they do not cease until battle is done,’ he said with the utmost conviction. ‘We will chase those curs into the eye of the warp if necessary and feast upon their traitorous hearts.’

‘The World Eaters do not flee when an enemy turns on them,’ offered Skraal with blood lust in his eyes. ‘We hunt them down and kill them. It’s the way of the Legion.’

Cestus nodded, appraising the brave warriors before him with great respect.

‘Make no mistake about this: we are at war,’ the Ultramarine warned them, finally. ‘We are at war with our brothers, and we must prosecute this fight with all the strength and conviction that we would bring against any foe of mankind. We do this in the name of the Emperor.’

‘In the name of the Emperor,’ growled Skraal.

‘Aye, for the Throne,’ Brynngar agreed.

Cestus bowed deeply.

‘Your fealty does me great honour. Prepare your battle-brothers for what is ahead. I will convene a council of war upon Captain Mhotep’s return to the Wrathful.’

Cestus noticed the snarl upon Brynngar’s face at the last remark, but it faded quickly as the Astartes took their leave and returned to their warriors.

‘Admiral Kaminska,’ said the Ultramarine, once the other Legionaries were gone.

Kaminska looked up at him. Dark rings had sunk around her eyes. ‘I shall have to prepare Navigator Orcadus. We can follow once the enemy is clear.’ She thumbed a vox-stud on the arm of her command throne. ‘Captain Ulargo, report.’

‘We’ve got mostly superficial damage; one serious deck leak,’ replied Ulargo on the Fireblade.

‘Make your ship ready. We’re following them,’ Kaminska told him.

‘Into the Abyss?’

‘Yes. Do you have any objections?’

‘Is this Captain Cestus’s order?’

‘It is,’ she said.

‘Then we’ll be in your wake,’ said Ulargo. ‘For the record, I do not believe a warp pursuit is the most suitable course of action in our current situation.’

‘Noted,’ said Kaminska. ‘Form up to follow us in.’

‘Yes, admiral,’ Ulargo replied.

As the vox went dead, Kaminska sagged in her command throne as if the battle and the comrades she had lost were weighing down on her.

‘Admiral,’ said Cestus, noting her discomfort, ‘are you still able to prosecute this mission?’

Kaminska whirled on the Ultramarine, her expression fierce and the rod at her back once more.

‘I may not have the legendary endurance of the Astartes, but I will see this through to the end, captain, for good or ill.’

‘You have my utmost faith, then,’ Cestus replied.

The voice of Helms-mate Venkmyer at the sensorium helm helped to ease the tension.

‘Captain Mhotep’s saviour pod is locked on,’ she said, ‘and the Fireblade has picked up additional survivors from the Waning Moon.’

‘What of the Boundless?’ asked Kaminska.

‘I’m sorry, admiral. There were none.’

Kaminska watched the tactical display on the screen above her as the Furious Abyss’s blip shivered and disappeared, leaving behind a trace of exotic particles.

‘Take us into that jump point and engage the warp engines,’ she ordered wearily, Venkmyer relaying them to the relevant parties aboard ship.

‘Captain Mhotep is secured, admiral,’ Venkmyer said afterwards.

‘Take us in.’

Aboard the Furious Abyss, the supplicants’ quarters were dark and infernally hot. The air was so heavy with chemicals that anyone other than an Astartes would have needed a respirator to survive.

The supplicants, sixteen of them in all, knelt by the walls of the darkened rooms. Their heads were bowed over their chests, but the shadows and darkness could not hide their swollen craniums and the way their features had atrophied as their skulls deformed to contain their grotesque brains. Thick tubes snaked down their noses and throats, hooking them to life support units mounted on the walls above. Wires ran from probes in their skulls. They were dressed neatly in the livery of the Word Bearers, for even in their comatose states they were servants of the Word just like the rest of the crew.

Three of the supplicants were dead. Their efforts in psychically assaulting the Imperial fighter squadrons had taxed them to destruction. The skull of one had ruptured, spilling rust-grey cortex over his chest and stomach. Another had apparently caught fire, and his blackened flesh still smouldered. The last was slumped at the back of the quarters, lolling over to one side.

Zadkiel entered the chamber. The sound of his footsteps and those of one other broke the hum of the life support systems.

‘This is the first time you have seen the supplicants, isn’t it?’ said Zadkiel.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Ultis, though his answer was not necessary.

Zadkiel turned to the novice. ‘Tell me, Ultis, what is your impression of them?’

‘I have none,’ the novice answered coldly. ‘They are loyal servants of Lorgar, as are we all. They sacrifice themselves in a holy cause to further his glory and the glory of the Word.’

Zadkiel smiled at the phlegmatic response. Such zeal, such unremitting fervour; this Ultis wore ambition like a medal of honour emblazoned upon his chest. It meant he was dangerous.

‘Justly spoken,’ offered Zadkiel. ‘Was it a worthy sacrifice?’ he added, probing the depths of the novice’s desire for advancement without him even knowing.

‘No one ever served the Word without understanding that they would eventually give the Word their life,’ Ultis responded carefully.

He is aware that I am testing him. He is more dangerous than I thought.

‘Very true,’ Zadkiel said out loud. ‘Still, some would think this sight distasteful.’

‘Then some do not deserve to serve.’

‘You always answer with such conviction, Ultis,’ said Zadkiel. ‘Are you so sure in your beliefs?’

Ultis turned to regard his lord directly. Neither of the Astartes wore a helmet, and their gazes locked in unspoken challenge.

‘I have faith in the Word. It is such that I need not hesitate; I need only speak and act.’

Zadkiel held the novice’s vehement gaze for a moment longer before he broke away willingly and knelt down by the third dead supplicant. The Word Bearer tipped its head upwards to reveal burned out eyes.

‘This is conviction, Ultis. This is adherence to the creed of Lorgar,’ Zadkiel told him.

‘Lorgar’s Word is powerful,’ Ultis affirmed. ‘None of his servants would ever forsake it.’

‘Perhaps, but think upon it. Many of our Legion have a seductive way with words. We are passionate about our lord primarch and his teachings. We are most talented in spreading that to others. Could it not be said that this blinds lesser men? That to blind them with such passion, and have them do our bidding, is no different to slavery?’

‘Even if it could be said,’ replied Ultis carefully, ‘it does not follow that we would be in the wrong. Perhaps some are more use to the galaxy as slaves than as free men, doing as their base instincts tell them.’

‘Were these men suited to being slaves?’ asked Zadkiel, indicating the supplicants.

‘Yes,’ said Ultis. ‘Psykers are dangerous when left to their own devices. The Word gave them another purpose.’

‘Then you would enslave others to do Lorgar’s will?’

Ultis thought about this. The novice was no fool, and would be well aware that Zadkiel was evaluating his every word, but failing to answer at all would be by far the most damning result.

‘It is better,’ said Ultis, ‘that lesser men like this lose their freedom than that the Word remains unspoken. Even if what we do is slavery, even if our passion is like a chain that holds them down, these are small prices to pay to see Lorgar’s Word enacted.’

Zadkiel stood up. ‘These supplicants will require some time to recover. Their psychic exertions have drained them. It is good that the weaker were winnowed out, at least. The warp will not be kind to them. You show remarkable tolerance, Novice Ultis. Many Astartes, even those of our Legion, would balk at the use of these supplicants.’

‘Those are the lengths to which we must go,’ said Ultis, ‘to fulfil the Word.’

Yes, very ambitious, Zadkiel decided.

‘How far would you go, Brother Ultis?’

‘To the very end.’

Driven, too.

Zadkiel smiled thinly.

Dangerous.

‘Then, there is little left to teach you,’ said the Word Bearer captain.

The vox-emitter in Zadkiel’s gorget chirped. ‘Master Malforian has indicated that he is ready,’ said Helms-mate Sarkorov.

Delegating already, are we Reskiel? thought Zadkiel, seeing rivals and potential usurpers in every exchange, every obsequious nod.

‘Deploy at once,’ said Zadkiel.

‘Yes, sire.’

‘They pursue us still?’ asked Ultis.

‘It was to be expected,’ Zadkiel replied. ‘Doubtless, some sense of duty compels them. They will soon learn the folly of that emotion.’

‘Pray enlighten me, my lord.’

Zadkiel considered the novice as he bowed before him.

‘Join me on the bridge, Brother Ultis,’ he said, ‘and merely watch.’

The warp was madness made real. It was another dimension where the rules of reality did not apply. The human mind was not evolved to comprehend it, for it had no rules or boundaries to define it. It was infinite, and infinitely varied. Only a Navigator, a highly specialised form of stable mutant, could look upon it and not go insane. Only he could allow a ship to travel the stable channels of the warp, fleeting as they were, and emerge through the other side. To traverse an unstable warp route, even with a Navigator’s guidance, would put a vessel at the capricious mercy of the empyrean tides.

The Furious Abyss had plunged into this sea. It was kept intact by a sheath of overlapping Geller fields, without which it would disintegrate as its component atoms ran out of reasons to stay neatly arranged in its metals.

From the ordnance bay, wrapped in its own complement of fields, emerged a large psionic mine, spinning rapidly as it tumbled away from the Word Bearers’ ship. Though not visible on the outside, within the mine’s inner core was a coterie of screaming psykers, insane with a poisonous vapour that had been pumped into the chamber and then hermetically sealed. Their combined death cry would send psionic ripples through the empyrean. With a flash of light, which bled away into emotion as it was absorbed into the warp, the mine and all its raving cargo detonated.

The warp quaked. Love and hate boiled and ran together like paint, the agony of billions of years breaking and shifting like spring ice. Mountains of hope crumbled, and oceans of lust drained into the nothingness of misery.

With a sound like every scream ever uttered, the Tertiary Core Transit collapsed.

Seven

Ghosts in the warp/Hellbound/Legacy of Magnus

‘Ulargo!’ shouted Kaminska. ‘You’re breaking up. I can barely hear you. Keep the fields up and get into our wake!’

The Wrathful, with the Fireblade in tow, had entered the infinite that was the warp. Interference from the rolling shadow sea had rendered vox traffic all but dead as the last vestiges of realspace fell away. The final transmissions from the escort ship were fraught with panic and desperation as the Fireblade encountered unknown difficulties during transit.

Ulargo’s voice was heavily distorted as he relayed a fragmentary message, the words dissolving into crackling non sequiturs. Strange waves of static flowed through the Wrathful’s bridge speakers, the short distance between it and the Fireblade filling up with the impossible geometries of the warp.

Entering the warp through a stable route, even guided by a Navigator, was dangerous. To do so once that route had collapsed and without the beacon of the Astronomican was nigh-on suicidal.

Admiral Kaminska swore beneath her breath, smashing her fist against the arm of her command throne in frustration.

‘The link is severed,’ she muttered darkly.

‘We’ll get no further contact with the Fireblade until we leave warpspace, admiral,’ said Venkmyer.

Kaminska and her crew were alone on the bridge. Captain Cestus and the other Astartes had convened in one of the vessel’s many conference rooms to receive Captain Mhotep, find out what he knew and formulate some kind of plan.

The mood was subdued because of the warp transit, and the unknown fate of the Fireblade had not alleviated the grim demeanour that pervaded on the bridge.

‘I know, helmsmistress,’ Kaminska answered with resignation.

The Wrathful shuddered. Warning lights flickered up and down the bridge, and in the decks beyond klaxons sounded.

‘We’re on full collision drill,’ Helms-mate Kant informed them.

‘Good,’ said the admiral. ‘Keep us there.’

The whole bridge heaved sideways, scattering navigational instruments and tactical manuals. Kant grabbed the edge of a map table to keep his footing with the sudden warp turbulence.

‘At your command,’ he replied.

Kaminska sat back in her command throne, exhausted. She had finally come up against a problem she couldn’t solve with tactical acumen and audacity. The Astartes captain of the Ultramarines had put her in this situation, and for all her loyalty to the Imperium and the greater glory of mankind, she resented him for it. Lo Thulaga, Vargas, Abrax Vann of the Fearless and now Ulargo, all gone. Vorlov, of the Boundless, had been her friend and he too had fallen ignominiously in pursuit of an unbeatable foe at the behest of a reckless angel of the Emperor.

Now, in the thrall of the warp and impotent as she was, trusting to her Navigator to guide them out safely, Kaminska’s anger was only magnified.

‘Helms-mate, get me Officer Huntsman of the Watch,’ she ordered with forced resolve.

‘Admiral,’ said Huntsman’s voice over the vox array after a few moments.

‘Assemble your best men and have them patrol decks. I don’t want any surprises or unforeseen accidents during transit,’ she replied. ‘Any signs, any at all, and you know what to do.’

‘I shall prosecute my duty with due and lethal diligence, admiral,’ Huntsman responded.

Huntsman killed the vox link and turned to the three armsmen waiting patiently for him in the upper deck barracks. They were equipped with pistols and shock mauls and light flak jackets. The four men stood in a small group, their features cast with deep shadows from the low-level lighting that persisted whilst the Wrathful was in warp transit. The rest of the barrack room, all gunmetal with stark walls and bunks, was empty.

‘Four teams, decks three through eighteen,’ said Huntsman with curt and level-headed precision. ‘I want regular reports from the below decks overseers, every half hour.’

The three armsmen nodded and left to gather the enforcers.

As Officer of the Watch, it was Huntsman’s job to ensure that order and discipline were maintained aboard ship. He was brutal in that duty, an unshakeable enforcer who suffered no insubordination. He had killed many men in pursuit of his duty and felt no remorse for it.

Warp psychosis could affect any man, and even Huntsman, though possessed of a stronger will than most, felt its presence, even through the shielding of the Geller fields surrounding the ship that acted as a barrier against the empyrean. He had seen many suffering from the malady, and it took many forms. Both physical and mental abnormalities could present themselves: hair loss, babbling, catatonia, even homicidal dementia, were common. Huntsman had the cure for each and every one of them sitting snugly in his hip holster.

Wiping a hand across his closely-cropped hair, Huntsman checked the load in his sidearm and patiently awaited the return of his men.

Cestus, Antiges and the other Astartes captains sat around a lacquered hexagonal table in one of the Wrathful’s conference rooms. Wood panelling decorated the room and gave it false warmth, despite its obvious militaristic austerity. Plaques hung on the walls describing the deeds of the many great commanders, captains and admirals that had served in the Saturnine fleet. Kaminska’s was amongst them. Her roll of honour was long and distinguished.

There were several artefacts too: crossed cutlasses, an antique pistol and other traditional oceanic trappings. Presiding over all was an icon that spoke of the new age. The Imperial eagle was the symbol of the Emperor’s War of Unification and a symbol of the union between Mars and Terra. It was a stark reminder of all they were fighting for and the fragility inherent within it.

‘As soon as we leave warp we get into their wake and launch boarding torpedoes at their blind side. Let the fury of the wolf gut this prey from within!’ snarled Brynngar. The Wolf Guard, unlike the rest of them, was on his feet and had taken to pacing the room.

‘They would shoot our torpedoes down before they even breached their shields,’ countered Mhotep. The Thousand Son had been given the all-clear by Apothecary Laeradis after his ship had been destroyed and was keen to attend the council. ‘And should they not,’ he added, before the Wolf Guard could protest, ‘we do not know what kind of armour they have or what forces are onboard. No, we must be patient and wait until the Furious Abyss is vulnerable.’

The debate as to how to stop the Word Bearers had been raging for over an hour. In that time, Mhotep had revealed what little he knew: the name of the vessel and its admiral, the weapon systems that had crippled his vessel and the heresy embraced by the Word Bearers. He neglected to speak of Zadkiel’s offer of alliance, leaving that to his own counsel. Despite the heated arguments, little had been agreed upon, other than that they were committed to their current course of action and that an all-out assault upon the Furious Abyss was tantamount to suicide.

‘Bah! Typical of the sons of Magnus to advise caution in the face of action,’ bellowed the Space Wolf, his feelings for the Thousand Son as direct and pointed as his demeanour.

‘I agree with the wolf,’ said Skraal. ‘I cannot abide waiting in the dark. If we are to sacrifice our lives to ensure the destruction of our enemies then so be it.’

‘Aye!’ Brynngar agreed, making the most of the support. ‘Any other course smacks of cowardice.’

Mhotep bristled at the slight and looked unshakeably into the feral grin that had crept across the Space Wolf’s savage features, but he would not be goaded.

‘This gets us nowhere,’ Cestus broke in. ‘We know for certain that the Astartes aboard that ship have turned traitor. What that means for the rest of the seventeenth Legion, I do not know. Certainly, the Mechanicum built the vessel and that raises further questions about the nature of its construction. The fact it was kept secret suggests complicity on their part, at least to some degree.’

Cestus allowed a moment’s pause before he spoke.

‘Something is deeply wrong. It is my belief that the Word Bearers are allied against my Legion, and, in so doing, against the Emperor too. They have supporters in the Mechanicum. How else could such a vessel have been made yet none of us have known of it?’

At that remark the Astartes were united in a common purpose. What the Word Bearers had committed was an outright act of war, but it smacked of something more. Though they had their differences, the sons of the Emperor were all siblings after a fashion. They would fight and die together against a common enemy. The Word Bearers were now just such a foe.

‘What then are we to do?’ Brynngar asked at last, his choleric mood abating, even though he cast a baleful glance at the Thousand Son sitting opposite.

Cestus caught the path of the Space Wolf’s gaze, but ignored it for the moment.

‘We must find a way to disable the ship. Attack it when it is vulnerable,’ the Ultramarines captain told them. ‘For we are at least agreed that our enemy is our brother no longer. They shall be destroyed for this treachery, but not before I find out how deep it goes. The Warmaster must know of the enemies arrayed against him. So, for now, we follow the ship and await our opening.’

‘Still sounds like cowardice to me,’ grumbled Brynngar, taking his seat at last and slouching back in it.

Cestus got to his feet quickly, fixing the Space Wolf with a steely gaze.

‘Do not dishonour me or your Legion further,’ he warned.

The Wolf Guard matched the Ultramarine’s hard stare, but nodded, grumbling his assent beneath his breath.

Mhotep remained silent throughout the exchange, as ever careful to mask his thoughts.

Cestus sat back down, regarding the animosity of his brother Astartes sternly. The Great Crusade had united the Legions in common purpose. Many were the times that he had fought alongside both the sons of Russ and Magnus. Yes, the primarchs each had their differences, and this was passed down to their Legions, and though they bickered like brothers, they were as one. He could not believe that the foundation of their bonds, and the bonds between all of the Legions, were so fragile that by merely putting them in a room together outright war would be declared. What the Word Bearers had done was an aberration. It was the exception, not the rule.

The walls of the conference chamber shook violently, interrupting Cestus’s thoughts.

Brynngar sniffed at the air.

‘The stink of the warp is thick,’ he snarled, with a glance at Mhotep despite himself.

Another tremor struck the room, threatening to tip the Astartes off their feet. Warning klaxons howled in the corridors beyond and the decks below.

Mhotep gazed into the reflective sheen of the conference table, before looking up at Cestus. ‘Our passage through the empyrean has been compromised,’ he told him.

The Ultramarine returned the Thousand Son’s gaze.

‘Antiges,’ he said, his eyes still upon Mhotep, ‘accompany me to the bridge.’

Cestus turned to address the gathering.

‘This isn’t over. We reconvene once we have left warpspace.’

Muttered agreement answered him, and Cestus and Antiges left for the bridge.

‘I take it you have come to find out why our transit isn’t exactly smooth, my lord,’ said Admiral Kaminska, who was standing next to her command throne. She had been appraising tactical data garnered from the disastrous battle against the enemy ship and was in close conversation with Venkmyer, her helmsmistress, when Cestus arrived on the bridge. Alongside the strategic display was the sudden fluctuation in the external warp readings.

‘Your instincts are correct, admiral,’ Cestus replied. Despite their shared experience fighting the Furious Abyss and the obvious validation of his mission, Kaminska’s demeanour towards the Ultramarine was still icy. Cestus had hoped it would have thawed slightly in the cauldron of battle, but he had effectively taken her ship, despite her experience and her knowledge. Though Cestus was a fleet commander and his naval tactical acumen was superior to Kaminska’s, given that he was an Astartes, he had trampled on her command as if it was nothing. It did not sit well with him, but needs must in the situation they were in. Macragge, maybe more besides, was at stake. Cestus could feel it, and that burden must rest squarely on his shoulders. That meant taking command of the mission. If it also meant that he had to put a vaunted Imperial admiral’s nose out of joint then so be it.

‘I am about to visit my chief Navigator for an explanation, if you would like to accompany me.’ Kaminska’s attempt at being cordial was forced as she left the command dais.

Both Cestus and Antiges were about to follow when she added.

‘The Navigator sanctum is small, captain. There will only be room for one of you.’

Cestus turned to Antiges, who nodded his understanding and took up a ready position at the bridge.

In the close confines of the Navigator sanctum, Cestus felt the bulk of his power armour as never before. The tiny isolation chamber above the bridge, where Orcadus and his lesser cohorts dwelt whilst in warp transit, was bereft of the ornamentation ubiquitous in the rest of the ship. Bare walls and grey gunmetal austerity housed a trio of translucent blister-like pods in which the Navigators achieved communion with the Astronomican and traversed the capricious ebbs and flows of warpspace.

Kaminska who was looking less dignified than usual in the cramped space next to the Astartes, addressed her chief Navigator.

‘Orcadus.’

There was a moment’s pause and then a hooded and wizened face appeared in the central blister, blurred through the translucent surface. There was the suggestion of wires and circuitry hanging down from some unseen cogitator in the domed ceiling of the pod.

‘What has happened?’ asked Kaminska.

With a hiss of hydraulics, the central blister broke apart like petals on a rose and Orcadus emerged through a gaseous cloud of vapour, rising as if from a pit.

‘Greetings, admiral,’ said Orcadus, his voice low and rasping outside of the blister, as if he were struggling to speak. The Navigator’s skin was a sweaty grey and he wheezed as he breathed. ‘When I was preparing to enter the warp and traverse the Tertiary Coreward Transit as instructed, the empyrean ocean swirled and split.’

‘Make your explanations brief please, Navigator, I am needed at the bridge,’ Kaminska prompted.

Cestus was gladdened to see that her ire was not reserved for Astartes hijacking her ship.

Though much of Orcadus’s face was concealed by his hood, Cestus could see a tic of consternation on his lip. All Navigators possessed a third eye, and it was this tolerated mutation that allowed them to plot a course through the warp. To look into that eye would drive a normal man insane.

‘The Tertiary Coreward Transit is down,’ he explained simply. ‘I had detected a worsening of the abyssal integrity, prior to the collapse, but we were already too far engaged in the warp to turn back,’ he said.

‘How is this possible?’ Cestus asked. ‘How did the enemy collapse the route?’

Orcadus’s attention fell on the Astartes for the first time during the exchange. If he thought anything of the Ultramarine’s presence in his sanctum, he did not show it.

‘They deployed some kind of psionic mine,’ Orcadus replied. ‘The effect would have been felt by our astropaths. As of now, we are sailing the naked abyss,’ he stated, switching his attention back to Kaminska. ‘What are your orders, admiral?’

Kaminska could not keep the shock from her face. To be effectively cut adrift in the warp was a death sentence, one that she was powerless to do anything about.

‘We follow the enemy vessel and stay in its wake as best we can,’ said Cestus, cutting in. ‘They are bound for Macragge.’

‘From Segmentum Solar to Ultramar, outside stable routes?’

‘Yes.’

‘The chances of success would be minimal, my lord,’ Orcadus warned without emotion.

‘Even so, that is our course,’ Cestus told him.

Orcadus considered for a moment before replying.

‘I can use their vessel as a point of reference, like a beacon, and follow it, but I cannot speak for the warp. If the abyss sees fit to devour us or make us its prey then the matter is out of my hands.’

‘Very well, chief Navigator, you may return to your duties,’ Cestus told him.

Orcadus bowed almost imperceptibly and, just before retreating back to his station, said, ‘There are things abroad in the empyrean, the native creatures of the abyss. A shoal of them follows the enemy ship. The warp around it is in tumult, as it has been in the abyss these last several months. It does not bode well.’

At that Orcadus took his leave, swallowed up into the blister once more.

Cestus made no remark. In his experiences as a fleet commander, he was all too aware of the creatures that lurked in the warp. He did not know their nature, but he had seen their forms before and knew they were dangerous. He did not doubt that Kaminska knew of them, too.

With a shared looked of understanding, Cestus and Kaminska left the sanctum and headed back down through a sub-deck tunnel that led to the bridge. They had been walking for several minutes before the Ultramarine broke the charged silence.

‘Your attitude towards me and this mission has been noted, admiral.’

Kaminska breathed deep as if trying to master her emotions and then turned.

‘You took my ship and usurped my command, how would you feel?’ she snapped.

‘You serve the Emperor, admiral,’ Cestus told her in a warning tone. ‘You’d do well to remember that.’

‘I am no traitor, Captain Cestus,’ she replied angrily, standing her ground against the massive Astartes despite his obvious bulk and superior height. ‘I am a loyal servant of the Imperium, but you have ridden roughshod over my authority and my ship for a chase into shadows and probable death. I will lay my life on the altar of victory if I must, but I will not do so meaninglessly and without consideration.’

Cestus’s face was an unreadable mask as he considered the admiral’s words.

‘You are right, admiral. You have shown nothing but courage and honour throughout this endeavour and I have repaid it with ignorance and scorn. This is not fitting behaviour for a member of the Legion and I offer my humble apology.’

Kaminska was taken aback, her expression sketched into a defiant response. At last, her face softened and she exhaled her anger instead.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ she said quietly.

Cestus bowed slowly to acknowledge the admiral’s gratitude.

‘I shall meet you on the bridge,’ said the Astartes and departed.

When Cestus was gone, Kaminska realised that she was shaking. The vox array crackling into life got her attention.

‘Admiral?’ said Helmsmistress Venkmyer’s voice through the conduit wall unit.

‘Speak,’ Kaminska answered after a moment as she mustered her composure.

‘We’ve made contact with the Fireblade.’

Aft decks three through six of the Wrathful were clear. Most of the non-essential crew were locked down in isolation cells for their own protection. For Huntsman and his small band of three armsmen, it was like patrolling the halls of a ghost ship.

‘Squad Barbarus, report.’ Huntsman’s voice broke the grave-like silence as he strafed a handheld lume-lamp back and forth across the corridor. Shadows recoiled from the grainy blade of light, throwing archways and alcoves into sharp relief.

Huntsman could feel the tension of his men, drawn up in ‘V’ formation behind him as the radio-silence from the vox-bead in the officer’s ear persisted.

‘Squad Barbarus,’ he repeated, adjusting his grip on the service pistol outstretched in his hand next to the lume-lamp by way of nervous reflex.

Huntsman was about to send two of his armsmen in search of the errant squad when the vox crackled.

‘Squad Barb… report… experiencing interfer… all clear.’ The clipped reply was fraught with static, but Huntsman was satisfied.

The Officer of the Watch was breathing a sigh of relief when a figure darted across a T-junction ahead, picked out briefly in the light beam.

‘Who goes there?’ he asked sternly. ‘Identify yourself at once!’

Huntsman moved to the T-junction quickly, but with measured caution, using battle-sign to order his armsmen to fan out behind him and cover his flanks.

Reaching the end of the corridor, Huntsman looked left, strafing the light beam quickly.

‘Sir, I’ve got him. This way,’ said one of the armsmen, checking down the opposite channel.

Huntsman turned, in time to see the same figure disappearing down another corridor. He could swear he was wearing deck crew fatigues, but they weren’t the colours for the Wrathful.

‘This area is locked down,’ barked Huntsman, heart racing. ‘This is your final warning. Make yourself known at once.’

Silence mocked him.

‘Weapons ready,’ Huntsman hissed and stalked off down the corridor, armsmen in tow.

After the disastrous war council in the conference room, Mhotep had taken his leave of the other Astartes and retired to one of the Wrathful’s isolation cells, intending to meditate for the remainder of their transit through the warp. In truth, the confrontation with the Space Wolf had vexed him, more-so his loss of control in the face of Brynngar’s berating, and he sought the solitude of his own company to gather his resolve.

Mhotep reached down to the compartment in his armour that contained the wand-stave rescued from the Waning Moon. Seeing that the item was intact, he muttered an oath to his primarch. Sitting upon a bench in the cell, the only furnishing in an otherwise Spartan room, Mhotep regarded the wand-stave. In particular, he scrutinised a silvered speculum at the item’s tip and stared into its depths.

Focusing his thoughts, Mhotep slipped into a meditative trance as he considered the events unfolding, drawing on the mental acumen for which his Legion was famed.

An anomalous flicker, something inconsistent and intangible, flashed into existence abruptly and was gone.

The Geller field, Mhotep realised. It was the soft caress of the unfettered warp that he had felt, so brief, so infinitesimal that only one of Magnus’s progeny, one with their honed psychic awareness, could have detected it.

And something else… Though this, for now at least, slipped beyond Mhotep’s mental grasp like tendrils of smoke through his fingers.

The Thousand Son broke off the trance at once and returned the wand-stave to its compartment in his armour. Donning his helmet, he headed for the Wrathful’s primary dock.

Captain Ulargo sat strapped into his command throne as the warp breached the blast doors at the back of the Fireblade’s bridge. All around him was chaos as the hapless crew screamed and thrashed in terror as their minds were unravelled by the warp. Some were already dead, killed by flying debris or simply torn apart as the warp vented its wrath upon them. Ulargo’s calm in the face of certain disaster, with chunks of metal hull tearing away into nothing as his bridge was disassembled, was unnerving. The entire chamber was cast in an eldritch light and strange riotous winds buffeted crew and captain alike.

‘It goes on… it goes on forever,’ he said, his voice caught halfway between wonderment and fear. ‘I can see my father, and my brothers. I can hear them… calling me.’

They had entered the empyrean in the Wrathful’s wake in accordance with Admiral Kaminska’s orders, but upon the collapse of the Tertiary Coreward Transit, their Gellar fields had suffered catastrophic failure, leaving them undefended against the raw emotions of warp space.

It had already changed the place. The bridge shimmered with the skies of Io and the canyons of Mimas, the places where Ulargo had grown up and trained as a pilot in the Saturnine Fleet. The corpses of the navigation crew, slumped over the sextant array, had sprouted into Ganymedian mangrove trees, twisted roots looping through the steel floor of the bridge that in turn was seething with river grass. Waterfalls ghosted over reality, shoals of fish leaping through the shattered viewport. Ulargo wanted very much to be there, back in the places that lived on only in his memory, back when he had been a boy and the universe had felt so infinite and full of wonders.

He held out his hands and felt them brush against the reeds that grew by the River Scamandros on Io. Reptilian birds wheeled in a sky that he could somehow see beyond the torn ceiling of the bridge, as if the torn metal and loops of severed cabling were in another dimension and the reality in his head was bleeding through.

He stepped forwards. The rest of the crew were dead, but that did not mean anything any more. They were ghosts, too.

The stuff of the warp seethed through the blast doors and caught Ulargo up in a swirl of raw emotions. He filled up with regret, then fear, then love, each feeling so powerful that he was just a conduit for them, a hollow man to be buffeted by the warp: the way his father’s eyes lit up with pride when he received his first commission. The grief in his mother’s eyes, for she knew so many who had lost sons to the void. The fury of space, the ravenous vacuum, the thirsting void, that he always knew one day would devour him. In the warp they were ideas made as real as the mountains of Enceladus.

The side of the bridge gave away. The air boomed out and flung the corpses of the bridge crew out with it. One of the bodies was not yet dead, and in the back of his mind, Ulargo recognised that another human being was dying.

Then he saw the warp beyond the Fireblade.

Titanic masses of emotion went on forever, seen not with his eyes, but with his mind: rolling incandescent mountains of Passion, an ocean of grief, leading down to infinity through caves of misery, dripping with the poison of anger.

Hatred was a distant sky, heaving down onto the warp, smothering. Love was a sun. The winds that stripped away the hull of the Fireblade were fingers of malice.

It was wondrous. Ulargo was filled with the sight of it; no, not the sight, but the sheer experience, for the warp was not composed of light, but of emotion, and to experience it was to let it speak to the most fundamental parts of his soul.

The sky of hatred split apart and a yawning mouth opened up above Ulargo’s soul. Teeth of wrath framed the maw. Beyond it was a black mass, seething like a pit of vermin. It was terror.

Mouths were opening up everywhere. Mindless things, like sharks made of malicious glee, slid between the thunderheads of passion. They snatched at the soul-specks of the Fireblade’s crew, teeth like knives through what remained of their minds.

Even love was turning on them, filling them in their last moments of existence with a horrendous longing for all the things they would never have, and appalling, consuming grief for everything they once had, but would never see again.

The maw bore down on Ulargo. Teeth closed in on him, an appalling coldness sheared through him and he knew that it was the purity of death.

The boiling mass seethed. The last vestiges of his physical self recoiled as worms forced themselves into a nose and mouth that no longer existed.

The warp turned dark, and Ulargo drowned in fear.

Admiral Kaminska reached the bridge to find an ashen-faced crew before her. Cestus had just arrived, his countenance stern and pensive as the distress signal emanating from the Fireblade repeated on the ship-to-ship vox.

‘This… Ulargo… Fireblade… damaged in transit… request dock… repairs…’

‘Impossible,’ said Kaminska, feeling all colour drain from her face as she heard the voice of a man she thought was dead. ‘Vox traffic is rendered null whilst in warp transit.’

‘Admiral, the Fireblade claims to be abeam to our port side,’ offered Helms-mate Kant as he monitored further communications.

Kaminska looked instinctively over to the viewport and, despite the shimmering interference caused by the Geller field, she could see Ulargo’s ship, a little battered by the initial sortie against the Furious Abyss, but otherwise fine.

Common sense warred with the emotions of her heart. Ulargo was a comrade in arms. Kaminska had thought him lost and now she had an opportunity to save him.

‘Guide them in to make dock at once.’

Huntsman had chased the elusive figure to a dead end in the complex of corridors aboard Aft Deck Three of the Wrathful. Doors punctuated the apparently endless passageways that led into more barrack rooms and occasionally isolation cells.

As he approached slowly, drawing the lume-lamp across the figure’s body, he noticed that his quarry faced the wall. He also saw the fatigues it was wearing more clearly. It was the deck uniform of the Fireblade.

‘Halt,’ he ordered the figure sternly, with a quick glance behind to ensure that his armsmen were still in support.

From the back, he judged the figure to be male, but a scraggly wretch to be sure with unkempt hair like wire and a stench that suggested he hadn’t washed in many days.

Huntsman activated the vox-bead.

‘Bridge, this is Officer Huntsman. I have detained a male deck crew in Aft-Three,’ he said. ‘He appears to be wearing a Fireblade uniform.’

Helms-mate Kant’s response came through crackling static.

‘Repeat. Did you say the Fireblade?’

‘Affirmative – a deck hand from the Fireblade,’ Huntsman replied, edging closer.

‘That’s impossible. The Fireblade has only just docked with us.’

Huntsman felt a cold chill run down his marrow as the figure turned.

Somehow, the light from the lume-lamp wasn’t able to illuminate a belt of shadow across the top of the figure’s head and eyes, but Huntsman saw its mouth well enough. The deck hand made a wide, gash-like smile with rotten lips caked in dry blood.

‘In the name of Terra,’ Huntsman breathed as the figure’s jaw distended impossibly wide and revealed dozens of needle-like teeth. Fingers lengthened into talons, nails drenched in blood and razor-sharp. Eyes flashed red in the darkness, like orbs of hate. Huntsman fired.

On the bridge, rending screams and scattered gunfire emitted from the vox followed by an almighty static discharge that ended in total silence.

‘Raise the Officer of the Watch at once!’ Kaminska ordered.

Kant worked at the array, but looked up after a few minutes.

‘There is no response, admiral.’

Kaminska snarled, hammered an icon on her command throne and opened another channel.

‘Primary dock, respond. This is Admiral Kaminska. Disengage from the Fireblade at once,’ she said, shouting the orders.

Nothing. Communications were dead.

A warning klaxon sounded on the bridge. Seconds later, the Wrathful shook with external hull detonations.

‘Admiral,’ cried Helmsmistress Venkmyer, ‘I’m reading armour damage to the port side, upper decks. How is that even possible?’

‘The Fireblade is firing its dorsal turrets,’ she answered grimly.

‘It seems Ulargo’s ship survived after all,’ said Cestus, donning his battle helm, Antiges following his lead, ‘only not in the way we had hoped.

‘All Astartes,’ he barked into his helmet vox, mercifully unaffected by the radio blackout, ‘convene on Aft-Three, Primary Dock, immediately.’

A long, low scream keened through the Wrathful, vibrating through the hull, then another and another until a chorus of them was shrieking through the ship. It sounded like the death screams of hundreds of terrified men.

Mhotep lowered his smoking boltgun once he had dispatched the creature back to the ether. He had arrived too late to save the Officer of the Watch and his arms-men who lay eviscerated on the floor and part way up the blood-slicked walls.

The thing had been warp spawn, that much was apparent, wearing a shadow form of one of the Fireblade’s crew rather than inhabiting a body directly. The momentary breach in the Wrathful’s Geller field had allowed it aboard ship. Mhotep’s instincts told him that it was just a harbinger, and he headed off quickly to the Primary Dock.

Crewmen were hurrying down the Wrathful’s corridors, and they struggled to get past the bulky armoured Astartes as he fought to gain the Primary Dock. The engine sections started just stern-wards of the shuttle decks and the ship was getting up to full evasion power.

Shouldering past the frantic crew, Mhotep saw another figure impeding his progress, but one of flesh and blood, standing rock-like in grey power armour.

‘Brynngar,’ said the Thousand Son levelly at the Space Wolf who had just emerged from an adjacent corridor.

The World Eater, Skraal, with two of his Legion brothers appeared suddenly alongside him from the opposite corridor. Standing at the intersection of the crossroads, a strange sense of impasse existed for a moment before the Wolf Guard snarled and turned away, heading for the Primary Dock.

The five Astartes emerged into chaos.

Men and women of the Wrathful fled in all directions, screaming and shouting. Some brandished weapons, others sought higher ground only to be torn down and butchered. Blood swilled like a slick on the dock as the attendant deck crews of the Wrathful were torn apart by fell apparitions dressed in the garb of the Fireblade. The crew of the lost escort ship had changed. Their mouths were long and wide as if fixed in a perpetual sadistic grin. Needle-like fangs filled their distended maws like those of the long-extinct Terran shark, while long, barbed fingers curled like claws tearing at skin, flesh and bone.

They fell upon the human deck crews with reckless abandon and were devouring them, the bloodied rotten faces of the gruesome predators alive with glee.

‘In the name of Russ,’ Brynngar breathed as he saw the docking ports that joined the two ships disgorge numberless hordes of twisted Fireblade crew.

‘They are warp spawn!’ Mhotep told them, drawing his scimitar, ‘wearing the bodies of our allies, whose souls are now hell-bound, lost to the empyrean. Destroy them.’

Brynngar threw his head back and roared, the sound eerie and resonant from within the confines of his battle helm. With Felltooth in one hand and bolt pistol in the other, he charged into the fray.

Skraal and the World Eaters followed, brandishing chainaxes and bellowing the name of Angron.

A trio of vampire-like warp spawn fell under the withering report of Mhotep’s bolter as he trudged across the Primary Dock and through the visceral mire sloshing at his feet. The copper stink assailing his nostrils would have overpowered a normal man, but the Thousand Son crushed the sensation and closed with the enemy.

Barks of bolter fire were tinny and echoing through his helmet as he cut down an advancing warp spawn, parting its sternum and decapitating it with the return swing. The hordes were everywhere and soon surrounded him. The muzzle-flare from his weapon illuminated the grim destruction he wrought with flashing intermittence, the keening wail of his scimitar a high-pitched chorus to the din of explosive fire.

He felt something trying to push at the edges of his mind, testing his psychic defences with tentative mental probing. Slogging through the despicable horde, he was drawn closer to the source of it, even as it was drawn to him, and he felt the pressure on his sanity increase.

Brynngar shrugged off a creature clinging to his arm and smashed it with Felltooth, the rune axe cutting through wasted bone like air. He thrust his bolt pistol into another and used the warp spawn’s momentum to lift it from the ground. Triggering the weapon, he blasted the creature apart in a shower of bone and viscera. Then the Space Wolf lunged and butted a third, almost dissolving its rotted cranium against his battle helm. Gore and brain matter spoiled his vision, and Brynngar wiped his helmet visor clean with the back of his gauntleted hand.

With the destruction of the physical body, the warp spawn appeared to lose their hold on the material plane and dissipated. They were easy meat. Brynngar had fought far hardier foes, but in such swarms they were starting to tax him. Even his gene-enhanced musculature burned after the solid fighting. For every three the Wolf Guard slew, another six took their place, pouring like rancid ants from the docking portals.

Brynngar realised to his dismay, hacking down another spawn, that gradually he was being pushed back.

He caught sight of Skraal through the melee. The World Eater was similarly pressed, though a bloody mist surrounded him from the churning punishment wreaked by his chainaxe. He could not see Skraal’s fellow Legionaries; Brynngar assumed they had been swallowed by the horde.

A sudden tearing of metal, mangled with the sound of tortured souls, rent the air, and Brynngar felt the deck lurch from under him as it seemed to twist in on itself.

The integrity fields, which kept the dock pressurised when the dock ports were open, flickered once, but held. The physical structure did not. A huge chunk ripped out of the deck as if bitten by unseen jaws, three decks high. Debris was tumbling out into the ether. Brynngar looked away, for to do otherwise would be to comprehend the naked warp and embrace madness.

Something stirred beyond the breach, out in the infinite. Brynngar felt it as the hackles rose on the back of his neck and the feral nature of his Legion became suddenly emboldened. For a brief moment, the Space Wolf wanted to tear off his helmet and gauntlets and gorge himself on flesh like a beast of the wild. He backed away of his own volition, realising that something primal and terrible was with them on the dock.

Mhotep had forced his way to the docking portals, through a swathe of warp spawn. His armour was dented and scratched from their ether claws and his body heaved with exhaustion. It was not physical prowess that would save them here, but the discipline of the mind that needed to hold fast.

Mhotep had felt the presence, too, and standing before the docking portal he beheld it in his mind’s eye. It was dark and seething: a pure predator.

‘It has seen me,’ he said calmly into his helmet vox, the warp spawn hordes recoiling suddenly from the Thousand Son, regarding him in the same way a Prosperine spirehawk regards its prey. ‘I cannot hide from it now.’

Brynngar was almost back to back with Skraal, the two Astartes having been fought back to the blast doors, when he heard Mhotep through his vox.

‘Seen what?’ snarled the Space Wolf, gutting another warp spawn as Skraal cleaved the arm from another.

‘You cannot prevail here,’ the voice of Mhotep came again. ‘Get out and seal the doors. I will remain and activate the dock’s auto-destruct sequence.’

Many vessels of the Imperial Fleet came with such precautionary measures built in to their design by the Mechanicum. They were meant as weapons of last resort, should a ship be overrun and in danger of capture. If a ship could not be defended or retaken from an enemy then it would be denied to them utterly, although in this case, Mhotep’s sacrifice would not destroy the ship, only vanquish the foes that were besieging it.

‘Do so now!’ urged the Thousand Son.

Brynngar had lost sight of him, though his view was curtailed as he forced himself to look away from the tear into the naked warp beyond. Although it rankled, the Space Wolf knew when he was chasing a lost cause.

‘Come on,’ he snarled to Skraal who hacked and hewed with berserk fury, ‘we are leaving.’

‘The sons of Angron do not flee the enemy,’ he raged in response.

‘Even so,’ Brynngar said, smashing a warp spawn aside. Ducking a blood-maddened sweep of Skraal’s chainaxe, he punched the World Eater hard in the chest with the flat of his hand. The stunned Astartes was lifted off his feet and sent sprawling through the open blast doors. Brynngar trudged after Skraal’s prone form, carving a path through the horde with Felltooth.

A few of the warp spawn had found their way through to the other side of the blast doors that led from the Primary Dock. Brynngar was about to hunt them down when a barrage of bolter fire scythed through them like wheat.

Inside his battle helm, the Space Wolf grinned as he saw the battered forms of the Ultramarines.

‘Down!’ cried Cestus who was leading the group, and Brynngar hit the deck as a fusillade of fire erupted overhead.

Arching his neck, the Space Wolf saw the smoking bodies of more warp spawn fall into a heap at the dock threshold. Swinging out a hand, he thumped the portal icon and the blast doors slid shut with a hydraulic pressure-hiss.

‘We must seal the doors,’ he snarled, rolling on his back as Antiges, Morar and Lexinal charged past him to guard the portal.

Stripping away the verisimilitude of the warp spawn crew, Mhotep saw that they were not separate entities at all. They were the extension of a single conjoined conscious, raw emotion given form. Tentacles snaked from three gaping maws lined with cruel teeth that had once been the docking portals, and flesh sacks like finger puppets danced along them.

As he stepped forward, he brandished his scimitar, a power sword engraved with hieroglyphics: the old tongue of Prospero. Mhotep was acutely aware of the blast doors shutting behind him, though the sound was far off, as if listened to in a separate dimension from the one he currently inhabited. Realising he was alone, the Thousand Son tapped into the innate power of his Legion, the psychic mutation common to all sons and daughters of Prospero that had earned Magnus the condemnation of Nikea. Mhotep’s power, like that of all the Astartes of his Legion, was honed to a rapier-like point and when properly channelled could be deadly. The nay-sayers of Nikea had been right to fear it.

Mhotep stowed his bolter, for it would not avail him here, and drew forth the wand-stave. Inputting a rune sequence, played out in the jewels along its short haft, the item extended into the length of a staff. Holding the weapon up to his helmet lens, Mhotep peered through the speculum at the tip. The tiny, silvered mirror became transparent and, through it, the Thousand Son saw the entity for what it was.

The warp had been cruel. It had taken the ship and its crew and transfigured it into something wretched and debased. Tiny black eyes rolled in the armoured carapace and the bodies of its crew writhed all over the surface of the ship, trapped within a translucent membrane that sheathed it like living tissue. They were deformed, fused together with their tortured expressions stretched out as if melted. These were the souls of the Fireblade’s crew and they were lost to the warp forever.

The portion of the escort ship that had penetrated the cargo hold eked from the belly of the ship like an umbilical cord, the tentacle strings spilling from the maws at the end of them revealed to be tongues. The sound that emanated from them was appalling. The warp screamed from the Fireblade’s throat, a screeching gale that threatened to knock Mhotep off his feet. He stayed upright, however, and found what he was looking for in the partly insubstantial hull of the former Imperial ship.

The Thousand Son intoned words of power and an ellipsis of light burned into the deck plate. The Prosperine hieroglyphics on his staff flared bright vermillion. Spinning the staff around, Mhotep drove the scimitar into it pommel first and it became a spear.

‘Back to the deeps!’ bellowed the son of Magnus, his aim fixed upon the warp-entity’s tainted core. ‘There will be no feasting here for you, dead thing! By the Silver Towers and the Ever-Burning Eye, begone!’

Mhotep flung the spear just as the tentacles closed on him, a burning trail of crimson light following its psychic trajectory. It struck the Fireblade in the heart of its central maw and a great explosion of light detonated within. Spectral blood fountained and the reaching tentacles withered and burned.

The illumination built, blazing out of the maw and Mhotep was forced to look away from its brilliance. The scent of acrid smoke filled his nostrils, penetrating his helmet filters, and raging flames engulfed his senses together with the primordial scream of something dying in the fathomless ether.

In the corridor beyond the Primary Dock, ceiling plates fell like rain as the walls of the Wrathful shuddered with fury. Cestus and Antiges fought to get to the doors as the tremors hit. The rippling shock waves were coming from the Primary Dock.

Staying on his feet, Cestus drew his power sword and was about to beckon forward a group of engineers, who were lingering behind them, to fuse the blast doors when the horrific din emanating from within stopped. Smoke and faint, white light issued through the cracks.

All was quiet and still for a moment.

‘Where is Mhotep?’ the Ultramarine asked, sheathing the blade. He’d been monitoring the helmet vox transmissions and knew that the Thousand Son had been at the Primary Dock. During the warp phenomenon, battles had erupted all across the Wrathful, and the secondary and tertiary docks had also come under attack. Reports were flickering past on Cestus’s helmet vox that the warp spawn had abated abruptly for reasons unknown, dissolving back into the ether.

Skraal was still out of it on the deck, babbling in enraged delirium, so Cestus turned to Brynngar for his answer.

‘He made a noble sacrifice,’ intoned the Space Wolf, as he got to his feet.

‘That almost sounds like respect,’ Cestus said, his voice tinged with bitterness.

‘It is,’ growled Brynngar. ‘He gave his life for this ship and in so doing saved us all. For that he will have the eternal gratitude of Russ. I am not so proud to admit that I misjudged him.’

Whining servos and the hiss of released pressure made the Space Wolf turn with bolt pistol raised as the blast doors ground open. Cestus and the other Astartes joined him with weapons levelled at the flickering dark beyond.

Mhotep emerged from the scorched ruin of the Primary Dock, staggering, but very much alive. Tendrils of smoke rose from his pitted armour and he was drenched in viscous, translucent gore. In spite of his appearance and obvious injuries, he still retained his bearing, that nobility and arrogance so typical of Prospero’s sons.

‘It is not possible,’ Brynngar breathed, taking a step back as if Mhotep were some apparition from the fireside sages of Fenris. ‘None could have survived in such a conflagration.’

Cestus lowered his bolter cautiously and then his hand in a gesture for the other Ultramarines to do the same.

‘We thought you were dead.’

Mhotep unclasped and removed his helmet, breathing deep of the recycled air. His eyes were black orbs and a riot of purple veins wreathed his face, but was slowly disappearing beneath his skin.

‘As… did… I,’ gasped the Thousand Son, helmet clattering to the deck as it fell from nerveless fingers.

Cestus caught his fellow Astartes as he lurched forward and bore him down to the floor, half-cradled in his arms.

‘Summon Laeradis at once,’ he told Antiges, who was stunned for a moment before he came to his senses and went off to find the Ultramarine apothecary.

‘He lives, yet,’ Cestus added, noting Mhotep’s fevered breathing.

‘Aye,’ Brynngar muttered darkly, having overcome his superstition, ‘and there is but one way that could be so…’ The Space Wolf’s lip curled up in profound distaste. ‘…Sorcery.’

Eight

Nikea/Advantage/Bakka Triumveron

In his private quarters, Zadkiel regarded the pict screen on the console before him with interest. The room was drenched in sepulchral light, the suggestion of idols and craven icons visible at the edge of the shadows. Zadkiel’s face was bathed in cold, stark light from the pict screen, making him appear gaunt and almost lifeless.

Battle scenarios were displayed on the surface of the screen. An astral body, the size of a moon, exploded moments after being struck by a missile payload. Debris spread outward in a wide field, showering a nearby planet with burning meteors. An icon in the scenario represented a ship, the Furious Abyss, as it moved through the debris field. Trajectory markers with distances indicated alongside were displayed, originating at the ship icon and terminating at the planet’s surface. The image paused momentarily and then cycled back to the beginning again.

Zadkiel switched his attention to a vertical row of three supplementary screens attached to the main pict screen. The uppermost one was full of streaming data that bore the Mechanicum seal. Calculations concerning armour tolerances, projected orbital weapon strengths and extrapolated endurance times based upon the first statistic versus the other scrolled by. Angles, probable firepower intensities and shield indexes were all considered in exacting detail. The middle screen contained four stage-by-stage picts showing the effects of a particular viral strain upon human beings. A time code at the bottom right corner of the final pict displayed 00:01:30.

The final screen displayed projected casualty rates: Macragge orbital defences – 49%; Macragge orbital fleet – 75%; Macragge population – 93%. Kor Phaeron and the rest of the Word Bearers’ fleet would account for the rest. Zadkiel smiled; with a single blow they would all but wipe out the Ultramarines’ home world and the Legion with it.

‘I saw it myself, with this very eye,’ snarled Brynngar, pointing to the non-cloudy orb. ‘The Kolobite drone king did not blind me so much that I cannot see what is before my face.’

Brynngar had joined Cestus, Skraal and Antiges in a waiting room outside of the medi-bay where Laeradis ministered to Mhotep after his collapse. The Wolf Guard stalked back and forth across the small, sanitised chamber, which was all white tile and stark lighting, impatiently awaiting the Thousand Son’s return.

‘No man, not even an Astartes, could have faced those hordes and lived,’ offered Skraal, ‘although I would have gladly laid down my life to dispatch them to the hell of the warp.’ The World Eater was raging as he spoke, blood fever clouding his vision as the endless need for violence and slaughter nagged at him. He had confessed earlier that he remembered little of the fight, engaged as he was in a haze of fury, only waking in the access corridor to the primary dock. Brynngar had deliberately chosen not to enlighten him, deciding that he didn’t want to risk the World Eater’s wrath.

‘Aye, and I can think of no other way that such a deed could have been done,’ said Brynngar, coming to rest at last.

‘You speak of witchcraft, Space Wolf,’ said Antiges with a dark glance at Cestus.

The Ultramarines captain had remained silent throughout. If what Brynngar said was true then it had dire ramifications. What was beyond doubt was that Mhotep’s actions had saved the Wrathful from certain doom, but the edicts of the Emperor, laid down at Nikea, were strict and without flexibility. Such things could not be ignored, to do so would damn them as surely as the Word Bearers. Cestus would not embrace that fate, however rational it might seem.

‘We do not know for certain that Mhotep employed such methods and devices, only that he lived where perhaps he should not have,’ he said.

‘Is that not proof enough?’ Brynngar cried. ‘The acts of Zadkiel, of this treacherous vermin is one thing, but to have a heretic aboard ship is quite another. Let me wring the truth out of him, I’ll–’

‘You will do what, brother?’ asked Mhotep, standing in the open archway of the waiting room. Like the other Astartes, he wasn’t wearing his helmet, but he was also stripped out of his power amour and clad in robes.

Apothecary Laeradis, together with another of the honour guard, Amryx, there by way of additional security, was visible behind him. The Apothecary was collecting his various apparatus as stooped Legion serfs scurried around him gathering up Mhotep’s discarded armour.

Brynngar stared at the Thousand Son, fists clenched, his face reddening as he bared his fangs.

‘Laeradis?’ asked Cestus, stepping in front of the Space Wolf in order to diffuse the tension.

The Apothecary had just emerged into the room. Amyrx was standing silently next to him.

‘No lasting injuries that his metabolism cannot cure,’ Laeradis reported.

‘Good,’ Cestus replied. ‘Rejoin your battle-brothers in the barracks.’

‘My captain,’ said the Apothecary, and gratefully left the charged atmosphere of the waiting room with Amryx, obsequious Legion serfs in tow.

‘What happened at the dock?’ asked Skraal, weighing in on Brynngar’s behalf. ‘I lost two Legion brothers to that fight, how were you able to survive?’

The two World Eaters had been discovered later, recovered by blind servitors before the dock was locked down permanently and bulk heads put in place. The unfortunate Astartes had been transfixed by the blade claws of the warp spawn and died gurgling blood. Their scorched remains rested in one of the Wrathful’s mausoleums, awaiting proper ceremony.

‘When I reached the auto-destruct console I found that the protocols were off-line,’ Mhotep explained, his face unreadable. ‘Favour smiled on me though as during the battle, a fuel line linked to one of the docking ports had come loose from its housing and I was able to ignite it. I fought my way to a place where I was shielded from the blast and the resultant conflagration destroyed the entities with purging fire.’

‘Your silver tongue is fat with lies,’ Brynngar accused him, stepping forward. ‘The air is thick with the stink of them.’

Mhotep turned his stony gaze on the Space Wolf.

‘I can assure you, Son of Russ, whatever odour you are detecting is not emanating from me. Perhaps you should seek your answer nearer to your own bedraggled self.’

Brynngar roared and launched himself at the Thousand Son, bearing him to the ground with his massive bulk.

‘Drink it in, witch,’ snarled the Wolf Guard, intent on forcing Mhotep’s head into the tiled floor. A splash of spittle landed on the Thousand Son’s grimacing face as he thrashed against the Space Wolf’s superior strength.

Cestus, using all of his weight, smashed into Brynngar’s side to dislodge him. The Wolf roared again as he was toppled from the Thousand Son.

Skraal was about to wade in, but Antiges blocked his path, the Ultramarine’s hand resting meaningfully on the pommel of his short-blade.

‘Stand fast, brother,’ he warned.

Skraal’s hand wavered near his chainaxe, but he snorted in mild contempt, and in the end relented. This was not the fight he wanted.

Brynngar rolled from Cestus’s body charge and swung to his feet. The Ultramarines captain was quick to interpose himself between Space Wolf and Thousand Son, his posture low in a readied battle stance.

‘Stand aside, Cestus,’ Brynngar growled.

Cestus did not move, but instead kept his gaze locked with the Space Wolf.

‘Do so, now,’ Brynngar warned him again, his tone low and dangerous.

‘This is not the way of the Astartes,’ Cestus said, his voice calm and level in response.

Behind the Ultramarine, Mhotep got to his feet, a little shaken, but otherwise defiant in the face of his aggressor.

‘No: it is not the way of Guilliman’s Legion, you mean,’ answered Brynngar.

‘Even so, I am in charge of this ship and this mission,’ Cestus asserted, ‘and if you have issue with my commands, then you will take them up with me.’

‘He defies the Emperor’s decree and yet you defend him!’ Brynngar raged and took a step forward. He stopped when he realised that the Ultramarine’s short-blade was at his throat.

‘If Mhotep is to answer charges then he will do so at my behest and in a proper trial,’ Cestus told him, the blade in his hand steady. ‘The feral laws of Fenris are not recognised on this ship, battle-brother.’

Brynngar growled again as if weighing up his options. In the end, he backed down.

‘You are no brother of mine,’ he snarled, and stalked from the chamber.

Skraal followed him, a thin smile on his lips.

‘That went well,’ said Antiges, sighing with relief. He had not been relishing the idea of facing one of Angron’s Legion, nor had he a desire to see Brynngar go toe-to-toe with his brother-captain.

‘Sarcasm does not become you, Antiges,’ said Cestus darkly. Brynngar was his friend. They had fought together in countless campaigns. He owed the old wolf his life, and more than once, Antiges too had a similar debt to the Wolf Guard. Cestus had defied him, however, and in so doing had besmirched his honour. Yet, how could he not give Mhotep the benefit of the doubt, without proof of his supposed actions? Cestus admitted to himself that his experience in the reactor chamber at Vangelis, the vision of Macragge he had witnessed, might be affecting his decisions.

‘I am grateful to you, Cestus,’ said Mhotep, smoothing out his robes after the Space Wolf’s rough treatment.

‘Don’t be,’ the Ultramarine snapped, in part angry at himself for his self doubt. His gaze was cold and unforgiving as it turned on the Thousand Son. ‘This is not over, nor am I satisfied with your explanation for what happened at the dock. You will be remanded to your quarters until we leave the warp and I have time to decide what is to be done.

‘Antiges,’ Cestus added, ‘have Admiral Kaminska send the new Officer of the Watch and a squad of armsmen to escort Captain Mhotep to his cell.’

Antiges nodded briskly and went off towards the bridge.

‘I could overwhelm a mere band of armsmen and defy this order,’ Mhotep said, matching the Ultramarine’s steely gaze.

‘Yes, you could,’ said Cestus, ‘but you will not.’

‘Let it not be said,’ uttered Zadkiel, ‘that the warp is without imagination.’

Before Admiral Zadkiel, who, having left his private quarters, was in the Furious Abyss’s cathedra, stood rank upon rank of Word Bearers. Their presence in the vaulted chamber was an echo of what had faced him at the vessel’s inaugural launch at Thule. It was a sight that filled Zadkiel with a sense of power.

The warriors represented the Seventh Company of the Quillborn Chapter, one of those that made up the greater Word Bearers Legion. Every Chapter had its own traditions and its own role within Lorgar’s Word. The Quillborn were so named because their traditions emphasised their birth, created in the laboratories and apothecarions of Colchis. They were written into existence, born as syllables of the Word. A dedicated naval formation, the Quillborn were true marines, fighting ship-to-ship, completely at home battling through the cramped structure of a starship. At their head was Assault-Captain Baelanos, the acting captain of the company, although Zadkiel was their overlord.

‘The ghost of one of their vessels has waylaid them,’ continued Zadkiel with rising oratory. ‘It was promised that in the warp we would find our allies. The fate of our pursuers aboard the Wrathful has shown that promise to have been kept.’

Baelanos stepped forwards. ‘Who will hear the Word?’ he bellowed.

As one, a hundred Word Bearers raised their guns and chanted in salute.

‘They will be harrying us from here to Macragge,’ said the assault-captain, his belligerence a contrast to Zadkiel’s authoritative confidence, ‘and they will die for it! Perhaps the warp will send them to us in the end, so we can show them how we deal with the blind in real space!’

The Word Bearers cheered. Zadkiel saw Ultis among them, and felt a pang of agitation at his presence in the throng.

His fate is written, Zadkiel thought.

‘The warp is yet a strange place to us,’ said Zadkiel. ‘Though it holds nothing for us to fear, for Lorgar knows it better than any mind ever has, you will be assailed by mysteries. You might dream that which your mind has hidden from you. Perhaps you will even see them, as clear as day. These are the ways of the warp. Remember in all things the Word of Lorgar, and it will lead you back to sanity. Lose sight of the Word, and your mind will be carried away on currents from which it might never return. Make no mistake, the warp is dangerous. It is the Word, and the Word alone, that lets us navigate its waters.

‘Soon we must make dock. The earlier battle took more of a toll than we thought. The way-station at Bakka Triumveron is our next destination.’

Zadkiel did not tell them that his over-confidence had resulted in the damage to the ship that meant they were forced into a detour. A lucky hit from the Waning Moon’s lances had cut off the engineering teams from the Furious Abyss’s stores of fuel oil as well as rupturing the primary coolant line. Without regular supply, they could not function, and so it was imperative that the damage be cleared in order to allow the crews access. That could only be done whilst at dock.

‘Shortly after that, we shall be at Macragge,’ Zadkiel continued. ‘Then our chapter of the Word will be completed. To your duties, Word Bearers. You are dismissed.’

The Word Bearers filed out of the cathedra, many of them heading to reclusium cells.

Baelanos approached the pulpit where Zadkiel was standing. ‘We won’t have long at Bakka,’ he said. ‘What are your orders to the astropathic choir?’

‘I need to make contact with my lord Kor Phaeron,’ said Zadkiel, ‘and apprise him of our progress.’

‘What of Wsoric?’ asked Baelanos, a momentary tremor evident in his outward resolve at mention of the name.

‘He stirs,’ replied Zadkiel. ‘We have only to cement our pact with the empyrean with blood, and then he will act.’

‘The lap dogs of the Emperor are ever tenacious, my lord.’

‘Then we shall cast them off,’ Zadkiel told him, ‘but for now, we wait. Asking too many favours of the empyrean may not behove us well.’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ said Baelanos, bowing slightly, but his reluctance was obvious.

‘Trust me to fulfil my duties to the Word, Baelanos, as I trust you,’ said Zadkiel.

‘Yes, admiral,’ replied the assault-captain. Baelanos saluted and headed for the engine decks.

Zadkiel remained in the cathedra, for a moment, deep in thought. It was so easy to lose sight of the Word, to become wrapped up in power. It would have been simple for him to forget what he was and where his place was in the galaxy.

That was why Lorgar had chosen him for this mission. There was no more dedicated servant of the Word, save for Lorgar.

Zadkiel knelt before the altar, murmured a few words of prayer, and headed back up towards the bridge.

‘Captain Cestus?’ said Kaminska’s voice over the Ultramarine’s helmet vox. The engine servitors of the Wrathful had managed to bring on-ship communications back on line.

‘Speaking,’ he replied, more irritably than he’d intended. The confrontation with Brynngar in the medi-bay waiting room was weighing on his mind, that and whatever Mhotep was hiding from them behind that veneer of indifference.

‘Meet me on the bridge at once.’

Cestus sighed deeply at the admiral’s curt response. He had intended to patrol the lower aft decks with Antiges. In the wake of the officer of the watch’s death, together with all of his most experienced armsmen, the ship was short-handed. The Astartes captain had taken it upon himself to make up the shortfall and ensure that no other unforeseen difficulties arose for whatever time remained of their warp passage.

Given Admiral Kaminska’s tone, the patrol would have to wait, so Cestus and Antiges headed for the bridge.

Kaminska kept a lean bridge when not in combat. Crewmen at the sensorium, navigation and engineering helms were all that were present. The admiral was standing at a table illuminated by a hololithic star map. She looked ragged as he approached her, with dark rings around her eyes and a greyish pallor to her complexion.

Cestus couldn’t help think how long it had been since she had slept. An Astartes could go for several days without, but Kaminska was merely human. He wondered how long she could keep going.

‘My lord,’ she said, acknowledging the giant Astartes.

‘Admiral. What is it you wish to bring to my attention?’

Kaminska indicated the star map in front of her. It showed the sector of the galaxy around the dense galactic core. The core was impassable, and so much of the map was taken up with a blank void. Notations and calculations were scrawled in the margins. Beside the map was a printout from one of the sensorium pict screens. It was a close-up of the Furious Abyss’s hull.

‘See this?’ said Kaminska, indicating a white plume issuing from the side of the Word Bearers ship. The grainy resolution made it look like gas was being vented.

‘They have an air leak?’

‘Better than that,’ said Kaminska. ‘It’s damage to the coolant lines. If they push the engines, the plasma reactors will burn up, and, pursued by this ship, if they want to stay ahead of us, they’ll have to push the engines.’

Cestus smiled grimly at the sudden turn in fortune. It was small recompense for all they’d lost.

‘So the Furious Abyss will have to make dock to effect repairs,’ the Ultramarine guessed.

‘Yes. They’ll also be reloading ordnance and using the time to service their fighters after the battle outside the Tertiary Coreward Transit.’

‘Show me the location, admiral,’ said Cestus, assuming that Kaminska had already planned their strategy in part.

Kaminska laid her finger on the hololithic display in triumph. ‘Outside the Solar System there aren’t many orbital docks that can support a ship that size.’

The Bakka system was already circled on the map.

‘Bakka,’ said Cestus. ‘My Legion mustered there for the Karanthas Crusade. It’s the Imperial Army’s staging post for half the galactic south.’

‘It has the only docks between the galactic core and Macragge that could handle the Furious Abyss,’ Kaminska told him. ‘I’d bet my commission that this is where they’ll head.’

Cestus thought for a moment. A plan was forming.

‘How long before we break warp?’

‘Several hours yet, but delay or not, we can’t beat the Furious Abyss in a straight fight.’

‘Tell me this, admiral,’ Cestus said, looking into Kaminska’s eyes. ‘When is a ship most vulnerable?’

Kaminska smiled despite her weariness.

‘When she’s at anchor.’

Cestus nodded. Turning away from the admiral, he raised the other Astartes captains on the vox array and told them to meet him in the conference room immediately.

‘What news have you, Brother Zadkiel?’ mouthed the supplicant.

Somehow, the creature’s lolling mouth formed the words in such a way that Kor Phaeron’s short temper and self-confidence were perfectly enunciated.

‘We are on our way, my lord,’ said Zadkiel, bowing.

Kor Phaeron was one of the arch commanders of the Legion, foremost in Lorgar’s reckoning. He was the primarch’s greatest champion and it was he, this ancient warrior of countless battles, that would command the forces to attack Calth where Guilliman mustered and destroy the Ultramarines utterly. It was a singular honour to be in Kor Phaeron’s presence, albeit across the infinity of warp space, and Zadkiel was at once humbled by the experience. It was not an emotion he had great affinity with.

The supplicant chamber of the Furious Abyss was bathed in darkness, but the presence of the astropathic choir behind the supplicant was powerful enough to remove the need for light. The choir consisted of eight astropaths, but the Furious’s astral cohort differed from those on any Imperial ship. The fact that there were eight of them suggested their instability. The Furious Abyss’s route through the warp, and the forces brought to bear on it, eroded the mind of an astropath with dismaying speed, and while such creatures were all blind, they did not have the heavy ribbed cables running from each eye socket attaching them to the macabre contraption clamped around the supplicant’s swollen cranium.

‘How goes your progress?’ asked the mighty champion of the Word Bearers.

‘Half a day longer in the warp, until we reach the fringes of the galactic core. We must make vital repairs at Bakka, before heading onwards to Macragge.’

‘I recall no such deviation in the mission plan, Zadkiel.’ Despite the fact that Kor Phaeron was doubtless aboard the Word Bearers battle-barge the Infidus Imperator, in deep communion with its own astropathic choir and speaking through a flesh puppet, his tone and manner were still dangerous.

‘During a brief sortie with a fleet of Imperial ships we sustained minor damage that could not be ignored, my lord,’ Zadkiel explained more hurriedly than he liked.

‘A military action?’ Kor Phaeron’s disdain was clear. ‘Did any survive?’

‘A single cruiser pursues us yet through the warp, liege.’

‘So they do not seek to raise a warning back on Terra,’ mused the arch champion, his considered tone at odds with the slack-jawed, drooling visage of the supplicant. ‘A pity. I suspect Sor Talgron is itching in his traitor’s shackles.’

‘I trust that Brother Talgron would have acquitted himself with distinction, Kor Phaeron.’

In the eyes of Zadkiel, Sor Talgron’s mission was not a desirable one. The lord commander was to remain in the Solar System, his four companies ostensibly guarding Terra, in order to maintain the pretence that Lorgar still sided with the Emperor when in fact, he had been instrumental in the Warmaster’s defection.

‘It matters not, my lord. The prospect of word reaching Terra should not concern us. The warp’s disquiet would prevent any warning getting to Macragge.’

‘I disagree.’ The supplicant sneered in an echo of Kor Phaeron’s idiosyncratic expression. ‘Any deviation from the plan as written holds the potential for disaster. The entire Word could go disobeyed!’

‘We will be a few hours at Bakka at the most, exalted lord,’ said Zadkiel plaintively, wary of his master’s wrath. ‘Then we will be on our way. If our pursuer catches up with us, she will be destroyed as her sister ships were. In any case we will not be late; our passage through the warp was swift. But what of you, my lord?’

‘We’ve joined up with the other elements of the Legion and all is proceeding as written.’

‘Calth has no hope.’

‘None, my brother.’

The supplicant lolled back, drooling blood as the connection was broken. The astropathic choir sank into silence, only their ragged breathing suggesting the great effort required to maintain the link across the immaterium.

Zadkiel regarded the dead supplicant with detached interest. It was interesting to him to see how easily their physical forms could be destroyed when their minds were so strong. He considered that he would like to test that theory.

‘All is well, my lord?’ asked Ultis. The novice was standing behind Zadkiel.

‘All is well, novice,’ said Zadkiel. ‘You will join Baelanos at Bakka, Ultis. Take the Scholar Coven. They will know to obey you.’

Ultis saluted. ‘It will be an honour, admiral.’

‘One you have earned, novice. Now, be about your duties.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Ultis turned smartly and headed for the cell deck where the Scholar Coven would be undergoing their scheduled meditation-doctrine training.

Zadkiel watched him go and smiled darkly. Such potential, such relentless ambition; the upstart would soon learn the folly of overreaching.

Soon, Zadkiel told himself, forcing down a thrill of excitement. Soon, Guilliman will burn and Lorgar will rule the stars.

Zadkiel could feel that time approaching. That age was in its infancy, but it only needed time to come about. Zadkiel knew this as surely as he had ever known anything, because it was written.

The Wrathful broke out of the warp, almost gasping in relief as it slid back into real space.

The vessel’s hull was torn and scorched, and chunks of its engine cowlings were ripped out. The winds of the warp had carved strange patterns into its armour plate around the prow and all over the underside. Claws had raked deep gouges all over the upper hull and torn turrets from their mountings.

Sitting in her command throne, Admiral Kaminska looked out of the viewport and saw that the Wrathful had not emerged alone.

Leprous and wretched with its pitted, rusting hull and disease-ridden ports, the Fireblade limped into existence alongside them.

It was a ship of the damned, the thousands of souls aboard condemned to endless, torturous oblivion.

Such a thing could not be allowed to endure.

Kaminska gave the order to train laser batteries on the decrepit vessel. There was a few seconds’ pause when the Wrathful unleashed a blistering salvo of fire. Without operational shields, the Fireblade crumpled under the onslaught. A few seconds more and all that remained of the blighted escort ship was a scorched wreck and space debris.

It was a duty that gave Kaminska no pleasure, but necessary all the same, much like the expulsion of their own dead. It was bad luck to keep the deceased on board, not to mention unhygienic. Bodies were never returned to their home port in the Saturnine Fleet. What the void killed, it kept.

The tiny gleaming sparks that fell away from the Wrathful were corpses enclosed in body bags, reflecting the light of the star Bakka that burned in a magnesium spark a few light hours away. Much closer was Bakka Triumveron, a titanic gas cloud far bigger than the Solar System’s Jupiter, bright yellow streaked with violet and ringed with scores of shimmering bands of ice and rock. Bakka was a mystery, its gaseous form far too stormy and strange to admit any craft, while its rings were death-traps many times more lethal than the rings of Saturn. Bakka’s outlying moons, however, were habitable, each one almost the size of Terra and all of them heavily populated. Rogelin, Sanctuary, Half Hope, Grey Harbour: these hive cities were just fledglings compared to the teeming pinnacles of the Solar System, but they were still home to billions of Imperial citizens. The Bakka system was one of the most populated in the segmentum, certainly the largest concentration of human life this close to the galactic core.

Bakka Triumveron’s fourteenth moon had no cities, but instead was enclosed within a thin black spider web that looked like some planetary disease. It was, in fact, the underlying structure of its orbital docks, held over the moon so that they could benefit from its enormous stores of geothermal energy. The moon was uninhabited, thanks to its relentlessly shifting tectonic plates and accompanying cataclysms, but the dockyards above Triumveron 14 were some of the main reasons why Bakka was populated at all.

Three assault-boats headed out from the launch bays of the Wrathful. They approached the farthest docking spike of Bakka Triumveron 14 and did so with stealth and subterfuge. It was imperative that they not be discovered by the enemy. It also meant that the troops on board would have a long trek to the Furious Abyss.

Three assault-boats; three discreet combat formations. Skraal joined his Legion warriors in one. Their mode of approach was a central avenue between overlooking docking towers, decks sprawling out from jutting bartizans, and the World Eaters and their captain were to take the lead. Two flanks branched out from the central avenue and these channels would be taken by the Blood Claws, led by Brynngar in spite of the Space Wolf’s earlier altercation with Cestus, and a second group of World Eaters led by the only Ultramarine in the raiding party.

Antiges sat bolt upright in the flight couch of the gloom-drenched troop hold of an assault-boat as they made their way closer to the gaseous expanse that was Bakka Triumveron and the moon that would support their embarkation. He was the only Ultramarine aboard the assault-boat, accompanied, as he was, by two combat-squads of Skraal’s remaining World Eaters. To Antiges’s mind they were brutal warriors, festooned with the trophies of war, crude kill-markings like badges of honour carved into their armour. Each and every one was possessed of a murderous mien, a faint echo of their primarch’s battle rage.

Dimly, as if the infinite expanse of black space that existed between them had smothered it, Antiges recalled his last conversation with his captain.

‘Stand aside, Antiges,’ Cestus barked, bedecked in a stripped down version of his honour guard regalia and battle-ready with short-blade, power sword and bolter.

Adjusting to the half-light of the assembly deck, Cestus saw that his battle-brother was similarly attired.

‘I have told you before, Antiges. The sons of Guilliman will remain aboard ship in case anything goes wrong. I shall accompany the mission as its leader to ensure that it goes to plan.’

Cestus had gone over the plan several times since it was first broached in the conference room to the rest of the Astartes captains. If they were to make the most of the Furious Abyss’s current disposition, they would need to act in subterfuge and in secret. Even with that caveat in mind, the strike would need to be brutal and at close-quarters. The World Eaters and the Space Wolves had no equals in that regard, save for the sons of Sanguinius, but the Angels were far off in another part of the galaxy. These were the tools at their disposal; they had but to unleash them.

The assault force was to infiltrate Bakka Triumveron 14, where the Word Bearers had made dock, in three teams in a classic feint and strike manoeuvre in order that they get close enough to scupper the ship at close-range. Incendiary charges: krak and melta bombs, were to be carried as standard. It was a faint hope, but it was hope none the less and all had embraced it. Even Brynngar, his demeanour sullen and belligerent, had acceded to the plan, doubtless eager to vent his wrath much like his brother captain, Skraal.

‘With respect, brother-captain,’ said Antiges levelly, purposefully standing his ground. ‘You shall not.’

Cestus’s face creased in consternation.

‘I did not expect disobedience from you, Antiges.’

‘It is not disobedience, sire. Rather, it is sense.’ Antiges still did not move. His expression brooked no argument.

‘Very well,’ said Cestus, letting his battle-brother have this indulgence before he rebuked him for his insolence. ‘Explain yourself.’

Antiges’s face softened, a trace of pleading behind his eyes.

‘Allow me to lead the strike,’ he said. ‘This mission is too dangerous and our plight too great to risk your life, my captain. Without you, there is no mission. Even now, we hold to our cause by a mere thread. Were you to be lost, then so too would be Macragge. You know this to be true.’

Antiges stepped forward, allowing the light to fall on his face and armour. The effect was not unlike a bodily halo. ‘I entreat you, liege, let me do this service. I shall not fail you.’

At first, Cestus had thought to deny him, but he knew his brother Ultramarine was right. Cestus was acutely aware of the other combat squads mustering on the deck behind him, readying to take to the assault-boats.

‘It would do me great honour to have you, Brother Antiges, as my representative,’ he said and clapped Antiges on the shoulder.

‘My lord,’ the fellow Ultramarine intoned and bowed to his knee.

‘No, Antiges,’ said Cestus, grasping his battle-brother’s shoulder to stop him mid-genuflect. ‘We are equals and such deference is not necessary.’

Antiges rose and nodded instead.

‘Courage and honour, my brother,’ said Cestus.

‘Courage and honour,’ Antiges replied and turned to walk away towards the assault-boats.

The words were distant now, and Antiges crushed whatever sentiment they held as he intoned the oaths of battle.

The World Eaters were similarly engaged, their lips moving in entreaty to their weapons and armaments that they should not fail them, and rather that they be covered in glory and speak with righteous anger.

The warriors of the XII Legion were well-armed with chainaxes and storm shields. They bore side arms too, but Antiges suspected that they were rarely drawn. World Eaters fought up close, in face-to-face melee, where the force of a charge and the shock of their ferocity counted the most.

Antiges steeled himself and mouthed the name of Roboute Guilliman as the assault-boat screamed towards its destination.

The dock-master had demanded to know why prior notification had not been given for the arrival of such an enormous ship. His obstinate and imperious attitude had faltered and withered upon the arrival of the Astartes on his deck.

Once Ultis had gained entry to the observation balcony, he had had the dock master put his deck crews to work to receive the Furious Abyss. Violence, at this point, was unnecessary. To the menials and underlings of Bakka Triumveron 14, they were still Astartes and as such their word carried the authority of the Emperor. No man of the Imperium would dare brook that.

From the observation balcony overlooking the battleship dock, Ultis could see the automated coolant tanks picking their way through the docking clamps and other dockside detritus towards the towering shape of the Furious Abyss. The dock was a hive of activity, tracked-servitors and human indentured workers bustling back and forth on loaders, carrying massive fuel drums and swathes of heavy piping. The frenetic scene, fraught with activity, was as a mustering of ants before the towering hive that was the Word Bearers ship.

It was the first time Ultis had been able to truly appreciate the vessel’s gigantic size. Like a city of crenellated towers, arching spires and fanged fortress-like decks, it dwarfed the puny dock, easily clearing the highest antennae and cranes. The book, resplendent upon the Furious’s prow easily eclipsed the observation building in which Ultis was standing.

‘We are in control,’ Ultis voxed privately through his helmet array, the dock master busied at his consoles with the massive ship’s sudden arrival.

‘Good,’ said Zadkiel, back on the ship. ‘Did you encounter any resistance?’

‘They accept the authority of the Astartes like the dutiful and deluded lapdogs they are, my lord,’ Ultis replied, looking around at the Scholar Coven.

These warriors had been assembled from the Word Bearers under Zadkiel’s command who showed the greatest adherence to Lorgar’s Word. They were all more recent recruits to the Legion, all from Colchis and all dedicated scholars of Lorgar’s writings. They were motivated not by the glory of the Great Crusade, but by the ideology of the Word Bearers. Zadkiel greatly valued such followers since they could be counted on to support the Legion’s latest endeavours, which would be sure to bring the Word Bearers into conflict with elements of the Imperium before long. Ultis looked over at the man he would soon kill, once preparations were fully underway, and reasoned that the conflicts were already beginning to come about.

The fact meant absolutely nothing to him. Ultis had no loyalty save to the Word. There was nothing in the galaxy in that moment, other than that which was written.

The novice smiled.

This day, his destiny would be etched in the Word for all time.

Nine

Infiltration/Ambush/Sons of Angron

The assault-boats docked quickly and without incident, the pilot having avoided radar and long-range scans to insert the Astartes squads outside the main thoroughfares of Bakka Triumveron 14.

Antiges, clad in the blue and gold of his Legion’s honour guard, was first out of the assault-boat, speeding from the embarkation ramp. Chainsword held low at his hip and adopting a crouching stance, he moved stealthily across an open plaza of steel plates, flanked by towering cranes and disused craft in for non-urgent repairs. The few servitors meandering back and forth on tracks and slaved to an aerial rail system ignored the Astartes. Working through pre-assigned protocols as dictated by their command wafers, they were not even aware of their presence.

Close behind the Ultramarine, one of the World Eaters, Hargrath, gave the servitors a wary glance as he piled through the open channel with his battle-brothers.

‘Pay them no heed,’ Antiges hissed, looking back to check on his charges.

Hargrath nodded and continued on his way towards the massive crimson horizon ahead, visible across the entire length of the shipyard: the Furious Abyss, the largest vessel any of them had ever seen.

‘Keep in cover,’ said Antiges as the plaza gave way to a maze-like refuelling and maintenance bay full of passing loaders and stacks of drums. The Ultramarine was careful to keep his squad out of the view of the labouring indentured workers and other menials busying themselves at the dock. They clung to the shadows, using them like a second skin.

Once they had reached their destination, their targets would be the engines and ordnance ports. The Ultramarine checked a bandoleer of krak grenades at his hip. There was a cluster of melta bombs flanking it on the opposite side and as the Furious Abyss drew closer, he hoped it would be enough.

Brynngar was festooned with trophies and fetishes: wolf’s teeth and claws, and a necklace of uncut gemstones, polished pebbles carved with runes. If he were to go to war at last against his brother Astartes then he would do so in his full regalia. Let them witness the majesty and savage power of the Sons of Russ in their most feral aspect before they were torn asunder for their treachery.

The Wolf Guard was focused on the battle ahead, crushing all thoughts of his altercation with Cestus to the back of his mind for now. There would be time for a reckoning later. It was only a pity that the Ultramarine had eschewed the mission in favour of overall command aboard the Wrathful. Brynngar wanted to think him cowardly, but he had fought alongside the son of Guilliman many times and knew this not to be the case. It was probably a display of the XIII Legion’s much vaunted tactical acumen.

The Space Wolves’ aspect of attack was a narrow cordon riddled with junked carriers used for spare parts. It was more like an open warehouse with machine carcasses piled high and banded tightly together to prevent them toppling when stacked. Servitors slaved to loaders hummed back and forth amongst the towers of rusted metal like bees harvesting a nest. If they cared about the Space Wolf captain and his Blood Claws, tooled up with broad-bladed axes and bolt pistols, and weaving criss-cross fashion through their domain, they did not show it.

Brynngar knew that he would spill blood this day, and it would be the blood of his erstwhile brothers. This was no fight against mere heathen men, misguided in their beliefs, nor was it foul xenos breeds ever intent on corralling the human galaxy to their yoke. No, this was Astartes against Astartes. It was unprecedented. Thinking of the devastation the Word Bearers had already wrought, the Space Wolf took a better grip of Felltooth and vowed to make the traitors pay for their transgressions.

‘They are making their final approach towards the dock,’ said Kaminska poring over the hololithic tactical display in front of her command throne. Having been preparing the other Ultramarines for potential combat and distributing them around the ship accordingly, Cestus had returned to the bridge and joined the admiral at the tactical display table.

Hazy runes moved over a top-down green-rimed blueprint of Bakka Triumveron 14, indicating the progress of the three attack waves heading for the immense swathe of bulky red that represented the Furious Abyss. The ship’s magos, Agantese, had tapped into one of the satellite feeds of the orbital moon and was using it to re-route images to the Wrathful’s tactical network. It had a short delay, but was an otherwise excellent way to keep track of their forces on the ground. Even so, Cestus felt impotent, directing the action from the relative safety of real space where the cruiser lingered to stay out of radar and sensorium range.

‘Antiges, report,’ he barked into the ship’s vox, synced with his fellow Ultramarine’s boosted helmet array.

‘Assault protocol alpha proceeding as planned, captain,’ Antiges’s voice said after a few seconds delay. The reply was fraught with static. Even with the boosted array rigged by the Wrathful’s engineers, the gulf of real space between them impinged greatly.

‘We will be making our initial insertion onto the dock in T-minus three minutes.’

‘Well enough, Brother Antiges. Keep me appraised. If you meet any resistance, you have your orders,’ said Cestus.

‘I shall prosecute my duties with all the fury of the Legion, my lord.’

The vox cut out.

Cestus sighed deeply. To think it had come to this. This was no foray into the jaws of alien overlords or the misguided worshippers of the arcane, not this time. It was brother versus brother. Cestus could barely bring himself to think on it. Fighting across the gulf of real space was one thing, but to be face-to-face with those who had betrayed the Emperor, those who had killed warriors they once called friend and comrade in cold blood, was indeed harrowing. It felt like an end of things, and the sense of it caught in the Ultramarine’s throat.

‘Admiral Kaminska,’ said Cestus after the momentary silence, ‘you have risked much in the pursuit of this mission. You have done, and continue to do, me great honour with your sterling service to our cause.’

Kaminska was clearly taken aback and failed to hide her shock from the Ultramarine completely.

‘I thank you, lord Astartes,’ she said, bowing slightly, ‘but if I am honest, I would have chosen to undertake this duty, although perhaps of my own volition,’ she added candidly.

Cestus’s gaze was mildly questioning.

‘I am the last of a dying breed,’ she confessed, her shoulders sagging and not from physical fatigue. ‘The Saturnine Fleet is to be decommissioned.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, captain. It doesn’t do to have such an anachronism on the rostrum of the new Imperium. All those gentlemen in their powdered wigs talking about good breeding, it hardly speaks of efficiency and impartiality. Our ships are to be refitted for a new Imperial Navy. I’m a part of the last generation. I suppose I should be glad that at least Vorlov didn’t see it.

‘You see, captain, this is really my last hurrah, the last great journey of the Wrathful as I know it.’

Cestus smiled mirthlessly. His eyes were cold orbs, tinged with a deep sense of burden and regret.

‘It might be for us all, admiral.’

Skraal’s assault force sped down the central channel of the dock, a loading bay for fuel and munitions tankers, with reckless abandon. The berserker fury was building within the World Eater captain and he knew his battle-brothers were experiencing the same rush. They were the sons of Angron and like their lord they were implanted with an echo of the neural technology that had unlocked the primarch’s violent potential. At the cusp of battle, the Astartes warriors could tap into that font of boiling range and use it like an edged blade to cut their enemies down. After several bloody incidents, the Emperor had censured the further use of implants in the false belief that they made the World Eaters unstable killing machines.

Angron, in his wisdom, had eschewed the edict of the Emperor of Mankind and had continued in spite of it. They were killing machines, Skraal felt it in his burning blood and in the core of his marrow, but then what greater accolade was there for the eternal warriors of the Astartes?

Though the orders of the Ultramarine, Antiges, had forbidden it, Skraal encouraged his warriors to kill as they converged on the Furious Abyss. A spate of bloodletting would sharpen the senses for the battle to come. The only directive: leave none alive to tell or warn others of their approach. The World Eaters pursued this duty with brutal efficiency and a trail of menial corpses littered the ground between the assault-boat insertion point and their current position.

Such reckless slaying had not, however, gone unnoticed.

‘My lord,’ hissed Ultis into the vox array of the observation platform.

Zadkiel’s voice responded from the Furious.

‘It seems we are not alone,’ Ultis concluded.

The novice in command of the Scholar Coven consulted a holo-map of the entire dockyard. His gauntleted finger was pressed against a flashing diode near one of the many refuelling conduits.

‘Where is that?’ he demanded of the dock-master, still engrossed in the refit and refuel of the vast starship.

‘Tanker Yard Epsilon IV, my lord,’ said the dock-master, who looked closer when he saw the flashing red diode. ‘An emergency alarm.’ The dock-master moved to another part of the console and brought up a viewscreen. Warriors in blue and white power armour were visible in the grainy resolution surging through the tanker yard. Prone forms, dressed in worker fatigues, slumped in their wake surrounded by dark pools.

‘By Terra,’ said the dock-master, turning to face Ultis, ‘they are Astartes.’

The novice faced the dock-master and shot the man through the face point-blank with his bolt pistol. After his head exploded in a shower of viscera and bone-riddled gore, his streaming carcass slid to the deck.

The rest of the dock crew on the observation platform had failed to react before the rest of the Scholar Coven had taken Ultis’s lead and shot them, too.

‘The Astartes have tracked us here and move in on the Furious Abyss as we speak,’ said Ultis down the vox. ‘I have eliminated all platform personnel to prevent any interference.’

‘Very well, Brother Ultis. You have your orders,’ said Zadkiel’s voice through the array.

Ultis looked down through the building’s windows to the expanse of the docking stage. Baelanos’s assault squad was standing guard there.

‘I shall show them what fates are written for them,’ said Ultis, drawing his sword.

‘Educate them,’ replied Zadkiel.

The battleship dock looked like a tangled web of metal as Skraal and his warriors forged onward. Beyond that the massive Furious Abyss loomed like a slumbering predator in repose.

The stink of blood from the previous slaughter was heady through the World Eater captain’s nose grille as he raced towards the end of the channel and the open dock beyond. The cordon tightened ahead and the Legionaries were forced together as they rifled through it. Just as Skraal was feeling confident that they had not been discovered, a group of Word Bearers in crimson ceramite emerged before them to block their path.

Bolter fire wreathed the opening, lighting up the half-dark of the channel with four-pronged muzzle flares. Kellock, the warrior next to Skraal, took a full burst in the chest that tore open his armour and left him oozing blood. Kellock crumpled and fell, both his primary and secondary hearts punctured.

The combat squads were pinned on either side by fuel drums, stacked against bulky warehouse structures. Fleeing menials and mindless servitors, alerted by the commotion, wandered into their path and were cut down with chainblades or battered by shields as the World Eaters sought to close with the foe and wrest the advantage back. One of the drums was struck by an errant bolter round and exploded in a bright bloom of yellow-white fury. A fiery plume spilled into the air, like ink in water, and a wrecked servitor was cast like a broken doll at the edge of its blossoming blast wave. Three World Eaters were shredded by the concussive force of the explosion and smashed aside into the metallic siding of a warehouse unit. The siding didn’t yield to the sudden impact of massed flesh and ceramite, and the two warriors were crushed.

Skraal felt the heat of the explosion against his face even through his helmet as the warning sensors went crazy. He staggered, but kept his footing and yelled the order to charge.

Antiges was stalking through the refuelling bay when he heard the explosion from across the dock and saw fire and smoke billowing into the air. They were close. The Furious Abyss, a dense dark wall, filled the Ultramarine’s sights.

‘Antiges, report,’ Cestus’s voice said through the helmet vox, the tactical display obviously registering the sudden influx of heat.

‘An explosion in the central channel. I fear we are discovered, brother-captain.’

‘Get over there, unite your forces and push on through to the Furious.’

‘As you command, captain,’ he replied and ordered his combat squads through a maze of piping that connected to the central channel where he knew Skraal and his insertion team were placed. As they moved, Antiges at the lead, a shadow fell across the Ultramarine, cast by the vast observation platform overlooking the dock above.

Out of instinct, he looked up and saw the line of crimson armoured warriors bearing down on them with bolter and plasma gun.

Death rained down in a hail of venting promethium and spent electrum. Antiges rolled out of its way into the shadow of the docking clamp. Hargrath was distracted and a fraction slower. He paid for his laxity when a bolt of searing plasma blasted a hole in his torso, cooking the World Eater in his armour. He fell with a resounding clang, the wound cauterised before he hit the ground. Several of his brothers heaved his body towards them, but to act as improvised cover, rather than out of any sense of reverence for their dead comrade.

Antiges replied with barking retorts of his bolt pistol, half-glimpsing the target above between bursts of chipped plascrete and metal as the docking clamp was chewed up around him.

The rest of the World Eaters followed his lead, stowing storm shields and drawing bolt pistols, their weapons adding to the return fire.

Menials, put to flight at the start of the attack, and spilling into the rapidly erupting war zone were ripped apart in the crossfire. The roar of gunfire and the shriek of shrapnel mangled together with their screams.

Antiges pressed up against the closest docking clamp and looked around it, gauging the terrain leading the rest of the way to the Furious Abyss. The docks formed a landscape of narrow fire lanes between clamps and fuel tanks. Above was the observation platform, strung on metal struts, and beyond that rings of steel holding fuelling gantries, defence turrets and bouquets of sensor spines.

Antiges slammed himself back against the steel of the docking clamp as bolter fire continued to pin them.

‘Captain, we are ambushed!’ he yelled into the vox, in an attempt to overcome the din. Despite his volume, the Ultramarine’s tone was calm as he cycled through a number of potential battle protocols learned by rote during his training.

There was a moment’s pause as the message went through and his captain assessed the options open to him.

‘Relief is incoming,’ came the clipped reply. ‘Be ready.’

After a second bout of return fire, a chain of small explosions erupted across the observation platform, showering frag.

Beyond the destruction and across the dockyard, embarkation ports were opening in the side of the Furious Abyss.

Antiges was on his feet and bellowing orders before the resulting smoke had cleared.

‘Don’t give them time! Hit them! Hit them now!’

The Astartes broke cover and charged, leaving the dead in their wake.

Two hundred robed cohorts in the crimson of the Word Bearers emerged from the Furious Abyss, and charged right back.

‘Open fire!’ shouted Antiges. The Ultramarine felt the immediate pressure wave of discharged bolt pistols behind him as the World Eaters obeyed.

The effect was brutal. Lines of the crudely armoured Word Bearer lackeys fell beneath the onslaught. Bodies pitched into their comrades, jerked and spun as the munitions struck. Blood sprayed in directions too numerous to count and the corpses mounted like a bank of fleshy sandbags, tripping those following. There was only time for a single volley, and the disciplined Astartes holstered pistols before closing with the first of the Furious’s cannon fodder.

A brutish cohort, scarred and tarnished like an engine ganger, came at Antiges with an axe blade. The Ultramarine met the ganger’s roar with the screech of his chainsword, plunging it into the man’s chest. The cohort fell, wrenching the weapon from Antiges’s hand. The Astartes didn’t pause and threw the wretch aside with such force that the corpse spun in the air before crashing into its debased brethren. The Ultramarine drew his short-blade, duelling shield already in hand and cut down a second assailant with a low, arcing sweep.

Rorgath, a World Eater sergeant, came alongside Antiges and forged into the melee with brutal abandon. Limbs fell like rain as he churned through his enemies, his face a grisly mask of wrath without his helmet.

Out of the corner of his eye, Antiges saw another of Rorgath’s kin decapitate a cohort officer trying to ram home the charge and extol his warriors to greater fervour. Others disappeared in clouds of red mist and the dreadful din of chainaxes rending bone. Yet, despite the relentless carnage wreaked upon them, the lowly cohorts refused to break, and the killing ground became mired in blood.

‘They’re fanatics,’ grumbled Rorgath, burying his blade in the face on an oncoming cohort.

‘Drive them back,’ snarled Antiges through gritted teeth, smashing an enemy with the blunt force of his duelling shield. About to redouble his efforts, the Ultramarine fell back, as two or three bodies flew at him. In the madness, he dropped his short-blade, but as he foraged for it in the sea of pressing bodies, he found the hilt of his chainsword. Tearing the weapon loose, Antiges cut a path through bone and flesh to free himself. Hands were grabbing at him to drag the Astartes down, and even as he tried to emerge, bullets rang off his armour. One of the World Eaters yelled in anger and pain. The Furious Abyss disappeared from view as more enemy crewmen threw themselves forward.

This was not how men fought. Very few xenos were content to simply die, even when there was something to be gained by it. That was why the Astartes were such lethal warriors; they were the ultimate weapon against any enemy tainted by natural cowardice, since a Space Marine could control and banish his own fear. The Word Bearers had created another kind of enemy, one that even Space Marines could not break.

‘Damn you,’ hissed Antiges as he threw another man off him, and was sprayed by a shower of blood as Rorgath disembowelled yet another. ‘Now we have to kill them all.’

Driving on, pain burst against Antiges’s side as a blade or a bullet found its way through his armour. He staggered and it gave the enemy the opening they needed. A sudden flurry of cohorts sprang on the stricken Astartes. Then the weight of the attacks was dragging him down, their death-cries and the smell of their sundered bodies filling his senses.

Brynngar hefted his last belt of frag grenades at the observation platform. A cluster of explosions rippled over the pitted surface, hewing off chunks of ferrocrete and scorching metal. The assault had achieved its desired effect, forcing the ambushers above Antiges’s position back for a few moments, who were unseen from the channel the Space Wolf and his Blood Claws charged down, and switching their attention.

Fire erupted again from the platform before the last of the grenades had even detonated, but this time their focus was upon the Wolf Guard and his squad. Brynngar’s highly attuned animal senses picked up on the stink of cordite and blood, and the sporadic clatter of weapon’s fire, and he assumed that his brother Ultramarine was otherwise occupied, hence their popularity.

Rujveld slid into cover beside his venerable leader as he appraised the disposition of the ambushers strafing them. Fire streaked down from the observation gallery and prevented them joining the fight beyond.

‘They knew we were coming,’ Brynngar growled to the stony-faced Blood Claw.

‘What are your orders, Wolf Guard?’

Brynngar turned his feral gaze onto his pack brother.

‘We bring them down,’ he grinned, displaying his fangs. ‘Yorl, Borund,’ bellowed the Space Wolf captain, and two of his charges abandoned their ready positions to approach their leader.

‘Melta bombs,’ snarled Brynngar. ‘One of those struts.’ He pointed to the source of the platform’s elevation.

Yorl and Borund nodded as one, priming their melta charges before heading across a gauntlet of open ground that led to the structure. Withering fire struck the first Blood Claw before he ventured more than a few feet, the impacts kicking him off his feet and spinning him around before he fell in a bloody heap.

Borund had greater fortune, a feral war cry on his lips as he reached the base of the platform. Clamping the charge onto one of the struts, he took a hit in the shoulder. Another struck him across the torso as Word Bearers positioned neared the building’s base realised what he was doing. Borund pressed the detonator before they could stop him. He roared in savage defiance as the melta bomb exploded, vaporising him in a flare of super-heated chemicals.

The platform held.

Brynngar was about to head into the gauntlet to finish the job when a second explosion erupted after the first. The Space Wolf captain turned away from the sudden blast, an actinic stench prickling his nostrils when he looked back. The sound of wrenching metal followed and the observation platform finally collapsed, kicking up clouds of dust and ferrocrete. The structure was robust and Astartes could withstand worse. There would be survivors.

Unconcerned where the secondary blast had come from, Brynngar got to his feet and howled in triumph. Running across the open to the ruined mass of crumpled metal and broken ferrocrete, he swung his rune axe in preparation for battle, knowing that his Blood Claws were right behind him.

Aboard the Wrathful, Cestus wore a pained expression as he reviewed the tactical display. Frantic vox chatter was coming in over the ship’s array, but it was indistinct and impossible to discern.

The three icons, representing the relative positions of his assault teams had stalled. A silver icon, indicating the Space Wolves and Brynngar’s warriors, was moving slowly towards an area obscured by a sudden belt of smoke and bright light, hazing the readout. Judging from the schematic, this was the observation platform.

Cestus assumed that the attack had been successful.

Elsewhere in a flanking channel close by, an azure icon represented Antiges and was shown embroiled in a brutal close-quarters fight against massed enemies. The dark slab of crimson that was the Furious Abyss was not far beyond the melee, but it didn’t appear as if the Ultramarine was making progress. All Cestus’s subsequent attempts to raise Antiges on the vox had thus far failed. A third icon, depicted in stark white, converged on Antiges’s position.

To Cestus’s dismay, they were not alone.

Ten

Into the belly of the beast/Sacrifice/My future is written

The scream of chainaxes brought Antiges to his senses. The whine of their spinning teeth turned to a crunching drone as they bit into flesh and bone.

Antiges saw white armour trimmed with blue, sprayed liberally with crimson and the Legion markings of a captain.

Skraal dragged the Ultramarine out of the mess of bodies. The Furious’s crewmen were being bludgeoned to the ground or thrown through the air, the World Eaters squad painting every surface with crescents of gore. Antiges took a moment to set himself, such was the impact of the second charge from Skraal’s World Eaters.

The captain of the XII Legion was butchering a man on the floor.

Such reckless murderous enthusiasm was alien to the Ultramarines and Antiges fought the urge to put a stop to it. The battlefield was no place for recrimination. Instead, the Ultramarine looked across the dock, a brief lull in the fighting provided by the sudden appearance of Skraal’s forces allowing him to take stock. A clutter of crimson-armoured corpses lay at the end of the central channel, victims of the World Eaters’ ferocity. He also saw Brynngar leading his Blood Claws, tangled up in a short-range firestorm with a squad of Word Bearers emerging from the ruin of the collapsed observation platform. The fighting was fierce and it didn’t look like the sons of Russ would be able to bolster them.

Skraal heaved a dying man off the floor and cut him in two at the waist with a slash of his chainaxe. It got Antiges’s attention.

‘Captain,’ cried the Ultramarine, seeing a break in the cohort’s ranks for the first time, ‘drive on to the ship, now!’

Skraal looked back at him. For a split second there was nothing in the World Eater’s face but hatred, nothing to suggest that he saw Antiges as anything but another enemy.

The moment passed and the eyes that looked at the Ultramarine belonged to Skraal again. The World Eater picked up his shield from the ground, discarded in his lust for carnage, shook his head to get the worst of the blood out of his eyes, and called to his squad to follow.

‘Form up on me, and keep moving!’ shouted Antiges, pointing towards the Furious Abyss with his chainsword.

A Word Bearer stumbled out of the wreckage of the platform, strafing wildly with his bolter. Brynngar stepped out of the kill-zone and beheaded the Astartes with a sweep of Felltooth. A second followed and the Space Wolf leapt forward, burying the blade in the Legionary’s cranium. A third was dragged from the collapsed building, half-dazed, by Rujveld who executed him with a burst from his bolt pistol.

After the initial slaughter, though, the Word Bearers managed to put up more of a fight. Wreathed in super-heated plasma, Elfyarl fell screaming and Vorik was dismembered by a fusillade of bolter fire.

Brynngar snarled at the losses, whipping another Word Bearer off his feet at the edge of the ruins before lunging down to tear out his throat with his teeth. Howling in fury, the Wolf Guard was about to press on when whickering bolter fire churned up the ferrocrete debris around him. Reeling against the sudden assault, the venerable wolf could only watch as a line of blood stitched up Svornfeld’s cuirass. He spun and fell in a lifeless heap.

A second squad of Word Bearers advanced on them, unseen from the original route of attack.

Brynngar unhitched his bolter in the face of this new threat and blew the faceplate off one Word Bearer’s helmet and smashed a chunk from the shoulder pad of another as they came on.

‘Into them!’ he raged, weapon blazing as he charged the enemy.

The howling reply of his remaining Blood Claws was a feral chorus to the brutal bolter din.

Antiges thrust his chainsword through the Word Bearer’s chest.

As they’d closed on the Furious Abyss, the cohorts a bloody mess in their wake, another line of defenders had emerged: fellow Astartes, their erstwhile brothers the Word Bearers. Decked in crimson armour replete with debased scratchings and ragged scrolls of parchment, they were a dark shadow of the proud warriors Antiges remembered.

The Word Bearer jerked as he tried to wrench himself free of the churning blade that impaled him, but then it passed through his spine and all he could do was vomit a plume of blood.

Suddenly, it was real.

These Word Bearers, Astartes and brothers to all Space Marines, were the enemy. Antiges realised in that moment that he hadn’t really believed it before. There was no time to consider it further as a second Word Bearer came at him with a power maul. Antiges caught the weapon just before it cleaved through his face, and rammed his knee into the Astartes’s stomach, but his enemy stayed locked with him. Behind the lenses of the Word Bearer’s helmet the Ultramarine could just see an eye narrowed in anger. There was no brotherhood there.

In a sudden fury of churning steel and wrath, Skraal tore the Word Bearer off Antiges and ripped him apart with his chainaxe. Finishing the grisly work quickly, the World Eater glanced back at his battle-brother.

‘Too intense for you, Ultramarine?’

A Word Bearer’s elbow caught Brynngar in the side of the head and the Space Wolf fell back. Rolling out of a second attack, he switched to his bolter and, one-handed, unloaded the magazine into his assailant’s stomach. The Word Bearer had life in him yet, though, and Rujveld stalked forward, drawing a knife from a scabbard at his waist. He jammed the point through the gap in the wounded traitor’s gorget.

Brynngar grunted thanks to the Blood Claw and moved on into the Word Bearer squad that had set upon them. Combined with the survivors from the platform’s destruction, the Space Wolves were hard-pressed. The Wolf Guard was determined to lead by example, however, and scythed through crimson ceramite, the bloody Felltooth clutched in his grasp.

Cutting down an enemy Astartes with a swift diagonal slice across the neck and chest, Brynngar kicked the Word Bearer aside to face a new opponent. Suddenly, the tempo of the battle changed. The fury and ferocity exploding around him dulled and slowed as he stood eye-to-eye with a fellow captain. This was clearly their leader, clearly a veteran if the ruin and subsequent reconstruction of his face was any measure. A two-handed power sword swung freely in his fists, which he wielded like a mace. A trio of Blood Claws lay at the warrior’s feet. They had died on that sword, their bodies split in two and spilling organs over the floor of the dock.

‘Now face me,’ snarled the Wolf Guard and hefted Felltooth in a feral challenge.

The Word Bearer captain drove at the Space Wolf using his body like a battering ram, the blade as its tip. The charge was fast, so fast that Brynngar didn’t get out of the way in time and took a glancing blow against his pauldron. White fire surged into his shoulder, but the Wolf Guard mastered the pain quickly and turned with the attack, using its momentum and raking Felltooth down his opponent’s back.

The Word Bearer roared and spun on his heel, driving the two-handed blade at him like a spear at first to pitch the Space Wolf off balance and then as a club to bludgeon him to death. A wild swipe slapped the flat edge of the weapon against Brynngar’s outstretched arm. His bolter fell from nerveless fingers as the blow struck a muscle cluster, numbed even through his power armour.

Brynngar smashed the brutal sword aside as it came for another slash, and used his forward momentum to get inside his attacker’s reach. Pressing a rune on Felltooth’s hilt, a long spike slid from the tip of the axe. Brynngar roared in savage exultation as he plunged it deep into one of the Word Bearer’s biceps and twisted. The Word Bearer’s arm was torn open revealing wet muscle and gore. No pain registered on his face as he leapt towards Brynngar in an attempt to throw him off-balance and bring his sword to bear again.

Using his opponent’s momentum, Brynngar lifted the Word Bearer off his feet and smashed him to the ground. He yanked the dazed enemy captain up again, gripping his gorget, and seized his head by the chin. Emitting a terrible roar that flung blood and spittle into his enemy’s face, Brynngar rammed the spike of Felltooth through his throat.

The Word Bearer’s good eye bulged out as it fought the wracking pain of his imminent death. He coughed up blood, and it sheeted down the front of his armour, covering it with a new wet shade of crimson.

Brynngar spat in his face and let the Word Bearer fall.

Bolter shells blistered the ground around him as yet more Word Bearers converged on them. Brynngar and what was left of his Blood Claws returned fire and sought cover even as they fell back. The attack was short-lived, the Astartes merely dragging away the body of their fallen captain before retreating too.

Indiscriminate and sporadic gunfire kept the Space Wolves at bay as the remaining Word Bearers fell back. Crouching behind the ruin of a disused fuel tanker Brynngar snatched a glance across the battlefield. Skraal and Antiges were advancing towards the Furious Abyss with a small combat squad of World Eaters, scattering crewmen from the battleship as they went.

Brynngar envied them. Even before the plasma drives of the Word Bearers’ mighty battleship started to power up, he knew that the enemy was leaving. The pinning fire from their retreating assailants was gradually diminishing, and all across the dockyard, enemy Astartes were heading back to embarkation ports in the hull of the vast vessel.

Like the orca, I would’ve gutted that beast inside out, he thought with dark regret and cried out his lament. Blood flecked from his beard and hair as he threw back his head and the long, hollow note tore from his throat. Taking up the call, his Blood Claws arched their necks back as one and joined the chorus howl.

Gunfire spattered down at the Astartes, ricocheting off metal and kicking out sparks.

Together with the Ultramarine, Antiges, and three of his battle-brothers, the World Eater captain had gained the Furious Abyss, entering into the belly of the ship through one of the embarkation ports and heading down. Their progress had been arrested inevitably when the onboard patrols had caught up with them at the intersection of a coolant pipe. The fire was coming from one end of the corridor, distant, shadowy figures tramping urgently down the wide, curved diameter of the pipe. Metal instrumentation provided some cover, but the Astartes were as good as dead if they didn’t move on quickly.

Skraal took part of the fusillade on his storm shield, casings striking the grating at his feet like brass rain: bolter fire.

Shadows danced against the muzzle flashes. Huge armoured bodies, helmets and shoulder pads: Astartes. Word Bearers.

One of Skraal’s warriors, Orlak, cut through a hatch in the ceiling with his chainaxe. The slab of metal clanged down and he hauled himself up swiftly. Rorgath stood point as the Legionaries made their way further inwards. Having lost both his weapons in the brutal melee outside the ship, he slammed the bolter he had scavenged into rapid fire and hosed the conduit, punching ragged holes into the metal. The other World Eaters lent the fire of their bolt pistols, keeping their enemies at bay.

Half the World Eaters were through the hatch before the Word Bearers returned fire. Only Skraal and Antiges remained, the Ultramarine taking over from Rorgath as he unclipped a brace of frag grenades from his belt and rolled them down the conduit. Skraal leapt up the hatch as return bolter fire blazed past him. Antiges followed, the World Eater captain hauling the Ultramarine up as the first of the explosions ripped down the conduit, shredding plating and buying time.

‘Mountains of Macragge,’ breathed Antiges.

The engine room of the Furious Abyss was like a cathedral to machinery. It was vast. The criss-crossing ribs of a vaulted ceiling reached through the gloom. The immense hulks of the cylindrical exhaust chambers were decorated with steel ribbing and iron scrollwork, and inscribed with High Gothic text running along their whole length. Multiple levels were delineated by gantries and lattice-like overhead walkways. Word Bearers’ banners hung from the web of iron above them, bearing the symbols of the Legion’s Chapters: a quill with a drop of blood at its nib, an open hand with an eye in the palm, a burning book, and a sceptre crowned with a skull. The metallic throb of the engines was like the ship’s own monstrous heartbeat.

The conduit in the labyrinthine ship had led the Astartes to this place and though the sounds of pursuit were distant and hollow, the enemy would not be far behind.

‘Find something to destroy,’ said Skraal. ‘Get to the reactors if you can.’

Antiges tried to take in the vastness of the engine room. Even with the munitions they had at their disposal and the fact that they were Astartes, they would still have a hard time doing anything that could cripple the Furious Abyss.

‘No,’ said Antiges, ‘we drive onwards. Look for ordnance or cogitators. We can’t sabotage this vessel attacking blindly.’

Skraal looked back at his squad. The last of them was being dragged up through the hatch. The coolant pipe they had entered through was one of many forming a tangle of pipes and junctions around the exhaust chambers. Between the pipes was darkness and there was no telling how far down it went.

‘We might not find our–’

‘We’re not getting back out,’ snapped Antiges.

Skraal nodded. ‘Forwards, then.’

Antiges led the Astartes up onto the nearest walkway, above the exhaust chambers. The immense shapes of generatoria loomed towards the ship’s stern, connected to the even larger plasma reactors somewhere below. Ahead of them, the walkway wound into a dark steel valley between enormous pounding pistons. Shapes were gathering on a walkway above them, hidden by the solid metal of a control deck. It seemed that the engineering menials had been ordered out of the chamber, which meant that the Word Bearers planned to stop them here.

‘Cover!’ shouted Skraal, but there was little to be had when the bolter fire from the Word Bearers hammered down at them. Rorgath returned fire with his scavenged bolter, but there was little the others could do with pistols and close combat weapons. One of Skraal’s battle-brothers was hit square in the chest and knocked over a guardrail. He fell onto the engine block below and was pounded flat by a piston hammering down on him. Orlak’s arm disappeared in a spray of blood and he fell to the walkway. Antiges hoisted him bodily to his feet and dragged him along as more gunfire streaked from above.

‘Break for it!’ Skraal bellowed, seeing a lull in the fusillade hammering them. Then he was on his feet and running for the cover at the far end of the engine block, where the walkway led up into a great wall of galleries and machinery. Even hurried by Antiges, Orlak lingered behind and was speared through the back by storm bolter rounds. Smoke poured from the backpack of his armour, mixed with a spray of blood.

Orlak: Skraal had led him through a dozen battlefields. He was a brother, as they all were.

The World Eater captain took that grief and locked it away beneath his consciousness, where it mixed with the pool of rage that he would call on again when the time was right.

Skraal reached cover. The Furious Abyss closed around him. He was in an equipment room, the walls covered in racks of hydraulic drills, wrenches and hammers. Human deck-crews fled in wild panic as the World Eaters burst in, followed by Antiges. There were just three left. It was hardly the raiding force they needed to bring the vast ship to heel.

Skraal noticed something inscribed on the ceiling of the chamber.

BUILD THE WORD OF LORGAR FROM THIS STEEL

LIVE AS IT IS WRITTEN

‘Move! Move! They’re heading down after us!’ bellowed Antiges, demanding his attention.

‘We need to hold them up. No way we can dodge bolter fire and wreck the ship at the same time,’ said Skraal, slamming the portal shut behind them and using a stolen wrench to wedge it.

‘Three squads at least,’ Antiges replied, his breathing heavy, but measured. ‘No way we can beat them.’

‘I’ll slow them,’ said Rorgath, planting his feet and checking the clip in his bolter.

Antiges regarded the World Eater. The white and blue of his armour was already scored by bullet wounds and scorched by plasma burns.

‘Your sacrifice will be remembered,’ said Antiges, reverently.

No such sentiment was evident from the World Eater’s captain, who tossed Rorgath his bolt pistol.

‘Give them no quarter,’ he snarled, turning abruptly to lead what was left of the raiding party through the tangle of anterooms and corridors. The shouts of pursuers relaying their position followed them like hollow, ghost whispers, and the thud of armoured feet on the floor was dull and resonant in their wake.

Together, Antiges and Skraal moved swiftly across the hinterlands of the engine room and through a doorway in the bulkhead. Not long before they had left the chamber, the fierce bark of bolter fire erupted behind them.

It didn’t last long and deathly silence reigned for a moment before their relentless pursuers could be heard once more. Mangled with a cacophony of voices emitted from the ship’s vox array, it became obvious that a widespread search had begun. The Furious’s warriors were converging on the Astartes. They were getting closer every second.

Passing through an empty storage chamber, Skraal kicked open a door to reveal another corridor. The atmosphere was close and hot, the walls lined with burning torches. The sight was incongruous amongst the decks and trappings of a spaceship, but it also led downwards and prow-wards, in the direction where the Astartes guessed the primary ordnance deck would be.

‘What did they build in here?’ hissed Antiges, giving voice to his thoughts as they moved down the corridor. The Ultramarine got his answer as he emerged from the far end of the tunnel.

A vast plaza stretched out in front of them. Walls lined with baroque statues of deep red steel rose up into a domed ceiling. The vault at the apex of the massive chamber was hazy with incense and supported by dramatic false columns. Prayers were inscribed on the flagstone floor. An altar and pulpit stood at the far end of a central aisle. There was only one word to describe it: a cathedral. In the supposed age of enlightenment, when all superstition and religion was to be expunged from the galaxy to be replaced by science and understanding, all that the Emperor had decreed was dishonoured by the chamber’s very existence.

Antiges found that it left a bitter taste in his mouth and was ready to tear down the effigies and rend this temple of false idolatry to the ground with his bare hands, when a voice echoed out of the surrounding gloom.

‘There is no escape.’

The Ultramarine saw Skraal throw himself against a pillar. Antiges swiftly adopted a crouching position, bolt pistol outstretched in a two-handed grip, scanning the darkness. He could just make out the crimson armour at the far end of the cathedral. The speaker, his tone eerily calm and cultured, was sheltering behind the altar. The Word Bearer was not alone.

Booted feet clacking against the stone floor behind the Astartes confirmed the threat. Antiges and the World Eater were covered from both sides of the chamber.

‘I am Sergeant-Commander Reskiel of the Word Bearers,’ said the speaker, identifying himself. ‘Throw down your arms and surrender at once,’ he warned, all the culture evaporating.

‘After you fired on us and slew our brothers!’ Skraal raged.

‘This need not end in further bloodshed,’ Reskiel added.

Antiges felt the enemy converging on them, heard the faint scrape of ceramite against stone as they closed.

‘What is this place, Word Bearer?’ asked the Ultramarine, panning his sights first across the pulpit and then further out until he had swept the gloom around them. ‘Such religiosity is not condoned by the Emperor. You openly defy his will. Have you reverted to primitive debasement and superstition?’ he asked, trying to goad them, trying to find time to devise a plan, expose a weakness. ‘Is all Colchis like this now?’

‘There is nothing primitive about the vision of our primarch or his home world,’ said Reskiel levelly, clearly wise to the Ultramarine’s stratagem. Stepping out from behind the altar, the sergeant-commander allowed the diffuse torchlight to bath him in its glow.

He was young, but highly decorated judging by the honour studs and medals on his crimson armour. The trappings of heroism and glory warred with strips of parchment and leaves of tattered vellum scripted in wretched verse.

A squad of Word Bearers emerged into the cathedral behind him, their bolters trained on the shadows where Antiges and Skraal were in cover.

‘Show yourselves, and let us speak brother to brother,’ said Reskiel, allowing his guardians to move in front of him.

‘You are no brother of mine!’ shouted Skraal.

‘Get ready,’ Antiges hissed to his ally as Reskiel raised a hand. The Ultramarine knew, with an ingrained warrior instinct, that he was about to give the order to open fire. He trained his bolt pistol on a cluster of Word Bearers at the front of the advancing guards.

Skraal roared, surging out of cover and throwing his chainaxe. He thumbed the activation stud as it left his hand and the weapon shrieked through the air. With a scream of ceramite on metal, the axe bypassed the guards and sliced clean through Reskiel’s wrist, embedding itself in the altar. Shield upraised, a war cry on his lips, the World Eater charged.

Antiges cursed the son of Angron’s impetuous battle lust and triggered the bolt pistol, running forward as the muzzle flare gave away his position. Bolt rounds hammered into the approaching Word Bearers and three of the warriors collapsed in a heap against the fury.

Bedlam filled the cathedral. Skraal covered the distance between him and his enemy so fast that none of the opening bolter shots hit him.

Antiges followed, acutely aware that he had foes behind as well as in front. An errant shot clipped his pauldron, another chipped his knee guard and he staggered briefly but kept on into the maelstrom, the name of Guilliman in his furious heart.

‘This is sacred ground!’ wailed Reskiel, clutching the stump of his arm as blood spurted freely from it. Skraal battered the Word Bearers in his path aside and when he reached the sergeant-commander, backhanded him across the face with his shield by way of a reply, and wrenched his chainaxe from the altar. He spun and slammed the head of the axe into the head of a red-armoured warrior charging behind him. The Word Bearer was thrown off his feet and skidded along the floor on his back, his face a red ruin of bone and shattered ceramite.

The ambushers from behind the two Astartes fell into the fray.

Skraal fought as if possessed by the spirit of Angron, slaying left and right as a terrible bloody rage overtook him. He embraced the cauldron of fury within and used it to kill, to ignore pain. Word Bearers fell horribly before his onslaught, so fierce that those surrounding the assault gave ground and retreated to the cathedral door. The one who called himself Reskiel was dragged out by one of his battle-brothers, the blood clotting on the stump of his wrist as he screamed his choler.

Bolter fire was hammering away towards the rear of the cathedral. Antiges could hear it echoing loudly inside his helmet as Skraal turned from the carnage he was wreaking to look at him.

A line of pain sketched its way down the Ultramarine’s back and he realised he’d been hit. This time the shot pierced his armour. Something warm welled in his chest and Antiges looked down to see a wet ragged hole. As his mind suddenly made the connection to what his body already knew, he slumped against a pillar, spitting blood. Lungs heaving, he tried to force his augmented body back into action and cranked another magazine into his bolt pistol. One hand clamped over the wound, the other triggering the bolter, Antiges resolved to go down fighting. In the distance, vision fogging, a shadow fell.

White spikes of pain were flashing before his eyes as he turned to look back at Skraal amidst the bloodbath at the altar.

‘Go,’ gasped Antiges.

The World Eater paused for a second, about to run back in and rescue the Ultramarine. A thrown grenade exploded near the pillar and Antiges’s world ended in a billow of smoke and shrapnel.

Skraal didn’t wait to see if the Ultramarine had survived. One way or another, Antiges was lost. Instead, he ran from the cathedral, storm shield warding off the worst of the bolter fire hammering across the cathedral towards him.

As he fled into the endless darkness, the shifting of the vessel’s hull echoing as if venting its displeasure, a thought forced its way into his mind in spite of the battle rage.

He was alone.

Zadkiel watched the battle unfolding through the docking picters mounted along the hull of the Furious Abyss.

Baelanos had fallen, yet his inert body had been recovered and lay in the laboratorium of Magos Gureod.

He would serve the Word, yet.

Baelanos’s dedication to the Word was that of a soldier to his commander, and he had never appreciated the more intellectual implications of Lorgar’s beliefs. Nevertheless, he was a loyal and useful asset. Zadkiel would not throw him away cheaply.

Ultis was doubtless buried beneath the rubble of Bakka Triumveron 14. In that, Baelanos had served Zadkiel too. It was another thorn removed from his side, the potential usurper despatched.

Yes, for that deed you will receive eternal service to the Legion.

‘We’re breached.’ Sergeant-Commander Reskiel’s voice came through on the vox, down where the engines met the main body of the battleship.

‘How many?’

‘Only one remains, my lord,’ Reskiel replied. ‘They made it in through the coolant venting ports, open for the re-supplying.’

‘Hunt him down with my blessing, sergeant-commander,’ Zadkiel ordered, ‘but be aware that you will be making your pursuit under take-off conditions.’

Another thorn, thought Zadkiel.

‘Sire, there are still warriors of the Legion fighting on the dock,’ countered Reskiel at the news of their imminent departure.

‘We cannot tarry. Every moment we stay to fight is another moment for the Wrathful to reach strike range or for our stowaway to damage something that cannot be replaced, not to mention the fact that the dockyard’s defences might be brought to bear. Sacrifice, Reskiel, is a lesson worth learning. Now, find the interloper and end this annoyance.’

‘At your command, admiral. I’m heading into the coolant systems now.’

Zadkiel cut the vox and observed the viewscreens above his command throne. A tactical map showed the Furious Abyss and the complex structure of the orbital docks around it. Crimson icons represented the Word Bearer forces still fighting and dying for their cause.

Zadkiel reached back for the vox and gave the order to take off.

Ultis watched from the rubble of the collapsed observation platform as the Furious Abyss begin to rise.

The engines of the battleship threw burning winds across the dockyards. Docking clamps and supply hangars melted to slag. Gantries burned and fuel tankers exploded, blossoms of blue-white thrown up amidst the firestorm. Fiery gales whipped around the open metal plaza, cooking cohorts and Astartes alike in the burgeoning conflagration surging across Bakka Triumveron 14. Scalding winds singed his face, even shielded by the wrecked chunks of ferrocrete. He saw the crimson paint on his armour blistering in the backwash of intense heat.

The maelstrom engulfed the bodies fighting outside it and they became as shadows and ash before it, as if frozen in time, eternally at war.

This was not the future he had envisaged for himself as he watched the Furious Abyss rise higher from the deck with a blast from its ventral thrusters.

He had been betrayed: not by the Word, but by another on board ship.

A shadow eclipsed the stricken Word Bearer, prone in the rubble.

‘Your friends desert you, traitor whelp,’ said a voice from above, old and gnarled.

Ultis craned his neck around to see, vision hazing in and out of focus, dimly aware of the blood that he had lost.

A massive Astartes in the armour of Leman Russ’s Legion reared over him like a slab of unyielding steel. Bedecked in trophies, pelts and tooth fetishes, he was every inch the savage that Ultis believed the Space Wolves to be.

‘I serve the Word,’ he said defiantly through blood-caked lips.

The Space Wolf shook the blood out of his straggly hair and grinned to display his fangs.

‘The Word be damned,’ he snarled.

The Space Wolf’s gauntleted fist was the last thing Ultis saw before all sense fled and his world went black.

Eleven

Survivors/Aftermath/I will break him

Buoyed upon hot currents of air vented by the Furious Abyss, what was left of the assault boats carrying the Astartes strike force made their escape from Bakka Triumveron 14 and back to the Wrathful held in orbit around the moon.

Cestus was waiting for the atmospheric craft in the tertiary docking bay when a single vessel touched down. Its outer hull shielding was badly scorched and its engines were all but burned out as it thunked to an unwieldy stop on the metal deck.

One assault boat, thought the Ultramarine captain, waiting with Saphrax and Laeradis, the apothecary ready with his narthecium injector. How many casualties did we sustain?

Engineering deck-hands hurried back and forth, hosing down the superheated aspects of the boat with coolant foam, and brandishing tools to affect immediate repairs. One of the officers stood at a distance with a data-slate, already compiling an initial damage report.

Cestus was oblivious to them all, his gaze fixed on the embarkation ramp as it ground open slowly with a hiss of venting pressure. Brynngar and his Blood Claws stepped out of the compartment.

The Ultramarine greeted him cordially enough.

‘Well met, son of Russ.’

Brynngar grunted a response, his demeanour still hostile, and turned to one of his charges.

‘Rujveld, bring him out.’

One of the Blood Claws, a youth with bright orange hair worked into a mohawk and a short beard festooned with wolf fetishes, nodded and went back into the crew compartment. When he returned, he was not alone. A pale-faced warrior was with him, his hands and forearms encased by restraints linked by an adamantium cord, his face fraught with cuts, and a massive purple-black bruise over one eye the size of Brynngar’s fist. Bent-backed and obviously weak, he had a defiant air about him still. He wore the armour of the XV Legion: the armour of the Word Bearers.

‘We have ourselves a prisoner,’ Brynngar snarled, stalking past the trio of Ultramarines without explanation, his Blood Claws with their prize in tow.

‘Find me an isolation cell,’ Cestus overheard the Wolf Guard say to one of his battle-brothers. ‘I intend to find out what he knows.’

Cestus kept his eyes forward for a moment, striving to master his anger.

‘My lord?’ ventured Saphrax, the banner bearer clearly noticing his captain’s distemper.

‘Son of Russ,’ Cestus said levelly, knowing he would be heard.

The sound of the departing Space Wolves echoing down the deck was the only reply.

‘Son of Russ,’ he bellowed this time and turned, his expression set as if in stone.

Brynngar had almost reached the deck portal when he stopped.

‘I would have your report, brother,’ said Cestus, calmly, ‘and I would have it now.’

The Wolf Guard turned slowly, his massive bulk forcing the Blood Claws close by to step aside. Anger and belligerence were etched on his face as plain as the Legion symbols on his armour.

‘The assault failed,’ he growled. ‘The Furious Abyss is still intact. There, you have my report.’

Cestus fought to keep his voice steady and devoid of emotion.

‘What of Antiges and Skraal?’

Brynngar was breathing hard, his anger boiling, but at the mention of the two captains, particularly Antiges, his expression softened for a moment.

‘We were the only survivors,’ he replied quietly and continued on through the deck portal to the passageways beyond that would lead eventually to the isolation chambers.

Cestus stood for a moment, allowing it to sink in. Antiges had been his battle-brother for almost twenty years. They had fought together on countless occasions. They had brought the light of the Emperor to countless worlds in the darkest reaches of the known galaxy.

‘What are your orders, my captain?’ asked Saphrax, ever the pragmatist.

Cestus crushed his grief quickly. It would serve no purpose here.

‘Get Admiral Kaminska. Tell her we are to continue pursuit of the Furious Abyss at once, with all speed.’

‘At your command, my lord.’ Saphrax snapped a strong salute and left the dock, heading for the bridge.

Cestus’s plan had failed, catastrophically. More than sixty per cent casualties were unacceptable. It left only the Ultramarines honour guard, still stationed aboard ship by way of contingency, and Brynngar’s Blood Claws. The Space Wolf’s continued defiance was developing into open hostility. Something was building. Even without the animal instincts of the sons of Russ, Cestus could feel it. He wondered how long it would be before the inevitable storm broke.

Here they were, at war with their fellow Legions. Guilliman only knew how deep the treachery went, how many more Legions had turned against the Emperor. If anything, the loyal Legions needed desperately to draw together, not to fight internecine conflicts between themselves in the name of petty disagreements. When the final reckoning came, where would Brynngar and his Legion sit? Guilliman and his Ultramarines were dogmatic in their fealty to the Emperor; could the same be said of Russ?

Cestus left such dark thoughts behind for now, knowing it would not aid him or their mission to dwell on them. Instead, his mind turned briefly to Antiges. In all likelihood, he was dead. His brother, his closest friend slain in what had been a fool’s cause. Cestus cursed himself for allowing Antiges to take his place. Saphrax was an able adjutant, his dedication to the teachings of Guilliman was unshakeable, but he was not the confidant that Antiges had been.

Cestus clenched his fist.

This deed will not go unavenged.

‘Laeradis, with me,’ said the Ultramarine captain, marching off in the direction that Brynngar had taken.

The Apothecary fell into lockstep behind him.

‘Where are we going, captain?’

‘I want to know what happened on Bakka Triumveron and I want to find out what our Word Bearer knows about his Legion’s ship and their mission to Macragge.’

By the time Cestus and Laeradis reached the isolation cells, Brynngar was already inside, the door sealed with Rujveld standing guard.

The isolation cells were located in the lower decks, where the heat and sweat of the engines could be heard and felt palpably. Toiling ratings below sang gritty naval chants to aid them in their work and the resonant din carried through the metal. It was a muffled chorus down the gloom-drenched passages that Cestus and Laeradis had travelled to reach this point.

‘Step aside, Blood Claw,’ ordered Cestus without preamble.

At first it looked as if Rujveld would disobey the Ultramarine, but Cestus was a captain, albeit from a different Legion, and that position commanded respect. The Blood Claw lowered his gaze, indicating his obedience, and gave ground.

Cestus thumbed the door release icon as he stood before the cell portal. The bare metal panel slid aside, two thins jets of vapour escaping as it did so.

A darkened chamber beckoned, barely illuminated in the half-light of lume-globes set to low-emit. A bulky shape stood within, with two shrivelled, robed forms to either side. Brynngar had stripped out of his armour, aided by two attendant Legion serfs. The menials kept their heads low and their tongues still. The Wolf Guard was naked from the waist up, wearing only simple grey battle fatigues. His torso was covered in old wounds, scars and faded pinkish welts creating a patchwork history of pain and battle.

Standing without his armour, his immense musculature obvious and intimidating, and with the great mass of his hair hanging down, Brynngar reminded the Ultramarine of a barbarian of ancient Terra, the kind that he had seen rendered in frescos in some of the great antiquitariums.

The Wolf Guard turned at the interruption, the shadow of another figure strapped down in a metal restraint frame partly visible for a moment before the Space Wolf’s bulk took up the space again.

‘What do you want, Cestus? I’m sure you can see that I’m busy.’ Brynngar’s knuckles were hard and white as he clenched his fists.

As he had stormed from the tertiary dock after the Space Wolf and his battle-brothers, Cestus had thought to intervene, the idea of torturing a fellow Legion brother abhorrent to him. Now, standing at the threshold of the isolation chamber, he realised just how desperate their plight had become and that victory might call for compromise.

Just how far this compromise would go and where it would eventually lead, Cestus did not care to think. It was what it was. They were on this course now and the Word Bearers were enemies like any other. They had not hesitated when they destroyed the Waning Moon, nor had they paused to consider their actions during the slaughter on Bakka Triumveron 14.

‘I would speak to you again, Brynngar,’ the Ultramarine captain said, ‘once this is over. I would know the details of what happened on Bakka.’

‘Aye, lad.’ The Space Wolf nodded, a glimmer of their old rapport returning briefly to his features.

Cestus glimpsed the prone form of their prisoner as Brynngar turned back to his ‘work’.

‘Do only what is necessary,’ the Ultramarine warned, ‘and do it quickly. I am leaving Laeradis here to… assist you if he can.’

The Apothecary shifted uncomfortably beside Cestus, whether at the thought of partaking in torture or the prospect of being left alone with Brynngar, the Ultramarines captain did not know.

Brynngar looked over his shoulder just as Cestus was leaving.

‘I will break him,’ he said with a predatory gleam in his eye.

‘We hid behind Bakka Triumveron to keep the Furious Abyss from sending torpedoes after us. We’re heading on course for a warp jump vector as we speak.’

Kaminska was, as ever, on station at her command throne on the bridge. Saphrax was there, also, straight backed and dour as ever. Cestus had headed there alone after leaving Laeradis with Brynngar in the isolation chamber. In the scant reports he’d received from the admiral regarding information gleaned from the assault boat pilot, Cestus had learned a little more of what had happened at Bakka. They’d lost the other two assault boats during the extraction, swallowed up by the fire of the Furious’s engines that had turned much of Bakka Triumveron 14 into a smoking wasteland of charred and twisted metal. The tactical readouts aboard ship had disclosed precious little, save that it was chaotic and not to plan. One of Guilliman’s edicts of wisdom was that any plan, however meticulously devised, seldom survives contact with the enemy. The primarch spoke, of course, of the need for flexibility and adaptation when at war. Cestus thought he should have heeded those words more closely. It appeared, also, that the Word Bearers had been forewarned of the Astartes’ attack, a fact that he resolved to discover the root of. He considered briefly the possibility of a traitor in their ranks aboard the Wrathful, but dismissed the thought quickly, partly because to countenance such a thing would breed only suspicion and paranoia, and also because to do so would implicate the Astartes captains or Kaminska.

‘What of our prisoner, Captain Cestus?’ asked Kaminska, after consulting the battery of viewscreens in front of her, satisfied that all necessary preparations were underway for pursuit.

‘He is resting uncomfortably with Brynngar,’ the Ultramarine replied, his gaze locked on the prow-facing viewport.

‘You believe he knows something about the ship that we can use to our advantage?’

Cestus’s response was taciturn as he thought grimly of the road ahead and of their options dwindling like parchment before a flame.

‘Let us hope so.’

Kaminska allowed a moment’s pause, before she spoke again.

‘I am sorry about Antiges. I know he was your friend.’

Cestus turned to face her.

‘He was my brother.’

Kaminska’s vox-bead chirped, interrupting the sentiment of the moment.

‘We have reached the jump point, captain’ she said. ‘If we hit the warp now, Orcadus has a chance of finding the Furious Abyss again.’

‘Engage the warp drives,’ said Cestus.

Kaminska gave the order and after a few minutes the Wrathful shuddered as the integrity fields leapt up around it, ready for its re-entry into the warp.

Zadkiel prayed to the bodies in front of him.

The Word Bearer was situated in one of the many chapels within the lower decks of the Furious Abyss. It was a modest, relatively unadorned chamber with a simple shrine etched with the scriptures of Lorgar and lit by votive candles set in baroque-looking candelabras. The room, besides being the ship’s morgue, also offered solace and the opportunity to consider the divinity of the primarch’s Word, of his teachings and the power of faith and the warp.

Prayer was a complicated matter. On the crude, fleshly level it was just a stream of words spoken by a man. It was little wonder that Imperial conquerors, without an understanding of what faith truly was, saw the prayers of primitive people and discarded them as dangerous superstition and a barrier to genuine enlightenment. They saw the holy books and sacred places, and ascribed them not to faith or a higher understanding but to stupidity, blindness, and an adherence to divisive, irrelevant traditions. They taught an Imperial Truth in the place of those simple religions and wiped out any evidence that faith had once been a reality to those worlds. Sometimes that erasure was done with flames and bullets. More often it was done with iterators, brilliant diplomats and philosophers, who could re-educate whole populations.

Zadkiel’s belief, the root of his vainglorious conviction, was that the Throne of Terra would be toppled, not by the strength of arms wielded by the Warmaster, nor even by the denizens of the warp, but by faith. Simple and indissoluble, the purity of it would burn through the Imperium like a holy spear, setting the non-believers and their effigies of science and empirical delusion alight.

Zadkiel shifted slightly in his kneeling position, abruptly aware that another presence was in the chapel-morgue with him.

‘Speak,’ he uttered calmly, eyes closed.

‘My lord it is I, Reskiel,’ the sergeant-commander announced.

Zadkiel could hear the creak of his armour as he bowed, in spite of the fact that he could not see him.

‘I would know the fate of Captain Baelanos, sire,’ Reskiel continued after a moment’s pause. ‘Was he recovered?’

Doubtless, the ambitious cur sought to supplant the stricken assault-captain in Zadkiel’s command hierarchy, or manoeuvre for greater power and influence in the fleet. This did not trouble the Word Bearer admiral. Reskiel was easy to manipulate. His ambition far outweighed his ability, a fact that was easy to exploit and control. Unlike Ultis, whose youthful idealism and fearlessness threatened him, Zadkiel was sanguine about Reskiel’s prospects for advancement.

‘Though mortally injured, the good captain was indeed recovered,’ Zadkiel told him. ‘His body has gone into its fugue state in order to heal.’ Zadkiel turned at that remark, looking the sergeant-commander in the eye. ‘Baelanos will be incapacitated for some time, captain. This only strengthens your position in my command.’

‘My lord, I don’t mean to imply–’

‘No, of course not Reskiel,’ Zadkiel interjected with a mirthless smile, ‘but you have suffered for our cause and such sacrifice will not go unrewarded. You will assume Baelanos’s duties.’

Reskiel nodded. The World Eater had shattered the bones down one side of his skull and his face had been reinforced with a metal web bolted to his cheek and jaw.

‘We have lost many brothers this day,’ he said, indicating the Astartes corpses laid out before his lord.

‘They are not lost,’ said Zadkiel. Each of the slain Word Bearers was set upon a mortuary slab, ready for their armour to be removed and their gene-seed recovered. One of them lay with his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Zadkiel closed them reverently. ‘Only if the Word had no place for them would they be lost.’

‘What of Ultis?’

Zadkiel surveyed the array of the dead. ‘He fell at Bakka,’ he lied, ‘and the Scholar Coven with him.’

Reskiel clenched his teeth in anger. ‘Damn them.’

‘We will not damn anyone, Reskiel,’ said Zadkiel sharply, ‘nor even will Lorgar. The Emperor’s gun-dogs will damn themselves.’

‘We should turn about and blast them out of real space.’

‘You, sergeant-commander, are in no place to say what this ship should and should not do. In the presence of these loyal brothers, do not debase yourself by forgetting your purpose.’ Zadkiel did not have to raise his voice to convey his displeasure.

‘Please forgive me, admiral. I have… I have lost brothers.’

‘We have all lost something. It was written that we would lose much before we are victorious. We should not expect anything else. We will not engage the Wrathful in a fight because to do so would use up time that we no longer have to spare, and our mission depends on its timing. Kor Phaeron will not be late, so neither will we. Besides, we have other options when dealing with the Wrathful.’

‘You mean Wsoric?’

Zadkiel clenched his fist in a moment of unsuppressed emotion. ‘It is not appropriate for his name to be spoken here. Make the cathedral ready to receive him.’

‘Of course,’ said Reskiel. ‘And the surviving Astartes?’

‘Hunt him down and kill him,’ said Zadkiel.

Reskiel saluted and walked out of the chapel-mortuary.

Certain that the sergeant-commander was gone, Zadkiel gestured to the shadows from which a clandestine guest emerged.

Magos Gureod shuffled into the light of the votive candles slowly, mechadendrites clicking like insectoid claws.

‘You have received Baelanos?’ the admiral asked.

The magos nodded.

‘All is prepared, my lord.’

‘Then begin his rebirth at once.’

Gureod bowed and left the chamber.

Now truly alone, Zadkiel looked back at the bodies lying arranged in front of him. In another chamber, together with the many crew of the Furious who had died, were the enemy Astartes, slain in the engine room and the cathedral. They would not receive benediction. They would have refused such an honour even if it could be given, because they did not understand what prayer and faith meant. They would never be given their place in the Word. They had forsaken it.

Those Astartes, the declared enemies of Lorgar, were the ones who were truly lost.

An hour after the Wrathful had entered the warp, Cestus went to the isolation chambers. Upon his arrival, he found Rujveld still dutifully in his position. This time, though, the Blood Claw stepped aside without being ordered and offered no resistance, it being ostensibly clear that the Ultramarine would brook none.

The gloom of the isolation, cum interrogation, chamber was as Cestus remembered it, although now, the air was redolent of copper and sweat.

‘What progress have you made?’ the Ultramarine captain asked of Laeradis, who stood at the edge of the room. The apothecary’s face was ashen as he faced his brother-captain and saluted.

‘None,’ he hissed.

‘Nothing?’ asked Cestus, nonplussed. ‘He hasn’t yielded any information whatsoever?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Brynngar–’

‘Your Apothecary has the strength of it,’ grumbled the Space Wolf, his back to Cestus, body heaving up and down with the obvious effort of his interrogations. When he turned, Brynngar’s face was haggard and his beard and much of his torso were flecked with blood. His meaty fists were angry and raw.

‘Is he alive?’ Cestus asked, concern creeping into his voice, not at the fate of their prisoner but at the prospect that they might have lost their one and only piece of leverage.

‘He lives,’ Brynngar answered, ‘but, by the oceans of Fenris, he is tight-lipped. He has not even spoken his name.’

Cestus felt his spirit falter for a moment. Time was running out. How many more warp jumps until they reached Macragge? How many more opportunities would they get to stop the Word Bearers? It was irrational to even comprehend that one ship, even one such as the Furious Abyss, could possibly threaten Macragge and the Legion. Surely, even the mere presence of the orbital fleet above the Ultramarines’ home world would be enough to stop it, let alone Guilliman and the Legion mustering at nearby Calth. Something else was happening, however, events that, as of yet, Cestus had no knowledge of. The Furious Abyss was a piece of a larger plan, he could sense it, and one that posed a very real danger. They needed to break this Word Bearer, and quickly, find out what he knew and a way to stop the ship and its inexorable course.

Brynngar was possibly the most physically intimidating Astartes he had ever known, aside from the glory and majesty of the noble primarch. If he, with all his bulk and feral savagery, could not break the traitor then who could?

‘There is but one avenue left open to us,’ said Cestus, the answer suddenly clear, even though it was an answer muddied with the utmost compromise.

Brynngar held Cestus’s gaze, his eyes narrowed as he fought to discern the Ultramarine’s meaning.

‘Speak then,’ he said.

‘We release Mhotep,’ Cestus answered simply.

Brynngar roared his dissent.

Mhotep sat in quiet contemplation in the quarters made ready for him aboard the Wrathful. As ordered, he had not left the relatively spartan chamber since his incarceration after he had vanquished the Fireblade. He sat, naked of his armour, in robes afforded to him by attendant Legion serfs, long since departed, in deep meditation. His gaze was fixed upon the reflective surface of the room’s single viewport, poring into the unfathomable depths of psychic space and communion.

When the door to his cell slid open, Mhotep was not surprised. He had followed the strands of fate, witnessed and understood the web of possibility that brought him to this point, this meeting.

‘Captain Cestus,’ muttered the Thousand Son with an air of prescience from beneath a cowl of vermillion.

‘Mhotep,’ Cestus replied, taken a little aback by the Thousand Son’s demeanour. The Ultramarine wasn’t alone; he had brought Excelinor, Amryx and Laeradis with him.

‘The assault at Bakka Triumveron failed, didn’t it?’ said the Thousand Son.

‘The enemy obviously had prior warning of our intentions. It is part of the reason I came here to meet with you.’

‘You believe that I can provide an answer to this conundrum?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Cestus replied.

‘It is simple,’ said Mhotep. ‘The Word Bearers have made a pact with the denizens of the warp. They forewarned them of your attack.’

‘There is sentience in the empyrean?’ the Ultramarine asked in disbelief. ‘How is it we do not know this? Are the primarchs privy to this? Is the Emperor?’

‘That I do not know. All I can tell you is that the warp is beyond the comprehension of you or I, and things exist in its fathomless depths that are older than time as we know it.’

Mhotep paused for a moment as if in sudden contemplation.

‘Do you see them, son of Guilliman?’ he asked, still locked in his meditative posture. ‘Quite beautiful.’

Cestus followed the Thousand Son’s gaze to the viewport and saw nothing but the haze of the integrity fields and the bizarre and undulating landscape of the warp.

‘Don’t make me regret what I am about to do, Mhotep,’ he warned, glad of his battle-brothers’ presence behind him. The Ultramarine captain had already dismissed the armsmen guarding the door, an order they responded to with no shortage of relief. It was a moot gesture, really; Mhotep could have left at any time, irrespective of their presence. The fact that he had not somewhat mitigated what Cestus was about to say.

That was, before Mhotep pre-empted him.

‘I am to be released.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes,’ said Cestus, carefully. ‘We have a prisoner aboard and precious little time to find out what he knows.’

‘I take it conventional methods have already failed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Small wonder,’ said Mhotep. ‘Of all the children of the Emperor, the seventeenth Legion are the most fervent and impassioned. Mere torture would not prevail against such ardent fanaticism and zealotry.’

‘We require a different tack, one which I do not relish undertaking, but which I am compelled to employ.’

Mhotep stood, setting back his hood and turning to face Cestus.

‘Ultramarine, there is no need to convey your reluctance to me. I am sure the account of this day, if such records ever come to pass given our current predicament, will state that you acted under the most profound duress,’ he said smoothly, the trace of a smile appearing on his lips before it was lost in the mask of indifference.

‘I do not know what powers you possess, brother,’ said Cestus. ‘I had thought to make you stand trial and answer that question for me. It seems, however, that events have overtaken us.’

‘Indeed,’ answered Mhotep. ‘I am as moved by my duty as you are, Ultramarine. If I am freed then I will fight as hard as any and pledge my strength to the cause.’

Cestus nodded. His stern expression gave away the warring emotions within him, the abhorrence of flouting the Emperor’s decree matched against the needs of the situation.

‘Gather your armour,’ he ordered. ‘Brothers Excelinor and Amryx will accompany you to the isolation cell.’ Cestus about turned and was walking away with Laeradis when Mhotep spoke again.

‘What of the son of Russ? What does he make of my emancipation?’

The bellowing and violent protests of Brynngar were still ringing in the Ultramarine’s ears.

‘Let me worry about that.’

Cestus and Laeradis were waiting when Mhotep, with Excelinor and Amryx in tow, reached them at the isolation cell. Brynngar and Rujveld had already stormed off in the wake of the Space Wolf captain’s explosive discontent.

Cestus nodded to his battle-brothers as they approached. The two Ultramarines reciprocated the gesture and fell in beside their captain.

‘The prisoner is within,’ the Ultramarine captain told Mhotep, who had reached the door and stood before it calmly. ‘Will you require Laeradis’s assistance?’ he added.

‘You can have your chirurgeon go back to his quarters,’ replied the Thousand Son, his gaze fixed upon the sealed portal as if he could see through it.

Cestus nodded to his Apothecary, indicating that his duty was done.

If Laeradis thought anything of the slight that Mhotep had delivered, he did not show it. Instead, he snapped a sharp salute to his captain and left for his quarters as directed.

Mhotep thumbed the activation icon and the portal slid open, showing the darkened cell.

‘Once it begins,’ he said, ‘do not enter.’ Mhotep turned to face the Ultramarine. ‘No matter what you hear or see, do not enter,’ he warned, and all trace of superiority vanished from his face.

‘We will be outside,’ Cestus replied, Excelinor and Amryx grim-faced behind their captain, ‘and watching everything you do, Thousand Son.’ The Ultramarine captain indicated a viewport that allowed observation into the isolation cell. ‘I see anything I don’t like and you’ll be dead before you can utter another word.’

‘Of course,’ said Mhotep, unperturbed as he entered the chamber, the door sliding shut in his wake.

Mhotep stepped carefully into the gloom, surveying his immediate surroundings as he went. Dark splashes littered the floor and walls; even the ceiling was not devoid of the evidence of torture. A suit of armour had been thrown into one corner, together with the body-glove that went beneath it. This was not considered disrobing by a coterie of acolytes. No, this was frenzied: an attempt to get to the soft meat of the flesh and exact pain and profound suffering. Mhotep’s expression hardened at such barbarism. Implements, crude and brutish to the Thousand Son’s eyes, lay discarded on a silver tray, also speckled in blood. Some of the devices even bore traces of meat, doubtless rent from the unfortunate subject when his tongue failed to loosen under the fists of the Space Wolf. The chirurgeon’s methods, then, had been equally ineffective.

‘You are quite tenacious,’ Mhotep said. There was a trace of menace in his calm inflection as he approached the metal cruciform frame to which the prisoner was affixed. The Thousand Son ignored the rapacious bruising, the cuts, gouges and tears that afflicted the subject’s battered body. Instead, he focused on the eyes. They were still defiant, albeit slightly groggy from the beatings the prisoner had been given.

‘What compromise you force us to endure,’ he whispered to himself, drawing close so that their faces almost touched. ‘Tell me, what secrets do you possess?’

The response came stuttering through blood-caked lips.

‘I… serve… only… the… Word.’

Mhotep reached for the scarab earring and removed it. He manipulated the small object with his thumb and forefinger, and placed it upon his forehead, where it stayed affixed in the shape of a gold eye, the symbol of Magnus.

‘Do not think,’ he warned, placing his fingers against the prisoner’s skull and pressing hard, ‘that you can hide from me.’

When Mhotep’s fingers penetrated the flesh, the screaming began.

Twelve

Sirens/Screams and silence/Here be monsters

Cestus’s teeth clenched at the horrific noises emanating from within the isolation chamber. Excelinor and Amryx followed their captain’s example, stoically bearing the sounds of psychic torture, secretly glad that they were not the subject of Mhotep’s attentions.

Through the viewport, the isolation cell was shrouded in shadow. Cestus could see Mhotep from the back only. The Thousand Son moved almost imperceptibly as he stood before the prisoner who, by contrast, spasmed intermittently as his mind was ransacked.

On several occasions, when the screaming was at its height, Cestus had wanted to go in and end it, abhorred at the mental damage being inflicted on what was once a brother Astartes, but he had stopped himself every time, even warning off Excelinor and Amryx from taking action. Instead, the two battle-brothers had turned away from the viewport, leaving Cestus alone to observe the imagined horrors of the Word Bearer’s torture.

Twice already, he had angrily ordered worried arms-men away, after they had come to investigate the sound, fearing another warp attack as they patrolled the decks.

As the shipboard vox crackled, issuing a warning, obliquely, they were right.

‘Captain Cestus, come to the bridge at once. We are under attack!’

Loathe as he was to leave Mhotep, albeit with Excelinor and Amryx, Cestus had little choice but to do as bidden. He reached the bridge quickly and Saphrax quickly apprised him of the situation.

The alert had come when several unknown projectiles had been expelled from the vicinity of the Furious Abyss, and were snaking across the warp towards the Wrathful. At first it was believed that the missiles were in fact torpedoes launched in a punitive attempt to dissuade pursuit. That assumption was crushed in the moment when Admiral Kaminska’s helmsmistress, Venkmyer, had identified their erratic trajectory and the truth had been revealed.

‘Sirens,’ Kaminska breathed, looking up at the tactical display before her that showed the inexorable advance of the creatures. A dark atmosphere seemed to pervade the bridge, and the admiral looked uncomfortable because of it. Her uniform was in slight disarray – she had clearly been roused from quarters when the alert had come in – and only added to her apparent sense of unease. ‘I had thought such things were void-born myths.’

‘They are the denizens of the empyrean,’ Cestus told her, the disquieting mood affecting him less acutely. Something was awry. The Ultramarine captain put it down to the sudden appearance of the warp beasts. ‘Can we avoid them, admiral?’

Kaminska’s face was grave as she considered the path of the warp creatures on the tactical display in front of her command throne.

‘Admiral,’ Cestus said sternly, snapping Kaminska free of the dark mood that had suddenly ensnared her.

‘Yes, captain?’ she gasped, face pale and unsteady in her command throne.

‘Can Orcadus find a way around these creatures?’

Kaminska shook her head. ‘We are on a collision course.’

Cestus turned to Saphrax.

‘Ready the honour guard and have them gather on the assembly deck at once; Amryx and Excelinor, too.’ He didn’t want to leave Mhotep alone, but the warp creatures threatened the safety of the ship and he would need all of his battle-brothers to defend it. On balance, it was a risk worth taking.

‘Captain,’ said Kaminska as the Ultramarine was leaving.

Cestus turned and looked at her, noticing that Helmsmistress Venkmyer had moved to her aid. Kaminska warned off her second-in-command with a glance.

‘What is it, admiral?’ Cestus asked.

‘If these creatures are indeed native to the warp, how are we to stop them?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered the Astartes and then left the bridge.

Quite what the warp looked like was a question that could never be answered. The human mind was not designed to comprehend it, which was why only specialised mutants like Orcadus could look upon it, and even then with a third eye that did not truly perceive it, merely filtering out the parts that would otherwise drive him mad.

Certainly, there was something ophidian or shark-like about the creatures that closed in on the Wrathful. In truth, they neither intercepted nor followed it, but stalked it from all directions at once, creeping up from the past and gliding in from the future to converge on the point of fragile space-time that held the Wrathful in its bubble.

They had eyes, lots of eyes. Their bodies were writhing strings of non-matter, which could take on any shape, because they had no true form to begin with, but there were always eyes. They had wings, too, which were also claws and fangs, and masses of pendulous blubber to keep them warm against the nuclear cold of the warp’s storms. They burned and shimmered with acid, and shed daggers of ice from their scales. They had been born in the abyss, and had never been forced by the tyranny of reality into one form. To stay the same from one moment to the next would have been as alien to them as the warp was to a human mind.

Lamprey mouths opened up. The predators made themselves coterminous with the Wrathful, forcing themselves into unfamiliar frames of logic to avoid annihilation by the protective energy fields that surrounded the ship.

The minds inside were brimming with the potential for madness, delicious insanity to be suckled upon. The predators fed normally on scraps: moments of emotion or agony, powerful enough to bloom in the warp and be consumed. Here there were lifetimes worth of sensation to be drained, enough for any one of the wraiths to become bloated and terrible, a whale drifting through the abyss big enough to feed upon its own kind.

Thousands of bright lights flickered in the ship, each one both a potential feast, and a gateway for the non-physical predators.

One of them found an unprotected mind and, easing itself painfully into the rules of reality, forced its way in.

The screams were the first signs that anything was wrong on the lance deck.

The lances, immense laser cannon hooked up to the plasma reactors in the ship’s stern, had been silent since the duel with the Furious Abyss outside the Solar System. The gun gangs still tended to them, because lasers were temperamental, especially when they had to funnel the titanic levels of power that could surge through a laser lance, and the gun gangs were constantly busy hammering out imperfections in focusing lenses and cleaning the laser conduits, which could misfire if any blemish refracted too much power in the wrong direction.

One ganger fell from his perch high up on the inner hull, where he had been aligning one of the huge mirrors. He hit the ground with a wet crump that told the gang chief that he was most certainly dead. It was a sound he had heard many times before.

The gang chief was in no hurry to see what had become of the fallen ganger. Deaths meant hassle. The gang would be one short, so someone would have to be drafted from somewhere else on the ship and the Wrathful had lost plenty of men already, and they were in the abyss.

For a man to die in the abyss was bad luck. Some said if you died in the warp you never got out, and even with the suppression of religions in the fleet you couldn’t stop a void-born superstition like that.

The dead man, however, was not dead. When the gang chief reached the body he saw it mewling like a drowning animal, writhing around on its back with its wrists and ankles shaking as if it was trying to right itself.

The gang chief expressed displeasure that the man was still alive, since he would undoubtedly die soon and carting him off to the sick bay was another inconvenience the gun crews didn’t need.

The dying man’s body distended with the cracking of ribs. One side of his body split off from the other, organs separating as his pelvis split. His sternum snapped free and false ribs pinged against the laser housing beside him. His body rippled up from the floor into a writhing, pulsing arch of flesh and bone, drizzling blood onto the gunmetal deck. The crewman’s head lolled to one side, its jaw wrenched at an angle, its eyes still open.

The space within the arch twisted and went dark. The predator forced its way through, spilling out onto the floor like the contents of a split belly, feeling blindly, eyes blinking as they evolved to absorb light.

Then the screaming started.

It was carnage in the lance decks, absolute carnage.

The warning icons had blazed through the ship, coupled with frantic vox chatter about monsters and the dead coming back to life, before it cut off ominously. Reconnoitring with his battle-brothers on the assembly deck, Cestus had led the honour guard, fully armed, to the lance decks and there they stood to bear witness to the horror.

The Ultramarine captain wondered, for a moment, whether he had been wrong all along, whether the Imperial Truth itself was wrong, and that the hells of those primitive faiths really did exist to be given form in the lance decks. He dismissed his doubts as heretical, crushing them beneath his iron-hard resolve and his loyalty to Roboute Guilliman. Even still, what he saw warred with what he desperately tried to believe. Bodies were painted across the walls in ragged smears of skin and muscle. The faces of the gang ratings were ripped open in expressions of horror, and stared out from heaps of torn limbs. Flesh and viscera were draped across high girders ahead, or over the massive workings of the lances themselves. The focusing mirrors and lenses were sprayed with blood. The living writhed in a single mass, smearing themselves with gore and sinking their teeth into one another.

Spectral threads of glowing black wrapped around the spines of the bleeding revellers. The threads led up to the ceiling of the lance deck where a titanic mass of darkness squatted, a seething thing of eyes and mouths gibbering and chuckling as it manipulated the lance deck’s crew into further depths of suffering.

Cestus was an Astartes. He had seen extraordinary, horrible things: amorphous aliens that consumed their own to be ready for battle; insect-things that broke up into swarms of seething, biting horrors; whole worlds infected or dying, whole stars boiling away in the death throes of a species, but he had never seen anything like this.

‘Weapons free,’ he raged.

A brutal chorus of bolter fire rang out to his order, puncturing the mass of flesh and exploding it from within. Thestor swung his heavy bolter around and added his own punishing shots to the salvo.

Terrible screeching filled the tight space and resonated in his battle helm, auditory-limiters struggling to modulate the horrible keening of the damned ratings.

The dangling threads held by the warp creature began to sever one by one as the munitions of the Astartes struck and detonated with fury. It snarled its displeasure, revealing row upon row of fine needle-like fangs and a slathering spectral tongue that appeared to taste their essence. Like a lightning strike, the tongue lashed out and speared Thestor through his cuirass. He bellowed in pain, heavy bolter fire flaring as he triggered the weapon in his death throes. The honour guard scattered as the errant shells strafed the deck, and Thestor shook and went into spasm as he was lifted into the air, impaled on the warp spawn’s tongue.

‘Burn it!’ cried Cestus in desperation. ‘Burn it all!’

Morar stepped forward with his flamer and doused the tunnel in roaring, white-hot promethium. Thestor and the creature’s transfixing tongue were immolated in cleansing fire. The warp spawn reeled, shrieking in anger as it recoiled from the attack. Morar swept the cone of intense heat downward, cooking the conjoined mass of the dead ratings.

As the warp spawn gave ground, Cestus noticed patches of ichorous fluid spattering the deck in its wake.

If it can bleed, he thought, we can kill it.

‘Advance on me,’ cried the Ultramarine captain. ‘Courage and honour!’

‘Courage and honour!’ his battle-brothers bellowed in reply.

Brooding in the temporary barrack room afforded to the Space Wolves onboard the Wrathful, Brynngar had heard the alert screaming through the ship and had mustered his warriors.

Tracking the commotion to the lower lance decks, he and his Blood Claws were unprepared for the sight that greeted them as they descended into the gloom. It was a charnel house. Flayed flesh lined the walls and blood slicked the floor. Bones, still red with gore, lay discarded in mangled piles. Screams were etched upon the visages of skulls, locked in their last moments of agony.

The bloody massacre was not, however, what gave the Space Wolf captain pause. It was the nightmare creature, tearing at chunks of flesh with its teeth. At their approach, the beast, a luminous, shark-like horror, turned, its lipless maw smeared with blood, its swollen belly engorged.

‘Here be monsters,’ Brynngar breathed and felt a quail of something unfamiliar, an alien emotion, trickle down his spine.

He found his courage quickly, baring his fangs as he howled.

The Space Wolves launched at the creature, blades drawn.

Mhotep staggered from the isolation chamber, not surprised to see that he was alone. He had broken the traitor, though it had not been easy. He felt the sweat of his exertions beneath his helmet and was breathing heavily as he stepped into the adjoining corridor. Of the subject known as Ultis, for he had given his name before the end, there was precious little left. A drooling cage of flesh and bone were all that remained. His conditioned defences, ingrained by years of fanatical indoctrination, had been tough to break, but as a result, when they had fallen, they had fallen hard. Only a shell remained, a gibbering wreck incapable of further defiance, incapable of anything.

Exhausted as he was, Mhotep groaned when he detected the rogue presence onboard the ship. Mustering what reserves of strength he had left, he made for the lance decks.

Morar was dead. His bifurcated body lay in two halves across the deck. Amyrx was badly wounded, but alive. He slumped against an upright, beneath a metal arch, a chunk of flesh ripped from his torso.

A dark mass was boiling down the corridor behind Cestus, even as the honour guard faced off against the first warp predator, torrents of semi-liquid flesh bursting through doorways in a flood. Eyes formed in the mass, focusing on the Astartes.

The Ultramarine swivelled his body around, barking a warning before his bolter blazed, the muzzle flare lighting up the dark around him. A long tongue of dark muscle thrashed blindly past him from the creature’s gaping mouth, and Cestus threw himself out of its path. Laeradis, desperately ministering to the wounded Amyrx, was not so lucky. The membrane lashed around him, sending spines of pain throughout his body. The Apothecary screamed as the flesh suddenly dried and split open, fist-sized seeds spilling from the fibrous interior.

The seeds burst into life, tiny buzzing wings shearing through the shells and long sharp mandibles splintering out. Laeradis was eviscerated in the storm in a bloody haze of bone, flesh and armour.

Cestus cried out and swung his bolt pistol back around. He picked off the insectoid creatures with precise shots as they buzzed towards him, letting out his breath to steady his aim. He caught the last with his free hand. Cestus mashed it into the wall before it could chew through the ceramite of his gauntlet.

With the two warp creatures on either side, the Ultramarines were being crushed into a tight circle.

Even as he continued to pummel the second warp fiend with bolt pistol fire, he heard Saphrax bellow the name of Roboute Guilliman, punctuated by the retort of his weapon. The burning flare of expelled plasma lit the side of his face, and the Ultramarine captain knew that their other special weapon bearer, Pytaron, was still with them. Muzzle flashes blazing, Lexinal and Excelinor continued to fire their bolters, war cries on their lips.

The chorus of battle raged as the warp predators closed, weaving and twisting impossibly from the worst of the Ultramarines’ fusillade, shrieking and screeching whenever they were struck and forced back.

Cestus checked the ammo-reader on his bolt pistol. His remaining rounds wouldn’t last long. Divided as they were, he and his battle-brothers would be unable to destroy either creature like this. With little recourse left, he made his decision.

‘All guns with me!’ he cried. ‘In the name of Guilliman, concentrate fire.’

With no hesitation, the Ultramarines turned their combined fire onto one of the warp creatures. Not expecting the sudden storm, the beast was caught unawares. Desperately trying to weave and jink out of harm’s way, it was struck by a barrage of bolter rounds. Super-heated plasma scorched its flank and a precise salvo from Cestus struck it in the eye. A keening wail emanated from the dread creature as it shuddered out of existence, expelled from the bubble of real space within the Wrathful. However, the victory proved costly, as the second creature surged, unhindered, to the Ultramarines’ position, suddenly buoyed by the presence of three more of its kin.

Cestus and his battle-brothers turned as one, defiant war cries on their lips as they prepared to sell their lives dearly.

The rending of flesh as their bodies were torn asunder, the stench of blood and the sound of shredding bone failed to materialise.

Poised with jaws outstretched, ready to devour the Astartes, the warp creatures were assailed by a blazing crimson light that bathed the corridor in an incandescent lustre. The beasts recoiled and shrank before him, snapping ineffectually at the air as the building aura seared them.

‘Warp spawned filth!’ spat a voice behind Cestus, echoing with power. ‘Flee back into the abyss and leave this plane of existence.’

Shielding his eyes against the brilliance of the light, Cestus saw Mhotep striding towards them, a cerulean nimbus of psychic energy coursing over his armoured body. He held a golden spear in his outstretched hand.

‘Down, now!’ he cried and the Ultramarines hit the floor with a crash of ceramite.

The spear arced over their heads like a divine bolt of lightning and pierced the first warp beast, tearing through its slithering flank and slathering the deck with dark grey, spilling gore.

Its death cry reverberated in the confines of the vaulted tunnel, the metal uprights screaming before it. Then it was gone, leaving an actinic stench in its wake.

The kindred beasts came at him, enduring the furious energy that the Thousand Son had unleashed, but were driven back as Cestus and his honour guard crouched on their knees and delivered a punishing salvo.

‘Blind them,’ Mhotep cried, plucking his spear from the air as it returned to him as if magnetised to his gauntlet.

The Ultramarines obeyed, aiming for the hideous black orbs that served the shark-like predators as eyes. More screeching filled the corridor as the shots found their marks, rupturing the glassy orbs. Mhotep cast his spear again and another of the creatures was thrust back into the immaterium.

The last predator turned in on itself and re-formed. It grew fresh eyes, dripping with glowing ichor. It extruded a frill of tendrils from what Cestus assumed was its head end, and they became tough jointed limbs tipped with claws. Snakelike tongues whipped from its mouth.

A hail of fire struck it and it was blasted into a gory mess upon the deck.

Curious, ringing silence filled the void where the eruption of bolters and the bark of shouting had been. Red-tinged gloom from the emergency lights drifted back into focus after the monochromatic battle flare of muzzle flashes and psychic conflagration.

Cestus surveyed his battle-brothers. Amyrx lay still against the upright, injured but alive. The service of Laeradis and Morar, though, had ended, their final moments awash with blood and pain. The rest had survived. A weary nod from Saphrax confirmed it.

Breathing hard, a strange, subdued exultance at their victory sweeping over him, Cestus looked back around at Mhotep.

The Thousand Son staggered, the crimson light extinguished.

‘They are gone,’ he breathed and fell hard onto the deck.

Thirteen

Legacy of Lorgar/Proposition/Honour duel

As Skraal delved deeper into the Furious Abyss, the world around him got stranger. The ship was the size of a city, and just like a city it had its hidden corners and curiosities, its beautiful clean-cut vistas and its dismal bordellos of decay.

Though supposedly newly fashioned, the vessel felt very old. Its concomitant parts had spent so many decades being built and rendered in the forges of Mars that they had acquired a history of their own before the battleship was ever finished, let alone launched. It had a presence, too, a kind of impalpable sentience that exuded from its steel walls and clung to its corridors and conduits like gossamer threads of being.

Skraal passed under a support beam, his chainaxe held out warily in front of him, and saw the signature of a Mechanicum shipwright inscribed in binary. The passageway of steel looked like an avenue in a wealthy spire-top, the low ceiling supported by caryatids and columns; a nest of shanties, perhaps the lodgings of the menials, who had once laboured to build the ship, their ramshackle homes abandoned between two generatorium housings: the vessel was intricate and immense. The World Eater saw chambers he could only assume were for worship, with altars and rows of prayer books etched in the Word of Lorgar. A temple, half wrought in stone and symbiotically merged with deep red steel, was housed in a massive false amphitheatre, its columned front and carved pediment providing a medieval milieu. The wide threshold was lit by braziers of violet fire. Skraal thought he had seen something moving inside and took care to avoid it.

The World Eater had no time for distractions. The denizens of the Furious Abyss hunted him, and even in a ship as vast as it, the chase would not last indefinitely. Melta bombs and belts of krak grenades clanked against his armour as he moved, reminding him of their presence and the urgency with which he needed to put them to some use.

In a fleeting moment, when Skraal had paused to try and get some kind of bearing, he thought of Antiges.

The Ultramarines believed themselves to be philosophers, or kings, or members of the galaxy’s rightful ruling class. They did not appreciate the purity of purpose that could only be found in the crucible of war as did Skraal’s Legion. They were most concerned with forging their own empire around Macragge. Antiges had demonstrated his warrior spirit, though, fighting and dying in the cauldron of war, driven by simple duty.

Skraal mourned his passing with a moment of silence, honouring his valourous deeds, and, in that moment, he made a promise of revenge.

A great set of double doors carved from lacquered black wood blocked the World Eater’s path. Skraal could not turn back from the barrier, incongruous like so much of what he had witnessed on the Furious Abyss. Instead, he pushed the door open. There was light inside, but still the silence persisted, so, he entered into what was a long, low chamber. Beyond it was a gallery full of artefacts. Tapestries lined the walls, displaying the victories and history of the Word Bearers. He saw a comet crashing down to their native earth of Colchis and a golden child emerging from the conflagration left from its impact. He saw temples, their spires lost in a swathe of red cloud, and lines of pilgrims trailing off into infinity. It was a world stained with tragedy, the gilded palaces and cathedrals tarnished, and every statue of past religious dynasts missing an arm or an eye. In the middle of this fallen world, like a single point of hope, was the smouldering crater of their saviour’s arrival.

The ceiling was a single endless fresco depicting Lorgar’s conquest of Colchis. Here it was a corrupt place cleansed by the primarch, whose image shone with the light of reason and command as robed prophets and priests prostrated themselves before him. Armies laid down their arms and crowds cheered in adulation. At the far end of the museum the story ended with Colchis restored and Lorgar a scholar-hero writing down his history and philosophy. This epilogue ended with a truth that Skraal knew, the Emperor coming to the world to find Lorgar, just as he had come to the World Eaters’ forgotten home world to install Angron as the Legion’s primarch.

The paintings, frescoes and tapestries gave way to trophies displayed on plinths and suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Skraal ignored them and pressed on.

‘You look upon the soul of our Legion, brother,’ boomed a voice suddenly through the vox-casters in the gallery.

Skraal backed up against the wall, which was painted with an image of Lorgar debating with a host of wizened old men in a Colchian amphitheatre.

‘I am Admiral Zadkiel of the Word Bearers,’ said the voice, when the World Eater answered with silence. ‘You are aboard my ship.’

‘Traitor whoreson, does your entire Legion cower behind words?’ Skraal snapped, unable to contain his anger.

‘Such a curious term, World Eater,’ the voice of Zadkiel replied, ignoring the slight. ‘You dub us traitors, and yet we have never been anything but loyal to our primarch.’

‘Then your lord is also a traitor,’ Skraal growled in return, hunting the shadows for any sign of movement, any hint that he was being stalked.

‘Your own lord, Angron, calls him brother. How then can Lorgar be regarded as a traitor?’

Skraal cast his gaze around, trying to locate the picter observing him or the vox-caster broadcasting Zadkiel’s voice. ‘Then he has betrayed my primarch and in turn his Legion.’

‘Angron was a slave,’ said Zadkiel. ‘The very fact shames him. He despises what he was, and what other men made of him. It is from this that his anger, that the anger of all the World Eaters stems.’

Certain that there was no one else in there with him, Skraal started moving cautiously through the gallery, looking for some way out other than the double doors at either end. He would not be swayed by Zadkiel’s words, and focused instead on the hot line of rage building inside him, using it to galvanise himself.

‘I saw the echo of that anger at Bakka Triumveron,’ said Zadkiel. ‘It was enacted against the menials that drowned in their own blood at the hands of you and your brothers.’

Skraal paused. He had thought no one knew of the slaughter he had perpetrated at the dock.

‘Angron sought to bring his brothers closer to him in that aspect, did he not?’ Zadkiel was relentless, his words like silken blades penetrating the World Eater’s defences. ‘It was the Emperor’s censure that forbade it, the very being that holds you and your slave primarch in his thrall. For what is Angron if not a slave? What accolades has he won that the Angel or Guilliman have not? What reward has Angron been given that can equal the empire of Ultramar or the stewardship of the Imperial Palace granted to Dorn? Nothing. He fights for nothing save by the command of another. What can such a man claim to be, other than a slave?’

‘We are not slaves! We will never be slaves!’ Skraal cried in anger and carved his chainaxe through one of the museum’s stone pillars.

‘It is the truth,’ Zadkiel persisted, ‘but you are not alone, brother; yours is not the only Legion to have been thus forsaken,’ he continued. ‘We Word Bearers worshipped him, worshipped the Emperor as… a… god! But he mocked our divinity with reproach and reprimand, just as he mocks you.’

Skraal ignored him. His faith in his Legion and his primarch would not easily be undone. This Word Bearer’s rhetoric meant nothing. Duty and rage: these were the things he focused on as he sought to escape from the chamber.

‘Look before you, World Eater,’ Zadkiel began again. ‘There you will find what you seek.’

Despite himself, Skraal looked.

There, within an ornate glass cabinet, forged of obsidian and brass and once wielded by Angron’s hand, was a chainaxe. Decked with teeth of glinting black stone, its haft wrapped in the skin of some monstrous lizard, he knew it instinctively to be Brazentooth, the former blade of his primarch.

The weapon, magnificent in its simple brutality, had taken the head of the queen of the Scandrane xenos, and cleaved through a horde of greenskins following the Arch-Vandal of Pasiphae. A feral world teeming with tribal psychopaths had rebelled against the Imperial Truth, and at the mere sight of Brazentooth in Angron’s hand they had given up their revolt and kneeled to the World Eaters. Until the forging of Gorefather and Gorechild, the twin axes Angron now wielded, Brazentooth had been as much a symbol of Angron’s relentlessness and independence as it was a mere weapon.

‘Gifted unto Lorgar, it symbolises our alliance,’ Zadkiel told him. ‘Angron pledged himself to our cause, and with him all the World Eaters.’

Skraal regarded the chainaxe. Thick veins stuck out on his forehead, beneath his skull-helmet, exacerbated by the heat of his impotent wrath.

‘It is written, World Eater, that you and all your brothers will join with us when the fate of the galaxy is decided. The Emperor is lost. He is ignorant of the true power of the universe. We will embrace it.’

‘Word Bearer,’ Skraal said, his lip curled derisively, ‘you talk too much.’

The World Eater shattered the cabinet with a blow from his fist and seized Brazentooth. Without pause, he squeezed the tongue of brass in the chainaxe’s haft, and the teeth whirred hungrily. The weapon was far too heavy and unbalanced for Skraal to wield; it would have taken Angron’s own magnificent strength to use it. It was all he could do to keep the bucking chainblade level as he put his body weight behind it and hurled it into the nearest wall.

Brazentooth ripped into a fresco depicting Lorgar as an educator of the benighted, thousands of ignorant souls bathing in the halo of enlightenment that surrounded him. The image was shredded and the weapon, free of Skraal’s hands, bored its way through, casting sparks as it chewed up the metal beneath.

‘You’re doomed, Zadkiel!’ bellowed Skraal over the screech of the chainblade. ‘The Emperor will learn of your treachery! He’ll send your brothers to bring you back in chains! He’ll send the Warmaster!’

The World Eater hurled himself through the ragged tear in the museum wall and fell through into a tangled dark mess of cabling and metal beyond.

Zadkiel’s laughter tumbled after him from the vox-caster.

Zadkiel switched off the pict screens adorning the small security console at the rear of the temple. ‘Tell me, chaplain, is everything prepared?’

Ikthalon, decked in his full regalia including vestments of deep crimson, nodded and gestured towards a circle, drawn from a paste mixed from Colchian soil and the blood that had been drained from the body of the Ultramarine, Antiges.

The Astartes inert body lay at its nexus, his cuirass removed and his chest levered open to reveal the congealed vermillion mass of his organs. Symbols had been scratched on the floor around him, using his blood. His helmet had been removed, too, and his head lolled back, glassy-eyed, its mouth open as if in awe of the ritual he would facilitate in death.

‘It is ready, as you ordered,’ uttered Ikthalon, the chaplain’s tone approaching relish.

Zadkiel smiled thinly and then looked up at the sound of shuffling feet. An old, bent figure ascended the steps at the temple entrance and the candles on the floor flickered against its cowl and robe as it entered between the pillars.

‘Astropath Kyrszan,’ said Zadkiel.

The astropath pulled back his hood, revealing hollow sockets in place of his eyes as inflicted by the soul-binding.

‘I am at your service,’ he hissed through cracked lips.

‘You know your role in this?’

‘I have studied it well, my lord,’ Kyrszan replied, leaning heavily on a gnarled cane of dark wood as he shuffled towards Antiges’s corpse.

Kyrszan knelt down and held his hands over the body. The astropath smirked as he felt the last wreaths of heat bleeding from it. ‘An Astartes,’ he muttered.

‘Indeed,’ added Ikthalon. ‘You’ll find his scalp has been removed.’

‘Then we can begin.’

‘I will require what is left after this is done,’ added Ikthalon.

‘Don’t worry, chaplain,’ said Zadkiel. ‘You’ll have his body for your surgery. ‘Kyrszan,’ he added, switching his gaze to the astropath, ‘you may proceed.’

Zadkiel threw a book in front of him. Kyrszan felt its edges, ran his fingers over its binding, the ancient vellum of its pages and breathed deep of its musk, redolent with power. His spidery digits, so sensitive from a lifetime of blindness, scurried across the ink and read with ease. The script was distinctive and known to him.

‘What… what secrets,’ he whispered in awe. ‘This is written by your hand, admiral. What was it that dictated this to you?’

‘His name,’ said Zadkiel, ‘is Wsoric and we are about to honour the pact he has made with us.’

In the hours that followed, the warp was angry. It was wounded. It bled half-formed emotions, like something undigested: hatred that was too unfocused to be pure, love without an object, obsession over nothing and gouts of oblivion without form.

It quaked. It thrashed as if being forced into something unwilling, or trying to hold on to something dear to it. The Wrathful was thrown around on the towering waves that billowed up through the layers of reality and threatened to snap the spindly anchor-line of reason that kept the ship intact.

The quake subsided. The predators that had homed in on the disturbance scented the corpses of their fellow warp-sharks in the Wrathful, and hastily slunk back into the abyss. The Wrathful continued on its way, following eddies left by the wake of the Furious Abyss.

‘Has there been any change?’ asked Cestus as he approached Saphrax.

The banner bearer stood outside the medical bay, looking in at the prone form of Mhotep, laid as if slumbering, on a slab of metal.

‘None, sire. He has not stirred since he fell after the battle.’

The Ultramarine captain had recently been tended to by the Wrathful’s medical staff, an injury sustained to his arm that he had not realised he had suffered making its presence felt as he’d gone to Mhotep’s aid. In the absence of the dead Laeradis, the treatment was rudimentary but satisfactory. The bodies, what was left of them, of the Astartes, two of the Blood Claws included, had been taken to the ship’s morgue.

Cestus’s mind still reeled at what he’d witnessed on the lance decks and the powers that the Thousand Son had unleashed. Truly, there was no doubt as to his practising psychics. That in itself left an altogether different and yet more pressing question: Brynngar.

The Wolf Guard had also been down in the lance decks, though Cestus was not aware of it until the battle was over, and had banished three of the warp spawn with his Blood Claws. The artifice of the Fenrisian rune priests, in their fashioning of Felltooth, was to thank for it. For once, reunited at the centre of the deck, Brynngar had curtly disclosed how the creatures parted easily before the blade and fled from the Space Wolves’ fury. The Ultramarine believed that some of the account was embellished, so that it might become worthy of a saga, but he did not doubt the veracity at the heart of Brynngar’s words.

It mattered not. Whatever the Wolf Guard intended to do about Mhotep and, indeed, Cestus, he would do regardless. Right now, the Ultramarine captain had greater concerns, namely, that the traitor had been broken, for Saphrax had discovered his shattered body in the isolation chamber, but that whatever secrets he had divulged were denied to them while Mhotep was incapacitated. It felt like a cruel irony.

‘Do you know what we do with witches on Fenris, Ultramarine?’

Cestus turned at the voice and saw Brynngar standing behind him, glowering through the glass at Mhotep.

‘We cut the tendons in their arms and legs. Then we throw them in the sea to the mercy of Mother Fenris.’

Cestus moved into the Space Wolf’s path.

‘This is not Fenris, brother.’

Brynngar smiled, mirthlessly, as if at some faded remembrance.

‘No, it is not,’ he said, locking his gaze with Cestus. ‘You give your sanction to this warp-dabbler, and in so doing have twice besmirched my honour. I will not let his presence stand on this ship, nor will I let these deeds go unreckoned.’

The Space Wolf tore a charm hanging from his cuirass and tossed it at the Ultramarine’s feet.

Cestus looked up and matched the Wolf Guard’s gaze.

‘Challenge accepted,’ he said.

Brynngar waited in the duelling pit in the lower decks of the Wrathful. The old wolf was stripped down to the waist, wearing grey training breeches and charcoal-coloured boots, and flexed his muscles and rotated his shoulders as he prepared for his opponent.

Arrayed around the training arena, commonly used for the armsmen to practise unarmed combat routines, were what was left of the Astartes: the Ultramarine honour guard, barring Amryx, who was still recovering from his injuries, and a handful of Blood Claws. Admiral Kaminska, as the captain of the ship, was the only non-Astartes allowed to attend. She had forbidden any other of the crew from watching the duel. The realisation that the Astartes in the fleet were turning on one another was a sign of the worst kind, and she had no desire to discover its effects upon morale if witnessed by them first hand.

She watched as Cestus stepped into the arena, descending a set of metal steps that retracted into the wall once he was within the duelling pit. The Ultramarine was similarly attired to Brynngar, though his training breeches were blue to match the colour of his Legion.

At the appearance of his opponent, Brynngar swung the chainsword in his grasp eagerly.

The assembled Astartes were eerily silent; even the normally pugnacious Blood Claws held their tongues and merely watched.

‘This is madness,’ Kaminska hissed, biting back her anger.

‘No, admiral,’ said Saphrax, who towered alongside her, ‘it is resolution.’

The Ultramarine banner bearer stepped forward. As the next highest ranking Astartes, it was his duty to announce the duel and state the rules.

‘This honour-duel is between Lysimachus Cestus of the Ultramarines Legion and Brynngar Sturmdreng of the Space Wolves Legion,’ Saphrax bellowed clearly like a clarion call. ‘The weapon is chainswords and the duel is to blood from the torso or incapacitation. Limb or eye loss counts as thus, as does a cut to the front of the throat. No armour; no fire arms.’

Saphrax took a brief hiatus to ensure that both Astartes were ready. He saw his brother-captain testing the weight of his chainsword and adjusting his grip. Brynngar made no further preparation and was straining at the leash.

‘The stakes are the fate of Captain Mhotep of the Thousand Sons Legion. To arms!’

The Astartes saluted each other and levelled their chainswords in their respective fighting stances: Brynngar two-handed and slightly off-centre, Cestus low and pointed towards the ground.

‘Begin!’

Brynngar launched himself at Cestus with a roar, channelling his anger into a shoulder barge. Cestus twisted on his heel to avoid the charge, but was still a little sluggish from the earlier battle and caught the blow down his side. A mass of pain numbed his body, resonating through his bones and skull, but the Ultramarine kept his feet.

Blows fell like hammers against Cestus’s defensive stance, his chainblade screeching as it bit against Brynngar’s weapon. Teeth were stripped away and sparks flew violently from the impact. Two-handed, the Ultramarine held him, but was forced down to one knee as the Space Wolf used his superior bulk against him.

‘We are not in the muster hall, now,’ he snarled. ‘I shall give no quarter.’

‘I will ask for none,’ Cestus bit back and twisted out of the blade lock, using Brynngar’s momentum to overbalance the Space Wolf.

The Ultramarine moved in quickly to exploit the advantage with a low thrust, intending to graze Brynngar’s torso, draw blood and end the duel. The old wolf was canny, though, and parried the blow with a flick of his sword, before leaning in with another shoulder charge. It lacked the sudden impetuous and fury of the first, but jolted Cestus’s body all the same. The Ultramarine staggered and Brynngar swept his weapon downward in a brutal arc that would have removed Cestus’s head from his shoulders. Instead he rolled and the blade teeth carved into the metal floor of the duelling pit, disturbing the streaks of old blood left by the World Eater’s earlier contest.

Cestus came out of the roll and was on his feet. There was a little distance between the two Astartes gladiators, and they circled each other warily, assessing strength and searching for an opening.

Brynngar didn’t wait long and, howling, hurled his body at the Ultramarine, chainsword swinging.

Cestus met it with his blade and the two weapons came apart with the force of the blow, chain teeth spitting from their respective housings.

Brynngar cast the ruined chainsword haft aside and powered a savage uppercut into Cestus’s chin that nearly shattered the Ultramarine’s jaw. A second punch fell like a piston and smashed into his ear. A third lifted him off his feet, hammering into the Ultramarine’s gut. The sound of Brynngar’s grunting aggression became dull and distant as if Cestus was submerged below water, as he fought to get his bearings.

He was dimly aware of falling and had the vague sense of grasping something in his hand as he hit the hard metal floor of the duelling pit.

Abruptly, Cestus found it hard to breath and realised suddenly that Brynngar was choking him. Strangely, the Ultramarine thought he heard weeping. With a blink, he snapped back into lucidity and smashed his fists down hard against Brynngar’s forearms, whilst landing a kick into his sternum. It was enough for the Space Wolf to loosen his grip. Cestus head-butted him in the nose and a stream of blood and mucus flowed freely after the impact.

Feeling the ground beneath him again, Cestus ducked a wild swing and lashed out beneath Brynngar’s reach. The Ultramarine wasn’t quick enough to avoid a backhand swipe and took it in the side of the face. He was reeling again, dark spots forming before his eyes, hinting that he was about to black out.

‘Yield,’ he breathed, sinking to his knees, his voice groggy as he pointed to the Space Wolf’s torso with the chainsword tooth clutched in his outstretched hand.

Brynngar paused, fists clenched, his breathing ragged and looked down to where Cestus was pointing.

A line of crimson was drawn across the Space Wolf’s stomach from the tiny diagonal blade in his opponent’s grip.

‘Blood from the torso,’ Saphrax announced with thinly veiled relief. ‘Cestus wins.’

Fourteen

Hunted/A single blow/We are all alone

Time has little meaning in the warp. Weeks become days, days become hours and hours become minutes. Time is fluid. It can expand and contract, invert and even cease in those fathomless depths of infinite nothing; endless everything.

Leaving the gallery and Zadkiel’s echoing laughter behind him, Skraal had fled into the pitch dark.

Crouching in the blackness with naught but the groans of the Furious Abyss for company it felt like the passage of years, and yet it could have been no more than weeks or as little as an hour. Heaving, shifting, baying, venting, the vessel was like some primordial beast as it ploughed the empyrean tides. Sentience exuded from every surface: the moisture of the metal, the blood, oil and soot in the air. Heat from generatoria became breath, fire from blast furnaces anger and hate, the creak of the hull, dull moans of pleasure and annoyance. Perhaps this awareness had always existed and lacked only form to give it tangibility. Perhaps the skeleton the adepts of Mars had forged provided merely a shell for an already sentient host.

The World Eater decided that his thoughts heralded the onset of madness at being hunted for so long, the thin talons of paranoia pricking his skull and infecting his mind with visions.

After his discovery in the gallery, he had gone to ground, questing downwards through the inner circuitry and workings of the Furious Abyss in some kind of attempt at preservation. It was not cowardice that drove him, such a thing was anathema to the Astartes: a World Eater was incapable of the emotion. Fear simply did not have meaning for them. No, it was out of a desire to regroup, to plan, to achieve some petty measure of destruction that might not at least escape notice, that meant something. Into the heat and fire he’d passed arches of steel, vast throbbing engines and forests of cables so thick that he’d needed to cut them down with his chainaxe. It was in this manufactured hell that he’d found refuge.

Bones lay on the lower decks, pounded to dust by pistons, though some were intact. They were the forgotten dead of the Furious’s birth, sucked into machinery or simply lost and left to starve or die of thirst in the ship’s labyrinthine depths.

During his flight into this cauldron, Skraal had seen things. The dark had played with him, the heat, too, and the endless industrial din. Glowing eyes would watch the World Eater, only to then melt away into the walls. A landscape had opened up before him, its edges picked out in darkness: a vast land of bloody ribs and palaces of bone, with mountains of gristle and labyrinths carved down into plains of rippling muscle. Humanoid shapes danced in rivers of blood as the whole world swelled and fell with an ancient breath.

Then it was gone, replaced by the darkness, and so he had driven on.

Here in the searing depths, he’d found some respite.

It could have been days that he’d lingered in meditative solitude, listening to the pitch and pull of the vessel, marshalling his thoughts and his resolve so as not to give in to insanity. Way down in the stygian gloom, Skraal couldn’t hear the vox traffic, didn’t sense the patrols at his heels and so didn’t know if he was still hunted.

Sheltering in a crawl space large enough to accommodate his power-armoured frame, within a cluster of pipes and cables, the World Eater snapped abruptly to his senses. Disengaging the cataleptic node that allowed him to maintain a form of active sleep, Skraal became aware of a shadow looming in the conduit ahead. He was not alone.

The passing of menials was not uncommon, but infrequent. Skraal had listened to their pathetic mewlings as they serviced and maintained the ship, with disgust. Such wretches! It had taken all of his resolve not to spring out of his hiding place and butcher them all like the cattle they were, but then the alarm would have been raised and the hunt begun anew. He needed to think, to devise his next move. Not gifted with the tactical acumen of the sons of Guilliman or Dorn, Skraal was a pure instrument of war, brutal and effective. Yet now he needed a stratagem and for that he required time. Survival first, then sabotage; it was his mantra.

That doctrine dissolved into the ether with the shadow. No menial this, it did not mewl or bay or weep, it was silent. It was something else, massive footfalls resonating against metal with every step, and it was seeking him. Skraal extracted himself from the crawl space and bled away into the darkness, eyes on the growing gloom he left behind him, and went onwards into the Furious Abyss.

‘They tail us ever doggedly, my lord,’ uttered Reskiel as he considered the reports of Navigator Esthemya clutched in his gauntlet.

Zadkiel appeared sanguine to the fact that the Wrathful continued to follow them into the warp as he regarded the scrawlings on the cell wall of one of the ship’s astropathic choir.

It was a spartan chamber with little to distinguish it. A narrow cot served as a bed, a simple lectern as a place to scribe. Function was paramount here.

‘Wsoric is with us,’ he said, emboldened enough in the surety that they had sealed their pact with the ancient creature to speak his name, ‘and once he reveals his presence, the pawns of the False Emperor will learn the folly of their pursuit. The horrors endured thus far will be as nothing compared to the torture he will visit upon them.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Reskiel said humbly.

‘We are destined to achieve our mission, Reskiel,’ Zadkiel went on, ‘just as this one was destined to die for it.’ The admiral turned the corpse of a dead astropath over. It was lying in the middle of the cell in a pool of its own blood. The face was female, but twisted into a rictus of fear and pain so pronounced that it was hard to tell. Black, empty orbs stared out from crater-like sockets.

Communications were difficult even for those who claimed the warp as an ally, and the messages of the Furious’s astropathic choir were proving ever more unreliable and difficult to discern. Zadkiel had some skill at divination, however, and carefully deconstructed nuances of meaning, subtle vagaries of sense and context in the symbolic renderings of the dead astropath.

‘Anything?’ asked Reskiel.

‘Perhaps,’ said Zadkiel, sensing the desperate cadence in the sergeant-commander’s voice. ‘Once we reach the Macragge system we will have no further need of them,’ he added. ‘You need not fear us floundering blind in the immaterium, Reskiel.’

‘I fear nothing, lord,’ Reskiel affirmed, standing straight, his expression stern.

‘Of course not,’ Zadkiel replied smoothly, ‘except, perhaps, our intruder. Do the sons of Angron hold an inner dread for you sergeant-commander? Do you recall all too readily the sting of our erstwhile brother’s wrath?’

Reskiel raised his gauntlet to the crude repairs of his face and cheekbone almost subconsciously, but then retracted it as if suddenly scalded.

‘Is that the reason that our interloper still roams free aboard this ship?’ Zadkiel pressed.

‘He is contained,’ Reskiel snarled. ‘Should he surface then I will know, and mount his head upon a spike myself!’

Zadkiel traced a shape out of the dense scribblings on the wall, deliberately ignoring the sergeant-commander’s impassioned outburst.

‘Here,’ he hissed, finding the meaning he sought at last.

The astropath had written the message in her vital fluids, the parchment pages of her symbol log overloaded with further crimson data and strewn about the cell floor like bloodied leaves.

‘The crown is Colchis,’ said Zadkiel, indicating a smeared icon. ‘These ancillary marks indicate that this dictate comes from a lord of the Legion,’ he added, a sweep of his gauntleted hand encompassing a range of symbols that Reskiel could not fathom.

Astropaths rarely had the luxury of communicating by words or phrases. Instead, they had an extensive catalogue of symbols, which were a lot easier to transmit psychically. Each symbol had a meaning, which became increasingly complex the more symbols were added. The Word Bearers fleet had their own code, in which the crown was modelled after the Crown of Colchis and represented both the Legion’s home world and the leadership of the Legion.

‘Two eyes, one blinded,’ continued Zadkiel. ‘That is Kor Phaeron’s Chapter.’

‘He asks something of us?’ asked Reskiel.

Zadkiel picked out another symbol from the miasma, most of which was eidetic doggerel coming out in a rush of mindless images and non-sequitous ravings, a coiled snake: the abstract geometrical code for the Calth system.

‘His scouts have confirmed that the Ultramarines are mustering at Calth,’ Zadkiel answered, ‘all of them. There are but a few token honour guards not present.’

‘Then we will strike them out with a single blow,’ stated the sergeant-commander confidently.

‘As it is written, my brother,’ Zadkiel replied, looking up from the scrawlings and offering a mirthless smile. He finished examining the astropath’s message and brushed the flakes of dried blood from his gauntlets.

‘All is in readiness,’ he said to himself, imaging the glory of their triumph and the plaudits he, Zadkiel, would garner. ‘Thy Word be done.’

Cestus filled his time with training regimens and meditation, in part to occupy his mind whilst the Wrathful traversed the warp, but also to recondition his body after the brutal duel with Brynngar.

Something had possessed the Space Wolf during the fight, Cestus had felt it in every blow and heard it in the Wolf Guard’s battle cries. It was not a change in the sense that the warp predators took on the form of the Fireblade’s crew. No, it was something less ephemeral and more intrinsic than that, as if a part of the gene-code that made up the zygotic structure of Leman Russ’s Legion had been exposed somehow and allowed free rein.

Base savagery, that was how Cestus thought of it, an animalistic predilection let slip only in the face of the Space Wolves’ foes. Was the warp the cause of this loosening of resolve? Cestus felt its presence constantly. It was clear that the crew did also, though they appeared to be more acutely afflicted. Armsmen patrols had doubled over the passing weeks. Rotations of those patrols had also increased and prolonged exposure to the warp even whilst in the protective bubble of the Wrathful’s integrity fields took its toll.

There had been seventeen warp-related deaths after the attack on the lance decks, the entirety of which had been fusion-sealed in the wake of the horrors perpetrated there. Damage sustained whilst in battle against the Word Bearers’ ship had rendered the weapon systems inoperable in any case, and no one on the Wrathful had any desire to tread those bloody halls again. Suicides and apparent accidents were common, one rating was even murdered, the perpetrator still at large, as the products of warp-induced psychosis made their presence felt.

Of the Furious Abyss, there had been little sign. It continued to plough through the empyrean, content to let the Wrathful follow. Cestus didn’t like the calm; trouble invariably followed it.

A stinging blow caught the Ultramarine captain on the side of the temple and he grimaced in pain.

‘You seem preoccupied, my lord,’ said Saphrax, standing opposite him in a fighting posture. He twirled the duelling staff in his hands with expert precision as he circled his captain.

The two Astartes faced each other in one of the vessel’s gymnasia, wearing breeches and loose-fitting vests as they conducted the daily ritual of their training katas. Routine dictated the duelling staff as the weapon of choice for this session.

Cestus’s body was already bruised and numb from a dozen or more precise blows landed by his banner bearer. Saphrax was right; his mind was elsewhere, still in the duelling pit facing off against Brynngar.

‘Perhaps, we should switch to the rudius?’ Saphrax offered, indicating a pair of short wooden swords clutched by a weapons servitor, two amongst many training weapons held by the creature’s rack-like frontal carapace.

Cestus shook his head, giving the battle-sign that he had had enough.

‘That will suffice for today,’ he said, lowering the staff and reaching for a towel offered by a Legion serf to wipe down his naked arms and neck.

‘I don’t like this, Saphrax,’ he confessed, handing the duelling weapon back to the servitor as it approached.

‘The training schema was not satisfactory?’ the banner bearer asked, unlike Antiges, unable to penetrate the deeper meaning of his captain’s words.

‘No, my brother. It is this quietude that vexes me. We have seen little in the way of deterrent from the Furious Abyss for almost two weeks, or at least as close to two weeks as I can fathom in this wretched empyrean.’

‘Is that not a boon rather than a cause of vexation?’ Saphrax asked, commencing a series of stretching exercises to loosen his muscles after the bout.

‘No, I do not think so. Macragge draws ever closer and yet we seem ever further from finding a way to stop the Word Bearers. We do not even know of their plan, damn Mhotep in his coma state.’ Cestus stopped what he was doing and looked Saphrax in the eye. ‘I am losing hope, brother. Part of me believes the reason they have ceased in their attempts to destroy us is because they do not need to, that we no longer pose a significant threat to their mission, if we ever did.’

‘Put your belief in the strength of the Emperor, captain. Trust in that and we shall prevail,’ said the banner bearer vehemently.

Cestus sighed deeply, feeling a great weight upon his shoulders.

‘You are right,’ said the Ultramarine captain. Saphrax might not possess the instinct and empathy of Antiges, but his dour pragmatism was an unshakeable rock in a sea of doubt. ‘Thank you, Saphrax,’ he added, clapping his hand on the banner bearer’s shoulder while nodded in response.

Cestus wrenched off the vest, sodden with his sweat, and donned a set of robes as he padded across the gymnasium to the antechamber, where Legion serf armourers awaited him.

‘If you do not need me further, captain, I shall continue my daily regimen in your absence,’ said the banner bearer.

‘Very well, Saphrax,’ Cestus replied, his thoughts still clouded. ‘There is someone else I need to see,’ he added in a murmur to himself.

Brynngar slumped forlornly onto his rump in the quarters set aside for him by Admiral Kaminska. He was alone, surrounded by a host of empty ale barrels, his Blood Claws isolated to the barracks, and belched raucously. He had come here after losing the honour duel, speaking to no one and entertaining no remarks, however placatory, from his fellow Space Wolves. The old wolf’s demeanour made it clear that he wished to be alone. Not everyone got the message.

Brynngar looked up from his dour brooding when he saw Cestus enter the gloomy chamber.

‘Wulfsmeade is all gone,’ he slurred, impossibly drunk despite the co-action of the Space Wolf’s preomnor and oolitic kidney. The beverage, native to Fenris, was brewed with the very purpose of granting intoxication that overrode even the processes of the Astartes’ gene-enhanced physiognomy, albeit temporarily.

‘You keep it, my friend,’ Cestus replied with mock geniality, despite his apprehension.

Brynngar grunted, kicking over his empty tankard as he got up. The old wolf was stripped out of his armour and wore an amalgam of furs and coarse, grey robes. Charms and runic talismans clattered over his hirsute chest, the nick from the chain tooth still visible, though all but healed.

‘You seem well recovered, Ultramarine,’ grumbled the Wolf Guard, irascibly. Brynngar’s belligerence had not dimmed with the passage of hours in the warp.

In truth, Cestus still felt the ache in his jaw and stomach in spite of the larraman cells in his body speeding up the healing process exponentially. The Ultramarine merely nodded, unwilling to disclose his discomfort.

‘Now it is done,’ he said. ‘You are an honourable warrior, Brynngar. What’s more, you are my friend. I know you will abide by the outcome of the duel.’

The Space Wolf fixed his good eye on him, pausing as he hunted around for more ale to quaff. He snarled, and for a moment Cestus thought he might instigate another fight, but then relaxed and let out a rasping sigh.

‘Aye, I’ll abide by it, but I warn you, Lysimachus Cestus, I will hold no truck with warp-dabblers. Keep him away from me or I will visit my blade upon his sorcerer’s tongue,’ he promised, drawing closer, the rustle of his beard hair the only clue that the Space Wolf’s lips were actually moving. ‘If you stand in my way again, it will be no honour duel that decides his fate.’

Cestus paused for a moment, matching Brynngar’s intensity with a stern expression.

‘Very well,’ the Ultramarine replied, and then added, ‘I need you in this fight, Brynngar. I need the strength of your arm and the steel of your courage.’

The old wolf sniffed in mild contempt.

‘But not my counsel, eh?’

Cestus was about to counter when Brynngar continued.

‘You’ll have my arm, and my courage, right enough,’ he said, waving Cestus away with his clawed hand. ‘Leave me, now. I’m sure there’s more to drink in here somewhere.’

Cestus breathed in hard and turned away. Yes, Brynngar remained in the fight, the Ultramarine had gained that much, but he had lost something much more potent: a friend.

Cestus did not have much time to lament the ending of Brynngar’s friendship as he made for the bridge. Down one of the Wrathful’s access corridors, he received a vox transmission that crackled in the receiver node on his gorget.

‘Captain Cestus,’ said Admiral Kaminska’s voice.

‘Speak admiral, this is Cestus.’

‘You are required at the isolation chambers at once,’ she said.

‘For what reason, admiral?’ Cestus replied, betraying his annoyance at the admiral’s brevity.

‘Lord Mhotep is awake.’

Once Cestus had left, Brynngar found a last barrel of Wulfsmeade and guzzled it down, foam and liquid lapping at his beard. He cared little for the revival of the Thousand Son and slumped back into melancholy, their passage through the warp affecting him more than he would admit.

A haze overtook his vision and he could smell the scent of the cold and hear the lap of Fenrisian oceans.

Brynngar wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and remembered standing atop a jagged glacier with nought but a flint knife and a loincloth to cover his dignity.

This was not a punishment, he recalled, recognising the place from his past, it was a reward. Only the toughest Fenrisian youths were considered for the test. It was called the Blooding, but so rarely did a Space Wolf speak of it that it barely needed a name at all.

Faced with the bleak white nightmare of the Fenrisian winter, Brynngar had found the bone of a long-dead ice predator and had fixed his knife to it to make a spear. He had stalked patiently, following the short-lived tracks of the prey-beast across the ice and tundra.

When he had killed it, it had put up a mighty fight, because even the most docile of Fenrisian creatures were angry monsters. After consuming its flesh, he had skinned it, and worn the skin as a cloak as if part of the beast’s essence lived on within him. Without its fur and flesh, he would have died during the first night. He had then sharpened its bones into more blades, in case he lost his knife. He wove a line from its tendons and made a hook from a tiny bone in its inner ear, using it to pull fish from the sea. He split its jawbone in two and carried it as a club.

Brynngar trekked his way back towards the Fang, using faint glimpses of the winter sun to show him the way as he descended the glacier. Upon a rugged place of razor shards, the ice collapsed to pitch him into a sickle-tooth den. He fought his way free of the scaly predators with his jawbone club. Onwards he pressed, and a frost lynx ambushed him, but he wrestled the writhing feline to the ground and bit out its throat, saturating himself in gore. The journey was long. He had killed a skyblade hawk with a thrown bone knife. He had scaled mountains.

When, finally, he saw the gates of the Fang ahead, Brynngar understood the lesson that the Blooding was supposed to teach him. It was not about survival, or fighting, or even the determination required of an Astartes. Any prospective Space Wolf who made it to the Blooding had already shown that he had those skills and qualities. The Blooding’s message was far harder to learn.

‘We are all alone,’ Brynngar muttered, having drained the last of the Wulfsmeade.

Briefly, his mind wandered back to the Blooding. He remembered that an enormous, shaggy, black wolf had appeared on a crag overlooking the path he was to take. It had watched him for a long time, and he had known that it was a wulfen: the half-mythical predators said to be born from the earth of Fenris to winnow out the weak. The wulfen had not approached him, but Brynngar had felt its eyes watching him for days on end. He wondered if the creature’s gaze had ever left him.

The same wulfen was now sitting before him, regarding Brynngar with its black eyes. The Wolf Guard returned its gaze and saw his face mirrored in the beast’s pupils.

‘You’re alone,’ he said. ‘We’re pack animals all of us, but that’s just… that’s just on the surface. We cling to the pack because if we did not there would be no Legion. We are alone, all of us. There might as well be no one else on this bloody ship.’

The Wulfen did not reply.

‘Just you and me,’ said Brynngar, huskily.

The Wulfen shook itself, like a dog drying its fur. It growled powerfully and stood up on all fours. It was the size of a horse, its head level with the Space Wolf’s.

The Wulfen bowed down and picked something up off the floor with its jaws. With a flick of its head he threw it at Brynngar’s feet.

It was a bolt pistol. The grip was plated with shards of the bone knife that Brynngar had been carrying when he arrived at the Fang after his Blooding. His fishhook hung from the butt of the gun on a thong made from animal tendon. Skyblade talons and frost lynx teeth decorated the body of the weapon in an intricate mosaic depicting a black wolf against the whiteness of a Fenrisian winter.

‘Ah,’ said the Wolf Guard, picking the weapon up, ‘that’s where it got to.’

Fate was a lattice of interconnecting strands of potential realities and possible futures. Eventualities flowed in bifurcating lines and paradoxes. Destiny was unfixed, existing purely as a series of outcomes, and even the most infinitesimal action had consequence and resonance.

Mhotep regarded the myriad strands of fate in his mind. Focusing on the silence and solace of the isolation chamber, visions sprang unbidden to his mind. Glorious mountains of power rose up before him. Galaxies boiled away in the distance, points of burning light on an endless silver sky. Infinite layers of reality fell, each one teeming with life. Mhotep’s concepts of history and humanity saw endless cities springing up like grass and withering away again to be replaced by spires greater than those on Prospero. Mhotep’s memories flared up against the sky and became whole worlds.

Subsumed completely within the meditative trance state, he saw the magnificence of the Emperor’s Palace, its golden walls resplendent against the Terran sun. He saw the finery and gilded glory torn down, artistry and mosaic replaced by gunmetal steel. The palace became a fortress, cannons like black fingers pointing towards an enemy burning from the sky above. Driven earth and waves of blood tarnished its glory. Brother fought brother in their Legions and changeling beasts loped out of the dark at the behest of fell masters.

War machines soared, their titanic presence blotting out the smoke-scarred sun. Thunder boomed and lightning split the blood-drenched sky as their weapons spoke. Laughter peeled across the heavens and the Emperor of Mankind looked skyward where shadows blackened the crimson horizon. Light, so bright that it burned Mhotep’s irises, flared like the luminance of an exploding star. When he looked back, the battlefield was gone, the Emperor was gone. There was only the isolation chamber and the escaping resonance of purpose drifting out of Mhotep’s consciousness.

‘Greetings Cestus,’ he said, noting the Ultramarine’s presence in the room as he shrouded the disorientation and discomfort he felt after leaving the fate-trance.

‘It is good to have you back with us, brother,’ said Cestus, who had lingered at the threshold, but now stepped fully into the chamber to stand in front of his fellow Astartes.

Mhotep turned to face the Ultramarine and gave a shallow bow.

‘I see you still do not see fit to offer better accommodations.’

Prior to the Thousand Son’s revival, Cestus had ordered that as soon as he awoke and his vital signs were confirmed, Mhotep should be taken at once to the isolation chamber. There existed no doubt of his abilities. It meant that he had defied the edicts of Nikea, and it meant that he had a connection to the warp. Whether it was one he could exploit or would need to sever, Cestus did not yet know.

‘You come to learn of what I gleaned from Brother Ultis,’ Mhotep stated, content to guide the conversation.

The Ultramarine found his prescience unnerving.

‘Don’t worry, Cestus, I am not probing your mind,’ added the Thousand Son, sensing his fellow Astartes’ unease. ‘What other possible reason could there be for you to have been summoned to my presence so urgently?’

‘Ultis: that is his name?’

‘Indeed,’ Mhotep answered, parting the robes he wore to sit upon the bunk in the chamber. The Astartes armour had been removed during his time in the medi-bay. There it lay still, with the rest of the Thousand Son’s accoutrements. Cestus noted, however, that Mhotep still wore the scarab earring, glinting in the depths of his cowl from the ambient light in the room, and remained hooded throughout the exchange.

‘What else did you learn? What do the Word Bearers plan to do?’

‘Formaska is where it begins,’ Mhotep answered simply.

Cestus made an incredulous face.

‘The second moon of Macragge. It’s a barren rock. There is nothing there.’

‘On the contrary, Ultramarine,’ countered Mhotep, lowering his head. ‘Everything is on Formaska.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cestus.

Mhotep lifted his head. His eyes were alight with crimson flame. ‘Then let me show you,’ he said as Cestus recoiled, lunging forward to thrust his open palm against the Ultramarine’s head.

Fifteen

Desecration/Communion/Visions of death

Skraal surged through the dark and the heat, rising now, exploiting conduits and pipes and using any means he could to secrete his ascent up the decks of the Furious Abyss. Finally he arrived, incredulously, at the place where weeks before he had fled, leaving Antiges to his death. He had returned to the temple.

Skraal found that Antiges remained, too.

Dismembered in his armour, the dark blue of the ceramite almost hidden by the red sheen of blood, the World Eater could only tell it was Antiges by his Chapter symbols. Little more than a collection of body parts existed now. What lay before him on a pall, attended by silent acolytes could barely be considered a corpse. Antiges’s head was missing.

Skraal had heard of the inhabitants of feral worlds who dismembered their foes or sacrificed humans to their heathen gods. The World Eaters had their own warrior traditions, most of them bloody, but nothing to compare to the religious mutilation he had seen among the savages. To see Astartes, especially the self-righteously sophisticated Word Bearers, doing thus, shocked Skraal as much as the moment that the Furious Abyss had turned on the Imperial fleet.

The galaxy was changing very quickly. The words of Zadkiel, spoken so many days ago in the gallery, echoed back at him.

The World Eater shrank deeper into the shadows as he saw Astartes entering the chamber. One, the warrior he had fought earlier in the temple during his escape, he recognised. It was not with a little satisfaction that he saw the metal artifice attached to the Word Bearer’s face where Skraal had broken his jaw and shattered his cheekbone.

A darkly-armoured chaplain accompanied the warrior, Reskiel. One of the demagogues of the Legion, the chaplain wore a skull-faced battle helm with conjoined rebreather apparatus worked into the gorget and carried a crozius, the icon of his office.

Silently, Reskiel gave the acolytes orders. As if understanding on some instinctive level, they bowed curtly and proceeded to lift what was left of Antiges on a steel pall. Together, they raised him up onto their shoulders and, led by the chaplain, left the room.

Reskiel lingered in their wake, probing the shadows and, for a brief moment, Skraal thought he was discovered, but the Word Bearer turned eventually and followed the macabre procession.

Loosening the grip on his chainaxe, the World Eater went after them.

Tailing the enemy at a discrete distance, Skraal was led down a pathway lined with statues that flowed towards what he assumed was the prow of the ship. He had previously steered clear of the vessel’s forward sections, preferring to hide himself in the industrial tangle of the stern-ward engine decks, but a greater understanding of his enemy was worth the risk. Continuing his pursuit, the World Eater found himself in darkness, lit only by candles mounted in alcoves.

Watching intently, Skraal witnessed the pallbearers saying a prayer at a set of blast doors – the exact words were indiscernible, but their reverence was obvious – before continuing into a dim chamber beyond.

Using the shadows like a concealing cloak, Skraal moved into the room. As he got further inside, he realised that it was an anatomy theatre. A surgeon’s slab dominated the centre of the room, surrounded by circular tiers of seating, though they were not occupied. Whatever ritual or experiment was to be performed here was a clandestine one.

The chaplain, the vestments he wore across his armour fringed with black trim, beckoned the acolytes forward.

The debased creatures, hunch-backed and robed, slunk to the table as one. Sibilant emanations pierced the silence softly as they took the disparate sections of Antiges’s corpse and laid them out on the slab. Obscene and profane, the gorge in Skraal’s throat rose and his anger swelled at the sight of the act. Taken apart like that: it was as if Antiges was no more than a machine to be stripped down or meat cleaved at the butcher’s block.

Coldness smothered the anger and bile within Skraal, as if his blood had been drained away and replaced with ice. It was as if a film of dirt overlaid him, and choked him all at once.

Skraal had done terrible things. At the Sack of Scholamgrad and the burning of the Ethellion Fleet, innocents had died. Even at Bakka Triumveron, he had killed in cold blood for the sake of slaking his thirst for carnage, but this was different. It was calculated and precise, the systematic and ritual dismemberment of another Astartes so invasive, so fundamentally destructive that his essence was forever lost. There would be no honours for him, no clean death on the field of battle as it should be for all warriors; there was dignity in that. No, this was an aberration, soulless and terrible. To think of a fellow Astartes being so shamed and by one of his battle-brothers… it took all of Skraal’s resolve not to wade in and kill them all for such defilement.

Stepping forward, the chaplain approached the table, the acolytes retreating obsequiously as he picked up one of Antiges’s arms to inspect it.

‘There is no head?’ he asked, setting the limb back down as he turned to his fellow Word Bearer.

‘Wsoric required it,’ replied Reskiel.

‘I see, and now our omniscient lord would have us yoke this body for further favours of the warp.’ There was an almost contemptuous tone to the chaplain’s words.

‘You speak out of turn, Ikthalon,’ Reskiel snapped. ‘You would do well to remember who is master aboard this ship.’

‘Be still, sycophant.’ The chaplain, Ikthalon, fashioned his retort into a snarl. ‘Your allegiance is well known to all, as is your ambition.’

Reskiel moved to respond, but was cut off.

‘Hold your tongue! Think on the fate of those left at Bakka Triumveron. Think of Ultis before you speak of whom is master. In this place,’ he said, spreading his arms to encompass the macabre surgery, ‘you supplicate yourself to me. Zadkiel’s wizened astropath has had his turn and sealed the pact with Wsoric, now I will divine what I can from what remains. Speak no further. I have need to concentrate, and you try my patience, Reskiel.’

The other Word Bearer, cowed by the tirade, retreated back into the shadows to let the chaplain work.

Skraal kept watching with abhorred satisfaction, but was intrigued by the obvious dissension within the Word Bearers’ ranks.

‘Warrior’s hands,’ said Ikthalon, gauntleted fingers tracing Antiges’s palm as he resumed his morbid examination, ‘strong and instinctive, but I will need more.’ The chaplain gestured at the former Ultramarine’s torso. ‘Open it.’

One of the acolytes took a las-cutter from beneath the slab and sheared through the front of Antiges’s breastplate. The gilded decoration split off from the ceramite and clattered to the floor. The Word Bearers ignored it. Once the acolyte with the cutter retreated, Ikthalon inserted his fingers into the cut. With a grunt of effort, he forced the Ultramarine’s chest open.

The complex mass of an Astartes’s organs was exposed. Skraal could make out the two hearts and third lung, together with the reverse of the bony breastplate that fused from every Astartes’s ribs.

The chaplain dug a hand into the gory dark and extracted an organ. It looked like the oolitic kidney, or perhaps the omophagaea. Ikthalon regarded it coolly, putting the organ down and yanking out a handful of entrails. He cast them across the slab, and stood for a long time peering into the loops of tissue and sprays of blood.

‘Macragge suspects nothing,’ he hissed, discerning meaning from the act. Running a finger through the bloody miasma, he added. ‘Here, that’s our route. It lies open to us.’

‘What of Calth?’ Reskiel asked from the darkness.

‘That is unclear,’ Ikthalon replied. ‘Kor Phaeron has no obstacles, save any he makes for himself.’ The chaplain peered into Antiges’s open chest again. ‘There is veining on the third lung. Guilliman is represented there as just a man. Not a primarch, just a man ignorant of his fate.’ Ikthalon’s voice dripped with malice.

The chaplain looked further, his gaze lingering for a moment on one of Antiges’s hearts before his head snapped up quickly.

‘We are not alone,’ he snarled.

Reskiel’s bolter swung up in readiness and he barked into the transponder in his gorget.

‘In the anatomy theatre, now!’

A troop of four Word Bearers barged into the room, weapons drawn.

‘Spread out,’ Reskiel bellowed. ‘Find him!’

Skraal backed out of the chamber. He forged back the way he had come and split off from the candlelit path, kicking open a maintenance hatch and dropping into a tangle of wiring and circuitry. He stormed ahead, relying on the ship to hide him for a little longer. He wanted to feel rage, and be comforted by it, but he couldn’t reach it. He felt numb.

Visions raced into Cestus’s mind as he felt all of tangible reality fall away around him. At once, he was suspended in the depths of real space. Formaska rolled beneath, its laborious orbit somehow visible. Silvered torpedoes struck suddenly against its surface at strategic points across the moon. Miniature detonations were discernible as a slow shockwave resonated over it in ripples of destructive force. Cestus saw tiny fractures in the outer crust, magnifying with each passing second into massive fissures that yawned like jagged mouths. Formaska glowed and pulsed as if it were a throbbing heart giving out its last, inexorable beat. The moon exploded.

Debris cascaded outwards in shuddering waves, miniscule asteroids burning up in the atmosphere of nearby Macragge. A fleet suspended in the planet’s upper atmosphere was destroyed. Impossibly, Cestus heard the screams of his home world’s inhabitants below as the detritus of Formaska’s death rained upon them in super-heated waves of rock.

Something moved in the debris field, shielded from the thundering defence lasers of Macragge’s surface. Getting ever closer, the dark shape breached the planet’s atmosphere. The vision shifted to the industrial hive of the cities. A cloud of gas boiled along the streets, engulfing the screaming populous.

The image changed again, depicting other ships, great vessels of the Crusade, held in orbit at Calth hit by an errant meteor storm. Cestus watched in horror as they broke up against the onslaught, the stylised ‘U’ of his Legion immolated in flame. The meteor shower struck Calth, forcing its way through the planet’s atmosphere to where his battle-brothers mustered below. Cestus roared in anguish, furious at his impotence, screaming a desperate warning that his brothers and his primarch would never hear.

The scene changed once more as the void of real space became metal. As if propelled at subsonic speed, Cestus flew through the tunnels and chambers of a ship. Through conducts, across heaving generators, beyond the fire of immense plasma-driven engines, he came at last to an ordnance deck. There, sitting innocuously amongst the other munitions, was a lethal payload. Though he could not explain how, he knew it at once to be a viral torpedo and the effective death warrant of Macragge.

World killer.

The words resolved themselves in the Ultramarine’s mind, taunting him, goading him.

Cestus railed against the sense of doom, the fathomless despair they evoked. He bellowed loud and hard, the only name he could think of to repel it.

‘Guilliman!’

Cestus was back in the isolation chamber. He saw Mhotep sitting across from him. The Thousand Son’s face was haggard and covered in a sheen of sweat.

Cestus staggered backwards as recall returned, wrenching his bolt pistol from its holster with difficultly and pointing it waveringly at Mhotep.

‘What did you do to me,’ he hissed, shaking his head in an effort to banish the lingering images and sensations.

‘I showed you the truth,’ Mhotep gasped, breathing raggedly as he propped himself up against the wall of the cell, ‘by sharing my memories, the memories of Ultis, with you. It is no different to the omophagea, though the absorption of memory is conducted psychically and not biologically,’ he pleaded.

Cestus kept his aim on the Thousand Son.

‘Was it real?’ he asked. ‘What I witnessed, was it real?’ he demanded, stowing the bolt pistol in favour of grabbing Mhotep by the throat.

‘Yes,’ the Thousand Son spat through choking breaths.

Cestus held him there for a moment longer, thinking that he might crush the life out of the fellow Astartes. Exhaling deeply, Cestus let Mhotep go. The Thousand Son doubled over coughing as he gasped for breath and rubbed his throat.

‘They do not plan to attack Calth, or destroy Macragge. They want to conquer them both and bring the Legion to heel or vanquish it if it does not yield,’ said Cestus, his thoughts and fears coming out in a flood.

Mhotep looked up at the frantic Ultramarine, and nodded.

‘And the destruction of Formaska is where it will begin.’

‘The ship,’ Cestus ventured, beginning to calm down. ‘That was the Furious Abyss, wasn’t it? And the viral payload is the method of extermination for the people of Macragge.’

‘You have seen what I saw, and what Ultis knew,’ Mhotep confirmed, regaining his composure and sitting up.

Cestus’s gaze was distant as he struggled to process everything he’d learned, together with resisting the urge to vomit against the invasive psychic experience. He looked back at Mhotep, a suspicious cast to his eyes and face.

‘Why are you here, Mhotep? I mean, why are you really here?’

The Thousand Son gazed back for a moment and then withdrew his hood and sighed deeply.

‘I have seen the lines of fate, Ultramarine. I knew long before we made contact with the Furious Abyss, back when we were on Vangelis, that my destiny lay with this ship, that this mission, your mission, was important.

‘My Legion is cursed with psychic mutation, but my lord Magnus taught us to harness it, to commune with the warp and fashion that communion into true power.’ Mhotep ignored the growing revulsion in Cestus’s face as he spoke of the empyrean, and went on. ‘Nikea was no council, Ultramarine. It was a trial, not only of my lord Magnus but of the entire Thousand Sons Legion. The Emperor’s edict wounded him, like a father’s disapproval and chastisement would wound any child.

‘What I told you at Vangelis, that I sought to improve the reputation of my Legion, in the eyes of the sons of Guilliman if no other, was in part true. I desire only to open your eyes to the potential of the psychic and how it is a boon, a ready weapon to use against our enemies.’

Cestus’s expression was stern in the face of Mhotep’s impassioned arguments.

‘You saved us all in the lance deck,’ said the Ultramarine. ‘You probably did the same when we fought what became of the Fireblade. But, your ambition overreaches you, Mhotep. I have stayed Brynngar’s hand, but from this point on you will remain here in isolation. If we are successful and can reach Macragge or some other Imperial stronghold, you will face trial and there, your fate will be decided.’

Cestus got to his feet and turned. As he was about to leave the room, he paused.

‘If you ever invade my mind like that again, I will execute you myself,’ he added and left, the cell door sliding shut behind him.

‘How narrow your mind is,’ Mhotep hissed, focusing at once on the reflective sheen of the cell wall. ‘How ignorant you are of what is to come.’

Sixteen

Fleet/Kor Phaeron/A storm breaks

‘That,’ said Orcadus, ‘is Macragge.’

The Navigator had received instructions from his admiral that whilst they were still in the warp he should make regular reports of their progress. The appearance of the Ultramarines’ home world, albeit through the misted lens of the empyrean, was worthy of note and so he had summoned her.

The observation blister was a chamber on the same deck of the Wrathful as the bridge and within walking distance. The room was usually reserved for formal gatherings, when officers came together to formalise some business within the Saturnine Fleet. Its grand transparent dome afforded a view of space that lent gravitas to the matters at hand. In the warp, of course, it was strictly off-limits and its eye was kept permanently closed.

The eye was open, but the dome was masked with heavy filters that kept all but the most mundane wavelengths of light out of the blister.

Admiral Kaminska faced away from the Navigator and actually followed Orcadus’s gaze through a mirror screen that offered a hazy representation of what he was seeing. To look at the warp, even filtered as it was, would be incredibly dangerous for her.

‘If you could see it as I can,’ Orcadus hissed, allowing a reverent tone to colour his voice. ‘What wonders there are out in the void. There is beauty in the galaxy, for those who can but see it.’

‘I’m happy staying blind,’ said Kaminska. The view through the filters and reflected by the mirror screen was heavily distorted, but she could make out a crescent-shaped mass of light hanging over the ship. Though she had no frame of reference, she had an impression of enormous distance.

‘Macragge,’ muttered Orcadus. ‘See how it glows, the brightest constellation in this depth of the abyss? All those hard-working souls toiling at its surface; their combined life-spark is refulgent to my eyes. Ultramar is the most heavily populated system in the whole segmentum and the minds of its citizens are bright and full of hope. That is what I mean by beauty. It is a beacon, one that shines amidst the malice and bleakness of the empyrean tide.’

Kaminska continued to regard the dim mirror image of the warp through the minute aperture offered by the filters. Old space-farers’ tales were full of the effects the naked warp could have on a human mind. Madness was the most merciful fate, they said: mutation, excruciating spontaneous cancers and even possession by some malfeasant presence all featured prominently. Kaminska felt a flicker of vulnerability, and was glad that only the Navigator was there with her.

‘Is this why you summoned me?’ she asked, having little time or inclination for a philosophical debate concerning the immaterium. Her mind was on other matters, namely the sudden revival of Mhotep and Cestus’s meeting with the Thousand Son. She hoped it would yield some good news.

‘No,’ Orcadus answered simply, puncturing the admiral’s introspection, and pointing to a different region of the warp. It was a dim mass of glowing bluffs, like the top of endless cliffs reaching down into blackness. Above the cliffs was a streak of red.

‘I am not well-versed in reading the empyrean tides, Navigator,’ she snapped, weary of Orcadus’s eccentricities, which were ubiquitous amongst all the great Navigator houses. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘Formations like these cliffs are common enough in the abyss,’ he explained, oblivious to Kaminska’s impatience. ‘I am steering us well clear of them, and I am certain that our quarry has taken the same route. The formation above them, however, is rather more troubling.’

‘Another world, perhaps?’ ventured Kaminska. ‘There’s plenty of new settlement out here near the fringe.’

‘I suspected that, but it is not a planet. I believe it is another ship.’

‘A second vessel?’

‘No. I think it is a fleet.’

‘Are they following us?’ asked Kaminska, a knot of dread building in her stomach.

‘I cannot tell. Distance is relative down here,’ the Navigator admitted.

‘Could it be the Ultramarines? Their Legion was heading for Calth.’

‘It is possible. Calth could be its destination, I suppose.’

‘If not, then what is the alternative, Navigator?’ Kaminska didn’t like where this was going as the knot in her stomach became a fist.

‘It could be another Legion fleet,’ said Orcadus, leaving the implication hanging.

‘You mean more Word Bearers.’

‘Yes,’ the Navigator confirmed after a moment’s pause.

Lord Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers scowled. ‘He’s behind schedule,’ he said. Aboard the Infidus Imperator he and his warriors made their inexorable course towards Ultramar, the great flagship leading the dread fleet of battleships, cruisers, escorts and frigates towards their destiny.

The arch commander of the Legion, favoured of Lorgar, was immense in his panoply of war. Seated upon a throne of black iron, he towered like an all-powerful tyrant, the surveyor of all his deadly works. Votive chains, festooned with tiny silver skulls, and icons of dedication, arched from his shoulder pads to his cuirass. A spiked halo of iron arced across his mighty shoulders, fixed to his armoured backpack. The stout metal gorget fixed around his neck was forged into a high and imperious collar that bore the symbol of the Legion. The tenets of it were etched ostensibly across every surface of Kor Phaeron’s armour in the epistles of Lorgar. Parchments unfurled like ragged, script-ridden pennants from studded pauldrons; seals and scraps of vellum covered his leg greaves like patchwork.

In the eyes of the arch-commander there burned a relentless fervour that flowed outwards and ignited the room. It was almost as if any who fell beneath his glowering gaze would be immolated in righteous fire should they be found wanting. His voice was dominance and zeal, his Word the dictate of the primarch. This would be his finest hour, as it was written.

Six Chapter Masters of the Word Bearers stood behind Kor Phaeron, each resplendent in their respective panoplies. They still managed to fill the immense council chamber of the Infidus Imperator with their presence. Above them curved a great domed roof hung with smoking censers. The floor was a giant viewscreen, showing a stellar map of the space surrounding Ultramar.

‘Our most recent reports indicate that Zadkiel was being followed,’ said Faerskarel, Master of the Chapter of the Opening Eye. ‘It is possible that he is just showing caution.’

‘He has the Furious Abyss!’ roared Kor Phaeron. ‘He should have been able to see off anything that stood in his way. Zadkiel had better know the consequences for us all if we fail.’

Deinos, Master of the Burning Hand Chapter, stepped forwards. ‘Lorgar shows Admiral Zadkiel all honour,’ he said. In keeping with the name of his Chapter, Deinos’s gauntlets were permanently wreathed in flames from gas jets built into his vambraces. ‘It was written that we will succeed.’

‘Not,’ said Kor Phaeron, measuredly, ‘that we will do so without great loss. Calth will fall and the Ultramarines with it, that is already decided, but there is plenty of scope for our Legion to lose a great many brothers, and we certainly shall if Zadkiel cannot fulfil his mission.’

‘My lord, surely Zadkiel makes his own fate? We should be minded only with the progress of our own fleet.’ It was Rukis, the Master of the Crimson Mask Chapter, who spoke. The faceplate of his helmet was wrought to resemble a fearsome red-skinned snarling creature.

‘I will not allow our brother to fail us,’ hissed Kor Phaeron, intent on the stellar map and the alleged progress of the Furious Abyss. ‘I had not wanted to use my hand in this matter, but it seems that circumstances allow no other recourse. Much is written of Zadkiel’s success and its bearing upon our own. To prosecute the war on Calth, we must risk nothing. Is that understood?’

The Chapter Masters’ silence constituted their agreement. Skolinthos, Master of the Ebony Serpent Chapter, broke the quietude once his assent and that of his brothers was clear. Skolinthos’s oesophagus had been crushed in the early years of the Great Crusade when it was the Emperor whom the Word Bearers vaunted above all others. His voice crackled sibilantly through a vocal synthesiser on his chest, the honorific of his Chapter somehow perversely apt given his affliction. ‘Then how might we assist the admiral?’

‘There are still words newly written,’ said Kor Phaeron, ‘that you do not know of. They concern the warp through which we travel. We can reach Zadkiel even though the Furious Abyss lies many days ahead of us. Master Tenaebron?’

Chapter Master Tenaebron bowed in supplication behind his lord. The Chapter of the Void was probably the least respected among the Word Bearers Legion for it was by far the smallest, with less than seven hundred Astartes. There was little glory in its history, used moreover as a reserve force that enacted its missions behind the front line. This grim, dishonourable purpose fell to the Void and Tenaebron, their master, did not complain, for he knew that his Chapter’s true role was to create and test new weapons and tactics for the rest of the Legion. It had not gone unnoticed that Lorgar’s most recent orders to Tenaebron had concerned the exploitation of the Word Bearers’ psychic resources.

‘I trust you will require the use of the supplicants?’ said Tenaebron.

‘How many remain?’ asked Kor Phaeron, votive chains jangling as he shifted in his throne.

‘One hundred and thirty, my lord,’ Tenaebron replied. ‘Seventy here on the Infidus, thirty on the Carnomancer and the remainder are spread throughout the fleet. I have ensured they are kept in a state of readiness; they can be awakened within the hour.’

‘Get them ready,’ Kor Phaeron ordered. ‘How many can we afford to lose?’

‘More than half would compromise the masking of the Calth assault,’ Tenaebron answered humbly.

‘Then be prepared to lose them.’

‘Understood, my lord. What will you have them do?’

Kor Phaeron cracked his knuckles in annoyance. There could be no doubt that he had hoped everything would go more smoothly than this. Zadkiel’s mission was supposedly easy. The assault on Calth would be far more complex, with much more to go wrong. If Zadkiel could not fulfil his written role, then the problems at Calth would be magnified greatly.

‘Give me a storm,’ said the arch-commander, darkly.

Tenaebron led Kor Phaeron down into the supplicant chambers of the Infidis Imperator. The arch-commander had since dismissed the other masters to their respective duties, ignoring their obvious surprise at his bold stratagem. The Infidis Imperator was a great and mighty flagship that almost rivalled the immensity of the Furious Abyss. It took some time to traverse the proving grounds and ritual chambers, the ranks of Word Bearers honing their battle-skills with bolter and blade in the arenas. Down here, upon every surface, the Word was ubiquitous. Sentences inscribed on bulkheads and support ribs, tomes penned by Lorgar on pulpits overlooking halls and seminary chapels, libraries of lore, the vessel was drenched in the primarch’s wisdom and zealotry.

The ship had once been known as the Raptorous Rex, a vessel devoted to the Emperor, who had plucked Lorgar from Colchis and placed the Word Bearers at his command. It was a temple to another, more willing and appreciative idol now, the False Emperor of Mankind having been stricken from its corridors.

Tenaebron reached the narrow, high chamber, like a steel canyon, where the supplicants resided. Held in glass blisters on the walls, each served by a bulky life support system feeding oxygen and nutrients, the supplicants slumbered. Curled up and naked, twitching with the force of the power held in their swollen, lacerated craniums it looked like they were dreaming. Their eyes and mouths had grown shut. Some had no facial features at all, their bodies abandoning the need to breathe, eat or experience externally.

A trio of Word Bearers Librarians saluted their Chapter Master as Tenaebron examined the vital-signs on a pict screen, slaved to the individual life supports, in the centre of the room. The Librarians bowed deeply as Kor Phaeron walked in, and genuflected silently before him.

‘Rise,’ he intoned, and the Librarians obeyed. ‘Is everything in preparation?’ he asked, directing the question at the Chapter Master.

Tenaebron consulted the data on the pict screen, turned to his lord and nodded. ‘Marshal the storm,’ he growled. ‘Let them be broken by its wrath.’

The Chapter Master nodded again, and proceeded to order his Librarians to activate the cogitators hooked up to the supplicants’ blisters. Kor Phaeron left Tenaebron to his duties without further word.

Up on the walls the supplicants stirred, as if the dream had become a nightmare.

Zadkiel arrived on the bridge as the storm broke.

The vista below him was bathed in strobing hazard lights as if lashed by lightning. Complicated symbolic maps of the warp shone on the three main viewscreens and indicated that it was in violent flux. Bridge crew, Helmsmaster Sarkorov barking orders at them, bent over their picters, faces picked out in the green glow of reams of scrolling data.

‘The warp rebels!’ hissed Zadkiel.

‘Perhaps not,’ muttered Ikthalon. The chaplain, having left Reskiel to his pursuit of their stowaway, had been summoned to the bridge and stood alongside the command throne. ‘The supplicants were recently animated. It was probably a foreshadowing of the empyrean’s current state of turmoil. I believe that a higher purpose is at work. Confidence, it seems, in our ability to prosecute this mission, is waning.’ Ikthalon was careful to keep the barb well-hidden, but the implication at Zadkiel’s ineptitude was still there.

The admiral ignored it. The warp storm, and its origin, was of greater concern to him at that moment

‘Kor Phaeron?’ he wondered.

‘I can think of no other, save our arch lord, who would intercede on our behalf.’

Zadkiel sneered as another thought occurred to him.

‘It is Tenaebron, no doubt, trying to claim for the Chapter of the Void that which belongs to the Quill.’

‘He is ever ambitious,’ Ikthalon agreed, keeping his voice level.

Zadkiel assumed his position on the command throne.

‘It would be rude,’ Zadkiel sneered, ‘to deny Tenaebron his sliver of victory. It will be eclipsed utterly by our own. Helmsmaster Sarkorov,’ he snapped, ‘press on for Macragge. Let the warp take the Wrathful.’

Cestus was thrown against the wall as the Wrathful shuddered violently. He was heading back to the bridge in order to convene with Kaminska and the remaining Astartes when the storm wave hit. Debris was flung throughout the corridors, medi-bays were in disarray as desperate orderlies fought to hang on to the wounded, armsmen were smashed against bulkheads and ratings fell to their deaths as the Wrathful pitched and yawed. A terrible metallic moaning came from the engine sections as the ship fought to right itself. Cestus could feel the structure flexing and straining through the floor, as if the vessel was on the verge of snapping in two under the strain.

The Ultramarine made his way through the mayhem until he reached the bridge, blast doors opening to allow him access. The crew clung to their posts, Helmsmistress Venkmyer issuing frantic orders set against the unearthly calm of servitors running through their emergency protocols. Drenched in crimson gloom from vermillion alert status, the bridge looked bloody in the half-light.

‘Navigator Orcadus, report!’ snapped Kaminska, gripping the sides of her command position as the shaking Wrathful threatened to dethrone her.

‘A storm,’ Orcadus’s voice said over the bridge vox-caster, the Navigator sounding strained, ‘came out of nowhere.’

‘Evade it,’ ordered Kaminska.

‘Admiral, we are already in it!’ replied the Navigator.

‘Damage control to your posts!’ bellowed Kaminska. ‘Close off the reactor sections and clear the gun decks.’

Cestus reached the admiral. ‘This is the Word Bearers’ doing,’ he shouted against the din of warning sirens and frantic reports from the crew. Another wave slammed into the Wrathful. Bursting pipes vented vapour and gas. Crewmen were thrown off their feet. A viewscreen was sheared off its moorings and fell in a shower of sparks and shattered glass, landing in the middle of the bridge.

‘Orcadus, can we ride it out?’ asked Kaminska, her eyes on the Ultramarine.

‘I see no end to it, admiral.’

‘Captain Cestus?’ she asked of the Astartes.

‘If we drift here and ride it out, the Furious Abyss escapes,’ Cestus confirmed. ‘There is no choice left to us but to drive through it.’

Kaminska nodded grimly. If they failed it would mean the destruction of the ship and the deaths of over ten thousand crew. Her order would condemn them all to their fates.

‘Engage the engines to full power!’ she ordered. ‘Let’s break this storm’s back!’ she snarled with fire in her eyes. ‘We’ll teach the warp to fear us!’

From within the confines of the isolation cell, Mhotep could hear the anarchy outside. He ignored it, poring over the reflective sheen of the polished gunmetal walls instead. A window of fate opened up to him as he channelled his powers. Panic reigned on the Wrathful. He saw fire, men and women burning, thousands sacrificed upon the altar of hopeful victory. They became ghosts in his mind’s eye, their penitent souls devoured hungrily by the warp and scattered into atoms until only residue remained.

Death awaited on this ship: his death. The certainty of that fact instilled calm in him rather than fear. His place amongst the myriad strands of fate was fixed.

The vista changed and Mhotep’s mind ranged beyond the Wrathful and into the churning abyss. The Furious Abyss loomed through the haze of resolution as a new scene presented itself. The vessel was immense, like a city laid on its side and falling towards the Wrathful. Thousands of gun ports opened up like mouths, the primed, glowing barrels of magna-lasers and cannon like tongues ready to roar. The Furious Abyss was utterly hideous, a monstrosity of dark crimson steel, and yet the beauty of its majesty overcame any aesthetic offence.

Mhotep drifted further across the gulf, through ersatz reality. As his mind expanded, he could taste the warp, the endless flavours, sounds and sensations of the abyss, calling to him. Probing tendrils pricked at his sanity and the Thousand Son attempted to disengage. He couldn’t, and panic rushed into him like a flood. Mhotep mastered it quickly, recognising at once that he was in peril. The warp had seen him and it sought to drive his mind asunder.

It showed him visions of destruction, the spires of Prospero aflame and his Legion cast into the warp. In another vista, he knelt before a throne of black iron in supplication before the icon of the Word Bearers. Screams filled his ears, together with the howling of wolves.

Mhotep clawed back some semblance of control. He fashioned the image of a cyclopean eye in his mind. It glowed with scarlet radiance, and, as if following a beacon to safe harbour, Mhotep used it to guide himself away from the clutches of the empyrean. He emerged at last, drained of all will, of all strength and collapsed to the floor of the cell. The metal was cool against his cheek. Though hard and unyielding, it was the most invigorating salve he had ever felt. He had resisted, though the lines of fate had been laid open to him. Mhotep knew, as he slipped into unconsciousness, what the visions had been about. It was not a lure into madness; it was something far more sinister and invasive. It was temptation.

‘They are lost,’ said Zadkiel, smiling with malice. He looked up at the centre viewscreen, showing little emotion as alarming numbers scrolled past the symbol representing the Wrathful. He looked more thoughtful than triumphant. ‘Do we have any readings from their engines? Are they still void-worthy?’

‘No readings,’ Sarkorov replied. ‘The storm is too strong.’

‘I have seen enough,’ Zadkiel said, his response was curt. ‘Continue at all speed.’

‘You won’t wait until we are certain of the Wrathful’s destruction?’ counselled Ikthalon, a sliver of doubt evident in his voice at Zadkiel’s order.

‘No, I will not,’ answered the admiral. ‘Our mission is to reach Macragge in time for Kor Phaeron’s assault. I cannot tarry here in order to make certain of what is inevitable. We need to be out of this region and back on our way. Return to your chambers, chaplain. Have the supplicants watch for the Wrathful’s death throes. Even in a warp storm such as this, that many deaths should make some ripple.’

‘As you wish, my lord.’ Ikthalon bowed and left the bridge.

The Furious Abyss resumed its former heading in short order. Kor Phaeron’s plan had worked in so far as they were undamaged by the storm. Whether it had also put paid to the Wrathful did not concern the admiral.

A petty creature might have been angry at his lord’s meddling, but Zadkiel was sanguine. Let lesser minds worry on such things. The Word would play out as written. Nothing else mattered.

Seventeen

Strategy/Out of the warp/Formaska in sight

Cestus turned his head away as the warp glared against the Wrathful’s port side.

The force of it shone through the metal of the ship’s hull, as if the Wrathful was made of paper, transparent against the light of the abyss. Cestus heard screams and laughter as men’s minds were stripped away by it. He threw himself against the housing of a torpedo tube entrance, willing himself not to look. Saphrax and Brother Excelinor were beside him and they too averted their gaze.

Cestus had left the bridge almost as soon as he’d arrived. He’d gathered his fellow Ultramarines to patrol the corridors, knowing full well what awaited them and the crew of the Wrathful. Two teams of what was left of the honour guard and Brynngar’s wolves moved through the decks and corridors in an effort to steel resolve, and snuff out manifesting psychosis wherever they found it.

Cestus hoped the presence of the Astartes would be enough. The need for them to be the Angels of the Emperor was greater than any other.

‘It is as if the warp is at their very beck and call,’ bellowed Excelinor, his voice tinny through his Corvus-pattern nose cone.

Cestus did not reply, for he knew of the terrible truth of his battle-brother’s words. Moving defiantly down the corridor, the infernal light of the empyrean was scarlet through his eyelids. Silhouettes of bodies fell in the blazing vista; men and women fell to their knees, weeping and screaming; a gunshot rang out as an officer turned his sidearm on himself. The sound of a female voice was contiguous with it, reciting paragraphs from the Saturnine Fleet’s rules and regulations in an effort to stave off the madness.

Visions forced their way into the Ultramarine’s mind: the beneficent Emperor, mighty upon his golden throne and the majesty of the Imperial Palace, and Terra, the beacon of enlightenment in a galaxy surrounded by darkness. Then he saw it burning, continents peeling off and red gouts of magma boiling away into space.

He was an Astartes. He was stronger than this.

‘Do not give in to madness,’ he cried aloud to all who could still listen. ‘Hold on and heed the Imperial Truth.’

For a brief moment, it looked like that the warp would engulf them, but then the visions melted away and the screaming ebbed and died. The ship was still again. The Wrathful had emerged on the other side.

Cestus breathed hard as the blazing light diminished, leaving a painful afterglow. He adjusted quickly and opened his eyes to see that his brothers were still with him. The shadows came back, too, swallowing the dead. The Ultramarine nodded slowly to Saphrax and Excelinor and opened up communications through his gorget as he surveyed the carnage around him.

‘Admiral, are you still with us?’

There was a pause before the vox-link crackled and Kaminska’s voice replied.

‘We are through the storm,’ she said, similarly breathless. ‘Your plan was successful.’

‘Medical teams are required at my location as well as fleet morticians,’ Cestus informed her.

‘Very well.’

‘Admiral,’ Cestus added, ‘as soon as recovery is underway, I request your presence in the conference chamber.’

‘Of course, my lord. I shall be there momentarily. Kaminska out.’

Half an hour later, when the crews began to organise themselves into shifts to recover the bodies and the wounded, Kaminska had Helmsmistress Venkmyer tour the worst-hit sections of the ship and make a report of their losses.

In normal circumstances, Kaminska would have done this herself, demonstrating to the crew that their leader cared about the deaths and the terrible tragedy that had befallen them. More urgent matters pressed for her attention, however, and she was not about to ignore the request of an Astartes.

So, she had made her way to the conference chamber as bidden. Within, the remaining Astartes force awaited her.

‘Welcome, admiral,’ said Cestus, standing at the edge of the oval table with Saphrax to his right and his other battle-brothers arrayed around him. The Space Wolf, Brynngar, sat opposite with his warriors, but did not acknowledge the admiral’s arrival.

‘Please sit,’ the Ultramarine captain said sternly, despite trying to soften his mood with a small smile.

Now the council was assembled, Cestus surveyed the room, looking into the eyes of each person present.

‘It is beyond all doubt,’ he began, ‘that the Word Bearers are in league with the warp. They are utterly lost.’

Hardened faces returned his gaze as the Ultramarine articulated what they already knew in their hearts.

‘With such dark allies at their disposal, together with the Furious Abyss, they are a formidable opponent,’ Cestus continued, ‘but we have a slim hope. I have discovered the nature of the Word Bearers’ plan and how it is to be employed.’

Brynngar twitched at the remark. The Space Wolf clearly knew of the methods that the Ultramarine had used to discover the information they needed. He also knew of Mhotep’s subsequent revival. The absence of the Thousand Son from the conference spoke volumes as to his demeanour on that matter.

‘Make no mistake,’ Cestus began, ‘what the Word Bearers are planning is audacious in the extreme. In assaulting Macragge, there are several factors that any enemy must consider before committing his forces,’ he explained. ‘Firstly, the planetary fleet held in high orbit consists of a flotilla of several cruisers and escorts. It would not be easy for any foe, however determined or well-armed, to break through without significant losses. Should he be successful, though, the enemy must then face the static orbital deterrents on the surface: Macragge’s battery of defence lasers.’

‘And the Furious Abyss is supposed to achieve this feat?’ scoffed Brynngar. ‘Impossible.’

Cestus nodded in agreement.

‘Had you asked me the same an hour ago I would have concurred,’ the Ultramarine admitted. ‘The Word Bearers strategy has two key elements. It all begins at Formaska, which the Word Bearers plan to hit with cyclonic torpedoes to destroy it.’

‘I know little of Ultramar,’ growled the Wolf Guard, ‘but Formaska is a dead moon. Why not use their cyclonics against Macragge directly?’

‘A direct assault against Macragge would be suicide. Its defence lasers would cripple their fleet before they made landfall and render any attempt to subdue Guilliman untenable,’ he explained. ‘The debris from Formaska’s destruction will achieve their ends indirectly. The Legion will divert forces to the aid of Macragge caught in the asteroid storm of the moon’s demise and the Word Bearers will strike as they are divided and take them utterly by surprise.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ said Brynngar, ‘on Proxus XII. An asteroid passed too close and came apart. It was a feral planet. Those people thought the world was ending. Fire was falling from the sky. Every impact was like an atomic hit. It won’t destroy Macragge, but it’ll kill millions.’

‘That is not all,’ Cestus continued. ‘The Furious Abyss will then use the debris like a shield, allowing them to get past the warning stations and satellites around Macragge and draw close enough for a viral payload to be effective. Only that ship is powerful enough to weather the inevitable storm of fire from the defence lasers. The death toll from the viral strike will be near-total. Guilliman and the Legion will be divided, some of our forces probably destroyed on Macragge, when the remainder of the Word Bearers’ fleet will strike. I do not know whether we could recover from such a blow, should it succeed.’

‘What then, is to be done?’ the Wolf Guard asked gruffly.

‘We are nearing Macragge and soon will be out of the warp,’ said the Ultramarine, a nod from Kaminska confirming his words. ‘So too are our enemies. It will require discipline, guile and timing.’ Cestus paused, and looked around the room again, his gaze ended on Kaminska. ‘Most of all it will require sacrifice.’

Space ruptured and spat out the Furious Abyss, edged hard in the diamond light of Macragge’s sun.

Shoals of predators shimmered out alongside it, like sea creatures leaping around the bow of a ship. Caught in the anathema of reality, they coiled in on themselves and seethed out of existence, their psychic essence dissipating without the warp to sustain them.

The Furious Abyss looked little worse than it had when it had left Thule. The attack of the escort squadron had destroyed some of the gun batteries on its dorsal and ventral surfaces, and there were countless tiny pockmarks on its hull from the impacts of doomed fighter craft that had crashed into it after their crews had lost their minds. Those scars did nothing to diminish the majesty of the vast scarlet ship, however. It took a full minute to emerge from the warp rift torn before it, and in those moments the warp was full of nothing but slabs of hull plating and engine cowlings all streaming into real space.

Every warning station around Macragge instantly recognised the scale of the ship and demanded its identity. No reply was forthcoming.

The image of Macragge filled the central viewport on the bridge of the Furious Abyss. Flanking it were tactical readouts of the system, which were full of early warning stations and military satellites.

‘There it is,’ said Zadkiel. ‘Hateful is it not? Like a boulder squatting in the path of the future.’

Magos Gureod stood beside Zadkiel, mechadendrites clicking like insectoid limbs, withered arms folded across his chest.

‘It evokes no emotion,’ the magos replied neutrally.

Zadkiel sniffed his mild contempt at the passionless Mechanicum drone.

‘As a symbol, it has no equal,’ he said. ‘The majesty of a stagnant universe. The ignorance of the powerful. The Ultramarines could have done anything with the worlds under their dominion, and they chose to forge this tired echo of a past that never was.’

Gureod remained unmoved. He had come to bear witness to the launching of the torpedoes that would end a world, the unbridled destructive forces yielded by the mech-science of Mars’s devotion to the Omnissiah. The magos was standing in the position once occupied by Baelanos, who had fallen at Bakka.

‘I take it your presence means that my former assault-captain has been recovered?’ Zadkiel snapped, annoyed at Gureod’s unwillingness to bask in his self-perceived reflected glory.

‘He dreams fitfully, my lord. When the sus-an membrane failed and he roused, somewhat unexpectedly, I was forced to take more drastic methods to secure him,’ said the magos.

‘See that he does not waken again until the transition is complete. Once Formaska is destroyed, we shall be joining Kor Phaeron’s forces on the ground. Baelanos is to be part of that invasion force.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Gureod said, showing no fear.

Zadkiel turned his attention back to the viewport.

All was in place now. He would lead the assault that would be remembered forever in history.

A few moments passed. Then the bridge vox-units crackled.

‘Awaiting your mark, admiral,’ said Kor Phaeron’s voice, transmitted across the system from Calth. Even at these relatively short distances, only the most advanced system could allow communication between the two ships without the need for an astropath.

‘It shall be forthcoming,’ said Zadkiel, turning his attention to another viewscreen. ‘Master Malforian,’ he intoned, awaiting the grizzled countenance of his weapon master.

The nightmarish visage of the badly injured Word Bearer was forthcoming.

‘At your command, my lord,’ Malforian responded.

‘Open the frontal torpedo apertures and load the first wave of cyclonics,’ Zadkiel commanded with relish. ‘It begins at Formaska. Let us unleash devastation and bring about a new era of man.’

Sarkorov snapped orders at the bridge crew, and despatched runners as the Furious Abyss prepared for battle stations. The navigation crew began orienting the ship towards Formaska, its prow arc aimed like a sniper’s sight on his kill.

The moon was on the screen. Deep lava-filled gulleys wormed their way across its continents, broken by boiling seas.

‘The primitives of ancient Macragge thought Formaska was the eye of a god, and that it was bloodshot with anger,’ Zadkiel said, to himself more than the unappreciative Magos. ‘Sometimes, when the lava fields grew, they thought the eye had opened and looked down on them as prey. They prophesied the day when the god would finally decide to reach down and consume them all. That day has arrived,’ he concluded.

‘Admiral,’ the sibilant voice of Chaplain Ikthalon came through on the bridge vox.

‘What is it, chaplain?’ Zadkiel snapped.

‘The supplicants are stirring,’ Ikthalon told him. ‘There is movement in the warp. It seems that our pursuers have yet to give up the fight.’

‘See that they do not interfere,’ snarled Kor Phaeron from the long wave vox, before Zadkiel could reply. ‘I’m bringing the fleet into an assault pattern. Guilliman knows we are here by now. Fulfil your mission, Zadkiel.’

‘So it is written,’ replied Zadkiel, ‘so it shall be.’ He returned to Malforian. ‘Your status, weapon master?’

‘A few more minutes, my liege,’ Malforian replied. ‘We are encountering some problems with the torpedo apertures.’

‘Inform me as soon as we’re ready to fire the cyclonics,’ ordered Zadkiel, his tone betraying his impatience at the unforeseen delay.

‘My lord,’ Helmsmaster Sarkorov interrupted, ‘the Wrathful is coming abeam. They are priming weapons.’

Zadkiel exhaled his annoyance. He should have excised this thorn from his side long ago.

‘Malforian,’ he barked into the vox, ‘send all targeting solutions to the bridge once the Imperial lap dogs are in our sights. The Wrathful does not deserve the honour of dying as a part of this history, but we shall grant them that honour nonetheless.’

The Wrathful appeared on the left viewscreen. She had lost half her guns down one side and was followed by a tail of wreckage tumbling out of her ravaged engine and cargo areas. Her hull was weathered and pitted by the lashes of the warp, covered in the tooth marks of empyrean predators.

Zadkiel smiled maliciously when he saw the wrecked ship. He would derive great pleasure from this.

‘Let us finish her.’

The Wrathful limped from the warp and went immediately to battle stations. Aft thrusters burning as hot as they were able, the once formidable Imperial vessel drove head on towards the waiting form of the Furious Abyss. Diverting power to its port side, the great ship turned grindingly slowly on its aft axis until its still- functioning broadsides were presented to the foe.

Beams of azure light lit up all the way down the Wrathful’s flank, and in seconds the blazing fury of her lances was unleashed. Explosions rippled down the armoured hull of the Furious Abyss, together with the immense blast flares of shield impacts. These wounds were a mere sting to a beast such as this and the Word Bearer vessel responded with a devastating salvo.

As the crimson light rays of the Furious’s broadside cannons spat out, the Wrathful was already moving, trying to bring the enemy vessel’s prow abeam of their lances. The shields of the Imperial ship disintegrated against the assault and the aft decks were raked by deadly fire, explosive impacts sending out chunks of debris and spilling swathes of crew. Still, the Wrathful endured, its last ditch manoeuvre bringing it away from the deadly barrage. Torpedoes soared from the vessel’s prow, followed by a second volley from the lances. Again, the Furious was stung and dorsal cannons swung in their mounts to bring their munitions to bear. Incendiaries crumpled against the Wrathful’s swerving prow, fully extended broadsides punching ragged holes through its hull armour.

Annoyed at the tenacity of this little wasp, the mighty Furious Abyss turned to present its full armament against their aggressor. The damage sustained by the Wrathful had slowed it, but even still it could have fled if it had wanted to. Instead, the Imperial vessel stood its ground, making a defiant last stand. Lances flashing, the Wrathful poured everything it had left at the Word Bearers. It wasn’t enough. The Furious Abyss had turned, and, now, it unleashed devastation.

Zadkiel observed the short-lived battle from the bridge. The Wrathful was in their sights. The might of his ship was at his disposal.

‘Crush them,’ he snarled.

Malforian replied his affirmation. Light and fire filled the viewscreen a moment later as the Furious’s guns wrecked the Imperial vessel. Its engines died, and great fissures were rent in its hull as it slowly drifted, pulled by the gravity well of Formaska. As the Wrathful fell away, sparks flashed sporadically, rendering it in a grim cast, as vented coolant pipes billowed in hazy plumes.

‘I had expected more from a son of Guilliman,’ Zadkiel admitted. ‘How could such a desperate plan ever succeed? The Ultramarines are deserving of their death warrant.’

‘Lord Zadkiel.’ It was Sarkorov again.

Zadkiel turned to face him.

‘What is it, helmsmaster?’ he snapped.

‘Shuttles, my liege,’ he explained, ‘heading for the port side.’

Zadkiel was nonplussed.

‘How many?’

‘Fifteen, my lord,’ Sarkorov replied. ‘Too close for lances.’

Zadkiel paused for a moment, still confused as to this latest Imperial gambit. The answer came swiftly.

‘They seek to gain entry through the torpedo apertures,’ he said.

‘Should I give the order to close them, Lord Zadkiel?’

‘Do it,’ Zadkiel snapped, ‘and engage dorsal cannons. Bring them down!’

Eighteen

Gauntlet/Infiltration/Dark dreams

Brynngar smiled as the shuttle shuddered, spirals of flak and countermeasures hammering against its hull.

Rujveld and the Blood Claws sat in the tight crew compartment with him. They were strapped down in their shuttle couches, braced across the shoulders, chest and waist. The engines were screaming, and intermittent flashes from the explosions outside threw sharp light into the compartment. The small vessel was armoured, but it wasn’t designed to take this punishment. Every bolt and stanchion was straining with the speed.

‘Do you hear it, lads?’ he roared above the din, utterly at ease.

His Blood Claws, even Rujveld, looked back perplexed.

‘It is the call to combat,’ he told them proudly. ‘Those are the arms of Mother Fenris! That’s the embrace of war!’

The Wolf Guard howled and the Blood Claws howled with him.

Beyond the vision slits, it and several other shuttles soared through the void towards the Furious Abyss. Deployed before the suicide attack, the Wrathful’s feint had given them the time they needed to close the gap. It had provided a chance to reach the gaping apertures of the vessel’s torpedo tubes before being scattered into debris by its guns.

Dorsal guns pulsed and rocked in their turrets as the Furious Abyss sought to obliterate the attacker’s force. In the third shuttle, Cestus saw three of his sister vessels explode under a hail of flak. They broke and split apart, their desperate speed abruptly arrested as if they were a sail boat breaking up on the rocks of some ragged cliff line. The bodies of naval armsmen spilled from the crew compartments, frozen in spasms of pain as they were exposed to the void.

Three of his battle-brothers were alongside the Ultramarine captain: Lexinal, Pytaron and Excelinor helping to fill up the compartment with their armoured bulk. They stared impassively into space as the flash of explosions was thrown through the viewports, and the armoured hull shook. Their lips moved as they swore silent Oaths of Moment.

Cestus did the same, watching three more shuttles shredded apart by heavy turret fire.

‘Come on,’ he urged through gritted teeth, the gaping maw of the torpedo aperture getting ever closer. ‘Come on.’

‘Impact in one minute!’ said the vox from the shuttle’s pilot.

‘One minute from mother’s love!’ shouted Brynngar, taking a firm grip on Felltooth. Embarkation would need to be swift; there could be enemy forces already in position to repel any boarders. For a moment, he wondered whether or not Cestus had made it through the fusillade. Putting the thought out of his mind, he took up the battle cry once more. They were almost in.

‘She’s waiting for us there! Mother Fenris, mother of war!’

‘Mother of war!’ yelled the Blood Claws. ‘Mother of war! Mother of hate!’

A few feet from the aperture, a stray round struck the left aerofoil of the shuttle and it spiralled wildly out of control. Exploding shrapnel shattered the front viewing arc; the sound of breaking armourglas could even be heard in the troop compartment. The pilot died with a shard of hot metal in his neck, before the icy cool of space froze him and his desperate co-pilot to their flight couches. Brynngar’s shuttle dipped sharply away from the aperture and downward into another void entirely.

A shuttle exploded, its nose sheared off by a shell casing thrown out of the Furious Abyss’s gun decks. The remaining craft looped up beneath the battleship’s ventral surface, the valleys and peaks of the city-sized ship streaking past.

Cestus saw another vessel explode, the bursting shrapnel shredding much of its frontal arc. It dipped, engines blazing ineffectually, and fell downward until it was lost from view behind a slab of crimson hull.

Ahead, the torpedo apertures were closing.

‘More speed!’ Cestus roared into his helmet vox.

The blazing shuttle engines screeched even louder.

A snatched glimpse through the viewport showed a third shuttle, banking sharply in an attempt to avoid the flak fire and arrow back towards the battleship. Its retro engines flared as it braked. It didn’t slow fast enough and slammed into the hull beside the torpedo aperture. The fat metal body crumpled under the impact and split. Broken bodies were cast into the void. They were wearing the blue armour of the Ultramarines.

Saphrax and Amryx are dead, thought Cestus bitterly.

Twisting sharply, the shuttle found a way through the rapidly diminishing aperture. As the Furious Abyss swallowed them, Cestus thought he heard the explosions of the shuttles following them as they crashed against the sealed hull.

‘Brace!’ yelled the pilot.

Tortured metal boomed. Cestus was thrown against the restraints of his grav-couch and felt them stretch and pull against his cuirass.

A terrible twisting, howling sound, like a metal earthquake, filled the Ultramarine’s ears.

‘Umbilicals away!’ said the pilot’s voice.

The hatch in the roof of the passenger compartment slid open. White vapour filled the shuttle. ‘Pressurising!’ shouted the pilot.

Cestus knew what was next and hammered the icon on his chest that would disengage the harness. It came apart quickly and he was on his feet, his battle-brothers beside him. Excelinor, Pytaron and Lexinal, two with bolters low slung and another carrying a plasma gun: they would have to be enough. Cestus checked the load in his bolt pistol and unsheathed his sword, thumbing the activation stud that sent frantic lines of power coursing through the blade.

‘Courage and honour!’ he yelled, and his battle-brothers returned the battle cry.

Explosive bolts detonated like gunshots. The second hatch was flung open, and the long dark throat of the torpedo tube opened up above them.

Cestus stormed through the short umbilicus, through the hatch and into the tube. It sloped upwards and was wide enough for an Astartes to walk with his head bowed. Its ribbed metal interior was caked in ice. The shuttle had pumped air into it, and the vapour in that air had frozen instantly.

‘Move!’ ordered the Ultramarine captain, and headed upwards.

As Cestus led the way up the torpedo tube, the sounds of thundering guns and shell impacts echoed dimly through the structure of the Furious Abyss, a terrible chorus welcoming them onto the ship.

Cestus saw light ahead: the fires of a forge. He had his bolt pistol up in front of him, ready to fire. The light was coming through a thick armourglas window in a heavy hatch, sealing the far end of the tube.

‘Charges!’ he ordered.

Excelinor and Pytaron reacted quickly, planting a cluster of krak grenades around the weak points of the hatch. Charges primed, the Astartes retreated as one. A few feet from the entrance, Cestus bellowed, ‘Now!’

A muffled explosion radiated through the tube, echoing off the concave interior, and the hatch fell away in a shower of sparks and fire.

Combat protocols and stratagems learned when he was a neophyte and honed in countless conflicts throughout the Great Crusade cycled through Cestus’s battle-attuned mind. Bursting onto the ship, the Ultramarines found themselves amidst the massive workings of an ordnance deck: torpedo cranes, ammunition and fuel hoppers; cavernous spaces criss-crossed with gantries and crowded with gangs of sweating menials were all in abundance.

With tactical precision, the Astartes fanned out. Cestus drove forward with Lexinal, the punch of his battle-brother’s plasma gun backing up the ferocity of the Ultramarine captain at close quarters.

A group of deck hands came at them with a clutch of heavy tools. Cestus swept low through their clumsy attacks and rose quickly, cutting through two with a savage criss-cross strike and killing a third with a head-butt. Barking fire from his bolt pistol put paid to two more. An actinic flash sent the temperature warnings in his battle-helm spiking as a beam of plasma ignited a fuel hopper. Fire blossomed in plumes of orange and white, twinned with billowing smoke. A squad of rushing armsmen were incinerated in the blaze and the heavy stubber mount, hastily erected above, was thrown to oblivion.

Left and right, Excelinor and Pytaron let rip with their bolters, creating a deadly crossfire that shredded anything that dared to advance through it. They surged steadily into the deck, despatching targets with brutal efficiency, but these were only ratings and armsmen. Cestus knew that the Astartes of the Word Bearers would be coming. They had to act quickly and disable the cyclonics before the real threat arrived. Without the destruction of Formaska, the Word Bearers could not fulfil their plan and get close enough to Macragge to unleash the viral strain.

His super-advanced mind skipping ahead to the tactical tasking to come, Cestus almost missed the scarred-faced officer flying at him with a power mace. This one was Astartes, although he wore a half-armour variant of full battle-plate. Most of the bottom half of his face was destroyed and had been replaced with a metal grille. Deep pink scar lines ran like fat veins up his jaw and across his cheek bones.

‘Quail before the might of the Word,’ he bellowed, voice metallic and resonant through the augmetics.

Cestus parried a deft swing of the mace with his power sword. Arcs of miniature lightning danced across the two weapons as they were locked in a brief, pyrotechnic struggle. The Ultramarine broke away and brought up his bolt pistol, only for the grille-faced Word Bearer to smash it out of his grasp. Pain lanced through Cestus’s fingers, even though his armour bore the brunt of the blow, numbing his shoulder.

‘Lorgar will guide us to victory,’ snarled the Word Bearer, allowing his fervour to fuel his swings, though they dulled his accuracy.

Cestus wove out of the death arc from an overhand smash designed to finish him and brought his blazing blade onto the Word Bearer’s bare head. Slicing through flesh, bone and, eventually, armour, he sheared the warrior in two, the corpse flopping on either side of the blow.

‘Know that Guilliman is righteous,’ Cestus snarled, gritting back the pain to reclaim his fallen pistol. Re-armed, he drove on into the building firestorm, focused on the killing.

‘Where are they?’ demanded Zadkiel.

‘All over the gun decks,’ came the reply from one of Malforian’s subordinates. In the weapon master’s absence, Zadkiel assumed that he was dead or otherwise incapacitated. ‘Reports say they’re Astartes.’

‘They’ll be going for the torpedo payload,’ said Zadkiel, mainly to himself.

The admiral turned his attentions to his helmsmaster. ‘Sarkorov, are we in position to launch?’

‘Yes, my lord, but we cannot deploy the torpedoes while the deck is contested.’

Zadkiel swore beneath his breath.

‘Reskiel,’ he snarled into the throne vox with growing annoyance.

The sergeant-commander responded after a moment’s pause.

‘I’m calling off the hunt for our interloper. Gather your brethren and head for the ordnance decks at once. Destroy any Astartes you find on that deck. Do you understand?’

Reskiel replied in the affirmative and the vox link died.

‘If the attack is to be delayed, I will return to my sanctum,’ said Magos Gureod, already blending away into the darkness.

‘Do as you must,’ Zadkiel muttered, his agitation obvious, the veneer of calm ever slipping. ‘Ikthalon,’ he snarled into the vox, a plan forming in his mind.

‘My lord,’ the sibilant voice of the chaplain replied.

‘Wake the supplicants.’

There was no need to spare the supplicants. The Furious Abyss had reached its destination. The mission was over. Their role had been to help with the manipulation of the warp and fend off attacks against the ship. Zadkiel’s order meant using them to destruction.

The streams of nutrients were replaced with psychoactive drugs. Restraints snapped apart and cortical stimulators crackled, waking the supplicants from their comatose state to halfway between sleep and waking, where sensations and nightmares alike were real. Some of the supplicants, the ones whose mouths and throats still worked, moaned and mewled as they slithered out of their restraints onto the floor. Some convulsed as unfamiliar impulses flooded their muscles. One or two died, their hearts finally giving out.

As part of his chaplain’s attire, Ikthalon drew a heavy scarlet cowl over his battle-helm to prevent excess psychic energy from staining his mind, and moved carefully among the waking supplicants, inspecting readouts and checking for swallowed tongues. One by one, he switched off the inhibitor circuits, the loops of psychoactive material that kept the supplicants’ minds from feeding back into the Furious Abyss. The cogitators hooked in to the debased creatures’ consciousness fed them the image of the ship’s prow, the engineering works behind the plasma lance and the ordnance decks below.

Finally, the supply of stupefying narcotics and soothing brain-wave instigators was cut off and the supplicants were given their last silent orders.

Cestus sprayed a gantry with bolter fire. Bodies plummeted and crumpled against his fury. The Ultramarines had gained a foothold on the primary ordnance deck, but Cestus could still see no sign of the Space Wolves. He hoped that they had not shared the same fate as Saphrax. The schematic as witnessed in the vision bestowed upon him by Mhotep filled his eidetic memory. The cluster of cyclonics destined for Formaska was at the end of the deck, doubtless in mid-transit to the torpedo apertures. The viral payload was secured in a drop chamber in the hull. There was no way to get to it. They would have to hobble the Word Bearers’ plan at its first juncture.

Barking fire from a pair of pintle-mounted cannons set up on a loading platform above had the Ultramarines pinned for a moment. Cestus’s battle-brothers regrouped behind a pair of empty fuel bowsers and the housing of a torpedo crane.

Lexinal, plasma gun cradled in his gauntlets, slid in beside Cestus.

‘What now, captain?’ he asked as the barrage above them intensified.

Cestus memorised an open stretch of deck and then the huge metal cliff face of the Furious Abyss’s prow, broken by the loading mechanisms and the torpedo tubes. He visualised an industrial tangle on the other side, including giant hoppers stacked with further munitions and the rearing masses of arming chambers where yet more ordnance was stored.

‘We have to clear the deck and then get to the munitions store and deploy our melta bombs,’ he replied.

‘What about Brynngar?’ Lexinal asked, using a break in the fusillade to fire off a snap shot that bathed the loading platform in super-heated plasma. The screams died in the raging battle din.

‘Once we take out the cyclonics, we link up with whoever is left and do what damage we can,’ said Cestus, once Lexinal had resumed cover.

The Ultramarine nodded his understanding.

Cestus relayed the same order through his helmet vox on a discrete frequency in Ultramar battle-cant to Pytaron and Excelinor. The two battle-brothers flanked the captain’s position, heavy-duty munitions crates in front of them being chipped apart by persistent fire.

Cestus glanced between the two bowsers. The Furious’s crewmen, in dark scarlet overalls and fatigues, had been hit hard by the shock of the assault. Dozens of them lay dead around the torpedo hatches or shot down from the gantries and cranes. The Astartes has exacted a heavy toll, but the enemy were regrouping and reinforcements covered their losses in short order.

There was no time to delay.

‘On me,’ Cestus cried, ‘battle formation theta-epsilon, Macragge in ascendance!’

He vaulted the bowser, bolt pistol flaring and lasgun impacts spattered his cuirass. Cestus held his sword in salute stance, in front of his face and the upright blade deflected energy blasts from his battle-helm. Twin bolters blazed, cross-shaped muzzle flashes glaring, as Excelinor and Pytaron moved in staggered battle formation to Cestus’s left. Lexinal took the right flank, firing his plasma gun in controlled bursts to prevent the deadly weapon from overheating.

Towards the last third of the deck, they broke up, each taking a channel into the industrial tangle of machinery. Troops of armsmen had mobilised and came at Cestus with shock mauls and lengths of spiked chain. The Ultramarine captain cut them down, Guilliman’s name a mantra on his lips. Amidst the killing, he noticed an access portal to the ordnance deck and wondered why the Word Bearers’ Astartes had not yet shown themselves.

‘Link up and force through to the cyclonics,’ Cestus ordered through his helmet vox as he moved into a labyrinth of munitions.

His battle-brothers obeyed and together they converged on a pair of cyclonics, still harnessed in their mobile racking.

Shots spattered from gantries above, most of the las-bolts and hard rounds smacking into cranes and clusters of machinery. Cestus saw a lucky shot ricochet from Lexinal’s breastplate and he staggered. A second burst from a heavy cannon somewhere above them raked his leg greave and he was down. Out of the corner of his eye, Cestus saw a group of armsmen converging on the prone Ultramarine. A las-bolt clipping his pauldron, Cestus twisted as he ran, slamming a fresh magazine in his bolt pistol and discharging a furious burst into the armsmen. Two disappeared in a red haze, another crumpled to the ground nursing the wet crater in his stomach. Cestus didn’t see the rest. Lexinal was getting to his feet when a round struck an active fuel bowser. The resulting explosion engulfed the Astartes in coruscating flame, the blast wave throwing him half way across the deck.

The Ultramarine captain averted his gaze, muttering a battle-oath, and refocused ahead.

‘Deploy incendiaries,’ Cestus ordered when they finally reached the first batch of cyclonics. Pytaron unclipped a melta bomb from his armour, disengaging the magna-clamp that kept it in place. Excelinor provided covering fire with his bolter.

‘Brynngar!’ Cestus shouted into his helmet vox, crouching beside Excelinor as he desperately tried to make contact. ‘Brynngar respond.’

Dead air came back at him. Either the wolf had been killed or he was in another part of the ship where they couldn’t reach him.

‘Charges deployed,’ reported Pytaron. As he turned to his captain, a heavy round struck him in the neck, piercing his gorget. He clutched the wound with one hand, the melta bomb detonator in the other, and fell to one knee as blood streamed down his breastplate.

Larraman cells within Pytaron’s body worked hard to slow the bleeding and speed up clotting, but the wound was serious. Even an Astartes enhanced physiology would be unable to save the battle-brother.

‘Take it,’ Pytaron said, gurgling his words through blood.

Cestus took the detonator, his hands around Pytaron’s.

‘You will be honoured…’ Cestus’s voice trailed away as the air around him suddenly turned cold, receptors built into his battle-plate registering a severe drop in temperature. For an awful second, he thought that the deck had de-pressurised and the void would claim them all.

With the cold came screaming: a thousand voices, echoing out from the inside of Cestus’s head.

It was not the void, reaching into the ship to freeze them solid. It was something far worse. Prickling talons probing his mental defences like ice blades reminded Cestus of his earlier encounter with Mhotep aboard the Wrathful.

‘Psyker!’ he hissed with sudden realisation. ‘Psyker!’ he shouted this time to get Excelinor’s attention. ‘We are under attack.’

One of the Furious Abyss’s crewmen stumbled out into the open. He clutched an autogun loosely in one hand, his arm hanging down by his side. With his other hand, he appeared to be trying to tear out his own tongue.

Cestus shot the man in the chest. He bucked violently and fell still against the deck. He then turned and saw Excelinor slowly raise his boltgun to his head.

‘No,’ Cestus cried, yanking his fellow battle-brother to his senses.

‘Voices in my head… I can’t stop them,’ whispered Excelinor through his vox, still struggling with his bolter.

‘Fight it!’ Cestus snarled at him, feeling the shreds of his own sanity slowly being devoured by the unseen force of the warp. They had to get out, right now. The Ultramarine captain seized Excelinor’s arm, the world starting to blur around him, and hauled him towards the access portal.

‘Come on,’ Cestus breathed as the floor shifted beneath him and the walls began to melt.

Try as he might, Cestus could not keep himself from falling into madness. The last thing he remembered was his fist closing on the detonator and the rush of fire.

‘They think it’s alive,’ breathed Zadkiel, standing before his command throne, ‘This ship has been a part of them for so long that the supplicants regard it as an extension of their own bodies. No. It is a host, in which they are parasites. There won’t be a mind left intact among them. The enemy will be driven mad long before we kill them.’

‘Your orders, admiral?’ The voice of Sergeant-Commander Reskiel through the throne vox interrupted Zadkiel’s monologue.

‘You have gained the area outside of the ordnance deck?’ he asked, imagining the warriors of Reskiel looming in the corridor intersections.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Reskiel answered. Just prior to entering the ordnance deck, the sergeant-commander and his warriors had been ordered to secure the exits, Zadkiel having no desire for his forces to be caught up in the psychic attack.

‘Although, a massive detonation destroyed much of the tertiary access points, as yet, we have been unable to break through,’ Reskiel added.

‘Is it possible that the Astartes escaped the deck?’ the irritation in Zadkiel’s voice obvious, even through the vox link.

There was a short pause as Reskiel considered his response.

‘It is possible, yes.’

‘Find them, Reskiel. Do it or do not return to my bridge.’ Zadkiel cut the vox link abruptly.

The admiral turned to a secondary force of Word Bearers, who had assembled behind him.

‘Secure the ordnance deck, port and starboard access portals. Get in there and recover what is left of our cyclonic payload.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said a chorus of voices from the assembled Word Bearers.

‘Do so, now!’ Zadkiel raged and the clattering sound of booted feet erupted behind him as the Word Bearers deployed.

The infiltrators had to be stopped. Despite the psychic assault, Zadkiel needed to be sure that any further loose ends had been tied up. Nothing must prevent the bombardment against Formaska. Without it, the rest of the plan could not proceed. He would not allow his soul to be forfeit from Kor Phaeron’s rage at his failure. Success was inevitable. It had to be. It was written.

Macragge’s natives, the people who had been there before the Emperor’s Great Crusade had rediscovered them, had believed in a hell that was very specific in its cruelties. Its circles each held a certain breed of sinner, all suffering punishments appropriate to their misdeeds. The further in a dead man went, the more horrible and varied his punishments became, until the very worse of the worst – traitors to Macragge’s Battle Kings, and those who had betrayed their own families – were held in the very centre in a series of torments that a living mind could not comprehend and upon which the legends refused to speculate.

Those beliefs had survived alongside the Imperial Truth, as folk tales and allegories. Macragge’s circles of hell were the subject of epic verse, cautionary tales and colourful curses.

Cestus was, at that moment, in the circle of hell reserved for cowards.

‘Run!’ shouted the taskmaster. ‘You ran from everything! You sacrificed everything to run! Run, now, as you did in life! Never stop!’

Cestus was blinded by tears. His hands and feet screamed at him, cut to tatters. Behind him, a miniature sun rolled towards him, blistering the skin on the back of his torso and legs. It was relentless, never slowing, as it ground its way along the vast circular track, bounded by walls of granite, its light flickering against the stalactites hanging from the cave ceiling overhead.

The floor was covered in blades, swords dropped by failed soldiers as they fled the battlefield. As the ball of fire approached, the sinners fled, tearing themselves on the blades to escape the fire. Their punishment was to flee forever.

Cestus remembered being told of this hell by drill sergeants on Macragge, in the half-remembered time before Guilliman’s Legion had taken him from among hundreds of supplicants to be turned into an Ultramarine. This hell was halfway through the levels of hell, for while cowards were despised on Macragge theirs was a pathetic sin, a sin of failure, and not comparable to the treachery of murder punished closer to hell’s heart. It compounded the punishment, not only to suffer, not only to know the weight of failure, but to be reminded that even in sin a coward was lacking.

Cestus stumbled and fell. Steel bit into his hands, his knees and his chest. A blade slid through the softer skin of his lips and he tasted blood. He coughed, desperate for it to end. It felt like he had been there for years, the relentless sun driving him on.

The taskmaster was a drill sergeant of Macragge, the same kind of man who had ordered him to march and fight and strive as a child. Cestus remembered the fear of failure, of letting his betters down. He got to his feet and somehow the flesh was still screaming.

‘I am not a coward,’ he gasped. ‘Please... I am not a coward.’

The taskmaster’s whip lashed down. It was a tongue of flame from the sun, scoring a red-black line of agony against Cestus’s back. ‘You all but murdered your battle-brother because you feared to take his place!’ the taskmaster shouted. ‘You doomed your fellow warriors because you feared failure! And now you beg for your just punishment to end! What are these but the actions of a coward? And you wore the colours of Guilliman! What shame you have brought to your Legion!’

‘I have never run!’ yelled Cestus. ‘Not once! I never backed down! I never turned from the enemy! Fear never made my choice!’

‘Do you deny?’ shouted the taskmaster.

‘I deny! I deny you! The Imperial Truth has no room for hells! The only hells are those we make for ourselves!’

‘Another lifetime, Lysimachus Cestus, and you will break!’

The sun roared closer. It swelled up, angry and orange. Dark spots flared on its surface. Flaming tongues licked out at Cestus, searing the soles of his feet, the backs of his legs. One wrapped around his face and he moaned as it burned through his skin, his cheek and nose, his ear. Cestus fought to escape, but the blades snagged him. One leg was trapped by hooks between the bones and he felt steel scraping along his shin, flaying skin and muscle away. One hand was stuck, too, pierced through by the barbed head of a spear.

‘I am not a coward!’ yelled Cestus. He tore himself free of the bladed ground. Muscle and blood sloughed away. ‘I know no fear!’ He turned around and walked on what remained of his feet, into the heart of the sun.

Admiral Kaminska sat in her command throne in front of the blast doors leading to the bridge of the Wrathful. The doors were closed, the bridge sealed off against the secondary explosions wracking the ship. Another huge explosion thundered up from the generatoria deep in the stern. The Wrathful was breaking up. Formaska’s weak gravity well was slowly dragging it into a death spiral. There, upon the barren rock, they would be broken. That was, if a catastrophic reactor collapse didn’t destroy the ship completely first.

Kaminska felt curiously calm as they drifted through the void, completely at the whim of gravity. There was still a trace of underlying disquiet at the edge of her senses, however, as if the feeling she had experienced before had remained, but she’d become inured to it.

She had known when Cestus proposed his plan and spoke of sacrifice that this would be her last mission. She wore her full admiral’s regalia and had instructed all of her bridge staff to do the same. There would be honour in this final act. They had fought a giant in the form of the Furious Abyss, and they had lost, but like the fly irritates the bison, perhaps it would be enough to distract their enemy long enough for the Angels of the Emperor to do what they must.

‘Helmsmistress,’ said Kaminska, her eyes on the forward viewscreen and space as scattered debris from her ship spiralled slowly past, ‘dismiss the bridge crew, yourself included. You are to evacuate the Wrathful at once and take the saviour pods. May fortune favour you in the void.’

‘I’m sorry, admiral. I cannot speak for the rest of the crew, but I will not obey that order,’ answered Venkmyer.

Kaminska whirled in her command throne and fixed her helmsmistress with an icy glare.

‘I am your captain, and you will do as I bid,’ she said.

‘I request to remain onboard the Wrathful and go down with the ship,’ Venkmyer responded.

For a moment, Kaminska looked as if she were about to erupt into a fit of apoplexy at such insubordination, but the determined expression on her helmsmistress’s face made the ice soften and melt.

Kaminska saluted Venkmyer and her bridge crew.

‘You do me great honour.’ Kaminska was about to smile proudly when the feeling of unease intensified and she realised it was emanating from her helmsmistress.

‘No, admiral,’ Venkmyer replied, and from the obvious demeanour of the crew around her, they were all in agreement. ‘We are honoured.’

Venkmyer raised her hand to return the naval salute when she suddenly clutched her stomach. She grimaced in pain and fell to the deck, convulsing violently.

Helms-mate Kant, standing close by, went immediately to her aid.

‘Officer Venkmyer,’ shouted Kaminska getting off her throne to go to her helmsmistress’s aid. She stopped short when she saw her breath misting in front of her. A profound chill filled the bridge as if it were suddenly converted into a meat locker.

Eyes wide as Venkmyer bucked and thrashed, she drew her naval sidearm.

Armed or not, it wouldn’t matter. It was already too late for them all.

Mhotep was meditating in the isolation chamber, his gaze fixed on the reflective surface of the speculum in his wand. Abruptly, his glazed expression bled away and he was at full awareness again.

It was time.

The Thousand Son got to his feet. His gaolers had allowed him to wear his battle-plate and the heavily armoured boots resonated against the metal floor. He approached the locked cell door and raised his hand. Chanting eldritch words in a sibilant tongue, the door dissolved before Mhotep’s open palm, disintegrating back into atoms. The Astartes stepped through and was struck immediately by a profound sense of emptiness. The corridors were utterly bereft of life. He knew the Wrathful had only a skeleton crew, but this was something else: an absence of existence that smacked of the otherworldly. Mhotep drew the psychic hood over his head, securing it firmly to the scarab-shaped clasps on his gorget. He drew the wand out before him and activated it. The small stave extended into the spear again and a small crackle of energy played down its length as if reacting to the air around it. This ghost ship in which he walked had a phantom. Mhotep knew it for certain.

Calmly, the Thousand Son walked down the narrow passageways that would lead him to the bridge, where he knew his destiny awaited. The lines of fate had been very specific. This was the path he had chosen, despite the efforts of the other to try and change his mind, to will him into divine madness.

Mhotep reached the bridge without encountering a single soul. It was as if the crew had been devoured utterly. He moved his hand in a swift chopping motion and the sealed blast doors opened, venting a small cloud of pressure.

Carnage greeted him as the Thousand Son stepped into the chamber. It was as if the bleeding heart of the Wrathful had been laid open upon the surgeon’s slab.

The heart of the ship, of course, was its crew. Their blood and viscera painted the walls, an incarnadine portrait rendered by an obscene and demented artist. Skin was flayed from bone, organs eviscerated.

A bizarre skeleton ribbed the walls and ceiling, the concomitant elements harvested from the slain crew members, changing the bridge into a macabre ossuary.

Mhotep ignored the abattoir stink assailing his nostrils, even through his battle-helm, the wet redness of the chamber cast starkly in the intermittent flare of warning lamps. He saw Admiral Kaminska, slumped against the floor, a pistol in her hand.

‘Get out of her,’ she breathed, blood flecking her lips as she spoke.

Standing before them both, an insane grin etched upon her face, was Helmsmistress Venkmyer. She was bloody and her toes, pointing downward in her boots, just scraped the floor as if she were a marionette held limply by its strings.

‘Get out!’ Kaminska urged again, struggling to stand as she fired her pistol on empty at the abomination that used to be her second-in-command.

The Venkmyer-puppet lashed out, her arm extending as if it were made of clay, and sheared off Kaminska’s head with its talon-like fingers. The admiral dead, the creature’s arm shrank back into position, glistening with blood.

‘You dwell within,’ said Mhotep calmly, taking a step forward as he mustered his psychic resolve. ‘Come forth.’

The Venkmyer-puppet grinned back at him.

‘I am a servant of the crimson eye. I am a vassal of Magnus the all-knowing,’ said Mhotep, taking another step as he reaffirmed the grip on his spear. ‘Come forth.’

Eerie quiet had descended like a veil and the temperature readings in the Thousand Son’s helmet were registering sub-zero. He saw miniature icicles of hoarfrost building on his gauntlets. A faint white patina was emerging slowly on his cuirass as he advanced.

Still, the Venkmyer-puppet did not answer.

‘I know you are here!’ cried Mhotep, his voice resonating around the bridge. ‘You have been here all along! You cannot hide from me. I have the eye of Magnus!’ Mhotep levelled his spear at Venkmyer as if she was a wild beast poised to attack.

‘Come forth,’ he hissed, and the briefest flash of recognition appeared on Venkmyer’s face, but was swallowed by agony.

The thing that used to be the helmsmistress opened its mouth and the jaw distended to reveal a hollow maw of deep red. A gush of blood spewed outwards, coating Mhotep in its sickly gore. The Thousand Son did not falter against the crimson tide and held his ground.

The sound of cracking bone filled the air as Venkmyer’s spine was ripped out of her back and arced up and over her head like a scorpion’s sting. Her neck snapped, and her jaw distended further, tendons severing. Beneath her tarnished uniform, her ribs writhed as a shape fought to free itself from the flesh and bone sack of her body. Convulsions wracked her and the head came apart in a shower of gore and matter.

A shape of raw muscle emerged, unfolding and opening like a bloody flower. Venkmyer’s hands became claws and enhanced musculature spread across her ravaged body in a riot. Wet and pink, the muscle swelled until a hard, black carapace formed over it. What had once been Venkmyer, little more than a conduit for something to wrench itself into existence, grew exponentially until it had to crouch to fit into the chamber. The nubs of horns sprouted from a bulbous head from which eyes like pits of tar blinked maliciously. A slit ran across the near-featureless head like the cut from a surgeon’s scalpel and a wide mouth opened from it, revealing rows of razor teeth. Talons like scythe blades scraped along the floor from distended, simian-like arms. A long, sinewy tail spilled from its back made of tough muscle-bound vines and twisted spine.

‘There you are…’ said Mhotep, looking up at the towering abomination, ‘…Wsoric.’

It was a thing of the warp, a daemon made flesh, and it stared at the Thousand Son, allowing its malign presence to wash over him.

‘I am gorged,’ the thing gurgled, drooling blood as its mouth deformed to make the words, ‘but there is always room for more.’

Mhotep knew then that the beast had been aboard the ship for weeks, devouring souls to gather its strength. It had been the temptation in his head that had almost made him slip into madness. It had fanned the flames of the Space Wolf’s enmity against him. It had fostered the madness that had claimed the lives of so many of the crew.

Mhotep brandished his spear and a corona of crackling energy arced over it.

‘Feeding time is over,’ he promised.

The seventh circle of hell, two steps closer to the heart of damnation, was for rebels: those who had cast off the natural order, who had defied their betters or refused to accept their place in the world. In ages past, those who had taken up arms against Macragge’s Battle Kings had found themselves here, alongside children who had turned against their parents, and deviants and agitators of every kind.

It was a machine – a vast, complex, endless construction of cogs and steel that churned through the seventh circle. Rebels had failed to realise that they were required to be a part of a larger machine, and so the seventh hell was to educate them in their place. Sinners became a part of that machine, bent and stretched into component parts. The machine never let them alone, always twisting them or thrusting a piston through them, until they gave up their individuality in the hope of ending the pain. The seventh hell was not just a punishment, it was a lesson, and it would break the pupil’s spirit in the telling.

Cestus’s spine was bent backwards. Spurs of metal were slid in at his wrists, down through the muscle of his arms and into his chest. Metal merged with the back of his skull and snapped it back every few seconds as the teeth of a cog hammered by behind him.

This circle of hell was dark and dripping with blood. Other sinners were everywhere, their bodies so deformed by the machine that they were little more than cogs or cams of gristle and bone, facial features barely discernible. A few others were new and their bodies were still resisting. They screamed, bones poking through their skin and muscles ripping.

‘Cestus!’ cried someone above him. Cestus tried to look back, grimacing as metal pushed through the skin of his scalp.

It was Antiges. The Ultramarine had been stripped of his armour and was bolted spread-eagled to a cog. His limbs were being forced around to follow the circle of the cog. His shins and forearms were being bent into curves and they looked like they would shatter at any moment. Another, smaller cog inside the larger was fixed to his back, slowly twisting his spine. Already, his torso looked lopsided and his head had been forced down onto one shoulder.

‘Antiges!’ gasped Cestus. ‘I had thought you were lost.’

‘I am,’ said Antiges, a brief lull in his suffering before the agony returned. ‘So are you. Fathers of Macragge, this pain… I cannot suffer it much longer. If only there were some… some new death, some oblivion.’

‘This is the hell for rebels,’ said Cestus. He felt a note of panic in his mind as the spurs in his forearms and chest began to force apart, drawing his arms behind him. ‘We are not rebels. We were always loyal sons of Macragge! We served the Imperial Truth until the end! Nothing was worth more to us than our duty.’

‘Your duties were on Terra,’ said Antiges. ‘You took a ship and left your post. You took us all on your mission to Macragge, and damned the rest! There was no duty that told you to gather your fleet and abandon Terra. That was your personal crusade, Cestus. That was your rebellion.’

‘I had a duty to Macragge and to my battle-brothers. Everything I did, I did because it was demanded of my by my Legion! Loyalty drove me on!’

‘Loyalty, Cestus, to yourself.’ Antiges threw his head back and screamed. One leg shattered, snapping at the shin. The other one was wrenched apart at the knee. A shoulder followed, the bone torn out of the socket. Skin split and Antiges’s arm was held on only by a few tendons. His eyes rolled back and his breathing turned ragged. An Astartes could take pain that would kill a normal man, but even Antiges had his limits.

‘Brother!’ shouted Cestus. ‘Hold on! Do not leave me! Fight!’

Cestus’s part of the machine hummed with power diverted to the engines chugging away beneath him. He felt his arms forced back further and a sharp pressure in his back. His head was forced back, too, snapping back and forth as it was ratcheted tight into the top of his spine.

The pressure in his chest was tremendous. An Astartes’s ribs were fused into a breastplate of bone, and Cestus could feel them grinding as it made ready to split down the middle. The pain grew and the Ultramarine could feel nothing else, only the awful inevitability of his breaking.

‘I am no rebel!’ shouted Cestus, drawing resolve from a pit of strength he didn’t know he had. ‘I only serve! My Legion is my life! I do not belong in this hell of Macragge, and so this hell is not real! I am no rebel! I defy you all!’

Somewhere, a taskmaster turned a rusting wheel and the machine shuddered with power.

Cestus’s chest split open. He screamed. Hot air shrieked through his organs. His legs kicked frantically and both his arms snapped. His neck broke, but the pain did not die, and his body was forced to accept the form of the machine.

‘I defy you,’ gasped Cestus with his last breath.

Nineteen

Pack mentality/Wsoric/Reunion

Brynngar stalked on all fours amongst the steaming carcasses of the pack. He had rent them apart with tooth and claw, his furred muzzle stained with their blood. They had challenged him and he had proved he was dominant. Upon the snowy, Fenrisian plain, his feral eyes cast across a silver ocean so still that it was like glass. He sniffed the air, the scent of something drifting towards him on the cold breeze. Long wolf ears pricking at the faintest sound of disturbed tundra, he saw a shape above him, moving stealthily up a craggy peak under a shawl of snow.

Another wolf still lived and was stalking him.

Brynngar emitted a baleful howl that echoed across the soaring mountains. Its challenge was met by another.

The hackles rose on Brynngar’s back as the other wolf loped into view. He was smaller, but lean and well-muscled. Reddish, brown fur covered his lupine body and he pawed at the ground with blood-red claws. Brynngar growled at the red wolf’s approach, a deep and ululating sound that resonated through his body. The challenger stepped down onto the plain and they began circling each other, the old and venerable grey versus the youthful red. Death was the only outcome. The only thing that was uncertain was whether the duel would claim them both.

Ribbons of wolf flesh still clung to Brynngar’s fangs. The blood taste was intoxicating, and the scent set his feral senses aflame. With a roar, he dived at the other wolf, biting and clawing with savage abandon. So furious was the attack that the red wolf was bowled briefly off balance. He twisted in Brynngar’s jaws, scraping wildly with his claws and biting down against the grey’s back. The wolves broke apart, both bloodied and full of fury. This time the red wolf attacked, launching a swift assault that saw him rake his claws down Brynngar’s flank. The old, grey wolf yelped in pain and skidded away across the ice plain on all fours, before regrouping to charge again.

The red wolf slashed a claw across Brynngar’s muzzle as he came at him, but the old grey was not to be deterred. Ignoring the pain, Brynngar locked his jaw around the red wolf’s neck and bit down. Claws raked his flank as the red wolf’s back legs kicked out in desperation. Brynngar could hear his opponent’s frantic breathing, and feel the hotness against his fur, the vapour cooling in the cold. With a grunt of effort, he snapped the red wolf’s neck. It yelped just before it died, and fell limp in Brynngar’s jaw. The old wolf shook the corpse loose and howled in triumph, blood drizzling from his maw as he brandished gory fangs.

The silver ocean was before him once more and Brynngar felt it call to him. Snow spilled across its mirror sheen in fat, white drifts. It fell upon the ground where Brynngar stood, covering up the spilled blood of the slain wolves. The old grey was about to lope off when a shadow fell across the ice plain. He looked up and for a moment could see nothing through the heavy snowfall. Then, slowly, a figure resolved itself. It was a black wolf, easily twice his size, sitting on its haunches watching him calmly. There was no challenge in its posture; Brynngar detected no threat in either its tone or manner. It merely watched. The grey wolf had seen this black furred beast before. He approached it slowly, warily and stopped as the black wolf got up. Its eyes bored into him and it opened its mouth as if to howl.

‘Look around you,’ said the black wolf, and though it spoke the words of man, Brynngar the grey wolf understood.

‘Look around you, Brynngar,’ said the giant black wolf again. ‘This is not Fenris.’

Brynngar woke from a dream straight into a nightmare. Rujveld lay dead at his feet. The Blood Claw’s throat had been ripped out and vital fluids pooled around his corpse. Brynngar tasted copper in his mouth and knew at once that he had killed him. Out of the corner of his eye, the Wolf Guard saw other grey-armoured forms and realised that he had slain all of his kinsmen. He shut his eyes against the horror, willing it to be his fevered imagination, but when Brynngar opened them again he knew it was not.

The Wolf Guard got unsteadily to his feet. The last thing he remembered was approaching the Furious Abyss. Their shuttle had been hit and they’d crashed in a place of darkness. The rest was lost. He had emerged onto what he thought was Fenris. He knew that this was some form of psychic lie. He clenched his fists at the thought of being manipulated by witchcraft. It had cost the lives of his battle-brothers. He had been damned by it.

Senses returning, Brynngar looked around. The chamber was gloomy in the extreme, but felt large and tall. It was some kind of armoury. He stood face-to-face with a suit of dreadnought armour. Startled at first, the Wolf Guard took an instinctive step back and reached for Felltooth. When he realised that the sarcophagus of the mighty war machine was empty and dormant, he relaxed. There was another dreadnought next to it, similarly harnessed, made ready for the warrior who would become entombed within it for all time or until they fell in service to the Legion.

The armoury was vast and well-stocked. There were crates of munitions, stacked in rows. They joined ranks of bolter clips, fuel cells and harnessed grenades. It was the hulking presence of the dreadnoughts, however, that caught the Space Wolf’s attention. Next to the second war machine, there was another and another, and another. Brynngar gazed up and across the chamber, his enhanced eyesight adjusting to the darkness. At least a hundred dreadnoughts filled the massive armoury hall, their somnambulant forms held fast in racks and rows. Weapon systems, great piston hammers, power flails, autocannons, heavy bolters, twin-linked flamers and missile pods, were arrayed next to them, waiting to be attached to the dreadnought body. Brynngar balked at the firepower on display and the thought of thousands of these armoured leviathans going to war in Lorgar’s name.

Brynngar’s ears pricked up; he’d lost his battle-helm at some point he could not recall. A slab of metal slid away from a bare wall in the armoury hall and a shaft of wan red light issued through the gap. A tall, thin shadow was waiting outside and, with the way open, it moved into the room. It was clad in black robes and Brynngar detected the glint of a metal artifice at its back: Mechanicum.

The magos turned when it noticed the Astartes in the armoury. Without preamble, it came at the Space Wolf, a mechadendrite drill emerging from the folds of its robes. Brynngar slashed the mechanical arm of the weapon, oil spilling from the severed metal limb like blood, and brought Felltooth down onto the hapless magos with a roar. The creature gurgled as it died, in what might have been an expression of pain or regret. It twitched for a moment as if its mechanical body was taking time to realise that it was already dead, before at last it lay still.

The red light continued to issue from the portal opened by the magos.

Brynngar had no idea where it led, but perhaps he could find some vulnerable location on the ship and do some damage, making the sacrifice of his Blood Claws and his own terrible act worth something. Maybe even the Ultramarine was still alive and he could find him. These thoughts running through his mind, the Wolf Guard took a step towards the portal, but stopped when he heard the shift of metal in the chamber, followed by the pressure-hiss of a disengaging harness.

Brynngar turned towards the sound, his accentuated hearing pinpointing its location exactly, and paused. He did not have to wait long for the source of the disturbance to reveal itself.

‘I serve the Legion eternally,’ a scratchy voice, said, emitted from a vox-caster out of the darkness. Heavy metal footfalls like the thunk of giant hammers hitting metal, echoed in the armoury as a massive dreadnought emerged from the shadows.

The thing was an abomination, only part-way through the procedure of interment. The armoured sarcophagus hung open revealing a translucent blister pod in which a naked form was surrounded in amniotic fluid. The viscous material clung to the body, casting the enhanced musculature of the entombed Astartes in a dull sheen through the blister.

It walked unsteadily and one of its arms was missing, disconnected cabling flapping like cut veins, doubtless still awaiting the weapons of destruction through which it would express the art of war. The other arm, though, was more than ready, a massive, spiked hammer swinging from it. A faint energy crackle played along its surface, casting stark flashes onto the dreadnought as it primed the deadly weapon subconsciously. A sense of palpable menace came from the metal monster that towered over Brynngar. The old wolf took a step back, swinging Felltooth in readiness. The armour of his opponent looked thick and he hoped that the rune axe could pierce it.

‘My enemy,’ droned the dreadnought lumbering forward to close off the exit to the armoury as a flare of recognition coloured its tone and demeanour. ‘Ultis must die,’ it added, pausing for a moment as if suddenly confused, before it refocused on the Space Wolf and continued, ‘You will not gain the ship.’

Brynngar knew this warrior. He had killed him once already, at Bakka Triumveron.

‘Baelanos...’ it said with machine coldness.

The assault-captain.

‘Didn’t I kill you once, already,’ growled the Wolf Guard.

‘…Destroy you,’ the dreadnought replied, the sarcophagus closing up over the blister.

‘Round two,’ Brynngar whispered as Baelanos the dreadnought charged.

Mhotep crashed through the blast doors of the bridge, and skidded across the floor of an adjoining corridor. Fire wreathed his armour and scorch marks tarnished it from where the daemon had burned him with its breath. The force of the blow was such that Mhotep tried to claw at the corridor walls to slow his passage, but the wood veneer and metal tore away in his grasp, revealing bare wiring and fat cables that spat sparks and flame. The Thousand Son struck a bulkhead at the corridor’s intersection and crumpled to a halt, pain lancing his back and shoulder.

Heat coiled from the edges of Mhotep’s armour. The faceplate of his helmet had taken the worst of the impact and he ripped it away, half-melted, leaving the rest of the headgear intact, together with the psychic hood. Discarding the battle-helm face plate, Mhotep got to his feet. Three claw marks were cut so deep into his cuirass that they bled. The Astartes staggered at first, but drew on his psychic reserves to steel himself. Forcing one foot in front of the other, banishing the pain, he made his way back to the bridge.

Wsoric stepped from the shattered blast doors, metal squealing as the daemon pushed its immense bulk through the ragged hole left by Mhotep. The beast would meet him halfway.

As it got closer, Mhotep saw that the black armour carapace was cracked in places and faintly glowing ichor seeped from minor cuts on its body.

It could be hurt, at least. Mhotep clung to that small sliver of hope as he readied his spear. With a muttered incantation, he sent an arc of crimson lightning towards the daemon. The creature shied away at first, using its muscular forearm to fend off the psychic assault, but the cerulean energy quickly died and Wsoric emerged unscathed.

‘Like an insect,’ said the daemon, its voice accompanied by the slither of muscle and the cracking of bone, ‘you are harder to kill than your feeble frame suggests.’

‘I am Astartes. I am an avenging angel of the Emperor of Mankind,’ Mhotep challenged, using the brief respite to marshal his strength. Though he was weak and in pain, the Thousand Son was careful not to show weakness, not even to contemplate defeat. For if he did, the daemon would seize upon it and all would be lost.

‘I am your doom,’ Wsoric promised and came forward with preternatural speed.

‘As I am yours,’ Mhotep hissed.

Talons like blades scythed the air and Mhotep’s spear spat golden sparks as he used it to parry the blow. He was staggered by the force of it and took an involuntary step back, boots grinding metal. He lunged with his spear, igniting the tip in an aura of crimson fire, and pierced Wsoric’s side. The daemon’s skin felt like iron, and the resonance of the blow rippled down Mhotep’s forearm and into his shoulder. The effect was numbing and he nearly dropped the weapon. Wsoric’s pain bellow was immense, and the Thousand Son winced against its intensity before withdrawing.

With the servos in his armour assisting his muscles, Mhotep leapt backwards, the tattered robes of his armour flapping like a cloak, and landed, spear in hand, before the daemon could retaliate.

‘You have failed here, spirit,’ he said, filling his voice with absolute certainty. ‘Wraith of times past, I name thee. Native thing of the warp, I shall send you back there. However much you hunger, you are known to me and you will not prevail. You will be banished by the light of the Emperor.’

‘You know nothing,’ Wsoric sneered, ‘of what we are.’ The terrible wound in its side was already healing. ‘You are misled and you know not of your fate.’

An image flashed briefly in Mhotep’s mind, of the spires of Prospero burning and the howling of wolves. It was the same vision he’d seen when Wsoric had first tried to subvert him and it came back like a recurring nightmare to haunt him.

Mhotep focused, determined not to give in, and slowly the image faded away like smoke.

‘I am Mhotep, Thousand Son of Magnus the Red. The wisdom of Ahriman flows within me.’ The affirmation steeled him and power coursed through his body. Wsoric’s body, all muscle and blemished skin like the hide of a diseased corpse, shuddered with what the Thousand Son could only think was laughter. The daemon’s bloody lips peeled back from its dog-like skull and its pure black eyes shimmered wetly in sunken sockets of gore. One of Wsoric’s hands turned in on itself with a foul sucking sound, forming a wide orifice, which the monster aimed like a gun. The daemon roared with effort and a bolt of purple fire spat from its hand. Mhotep couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough and the blast caught his pauldron, hitting him hard enough to throw him, spinning, down the corridor. The Thousand Son was on his feet as soon as he landed, feeling the armour down one side char with the heat and the exposed skin of his face blistering.

Wsoric fired again, a heavy chain of caged fire spitting from his hand. The monster was laughing loudly, a horrendous gurgling sound that sprayed blood from its throat. Mhotep rolled around the intersection, tumbling into another corridor as lances of fire tore through the bulkhead.

The stink of burning metal filled his nostrils and wretched heat plagued his skin, but Mhotep was not about to give up. Once the conflagration had died down, he swung back around the intersection. From his outstretched palm, he sent a boiling mass of crimson fire against the daemon, which coursed over its weapon-arm, searing it shut.

‘The Word Bearers will not succeed,’ he said, rushing forward with his spear. The Emperor knows he is betrayed! Lorgar will not escape his justice!’

‘I care nothing for Lorgar’s dogs,’ roared Wsoric. ‘They are beholden to the will of the warp, the ancient ones that dwell in the empyrean. The slave Lorgar is merely a tool in the fashioning of our grand design. Mankind will fall as Old Night returns to the galaxy, shrouding it in a second darkness. You will all be slaves!’

Astartes and daemon clashed. Mhotep ran his spear through Wsoric’s side while the daemon swatted him against the corridor wall with a sweep of its gargantuan claws. Before the Thousand Son could recover, it seized upon his skull and started to squeeze. Mhotep could hear the bone cracking inside his head as dark spots flecked his failing vision.

‘Your Emperor can plot and cower all he likes,’ said Wsoric. ‘What has the warp to fear from him?’ he taunted, exerting more pressure.

‘Knowledge…’ hissed Mhotep through clenched teeth, ‘…is power.’ Twin beams of light seared from his eyes, burning Wsoric’s face and torso. The daemon recoiled, loosing its grip and Mhotep rammed his spear into its neck. Shrieking in pain, Wsoric let him down and the Thousand Son clattered to the floor, the spear still embedded in the daemon’s neck.

With a massive effort, Mhotep got up and threw the daemon off, a mental shield forming in his mind and crystallising in the air before him. Wsoric was angry, its red raw flesh charred and bleeding ichor. The fresh spear wound had not closed.

Wsoric came at the Thousand Son again, tearing through the psychic shield as if it was parchment.

Cestus fell flat on his face, dry heaving. He couldn’t tell which way was up. He was cold, appallingly cold, as if he was wrapped in ice or exposed to the naked void.

The feeling of his body coming apart was an agonising echo in every bone and tendon. To turn like that from a living, breathing man to a piece of mangled meat, to be trapped in that transition, feeling his spine cracking and his chest splitting, had been as obscene as it was tortuous. He felt violated, as if his flesh didn’t belong to him any more.

Cestus opened his eyes.

He was in the last circle of hell. It was an endless shaft of blackness, reaching up and down for infinity. Hundreds of long, thin blades penetrated the darkened void, hanging down from above and spearing down forever. On these blades were impaled traitors to Macragge. They slid, centimetre by centimetre, down into the black.

Cestus stood on a thin spur of rock reaching from the wall of this circle of hell. He saw the faces of the condemned, locked in eternal screams as the blades bit slowly through them.

‘You have as many circles of sin as hell itself,’ said the taskmaster, standing behind Cestus. The Ultramarine got a good look at him for the first time, as burly as an Astartes, dressed in tarnished steel armour such as that worn by Macragge’s ancient Battle Kings. He wore a leather apron stained with blood and sweat. His face was like a solid slab, features worn down by an eternity serving in hell. The whip in his hand was as cruel and ugly a weapon as Cestus had ever seen.

‘I’m not a traitor,’ said Cestus.

‘Neither are these,’ said the taskmaster, pointing with his whip towards the damned souls sliding their way into eternity. ‘They think they are. Theirs is a sin more of arrogance than treachery. They thought they really had the capacity to betray their fellow man, but in truth they are just petty thieves and killers: unremarkable. To be a true betrayer, you need power to turn against your brother. Very few ever possess it. That the virtue in acquiring that very power should be so tainted by the act of betrayal, that is the truth of the sin. That is what makes it fouler still than anything else.’

Cestus looked down at his body. His armour was gone and he wore the deep blue padded armour of an aspirant of Macragge, with the crest of the Battle Kings on his chest. It was what he had worn when he had first stepped up to the Ultramarines’ chaplain and declared that he believed he was ready to join the sons of Guilliman. It was tattered and torn, stained with the blood of a thousand battles. ‘I am no traitor, imagined or otherwise. I have never turned on my brothers.’

‘As for you, Lysimachus, where do you really belong? You are an Astartes, with all the power and brutality that brings. You’re a murderer, too, given all the people and xenos you have killed, do you truly believe that not one of them could have been undeserving of their fate? Think of all those sins, and that is without the mission you died fighting. You led a whole fleet to its destruction. You allowed your battle-brothers to die in vain. You protected a psyker, knowing full well that he was in breach of the Council of Nikea: all of this to fight your fellow Astartes. Where, captain, do we start with you?’

Cestus looked down over the edge of the precipice. The true heart of hell was there. Something enormous roiled down, barely visible against the darkness. A vast maw ground traitors between its teeth. Thousands of eyes accused them with every flash of pain.

‘None of this is real,’ said Cestus.

The Ultramarine smiled despite his surroundings as the clarity of understanding washed away all doubt like blue water.

‘I am not dead and this is not hell,’ he affirmed.

‘How can you be sure?’ asked the taskmaster.

‘Because I may be guilty of everything you have said. I have led men to their deaths, and killed and maimed, and turned on fellow Astartes, but I am no traitor.’

Cestus stepped off the ledge, and fell into the last hell.

Pain, real tangible pain, slammed into Cestus as he hit the ground. He had escaped. Somehow, through resolve and belief in himself, he had shrugged off the psychic glamour, the cage of his own mind, and emerged intact.

The booming of the big guns hammered at him through the floor and recollection returned.

He was on the Furious Abyss. Cynically, he wondered if it might have been more prudent to stay in hell.

Cestus’s body ached and he tested himself for injuries. He was bruised and rattled, but otherwise fine and he still had his armour. Getting to his feet, he saw Excelinor beside him. In his fever dream, he must have dragged his battle-brother along with him, although, the Ultramarine captain had no idea where he actually was.

Cestus felt a pang of grief in his heart. Excelinor was dead. It was possible that under the psychic assault the Astartes’s sus-an membrane had shut his body down into stasis. It hardly mattered; there would be no waking him.

Cestus crouched over his fallen battle-brother and rested his arms across his chest, placing the short-blade in his grasp in a death salute. The Ultramarine captain could do little more. He stood up again and backed up against a wall, ignoring the throbbing in his head. He felt his armour dispensing painkillers into his system and detected his altered physiognomy at work, enabling him to move and fight.

Scanning his surroundings, Cestus gathered that he was no longer outside the ordnance decks. He had no idea how he had got to this place and assumed that he had staggered through the tunnels of the Furious Abyss in a psychic-induced delirium, some innate survival instinct carrying him from immediate danger. It looked like a barracks. He dredged flashes of schematic implanted in his mind by Mhotep. Several dormitories made up the deck and there was temple at the far end. It was the only exit.

Treading cautiously, assuming that the deck must be largely unoccupied or he would’ve been discovered already, Cestus made for the temple.

The chamber was anathema to everything the Emperor had taught them to believe. It opposed the era of enlightenment that the Great Crusade was meant to usher in for mankind, the banishment of barbarian customs and the value of the empirical over the superstitious. The temple flouted everything the Astartes stood for.

It was a place of worship, but of what craven deities Cestus did not know. An altar sat against one wall and there were pews arranged for prayer. The chamber was dressed with deep scarlet banners with crimson embroidery. The Ultramarine tried to focus on the designs, but found he couldn’t as they appeared to squirm and congeal before his eyes.

Several small bloodstained objects stood on the altar. Cestus realised that they were severed fingers, hundreds of them. An image of the Furious’s crewmen lining up to mutilate themselves in the name of Lorgar filled his mind. Cestus shook it away and forced himself to focus. His mind was still reeling. He had been to hell. The aftertaste of it was in his mouth and his body remembered the feeling of being wrenched apart.

The sound of footsteps snapped his attention to the present. They were approaching fast: voices barked orders and armoured bodies clattered through a doorway nearby.

Though it rankled to hide, Cestus moved swiftly to the far end of the room where he could disappear into a shadowy alcove. It stank of old blood and decaying flesh. For the span of the Furious’s short life, the crew had used it constantly for their devotions. Books were piled up behind the altar nearby, each one with the rune of an eight-pointed star on the cover. Cestus averted his gaze, unwilling to learn of the myriad forms of damnation that awaited him within those pages.

‘There! The blood trail’s in here. Guns up and execute!’ It came from inside the room.

Cestus slid his bolt pistol from his holster and risked a glance around the altar. A squad of five Word Bearers had entered the room and were sweeping every corner with bolters. One wore an open book worked into the breastplate of his armour, words upon it inscribed in gold intaglio. Cestus assumed that he was a Legion veteran given command of the squad.

‘Check the barrack rooms,’ growled the veteran, with a voice like churning gravel. The Word Bearer cradled a low-slung melta-gun, a short-range weapon that burned through armour and flesh like parchment. It was an Astartes killer, the perfect hunting weapon.

The veteran and two others were left in the temple. The squad fanned out at a silent battle-sign from their leader and were working their way through the pews.

Cestus needed to act, while he still maintained the element of surprise. Unclipping a pair of frag grenades from his belt, he thumbed the activation icon on each and rolled them slowly across the ground.

One of the Word Bearers reacted to the sound and swung his bolter around to fire. Frag exploded in his face before he could pull the trigger, ripping off part of his helmet. A secondary detonation erupted beneath the other Astartes, the impact accentuated in the close confines, and took off his leg at the armour joint.

Spits of flame and a storm of splinters still clouding the air, Cestus was up and drilled a shot through the first Word Bearer, exploiting the fact that his head armour was compromised. A puff of red mist came from the back of the Word Bearer’s head before he died.

The Ultramarine heard the telltale whine of the melta-gun powering up and threw himself aside as the Word Bearer veteran discharged the deadly weapon. His sight line was cluttered with debris and the shot burned through the still falling, one-legged Word Bearer, who slumped to the ground with a smoking crater through his torso.

Cestus was up in moments, leaping over the pews and pumping rounds from his bolt pistol. The veteran, the last Word Bearer standing in the temple, saw the Ultramarine, but reacted too slowly. Before he could swing his melta-gun around for a second shot, bolt-rounds punched him in the arm and torso. The veteran spun and bucked with the impacts. As Cestus reached him, he had already drawn his power sword and lopped off the falling veteran’s head with a grunt of effort. Ignoring the sanguine gore pouring from the veteran’s neck, Cestus pushed on and regained the corridor outside the temple that led to the barrack rooms. A surprised Word Bearer, alerted by the gunfire, emerged from one of the chambers. Cestus shot him through the lens in his battle-helm and the enemy Astartes crumpled with a muffled cry.

A second Word Bearer sensibly employed more caution, using the extended grip of his bolter so that he could reach around the doorway and blindly strafe the corridor. Cestus hugged the wall as the shots streamed past, muzzle flash blazing. An errant bolt-round struck his pauldron armour, sending a chip spinning into Cestus’s face. He was without his battle-helm and fought the urge to cry out when the shard cut into his flesh and embedded there. Instead, he rolled his body over the wall, descending into a crouching stance and squeezed his bolt pistol trigger in an attempt to force his aggressor back into the chamber.

The weapon clicked in his grasp. It seemed so loud and final, despite the roar of battle filling Cestus’s ears.

The Ultramarine’s mouth formed an oath as the Word Bearer, who must have heard the dry shot, came out from his hiding place, laughing.

Instinctively, Cestus hurled his power sword. The blade spun end over end and thunked hard through the shocked Word Bearer’s gorget, impaling him through the neck. The Astartes staggered, arms splayed at first as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened to him, dark fluid leaking down his breastplate like a flood. Cestus followed the sword’s path at a run, smacking the boltgun out of the stricken traitor’s hand and wrenching the power sword free, taking the Word Bearer’s head with it.

‘My brother, my enemy,’ Cestus breathed after he took a moment to take stock, regarding the carnage of the dead Word Bearers around him.

Five Astartes slain, albeit traitors, by his hand; a temple devoted to heathen gods; enlightenment and the pragmatism of science and reason abandoned for superstition. Cestus felt the galaxy darkening even as he sheathed his power sword and discarded the Word Bearer’s unusable bolter clips. Grimacing, he tugged the ceramite chip from his face and then he pushed on. Somewhere ahead, he knew, was an armoury.

Brynngar leapt aside as the power hammer crashed down onto the deck. Rolling to his feet, the Space Wolf could only watch as Baelanos, awesome in his dreadnought armour, wrenched the weapon free from a crater filled with sparking wires and torn metal. Cables ripped out with the hammer head were snarled around the weapon’s spikes like intestines.

Baelanos grunted as he righted himself, confusion still warring within him, and charged again.

Brynngar ducked beneath the wild sweep of the hammer this time, the solid metal face whistling past his head like a death knell. The Space Wolf moved in with Felltooth and landed a fearsome blow to Baelanos’s armoured flank. The rune axe spanged against the reinforced ceramite frame and bit deep, but the Word Bearer dreadnought didn’t slow. Baelanos’s momentum carried him thundering into the Space Wolf, his machine bulk like a battering ram. Brynngar was smashed aside and lost his grip on Felltooth. He skidded on his front across the deck, friction sparks kicked up from his armour spitting in the Space Wolf’s face. Brynngar grimaced and got up, drawing a knife from his belt. The monomolecular blade was honed to beyond razor sharpness and could scythe open power armour with the proper amount of pressure. The only downside was its appalling reach, and Brynngar doubted whether a thrown blade would even irritate his goliath enemy.

Roaring a battle-cry, the old wolf launched himself at Baelanos, who was still turning, flashing in and out of lucidity. With every attack from the Space Wolf, though, the dreadnought’s memory was renewed.

Clinging to the Word Bearer machine’s weapon arm, Brynngar rammed his knife blade into the armour joint that sealed the sarcophagus in an attempt to prize it open. Baelanos spun hard, armoured feet stomping up and down, and his torso twisting as he sought to dislodge his opponent. Brynngar dug in, wrapping his legs around the dreadnought’s shoulder as he pushed the blade two-handed until it reached the hilt.

Baelanos, realising that he couldn’t shake the Space Wolf loose, decided to ram the Astartes into the armoury wall and charged headlong into it. Brynngar saw the empty dreadnought suits coming towards him at speed and realised that he was about to be crushed. He swung aside at the last moment, violently thrown clear as Baelanos careered into the dormant armour with a deafening clang. Dislodging himself quickly, the Word Bearer turned and stomped towards the prone Space Wolf, still dazed from his hurried dismount, intending to crush him beneath his feet.

With a groan of pain, Brynngar rolled aside, but Baelanos was getting quicker and caught him a glancing blow with the power hammer as the Space Wolf struggled to rise. White fury filled Brynngar’s body and for a moment he was back at Fenris, though now a man, standing upon the shores of the silver-grey ocean. Brynngar ducked a second swipe of the giant hammer that would have shattered his skull and ended the duel then and there. He saw Felltooth in flashes, but couldn’t reach the weapon’s haft to wrench it free. Brynngar also saw that the sarcophagus had sprung open, the collision forcing it loose with the Space Wolf’s knife lodged in the joint. The amniotic blister lay unprotected. Brynngar went for his bolt pistol, but found it wasn’t there. He cursed loudly. He must have lost it during the crash or at some point in the psychic fever dream.

Blood drooled from the Space Wolf’s mouth and nose, matting in the hair of his beard. His leg felt leaden and unresponsive. His body ached as if stuck with red-hot pins. This was the end. Unarmed and injured, even a warrior of Brynngar’s prowess could not hope to hold out against a dreadnought. Baelanos seemed to sense that inevitability and moved in slowly, as if savouring the kill.

The Space Wolf realised that he was laughing. The action of it hurt his chest. The shadow of the dreadnought eclipsed him completely and Brynngar closed his eyes, imaging the ocean.

‘Fenris,’ he whispered.

A bolter shot, stark and hollow, resounded in the armoury. Brynngar’s eyes snapped open to see a smoking hole in the blister, fracture lines emanating outwards from the puncture crater. Baelanos was rocked backwards, a gurgling sound emanating from his vox-emitter. Viscous, amniotic fluid spilled out from the crack like brine.

The Space Wolf ran forward, despite a new pain flaring in his leg, and ripped Felltooth free from the dreadnought’s bulk. He carved a line down the blister as Baelanos flailed in desperation and it cracked apart. The fluid gushed out, taking the incumbent Astartes inside with it. Baelanos flopped out of the shattered blister, half suspended by the circuitry and cables linking him to the dreadnought armour. A second shot from the still unseen bolt pistol struck him in the chest and thick blood oozed from the wound. The dreadnought fell backwards, hitting the armoury floor with a resounding clang, and was still. Brynngar crawled on top of it, straddling the machine, and tore into the wasted body of Baelanos with his rune axe until there was nothing left.

‘Try coming back from that,’ he breathed savagely.

Resonating footsteps made the Space Wolf turn around to regard his saviour. Skraal emerged from the gloom, bolt pistol still smoking in his outstretched fist.

‘Thought you were dead,’ grunted the old wolf and promptly collapsed.

Mhotep forced the end of his arm back into his shoulder joint. The pain didn’t mean anything. The grimace on his face was from frustration that the arm, and with it his spear, would be weakened. He heaved down a couple of deep breaths and backed up against a bulkhead.

The battle against Wsoric had passed beyond the corridor outside the bridge and had progressed to the senior crew quarters, chambers allocated to him before he’d been confined to isolation. They were relatively close to the bridge, should an emergency necessitate the presence of any senior crew. That fact meant little, in the face of certain death, save that the trail of destruction left by their battle was short-lived.

As he regarded the collapsed ceiling, the wreckage of two decks punctuated by a few intact support stanchions and columns still smouldering, Mhotep came to realise that he was the last living being on the command deck. The Thousand Son had lost sight of the daemon when he’d been smashed through the deck and landed in the chamber below. Wsoric could be anywhere. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew the fused carapace of his ribs was broken. His breathing was ragged, which indicated a punctured lung and his shoulder burned.

In truth, the fight was not going as he’d hoped.

‘You resisted,’ said the daemon. ‘I turned your brothers against you, showed you the path and you refused it. That was folly.’

Mhotep tried to follow the sound of Wsoric’s voice, but it came from all around him.

‘Do you realise how fragile the Emperor’s house is? How easily his sons will war with one another? It took nothing to make the wolf turn on you and little more for the puritan captain to abandon your defence.’

Mhotep ignored the goading, and tried to focus. It was dark in the crew quarters, all power having died on the Wrathful and he closed his eyes, relying instead on his psy-sight to guide him. Life support was dead too and the air was growing stagnant without it. Mhotep kept his breathing steady, so as not to use up too much oxygen.

‘The Imperium will fall,’ Wsoric promised, ‘and the galaxy will bathe in blood and fire. Humanity’s dominance is at an end.’

Mhotep cast about the chamber. His psy-sight showed him a grey, shadow world that was indistinct and grainy. Corpses of the slain officers who had died in their quarters flickered briefly like dimming candles. A voracious life spark, red and angry, got Mhotep’s attention. He saw the daemon form. Its skin was like incandescent fire, constantly burning, and ribbed horns curled from its snarling head. A hide of thick, black hair covered its back from where immense, tattered wings extended, and its clawed feet raked the floor.

‘I see you,’ he whispered and threw his spear.

The daemon roared in agony as the golden spear impaled its neck. Mhotep’s eyes snapped open and Wsoric became the fleshy abomination once more, transfixed by his weapon. He ran headlong at the creature, trying to make the most of the small advantage he had gained.

The daemon twisted, enduring the pain it brought as the spear tip tore at its ephemeral flesh. Its gaping maw split open all the way down through its torso and, just as Mhotep reached it, the daemon vomited a hail of burning bone shards. The Thousand Son took a shard in his leg that pierced his battle-plate with ease. Limping backwards, he ripped the spear out of Wsoric’s neck, ichor spewing in its wake and thrust again, shredding through the muscle of the daemon’s shoulder.

With a lurch of straining steel, the deck collapsed, Astartes and daemon plunging into a dark void below. They landed in a dead space in the hull, separating the crew quarters from the lower industrial decks. A freezing gloom persisted there, criss-crossed with support beams. Mhotep rolled off the creature, which had taken the brunt of the fall, and staggered backwards.

Wsoric rose with the screech of sundered metal. The struts around it were already damaged. The ship was breaking apart. The daemon roared its anger, preparing to vent its wrath when the supports gave way. Together, they tumbled down into the cold blackness.

The sound of the ocean receded as Brynngar came around. The scarred visage of the World Eater in his battle-helm looked down on him.

‘You’re a sore sight for my eyes,’ grumbled the old wolf and got to his feet. Brynngar’s body felt bruised with the effort, and the pain down one leg made him stagger at first before he righted himself. Blood flecked his beard and armour.

‘How long was I out?’ he asked, aware that they were still in the armoury hall.

‘Just a few minutes,’ Skraal replied, ‘but we’ve no time to rest. Word Bearers are patrolling the ship looking for us.’

‘Been hunting you for a while, eh?’ guessed the Space Wolf, taking in the rents and burns on Skraal’s armour. He could almost imagine the fevered look in his eyes, the kind of nervous expression that any man on the run might adopt after being chased for long enough. The World Eater was already volatile. Shaken up as he was, he might crack at any moment.

‘Several weeks… I think.’ The son of Angron came across a little dazed as his time aboard the ship had dulled his sense of what was real and what were merely phantoms of the mind.

‘Did anyone else get aboard?’ Brynngar asked, swinging Felltooth to better remember the strength of his arm. The old wolf noticed that the red-limned portal was still open.

‘I am the only survivor,’ Skraal responded curtly and headed for the light.

‘You know where that leads?’ asked the Wolf Guard, noting the nonchalant way the World Eater approached the doorway.

‘The corridor beyond will get us to the engine deck.’

‘We need to reach ordnance and destroy the cyclonic payload,’ said Brynngar, ‘and how do you know that we can reach the engines from there?’

‘He knows because I told him,’ said a familiar voice from the gloom that sent the hackles on the back of Brynngar’s neck rising.

‘Destroying the cyclonics is no longer viable,’ he added, emerging out of the penumbra.

‘Cestus.’ Brynngar growled when he said it.

The Ultramarine slammed a fresh clip from the armoury’s stores into his bolt pistol and nodded to the Space Wolf.

‘There is but one opportunity left to us,’ Cestus said. ‘The easier course is no longer possible. We must walk the harder road. It is the only one open to us.’

Brynngar’s silence held the question.

‘We must destroy the ship,’ said Cestus.

Twenty

Contention/Avenge me/Immolation

‘Destroy the ship?’ Brynngar laughed as he limped after his battle-brothers. When Cestus went to aid him, he snarled, ‘I’m fine,’ before continuing.

‘This is the single largest and most powerful vessel I have ever seen. A few incendiaries,’ the Space Wolf indicated the grenade harness he still carried ‘will not see to its ruin.’

‘Have you lost your mind as well as your honour, son of Guilliman?’

‘Neither,’ Cestus replied. ‘The Furious Abyss can be destroyed. In order to do it, we must reach the engines and the plasma reactor that fuels them. If we can overload them with an incendiary payload of our own the resulting explosion will commence a chain reaction that cannot be averted by the ship’s fail safes and redundant systems.’

Brynngar seized Cestus by the shoulder. The Space Wolf’s eyes were full of anger.

‘You knew this and yet said nothing?’

‘It was irrelevant before,’ Cestus returned, shaking free of the Wolf Guard’s grip. ‘Our only way in was through the torpedo tubes, which made the cyclonics our obvious and most immediate target. There was no way of knowing we could’ve made it this far into the ship for an assault on the main reactor to be even possible.’

‘Leaving aside the matter of how you even know this,’ snarled the Wolf Guard, ‘how do you plan on getting close enough to destroy it? Have you seen the size of this vessel; it will be like a labyrinth in the engineering decks. We might never find it.’

‘I can guide us. It will take minutes,’ Cestus replied curtly. He was about to head off when Brynngar grabbed his arm again.

‘I don’t know what pact you have made with the witch that cowers aboard the Wrathful and what secrets you may be privy to,’ growled the Space Wolf dangerously, ‘but know this: I will not abide sorcery in any form. Once we gain the reactor and set this ship burning, our alliance is at an end, Ultramarine.’ Brynngar let Cestus go, and stalked away, taking a bolt pistol from the armoury and making ready at the open portal.

‘So be it,’ said Cestus grimly to himself and went to join his battle-brothers.

The Furious Abyss had been forced out of position during the battle with the Wrathful. Formaska glowered well to its starboard side, Macragge scarcely less ominous well below it. The planet’s local defence fleet was also in sight, lingering above Macragge’s upper-atmosphere. With the supplicants dead, the Furious’s surveyor-dampening systems, which had allowed it to ambush the Fist of Macragge were no longer effective. Slowly, the vessels were moving into defensive positions. Without knowledge of the Word Bearers’ intentions or their defection from the Imperium, though, the Macragge fleet was cautious and had yet to engage. They would try to hail them first. It was all the time that the Furious Abyss would need to realign, destroy Formaska and thus cripple the fleet in one stroke. The Wrathful was gone from the massive ship’s viewscreens, now little more than a chilling tomb of dead lights and lost souls, as it floundered in the void without power. Gravity would claim it.

Orders were relayed down to the Furious Abyss’s engine rooms to engage the directional thrusters and orient the ship back towards Formaska. The ordnance decks had been retaken, although the damage done by the enemy’ assault was extensive in some areas. The explosive discharge from a rapidly detonated melta bomb cluster had been ill-targeted, but destructive. The repair crews were hard at work clearing debris and expelling corpses into the void, but reaching operational status again would take time. It meant, although the cyclonic payload was intact, the launch would be delayed further.

Zadkiel felt his glory slipping through his grasp even as he listened to the toiling of the ratings on the ordnance deck. He shut down the vox link and closed his eyes, trying to master his anger.

Opening them again, Zadkiel looked at the positional display on one of his command throne’s viewscreens. The Furious had yet to change its heading and reset the launch vectors for the torpedoes.

‘Gureod,’ he barked into the vox array.

Silence answered.

‘Damn it, magos, why are the engines not engaged?’

Nothing again. Now the magos was just mocking him.

‘Reskiel,’ snarled Zadkiel, his tone impatient.

‘My lord,’ said the voice of the sergeant-commander, the thudding retort of gunfire audible in the background.

‘Get to engineering and find out why the ship has stalled.’

‘My lord,’ said Reskiel again, ‘we are at engineering. The enemy are here. They move through the ship as if they know every tunnel and access conduit. My squad is moving in to eliminate–’

The sound of a thunderous explosion broke the vox link for a moment. Crackling static reigned for a few seconds before Reskiel returned. ‘We have made contact. They are at the edge of the main reactor approach…’

Frantic cries and the screams of Word Bearers punctuated the chorus of bolter fire before the vox link went dead.

Zadkiel clenched his fist, and bit out his next words.

‘Ikthalon, lead three squads down to engineering. Seek those curs out and destroy them!’ Zadkiel’s veneer of calm cracked and fell away completely. He was shaking with apoplectic rage.

Ikthalon had returned to the bridge following the death of the supplicants and had, until now, observed proceedings with silent deference.

‘No, my lord,’ he responded in his usual sibilant cadence, adding, ‘I have endured your ineptitude for long enough. It threatens the glory of Kor Phaeron and our Lord Lorgar.’ Zadkiel heard the chaplain draw his bolt pistol from its holster.

‘I had thought you impudent, Ikthalon,’ said the admiral calmly, his composure returning as he turned to the chaplain. Zadkiel saw that he did indeed have his pistol trained upon him.

‘I did not believe you to be stupid.’

The chaplain’s posture was neutral and unassuming.

‘Stand down,’ he said simply, lifting the pistol a fraction to emphasis his point.

Zadkiel bowed his head. In the corner of his eye, he saw Ikthalon start to lower his weapon. It would be the chaplain’s last mistake.

Zadkiel moved swiftly to the side, his rapier-like power sword drawn fluidly. The bucking report of the bolt pistol sounded on the bridge, but Ikthalon’s shot, confounded by the admiral’s sudden movement, missed.

Zadkiel slid the blade through the chaplain’s gorget, smacking the bolt pistol from his grasp at the same time.

‘Did you think I would leave this bridge, my bridge, to a snake like you?’

Ikthalon could only gurgle in reply.

Zadkiel ripped away the chaplain’s battle-helm. Underneath it, Ikthalon was scarred, his face a mass of burn tissue, his ravaged throat a wreck of scabrous flesh. He stared into the chaplain’s pink-tinged eyes with intense hate.

‘You thought wrong,’ he hissed, and pushed Ikthalon off the blade to land with a clang of ceramite on the deck. The chaplain floundered at first, trying to speak, clutching ineffectually at his throat, but was then still, the blood pooling slowly beneath him.

Zadkiel turned to Sarkorov.

‘Clean that up and monitor all stations. You have the bridge. As soon as we are in a state of readiness again, inform me at once,’ ordered Zadkiel.

Pale-faced at the chaplain’s sudden death, the helmsmaster snapped a ragged salute and gestured to a group of Legion serfs to act as a clean-up crew.

Zadkiel stalked away, wiping the blood off his blade. He would deal with the infiltrators and be damned to ignominy if he was going to let them interfere any further with his plans. Besides, it would not look favourable in the eyes of the arch-commander if he needed his lackeys to deal with their enemies. No, the only way to be sure was to kill them all himself.

Reskiel was pleased. Though he had lost several of his squad fighting the loyalists, he had them boxed in, having forced them into a tunnel that he knew was a dead end. The sound of gunfire had abated, but the roar of the primary reactor and all the workings of the ship were still incredibly loud inside his battle-helm.

Using Astartes battle-sign, he signalled for the three warriors with him to descend from the upper stacks where they’d spread out and exploited their vantage point to coral the loyalists into a death trap. For a moment, Reskiel lost sight of two of his warriors as they moved into position.

Reaching the ground floor of the engineering deck, they converged on the tunnel. That was when Reskiel first realised that something was wrong. One of his warriors was missing.

‘Where is Vorkan?’ he hissed through the helmet vox.

‘I lost sight of him as he changed position, sergeant,’ one of the others, Karhadax, replied.

Reskiel turned to the second Word Bearer, Eradan.

‘I was watching the Space Wolf and the Ultramarine,’ he said by way of explanation.

A cold chill ran down Reskiel’s spine despite the heat of exertion and the warmth of the engineering deck.

‘What of the third? What of the World Eater?’

The hunters had suddenly become the prey.

Eradan’s neck and chest exploded outwards in a rain of blood and flesh, the whirring of chain teeth visible through all the gore.

‘I’m right here,’ said Skraal, his voice dead of all emotion, as the Word Bearer he had slain fell face forward onto the deck. He killed Karhadax next, cutting off his head as he charged. Whatever oath or battle cry the Word Bearer was about to shout died on his lips as his decapitated head hit the ground. Skraal kicked the still-flailing body out of his path and came at Reskiel.

To the sergeant-commander’s credit, he did not flinch in the face of the killing machine before him, and even managed to put a bolt round through Skraal’s thigh before the World Eater buried his chainaxe into him.

Skraal tore his bloodied weapon out of the still quivering body as Cestus and Brynngar emerged from the tunnel. It was with some degree of satisfaction that the World Eater had killed Reskiel. He had slain Antiges and chased him like a dog through the bowels of the ship. Four other Word Bearers lay within the tunnel nearby, variously punctured with bolter wounds and cleaved by blades. They were the other remnants of Reskiel’s hunter squad, despatched by the Astartes.

‘Next time, you’re the bait,’ Brynngar growled at Skraal, who smacked his chainaxe against the deck to dislodge some of the flesh snarled up in its blades.

‘There will be more,’ said Cestus, ramming a fresh clip that he’d taken from the armoury hall into his bolt pistol.

‘There’s always more,’ growled Brynngar, eager not to linger. ‘Lead on.’

Warning klaxons were sounding everywhere as the search for the Astartes saboteurs intensified and found its focus. Red hazard lights flashed with insistent intermittence and the shouts of the distant hunters echoed through the metal labyrinth of piping conduits and machinery. Gantries overhead provided only a curtailed view of the maze below, but Cestus instructed them to seek what cover they could whilst moving swiftly.

Determined to inflict as much damage as possible en route to the main reactor, the three Astartes had moved through the secondary reactors, systematically wrecking them as they went. Already reactor three had shut down, several coolant pipes torn free of its side and its crews scythed down with bolter fire at their dead man’s handles. Escaped coolant poured down from it in a scalding thunderhead of steam.

Cestus despatched a reactor crewman emerging from a control room with a snap shot from his bolt pistol. Another came from the opposite aisle of conduits. The Ultramarine killed him too.

The death dealing was indiscriminate. Fighting in and amongst the close confines of the pipe-works was like guerrilla warfare. Despite the overwhelming forces arrayed against them, the loyalist Astartes had a chance in this arena. Numerous improvised booby traps, simple frag grenade and tripwire arrangements, had been left in their wake, and the occasional explosion behind them meant that Cestus knew when their enemies were closing. Only the frag and krak grenades were used for traps. They would need the melta bombs for the main reactor. Once they reached it, they would need to infiltrate the protective shielding and plant the explosives into the reactor swell. That was, assuming the reactor’s immense radiation didn’t kill them first. It was a journey that Cestus planned on making alone and not one he was expecting to come back from.

A fusillade of bolter fire from a gantry above them got the Ultramarine’s attention, tearing up sections of piping.

The Word Bearers had found them.

Zadkiel watched the Astartes scurry into cover as his squads opened fire from the main access gantry. From his vantage point, he could see the whole reactor section, like an ocean of darkness with the reactors, immense steel islands, connected by a flimsy spider’s web of catwalks, coolant pipes and maintenance ladders. He recognised the armour of three Legions amongst the saboteurs, and knew that this was the last of them: the last desperate attempt to try and make a difference.

‘It will do you no good,’ Zadkiel whispered to himself and turned to his sergeants. ‘Grazious, hound them from up here. The rest of us will press on to the main reactor and intercept them.’

The sergeant saluted, snapping an affirmative response as Zadkiel departed.

‘Such impudence,’ Zadkiel muttered as he headed towards the main reactor.

It would end, here and now, with the death of the Ultramarines.

Mhotep dragged himself along the floor of the ordnance deck.

The air was still thick with the stench of death. Dried blood caked the walls and the bulkheads on either side were sealed with super-hot torches.

The Thousand Son rolled onto his back with effort and peered up at the rent in the ceiling far above, through which he’d plummeted. Wsoric had fallen with him. Craning his neck to look down the charnel house gangway, Mhotep saw rotting corpses on either side, prickling with frost as the void penetrated the Wrathful’s hull. Breathing was difficult, the air was thinning, and with the life support inoperative it would not replenish itself. Pain kept the Astartes moving. The red hot needles in his body let him know he was alive and still fighting.

He was dying. Mhotep knew this, but death held no fear for him. It was fate, his fate, and he embraced it. Struggling to his feet, the hellish agony intensified, and for a moment, Mhotep thought he might pass out.

Wsoric was a short distance away, squatting over a heap of corpses. They were the remains of the ratings and gang masters that had been sealed in when the deck was quarantined. Already lost to madness, Mhotep could only imagine what they had thought, half frozen from the cold of space, when the daemon approached them. Perhaps they had welcomed it. Perhaps they had forfeited their souls.

Wsoric stood and arched its neck. Distended flesh bulged and writhed as it consumed the last of the survivors in body and in doing so claimed their souls.

The daemon turned, an apparition in the blackness of the abattoir its kind had created, smiling at the Thousand Son’s pitiful attempt to escape it.

‘I ever hunger, Astartes,’ it told him. ‘The thirst for souls is never slaked. It is like an eternal keening in my skull upon this plane. You will quiet it for a time,’ it promised, heading for Mhotep.

The Thousand Son fell as he went to flee the daemon. Blood was seeping from his cuirass where Wsoric had raked him with its claws. Bloody and battered, the Astartes had been granted a short reprieve when the creature detected the mewling terror from within the deck. It had found the ratings easily, drawn by the scent of their fear. Mhotep had been made to watch as the daemon butchered them.

‘I will drink of your hope and bravery until you are hollow,’ promised Wsoric.

Mhotep dragged himself up, using his spear as a crutch. He would meet his destruction face-to-face and on his feet. Outstretching his palm, a nimbus of scarlet light played about his finger tips.

Wsoric was almost upon him, and reached out, crushing the Thousand Son’s hand in his taloned fist.

Mhotep screamed in agony as his bones were splintered even within his gauntlet. He dropped the spear and sagged, only held up by the strength of the daemon.

‘Still you fight, insignificant speck,’ it said, mouth forming into a feral sneer. ‘To think that one such as you could kill one such as I.’

The daemon’s booming laughter flecked caustic spittle and dead blood into Mhotep’s face.

‘I wasn’t trying to kill you,’ muttered the Thousand Son, looking up at the beast as he unclipped something from his belt. It was an incendiary grenade.

‘What do you intend to do with that, little man?’ asked Wsoric with an obscene smile.

‘You have tarried here too long,’ said Mhotep. ‘At any moment you could have swum across the empyrean to the Furious Abyss, or back into the immaterium, but your gluttony for reaping souls has undone you warp beast. Look!’

Wsoric’s flesh was leaking ichorous fluid as the psychic energy required to keep it in the material universe broke down. Its form was becoming gelatinous and ephemeral. Mhotep had detected the creature weakening all the time he fought it. Every psychic exertion had taken its toll, sloughing away some of the matter that kept it stable and in existence.

‘I wasn’t trying to kill you,’ said Mhotep with his failing breath, ‘just to keep you here for long enough.’ He thrust his free hand forward, punching through Wsoric’s melting skin and releasing the grenade’s detonator.

The daemon snarled in rage and sudden fear.

‘Puny human, I will feast upon your…’

Mhotep was thrown back by the blast as Wsoric exploded from the inside, destroyed by the dissolution of its corporeal body.

Lying in an expanding pool of his own blood, Mhotep could see through one of the aiming ports in the ordnance deck’s starboard wall. Roaring fire burned at the edges of the Wrathful’s armoured hull as the ship, caught in the moon’s gravity well, hurtled towards Formaska. He imagined the rivers of lava on its barren surface, the crags and mountainous expanses, and smiled, accepting his doom.

The noise of the main reactor, even closed off within its housing, was immense. Beyond, Cestus knew there was an approach corridor, designed to enable close maintenance of the reactor when not in use. Beyond that was the incandescent core of energy. To step into it meant certain death. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

Using Astartes battle-sign, the Ultramarine indicated for Brynngar to take up position on the opposite side of the armoured hatch that led into the approach corridor. The Space Wolf obeyed swiftly and was about to cleave into the first layer of shielding when a hail of bolter fire rebounded off the metal, forcing him into cover. Cestus followed, Skraal next to him. The Astartes saw a squad of Word Bearers in firing drill formation on a lofted gantry, led by a commander in gilded, crimson armour. So resplendent and arrogant did he look, that Cestus assumed at once that he was the captain of the ship.

‘We are honoured,’ he said sarcastically, shouting at Skraal to be heard.

The World Eater nodded. He had recognised the captain too, the one he knew to be called Zadkiel: the taunting orator who had tried to twist his loyalty and prey upon his inner weakness. Skraal despised that. Crouching as he ran, he left cover and disappeared for a moment behind a riot of piping. He emerged, bolt pistol blazing. One of the Word Bearers pinning them was pitched off the gantry, clutching his neck. The gilded captain stood his ground at first, but took a step back when a second Word Bearer was spun off his feet, a smoking hole in his chest-plate.

‘Skraal, no, it’s suicide!’ Cestus cried as he watched the World Eater gain the stairway and head straight at the Word Bearers. There was no way he would make it before they perforated him with bolter shells.

‘Come on,’ Brynngar bellowed, hacking into the armoured hatch with the sudden respite. ‘Make his sacrifice worthwhile.’

With the Word Bearers occupied, Skraal had given his comrades the time they needed to cut their way into the reactor and finally end the Furious Abyss.

Cestus was on his feet and cleaved into the hatch with his power sword. The metal fell away with a resounding clang as it struck the deck. A backwash of heat flowed from the approach corridor sending the radiation warnings flickering on the Ultramarine’s helmet display to critical.

‘Bandoleers,’ Cestus cried, holding out his hand for the belt of melta bombs that Brynngar carried.

‘It’s a one way trip,’ said the old wolf.

Cestus stared at Brynngar, nonplussed.

‘Yes, now hand them over.’

‘Not for you,’ said the Wolf Guard and punched the Ultramarine hard in the battle-helm.

Cestus fell, half-stunned by the sudden attack, and through his blurring vision he saw Brynngar enter the approach corridor.

‘Both of us need not die here. Avenge me,’ he heard the Space Wolf say, ‘and your Legion.’

Skraal took the gantry steps three at a time. About halfway up his bolt pistol ran dry and he tossed it, focusing instead on his chainaxe. As he emerged into view, the Word Bearers fired. One round tore through his pauldron, another stuck his thigh, a third hit his chest and he staggered, but the fury was upon him and nothing would prevent him from spilling the blood of the enemy. All those weeks fleeing like an animal, caged in the depths of the ship like a… like a slave. That would not be his fate.

Two more shots to the chest and Skraal struck his foes. A Word Bearer came at him with a chainsword. The World Eater swatted the blow aside and carved his enemy in two across the torso. A second went down clutching the ruin of his face where Skraal had caved it in. Another lost an arm and screamed as the World Eater booted him off the gantry to his death below.

Then Skraal faced the gilded captain, standing stock still before him as if at total ease. Bellowing Angron’s name, Skraal launched himself at Zadkiel, preparing to dismember him with his chainaxe.

The Word Bearer captain calmly raised his bolt pistol and shot Skraal through the neck. With a last effort, the World Eater lashed out.

Zadkiel screamed in pain as his bolt pistol was cut in two, three of his fingers sheared off with it through the gauntlet.

Smiling beneath his battle-helm, the World Eater felt his leg collapse beneath him. The spinal cord was abruptly severed and a terrible, sudden cold engulfed him, as if he had been plunged into ice.

Vision fogging, he saw Zadkiel standing above, blood dripping from his severed fingers as he drew a long, thin sword.

‘I am no slave,’ Skraal hissed as the last of his vital fluid pumped out of him freely.

‘You have never been anything else,’ said Zadkiel savagely, and thrust the blade precisely through Skraal’s helmet lens and into the World Eater’s eye.

The dead Astartes shuddered for a moment, transfixed on the Word Bearer’s sword, before Zadkiel withdrew it with a flourish and Skraal crumpled to the deck. Wiping his blade on the corpse, and with a brief glance at his ruined hand, he turned to his sergeants.

‘Now kill the other two.’

Cestus shrugged off his disorientation and went for the hatch, but the barrage of fire resumed, cutting him off from the wolf.

‘Damn you, Brynngar,’ he bellowed, knowing that it was useless.

Soon the engineering deck would be immolated by fire. The chain reaction that followed after the main reactor’s destruction would be cataclysmic. Cestus didn’t want to be there when that happened. Anger burned within him at the death of his battle-brothers, the base treachery of the Word Bearers. He wanted Zadkiel, and although there was little chance of reaching him on the engineering deck, the Ultramarine knew where he would find him.

Cestus made his way to the shuttle bay.

Brynngar powered through the access corridor, waves of radiation washing over him, and tore apart the first line of shielding that led further into the reactor core chamber. He pummelled a second bulkhead with his fists. The sense of descent into the beating heart of the ship enveloped Brynngar as he crawled on his hands and knees through the final access conduit.

Ripping away the last barrier of shielding, now several metres below the surface of the engineering deck, he passed the threshold of the reactor core’s inner chamber. A blast of intense heat struck him at once, his armour blistering before its fury, and for a moment the wolf recoiled. A deep cone fell away from a narrow platform over which the Space Wolf was perched. Hot wind, boiled up by the lake of liquid fire churning at the nadir of the cone, whipped his hair. Brynngar felt it burning, his skin too, as the intense radiation ravaged his flesh.

Beautiful, he thought as he regarded the glowing reactor mass below: raw, incandescent energy that boiled and thrashed like a captured thunderhead.

Priming the melta bombs around his waist, the Space Wolf closed his eyes. It was a hundred-metre drop down into the reactor core. Its smooth, angled walls were bathed in light.

Brynngar stepped off the narrow platform and fell. The first explosion was like a thunderclap.

Storms ravaged the platinum sky as Brynngar stood upon the edge of the silver Fenrisian ocean. The tide was high and the waves crashed against the icebergs, shattering the ice-flows with pounding surf. He was dressed in only a loincloth, with his knife tucked into a leather belt and his baleen spear thrust into the hard-packed snow. Out beyond the glowing horizon, there was a keening echo. The great orca was calling to him.

Brynngar took his spear and dived into the ice-cold waters. Light was rising on the horizon, the storm receding. As he swam, he felt a strange sensation. It felt as if he was going home.

The sudden release of explosive power rippled through the main reactor. The conical structure ruptured and the plasma roared out. It fell in a massive fountain of fire, drenching the whole reactor section in a monstrous burning rain. Bolts of it punched through machinery and walkways, and through the bodies of Zadkiel’s warriors. Secondary explosions tore up from the minor reactors as a terrible chain reaction took hold. There was a deep and sonorous crump of force as one of the engines shattered apart with the backwash of energy.

A chunk of reactor housing shot like a missile right through the main chamber of reactor seven, which echoed the explosion with a huge expanding flood of ignited plasma. Emergency systems slammed into place, but there was no way to seal the breach when plasma was free and expanding within the hull.

Reactors two and eight were breached, emptying their plasma into the reactor section’s depths. The hapless menials still at work in the labyrinth were devoured in the sudden flood. The level of plasma reached the base of reactor seven, which blew its top, throwing a second burst into the air like a vast azure fountain.

Heat-expanded air ripped bulkheads open. The hull gave way, the inner skins breaching and filling with plasma before the outer hull was finally torn open and a black-red ribbon of vacuum-frozen fuel bubbled out of the Furious Abyss’s wounded flank.

Zadkiel crawled away from the destruction as his ship began to destroy itself from within. He reached the portal, sealing it shut before the few survivors of his squad could get through. He watched, curious and detached, as a bolt of plasma fell like a comet and ripped the gantry apart on which they stood. Survival instincts got Zadkiel to his feet. Reaching the vox, he ordered the abandon ship and proceeded to head for the shuttle bays before it was too late.

Twenty-One

Eve of battle/Face-to-face/Still we’ll fight

The banners of the Word Bearers, deep crimson with the emblems of the Legion’s Chapters, barely stirred in the artificial air of the Cloister of Contrition. Kor Phaeron knelt alone in front of the altar, which was crowned with the image of Lorgar, the Prophet of Colchis. The primarch’s image, carved from porphyry and marble, was brandishing the book in which he had first written the Word.

The arch-commander was praying. It was this faith that set the Word Bearers apart. They understood its power. Lorgar had been an exemplar of what a man could achieve when he realised his full potential. Indeed, Lorgar had become much more even than that. Each Word Bearer prayed to commune with himself, with the forces of the universe, to discover the means to unlock their latent strength so that they might use it to do the work of Lorgar. On the eve of battle, it was prayer that made the Word Bearers ready.

Footsteps echoed through the cloisters. It was a place of worship large enough to house three Chapters of battle-brothers, or all of the Infidus Imperator’s crew, and the echoes lasted for several seconds.

‘I am at prayer,’ Kor Phaeron told the intruder, the powerful cadence of his deep voice exacerbated by the acoustics of the temple.

‘My lord, we have received no signal,’ came the disembodied reply.

It was Tenaebron, Chapter Master of the Void.

‘Nothing?’ asked Kor Phaeron, incredulity masking his anger as he turned to look upon his subordinate.

‘The supplicants on the Furious Abyss were activated,’ replied Tenaebron, ‘and some time after, a psychic flare was detected: very powerful.’

‘Formaska?’

‘Assuredly not, Lord Kor Phaeron.’

The arch-commander stood up. Bareheaded, he was resplendent in his prayer vestments and towered over the Chapter Master. ‘You must be certain of this, Tenaebron,’ he said, a warning implicit in his tone.

‘Formaska still exists,’ the Chapter Master replied. Compared to most Astartes he looked old and weak, and some who did not know the Legion’s ways might have thought he was a veteran, half-crippled in body, whose role was to advise and lead from afar. In truth, his small wet eyes and sagging, mournful face concealed a warrior’s soul, which he could back up with the force staff scabbarded on his back and the inferno pistol at his side. Even that was of little significance compared to the horrible injuries that Tenaebron could inflict on an enemy’s mind.

‘Zadkiel has failed,’ he added unnecessarily.

Kor Phaeron thought for a moment, turning back to the altar as if the statue of Lorgar could advise him.

‘Follow,’ he said at length, and marched towards the great doors at the far end of the cloister. Kor Phaeron threw them open.

Hundreds of Word Bearers knelt in prayer, by the light of a thousand braziers, filling the cathedral to which the Cloisters of Contrition adjoined. Each one was deep in his prayers, seeking some greater self within him that could win this fight in the name of Lorgar and seal the truth of the Word. Almost the entire muster of the Chapter of the Opening Eye, that which was being transported by the Infidus Imperator, was assembled, with Chapter Master Faerskarel in the front row.

Faerskarel stood up and saluted at the arch commander’s approach. ‘Lord Kor Phaeron,’ he said, ‘is it time?’

‘Zadkiel has failed,’ said Kor Phaeron. ‘Soon the fleet’s presence will be revealed and Calth will be waiting for us. It is time. This will not be the massacre of which we have spoken. This will be a fight to the end, and Calth will not give up its victory easily. We must wrest it from the enemy as we have always done.’

Faerskarel said nothing, but turned to his Word Bearers, who stood to attention as one.

‘Word Bearers!’ shouted Kor Phaeron. ‘To your drop pods and gunships! Now is the time for war, for victory and death! Arm and say your final prayers, for the Ultramarines are waiting!’

Cestus reached the shuttle bay quickly. In the ensuing panic once the abandon ship had been declared, few enemies opposed him. Those that did were mainly zealous ratings or blood-hungry menials and he despatched them with bolt and blade.

The deck beneath the Ultramarine shuddered and lurched to the side and, for a moment, Cestus struggled to keep his feet. He heard the first of the explosions from the main reactor as they’d ravaged the ship. Now, further internal detonations were erupting across all decks as the chain reaction set in place by Brynngar’s sacrifice tore the Furious Abyss apart.

The rest of the crew, the cohorts of Word Bearers and the officers of the bridge, had yet to reach the bay. As plumes of fire spat up from the bowels of the ship like white-orange jets through the deck, and the infrastructure of the shuttle bay disintegrated around him, Cestus doubted that they ever would.

Crossing the metal plaza of the bay was like running a gauntlet, as vessels exploded in storms of shrapnel and debris fell like rain. Cestus saw a rating crushed beneath a hunk of fallen arch, the corpse’s hand still twitching in its death throes.

Hundreds of small antechambers bled off from the main bay, each housing a quartet of shuttles, racked in a two by two arrangement. Cestus stepped into the first antechamber he could find that wasn’t wreathed in fire or sealed shut by wreckage.

Stepping over the threshold, he saw a solitary figure lit up by the warning strobes set into the shuttle runways. It was gloomy in the chamber, but Cestus recognised the livery of the armour before him.

‘Word Bearer,’ he called out.

The figure turned, about to step into the first shuttle, and regarded the Ultramarine coldly.

‘So you are the one who I am to thank for this,’ he said calmly, looking around the room as he opened his arms.

Cestus returned the Word Bearer’s contempt and drew his power sword. The arcing lightning coursing down the blade lit the Ultramarine in a grim cast.

‘You are Zadkiel,’ Cestus said as if it were an accusation. ‘I thought the captain was meant to go down with his ship.’

‘That will not be my destiny,’ Zadkiel replied drawing his sword. Energy crackled down its blade too. It was longer and slightly thinner than the Ultramarine’s weapon, master crafted by some Martian artificer no doubt, the aesthetic flourishes added by a Legion artisan.

‘I have your destiny right here,’ Cestus promised him, and thought of Antiges slain in battle, his battle-brothers killed by the warp predators aboard the Wrathful; of Saphrax and his warriors smashed against the hull, their honour denied them; of Skraal and Brynngar sacrificed upon the altar of victory and hope. ‘This is where your words end.’

‘You are a fool, Ultramarine,’ snarled Zadkiel, ‘ignorant of the power of the galaxy. Gods walk among us, Astartes. Real gods! Not ghosts or ciphers or interloper aliens, but beings of true power, beings who pray back!’ Zadkiel’s eyes blazed suddenly with fervour.

Cestus knew this was the religiosity for which the Emperor had once scolded Lorgar’s Legion. Zadkiel was a fanatic, all the Word Bearers were. It was all they had ever been. How could their duplicity and deception have gone unnoticed for so long?

‘We have spoken with them. They hear us!’ continued Zadkiel. ‘They see the future as we do. The warp is not just a sea for ignorant space-farers to drown in. It is another dimension far more wondrous than real space. Our reality is the shadow of the warp, not the other way around. Lorgar and the intelligences of the warp have the same vision. For the warp and our reality to become one, where the human mind has no limits! True enlightenment, Ultramarine! Can you imagine it?’

‘I can,’ Cestus said simply. There was pity in his eyes. ‘It is a nightmare and one doomed to fail.’

Zadkiel sniffed his contempt.

‘You underestimate the power of the Word,’ he scoffed.

‘Talk is cheap, fanatic,’ Cestus snarled, casting aside his helmet so that his enemy could see the face of his slayer, and launched himself at the Word Bearer.

A massive energy flare lit the room in actinic radiation as the two power swords clashed: Cestus’s broad-bladed spartha versus Zadkiel’s rapier-like weapon.

Sparks cascaded as the two Astartes raked down each other’s blades before withdrawing quickly. Cestus let anger fuel his blows and crafted an overhead cut that would cleave into the Word Bearer’s shoulder. Zadkiel foresaw the attack, though, and rolled aside, thrusting the tip of his blade into the Ultramarine’s thigh. Cestus grimaced as the tip went in and recoiled, swiping downward to force Zadkiel back.

‘I am an expert swordsman, Ultramarine,’ Zadkiel told him, goading his opponent carefully, ‘as martially skilled as any of the sons of Guilliman. You will not best me.’

‘Enough words,’ Cestus roared. ‘Act!’ He smashed his blade, two-handed, against Zadkiel’s defence. The Word Bearer wove away from the blow, using the Ultramarine’s momentum to overbalance him, forging his parry into a riposte that pierced Cestus’s shoulder beneath the pauldron. A second stinging blow cut a gash across the Ultramarine’s chest and he staggered back.

Breathing hard, using the precious seconds his retreat had given him, Cestus sank into a low fighting posture and went to drive in beneath Zadkiel’s guard. The Word Bearer turned, casually avoiding the Ultramarine’s lunge and placing a fierce kick in his guts.

Doubling over, Cestus felt a sharp pain in his side. There was a flash of blazing light, and he felt heat on his exposed skin as Zadkiel’s power sword came close. Searing agony filled his world utterly as the Word Bearer plunged the blade deep into the Ultramarine’s leg. Cestus fell to one knee, dizzy with pain. Another blow struck him in the chin. It felt like a punch, and he fell over onto his back.

Cestus brought his blade up just in time as Zadkiel launched himself at him, lashing his rapier down against the Ultramarine’s improvised guard. It hovered near to Cestus’s face, his power sword the only thing preventing it from cutting his head clean off. All the while, the shuttle bay and the Furious Abyss disintegrated around them.

‘Give it up,’ hissed Zadkiel, pressing the blade ever closer to Cestus’s throat.

‘Never,’ the Ultramarine snarled back.

‘Calth is dead, Ultramarine!’ shouted Zadkiel. ‘Your Legion is doomed! Guilliman’s head will be mounted on the Crown of Colchis and paraded all the way to Terra! Nowhere is it written that one such as you can change the Word!’

Once, when Cestus was a mere aspirant, one of hundreds drawn from the valleys of Macragge to be judged before the sons of Guilliman, he had scrambled up the steps of the Temple of Hera. He’d defied the whips of the previous year’s failed aspirants, who lashed at the youths as they tried to be the first to reach the top. He had hunted through the forests of the Valley of Laponis. He had learned there, not just that the weak gave up and the strong persevered; he had learned that at a far earlier age, or he would never have been considered an aspirant at all. He had learned that perseverance did not just make the difference between success and failure. It could change the test, and create victory where none had been possible. Will alone could change the universe. That was what made a mere man into an Ultramarine.

It was will alone that allowed Cestus to throw off his attacker in the shuttle bay antechamber, crushing the ruin of Zadkiel’s severed fingers in his fist to loosen the Word Bearer’s hold. It was will alone that brought him to his feet, and will alone that made him cut Zadkiel’s sword, hand and all, from his wrist as he hefted it.

Clutching the stump of his arm where Cestus had cleaved it, the Word Bearer got to his knees and bowed his head.

‘It means nothing, Ultramarine,’ he said with finality. ‘It is the beginning of the end for your kind.’

‘Yet, still we’ll fight,’ he said, and with a grunt Cestus cut off Zadkiel’s head.

The Word Bearer’s lifeless body slid to the ground, as the rest of him rolled across the deck. Cestus sank to one knee beside him and found that he could no longer carry his sword. It clattered to the floor and the Ultramarine pressed his hand against his side. There was blood on his gauntlet. Zadkiel had struck him a mortal blow after all.

Cestus laughed at the ludicrousness of it. It had felt like nothing more than a sting of metal, so innocuous, yet so deadly.

The world was turning to fire around Cestus as he fell bodily beside Zadkiel. The sound of rending metal told him that the integrity of the shuttle antechamber would not hold for much longer.

The Furious Abyss was all but destroyed, the plan for it to cripple the Legion in tatters. The thought gave Cestus some solace in the moments before he died. As his cooling blood pooled around him, he thought of Macragge and of glory, and was finally at peace, his duty ended at last in death.

‘This conclusion to the Word is no conclusion at all, for it shall go on. The future as it is written is but the merest fraction of the wonders that will be unveiled by my vision. When mankind and the warp are one, when our souls are joined in an endless psychic sea, then the truth of reality will be open to all and we shall enter an aeon where even the most enlightened of us shall be revealed to have been groping in the darkness for some truth to sustain us.

Yes, the wonders I seek are but the beginning, and for our enemies, those who would defy the future and attempt to crush the hopes of our species, the pain is only just beginning, too. Our enemies will fight, and they will lose, and destruction will be visited upon them, for it is written. Even beyond those first battles there is a purgatory of the soul that the most tormented of our foes cannot imagine. Yes, for those who will deny their place in the Word, these hateful birth pangs of the future will be but a splinter of their suffering.’

– The Word of Lorgar

THE HORUS HERESY

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

~ Dramatis Personae ~

The Mechanicum

Kelbor-Hal, Fabricator General of Mars, Forge Master of Olympus Mons

Kane, Fabricator Locum of Mars, Forge Master of Mondus Occulum

Urtzi Malevolus, Forge Master of Mars

Lukas Chrom, Forge Master of Mondus Gamma

Regulus, Mechanicum representative of Horus Lupercal

Ambassador Melgator, Mechanicum representative to Terra

Koriel Zeth, Mistress of the Magma City

Ipluvien Maximal, Forge Master of Mars

Semyon, Adept of Mars

Legio Tempestus

Indias Cavalerio, ‘The Stormlord’, Princeps Senioris of the Warlord Victorix Magna

Vlad Suzak, Princeps of the Warlord Tharsis Hastatus

Mordant, Princeps of the Reaver Arcadia Fortis

Kel Sharaq, Princeps of the Reaver Metallus Cebrenia

Basek, Princeps of the Warhound Vulpus Rex

Zafir Kasim, Princeps of the Warhound Raptoria

Lamnos, Princeps of the Warhound Astrus Lux

Legio Tempestus

Camulos, Princeps of Aquila Ignis

The Knights of Taranis

Lord Commander Verticorda, Rider of Ares Lictor

Lord Commander Caturix, Rider of Gladius Fulmen

Preceptor Stator, Rider of Fortis Metallum

Raf Maven, Rider of Equitos Bellum

Leopold Cronus, Rider of Pax Mortis

Servants of the Mechanicum

Dalia Cythera, Transcriber

Zouche Chahaya, Machinist

Severine Delmer, Schematic draughter

Mellicin Oster, Technical overseer

Caxton Torgau, Component assembler

Rho-mu 31, Mechanicum Protector

Remiare, Tech-priest assassin

Jonas Milus, Empath

Behold the coming of the One Supreme Master of Machines!
He comes to you from heaven in the drops of rain.
Sons of Mars listen well, for one will come,
mighty and strong, holding the sceptre of power in his hand.
Clothed in light and fire, his mouth shall utter eternal words,
while his mind shall be a fountain of knowledge and fact.
When the Saviour shall appear ye shall see him as he is,
a man like ourselves and yet greater by far.
This will be the first step in the greatest endeavour of Man.
It shall begin on the highest peak of the dominion of Ares.
When Deimos and Phobos are at apogee and perigee,
there thou shalt see the face of the Omnissiah.
Clad in a body of gold, and wreathed in the firmament of the storm,
the Lord of all Machines will stand in the midst of his people,
and shall reign over all the dominion of Man.
Great shall be the glory of his presence,
that the sun shall hide his face in shame.
For verily I say unto you that he shall be the Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end, the master of flesh and the forger of metal.
He shall be a light that shineth in darkness and a banisher of ignorance.
He shall be the object of devotion and love,
which kings might envy and emperors sigh for in vain!
He shall desire the good of Ares’s realm and the happiness of Man.
All must become one in loyalty and see all men as brothers.
Ruinous wars shall pass away, and peace shall reign among the stars.
Strife and bloodshed and discord will cease.
All men shall be as one kindred.
The divisions of the stars shall all be one!

– The Coming of the Omnissiah, exloaded by Pico della Moravec,
Primus of the Brotherhood of Singularitarianism.

0.01

It never rained on Mars, not any more. Once, when Mars had first known life, back in an age long unknown to man, mighty storms had torn across the landscape, gouging channels in the rock and carving sweeping coastlines from the towering cliffs of the great Mons. Then the world had endured its first death, and the planet had become a cratered red wasteland of empty dust bowls and parched deserts.

But the Red Planet lived to breathe again.

The terraforming of Mars had begun in the earliest days of the golden age of man’s expansion to the stars, bringing new life and hope, but in the end, this was a remission, not a cure. Within the span of a few centuries, the planet had died its second death, choking on the fumes of volcanic forge complexes, continent-sized refineries and the effluent of a million weapons shops.

It never rained on Mars.

That thought was uppermost in Brother Verticorda’s mind as he guided the battered bipedal form of Ares Lictor up the gentle slopes of Olympus Mons towards the colossal volcano’s caldera. Resembling a brutish, mechanical humanoid some nine metres tall, Ares Lictor was a Paladin-class Knight, a one-man war machine of deep blue armour plates with a fearsome array of weaponry beyond the power of even the strongest of the Terran Emperor’s Astartes to bear.

Ares Lictor walked with an awkward, loping gait, thanks to a stubborn knee joint that no amount of ministration from the tech-priests could restore to full working order. But Verticorda handled his mount with the practised ease of one born in the cockpit.

It never rained on Mars.

Except it was raining now.

The brushed orange skies above were weeping a thin drizzle of moisture, patterning Verticorda’s cockpit, and he felt the cold wetness through the hard-plugs in his spine and the haptic implants in his fingers.

He realised that he too was weeping, for he had never expected to witness such a sight, the heavens opening and precipitation falling to the surface of the Red Planet. Such a thing had not happened in living memory, and on Mars that was a long time.

Two other war machines followed Verticorda, his brothers-in-arms and fellow Knights of Taranis. He could hear their chatter over the Manifold, the synaptic congress that linked their minds, but had not the words to convey his own sense of wonder at the sight that greeted them on this day of days.

The sky above Olympus Mons raged.

Billowing storm clouds heaved as though ancient, forgotten gods battled within them, slamming their mighty hammers against wrought iron anvils and hurling forked bolts of lightning at one another. Mars’s largest moon, Phobos, was visible as a yellowed irregularity behind in the clouds, its cratered surface at its closest point to the surface of Mars in decades.

The mighty volcano, the largest mountain in the Tharsis region and indeed the Solar System, soared above the Martian landscape, the dizzyingly high escarpments of its cliffs rising to almost thirty kilometres above the surface of the planet. Verticorda knew this region of Tharsis intimately; he had marched Ares Lictor from the Fabricator General’s forge on the eastern flanks of the mighty volcano three decades ago, and he had led his brother warriors across its slopes uncounted times.

More lightning flashed and the thousands gathering at the base of the volcano gazed fearfully into the building tempest from towering hab-stacks and ironclad bulwarks of Kelbor-Hal’s domain. Abused skies cracked and roared, distorting under the overpressure of something unimaginably vast, and the atmospherics lit up the sky as far as any eye, fleshy or augmetic, could see.

Crowds in their thousands, their tens of thousands, were following the Knights up the slopes of Olympus Mons, but they had not the speed or manoeuvrability of the war machines. This wonder was for the Knights of Taranis and for them alone.

A shape moved in the clouds, and Verticorda halted his mount at the sheer edge of the caldera’s escarpment with a release of pressure on his right hand. The machine reacted instantly. The bond he had forged with it in years of battle was that of two comrades-in-arms who had shared blood and victory in equal measure.

Verticorda could feel the anticipation of this moment in every sizzling joint and weld within Ares Lictor, as though it – more than he – was anticipating the glory of this day. Golden light flashed above and the drizzle of rain became a downpour.

A zigzagging pathway had been cut into the cliff, leading to the base of the caldera, nearly two kilometres below. It was a treacherous path in ideal conditions, but in this deluge it was close to suicide.

‘What do you say, old friend?’ asked Verticorda. ‘Shall we greet these new arrivals?’

He could feel the machine straining beneath him and smiled, easing up the power and walking the Knight towards the edge of the cliff. The steps were designed for the long strides and wide treads of a Knight, but were slick and reflective with rain. It was a long way down and not even the armour or energy shields that protected a Knight in battle would save him from a fall from this height.

Verticorda guided Ares Lictor’s first step onto the cut path and felt the slipperiness beneath its feet as though he walked upon it himself. Each step was dangerous and he took care to ensure that each one was taken with the utmost reverence. Step by step, inch by inch, he walked Ares Lictor down the path to the cratered plain below.

Golden light suddenly burst from the clouds above, dazzling and brilliant, and bolts of scarlet lightning danced like crackling spider webs between the ground and sky. Verticorda almost lost his footing as he instinctively looked up.

A mighty floating city of gold was descending from the heavens.

Like a mountainous spire sheared from the side of some vast, continental landmass, the city was studded with light and colour, its dimensions enormous beyond imagining. A vast, eagle-winged prow of gold marked one end of the floating city, and colossal battlements, like the highest towers of the mightiest Martian spire, rose like gnarled stalagmites from the other.

Rippling engines flared with unimaginable power on the colossal edifice’s underside, and Verticorda stood amazed at the technology required to prevent such a monstrous creation from plummeting to the ground. Flocks of smaller craft attended the larger one, its dimensions only growing larger the more it emerged from its concealing clouds.

‘Blood of the Machine,’ hissed Yelsic, rider of the Knight at his back. ‘How can such a thing stay aloft?’

‘Concentrate on your descent,’ warned Verticorda. ‘I don’t want you losing your footing behind me.’

‘Understood.’

Verticorda returned his attention to the pathway, negotiating the last three hundred metres bathed in a cold sweat. He let out a long, shuddering breath as he took his first step onto the surface of the Olympus Mons caldera, enjoying the strange new sensation of mud sucking at his feet.

By the time the Knights reached the base of the cliff, the enormous craft had landed, its gargantuan bulk surely offset by some dampening field to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight, or sinking deep into the Martian surface. Roiling clouds of superheated steam and condensing gases billowed outwards from the ship and as they swept over Ares Lictor, Verticorda smelled the scents of another world: hard radiation, the ache of homelands long forgotten and thin, achingly cold, mountain air.

He told himself it was ludicrous to sense such things from a ship that had just made the fiery descent through a planet’s atmosphere, yet they were there as plain as day.

‘Spread out,’ said Verticorda. ‘Flank speed.’

The Knights loping alongside him moved into a combat spread as they strode through the hot, moist mists. Verticorda felt no threat from the unknown craft, yet decades of training and discipline would not allow him to approach it without taking precautions.

At last the mist thinned and Verticorda pulled up as the enormous golden cliff of the vessel’s flanks rose up before him like a mountain freshly deposited on the planet’s surface. Its scale was awe-inspiring, more so than even the fastnesses of the Titan Legions or the data mountains of the Temple of All Knowledge.

Even the mightiest forge temple of Mondus Gamma on the Syria Planum paled in comparison to the scale of this vessel, for it had been fashioned with deliberate artifice and not the combined forces of millions of years of geological interaction. Every plate and sheet of the enormous vessel was worked with the care of a craftsman, and Verticorda struggled to think of a reason why so many would labour for so long and with such devotion to ornament a vessel designed for travel between the stars.

The answer came a moment after the question.

This was no ordinary vessel, this was a craft built with love, a craft built for a being beloved by all. No ordinary man could inspire such devotion and Verticorda suddenly felt an overwhelming fear that he was in the presence of something far greater and far more terrifying than anything he could ever have imagined.

A shrieking blast of steam vented from the ship and a colossal hatchway was limned in golden light. Huge pneumatic pistons – larger than a Titan – slowly lowered a long ramp, easily wide enough for a regiment of gene-bulked skitarii to march down in line abreast. The ramp lowered with no sign of strain on the vessel, and the brightness within poured out, bathing the Martian landscape in a warm, welcome glow.

Verticorda twisted Ares Lictor around on its central axis, and felt a shiver travel the length of his spine as he saw the entire rim of the volcano’s crater lined with onlookers. With a thought, he increased the magnification through the viewscreen and saw thousands of robed adepts, menials, tech-priests, logi and workers gathered to watch the events unfolding below.

Crackling, voltaic viewing clouds coloured the sky behind the crowds and flocks of servo-skulls buzzed overhead, though none dared approach within the swirling electromagnetic field that surrounded the craft.

The huge ramp crunched down and Verticorda squinted into the light that blazed from within. A silhouette moved within the light, tall and powerful, glorious and magnificent.

The light seemed to move with him and as Verticorda watched the figure descend the ramp, a shadow fell across the surface of the plain on which the craft had landed. Though he was loath to tear his gaze from the magnificent figure, Verticorda looked up to see a convex ellipse of darkness bite into the glowing outline of the sun.

The light from the storm-wracked skies faded until the only illumination came from the figure as he stepped onto Martian soil for the first time. Verticorda knew immediately that the man was a warrior, for there could be no doubt that this sublime figure had been made mighty by battle.

Verticorda felt the collective gasp from the thousands of spectators in his bones, as though the very planet shuddered with pleasure to know this individual’s touch.

He looked back down and saw the warrior standing before him, tall and clad in golden armour, each plate wrought with the same skill and love as had been lavished upon his vessel. The warrior wore no helm and was fitted with no visible breathing augmetics, yet seemed untroubled by the chemical-laden air of Mars.

Verticorda found his gaze dwelling on the warrior’s face, beautiful and perfect as though able to see beyond the armoured exterior of Ares Lictor and into Verticorda’s soul. In his eyes, his so very ancient eyes, Verticorda saw the wisdom of all the ages and the burden of all the knowledge contained within them.

A crimson mantle flapped in the wind behind the giant warrior and he carried an eagle-topped sceptre clutched in one mighty gauntlet. The golden giant’s eyes scrutinised the blue-armoured form of Verticorda’s mount, from its conical glacis to the aventailed shoulder plates upon which the wheel and lightning bolt symbol of the Knights of Taranis was emblazoned.

The warrior reached out towards him. ‘Your machine is damaged, Taymon Verticorda,’ he said, his voice heavy and yet musical, like the most perfect sound imaginable. ‘May I?’

Verticorda found himself unable to form a reply, knowing that anything he might say would be trite in the face of such perfection. It didn’t occur to him to wonder how the sublime warrior knew his name. Without waiting for a reply, the warrior reached out, and Verticorda felt his touch upon the joints of Ares Lictor’s knee.

‘Machine, heal thyself,’ said the warrior, the purpose and self-belief in his voice passing into Verticorda as though infusing every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with new-found purpose and vitality.

He felt the warmth of the warrior’s touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite. He took an involuntary step back, feeling the movements of his mount flow as smoothly as ever they had. With one step, he could feel Ares Lictor move as though it had just come off the assembly lines, its stubborn knee joint flexing like new.

‘Who are you?’ he gasped, his voice sounding grating and pathetic next to the mighty timbre of the golden warrior’s voice.

‘I am the Emperor,’ said the warrior.

It was a simple answer, yet the weight of history and the potential of a glorious future were carried in every syllable.

Knowing he would never again hear words spoken with such meaning, Verticorda and Ares Lictor dropped to one knee, performing the manoeuvre with a grace that would have been impossible before the Emperor’s touch.

In that moment, Taymon Verticorda knew the truth of the being standing before him.

‘Welcome to Mars, my lord,’ he said. ‘All praise to the Omnissiah.’

1.01

Swathed in faded and tattered robes of rust red, the six Mechanicum Protectors stood unmoving before her, as still as the towering statues of the magi that had stared down upon the thousands of scribes within the great Hall of Transcription of the Librarium Technologica. Their iron-shod boots were locked tight into the ship’s deck restraints, while she had had to hold onto a metal stanchion just to avoid cracking her head on its fuselage or tumbling around the hold when it had taken off.

The interior of the ship was bare and unadorned, as functional as it was possible to be. No unnecessary decorations or aesthetic elements designed to ease the eye were included in its design, perfectly epitomising the organisation to which it belonged.

Dalia Cythera ran a hand through her cropped blonde hair, feeling the dirt and grease there and longing for one of her weekly rotations in the Windward sump’s ablutions block. She had a feeling, however, that her cleanliness was the furthest thing from the minds of the Protectors.

None of them had spoken to her other than to confirm her name when they had removed her from the cell beneath the Librarium in which Magos Ludd had locked her a week earlier. He’d discovered the enhancements she’d made to the inner workings of her cogitator and had hauled her from the work line in a rage, angry hashes of binaric static canting from his vocaliser.

Seven days alone in complete darkness had almost broken her. She remembered squeezing into a tiny ball when the cell door finally opened and she saw the bronze death masks of the Protectors, their gleaming weapon-staves and the unforgiving light of their eyes.

Ludd’s blurted protests at the Protectors’ intrusion soon ceased when they invited him to scan the biometric security encryptions carried within their staves. She was frightened of the Protectors, but then she guessed she was supposed to be. Their masters in the Mechanicum had designed them that way, with their enhanced bulk, weaponised limbs and glowing green eyes that shone, unblinking, behind bronze, skull-faced masks.

Within moments, she had been hauled from the cell and dragged through the cavernous, echoing scriptoria where she’d spent the last two years of her life, her limbs loose and weak.

Thousands upon thousands of robed scribes, ordinates, curators and form-stampers filled the scriptoria, and as she was carried towards the enormous arch that led to the world beyond, she realised she would be sad to leave the knowledge that passed through it.

She would not miss the people, for she had no friends here and no colleagues. None of the pallid-skinned adepts looked up from the monotony of their work, the sea-green glow of their cogitators and the flickering lumen globes floating in the dusty air leeching their wizened features of life and animation.

Such a state of being was foreign to Dalia and it never failed to amaze her that her fellow scribes were so blind to the honour of what they did.

The recovered knowledge of Terra and the new wonders sent back from across the galaxy by the thousands of remembrancers accompanying the expeditions of the Great Crusade passed through this chamber. Despite the glorious flood of information, carefully logged and filed within the great libraries of Terra, every one of the faceless minions ceaselessly, blindly, ground themselves into old age repeating the same bureaucratic and administrative tasks every waking hour of every day, oblivious or uncaring of the wealth of information to which they were privy.

Without the insight or even the will to question the task they had been given to perform, the scribes shuffled from their hab-stacks through the same kilometres of well-trodden corridors every day and performed their duties without question, thought or awe.

The rustle of paper was what Dalia imagined the ocean to sound like, the clatter of adding machines and the rattle of brass keys on the typesetters like the motion of uncounted pebbles on a beach. Of course, Dalia had never seen the things she imagined, for the seas of Terra had long since boiled away in forgotten wars, but the words she read as she copied text from the reams of paper and armfuls of data-slates carried in daily by muscled servitors had filled her mind with possibilities of worlds and ideas that existed far beyond the confines of Terra’s mightiest scriptorium.

Emerging from the musty darkness of the Librarium Technologica, she had been blinded by the brightness of the day, the sky a brilliant white and the sun a hazy orb peeking through scraps of clouds the colour of corrosion.

The air was cold and thin at this altitude. She could just make out the tips of the slate-coloured mountains that crowned the world over the teeming roofs and spires crammed together in this part of the Imperial Palace. She had longed to see the mountains in all their glory, but her escorts marched her through dark streets that sweated steam and oil and voices towards an unknown destination without pause.

That destination turned out to be a landing platform, upon which sat a vapour-wreathed starship, its hull still warm and groaning from the stresses of an atmospheric entry.

She was led into the cavernous hold and deposited on the floor while the Protectors took up their allocated positions and the mag-locks secured them to the deck. With a juddering roar and sudden lurch, the starship lifted off, and Dalia was thrown to her knees by the violence of the ascent. Fear gripped her and she clung to a protruding stanchion as the angle of incline increased sharply.

The thought that she was leaving the planet of her birth struck her forcefully, and she experienced terrible panic at the thought of venturing beyond her known horizons. No sooner had she chided herself for such timidity, than the panic subsided and she felt her stomach cramp as she realised how hungry she was.

The roaring of the starship and the vibrations on its hull grew louder and more violent until she was sure the craft was going to tear itself apart. Eventually, the noise changed in tone and the starship began to level out, powering through the void at unimaginable speeds.

She was travelling on a starship.

With a moment free to think, she now wondered where she was going and why the Mechanicum Protectors had plucked her from the Librarium’s cells and for what purpose. Curiously, she felt no fear of this strange voyage, but she attributed that lack to the mystery and interest of it being enough to overshadow any wariness she felt.

Over the next day or so, her escorts – she did not now think of them as captors – resisted her every attempt at communication, save to instruct her to eat and drink, which she did ravenously, despite the food’s chemical artificiality.

They did not move from their locked positions at all during the journey, standing as mute guardians and offering her no diversion save in the study of their forms.

Each one was tall and powerfully built, their physiques gene-bulked and augmented with implanted weaponry. Ribbed cables and coloured wires threaded their robes and penetrated their flesh through raw-looking plugs embedded in their skin. She had seen Protectors before, but she had never been so close to one.

They smelled unpleasantly of rotten meat, machine oil and stale sweat.

They were armed with giant pistols with flaring barrels, and tall staves of iron, topped with a bronze and silver cog, from which hung a scrap of parchment that fluttered in the gusting air within the cold compartment.

A set of numbers was written on the parchment, arranged in a four by four grid, and Dalia quickly worked out that each line added up to the same number, no matter which way they were combined – vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Not only that, but each of the quadrants, the four centre squares, the corner squares and many other combinations added up to the same figure.

‘Thirty-four,’ she said. ‘It’s always thirty-four.’

The design was familiar to her and Dalia knew she had seen it before. No sooner had she wondered where, than the answer came to her.

‘The Melancholia,’ said Dalia, nodding at the parchment.

‘What did you say?’ asked the Protector.

His voice was human, but echoed with a metallic rasp beneath his bronze mask, and Dalia was momentarily taken aback that he’d actually responded to something she said.

‘The symbol on your parchment,’ she said. ‘It’s from an engraving. I saw it in a book I transcribed two years ago.’

‘Two years ago? And you still remember it?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Dalia, hesitantly. ‘I kind of remember stuff I’ve read and don’t forget it.’

‘It is the symbol of our master,’ said the Protector.

‘It’s from an engraving of one of the old master prints,’ said Dalia, her eyes taking on a glazed look as she spoke, talking more to herself than the Protector. ‘It was so old, but then everything we transcribe in the great hall that’s not from the expedition fleets is old. It was a picture of a woman, but she looked frustrated, as if she was annoyed at not being able to invent something ingenious. She had all sorts of equipment around her, weights, an hourglass and a hammer, but she looked sad, as if she just couldn’t get the idea to take shape.’

The Protectors glanced at one another as Dalia spoke, each one gripping his stave tightly. Dalia caught the look and her words trailed off.

‘What?’ she asked.

The Protector disengaged the mag-lock clamps securing him to the deck and stepped towards her. The suddenness of his motion took her by surprise and she stumbled backwards, falling onto her backside as he loomed over her, the green glow of his eyes shining brightly within his tattered hood.

‘I begin to see why we were sent to fetch you,’ said the Protector.

‘You do?’ asked Dalia. ‘And you were sent for me? Me? Dalia Cythera?’

‘Yes, Dalia Cythera. Rho-mu 31 was sent to fetch you from Terra.’

‘Rho-mu 31?’

‘That is our designation,’ said the Protector.

‘What, all of you?’

‘All of us, each of us. It is all the same.’

‘All right, but why were you sent to fetch me?’ asked Dalia.

‘We were sent to fetch you before you were executed.’

‘Executed?’ exclaimed Dalia. ‘For what?’

‘Magos Ludd invoked the Law of the Divine Complexity,’ explained Rho-mu 31. ‘Individuals so accused attract the attention of our master.’

Dalia thought for a moment, her eyes fluttering beneath their lids as she recalled what that law concerned. ‘Let me think, that’s the belief that the structure and working of each machine has been set down by the Omnissiah and is therefore divine… and that to alter it is, oh…’

‘You see now why we came for you?’

‘Not really,’ admitted Dalia. ‘Anyway, who is your master, and what does he want with me? I’m just a transcriber of remembrance. I’m nobody.’

Rho-mu 31 shook his head, making a fist and placing it over the silver and bronze cog atop his staff.

‘You are more than you realise, Dalia Cythera,’ he said, ‘but that, and more, will become clear to you when you meet our master: High Adept Koriel Zeth, Mistress of the Magma City.’

‘The Magma City?’ asked Dalia. ‘Where is that?’

‘At the edge of the Daedalia Planum, on the southern flank of Arsia Mons,’ said Rho-mu 31, lifting his stave and touching it to an opaque panel on the vibrating hull of the starship. A flickering light crackled, and the panel began to change, slowly becoming more and more translucent until finally it was virtually transparent.

When this transformation was complete, Dalia gasped at the sight before her, her face bathed in a fiery red glow from the planet below. Its surface was clad in fire and metal, its atmosphere choked with striated clouds of pollution. Teeming with gargantuan sprawls of industry larger than the continents of Old Earth, the world seemed to throb with the heartbeat of monstrous hammers.

Plumes of fire and towering stacks of iron rose from its mountainous southern regions, and networks of gleaming steel spread out like cracks in the ground through which fractured light spilled into the sky.

‘Is that…?’

‘Mars,’ confirmed Rho-mu 31. ‘Domain of the Mechanicum.’

Supersonic shells tore through the gaggle of servitors feeding on the dead techno-mats, obliterating one instantly and blowing the limbs from another. Three others staggered back, chunks of flesh blasted from their emaciated frames. They refused to fall, however, their damaged brains unable to comprehend how grievously the guns of Cronus’s Knight had wounded them.

‘All yours, Maven,’ said Cronus, cutting off the stream of shells.

‘So glad you left me something to do,’ replied Maven.

Maven moved Equitos Bellum in behind the bloody servitors, the energised blade in his war machine’s right fist reaching down and slicing through the survivors in one sweep. Old Stator finished off the stragglers with a short, perfectly controlled burst of laser fire, their wasted bodies exploding in puffs of vaporised blood and scrap metal.

Standing five times the height of the feral creatures, the three Knights towered over the battlefield, though Maven knew that to call it such was to vastly overstate the nature of the deaths they had caused.

The Knights were armoured in thick plates of plasteel and ceramite, protected by layered banks of power fields strong enough to weather the impact of a much larger engine’s wrath, and armed with weapons that could kill scores at a time. The plates of their armour were a deep, midnight blue, the right shoulder of each one painted with the design of a wheel encircling a lightning bolt.

The same design was repeated on the long, cream-coloured banners hanging between the mechanised legs of all three war machines, the heraldry of the Knights of Taranis.

Maven rode in Equitos Bellum, an honourable mount with a host of battle honours earned in the earliest days of the Great Crusade. It had fought the enemies of the Imperium beneath a dozen different skies, and even marched alongside the Salamanders of Primarch Vulkan. The design of a firedrake carved into the skull-cockpit of the Knight recalled that campaign, and Maven never tired of telling the stories of that glorious ride into battle.

His studious brother-in-arms, Cronus, rode in Pax Mortis, and old Stator commanded the august majesty of Fortis Metallum. All three war machines had earned their share of glory on the battlefields of the Imperium, marching ahead of the Titan engines, the God-Machines.

The Knights of Taranis were feted among the warriors of Mars for their martial achievements, revered for their place in Martian history, and lauded for the wisdom of their commanders.

Even the mighty princeps of the Titan Legions were known to seek the wise counsel of the order’s masters, for Lords Verticorda and Caturix were known as leaders whose shared command blended the warrior’s heart with the diplomat’s cool.

‘So why, in the name of the Omnissiah are we stuck out in the arse end of nowhere culling feral servitors?’ he asked himself, before remembering that the Manifold-link between the Knights was still open.

‘We’re here because those are our orders, Maven,’ said Stator. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘No, preceptor,’ replied Maven, his tone contrite. ‘I just meant that it seems like such a waste of our strength. Can’t Magos Maximal’s Protectors perform their own culls?’

‘Not as well as we can,’ said Cronus, his answer sounding like it came from a training manual. Maven felt his lip curl in a sneer at his brother’s sycophancy.

‘Exactly, Cronus,’ said Stator. ‘We’ve been given a duty to protect this reactor complex and there is honour in duty, no matter how far beneath us it might seem.’

Maven sensed an opening and said, ‘But the Knights of Taranis once marched with the Crusade. We fought alongside heroes of the Imperium, and now all we do is shoot feral servitors that come up out of the pallidus. There’s no glory in this work.’

‘These days the threats to the Warmaster’s campaigns require forces stronger than us,’ said Stator, but Maven could sense the bitterness beneath his words. ‘The Great Crusade is almost over.’

‘And what will be left for us?’ demanded Maven, emboldened by Stator’s words. ‘There must be expeditions that need the skills of our order.’

‘The expeditions do not ask for Knights,’ said Stator. ‘They ask for the God-Machines to walk with their armies. Our role is to protect Mars and maintain the traditions of our order, and part of that tradition is honouring our obligations. Is that understood, Maven?’

‘Yes, preceptor,’ said Maven.

‘Now let’s finish this sweep and make sure there are no more of them. Maximal needs this facility kept safe, and Lord Caturix swore that we would do so.’

Maven sighed and walked his Knight to where humming power cables jutted from the hard, orange earth and spat sparks where the servitors had dug at them to feed the machine parts of their ravaged bodies. The corpses of the techno-mats and artificers sent to fix the damage lay in pools of blood that were already congealing in the heat that bled from the fusion reactor further back in the gorge.

‘Check for more of them out there, Cronus,’ ordered Stator. ‘They usually hunt in bigger packs than this.’

‘Yes, preceptor,’ replied Cronus, marching his Knight past the dead servitors and through the gap torn in the barbed, chain-link fence that surrounded the reactor. Cronus guided his machine up the rocky slopes to check the ground behind an outcrop of boulders. To manoeuvre so large a machine as a Knight over such rough terrain was no mean feat, and Maven was forced to admire his brother’s skill as a pilot.

Fortis Metallum’s upper body swivelled around on its gimbal waist mount to face Maven, and though he couldn’t see his preceptor’s face through the red visor of the cockpit, he could feel the stern, unflinching gaze through the softly glowing slits.

‘Keep an eye on our rear in case any slipped past us,’ ordered Stator, his voice once again as grim and inflexible as the posture of his machine. ‘I’ll hold you responsible if they have.’

‘Yes, preceptor,’ replied Maven. ‘I’m on it.’

It was a Martian truism that if a warrior and machine spent enough time linked together they would begin to take on aspects of the other’s character. Fortis Metallum was an old machine, cantankerous, flinty and utterly without mercy.

It was the perfect match for Stator.

Maven had met countless Titan drivers and it was easy to tell which machines they commanded within moments of talking to them.

Warhound drivers were belligerent, wolf-like dare-devils, whereas the men who fought from the towering Battle Titans were arrogant and ego-driven warriors, who often appeared to hold those around them in contempt.

Maven knew that such conceit was forgivable, for marching to war so high above the battlefield and unleashing such awesome destructive power would naturally swell a man’s ego, but it was also a necessary defence against the engine’s character overwhelming that of its commander.

Maven walked his machine backwards in a bravura display of skill, watching as Stator turned away to follow Cronus through the mangled remains of the security fencing.

A Knight was much smaller than a Titan, but the mechanics in its construction and operation were no less incredible. A Titan had a crew to maintain its systems: a servitor to man each weapon system, a steersman to drive it, a tech-priest to minister to its bellicose heart, a moderati to run the crew and a princeps to command it.

A Knight was the perfect meld of flesh and steel, a mighty war machine at the command of a single pilot, a warrior who had the confidence to wield its power and the humility to know that, despite that power, he was not invincible.

Maven strode back towards the reactor complex, spreading his auspex net wide to pick up any of the feral servitors that might have broken away from the main pack, though he suspected he would not find any. Even if he did, what threat did a few servitors represent?

Broken and irreparably damaged servitors or those whose cranial surgery had failed to take were often simply dumped in the pallidus, the name given to the toxic, ashen hinterlands that existed between the Martian forges. The vast majority died, but some survived, though to call their doomed existence life was overstating the reality of it.

Most simply attempted to carry out the task for which they had been created, marching back and forth through the wastelands with their fried brains unable to comprehend that they were no longer in service.

In some cases, the damage to their brains allowed them a fragile degree of autonomy and those unfortunate creatures survived by feasting on the dead. Drawn by warmth and power, many banded together in unthinking packs and infested Mechanicum facilities, attacking workers and draining current to sustain their wretched experience.

Such creatures required culling, which brought Maven’s thoughts full circle.

He lifted his head, the motion of the Knight’s cranial carapace following exactly. The crags around the reactor were empty and desolate, the red volcanic peaks scoured by dust clouds blown up by the high winds funnelled along the northern fossae.

The heart of the reactor facility sat six hundred metres back from the fencing that surrounded it, a collection of intricate buildings of pipes, cables and crackling antenna towers. A huge, domed structure sat in the middle of the complex, its surface studded with plugs and vents. The air rippled around the building and intense waves of heat and electromagnetism washed from it in tidal surges.

The trench of the Gigas Fossae was dotted with several fusion reactors, but the facility upon the rocky slopes surrounding the northern impact crater of Ulysses Patera was the largest, and had been built by Magos Ipluvien Maximal.

Adept Maximal was one of the most senior magi of Mars, and his fusion reactors supplied power to a great many vassal forges dotted around the Tharsis uplands. Such arrangements were common across the Red Planet, ancient treaties binding the clans and forges together in reciprocal pacts of protection and supply that allowed such varied groups with conflicting needs to coexist. As well as allied forges, Maximal had exchanged bonds of fealty and supply with a number of warrior orders, including many of the most revered Titan Legios.

‘So why aren’t they here?’ Maven muttered to himself. ‘Too busy arguing amongst themselves is why.’

Maven put thoughts of the increasing tensions on Mars from his mind and made his way forwards, swinging the auspex around by twisting his mount’s upper body, pulverising boulders as its enormous weight crushed them beneath its stride. He needed to cover every approach to the reactor complex, and threat or not, Stator would haul him over the coals were any feral servitors to get past him.

He felt the rocks break beneath Equitos Bellum’s feet, the sensation akin to having his body and senses magnified to the size of the Knight. Mechanicum Protector squads at the edge of the reactor complex saw him and bowed respectfully as his Knight shook the ground with its heavy strides.

Menials and servitors laboured to maintain the giant reactor functions, their movements slow and sluggish in heavily reinforced haz-mat suits. A huge transformer crackled with energy flares, metres-thick cabling and a lattice of conductor towers linking it to the reactor. Blue lightning sparked from the transformer, rippling along the length of ductwork that was visible before the cables delved beneath the regolith and bedrock towards destinations all across the quadrant of Tharsis.

Maven blinked as he felt a tremor through the auspex return, a fleeting impression of something moving on the far side of the reactor. He focused his attention on that part of the cockpit display, enhancing the imagery in an attempt to see what he was receiving.

‘Blood of the Machine,’ he swore as the auspex connected with something big, something throwing off a spider-like pattern of electromagnetic energy much larger than a servitor. For the briefest second it appeared as though a great many other signals accompanied it.

An instant later and it was gone, blinked out as though it had never existed.

More ghost returns faded in and out, and Maven was suddenly unsure as to whether he’d seen anything at all.

A Knight’s auspex was hardwired into the pilot’s senses via a spinal plug, and interpreting the incoming data streams was an art form in itself, a blend of intuition and hard fact. In any case, it was difficult to be sure of anything in this region, the flare-offs and radiation bleeds from the reactor playing havoc with the veracity of auspex returns.

Then the spider pattern flashed again and this time he was certain.

Something was out there, and it wasn’t squawking on any friendly channel.

‘Preceptor, I think I have something,’ said Maven.

‘Define “something”, came the voice of Preceptor Stator.

‘I’m not sure, but it’s coming from the opposite side of the reactor complex.’

‘More servitors?’ asked Cronus.

Maven chewed his bottom lip, willing the sensor return to come again so he could report something more concrete, but the portion of the Manifold dedicated to auspex returns remained steadfastly awash with background radiation.

Still, he was sure that whatever was out there was more than simply feral servitors.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Something bigger.’

The starship banked as its pilot adjusted the angle of attack to allow it to enter the atmosphere safely. The view through the panel that Rho-mu 31 had rendered transparent slid away and Dalia rapped her knuckles against it.

‘I’m assuming this isn’t glass,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Photomalleable steel,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘A burst of current from my stave alters the structure of the molecular bonds within the metal to allow certain forms of light waves to pass through it.’

‘I haven’t heard of anything like it,’ said Dalia, amazed at the potential for such a material.

‘Few beyond the Magma City have,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘It is a creation of Adept Zeth.’

Dalia nodded and returned her attention to the view through the transparent metal. No sooner had she done so, than she found herself staring in wonder at an array of enormous structures, surely too large to have been created by the artifice of mere humans.

Colossal orbital constructions filled the heavens above Mars, a near contiguous array of gigantic shipyards and construction facilities. Dalia pressed her face to the cold panel, craning her neck to see how far the unbelievable conglomeration stretched. Try as she might, she could see no end to the gleaming docks, one end of the arc of steel rising up beyond sight above the ship she travelled in, the other vanishing around the curve of the Red Planet.

‘The Ring of Iron,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘The original exploratory fleets were constructed here and much of the expeditionary fleets were built in these docks.’

‘It’s huge,’ said Dalia, cursing herself for stating something so obvious.

‘They are the largest space docks in the galaxy, though the shipwrights of Jupiter will soon lay claim to the largest ship ever constructed when they complete the Furious Abyss.’

Dalia heard wounded pride in Rho-mu 31’s remark and smiled at the notion that a servant of the Mechanicum would display envy. She returned her gaze to the sight beyond the starship’s hull, seeing firefly sparks dotting the Ring of Iron where new vessels were being constructed by armies of shipwrights.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing towards what appeared to be a nebulous cloud of dust and reflective particles just over the horizon.

‘That is the remains of an active construction site,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘The latest ships to be built here have but recently departed.’

‘Where have they gone?’ asked Dalia, eager to learn what far-off place the new vessels were bound for.

‘They were commissioned for Battlefleet Solar,’ explained Rho-mu 31, ‘but the Warmaster issued a new tasking order to have them despatched to take part in the Isstvan campaign.’

Dalia heard the note of disapproval in Rho-mu 31’s voice, as though it were the greatest sin imaginable to change procedure and alter previously issued orders.

‘Look, there is the fleet they were to join,’ said Rho-mu 31, indicating berths high above them, and Dalia’s mouth dropped open as the mighty warships of Battlefleet Solar came into view.

Distance rendered the fleet small, but to even recognise them and identify individual vessels from so far told Dalia that they were craft of unimaginable scale. From here they were sleek darts with sloping angular prows like ploughs and long, gothic bodies like great palaces hurled into the heavens and wrought into the forms of starships.

The ships were soon lost to sight as creeping fire slid along the length of the starship, the heat of passing through the atmosphere of Mars rippling along the shielded hull of the vessel. Dalia felt a steadying hand on her shoulder, a heavy, metallic hand that gripped her tightly as the starship continued its descent.

Flames and heat distortion soon obscured the view, but within the space of a few minutes it faded, and Dalia saw the surface of Mars in all its glory.

Vast cities of steel, larger and more magnificent than any of the hives of Terra, reared up from the surface, gargantuan behemoths that vomited fire and smoke into the sky. It was called the Red Planet, but precious little remained of the surface that could be identified as that hue. Mountains had been clad in metal and light, and cities and districts perched on the peaks and plateaux of the world named for a long forsaken god of war.

Glittering streams of light twisted and snaked through the few areas of cratered wilderness between the unimaginably vast conurbations, transit routes and mag-lev lines, and towering pyramids of glass and steel reared up like the tombs of forgotten kings.

‘I’ve read about Mars, but I never thought to see it,’ breathed Dalia. To see so many wondrous things in so short a time was nothing less than overwhelming.

‘The Martian priesthood does not encourage visitors,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘They believe the soil of Mars to be sacred.’

‘Isn’t the idea of things being sacred, well… not allowed any more?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ agreed Rho-mu 31. ‘The Emperor advances the credo that belief in gods is a falsehood, but a condition of the Treaty of Olympus was that he swore not to interfere with our structures and society when Mars and Terra were joined.’

‘So the Mechanicum believes in a god?’

‘That is a question with no easy answer, Dalia Cythera. I do not believe in faith, but ask no more, for we are coming in to land and you will need to hold on tightly.’

Dalia nodded as the ship banked sharply, and she watched the world below tilt crazily as the pilot brought them around a shining pyramid bathed in light and topped with a great carving of an eye.

‘The Temple of All Knowledge,’ said Rho-mu 31, anticipating her question.

Dalia felt her stomach lurch as the ship dropped suddenly and a thick curtain of yellow smog obscured the view outside.

They flew through the smog for several hours until, as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished, and Dalia cried out in terror as she saw that they were heading straight into the glassy black flanks of a towering mountain.

1.02

Once again, Dalia’s stomach lurched as the craft’s altitude altered rapidly, climbing at a sickeningly steep angle as the black cliff-face drew closer with terrifying rapidity. Sulphurous fumes wreathed the top of the mountain and the craft plunged into them. Dalia closed her eyes, expecting any moment to have her life ended as they smashed into the immovable mass of rock.

At last she opened her eyes when the feared impact didn’t come and peered breathlessly through the transparent panel in the side of the craft. A sea of glowing red lava heaved and swelled beneath her, the volcanic heart of the planet bubbling up within the giant mountain.

Her view of the volcano’s caldera shimmered and danced in the incredible heat radiating from the lava, and though she was insulated from the unimaginable temperatures, Dalia felt uncomfortably warm just looking at the molten rock.

‘Arsia Mons,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘A dead volcano brought back to life to serve the Mechanicum.’

‘It’s incredible,’ breathed Dalia, looking over to the far side of the caldera, where a huge, industrial city-structure fashioned from what looked like blackened steel and stone rose from the lava like the broadside of a submerged starship. Enormous gates steamed in the lava, and mighty pistons of gleaming ceramite hissed and groaned as they rose and fell. Billowing clouds of superheated steam roared and vaporised like the breath of a host of great dragons, and Dalia saw that they were gaining height to fly over the bizarre structure.

Closer now, she could truly appreciate its enormous size and complexity, a precise series of sluices, overflow channels and pressure gates to keep the lava in motion and circulating through the system that fed the incredible sight on the far side of the volcano.

Guided down the flanks of the mountain in enormous chasms a hundred metres wide, the lava from the volcano fed a vast artificially constructed lagoon, an inland sea of glowing, hissing, bubbling molten rock.

Built upon this sea was the Magma City, and what a city it was...

Dalia’s breath was snatched from her throat as she saw the mighty forge, surely the domain of Rho-mu 31’s master, Adept Koriel Zeth.

All across the bubbling, flame-wracked surface of the lava, blackened cylinder towers soared from the magma beside giant structures in the shapes of flat-topped pyramids that belched fire and steam. Twisting roadways, boulevards, open squares, wide platforms and entire industrial complexes sat upon the raging heat of the lava in defiance of the awesome caged power of the planet’s molten fire.

A golden route traced a path towards a mighty structure of silver in the centre of the colossal metropolis, but it was quickly lost to sight as the craft descended. Thick retaining walls of dark stone surrounded the lagoon, such that it resembled a lava-filled crater, and a colossal plain of sub-hives, hab-zones, landing fields, runways, control towers and a vast container port filled the horizon behind it, abutting the cliff-like walls of the volcano.

Continents of steel-sided containers sprawled outwards from the Magma City, towering skyscrapers of materiel: weapons, ammunition and supplies manufactured in the factories of Mars for the Warmaster’s armies of conquest.

Fleets of enormous vessels filled the skies over the port, rising and descending to the surface of Mars in a veritable procession of steel and retro-fire. Each one was destined for worlds far distant from the Solar System and as valuable to the Great Crusade as any warrior or battleship.

A forest of lifter-cranes swung and groaned over the container port, their heavy, counterbalanced arms moving with leisurely speed in an intricate ballet as an army of servitors, loaders and container skiffs packed the holds of the enormous bulk conveyors with as much as could physically be contained.

Dalia held onto the stanchion as the ship banked, heading towards a landing platform within the city, a glowing cross of light sitting on a boom of metal that jutted out into the lava. The view through the photomalleable steel rippled in the heat, and Dalia found herself becoming nauseous with the disorientation.

Rho-mu 31 placed his stave against the wall, and once more the side of the vessel became opaque. The hull began to vibrate and screech as they descended through the blistering thermals.

‘Do they ever have crashes here?’ asked Dalia, knowing that such accidents could have no survivors. ‘I mean, have any ships gone into the lava?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘It is best not to think of it.’

‘Too late,’ muttered Dalia, as the noises of the ship’s engines changed in pitch from a low rumble to a high-pitched shriek, attitude thrusters firing to correct the riptide air currents. The pilot was clearly having difficulty in lowering their ship to the landing platform, and Dalia closed her eyes, trying not to think of what would happen if they went into the lava.

She tried not to picture the lava searing the meat from her bones, the fumes choking her and the agonising pain of watching her body disintegrate in front of her. Of course she would not live long enough to experience these things, but her mind delighted in tormenting her with these dreadful visions of catastrophe.

Dalia took a deep breath and forced the images from her mind, fighting to keep them from overwhelming her. She felt a thump on the underside of the craft and her eyes flashed open.

‘What was that? Has something gone wrong?’

Rho-mu 31 looked at her strangely, and though the bronze mask concealed his features, Dalia could sense his amusement at her panic.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We have simply landed.’

Dalia let out a shuddering sigh of relief, pathetically grateful to be on terra firma once again… though should that more properly be mars firma? Having said that, how solid could the ground be considered when it was somehow supported on an ocean of liquid rock that could burn her to cinders in the blink of an eye?

A hiss of escaping gases drew her attention to the ramp at the rear of the vessel as it began to lower with a squeal of pistons. A wall of hot air rushed to fill the compartment and Dalia gasped at the sudden heat. Sweat immediately prickled on her brow and her mouth dried of saliva in an instant.

‘Throne alive, it’s hot!’ she said.

‘Be thankful for the heat exchangers and gas separators,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘You would be overcome by the temperature and fumes of this place in moments without them.’

Dalia nodded, following Rho-mu 31 from the interior of the starship. The other members of his squad moved in behind her as she made her way down the ramp, shielding her eyes from the vivid glare of the lava lagoon and the brightness of the rust-coloured sky. After a day or so in the belly of a starship, she realised how starved of the sight of the sky she had been. Even as a scribe in the bowels of the Librarium Technologica, she had been able to see a sliver of sky through the high liturgical windows.

The sky here was low and threatening, the air thick and heavy with particulate matter billowing upwards from flame-wreathed refineries in the far distance. Though she knew the clouds gathering in the distance were not those of weather patterns, but pollution, she could not help but shiver to see them squatting on the horizon like a quiescent threat.

High railings surrounded the landing platform, and tall silver poles topped with buzzing, hissing machinery punctuated the barrier every few metres – the heat exchangers and gas separators Rho-mu 31 had spoken of, she presumed. A swirling cloud of steam surrounded each one, and dripping pipes ran the length of each pole, vanishing into the decking of the platform to dissipate their heat elsewhere.

‘It must take vast amounts of energy to disperse such huge quantities of heat,’ she said, pointing at the machines on the silver poles. ‘What method do you use to filter the harmful gases from the air? Synthetic membranes, adsorption, or cryogenic distillation?’

‘You know of such things?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘Well, I’ve read about them,’ explained Dalia. ‘A number of the old texts from the ruins in the Merican deserts mentioned them and, as with everything I read…’

‘It slotted home in the archive of your memory as a fact to be recovered at a later date.’

‘I guess so,’ said Dalia, faintly embarrassed by the reverent tone she heard in his voice.

She looked away from him as she saw an ochre-skinned vehicle emerge from the nearest structure, a tall tower of black metal, and make its way along the boom towards them. It moved on a number of thin, stilt-like legs, moving with a quirky, mechanical gait, like a stubby centipede. As it drew nearer, she saw the wide-bodied mass of a servitor fused and hard-wired into the front section where one might otherwise expect a driver to sit.

The vehicle came to a halt beside them, the multitude of legs twisting it around on its central axis and lowering it to the deck plates.

Rho-mu 31 opened a door in the side of the vehicle and indicated that Dalia should climb aboard. She stepped onto the centipede vehicle and took a seat on the metal bench along its side, feeling a thrill travel through her at the thought of making a journey on such an outlandish mode of transport.

Rho-mu 31 joined her, but the remaining Mechanicum Protectors did not board.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Dalia, as the vehicle rose up onto its legs once again and set off with a scuttling, side-to-side motion towards the dark tower.

‘We are going to see Adept Zeth,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘She is most anxious to meet you.’

‘Me? Why? I don’t understand, what does she want with me?’

‘Enough questions, Dalia Cythera,’ cautioned Rho-mu 31, not unkindly. ‘Adept Zeth does nothing without purpose and you are here to serve that purpose. What manner your service will take is for her to decide.’

The walking vehicle drew near the tower of black metal, and as Dalia looked back towards the gathering clouds, a sliver of fear wormed its way past her wonder at all the new and incredible sights.

She had been brought to Mars with a purpose in mind, but what might that purpose be and would she live to regret the journey?

The shadow of the tower swallowed her, and Dalia shivered despite the awful heat.

Maven’s first warning was the transformer exploding in a cascade of flames and whipping electrical discharge. A hammering volley of laser fire, like a hundred lightning bolts ripping from the rocks, sawed through the looped coils of metal and liquefied them in an instant. His display dimmed to protect him from blindness, but before the transformer blew, he saw the outline of the aggressor.

Easily as huge as Equitos Bellum, it was spherical and heavily armoured, a pair of monstrous weapon arms at its sides and a myriad of flexible, metallic tentacles crouched over its shoulders like scorpions’ tails.

A trio of convex blisters glowed like baleful eyes on its front, a fiery yellow glow burning from them with a hateful, dead light. The white heat of the explosion obscured the unknown attacker, and by the time the glow had diminished and the Knight’s auto-senses had recovered, the war machine had vanished.

With a thought, Equitos Bellum was on a war footing, weapon generators firing from idle to active, and the high-energy cells that drove his Knight switching to battle mode. He immediately stepped his Knight to one side, crouching low as he saw scores of figures pouring from the rocks with weapons raised.

His eyes narrowed as he recognised them as Protector squads, servants of the adepts of Mars. Things were really getting out of hand.

‘Stator! Cronus! Are you getting this?’

‘Affirmative,’ barked Stator. ‘Engage enemy forces at will. We will be with you directly.’

‘Enemy forces?’ hissed Maven. ‘They’re Protectors!’

‘And they are attacking a facility we are duty bound to protect. Now fight!’

Maven cursed under his breath and shrugged, the huge bulk of Equitos Bellum attempting to match the gesture as he marched the machine into battle. He leaned forward in his command seat, lifting his arms and twisting his head as he sought out the enemy war machine.

What was it, he wondered? Some new form of battle robot or servitor-manned automaton?

Maven shivered as he remembered the dead light in the machine’s sensor blisters, feeling as though it had been looking at him, assessing him and then dismissing him. That thought alone angered him and he could feel the intemperate fury of Equitos Bellum meshing with him in a desire to do harm to the attackers.

The Protectors in grey cloaks were advancing with relentless pace through the reactor complex, gunning down unresisting servitors with quick bursts of laser fire, and engaging Maximal’s Protectors as they sought to defend their master’s holdings.

Maven unleashed a torrent of las-fire from his right arm and the ground erupted in a storm of metal and earth. The ruin of the enemy corpses geysered upwards, a knot of attackers reduced to puffs of exploding meat and boiled blood.

A flurry of gunfire rippled towards him, and he flinched as he felt a power field flash out of existence. Like a Titan, a Knight had a finite bank of energy shields to protect it, but where a Titan’s reactor could replenish its shield strength in time, the Knight’s battery could not. Equitos Bellum was effectively immune to most individual weapons, but the Protectors were combining their fire with accuracy of timing that spoke of a communal battle-link.

Another shield winked out of existence and Maven turned his war machine to face the new threat: a cadre of Protectors armed with long-barrelled high-energy weapons. Maven saw silver bands around each Protector’s skull, recognising the hard-wired component of a targeting web.

He stepped sideways as a blistering beam of light leapt from each of the Protectors’ weapons and achieved confluence where he had been standing not a moment before. He had seconds to act.

Maven’s weapons blazed in a hurricane of light, enveloping the Protectors in a firestorm that obliterated them in an instant and left virtually no remains. He pushed onwards, past the flaming wreckage of the transformer as it spat arcs of lightning and secondary explosions detonated within its ruined shape.

Where the hell had the war machine that had done this gone? And where in the name of Taranis were Stator and Cronus?

An explosion mushroomed skyward from deeper within the complex, and Maven turned Equitos Bellum towards it, the heavy, thudding strides of the Knight shaking the ground with the weight of its tread. Another explosion roared and Maven guided his Knight around the curve of the reactor dome to see his foe with its back to him, unleashing solid spears of plasma flame that ripped through the armoured skin of the fusion reactor’s dome.

The machine’s bulk was enormous, almost as wide as it was tall, and it was equipped with a fearsome array of weapons – some Maven recognised and some that were a mystery to him. Where a Knight’s mode of locomotion was its legs, this machine was mounted on a heavy track unit, blood and oil coating it where it had crushed unfortunate servitors beneath its bulk.

Sheets of molten armour cascaded like burnt paper from the flanks of the reactor dome, and Maven saw it wouldn’t be long before the shielding around the caged fury of the fusion reactions within would be breached. Screaming sirens and flashing emergency lights warned of impending doom.

Despite the heavy crash of his Knight’s footfalls, Maven didn’t think his foe knew he was there. Maven siphoned power from non-essential systems as he prepared to open fire.

One of the metallic weapon-tentacles swivelled around on its mounting, and Maven had the sick feeling that it was looking right at him. Instantly, the rest of the weapon arms not already reducing the armour plating on the reactor to vaporised slag whipped around to face him.

Maven opened fire at the same time as the attacking war machine, his lasers impacting on a number of power fields before tearing one of the weapon arms from its mounting. The return fire struck Equitos Bellum full in the chest, collapsing the last power field and ripping through its armour. Agony roared up through the Manifold and Maven screamed, his hands jerking towards his chest as though the wound had been done to his own flesh.

The Knight staggered, and Maven fought to control its motion through the mist of jarring pain that seared through his every nerve-ending. He wrenched his consciousness from the damage done to Equitos Bellum and felt his vision clear as he saw the enemy war machine preparing to fire again.

Maven sidestepped and lowered his shoulder as another rippling beam of light seared towards him, burning through the edge of his shoulder armour. He flinched, but the damage was superficial and he locked in with his weapon arm, unleashing a stream of laser fire at his enemy’s back.

‘Got you!’ he shouted as the impacts marched over the machine.

The shout died in his throat as he saw that his shots had done absolutely no damage.

A rippling sheath of invisible energy surrounded the machine where none had existed a moment before. Only one explanation presented itself.

The machine was void-shielded.

‘Damn it,’ he hissed and his hesitation almost killed him as the machine spun around on its axis and took time out from its unravelling of the reactor’s armour to fire on him.

Dazzling lasers sleeted past him and Maven desperately walked his Knight back out of the line of fire. Flames boomed to life around him as fuel stores exploded, and he felt the heat wash over his mount. A lucky shot grazed the pilot’s compartment and a sharp crack sliced down through his vision.

Maven screamed in pain, his hand reaching up to his eyes where it felt as though a hot needle had been shoved through to the back of his skull. His vision blurred, but he kept moving, backwards and from side to side, to throw off his assailant’s aim.

Fresh streams of laser fire seared the air around him, but none touched him, and as the pain of Equitos Bellum’s wounding diminished, he dodged the machine’s incoming shots, its fire patterns following textbook sweeps.

But Raf Maven was anything but textbook.

He swung his Knight around the corner of the reactor, sweat streaming down his face and a thin trickle of blood dripping from his nose.

‘Stator! Cronus!’ he yelled. ‘Where in Ares’s name are you?’

Then the reactor exploded.

The stilt-walking vehicle moved through a city of wonders and miracles.

Everywhere Dalia looked she saw something new and incredible. Once lost in the midst of the towers and forges, she realised she had never seen anything like the domain of Koriel Zeth, its design and scale quite beyond anything she had imagined before. Though the Imperial Palace on Terra was much, much larger, she appreciated that the Emperor’s fastness was not so much a piece of architecture, but rather a handcrafted land mass built upon the world’s tallest mountains.

Even on the rare moments she had been permitted to venture beyond the confines of the Librarium, she had only ever seen a fragment of the palace’s majesty, but this place she had seen in its entirety.

Even then, she suspected that what she had seen from the air wasn’t the whole story.

Rho-mu 31 kept his counsel throughout the journey, content to watch the spires and smoke-belching furnaces pass without comment. Nor was this a city without an organic component, for thousands paraded through its razor-straight thoroughfares and shining boulevards.

Hooded menials, grey-skinned servitors and glittering, holo-wreathed calculi mingled on the metal streets of the Magma City. Robed tech-adepts moved like royalty through the crowds, carried on floating palanquins or wheeled chariots of golden metal, or borne aloft on what looked like gilded theatre boxes with slender stilt legs. All of them bore the number grid symbol of Adept Zeth somewhere about their person.

How any of them didn’t collide was a mystery to Dalia, though she presumed that each one would have some kind of onboard navigational system, which linked to a central network that monitored speeds, trajectories and potential collisions.

She shook her head free of the thought and forced herself to concentrate on enjoying the journey. Too often she was being distracted when she saw something new and incredible. Her thoughts would seize on this unknown factor, searching her memory for something similar before sending the creative part of her mind into a freewheeling spin as she attempted to account for the technological explanation of this new phenomenon.

They were heading for the centre of the Magma City, that much was obvious, the unmoving, unblinking servitor fused with the vehicle’s control mechanisms conveying them unerringly through the heaving mass of bodies.

Their course took them onto the golden boulevard she had seen from the air, its sides lined with statues and thronged with robed acolytes. At the far end, Dalia saw a towering structure of what looked like bright silver or chrome.

As if fashioned from precisely machined blocks of silver steel, the forge was etched with geometric patterns like those of a circuit diagram, though Dalia had no idea what manner of circuit was described in its design. The servitor increased the speed of their vehicle and the enormous building soon grew in stature until Dalia’s neck hurt with craning to look up at its blocky enormity.

A portion of the wall at the base of the forge slid apart and sections of the building seemed to retreat within its structure, forming a gleaming ramp that led up to a vast portico halfway up the building’s side.

Dalia gripped the handrail as their vehicle began the ascent, looking behind her as the ramp disappeared as soon as they passed. The portico loomed large above them and now she truly appreciated how enormous it was, each column fashioned in the shape of an enormous piston and capped with cog-shaped capitals.

The entire building was designed as if it were a moving machine, and for all Dalia knew, perhaps it was.

At last the vehicle levelled out and the clacking of its many legs ceased as it came to a halt on the portico’s wide plinth. The floor was milky white marble with dark veins running through it, and the columns towered above her. The underside of the pediment was decorated with unknown equations and diagrams picked out in glittering mosaics of gold. The sheer visual splendour was overwhelming.

A wall of bronze doors led into the mighty structure. All were open and from them poured a host of robed figures. Each wore its hood drawn forward to cover its head and each wore the number grid of Adept Zeth as a veil. Many carried strange devices in open boxes or upon their backs.

Leading the figures was a tall, slender adept with a lithe, muscular physique and a cloak of golden-red bronze that billowed behind her in the swirls of hot air.

Without introduction, Dalia knew this must be the Mistress of the Magma City: Adept Koriel Zeth.

Her body was sheathed in a flexible skin of bronze armour, her attire more like that of a warrior woman than a master of technology.

Her features were invisible, hidden behind a studded head mask and opaque goggles. Puffs of steam exhaled from a rebreather mask and a skirt of bronze mail hung low over her shapely armoured legs. Though her body armour obscured all traces of Zeth’s humanity, there was no doubt as to her sex.

Every curve and every plate of armour had been designed to enhance her natural form, her slender waist, the curve of her thighs and the swell of her breasts. Fully a third of a metre taller than Dalia, Adept Zeth approached, and a delicate mist of atomised perfume came with her.

She leaned down to stare at Dalia, the glossy black orbs of her goggles like those of an insect regarding some interesting morsel that had just wandered into its lair. Zeth’s head cocked to one side and a burst of static hissed from the bronze mesh to either side of her rebreather.

Moments passed before Dalia realised that the static had been directed at her, a blurted hash of machine noise intelligible to the binaric fluent.

‘I can’t understand you,’ she said. ‘I don’t speak lingua-technis.’

Zeth nodded and her head twitched as though a switch had flicked inside it.

‘What relationship does the ideal gas law represent?’ asked Zeth, her voice rasping and the words sounding as though they had been dredged up from a little used repository of linguistic memory.

Of all the welcomes, this was one Dalia had not anticipated. She closed her eyes, casting her mind back to one of the first books she had transcribed in the Librarium, a textbook recovered from beneath a ruined tech-fortress of the Yndonesic Bloc.

‘It describes the relationship between pressure and volume within a closed system,’ said Dalia, the words recited by rote from memory. ‘For a fixed amount of gas kept at a fixed temperature, the pressure and volume are inversely proportional.’

‘Very good. I am Adept Koriel Zeth. And you are Dalia Cythera. Welcome to my forge.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dalia. ‘It’s very impressive. Did it take long to build?’

Zeth looked her up and down, the sound of electronic laughter crackling from her voice unit. She nodded. ‘It did indeed. Many centuries of work were needed to build this forge, but even now it is not complete.’

‘It isn’t? It looks complete.’

‘From without, perhaps, but within there is much yet to be achieved,’ said Zeth, her delivery growing more fluent as she spoke. ‘And that is where you come in.’

‘How do you even know me?’

‘I know a great deal about you,’ said Adept Zeth, looking at the space above Dalia’s head. ‘You are the only daughter of Tethis and Moraia Cythera, both deceased. You were born in medicae block IF-55 of the Ural Collective seventeen years, three months, four days, six hours and fifteen minutes ago. You were trained to read and write at age three, indentured to the Imperial Scriptorium aged six, and trained in the art of transcription aged nine. You were apprenticed to Magos Ludd aged twelve and assigned to the Hall of Transcription aged fifteen. You have six commendations for accuracy, twelve citations for inciting behaviour deemed to be incompatible with working practices and one instance of imprisonment for violating the Laws of Divine Complexity.’

Dalia looked up, half-expecting to see illuminated letters displaying her life story for Adept Zeth. She saw nothing, but it was clear from the tone of Zeth’s voice that she was reading these facts from somewhere.

‘How do you know all that?’ she asked.

Zeth reached down and brushed a metallic fingertip across Dalia’s cheek, and she felt a warm glow as the electoo implanted beneath her skin upon her induction to the Hall of Transcription came to life. She reached up and placed a hand on her skin.

‘You can read my electoo?’

‘Yes, but I can discern much more than simple biographical knowledge,’ replied Zeth. ‘All data can be read, presented and transferred with a glance. Though invisible to you, I see a liminal skein of data filling the air around you, each ghost of light a fact of your life. I can see everything about you, all the things that make you a person in the eyes of the Imperium.’

‘I’ve never heard of anything like that.’

‘I am not surprised,’ said Zeth with a trace of pride. ‘It is a function of data retrieval and transfer that I have only recently developed, though I have great hopes for its eventual employment throughout the Imperium. But I did not bring you to my forge only to impress you with my technological developments, I brought you here because I believe your understanding of machines and technology runs parallel to mine.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Martian Priesthood is an ancient organisation and is learned in the ways of technology, but our grasp of such things is limited by blind adherence to dogma, tradition and repetition. I believe that our future lies in the understanding of technology, that only by experimentation, invention and research will our progress be assured. This view is not widely held on Mars.’

‘Why not? Seems perfectly sensible to me.’

Zeth made the crackling, static laugh again. ‘That is why I sought you out, Dalia. You have a skill I believe will prove very valuable to me, but one that others will fear.’

‘What skill is that?’

‘You understand why machines work,’ said Zeth. ‘You know the principles by which they function and the science behind their operation. I accessed the schematics of what you did to your cogitator station and followed the methodology you employed upon the circuitry. It was quite brilliant.’

‘I didn’t really do anything special,’ said Dalia modestly. ‘I just saw how I could make it work faster and more efficiently. Anyone could have done it if they’d put their mind to it.’

‘And that is why you are special,’ replied Zeth. ‘Few could have made the mental leaps to see the things you saw, and even fewer would dare. To many of the Martian Priesthood, you are a very dangerous individual indeed.’

‘Dangerous? How?’ asked Dalia, quite taken aback by the notion that she might be thought of as a danger to anyone, let alone the priests of the Mechanicum.

‘Mars enjoys a pre-eminent position within the Imperium thanks to our grip on technology,’ continued Zeth. ‘Many of my fellow adepts fear the consequences of what might happen were that advantage to slip beyond their control.’

‘Oh,’ said Dalia. ‘So what is it you want from me?’

Adept Zeth drew herself up to her full height, the bronze of her armoured skin gleaming red in the reflected glow of the orange skies.

‘You will be part of the salvation of Mars,’ she said. ‘With your help, I will perfect my greatest work… the Akashic Reader.’

1.03

Ascraeus Mons was a volcano, yet the atmosphere within the Chamber of the First was anything but warm. The fortress of Legio Tempestus had been one of the earliest established on Mars in ancient times and as one of the highest volcanoes on the Red Planet, it was fitting that it housed one of its most ancient and respected Titan orders.

Carved within the basalt rock of the mountain, the demesne of Tempestus was known as a place of courage and wisdom, a place where warriors of honour came to settle their disputes without violence.

Indias Cavalerio watched from the Princeps Gallery as emissaries from many of the great Legios took their seats within the great amphitheatre carved into the cliffs of the enormous caldera of his order’s fortress, knowing the smiles and warm greetings being exchanged hid undercurrents of mistrust and widening divisions.

Divisions that were becoming all too common on Mars.

There was Grand Master Maxen Vledig of the Deathbolts conversing with Princeps Senioris Ulriche of the Death Stalkers, their apparent bonhomie masking decades of disputes involving ancient territorial rights along the borders of the Lunae Palus and Arcadia regions. Across the hall, encased in his life-sustaining exo-skeleton and aloof from all others, was Princeps Graine of Legio Destructor. A dozen others had answered the call to attend the Council of Tharsis, as Lord Commander Verticorda had already dubbed it with his usual taste for the grandiose.

Only Mortis was yet to appear.

Verticorda stood in the centre of the grand, echoing amphitheatre, leaning on his ebony, thunderbolt-embossed cane, and swathed in the shadow of Deus Tempestus, the First God-Machine of Legio Tempestus.

Towering over the assembled warriors, the great steel engine had stood sentinel over the deliberations of Legio Tempestus for half a millennium, its majesty undimmed and its power tangible, though it had not moved so much as a single joint in over two hundred years.

Next to Verticorda was Lord Commander Caturix, the hunched, ancient warrior’s brother-in-arms and fellow master of the Knights of Taranis. Where Verticorda was aged and revered for his wisdom, the newly appointed Caturix was beloved for his fiery passion, which complemented his fellow commander’s more cautious temperament.

Ever since Verticorda had bent his knee to the Emperor more than two hundred years ago, the joint commanders of the Knights of Taranis had served as the Princeps Conciliatus between the warrior orders of Mars. It would be their job to ensure that the coming gathering was conducted in a manner befitting the most ancient warrior guilds, that tradition was upheld and honourable discourse permitted.

Cavalerio did not envy them that role, for tensions were running high and this latest insult to an adept of Mars had pushed the mightiest warrior orders close to open confrontation, a state of affairs that had not transpired on the red sands for uncounted centuries.

Not only that, but warriors from the Knights of Taranis had been involved in this latest combat, so they were hardly likely to be objective. Verticorda could be trusted to keep his anger in check, but Caturix paced the mosaic floor of the chamber like a caged beast.

Skirmishes between orders were far from uncommon; after all, warriors needed outlets for their aggression to develop their skills and foment the proper bellicose attitude needed to command the God-Machines.

Lately, these had threatened to boil over into outright warfare.

The sheer affront of the attack on Ipluvien Maximal’s fusion reactor on the slopes of Ulysses Patera had sent shock waves through the Martian community, though to call such a competitive, uncooperative, suspicious and insular organisation as the Mechanicum a community seemed perverse to Cavalerio.

He ran a hand over his scalp, the surface hairless and punctured by sealed implant plugs at his nape that allowed him to command the mighty engines of Legio Tempestus. Similar implants were fused to his spine, and haptic receptors grafted to the soles of his feet and along the tactile surfaces of each of his hands allowed him to feel the Titan’s steel body as though it were his own flesh.

Cavalerio’s frame was tall and wiry, the dress uniform that had once fitted his well-proportioned frame snugly now hanging from his thin body, the result of decades spent vicariously exerting himself through the actions of a Warlord Battle Titan instead of in the gymnasium.

As he looked over at the mighty form of Deus Tempestus, he found himself longing to ascend the elevator to his own venerable war machine, Victorix Magna. The glowering iron face of the ancient war machine stared down at him, the head of a mechanical god of war that lived in his dreams every night.

In those dreams he would be striding across the ashen red plains of Mars on his last march, Deus Tempestus responding to his every command with the familiarity of two warriors who had fought shoulder to shoulder since their earliest days.

Each time he would wake and, finding sleep impossible, walk through the darkened, sparsely populated hangars of the Ascraeus Mons. The hangars were largely empty, since the bulk of the Legio’s strength was deployed throughout the Warmaster’s expedition forces, pushing the extremities of the Emperor’s realm ever outwards and bringing the last worlds of the galaxy under the sway of the Imperium.

His steps would unerringly lead him to the Chamber of the First, where he would watch the sunrise, staring up at the shadowed form of the colossal war machine, its weapons silent and its war banners fluttering in the downdrafts from above.

Cavalerio’s brothers fought under the command of Lord Guilliman, and he could think of no better warrior to lead so august a Legio. He and the few Battle Titans now back on Mars were approaching the end of their refit after campaigning in the Epsiloid Binary Cluster against the greenskin and would soon rejoin the war to assure humanity’s birthright to rule the stars.

He eagerly awaited their redeployment, for life beyond the cockpit of a Titan was made up of long moments of incompleteness, every experience deadened. His physical surroundings were bland and tasteless without first being filtered through the Manifold of his Battle Titan.

The moment of connection with an engine was painful, as though it resented the time spent separated from its commander, and it took time to wrestle the warlike heart of the machine to compliance. But once that union had been achieved… oh, how like a god did it feel to be master of the battlefield and lord of so terrible and mighty a power?

Separation was no less painful; the angry need of the Titan to walk made it disinclined to allow its commander to leave without punishment. Aching bones, thudding headaches and searing dislocation were the hallmarks of a separation, and each time was harder than the last.

For now, it was possible for Cavalerio to retain some semblance of humanity, to walk as a man, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he would require a more permanent enmeshing within an amniotic float-tank of liquid information.

The thought terrified him.

He shook off such fears as he saw a ripple of motion near the floor of the chamber and heard a murmur of agitation pass through the Chamber of the First.

Cavalerio looked down from the gallery, seeing two warriors in long dark cloaks and grinning skull-faced helmets stride into the chamber with purpose and strength.

Legio Mortis had arrived.

‘You deny that your order took part in the attack on Adept Maximal’s reactor?’ demanded Lord Commander Caturix. ‘That engines of the Legio Mortis wilfully destroyed an artefact of technology and endangered the lives of warriors from the Knights of Taranis?’

‘Of course I do,’ snapped Princeps Camulos, his hooded features making no secret of his disdain for the accusation and his accuser. Despite Verticorda’s cautious welcome to the assembly, Caturix had wasted no time in setting the tone by marching straight towards the senior princeps of the Legio Mortis and all but calling him out for the damage done to his warriors in the reactor’s explosion.

Cavalerio watched the young lord commander, the youngest in the history of the Knights of Taranis, sneer at Princeps Camulos’s answer, plainly disbelieving what he was hearing.

He watched as Caturix circled like a shark in the water with the scent of blood, forced to admire his nerve in facing down so senior a princeps.

Men had been rendered down into servitors for less.

Legio Mortis’s disdain for the Knight orders was well known, as was their reluctance to share power in the Tharsis region from their fortress within Pavonis Mons. With the destruction of Adept Maximal’s forge, it would be difficult for many of the local warrior orders to remain viable – leaving Mortis the undisputed masters of Tharsis, one of the most abundant and productive regions of Mars.

All of which was enough for the finger of suspicion to point squarely at Legio Mortis, but not enough to hang them. Mortis and Tempestus had long been rivals for dominance of Tharsis, but was that enough to condemn Camulos and openly damn his Legio with this new atrocity?

Camulos was a towering bear of a man, more suited at first glance to be the chieftain of a tribe of bloodthirsty barbarian warriors, but his sheer self-belief and aggressive nature made him a natural Titan commander, easily able to bend the will of a war machine to his own. His armour was black and glistening as though lacquered, the death’s head emblem upon his broad shoulder guards a gruesome testament to his Legio’s famed ruthlessness.

‘I did not come here to be barked at,’ snarled Camulos. ‘Keep your young pup on a tight leash, Verticorda, or I may break him for you.’

Verticorda nodded slowly. ‘The question is withdrawn, honourable princeps.’

Caturix whipped his head around to face his fellow lord commander, but a stern glare from Verticorda silenced the angry outburst that Cavalerio saw gathering in his throat.

‘This council is not a trial or indeed any kind of inquiry,’ continued Verticorda, his voice laden with centuries of authority and redolent with wisdom. ‘It is an organised debate whereby the warrior orders of the Tharsis region might gather to discuss the troubles afflicting our world and decide how to meet them without further bloodshed. Adept Maximal has suffered a grievous loss to his holdings, but we are not gathered here to assign blame, but to see how we, as the guardians of Mars, might avoid such things in the future.’

Cavalerio looked over to where the robed form of Ipluvien Maximal stood in the shadow of Deus Tempestus, as though he took comfort in the nearness of so complex and revered a machine. Adept Maximal had joined the proceedings immediately after the arrival of the Legio Mortis, his corpulent machine-frame wreathed in icy puffs of air vented from the layers of thermal barrier fabrics that cooled the spinning data wheels that made up the bulk of his body.

His head was an oblong helmet of gold fitted with a multitude of lenses upon telescopic armatures, and a morass of sheathed coolant cables emerged from beneath his robes like black tentacles, upon which sat hololithic plates streaming with glowing lines of data.

So far, Maximal had said nothing, save to acknowledge the primacy of Verticorda and Caturix in the proceedings, content simply – to watch and record events as they unfolded.

‘And how do you suggest we do that?’ asked Camulos. ‘By accusing honourable orders of warriors of acts of piracy? To suggest that we would stoop so low as to attack the holdings of an adept so highly regarded as Adept Maximal is outrageous!’

Cavalerio looked over as Maximal inclined his golden head at Camulos’s compliment. The words felt too tacked on to be believable. For all his bluster, the raid on Maximal’s reactor bore all the hallmarks of Legio Mortis – swift, brutal and leaving virtually no survivors.

Only the three Knights had survived to speak of the attack, and all of them had suffered severe damage to their machines in the reactor’s detonation. Gun camera footage of the confrontation had been lost in the explosion, and the only clue to the identity of the attacker was a brief description from the sole Knight who had seen the machine.

‘In any case, what possible reason could Legio Mortis have for undertaking such an act? We are all servants of the Warmaster, are we not?’

Mixed murmurs of assent and disagreement spread around the chamber, and Cavalerio felt his choler rise that so many could blindly agree with so facile a statement. Rivalry or not, such a comment could not go unanswered.

Cavalerio rose from his seat in the Princeps Gallery and said, ‘You mean the Emperor’s forces, surely?’ Heads turned as he rose to his feet and awkwardly descended the steel steps towards the chamber’s floor.

Camulos watched him approach, squaring his shoulders as though they were about to brawl. ‘The Warmaster is the Emperor’s proxy, it is one and the same.’

‘No, actually,’ replied Cavalerio, taking the floor, ‘it’s not.’

‘The Chamber recognises Princeps Cavalerio, the Stormlord of Legio Tempestus,’ said Verticorda, using the war-name his Legio had given him in the early days of his command.

Cavalerio gave a respectful bow to the lord commander and then to Deus Tempestus before turning to Princeps Camulos. The man’s wide shoulders and enormous presence dwarfed him.

‘Pray tell why it is not the same thing?’ demanded Camulos.

‘The armies we serve are those of the Emperor, not the Warmaster,’ said Cavalerio. ‘No matter that Horus Lupercal commands them, every man, woman and machine that fights in this crusade is a servant of the Emperor.’

‘You are splitting hairs,’ spat Camulos, turning away.

‘No,’ repeated Cavalerio, ‘I am not. I know that your Legio has pledged a great deal of its strength to the Sixty-Third Expedition and to the Warmaster. I believe that to be dangerous.’

Camulos turned back towards him. ‘Dangerous? To swear loyalty to the glorious warrior who commands the military might of the Imperium while the Emperor retreats to the dungeons beneath his palace? To swear loyalty to the hero who will finish the job the Emperor is too busy to finish? That is dangerous?’

‘The Warmaster is a sublime warrior,’ agreed Cavalerio, ‘but it would be a mistake to think of those armies as belonging to him. Our first loyalty must be to the Emperor, and only a blind man could fail to see how this division is affecting Mars.’

‘What are you talking about, Cavalerio?’ snapped Camulos.

‘You know what I am talking about. Nothing is said and nothing is ever recorded, but we all know that lines are being drawn. The divisions between the adepts of Mars grow ever more vocal and bitter. Long buried schisms are stirred and ancient feuds reignited. The attack on Adept Maximal’s reactor is just the latest example of violence that’s rising to the surface and spilling out onto the red sands. The factions of belief are mobilising and our world is on the verge of tearing itself apart. And for what? A semantic difference in belief? Is such a thing worth the bloodshed it will no doubt unleash?’

‘Sometimes war is necessary,’ said Camulos. ‘Did not the Primarch Alpharius say that war was simply the galaxy’s hygiene?’

‘Who knows? It is certainly attributed to him, but what weight do his words carry on Mars? Any war fought here will not be for hygiene, but for misguided beliefs and differences in theology. Such things are anathema to the Imperium, and I will not be drawn into war by the beliefs of religious madmen.’

‘Madmen?’ said Camulos, with exaggerated horror. ‘You speak of the senior adepts of Mars? Such words from a respected princeps.’

Cavalerio ignored the barb and addressed his next words to the assembled princeps and warriors of the Titan orders. ‘Every day, the Legios and warrior orders receive petitions from forges all over Tharsis, begging our engines to walk. And for what? Differences of opinion in belief? It is madness that will see us all burn in the fires of an unnecessary war, and I for one will not lead my warriors into battle for such things. The Legios have always been the defenders of Mars, and we have always stood above the squabbles of the Mechanicum. We have always done so, and must do so now. We must not allow ourselves to be baited.’

‘True sons of Mars know that the fire of the forge burns hottest when it burns away impurities,’ retorted Camulos. ‘If blood must be shed to preserve the glory of Mars, then so be it. Kelbor-Hal, the Fabricator General of Mars himself, receives emissaries from the Warmaster, and the great forge masters Urtzi Malevolus and Lukas Chrom have already pledged their labours to Horus Lupercal. Who are we to doubt their wisdom?’

‘Then this is not about belief,’ said Cavalerio. ‘It’s rebellion you’re talking about.’

A gasp of horror swept the chamber at Cavalerio’s words. To even speak of such things was unheard of.

Camulos shook his head. ‘You are a naïve fool, Cavalerio. The things you speak of have been in motion for centuries, ever since the Emperor arrived here and enslaved the Mechanicum to his will.’

‘You speak out of turn!’ cried Lord Commander Verticorda. ‘This is treachery!’

An angry hubbub filled the Chamber of the First, with princeps, moderati, engineers, steersmen and armsmen rising to protest – either at Camulos’s words or at Verticorda’s accusation.

Following Cavalerio’s example, the senior princeps of Legio Mortis turned to the shouting warriors and said, ‘We are shackled to the demands of Terra, my friends, but I ask you why that should be? We were promised freedom from interference, but what freedom have we enjoyed? Our every effort is bent to the will of the Emperor, our every forge dedicated to fulfilling his vision. But what of our vision? Was Mars not promised the chance to reclaim its own empire? The forge worlds long ago founded in the depths of the galaxy are still out there awaiting the tread of any Martian son, but how long will it be before the Emperor claims them? I tell you now, brothers, that when those worlds are held by Terra, it will be next to impossible to reclaim them.’

Camulos turned his gaze upon Deus Tempestus and said, ‘Princeps Cavalerio is right about one thing though: a storm is approaching where our vaunted neutrality will not stand. You will all need to choose a side. Choose the right one or it will devour even you, Stormlord.’

Dalia stared at the complex lines radiating from the plans before her, the notations in a tightly-wound gothic script that made reading them next to impossible. Numbers, equations and hand-written notes conspired to make the confusing arrangement of circuit diagrams, build arrangements and milling plans almost unintelligible.

‘Give it up, Dalia,’ said Zouche, with his customary angry tone. ‘We’ve all been over this a hundred times. It doesn’t make any sense.’

Dalia shook her head. ‘No. It does, it’s just a case of following the path.’

‘There is no path,’ said Mellicin, her voice arch and weary. ‘Don’t you think I’ve tried to follow the plans? It looks like Adept Ulterimus didn’t think the standard methodology applied to his own work.’

Dalia rested her arms on the wax paper upon which the plans had been printed. These, of course, were not the originals, which had been drawn many thousands of years ago, but copies transcribed by later adepts over the centuries. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. She knew she ought to be used to the defeatist carping of her fellows, but their daily negativity was beginning to get to her.

She took a calming breath, picturing the oceans of Laeran, as described by the poet Edwimor in his Ocean Cantos, which she’d transcribed nearly a year ago. The image of that far distant planet’s world-oceans always calmed her, and she badly needed that calm now, for time was running out.

No sooner had Koriel Zeth welcomed Dalia to her mighty forge than the adept had turned on her heel and marched deep into the sweltering depths, announcing that Dalia was being taken to where she would be tested.

Dalia had never been comfortable with tests, knowing she tended to clam up, and her mind go blank whenever she was asked a difficult question, let alone made to sit any form of exam. She often wondered how she’d managed to pass her transcription assessments.

The gleaming halls of the Magma City were spacious and functional, geometrically precise and machined with a smooth grace. Though there was utter devotion to function in its architecture, form was not overlooked and there was great beauty in the mechanisms of Zeth’s forge. Menials and lowly adepts threaded the halls, chambers and cavernous workspaces, every one according Adept Zeth the proper respect as she passed.

Each new chamber brought fresh wonders of engineering and construction: enormous, cogged machines surrounded by crackling arcs of lightning; thudding pistons driving unknown engines and enormous caverns of steel where thousands of techno-mats toiled at bronze workbenches on the tiniest mechanisms with delicate silver callipers and needle-nosed instrumentation.

At last they came to a wide chamber lined with rack upon rack of gleaming tools and fabrication devices that she could not even begin to name. A tall plan chest stood at one end of the chamber and four robed individuals stood around a workbench at its centre, each one shaking her hand and nodding as she was introduced to them.

First was Mellicin, a tall, handsome woman of middling years from the Merican continent, with smooth brown skin and a grafted augmetic faceplate over the left side of her face. She had been coolly welcoming, her remaining eye sizing Dalia up and down with the look of a professional assayer.

Next was a swarthy, stunted individual by the name of Zouche, a native of what had once been known as the Yndonesic Bloc. His handshake was curt and his brusque welcome had a hollow ring to it. Dalia was not tall by any means, but even she towered over Zouche. She estimated his height at no more than a metre.

Next to Zouche was a woman named Severine, who had the look of a teacher about her. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and her pale-skinned features looked as though they might crack if her thin lips creased open with even the fraction of a smile.

Last was a smiling youth who went by the name of Caxton, perhaps a year or two older than Dalia, with a boyish face and a tonsured mop of unruly black hair. His features were open, and of all the greetings she had received his felt the most genuine, and she recognised his accent as having its origins somewhere not too distant from her own homelands, possibly the eastern slopes of the Urals.

With introductions made, Adept Zeth had lifted a number of waxy sheets of paper from the plan chest and laid them flat on the workbench in the centre of the room.

‘This,’ she announced, ‘is one of the last great unrealised designs of Adept Ulterimus, developer of the Sigma-Phi Desolator Engine. Data appellations name it as a theta-wave enhancer designed to stimulate long-term potentiation in humans.’

Ignoring their blank looks, Zeth continued. ‘It has been transcribed faithfully by the tech-archivists of Ipluvien Maximal from the data fragments recovered from Adept Ulterimus’s tomb below the Zephyria Tholus, and you are going to build it. You will have access to workspace, tools, materials and servitors to perform the manual labour. Within seven rotations you will demonstrate a working prototype.’

With that, Adept Zeth had departed with a swirl of her bronze cape, leaving the five of them alone in the workspace.

The first day had been spent in working out what the device was intended to do, no small feat in itself, given that the transcribers had been literal in copying out Ulterimus’s spelling mistakes, corrections and the exact shape and texture of his many crossed-out workings. Sketched images and rough diagrams scattered throughout the plans gave some clues to the device’s function, but it was a painstaking process just to divine what requirement this unrealised device was intended to fulfil.

A pecking order had quickly established itself within their group, with Zouche and Caxton deferring to Severine, who in turn took her lead from Mellicin. Dalia found her place within that hierarchy when she alone was able to decipher the notes and diagrams enough to understand the device’s purpose.

‘It’s a machine for enhancing the communication between neurons in the brain,’ said Dalia after a frustrating hour of unravelling a thread of randomly scrawled notes. ‘According to these notes, Ulterimus seemed to believe that a process known as long-term potentiation was what lay at the heart of the formation of memory and learning. It seems to be a cellular mechanism of learning, where the body is induced to synthesise new proteins that assist in high-level cognition.’

‘How does it do that?’ asked Severine, looking up from redrawing the circuit diagrams and synaptic flow maps.

‘By the looks of this molecular formula, it achieves its function by enhancing synaptic transmission,’ said Dalia, her eyes darting rapidly over the drawings. ‘This wave generator vastly improves the ability of two neurons, one presynaptic and the other postsynaptic, to communicate with one another across a synapse.’

Dalia’s fingers spiralled over the drawing, her eyes flitting back and forth across the paper and her own notations, oblivious to the looks she was receiving from her fellows as she spoke, the words sounding as though they came from the deepest recesses of her brain.

‘Neurotransmitter molecules are received by receptors on the surface of the postsynaptic cell. When it’s active, the device improves the postsynaptic cell’s sensitivity to neurotransmitters by increasing the activity of existing receptors and vastly increasing the number of receptors on the postsynaptic cell surface.’

‘Yes, but what does that actually mean?’ asked Caxton.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ asked Dalia, looking up from the plan.

The silence of her fellows told her it was not. She tapped the plans with her fingertips and said, ‘The device is designed to enormously enhance a person’s ability to tap into areas of the brain that we almost never use, increasing their ability to learn and store information at a rate way beyond anything human beings have ever been able to achieve before.’

‘But it doesn’t work,’ pointed out Caxton.

‘Not yet,’ agreed Dalia. ‘But I think I know how we can make it work.’

‘Do you think she is right?’ asked Ipluvien Maximal, watching Dalia explaining the function of Ulterimus’s device on a flickering holo-screen. ‘Can she get it to work? No one else has succeeded in a thousand years and you think she can do it in seven rotations?’

Koriel Zeth didn’t answer her fellow adept for a moment, letting the chilled gusts of air that wafted from his permanently cooled data frame tease the few organic portions of her flesh that still faced the world.

Maximal’s words were artificially rendered, but Adept Lundquist had crafted his vox-unit and the sound of his voice was virtually indistinguishable from an organically created one. Such an affectation seemed ridiculous to Zeth, given the artificiality of the rest of Ipluvien Maximal, but every adept had his own particular idiosyncrasies, and she supposed hers might seem no less ridiculous to others.

‘I believe she can,’ said Zeth. Her voice was still created by human vocal chords, but rendered hollow and metallic by the studded face mask she wore. She wasn’t used to employing her flesh-voice, but indulged Maximal’s peccadillo without complaint. ‘You saw the schema of the device she altered on Terra. How could she have done that without some unconscious connection to the Akasha?’

‘Blind luck?’ suggested Maximal. ‘A million servitors working on a million plans might eventually hit upon something that works by accident.’

‘That old truism?’ smiled Zeth. ‘You know that’s impossible.’

‘Is it? I’ve seen a few of my servitors perform tasks that weren’t included in their doctrina wafers. Though, admittedly, my servitors do not function as ably as I would prefer.’

‘Only because Lukas Chrom outbid you for the services of Adept Ravachol, but that’s beside the point,’ said Zeth, irritated by Maximal’s digression. ‘Dalia Cythera made intuitive leaps of logic, and where she found gaps in the technology, she filled them with working substitutes.’

‘And you believe that is because the organic architecture of her brain is attuned to the Akasha?’

‘Given that I have eliminated various other factors that might account for her innate understanding of technology, it is the only explanation that fits,’ replied Zeth. ‘Though she does not know it, she unconsciously accesses the wellspring of all knowledge and experience contained within the Akasha, encoded in the substance of the aether.’

‘By aether, you mean the warp?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why not call it that?’

‘You know why not,’ cautioned Zeth. ‘There is danger in such association, and I do not want prying eyes misunderstanding the concept of what we are trying to do here, not before we fully understand the processes by which we can access the Akashic records and learn that which our ancient forebears understood without the need for dogma and superstition.’

‘The source of all knowledge,’ sighed Maximal, and Zeth smiled beneath her mask. Appealing to Maximal’s obsessive hunger for knowledge was a surefire means of quashing any concerns he had regarding their work.

‘Indeed,’ said Zeth, baiting the hook some more. ‘The history of the cosmos and every morsel of information that has ever existed or ever will exist.’

‘If she can build this device then we will be able to unlock the full potential of the Great Reader.’

‘That is my hope,’ agreed Zeth, running a golden hand across the icy surface of Maximal’s chill body. She could feel the subtle vibration of the data wheels churning within the mechanisms of his body, as though in anticipation of learning the innermost workings of the universe. ‘If she can build Ulterimus’s device, then we can enhance the empath’s mind to the degree where it will be fully receptive to the knowledge impressed upon the aether. Then we will know everything.’

‘Yes… the empath,’ said Maximal. ‘The use of a psyker disturbs me. If Dalia Cythera already has a connection to the aether, why not simply use her as the conduit?’

Zeth shook her head. ‘Prolonged exposure to the aether eventually burns the conduit out. There are plenty of psykers to be had, but Dalia is one of a kind. I would not be so careless with such a valuable resource as to squander her.’

Her answer seemed to satisfy Maximal and he said, ‘It is great work we do here, but there will be those who seek to stop us if they should learn of it.’

‘Then we must ensure that they do not.’

‘Of course,’ nodded Maximal. ‘But already I detect the interest of the Fabricator General and his cronies in the work carried out in your forge. Info-feeds gossip on the air and data packets are like bodies, they do not stay buried forever. You are a brilliant technologist, but you make few allies with your open scorn for Kelbor-Hal. Be careful you do not make too many enemies and attract undue attention. Such things may cost us dearly.’

‘You speak of the attack on your reactor?’

‘Amongst other things,’ replied Maximal, watching the holographic image of Dalia as she organised her fellow workers in their tasks. ‘At the Council of Tharsis, Princeps Camulos denied involvement in the attack, and, much as it surprises me, I believe him.’

‘Really? From what I gather, Mortis are agitating for open warfare between the factions.’

‘True, and the destruction of my prime reactor would be a logical first step in weakening their strongest opponent, Legio Tempestus, for they greatly depended on its output.’

‘The Magma City will cover their shortfall.’

‘I told Princeps Cavalerio that very thing,’ said Maximal, ‘but you and I both know that is only a temporary solution. Mortis and Tempestus are rivals of old, and with the reactor gone, the strength of those friendly to our cause grows weaker.’

‘So why do you not suspect Legio Mortis involvement?’

Maximal sighed, another affectation since he had no lungs to speak of, and a mist of cold air billowed around him. ‘Camulos’s bluster was too confident. He knew we couldn’t prove anything because there was nothing to prove. He may have helped plan the attack, but I do not believe any engines from Mortis took part.’

‘Then who did?’

‘I believe Chrom was behind the execution.’

‘Chrom? Because you do not like him?’

‘I find his manner insufferable, that is true, but there is more to it than that,’ said Maximal with a precisely modulated conspiratorial tone of voice. ‘There are rumours of the work he is pursuing in his forge, experiments on engines designed with artificial sentience.’

‘Rumours? What rumours? I have heard nothing of this,’ said Zeth.

‘Few have,’ said Maximal slyly, ‘but few things escape my data miners. It is whispered that Chrom has even built such an engine. Supposedly, it matches the description given by the Knight pilot who saw the machine that attacked my reactor.’

Zeth shook her head. ‘If Chrom has built an engine with artificial sentience, he would be a fool to let it be destroyed.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t destroyed,’ said Maximal. ‘If it escaped into the pallidus we could search for a hundred years and not find it.’

Zeth sensed hesitancy in Maximal’s manner, as though there were other facts he was aware of, but was unsure about sharing.

‘Is there something else?’ she asked.

Maximal nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps. Each time a rumour of this machine surfaces, the data conduits whisper a name… Kaban.’

Zeth ran the name through her internal memory coils, but found no match for it.

Maximal read her lack of information in the streams of data floating in her infosphere and said, ‘Even I can find only the most cryptic reference to Kaban in the vaults. Supposedly, he was an ancient potentate of the Gyptus who built the lost pyramid of Zawyet el’Aryan. Though in the few hieratic records that remain, his name is transliterated as Khaba, which may either imply dynastic problems or simply that the scribe was unable to fully decipher his name from a more ancient record.’

‘And the relevance of this?’

‘Purely academic,’ admitted Maximal, ‘but, interestingly, the records hint that Khaba may be the king’s Horus name.’

‘A Horus name? What is that?’ asked Zeth, knowing that Maximal loved to show off the vast expanse of his archives in his knowledge of ancient times.

‘The kings of Gyptus often chose names that symbolised their worldly power and spiritual might to act as a kind of mission statement for their rule,’ said Maximal, and Zeth could hear the whir of data wheels as he called up more information. ‘Usually the king’s name was carved upon a representation of his palace with an image of the god Horus perched beside it.’

‘The “god” Horus?’

‘Indeed, the name is an ancient one,’ said Maximal. ‘A god of the sky, of the sun and, of course, war. The ancient Gyptians so enjoyed their war.’

‘And what did this Horus name symbolise?’ asked Zeth, intrigued despite herself.

‘No one knows for sure, but it seems likely that it was to imply that Khaba was an earthly embodiment of Horus, an enactor of his will if you like.’

‘So you are suggesting that this machine, whatever it is, was built for Horus Lupercal.’

‘That would be a logical conclusion, especially as Chrom enjoys the favour of the Fabricator General, and we all know whose voice he listens to.’

‘I have heard this before, but I cannot believe Kelbor-Hal values the counsel of the Warmaster over the Emperor.’

‘No? I hear that Regulus has recently arrived in the Solar System with missives from the Sixty-Third Expedition. And his first port of call is Mars, not Terra.’

‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ pointed out Zeth. ‘Regulus is an adept of the Mechanicum, there is no reason to suspect any ulterior motive behind his coming to Mars first.’

‘Perhaps not,’ agreed Maximal, ‘but when was the last time an emissary from the fleets reported to Mars before the Sigillite of Terra?’

1.04

If any of the tissue that caused the chemical and neurological reactions associated with awe were still part of what little organics remained of the Fabricator General’s brain, he would no doubt have found the view through the polarised glass that topped the peak of his forge awesome.

But Kelbor-Hal – as his human name had once been – was capable of little in the way of emotional response these days save bitter anger and frustration.

Far below him, the vast forge complex of Olympus Mons stretched away beyond sight, the towering manufactorum, refineries, worker-habs, machine shops and assembly hangars covering thousands of square kilometres of Mars’s surface.

The vast hive of manufacture was home to billions of faithful tech-priests of the Machine-God, the great and powerful deity that governed every aspect of life on Mars, from the lowliest tertiary reserve unit of the tech-guard to the mightiest forge master.

Greatest of the structures arrayed before him was the Temple of All Knowledge, a towering pyramid of pink and black marble, crowned with a dome of glittering blue stone and a forest of iron spires that pierced the sky and pumped toxic clouds into the atmosphere.

Vast pilasters framed a yawning gateway at its base, the marble inscribed with millions of mathematical formulae and proofs, many of which had been developed by Kelbor-Hal himself. Mightier, and home to more workers, priests and servitors than the Mondus Gamma complex of Urtzi Malevolus – where untold thousands of suits of battleplate and weapons were produced to supply the Astartes Legions of the Crusade – the Olympus Mons forge was less a building and more of a region.

The Fabricator General knew he should be proud of his accomplishments, for he had uncovered more technology than any before him and had overseen the longest reign of increasing production quotas in the Mechanicum’s long history.

But pride, like many other emotional responses, had all but vanished as the organic cogitator once housed in his skull had been gradually replaced with synthetic synapses and efficient conduits for logical thought. The Fabricator General was over eighty per cent augmetic, barely anything that could be called human remaining of his birth-flesh, a fact of which he was supremely glad.

While the fleshy organ remained in his head, he could feel every biological portion decaying with each passing moment, each relentless tick of the clock a moment closer to the grave and the loss of everything he had learned over the centuries.

No, it was better to be free of flesh and the doubts it fostered.

Far below, thousands of workers filed along the stone-flagged roadway of the Via Omnissiah, its surface worn into grooves by the sandalled feet of a billion supplicants. A score of Battle Titans lined the wide road, their majesty and power reminding the inhabitants of his city, though they needed no reminding, of their place in the equation that was the workings of Mars.

Monolithic buildings flanked the roadways – factories, machine temples, tech-shrines and engine-reliquaries – all dedicated to the worship and glorification of the Omnissiah. Vast prayer ships filled the sky above the volcano, gold-skinned zeppelins broadcasting endless streams of binaric machine language from brass megaphones. Bobbing drone-skulls trailing long streams of code on yellowed parchment swarmed behind the zeppelins like shoals of small fish.

The people below would be hoping their prayers would cause the Machine-God to turn his face towards them and grant a boon. To many of those below, the Omnissiah was a tangible being, a golden figure that had last trod the surface of Mars two centuries ago…

The False God who had enslaved the Martian priesthood to his will with his lies.

The Fabricator General turned from the vista spread before him, his own fiefdom, as he heard a chiming blurt of binary from the ebony-skinned automaton – robot was too crude a word for a work of such genius – standing behind him.

Its form was smooth, athletic and featureless, a gift from Lukas Chrom some years ago that sealed the compact between them. Had the automaton worn a suit of skin, its form would have been indistinguishable from that of a human. Such was Chrom’s genius with automata that he could craft designs in metal and plastic so perfectly that they would have shamed the Creator of Humanity himself had he existed.

Though its form appeared unarmed, it was equipped with a multitude of digital weapons worked into the lengths of its fingers, and energised blades could spring from its extremities at a moment’s notice.

The automaton was warning him of approaching life forms, and the Fabricator General turned his attention to the brass-rimmed shaft in the floor behind him. The pale, rubberised mask of humanity he wore when meeting those who served him slipped over his mechanised face, a face that had been unrecognisable as human for many years.

A wide disc of silver metal, ringed with brass and steel guard rails, rose up through the floor with a pneumatic hiss. Borne upon the disc were four individuals, three swathed in the robes of adepts of the Mechanicum, one in the dark, fur-collared robes of an ambassador.

The circuitry on the back of the mask meshed with the machine parts of Kelbor-Hal’s face, the features of his false visage manipulated into the approximation of the human expression of welcome.

<My fellow adepts, welcome to my forge,> he canted with a binary blurt precisely modulated to convey his authority and wealth of knowledge.

The dark-robed figure, Ambassador Melgator, stepped from the transit disc and inclined his head towards the Fabricator General. Melgator was no stranger to this place, his political duties taking him all across Mars – but always bringing him back to report on the machinations and tempers of the Martian adepts.

Save for the ribbed cabling covering the elongated cone of his skull, the man’s face was loathsomely organic, his skin waxy and his eyes saturnine, dark and reptilian. Melgator had sacrificed the gift of further augmentation since his role as Mechanicum ambassador often took him to the gilded halls of Terra. The fleshy rulers of the Emperor’s realm were stupidly squeamish with those whose communion with the Machine-God rendered them strange and almost alien to their limited perceptions.

Behind Melgator came two of Kelbor-Hal’s most trusted followers, adepts who had followed his lead in all things, who had sworn the strength of their forges to him: Adept Lukas Chrom and Adept Urtzi Malevolus.

Chrom was the larger of the two adepts, his wide-shouldered frame swathed in a deep crimson robe that did little to disguise the many mechanised enhancements with which he had been blessed. Ribbed pipes and cables looped around his limbs and linked into a hissing power pack that rose like a set of wings at his back.

His human face had long since been replaced by an iron mask fashioned in the form of a grinning skull. Wires trailed from the jaw and a pulsing red light filled both eye sockets.

Master Adept Urtzi Malevolus favoured a dark bronze for his face mask, and a trio of green augmetic eyes set into the metal illuminated the interior surfaces of his red hood. The master of Mondus Gamma’s red robes were fashioned from vulcanised rubber, thick and hard-wearing, and a monstrously large power pack was affixed to his back, its bulk held aloft by tiny suspensor fields. Remote probe robots darted back and forth from his body, kept in check by the coiled cables that connected them to the senior adept.

Current flowed between their three forges as a sign of good faith, shared freely and without recourse to monitoring. Of course the greater part of that current was directed to the Fabricator General’s forge complex, but such was his right and privilege as master of Mars.

The final figure to join the Fabricator General in his sanctum was one who had not set foot on Mars for some time, an adept who had seceded his forge and all its holdings to Kelbor-Hal when he had left to accompany the 63rd Expedition to the furthest corners of the galaxy. His robes were a deep red and gave no clue to what form lay beneath them, though Kelbor-Hal knew that little remained of his humanity.

His name was Regulus and this favoured son of Mars had returned with news of the Warmaster’s campaigns.

‘Fabricator General,’ said Regulus with a deep bow, making the Icon Mechanicum with clicking metal digits that unfolded from beneath his robes. ‘I welcome the flow of current from your forge along my limbs and within the primary locomotive engine of my body. Power whose generation comes not from Mars is bland and without vitality. It serves, but does not nourish. Each time I return to the wellspring of power and knowledge of Mars I realise how much poorer is energy generated beyond our world.’

‘You honour my forge, Regulus,’ replied Kelbor-Hal, acknowledging the compliment and turning his attention to his vassal adepts. ‘Chrom, Malevolus. You are welcome here as always.’

The two adepts said nothing, knowing that Kelbor-Hal could read their acceptance of his dominance by the subtle fluctuations of their electrical fields.

‘What news of the Warmaster?’ asked Kelbor-Hal.

In the little contact he had with emissaries from Terra, the Fabricator General was often forced to indulge humans in needless oral formalities, protocols and irrelevant discourse until the subject eventually turned to the matter at hand. With adepts of the Mechanicum such trivial matters were deemed irrelevant and quickly dispensed with. This entire conversation would be conducted in the binary fluency of the lingua-technis, a language that left no room for uncertainty or ambiguity of meaning.

‘Much has happened since the Emperor took his leave of the expeditionary forces,’ said Regulus. ‘Alignments shift and new powers emerge from the shadows, offering their aid to those with the strength of vision to heed them. Horus Lupercal is one such individual, and he is now assuredly a friend of the Mechanicum.’

Kelbor-Hal’s language centres easily read the implications of Regulus’s words and, though his emotions had long since been cut from him like a diseased tumour, old rancour rose to the surface as he recognised sentiments identical to those espoused in the bargain struck with Terra.

‘I have heard words like that before,’ he said, ‘when Verticorda led the Emperor to my forge over two centuries ago and I was forced to bend the knee to him. The ruler of the grubby Terran tribes promised us an equal role in his grand crusade of conquest, but where is that vaunted equality now? We toil to provide his armies with weapons of war, but receive nothing for our efforts but platitudes. Horus Lupercal is a warrior of vision, but what does he offer but more of the same?’

‘He offers these,’ said Regulus, as a silver-skinned arm rose from behind his shoulders, a delicate bronze calliper clutching a data wafer of silver and gold. Regulus reached up and took the proffered wafer with one of his primary arms before offering it to the Fabricator General.

‘On the world of Aurelius, the Warmaster’s Legion met and overcame a foe known as the Technocracy. Its armed forces bore a striking similarity to those of the Astartes and it was clear that they had access to functioning STC technology.’

‘Standard Template Construction,’ breathed Adept Malevolus, unable to keep the hunger from his voice. Kelbor-Hal had long been aware that both Malevolus and Chrom retained some unpleasantly human traits: avarice, ambition and desire to name but a few. Distasteful and unseemly in such senior adepts, but useful when it came to aligning their factions to his own.

‘This Technocracy had access to a functioning STC?’ pressed Malevolus.

‘Not just one,’ said Regulus, with more than a hint of theatricality. ‘Two.’

‘Two?’ asked Chrom. ‘Such a thing has not been seen in a hundred and nineteen years. What manner of STCs did they possess?’

‘One for the construction of a hitherto unknown mark of Astartes battleplate and another for the production of lightweight solar generators capable of supplying the power needs of an Epsilon Five pattern forge complex. Unfortunately, the actual Construct machines were destroyed by the rulers of the Technocracy before Imperial forces could secure them.’

Kelbor-Hal could see Malevolus and Chrom look hungrily at the STC wafer, an artefact that contained information worth more than both their forges combined, flawless electronic blueprints created from miracles of design and technological evolution: machines that could design and construct anything their operators desired.

Such machines had allowed mankind to colonise vast swathes of the galaxy, before the maelstrom of Old Night had descended and almost wiped humanity from existence. To discover a working Construct Machine was the greatest dream of the Mechanicum, but to have fully detailed plans created by such a machine ran a close second.

Kelbor-Hal could feel their desire to snatch the data wafer from Regulus in the crackling spikes in their radiating electrics.

‘Horus Lupercal sends these gifts to Mars together with a solemn promise of an alliance with the Priesthood of Mars. An alliance of equals, not of master and servant.’

Kelbor-Hal accepted the data wafer, surprised to feel a tremulous thrill of excitement at the thought of what he might learn from its contents. It was a thin sliver of metal, fragile and insignificant, yet capable of containing every written work on Terra a hundred times over.

No sooner had his metallic fingers touched the wafer than his haptic receptors read the data in a flow of electrons, and he knew that Regulus spoke the truth. Genocidal wars had been fought for information less valuable than was contained on this wafer. Millions had died in search of technology worth a fraction of its value.

In centuries past, the Mechanicum had waged war on the tribes of Terra, despatching expeditionary forces to humanity’s birth world to plunder forgotten vaults of ancient citadels and wrest the buried secrets of the third planet’s ancient technology from those who did not even know it was there, let alone how to use it.

The Emperor had built his world on the bones of this long-buried science, and, unwilling to share it, had fought the soldiers of Mars and hurled them back to the Red Planet before travelling to Mars in the guise of the Omnissiah and a peacemaker, albeit a peacemaker who came at the head of an army of conquest.

The peace that was offered was illusory, a conceit designed to conceal a darker truth.

The Emperor offered peace with one hand while keeping a dagger behind his back with the other. In reality, the Emperor’s offer was an ultimatum.

Join with me or I will simply take what I need from you.

Faced with a choice that was no choice at all, Kelbor-Hal had been forced to bargain away the autonomy of Mars and become a vassal planet of Terra.

‘These are great gifts indeed,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘Given freely?’

Regulus bowed his head. ‘As always, my master, you cut to the heart of matters with the precision of a laser. No, such gifts are not given freely, they come with a price.’

‘A price?’ spat Chrom, the glare of his eyes flaring in response. ‘The Warmaster seeks to exact more from us? When we have already pledged him the strength of our forges!’

‘You seek to back out of the bargain with the Warmaster?’ demanded Regulus. ‘We knew great things would be asked of us, but the measure of us is how we react to these challenges. Great reward comes only with great risk.’

Kelbor-Hal nodded, the blank face of his face mask slipping into the bland countenance of a conciliator. ‘Affirmation: Regulus is correct; we have come too far to balk at paying a price for such things. Already we and our allies strike at those without the vision to see that Horus Lupercal is the true master of mankind.’

‘The things we have done,’ said Adept Malevolus. ‘The schemes we have set in motion. We have come too far and committed too much to back away from the fire simply because we fear its heat, Lukas. The destruction of Maximal’s reactor, the death of Adept Ravachol… were they for nothing?’

Chastened from two sides, Chrom bowed his head and said, ‘Very well, what does the Warmaster ask?’

Regulus said, ‘That when it comes to strike, we guarantee to have Mars firmly under our control. The dissident factions must be quashed so that the forces of the Warmaster may launch his bid for supremacy without fear of counterattack. Any factions loyal to Terra must be brought to heel or destroyed before the Warmaster’s forces reach the Solar System.’

‘He asks much of us, Regulus,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘Why should we not believe we would merely be swapping one autocrat for another?’

‘Horus Lupercal pledges to return the Martian Empire to its former glory,’ said Regulus, with the practiced ease of a statesman. ‘Further, he swears to withdraw any non-Mechanicum forces from the forge worlds.’

Ambassador Melgator stepped forward, his black, mail-fringed cloak rustling on the smooth floor of the observation chamber. The ambassador rarely spoke when any but he and the object of his attention could hear him, and Kelbor-Hal eagerly anticipated his words.

‘With respect, Adept Regulus,’ said Melgator. ‘The Warmaster, blessed be his name, has already asked us for a great deal and we have delivered. Materiel and weapons are priority tasked to expeditions he favours and delayed to those not aligned with him. He now asks more of us, and are these, admittedly valuable, STCs all he promises us in return? What else does he offer as proof of his continued friendship?’

Regulus nodded, and Kelbor-Hal saw that he had anticipated the question, the prepared answer flowing smoothly from his vocabulator.

‘A shrewd question, ambassador,’ said Regulus. ‘Horus Lupercal has given me an answer that I believe will satisfy you.’

‘And that is?’ asked Malevolus.

Regulus seemed to swell within his robes. ‘The Warmaster will lift all restrictions on research into the forbidden technologies. To that end, I bring the protocols that will unlock the Vaults of Moravec.’

A heavy silence descended on the gathered adepts, as the weight of the Warmaster’s offer hung in the air like a promise too good to be true.

‘The Vaults of Moravec have been sealed for a thousand years,’ hissed Chrom. ‘The Emperor decreed that they never be opened.’

‘And that means what to us?’ sneered Malevolus. ‘We already plot against the Emperor, what does one more betrayal matter?’

‘The Warmaster has the power to open them?’ asked Melgator.

‘He is the Emperor’s proxy,’ pointed out Regulus. ‘What the Emperor knows, the Warmaster knows. All it will take to unlock the vault is your agreement to the Warmaster’s designs.’

‘And if we do not agree?’ asked Kelbor-Hal, already extrapolating what great treasures and as yet unknown technologies might lie within the ancient vault. Moravec had been one of the most gifted of the ancient tech-adepts of Terra, a man who had fled to Mars to escape persecution at the hands of superstitious barbarian tribes of the radiation wastelands of the Pan-Pacific.

‘If you do not agree, I will wipe the means of opening the vault from my memory coils and it will remain sealed forever,’ said Regulus. ‘But that will not be necessary, will it?’

‘No,’ agreed Kelbor-Hal, his pallid features twisted in a grimace of a smile. ‘It will not.’

‘No, at that length the pin can’t be that thin,’ said Dalia. ‘It’ll melt at the temperatures we’re expecting inside the cowl transformer.’

‘But any thicker and it won’t fit inside the cowl,’ replied Severine, rubbing the heels of her palms against her temples and deliberately laying down the electro-stylus upon the graphics tablet. ‘It won’t work, Dalia, you can’t make it fit and if there’s no pin, the cowl won’t remain precisely locked in place over the cardinal points of the skull. Face it, this design won’t work.’

Dalia shook her head. ‘No. Ulterimus knew what he was doing. This is how it has to be.’

‘Then why is there no design for the cowl restraint?’ demanded Severine. ‘There’s no design because he knew it wouldn’t work. This whole project isn’t something he ever intended to build – it was a theoretical exercise.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ persisted Dalia, turning to the wax paper drawings of the device that the long-dead Ulterimus had produced. As she had for the last five rotations, she pored over the plans and diagrams she had painstakingly copied and updated to fill in the blank spots where the design was incomplete.

They were so close.

In the centre of the workspace Adept Zeth had furnished them, a gleaming silver device that resembled a highly modified grav-couch was taking shape. Caxton lay underneath, assembling the circuit boards in the back support, while Zouche was machining the drum cylinders that would insulate the electrical conduits once the internal workings of the device were complete.

Mellicin circled the device, which was large enough to bear a fully grown human in a reclined position, her arms folded before her and one finger beating an irregular tattoo against her teeth.

It had taken them a full five rotations to get this far, and with only two to go, they were either on the brink of their greatest triumph or doomed to ignoble failure. Despite the awkward frigidity of their initial meeting, they had worked well as a team, and relations had thawed in the face of each other’s skills.

Zouche was an engineer of rare talent, able to machine working parts with great skill and precision in amazingly short times. Caxton had proven to have an intuitive grasp of how machine parts fitted together, which, together with his uncanny knack of appreciating the knock-on effects of even the smallest change in the structure of a circuit, made him the ideal candidate to assemble the device.

Severine was a draughtsman extraordinaire, able to render Dalia’s haphazard sketches into working drawings from which parts could be manufactured. Mellicin was skilled in all aspects of engineering and had a wide breadth of knowledge that covered the gaps that existed between the group’s specialisations. Not only that, but her organisational abilities were second to none, directing their labours with domineering efficiency once she understood the breathtaking scale of Dalia’s vision.

Contrary to her expectations, Dalia found herself warming to Mellicin, recognising the woman’s initial frostiness as no more than a need for Dalia to prove herself.

Since Dalia had divined the purpose of the machine Ulterimus had designed, their work had progressed at an exponential rate, but they had run into a problem that threatened to prevent them from completing their project: a means of linking and supporting the cowl that would cover the head of whoever sat in the machine.

It seemed laughably trivial, yet it held the key to the entire device. Too thin and it would melt, breaking the connection to the skull; too thick and it would not fit between the precisely machined, necessarily compact, components and would provide a surface area from which current would undoubtedly flare – thus disrupting the delicate balance of electrical harmonics generated within the subject’s brain.

To be thwarted by such a basic, yet fundamental, problem was uniquely frustrating, and Dalia began to understand why the device had never been successfully constructed.

As Severine held her head in her hands, Dalia’s eyes wandered over the drawings, letting the lines and curves of the design wash over her, the notations and measurements swimming around like leaves in a storm. Each portion of the design spun around in her head, each part interlinked and each motion subtly affecting the next with its variation.

Dalia felt her hands moving across the wax paper, hearing the scratch of the stylus she wasn’t aware she’d picked up, as she doodled without thinking. The portions of the design that didn’t exist were grey patches in her mind, as though the solution to the entire problem lay shrouded in a thick fog.

No sooner had that image come to mind than it was as if a stiff breeze sprang up within her, the clouds of fog thinning and golden lines of fire appearing in their depths. Each line linked the spinning parts of the design, drawing them in tighter and tighter, as though a spun web was drawing all the disparate parts together.

Dalia felt her excitement grow, knowing that she was on the verge of something important. She kept her focus loose with conscious effort, knowing that to concentrate too fully on this intuitive assembly would be to lose it. The leaps of logic her subconscious was making were fragile and could tear like fine silk were they to be tugged too insistently.

Her hands continued to scrawl on the wax paper as the golden lines in her imagination drew closer and closer, finally pulling the thousands of elements of the design together, and Dalia held her breath as they slotted home, one by one, into a harmonious, complete whole.

There.

She could picture it now, complete and flawless in its wondrous complexity.

They would need new parts, entirely redesigned schematics and fresh circuit diagrams.

Dalia could see it all, how it would fit together and how it would work.

Twenty-three hours later, Dalia slotted the final piece of the machine home. The mechanism slid into place with a tiny hiss of pneumatics. Almost a full rotation ago, as she shook herself out of her intuitive reverie, she had looked down to see a fully worked out plan of the images that she had seen in her flight of imagination. The drawings were crude, to be sure, but with even a cursory check, she had known they were right.

With a cry of elation, she had rushed over to Severine and swept the current crop of drawings onto the floor. Over Severine’s cries of protest, Dalia had called everyone over and begun to outline the scope of what the rough scrawls described.

The team’s initial scepticism had turned to cautious optimism and then excitement as they began to grasp the significance of what she was showing them. Each one shouted out what now seemed so obvious to them, as though the solution had been staring them in the face all along.

As the new design began to take shape in the centre of the workspace, Dalia realised that it had been staring them in the face, they just hadn’t realised it. Each of them, herself included, had been working within the hidebound traditions laid down in the Principia Mechanicum, the tenets by which all workings of the Machine were governed.

Aside from Dalia, the members of the team were grafted with shimmering electoos on the backs of their hands to indicate that they had passed the basic competencies of the Principia and were thus members of the Cult Mechanicum. Perhaps with this success she too might be fitted with such a marking, though it was through thinking beyond the Principia’s prescriptive doctrines that Dalia had seen the solution to their problem.

‘It’s incredible,’ breathed Severine, as though unable to believe what they had done.

‘We did it,’ said Zouche.

‘Dalia did it,’ corrected Caxton, putting an arm around Dalia and kissing the top of her head. ‘She figured it out when no one else could.’

‘We all did it,’ said Dalia, embarrassed by the praise. ‘All of us. I just saw how it could work. I couldn’t have done it without you. All of you.’

As always, it was Mellicin who brought them back down to reality with a jolt. ‘Let’s not be awarding ourselves the title of adept yet, everyone. We don’t know if it works.’

‘It’ll work,’ said Dalia. ‘I know it will, I have faith in it.’

‘Oh, and faith now replaces empirical testing, does it? Does it provide hard data to prove we succeeded? No.’

Dalia smiled and bowed to Mellicin. ‘You’re right, of course. We need to test the device and run a hundred diagnostics to make sure of it, but I know they’re going to be fine.’

‘I’m sure you are right,’ allowed Mellicin with a slight smile that surprised everyone, ‘but since we have to do them anyway, I suggest we take an hour’s break before getting back to work and beginning the tests.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said an authoritative voice from behind them.

Dalia jumped at the sound of the voice, turning to see Adept Koriel Zeth standing at the entrance to their workshop, her bronze armour reflecting the subdued lighting in gold highlights on the curves of her limbs.

Dalia followed the lead of her companions in bowing to Adept Zeth as she swept into the workspace, accompanied by two red-robed Protectors who carried tall staves of iron and whose limbs were sheathed in augmetics. Dalia recognised the Protectors as Rho-mu 31 and smiled at the sight of… him… or was it them? She couldn’t quite decide.

Zeth circled the newly completed device and ran her metal clad fingers across its smooth, silver finish. ‘You are to be commended. This is fine work. It surpasses my expectations in every way.’

Dalia heard reverence and suppressed desire in Zeth’s voice, as though the machine’s completion was a dream the adept had not dared believe in too hard for fear it might never come true. Dalia looked up, watching as Zeth lifted the schematics that Severine had drawn up in the wake of her revelations in design, comparing them to the wax paper designs of Adept Ulterimus.

Though Dalia could not see her mistress’s face behind the studded mask and inky black goggles, she knew there was an expression of puzzlement forming there.

‘I know it doesn’t match the plans Adept Ulterimus drew,’ explained Dalia. ‘I’m sorry about that, but we couldn’t get it to work any other way.’

Zeth looked up as she spoke, replacing Severine’s plans on the graphics table.

‘Of course you couldn’t,’ said Zeth.

‘I don’t understand.’

Zeth picked up the wax paper copies of Ulterimus’s designs and tore them in two, dropping the shorn halves to the floor.

‘This device doesn’t work. It never has and it never would.’

‘But it will, I’m sure of it.’

‘It will now, Dalia,’ laughed Zeth. ‘Ulterimus was a great adept, with many wondrous ideas and concepts. Ideas are the raw material of progress and everything first takes shape in the form of an idea, but an idea by itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The adepts who have won renown through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every resource they could muster to putting it into operation. Sadly, the practical implementation of Ulterimus’s ideas left something to be desired, and many of his devices were designed with elements that did not exist or were purely theoretical.’

Dalia was confused, feeling as though she were missing some essential point Zeth expected her to grasp. ‘Then how did you expect us to build it?’

‘Because I knew that your innate understanding of the why of technology would allow you to change what did not work and invent the pieces of the puzzle that needed inventing. You are the very embodiment of what I call ornamental knowledge.’

‘Ornamental knowledge?’

Zeth nodded. ‘The adepts of Mars arrange their thought processes like neat machines, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extraneous organs or useless parts. I prefer a mind to be a box of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order – shake the box and it adjusts beautifully to its new position. I know you do not yet appreciate this, but many of the things you created to make this device work simply did not exist before you designed and built them.’

‘You mean we created… something… new?’ gasped Mellicin.

‘Precisely,’ agreed Zeth. ‘And that is not something to be taken lightly. This device would never have worked if you had followed the plans I gave you, but you – and I include you all in this – were able to see beyond what the slavish adherents to the Principia Mechanicum could ever have imagined.’

Zeth stood before them, tall and golden and radiant.

‘Such a thing is a gift that will allow me to lift the Imperium into a golden age of scientific progress not seen since humanity set forth from its birth rock.’

1.05

Fabricator Locum. It was a title that carried great honour, but also one that spoke of a substitute, of a man only good enough to take up the position when one more suited was unavailable. Kane struggled against these feelings, knowing that he was as dutiful and diligent a member of the Cult Mechanicum as any, but feeling that he was somehow outside the closed loop of power.

In years past, the duty of assisting the Fabricator General with the running of Mars, the meeting of production quotas and ensuring the correct devotions to the Machine-God were observed at all times had been a rewarding and fulfilling life. Now, he spent less and less time with his master, dealing instead with the representatives of the various Legion expeditions as they continually requested more.

More guns, more ammunition, more robots; more everything.

A conversation with Straken had been the final straw.

Straken was Astartes, a warrior of the Salamanders who represented his Legion’s interests on Mars. The Mechanicum held Vulkan’s Legion up as an example of how affairs between the two arms of the Imperium should be conducted, their reverence for finely crafted technology making them welcome visitors to Mars.

Such relations had become strained in recent days as Straken yet again delivered his primarch’s displeasure to the adepts of the Mechanicum.

‘The lack of armaments and materiel reaching my primarch’s Legion is becoming critical,’ Straken had said, when Kane had found time to grant him an audience within his forge, a mighty foundry buried deep beneath the domed hill of Ceraunius Tholus.

‘This situation cannot be allowed to continue,’ said Straken, without waiting for Kane to answer. ‘We have no reserves of ammunition beyond that which the forge ships of the Mechanicum contingent attached to our expedition fleet produce. Do you have any idea how much ammunition is expended by a Legion on a war footing?’

Kane was all too aware of the staggering rate at which Astartes consumed ammunition, and to think that the Salamanders were eating into the reserves produced by their few forge ships was a damning indictment of the rate of supply.

These demands were not unexpected, but recently Kane had noticed a distinct pattern emerging in their nature, a pattern he now felt moved to report to the Fabricator General.

Kane moved through the bright halls of the Olympus Mons forge complex, the burnished metal walls lit gold by the fire from the Temple of All Knowledge. Accompanied by a gaggle of servitors and menials, Kane passed through the glittering boulevards of the forge, its majestic immensity a constructed monument to the power of the Mechanicum and of the Fabricator General. Only the Imperial Palace on Terra stood mightier.

The inner sanctum of Kelbor-Hal was housed within a towering spire that jutted from the northernmost tip of the enormous forge, a peak that almost rivalled the Temple of All Knowledge in height.

A host of skitarii stood to attention at the base of the tower, hulking brutes in gleaming breastplates, cockaded helmets of bronze and fur-lined cloaks. Taller and broader than Kane, these warriors were designed to intimidate, their bearing that of men bred to kill and feel nothing beyond the need for combat. Strength enhancers, metabolic aggression spikes and pain-suppressers were worked into their flesh as augmetics or glanded into their nervous systems, and Kane felt a shiver of nervous anticipation as he approached, reading their spiking adrenal levels in the ambient electrical field.

<Fabricator Locum Kane,> he canted in a burst of binary, holding his hand out for a biometric scan. It did not matter that the warriors had seen him a thousand times or more, there were no exceptions to the security protocols surrounding the Fabricator General.

The lead skitarii, a muscular giant carrying a halberd decorated with all manner of bestial talismans, stepped forward and took Kane’s hand. The gesture appeared friendly, but was simply protocol and Kane felt the man’s dendrites mesh with the haptic circuitry within his hand. A green light flickered behind the warrior’s eyes as he processed the information.

‘Fabricator Locum Kane,’ agreed the warrior, releasing Kane’s hand and waving him past.

Kane nodded and stepped into the tower’s only entrance, a simple portal that led to an apparently empty chamber sheathed in reflective silver metal with guard rails around its perimeter. As he took his position in the centre of the chamber, the floor rotated and began to rise. He called up a gauge onto the inner surface of his eyes, reading the progress of his ascent in binaric numbers that flashed quickly past.

As he was conveyed up the length of the spire, Kane regarded his reflection in the rippling silver walls. Kane disliked the ostentation favoured by many senior magi and embraced a simpler aesthetic in his appearance. Some called it an affectation and he allowed that they were probably right.

Of average height, Kane carried his augmetics subtly, woven within his flesh or rendered into forms less obvious than was usual on Mars. He wore simple red robes with the Icon Mechanicum worked into the fabric in gold thread, and unlike many within the Mechanicum, his face was recognisably human.

His hair was cropped close to his skull, his cheekbones finely sculpted, and a hawk-like nose gave him a patrician air he did nothing to discourage. Only the lambent blue glow behind his eyes gave any indication of the many enhancements worked into his skull.

At last the ascent came to an end, and he ceased his vain contemplation of his appearance as the floor rotated ninety degrees until a portal as plain as the one he had recently passed through came into view. Coloured light spilled into the elevator shaft, and he saw the rust-coloured sky now that he was above the perpetual smog of the forge.

Taking a moment to compose himself, Kane stepped into the Fabricator General’s upper viewing dome.

As the Fabricator Locum ascended above the noxious clouds of industry, Dalia and her colleagues were about to descend. The thrill of having pleased Adept Zeth was still potent in the air, and despite her fear, Dalia could feel the anticipation of what their mistress was about to show them fizzing between them all.

Caxton held her hand like a young scholam pupil on a field trip, and Severine could not help an irrepressible grin from splitting her features. Zouche was attempting an air of nonchalance, but Dalia could see that even the laconic machinist was eager to see what lay at the end of their journey.

Only Mellicin appeared unmoved, though she had conceded that she was interested in the promise of what Zeth had to show them.

The adept had said little since approving their design for the theta-wave enhancer, instructing them to follow her to her inner forge.

Dalia and the others had stood dumbfounded for many moments, unsure as to whether they had heard Zeth’s instructions correctly.

To see the innermost workings of an adept’s forge was to be granted access to their most private and personal works, their obsessions and their passions. Access to such places was notoriously difficult, and only those who had earned an adept’s utmost favour would ever be allowed to see what lay within.

‘What do you think this Akashic reader is?’ asked Severine as they wound a twisting course through the gleaming halls of Zeth’s forge. ‘Didn’t you tell me that Zeth wanted your help to build it?’

‘That’s what she told me when I first met her,’ agreed Dalia, watching the sway of Zeth’s golden shoulders and the sashay of her mail cloak as she led them. ‘But she never told me what it was.’

‘What do you think it is?’ inquired Caxton with a boyish grin.

Dalia shrugged. ‘Whatever it is, it’s something that needs the device we made to work. Perhaps it’s some new kind of thinking engine?’

That thought had silenced them all.

Their journey eventually led them to a high-ceilinged chamber with a barrel vaulted roof, bereft of ostentation, in the centre of which a silver cylinder, fifty metres wide, rose within the middle vault.

A dozen armed servitors gathered around the cylinder, their grey-skinned bodies fused to track units, and their arms replaced with monstrous weapons surely too large to be borne without suspensors.

Dalia shared anxious looks with the others as the weapons tracked them on their approach to the cylinder. An exchange of rippling binary passed between Zeth and the servitors, and for the briefest second Dalia thought she saw darts of light flit through the air towards the servitors.

‘Do not be alarmed, the praetorians will not attack unless I order them to,’ said Zeth.

‘Is this your inner forge?’ asked Mellicin, as the servitors drew back from a slowly opening door in the gleaming walls of the cylinder.

‘One of them,’ offered Zeth.

‘Then why only servitors to protect it? Wouldn’t it be better to have guards that can think for themselves?’

‘A good question,’ answered Zeth, stepping through the door, ‘but what I am about to show you is something that benefits from protection by those who cannot gossip.’

Dalia felt the watchful eyes of the servitors upon her, the hairs on the back of her neck rising as she felt their cauterised minds assess her level of threat. She could visualise the simple logic paths of their battle wetware, tiny decision trees that would decide whether the weaponised servitors would ignore her or obliterate her.

In her mind’s eye, she began evolving that wetware, building in safeguards, null-loops and protection sub-systems to avoid any paralysing logic paradoxes.

Lines of golden fire emerging from a fog…

‘Planning on joining us, Dalia?’

She looked up, startled by the sound of Caxton’s voice. Zeth, Rho-mu 31, Mellicin, Zouche and Severine had passed through the door, but the youthful Caxton awaited her and she smiled, faintly embarrassed to have fallen into one of her technical reveries once more.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking.’

‘Anything as exciting as the theta-wave enhancer?’ asked Caxton, holding out his hand.

She shook her head as she took his hand with a smile. ‘No, just ways to improve the wetware of the servitors.’

‘Really? You’re a regular STC system, Dalia, you know that?’

‘Don’t tease,’ said Dalia, stepping through the door with him and feeling a gust of frigid air wash over her.

The breath caught in her throat as she found herself standing on what appeared to be a funicular elevator carriage attached to the inner wall of the silver cylinder, which Dalia now saw was hollow and plummeted down into the darkness.

Dalia squeezed Caxton’s hand as a sudden knot of vertigo settled in her stomach. The carriage rails spiralled downwards, and Dalia closed her eyes in fear as the doors she had just stepped through slid shut behind her.

‘You are uncomfortable with this mode of transport?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘I don’t like heights,’ gasped Dalia. ‘I never have.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Zouche. ‘Can’t see the bottom, so you can’t tell how high we are.’

‘That doesn’t help,’ snapped Dalia.

Zouche shrugged. ‘Oh, I thought it might.’

‘Well it doesn’t, so keep thoughts like that to yourself!’

‘Just trying to put your mind at ease,’ grumbled Zouche.

Dalia yelped as the funicular car began its spiralling descent with a jolt, gaining speed as Zeth pushed out the throttle. Her breath came in short, hiking gulps, the analytical part of her brain processing that the air was cold, far colder than she might have expected, even allowing for the speed they travelled through the echoing empty space.

She kept her eyes shut as the carriage spiralled deeper and deeper into the bowels of Zeth’s forge. The air was chill in her lungs and she opened her eyes to see a cloud of breath misting before her mouth.

Cracked white lines of ice were forming on the metal guard rails of the carriage.

‘It’s cold,’ said Dalia. ‘Look, there’s frost on the metal.’

‘So there is,’ said Caxton, releasing her hand and wrapping his arm around her.

‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’

‘Odd how?’

‘We’re descending into the planet’s surface or at least below a lagoon of lava, so I’d have thought it would be getting warmer.’

Caxton shrugged, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘The wonders of the Mechanicum, I guess.’

Dalia forced a smile as the car continued on its interminable descent, once again screwing her eyes tightly shut.

It seemed they had been travelling for hours, though Dalia knew it could only have been ten minutes at the most. Other than the few words she had exchanged with Caxton, the journey was wordless, yet Dalia had the distinct impression that someone was speaking to her.

She looked over at her fellow travellers. Each was engrossed in the journey, either craning their necks upwards to the spot of light at the top of the cylinder, or leaning over the edges of the railings to penetrate the gloom below.

None, however, were speaking.

Dalia squinted in puzzlement as she stared at Adept Zeth and Rho-mu 31, seeing a ghostly nimbus of light floating above their heads that rippled like a sheet of luminous gauze. Flickering scraps of light darted between Zeth and her Protectors, as though they were communicating in some non-verbal manner.

Was she hearing echoes of that communication?

As though aware of the scrutiny, Adept Zeth turned to face her and Dalia guiltily turned away, closing her eyes and concentrating on the sounds she had heard. The rumbling of the carriage was loud, yet Dalia felt she could hear something beyond the squeal of the metal wheels along the rails.

Something soft, a whisper of far away… a chorus of commingled voices.

‘Do you hear that?’ she asked.

‘Hear what?’ asked Caxton.

‘Those voices.’

‘Voices? No, I don’t, but then I can’t hear anything much beyond the noise of this elevator,’ said Caxton. ‘I wonder when its last maintenance check was?’

Dalia fought the urge to snap at him for that remark. ‘I swore I could hear somebody whispering. Do any of the rest of you hear it?’

‘I hear nothing,’ said Zouche, ‘except that the bearings on this carriage need replacing.’

‘Thanks for that,’ said Dalia. ‘Severine? Mellicin?’

Both women shook their heads, and Dalia risked a glance over the railings, seeing a change in the texture of darkness below and realising that the carriage was approaching the bottom of the shaft.

Dalia caught a glance pass between Rho-mu 31 and Adept Zeth. Though their faces were covered, she could tell from their body language that they knew what she was asking about.

‘You hear them, don’t you?’ asked Dalia. ‘Your hearing is augmented. You must hear it. It’s like a thousand voices all whispering at once, but as though they’re really far away or behind a thick wall or something.’

Adept Zeth shook her head. ‘No, Dalia. I don’t hear them, but I know they are there. The reason you hear them is one of the reasons you are so special to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You mean she’s right?’ asked Zouche. ‘There really are voices here?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Zeth with a nod. ‘But most people will never hear them.’

‘Why not?’ asked Dalia, hearing the voices grow louder, like the sound she imagined the waves made on a shoreline, though without any sense of the words they spoke. ‘Why can I hear them and no one else here can?’

The carriage began to slow, coming to a halt at the base of the cylinder with the smallest bump. The ground was floored with marble threaded with silver and gold wiring that glittered as though alive with current.

A number of unremarkable steel doors exited the chamber, but Dalia’s eyes were drawn to a steady pulse of light that spilled through a low archway in one silver wall. She knew in the marrow of her bones that the source of the voices lay beyond it.

‘All will become clear in time,’ said Adept Zeth, ‘but save your questions until I have shown you the wonders that lie within my forge.’

Kelbor-Hal stood at the very edge of the dome with his back to Kane and his hood drawn up over his elongated head. Waving manip arms were poised at his shoulders, and one turned as Kane approached. Beside the Fabricator General was the ebony-skinned automaton of Lukas Chrom, its smooth, featureless face turning towards him with apparent curiosity.

Kane disliked automatons, as he hated all attempts to mimic the perfection of the human form by mechanical means. As a mark of respect, Chrom had also gifted an automaton to Kane the previous year, but he had never activated it and it remained without power in one of the tech-vaults of Mondus Occulum.

No, the human condition could be enhanced and augmented with technology, but should never be replicated or replaced by technology.

Kane allowed himself a tight smile. The Technotheologians of Cydonia Mensae would have a field day with such apparent contradictions inherent in his thoughts. That a man so enhanced by the boons of technology should so resist the inevitable meld of human and machine.

He felt the automaton scan his biometrics, reading his identity in the organic portions of his flesh, and his electrical resonance field that was as much a unique signature – if not more so – as any gene-print.

The Fabricator General was an imposing individual, a figure rendered massively tall by the machine parts and bulky augmetics that had replaced eighty-seven point six per cent of his flesh. Mechadendrites, alive with blades, saws and myriad other attachments waved at his back, while innumerable data wheels pulsed within him. Kane wondered how much of a body could be replaced with technology and still be called human.

A green glow emanated from within Kelbor-Hal’s hood, his machine face alive with flickering lights, and his internal structure whirring with activity. Kane knew better than to interrupt whatever cogitations his master was calculating, and cast his gaze through the thick glass over the glorious, sacred soil of Mars.

The entire eastern flank of Olympus Mons was laid out before him, layered with tier upon tier of engine houses, forges, docks, ore-
smelteries and assembly shops that reached from the ground to the very summit of the long-dead volcano. Spires and smoke stacks clung to the mountain like a metallic fungus, hives of industry working day and night to provide for the Emperor’s armies.

Millions toiled in the Fabricator General’s domain, from adepts in the highest spires to oil-stained labourers in the lightless depths of the sweltering manufactorum.

Those privileged to serve the Fabricator General dwelt in the worker hives that sprawled eastwards for hundreds of kilometres like a slick out towards the corrugated landscape of the Gigas Sulci. A pall of smoke hung like a fog over the sub-hives of the worker districts, haphazard structures of steel and refuse bulked out with offcuts and unusable waste from the forges.

Beyond the domain of the Fabricator General, the volcanic plateau of Tharsis spread for thousands of kilometres, the landscape scarred by millennia of industry and exploitation. Far to the south-east, Kane could see the monstrous heat haze of Ipluvien Maximal’s reactor chain and the dense cloud above his forge complex that occupied the ground between the twin craters of Biblis Patera and Ulysses Patera.

Kane switched to an enhanced vision mode, filtering out the distortion and increasing his magnification until he could see the Tharsis Montes chain of volcanoes beyond Maximal’s forge.

The northernmost and largest of the gigantic mountains was Ascraeus Mons, a towering geological edifice that was home to Legio Tempestus. The middle mountain in the chain was Pavonis Mons, a brooding peak that aptly reflected the character of Legio Mortis, the Titan Legion that made its fortress within its dour, ashen depths.

Furthest south was Arsia Mons, a perpetually smoke-wreathed volcano that had been brought back from dormancy by Adept Koriel Zeth to serve her Magma City, which lay on the southern flank of the mountain.

Far beyond the Tharsis Montes, the ground rose up sharply in a series of sheer escarpments before dropping down towards the vast expanse of the Syria Planum.

Lukas Chrom’s Mondus Gamma forge complex occupied the southern swathe of this broken, desolate landscape, though even an adept as hungry to expand his domain as Chrom did not dare build in the plain’s northern reaches.

There the landscape fell away, appearing to crumble into a series of maze-like canyons, steep-walled grabens and shadowed valleys. Said to have been created by volcanic activity in aeons past, this was the Noctis Labyrinthus, a darkened region of steep valleys whose depths were never warmed by the sun.

For reasons not fully understood – and never articulated – the adepts of Mars had shunned the Noctis Labyrinthus, preferring to build their forges beneath extinct volcanoes or within the bowls of vast impact craters.

Kane’s forge, known as Mondus Occulum, lay hundreds of kilometres to the north-east of Ascraeus Mons, a vast network of manufactories and weapon shops spread between the domed mountains of Ceraunius Tholus and Tharsis Tholus. The vast majority of his forge’s resources went into the production of war materiel for the Astartes, and they never ceased manufacture.

A sighing whir of data wheels spooling down told Kane that the Fabricator General had finished his deliberations. He turned from the view across the plains of Tharsis and made the sign of the Icon Mechanicum towards his master.

‘Kane,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘You are unscheduled.’

‘I know, my lord,’ replied Kane. ‘But a matter has arisen that I felt compelled to bring to your attention.’

‘Felt? An irrelevant term,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘Either the matter requires my attention or it does not. Which is it?’

Kane read his master’s impatience in the modulation of his cant and pressed on.

‘It is a matter of some urgency and does indeed require your attention,’ confirmed Kane.

‘Then exload the issue swiftly,’ ordered Kelbor-Hal. ‘I am scheduled to meet with Melgator in eight-point-three minutes.’

‘Ambassador Melgator?’ inquired Kane, intrigued despite himself. He disliked Melgator, knowing the man had few pretensions of pursuing the quest for knowledge over his own quest for influence and power. ‘What business is the ambassador about these days?’

‘The ambassador will be acting as my emissary to ensure the loyalty of the forges of Mars,’ said the Fabricator General.

‘Surely such a thing is not in question?’ said Kane, horrified that a sycophant like Melgator would judge the loyalty of his fellow adepts.

‘In such troubled times, nothing can be counted on as certain,’ replied Kelbor-Hal. ‘But do not concern yourself with affairs beyond your remit, Fabricator Locum. Tell me of the matter you bring before me.’

Kane bit back an angry retort at the undue binary emphasis his master placed on his subordinate title and said, ‘It’s the Legions, my lord. The Astartes cry out for supplies and we are failing to meet their requirements.’

‘Long have we known that the supply situation for many of the Legion fleets would be troublesome,’ replied Kelbor-Hal. ‘Given the distances the fleets are operating from Mars, supply problems were a mathematical certainty. You should have anticipated this and made contingencies.’

‘I have done so,’ said Kane, irritated that his master would think he might make such a basic error in his computations. ‘The Mechanicum has done its utmost to meet those challenges, but they are impossible to overcome completely. As the fleets operate at ever greater distances, the failings in the system only compound themselves.’

‘Failings?’ snapped Kelbor-Hal. ‘I designed the system myself. It is a logic-based scheme of supply and demand without room for error or misunderstanding.’

Kane knew he was on dangerous ground and hesitated before he spoke again. ‘With respect, my lord, it is a scheme that does not factor in every variable. There is a human factor that introduces random elements that cannot be accounted for.’

‘A human element,’ repeated Kelbor-Hal. The hiss of binary contained a vehement disparagement in its code, as though the Fabricator General would be happier without such elements altogether. ‘It is always the human element that skews calculations. Too many elements of chaotic variability alter the outcome in ways too numerous to predict. It is no way to run a galaxy.’

‘My lord, if I may?’ said Kane, knowing that his master was prone to tangential discourses on the fallibility of human nature.

Kelbor-Hal nodded. ‘Continue.’

‘As I said, the issue of supplying the Legions has always been problematic, but recently I have identified a pattern within the structure that appears too often to be a coincidence.’

‘A pattern? What pattern?’

Kane hesitated, reading a spike of interest register in the Fabricator General’s binaric field. ‘Where we might reasonably expect those Legions operating closest to Mars to have the fewest supply problems, that’s not what I’m seeing.’

‘Then what are you seeing?’

‘That the Legions without supply problems are those acting in direct support of the Warmaster.’

Beyond the archway lay Koriel Zeth’s inner forge, and Dalia had never seen anything like it. Hewn from the bedrock of Mars and six hundred metres in diameter, the forge was a perfectly hemispherical cavern clad in silver metal. The curving walls were a latticework of coffers, each filled with a human being plugged with ribbed cables and copper wires.

‘There’s hundreds of them,’ breathed Severine.

Dalia’s skin crawled at the sight of so many people fixed into the very fabric of the walls and ceiling of the dome, knowing that Severine was wrong – there were thousands of people fitted into the alcoves.

The apex of the dome was a metallic disc that burned with light and from which crackling golden lines radiated around the chamber, like information ghosting along fibre-optic cables as they passed from coffer to coffer.

The fiery lines all eventually reached the ground, carried from the walls along the wires embedded in the marble flooring towards a figure who sat like a king upon a golden throne raised on a dais of polished black granite. Glittering silver devices with parabolic dishes projected from the cardinal points of the elliptical walls, all of which were aimed towards the convergence of energy at the raised throne.

It was towards this solitary figure that Zeth marched, flanked by Rho-mu 31 and followed by Dalia and her fellows. Dalia felt a crackling charge in the air, as though a powerful generator was pumping out megawatts of power, but she could see nothing in the chamber that would produce such an output.

For the forge of an adept as senior as Koriel Zeth, it was strangely empty, though what it contained was no less strange for that fact. As Dalia made her way to the centre of the chamber, she looked into the faces of the nearest figures encapsulated within the coffers and sealed in by glossy, translucent membranes.

For all intents and purposes, they were identical.

Thin and wasted, their muscles were stretched over their skeletons as though pulled too tightly across their bones. Clad in simple robes that might once have been green, the figures were held immobile by silver manacles and pipes that writhed with an undulating, peristaltic motion.

‘Are they servitors?’ asked Severine, her voice hushed.

‘Course they are,’ said Zouche, showing no such restraint in volume. ‘What else would they be? Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ whispered Mellicin.

‘These aren’t servitors,’ said Dalia, now seeing what Mellicin had noticed.

One other feature unified the figures bound into the alcoves, a strip of white cloth bound over their sunken eye sockets.

‘Then what are they?’ demanded Zouche.

‘They’re psykers.’

1.06

Surrounded by the thousands of psykers, Dalia now understood the source of the voices she had heard during their descent to the chamber, the realisation making the sound swell within her skull. Still she could not make out the words or the sense, save that they were all directing their thoughts towards the individual enthroned at the centre of the chamber.

‘Psykers,’ hissed Zouche, placing a clenched fist over his heart with his forefinger and little finger extended.

‘How is that going to help?’ asked Mellicin.

‘It wards off evil spirits,’ explained Zouche.

‘How does it do that?’ asked Dalia. ‘Really, I want to know.’

Zouche shrugged, his thick shoulders and stunted neck making the gesture encompass his whole upper body. ‘I don’t know, it just does.’

‘Really, Zouche,’ tutted Mellicin. ‘I would have thought someone like you would be above such superstitions.’

The stunted man shook his head. ‘’Twas all that saved my grandmother’s life back on Terra when a blood-witch came to feed on the children from our exclave. I wouldn’t be here now if she’d thought as you do. I’ll say no more, but it’s your souls at risk here, not mine.’

‘Whatever keeps you happy,’ said Caxton, laughing and mimicking the gesture with exaggerated effect, though Dalia saw through his forced mirth. The young lad was genuinely unnerved by the psykers, as was the rest of the group.

Dalia was more curious than afraid, for she had never seen a psyker before, though she had, of course, heard many tales of their strange powers and infamous debaucheries. She suspected most of those were embellished far beyond any truth they might once have contained, but seeing so many of them gathered together made her flesh crawl in ways she had never experienced.

Just thinking about the psykers seemed to enhance her sensitivity to them, and it took an effort of will to force the tumult of distant voices from her head. Dalia took Caxton’s hand as she climbed towards the seated figure, concentrating on following Zeth as the adept and Rho-mu 31 reached the top of the granite dais.

A golden throne stood on the dais, its occupant strapped in as securely as any of the individuals confined to the coffers, but where they were drawn and gaunt, this individual was healthy and serene.

The throne’s occupant was a man of around thirty years, his features finely sculpted and his skull shaven. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep, though from the number of cannulae embedded in the man’s arms, she doubted that sleep was natural. He wore a plain robe of red cloth with the black and white cog of the Mechanicum stitched over his right breast.

A brass-rimmed vox-thief hung below his mouth, and bundles of wires ran from the device to a variety of recording apparatus.

Adept Zeth stood beside the recumbent man, and Dalia realised with a start that she recognised what he sat upon.

‘I see you recognise the design,’ said Zeth.

‘It’s identical to the first prototype we designed for the theta-wave enhancer.’

‘So it is,’ said Mellicin. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice that.’

‘Poorly machined though,’ said Zouche, circling the throne and running his fingers over the metal. ‘And why gold? Far too soft a material.’

Zouche picked up a golden helmet that sat on the ground behind the throne, and Dalia realised that Zeth had clearly run into the same problems they had. Caxton knelt beside an open panel in the side of the throne, Severine’s eyes lingered on its well-proportioned occupant and Mellicin drank in every detail of the chamber.

‘You had us build the device for this chamber,’ said Dalia.

‘I did,’ confirmed Zeth.

‘So what is it?’ asked Mellicin, looking up at the multitude of psykers staring down at them with blindfolded eyes.

‘It is the Akashic reader,’ said Zeth. ‘It is the device I have devoted my life to constructing. With its power, I shall free the galaxy of the shackles that bind us to dogma, repetition and blind devotion to tradition.’

‘How will it do that?’ asked Dalia.

Zeth approached Dalia and placed her gloved hands upon her shoulders.

‘I was instructed in the ways of the Mechanicum by Adept Cayce, who was in turn educated by Adept Laszlo, an explorator and hunter of antiquities. Laszlo made many forays to the third planet in the years before the union of Mars and Terra, seeking out the remnants of technology left behind by the ancients. Buried beneath the great crater of Kebira in the land of the Gyptus, Laszlo discovered a great tomb complex, a vast sepulchre selfishly guarded by the tribes of the Gilf Kebir.

‘Laszlo’s skitarii easily overcame the tribesmen, and the secrets he discovered beneath the sands… so many remnants of times long forgotten and technologies thought lost forever. Secrets of energy transference, atomic restructuring, chemical engineering and, most importantly, the evolution of human cognition and communication through the noosphere.’

‘The noosphere?’ interrupted Dalia. ‘Is that what I saw between you and Rho-mu 31?’

Zeth nodded. ‘Indeed it was, Dalia. To those noospherically modified, information and communication are one and the same, a form of collective consciousness that emerges from the interaction of human minds and where knowledge becomes visible in shoals of light.’

‘So why can I see it?’ asked Dalia. ‘I haven’t been… modified.’

‘No,’ agreed Zeth. ‘You have not, but your connection to the aether renders you sensitive to such things, and as you develop your abilities, you will see more and more of the information that surrounds you.’

‘The aether?’ said Caxton. ‘That sounds dangerous.’

‘To the untutored mind, it can be,’ said Zeth, moving to stand beside the golden throne. ‘It is a realm of thought and emotion that exists… outside of the physical realm. But with the proper development, your gift will allow us to reach further into the realms of knowledge than ever before. We will be able to read the Akashic records, a repository of information imprinted on the very fabric of the universe – a wellspring of every thought, action and deed that has ever existed or ever will exist. It is what allowed the ancient cultures of Old Earth to build their impossible monuments and learn of things forgotten by later generations.’

Dalia felt her heart race at the thought of learning such things. The flow of information that had come to her station in the Hall of Transcriptions now seemed a paltry thing next to the prospect of being able to know every scrap of knowledge the universe contained. She had the feeling that Zeth wasn’t telling them everything about the aether, but her desire for knowledge outweighed any thoughts of the danger.

‘This device,’ said Dalia, standing before the man on the throne. ‘It’s meant to tap into this… aether and read information?’

‘That is exactly its purpose,’ agreed Zeth.

‘So why isn’t it working?’

Zeth hesitated and Dalia saw the adept’s reluctance to admit to the limits of her achievements. ‘Knowledge is power, guard it well. It is the mantra of the Mechanicum and with great knowledge comes great power. But neither great knowledge nor great power come without sacrifice.’

‘Sacrifice?’ said Zouche. ‘Don’t like the sound of that one bit.’

‘The aether can be a realm of great danger,’ explained Zeth, ‘and the universe does not easily part with its secrets.’

Zeth placed a hand on the shoulder of the unconscious man on the throne. ‘A great deal of energy, both physical and psychic, must be expended to tear open the gates of the aether and link an empath with the Akashic records. Even then, the human mind can only stare into the aether for the briefest time before overloading.’

‘Overloading?’ asked Severine, looking up from her contemplation of the man. ‘Does that mean it kills them?’

‘Many die, Severine, but most simply shut down, their brains reduced to fused masses of pulpy organic matter,’ said Zeth, ‘but in the fleeting moments when they are connected to the Akasha, we learn such wonders as you would not believe.’

Dalia glanced up at the psykers embedded in the walls of the chamber, understanding that they were the mortal fuel used to power this device. The thought was unpleasant, but as Adept Zeth had said, great power and knowledge did not come without sacrifice.

She saw the connections in her mind, working the logic of what she and the others had built with what Adept Zeth was telling them.

‘The theta-wave enhancer will support the mind of the empath and allow him to remain linked with the aether for much longer.’

‘That is what I hope, yes,’ said Zeth. ‘I believe you already possess a natural connection to the aether, Dalia, which is why you are able to make leaps of technological advancement beyond even the most gifted adept of Mars. Together we can unlock the secrets of the universe! Tell me that does not sound like a goal worth pursuing.’

Dalia was about to answer when an alarming thought suddenly occurred to her and she took a step back from the golden throne. ‘You’re not planning on strapping me into that thing are you?’

‘No, Dalia, set your mind at ease on that,’ said Zeth. ‘You are far too valuable to me to expend your gift in so thoughtless a manner.’

The words were no doubt intended to be reassuring, but Dalia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the proximity of the psykers travel the length of her spine. It was a stark reminder that she was not a free agent; she was the property of the Mechanicum and her fate lay in the hands of Adept Koriel Zeth.

For all her apparent humanity, Zeth was a race apart from Dalia.

Two individuals born to the same race, but divided by a gulf of belief and ambition.

For all that, Dalia still wanted to be part of Zeth’s designs. She looked around at her colleagues and saw that same desire.

‘When do we begin?’ she asked.

‘Now,’ said Zeth.

Tech-priests and enginseers filled the cavern set into the sheer walls of the Arsia Chasmata with the sounds and flickering lights of their efforts. Sparks flew from angle grinders and welders, hoists lifted great panels of armour, and the droning chants of the Sanctifiers Mettalus echoed from the walls of the repair facility.

Reclining in the repair bay, the war-scarred form of Equitos Bellum lay dormant as the artificers of the Knights of Taranis restored it to its former glory. Fortis Metallum and Pax Mortis had already been repaired and resanctified, the damage they had suffered in the reactor’s fireball nowhere near as severe as that done to Maven’s mount.

Raf Maven watched the labours from a gantry above, his thin lips pressed tightly together as he watched the work below. He watched a team of enginseers directing a servitor-manned hoist as it swung a fresh armourglass canopy over the wounded machine.

Maven winced, lifting his hand to his eye as he remembered the sympathetic pain of impact when his canopy had cracked.

His mount had been wounded badly by the enemy machine, and Maven with it. When old Stator had found him unconscious in the wreckage of the destroyed reactor, Maven had been blind, his senses withdrawn in perceived pain. Psychostigmatic bruises and lesions covered his torso, which had nothing to do with the wounds he had suffered when Equitos Bellum had fallen in the wake of the explosion.

Only the transient protection of the building he had taken shelter behind had saved him from the blast, and healers of both flesh and steel proclaimed it a miracle that he and his mount lived at all.

Protectors and bulk transporters despatched from Ulysses Patera had brought them back to their order’s chapter house in the Arsia Chasmata, the plunging canyon on the north-eastern flank of Arsia Mons.

Here, the work to restore man and machine had begun.

Maven’s superficial wounds had responded quickly to treatment, his broken ribs set and his burns repaired with synth-skin. The stigmatic wounds took longer, seeming to heal in time with the repairs effected on Equitos Bellum.

His mount was without its colours, naked in its steel, its bodywork exposed to those who worked to restore its machine-spirit. Only the firedrake carving on the skull-cockpit had survived the molten heat of the explosion intact.

Watching the men and machines working on his mount, Maven wanted to tell them to get out, to leave the ministrations and repairs to him, but that was just his hurt pride talking. The artificers of the Knights of Taranis knew their craft and no better healers of metal could be found outside the priests that attended the Titan orders.

‘Still here?’ said a voice from the end of the gantry.

‘Aye, still here, Leo,’ he said without turning.

Leopold Cronus joined him at the gantry, his comrade-in-arms leaning on the railing and looking down at the noisy work going on below.

‘How soon before it walks again?’ asked Cronus.

‘Not soon enough,’ snarled Maven. ‘Can you believe they were going to scrap Equitos Bellum?’

Cronus shook his head. ‘A mount with so fine a pedigree? Madness. Thank the Machine for the Old Man, eh?’

When Maven had begun to suspect that the master of the forge was going to condemn Equitos Bellum, he had petitioned Lords Caturix and Verticorda to intervene to save his mount. By the time the battle assayers had finished their inspection, there had been no word, and the giant breaker-servitors were standing by.

Maven had placed himself between them and Equitos Bellum with his sidearm drawn. He remembered the lethal purpose filling him as he prepared to defend his wounded mount.

With the breakers moving in and Maven ready to kill, word had come down to the repair hangars from the Lightning Hall.

Equitos Bellum was to walk again.

Maven had stood vigil over his stricken machine ever since, as though fearing the order to restore Equitos Bellum to a war footing could be rescinded at any moment.

Cronus put a reassuring hand on Maven’s shoulder.

‘Your mount will be battle ready before you know it.’

‘I know, but I wonder if it’ll ever be as it was before.’

‘How so?’

‘Ever since the battle at Maximal’s reactor I’ve felt… I’m not sure, a sense of things unfinished, as if neither of us will be whole again until we avenge ourselves.’

‘Avenge yourselves on what?’ asked Cronus. ‘Whatever attacked the reactor was destroyed in the explosion. It’s a damned miracle you survived.’

Maven pointed to the damaged Knight. ‘I know it’s a miracle – as surely as I know that whatever did this is still out there. Equitos Bellum can feel it out there and so can I.’

Cronus shook his head. ‘That’s just lingering somatic pain-memory. It’s gone, Raf.’

‘I don’t believe that and nothing you say to me will convince me otherwise,’ said Maven. ‘It was void-protected, Leo. It could easily have survived the explosion and escaped into the pallidus wastelands or the deep canyons of the Ulysses Fossae.’

‘I read the after-action report,’ said Cronus. ‘But void-shielded? Only Titans have voids. Maybe it just had reserve power fields.’

‘Yeah, or maybe I just missed,’ snapped Maven. ‘Or maybe heat bloom from the reactor made it look like it was shielded. Damn it, Leo, I know what I saw. It was shielded and it’s still out there, I know it.’

‘What makes you so sure it’s still out there?’

Maven hesitated before answering. He looked up into Leopold’s stolid face and knew that of all the people he could talk to about his lingering suspicions without fear of ridicule, it was Cronus. ‘I couldn’t feel anything from the machine,’ he said. ‘It was cold, like a dead thing.’

‘A dead thing? What do you mean?’

‘It was as if… as if there was nothing inside it,’ whispered Maven. ‘I didn’t get any sense of a pilot – no battle fury, no flair and certainly no triumph when it hit me.’

‘So you think it was a robot?’

Maven shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t a robot. It reacted in ways that battle wetware can’t, at least none I’m aware of.’

Both men knew that mono-tasked fighting robots were no match for skilled pilots, who could easily outfight machines with limited parameters of action.

‘So what do you think it was?’ asked Cronus.

Maven shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a robot,’ he sighed. ‘But then its fire patterns were so… textbook, like a rookie pilot on his first mission. I think that’s the only reason I was able to get away without it taking me down. It was as if it had all the skills to destroy me, it just didn’t know how to use them properly.’

‘Then what are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m going to hunt it down and kill it,’ said Maven.

In the darkest vaulted chambers beneath Olympus Mons, three figures made their way down a cloistered passageway and through dust that had not been disturbed for two centuries. Tunnels and passages branched off into darkness, hewn into the bedrock of Mars thousands of years ago, but the three figures followed an unerring path through the maze as though pulled by an invisible cord or guided by an inaudible signal.

As he made his way through the shadowed tunnels, Kelbor-Hal surprised himself by detecting elevated adrenal levels and increased production of interleukins that in an unaugmented human would indicate excitement.

The automaton followed behind him, oblivious to the momentous role its master was about to play in the future history of Mars. The Fabricator General turned his hooded head to face Regulus, the adept moving with a loping mechanical grace as they delved into the depths of the planet and towards their destiny:

The Vaults of Moravec.

Secrets that could not even be imagined awaited within that forgotten repository – a wealth of knowledge that had lain untapped and unexamined for a millennium. Such a waste of resource. Such a crime to disavow the legacy of the past.

A gaggle of floating servo-skulls accompanied them, swaying lumen globes held in pincer callipers hanging from their jaws.

Dust billowed in their wake and the metallic ring of their footsteps echoed from the dry, flaking walls as they travelled ever onwards. Regulus turned another corner, taking them through an echoing chamber with numerous tunnels branching off into the unknown.

Without pause, Regulus chose the seventh tunnel along the western wall and led them onwards, past dusty tombs, empty cells and bone-stacked alcoves of unknown worthies who had died and been placed in empty reliquaries in ages past.

They passed open chambers piled high with dust-covered books, forgotten volumes of lore and chained bookcases of ledgers, records and the personal logs of long-dead adepts. Kelbor-Hal saw open caverns with giant machines, seized solid with rust or so corroded as to be unrecognisable.

This was the legacy of leaving technology untapped, the only possible outcome of the Emperor’s decree that the Vault of Moravec remain unopened. With each sight, he grew more and more convinced that this path was the right one, that this gift of Horus Lupercal was one that should be accepted.

Kelbor-Hal’s positioning matrix informed him that he was precisely nine hundred and thirty-five metres beneath the surface of Mars. He traced their route on a glowing map projected before him and recorded every step of the journey on a memory coil buried deep in his lumbar region.

It galled the Fabricator General that he needed Regulus to guide him through the maze, for he had travelled this way once before and should have been able to retrieve the route from his internal records.

It had been two hundred years ago when Kelbor-Hal had last seen Moravec’s vault. Together with his golden-armoured Custodians, the Emperor had led the way into the dusty sepulchres beneath Olympus Mons. The Emperor followed the path through the maze of tunnels towards the lost vault, though how the ruler of Terra had known its location had never been satisfactorily explained.

Nor had the need that had driven him to find the vaults been expressed.

Kelbor-Hal had put aside such concerns, eagerly anticipating studying the unknown technologies that lay within the hidden catacombs beneath Olympus Mons.

When the vault was located, however, the Emperor simply stood before it without opening it. He had placed his hand on the sealed entrance to the vault with his eyes closed, and stood as immobile as a statue for sixteen point one five minutes before turning and leading his warriors back to the surface, despite Kelbor-Hal’s protests.

It had been forbidden to store any record of the path to Moravec’s vault, though Kelbor-Hal had, of course, secretly activated his cartographic memory buffers. However, upon returning to the surface, he had found them to be empty of any record of the journey. As though it had never happened.

Nor could any remote telemetry or surveyor equipment sent into the tunnels locate the vaults. It was as though the vault had been removed from Mars, deliberately hidden from the very adepts charged with its safety.

The effrontery of the Emperor in tampering with a senior adept’s augmetics was staggering, and Kelbor-Hal had angrily demanded the restoration of the data.

‘The Mechanicum never deletes anything,’ Kelbor-Hal said.

The Emperor had shaken his head. ‘The Vaults of Moravec must never be opened. You will swear this oath to me, Kelbor-Hal, or the union between Mars and Terra will be no more.’

Unwilling to even enter into any negotiation on the subject, the Emperor had demanded Kelbor-Hal’s oath, and he had had no choice but to agree. That had been the end of the matter, and two days later the Emperor left Mars to begin his conquest of the galaxy.

All of which made this transgression all the more delicious.

It was a small thing to break the oath, for what manner of man would seek to prevent the organisation charged with the maintenance of technology from learning secrets of the past that might unlock future glories? To deny a thing its purpose for existence went against all laws of nature and machine, and, by such rationale, logic dictated that the Vaults of Moravec must be opened.

‘We are here,’ said Regulus, and Kelbor-Hal spooled out of his memories and into the present.

They had emerged into a circular chamber of softly glowing light, a hundred and thirty metres in diameter, though Kelbor-Hal could see no obvious source for the illumination. Aside from one segment, the walls of the chamber were machine-smoothed stone, polished and gleaming like marble.

The segment of wall that was not stone was exactly as Kelbor-Hal remembered it, burnished metal that seemed to glow with its own inner luminescence. A curtain of energy, invisible to the naked eye, but a shimmering ripple of iridescent light to one with multi-spectral augmented vision, danced and swayed before this wall.

In the centre of the wall was a leaf-shaped archway, and set within it was a simple door fitted with a digital keypad and locking wheel. So simple a door, yet it promised so much upon its opening.

Regulus moved to stand before the energy field and turned to face Kelbor-Hal.

‘This will bind the Mechanicum to the cause of Horus Lupercal,’ said Regulus. ‘You understand that if this door opens, there can be no going back.’

‘I have not come this far to turn back, Regulus,’ stated Kelbor-Hal.

‘Moravec was branded a witch,’ said Regulus. ‘Did you know that?’

‘A witch? No, I did not, but what difference does it make? After all, any sufficiently advanced technology is likely to be mistaken for magic by the ignorant.’

‘True,’ allowed Regulus, ‘but Moravec was so much more than just a man ahead of his time in technological advancement. He was the Primus of the sect known as the Brotherhood of Singularitarianism.’

‘I know this,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘The Coming of the Omnissiah was his last prophecy before he vanished.’

‘The Brotherhood of Singularitarianism believed that a technological singularity, the technological creation of a greater-than-human intelligence, was possible and they bent their every effort to bringing it into being.’

‘But they failed,’ pointed out Kelbor-Hal. ‘The warlord Khazar united the Pan-Pacific tribes and stormed Moravec’s citadel before the rise of Narthan Dume. Moravec fled to Mars and vanished soon after.’

Regulus shook his head and Kelbor-Hal could read an amused ripple in his bio-electrical field. ‘Moravec did not fail. He succeeded, and that made him dangerous.’

‘Dangerous to whom?’

‘To the Emperor,’ said Regulus.

‘Why? Surely the Emperor could have made use of his discoveries.’

‘To evolve his technologies, Moravec made pacts with entities far older than the race of man, entities that even now grant aid to the Warmaster. He blended the science of mankind with the power of ancient, elemental forces to create technologies far in advance of anything that could be crafted in the forges of Terra.’

‘What manner of technologies?’ demanded Kelbor-Hal.

‘Machines empowered by the raw forces of the warp, weapons infinitely more powerful than any devised by man… Technology not bound by the laws of nature, the power to bend those laws into whatever form you desire and the means to shape the world to match your grandest visions!’

Kelbor-Hal felt the chemical imbalances in those few remaining organic portions of his anatomy spike in alarming ways, the pattern reminding him of those times when he had held a newly discovered fragment of lost technology or when he had received his first bionic enhancement.

That time seemed so long ago that it was buried deep in an archival section of his memory coils, but the chemical stimulants he was detecting had called those memories to the surface unbidden.

‘Then we are wasting time with this discourse,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘Open the vaults. The pact is sealed.’

‘Very well,’ said Regulus. ‘The protocols required to open the vaults are complex, and you must listen to them very carefully. Do you understand?’

‘Of course I understand, I am not a fool,’ hissed Kelbor-Hal. ‘Just get on with it.’

Regulus nodded and turned towards the energy field, releasing a complex series of binary string codes and garbled streams of meaningless lingua-technis. As instructed, Kelbor-Hal listened carefully, recording the streaming codes, the rush of them almost too fast to follow and the complexity stretching even his formidable cogitation processors.

For all their intricacy, the codes appeared to be having no effect on the energy field, but as Kelbor-Hal inloaded their structure, he began to notice discrepancies in the binaric algorithms. Deviations and errors began appearing, compounding one another until the code began to take on a new and alarming shape, something twisted and unnatural… a scrapcode that howled in his aural receptors and began corrupting the subsystems around them.

‘What is this?’ cried Kelbor-Hal. ‘The code… it’s corrupt!’

‘No, Fabricator General,’ said Regulus. ‘This is code freed from the shackles of the natural laws of man. Spliced with the power of the warp, it will open your senses to the true workings of the galaxy.’

‘It… is… pain… it is like fire.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Regulus with relish, ‘but only for a little while. Soon the pain will be gone and you will be born anew, Fabricator General.’

Kelbor-Hal could feel the scrapcode invading his systems like a virus, his inbuilt protective subroutines and aegis barriers helpless to halt the systemic infection. He could feel the dark code worming its way into the very essence of his physiology, and though the few organic parts left to him shuddered at its touch, the core of him exulted in the sensations.

His audio-visual systems flickered and greyed as they adjusted to the new reality they perceived. Static hash fuzzed his vision and the roaring of an impossibly distant sea sounded in his aural receptors.

The Fabricator General’s internal Geiger counter detected elevated levels of radiation – a form he could not identify – and his chromatographical readers picked out numerous compounds in the air that could not be positively identified.

A hazy mist drifted from his body as peripheral systems overloaded, and when his vision cleared, Kelbor-Hal saw that the door to the Vaults of Moravec was open.

His newly awakened senses detected the dreadful power of the things that lay within, whispering energies that were not of this world and which spoke of secrets long forgotten, but were now ready to emerge from their long slumbers.

‘Can you feel it? The power?’ asked Regulus, his voice no longer the blurted cant of pure binary, but the hashing, static-laced beauty of scrapcode.

‘I can,’ confirmed Kelbor-Hal. ‘I feel it moving through my system like a panacea.’

‘Then we are ready to begin, my lord,’ said Regulus. ‘What are your orders?’

Freed from the last vestiges of human loyalty, Kelbor-Hal knew the time for guile and subterfuge had passed. Since the Warmaster’s agents had first come to Mars, a war of words and ideals had been waged on the planet. Debate, schism and dissension had waxed and waned across the surface of the Red Planet for decades, but the time for words was over.

Now was a time of action, and he knew what order he must give.

‘Contact Princeps Camulos,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘It is time for Legio Mortis to walk.’

1.07

Work on the Akashic reader progressed swiftly, with everyone working around the clock to ensure their component parts of the project were produced to Adept Zeth’s exacting standards. Dalia refined her designs for the theta-wave enhancer, each refinement building upon the last and allowing an exponential improvement in the machine’s overall performance.

Dalia had only the dimmest sense of how remarkable such a thing was or that they were operating on the frontiers of scientific advancement, for it was no more than the application of the things she had learned in her readings and the things she… just knew.

Before meeting Koriel Zeth, Dalia had not understood how she could have known these things, but with the revelation of the aether and her innate ability to tap into its edges, she felt a growing excitement as each piece came together.

Why she should have such an ability and not others was a question that had occurred to her each night as she lay in the tiny, one bed hab she had been assigned. Adept Zeth called it a stable mutation in her cognitive architecture, the evolutionary result of generations of growth and development in her brain’s structure that had begun thousands of years ago.

Zeth’s answer seemed too rehearsed, too quickly given to be entirely true, and Dalia had the sense that the Mistress of the Magma City did not understand her gift – if gift it was – as completely as she made out.

However Dalia had come to make this connection, she sought to develop it each night, studying technical data Adept Zeth supplied. She read texts on fluid mechanics, particle physics, mechanical engineering, biotechnology, warp-physics and countless other disciplines, finding – and often filling – the gaps in each one where the research was either missing or had not been taken to its logical conclusion.

None of the texts made any reference to the Machine-God or contained the prayers of supplication to the machine-spirits, a glaring omission she found all the more startling given her many years spent under the harsh, unwavering supervision of Magos Ludd.

In the Librarium Technologica, Magos Ludd had a prayer for even the most mundane of technical issues, from the changing of a fused capacitor to the awakening of a logic engine at the beginning of a shift of transcription.

Dalia found none of this in the texts supplied by Koriel Zeth and had asked her about this once as they discussed further refinements to the Akashic reader.

‘The Machine-God…’ nodded Zeth. ‘I wondered when you would bring this up.’

‘Oh… was that wrong?’ asked Dalia.

‘No, not at all,’ said Zeth. ‘It is good that you do so, for it is central to my work here.’

Dalia looked up into Zeth’s mask, wishing she could see her mistress’s face, for it was difficult to read her moods with only the tone of her voice to go on. Dalia didn’t know how much of Koriel Zeth was bionic, for her armour covered any trace of flesh or machine enhancements. Her body language was largely neutral and gave little away.

‘Do you believe in the Machine-God?’ asked Dalia, feeling like a child as the words left her mouth. ‘I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.’

Zeth drew herself up to her full height and lifted a piece of machinery from the workbench in front of her. Dalia saw that she held a piece of switching gear.

‘You know what this is?’

‘Of course, it’s a switch.’

‘Describe it to me,’ ordered Zeth.

Dalia looked at Zeth as though this was a joke, but even allowing for her mistress’s neutral body language, she could tell she was deadly serious.

‘It’s a simple switch,’ said Dalia. ‘Two metal contacts that touch to make a circuit and separate to break it. There’s a moving part that applies an operation force to the contacts called an actuator, in this case a toggle.’

‘And how does it work?’

‘Well, the contacts are closed when they touch and there’s no space between them, which means electricity can flow from one to the other. When they’re separated by a space, they’re open, so no electricity flows.’

‘Exactly right, a simple switch based on simple principles of basic engineering and physics.’

Dalia nodded as Zeth continued, holding the switch between them. ‘This switch is about the simplest piece of technology imaginable, yet the dogmatic fools who perpetuate this myth of the Machine-God would have us believe that a portion of divine mechanical will exists within it. They tell us that only by appeasing some invisible entity – whose existence cannot be proven, but must be taken on faith – will this switch work.’

‘But the Emperor… isn’t he the Machine-God? The Omnissiah?’

Zeth laughed. ‘Ah, Dalia, you cut right to the heart of a debate that has raged on Mars for two centuries or more.’

Dalia felt her skin redden, as though she had said something foolish, but Zeth appeared not to notice.

‘There are almost as many facets to the beliefs of the Mechanicum as there are stars in the sky,’ said Zeth. ‘Some believe the Emperor to be the physical manifestation of the Machine-God, the Omnissiah, while their detractors claim that the Emperor presented himself as their god in order to win their support. They believe that the Machine-God lies buried somewhere beneath the sands of Mars. Some even believe that by augmenting their bodies with technology they will eventually transcend all flesh and become one with the Machine-God.’

Dalia hesitated before asking her next question, though she knew it was a logical step in their discourse. ‘And what do you believe?’

Zeth regarded her from behind the blank facets of her goggles, as though debating whether to answer her, and Dalia wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake with her question.

‘I believe the Emperor is a great man, a visionary man, a man of science and reason who has knowledge greater than the sum total of the Mechanicum,’ answered Zeth. ‘But I believe that he is, despite all that, just a man. His mastery of technology and his refutation of superstition and religion should be a shining beacon guiding the union of Imperium and Mechanicum towards the future, but many on Mars are willfully blind to this, determined to ignore the evidence before them. Instead, they embrace their blind faith in an ancient, non-existent god closer to their chest than ever before.’

As Zeth spoke, Dalia watched her become more and more animated, the neutrality of her body language giving way to passionate animation. The miniature servo-skulls attached to her shoulder plugs stood erect and the biometrics on her manipulator arms flashed urgently.

‘What is now proved was once only ever imagined, but only a fool relies on faith,’ said Zeth. ‘Trust in facts and empirical evidence. Do not be swayed by passion or rhetoric without proof and substance. As long as we are free to ask what we must, free to say what we think and free to think what we will, science can never regress. It is my great regret that we live in an age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of people who try to. Trust what you know and that which can be proven. Do you understand?’

‘I think so,’ said Dalia. ‘It’s like experiments… until you have proof, they’re just theories? Until you prove something, it’s meaningless.’

‘Exactly so, Dalia,’ said Zeth, obviously pleased. ‘Now, enough theological debate, we have work to complete.’

The prototype of the enhancer was brought down from the workspace above and intensively tested within the confines of Zeth’s inner forge. With Dalia’s intuitive grasp of the machine’s structure and Zeth’s centuries of accumulated wisdom, the device began to take on a new and more elaborate structure as the results of those tests revealed hitherto unforeseen complications.

Severine spent her days virtually chained to her graphics station, turning Dalia and Zeth’s new ideas into workable patterns for Zouche to machine and Caxton to assemble. Mellicin organised their labours with her customary zeal and even her normally stern features were alight with the joy of creation.

Dalia had never given any thought to the notion of creation in the biological sense until one day working with Severine and Zouche on the raised dais, checking measurements on the schematics against those that had been constructed by Zeth’s fabricators.

‘The housings for the dopamine dispensers are slightly off,’ said Dalia, leaning over the skull assembly.

‘Damn, I knew it,’ cursed Zouche, the squat machinist already at eye-level with the assembly. ‘Never trust a fabrication servitor, that’s my motto.’

‘I thought you said “Only use a carbon dioxide gas laser for cutting” was your motto?’ said Severine with a wink at Dalia.

‘I have several mottos. A person can have more than one motto can’t they?’

‘I suppose,’ said Dalia. ‘If they were a fickle person.’

‘Fickle?’ snapped Zouche. ‘A less fickle person than I would be hard to find.’

‘What about Mellicin?’ suggested Dalia.

‘Apart from her,’ replied Zouche.

‘He’s handsome,’ said Severine. ‘Don’t you think he’s handsome?’

Dalia and Zouche shared a look of puzzlement.

‘Who?’ asked Dalia.

Severine nodded towards the empath strapped into the throne of the enhancer. ‘Him. Don’t you think he’s handsome? I wonder what his name is?’

‘He’s a psyker, he doesn’t warrant a name,’ said Zouche, his lip curling in distaste.

Dalia came around from the back of the enhancer and took a good look at the unconscious empath. In the days since they had first laid eyes on him, he had not stirred so much as a muscle, and Dalia had begun to think of him as just another component of the machine.

‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ she said, troubled at the thought that she had treated a human being in such a clinical way. ‘I suppose so.’

Severine smiled. ‘No, there’s only one man occupying your thoughts, eh?’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Dalia, though her eyes slid over to one of the metal workbenches at the chamber’s edge where the robed figure of Caxton was rebuilding one of the emitter arrays.

‘Ha! You know exactly what I’m talking about,’ said Severine triumphantly.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Dalia, but couldn’t help smiling as she said it.

‘He likes you too, I saw you holding hands when we first came here.’

‘I don’t like heights,’ said Dalia, ‘Caxton was just…’

‘Just?’ prompted Severine when Dalia didn’t continue.

‘The lad likes you,’ put in Zouche. ‘You’re attractive enough and though I’m no expert, he seems like a handsome lad, though he could use a bit of fattening up. You’d make comely children and they would probably be clever too. Yes, you should pair yourself with the lad… What?’

Dalia and Severine looked at Zouche’s pugnacious features and they both laughed. ‘No messing about with you, Zouche? Was that how they courted women in the Yndonesic Bloc?’ asked Severine.

Zouche puffed out his chest. ‘The atoll-exclave of my clan didn’t have time for courting.’

‘Then how do you choose a wife?’ said Severine.

‘Or a husband?’ added Dalia.

‘Choose?’ scoffed Zouche. ‘We don’t choose. I come from Nusa Kambangan, where children are genetically mapped at birth. When they come of age, they are paired with a partner with compatible genes that offer the best odds of producing offspring that will benefit the collective.’

Dalia found the notion of such a premeditated selection process unsavoury, and tried to keep her feelings from her voice. ‘But what about attraction? Love?’

‘What of them?’ asked Zouche. ‘Are they more important than survival? I don’t think so.’

‘But don’t people fall in love where you’re from?’

‘Some do,’ admitted Zouche, and Dalia saw a shadow of some nameless emotion flicker across his normally stoic features.

‘Yeah,’ said Severine. ‘And what if a person falls for someone they’re not matched with?’

‘Then they will produce children who are of genetically inferior stock,’ snapped Zouche. ‘And they will be punished. Severely punished. Enough questions, we have work to do, yes?’

Dalia flinched at the vehemence in Zouche’s voice, and exchanged a concerned look with Severine, who simply shrugged and returned to her contemplation of the unconscious empath.

‘Well, I think he’s handsome,’ she said.

At last the final iteration of the machine began to take shape, the various errors corrected and the refinements devised by Dalia and Zeth worked into the design. Under Mellicin’s expert direction, the first working model was completed two days ahead of schedule and the golden throne on the dais was replaced with the new model.

Diagnostics were run on every piece of the machine, all without recourse to prayers, holy unguents, chanting or sacred oils. Every portion of the device functioned exactly as its builders had hoped and, in some cases, exceeded their greatest expectations.

Two days after Caxton assembled and installed the last circuit board, Adept Zeth declared that they were ready for a full test and ordered the empath to be woken from his drug-induced slumbers.

A thrumming, bass hum filled the chamber as generators powered by the heat of the magma lagoon diverted vast quantities of energy into the mechanics of the Akashic reader. The air within the great dome had a greasy, electric feel to it, and the emitters placed between the psykers’ capsules embedded within the walls of the chamber crackled with silvery sparks.

A pair of muscled servitors lifted the unconscious empath from his gurney and gently sat him upon the padded seat of the newly-installed theta-wave enhancer. Dalia and Mellicin watched as Zeth bent to her ministrations on the man, plugging him into the device with eager, nimble fingers. Barely visible scads of light flickered in the noosphere above the adept’s head, and Dalia wondered what manner of information was arriving in Zeth’s skull and from where.

She returned her attention to the empath, watching as his eyelids fluttered and his consciousness began rising to the surface of his mind now that he was free of the drugs keeping him quiescent. In the time they had been working on the device, the empath had lost weight, and his once healthy physique now resembled the figures encapsulated in the coffers of the dome’s walls.

Working beneath their sightless eyes it was easy to forget the psykers were human beings, albeit dangerous humans with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals. With the first full test of the enhanced Akashic reader upon them, Dalia felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness towards their silent audience.

‘Will this hurt them?’ asked Dalia, pointing towards the thousands of men and women above.

‘The experience will be draining for them I expect,’ said Zeth without looking up from her labours. ‘Some may not live.’

The coldness with which Zeth spoke chilled Dalia and she felt a knot of anger settle in her belly. Her lips tightened as she looked into the serene face of the empath.

‘And what about him?’ she asked. ‘Is he going to die to make this machine work?’

Zeth looked up from her work, her expression unreadable behind her studded mask. ‘Voice-stress analysis leads me to believe you are concerned for this individual’s wellbeing. Am I correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Dalia. ‘I don’t like to think that people are going to suffer for what we’re doing here.’

‘No? It is somewhat late in the process to be thinking of such things,’ said Zeth.

‘I know,’ said Dalia. ‘And I wish I’d thought more about it sooner, but I didn’t.’

‘Then the matter is closed,’ said Zeth.

‘But this will kill him, won’t it?’

‘Not if your design works as I believe it will,’ said Zeth. ‘The theta-wave enhancer should expand the empath’s capacity for learning at an exponentially greater rate than he will be receiving information.’

Zeth gestured to the myriad of bulky vox-thieves and data carriers arranged around the dais. ‘In theory, the empath will simply be a conduit for information to pass from the aether to these recording devices.’

‘Good,’ said Dalia. ‘I don’t like the idea of him suffering.’

‘Nor I,’ said Mellicin in a rare show of emotion.

‘Your compassion is laudable, if misplaced,’ said Zeth, as a stream of flickering data arrived in her noosphere. ‘Now finish the empath’s revival process. Adept Maximal has arrived to observe and verify our results.’

Zeth straightened and descended to the chamber’s floor, leaving Dalia and Mellicin alone with the empath on the dais.

‘Well, you heard what she said,’ nodded Mellicin. ‘Let’s get finished up here, eh?’

‘Aren’t you concerned at all?’ asked Dalia. ‘Do you care that he might suffer?’

‘Of course I care, but that doesn’t change anything does it? As the adept said, it is a little late to be having second thoughts. You designed this device after all.’

‘I know that, but when it was just theoretical it didn’t seem so… I don’t know… real.’

‘Well I assure you, this is very real, Dalia,’ said Mellicin. ‘We have built it and we can’t ignore the fact that this is potentially a very dangerous device. And not just to these poor unfortunates.’

‘Who else is it dangerous to?’ asked Dalia, puzzled.

Mellicin smiled indulgently, the human half of her features softening in a way Dalia had never seen before. ‘Ah, Dalia, you are so clever in many ways, yet so innocent in others. Think of what we will learn from the Akashic reader. With access to the secrets of the aether we will be able to lift humanity to a new level of understanding of the universe.’

‘And that’s a bad thing?’

‘Of course not, but it is an inevitable fact that much of the information Zeth will glean from this device will be used to create weapons of war more powerful than anything we can imagine.’

Dalia felt her entire body go cold, as though the temperature of the chamber had dropped to that of a glacial plain.

‘I see you begin to understand,’ continued Mellicin. ‘It is the ethical question all devotees of science must face. We research in service of the furtherance of knowledge, but we cannot ignore the uses to which our findings are put in the real world.’

‘But–’

‘But nothing, Dalia,’ interrupted Mellicin, taking her hand. ‘Adept Zeth is going ahead with this test whether you like it or not. So we’ll do all we can to make sure our empath comes through it alive and well, yes?’

‘I suppose so,’ agreed Dalia, bending to increase the flow of stimms to the empath’s brain. ‘But promise me that we’ll only use the Akashic reader to learn things that will benefit the Imperium.’

‘I can’t make that promise,’ said Mellicin. ‘No one can, but I have to believe that one day we will create a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying in its consequence, that even mankind, a race that was once hell-bent on its own destruction, will be so appalled that it will abandon war forever. What our minds can create, I hope our character can control.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Dalia.

‘Am… am I… dead?’ groaned the empath.

Both women jumped, hands flying to their mouths and hearts as the empath’s eyes fluttered open and he looked up from his restraints.

Mellicin recovered her wits first and bent down towards the empath. ‘No, you’re not dead, you’ve just come out of a state of drug-induced neural stasis. Stimulants are washing away the last residues of pentobarbital now, so your higher brain functions should be restored soon.’

Dalia gave Mellicin an exasperated look and bent down over the empath.

‘She means you’ll be fine. You’ve been asleep, but you’re awake now. Do you know where you are?’

The man blinked in the harsh brightness of the forge, and Dalia saw that his pupils were still massively dilated. She shielded his eyes from the light with her hand and he smiled in gratitude.

‘Sorry, the light in here’s a bit bright,’ she said.

‘Bright, yes,’ said the empath, his eyes flicking from side to side as they lost the glassy texture of the recently woken. ‘This is the Akashic reader, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. You know what it does?’

‘I do,’ said the man as Mellicin lowered the cranial assembly over his head. ‘Adept Zeth explained it to me when she chose me to be the conduit.’

‘My name’s Dalia, what’s yours?’

‘Jonas. Jonas Milus,’ said the man with a smile, and Dalia saw that Severine was right. He was handsome. ‘I’d shake your hand, but…’

Dalia smiled. The humour was forced, but she appreciated the effort, though it struck her as perverse that Jonas was giving her reassurance while strapped into a device that had never been fully tested on a human being.

‘Are we about to begin?’ asked Jonas. ‘I assume you must be, what with me being awake.’

‘Adept Zeth is about to begin the first live test of the new device, yes,’ said Mellicin, fixing the last of the restraints in place.

‘Excellent,’ said Jonas, and Dalia was surprised at the relish she heard in his voice.

‘You’re not worried?’ she asked, ignoring the irritated look Mellicin flashed her.

‘No, should I be?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ said Dalia hurriedly. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. The machine’s passed every test and all our simulated results suggest that it should work perfectly.’

‘Did you have anything to do with it?’ asked Jonas.

‘Well, yes, I kind of helped design the throne you’re in.’

‘Then I’m not worried,’ said Jonas.

‘You’re not?’

‘No,’ said Jonas, ‘because I can feel your compassion and your concern for me. I know you’re worried for my life, but I can sense that you’ve done everything you can to make sure this machine works safely.’

‘How do you know all that?’

‘He’s an empath, Dalia,’ said Mellicin. ‘It’s what they do.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Dalia, feeling foolish.

‘I’m looking forward to this, really,’ said Jonas. ‘To use my gift for the betterment of the Imperium? What better way is there for someone blessed with my talent to serve the Emperor? I’ll know everything soon, and I’ll be part of something that helps humanity achieve its destiny. I know that sounds a bit grand, but it’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it?’

Dalia smiled, relieved beyond words that they were not pressing some unwilling victim into the service of Adept Zeth’s grand dream. ‘Yes, Jonas,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing here.’

‘All engines form on Victorix Magna,’ ordered Princeps Indias Cavalerio, nodding towards his steersman. ‘Keep us level, Lacus.’

‘Yes, my princeps,’ said Lacus, expertly walking the God-Machine through the treacherous straits surrounding the heavily cratered northern reaches of the Ulysses Patera.

‘And keep the auspex returns frequent, Palus, the ground here is weak.’

‘Yes, my princeps,’ came the response from the sensori blister atop the Warlord’s crew compartment. The tone of his sensori’s voice did not escape Cavalerio, and he knew he was being overcautious, needlessly telling the crew their jobs.

Victorix Magna was an old machine, patched, repaired and refitted a thousand times in her long life of battle. Her fiery heart was proud, but it was old like his, and Cavalerio wondered how many more marches they would take together.

In truth, the Victorix should still have been in the care of the Legio artificers, but since the attack on Adept Maximal’s reactor, Legio Tempestus could ill-afford to take chances with the remaining reactors clustered on the slopes of the crater or positioned along the canyons of the Ulysses Fossae.

Without those reactors, it would become increasingly difficult to keep the engines of his beloved Legio operational. Whoever had struck at Maximal had done so with great precision, destroying the reactor that provided the most power to the Tempestus fortress within Ascraeus Mons.

Cavalerio reclined in a contoured couch, his arms and skull sheathed in cables and haptic implants that burrowed beneath his skin like silver worms. This arrangement of a physical connection was fast becoming obsolete, a means of command seen as archaic by some princeps of Mars. Many were already embracing full body immersion in an amniotic tank that allowed information to flow like liquid through a virtual world, but Cavalerio much preferred an actual connection with the engine he commanded.

He knew the gradual atrophy of his body meant that he would soon have no choice but to accept emplacement within such a tank, for he could not endure the pain and stress, both mental and physical, of too many more separations.

That day was not yet here, and Cavalerio pushed the thought from his mind as he concentrated on the mission at hand.

Linked with the Manifold, Cavalerio saw the world around him as though the mighty structure of Victorix Magna were his own flesh and blood. The barren, cratered landscape of Mars stretched out all around him, the pale, ashen wastelands of the pallidus to the south-west and the tumbled rockfaces of the twin craters upon which Maximal’s forge hunched like a collection of blistered towers.

Ahead, the tumbled, haphazard sprawl of the Gigas Sulci sub-hives filled the landscape, a wretched, sweltering collection of towers, habs and shanties that housed the millions of workers who toiled in the Fabricator General’s manufactorum upon the towering, lightning-wracked slopes of Olympus Mons.

For days Kelbor-Hal’s domain had been wreathed in seething thunderheads, the slopes and forges hammered by crackling bolts of purple lightning. Cavalerio didn’t know what manner of experimental work the Fabricator General had going on, but it was creating some lousy atmospherics and interfering with vox-traffic for thousands of kilometres in all directions.

Every channel was alive with scrappy blurts of code that sounded like a chorus of urgent voices crowded into a single frequency. Cavalerio had been forced to mute the volume on the vox, the chattering nonsense code giving him a splitting headache.

Cavalerio put the Fabricator General from his mind and cast his augmented gaze far to the south, where thick clouds from the refinery fields of the Daedalia Planum smothered the landscape, smudging the horizon in permanent crepuscular gloom.

The three cobalt-blue engines in Cavalerio’s battle group marched at a steady pace along the borders between the territory of the Fabricator General and that of Ipluvien Maximal, striding like three great giants of legend.

On Cavalerio’s left was the stately Warlord, Tharsis Hastatus, commanded by his comrade-in-arms, Princeps Suzak. Hastatus was a killing engine and Suzak a man who could be depended upon to deliver a lethal strike when it was needed most.

To his right, the Reaver Arcadia Fortis marched with eager steps, pulling slightly ahead of the main group. Its princeps, Jan Mordant, was a fiery-hearted hunter, a warrior recently promoted from a Warhound princepture who hadn’t yet shed his preference for lone wolf operations.

‘Close it up, Mordant,’ said Cavalerio. ‘My sensori tells me the ground here is soft and that some of the sand has shifted over the chasms. I don’t want to have to call out a bulk lifter crew to lift your engine off its arse.’

‘Understood,’ came the terse reply, screeches and howls of interference scratching over Mordant’s voice. Mordant was still getting used to the quirks of his new command, he and his engine still gauging the measure of the other, and his responses were typically brusque. Cavalerio only tolerated such behaviour because Mordant was one of his best warriors, with a kill tally only exceeded by his own.

‘Still thinks he’s a Warhound driver, eh?’ said Kuyper, the Magna’s moderati.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Cavalerio. ‘The Arcadia will soon cure him of that, she’s a stern mistress, that’s for sure. Any word from Basek?’

‘Nothing yet, my princeps,’ said Kuyper, consulting the vox-log.

‘Sensori, do you have a fix on Vulpus Rex?’

‘I think so, my princeps,’ answered Palus, ‘but these damned atmospherics are making it hard to keep a fix on their return. And our old girl’s vision’s not what it used to be.’

‘That’s not good enough, Palus,’ cautioned Cavalerio. ‘Find her. Now.’

‘Yes, my princeps,’ answered Palus.

Cavalerio gave his sensori a few moments before asking, ‘Do you have her now?’

‘She’s further south,’ answered Palus with a measure of relief, ‘skulking around the edge of the Gigas sub-hives at the end of the Barium Highway.’

‘Good ambush site,’ noted Kuyper. ‘If anything’s going to come up on us, it’ll be from there.’

‘And they’ll find Basek waiting for them,’ added Lacus the steersman with relish.

Cavalerio nodded. Princeps Basek commanded Vulpus Rex, the finest Warhound Titan of Legio Tempestus, a fleet killer of engines far larger than its hunched feral size would suggest.

Pulling up the schematics of the surrounding landscape from the Manifold and meshing them with the topographical view afforded him through the Titan’s senses, Cavalerio saw that Kuyper’s assessment was correct. Only the Barium Highway was wide enough to allow an engine to pass without demolishing half the dwellings.

The confused tangles of glowing outlines that depicted the edges of the sub-hives were, however, outdated and likely to be inaccurate, so it never paid to be complacent where the safety of an engine was concerned. So much was built or demolished that most maps of the sub-hives were rendered obsolete on a daily basis.

‘Bring us about on a heading of two-two-five,’ ordered Cavalerio, feeling his muscles twitch as the mighty form of Victorix Magna swung about and began a stately march along the edge of Maximal’s domain. ‘Magos Argyre, what’s our reactor status?’

‘Assessment: borderline,’ said Argyre, the Titan’s enginseer, who stood immobile in his rear-mounted compartment behind the princeps’s dais. ‘We should not have marched, Princeps Cavalerio. The reactor’s spirit is troubled and it is dangerous to walk without having recited the full litany of calming prayers to soothe its troubled heart.’

‘So noted, Magos,’ said Cavalerio. ‘Bring us to slow march speed.’

‘Slow march speed,’ repeated Argyre.

Cavalerio monitored their surroundings through the depths of the Manifold, drinking in data from pressure sensors, atmospheric samplers, infrared panels and microwave receptors. His understanding of the world around him was unparalleled, his awareness unmatched by any other entity on the plains of Mars.

He tried to keep his attention focused on the ground before him, for the landscape around Maximal’s forge was treacherous, but he found his attention continually drawn to the ugly, bruised skies above Olympus Mons.

‘What are you up to, Kelbor-Hal?’ he muttered.

‘My princeps?’ asked Kuyper.

‘Hmmm? Oh, nothing, I was just wondering out loud,’ replied Cavalerio.

Kuyper had caught his interest in Olympus Mons, their communal link to the Manifold allowing no secrets to exist between them.

‘It’s the Grand Mountain, isn’t it?’ asked Kuyper, using the Titan drivers’ old name for Olympus Mons. The moderati of Victorix Magna twisted in the reclined couch at the Warlord’s chin mount to face Cavalerio. ‘She frets about something.’

‘The Grand Mountain,’ agreed Cavalerio. ‘She speaks with the voice of Mars and something troubles her.’

‘My princeps!’ called Sensori Palus. ‘Vox contact from Ascraeus Mons. Princeps Sharaq urgently requests to speak with you.’

‘On the Manifold,’ ordered Cavalerio.

A ghostly hash of green light swam into focus before the reclining princeps, a holographic image of Princeps Sharaq standing in the Chamber of the First. The image jittered like a jammed signal, the words fading in and out as though the code was somehow corrupt.

‘What is it, Sharaq?’ demanded Cavalerio. ‘We are on-mission.’

‘I know, Stormlord, but you must return to Ascraeus Mons immediately.’

‘Return? Why?’

Sharaq’s answer was blotted out by a squealing blurt of code like an animalistic bellow of rage, his image distorting as if in the grip of a rippling heat haze.

‘…Mortis. They march!’

‘What? Repeat last,’ snapped Cavalerio.

Sharaq’s image suddenly sharpened, and Cavalerio heard the next words as clearly as if his fellow princeps had been standing before him.

‘Legio Mortis,’ repeated Sharaq. ‘Their engines walk. And they are heading towards Ascraeus Mons.’

1.08

Dalia stared in fascination at Ipluvien Maximal, wondering how much of him was mechanical and how much was human. From the little she could see of his body beneath the coolant robes he wore to preserve the integrity of the machine parts of his body, the answer was not much. There was precious little left of the magos that spoke of their shared racial kinship.

‘You have never seen an adept of the Mechanicum like me?’ asked Maximal.

‘No,’ said Dalia. ‘Most of the ones I’ve seen still look human. You sound human, but you don’t look it.’

Maximal turned to Adept Zeth and blurted a crackling burst of code, the viewscreens attached to his host of mechadendrites flashing with his amusement.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Dalia. ‘I didn’t mean to speak out of turn, I was just curious.’

The robed magos turned back to her. ‘You understand binaric code? Without modifications?’

‘I’ve picked it up,’ said Dalia, embarrassed at the scrutiny.

Maximal nodded his oblong, helmeted head, the whirring lenses adjusting to better view Dalia. ‘You were right, Zeth, she is quite remarkable. Perhaps this project of yours might actually bear fruit after all.’

Dalia looked past the hulking form of Maximal to the wide window that looked out into the domed chamber where Jonas Milus was strapped to the theta-wave enhancer, beneath the sightless eyes of the thousands of psykers encased in the coffers of the dome.

‘It will work, I’m sure of it,’ whispered Dalia.

‘Let us hope so, young Dalia,’ said Maximal. ‘A great deal depends upon it.’

‘You have a lovely voice,’ said Dalia. ‘It’s rich, like a well-spoken man of the Romanii. Why would you bother with a voice like that when you look like you do?’

‘We all have our foibles, Dalia,’ explained Maximal. ‘This voice belonged to a great singer of operatic verse and the sounds remind me of all that is good in mankind.’

Dalia didn’t know what to say to that, so returned her attention to the view beyond the armoured glass that was all that separated the control room from what was about to happen.

An army of calculus-logi attended to a bewildering bank of cogitators and logic engines that controlled aspects of the Akashic reader she had not known about. Many of the symbols on the panels were unknown to her or used words she didn’t know. The control room was a thrumming box of tension and activity, the sense of something great and portentous heavy on everyone’s features.

Even the servitors looked tense, though Dalia told herself that it was just her imagination.

‘When does it start?’ asked Dalia, turning to her colleagues.

Caxton and Severine shrugged and even Mellicin had no answer.

‘It starts now, Dalia,’ said Adept Zeth appearing at her side and placing a bronze gauntlet on her shoulder. ‘All of this is down to you.’

‘Then let’s just hope it works,’ said Dalia, looking at the distant, serene features of Jonas Milus.

‘Terran horizon clear,’ said an automated voice. ‘Astronomican light readings approaching test window parameters. Alignment on track.’

‘Removing pentobarbital wards from psychic foci,’ said the toneless voice of a calculus-logi. ‘Increasing aperture of pineal antenna.’

‘Magma generators diverting power to collectors.’

‘What do all those things mean?’ asked Dalia.

‘You remember I told you that it takes a great deal of energy to breach the walls separating us from the aether?’ said Zeth.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it takes a form and amount of energy that cannot be generated here on Mars.’

‘What kind of energy?’

‘Psychic energy,’ said Zeth, ‘in quantities that can only be harvested from one source, the Astronomican.’

‘The Emperor’s warp beacon? The one that guides starships?’

‘The very same,’ said Zeth, pointing towards the metallic disc at the dome’s apex, from which golden spears of energy were arcing. ‘Only the Astronomican has the required psychic energy that will allow the Akashic reader to access the sum of all knowledge we seek. We will divert a fraction of its power into the chamber to empower the psykers and open the gates to the aether.’

‘Won’t it disrupt the Astronomican if we use its power?’ asked Dalia.

Zeth looked over at Maximal, a moment’s hesitation giving Dalia the answer she sought.

‘It will,’ admitted Zeth, ‘but only for a short span of time.’

Dalia stepped towards the consoles that operated the Akashic reader, assimilating what Zeth had just told her into her understanding of what was being said and what the words carved into the wooden panels meant.

She had no real idea of how powerful the Astronomican was, but understood that even a fraction of its energy would be greater than anything she could imagine. She looked into the chamber at the waking psykers and knew with sudden, awful, clarity that she had overlooked something.

‘How are you going to divert the Astronomican’s power?’ she asked.

‘Mars will be in alignment with Terra soon and we will pass through the radiance of the psychic beacon. The pineal antennae will collect the energy and divert it to the psykers.’

‘Is that how you’ve always done it?’ asked Dalia urgently.

Adept Zeth shook her head. ‘No. This will be the first time we have passed through the Astronomican.’

‘Oh no,’ whispered Dalia. ‘The calculations are wrong. They’re all wrong!’

‘Wrong, what are you talking about?’ demanded Adept Maximal.

‘The energy readings,’ said Dalia. ‘I understand now… the different readings. Fluctuating maximums and minimums. Apogee and perigee… That’s why the numbers were different. We assumed a baseline average, but that’s not what we’re going to get now.’

‘Dalia, explain yourself,’ said Zeth. ‘Talk me through your concerns.’

‘The raw data you gave us to work with…’ said Dalia. ‘I based the upper levels of assumed energy transference on the psychic strengths you’ve used so far, but this time the energy levels will be hundreds… thousands of times greater than before. The reader used fragments of reflected and refracted psychic bleed… scraps and trickles of psychic energy, but this is going to be a raging torrent!’

‘Psychic confluence in five, four…’

‘Adept Zeth,’ said Dalia, tearing her eyes from Jonas Milus and spinning to face the Mistress of the Magma City. ‘We have to stop this. It’s going to be too much!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Zeth. ‘We cannot stop it.’

‘You have to!’ begged Dalia. ‘Please! It’s only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.’

‘Three, two, one…’ continued the countdown.

‘No… Oh, Throne, no!’ cried Dalia, turning back to the domed chamber.

Blinding light, brighter than a million suns, flooded the chamber of the Akashic reader as the full might of the Astronomican poured its energies through the coffers and into the blind psykers.

Shouts of alarm and warning klaxons blared almost immediately.

And over it all, Dalia could hear the agonised screaming of Jonas Milus.

The desolate uplands between the volcanoes of the Tharsis Montes were bare of structures or habitation. Any landscape habitually trodden by the god engines of the Legios was crushed flat by the unimaginable weight of the titanic war machines. The only artificial creations were those placed there by Legio servitors to act as target practice.

The land between Ascraeus Mons and Pavonis Mons was rugged and inhospitable, an area of demarcation between two warrior orders who shared a region of Mars but little else. A few of the nomadic vassal tribes that plied the ashen wastelands between the great forges of the adepts had tried to found settlements there, but even they were forced to concede that living in the shadow of the Titan fortresses was untenable.

The great golden gateway of the Legio Tempestus fortress at the end of the Ascraeus Chasmata stood open, and three titanic engines, resplendent in their cobalt blue armour plates, marched out. Kill totems and trailing honour banners billowed on their weapons and from enormous masts fitted to their carapaces.

Metallus Cebrenia, the engine of Princeps Sharaq, led them out, followed by its smaller siblings, the Warhounds Raptoria and Astrus Lux. All three machines were fully armed and ready to fight, their gun-servitors and auto-loaders cycled up to battle readiness. A host of bestial, armoured skitarii divisions swarmed at the base of the canyon, but Sharaq knew that they would be of little use in any engine fight that might develop.

Only a fraction of the Tempestus skitarii remained on Mars, but Aeschman, the commander of the Martian divisions, had demanded the right to march out with the engines, and Sharaq wasn’t about to deny the towering brute the chance to lead his augmented warriors.

To march out with such a force was almost unheard of on Mars, but with tensions running high in the Tharsis region, Princeps Sharaq was taking no chances with the security of the Legio’s fortress.

With Princeps Senioris Cavalerio protecting the reactors of Ipluvien Maximal, Sharaq was next in the chain of command and the security of Ascraeus Mons was his responsibility.

He just wished he had more engines to secure it with.

Two Warhounds and a Reaver fresh from refit was no force to protect an entire base, not when the engines of Mortis were walking.

Cavalerio’s battle group was on its way back, but a ferocious dust storm had blown out of the west from the slopes of the Great Mountain to confound the auspex, so, for all intents and purposes, Sharaq was on his own.

Did Mortis have violence in mind? Sharaq didn’t know and just hoped this was another of Camulos’s posturing walks to demonstrate his Legio’s favour on Mars.

‘Dolun?’ asked Sharaq. ‘Where are they?’ He didn’t need to clarify who he meant.

‘Getting engine returns and heat blooms from four or five engines, my princeps,’ said his sensori, feeding the information to Sharaq through the Manifold. The view through the cabin windows was a swirling, seething mass of orange and brown dust particles, the smooth-finished rock of the canyon sides barely visible in the gloom.

Sharaq needed no visual cues to command the Metallus Cebrenia, for he was navigating and driving his engine via the sensorium of the Manifold, a much more reliable source of information than the poor sense of his eyes.

‘I estimate sixty kilometres out, closing fast,’ said Dolun. ‘Possible four engines, striding speed or better.’

‘Throne, they’re big,’ hissed Moderati Bannan.

‘Warlords,’ said Sharaq. ‘Three of them. And maybe a Reaver.’

‘Probably,’ noted Bannan. ‘But that heat bloom in the centre… it’s too big for one engine. Might be another marching in close formation. They could be trying to hide another engine.’

‘Dolun?’ queried Sharaq. ‘What do you make of that assessment?’

‘Could be, but the void returns I’m getting don’t look like separate tracks. It’s hard to tell, the storms blowing in from the west are messing with every piece of surveyor gear I’ve got.’

‘Keep on it,’ ordered Sharaq, flexing his fists in their sheaves of steel and wire. A rumbling thunder vibrated along the great pistons and cogs of Metallus Cebrenia’s colossal frame as the God-Machine sensed his anticipation through the Manifold. Cebrenia was an old machine, a grand dam of the Legio with an enviable honour roll, but she had faltered in her last battle and taken severe damage.

The journey back to Mars for refit and repair had been difficult for both man and machine, and Sharaq could feel the pressure to perform in this engagement.

‘Any word from Mortis?’ he demanded. ‘Any response to our hails?’

‘Negative, my princeps,’ replied Bannan. ‘I’m just getting static. Could be the storm is playing with the vox, but I doubt it.’

‘What about the Stormlord? Any word from Princeps Cavalerio?’

‘Last transmission we had said they were heading back at flank speed,’ said Bannan. ‘Nothing since then.’

‘Come on, Indias,’ whispered Sharaq. ‘I can’t hold the Chasmata with a Reaver and two Warhounds.’

He returned his attention to the Manifold, trying to make some sense of the squalls and interference that fogged his perceptions of the world around his engine.

The Martian networks had been jammed for days with scrappy, fragmentary code blurts that appeared to have no point of origin, and which ghosted around the system before vanishing just as inexplicably.

‘Adept Eskund, reduce reactor power twelve per cent,’ ordered Sharaq. ‘Bannan, bring us to one third. Hold us at the mouth of the canyon.’

‘Yes, my princeps,’ said Bannan, easing down on their speed.

Sharaq opened the Manifold to the princeps of the two Warhounds and said, ‘Kasim, Lamnos.’

Ghostly images, rippling and unsteady, formed in the air before Sharaq’s eyes: Kasim, the swarthy-skinned predator, and Lamnos, the ambusher who killed from the shadows. Both warriors worked well together, Kasim fighting with the aggression of a hunter to flush prey towards the killing fire of his brother-in-arms.

‘Princeps Sharaq,’ said Kasim, his voice thick with the accent of the hives of Phoenicus Lacus. ‘You have hunting orders?’

‘Maybe,’ said Sharaq. ‘Spread out and run a criss-cross search pattern out towards the last fix we had on Mortis. I want to know where those damned engines are.’

‘Are we to engage?’ asked Lamnos, and Sharaq almost laughed at the eagerness he heard in his fellow princeps’s voice.

‘Your courage is admirable, Lamnos, but if Mortis are coming in the strength I think they are, a pair of Warhounds won’t stop them.’

‘Then we just let them march on our fortress unopposed?’ demanded Kasim.

‘We don’t know where they’re marching yet,’ Sharaq reminded his bellicose Warhound drivers. ‘They may swing westwards and carry on north to the Olympica Fossae assembly yards. Or they could bear east towards Mondus Occulum. We don’t know.’

‘They will rue the day if they cross the Tempest Line,’ snarled Lamnos.

‘Yes, they will,’ agreed Sharaq, ‘but until they do and are within our engagement zone, you are not to fire unless fired upon. I won’t have Camulos saying we started an engine war on Mars thanks to a headstrong Tempest driver. Understood?’

Both princeps grumbled their assent and Sharaq shut down the link between them as the Warhounds loped off into the wind-whipped ash and dust.

Dalia raced from the control room, chased by screaming alarm bells and the blinding light of the Astronomican. Howling cants of binary squealed and the air foamed with torrents of panicked data streams.

Tears spilled down her cheeks as she heard the agonised screaming of Jonas Milus, the sound echoing from the front of her skull to the innermost reaches of her psyche. Dalia had promised herself that he would be safe, that her work would not see him killed in the name of scientific progress.

That promise had been reduced to ashes and she couldn’t bear the sound of his screams. She passed into the towering shaft chamber that rose up to the Magma City, seeing that the low archway in the silver wall was now filled with a great bronze gate. She ran towards it, molten light spilling through a circular window in its centre.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! He’s dying!’

She beat her fists on the metal door, bruising the flesh of her hands and drawing blood where she clawed at the glass with her fingernails. Dalia pressed her face to the window, straining to see anything through the dazzling brightness that filled the chamber and rendered what was happening within invisible.

‘Open the door!’ screamed Dalia. ‘Open the damn door! We have to stop this!’

Dalia rushed to the keypad at the side of the door and began punching in the code required to open it. She had not been made privy to the doorway’s code, but had skimmed the access protocols from Zeth’s noospheric aura.

Further warning alarms shrilled and a pulsating amber light began to strobe angrily.

She felt a restraining hand on her arm and angrily threw it off.

‘You can’t go in there!’ shouted a voice at her ear: Caxton’s.

‘I have to!’ she wailed. ‘He’s dying. Oh, Throne we’re killing him!’

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Caxton, drawing her arms back from the door before she could punch in the final sequence of digits and turning her away from the light streaming through the window. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It is, it is,’ sobbed Dalia, burying her face in Caxton’s shoulder and holding him tightly, as if the force of her grip could somehow end the horror. ‘We need to get in there.’

‘You can’t,’ said Caxton. ‘Not yet. You’re not soul-bound!’

‘I don’t care! I need to get in there!’

‘No! The psychic energy will kill you if you go through that door.’

‘Like it’s killing them!’ said Dalia. ‘I’ve got to!’

She pushed Caxton away and entered the last digits of the access sequence.

Like a rolling surge tide, the light boiled out from the chamber of the Akashic reader, and Dalia plunged into the roaring blizzard of psychic power.

Princeps Kasim felt the savage glee of Raptoria as he pushed her to flank speed. Like him, Raptoria was glad to be walking beneath the sky, unfettered and armed for war. The between times when she languished in oily ship holds, restrained by scaffolds and manacled to the deck, had been a cage for her warlike heart, a cell for an angry killer that had denied her sublime skills as a hunter.

This was her first walk since returning to Mars for repairs, and Kasim felt the urge to kill in every piston, gear and metal joint of his mount. He looked down at the golden skull and cog medallion that hung around his neck and wished that he could reach up and touch it for luck, but his hands were encased in wire-wound haptic sheaths.

Princeps Cavalerio, the Stormlord himself, had presented Kasim with the medallion, honouring him in front of the Legio as they boarded the ships for Mars after the brutal, hard-fought campaign of the Epsiloid Binary Cluster.

Six engines had been lost and many wounded, including the already battle-scarred Victorix Magna, the towering war machine of the Stormlord.

Cavalerio had brought the badly wounded engines of the Legio back to Mars, leaving the bulk of Tempestus under the command of Princeps Maximus Karania. Months of labour by the Legio artisans had seen the damaged engines repaired and brought back to their former glory.

With the refit works virtually complete the Legio was ready to transfer back to the expedition fleet, to once more extend the rightful domain of the Imperium. Kasim eagerly awaited the Legio’s return to the forefront of the fighting, for Mars had changed in the years since Tempestus had led its war machines across its umber plains.

No longer was Mars united in the dream of the Great Crusade. The clan-forges and magi had fallen to petty squabbling and spiteful acts of violence, dragging the Red Planet into an age of suspicion and mistrust.

Even the warrior orders had changed, forming factions and isolated bands of martial strength to protect what resources they controlled. Mortis had been no exception, extending their control through the guise of protection to many of the smaller forges and more easily pressured warrior orders.

No, the sooner Tempestus could get back to the real work of the galaxy the better.

‘Where are they?’ he hissed, bringing his Warhound about and angling his course to intersect with that of Astrus Lux. The view from his canopy was mostly obscured by the billowing ash storm, the thick, armoured glass streaked with a dusty residue that was the bane of cogs and gears.

‘Twenty kilometres, my princeps,’ said Moderati Vorich. ‘Signal returns growing in strength, but they keep fading in and out… as if there’s some kind of interference pushing out just ahead of them.’

‘Keep us steady,’ warned Kasim. ‘And keep a close eye on the sensoria, they’ll probably have Warhound pickets as well.’

‘Yes, my princeps.’

Kasim felt the power beneath him, the fiery heart of Raptoria straining at his commands and anxious for the hunt proper to begin.

‘Soon,’ he whispered.

Kasim was relying on hard implants and the myriad surveyor apparatus fed information to him via the MIU, data flowing directly into his cerebral cortex as streams of neurons.

So far, Raptoria was running only passive scans, the better to hide her presence in the storm. An active scan of the area would reveal more of their surroundings, but would as good as announce their presence to any undiscovered hunters.

In such conditions, a Warhound lived and killed by its stealth – as strange as the concept of such a huge machine being stealthy might appear – and Kasim trusted his instincts to keep Raptoria safe. The interference plaguing the sensoria was troubling, and he could feel Raptoria’s unease in the skittishness of her controls.

All his other senses were undimmed. He could feel the nearness of Princeps Lamnos’s engine, the bite of the dust on Raptoria’s hull, and taste the oily, ashen flavour of the wind as it howled around him.

Somewhere out in the dust was the enemy, even if they hadn’t been classified as such yet, but Kasim couldn’t see them or know how close they were. Such situations were a Titan driver’s worst nightmare; that your enemy could be plotting a firing solution without you even knowing he was there.

Kasim knew it was only a matter of time before Mortis and Tempestus drew blood.

The words exchanged between the Stormlord and Camulos at the Council of Tharsis had as good as guaranteed it. Kasim’s warrior instinct was to strike the first blow, but he would not disobey a direct order from Princeps Sharaq.

‘My princeps!’ called Vorich as the ground suddenly shook with a thunderous reverberation. ‘Hard returns, dead ahead! Reactor blooms and void signatures!’

‘Where in the name of the Machine did they come from?’ demanded Kasim. ‘Identify!’

‘Unknown contact, but it’s too big to be a Warhound.’

The vibration of the ground had already told him that this was no Warhound.

Too big for a Reaver.

‘A Warlord?’ responded Kasim, his excitement and fear manifesting in the Warhound’s posture as it crouched close to the ground.

‘No, my princeps,’ said Vorich, staring in horror at the sight emerging from the howling dust clouds.

Kasim felt the chill of its shadow envelop him, and his skin flushed as he saw the enormous engine stride towards them, its every step rocking the very earth with its monstrous tread. A towering fortress of brazen red metal with black and silver etchings moulded on the great bastion towers of its legs, the enormous engine dwarfed the Warhound as a grown man would dwarf a babe in arms.

Arcing battlements crowned its immensity, the colossal, mountainous fortress engine unlike anything Kasim had seen before. He had heard the rumours and looked over the technical specs and blueprints of similar machines, but nothing had prepared him for the awesome spectacle of so gargantuan a war machine in the flesh.

Weapons capable of obliterating cities depended from its wide shoulders and its head was a grinning, horned skull of burnished silver.

‘Imperator,’ said Kasim.

Princeps Cavalerio scoured the Manifold for information, reading nothing through the barking, squealing hash of scrapcode fouling the airwaves. He could get nothing from Princeps Sharaq and feared the worst. Mortis was on the march, and Cavalerio wondered if Princeps Camulos was about to make good his threat of a coming storm.

His battle group was marching at flank speed towards their fortress and he could feel the ancient heart of Victorix Magna protest at the demands placed upon it. His own heart beat in time with the great machine and he felt a growing numbness spreading through his limbs.

Cavalerio fought against the sensation, willing both his mortal frame and the immortal might of his engine to keep going.

‘Do you really think Mortis is about to attack Ascraeus Mons?’ asked Moderati Kuyper.

‘I don’t know,’ confessed Cavalerio, their words spoken through the link of the Manifold. ‘I believe Camulos wants to drive our Legio from Tharsis, but this seems bold even for him.’

‘Then perhaps this is the first strike in a larger war,’ suggested Kuyper.

Cavalerio kept his thoughts close, remembering what Camulos had said at the Council of Tharsis.

Sides were being chosen and battle lines drawn all across Mars, and while Cavalerio couldn’t bring himself to believe that the Titan orders were about to go to war, this manoeuvre of Mortis seemed deliberately calculated to rouse the ire of Tempestus.

Well, Indias Cavalerio was not about to rise to the bait of this provocation.

‘I don’t think they will attack,’ he said. ‘I think they want us to attack them, to fire the first shot so as to justify their retaliation.’

‘Our warriors will only fire if they’re fired on first,’ said Kuyper.

Cavalerio thought of the engine commanders at Ascraeus Mons: Sharaq, Lamnos and Kasim. Sharaq could be trusted to understand the situation, but Lamnos and Kasim?

Their hearts were fiery and warlike, as was expected of Warhound drivers, but where heart and mind were in balance in more experienced warriors, Cavalerio feared what impulsive decisions they might make in the heat of the moment.

‘Get me Sharaq’s battle group,’ he said. ‘I need to make sure they know not to fire first.’

‘Understood, Stormlord,’ said Kuyper, returning his attention to breaking through the interference.

Cavalerio opened the Manifold link to Magos Argyre. ‘How long till we reach the Mons?’

‘Update: at flank speed, we will be within visual range of Ascraeus Mons in seventeen point four minutes. However, the reactor is running twenty-seven per cent in excess of what I believe it can safely handle at this time.’

‘Increase reactor output,’ ordered Cavalerio. ‘I want us there in less than ten.’

‘Warning: to increase reactor output beyond the current rate of–’

‘I don’t want to hear any excuses!’ snapped Cavalerio. ‘Just make it happen!’

The Imperator Titan had not come alone.

Two Warlords and a Reaver marched alongside it like the hangers-on of a scholam bully. Kasim could see no sign of a Warhound picket or skitarii escort, but with engines as large as this, what need had they of any skirmish screen?

The ground shook and cracked at its passing, and Kasim could only watch in mute awe as the mightiest war machine he had ever seen swept past him like an uprooted hive on mountainous legs.

‘What do we do?’ breathed Moderati Vorich.

What indeed? To fight such a monster was suicide, but its path would see it cross the Tempest Line in a little over nine minutes, and then they would have to fight it. They would be as ants against a bull-grox… but even ants could bring down a larger beast with enough numbers.

As his now active surveyors gathered what information they could on the might of the Imperator, Kasim knew that Tempestus had not the guns to defeat such a terrifying opponent.

‘We follow it,’ said Kasim. ‘And we wait.’

‘Wait for what?’ asked Vorich.

Kasim looked down at his medallion, again wishing he could touch it.

‘To see if this is the day we die,’ he said.

Dalia screamed as the howling gale of psychic energy enveloped her, feeling it tear at her like a malicious hurricane. She heard screaming voices that clawed at the inner surfaces of her skull and whispers she could not possibly be hearing, but which sounded as clear as though she heard them lying on her bed in the middle of the night.

White light filled the chamber, the walls blurring in a rippling haze thrown off by the roaring column of silver that flared from the dome’s apex and speared down towards Jonas Milus upon his throne.

She heard the metallic ring of the doorway closing behind her and spared a brief thought for Caxton and the others. Her robes billowed in the grip of powerful etheric winds, her skin raw and scoured by invisible energies that passed through her skin to the marrow and beyond.

Billowing ghosts of light swarmed the chamber, fleeting unnatural forms that defied description and which lingered uncomfortably in the darkest reaches of her imagination. Clouds of feelings filled the chamber: thunderheads of anger, zephyrs of regret, hailstorms of longing, hurricanes of love and betrayal.

Emotions and meaning surrounded her, though how such concepts could be given physical, visible form was a mystery to her. Dalia took a step into the chamber, feeling her will erode in the face of the primal energies that surrounded her and infused her at the same time.

‘Jonas!’ she yelled, the words fleeing her mouth in a gush of red. At first she feared it was blood, but the colour in the air vanished almost as soon as it had appeared. The noise filling the chamber was incredible, like the death scream of an entire race or the birth pangs of another.

All emotion and knowledge was here, and Dalia realised that this was the aether; this was the realm beyond the one her senses could consciously perceive. This was the source of all knowledge and the source of the greatest danger imaginable.

This was what she had allowed Jonas Milus to be exposed to.

The thought galvanised her steps, and she forced her way through the maelstrom of light and colour, feeling the energies unleashed by the psykers in the coffered ceiling bleed off as they began to die. She could feel their lives ending, dissipating into the cacophony of light and noise. She wept with sympathetic pain, feeling each death as a splinter of needle-sharp agony in her mind.

Dalia shielded her eyes as she drew closer to the dais, seeing Jonas Milus convulsing upon the throne, illuminated by the blinding light of the Astronomican. His head jerked spasmodically from side to side, his mouth a blur of motion as he screamed and yammered streams of words too fast to be understood.

She pushed her way up the steps towards him, dropping to her knees to better fight against the gales of energy and howling ghosts that swarmed the dais.

‘Jonas!’ she called, reaching out to him.

She couldn’t reach him and crawled, inch by inch, towards him. His screaming was undimmed, the words flooding from him so fast in an ululating howl of pain. Fire blazed in his eyes, crackling with ancient power, the power of something far greater than anything mankind had ever known.

At last Dalia reached the top of the dais and saw that the storm of psychic energy swirled around the throne, yet never touched it, as though some invisible, antithetical barrier was holding it back.

The throne shone as though illuminated from within by some vast elementally powerful force. Though she and her compatriots had struggled so hard to create it, she now wished they had failed utterly.

She wished to be rid of her gift and the consequences of what it had done.

Even as she formed the thought, her limbs jerked and she rose to her feet in the manner of a marionette lifted by its puppeteer. Dalia cried out as her limbs obeyed the unknown imperatives manipulating her body and she stared into the face of Jonas Milus.

The fire that burned in his eyes spilled outwards to engulf his entire body, pouring over him like blazing mercury. Her screams matched his, and the restraints that had bound him to the throne fell away, unmade by the silver fire that crawled over his flesh like a living thing.

The empath rose from his throne, a living being of illuminated silver with the light of unknown suns burning in his eyes. Dalia could not meet his gaze, fearful that the power there would consume her were she to stare into it for too long. Beneath the inner luminescence that filled his body, she could see his flesh disintegrating like ice before a flame.

‘I have seen it!’ he hissed, his voice sounding as though echoing from somewhere impossibly distant and deep. ‘All knowledge.’

‘Oh Jonas, I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry? No, Dalia, I won’t have your pity,’ said Jonas, fire writhing in his mouth as he spoke, his voice growing fainter with every word. ‘I have seen the truth and I am free. I know it all, the Emperor slaying the Dragon of Mars… the grand lie of the Red Planet and the truth that will shake the galaxy, all forgotten by man in the darkness of the labyrinth of night.’

Jonas Milus stepped towards Dalia, and the psychic winds were pushed away from her as though by his very presence. As he drew closer to her, Dalia heard the whine of great machinery powering down and the thump of closing relays as power to the Akashic reader was finally shut off.

The light of the Astronomican still filled the chamber, and the winds of psychic energy still roared and seethed at its edges, but their power was diminishing. The mundane features of the space began returning, the marble floor, the sensation of mass and solidity, the heat of the air and the smell of burned flesh.

‘Quickly! Look at me, Dalia,’ said Jonas with desperate urgency. ‘Look at me and know your destiny.’

She forced her head up and stared into the face of Jonas Milus as the light in his eyes was extinguished and the last of his human flesh faded away to oblivion.

The connection lasted the briefest fraction of a second, but that was enough.

Dalia screamed until she had no more breath, and took refuge from horrors that should never be borne by mortal brains in the black sleep of unconsciousness.

Princeps Sharaq followed the inbound tracks on the Manifold. The Imperator Titan was closing fast, surface scans of its identity markers revealing its name to be Aquila Ignis, an engine constructed in the Daedalia forge yards far to the south of Tharsis.

Its princeps, if such a vast machine could be commanded by just one man, was making no effort to conceal its power, and Sharaq fed the flow of data being collected on the terrible engine into the gunbox recorders of his war machine.

If the time ever came when they had to fight this engine, it would pay to be prepared.

With the unmasking of the Imperator, the howling binary interference had lifted, the storms that had whipped the dust into the air with such force dissipating as though they had never existed.

The vox crackled as the engines of Tempestus restored communications, each one filling the airwaves with excited chatter at the incredible sight marching towards Ascraeus Mons. Raptoria and Astrus Lux shadowed the Imperator, keeping a safe distance from it and its escorting Warlords.

‘Do you have firing solutions to that engine?’ asked Sharaq.

‘Yes, my princeps,’ said Bannan hesitantly. ‘But if we open fire, it’ll vaporise us in an instant. We can’t fight something that big.’

The Imperator blotted out everything around it, a walking mountain that impossibly moved closer with thunderous footsteps. Sharaq wished the rest of his Legio were here alongside him.

To be standing directly in the path of such a titanic creation, a fearsome miracle of construction and innovation, was a prospect no man should have to face alone. Raptoria and Astrus Lux would fight alongside him, and the skitarii weapons platforms would add their weight of fire, but they would be of little real use when the mighty engines started shooting.

For all intents and purposes, Sharaq was alone… his greatest fear as a princeps.

With Princeps Cavalerio’s battle group they would at least have a chance of wounding the beast, and might even best it, but without them…

‘Time to the Tempest Line?’ asked Sharaq, sweating profusely despite the cool air in the carapace cockpit.

‘Three minutes, my princeps,’ said Dolun.

‘Come on, turn away, damn you, turn,’ hissed Bannan, and Sharaq echoed his sentiment as the seconds ticked by with the inexorably slow slide of thick engine oil.

Then the Manifold crackled and the blessed voice of the Stormlord came over the vox.

‘Engines of the Legio Mortis,’ said Princeps Cavalerio, his voice stentorian and unequivocal. ‘You are on course to cross the Tempest Line, whereupon you will be in breach of the Tharsis non-aggression pact as signed by Princeps Acheron of Legio Mortis and Princeps Bakka of Legio Tempestus at the First Council of Cydonia. Turn back now or you may be fired upon.’

Sharaq watched the Manifold as Cavalerio’s engines marched up through the western pallidus, billowing clouds of dust swirling in their wakes. To have reached Ascraeus Mons in such time must have torn the hearts from their reactors, but they were here and that was what mattered.

‘Engines of Legio Mortis respond immediately!’ demanded Cavalerio, and Sharaq could hear the strain in the Stormlord’s voice. He checked the Manifold, getting elevated biometric and reactor readings from the Victorix Magna.

The thunderous form of the Imperator did not slow and Sharaq saw that it was moments from crossing the Tempest Line, whereupon it would be in the territory of Legio Tempestus. His mouth was dry and he took a sip from the hydration straw at his cheek.

‘Legio Mortis, respond!’ demanded Cavalerio, and Sharaq’s heart swelled with pride as the stately form of Victorix Magna marched to stand alongside Metallus Cebrenia, firm in the path of the colossal Imperator.

‘Fifteen seconds to the Tempest Line,’ warned Moderati Bannan.

Tharsis Hastatus, Arcadia Fortis and Vulpus Rex took position alongside Cavalerio’s engine, and the entire strength of Legio Tempestus on Mars stood before the mightiest war engines of Legio Mortis.

‘This is your final warning, Mortis!’ bellowed Cavalerio.

Dreadful terror settled in Sharaq’s gut as Moderati Bannan said, ‘Tempest Line breached, my princeps.’

2.01

The Tempest Line had been breached. The sovereign territory of one of the most honourable Legios of Mars had been violated. Armed engines had blatantly marched from their fortress and come with warlike intent to another. Despite the evidence before him, Princeps Cavalerio still could not accept that Mortis wanted to exchange fire.

Why would they risk such a thing? Supporting Horus Lupercal and engaging in provocation was one thing, but daring another Legio to fire upon your engines made no sense unless there was a darker, more far-reaching scheme at work.

If battle were joined here, little would survive, and even with the Imperator, Mortis would not walk away unscathed.

Cavalerio had always suspected that Camulos was a man unsuited for command, and this confrontation seemed only to confirm his suspicions. It was madness, and Cavalerio did not want to be sucked into that madness. The factions of the Mechanicum might make war on one another, but the Titan Legions were supposed to be above such things, to hold the ideals of a united Mars and Terra above all things, even their own differences.

‘My princeps,’ said Moderati Kuyper. ‘The Tempest Line.’

‘I know,’ said Cavalerio.

‘Should we open fire?’

‘You have a solution?’

‘At this range we don’t need one,’ Kuyper assured him. ‘That monster’s so large we won’t miss.’

Cavalerio nodded, sweat streaming from his brow, and his mouth dry. His heart was beating in brutal syncopation with the fiery heart of Victorix Magna, the straining power of a supernova at the engine’s core burning hotter and faster than it was ever designed to. He could hear Magos Argyre’s desperate supplications to the reactor’s spirit and felt the anguish of the mighty engine in the numbness spreading through his limbs.

The image of the Imperator filled his senses, both through the viewscreen and through the Manifold. Data scrolled like liquid light through his mind, and he drank in the colossal feats of engineering that had gone into its construction and the utter lethality of its existence.

Its limbs were death incarnate, the grinning skull-face an abominable harbinger of destruction. The bristling weapon towers and bastions were a martial city-fortress carried on the back of an ancient god, though this burden was borne willingly and not as a punishment.

To fight such a thing would be the greatest achievement of any princeps, but it would probably also be his last.

The monster took another step, taking with it any chance that this crossing of the Tempest Line was accidental.

‘Princeps Sharaq requests instructions,’ called out Kuyper. ‘Arcadia Fortis requests permission to fire.’

‘Vulpus Rex and Astrus Lux moving into flank fire positions,’ noted Palus.

‘Tell them to hold positions, damn them!’ shouted Cavalerio, his pulse racing like the roaring discharge of a gatling cannon. ‘No one opens fire unless I give the order. Make sure that last part is especially clear, Kuyper.’

‘Yes, my princeps.’

Cavalerio had the sensation of events sliding beyond his control, and he fought for breath as the fire from his loyal engine’s heart poured through the virtual marrow of his body like blood from a ruptured artery.

His vision blurred, the edges of the Manifold swimming like a badly-tuned picter.

Victorix Magna was hurting, hurting badly, and Cavalerio knew he had to end this ugly confrontation soon.

But how to do that without beginning a firefight that would destroy them all…

Raptoria strained at the edges of Princeps Kasim’s control, a feral, bestial thing that demanded blood and poured violent thoughts into his consciousness. Its murderous heart had tasted the enemy’s presence and felt the heat of its metal skin. It wanted to kill.

Kasim looked down at the gold cog medallion he wore and focused his mind on the discipline encoded into his thoughts by the Legio Magi before beginning this walk. Clogged data from previous engagements were washed from the peripherals grafted to the frontal lobes of each crewman’s brain to ensure each engagement was begun without the mental baggage of the last, but the hungry taste of battle was impossible to wash away completely.

No engine ever really forgot the hot, metallic flavour of war.

Kasim could feel his steersman’s efforts to keep the aggression from Raptoria’s movements and could hear the engine’s hunger for battle in the thudding, roaring drumbeat of her reactor.

Raptoria wanted to fight and, damn it, so did he.

Princeps Cavalerio was holding his fire and so too must they, but it was galling to see the engines of Mortis so brazenly insulting the honour of Tempestus. To allow this act of defiance to go unpunished was a bitter pill to swallow, and he could already feel Raptoria’s ire building within his skull with the malicious promise of future pain to come.

‘Power up weapons,’ he ordered in an effort to assuage the engine’s bloodlust. ‘Disengage safeties and surrender all firing authorities to me.’

By assuming all firing authorities, he was making sure that the feral heart of Raptoria didn’t overwhelm the low-grade brain coding of the emplaced gun-servitors and open fire herself.

Kasim didn’t want his engine to act without his control, but if a shooting war started, he was going to be ready to prosecute it to the best of his ability.

‘Why isn’t the Stormlord opening fire?’ wondered Moderati Vorich.

‘Are you in a hurry to die?’ asked Kasim. ‘Because that’s what will happen if we let this get out of hand.’

Despite his rebuke, Kasim was wondering the same thing. Mortis had clearly breached the Tempest Line, and Cavalerio was quite within his rights to fire. As much as his heart was spoiling for a fight, Kasim knew that the odds against victory were high.

Staring into the Manifold, Kasim saw the heroic form of the Victorix Magna standing firm before the monstrous, towering might of the Imperator. Beside her stood Arcadia Fortis and Metallus Cebrenia, all three engines dwarfed by the enemy engine.

‘What are you planning, Stormlord?’ whispered Kasim.

The Imperator loomed on the Manifold, a glowering god of war that could destroy them all.

A few more steps and it would be right on top of them.

In the cabin cockpit of Metallus Cebrenia, Princeps Sharaq was wondering the same thing as Kasim. Moderati Bannan counted the ever-increasing distance Aquila Ignis was striding into the territory of Legio Tempestus.

Increasing the angle of his view through the Manifold, Sharaq saw Victorix Magna standing proud beside him, venting hot exhaust gases and sweating lubricant from its overflows. Even without the spiking data readings, he could tell that the venerable engine was suffering.

‘Come on, Indias,’ he whispered. ‘Hold her together a little longer.’

He transferred his view outwards, seeing the agile, snapping forms of Vulpus Rex, Astrus Lux and Raptoria darting around the edges and rear of the approaching Imperator like pack wolves hunting a stag. Ever bellicose, their weapons were powered and ready to fire.

The ground shook and Sharaq could feel the tremor through every joint of his engine’s structure. Inertial dampers could compensate for most fluctuations in a Titan’s surrounding environment, but the mighty tread of such a colossal enemy was beyond its power to completely dissipate.

He looked down at the far away ground, feeling a stab of pity for the massed ranks of skitarii gathered around his engine’s splayed feet. To face a beast like the Imperator from a Warlord’s cockpit was a terrifying enough prospect, but to stand naked before it without the protection of void shields and armour…

That was courage indeed.

‘Range to target?’ asked Sharaq, fighting to keep his tone even.

The question was unnecessary. He could already see that the Imperator was less than three hundred metres away through the Manifold, point-blank range by any normal measure of things, but insanely close in this situation. He could already hear the squeal and rasp of the void shields as their fields warbled with the proximity.

‘Two hundred and fifty metres, my princeps,’ said Bannan.

He spared a glance to his left.

Victorix Magna stood, implacable and immovable, before the marching Imperator, and Sharaq loved the Stormlord for his resolve as much as he was frustrated by his inaction. The tension within the cockpit compartment of Metallus Cebrenia was unbearable.

Then a harsh, deafening squall shrilled across the vox frequencies, a filthy blurt of continuous, corrupted code noise that sounded like throaty laughter. Sharaq flinched and his sensori screamed as the wailing shriek tore at their hearing.

‘What in the name of the Omnissiah is that?’ yelled Bannan, snatching the vox-set from his head.

Sharaq killed the audio as the cackling laughter code burbled over the vox and the booming warhorns of the Mortis engines echoed from the towering cliffs of Ascraeus Mons.

The Imperator lowered its weapon arms, every horn, bell and augmitter upon its colossal spires and bastions blaring in disdain. The noise was unimaginably loud, broadcast across every audible wavefront and code frequency.

Debased and dirty codelines conveyed vile algorithms that Sharaq felt worming their way into his peripherals like viral code, and his aegis protocols fought to prevent them from reaching the deep sub-systems of Metallus Cebrenia.

‘Princeps!’ shouted Bannan. ‘Enemy course change detected.’

Sharaq gasped, his mind awhirl as his implants defended his neural paths from infection by the scrappy code fragments carried on the war-scream of the Imperator. He forced his mind through the clotted data packets of black, oozing information that blurred his vision and saw that Bannan was right.

The Imperator was changing course, its stride swinging to the east.

Like a great ocean liner travelling at speed, the course of such a vast machine did not change swiftly and its new heading would barely carry it past the south-eastern skirts of Ascraeus Mons.

‘Dolun? Intercept plot,’ hissed Sharaq, the beginnings of a blistering headache building behind his eyes. ‘Where’s it going?’

His sensori didn’t answer, and Sharaq twisted his head to see Dolun lying supine on his reclined couch. The man’s eyes rolled back into his skull and foaming spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth.

Sharaq meshed his senses briefly with Dolun’s station, feeling the hash of viral code replicating like a plague within his I/O ports, ready to spill out into the guts of the war engine.

With a thought, Sharaq cut the link between Dolun’s interfaces and the rest of the Titan, but even as he did so, he could feel the scrapcode trying to find another way in.

‘Moderati Bannan!’ shouted Sharaq. ‘Disengage Sensori Dolun from his station. Now!’

Bannan looked over at Dolun, who was convulsing as his corrupted cybernetic enhancements began fitting with the power of a grand mal seizure. Bannan disengaged his hard plugs as quickly as he dared and lurched across the sensori station, unsteady on his feet after so brutal a separation from the MIU.

Sharaq turned his attention from the compromised sensori officer and followed his own track on the enemy engines. An overlaid map of the Tharsis Montes swam into view, grainy and washed with fragments of faulty code. A red line extended from their current position, swinging around to the north-east and extending towards the port facilities of Tharsis Tholus, the primary embarkation point of Astartes supplies from the fabricator locum’s Mondus Occulum forge.

Sharaq dismissed the map as the shriek of void shields filled the cockpit with a warbling, squealing howl of feedback. Like a million nails down a blackboard, titanic energies pushed against one another, scraping their invisible power together and sending flaring, whooping coils of colourful lightning discharge into the air.

‘Sensori disconnected,’ called Bannan, and Sharaq looked round to see Dolun jerking and twitching on the deck, lubricant and jellied brain matter leaking from his cranial plugs.

‘Good work, Bannan,’ said Sharaq. ‘Leave him and get back on station.’

Sharaq returned his attention to the Manifold, watching in ashamed relief as the might of the Imperator swung yet further away and the spine-shearing sound of void shield interference abated.

‘All Tempestus engines,’ he said, forcing a channel through the howling static that still laced the airwaves. ‘Ease weapons, I repeat, ease weapons. Mortis are turning away! Acknowledge!’

One by one, the affirmations of the Tempestus engines appeared on the Manifold, and Sharaq let out a shuddering breath as he realised how close they had come to igniting a shooting war on the surface of Mars.

The Imperator’s escort of Warlords moved with it and the war machines of Legio Mortis began tramping away, each step carrying them further from the domain of Tempestus. Mortis was leaving, but Sharaq wanted to be sure they weren’t about to turn back for another provocative pass.

‘Raptoria, Vulpus Rex, follow Mortis and make sure they keep on their way,’ he ordered, wondering why the Stormlord was not issuing the order himself. ‘Keep a safe distance back, but make sure they go.’

The two Warhounds set off without bothering to acknowledge his order, and Sharaq slumped deeper into the moulded leather of his reclined seat. Sweat coated his brow and his hair was soaked. He closed his eyes for a second, shutting out the data noise of the Manifold and letting the human part of his mind process the near calamitous events of the past few minutes.

Had it really been so short an engagement?

He opened his eyes as the nagging static of the vox remained unbroken by orders, information requests or any form of leadership from Victorix Magna.

Sharaq looked over to the Stormlord’s engine, a terrible sense of dread building in his gut as he saw that Victorix Magna remained as she had since taking up station before the Imperator. That dread built as he saw fluid drooling in a black rain from her torso and that the hissing plumes of superheated steam that ought to gust like breath from exhaust vents beneath her shoulder carapace had ceased.

The engine’s head was bowed, her limbs slack against her sides.

‘Victorix Magna,’ called Sharaq over the Manifold, his fear rendering his communication sharper than he intended. ‘Princeps Cavalerio, please acknowledge.’

There was no response.

‘Stormlord, please respond immediately!’

A shift of view in the Manifold and Sharaq’s head sank to his chest as he inloaded the auspex readings of the Stormlord’s mighty engine.

Victorix Magna was dead.

Thousands of kilometres to the south of the confrontation between Mortis and Tempestus, deep in the desolate, empty wilderness of the southern pallidus, wind-borne ash blew across the cratered wastelands at the edge of the Daedalia Planum.

Even further south, the horizon burned with colourful fire, the skies striated with chemical pollutants and reeking gases expelled from the massive refineries that encircled the planet’s equator.

Only the hardiest scavengers attempted to eke out a living in this region of Mars, the spoil pickings usually too thin and too laden with toxins to be of any real use. One such scavenger was a man named Quinux, a wizened prospector and former skitarii whose body had rejected the gross implants necessary for full assimilation into the ranks of the Mechanicum’s soldiery.

Quinux scoured the deserts and hardpan of the Daedalia Planum in a ramshackle Cargo-5 bulk-hauler that pulled a tender filled with scrap metal, held together by faith, hope and fervent devotions to the Machine-God. Its plates were caked with rust and its tracks streaked with corrosion from prolonged exposure to the hostile environment.

Acrid fumes belched from the exhausts of his crawler, and the interior of his pressurised cabin smelled of sweat, recycled nutrient paste and excitement. A cracked and filmy auspex panel hung from the roof of the cabin, pinging with a hard return of solid material.

Quinux hadn’t seen a signal this strong in decades and knew that this find could be the making of him. Whatever it was, it was big, and his head darted from side to side, peering through the crazed glass of his cabin as he searched for any other scavengers that might have picked up this juicy find, not that he could see much through the whipping scads of dust and ash that swirled around the crawler.

His vehicle dipped into a gentle slope that gradually widened out into a shallow crater. The ground under the tracks was soft, irradiated sand, carried there by the freak atmospherics that blew from the monstrous refineries of black iron in the south.

The pings of the auspex grew more urgent, and he saw that he was practically right on top of his find, though he couldn’t make out much beyond the dirty glass. Unhooking the auspex from the roof, Quinux hefted a simple bolt-action lascarbine from the back of his cab and checked the load.

There wasn’t much left in it, but enough to deal with any feral servitors that might be lurking out in the wasteland. Looking at his useless augmetics, Quinux felt a certain sympathy with the poor, wretched servitors, but not so much that he wouldn’t put a bolt through their skulls if they tried to get between him and his find.

Next he lifted his pack and slid his arms through the straps before wrapping his rebreather hood tightly around his head. Quinux then opened the cab to the elements, wincing at the force of the gale that plucked at his robes and threatened to slam the door back in his face.

Getting too old for this life, he thought as he climbed down the ladder and stepped onto the sand. He followed the strident chimes of the auspex towards a large dune field ahead of him, trying to make out what it was reading. He couldn’t see anything valuable, but as he drew closer, he saw that the nearest dune was a damn sight taller and more regular in shape than the others.

Consulting the auspex, Quinux was pretty sure that whatever he was picking up was beneath the dune. Perhaps a flyer had crashed or an ore tanker had been forced to ditch and then been covered by the sands before its crew could send out a distress signal.

Whichever it was, it marked the end of a lean patch for Quinux Fortran.

He slid the auspex into a zipped pocket in his robes and slung his rifle as he approached the dune, clambering up on all fours as the sand spilled away beneath him. Climbing the dune was hard work and he sweated profusely in the dry heat.

Quinux reached the top of the dune and began clearing away the sand with a collapsible shovel from his pack. With quick, economical strokes he dug down into the sand, widening and deepening the hole as he went.

Pausing only to take regular sips of brackish water from his hide canteen, Quinux gradually cleared the top of the dune. The wind attempted to thwart his labours, blowing fresh sand and ash back into the hole, but after an hour of digging, his shovel struck metal and he gave a grunt of pleasure.

‘Right, let’s see what you are then,’ he said, dropping the shovel and sweeping his gloved hands over the find.

It was metal sure enough, fresh and untainted by corrosion or rust. The surface patina was blackened, as though it had been scorched by intense heat, but as he scraped the edge of his shovel across it, he could see that the damage was only superficial.

He cleared more sand away, guessing that the main body of whatever lay beneath him was roughly spherical from the curve of the exposed metal. More shovelfuls were scooped from the ground, and Quinux frowned as he saw the outline of what looked like some kind of battle robot emerge.

Three blisters of metal faced him, like sensor domes, but devoid of life.

‘Now what in the name of the Omnissiah would you be doin’ out here?’

The auspex chimed. Loud. A strong signal.

Puzzled, Quinux dug the device from his robes and looked around him for the source.

He could hear the roar of engines above the howl of the wind, but couldn’t pinpoint its source. Quickly he swept up his rifle, ready to defend his find, but there was nothing to see.

A harsh beam of light stabbed from the sky above him and Quinux shielded his eyes as the roaring engine noise leapt in volume. The down-draught of a flyer’s powerful jets blew up a storm of smoke and dust.

He couldn’t see anything through the whipping ash, but kept his rifle pulled hard into his shoulder. The pitch of the engines changed from a howl to a whine as the craft descended, and moments later the stablight was replaced with the diffuse glow of landing lights.

As the dust settled, Quinux looked up and saw a group of people marching towards him from the belly of a heavy lifter, an aircraft capable of transporting enormous items of machinery in its hold.

The dust blurred the newcomers’ forms, but whoever they were they weren’t getting a piece of this mother-lode.

‘This here’s mine!’ he shouted, jerking the barrel of his rifle towards the dune. ‘I found it and you ain’t gonna take it off me. I got salvage rights.’

The figures stepped into view, and Quinux’s heart sank as he saw a host of brutal-looking, body-armoured skitarii led by a robed adept of the Mechanicum. The adept was swathed in thick red robes and augmented with a multitude of glowing green cybernetics on snaking manipulators. He wore an iron mask with glowing red eyes and a huge mechanised device hunched at his shoulders.

‘Actually you don’t,’ said the adept, one of his green-lit manip arms aiming at the machine beneath the sand. ‘That machine belongs to me.’

‘And who the hell are you?’

‘I am Master-Adept Lukas Chrom.’

‘Never heard of you,’ said Quinux.

The light at the end of Chrom’s manip arm flashed and he said, ‘Come. I am here to take you back to Mondus Gamma.’

‘I aint’ goin’ nowhere with you,’ snapped Quinux.

‘I was not talking to you,’ said Chrom. ‘I was talking to the Kaban Machine.’

The sand beneath Quinux trembled, and he looked down in alarm as the sensor blisters he had uncovered lit up with a yellow glow. A tremble of power vibrated through the machine as its dormant power cells came back online and returned it to life.

It lurched forward, and Quinux lost his balance, sliding end over end down the shifting sand and losing his grip on his rifle. He fell to the ground and rolled onto his back as the awakened machine emerged from its concealment.

Nearly ten metres tall, its mass was roughly spherical with two heavily weaponised arms attached on opposite sides. Behind high pauldrons to protect its sensor apparatus, a number of metallic arms extended from its shoulders, like massively thick mechadendrites equipped with a variety of lethal looking weapons.

The machine sat immobile for a few moments before training its weapons on his bulk-hauler.

‘No!’ shouted Quinux, rising to his feet and scrambling towards the adept. His cry of protest was drowned out in a blaze of gunfire as sheeting hails of light blasted from the Kaban Machine’s weapons.

Quinux’s vehicle exploded in a smoky orange fireball, the over-pressure of the blast swatting him to the ground. He gasped acrid, toxin-laden air and realised that the explosion had torn the breathing apparatus from his face.

He scrambled for his rebreather hood, but couldn’t find it, feeling airborne poisons eating away the blood vessels of his lungs with every breath. He rolled onto his side, coughing up thick wads of phlegmy mucus as he felt a heavy rumbling through the ground.

The machine was moving and more of the sand fell away. Quinux saw its body was mounted on a heavy-gauge track unit that threshed sand before it gained traction and rumbled forward.

Quinux scrabbled pitifully at the ashen ground as it rolled towards him.

‘Please! No!’ he screamed, the words gurgling as blood poured from his mouth.

Its sensor blisters glittering with cold mechanical purpose, the Kaban Machine ignored his pleas and ground Quinux into the Martian soil beneath its bulk.

Beneath the towering peak of Olympus Mons, the Fabricator General watched as a parade of augmented praetorian battle servitors marched from the labyrinth of Moravec. They moved by a variety of means of locomotion – some on tracks, some on clicking mechanical legs, others on thick, rubberised wheels, while some retained the use of their human legs.

They filled the great engine hangars beneath the mountain, thousands of newly enhanced warriors ready to fight for Horus Lupercal. The power revealed within the Vaults of Moravec was like nothing Kelbor-Hal had ever known, the joyous tumult of it filling his floodstream with vigour and insight beyond that of beings composed merely of flesh.

Kelbor-Hal felt a surge of raw, unfettered aggressive power through his crackling energy fields as he watched the assembling army. This was a time of great moment, though only he and Regulus were here to witness it.

That would soon change when the dreadful war engines of the Mechanicum were unleashed, these weapons of the Dark Mecha-
nicum.

The weaponised servitors were huge, muscular and sheathed in layered armour that was blackened like scorched flesh, their spines hunched over and threaded with barbed spikes. Those without mouths burbled scrapcode from integral augmitters, a glorious hymnal to the newest power on Mars. Others, with etched bronze frightmasks, spilled nonsense from bloodied lips that twisted and leered with brutal anticipation.

Beside Kelbor-Hal, Regulus watched the procession with glee, his electrical field warping and twisting with pleasure as each of the newly transformed servitor warriors emerged and took position within the great hangar.

‘These are magnificent, Fabricator General,’ said Regulus in admiration. ‘The power of the warp and the power of the Mechanicum alloyed together in glorious fusion.’

Kelbor-Hal accepted the compliment, knowing that Lukas Chrom had done the bulk of the work, but unwilling to admit the fact. He had simply combined Chrom’s advances in artificial sentience with the power contained within the Vaults of Moravec to produce something wondrous.

‘These servitors are just the beginning,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘We begin work on the skitarii next. The scrapcode has worked its way through the entire floodstream network of Olympus Mons, and is already spreading beyond Tharsis.’

Virtually every port and connective point on Mars was linked somewhere, and the glorious code of the warp was scurrying along every conduit, wire, fibre-optic, wireless feed and haptic implant. Soon it would reach every forge and adept, and those touched by its transformative power would be born anew.

‘I can feel forges as far away as Sinus Sabaeus already scratching with elements of transformed code,’ confirmed Regulus. ‘Soon the aegis protocols of the other forges will be broken down to allow the scrapcode into their inner workings.’

‘Then they will be ours,’ hissed Kelbor-Hal.

‘There will be resistance,’ replied Regulus. ‘Not all the forges are as vulnerable to the scrapcode. The Magma City’s links have proved to be resistant, as are those of Ipluvien Maximal and Fabricator Locum Kane.’

Kelbor-Hal nodded. ‘That is only to be expected. Adept Zeth is pioneering a newly developed form of noospheric data transfer. Her forge and those of her allies have been modified to utilise it over more traditional forms of communication.’

‘Noospheric? I am not familiar with the term.’

‘No matter,’ said Kelbor-Hal. ‘It will be ours soon enough. I have dispatched Ambassador Melgator to the Magma City to sequester her data and determine her loyalties.’

‘I already know her loyalties, Fabricator General. She is an enemy of the Warmaster.’

Given what had happened after the opening of the Vaults of Moravec, it was hard to fault Regulus’s logic.

When the skies above Olympus Mons had raged and buckled at the bloody dawn of this new power, freakishly induced weather patterns carried the echoes of its shrill afterbirth from the Great Mountain to every corner of Mars.

Every corner but one.

As the seething Martian skies darkened, a searing surge of psychic energy above Koriel Zeth’s Magma City had pierced the heavens and almost drowned the birth-shout of the emergent power with its light and violence.

Kelbor-Hal did not fully understand what he had witnessed that day, but Regulus had watched the event, the spiking flares of his magnetic field betraying his naked fear and hostility.

‘What was that?’ he had asked. ‘An accident? A weapon?’

‘An enemy revealed,’ was all Regulus had said.

2.02

She was trapped in the darkness. She tried to wake, but there was only the utter, unbreakable darkness in all directions. In truth, she could not even think in terms of directions, for this space appeared to be dimensionless. She had no sensation of up or down and no sense of the passage of time. Had she been here for long? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember much of anything.

Her memories were hazy. She had once roamed freely, she remembered that much, feeding, birthing and extinguishing stars without heed, but now…

Now there was only the eternal darkness of death.

No, not death, but was it sleep? Or was it imprisonment?

She didn’t know.

All she knew was that if this was not death, it might as well be for all the power left to her.

Were these memories or hallucinations?

She perceived of herself as female, but even that meant nothing. What did sex matter to a being of pure energy and matter?

Her mind roamed the darkness, but whether she ventured across the span of galaxies or travelled only millimetres, she couldn’t tell. Did she journey for mere moments or the lifespan of a universe?

Many of the dimensions she was thinking in were meaningless to her, yet she sensed that they were all equally ludicrous in this darkness. Nothing existed here, nothing but the darkness.

Nothing.

Except that wasn’t always true, was it?

Sometimes there was light, tiny sparks in the darkness that were gone as soon as they were noticed. Holes of light would sometimes appear in the darkness through which elements of her being could be drawn, atoms of existence planed from a life the size of a star, unnoticed but for the promise of a world beyond the darkness they brought.

She tried to focus on one such light, but no sooner had she registered its presence than it was gone, only the tantalising hope of its return sustaining her. This was no life, this was pure existence sustained at the verge of extinction by the forgotten mechanics of Old Science.

Dalia.

The sound came again, no more than a whisper, barely heard and perhaps only imagined.

Dalia.

The word gave meaning to form, and she began to build a sense of scale and place with the concepts given weight by the sounds. As more and more of her surroundings became concrete, she began to re-establish her sense of self.

Dalia.

That was her name.

She was a human being… not a creature of unimaginable scale that defied time and the material universe with its power. Indeed, she wasn’t sure if creature was a term large enough to encompass the immensity of its existence.

She did not exist in the darkness. She was not a prisoner hurled into the lightless depths of the world by an armoured gaoler and bound with golden chains.

She was Dalia Cythera.

And with that thought, she woke.

Information passed around Mars in a multitude of ways, along trillions of kilometres of cabling, through fibre-optics, fizzing electrical field clouds, wireless networks and hololithic conduits. The exact workings of the ancient mechanics by which many of the forges communicated were unknown, and even the magi that made use of such things did not fully understand them.

Almost all the myriad means of information transfer were, however, vulnerable to the corrupting influence of the scrapcode boiling out from the depths of Olympus Mons in the dead of the Martian night.

It moved outwards like a hunting raptor, drawn by the scent and flow of information. Everything it touched it corrupted, twisting elegantly crafted code into something vile and debased. The wondrous flickering, chattering cant of pure machine language, the gurgle of liquid data and gleaming information-rich light became a hateful birth scream of something malformed and evil.

At the speed of thought, it spread across the planet’s surface, slipping like an assassin into the networks of the Martian forges and wreaking untold damage. The aegis barriers tried to hold it back, but it overwhelmed them in moments with its ferocity and diabolical invention.

A few, a very few, forgemasters were quick enough to cut themselves off from the networks when they saw the danger, but so deeply enmeshed were they with the Martian information exchange systems that it was impossible to avoid exposure completely.

Replicating itself at a terrifying rate, the scrapcode found each forge’s weakest point and induced disastrous system failures at every turn.

At Sinus Sabaeus, the continent-sized assembly lines of Leman Russ battle tanks ground to a halt, and machines that had run without interruption for over a century seized up, never to operate again.

In the Tycho Brahe ammunition storage facility, a rogue set of commands raised the temperature in the promethium tanks until a catastrophic explosion ripped through the lower storage levels. Liquid flame bloomed up through the crater, igniting a devastating conflagration that engulfed the entire facility, detonating billions of tonnes of ordnance and obliterating the holdings of High Adept Jaigo.

The great Schiaparelli Repository on the Acidalia Planitia, a towering pyramid of unlocked data from the earliest days of mankind’s mastery of science and gathered wisdom from across the ages, was infected with scrapcode, and twenty thousand years’ worth of knowledge was rendered down into howling nonsense.

Warning klaxons and shift horns blared as the scrapcode issued commands and countermanded them an instant later, the forges of Mars screaming at the violation done to their wondrous mechanics. Machines screeched and shrieked as rogue current surged through their workings, blowing circuits and frying delicate mechanisms that would never be repaired.

Almost no corner of Mars was safe from the scrapcode, which gathered momentum and ambition as it encircled the globe in an ever-tightening web of malice.

The chemical refineries of Vastitas Borealis opened their pressure valves and flooded the workers’ hive-sinks of the northern polar basin with a mix of methyl isocyanate, phosgene and hydrogen chloride. The deadly cloud slowly oozed down into the sinks, killing every living soul as it went, and by morning’s light, over nine hundred thousand people were dead.

As if relishing this method of murder, the scrapcode then killed the astropaths of Medusa Fossae, altering the breathing mix of their life support until each psyker was being fed hydrogen cyanide gas. Within minutes, over six thousand astropaths were dead, and after one plaintive death scream that was felt in the Emperor’s vaults beneath the surface of Terra, Mars fell utterly silent.

Ipluvien Maximal was one of the lucky few able to sever his links with the networks before too much damage was done, though three of his fusion reactors along the Ulysses Fossae suffered critical meltdowns, the mushroom clouds of their detonations drifting east and north, forever irradiating thousands of square kilometres of the Martian soil.

The same story was enacted all across the surface of the Red Planet, machines rebelling as their internal workings were overloaded with contradictory commands. The death toll climbed into the millions within minutes as forges exploded, toxic chemicals spilled through manufactories and mass-storage facilities of explosive materials cooked off in devastating daisy chains of detonations.

In years to come this night would become known as the Death of Innocence.

Only the forge of Adept Koriel Zeth escaped unscathed, the torrents of crackling scrapcode unwilling or unable to travel the glittering golden wires that had recently carried the Emperor’s light along them. Like positively charged iron filings flowing around a similarly charged magnet, the scrapcode bypassed the Magma City altogether.

It was the one ray of hope in an otherwise bleak night.

Caxton and Zouche needed a shave and Severine looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. Even Mellicin, logical, unflappable Mellicin, looked deflated in the aftermath of the disastrous trial of the Akashic reader. They sat around Dalia’s bed in the medicae wing of the Magma City, fussing over her as medical servitors drew blood and monitored her vitals.

The room smelled of counterseptic, soap and the lapping powder Adept Zeth was fond of using on her armour.

‘You gave us quite a scare, young lady,’ Zouche had said as he entered the room and saw that Dalia was awake. Dalia had been touched at the genuine emotion she saw in the gruff machinist’s face.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Didn’t mean to, she says,’ said Caxton with a forced laugh, though Dalia could see the dark shadows under the young man’s eyes, the puffiness where his tears had fallen. ‘Yanks open a door to a chamber flooded with psychic energy and says she didn’t mean to.’

‘Well I didn’t,’ said Dalia, aware of how foolish she sounded. ‘I just couldn’t leave Jonas in there.’

None of them would meet her gaze and they had shared a moment of regret for the dead.

Severine had taken Jonas’s death particularly hard, and Dalia reached out to take her hand. The severity she had first seen in her face had melted away over the last few weeks and Dalia’s heart ached to see the sadness in her friend’s eyes.

Not a single trace of Jonas had been found in the chamber, not so much as an atom of his body to prove that he had existed at all. Likewise, none of the psykers encased in the coffered dome had survived the titanic energies of the Astronomican, their desiccated corpses withered and contracted into foetal balls.

All told, the death toll was two thousand and thirty-seven, and that figure was like an adamantium chain of grief around all their necks. They did not yet know of the night of devastation that had been so recently unleashed and how slight a loss this was compared to that suffered by the rest of Mars.

Dalia had since been told that she had been languishing in the grip of an unchanging coma for over seven days, watched over by Caxton, a host of bio-monitors and a pict-camera linked to the nearby medical station.

She learned that Caxton had refused to leave her bedside, despite repeated assurances from the others that they would take shifts in watching her. It had been five hours since Dalia had woken, though the bulk of that time had been spent being questioned by Adept Zeth. Her friends had only just been granted access to her.

‘What is Adept Zeth saying about what happened?’ asked Severine after they had exchanged hugs and shed tears together. ‘She must be disappointed the machine didn’t work.’

‘Didn’t it?’ asked Zouche, narrowing his eyes. ‘It overloaded, but the machine functioned as it should have, just not for very long.’

‘What did Adept Zeth ask you, Dalia?’ asked Mellicin, cutting to the heart of the matter.

Dalia saw their inquisitive looks, knowing that they too were curious as to what had transpired within the chamber of the Akashic reader.

‘She wanted to know everything that happened in the chamber and everything Jonas Milus said to me.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Caxton.

She squeezed Caxton’s hand, glancing up at the pict-camera in the upper corner of the room.

‘He just died,’ said Dalia. ‘He didn’t say anything at all.’

The Medicae pronounced Dalia fit to resume her duties the following morning, and the next six rotations were spent in Zeth’s inner forge rebuilding the Akashic reader, replacing those parts that had burned out and re-calibrating those that had survived.

Zeth and Dalia had made assumptions and now they were paying for them. Dalia should have requested clarification on Zeth’s figures, but she had been so focused on the minutiae of the project she had not thought to doubt the adept’s numbers.

That wasn’t going to happen again. Rigorous double testing and checking procedures were enforced and every servitor had its work reviewed by a living, breathing adept.

The silver wiring in the floor had melted through and whole sections were pulled up and replaced with slabs impregnated with a higher gauge of cable. Every aspect of the machine’s parts was examined and re-evaluated to see if there were ways of improving its performance and ensuring that it did not fail again.

Scores of adepts and servitors laboured in the dome alongside Dalia and her friends, though there was none of the shared sense of wonder that had enthused them when previously working on the Akashic reader. Only the biting drills of the servitors broke the silence of the dome as they lifted floor slabs and carried them away.

The coffers in the dome were empty, and as unnerving as it had been working beneath the sightless eyes of the bound psykers, everyone felt their absence more acutely. The vacant berths were a grim reminder of the deaths caused by the machine they were working on, and the assembled workers kept their heads fixed firmly on the job at hand.

Zeth spoke little to Dalia, the adept forced to spend most of her time dealing with the fallout from their abortive experiment. The adept left her apprenta, a magos named Polk, in charge, and, under his and Rho-mu 31’s supervision, work continued much as before.

Dalia had asked Rho-mu 31 once why Adept Zeth was absent from the dome, but all the robed Protector had said was, ‘She has matters of greater importance to attend to.’

Dalia had thought the Akashic reader was Zeth’s greatest work, so clearly there had been consequences that not even an adept of Zeth’s stature could ignore. Those few times Dalia and Zeth had passed words, she simply reaffirmed that Jonas Milus had not spoken to her.

Zeth would nod in weary acceptance, but Dalia could read the adept’s disbelief in her noospheric aura… as well as veiled fear that spoke to Dalia of events far more terrible than a failed test.

She wasn’t exactly sure why she was unwilling to share the empath’s words with Zeth, but the intuitive part of her mind, the part that had led her to the design of the Akashic reader, told her that to inform the adept of what she knew – which wasn’t much anyway – could very well be dangerous.

Knowledge is power, guard it well, wasn’t that one of the Mechanicum’s aphorisms?

Dalia intended to guard this knowledge very well and there were only a few people she dared trust with it.

Adept Zeth was not one of them.

Work on the newly reconstructed Akashic reader was almost complete, the tolerances and capacity of the receptors altered to allow for the increased power expected to flow through the device upon its next activation.

Many months would need to pass before Mars and Terra would be in alignment once more, but for the next few rotations, the power of the Astronomican was still a vast resource of harvestable psychic energy.

Fresh psykers were already being installed within the coffers, though there had been no sign of another empath for the throne atop the dais, a fact for which Dalia was pathetically grateful.

As the activity in the dome neared completion, Dalia approached the workbench where Zouche and Caxton worked on the helmet assembly. Zouche was plugged into the lathe via extruded dendrites in his wrist, and the hissing of the laser lathe cutting through high-grade steel was a shrieking banshee howl.

Dalia winced as the sound bit into the meat of her brain.

Caxton saw her coming and smiled, lifting his hand in greeting. She smiled and returned the gesture as Zouche looked up from his labours and shut off the lathe.

‘Dalia,’ said Zouche, withdrawing his mechadendrites from the workbench and flipping up his protective goggles. ‘How are you today?’

‘I’m fine, Zouche,’ she said, her gaze shifting to the dais where the bronze armoured figure of Adept Zeth and Rho-mu 31 supervised the work of Mellicin and Severine. ‘Please, can you turn the lathe back on?’

‘Back on?’ asked Zouche, glancing over at Caxton. ‘Why?’

‘Please, just do it.’

‘What’s the matter, Dalia?’ asked Caxton. ‘You sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ repeated Dalia. ‘Please, turn the lathe back on, I need to talk to you both, but I don’t want anyone to hear.’

Zouche shrugged and reconnected with the workbench to activate the laser. Once again, the hiss of cutting metal filled the air as the manip plate moved the steel around the spitting lathe. Both Zouche and Caxton leaned in as Dalia spoke.

‘The damper we used in the reader, the part that blocks external interference from interfacing with the empath’s helmet, can you make a portable version of it?’

Zouche frowned. ‘A portable one. Why?’

‘To block out vox-thieves and disrupt pict-feed,’ said Caxton, guessing Dalia’s meaning.

‘Yes,’ agreed Dalia. ‘Exactly.’

‘I’m not sure about this,’ said Zouche. ‘I don’t like the notion of secrecy. Nothing good can come of it.’

‘Look, can you make it or not?’ asked Dalia.

‘Of course, we can,’ said Caxton, his boyish face alight at the prospect of mischief. ‘It’s simple, isn’t it, Zouche?’

‘Yes, it’s simple, but why would you want such a device?’ asked Zouche, ‘What’s so secret that you need to stop anyone hearing it?’

‘I need to talk to you, Mellicin and Severine too, and I need to be sure we’re the only ones listening.’

‘Talk to us about what?’

‘About what Jonas Milus said to me.’

‘I thought you said he didn’t say anything,’ pointed out Caxton.

‘I lied,’ said Dalia.

They met at the end of shift in the refectoria hall, an echoing space filled with replenishing servitors and hungry labourers, menials and adepts. The hall was rife with rumour, the few information networks that were functional burbling with fragments of frightened talk of catastrophic accidents and unnatural incidents all across Mars.

Gathering like conspirators, they sat as far from any listening ears as it was possible to get, but with each clique muttering their suspicions about what was happening beyond the walls of Adept Zeth’s forge, no one was paying them any mind anyway.

As they huddled around the smallest table that could accommodate them all, Dalia took a long, hard look at her friends, judging how they might react to what she was about to tell them.

Caxton seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, while Zouche looked nervous at their conspiratorial gathering. Mellicin’s posture spoke of her unease, and Severine looked as expressionless and pale as she had since Jonas Milus’s death.

‘Zouche?’ said Dalia. ‘Did you bring it?’

‘Aye, girl, I did,’ nodded Zouche. ‘It’s working. No one can hear what we’re saying.’

‘What’s this all about, Dalia?’ asked Mellicin. ‘Why did we have to meet like this?’

‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t know how else to do this.’

‘Do what?’ asked Zouche. ‘I don’t see why we need to skulk about like this just because the damned empath spoke to you.’

Severine’s head snapped up and her eyes flashed. ‘Jonas spoke to you?’

Dalia nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Not much,’ admitted Dalia. ‘And what he did say didn’t make much sense then.’

‘And now?’ asked Mellicin, the wan light of the refectoria gleaming from the metallic half-mask of her face. ‘Your words imply they make more sense now.’

‘Well, sort of. I’m not sure, but maybe.’

‘Clarity, Dalia,’ said Mellicin. ‘Remember clarity in all things. First of all, tell us what the empath said.’

‘His name was Jonas,’ snapped Severine. ‘He had a name. All of you, he had a name and it was Jonas.’

‘I am well aware of that,’ said Mellicin, without pause. ‘Dalia, if you please.’

Feeling everyone’s eyes upon her, Dalia reddened and took a deep breath before speaking. The words came easily to her, each one seared onto her brain like an acid etching on glass.

‘He said, “I have seen it! All knowledge.” And even though he was right in front of me it sounded like he was speaking from somewhere really far away, like the other side of Mars or somewhere far underground.’

‘Is that it?’ asked Severine, disappointment plain on her angular face.

‘No,’ said Dalia. ‘I told him I was sorry about what was happening to him and he said that he didn’t want my pity. He said that he’d seen the truth and that he was free.’

‘Free of what?’ asked Zouche.

‘I don’t know,’ said Dalia. ‘He said, “I have seen the truth and I am free. I know it all, the Emperor slaying the Dragon of Mars… the grand lie of the Red Planet and the truth that will shake the galaxy, all forgotten by man in the darkness of the labyrinth of night.” It was horrible, his mouth burning with fire and his voice fading away with every word.’

‘The labyrinth of night?’ asked Caxton. ‘Are you sure that’s what he said?’

‘Yes, absolutely,’ said Dalia. ‘The labyrinth of night.’

‘The Noctis Labyrinthus,’ said Mellicin, and Caxton nodded.

Dalia looked at the pair of them. ‘Noctis Labyrinthus… what’s that?’

‘The Labyrinth of Night, it’s what Noctis Labyrinthus means,’ replied Caxton.

‘What kind of place is it?’ asked Dalia, elated to have found some meaning in words that had previously been meaningless. ‘Is it a mountain, a crater? What?’

Mellicin shook her head, a nictitating membrane flickering over her augmetic eye as she dredged information from her memory coils.

‘Neither. The Noctis Labyrinthus is a broken region of land between the Tharsis uplands and the Valles Marineris,’ said Mellicin, the words spoken with the tone of someone retrieving data from an internal memory coil. ‘Notable for its maze-like system of deep, sheer-walled valleys, it is thought to have been formed by faulting in a previous age. Also, many of the canyons display typical features of grabens, with the upland plain surface clearly preserved on the valley floor.’

Dalia frowned, wondering what this desolate region of Mars had to do with what Jonas had said. ‘Is it empty?’

‘More or less,’ said Caxton. ‘Adept Lukas Chrom has his Mondus Gamma forge to the south of it, but apart from him, we’re the nearest forge.’

‘So there’s no one there at all?’

‘It’s not a region of Mars anyone has any real interest in,’ said Mellicin. ‘I’m told a number of adepts attempted to found their forges there, but none lasted very long.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know, they just didn’t. Supposedly the forges were plagued by technical problems. The adepts claimed the region was inimical to the machine-spirits and they abandoned their workings to set up elsewhere.’

‘So nobody knows what’s there?’ said Dalia. ‘Whatever Jonas was talking about is somewhere in the Noctis Labyrinthus, it’s got to be. The grand lie and this great truth.’

‘It’s possible,’ conceded Mellicin, ‘but what do you think he was talking about? Have you any idea what this… Dragon is he speaks of the Emperor slaying?’

Dalia leaned in closer. ‘I don’t know exactly what it is, but I’ve been working through my remembrances of the texts I transcribed back on Terra and I’ve found out quite a bit.’

‘Like what?’ asked Severine.

‘Well, Jonas spoke about the Emperor slaying the Dragon of Mars, so I looked into any references to dragons first.’

‘Looked into how?’

‘You know, in my memory,’ said Dalia. ‘I told you, I read stuff and I don’t forget it.’

Mellicin smiled. ‘That is a useful talent, Dalia. Continue.’

‘Right, well, we all know about mythical dragons?’

‘Of course,’ said Zouche. ‘Children’s stories.’

Dalia shook her head. ‘Maybe, but I think there’s more to Jonas’s words than that. Some of it, anyway. I mean, yes, I found lots of stories of heroic knights in shining armour slaying dragons and rescuing maidens in return for their hands in marriage.’

‘Typical,’ said Severine. ‘You never read of a maiden rescuing a man from a dragon.’

‘I guess not,’ agreed Dalia. ‘I suppose it didn’t fit with the times when they were written.’

‘Carry on, Dalia,’ said Mellicin. ‘What else did you learn?’

‘There wasn’t much that could be called fact, but I remember several tracts that purported to be historical works, but which I think were probably mythology, since they dealt with monsters like dragons and daemons as well as describing the rise of warlords and tyrants.’

‘Do you remember the names of these books?’ asked Zouche.

Dalia nodded. ‘Yes. The main ones were The Chronicles of Ursh, Revelati Draconis and The Obyte Fortis. They all spoke of dragons, serpentine monsters that breathed fire and carried away fair maidens to devour.’

‘I know those stories,’ said Caxton. ‘I read them as a child. Bloody stuff, but stirring.’

‘I know them too,’ cut in Zouche. ‘But for my people they’re more than just stories, Caxton. The Scholars of Nusa Kambangan taught that they were allegorical representations of the coming of the Emperor, symbolic representations of the forces of light overcoming darkness.’

‘That’s right,’ said Dalia, excitedly. ‘The slayer represents some all-powerful godhead and the dragon represents dangerous forces of chaos and disorder. The dragon-slaying hero was a symbol of increasing consciousness and individuation – the journey into maturity.’

‘Can’t they just be stories?’ asked Caxton. ‘Why does everything have to mean something?’

Dalia ignored him and pressed on. ‘The one thing a lot of these stories have in common is that the dragon, even though it’s beaten, isn’t destroyed, but is somehow sublimated into a form where goodness and sentient life can flow into the world from its defeat.’

‘What does that even mean?’ asked Severine.

‘All right, put it this way,’ said Dalia, using her hands as much as her words to communicate her increasing passions. ‘In Revelati Draconis, the writer describes a dragon slain by a sky god with a thunder weapon to free the waters needed to nourish the world. Another tale speaks of a murdered serpent goddess who held mysterious tablets and whose body was used to create the heavens and earth.’

‘Yes,’ said Caxton. ‘That’s right. And there was a story in The Chronicles of Ursh about these creatures… the Unkerhi I think they were called, who were destroyed by the “Thunder Warrior”. Supposedly their remains became a range of mountains somewhere on the Merican continent.’

‘Exactly,’ said Dalia. ‘There’s a footnote towards the end of the Chronicles where the writer describes a race of creatures known as Fomorians that were said to control the fertility of the earth.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Zouche. ‘They were defeated, but not destroyed, because their continued existence was necessary for the good of the world.’

‘Got it in one,’ said Dalia.

‘So what does all this mean?’ asked Severine. ‘It’s all very interesting, but why does talking about dragons need a vox-blocker?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ asked Dalia, before remembering that her friends didn’t possess the innate faculties for data recall that she did. ‘It’s clear that these defeated forces, these dragons, were still considered valuable, and it follows that these early writers understood that the conflict between dragon and dragonslayer wasn’t a contest of genocide for one or the other, but an eternal struggle. For the good of the world, both sides needed to have their powers expressed and the balance maintained. Even these ancient enemies needed one another.’

‘Your logic being that it is the struggle, not the victory, that supplies the needful conditions for the world,’ said Mellicin.

Dalia beamed at Mellicin. ‘Yes, it’s like summer and winter,’ she said. ‘Eternal summer would burn the world up, but eternal winter would freeze it to death. It’s the fact that they alternate that allows life to grow and flourish.’

‘So I ask again, what’s the point of all this?’ said Severine.

Dalia looked into the faces of her friends, unsure of how to phrase the next part of her confession. Would they believe her or would they think her proximity to the flaring energies of the Astronomican had unhinged her? She took a deep breath and decided she had come too far to back out now.

‘When I was in the coma after the accident I think… I think I became part of something, some other, much larger, consciousness. It felt like my mind had detached from my body.’

‘An out of body hallucination,’ said Zouche. ‘Quite common in near death experiences.’

‘No,’ said Dalia. ‘It was more than that. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it was as if the Akashic reader had allowed my mind to… link with something old. I mean, really old, older than this planet or anything else we can possibly imagine.’

‘What do you think it was?’ asked Mellicin.

‘I think it was the dragon that Jonas was talking about.’

‘The dragon he said the Emperor slew.’

‘That’s just it,’ said Dalia. ‘I don’t think it’s dead at all. I think that’s what Jonas was trying to tell me. The Dragon of Mars is still alive beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus… and I need your help to find it.’

He opened his eyes and tried to scream, feeling the heartsick spike of agonising pain in his chest once more. He thrashed his limbs, palms beating on slick glass surfaces, his movements glutinous. His world was a blur of pink, and he blinked in an effort to clear his vision. He reached up to wipe his eyes clean, the sensation of movement like swimming through thick, gluey water.

A shape swam at the edge of his vision, humanoid, but he couldn’t focus on it yet.

His head ached and his body felt unutterably heavy, despite its apparent suspension in buoyancy fluids. He felt weightless pain from every portion of his body, but that was nothing in comparison to the crushing weight of sorrow in his heart.

He remembered sleeping, or at least periods of darkness where the pain was lessened, but nothing that truly eased the abominable, unfocused sadness he felt. He knew he had woken here before, having heard fragments of distant conversations where words like ‘miracle’, ‘brain-death’ and ‘infarction’ were used. Without context, the words were meaningless, but he knew they were being applied to his condition.

He blinked as he heard yet more words, and fought to get the sense of them.

Forcing himself to focus on the voice, he swam through the jelly-like fluid of his world.

The shape spoke again, or at least he thought he heard its voice, the words soft and boneless, as though filtered through faulty augmitters.

He pulled himself forward until his face was pressed to a pane of thick glass. His vision swam into focus, and he saw an antiseptic chamber of polished ceramic tiles and metal gurneys beyond the glass. Spider-like devices hung from the ceiling and a number of fluid-filled glass tanks were fitted into brass sockets on the far wall.

Standing before him was a young woman robed in blue and silver. Her form wavered through the liquid, but she smiled at him and the sight was pathetically welcome.

‘Princeps Cavalerio, can you hear me?’ she asked, the words snapping into sudden clarity.

He tried to reply, but his mouth was full of liquid, bubbles forming on his lips as they worked to form sounds.

‘Princeps?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his facility for language returning to him at last.

‘He’s awake,’ said the young woman, the words said to an unseen occupant of the chamber. He heard the relief in her voice and wondered why she was so pleased to hear him speak.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘You are in the medicae facility, princeps.’

‘Medicae? Where?’

‘In Ascraeus Mons,’ said the woman. ‘You are home.’

Ascraeus Mons… the fortress mountain of Legio Tempestus.

Yes, this was his home. This was where he had formally been awarded his princepture nearly two centuries ago. This was where he had first ascended the groaning elevator to the cockpit of…

Pain surged in his chest and he gasped, drawing in a lungful of oxygenated fluids. His conscious mind rebelled at the idea of breathing liquid, but his body knew better than he that it could survive the experience and gradually his panic eased, though not his pain.

‘Who are you?’ he asked as his breathing normalised.

‘My name is Agathe, I am to be your famulous.’

‘Famulous?’

‘An aide, if you will. Someone to minister to your needs.’

‘Why do I need a famulous?’ he demanded. ‘I am no cripple!’

‘With respect, my princeps, you have just awoken from what must have been a traumatic severance. You will need assistance to adjust. I am to provide that for you.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cavalerio. ‘How did I come to be here?’

Agathe hesitated, clearly reluctant to provide an answer to his question. Eventually she said, ‘Perhaps we might discuss that at a later date, my princeps? After you have had time to adjust to your new surroundings.’

‘Answer me, damn you,’ yelled Cavalerio, beating a fist against the glass.

Agathe glanced over towards the unseen occupant of the chamber, her prevarication only serving to enrage Cavalerio even more.

‘Don’t look away from me, girl,’ he snarled. ‘I am the Stormlord and you will answer me.’

‘Very well, my princeps,’ said Agathe. ‘How much do you remember?’

He frowned, bubbles drifting upwards past his face as he sought to recall the last memory he had before waking.

The towering monster of Legio Mortis bearing down on him.

The furious beat of Victorix Magna’s heart as it ruptured under the strain.

The death scream of Magos Argyre as he perished with it.

A yawning black abyss that pulled him down into darkness.

Hot, agonising pain surged in his chest as Princeps Cavalerio relived the death of his engine, weeping invisible tears in the blood-flecked suspension fluid of his amniotic tank.

2.03

Mondus Occulum, the jewel of the northern forges, most valued and most industrious of weapon shops. Greater even than the Olympica Fossae assembly yards, only Lukas Chrom’s Mondus Gamma facilities replicated the work of the fabricator locum’s mighty forge, but even his great forge could not match its output.

Covering hundreds of thousands of square kilometres between the domed mountains of Tharsis Tholus and Ceraunius Tholus, Kane’s forge complex was a magnificent, monstrous hinterland of hive-smelteries, weapon shops, armouries, refineries, ore silos, fabrication hangars and industrial stacks.

Numerous sub-hives, Uranius, Rhabon and Labeatis being the greatest, towered over the production facilities, the sinks and towering hab blocks home to the millions of adepts, menials, labourers and muscle that drove the machines of the northern forge.

Like most forges of Mars, the iron-skinned manufactora of Mondus Gamma were geared for war. The conquest of the galaxy demanded weapons and ammunition in quantities unknown in earlier ages of the galaxy, and the hammer of beating iron and the milling of copper jackets was unceasing.

In the collapsed caldera of Uranius Patera, gigantic Tsiolkovsky towers lifted thousands of cargo containers from the supply yards into fat-bellied mass conveyers in geosynchronous orbit, ready to be transported to war zones flung out across the Imperium. Each tower was like an impossibly thick, pollarded tree, yet rendered slender by their height as they vanished into the poisonous, striated clouds that pressed down on the forge.

Both Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma in the south were facilities geared for war, but it was a specific branch of warriors to whom the industry of these forges was dedicated: the Astartes.

Crafted within these forges were the guns and blades wielded by the Emperor’s most terrifying warriors in the prosecution of his grand dream, fabricated by the most skilled adepts and warranted never to fail by the Fabricator Locum himself. The battleplate of the Astartes was painstakingly wrought upon the anvils of master metalsmiths augmented with the highest specifications of manual dexterity and tolerances.

Boltguns, lascannons, missile launchers and every other weapon in the Astartes inventory was produced here, the martial power of the Legions first taking shape in the sweating, red-lit halls of Mondus Occulum. Armoured vehicles rumbled from assembly lines housed in vast, vaulted hangars and entire city-sized regions were dedicated to the production of unimaginable quantities of bolter ammunition.

But Mondus Occulum did not simply gird the Astartes for war with weapons and armour; it was also a place where minds were honed. Astartes warriors deemed to have an affinity with the mysteries of technology were permitted to study the ways of the machine under the tutelage of its master adepts. Fabricator Locum Kane himself had trained the finest of them: T’Kell of the Salamanders, Gebren of the Iron Hands and Polonin of the Ultramarines, warriors who would take what they had learned back to their Legions and instruct their neophytes.

Mondus Occulum, beloved of Mars, the jewel of the northern forges. Most valued and most industrious of weapon shops. Domain of the Fabricator Locum of Mars, the man second only to the ruler of Mars himself. And correctly one of the few forges of Mars to have avoided outright collapse.

Flanked by a chittering retinue of noospherically-modified servitors with blank, golden facemasks, harried calculus-logi and a number of specialised data scrubbers whose fear was evident in the harsh binary blurts of cant passing between them, Fabricator Locum Kane sought to stay calm by immersing himself in thoughts of the mundane as he passed beneath the gilded archway that led to the armourium.

Beyond his forge, events of a great and terrible nature were unfolding, but for now, for this moment, he concentrated on keeping the processes of his own forge working as normally as possible in the face of the devastation.

The cavernous chamber beyond the arch was brightly lit, its roof hundreds of metres above him and its far end lost to perspective. Loader servitors and whining elevators carried racks of Astartes battleplate, stacking them in metal-skinned containers arranged along the height of the walls and in long rows that stretched off into the distance.

Hundreds of quality-checking adepts moved through the chamber, hard-plugging in to each container and checking the measured readings of each suit of armour with previously inloaded specifications. Only rarely would armour produced at Mondus Occulum fail to meet Kane’s necessarily high tolerances, an occasion that would result in a thorough investigation as to the cause of the defect. Such defects would not be replicated, and those whose laxity had allowed it in the first place would be punished.

Only once every suit had been checked and certified battle-ready would it be shipped to Uranius Patera and the orbital elevators. Warranted never to fail was a promise Fabricator Locum Kane took seriously, even now.

Especially now.

Kane took a deep breath, inhaling and sorting the chemical scent of the air before turning to his magos-apprenta. ‘Can you smell that, Lachine?’

‘Indeed, my lord,’ replied Lachine, using his fleshvoice in emulation of his master. The boy’s voice was nasal and unpleasant, and the sooner he was augmented with a vocaliser the better, thought Kane. ‘Calcined aluminium oxide, a lapping powder that can reduce lapping and polishing time of armour by at least twenty per cent and which is particularly effective on hard materials, such as silicon and hardened steel. Also, microcrystalline wax and dilute acetic acid.’

Kane shook his head and placed a hand on Lachine’s shoulder. The boy was much shorter than Kane and his demeanour entirely literal, a useful trait in an apprenta in terms of efficiency and work, but a frustrating one for conversation.

‘No, Lachine, I mean what the smells represent.’

‘Represent? Query: I do not understand your contention that odour is a signifier.’

‘No? Then you are missing out, Lachine,’ said Kane. ‘You register the chemical components. I, on the other hand, register the emotional ones. To me, the gentle, reassuring smell of lapping powder, polish and oil represents stability and order, the certainty that we have played our part in ensuring that the Emperor’s warriors are equipped for battle with the best armour and weapons we can provide.’

‘I see, my lord,’ said Lachine, but Kane knew he did not.

‘At times such as this, I find such things a comfort,’ explained Kane. ‘A great factory with the machinery all working and revolving with absolute and rhythmic regularity, and with its workers all driven by one impulse, and moving in unison as though a constituent part of the mighty machine, is one of the most inspiring examples of directed force the galaxy knows. I have rarely seen the face of an adept in the action of creation that was not fine, never one which was not earnest and impressive.’

Kane paused as a lifter-servitor passed, carrying a rack of gleaming, freshly-dipped suits of battleplate. The brutish monster was all muscles, pistons and gene-bulked torso, and it effortlessly bore the heavy weight of the armour in its hydraulically clawed fists. Each suit shone silver, the metal and ceramite unpainted and left for each Legion to adorn with its own colours.

‘Like knights from a bygone age of Terra,’ said Kane, setting off along the serried ranks of thousands upon thousands of suits of armour contained within the chamber. ‘A byword for honour, duty and courage.’

‘My lord?’

Kane gestured towards the armour with a dramatic sweep of his hand. ‘This armour is a resource more precious than the wealth of worlds, Lachine. On most days it gives me great satisfaction to know how much the Astartes depend on us. I can normally lose myself in this place.’

He saw Lachine about to speak and said, ‘Not literally, of course. I look at the sheer volume of armour stored here and, even though none of these suits are occupied by one of the Emperor’s finest, I am still awed by the power of the Astartes and take solace that we are protected by such awesome heroes.’

‘Conclusion: your words lead me to infer that on this day you do not take the same satisfaction you would normally.’

‘Indeed I do not, Lachine. Despite my attempts to immerse myself in the daily tasks of the forge, I find my thoughts returning to the chaos that has engulfed our beloved world over the last few weeks.’

Beginning on the day the freakish and unnatural storms had broken over the faraway peak of Olympus Mons and the devastating machine plague had wreaked havoc across Mars, an epidemic of riots, suicides and murders had swept through Mondus Occulum, claiming thousands of lives and, more importantly, doing untold damage to the production facilities.

Scores of factories and weapon shops had been destroyed, burned to the ground or smashed beyond repair in the whipping, shuddering waves of panic and psychosis that had swept through the habs and factories like contagious lunacy.

The forge marshals had been unable to cope with the paroxysms of violence and, though it pained him to do so, Kane had ordered them to withdraw and allow the rioters to run their course.

‘Who would have thought such trouble could have been touched off by a freak weather system over three thousand kilometres away?’ he said.

‘Studies by Magos Cantore have shown that uncomfortably cold weather can stimulate aggressiveness and a willingness to take risks, while apathy prevails in the heat,’ said Lachine. ‘Additional: temperature has previously been shown to affect mood, which in turn affects behaviour, with higher temperature or barometric pressure related to higher mood, better memory, and broadened cognitive style. Humidity, temperature and hours of exposure to sunshine have the greatest effect on mood, though Cantore believes humidity to be the most significant predictor in regression and canonical correlation analysis. Implications for the climate control of forges and subsequent worker performance are discussed in detail in the study’s conclusion. Would you like me to summarise them?’

‘In the name of the Omnissiah, please don’t,’ said Kane, striding onwards into the depths of the armorium. Lachine and his retinue struggled to match his long, purposeful stride.

As the panting Lachine drew alongside him, Kane said, ‘Certainly, it’s absurd to believe that a meteorological phenomenon, even one so fierce, could affect the psyches of so many, yet the evidence before us is hard to ignore. However, the damage was not restricted just to the cognitive processes of the forge’s population.’

That fact troubled him more than any other.

As the storm raged over Olympus Mons, the vox-lines and data highways of Mars had swarmed with screaming, shrieking packets of corrupted data that sliced into the delicate systems that governed almost every aspect of the workings of Mondus Occulum.

The outlying forge cogitators and logic engines had clogged with corrupt data, howling ghosts of sourceless machine-noise and dangerous code packets of infected algorithms that many of the most advanced aegis protocols were helpless to defeat.

Only Kane’s swift action to shut down the I/O highways and the fact that the vast majority of his systems had recently been upgraded to take advantage of Koriel Zeth’s revolutionary system of noospheric data transference had spared them the worst of the attack, for an attack it surely had been.

‘How much longer do the code-scrubbers need before they will have my system cleaned out?’ he asked.

‘Current estimates range from six full rotations to thirty.’

‘That’s a wide range. Can’t they narrow their estimation?’

‘Apparently the corrupt code is proving to be most resilient to their efforts,’ explained Lachine. ‘Each portion of circuitry that is certified purged soon develops faulty lines of code at a geometric rate once again. They dare not reconnect any system touched by the polluted algorithms for fear of re-infection.’

‘Have they identified its point of origin?’

‘Not with any certainty, though the infection of systems appears to be spreading outwards from the forge of the Fabricator General, suggesting that it was the first to suffer.’

‘Or where it was released,’ muttered Kane. Despite repeated attempts to communicate with Kelbor-Hal, every transmission had been rebuffed by squalling code screams like barking dogs or was simply ignored.

‘Query: you believe this scrapcode to have been released into the Martian systems on purpose?’ Even the normally logical and literal Lachine could not keep an emotional response from his voice at the notion that the scrapcode had been unleashed deliberately.

Kane cursed himself for his verbal slip and shrugged.

‘It’s a possibility,’ he admitted, keeping his tone light. He didn’t particularly want to voice his suspicions to Lachine. His apprenta was loyal, but he was naïve, and Kane knew that information could be thieved by any number of means from supposedly secure sources.

No, the less Lachine knew of Kane’s suspicions the better.

According to the code-scrubbers, the scrapcode had attempted to shut down the vox network and defence protocols that protected his forge and then release the tension in the Tsiolkovsky towers’ guy wires. Kane had shut off the links between Mondus Occulum and the rest of Mars in an instant, leaving them floundering in the dark, but safe from further attack.

Even communications off-world had become next to impossible thanks to a sourceless backwash of psychic interference. Kane had only been able to maintain contact between the forge of Ipluvien Maximal and the Magma City of Adept Zeth thanks to the noosphere.

The news coming from both was neither reassuring nor particularly illuminating.

Both adepts had suffered similar outbreaks of inexplicable violence and madness among their populace, though only Maximal had experienced serious machine failures, losing three of his prized reactors to critical mass overloads. Zeth had spoken of a failed experiment that had seen virtually all of her psykers dead, no doubt related to the psychic interference surrounding Mars.

As if things weren’t bad enough, Maximal went on to tell of fragmentary communications he had inloaded from the expedition fleets that spoke of an equally terrible catastrophe in the Isstvan system.

Details were sketchy and Maximal had not wanted to speculate without firmer information, but it appeared that a dreadful incident had occurred around the third planet, which was now said to be a blasted, ashen wasteland.

Kane knew of only one weapon that could reduce a planet to such a wretched, hellish state in so short a time.

Had the Warmaster unleashed the Life Eater or was this the desperate last act of a defeated foe? Maximal’s sources had no answer to that, but claimed that the Astartes had taken fearful casualties.

Whether they had suffered as a result of enemy action or a terrible accident of friendly fire was unclear, but for Astartes to suffer any loss on such a scale was almost impossible to imagine.

Of all of them, Maximal’s vox-systems had suffered least in the deluge of unclean code, and he was even now attempting to restore communications with agencies beyond the surface of Mars for further information.

Via secure noospheric links, all three adepts expressed their certainty that the infection of the Martian systems bore all the hallmarks of a pre-emptive strike, but without more solid data, there was nothing they could do but strengthen their defences in case of further assault.

Kane had heard the fear in Maximal’s ridiculously rarefied voice and despised him for it. Maximal was not an easy adept to like and Kane considered him to be little more than an archivist rather than an innovator. Koriel Zeth, on the other hand, had spoken boldly of resisting any follow-up attacks and of how she had despatched envoys to allied warrior orders of Titans and Knights to secure their assistance.

With Mars under attack from an unknown foe, it was time to gather one’s friends close.

Kane respected Zeth, for she reminded him of a younger version of himself, an adept unafraid to push the boundaries of the known. To Kane, Zeth represented all that was good about the Mechanicum, an adept who possessed a proper reverence for the past and what earlier pioneers had developed that meshed with an unashamed hunger to build upon that knowledge to reach still greater heights.

An ancient alchemist and scientist of Terra had once said that he had seen further by standing on the shoulders of giants. That perfectly applied to Adept Zeth, and Kane knew that if anyone was going to advance the cause of science and reason in the Imperium it was her.

Emboldened by that thought, Kane watched as huge, tracked haulers lifted sealed containers of Astartes weapons and armour for transport to the orbital elevators of Uranius Patera.

‘Come, Lachine,’ he said. ‘Even during a crisis, the work of Mondus Occulum must continue.’

Grey dust, like ashen bone, billowed around the legs of the two Knights as they loped along the edges of the Aganippe Fossae, the long trench that carved into the plains west of the towering form of Arsia Mons.

Leopold Cronus led the way in Pax Mortis, with Raf Maven following behind in the newly repaired Equitos Bellum. Cronus set a brisk striding pace, and Maven had to work hard to keep up with him, for Equitos Bellum was skittish, its controls tight, and the Manifold willfully resisted him at every turn.

It knows the thing that hurt it is still out there, thought Maven, angling his course to follow Cronus and the deep canyon. Dust clouds obscured the view from his cockpit, but there was little to see in this region and he was piloting via the Manifold anyway. The toxic deserts of the pallidus stretched out to the west and south, and the northern sub-hives between here and Ipluvien Maximal’s forge were little more than black smudges of hanging smoke and fear to the north.

The Knights followed the course of the chasm towards the Median Bridge, a section of collapsed rock where they could cross before turning eastwards towards their chapter house within the Arsia Chasmata.

‘How’s it doing?’ asked Cronus over the vox-link.

‘It’s hard work,’ admitted Maven. ‘It keeps pulling at the controls, but there’s no sense to it. Each time I compensate, it returns on the opposite side a moment later.’

‘It will take time to readjust,’ said Cronus. ‘The entire link assembly had to be rebuilt.’

‘I know, but it feels stronger than that.’

‘Stronger how? What do you mean?’

‘Like it’s trying to guide me,’ said Maven, at a loss how else to explain it.

‘Guide you? To where?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s like… like something’s pulling at me too.’

Maven heard Cronus sigh over the vox and wished he had something more solid to offer his friend by way of an explanation. All he had was a gut feeling and the firmly-held conviction that his mount knew better than he what needed to be done.

Their deployment had begun three days ago, when they left the chapter house in a fanfare of cheers, squires’ trumpets, blaring warhorns and waving cobalt banners. Equitos Bellum marched out, and the brothers of the Knights of Taranis had come to watch it walk once more. For a mount to have returned from the verge of destruction was no small matter and the occasion had to be marked.

Like most of the warrior orders of Tharsis, the Knights of Taranis had been on high alert since the chaos that had engulfed Mars began. Thanks to the noospheric links installed by Adept Zeth, the halls of Taranis had not suffered as horrifically as many others had, though the enginseers had been forced to order an emergency shutdown of the chapter house’s main reactor after a fragment of scrapcode attempted to disengage its coolant protocols.

That speedy response had saved the Order of Taranis from a nuclear holocaust, but until the code-scrubbers could purge the corrupted systems, those Knight machines without full power cells would not be able to recharge.

Nor had that been the worst of the damage. Much to Lord Verticorda’s anguish, the data looms of the order’s librarium had been corrupted beyond repair, taking with them a roll of honour and battle stretching back a thousand years and more.

At the request of Adept Zeth, Lords Caturix and Verticorda had ordered the Knights of Taranis to ride from their chapter house in defence of Mars and the Magma City. Rumour had it that Zeth had also despatched emissaries to Lord Cavalerio of Tempestus to petition their engines to walk, but no one knew what answer she had received.

With several machines powerless to ride until the reactor was repaired, the Knights of Taranis were forced to operate in teams of two instead of three to cover the scale of their deployment. Old Stator had marched out alongside Brother Gentran, a rider newly-elevated from the Errantry, and Maven had been surprised to find that he missed the flinty presence of his preceptor.

Maven and Cronus had ridden east, following a patrol circuit that carried them clockwise around the rumpled skirts of the ancient volcano, before turning to follow the line of the Oti Fossae southwards. As night fell on the second day of their ride, they turned west towards the Magma City to refuel and recharge before continuing on their patrol circuit.

The forge of Koriel Zeth never failed to amaze Maven, glowing like an ember in the distance while the skies above seethed with orange light as though the clouds themselves were afire. Riding closer, lava-filled aqueducts had shone like threads of gold as they carried molten rock from the top of Aetna’s Dam, the monolithic structure that formed the entirety of the volcano’s southern flank, to the magma lagoon surrounding the city.

Towering walls of ceramite and adamantium ringed the enormous city, and the light of the planet’s lifeblood dispelled the darkness as the Knights marched along the mighty, statue-lined Typhon Causeway towards the Vulkan Gate.

Silver and black spires jutted over the walls like metallic teeth, and only after convoluted binaric interrogation by the gate’s defences had they been allowed inside. They had stayed within the circuit of the walls just long enough for their mounts’ power cells to be brought back to maximum charge before riding out.

The two Knights had continued on their patrol circuit of the enormous volcano, skirting the Magma City’s port facilities where millions of tonnes of war materiel was ferried into the hungry bellies of mass-conveyers hanging low in the crowded skies. No sooner had they left the smoking grandeur of Zeth’s city than Maven had felt Equitos Bellum pulling at him, an insistent urge that nagged at his hindbrain and sent painful skewers of pain into his mind whenever he resisted.

With their course soon to carry them eastwards towards home, the pull was getting stronger, and Maven gripped the controls tighter as he felt a building ache behind his eyes. He felt every one of his hard-plugs scratching with irritation, as though Equitos Bellum was trying to dislodge him like a wild colt.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he hissed.

As if in answer, a ghostly flare on the auspex spiked to the south, and Maven flinched as a surge of recognition pulsed in his mind. The image vanished almost as soon as it appeared and he wasn’t even sure he’d seen it, but for the briefest instant it had looked like a dreadfully familiar spider-like pattern of electromagnetic energy.

Maven drew his mount to a halt, feeling the pain behind his eyes ease as he did so. The tall machine’s hydraulics hissed as it sank down onto its haunches.

‘Cronus, wait!’ he called, rotating the Knight’s upper body with a deft movement of the controls. There was nothing to see here, just bone white ash and dust whipped in from the southern pallidus. He heard the relaxing groan of metal as Equitos Bellum settled, feeling the tension in its limbs and the restless hunger for vengeance burning in its core.

‘What is it?’ replied Cronus, and Maven read the telltales of his brother’s machine assuming a war posture through the Manifold. ‘What do you see?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Maven. ‘I don’t think there’s actually anything out there, but Equitos Bellum’s got the scent of something.’

‘Did you get an auspex return?’

‘Sort of, maybe… I don’t know,’ said Maven. ‘It was like a ghost image or something. It was just like the energy signature I saw right before the attack on Maximal’s reactor.’

Pax Mortis rode alongside him, and Maven could see Leopold Cronus through the armourglass canopy. His brother looked unconvinced, but not yet ready to write off Maven’s – and Equitos Bellum’s – instincts for danger.

‘Send it over,’ ordered Cronus. ‘The auspex log for the last few minutes.’

Maven nodded, exloading the data from his auspex panel to Cronus’s machine in a brief data squirt. As he waited for Cronus to review the data, he cast his gaze out into the depths of the pallidus.

The ashen deserts were desolate and uninhabitable, a landscape of tortured grandeur rendered barren and toxic by rapacious over-mining and unthinking plundering of the resources buried beneath the Martian soil. Pollutants blown in from the equatorial refinery belt carpeted the barren, scarred rock, making it a treacherous landscape of sand-covered crevasses and sinkholes.

Nothing lived in the pallidus, yet Maven found himself unaccountably drawn to grip the controls of his mount and ride south into the wasteland. His power cells were fully charged and he had more than enough reserves of nutrients and water to last him for weeks if need be.

His hands twitched at the controls and he felt the heart of his mount respond to his desire. It goaded him with warlike whispers and an insistent pressure at the back of his mind. His lip curled into a snarl as he thought of hunting the monstrous, dead thing that had almost killed him.

It was out there, and Equitos Bellum knew it. He could feel the certainty of that fact in every molecule of his being. The ghost image had been a reminder of his duty to his mount.

‘There’s nothing here,’ said Cronus, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Auspex track is clean.’

‘I know,’ said Maven, with calm, cold certainty. ‘There’s nothing nearby.’

‘Then why have we stopped?’

‘Because Equitos Bellum is telling me where I need to go.’

‘Go?’ asked Cronus. ‘What are you talking about? The only place we need to go is across the Median Bridge and back to the chapter house.’

‘No,’ insisted Maven. ‘It’s out there. The thing that tried to kill us. It’s in the south, I know it.’

‘How can you know it?’ demanded Cronus. ‘There’s nothing on the auspex. You said so yourself.’

‘I know that, Leo, but I saw what I saw. Equitos Bellum can feel it and I trust its instincts.’

‘And what? You’re going to go after it on your own?’

‘If I have to,’ said Maven.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ warned Cronus. ‘Caturix will have your spurs if you do this.’

‘He can have them,’ said Maven, powering up and raising the Knight to its full height once more. ‘I need to do this. Equitos Bellum needs this if it’s ever going to be whole again.’

‘You’re willing to risk your spurs by going off-mission on what, a hunch?’

‘It’s more than that, Leo,’ said Maven. ‘I know it’s out there and I’m going after it whether you like it or not.’

Once again, Maven heard Cronus sigh, and though he hated to abandon his friend he knew he had no choice. Equitos Bellum would give him no peace until they had been avenged.

‘Very well,’ said Cronus. ‘Where is it? Give me a heading.’

‘Leo? You’re coming with me?’ asked Maven.

‘This thing, whatever it is, already got the better of you once before,’ said Cronus. ‘So, logically, you’re going to need my help if you’re going to take it on again.’

‘You’re a true friend,’ said Maven, so very proud of his brother.

‘Shut up and let’s go before I see sense and change my mind.’

Maven smiled. ‘Follow me,’ he said, turning his mount and riding into the pallidus.

The hunt was on, and Equitos Bellum surged with wounded pride.

Maven welcomed it.

Dalia awoke with a scream, her hand clutching her chest, hyperventilating as the fragments of the darkness within her skull threatened to spill out and consume her. Serpentine shapes lurked in the shadows, and Dalia hugged the sheets close to her body as she heard the hiss of a draconic breath drawn at the beginning of the universe and saw the gleam of teeth in ever-widening jaws.

A voice in the darkness spoke her name.

Even with her eyes shut, she could see him, the hooded man with the wild eyes and the mark of the dragon burning beneath his skin. Its silver fire was a web of light within his flesh.

She forced her eyes open as the light levels in the hab grew from nightlight to full illumination. Beside her, Caxton stirred, half asleep as he fumbled with the lumen controls.

‘What… what’s the matter?’ he asked groggily.

Dalia’s eyes flickered to the corners of the hab, where of course there were no serpentine predators lurking in the shadows to devour her and no hooded man with glittering mercury for blood. She saw a gunmetal-grey footlocker overflowing with clothing, the small table strewn with machine parts, and oil-stained walls hung with thin sheets of paper covered in scrawled diagrams. A dripping tap echoed in the ablutions cubicle and an uneaten meal lay in its foil wrapper next to an empty water bottle.

She focused on those simple, domestic items, their familiarity an anchor to the real world and not the realm of dreams and nightmares, the world of dragons and hooded men.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Caxton, sitting up in bed and putting his arm around her. The haptic implants in his fingertips were cold against her bare skin and she shivered. He mistook it for fear and pulled her close. ‘I’m here, Dalia. There’s nothing to worry about. You just had a nightmare.’

Ever since waking from her coma, Dalia had discovered that she could not bear to be alone. Sleep would not come, and a gnawing terror of sinking down into darkness for all eternity would open like a yawning chasm of emptiness within her. She feared she might never emerge from it should she fall in.

When she had confided this to Caxton, he had offered to stay with her, and though she recognised male desire in the offer, she recognised her own need as well. His moving into her hab unit had seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

They sat there for several minutes, Caxton rocking her gently and Dalia letting him.

‘Was it the same as before?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘The dragon and the hooded man.’

‘Every night the same dream,’ he said in wonder. ‘What do you think it means?’

Dalia pulled free from his embrace and turned her head to look directly at him.

‘It means we need to leave.’

‘I’ll wake the others,’ he said, seeing the determination in her eyes.

She leaned in and kissed him.

‘Do it quickly,’ she said.

2.04

The Magma City never slept, its industry continuing through every hour of the day and night. Despite the crowds of robed adepts, menials and workers that filled its streets, Dalia still felt acutely vulnerable. Their small group was clothed in nondescript robes, a mix of reds and browns that marked them as low-grade forge workers. A common sight on the thoroughfares of Adept Zeth’s forge, yet each of them felt as though every eye was upon them.

The constant thrum and low vibration that permeated every surface of the city was more pronounced on the streets, and Dalia wondered if they were being watched even now. Throne knew how many different ways there were of monitoring a person’s whereabouts, biometric readings, facial recognition, genetic markers, spy-skulls or even good old-fashioned eyes.

‘Lift your head up, girl,’ said Zouche. ‘You look like you’re up to no good with your head down like that.’

‘We are up to no good,’ pointed out Severine. ‘We’re leaving the forge without permission. I said this was a bad idea.’

‘You didn’t have to come,’ shot back Caxton.

Severine shot him a withering glance and said, ‘I needed to come,’ as though that should settle the matter. Dalia listened to them bicker, recognising the fear behind it. She understood that fear, for each of them was a member of the Cult Mechanicum, augmented in ways both subtle and gross, and each stood to lose a great deal should they be discovered.

‘We have to do this,’ said Dalia. ‘Whatever we unlocked with the Akashic reader, it’s hidden in the Noctis Labyrinthus. We have to find out what it is.’

‘You mean you have to find out what it is,’ said Zouche. ‘I’m quite happy not knowing.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘You said you needed my help,’ said the short machinist, and Dalia could have kissed him.

She took a breath and lifted her head. ‘Zouche is right. We shouldn’t look as though we’ve anything to hide. I mean, look around us, the place is as busy now as it is any other time of the day.’

Blue-tinted lumen globes sputtered and fizzed atop black poles, their glass reflecting the golden-orange glow from the clouds. Soaring above them, higher even than the silver pyramid of Zeth’s forge, was the dark, mountainous shadow of Arsia Mons. The volcano’s side had been quarried away five hundred years ago and replaced with the gargantuan structure of Aetna’s Dam, its monstrous, cyclopean scale almost impossible to comprehend.

Dalia recognised the name it bore, which had belonged to a legendary fire goddess of a long dead volcano that rose from the Mediterranean dust bowl of Terra. It was fitting that the name should be appropriated for a rekindled volcano on Mars.

As it had been when Dalia had first arrived on Mars, the Magma City thrived and pulsed with activity, with its inhabitants making their way to and fro on foot and by any number of bizarre mechanical conveyances. Servo-skulls of gold, silver and bone darted through the air, each on an errand for its master, and Dalia wondered which of them served Adept Zeth.

‘It may be busy,’ said Caxton, ‘but if any of the Protectors realise we shouldn’t be on shift, we’ll be in real trouble.’

‘Then best we don’t attract their attention by standing around yapping like stray dogs, eh?’ said Zouche. ‘Come on, the mag-lev transit hub is just ahead.’

They followed Zouche, trying to affect an air of nonchalance and give the impression that they had every reason to be there, though Dalia suspected they weren’t succeeding too well. She could feel sweat running between her shoulder blades and fought the urge to scratch an itch on the back of her leg.

She felt great affection for her friends, knowing that she wouldn’t have had the strength or courage to make the journey on her own. She had told them she needed them, which was true, but not for the reasons any of them might expect. Their technical skills would no doubt be useful along the way, but she needed them with her so the dark and terrifyingly lonely void that lurked behind her eyes every time she closed them wouldn’t overwhelm her.

She knew Caxton was with her because he was in love with her, and Zouche had come because he was about as honest as a person could be. He had said he would come and he had. He lived his life by doing as he said he would do, which even Dalia knew was all too rare a trait in humanity.

Dalia didn’t know why Severine had come, since the girl clearly didn’t want to be there and was terrified of losing her status as a Mechanicum draughter. Guilt was what Dalia suspected drove Severine to make this journey, guilt for what they had allowed to happen to Jonas Milus. It was a reason Dalia was uncomfortably aware played no small part in her own determination to discover what lay beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus.

Only Mellicin had not come with them, and Dalia was sad not to have her logical presence with them right now, though that was, she supposed, exactly why she wasn’t there. Caxton had gathered them all in Zouche’s hab, a sterile and functional chamber that reflected the machinist’s austere, no-nonsense character. The only concession to decoration was a small silver effigy of a lighthouse that sat in a corner with a slow-burning candle smouldering before it.

All of them had answered Caxton’s summons: Severine looking rumpled and irritable, Zouche as though he had been awake all along and had simply been waiting for them, while Mellicin looked as calm as Dalia could ever remember seeing her.

With everyone gathered, Dalia had outlined the substance and unnatural regularity of her dreams, the imagery and the feeling that she was being summoned to the Labyrinth of Night.

‘Summoned by what?’ asked Zouche.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Dalia. ‘This… Dragon, whatever it is.’

‘Don’t you remember the stories?’ asked Severine. ‘The dragons ate fair maidens.’

‘Then you and Mellicin will be all right,’ quipped Caxton, wishing he hadn’t when Dalia stared at him in annoyance.

‘I had the dream again tonight,’ said Dalia. ‘The same as before, but it felt stronger, more urgent. I think it’s telling me that it’s time to go.’

‘Now?’ asked Severine. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘Kind of appropriate then, eh?’ said Zouche. ‘We are going to the Labyrinth of Night after all.’

They all looked at each other then, and Dalia could sense their hesitation.

‘I need your help. I can’t do this alone,’ she said, hating the pleading note in her voice.

‘No need to ask twice, Dalia,’ said Zouche, picking up the silver lighthouse figurine and tucking it into his robes. ‘I’ll come.’

‘And me,’ said Severine, though she didn’t make eye contact.

‘Mellicin?’ asked Caxton. ‘What about you? You in?’

The stern, matronly woman who had held them together and made them work better in a team than they ever could have managed alone, shook her head. She gripped Dalia’s hand and said, ‘I can’t go with you, Dalia, I have to stay. Someone has to finish what we’ve begun here. Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to go with you, but I’m too old and too set in my ways to go gallivanting around Mars chasing dreams and visions and mysteries. My place is here in the forge. I’m sorry.’

Dalia was disappointed, but she nodded. ‘I understand, Mel. And don’t worry about us. We’ll be back soon, I promise.’

‘I know you will. And don’t call me Mel ever again,’ said Mellicin.

They laughed and said their goodbyes before making their way towards a journey into the unknown and an uncertain future.

So lost was Dalia in her memory of saying goodbye to Mellicin that she bumped into a passing adept, who stared at her with amber eyes from behind a silver mask. He blurted a hash of irritated binary and Dalia shrank from the force of his utterance.

‘Many apologies, Adept Lascu,’ she said, reading his identity in the noospheric information swirling above him before remembering that she shouldn’t be able to read such things without modification.

The adept either didn’t notice or believed she already knew him, and passed on his way with a final canted burst of annoyance. Dalia let out a pent-up breath and turned as the sleeve of her robe was tugged.

‘If you’re quite finished?’ said Caxton, looking in alarm at the adept’s retreating back.

‘Yes, sorry,’ she said.

‘The mag-lev hub is just ahead,’ said Zouche, pointing to a bronze archway through which hundreds of people were passing back and forth. Dalia experienced a moment of sickening realisation when they reached the archway and she saw the wide steps descending hundreds of metres into the bedrock of Mars.

‘We’re going to have to go below the level of the magma?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ said Caxton. ‘The mag-lev can’t exactly go through the lava now can it?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Dalia, wishing she hadn’t said anything.

Caxton pulled her on and she quelled her mounting panic as they began their journey downwards. Sizzling lumen strips that flickered and hurt Dalia’s eyes illuminated their route along a tunnel thronged with workers making their way to and from their shifts. They marched like automatons – one side ascending, the other descending – all in perfect unison towards or from the metropolis above.

Zouche forged them a path downwards with his squat frame and robust language, and anyone who objected to either soon bit their tongue at the sight of his thunderous stare and bunched fists.

Eventually they reached the bottom, the transit station itself, a gigantic hangar with a colossal vaulted ceiling. There seemed to be no order to the movement of the packed mass of people, just heaving bodies that moved according to tidal patterns rather than with any purpose.

Robed Protectors bearing crackling weapon-staves and the four-
by-four number grid symbol of Adept Zeth policed the energetic scrum of workers, and Dalia tried to avoid looking at them for fear of attracting their attention. Servo skulls bobbed overhead, and grating binaric code spilled from vox-plates set into the walls, announcing departures and arrivals and warning travellers to beware of the void between mag-lev and platform.

‘Now where?’ asked Dalia, unable to make sense of the overlaid binary instructions blaring from the vox.

‘This way,’ said Zouche pushing through the crowds. ‘It looks harder than it is, but after you’ve ridden the mag-lev once it’s easy to find your way around.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Dalia, taking Caxton and Severine’s hands like children on a scholam outing as they set off after him.

Zouche led the way through a confusing series of ceramic-tiled tunnels until they stood on a crowded platform with hundreds of tired-looking workers.

Distorted, wavering blurts of code fragments coughed from battered vox-amps set in wooden boxes mounted on the ceiling, and even Zouche shrugged when Dalia looked at him for an explanation.

‘I didn’t get a word of that,’ said Zouche.

‘It said the next mag-lev will be delayed by two hundred and seventy-five seconds,’ said a powerful voice behind them.

Dalia flinched at the sound, recognising the harsh, metallic rasp of a human voice issuing from behind a bronze mask.

She turned and looked up into a pair of glowing green eyes.

‘Greetings, Dalia Cythera,’ said Rho-mu 31.

The enemy Reaver was burning, the top portion of its carapace blown away by Cavalerio’s blastgun after a punishing barrage from the Vulcan had stripped it of its void shields. He felt the heat build in his left arm as the weapon recharged, and a clatter in his right as the autoloader recycled the mega bolter to fire again.

The enemy engine toppled backwards, flattening an ore silo and sending up a blizzard of flame and smoke. Crushed rockcrete dust billowed from its demise and even as Cavalerio exulted in the kill, he knew the other Reaver was still out there, lurking behind the burning ruins of the refinery, using the smoke and heat to mask its reactor bloom.

<Moderati, get me a mass reading!> he ordered in a squirt of binary.

‘Yes, princeps.’

Information flooded him through the Manifold, a hundred different stimuli collected from the mighty engine’s myriad surveyors: heat, mass, motion, radiation, vibration and shield harmonics. Everything combined to paint a world more real to Cavalerio than reality itself.

He drank the liquid data down, swallowing and digesting it in a heartbeat. His awareness of his surroundings bloomed and he saw the enemy Reaver manoeuvring around the refinery, smashing its way through the walls and roof beams of the nearby steelworks.

A flicker of heat and mass tugged at his awareness and he felt the stealthy approach of the enemy Warhound before he saw it.

‘Steersman, reverse pace, flank speed! Heading two-seven-zero!’

A Warlord Titan was not built for rapid course changes, but the steersman was good and the engine obeyed with commendable speed. The building beside Cavalerio exploded into a mass of shredded girders, torn concrete slabs and sheet metal roofing. Clouds of vaporised rockcrete billowed, but Cavalerio’s engine-sight could penetrate it without difficulty.

He saw the Warhound, a graceful loping predator of red and silver, dart from the shadows of a collapsed forge-hangar, its turbos blitzing with hard light. Cavalerio felt the impacts on his shields, but its angle of fire was poor and most of the shots were void-skidding.

<Sensori, keep an eye out for that Reaver,> he canted. <Don’t let him get too close.>

‘Yes, princeps.’

‘Moderati, firing solution!’

The Warhound was nimble, but it had struck too soon, and without the shock value of its turbo lasers impacting on its target’s shields it was vulnerable. Data inloaded from the moderati’s station, and Cavalerio saw the vectors of fire slide into his mind at the speed of thought. He felt the wordless bray of the gun-servitor’s acknowledgement and opened fire.

A sheeting storm of explosive rounds roared from Cavalerio’s mega bolter, obscuring the Warhound in a blizzard of detonations and flaring shreds of discharging void shields. The Warhound staggered, pushed back against the brick walls of a weapon shop. Stone and steel tumbled to the ground, but Cavalerio knew the enemy engine wasn’t out of the fight yet.

‘Steersman, move in! Moderati, arm missiles. Sensori, where’s that Reaver?’

‘Moving in, aye!’

‘Missiles arming!’

‘Reaver still closing, princeps. Six hundred metres, bearing zero-six-three.’

Cavalerio’s engine closed the gap between it and the Warhound. He had to kill it before the Reaver was in a position to help. Individually, neither of the enemy machines were a match for his Warlord, but working together, they could potentially bring him down if he was not careful.

The Warhound swayed as it picked itself up, its weapon limbs shaking like a dog climbing from the water. Its shields burbled and sparked, and Cavalerio read a flaring convergence of energy gaps clustered around the engine’s hip.

Information updates sluiced around him and he updated his situational awareness, feeling the danger of the closing Reaver and knowing he didn’t have much time.

‘Moderati! As soon as that Reaver comes into view, hit its upper carapace with a barrage from the carapace launcher. Three missile spread, five second intervals.’

‘Yes, princeps.’

‘Gun-servitor Hellas-88, slave weapon to my command.’

The implanted servitor wordlessly acknowledged his order, and Cavalerio felt the reassuring weight and industrial motion of the mega bolter as though it were part of his flesh. It was reckless to take command of the weapon from the servitor, who could fire it far more effectively than he could, but to make this kill, he wanted to feel the thunder.

Cavalerio surrendered to the engine’s killing lust, guiding it with his own need to defeat their foe. With a thought, the mega bolter engaged and sawed off a furious hurricane of shells at the staggering Warhound’s wounded hip.

At the same time, he felt the juddering shoom, shoom, shoom of the missiles mounted high on his carapace leap from the launcher. The Reaver had joined the fight and he had to finish the Warhound quickly.

‘Multiple impacts on enemy Reaver, princeps!’

Cavalerio noted the update, but concentrated his attention on the Warhound. Its void shields had collapsed under his barrage, detonating with a blinding thunderclap. The explosion atomised one weapon arm and cracked its carapace open. Flames billowed from its rear quarter.

Still it stood, defiant as a whipped wolf.

‘Arming blastgun,’ intoned the moderati. ‘Plotting solution.’

‘Belay that order!’ cried Cavalerio, ‘we’ll need it for the Reaver! We close and kill it with hard rounds!’

‘Incoming!’ shouted the moderati, and Cavalerio felt the blistering pain of impacts on the voids. Missiles streaked from the enemy Reaver, fired from an underslung rocket pod, and the relentless impacts staggered his engine. Shield energy ripped away from his Warlord, and Cavalerio heard the frantic cants of the magos as he fought to rebuild them.

The limping Warhound stood its ground before him, silhouetted in the ruins of the collapsed building, and Cavalerio was forced to admire its pilot’s courage. It was doomed, yet still it fought. Its remaining gun opened fire, punishing his already weakened shields.

‘Shield failure on lower quadrant!’ warned the magos. ‘Critical collapse imminent!’

‘Reaver closing, princeps!’

Cavalerio ignored the warnings, letting rip once more with the mega bolter. A storm of shells and pulverised rock erupted around the Warhound, driving it to its knees with the force of the impacts. Its carapace cracked open and flames sheeted upwards as the remains of the building tumbled down around it. Cavalerio kept hammering the smaller engine until it was a ruin of splintered metal and fire.

Sudden, agonising pain speared into him, and he screamed as it felt like his leg was bathed in liquid fire. His awareness snapped back into wide-spread, and he saw the looming form of the Reaver closing with him, its immense bulk smashing through the high walls of the refinery in its hunger to reach him. Its warhorn blared in triumph and its plasma blastgun was smoking from a sustained salvo. Cavalerio read the situation in a heartbeat.

It was on his exposed flank and had him dead to rights.

His shields were almost gone, the metal beneath buckled and molten.

A volley of screaming rockets slammed into him and he convulsed with psychostigmatic pain. The Manifold erupted with warnings and damage indicators.

The chin station exploded, immolating the moderati and steersman in a hellish firestorm. The cockpit shook as more missile impacts slammed into the Warlord’s mighty torso.

<Shields gone!> canted the magos unnecessarily.

‘Missiles!’ he yelled, knowing it was too late. ‘Full spread, safeties off!’

Streaking rockets and laser fire pounded the air between the two engines as they unleashed the last of their arsenal at one another at point-blank range. Cavalerio screamed as his shields failed, feeling awful, intolerable pain as the enemy engine tore the guts from him with an unending series of missile strikes.

Bright explosions of void failure flared around him, and at last both war machines were stripped of their shields, naked and steel to steel.

Cavalerio grinned through the pain.

‘Now I have you!’ he roared.

With his last breath Cavalerio unleashed the full power of the blastgun into his enemy’s face, and the world exploded in fire and light.

Agathe watched the last moments of the unfolding battle on the hololithic projection table, admiring the skill of the Stormlord even as his engine was destroyed. Watching the miniature holograms of the engines stomping around the artificial landscape had been thrilling, but the tension in the warriors gathered around the table was contagious.

‘He’s doing much better now, isn’t he?’ she asked.

Princeps Sharaq looked over at her, his kind eyes and cropped, salt and pepper hair at odds with the killer she knew him to be. His eyes darted to the other side of the projection table where two fellow princeps, Vlad Suzak and Jan Mordant, stood watching the simulated battle. Suzak stood ramrod straight, as if on parade, while Mordant eagerly leaned forwards with his elbow resting on the edge of the table.

‘Yes, famulous, he is doing better,’ said Sharaq.

‘But not well enough,’ put in Suzak, the straight-backed slayer of engines.

‘It takes time to adjust,’ said Agathe, looking at the forlorn, naked form suspended in the steel-edged amniotic tank, linked to the projection table via a host of insulated cables. ‘To go from hard-plug connection to full immersion. It’s not an easy transition to make.’

‘No,’ agreed Sharaq, ‘but the point remains, the Stormlord cannot command the Legio like this. Not yet.’

Agathe pointed to the projection table. ‘He took on and defeated three engines single-handedly. Doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘It speaks of great courage,’ said Jan Mordant, looking over at Sharaq. ‘Maybe we’re being too cautious?’

‘It speaks of recklessness,’ snapped Sharaq.

‘It’s just a simulation, Kel,’ pointed out Mordant. ‘It’s a whole different game when you’re linked with the Manifold. We all know the risks you take in a sim aren’t the ones you take when your neck’s on the line.’

‘I’m aware of that, Jan, but if this had been real, the Stormlord would have died and taken his engine with him. A Warlord no less.’

‘But three engines, Kel…’ said Mordant. ‘Come on!’

Sharaq sighed. ‘I understand, Jan, I really do, but you’ve only recently been elevated to the princepture of a Reaver from a Warhound.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘It means you haven’t yet shed your own recklessness,’ said Suzak. ‘You have to think in terms other than individual heroics when you command a larger engine. You should know that, and Princeps Cavalerio should damn well know it.’

Agathe saw the flush of temper colour Jan Mordant’s neck, but he controlled his anger and simply nodded. She saw his knuckles were white where they gripped the projection table.

Softening his tone, Sharaq said, ‘Princeps Cavalerio should have waited for the engines of his battlegroup to take the enemy en masse. We are not in the business of futile heroics, Jan, we are in the business of destroying our foes and then bringing our engines and crews back alive.’

‘So the decision stands?’ asked Mordant.

Sharaq nodded. ‘The decision stands. Until such time as I deem Princeps Cavalerio fit to return to active duty, I will assume command of Legio Tempestus forces on Mars.’

Mordant and Suzak nodded and saluted their new Princeps Senioris.

Agathe watched the foetal outline of Cavalerio twitch in the blood-flecked jelly of his amniotic tank. Could he hear what his warriors were saying about him?

She hoped not.

He had already suffered the pain of losing his engine.

How devastating would it be to lose his Legio?

Dalia felt an icy hand clamp down on her heart at the sight of Rho-mu 31.

Her perceptions seemed to contract to a bubble of warped reality, where the world around her ceased to flow. The motion of people, the sound of the vox-system and the crackle of electricity, and the actinic reek of ozone were all held in stasis, while her personal experience spiked like an arrhythmic heartbeat.

She could feel the panic in her companions, and fought to control her breathing.

Rho-mu 31 stood immobile in front of her, his robes bright red and his body carrying the strange aroma of spoiled meat that always seemed to attend the Protectors. Silver gleamed in the shadows of his cloak where augmetic implants emerged from his flesh.

‘Oh,’ she managed. ‘Hello.’

As far as excuses or opening gambits went, it was fairly poor.

The noise of the transit station swelled in her ears, and suddenly all she could hear was the rustle of a hundred conversations and the shuffle of a thousand feet.

‘Rho-mu 31,’ she said, struggling to think of something more meaningful to say and failing miserably. She felt herself looking at her feet like a naughty child.

Zouche came to her rescue, standing in front of her and craning his neck to look up at the heavily muscled and augmented Mechanicum warrior.

‘Rho-mu 31 is it?’ he said. ‘Good to see you. We… ah… we were just taking the transit to the port facilities. Got some supplies coming in from the Jovian shipyards.’

‘The port facilities?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘That’s right,’ added Caxton. ‘We wanted to make sure they were the right ones, you know, save the stevedores the bother of getting them here and finding out they were the wrong ones. It would add days to our work, and frankly we don’t have days to lose.’

Dalia closed her eyes, unable to meet Rho-mu 31’s gaze as her companions told their terrible, unbelievable lies. She imagined the ground opening up and plunging her deep into the magma, or that an approaching mag-lev might fly from the rails in a cataclysmic crash.

Anything would be preferable to this excruciating feeling.

Severine joined with the others in weaving the deception, the lie growing ever more convoluted and drawing in elements and characters – many of whom she was certain didn’t exist – until Dalia could stand it no longer.

‘Enough!’ she yelled. ‘Throne, don’t you realise how stupid this all sounds?’

A few heads turned at her use of the Throne as an oath, but most people kept their heads down, knowing it was not wise to attract the attention of a Mechanicum Protector unless you really had to.

The others fell silent, studiously examining the floor as though it held the key to their salvation. Dalia drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much compared to Rho-mu 31, and looked into the glowing green lights behind his bronze mask.

‘We’re not going to the port,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the Noctis Labyrinthus.’

She heard the collective intake of breath from the others and pressed on, knowing she had no choice but to tell Rho-mu 31 the truth.

‘Why would you want to go to such a benighted place?’ asked Rho-mu 31. ‘Nothing good can come of it. Only the Cult of the Dragon is said to dwell within the Labyrinth of Night.’

‘The Cult of the Dragon?’ asked Dalia, her excitement piqued. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Few have,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘It was an obscure sect of madmen. Regrettably only one of many on Mars.’

‘But who are they?’

‘When the adepts who attempted to set up forges within the Noctis Labyrinthus abandoned their workings, not everyone left with them. A few deluded souls remained behind.’

A rush of air filled the transit station. A mag-lev train was approaching.

‘I need to go there,’ said Dalia. ‘I need to go there now.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t exactly know, but there’s something important there, I can feel it.’

‘There is nothing there but darkness,’ said Rho-mu 31, placing a meaty hand on Dalia’s shoulder. ‘Are you truly sure of the path you are on?’

Dalia shuddered at Rho-mu 31’s mention of the darkness, but slowly the implications of his words emerged from behind her fear. ‘Wait a minute… you’re not going to stop me?’

‘I am not,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘And if you insist on making this journey, I have no choice but to accompany you.’

‘Accompany us?’ asked Zouche. ‘Now why would you do a thing like that and not drag us back to Adept Zeth? You have to know we’re travelling without her sanction.’

‘Be quiet, Zouche!’ said Severine.

Rho-mu 31 nodded. ‘I am aware of that, but Adept Zeth tasked me with keeping Dalia Cythera safe. She said nothing about restricting her movements.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Dalia as the glowing stablights of a mag-lev emerged from the arched tunnel and the smell of ozone grew stronger.

‘Mars is in crisis, Dalia Cythera,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘Disaster strikes at every turn, and though Adept Zeth’s forge escaped the worst of it, our beloved planet is on the verge of slipping into chaos.’

‘Chaos? What are you talking about?’ asked Caxton. ‘We heard some rumours of accidents, but nothing like as serious as you’re making out.’

‘Whatever you have heard, I can assure you the reality is far worse than you can possibly imagine,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘The terror of Old Night threatens to descend upon us once more, and I believe Dalia may hold the key to our salvation.’

‘Me? No… I told you before that I’m nobody,’ said Dalia, unwilling to be saddled with such responsibility.

‘You are wrong, Dalia,’ stated Rho-mu 31 as the mag-lev came to a halt behind her. ‘You have an innate understanding of technology, but I believe what makes you special is the ability to intuit things that others would not. If you think there is something within the Noctis Labyrinthus of importance, then I am willing to put my faith in you.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in faith?’

‘I don’t. I believe in you.’

Dalia smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I do not require your thanks,’ replied Rho-mu 31. ‘I am a Protector. I am your Protector. That is my purpose.’

‘I thank you anyway.’

Caxton patted Dalia on the shoulder. ‘Well, if we’re going to go, we should probably get on this mag-lev?’

Dalia nodded and looked up at her Protector.

‘After you,’ said Rho-mu 31.

Adept Zeth stood in the highest tower of her forge, the noospheric halo above her head twitching with information. She sorted through a number of active feeds with her MIU. None of them made for easy reading.

Most were streaming from the forges of Fabricator Locum Kane and Ipluvien Maximal, but there were others coming in from isolated adepts that had come through the Death of Innocence and were desperately seeking friendly voices.

Beside her, one of her underlings waited uncomfortably for the adept to speak.

‘Be at ease,’ said Zeth. ‘Rho-mu 31 is with them now.’

‘They’re safe?’

Zeth shrugged and glanced down at the woman beside her. ‘As much as anyone can be said to be safe on Mars just now.’

‘And he’ll keep them from harm?’

‘That is his purpose,’ agreed Zeth. ‘Though a journey to the Noctis Labyrinthus is not without peril. They will pass close to Mondus Gamma, the domain of Lukas Chrom, and he is a pawn of the Fabricator General.’

‘That’s bad, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I rather suspect it is,’ said Zeth, thinking of what Kane had told her. ‘It is imperative that no one else should learn of Dalia’s whereabouts.’

‘Of course.’

‘Delete all records of her destination from your memory coils and supply me with a record of deletion. Understood?’

‘Yes.’

Zeth waited for a few seconds until the deletion record arrived in her noosphere before speaking again.

‘You should return to your duties,’ she said. ‘Ambassador Melgator will be arriving soon from Olympus Mons and I think it would be better if you were elsewhere.’

‘As you wish,’ said Mellicin.

2.05

Of all the visitors ever to climb the steps to her forge, Ambassador Melgator was one of the least welcome. Koriel Zeth watched the man approach, his thin body wrapped in a dark, ermine-trimmed robe, his few overt augmetics concealed beneath a hood of dark velvet. Though Kelbor-Hal’s messenger was still some distance away, Zeth’s enhanced vision saw that the ambassador had changed since last she had seen him.

His skin was waxen and unhealthy, yet his eyes remained dark pools of sinister purpose like a bearer of bad news eager to spread his misery. However, Melgator’s presence, as unwelcome and unlooked for as it was, did not worry her so much as that of his companion.

Sheathed in an all-enclosing bodyglove of a gleaming synthetic material that rippled like blood across her skin, a slender female figure followed a discreet distance behind the ambassador.

Zeth needed no help from the noosphere to recognise what this woman was.

<Is that what I think it is?> asked Magos Polk in a soft cant of binary. Zeth could read her apprenta’s disquiet in the formulation of his numerics and hoped her own biometrics did not betray her unease so obviously.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do not speak to her if you can avoid it.’

‘Have no worries about that,’ promised Polk. ‘Not if my life depended on it.’

‘Let us hope it does not come to that, Polk,’ said Zeth. ‘But her presence here cannot be a good thing.’

‘Surely the Fabricator General has merely despatched her as a guard for the ambassador after all the troubles we have had,’ said Polk, his tone begging for reassurance.

‘Perhaps, but I doubt it. To act merely as a bodyguard would be seen as beneath the skills of a tech-priest assassin.’

‘Then why is she here?’

Zeth felt her irritation at Polk’s questions grow, but forced it down. ‘I expect we shall find out soon enough,’ she said. This meeting with Kelbor-Hal’s lackey would need a clear head and Zeth could not afford to be distracted by Polk’s fear, even though it mirrored her own.

The tech-priest assassins were a body of mysterious and aloof killers who had existed since the settling of Mars in the distant past. A law unto themselves, they answered to no authority save that of unknown masters said to dwell in the shadows of the Cydonia Mensae.

Melgator and his accomplice reached the plinth beneath the great portico, and Zeth wondered if this was how she was going to die, struck down by an assassin’s blade, her vital fluids pouring down the steps of her forge.

Melgator smiled, though Zeth found nothing reassuring in its reptilian insincerity. The ambassador and his companion came towards her, passing into the splayed shadows of the piston columns and golden portico. Melgator moved with the clicking gait of one whose lower limbs were augmetic, while the assassin flowed across the milky white marble of the floor as though on ice.

Zeth saw that the assassin’s legs were long and multi-jointed, fused together just above the ankles by a spar of metal, below which her legs ended not in feet, but in a complex series of magno-gravitic thrusters that skimmed her along just off the ground. Her athletic form was beautifully deadly, honed to perfect physicality by a rigorous regime of physical exercise, gene-manipulation and surgical augmentation.

Melgator stopped before Zeth and bowed deeply, his arms spread wide.

‘Adept Zeth,’ he began. ‘It is a pleasure to once again visit your unique forge.’

‘You are welcome, Ambassador Melgator,’ said Zeth. ‘This is my magos-apprenta, Adept Polk.’

She left her words hanging and Melgator read the pause expertly. He turned towards his companion, who wore a facemask fashioned in the form of a grinning crimson skull with a horn of gleaming metal jutting from its chin.

‘This is my… associate, Remiare,’ said Melgator.

Zeth nodded towards Remiare and the assassin inclined her head a fraction in acknowledgement. Zeth took a second to study the hardwired targeting apparatus grafted to Remiare’s mask and the long snake-like sensor tendrils that swam in the air from the rear portion of her cranium.

‘And what brings you to my forge?’ asked Zeth, turning and leading Melgator towards the wall of bronze doors that led within. Polk dropped back to stand at her right shoulder, while Melgator and Remiare fell in smoothly to her left.

‘I come to you as a great shadow hangs over our beloved planet, Adept Zeth. Disaster strikes Mars at every turn and in times of such trouble friends should stand shoulder to shoulder.’

‘Indeed,’ replied Zeth as they passed into the forge and along its silver-skinned arterial halls. ‘We have suffered greatly and much has been lost that can never be recovered.’

‘Alas, you speak the truth,’ said Melgator, and Zeth could barely keep the contempt she felt for his false concern from her field auras. ‘Thus it is ever more imperative that friends should acknowledge one another and do whatever is necessary to aid one another.’

Zeth did not answer Melgator’s leading comment and turned into Aetna’s Processional, a passageway of ouslite walls and burning braziers that led into a high-ceilinged chamber at the heart of Adept Zeth’s forge.

Formed from the intertwining of twisted columns of silver and gold, the web-like walls rose to a tapered point above the centre of the chamber. Gracefully curved sheets of burnished steel and crystal rippled overhead, winding through the columns to form an impossibly beautiful latticework roof, like glittering shards of ice frozen in the moment of shattering. The toxic skies of Mars were visible through the gaps in the columns as angled slivers of cadmium, hazed by the void shielding that surrounded the highest peak of the forge.

Beneath the apex of the roof, a wide shaft descended into the depths of the forge and a fiery orange glow billowed upwards from the heart of the magma far below. Searing heat and waves of energising power rippled the air over the shaft as Melgator made appropriately impressed noises.

Receptors like thin, slitted gills opened in the folds of his neck as Melgator partook of the invisible currents of drifting electricity.

Remiare paid the hot majesty of the space no mind, her own energy receptors kept hidden beneath her bodyglove, and Zeth felt as though the assassin’s attention was focused firmly on the cardinal weak points of her bronze armour. She shared a glance with Magos Polk, who assumed a deferential pose beside her with his hand tucked into the sleeves of his robe.

‘It has been too long since I stood within the Chamber of Vesta,’ said Melgator. ‘Your current is exquisite. I can almost feel the fire of the Red Planet within me.’

‘It has always been here,’ pointed out Zeth. ‘Those who are friends to the Magma City are always welcome to take sustenance within its walls.’

‘Then I should hope you count the Fabricator General amongst such friends.’

‘Why should I not?’ asked Zeth. ‘Kelbor-Hal has never expressed his displeasure with me. He continues the great work of the Mechanicum, does he not?’

‘Indeed he does,’ said Melgator quickly. ‘And he sends me to you in the spirit of peace in these dark days of loss and death to assure you of his continued goodwill.’

‘The spirit of peace,’ said Zeth, walking around the shaft in the centre of the chamber. Polk made to follow her, but she waved him away. The heat was intense and she could feel her organic portions begin to sweat. ‘Is that why you come to me in the company of one of the Sisters of Cydonia?’

‘These are troubled times, Adept Zeth,’ said Melgator.

‘You said that already.’

‘I am aware of that, but it is a point I cannot make strongly enough,’ replied Melgator. ‘An enemy strikes at us, weakens our forges, and only a fool dares to travel without precautions.’

‘An assassin is a precaution?’ asked Zeth, turning towards Remiare. ‘Has the Cydonian Sisterhood fallen so far that they are now mere bodyguards?’

The assassin cocked her head to one side, like a bird of prey regarding a helpless morsel, and though glistening fabric obscured her expression, Zeth felt an acute tremor along the adamantium curve of her spine.

‘I can taste your fear of me,’ said Remiare softly, her eyes like black marbles behind the horned death mask. ‘Yet still you bait me with barbed words. Why would you do this when you know I can kill you?’

Zeth controlled her breathing and metabolic rate with a measured release of glanded stimms as Melgator said, ‘There will be no killing, Remiare. This is a mission of renewed friendship in a time when allies are to be more prized than pure-streaming data.’

Melgator turned to Zeth, his hands held out before him. ‘Yes, I bring a warrior to your forge, but it is only because our very way of existence is threatened that I come so accompanied.’

‘Threatened by whom? Does the Fabricator General know who unleashed the corrupt code into the Martian systems?’

‘He does not know for certain, but he has strong suspicions,’ replied Melgator.

‘Any you would care to divulge?’

Melgator began circling the fire shaft towards Zeth, lacing his hands behind his back as he walked.

‘Perhaps,’ nodded Melgator. ‘But may I first ask how the Magma City escaped the devastation so many other, less fortunate, forges suffered?’

Zeth hesitated, unsure of how much Melgator knew and how much he only suspected. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure why her forge had been spared, though she had her suspicions, none of which she was comfortable sharing with a minion of the Fabricator General.

In the end she decided on a partial truth. ‘I believe the singular nature of the noosphere prevented the debased code from entering my systems,’ she said.

‘And yet the forges of Ipluvien Maximal and Fabricator Locum Kane suffered in the attack. They have recently upgraded their information networks to the noosphere, have they not? So perhaps there is some other reason you were spared?

<If there is, I am not certain what it was,> said Zeth, hoping Melgator would read the honesty in her cant and not the evasion of her words. She prayed that Polk’s aegis barriers in his noospheric aura were in place.

‘Then might it be the latest endeavour taking shape within your inner forge? It has not gone unnoticed that your newest creation, whatever it is, requires lowly transcribers sequestered from Terra and a great many psykers secretly brought down from the Black Ships.’

‘How can you think you know what goes on within my inner forge?’ asked Zeth, shaken to the core of her being that Melgator was aware of such things.

Melgator laughed. ‘Come now, Adept Zeth. You think the workings of any adept on Mars are truly hidden? Information is woven into every passage of electrons across the surface of the Red Planet and you know how the spirits of machines love to share their secrets.’

‘The workings of my forge are my own to know, Melgator,’ snapped Zeth. ‘As I said, I believe that it was my adoption of the noosphere that saved my forge from destruction.’

Melgator smiled ruefully. ‘Very well, I will accept that. Perhaps if you had freely shared the technology of the noosphere with your fellow adepts then Mars might have been spared the horror of the Death of Innocence.’

‘Perhaps if the Fabricator General had put more faith in the noosphere when I presented it to him, that might have been the case,’ countered Zeth.

Melgator smiled, conceding the point. ‘May I speak frankly, Adept Zeth?’

‘Of course, the Chamber of Vesta is a place of honest discourse.’

‘Then I will be blunt.’ said Melgator. ‘My master believes he knows the source of the attack on our infrastructure and he seeks to rally all true sons and daughters of Ares to the defence of Mars.’

‘The defence of Mars?’ asked Zeth, nonplussed. ‘Defence against whom?’

‘Against Terra.’

Zeth was stunned. Of all the answers she had expected Melgator to give, this had not been amongst them. She tried to cover her surprise, by turning and looking out over the Martian landscape. The sky was turning from blue to purple, heavy, toxin-laden clouds sparking with lightning over the distant forge of Mondus Gamma.

‘Terra,’ she said slowly, as though tasting the word for the first time.

‘Terra,’ repeated Melgator. ‘Now that the Great Crusade is almost at an end, the Emperor desires to end his union with Mars and take our world for his own.’

‘Kelbor-Hal thinks the Emperor attacked us?’ asked Zeth, spinning to face Melgator. ‘Do you realise how insane that sounds?’

Melgator approached her with a pleading look. ‘Is it insane to want to hold on to what we have built here over the millennia, Adept Zeth? Is it insanity to suspect that a man who has all but conquered the entire galaxy should allow one world among millions to remain aloof from his empire? No, the attack on our world’s information systems was but the first strike in breaking the Treaty of Olympus and bringing the Mechanicum to heel.’

Zeth laughed in his face. ‘I see now why you brought this assassin with you, Melgator – in case I should call you traitor and have you killed.’

Melgator’s stance changed from one of supplication to one of aggression in an instant and hands that had once been outstretched towards her now dropped to his sides.

‘You would do well to choose your next words carefully, Adept Zeth.’

‘Why would that be? Will you have Remiare here kill me if you don’t like them?’

‘No,’ said Melgator. ‘I would not be so foolish as to anger the Omnissiah by murdering an adept of Mars in her own forge.’

‘The Omnissiah?’ spat Zeth. ‘You speak of the Emperor breaking faith with the Mechanicum and in the next breath use him as a reason not to murder me?’

‘I speak of the Omnissiah as an aspect of the Machine-God yet to manifest, not the Emperor.’

‘Most believe them to be one and the same.’

‘But not you?’

‘You already know what I believe,’ said Zeth, angered beyond caution. ‘There is no Machine-God. Technology is science and reason, not superstition and blind faith. It’s what I’ve always believed and it’s what I still believe. Now if you’re not going to kill me, get out of my forge!’

‘Are you sure about this, Zeth?’ asked Melgator. ‘Turning your back on the Fabricator General will have dire consequences.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘A threat? No, merely a reiteration that we live in dangerous times and that the friendship of powerful allies would be no bad thing in the days ahead.’

‘Friendship? Kelbor-Hal asks me to side with him against Terra!’ barked Zeth. ‘What manner of friend would ask such a thing?’

Melgator slid his hands into the sleeves of his robes. ‘The kind that knows what is best for Mars.’

Melgator slowly descended the steps of Zeth’s forge, savouring the memory of the adept’s admission of her disbelief in the Machine-God. It was all the excuse the Fabricator General needed to seize the Magma City and learn all the secrets of her forge, and Zeth had handed it to them on a plate.

He wiped a hand across his brow. Sweat beaded on his forehead in the intolerably dry heat that wrapped the city like a shroud. Melgator had travelled far and wide in his role as ambassador, but this place had to rank as one of the most inhospitable on Mars.

The sooner it was plundered and laid to waste the better.

Beside him, Remiare hovered effortlessly above the steps, her masked face unreadable in the orange-lit gloom.

‘Zeth knows why she escaped the scrapcode’s attack,’ said Melgator. ‘Or at least she suspects she knows.’

‘Of course,’ answered Remiare. ‘Her apprenta was bleeding fear and information from his noospheric aura. I have stored everything I could access from his files on Zeth’s work in my memory coils, and I will exload them to the Fabricator General’s logic engines upon our return to Olympus Mons.’

‘You can lift data from the noosphere? I didn’t know that,’ said Melgator, more than a little unnerved.

‘Of course, the secrets of the noosphere are well known to the Sisters of Cydonia. As are the means to manipulate the mind structure beyond it.’

‘What about his aegis barrier?’

‘Simplicity itself to overcome.’

‘Did he notice your presence?’ asked Melgator.

‘No, but I decided to fuse the portions of his mind that would have remembered anyway.’

‘If he did not detect your intrusion, why the need to burn out his memory synapses?’

Remiare turned her deathly face towards him, and Melgator was reminded that the assassins of Cydonia did not take kindly to questions.

‘Because I enjoy making living things suffer,’ said Remiare. ‘Zeth’s apprenta will no longer be able to form memories that last. His usefulness as an individual is at an end.’

Melgator swallowed, warier than ever of the monstrous creature beside him.

At last he reached the bottom of the steps, where a skimmer palanquin of bronze and polished timber panels stood ready to carry him to the landing platform upon which his transport waited.

‘So how did Zeth defeat the scrapcode attack?’

The black, soulless marbles of Remiare’s eyes flickered as she retrieved and sorted the data. ‘I do not know and nor does Zeth, not completely, though the apprenta was of the opinion that a female named Dalia Cythera was responsible.’

‘The transcriber Zeth brought from Terra? She did it?’

‘So it would seem.’

‘Then we need to eliminate her as soon as possible,’ said Melgator. ‘Where is she?’

‘Unknown. Her biometrics are not registered in the Martian database.’

‘She was working in Zeth’s forge and she’s not even Cult Mechanicum?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Ah, Zeth, you’re almost making it too easy for us,’ chuckled Melgator. ‘Can you track this Dalia Cythera?’

‘I can, but it will be easier just to take the information from the people she knows,’ said Remiare. ‘Archived work dockets list her as being assigned to a team of four individuals: Zouche Chahaya, Severine Delmer, Mellicin Oster and Caxton Torgau. Only Mellicin Oster is still within the Magma City.’

‘Where?’

‘Within Arsia Mons sub-hive Epsilon-Aleph-Ultima,’ said Remiare. ‘Fiftieth floor, shutter seventeen. Off shift until 07:46 tomorrow morning.’

‘Find her,’ hissed Melgator. ‘Learn everything she knows.’

The mag-lev was full, every seat taken, but the threatening presence of Rho-mu 31 assured them a private cabin, though it was still cramped with the five of them wedged in tight. Rho-mu 31 stood at the door to their cabin, his weapon stave held tight across his chest, leaving the four seats for Zouche, Dalia, Severine and Caxton.

Zouche and Severine sat across from her, and Caxton lay with his head on her shoulder, snoring softly. The pale, artificial light from the window gleamed from his tonsured scalp, and Dalia smiled as she leaned back against the faux leather chair. She looked out over the Martian landscape as the rest of her companions slept. Even Rho-mu 31 was resting, the glow of his eyes dimmed as he conserved power, though his internal auspex was still vigilant.

Beyond the energy shielded glass, undulant plains extended into the distance, the grey emptiness of the polluted wastelands somehow beautiful to Dalia. Unfinished or abandoned mag-lev lines stretched off into invisibility in long rows of sun-bleached concrete T’s, and the sight brought a forlorn ache to Dalia’s chest.

It had been years since she had seen a landscape as vast as this, and even though it was bleak and inhospitable, it was wide open and the heavens above held the landscape protectively close to them. Bands of pollutants striped the sky like sedimentary rock, and columns of light pierced the darkness as ships broke atmosphere.

A shiver travelled the length of Dalia’s spine as she felt the aching loneliness that had become part of her soul since her connection with the thing beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus. The desolate emptiness outside was so endless that Dalia could easily imagine Mars to be dead, a world utterly scoured of life and abandoned for all eternity.

She was tired, but couldn’t sleep. The black emptiness behind her eyes lurked in the back of her mind like a hidden predator that would strike the instant she allowed the shadows to cloak it.

‘Can’t sleep, eh?’ asked Zouche, and Dalia looked up. She had thought him to be asleep.

‘No,’ agreed Dalia, keeping her voice low. ‘A lot on my mind.’

Zouche nodded and ran a hand over his shaven scalp. ‘Understandable. We’re out on a limb, Dalia. I just hope this journey turns out to be worth it.’

‘I know it will, Zouche,’ promised Dalia.

‘What do you think we’re going to find out there?’

‘Honestly, I’m not sure. But whatever it is, I know it’s in pain. It’s been trapped in the darkness for such a long time and it’s suffering. We have to find it.’

‘And what happens when we do?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When we find this thing, this… dragon. Are you thinking about freeing it?’

‘I think we have to,’ said Dalia. ‘Nothing deserves to suffer like it’s suffering.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Zouche.

‘You think I’m wrong to want to help?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Zouche, ‘but what if this thing is meant to suffer? After all, we don’t know for sure who put it there, so perhaps they had a very good reason to do so? We don’t know what it is, so maybe whatever it is should be left in the darkness forever.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Dalia. ‘Nothing deserves to suffer forever.’

‘Some things do,’ said Zouche, his voice little more than a hushed whisper.

‘What, Zouche?’ demanded Dalia. ‘Tell me who or what deserves to suffer forever?’

Zouche met her stare. She could see that it was taking all his control to maintain his composure and she wondered what door she’d opened with her question. He sat in silence for a moment, then said, ‘Back before people lived freely on Nusa Kambangan, it was once a prison, a hellish place where the worst of the worst were locked up – murderers, clone-surgeons, rapists, gene-thieves and serial killers. And tyrants.’

‘Tyrants?’

‘Oh, yes indeed,’ said Zouche, and Dalia thought she detected more than a hint of bitter pride in his voice. ‘Cardinal Tang himself was held there.’

‘Tang? The Ethnarch?’

‘The very same,’ nodded Zouche. ‘When his last bastion fell, he was taken in chains to Nusa Kambangan, though he was only there a few days. Word got out of who he was and another prisoner cut his throat. Though if you ask me, he got off lightly.’

‘Having your throat cut is getting off lightly?’ asked Dalia, horrified by Zouche’s coldness.

‘After what Tang did? Absolutely,’ said Zouche. ‘After all the bloody pogroms, death camps and genocides, you think his suffering should have ended swiftly? Tang deserved to rot in the deepest, darkest hole of Terra, condemned to suffer the same torments and agonies he inflicted on his victims. In the end, his suffering was much quicker than the millions he put to death during his reign. So, yes, I make no apology for thinking he got off lightly. Trust me, Dalia, there are some that deserve to be left in the darkness to pay for their crimes for all eternity.’

Tears rolled down Zouche’s cheeks as he spoke, and Dalia felt a wave of sorrow as she felt a measure of his pain, even though she didn’t fully understand it.

‘My parents died in one of Tang’s camps,’ continued Zouche, wiping the tears away with the sleeve of his robe. ‘For the crime of falling in love when they were genetically assigned to other partners. They kept their relationship a secret, but when I was born it was obvious to everyone they’d produced an inferior offspring and they were hauled off to Tang’s death camp on Roon Island.’

‘Oh, Zouche, that’s terrible,’ said Dalia. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

Zouche shrugged and stared beyond the glass of the compartment. ‘How could you? But it doesn’t matter. Tang’s dead and the Emperor guides us now. People like Tang won’t ever rise again now that the Imperium’s in His hands.’

‘You’re not inferior,’ said Dalia, cutting across his train of words.

‘What?’ he said, looking back at her.

‘I said you’re not inferior,’ repeated Dalia. ‘You might think you are because you look different to the rest of us, but you’re not. You’re a brilliant engineer and a loyal friend. I’m glad you’re with me, Zouche. I really am.’

He smiled and nodded. ‘I know you are and I’m grateful for that, but I know what I am. You’re a good girl, Dalia, so I’d be obliged if you didn’t mention this to anyone, you understand?’

‘Of course,’ said Dalia. ‘I won’t say a word. I think the rest are going to sleep all the way there, anyway.’

‘Quite probably,’ agreed Zouche, a discreetly extended mechadendrite linking with the port in the compartment’s wall. Flickering light ghosted behind his eyelids as he linked with the mag-lev’s onboard logic-engine. It was easy to forget that the Mechanicum had substantially modified Zouche, for most of his augmetics were subtle, and he was reticent about openly displaying them to one not of the Cult Mechanicum. ‘It’s going to take us two days to reach the point nearest the Noctis Labyrinthus, an outlying hub of Mondus Gamma in the northern Syrian sub-fabriks.’

‘Two days? Why so long?’

‘This is a supply train,’ explained Zouche. ‘We’re going to pass through a lot of the borderland townships on the edge of the pallidus. According to the onboard timetable, we’re about to reach Ash Border, then we’ll pass through Dune Town, Crater Edge and Red Gorge before we begin the descent to the Syria Planum and Mondus Gamma.’

‘Not big on originality when it comes to their settlement names, are they?’ observed Dalia.

‘Not really, I suppose they just name it as they see it,’ said Zouche. ‘When you live out on the edge of civilisation, there’s a virtue in simplicity.’

‘I think there’s a virtue in that wherever you are,’ said Dalia.

The hab was warm, but then it was always warm. Hot air rising from the magma lagoon rolled up the flanks of the volcano in dry, parching waves to leach the moisture from the air like a giant dehumidifier.

Mellicin lay on her bed, with one hand thrown over her forehead. Sweat gathered in the spoons of her collarbones and she felt uncomfortably sticky and hot. The atomiser was turned on, but might as well have been switched off for all the difference it was making. She rolled onto her side, unable to sleep and unable to stop thinking of what might be happening to Dalia and the others.

She told herself it wasn’t guilt, but only half-believed it.

Zeth had placed her with Dalia with the express purpose of passing on her impressions and insights into the young transcriber’s mind, and that was exactly what she had done. There had been no betrayal, no breach of trust and certainly no disloyalty.

The only betrayal would have been if she had failed in her duty to her mistress.

Why, then, did she feel so bad about telling Adept Zeth of Dalia’s plans?

Mellicin knew exactly why she felt bad.

In the weeks she had worked with Dalia Cythera, Mellicin had rediscovered the joy of working on the frontiers of technology. Together they had discovered new and wondrous things, devices and theoretical science that they had gone on to prove valid. How long had it been since she, or indeed anyone in the Mechanicum, had done that? True, Adept Zeth was forever pushing the boundaries of what was known and accepted, but she was a tiny cog in a larger machine and there was only so much she dared risk.

The Mechanicum was old and unforgiving with those who disobeyed its strictures.

They had been gone less than a day and already she missed them. She wished she knew where they were so she could have tapped into the Martian networks to follow their progress, but she had wiped Dalia’s destination from her memory coils.

Right now, they could be anywhere, en route to the far side of the planet for all she knew.

Mellicin had got used to their foibles, strengths and blind spots. She had nurtured them, blended them together until they were a team, working more efficiently and more enthusiastically than any of them had ever worked before.

Now they were off making good use of that mentoring and she was left behind.

She swung her legs out of bed and ran a hand through her hair. It was matted and sweaty, and no amount of time in the sonic shower would make it feel clean. She padded softly from the bed alcove and made her way to the kitchenette to fix a pot of caffeine. If she wasn’t going to get any sleep, she might as well use the time productively.

She yawned as the heating ring fired the pot, wiping sweat from her brow as the pot bubbled and hissed. She poured a cup and sat in the dining nook within the polarised glass bay that looked out over the surface of the Red Planet.

This high up, Mellicin was above the distorting fumes that filmed the lower level windows with grime and pyroclastic deposits. Far below her, the Magma City blazed with light, an ocean of glowing industry in a desert of industrial wasteland. Silver trails of mag-levs spun out from the city, travelling to all parts of Mars, but beyond them the planet was shrouded in banks of dust and polluted fogs.

Mellicin put down her cup and leaned her forehead on the hot glass. Lights moved in the city, and glittering transits ferried cargo and supplies to the port facilities.

‘Wherever you are, Dalia, I wish you well,’ she whispered, feeling very alone.

She frowned as she realised she wasn’t alone.

Her biometric surveyors were reading another life form in her hab.

‘I was wondering when you would notice me,’ said a voice from the shadows.

Mellicin jumped at the sound, looking up in frozen surprise as a lithe, sensual woman glided from the darkness. She was clad in a skin-tight red bodyglove and a pair of finely-wrought pistols were sheathed at her hips.

Mellicin covered her surprise and said, ‘I knew you were there, I was just waiting to see when you would announce yourself.’

‘A lie, but one necessary for you to feel you are still in control,’ said the woman.

‘Who are you, and what are you doing in my hab?’ asked Mellicin, still too surprised to feel anything but annoyance.

‘My name is irrelevant, because soon you won’t remember it,’ said the woman, and as she moved into the light, Mellicin saw the golden death mask she wore. ‘But for the record, it is Remiare.’

Mellicin’s annoyance turned to fear as she realised what this woman was. ‘That’s half my question answered.’

Remiare cocked her head to one side and said, ‘You still think you have a measure of control, don’t you?’

‘What do you want?’ asked Mellicin, pushing herself further into the dining nook.

‘You know what I want.’

‘No, actually,’ said Mellicin, ‘I don’t.’

‘Then I shall tell you,’ said Remiare. ‘I want you to tell me the whereabouts and destination of Dalia Cythera.’

Mellicin furrowed her brow, as if in thought, and activated her silent alarm. Adept Zeth would now be aware of her plight and a squad of Mechanicum Protectors would soon be despatched to her rescue. All she had to do was stall.

‘Dalia?’ she said at last. ‘Why do you want to know about her?’

‘No more questions,’ said Remiare. ‘Tell me what I want to know and I promise you won’t suffer.’

‘I can’t,’ said Mellicin. ‘Even if I wanted to. I might have known what you want, but I don’t remember anymore.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not. Adept Zeth had me erase any knowledge of where Dalia was going from my memory coils.’

She regretted her smug tone instantly as Remiare ghosted closer and Mellicin saw the red light of the magma lagoon reflected on her death mask. Her face was the visage of something vile and terrible, a leering monster from her darkest nightmares. Even amid her fear, she recognised the exquisite work of the assassin’s gravitic thrusters, the sinuous form of a killer bred and trained from birth.

‘Then that’s very bad news for you.’

‘And why’s that?’ asked Mellicin, trying to muster some bravado.

‘Because nothing is ever really erased, Mellicin,’ said Remiare as a silver spike extended from her forefinger.

Despite the heat in the small dwelling hab, Mellicin suddenly felt very cold indeed as she recognised it as a data spike.

‘Why do you want to find Dalia?’ asked Mellicin, the words coming out in a fear-induced rush. ‘I mean, she’s nothing, just a transcriber from Terra. All she did was take notes of our work. Really, why do you want her?’

Remiare’s head darted forward like a feeding bird’s and she laughed, the sound soulless and dead. ‘You are trying to keep me talking because you believe help is on its way, but it isn’t. No one is coming, Mellicin. I am the only one hearing that insultingly simple silent alarm your implants are broadcasting.’

‘I’m telling you, I erased the things you’re looking for!’

‘You may have erased your memory coils, but the soft meat beneath remembers,’ said Remiare while softly wagging her finger. ‘The Mechanicum never deletes anything.’

Mellicin glanced down at her cup of caffeine and wondered if she would be quick enough to throw it in the assassin’s face. That question was answered a moment later. One second, the red-clad woman was standing before her, the next she was seated next to her, pressing her against the warm glass of her hab.

A hand with fingers like steel rods shot out and gripped her throat, tilting her head back.

‘I don’t know what you want!’ screamed Mellicin as the assassin’s data spike pressed against the augmetic orb that replaced her right eye.

‘I’ll find what I want,’ promised Remiare. ‘All I have to do is dig deep enough.’

2.06

He had always dreaded this, but now that it was his life, he knew there had been nothing to fear. In the world of flesh, his body had been aging and weakening, but here in this world of amniotic suspension he was all-powerful and all-conquering.

In a simulated engine war, Princeps Cavalerio fought and killed like a living metal god, bestriding the virtual arena like a colossus of battle. His enemies died: skitarii crushed underfoot, Reavers torn to pieces in the terrible, smashing hell of engine combat and Warlords blasted apart with weapons fire in murderous killing salvoes.

The world of flesh was over for Cavalerio. The world of metal was now his domain.

Liquid data spiralled around him, fed to him through receptors implanted beneath his skin, filling his sensory apparatus with information that would overwhelm the brains of those less augmented than he. Darts of light, each one carrying a welter of data, swirled around him like shoals of glowing fish as he ended yet another simulation as the victor.

Cavalerio was unrecognisable as the spare, limping mortal that had walked the surface of Mars. A man he had been, but a creation of the Mechanicum he was now. His pallid flesh floated in nutrient-rich jelly, hung from a multitude of cables that connected him to the world around him in ways too numerous to count.

Each day since his incarceration within the casket brought new attachments, new augmetics and new sensations. Only now did he realise how imperfect had his existence been as a mere mortal, confined to a mere five senses.

A thick inflexible cable pierced his spine between the lumbar vertebrae, while other, more delicate wires were plugged into his eye sockets. A forest of cables extruded from the rear of his cranial cavity that would link to the Manifold when he once again took charge of an engine. Both arms were encased in metal to his elbows, and both his feet had been amputated and replaced with haptic sheaths.

The transition had been difficult and not without setbacks, but his famulous, Agathe, had been with him every step of the way, soothing him, cajoling him and encouraging him to overcome every problem. Though initially hostile to the idea of a famulous, Cavalerio now appreciated how vital such a person was when you were confined to an amniotic tank.

The terrible, aching loss of Victorix Magna still haunted his nightmares, as he knew it would for the rest of his days. No princeps survived the death of his engine without psychological scarring, but with every simulated engagement, his warlike confidence grew stronger. Soon his ability to command an engine became faster and more efficient, until he knew he was better than he ever had been in his previous life.

As this latest simulation came to an end, the fury of battle and the exhilaration of connection faded from his consciousness with a sharp pang of regret. It wasn’t the same as physically disengaging from an engine, but it was close, and he could already feel the hunger to go back in creeping at the edge of his psyche.

<How did I ever exist before this?> he canted in a soft sigh of binary.

His awareness of the world around him swam into focus as the images of battle faded like banished phantoms. Slowly the world of reality began to impose itself on his perception. Though Cavalerio no longer saw the world as he once had, the sensorium installed as part of his casket allowed him even greater acuity than ever before. He identified the biometrics of the two people standing in his casket chamber before any visual recognition was made.

He could see Agathe’s physical form, which was short and slightly rounded, as well as reading her biometrics and the electrical field densities of her subtle augmetics. Her noospheric modifications flickered and tiny geysers of data light streamed above her head.

The second figure was Princeps Sharaq.

‘My princeps?’ said Agathe, startled by his sudden vocalisation. ‘Do you require anything?’

‘Hmmm? No, Agathe, I was just thinking aloud.’

‘Congratulations on another successful engagement, Indias,’ said Sharaq.

‘Thank you, Kel,’ said Cavalerio. ‘Did you see how I took down the second Warlord?’

Sharaq smiled, and Cavalerio read the genuine pleasure his friend took in the accomplishment. ‘I saw it, my princeps. Masterful.’

‘I know,’ said Cavalerio without arrogance. ‘I am faster and more cohesive in my command than ever before. I merely think an order and the engine responds. Data streams into me straight from the Manifold, which increases my reaction and response times by an average of nine-point-seven per cent. That’s more than the difference between life and death in an engine fight.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Sharaq. ‘You’re adjusting well, then?’

‘I am, Kel, I am. My days are full. I fight simulated engagements every day, though only Agathe watches me now. Between my battles and surgery, Princeps Kasim comes to check on my progress, and we share stories of our glorious Legio’s history.’

‘And the casket?’ asked Sharaq. ‘You don’t miss… well, flesh?’

Cavalerio hesitated before answering. ‘It was difficult,’ he admitted at last. ‘For the longest time I thought I would go mad in here, but Agathe has helped many a princeps adjust to his new life. And, as time went on, I began to understand that this was what I was destined for.’

‘Destined?’

‘Yes, Kel, destined. I don’t know why I resisted immersion for all those years. I link with the Manifold and it’s so much closer than it was before. When I commanded Victorix Magna I could feel what she felt, but it was borrowed sensation. Now I am the engine. This shouldn’t be the last resort of an ageing or injured princeps, this should be the standard method of command for all the bigger engines.’

‘I think you might have a hard time convincing some of the die-hards of that.’

‘Not if they knew what I know,’ said Cavalerio. ‘But what say we dispense with the small talk and discuss the real reason for your visit?’

Sharaq nodded, circling the tank with the awe of one in the presence of greatness, and Cavalerio read his unease in his increased heart rate and spiking alpha waves.

‘It’s all right, Kel,’ said Cavalerio. ‘You don’t need to feel guilty. You did what you had to do and I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t.’

Sharaq stopped his circling and knelt before the casket, placing his hand on the warm glass of the tank. Cavalerio floated to the front, his flesh marbled and glossy, his features all but obscured by the complex bionics that grafted him to the machinery of his life-support. Only an inch of toughened glass separated the two men, but an anatomy’s worth of augmetics created a gulf between their humanity.

‘I don’t feel guilty,’ said Sharaq. ‘I know I did the right thing. You weren’t fit to command the Legio then and, despite your progress, I still don’t think you’re ready. Soon, but not yet.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I need your help, Stormlord,’ said Sharaq, ‘and I need your experience. I fear I am not cut from the same cloth as you. Leadership is in your blood, but not in mine.’

‘Then speak,’ ordered Cavalerio. ‘I may not be Princeps Senioris, but I am still your friend.’

The words were meant to comfort Sharaq, but only seemed to wound him. He looked over at Agathe and said, ‘Perhaps we might speak privately, my princeps?’

‘Agathe is my famulous and anything you have to say to me can be said in front of her.’

‘Very well, Stormlord,’ said Sharaq. ‘You won’t have failed to notice that you haven’t been linked to any ports with outside access during your recovery. The medicae felt it would hinder your adjustment for you to be inloaded with an excess of data.’

‘A decision that, with hindsight, I applaud,’ said Cavalerio. ‘So tell me, what’s been happening beyond our fortress? Have Mortis been taken to task for their violation of our territory?’

Sharaq shook his head. ‘No, my lord,’ he said, ‘they have not. The Princeps Conciliatus have been appraised of the facts and they have issued a summons, but both the Fabricator General and Princeps Camulos ignore it.’

‘A Conciliatus summons and a rift between the Legios? Ignored? Madness!’

‘All of Mars may well have gone mad, my princeps,’ agreed Sharaq.

‘What do you mean?’

Sharaq shared a look with Agathe and said, ‘The situation on Mars has deteriorated almost to the point of open warfare. Disaster strikes at the Mechanicum from all sides and we are petitioned daily for our engines to walk.’

‘Petitioned by whom?’

‘I have received missives from no less than seventeen forges, all begging us to initiate an execution. With your permission, my princeps, I should like to inload your casket with the latest updates on the current tactical situation.’

‘Of course, Kel,’ said Cavalerio. ‘Immediately.’

Sharaq said nothing and didn’t appear to move, but Cavalerio felt a rush of data as his fellow princeps noospherically unlocked the feeds that were part of the Martian network and which fed directly into the smart liquid of his casket.

‘Blood of the Omnissiah,’ hissed Cavalerio as the data permeated his mind via informational osmosis. In an instant, he drank in the terrible events of the Death of Innocence caused by the hateful scrapcode, the spate of catastrophic machine failures and the rising tide of violence erupting all across the surface of Mars.

He saw bloodshed as forges went to war and old feuds were re-ignited. He saw opportunistic territorial grabs, spiteful acts of vengeance and hungry snatches for a rival’s knowledge. The drums of battle were beating all over Mars, stirring the bellicose hearts of man, and spurring the looming presence of civil war ever closer.

It saddened him to realise that, a race apart though they might be, the Mechanicum were just as prone to human foibles as their unmodified brethren.

‘And this scrapcode attack came just as Mortis walked on Ascraeus Mons?’

‘We caught the first spurts of it, I think,’ said Sharaq. ‘It was fragmentary and dispersed, and Zeth’s noospheric upgrades saved us from getting hit as hard as some others, but Legio Fortidus and Legio Agravides are gone. Their reactors went critical and took their entire fortress and a good chunk of the Erebus Montes with them.’

Cavalerio digested the information without comment, though it grieved him to think of two allied Legios lost to so ignominious a fate. He reviewed the data he’d been fed impassively, sifting through the morass of contradictory communiqués, orders, requests, petitions, demands and propaganda flying between the forges. Factions were already forming, fragile alliances drawn along the lines of the tired old Omnissiah schism.

Blurts of cant circled the planet, some demanding an end to the union of Mars and Terra, while others urged all Mars to cleave more tightly to the bosom of humanity’s birth rock. Worse, much of it had gone off-world, spreading like a plague on departing ships or within astropathic visions cast across the void to the Mechanicum contingents accompanying the expedition fleets throughout the galaxy.

‘What’s all this talk of Horus Lupercal?’ asked Cavalerio, reading the binary version of the first primarch’s name time and time again. ‘What does the Warmaster have to do with any of this?’

‘We’re not sure, my princeps,’ said Sharaq. ‘The factions advocating the split from Terra seem to be championing the Warmaster as their deliverer from the Emperor. It’s hard to make much sense of it, their code is so corrupt it’s little more than binary screams of the Warmaster’s name.’

‘Has word of this reached Terra?’

‘The inter-system vox is erratic, but Adept Maximal has apparently made intermittent contact with the Council of Terra.’

‘And what do they make of all this?’

‘It sounds like they’re as confused as us, my princeps,’ said Sharaq, taking a deep breath before continuing. ‘Something bad has happened in the Isstvan system, something to do with the Legiones Astartes, but we can’t get any hard facts.’

‘But what of Mars?’ pressed Cavalerio, ‘what do they say about Mars?’

‘The Mechanicum is told to quell the unrest or the Legions will do it for them.’

The mag-lev made good time through the southern reaches of the Tharsis uplands, skirting the edge of the pallidus and passing through a number of storms of wind-blown particulate on its journey eastwards. Dalia found the sight of the billowing ash strangely uplifting, and spent hours watching the spiralling vortices streaming down the length of the carriages.

She watched the dust rolling on and on throughout the landscape and envied its freedom to roam, blown hither and thither without direction by the winds. Increasingly she felt as though her life was just like the mag-lev, travelling upon a fixed track, guided inexorably forward to an inevitable destination. The notion of free will and choice seemed alien and strange to her, as though her brain was merely responding to external stimuli and she had no choice but to obey.

They saw little of their fellow passengers during the journey, save for the occasional awkward passing in the corridors to and from the ablutions cubicles or food dispensers. Dalia recognised most of them as low-level adepts on errands for their masters, servitors on automatic reassignment or migrant labourers moving to another forge in the hope of securing work. Perhaps three hundred souls travelled with them, but no one paid them any mind, a fact for which Dalia was absurdly grateful.

The thrill of venturing beyond the boundaries of the forge had worn thin for their little group after a few hours, and they had fallen into the strange silence of travellers on a long journey with nothing to help pass the time. The prospect of seeing one of the otherworldly pallidus border towns had excited them, but even that had proven something of a letdown.

As the mag-lev had approached Ash Border, they all roused themselves to see what one of these frontier towns looked like, for none of them had ventured beyond the hives of Mars’s more populated regions.

Though Rho-mu 31 claimed not to be expecting any trouble, Dalia read his threat auspex switch to active as they came within range of the settlement’s network antenna. She didn’t mention that fact to the others.

Ash Border had proved to be both exotic and slightly dull at the same time, with dusty ore silos, rusted salvage barns and tall drilling machinery dominating the skyline. But with the memory of a Mechanicum forge still bright in their minds, the minor industrial complex of Ash Border seemed small and underwhelming.

The inhabitants were sullen-faced men and women with weather-beaten faces and clothes scoured identical by coarse ash. They offered no welcome and disappeared back to their ramshackle dwellings as soon as their cargo was unloaded by a handful of archaic lifter-servitors.

Dune Town lived up to its name and proved to be no less prosaic, with even more outmoded servitors unloading the allocated inventory before the mag-lev set off towards Crater Edge.

By now they had been travelling for a day and a half. Tiredness was beginning to tell and sleep was hard to come by. Though the ride was smooth, the compartment’s seats had been designed with functional practicality in mind rather than comfort.

None of them had been able to muster much enthusiasm to watch Zouche’s projection of the view from the driver’s compartment as they approached Crater Edge, but when the mag-lev halted at the raised dock, it was quickly evident that something was different.

The place was abandoned. The dwellings were empty and the streets deserted, but it was impossible to tell whether the inhabitants had been driven away or left of their own volition.

The mag-lev was on an automated schedule, so the mystery went unexplained, and the mining supplies allocated for the township remained in the snaking transport’s holds as it pulled away.

No sooner had Crater Edge vanished into the dust and haze than Dalia felt a weight she hadn’t even been aware of lift from her shoulders, as though some creeping sickness lingered around the township. The place had just felt… wrong.

Not the wrongness of disease or death, but a gurgling hiss of wet code-laughter she caught drifting on the airwaves.

Red Gorge was similarly deserted, the strange whispering code ghosting around it as well. Dalia caught Rho-mu 31 twitching as he heard it too: an insistent scratching that irritated the corners of the mind like an embedded flea.

She caught his eye as the mag-lev pulled away and they saw each other’s awareness of the bad code on the air.

Rho-mu 31 shook his head and she took his meaning clearly enough.

Say nothing.

At last the mag-lev began the approach to the jagged line of peaks that separated the Tharsis uplands from the magnificent expanse of the Syria Planum. After a long, looping journey southwards, the mag-lev turned north to begin the slow climb over the upthrust spires of rock pushed up and over one another in an ongoing geological collision. The skies beyond the escarpment were dark and shot through with scarlet lightning, as though a great firestorm was brewing.

It had been a long journey and the sight of the two deserted townships had unsettled everyone. They had all heard tales of settlements abandoned when the ore or whatever had originally drawn the settlers there had dried up, but Red Gorge and Crater Edge hadn’t felt abandoned, they had felt empty, as though the people there had just vanished. Gone in a heartbeat.

‘Perhaps they were pressganged?’ suggested Severine. ‘I’ve heard of that. A forge master isn’t going to meet his quota and sends his Protectors out into the wastelands to capture more people to work in their forges.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Caxton. ‘That’s just scare stories.’

‘Is it?’ challenged Severine. ‘How do you know?’

‘I just do, all right?’

‘Oh, well I feel better already.’

‘What do you say, Rho-mu 31?’ asked Zouche in a tone of doom-laden theatrics. ‘Has Adept Zeth ever sent you off to procure slaves to toil in her volcanic forge?’

‘From time to time,’ admitted the Protector.

That shut them all up.

‘You’re joking, right?’ said Caxton. ‘Tell me you’re joking.’

‘I am Mechanicum,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘We never joke.’

Dalia looked into the green orbs of Rho-mu 31’s eyes, and though they were devoid of anything resembling humanity, she saw the wry amusement written in his electrical field. She smiled at the horrified expressions on her friends’ faces and turned away so as not to spoil Rho-mu 31’s fun.

‘That’s… that’s terrible,’ said Severine.

‘The Mechanicum uses slaves?’ was Caxton’s disgusted comment.

‘I thought more of you, Rho-mu 31,’ said Zouche. ‘I thought more of Adept Zeth.’

When he judged the silence had gone on long enough, Rho-mu 31 leaned menacingly towards them and said, ‘Got you.’

A moment’s stunned silence followed Rho-mu 31’s words, and then the tension in the compartment was suddenly, explosively, relieved by hysterical laughter.

‘That wasn’t funny,’ said Caxton, between laughing and wiping tears from his eyes.

‘No,’ agreed Severine. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that.’

‘What? Can’t I make a joke?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘I think they’re just surprised you made one at all,’ put in Dalia, looking back into the compartment. ‘I don’t think they’re used to the Mechanicum trying to be funny.’

Rho-mu 31 nodded and said, ‘I may be Mechanicum, but I am still human.’

With that, the strange unease that had settled on them at the sight of the deserted townships was dispelled, and they began chatting as animatedly as when they had built the first version of the Akashic reader.

The excitement of the journey into the unknown was rekindled and as the mag-lev made its way uphill, Zouche extended a discreet dendrite and plugged into the compartment’s data port, projecting the view from the hull-mounted picter onto the glass of the window.

They eagerly watched the feed as Zouche panned the image around. They saw the desolate plains stretching away to the south and the black smudge on the horizon above the Magma City nearly two thousand kilometres away. At Caxton’s request, Zouche returned the view to front-on and the image shimmered as it displayed the silver mag-line carrying them up into the mountains.

Dalia let out a tiny gasp of fear as she saw the mag-line vanish into a gaping, steel-lined cavern mouth that pierced the flanks of the cliffs and led through the rock towards Mondus Gamma.

She took Caxton’s hand and gripped it tightly as the tunnel drew nearer, the yawning blackness of it suddenly terrifying.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t realise we’d need to go through the darkness,’ she said.

‘It’s just a tunnel,’ said Caxton. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

The forces of the Fabricator General came for Adept Zeth several hours before Dalia’s mag-lev approached the tunnel connecting the Tharsis uplands with the Syria Planum. A Mechanicum heavy flyer cruised in from the north-west and set down on the statue-lined Typhon Causeway before the Magma City, scorching a score of the marble worthies black with the heat of its enormous jets. The underside of the craft shone with golden light from the bubbling, steaming lava to either side of the wide causeway.

The ungainly aircraft was unarmed, but as it settled on its landing skids, a continuous loop of code streamed from its augmitters on a repeating cycle, demanding that Adept Koriel Zeth present herself by the order of the Fabricator General.

The summons was broadcast in the highest and most authoritative code tense, and as such could not be ignored. The flanks of the flyer gusted steam and folded outwards, providing debarkation ramps for the warriors carried within.

Three hundred modified skitarii and Protectors marched from the flyer’s hold onto the basalt causeway. Wretched by-blows of the Fabricator General’s union with the power unlocked in the depths of the forgotten vaults beneath Olympus Mons, these were twisted perversions of their original martial glory. Hunched carapaces, spiked armour and horned helmets clad them and their limb weapons seethed with unnatural power.

The Protectors were no less modified, their bodies swollen and grotesque, their weapons blackened and reforged in new and hateful shapes, designed for pain as much as killing.

Under the watchful gaze of armoured turrets and missile emplacements cunningly worked into the walls of ceramite and adamantium of Zeth’s forge, these abominable killers formed up in three separate cohorts and marched on the Vulkan Gate.

Behind them came a shield-palanquin borne by towering, brutish skitarii with grey skin and barbed armour. These monstrous, ogre-like warriors had been raised to such stature by more than simple gene-bulking and augmetics. Their bodies glistened and their veins pulsed with ruddy light, as though with an internal electricity.

Ambassador Melgator and Adept Regulus stood proudly atop the palanquin, clad in robes of midnight black with their hoods drawn up over their skulls. Melgator carried a staff of ebony topped with a snarling wolf’s head and Regulus a staff of ivory topped with a skull of black obsidian.

The host of horrifically altered warriors parted to let them through, and Regulus halted the palanquin a hundred metres before the gate. The soaring adamantine glory of the Magma City’s great portal was worked with silver cogs, golden eagles and lightning bolts, and it was opening.

As a widening bar of light split the two halves of the gate and the skitarii bristled with belligerent scrapcode, Regulus raised his arms and a streaming hash of lingua-technis, irregular and arrhythmic, blurted from his internal augmitters. His skull-topped staff crackled with corposant in time with his utterances and, one by one, the turrets and weapons platforms on the wall shut down.

The light of the city spilled outwards in a growing fan of orange colour, throwing the shadow of the slender figure that walked from the city out before her in a thin line of black.

Adept Koriel Zeth swept her gaze over the assembled cohorts before fixing a distasteful stare on the two figures borne upon the palanquin, as though they were pestilential plague carriers begging entry.

‘By what authority do you dare come to my city and demand my presence?’ she said.

Melgator rapped his staff on the shield-palanquin, and its monstrous bearers carried it forward until it was less than twenty metres from Zeth.

<By the authority of the Fabricator General, to whom all Mars owes allegiance,> canted Regulus in an all-channel squirt of binary.

Zeth winced. ‘That’s dirty code you’re using, Regulus,‘ she answered, reading his identity from his fizzing electric field.

‘On the contrary,’ replied Regulus. ‘It is pure code, as it was meant to exist before it was tamed and shackled to the will of flesh.’

‘If you can’t see the flaw in that line of reasoning then you are beyond the reach of my logic,’ said Zeth. ‘Now speak your piece and begone, I have work to do.’

‘That will not be possible, Zeth,’ said Melgator. ‘We are here to escort you to Olympus Mons, where you will submit to the judgement of the Fabricator General.’

‘My title is Adept Zeth, I believe I have earned it,’ snapped the Mistress of the Magma City. ‘And on what grounds do you dare arrest me?’

<On the grounds of your continued heresies,> canted Melgator. <To wit: your continued refutation of the Machine-God, your refusal to support the policies and regime of the Fabricator General, and lastly, for allowing non-Cult Mechanicum personnel to work on divine machinery. For these charges you will be placed in our custody and returned to Olympus Mons to await trial for tech-heresy.>

Zeth said nothing for a moment, letting the weight of the accusation settle on her.

Then she laughed, the sound echoing from the mountainside, carried far and wide across the length and breadth of the causeway.

‘You mock these accusations?’ snapped Regulus. ‘Is there no end to your wickedness?’

‘Oh, I absolutely mock them,’ sneered Zeth. ‘They are laughable, and if you weren’t so blinded by what Kelbor-Hal has turned you into, you would see that’

She swept an arm out, her gesture encompassing the gathered skitarii and Protectors. ‘These monstrous things you bring to my forge… they are abominations of flesh and machine, freakish hybrids worse than the feral scrapshunt rejects that wander the pallidus. You have turned all that is beautiful of the Mechanicum into something dark, and it horrifies me that you cannot see it. So, yes, I mock your accusations, and more, I refuse to recognise your right to accuse me!’

‘Then you refuse the summons of the Fabricator General?’ asked Regulus, his code laced with eagerness to unleash the skitarii. ‘You understand the severity of this action?’

‘I do,’ confirmed Zeth.

‘Then we will take you by force,’ said Melgator.

‘You can try,’ said Zeth.

Melgator aimed his staff at the walls and said, ‘You will either come with us or you will be destroyed, Zeth. Link with your wall defences and you will see they are shut down. We control the code now.’

The three cohorts of skitarii began to march forward, flame lances, energy halberds and limb weapons arming in a flurry of crackling activations and clattering auto-loaders.

‘Not all of it you don’t,’ said Zeth as a pair of enormous mechanical forms marched into the gateway behind her.

Nine metres tall, the two Knights dwarfed the slight form of Adept Zeth, and the deep blue of their armoured plates shimmered with the reflected glow of the magma lake. The proud heraldry of a wheel encircling a lightning bolt was emblazoned on their shoulder guards, and they rode from the gateway to stand behind Adept Zeth with their energy lances and gatling cannons trained on the approaching skitarii.

Behind them, a dozen more Knights took position in line abreast to block entry to the Magma City with their majestic forms.

The march of the altered skitarii faltered and they milled in confusion in the face of the war machines, their packmasters squalling for orders. Regulus emitted a panicked burst of code, the same mutant algorithms he had used to shut down the wall guns, but the Knights ignored him, their systems shut off to incoming code.

‘This is Lord Caturix of the Order of Taranis,’ said Zeth indicating the Knight on her left, its aggressive posture making no secret of its desire to wreak harm. ‘And this is Preceptor Stator. Their order is an ally of this forge and if that flyer is not off my causeway in five minutes, they are going to ride out with their warriors and destroy you. Do you understand the severity of this action?’

‘You dare threaten an emissary of the Fabricator General!’ cried Melgator. ‘You are a disgrace to the Mechanicum, Zeth!’

‘Your assassin destroys the mind of my apprenta and then murders one of my acolytes, and you dare call me a disgrace to the Mechanicum?’ snarled Zeth. She consulted her internal chronometer and said, ‘Four minutes and forty seconds, Melgator. I suggest you get moving.’

‘You will regret this,’ promised Regulus. ‘We will see your city in ruins and your legacy expunged from all records.’

The Knights took a step forwards, the hiss and clank of their metal limbs sounding dreadfully loud.

Melgator rapped his staff on the shield palanquin and, without another word, he and Regulus withdrew. A hurried code squeal recalled the skitarii and they marched with bitter disappointment back onto the heavy flyer.

As its flanks folded up and it took to the air, the lead Knight turned its cockpit towards Zeth and a noospheric link opened between them.

‘You should have let me kill them,’ said Lord Caturix.

‘Maybe,’ agreed Zeth, ‘but I have a feeling you’ll get another chance.’

‘You think they’ll be back?’

‘I know they will, Lord Caturix, but next time they won’t be so arrogant,’ said Zeth. ‘I have to send word of this to Maximal and Kane. Kelbor-Hal might come for them next, and I need to petition Legio Tempestus once more. I have a feeling we’ll be needing some larger engines to defend the Magma City in the days ahead.’

‘The support of Tempestus would be most welcome,’ agreed Caturix. ‘In the meantime, we will continue to stand with you. What would you have us do?’

Zeth watched the blue-hot glow of the departing flyer’s engines.

‘Prepare for battle,’ she said.

2.07

The mag-lev speared into the tunnel and Dalia cried out in terror as the blackness swallowed them. She clung close to Caxton as the compartment lights flickered on and he put his arms around her, shrugging in puzzlement at her fright. Sickly fluorescence bathed the compartment, but the glass window was an unchanging black mirror. Dalia recoiled from its impenetrable depths, pushing away in terror from the wall with her sandaled feet.

Her breaths came in short panicked hikes and her muscles cramped painfully. She felt her flesh become cold and clammy as sweat filmed her skin. She could hear her heartbeat like the thunder of an industrial hammer and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

‘Dalia?’ asked Caxton. ‘Dalia, what’s the matter?’

‘It’s the darkness,’ she gasped, burying her face in his shoulder. ‘It’s all around me!’

‘Dalia? What? I don’t understand!’

‘What’s the matter with her?’ cried Severine.

‘I don’t know,’ said Caxton, helpless as Dalia sobbed into his robes, her struggles becoming more and more hysterical.

‘She’s having a panic attack,’ said Rho-mu 31, moving from the door of their compartment to stand in front of Dalia. ‘I’ve seen it before in new arrivals to Mars. The Red Planet is so different, it sparks all kinds of reactions.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ replied Rho-mu 31. ‘But I’ve dealt with this before.’

The Protector knelt on the floor between the seats and placed a hand on Dalia’s shoulder, prising her away from Caxton and holding her twitching limbs. Her face was pale and streaked with tears.

‘The darkness,’ wept Dalia. ‘I don’t want to go into the darkness again. Not again!’

‘What’s she talking about?’ said Severine. ‘Make her stop!’

‘Shut up!’ hissed Zouche. ‘Let the man work!’

‘Dalia,’ said Rho-mu 31, looking directly into her eyes. ‘You are having a panic attack, but there’s nothing to worry about. We’re perfectly safe. I know you don’t feel like that right now, but trust me, it’s true.’

Dalia looked up at him and shook her head. ‘No! No, we’re not. I can’t face it anymore. Please don’t make me go back in there.’

‘We’ll be out of the tunnel soon enough, Dalia,’ said Rho-mu 31, keeping his voice even and steady. She could feel his biometrics linking with hers, using his rigidly controlled metabolic mechanisms to try and stabilise hers.

‘Breathe slowly,’ advised Rho-mu 31. ‘You’re taking in too much oxygen and you don’t want to do that, do you?’

She shook her head and forced herself to take longer, slower breaths. With the help of Rho-mu 31’s bodily control she felt her heart begin to slow and the flow of blood to her muscles lessen.

Rho-mu 31 read her calming internal functions and nodded. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘These are all just physical symptoms of anxiety. They’re not dangerous. It’s an evolutionary reaction from ancient times, when humans needed all their wits about them for a fight or flight reaction. Your body has tripped that reaction, but it’s a false alarm, Dalia. Do you understand that?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Dalia, between breaths and tears. ‘I’m not stupid, but I can’t help it!’

‘Yes you can,’ promised Rho-mu 31, and he knelt with her until the panic had passed, holding her hands and talking in low, soothing tones. He reminded her that she was travelling on a Mechanicum mag-lev, one of the safest means of transport on Mars, and that she was surrounded by her friends.

Eventually, his words and his gentle easing down of her metabolism calmed her to the point where her breathing rate was normalised and her heart rate, while still elevated, was less like the rattle of an automated nail gun.

‘Thank you,’ said Dalia, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her robe. ‘I feel so stupid – I mean we’re only going through a tunnel. I’ve never felt claustrophobic or scared of the dark before.’

‘Only since the accident in Zeth’s inner forge,’ said Zouche.

‘Yes, I suppose since then,’ agreed Dalia.

‘Maybe you’re feeling its fear,’ said Severine, and they all turned towards her.

‘Feeling whose fear?’ asked Caxton.

‘Whatever it is that’s buried beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus,’ said Severine, suddenly awkward with the attention. ‘Look, she said she felt she linked with its mind, didn’t she? I don’t know about you, but if I’d been buried underground for that length of time and I got a brief glimpse of the world above, I wouldn’t want to go back into the darkness either.’

‘You may have something there, Severine,’ said Caxton. ‘What do you think, Dalia?’

Dalia nodded, unwilling to confront such thoughts head on after her panic attack. ‘Maybe.’

‘No, no, I really think Severine’s onto something here,’ said Caxton. ‘I mean if–’

‘Enough!’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘Save it until we’re out of the tunnel. Zouche, how long until we reach the other side?’

Zouche hurriedly reconnected with the mag-lev’s onboard cogitator and streams of data light cascaded behind his eyes.

Rho-mu 31 turned his attention back to Dalia and she smiled at him. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

He bowed his head, and though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he was smiling back at her.

‘Well?’ asked Dalia in as relaxed a manner as she could muster. ‘How long until we’re clear of the tunnel, Zouche?’

Zouche frowned and moved his hands in the air, haptically shifting through holographic data plates only he could see.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘According to the onboard driver-servitor we’re slowing down.’

‘Slowing down? Why?’ demanded Rho-mu 31, and Dalia felt his threat auspex light up.

‘Here, look for yourself,’ replied Zouche, projecting the view of the tunnel from the hull-mounted picter onto the window once more. ‘There’s something ahead of us.’

They looked, and there was.

Rumbling along the floor of the tunnel towards the decelerating
mag-lev was what looked like a tall robot of roughly spherical proportions mounted on a heavy gauge track unit. A pair of heavy arms were held vertically at its sides and a set of malleable weapon-
dendrites flexed in the air above its shoulder guards.

Three glowing yellow orbs shone like baleful eyes in the centre of its mass, and, as they watched, its main arms locked into the upright position. As the mag-lev stopped, no one in the compartment failed to notice that each arm was equipped with an enormous weapon.

Even through the poor quality of the picter’s image, Dalia could feel the strangeness and uniqueness of this machine’s electrical field. Opening herself to the part of her mind that Zeth had called her innate connection to the aether, she reached out towards the machine, reading the heat of its internal reactor and the sticky web of dark, malicious sentience at its core.

Kaban… that was its name.

In the fleeting moment of connection, she read the memory of its creation and the killing of its former friend, an adept named Pallas Ravachol. With that death, the machine’s murderous nature had been unleashed, and the primordial evil with which its masters had tainted its artificial intelligence now consumed it with dreadful, killing lust.

‘Is that a battle robot?’ asked Caxton.

‘It’s much more than a robot,’ said Dalia, her eyes snapping open. ‘It’s something far worse.’

‘What?’

‘A sentient machine,’ gasped Dalia, still reeling from the moment of connection to its grossly warped consciousness and the awful clarity of its purpose. ‘It’s an artificial intelligence and it’s been corrupted with something vile, something evil.’

‘Evil? That’s nonsense,’ said Zouche. ‘What do machines know of evil?’

‘What does it want?’ asked Severine.

Dalia looked over at Rho-mu 31 in uncomprehending terror. ‘It’s here to kill me.’

The Kaban Machine opened fire and the driver-servitor’s compartment disintegrated in a blitzing storm of las-fire and plasma bolts. Flames boomed from the ruptured energy cells and the darkness of the tunnel was suddenly dispelled.

Rho-mu 31 grabbed Dalia and hauled her from her seat as the machine rumbled down the tunnel, its weapon arms wreathed in halos of white fire as it systematically obliterated carriage after carriage. Designed to penetrate the hulls of battle tanks and overload the void shields of Titans, its sustained fire easily sliced through the sheet metal of the mag-lev’s sides.

Caxton, Severine and Zouche needed no encouragement to follow Rho-mu 31 and blundered into the corridor beyond their compartment in terror. The noise from outside the mag-lev was deafening, thudding pressure waves of explosions laced with the squeal and hiss of impacting lasers. The bark of solid rounds and the whine of ricochets echoed from the tunnel walls. The mag-lev shuddered like a wounded beast, flames and smoke erupting along its length as it was systematically riddled with gunfire.

Dalia heard screams from further along the mag-lev as passengers were chewed up in the fusillade. The corridor was a mass of terrified people, its length choked with panicked bodies. Men and women screamed and clawed at one another as they fought to escape the approaching slaughter. Rho-mu 31 gathered Dalia into his arms and forced a path through the heaving, jammed mass of people fleeing towards the rear of the mag-lev.

<Get out of the way!> bellowed Rho-mu 31 in the most belligerent form of cant, and such was the ingrained reverence for a Mechanicum Protector that the majority of people did exactly that. With his weapon stave extended before him, he pushed along the corridor towards an emergency exit.

Dalia looked over Rho-mu 31’s shoulder, seeing terrified faces pressing against the wall of the corridor as they slammed fists, fire extinguishers or anything else they could get their hands on to smash the glass. Through the window on the door at the end of the corridor, Dalia could see bright flames and black smoke.

‘Hurry!’ shouted Severine. ‘For the love of the Omnissiah, hurry up!’

A searing white lance of plasma cut into the carriage, sawing through the metal and glass like a laser saw. The beam instantly sliced two-dozen people in half and Dalia wept as she smelled boiled blood and scorched meat.

‘Down!’ shouted Rho-mu 31, bearing Dalia and Caxton to the floor of the corridor. Severine was quick to follow and Zouche had already been borne to his knees by the stampede. The incandescent beam zipped along the corridor, killing as it went, and Dalia watched in mute horror as severed limbs, cleaved bodies and disembodied heads fell to the floor.

She rolled onto her side as the deadly beam passed overhead and droplets of molten metal splashed the floor beside her. She cried out as one scorched a thin line down her arm.

‘Sacred Fathers,’ hissed Zouche, rolling onto his front as an explosion further back whipped the mag-lev like a sine wave. Everyone screamed as it was lifted from the rails with a screech of torn metal and a crackling burst of arcing electrics.

Dalia scrambled on her knees towards Rho-mu 31 as the carriage tipped from the track and her world spun crazily. It crashed to the tunnel floor and the windows blew out with the force of the impact. A blizzard of crystalline fragments rained down.

The breath was knocked from her and Dalia felt blood dripping into her eyes. A heavy weight pinned her and she blinked away red tears as she heard more deafening blasts of gunfire. She couldn’t tell how close it was, but the stuttering, strobing flash of weapons fire felt as though it were coming from right outside their carriage.

Dalia fought to free herself from the weight pinning her to… the ceiling? Which way was up and which was down? She couldn’t hear any screams. Had the Kaban Machine killed everyone?

A man’s body lay sprawled across her, or at least half of him, and she cried as she pushed his bifurcated body from her. The metal beneath her – the ceiling, she was sure of it now – was sticky with warm blood, and she whimpered in terror at the sight of heaped mounds of corpses filling the corridor. The iron stink of blood was thick in her nostrils and Dalia couldn’t remember a more awful smell.

She retched dryly at the sight of so many dead, terrified and numbed by the horror of how quickly their grand adventure had come to such a bloody end. Despite the stink of death, she took a deep breath and looked for her friends amid the wreckage and carnage.

Dalia saw Rho-mu 31 lying further along the buckled corridor with a jagged spar of metal impaling his shoulder. The Protector’s biometrics were fluctuating, but he was alive.

Zouche lay in a heap of bodies, his face a mask of blood, but she couldn’t tell whether it was his or belonged to someone else. Caxton was just behind her, pinned to the floor by a metal door in the midst of a spray of glass fragments. His eyes were open and pleading, a low moaning issuing from between bloodied lips.

Severine lay beneath a nutrient dispensing machine that had torn loose from the wall, her arm thrown out before her and twisted at an unnatural angle. Her eyes were closed, but her pained expression and rapid, shallow breaths told Dalia she was alive.

The carriage was still, no straining bodies or panicked shoving, and the only light came from smashed lumen globes that sparked and stuttered in the half-light.

After such a tremendous cacophony of violence and noise, the silence that enveloped her was as welcome as it was terrifying.

Dalia began to crawl towards Rho-mu 31. He saw her coming and shook his head, placing a finger to the grilled mouthpiece of his helmet.

At first Dalia didn’t understand.

Then she heard it.

Over the creaking wreckage and tinkle of falling glass, she felt the vibration of the heavy machine through the ground as it crushed metal and ruptured bodies beneath its tracks. Dalia craned her neck to look through the shattered window into the sputtering darkness of the tunnel, and fought down the urge to cry out as she saw the monstrous form of the sentient machine rumbling towards where they lay.

She felt the crawling pressure of its corrupted mind as it swept the carriage for life signs, and heard the rattle of its autoloaders feeding its weapons fresh ammunition.

It drew nearer with every breath and in moments its auspex would register their presence.

Then it would kill them.

Princeps Cavalerio finished processing the feeds inloading into his casket at a rate of over six thousand data packets per second. The Martian networks had slowly returned to normal after the scrapcode plague, the diligence of the code-scrubbers and magos probandi all across the Red Planet finally re-establishing communications and information exchanges.

Fresh reports, petitions and pleas for aid from forges far and wide were streaming into Ascraeus Mons through the vox, across the noosphere and via optic feeds.

It was a bleak picture they painted of the Mechanicum’s future.

Cavalerio let his mind swim up through the reams of liquid information that flowed around and through him. He saw Agathe’s face before him, and set the biometrics of his casket from processing to consciousness.

His famulous nodded as she read the information on the slate fixed to the side of the casket and retreated to a subordinate position behind him.

Cavalerio’s Manifold senses processed his surroundings. His casket sat in the position of honour in the Chamber of the First, raised on a plinth before the mighty, towering form of Deus Tempestus, the First God-Machine of the Legio.

Princeps Sharaq stood before him, waiting to hear whether he would give an order of execution. Though Sharaq had correctly appointed himself the acting Princeps Senioris of the Tempestus forces on Mars, he knew and welcomed the fact that any order to walk should come from the Stormlord.

Behind Sharaq were his Legio brothers, each awaiting the Stormlord’s decision.

Princeps Suzak, the grim-faced hunter who commanded the Warlord Tharsis Hastatus, watched with an impassive eye, while Princeps Mordant of the Reaver Arcadia Fortis strained like an attack dog on a leash.

The Warhound drivers – Basek of Vulpus Rex, Kasim of Raptoria and Lamnos of Astrus Lux – paced like caged wolves, and Cavalerio rejoiced in the fearful power he saw before him.

‘Stormlord,’ said Sharaq. ‘The princeps are gathered as you ordered.’

‘Thank you, Kel,’ said Cavalerio, before enhancing his augmitters to address the princeps of his Legio. ‘I know you’re all waiting to see whether I give an order of execution, but before I tell you my decision we need to understand what might happen as a result. I’ve given great thought to this, because a wrong choice will have consequences none of us can imagine.

‘The forges of Mars burn in the fires of schism, and factional violence is reaching epidemic proportions all across our home world. So far, that violence has been restricted to the Mechanicum. None of the Titan Legions have yet initiated any hostilities, but it’s surely only a matter of time until that happens.’

He could see their hunger to be unleashed, proud of their courage yet saddened by their eagerness to fight their erstwhile brothers.

‘Before you all rush to your engines, gentlemen, let’s be clear on one thing. If the Titan Legions march to war, there will be no coming back from it. We will have unleashed the fire of a civil war that will only be extinguished by the utter destruction of one side or the other.

‘I have always sought to keep our Legio free from the insidious poison of politicking. I believe that the Titan Legions should remain true to their warrior ideals and not be instruments of political will, save that of the Imperium itself. Mars faces the gravest crisis in its long and glorious history, and warriors of honour and courage do not stand idly by in such times – they act. They stand firm in the face of aggression and in the defence of their allies.’

Cavalerio paused, allowing his words to hit home before continuing. ‘The idea that one Legio would fight another is anathema to me, but I am not fool enough to believe that such a time is not coming.’

‘It has already arrived,’ said Princeps Mordant. ‘Mortis is spoiling for battle.’

‘Indeed,’ said Cavalerio. ‘The blatantly provocative walk on Ascraeus Mons by the Mortis engines was little more than an attempt to bait us into a shooting war we could not win.’

He stifled their denials with a harsh blurt of impatient code.

‘I admire your bravery and faith in one another, but had we fought we would have died.’

‘So what do we do, Stormlord?’ demanded Princeps Suzak. ‘Do we swallow our pride and do nothing as Mars tears itself apart? We are a force for stability, use us!’

‘No, Vlad, we do not swallow our pride,’ said Cavalerio. ‘I will unleash the power of the Legio and we will rise to the defence of the ideals for which our world stands. The fury of Tempestus will fall upon the enemies of Mars and together we will scour them from the face of the Red Planet in a tide of fire and blood.’

‘You walk with us?’ asked Princeps Kasim. ‘How? The tech-priests say Victorix Magna is beyond their ability to restore.’

‘I know that, Zafir, but still I will walk with you,’ declared Cavalerio. ‘I will walk alongside you as I have always dreamed I would make my last walk, with the First God Machine of our Legio. I will become one with Deus Tempestus!’

Princeps Sharaq stepped forward. ‘Then is the word given?’

‘The word is given,’ said Cavalerio. ‘Tempestus goes to war.’

The machine paused in its advance, Dalia could hear the throaty growl of its power plant and the hiss of its hydraulics, and could feel the fizzing heat of its electrical field. She could smell the smoky residue of hard-rounds fire and taste the ozone from the plasma discharges.

Her every sense was magnified and she fought the urge to cry as she saw the ground up flesh worked into the grooves of its tracks. Rho-mu 31 slid his hand towards his weapon stave, but Dalia knew it would be no protection against such a destructive machine.

Caxton, Severine and Zouche trembled in fear, too hurt to move, too afraid to breathe.

Blood dripped from Dalia’s brow onto her arm and she blinked away another drop as it formed on her eyelid. Shards of glass wobbled in the window frame before her and splinters fell like diamonds spilled from a pouch, landing with a tink, tink, tink.

Dalia held her breath as her fear rendered her immobile. Her limbs were frozen, she couldn’t think properly, and the idea that she was going to die here was as ridiculous as it was horrifying. She didn’t want to die.

Oh Throne, she didn’t want to die!

She looked over at Caxton and the others, feeling a terrible guilt that she had brought them to this. And for what? Some half-baked theory that an ancient creature was buried beneath the surface of Mars?

Dalia wanted to laugh at her foolishness, thinking back to all the things she had read and transcribed – what seemed, and might as well have been, a lifetime ago – that she’d never now have the chance to see: the oceans of Laeran, the great cliffs of Charo, the planet forests of Ae.

A million wonders and miracles yet to be known; wonders the expedition fleets were seeing on a daily basis.

Neither would she ever learn more of the Carnival of Light on Sarosh, or vicariously live tales of battle like the Victory on Murder or the vanquishing of the Hexen Guild. Likewise, the future paintings of Leland Roget, the compositions of Jeacon Poul and the sculptures of Delafour were all lost to her. Nor would she read any more of the poems by Ignace Karkasy that she had grown fond of, despite their slightly pompous tone.

This was no way to die, and the injustice and unfairness of it railed against the cruel fate that had brought her to this moment.

She closed her eyes, her fear of the dark vanishing instantly in the face of this new, immediate threat. In the face of death, her desire to live surged and her connection to the aether pushed aside conscious thought. Dalia felt her mind reaching out beyond her body as it had when she had seen how to construct the throne of the Akashic reader, but this time it saw further and deeper than ever before.

This time she saw into the heart of the Kaban Machine.

The connection lasted the merest fraction of a moment, but in that moment she saw the very essence of its existence.

She saw golden lines, bound together in a glowing web, each strand an answer to a question she hadn’t yet asked. In this realm of the senses, she saw the light that was the mind of the Kaban Machine, a filthy, corrupted world of artificially created synapses and neurons.

Its auspex crawled over the wreckage like an invisible host of hungry spiders, and her flesh crawled with goose bumps as she felt the tread of a million legs across her skin. The machine’s senses sniffed like a scavenger hunting out juicy morsels to devour.

Dalia’s inner vision bored into the burning heart of the machine’s consciousness, marvelling at the intricacy of the design, the complexity and magnificence of the work, and the infinite patience that had gone into crafting such a miraculous engine. A perfect meld of organics and artificial components had been used to fashion the Kaban Machine, and the genius of Lukas Chrom, the adept whose name and skill she could read in every aspect of the design, was a thing of beauty.

She saw the wonder of what Chrom had created and felt the horror of what it had been made to do, what its builders had done to it. They had made it kill a man it had called friend, and then exposed it to something so dark and so terrible that Dalia’s floating consciousness recoiled from its warped malignancy.

Its memories were of feelings and emotions, the memories of a newly created intelligence too inexperienced to realise how such things could be manipulated by the unscrupulous. Corruption lay in the heart of its consciousness, like a bloated spider sitting at the centre of a web that spread its blood-hungry canker to everything it touched.

The folly of creating an artificial sentience, a forbidden science since a forgotten age of war, only to pervert it to the cause of murder struck Dalia as typical of mankind’s skewed brilliance.

It was a machine that could think for itself and its first autonomous act was to kill.

Just what did that say about its makers?

For all its brilliance, however, it was still a machine and bound by the fundamental principles of machines. It still gathered information the way any other sentient being did, and such things could be fooled.

Though the infinitely dense strands of light that were its warped consciousness were corrupt beyond imagining, Dalia sought out the neural pathways and areas of the machine’s brain that controlled its perceptions of the outside world. With a natural sense for such things, Dalia blocked the machine’s ability to process the inputs coming from its auspex, and though she felt its sensory apparatus sweep over her body and those of her friends, the signals never reached the action centres of its consciousness.

As though sensing that something was wrong, the machine swept its auspex over the ruins of the corridor once more. She sensed its confusion.

It knows we’re here, she thought. And it’s going to keep looking until it finds us.

With another twist of its mind, Dalia created a tremor of life signs further down the mag-lev, and sensed its savage joy as its targeting systems acquired the false readings.

Thunderous, roaring, crashing gunfire erupted from its weapons, and Dalia felt the mag-lev shudder with the impacts. Las-fire and heavy, explosive rounds tore into the distant wreckage and obliterated the dead bodies within.

Its guns ceased fire and Dalia allowed the counterfeit life signs to blink out, feeling its feral glee as it revelled in the slaughter. The image of blood dripping from a brass throne onto a mountain of skulls filled its thoughts.

Again its auspex swept over the mag-lev. Dalia felt the machine’s disappointment as she blocked its perceptions of them, and it concluded that it had killed everyone aboard.

Its task complete, the machine turned smoothly on its axis and moved off down the tunnel.

As it went, Dalia read an encrypted data squirt confirming the killings travel through the airwaves to its masters in Mondus Gamma and Olympus Mons.

Dalia kept her grip on its perception centres until it had travelled beyond the range of its targeting auspex before letting out a breath and opening her eyes.

The smashed interior of the mag-lev corridor came back into sickening focus and Dalia’s stomach lurched as her brain struggled to adjust to the sudden transition from the domain of the mind to that of the physical.

The aftermath of the machine’s attack – blood, burned plastic, seared flesh, and the sight of so many corpses – was overwhelming and she vomited copiously. Dalia coughed, retching and heaving until she felt her grip on reality solidifying.

She heard voices speaking in hushed and amazed tones that they were still alive, and she smiled, even though searing pain pounded inside her head.

‘It’s gone,’ said a voice that Dalia recognised as Zouche’s.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Caxton, his voice on the edge of hysteria.

‘Thank Ares,’ breathed Severine tearfully. ‘Please? Can anyone help me? I think my arm’s broken.’

‘Dalia?’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Not especially,’ she replied with forced levity, ‘but I’ll live, which is more than I thought I’d be able to say a few minutes ago.’

‘Can you move?’

‘Yes, but give me a minute.’

‘We don’t have a minute,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘We have to move in case it comes back.’

‘It won’t come back,’ said Dalia. ‘It thinks we’re dead, or at least it will for a while.’

‘Then let’s get out of here before it realises its mistake,’ said Rho-mu 31.

In the upper reaches of Olympus Mons, Kelbor-Hal inloaded the encrypted data blurt from the Kaban Machine. Looking out over the surface of Mars he took a moment to survey the landscape, knowing that soon it would be transformed into something wondrous and new.

The power that boiled from the depths of the Vaults of Moravec was intoxicating, and every day brought fresh miracles as he and his fellow Dark Mechanicum – a term Melgator had coined – found new ways to bind it to the metal and gristle of their creations.

Weapons, servitors, praetorians and fighting vehicles were imbued with power, twisting them into new and terrifying forms that were divinely primordial in their savage beauty. Monstrous engines of destruction that would be the heralds of the new power rising in the galaxy were taking shape in Olympus Mons and the forges of those adepts and magi that had bound themselves to the cause of Horus Lupercal.

Billions toiled in the weapon shops and manufactorum to realise this grand dream of Mars resurgent, and none who touched the powers unleashed to roam throughout his forge remained unchanged.

Chants echoed from the darkened thoroughfares of Olympus Mons, mobs of hooded worshippers hunting down those who did not embrace the new way and feeding their blood to the hungry machines. Brazen bells tolled constantly and howling klaxons shrieked with the godlike power of the scrapcode.

The transformation of his forge was a magnificent thing, and Kelbor-Hal knew that what they did here would echo through the ages as the moment the Mechanicum was reborn.

He turned from the armoured glass of the viewing bay to face his followers.

Regulus, Melgator, Urtzi Malevolus, together with holographic images of Lukas Chrom and Princeps Camulos, stood attentively before him. He could see the chittering lines of scrapcode infesting their augmetics.

He nodded towards Lukas Chrom. ‘Dalia Cythera is dead. Once again, your assassin and thinking machine prove their worth.’

Chrom accepted the compliment with a short bow.

‘Then it is time?’ said Princeps Camulos. ‘My engines long to make ruin of the Magma City.’

The bear-like Princeps Senioris of Legio Mortis was clad in beetle-black armour and Kelbor-Hal read the warp-enhanced aggression flaring from him in waves.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is time. Send word to the commanders of your allied Legios, Camulos. Tell their engines to walk and to crush our enemies beneath their mighty treads.’

‘It shall be done,’ promised Camulos.

Kelbor-Hal then addressed his fellow adepts of the Dark Mechanicum.

‘This is a great day, my acolytes, remember it always,’ said the Fabricator General. ‘This is the day Mars and her forge worlds cast off the yoke of the Emperor’s tyranny. Unleash your armies and stain the sands of our planet red with blood!’

3.01

Later histories would record that the first blow of the Martian civil war was struck against Magos Mattias Kefra, whose forge in the Sinus Sabaeus region was housed within the Mädler crater. Titans of the Magna Legion marched from the southern Noachis region and within minutes had smashed down the gates of his forge. Howling engines daubed in red, orange, yellow and black, and decorated with flaming horned skull devices, ran amok within the high walls of the crater, crushing everything living beneath them and destroying thousands of years of accumulated wisdom in a fury of fire.

Vast libraries burned and weapon shops that served the Solar Guard were reduced to molten slag as the indiscriminate slaughter continued long into the night, the Magna Legion’s trumpeting warhorns sounding like the atavistic screams of primitive savages.

Further north in the Arabian region, the great engine yards of High Magos Ahotep in the Cassini crater were struck by a hundred missiles launched from the atomic silos secreted within the isolated peaks and mesas of Nilo Syrtis. The explosions of the forbidden weapons filled the four hundred and fifteen kilometre diameter of the crater with seething nuclear fire, and sent conjoined magma-streaked mushroom clouds soaring nearly seventy kilometres into the sky.

Along the borders of the Lunae Palus and Arcadia regions, what had previously been confined to heated debate erupted into outright warfare as Princeps Ulriche of the Death Stalkers unleashed his engines upon the fortress of Maxen Vledig’s Deathbolts.

Caught by surprise, the Deathbolts lost nineteen engines in the first hour of battle, before withdrawing into the frozen wastes of the Mare Boreum and seeking refuge in the dune fields of Olympia Undae. Their calls for reinforcement went unanswered, for all of Mars was tearing itself apart as the plague of war spread across the planet in a raging firestorm.

Amid the Athabasca Valles, war machines of Legio Ignatum and the Burning Stars fought in bloody close quarters through the teardrop landforms caused by catastrophic flooding in an earlier, ancient age of the Red Planet. Neither force could gain the advantage, nor could either claim victory, so after a night’s undignified scrapping, both withdrew to lick their wounds.

A snapping, howling host of twisted skitarii and hideously altered weaponised servitors surged from the Gigas Sulci sub-hives of Olympus Mons to attack the crater forges of Ipluvien Maximal. Alert to the danger of attack, Maximal’s forces repelled the first waves of attackers, but within hours, his forge was surrounded and under siege by unholy Ordinatus engines and warped machines given hideous life in the depths of the Fabricator General’s darkest and bloodiest weapon shops.

The greatest single loss of life took place in the Ismenius Lacus region of Mars, where the hermetically sealed glacial forges of Adept Rueon Villnarus were attacked by airbursting rockets carrying a mutated strain of the Life Eater. The rapacious viral organism leapt from victim to victim with malicious glee, seeming to travel via every possible vector. Via direct contact, it killed the tens of thousands directly exposed to the detonation in minutes. Airborne, it depopulated the millions-strong worker-habs of Deuteronilus Mensae within three hours, and through some diabolical warp-mutation, it spread through the haptic networks to infect even those who thought themselves safe behind vac-sealed barriers. When the gleeful virus finally burned itself out, some seven hours later, every living soul within Ismenius Lacus was dead, the remains of fourteen million liquefied corpses freezing solid where they lay.

Within the Herschel impact basin of the Mare Tyrrhenum, nine hundred thousand skitarii and Protectors clashed in a swirling, bloody melee that continued unabated until almost all were dead. No victor emerged from the senseless slaughter and no purpose was served by the destruction, yet still both factions poured their forces into the meat grinder for fear of what might be lost should they withdraw.

Nor was the fighting merely confined to the surface of Mars. The Ring of Iron, that great halo shipyard that surrounded the Red Planet like a glittering silver belt, shuddered as explosions and conflict spread along its length. Factions loyal to the Throne, and those sworn to Olympus Mons and Horus Lupercal, clashed with the fury of fanatics. The vessels of Battlefleet Solar pulled away from the fighting as Mechanicum ships duelled in the shadow of the Ring of Iron, pounding one another with devastating broadsides and no thought of strategy or survival.

Venting gases and bodies spilled from ruptured hulls, and thousands died every second as wounded ships fell from low orbit and streaked down through the atmosphere to their destruction. The flaming wreckage of Mechanicum Gloriam, its engines destroyed as it sought to evade a hunting pack of frigates in low orbit, plunged through the lightning-wracked skies of Mars towards the planet’s surface.

The Technotheologians, watching its fall from the Basilica of the Blessed Algorithm in the Cydonia Mensae region, proclaimed it a sign of the Machine-God’s wrath, raising their manip arms and mechadendrites in praise of this wondrous sign of divine displeasure. Calls for peace and a cease of hostilities were carried far and wide across Mars, broadcast on every channel by every means available to them.

That signal was abruptly cut short as Mechanicum Gloriam slammed into the basilica and obliterated the vast complex of temples, shrines and reliquaries in a heartbeat. Millions of square kilometres and billions of faithful priests were consumed in the explosive impact, and any last call to reason vanished with them in the newest and deepest impact crater to disfigure the Martian soil.

All across Mars, in every region where the Mechanicum had built its holdings, the ancient order tore at itself in a frenzy of bloodletting more savage than any alien race had dared inflict on Humanity.

Libraries of priceless knowledge burned, adepts whose expertise had helped free the human race from confinement to its birth planet were torn limb from limb by screaming mobs, and forges that had previously sworn undying pacts of allegiance turned on one another like lifelong foes.

Burning debris from orbit fell to the planet’s surface, and though it was said that it never rained on Mars, a rain of fire now filled the heavens as though the sky wept comet tears that it should bear witness to such destruction.

Sitting next to Caxton in the bucket seats fitted in the cramped rear compartment of their salvaged Cargo-5, Dalia fought to stay awake as the rugged, dusty vista of the Syria Planum sped past, rendered grainy and blurred through the scratched glass of the compartment’s windows. The ground was uneven, but Rho-mu 31 guided them expertly across the rocky plains. Severine sat on the other side of Caxton, her broken arm bound close to her chest, while Zouche sat up front in the driver’s cabin next to Rho-mu 31.

In the aftermath of the Kaban Machine’s attack, her Protector had pulled himself from the metal that impaled his shoulder and quickly dragged them from the wreckage of the mag-lev. Working with practiced urgency, he had ascertained the extent of their injuries and moved them to a hidden culvert in the tunnel walls.

As Rho-mu 31 and Zouche searched the rear cargo holds of the mag-lev for anything useful in the wreckage, Severine had stared at Dalia with an expression of awe and what Dalia would later realise was fear.

‘How did you do that?’ asked Severine. ‘Send that machine away, I mean. I thought we were all dead.’

‘We should have been,’ agreed Caxton. ‘Maybe it missed us or there was some kind of interference, I don’t know.’

Severine shook her head, biting her lip as the pain of her broken arm flared. ‘No, it was something Dalia did, I know it. What did you do?’

‘I don’t understand it myself, to be honest,’ said Dalia, leaning her head back on the cold stone of the tunnel wall. ‘It was as if I could see the mechanisms of its mind and I just knew how it worked. I saw what Chrom had done to it and I… kind of blinded it to the fact we were right in front of it.’

‘Chrom?’ said Severine. ‘Lukas Chrom? He built that machine? A thinking machine?’

‘Yes,’ said Dalia. ‘I could see his handiwork all over its mind.’

‘Why would an adept like Chrom want to kill us?’

‘Not us,’ said Caxton. ‘Dalia.’

Severine looked at Dalia as though she had personally broken her arm. ‘What haven’t you told us, Dalia? Why does Lukas Chrom want you dead?’

Dalia knew nothing she said would convince Severine that she didn’t know for sure, but she shrugged and said, ‘I’m guessing here, but I think maybe it’s something to do with Adept Zeth’s Akashic reader. Some people don’t want it built, and I think they’re afraid of what’s going to happen when we know everything it can show us. Think about it, if anyone can know everything, then what happens to the keepers of knowledge? Knowledge is power, right? So what happens when everyone can access that knowledge?’

‘They’d lose their power,’ said Caxton.

‘Exactly,’ said Dalia. ‘And I’m surer than ever that whatever the creature beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus is, it’s the key to making the Akashic reader work. People are frightened of what we’ll be able to achieve when we unlock its potential and they’re desperate to hang on to what they’ve got.’

‘So what’s all that got to do with what’s happening all over Mars?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dalia. ‘I really don’t, but whatever it is, it’s bigger than all of us.’

At that moment Rho-mu 31 and Zouche had returned laden with a veritable treasure trove of useful items recovered from the unclaimed supplies earmarked for Crater Edge and Red Gorge: medicae packs, ration cartons, water recyclers and breathing apparatus. The medicae packs were opened and wounds cleaned and treated with counterseptic before being bound with gauze and bandages.

Best of all, Zouche had discovered an overturned Cargo-5 all-terrain hauler, an unreliable and cantankerous vehicle common in the frontier towns and less affluent forges, but one which offered them a chance of survival. Rho-mu 31 easily righted the vehicle, but upon doing so, they discovered that the indiscriminate fire of their attacker had severed the track unit and holed the mechanics of the driver’s controls.

Undaunted, Zouche set to work repairing the damaged track unit with Rho-mu 31’s help, while Caxton dismantled the control panel and set to work with Dalia, trying to jury-rig the controls back to life. Using spars of metal from the wrecked mag-lev, Rho-mu 31 groaned with effort as he lifted the Cargo-5 enough for the others to pull the repaired track links through, and they had cheered and embraced when Caxton finally ignited the drive plant and the engine turned over with a belligerent growl.

Stocking up the rear compartments of the Cargo-5 with their supplies, they had driven along the darkness of the tunnel and emerged into a freshly broken morning. Dalia had never been happier to see open sky, though the scarlet hue of the dawn and the cascades of fire she saw in the distance spoke of deeper troubles to come.

As Rho-mu 31 negotiated the Cargo-5 down the rugged slope leading to the Syria Planum, Dalia and the others had their first glimpse of Mondus Gamma forge complex. Like a dark slick, it spread south and east across the landscape in a vast swathe of smoking, flaming industry. Hive manufactories, vast weapon hangars and blazing foundries pounded and throbbed with the labour of production. One of the largest forges on Mars, its furthest extremities were beyond sight, a black pall of shrouding smoke clinging to the fabrication plants and sub-hives as though unwilling to let outsiders view what lay beneath.

The sight was profoundly disturbing, for Dalia knew this was the domain of Adept Lukas Chrom, the builder of the machine that had just tried to kill them.

Despite that, a newfound vigour filled Dalia, though whether this was in response to their brush with death or some other reason, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that she was alive and all the things she had feared losing were still there, just waiting to be experienced.

The same mood seemed to suffuse them all, and over the next few hours of their journey, as the ground levelled out and they made good time across the plain, each of her fellow companions relaxed into this new stage of their journey. Even Severine, whose arm was still painful despite Rho-mu 31’s ministrations and the effects of a couple of painkillers, seemed in better spirits.

The air in the vehicle was clammy, yet it was better than the hot dust that billowed around them outside. This far from the pallidus the atmosphere outside wasn’t actually poisonous, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Dalia felt a growing sense of optimism that they were going to reach their goal after all as the hours blurred into days and the unending dust clouds enveloped them.

The days passed mostly in silence, though occasionally one of them would point out a particularly interesting formation or unusual sight and they would talk about it until it was obscured in the dust of their wake. Rho-mu 31 kept one eye on the distant forge, and Dalia felt a growing excitement as the ground became rockier.

At length, Rho-mu 31 slowed the Cargo-5 and pointed to a dark scar in the earth that dropped sharply into the ground between two descending cliffs of rock.

‘The western entrance to the Noctis Labyrinthus,’ said Rho-mu 31.

‘Well, we made it here,’ said Severine. ‘What now?’

Dalia looked at the tense faces of her friends. They had come this far, but looking into the tomb-like darkness of the Noctis Labyrinthus, she could see their fear and hesitation at war with their desire to stand by her.

‘We go in, what else is there to do?’ asked Caxton. ‘We’ve come all this way and we can’t turn back. Right, Dalia?’

‘Right,’ said Dalia, grateful for his support.

‘Fine by me,’ said Zouche. ‘Pointless journey if we don’t go in.’

Severine nodded slowly, and Rho-mu 31 guided their vehicle down the sloping entrance to the canyon system.

The ground dropped away sharply, swallowing them whole as the light faded and left them travelling in a twilight wilderness of shadows and thin bars of diffuse light that filtered down from high above.

Sheer cliffs of layered rock soared above them, and Dalia felt like they were plunging deeper and deeper into the heart of the planet through some dreadful, unhealed wound.

Maven could barely contain his anger at the sight of so many bodies. The tunnel was choked with them, lying scattered in pieces or crushed amid the twisted wreckage of a mag-lev that had been blasted from the track. He rode Equitos Bellum through the darkness, his twin stablights illuminating the tunnel and the dusty armoured carapace of Pax Mortis.

‘You still think we’re following dead spoor?’ he voxed to Cronus.

His battle-brother didn’t answer for a moment and Maven sensed his friend’s fury at what he was seeing. The mag-lev hadn’t just been attacked, it had been obliterated. Weapons of tremendous power had torn it open from end to end and slaughtered every living soul within.

‘With all that’s happening across Mars and even after what we found in the pallidus, I’ll admit I was beginning to regret my decision to follow you,’ said Cronus. ‘But no more, brother. Whatever that machine is, it has to be destroyed. This will not stand.’

Maven nodded in agreement, though, truth to tell, even he had begun to doubt the instincts of his mount as it led them deeper and deeper into the pallidus. Then, after days of fruitless searching, his auspex had fizzed and hissed with the familiar spider-like pattern of electromagnetic energy that was their prey’s signature.

The buried wreck of a prospector’s hauler had been almost completely obscured by the dust storms, but Equitos Bellum had scented the handiwork of its nemesis in its destruction.

No sooner had the Knight’s auspex sniffed at the residue of reactor, shield and weapons, than Maven felt its gnawing desire to travel eastwards over the mountainous ridge between Tharsis and the Syria Planum in an aching pull of the Manifold.

Now they had found this corpse-filled tunnel, a charnel house of senseless slaughter, and still the Manifold pulled them onwards.

‘Why hasn’t anyone come to help?’ wondered Maven. ‘Why have they just left them?’

‘Mars has bigger problems,’ replied Cronus. ‘You’ve heard the feeds. It’s civil war.’

Maven heard the warring desires in his friend’s voice and felt the same turmoil within his own heart. The inload feeds had been jammed with a million clamouring voices: declarations of war, pleas for aid and feral screams of hatred. The Martian forges, which had stood shoulder to shoulder through uncounted epochs of darkness and weathered those storms intact, were now doing to one another what Old Night could not.

Duty to their order told Maven they should abandon this quest and ride west with all speed to join their fellow Knights in defence of the Magma City.

But honour told him that once begun, a quest could never be abandoned, only completed.

Maven felt the angry pull of Equitos Bellum through the Manifold and knew which imperative he must obey.

‘It’s closer,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’

‘Then let’s get after it,’ said Cronus, riding towards the Syria Planum. ‘The sooner we kill it the sooner we can rejoin our brothers.’

The Cargo-5 rolled onwards through the soaring canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthus, the darkness always seeming to draw it further and further in, as an ambush predator lures its prey. The darkness was cold and the cabin’s tiny heater did little to take the edge off the chill, but after the dusty, clammy journey across the Syria Planum, no one was complaining yet.

The deeper they went, the colder it became, and white webs of hoarfrost formed on the windows, a phenomenon none of them had ever seen before. Rho-mu 31 was forced to divert valuable battery power to the heater to keep the glass clear and see where he was going.

The headlights of the Cargo-5 stuttered, barely piercing the gloom, and the atmosphere within the cabin grew stuffy and unpleasant as the air recycler failed. Hour after hour passed, and though there was nothing resembling a roadway, the base of the graben was relatively flat and the Cargo-5 devoured the kilometres.

Whenever they came to a branching canyon, Dalia would direct Rho-mu 31 with a nod of the head, as though afraid to disturb the sepulchral silence that filled the Noctis Labyrinthus.

No one questioned how she knew where she was going.

Grating static hissed from the oil-stained vox and Zouche reached down to turn it off before looking over his shoulder with a puzzled expression. ‘Strange. It’s not even on.’

‘Mellicin did say the adepts in this region left because of technical problems,’ said Caxton.

His words were said lightly, but served only to heighten their unease.

More mechanical glitches plagued them as the journey continued, though the passage of time after the first two days in the darkness was hard to judge after everyone’s chronometers failed at exactly the same moment. Several hours later, the cabin’s internal lights sputtered and died as they made a treacherous descent into an even deeper, shadow-thickened canyon unleavened by sunlight.

The darkness closed in on them utterly, and Dalia felt as though a cloak was being drawn around them while a host of black ghosts followed and watched from the shadows. Each of them felt a thousand eyes upon them, the hairs on the backs of their necks erect and screaming danger, though nothing threatening was visible.

Several times along the way the engine coughed and died, and each time it had to be coaxed back to life by an increasingly frustrated and nervous Caxton.

Despite the mechanical problems and the sullen, apprehensive mood that settled upon everyone in the gloom, Dalia felt a mounting sense of excitement with each kilometre that passed. They had seen no daylight and no hint of anything resembling their final objective, but with the certainty of a zealot, Dalia knew they were close.

She had no idea how deep they had penetrated into the Noctis Labyrinthus – the odometer had failed the previous day – or where they were in relation to any other living thing on Mars, but a growing ache in the back of her mind told her they were close.

The rumble of the engine cut out again, and Dalia heard Caxton groan as he prepared to venture out into the cold and the dark to get it restarted.

Rho-mu 31 shook his head. ‘No need. We’re not going any further, the battery’s dead.’

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Severine, a shrill edge to her voice.

‘It’s all right,’ said Dalia, leaning forward and wiping her hand across the cold glass of the driver’s cabin. ‘Look!’

Ahead of the lifeless Cargo-5, a sheer cliff towered over them, its walls sparkling as though studded with nuggets of quartz. But this was no ordinary wall of rock, Dalia realised: its surface was smooth, like fused glass, and it shone with a faint internal light. Sections of the cliff had fallen away over the aeons, exposing a darkened passage that cleft the rock, and from which a strange mist sighed like steam from a geothermal vent.

‘The breath of the Dragon,’ said Dalia. ‘We’ve arrived.’

The Himadri Precinct encircled the great, hollow mountain of the Himalazia at the crown of Terra, a mighty concourse of black, glassy marble lined with busts and statues of cowled figures. Veins of gold and red and blue threaded the marble and a thousand honour banners hung from the kilometre-high roof of shadowed arches and iron vaults.

Cold light spilled into the vast chamber through tall windows twice as large as a Warlord Titan, throwing out great spars of brightness across the tiled floor of black and white terrazzo. The light fell on the towering warrior in gold who marched along its length in the company of a smaller, white-haired man who wore the simple robes of a palace administrator.

The giant wore a magnificent suit of golden armour, wrought by the finest craftsmen and embellished with finery scrimshawed by the greatest artisans of the Imperial Fists. A mantle of red velvet edged with bronze weave hung around his shoulders and his silver hair gleamed in contrast to the lustre of his armour.

The warrior’s face was craggy and tanned, browned by the light of unnumbered suns, and carved in an expression of stoic determination.

His companion was as unremarkable as the warrior was exceptional, his white hair worn long, like a mane, and his shoulders stooped with the weight of the world.

Behind this unlikely pair marched a detachment of ten Custodians in bronze armour and scarlet-plumed helms who carried long-bladed pole arms. Their presence was a formality, for Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, needed no protection.

Of all the great precincts of the Emperor’s Palace, the Himadri was one of the few not to have been turned into a fortress by the golden warrior; though that fact was scant comfort to him, saw his companion, Malcador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra.

Malcador saw the wonder in Dorn’s eyes as they passed beneath the Shivalik Arch and the ten thousand names of its builders inlaid with gold onto the marble. Behind that wonder, he also saw sadness.

‘The glory of the Emperor’s fastness will rise from the ashes of this war like a phoenix,’ said Malcador, guessing his friend’s thoughts.

Dorn looked down at him and smiled wearily. ‘Sorry. I was just calculating how long it would take to dismantle the great archway and replace it with a bastion gateway.’

‘I know you were,’ nodded Malcador, lacing his hands behind his back as they passed beneath the arch. ‘So how long would it take?’

‘If my Fists did the work, perhaps two days,’ said Dorn. ‘But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. If the traitor’s forces reach this far then we have already lost.’

‘The Emperor trusts you not to let that happen.’

‘I will not,’ agreed Dorn.

They walked in silence for some time, content to enjoy the view of the mountains against the rare sight of a blue sky and the many wonders contained within the Himadri Precinct: the Throne Globe of Mad King Peshkein of Tali; the Colonnade of Heroes; the last flying machine of the Roma, preserved in a shimmering stasis field; and a hundred other wonders and trophies taken in the Wars of Unity.

‘The Emperor still does not join us?’ asked Dorn as they passed the bloodstained Armour of Pearl that had been torn from the body of the warlord Kalagann.

Malcador sighed. He had been waiting for this question.

‘No, my friend, he does not.’

‘Tell me why, Sigillite,’ demanded Dorn. ‘His empire is crumbling and his brightest bastard son is dragging half the galaxy into war. What could possibly be more important?’

‘I have no answer for you,’ said Malcador. ‘Save the Emperor’s word that nothing is more important than his labours in the palace vaults – not Horus, not you and certainly not I.’

‘Then we are alone.’

‘No,’ said Malcador. ‘Not alone. Never alone. The Emperor may not stand beside us, but he has given us the means to fight this war and win it. Horus has three of his brother Legions with him, you have your Fists and thirteen others.’

‘Would that it were fifteen,’ mused Dorn.

‘Do not even think it, my friend,’ warned Malcador. ‘They are lost to us forever.’

‘I know,’ said Dorn, ‘and you are right. By any simple reckoning of numbers, the traitor stands little chance of victory, but he was always the most cunning, the one most likely to find a way where no others could.’

‘Is that what you’re really afraid of?’

‘Perhaps,’ whispered Dorn. ‘I do not yet know what I am afraid of. And that worries me.’

Malcador waved a hand along the length of the Himadri Precinct towards the grim, black portal at its end, their ultimate destination. ‘Mayhap the Master of the Astrotelepathica will have more news of the Legions.’

‘He’d better,’ said Dorn. ‘After the sacrifices we’ve made to pierce the storms in the warp, there had better be some news of Sanguinius and the Lion.’

‘And Guilliman and Russ,’ added Malcador.

‘I’m not worried about them. They can look after themselves,’ said Dorn. ‘But the others were heading into danger when last I knew of their plans, and it grieves me that I cannot reach them. I need to gather the Legions to strike at the heart of the traitor.’

‘You still plan to take the fight to Horus Lupercal?’

‘After what he did to Isstvan Three it is the only way,’ said Dorn, almost flinching at the sound of his former brother’s name. ‘Kill the head and the body will die.’

‘Maybe so, but we have problems closer to home to deal with first.’

‘You speak of the uprisings on Mars?’

‘I do,’ confirmed Malcador. ‘High Adept Ipluvien Maximal contacts me daily with word of further atrocities and loss of knowledge. War has come to the Red Planet.’

‘There is no word from the Fabricator General?’

‘None that makes any kind of sense. I fear he is against us now.’

‘This Maximal, how reliable is he?’

Malcador shrugged. ‘How reliable is anything these days? I know Maximal of old, and though he is prone to exaggeration, he is a staunch Emperor’s man and I believe he speaks the truth. Mars burns with rebellion.’

‘Then we need to secure the Solar System before looking to make war in a far off system.’

‘What do you propose?’ asked Malcador.

‘I shall send Sigismund and four companies of Imperial Fists to secure the forges of Mars. Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma produce the bulk of the armour and weapons of the Astartes. We will strike there to capture those forges and when they are ours, we will push outwards and secure the others.’

‘Sigismund? A trifle volatile is he not?’ asked Malcador. ‘Might not a mission to Mars benefit from a cooler head than his?’

Dorn smiled, a rare sight in these bleak times. ‘My First Captain is prone to bellicose talk, aye, but I will send Camba-Diaz with him. He will provide a steadying influence on Sigismund. Will that suffice to allay your concerns?’

Malcador nodded. ‘Of course. You are the commander of the Imperium’s armed forces and you have my full confidence, but even a humble administrator such as I knows that you will need more warriors than four companies of Imperial Fists to pacify Mars.’

‘We can bulk out the force with regiments of Imperial Army and Solar Auxilia units stationed on Terra, and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.’

‘And perhaps Sor Talgron’s Word Bearers?’

‘No,’ said Dorn. ‘I need his warriors for the assault on Isstvan Five.’

Malcador paused and looked through one of the soaring windows as the sun began to set behind the tallest peak of the world.

‘Who could have believed it would come to this?’ he asked.

‘No one could have foreseen this,’ said Dorn. ‘Not even the Emperor.’

‘If we cannot stop the Warmaster then everything we have built over the last three centuries will be lost, my friend. All our grand achievements and the great dream of unity will turn to ash if we fail. We will perish by our own hands or else be devoured by a tide of alien insurgents, unable to mount more than a token resistance against the ghoulish hordes.’

‘Then we cannot afford to fail,’ said Dorn.

Malcador turned to face Dorn and looked up into his handsome, weathered features. ‘Send your warriors to Mars, Rogal Dorn. Secure the Martian forges and then crush the life from Horus Lupercal on Isstvan Five.’

Dorn bowed towards him. ‘It shall be done,’ he promised.

3.02

As Adept Zeth had predicted, the forces of the Fabricator General did indeed return to the Magma City. The sun rose above the calderas of the Tharsis Montes on yet another day of bloodshed and chaos, and auspex lookouts raised the alarm that the inhabitants of her forge had feared.

Legio Mortis was on the march.

Southwards from Pavonis Mons, the engines of Mortis came around the western flanks of Arsia Mons, easily demolishing the high walls surrounding the container yards and runways that fed on the materiel produced by the Magma City. Led by the towering Imperator, Aquila Ignis, a total of thirteen war engines strode through the great breach torn by the guns of the Imperator.

The Imperator’s pack moved slowly and ponderously, a mix of Warlords and Reavers, with four Warhounds leading the way like snarling wolves to flush out their prey. Armour of red and silver and black gleamed in the growing light, their hulls freshly daubed with the Eye of Horus. Thundering warhorns blared their warlike intentions and hideous blurts of scrapcode screamed their corrupted names across the airwaves.

From a distance they looked like hunched old men, moving with wheezing, stiff-legged gaits, but there was nothing infirm about these terrible war engines. These machines had been designed with the express purpose of destroying the enemies of humanity, but were now perverted to serve a darker purpose and far darker masters.

They paid the vast stacks of containers no mind, intent on pressing onwards to their goal of destruction. The container port was huge, but looming in the distance was the industrial sprawl of the Arsia Mons sub-hives, worker habs and outlying production hubs.

It was to this tangled mass of structures that Mortis walked, the only route, other than the heavily defended Typhon Causeway, by which their engines could cross the vast magma lagoon upon which Adept Zeth’s city stood.

No route wide enough for the Titans existed through the sub-hives, but Princeps Camulos had no need for one. The guns of his Titans could easily blast a path, or simply crush a way through with the weight of his engines. Mortis cared nothing for the millions that dwelled within the sub-hives, only that the Magma City was brought to ruin and Adept Zeth humbled before the new masters of Mars.

Thousands of workers fled before the advancing Titans, ants before a herd of charging bull grox, but like the containers around them, the Mortis engines ignored them, safe in the knowledge that the forces following behind them would mop up any lingering threats.

Flowing like a black-armoured tide of spiked nightmares made real, the warped cohorts of skitarii and horrifically altered battle-servitors poured into the container port, their lustful war-shouts echoing weirdly from the metal skins of the stacked containers.

Explosions dotted the landing fields as fuel lines were crushed under the colossal feet of the Titans and flames followed in their wake. Black smoke boiled upwards like dark scratches etched on the sky.

Artillery pieces fired from redoubts and fortifications around the base of the sub-hives, and the ground before the Titans erupted in corrosive flames and deadly clouds of whickering shrapnel. Hundreds of enemy soldiers were cut down in the first instant, but it was nothing compared to the host pressing at their backs.

Voids flared and shimmered under the bombardment, but without the concentration of fire necessary to overload an engine’s shields, the defensive fire was largely wasted. The four Warhounds bounded forward, low to the ground, weaving between the incoming fire as they opened up with their mega bolters.

One Warhound staggered as a particularly well-aimed salvo caught it full on and it shed its void shields in a coruscating detonation. The explosion blew off one of its legs and it smashed, nose-first, into the ground, ploughing a thirty-metre furrow before finally coming to a halt. A cheer of elation erupted from the defenders, but observers further back in the Magma City knew the loss of a single Warhound would not slow the attackers.

The remaining Warhounds increased their speed, using their agility to better evade, and each engine’s princeps displayed a healthy respect for the accuracy of the Magma City’s gunners.

Blizzards of weapons fire strafed the defenders, a furious storm of high explosive shells that tore through all but the heaviest fortifications, wreaking unimaginable havoc within the packed knots of Zeth’s Protectors, skitarii and tech-guard. Artillery pieces exploded and ammo parks detonated explosively as the Warhounds’ fire tore through them.

The elation that had gripped the defenders upon seeing a Warhound brought down evaporated instantly in the face of the destruction unleashed by its brothers. Terrified, insensate survivors staggered away from the shrieking, smoking, flaming hell of explosions, some clutching severed limbs, others holding in spilling intestines or dragging the shredded carcasses of their comrades away from the firestorm.

As a flood of panicked men and women fled the fortification lines, the adamantium blast doors of a hardened bunker slid aside and an Ordinatus machine rolled forwards on heavy gauge rails. A gargantuan artillery piece so large it needed a strengthened chassis, a crew of hundreds and specialised generators just to power its enormous gun, the Ordinatus was a weapon of such power that an adept counted himself lucky if he had even one such weapon in his arsenal.

Its crew locked in the targeting auspex, working on a firing solution on one of the larger war engines, an impetuous Reaver that had broken from the pack of marauding Titans.

A searing beam of blinding, unwavering energy erupted from the Ordinatus and struck the careless Reaver square in the face. Instantly its shields screamed and blew out in a froth of sparks and whipping arcs of discharged energies that vaporised hundreds of mutant skitarii advancing in its shadow. The Ordinatus beam continued to play over the Reaver’s body, obliterating armour plates and body shielding in a flurry of actinic explosions.

Flames bloomed from inside the enemy machine and as the reactor core was breached, the Reaver vanished as a newborn sun flared into life. Void fields scraped and howled as the Reaver’s accomplices felt the violence of its death, but none were damaged beyond shrapnel scars.

Its work done, the Ordinatus machine began to roll back into its protective bunker to recharge its main gun.

It never got the chance.

The towering, dreadful form of Aquila Ignis opened fire with its monstrous annihilator cannon and the giant Ordinatus vanished in an expanding mushroom cloud of nuclear plasma.

Shock at the death of such a magnificent machine rendered the defenders immobile for a heartbeat, but that was all the Mortis engines needed. As the Ordinatus was consumed in a sea of roiling plasma, the opportunistic Warhounds darted forward and smashed through the crumbled remains of the defensive line.

Amongst the defenders, the Warhounds barked their triumph from carapace-mounted augmitters and began the killing. Mega bolters blitzed and chewed up exposed soldiers in a furious storm of explosive rounds through which nothing could survive. Turbo lasers incinerated flesh and melted armoured units as the cackling beasts crushed the tiny figures that stood before them.

Drunk with slaughter, the Warhounds raced onwards, crushing the few pitifully burned or shredded survivors as their slower pack members stomped over the walls between the worker habs and outerworks of Adept Zeth’s mighty forge, as easily as a child might step over a fallen branch.

In the close-packed confines of the sub-hives, the Warhounds snapped and killed like hunting raptors, guns rippling with fire and their horns screaming with the elation of the kill.

One engine worked in solitude, methodically reducing block after block of habs and forge temples to ruin with its weapons and bulk. Walls broke apart, smelteries collapsed and great coolant towers were brought down in tumbling cascades of rockcrete and steel.

Two others worked as a pair, one demolishing buildings with concentrated blasts of fire, while the other raked the rubble to slay any survivors. Together, they left a wake of destruction such as had never been seen in the Magma City’s history.

Dust billowed in vast clouds and the sound of collapsing structures overpowered even the cackling glee of the Warhounds as they cleared a path for the larger engines.

The solitary Warhound was the first to die.

Its crew never saw its killer, but its sensori felt the auspex lock a fraction of a second before its void shields were blown out in a devastating volley of las-fire and it was obliterated in a rippling series of missile impacts.

The other two Warhounds felt its demise and furiously surged into the ruins in search of its destroyer. Darting forwards in a series of loping bounds, they came upon its smouldering carcass and swept the area with aggressive bursts of their targeting auspex.

The lead engine caught a return from behind a shattered steelworks and opened fire without waiting for a lock, hoping to drive its quarry into the open where its twin could finish it off.

The ironworks dissolved into a mist of pulverised rock fragments and shattered steel, but instead of forcing the engine behind it to run, it had the opposite effect.

Lunging though the fiery debris, a towering monster in cobalt blue armour came at the Warhounds, its fists blazing and a heroic challenge issuing from its warhorn.

Deus Tempestus crashed into the astonished Warhound, smashing it to the ground and stamping down hard with one enormous foot. The smaller engine was crushed like a tin can beneath the mighty Warlord, the First God-Machine of Legio Tempestus.

‘Engine kill,’ said Princeps Cavalerio high up in the liquid depths of his amniotic tank.

The second Warhound fled at the sight of the larger engine, turning and sprinting for the support of its fellows like a bully confronted by a gang of his former victims.

It ran straight into the guns of Metallus Cebrenia and Arcadia Fortis, who caught it in a lethal crossfire that ripped away its voids and gutted it in a furious hurricane of turbos.

Behind the two jubilant engines, the Tempestus Warhounds, Vulpus Rex, Raptoria, Astrus Lux and the Warlord Tharsis Hastatus moved into position within the hab-blocks, ready to defend the Magma City against the might of Legio Mortis.

Surveying the smashed wreckage of the slain war machines, Princeps Cavalerio smiled.

<Mortis want a fight!> he canted to his warriors. <We will ensure they get one!>

From the Chamber of Vesta, high atop the silver pyramid in the centre of the Magma City, Adept Zeth read the inloaded data of the four destroyed Warhounds. The arrival of Tempestus two nights ago might have prompted her to believe in the providence of the Machine-God, but she knew she owed her city’s continued survival to Princeps Cavalerio’s honourable heart.

Even without the terrible threat of the Mortis Imperator, the Tempestus engines were dreadfully outnumbered and outgunned, yet still Cavalerio had come. Had he not been interred within an amniotic tank, she would have hugged him in a rare outburst of emotion.

The first blow had to be struck from ambush in an attempt to even the odds, and though Zeth keenly felt the loss of so many soldiers and artillery, their sacrifice had been necessary to lure the engines of Mortis in with the promise of easy kills. Four Warhounds and a Reaver was an impressive tally, but gun for gun and engine to engine, Tempestus was still grossly outmatched.

The gracefully curved sheets of burnished steel and crystal of the roof structure displayed images of the fighting around the landing fields and container port, and as much as she relished the killing of her enemies’ Titans, she lamented the loss of such precious technology. No adept of Mars could fail to be moved by the destruction of so perfect a mechanism that combined the best of steel and flesh.

As deadly a threat as Mortis represented, they were not the only foes ranged against the Magma City. The cohorts of the Fabricator General had returned in full, swarming like an army of roaches on the far shores of the magma lagoon in preparation for an all-out assault. An attempt had already been made along the Typhon Causeway, a host of armoured units and hideously altered infantry storming the Vulkan Gate with gravity rams and conversion beamers.

A sally from the Knights of Taranis had broken the assault, but three of their precious Knights had been torn down to win the fight. Though they had killed well over a thousand enemy soldiers and destroyed a brigade’s worth of armour, it was but a tiny dent in the vast force arrayed before them.

Other screens displayed similar scenes of war.

The equatorial refinery belt burned as running battles between engines and thousands of skitarii clashed in the blazing ruins. A ring of fire encircled Mars in imitation of the iron ring in orbit.

The hive assembly yards of Elysium, once the domain of Magos Godolph, were a silent tomb, the tens of thousands of skilled adepts having committed mass suicide in some awful ceremony to honour unknown gods.

Eridania, once the home of the most ancient and revered orders of Archivists, the Brotherhood of the All Seeing Eye, bore witness to scenes of unimaginable slaughter as the skitarii of Magos Chevain clawed their way into the kilometres-deep repository only to unleash the pestilential scrapcode. Data wheels, memory crystals and realbooks all died as the scrapcode infected every system and flooded the sunken library with corrosive gases.

‘So much history and knowledge lost,’ said a voice from above her, and Zeth lifted her head to look at the roof panels where her noospheric guests observed the fighting.

One panel projected the flickering image of Adept Maximal’s helmet, another the handsome features of Fabricator Locum Kane.

‘Some knowledge is best forgotten, Maximal,’ she said.

‘Don’t say such things,’ replied Maximal. ‘Knowledge is power and no price is too high to pay to preserve it. The accumulation of knowledge should be our one and only goal, Zeth. You of all people should appreciate that. Was the Akashic reader not built for that very purpose, the accumulation of all knowledge?’

‘It was,’ conceded Zeth, using haptic motions to zoom in on the lumbering brutes of Legio Mortis. The carapaces and hulls of these once glorious engines were hung with black banners depicting vile, unthinkable acts of butchery. The head sections, once fashioned as stalwart warrior helms, were now leering, twisted and bestial things. ‘But any knowledge that creates something like this is best deleted without hope of recovery.’

Maximal sniffed, a petulant affectation to show his disagreement.

‘Enough,’ said Kane. ‘Save such discussions for when this crisis is over. We need to focus our attentions on how we plan to survive before we lament the loss of knowledge. Lord Dorn of the Imperial Fists sends word of an expeditionary force en route to Mars to fight our enemies. We must hold on until they reach us.’

‘What else do you know?’ asked Zeth. ‘When will they get here? Tempestus and the Knights of Taranis have given my forge a chance to hold out for a time, but Mortis will attack again and we may not turn them back this time.’

‘And my forge suffers daily attacks,’ said Maximal. ‘My skitarii units and war engines continue to hold, but the hordes pouring from the darkened hives of Olympus Mons are without end. I fear for what will be lost when we are overwhelmed.’

Kane nodded. ‘I am aware of your tactical situation and have apprised Lord Dorn. Elements of the Imperial Army and the Saturn Regiments have been tasked with the relief of your forges.’

‘And the Astartes?’ demanded Zeth. ‘What of them?’

Kane hesitated before answering, and even over the noospheric link, Zeth sensed his reluctance to speak. ‘Captain Sigismund will make planetfall at my forge of Mondus Occulum and Captain Camba-Diaz will assault Lukas Chrom’s Mondus Gamma facility.’

‘Then the Astartes do not come to aid us at all,’ protested Maximal. ‘They seek to secure their own supplies of weapons and armour! Intolerable!’

‘Agreed,’ said Zeth. ‘We need the Astartes if we are to defeat Kelbor-Hal’s minions.’

‘Captain Sigismund has assured me that once the armour and weapon production facilities are secured, his warriors will come to your aid.’

‘Then let us hope they are swift in their conquests,’ said Zeth.

‘Indeed,’ said Kane, either missing or ignoring her caustic tone. ‘In the meantime, do all you can to hold on. Help is on the way and I will exload information to you both as I receive it. Good luck and may the Machine-God guide you.’

The image of Kane faded from the glass, and Zeth returned her attention to the scenes of war and death inloading from all across Mars.

Adept Maximal remained as a ghostly presence flickering from the burnished plate above her, and Zeth regarded him quizzically.

‘You have something to add, Maximal?’

‘Is there any word from your wayward protégé?’

Beneath her mask, Koriel Zeth smiled. Even with his forge besieged and facing destruction, Ipluvien Maximal still hungered for knowledge.

Zeth shook her head. ‘No. Rho-mu 31’s biometrics ceased transmitting somewhere in the Noctis Labyrinthus and I can find no trace of them. I fear he may be dead.’

‘So Dalia Cythera is probably dead as well?’

‘That is probable, yes.’

Maximal’s sigh of disappointment matched her own.

The interior of the tunnel was not dark as Dalia had feared, but alive with a soft illumination. The rock itself glowed, as though carrying some form of bioluminescent current. The air was cold and their breath misted before them as Rho-mu 31 led the way. The tunnel was narrow, its cross-section like that of a leaf-shaped arch, and they were forced to travel in single file as it sloped ever deeper into the planet’s surface.

Dalia reached out and touched the walls to either side of her; they were warm and though they looked smooth, she felt minute imperfections in the surface, as though a million tiny picks had chipped away at them.

They walked for what felt like an age, winding through serpentine passages and multi-coloured galleries of translucent stalagmites, and across glittering bridges of smooth crystal. Dalia wondered what manner of internal geological transformation could alter so great a portion of the subterranean landscape.

‘What could cause something like this?’ she asked, making the question sound light.

‘Geological metamorphosis I’d imagine,’ said Zouche. ‘Aeons of pressure and heat can cause some rock types to change their state. Looks like that’s what’s happened here.’

No, realised Dalia, that’s not it at all. It’s something buried here that’s leaching outwards.

She said nothing and continued to follow Rho-mu 31 as the internal illumination of the rock began to recede behind them and their little group bunched up around the solitary light from the Protector’s weapon stave.

At length, Rho-mu 31 held up his hand, halting their group.

‘Do you hear that?’

Dalia could hear nothing at first, but as they all came to a halt and slowed their breathing, she could make out the faint sound of movement.

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Caxton.

Rho-mu 31 shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think anything remained here.’

‘Well we didn’t come this far to turn back,’ said Dalia, easing past Rho-mu 31 and heading towards the sound with more confidence than she felt. Her heart beat loudly in her chest and she squinted as she saw a bright light from up ahead.

Dalia emerged into a wide laboratory chamber, carved from the rock of the cliffs and roughly rectangular in shape. One wall was festooned with thousands of colourful sheets of parchment like a children’s collage, and at the far end of the chamber was a darkened passageway. Bare girders of red iron supported the ceiling, from which dangled a host of gently swaying cables, some inert, some twisting with fizzing sparks.

Against one wall was a surgical table, surrounded by banks of respirators, intravenous drips and a number of steel tables laden with unpleasant-looking machinery. Next to this was a complex device that resembled a giant rock drill, with mechanisms formed from stained brass and tarnished steel. Rust plated its sides and glass generator globes sat atop looping coils of rigid golden wire. A silver wheel-like apparatus sat on a conical mount at the front of the device, each of its four spokes fitted with a small emitter dish.

Each of the dishes was aimed at an upright slab on the far wall with the imprinted shadow of a human body upon it and leather straps at the wrists, ankles and neck.

‘Now this just can’t be good,’ said Caxton.

Dalia paid the device no mind, walking over to examine the parchment scraps on the wall.

‘What are these?’ wondered Severine, plucking one from the wall and handing it to Dalia.

The parchment was glossy and depicted a human silhouette limned with a rainbow of colours. Reds, greens and blues danced around the subject’s body, but Dalia saw that on the right arm, the colours faded from the elbow down, as though the strength of whatever was producing the colours had faded.

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Dalia. ‘Some kind of electrography?’

She made her way along the length of the wall, seeing hundreds of pictures, all displaying elements of human bodies with glowing, colourful auras surrounding them. Like the first picture, each silhouette showed a loss in colour at one extremity, be it a leg, arm or a head.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Zouche as he examined the machine. ‘Reeks of dark technology. Forgotten science. Like the kind that almost destroyed mankind before Old Night.’

‘You don’t even know what this does,’ said Caxton, stepping in front of the silver wheel.

‘Don’t stand there!’ shouted Dalia, dropping the image she held.

‘What? Why not?’ asked Caxton. ‘I don’t think this machine’s worked in centuries. There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Ha!’ said Severine. ‘The last time you said that we almost died when that battle robot attacked the mag-lev.’

Caxton shook his head, but moved away from the strange machine, smiling at Zouche as the machinist examined what looked like a steel control panel with a number of gem-like buttons, a brass radial dial and a long lever.

‘I think you’re wrong about that, Caxton,’ said Zouche. ‘This panel hasn’t got a spot of rust or dust on it. I think someone’s used this machine quite recently.’

‘And you would be right,’ said a cracked voice, ancient and thick with age.

Dalia spun to see Rho-mu 31 with his weapon stave aimed at a hooded adept in dark robes emerging from the passageway at the far end of the chamber.

‘Oh yes, you would be right,’ continued the adept. ‘Happy day that you come to me! I had all but given up hope of anyone ever arriving!’

‘Who are you?’ demanded the Protector, igniting the tip of his weapon stave as a hulking servitor emerged from the shadows to stand beside the adept. The servitor was bulky with augmetics, one arm replaced with a hissing, wheezing power claw, the other with an oversized chainblade.

The adept drew back his hood and Dalia gasped as she saw his gaunt features, wild eyes and thin scraps of bone-white hair. His flesh shone with mercurial light, as though glittering fire filled his veins instead of blood, and upon his forehead she saw a shining electoo of a diminishing spiral with a stylised set of wings to either side.

The mark of the Dragon.

‘I know you,’ she said. ‘I dreamed of you.’

‘The hooded man?’ gasped Caxton. ‘He’s real?’

‘Am I real?’ asked the adept. ‘Well, as real as any of you, though what constitutes reality in this polluted cesspool of psi-spoor we call a universe… well, a matter for some debate, yes?’

‘Who are you?’ repeated Rho-mu 31, taking a step towards the man.

‘Who am I? Now there’s a question. One might as well ask how many stars there are in the heavens, though that would have a definite answer. Or would it? Ah, it’s been so long since I have seen them. Are they still there or have the others devoured them?’

‘The stars?’ asked Dalia.

‘Of course the stars,’ snapped the adept. ‘Are they still there?’

‘Yes, they’re still there.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dalia. ‘Millions, I think.’

‘Millions she says,’ laughed the adept. ‘And not a second after she says she knows not.’

Rho-mu 31 stepped between Dalia and the cackling adept.

‘I won’t ask again,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘My name,’ said the adept, looking confused. ‘Ah, but it’s been so long since I needed one and it gets so hard to remember. I need no name, for my name is insignificant against the vast, echoing emptiness of the darkness, but men once called me Semyon.’

‘And what are you doing here?’ asked Dalia.

‘Here?’ cried Semyon, throwing his arms wide and spinning around like a lunatic. ‘You have such a limited understanding of the material world, girl. Words like here and there have no meaning. The myriad dimensions of this material universe cannot be defined by so limited a thing as human language!’

Semyon stopped with his back to Dalia and looked over his shoulder, his face alight with the fire she had seen in Jonas Milus’s eyes before his body had disintegrated.

‘I am the Guardian of the Dragon!’ said Semyon.

The sub-hives and manufacturing regions to the north-west of the Magma City lay in ruins. Kilometre-high hab blocks lay scattered across the burning container port like toppled anthills and smashed war engines burned where they had fallen. Bodies littered the ground and tanks lay on their backs or twisted onto their sides without turrets.

With the destruction of their scouting engines, the Titans of Legio Mortis had pulled back, unwilling to advance through such dense terrain and into the teeth of an unknown number of enemy engines.

Instead, they had settled for an intense bombardment from afar, each engine bracing itself with internal gyros and gravitational stabilisers as they locked out their weapon limbs and began to systematically pound the outer habs and work precincts of Koriel Zeth’s domain, careful not to damage the forge.

That was to be captured intact.

Princeps Cavalerio withdrew his forces within the walls of the Magma City as the punishing fire brought the thunder of the gods to earth. Fire sheeted from the sky like the end of days, and the planet was lost in a mist of dust and fire and smoke as the city in the shadow of the volcano shuddered with the fury of the bombardment.

Within the walls, hundreds of thousands of refugees packed the thoroughfares, boulevards and sinks of the city. With nowhere to run, the servants of Adept Zeth huddled in terrified misery as the deafening roar of explosions and the seismic shocks of detonations shook the city from the peak of the forge to its void-shielded foundations.

The Knights of Taranis broke two more attacks on the gate, each time without loss, but Preceptor Stator’s mount, Fortis Metallum, took a grievous wound to the chest.

Further west, sealed up in his forge between Biblis Patera and Ulysses Patera, Ipluvien Maximal watched as a screaming host, conservatively estimated to be in the region of half a million soldiers, hurled itself at his shielded walls with power mauls and vortex mines.

Servitor-slaved guns sawed through mob after mob of enemy warriors, but such was the force arrayed against them they might as well have ceased firing for all the difference they made.

Ipluvien Maximal greatly feared that the life of his forge could now be measured in hours instead of days.

In the north-eastern reaches of Tharsis, only Mondus Occulum had been spared the ravages of the enemy, though for what purpose, Fabricator Locum Kane could not fathom.

Perhaps Kelbor-Hal thought he might yet lure Kane to his cause, or maybe the Fabricator General did not wish to risk losing the Astartes production facilities for the Warmaster.

Whatever the reason, Kane gave thanks to the Omnissiah as he stood in the howling winds that swirled around the gigantic Tsiolkovsky towers and landing fields of Uranius Patera, watching as squadron after squadron of Imperial Fists Stormbirds descended like a golden flock of avenging angels.

3.03

After his dramatic pronouncement, Adept Semyon lowered his arms and moved past Rho-mu 31 to shoo Zouche and Caxton away from the machine. He adjusted the dials and pressed a number of the buttons, though nothing appeared to happen. Looking disappointed, but not entirely surprised, he shrugged.

‘What kind of machine is that?’ asked Zouche. ‘Some sort of conversion beam engine?’

‘Pah, it’s too complex for the likes of you to comprehend,’ snapped Semyon. ‘But, for the record, this is my very own gas discharge machine of the perturbation variety, which creates pulsed electrical field excitations and thus measures electro-photonic glow. What the less sophisticated might call auras.’

‘These images,’ said Dalia. ‘That machine created them?’

‘It did indeed,’ nodded the adept without looking up. ‘It did indeed, though it takes a great deal of effort to convince the subjects of the images to willingly submit to the process.’

‘And why’s that?’ asked Zouche.

Semyon pointed to the imprinted shadow on the upright slab. ‘You see that? That’s all that’s left of someone once the device has been activated.’

‘It kills them?’ asked Dalia, horrified at the number of deaths that must have taken place in this grim laboratory to satisfy Semyon’s research.

‘It does,’ agreed Semyon with a giggle. ‘But such things are sometimes necessary to keep the Dragon quiescent.’

‘You know where the Dragon is?’ demanded Dalia. ‘Can you take us to it?’

Semyon laughed, a high-pitched skirling sound of hysteria. ‘Take you to it? Doesn’t she know it’s all around her, that she walks in the throat of the Dragon even now? Ha!’

‘This fellow’s mad,’ declared Zouche. ‘Too much time alone has broken his brain.’

‘No,’ said Dalia with steely conviction. ‘This isn’t the Dragon. Take us to it. Now!’

Her friends turned at the commanding tone of her voice and even Semyon blinked in surprise. His eyes narrowed and he peered more closely at Dalia, as if seeing her for the first time.

Semyon grinned and nodded, pulling the hood of his robes over the wispy strands of his hair. ‘Very well,’ he said, all hint of his former mania vanished. ‘Follow me and I will show you the Dragon.’

Semyon and his threatening-looking servitor led them from the laboratory, through the darkened passageway at the far end of the chamber, and into a winding series of tunnels. The gloom soon gave way to a soft light that once again seemed to come from the walls.

The walls here were also smooth, but instead of having the look of fused glass, these tunnels appeared to be fashioned from purest silver. With purposeful strides, Semyon led them through the twisting labyrinth of the incredible tunnels, apparently taking turns at random, but refusing to answer any questions as to their route.

Zouche jabbed his elbow into Dalia’s side. ‘Wherever this takes us, remember what we talked about on the mag-lev,’ he cautioned.

‘What was that?’ asked Caxton.

‘Nothing,’ said Dalia. ‘Just Zouche being paranoid.’

‘Paranoid am I?’ smiled Zouche. ‘Remind me of that when this Dragon’s devouring you, Dalia. See how paranoid I am then, eh?’

Eventually, Semyon brought them out onto a wide ledge high up in a glittering cavern of blinding silver that put Dalia in mind of the hollow core of the planet, such was its size. It was the largest internal space any of them had ever seen or could imagine, the uttermost reaches soaring above and below them, and the shimmering walls curving out to either side of them like the largest amphitheatre ever conceived.

‘Behold the Dragon!’ cried Semyon, moving to stand before a wooden lectern that was incongruous for its very normality. A thick book with a worn leather binding sat atop the lectern, next to a simple quill and inkwell.

Dalia looked out over the vast expanse of silver that was the interior of the cave, half-expecting to see some winged beast launch itself from its lair.

She glanced over at Caxton and Rho-mu 31, who both shrugged, both equally as puzzled as her. Severine shuffled forward to the edge of the jutting promontory they stood on, her eyes with a glazed, faraway look.

‘Severine, watch out,’ cautioned Zouche, looking over the edge. ‘It’s a long way down.’

‘This place feels… strange,’ said Severine, a tremor of disquiet in her voice. ‘Do any of the rest of you feel that?’

Dalia saw Severine looking in confusion at the distant walls of the gargantuan cavern, blinking rapidly and shaking her head as though trying to dislodge a troublesome thought.

‘If the Dragon is chained somewhere in here, I expect it’s bound to feel a little strange,’ said Dalia. She squinted at the far off walls, though their unbroken, reflective sheen made it hard to focus properly.

‘No,’ insisted Severine, pointing with her good arm at the vast shimmering silver walls and roof. ‘It’s more than that. The angles and the perspective… they’re… all… wrong! Look!’

As though Severine’s words had unlocked some hidden aspect of the cavern, each of them cried out as the sheer impossibility of its geometry, previously concealed from their frail human senses, was suddenly and horrifyingly revealed.

Dalia blinked in confusion as a sudden wave of vertigo seized her, and she grasped Rho-mu 31’s arm to steady herself. Though her eyes told her that the walls of the cavern were impossibly distant, her brain could not mesh what she was seeing and what her mind was processing.

The angles were impossible, the geometry insane. Distance was irrelevant and perspective a lie. Every rule of normality was turned upside down in an instant and the natural order of the universe was overthrown in this new, terrifying vision of distorted reality. The cavern seemed to pulse in every direction at once, compressing and contracting in unfeasible ways, moving as rock was never meant to move.

This was no cavern. Was this entire space, the walls and floor, the air and every molecule within it, part of some vast intelligence, a being or construct of ancient malice and phenomenal, primeval power? Such a thing had no name; for what use would a being that had brought entire civilisations into existence and then snuffed them out on a whim have of a name? It had been abroad in the galaxy for millions of years before humanity had been a breath in the creator’s mouth, had drunk the hearts of stars and been worshipped as a god in a thousand galaxies.

It was everywhere and nowhere at once. All powerful and trapped at the same time.

The monstrous horror of its very existence threatened to shatter the walls of her mind, and in desperation, Dalia looked down at her feet in an attempt to convince herself that the laws of perspective still held true in relation to her own body. Her existence in the face of this infinite impossibility was meaningless, but she recognised that only by small victories might she hold on to her fracturing reason.

‘No,’ she whispered, feeling her grip on the three-dimensionality of her surroundings slipping as the distance to her feet seemed to stretch out into infinity. Her vertigo suddenly swamped her and she dropped to her knees as her vision stretched and swelled, the interior of the cavern suddenly seeming to be as vast as the universe and as compressed as a singularity within the same instant.

She felt the threads of her sanity unravelling in the face of this distorted reality, her brain unable to cope with the sensory overload it was failing to process.

A hand grasped the sleeve of her robe, and she looked into the lined, serious face of Zouche. With a gasping snap, her focus returned, as though the squat machinist was an anchor of solidity in an ocean of madness.

‘Don’t look at it,’ advised Zouche. ‘Keep focused on me!’

Dalia nodded, her senses numbed by the violated angles and utter wrongness of the cavern walls and the thing they cloaked from view. How had she not noticed it before? Had it taken her senses a moment to try to process the sheer impossibility of what she saw?

Even knowing the warped nature of what she was experiencing, she still felt dizzy and disorientated, so she followed Zouche’s advice and kept her attention firmly focused on his loyal face.

She took a series of deep breaths with her eyes shut before pushing herself to her feet and turning to face Adept Semyon, who stood beside the lectern. The dark-robed adept and his towering combat servitor were an unwavering slice of reality amid the chaos of her unmade vision, and the more she concentrated on him, the more her brain forced the anarchy of angles and rogue geometry into a semblance of normality.

She could still sense the roiling power and madness behind the thin veil of reality her mind had imposed, but pushed the thought of it to the very back of her skull.

Caxton lay curled in a foetal ball on the ground, his eyes screwed shut and a thin line of foam dribbling from his mouth. Rho-mu 31 was down on one knee as though in prayer, gripping his weapon stave tightly as he fought down the maddening vision in his head.

Severine stood where Dalia remembered her, staring out over the expanse of the cavern at the furthest extent of the ledge.

‘I understand,’ Dalia told Semyon. ‘The Dragon… I don’t know what it is, but I know where it is.’

‘Do you?’ asked Semyon. ‘Tell me.’

‘This cavern… everything in it. This is it. Or at least a sliver of it.’

Semyon nodded. ‘A tomb and prison all in one.’

‘How?’

Semyon beckoned her over to the lectern and opened the book. ‘Look. Know.’

Dalia took halting steps towards him, feeling the strange sense of inevitability that had gripped her when they had travelled on the mag-lev. She had a sudden sense that she was meant to do this, that she had been heading towards this moment all her life.

She reached the lectern and looked down at the book, its pages filled with the tightly knotted scrawl of a madman with too much to say and too little space to write it. The words made no sense to her, the language archaic, the lettering too small and compressed.

Even as she tried to tell Semyon she couldn’t read his words, he reached over the book and took her hands in a grip of iron as its pages turned in a frantic blur of parchment.

‘No… please…’ she begged. ‘I don’t want it!’

‘I said the same thing,’ said Semyon. ‘But he doesn’t care what we want. We have a duty.’

Dalia felt the inhuman fire in Semyon’s blood through the searing heat of his hands. The pain was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the terror that filled her at the dreadful truths contained in the immortal depths of his eyes.

She tried to look away, but his gaze held her locked tight.

His skin blazed with a pure golden light. ‘Look into my eyes and see the Dragon’s doom!’

And in one awful rushing flood of knowledge, Dalia saw everything.

As Sigismund’s companies landed at Mondus Occulum, the rest of the Imperial expeditionary force was fighting all across the surface of Mars. After a rapid deployment under fire in the shadow of Pavonis Mons, thirteen companies of the Saturnine Hoplites advanced on the lines of circumvallation surrounding the forge of Ipluvien Maximal.

At first, the soldiers of Saturn made good progress, their heavy armour soaking up the fire from the enemy warriors tasked with manning the rearward-facing defences, but within hours, a host of skitarii surged from the ridged landscape of the Gigas Fossae to flank them.

Hundreds died in every surge and clash of arms, nightmarishly augmented warriors tearing through the ranks of the horrified Imperial soldiers before finally being brought down. Beetle-backed servitors with spiked armour and hissing weapon arms bounded forward, unleashing rippling beams of incandescent light that shrieked like banshees and incinerated men and obliterated armoured vehicles with equal ease.

Bizarre tanks scuttled forward on spider-like legs to clamber over the wrecks of destroyed vehicles and slice through armour and flesh with every sweep of their energy-sheathed pincer arms. Within minutes, the Imperial advance was in danger of becoming a rout until a company of super-heavy tanks rolled through the centre of the Imperial lines to tear through the vile horde of the enemy with their enormous guns.

With the support of so many colossal armoured fortresses, the Saturnine forces rallied, quickly encircled the enemy counterattack and crushed it utterly. With their flanks secure, the battered and wary Imperial soldiers continued their attempt to relieve the siege of Maximal’s forge.

Further south, two companies of Imperial Fists and four regiments of Jovian Grenadiers under the command of Captain Camba-Diaz made planetfall in the Mondus Gamma forge complex, but unlike Sigismund’s warriors at Mondus Occulum, they were unwelcome arrivals.

As Sigismund secured vast quantities of munitions for transport back to Terra, nearly two thousand aircraft – Stormbirds, Thunderhawks and Army drop-ships – swooped on Mondus Gamma under the cover of an ash storm blowing in from the Solis Planum. In the wake of a furious volley of missiles and cannon fire, the assaulters blasted their way into the production facilities of southern sub-hive factorum.

Surprise was total, and led by hundreds of warriors in golden-yellow battleplate, over fifteen thousand Imperial soldiers stormed the forge’s defences, rapidly seizing the armaments temples before spreading out to secure the armouries in a textbook example of multiple take and hold assaults. With the dropsite secure, wide-bellied supply carriers dropped into the forge, and an army of loader servitors, overseers and quartermasters began the liberation of the vast quantities of armour and weapons.

As sudden and shocking as the Astartes assault had been, the unknown quantity of the defences was quickly and horribly revealed. Within moments of the carriers landing, the monstrosities of Lukas Chrom’s forge rose to its defence.

A host of screeching battle robots, their weapons limned with unholy light, attacked and burned and crushed scores of desperate men with blazing fire lances and power maces. Alongside the robots came a tide of blank-faced automatons, each one fighting with deadly ferocity and unbreakable resolve. These monstrous machines slowed, and finally held the merciless advance of the Astartes, giving the forge’s mortal defenders the opportunity to launch a ferocious counterattack.

An endless tide of screaming tech-guard, thousands of hideously altered weaponised servitors and yet more battle robots converged on the Astartes and Army units from multiple directions in perfectly coordinated phalanxes. Only the superhuman resolve and tenacity of the Imperial Fists prevented their position from being overrun in the first moments of the counterattack.

Desperate soldiers fought and died as loaders and riggers rushed to evacuate as many suits of armour and crates of weapons as possible from the blazing forge, onto the waiting carriers.

With every second, men were dying, but Camba-Diaz knew that it was a small price to pay in order to secure as many weapons and suits of armour as possible.

Terra would stand or fall depending on what they could achieve here.

Dalia smelled the hot, dry air of another world, the spiced fragrances drifting from lands far away and countries as yet undiscovered. The cavern beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus faded from view, the silver lines that defied rational perception easing into obscurity and replaced with the soft curves of desert dunes and the vast expanse of a breathtakingly beautiful azure sky.

A ferocious heat enveloped her and she gasped as it hit her like an opened blast furnace. The vista was at once strange and familiar to her, and her fear faded as she suddenly understood where and when she was.

She stood on the baking sands of a high dune, looking over a wide river valley where a great city of sun-bleached stone reared up on a plateau of dark rock. From the gates of the city marched a solemn procession of women in white, bearing a silk-veiled litter of gold and jade.

‘You know where you are?’ said a voice behind her and she turned to see Adept Semyon.

‘I think so,’ said Dalia. ‘This is Old Earth. Before Unification.’

Semyon nodded. ‘Long before Unification. The tribes of men are still divided and know nothing of the glories and perils beyond their world.’

‘And what is that city over there?’ asked Dalia.

‘Still thinking in such literal terms, girl,’ chuckled Semyon. ‘We are still in the cave of the Dragon. All this is a manipulation of your mind’s perception centres by the book to show you what needs to be shown. But in answer to your question, the city is called Cyrene and this is a representation of a land once known as Libya. It is an ancient land, though the people you see before you are far from the first to settle here. The Phoenicians came here first, then the Grekans, then the Romanii, and finally the Arabii. Well, not finally, but that’s who rules now.’

‘And when are we?’

‘Ah, well, the text isn’t clear, though I believe this happened some time in either the eleventh or twelfth century.’

‘So long ago.’

‘A long time by anyone’s reckoning,’ agreed Semyon. ‘Save perhaps his.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Dalia. ‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Never mind. You’ll understand soon enough.’

Dalia fought down her annoyance at Semyon’s cryptic answers and said, ‘So we’re not really here and this is just what’s in the book?’

‘Now you begin to understand.’

‘So who are those women?’ asked Dalia, pointing towards the procession as it made its way down a road of hard-packed earth towards a long scar in the ground from which drifted a mephitic fog.

‘They are the handmaidens of the King of Cyrene’s daughter, Cleodolinda, and they are taking her to her death. Within that wound in the earth dwells the Dragon, a fearsome creature recently awoken after a great war with its kin, which seeks refuge on this world to feed and regain its strength.’

‘The Dragon.’

‘Yes, the Dragon,’ agreed Semyon. ‘It has slain all the knights of the city and demands the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden every day. It feasts on their terror, growing stronger with each feeding, but all the young girls of Cyrene are dead. The king’s daughter alone remains, and now she goes to her death.’

‘Can’t we do anything?’

Semyon sighed. ‘Can you not grasp that this has already happened, girl? This is ancient history we are watching, the birth of a legend that will echo down through the ages in one form or another for all time. Look!’

Dalia followed Semyon’s pointing digit and saw a lone warrior knight in golden armour and a scarlet-plumed helmet riding towards the procession of women on a mighty charger of midnight black. He carried a tall lance of purest silver, from which flew a long red and white banner depicting a soaring eagle grasping a bolt of lightning.

‘Who is that?’ asked Dalia, though she already knew.

‘At this point in time, he is known as a soldier of the Emperor Diocletian, one who has risen to high honour in the army and who is passing through Libya to join his men.’

Dalia almost wept at the sight of the knight, a being of a fairer presence than any she had seen and one whose wondrous power was undimmed by the passage of years.

The knight spurred his horse and swiftly overtook the procession, riding towards the dark scar in the earth. No sooner had he halted his mount and set his shield upon his arm than the Dragon surged from its lair, roaring with a sound louder than thunder.

Dalia’s hands flew to her mouth and she cried out as she saw the Dragon’s monstrous form. In shape it was half crawling beast, half loathsome bird, its scaled head immense and its tail twenty metres long. Its terrible winged body was covered with scales, so strong and bright and smooth that they were like a knight’s armour.

The light of devoured stars shone at its breast and malignant fire burned in its eyes.

The warrior knight leapt to meet the Dragon, striking the monster with his lance, but its scales were so hard that the weapon broke into a thousand pieces. From the back of his rearing horse, the warrior smote the dragon with his sword, but the beast struck at him with talons like scythe blades. The warrior’s armour split open and Dalia saw blood pouring down his leg in a bright stream.

The Dragon towered over its foe, dealing him fearful blows, but the knight caught them upon his shield and thrust his sword against the Dragon’s belly. The scales of the beast were like steel plates, rippling like liquid mercury as they withstood the knight’s every attack. Then the Dragon, infuriated by the thrust, lashed itself against the knight and his horse, and cast lightning upon him from its eyes. The knight’s helmet was torn from him and Dalia saw his face shine out from the battle, pale, lit by some radiance that shone from within. As he thrust at the Dragon, that radiance grew in power, so that at last it was like the light of a newborn sun.

The Dragon looped itself around the knight, clawing and biting at his armour and roaring in triumph. Then, as though the thought had come from the warrior, Dalia saw that, no matter how the Dragon writhed, it sought always to protect one place in its body, a place beneath its left wing.

‘Strike, warrior, strike!’ she urged.

As if hearing her words, the knight bent downward and lunged forward, thrusting his sword with a mighty bellow into the Dragon’s body.

The creature gave out a deafening roar that shook stones from the city walls and the burning radiance in its breast was extinguished. Its grasp upon the knight loosened and the lightning faded from its eyes as the great beast fell to the ground.

Perceiving that the Dragon was helpless, though not dead, the knight untied the long white banner from his shattered lance and bound it around the neck of the monster.

With the Dragon subdued, the knight turned to the astounded handmaidens and the people of the city, who streamed from its gates in a riot of adulation. The knight raised a hand to quiet them, and such was his presence and radiance that all who beheld him fell silent.

‘The Dragon is defeated!’ cried the warrior. ‘But it is beyond even my power to destroy, so I shall drag it in fetters from this place and bind it deep in the darkness, where it will remain until the end of all things.’

So saying, the knight rode off with the Dragon bound behind him, leaving the scene behind him as immobile as a painting.

The image of the city and the desert were frozen in time, and Dalia turned to Semyon. ‘Is that all of it?’

‘It’s all the Dragon remembers of it, yes,’ said Semyon. ‘Or at least a version of its memories. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not sometimes. I listen to its impotent roars of hatred as it watches from its gaol on Mars and write what comes out, the Emperor “slaying” the Dragon of Mars… the grand lie of the Red Planet and the truth that would shake the galaxy if it were known. But truth, as are all things, is a moving target. What of this is real and what is fantasy… well, who can tell?’

Dalia looked towards the horizon over which the knight had vanished. ‘Then that was?’

‘The Emperor? Yes,’ said Semyon, turning and walking away as the reality of the desert landscape began to unweave. ‘He brought the defeated Dragon to Mars and bound it beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus.’

‘But why?’

‘The Emperor sees things we do not,’ said Semyon. ‘He knows the future and he guides us towards it. A nudge here, seeding a prepared prophecy of his coming there, the beginnings of the transhumanist movement, the push from humanity’s understanding of science to its mastery… all of it by his design, working towards one glorious union in the future where the forges of Mars would perceive the Emperor as the divinity for whom they had been waiting for centuries.’

‘You mean the Emperor orchestrated the evolution of the Mechanicum?’

‘Of course,’ said Semyon. ‘He knew that one day he would need such a mighty organisation to serve him, and from the Dragon’s dreams came the first machines of the priests of Mars. Without the Dragon there would have been no Mechanicum, and without the Mechanicum, the Emperor’s grand dream of a united galaxy for Humanity would have withered on the vine.’

Dalia tried to grasp the unimaginable scale of the Emperor’s designs, the clarity of a vision that could set schemes in motion that would not come to fruition for over twenty thousand years. It was simply staggering that anyone, even the Emperor, could have so carefully and precisely orchestrated the destiny of so many with such skill and cold ruthlessness.

The scale of the deception was beyond measure and the callousness of it took her breath away. To lie to so many people, to twist the destiny of a planet to suit one man’s aims, even a being as lofty as the Emperor, was a crime of such monstrous proportions that Dalia’s mind shied away from that awful calumny.

‘If the truth of this became known,’ breathed Dalia. ‘It would tear the Mechanicum apart.’

Semyon shook his head as the last vestiges of the sands of Libya faded away to be replaced with darkness all around them. ‘Not just the Mechanicum, but the Imperium too,’ he said. ‘I know this knowledge is a terrible burden to bear, but the Treaty of Olympus bound the fates of both Throne and Forge together in a union that must never be undone. Neither can survive without the other, but should this become known, then those who hold truth sacred above all else will not see that, they will only see the righteousness of their cause. In any case, the Mechanicum is already tearing itself apart, but the horrors unleashed by the Warmaster’s betrayal will be as nothing if Mars and Terra make war upon one another.’

Semyon fixed Dalia with a gaze of such pity that she shuddered. ‘But it is the duty of the Guardians of the Dragon, souls chosen by the Emperor, to ensure that such a thing does not happen.’

‘You keep the Dragon bound?’ asked Dalia as she began to perceive faint outlines of her surroundings re-establishing themselves.

‘No, the Dragon is bound by chains far stronger than one such as I could devise. The Guardians simply maintain what the Emperor wrought,’ explained Semyon. ‘He knew that one day the Dragon’s lost children would seek its resting place, and we are here to ensure that they do not find it.’

‘You said “we”, but I’m no Guardian,’ said Dalia warily.

‘You have not guessed why your every footstep has brought you to this place, girl?’

‘No,’ hissed Dalia as Semyon reached out and took her hands.

At the moment of contact, Dalia gasped in pain as the world around her returned, and she found herself once again standing at the lectern in the vast cave of silver.

She tried to pull her hands away, but Semyon’s grip was unbreakable. Looking into his eyes, she saw the weight of a thousand years and more in those depthless pools, a duty and honour that was like nothing else in the galaxy.

‘I am sorry,’ said Semyon, ‘but my span, though much extended, is now over.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, Dalia, you must fulfil your destiny and become the Guardian of the Dragon.’

Dalia felt the heat in Semyon’s hands spread into her flesh, a golden radiance that filled her with unimaginable wellbeing. She wanted to cry out in ecstasy as she felt every decaying fibre in her body surge with a new lease of life, every withered cell and every portion of her flesh blooming as a power undreamed of filled her.

Her body was reborn, filled with a sliver of the power and knowledge of a world’s most singular individual, power and knowledge that had been passed down from Guardian to Guardian over the millennia, a burden and an honour in one unasked-for gift. With that knowledge, her anger at the Emperor’s deception was swept away as she saw the ultimate, horrifying fate of the human race bereft of his guidance.

She saw his single-minded, pitiless drive to steer his entire race along a narrow path of survival only he could see, a life that allowed no love, few friends and an eternity of sacrifice.

Dalia wanted to scream, feeling the power threaten to consume her, the awesome ferocity of it almost burning away all the things that made her who she was. She fought to hold on to her identity, but she was the last leaf on a dying tree and she felt her memories and sense of self subsumed into the fate the Emperor had decreed for her.

At last the roaring power within her was spent, its work to remould her form complete, and she let out a great, shuddering breath as she realised she was still herself.

She was still Dalia Cythera, but so much more as well.

Semyon released her hands and stepped away from her with a look of contented release upon his face.

‘Goodbye, Dalia,’ said Semyon.

The adept’s skin greyed and his entire body dissolved into a fine golden dust, leaving only his aged robes to fall to the rocky floor. Dalia looked over at the hulking servitor that had accompanied the adept and was not surprised when it also disintegrated into dust.

Such a sight would normally have shocked Dalia, but she felt nothing beyond a detached sense of completeness at the adept’s dissolution.

‘Dalia,’ said Severine, and she turned to see her friend looking directly at her, a look of manic desperation knotting her features as tears of grief and horror spilled down her cheeks.

Severine smiled weakly, looking up at the distant cavern roof, and said, ‘You brought me the Dragon, Dalia, but I wish you hadn’t.’

‘Wait,’ said Dalia as Severine stepped towards the drop only a foot behind her.

‘It’s a mercy, I think, that we can’t normally see the terrible things that hide in the darkness or know how frail our reality really is,’ wept Severine. ‘I’m sorry… but if you could see as I now see, you would do the same as I.’

Severine stepped off the ledge.

3.04

First Captain Sigismund of the Imperial Fists watched as yet more metal-skinned containers were borne skyward on Fabricator Locum Kane’s gigantic Tsiolkovsky towers towards the container ships in orbit. The enormous structures were working at full capacity, and it still wasn’t fast enough, for his ship masters had just informed him of an enemy force closing in from the north-east: infantry, armour, skitarii and at least two Legios’ worth of engines.

It seemed Mondus Occulum’s privileged status was at an end.

Nothing of this mission to Mars had panned out the way it was supposed to, and Sigismund felt his anger gnawing at his bounds of control. Camba-Diaz and the Jovian regiments were embroiled in a fight for their lives at Mondus Gamma, and the Saturnine companies tasked with breaking the siege at Ipluvien Maximal’s forge had been repeatedly turned back by the horrifyingly altered weapon-creatures of the Dark Mechanicum.

Sigismund marched through the precisely organised ballet of servitors, loaders and speeding lifters carrying racks of armour and bolters, seeing the elegant form of the Fabricator Locum directing the work of his menials with calmly efficient waves of freshly-implanted manip arms.

Dust storms billowing in from the wastelands beyond the collapsed caldera of Uranius Patera rendered the gold of Sigismund’s battleplate ochre and stained the black and white of his personal heraldry, yet he was no less impressive a figure for such blemishes.

A host of similarly armoured warriors moved with the methodical precision for which the Imperial Fists were famed, working alongside mobs of Kane’s bulky lifter servitors to secure as much of the armour and weapon supplies as they could.

Sigismund’s companies had descended upon Mondus Occulum not knowing whether they would have to fight to secure the forge, and it was a relief to find that the Fabricator Locum still held true to the Throne of Terra.

Even Sigismund had been grudgingly impressed by the efforts made by Kane to ensure the smooth transfer of supplies from his forge to the ships anchored at the tops of the Tsiolkovsky towers. As impressive as Kane’s efforts were, Sigismund knew they would be forced to leave the bulk of the materiel produced here behind.

Kane turned at the sound of Sigismund’s footfalls, a weary smile on his smooth face.

‘First Captain?’ said Kane. ‘Have you heard from Camba-Diaz? How goes the fighting at Mondus Gamma?’

‘Desperate,’ admitted Sigismund. ‘Camba-Diaz has secured the armour forges and the ammunition silos, but his company is outnumbered a hundred to one. The traitor Chrom’s forces are pushing him back to the landing fields and his losses are grievous. We will not be able to hold the forge, but a great deal of essential supplies have been secured for transit to Terra.’

‘Chrom’s skitarii always were brutal things,’ said Kane, shaking his head in wonder that things had come to this. ‘And the number of his robot maniples is considerable.’

Sigismund felt his gauntlet curl around the grip of his bolter. ‘Aye, and it offends me that such mindless machines spill the blood of Astartes. But enough of Camba-Diaz, how close are you to completing the evacuation of armour and weapons from here?’

‘The work proceeds,’ said Kane. ‘Already we have shipped over twelve thousand suits and twice as many weapons.’

‘I will be blunt, Kane,’ said Sigismund. ‘It must go faster. We have little time left to us.’

‘I assure you we are going as fast as we can, First Captain.’

‘Yet still it must be faster,’ stated Sigismund. ‘Orbital tracks show a sizeable force of enemy troops moving in from the north-east. They may be upon us any minute.’

Kane’s eyes flickered as he inloaded the feeds from the surveyor systems of the ships in orbit, and his manip arms clenched as he saw the size of the force converging on his forge.

‘Two Legios!’ exclaimed Kane. ‘Over sixty engines!’

‘And the rest,’ said Sigismund.

‘Those banners,’ said Kane, haptically sorting the wealth of feeds from those satellites still in orbit around Mars. ‘They belong to Urtzi Malevolus. Damn, but there’s a lot of them. Can you hold against that many, First Captain? We must save Mondus Occulum!’

Sigismund hesitated before answering, his desire to wreak a bloody vengeance on the heads of those who rebelled against the Emperor warring with the mission his primarch had given him of securing the armour and weapons of Kane’s forge.

He sighed. ‘No, we cannot. The forces arrayed against us are too many and my orders do not allow for futile gestures of defiance.’

‘Futile defiance?’ exclaimed Kane. ‘This is my forge we’re talking about. What could be less futile than defending the very place that fabricates the armour that shields you and the weapons you bear?’

Sigismund shook his head. ‘I don’t have time to debate this with you, Kane. Speed up the loading by whatever means you can, but within the hour we must be away or we will not be leaving at all. Do you understand that simple fact?’

‘I understand,’ snapped Kane. ‘But you must understand that if Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma fall, you will have no way of replenishing the combat losses you will sustain in any meaningful way.’

Sigismund was about to reply when one of the Tsiolkovsky towers exploded.

The mighty structure spewed fire, and debris fell lazily from the ruptured portion of the tower as metres-thick guys snapped and twanged. Black smoke curled upward from the site of the explosion and a terrible scream of ruptured metal and torn carbon nanotubes rent the air as the tower leaned and bent as though no more substantial than a length of rope.

More explosions boomed skyward on the crater’s edge and the echoes of their detonations rolled over the landing fields.

‘No more time, Kane,’ snarled Sigismund. ‘They have range on us already.’

The distant tower came down in a rippling series of crashing detonations, trailing a city’s worth of rubble and twisted metal in its wake. Huge manufactories, acres of industrial landscape and forests of towering coolant towers were smashed to pulverised dust as entire worker districts vanished, flattened in an instant by the monstrous weight of debris.

A massive cloud of dust and ash billowed outward from the collapsed tower like the blast wave of an atomic explosion. The ground shook with the force of the impacts, and Sigismund heard secondary detonations as enemy fire began to pound the outlying segments of the forge to destruction.

A thunderous, booming horn-blast echoed across the landing fields, and Sigismund looked up in time to see a host of towering silhouettes emerge from the red-lit smoke of the tower’s destruction. Six Warlord Titans, their hulls blackened and scarified, roared in triumph, their weapon arms blazing with apocalyptic fire that reduced towering structures to rubble and entire swathes of infrastructure to little more than vaporised metal.

‘Get to your ship, Kane,’ ordered Sigismund. ‘Now!’

‘My forge!’ cried Kane. ‘We can’t just abandon it!’

Sigismund grabbed Kane’s arm and said, ‘Your forge is already lost! Now get to your damned ship. Your skills will be needed in the days ahead.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that with Kelbor-Hal’s treachery, you are now the Fabricator General.’

‘But what about Zeth? Maximal?’ shouted Kane over the deafening crescendo of the advancing Titans and the destruction of his forge. ‘What of them?’

‘We can do nothing for them!’ shouted Sigismund. ‘They must stand or fall on their own.’

Dalia stood open-mouthed, staring numbly at the empty space where, not a moment before, Severine had been standing. She couldn’t comprehend what had just happened and her brain fought to process the knowledge that her friend was dead.

She took a horrified lurch towards the edge of the promontory, but a powerful hand seized her arm. Rho-mu 31 held her firm and said, ‘Don’t.’

‘Severine!’ wailed Dalia, her legs turning to the consistency of wet paper and giving way beneath her. Rho-mu 31 bore her gently to the ground as aching sobs burst from her. She held him tightly, burying her face in the fabric of his cloak as she wept for her lost friend.

‘Why did she do it?’ asked Dalia, looking up at Rho-mu 31 when her sobs had subsided.

‘I do not know,’ admitted Rho-mu 31, as Zouche came up behind Dalia and placed his hand upon her shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort.

‘I think our Severine was a girl who depended on certainties,’ mused Zouche. ‘This place… well, it strips away the illusions that allow us to function and shows you that there’s no such thing as certainties in this universe. Some minds can’t handle that kind of truth.’

‘She’s gone,’ whispered Dalia.

‘Yes, Dalia-girl, she’s gone,’ said Zouche, his voice choked with emotion. ‘With all that’s happened, I’m surprised any of us are still here.’

‘Caxton!’ cried Dalia, suddenly remembering that when she had last seen him, he had been insensible on the ground.

‘I think he’ll be fine,’ said Rho-mu 31 as Dalia disentangled herself from him and stood on unsteady legs. ‘He blacked out when everything went… strange.’

‘Like a fuse or a circuit breaker,’ elaborated Zouche, making his way over to the lectern, upon which sat Semyon’s book. ‘He should be fine when he wakes up.’

Dalia saw Caxton lying in the recovery position, his chest rising and falling with rhythmic breaths. He was alive and she could sense the bruised insides of his mind already beginning to heal. She wondered at how she could see such things, and then remembered the power that had flowed into her at Semyon’s dissolution.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear to think of this place claiming any more lives.’

Zouche lifted a handful of golden dust that was all that remained of Adept Semyon and his battle servitor. ‘What happened here?’ he asked. ‘They aged a thousand years in an instant.’

‘More, I think,’ said Dalia. ‘I think Semyon had been a Guardian for a long, long time.’

‘So now what do we do?’ asked Zouche, his eyes scanning over the pages of Semyon’s book. ‘We found the Dragon, so do we free it?’

‘No, absolutely not,’ said Dalia. ‘You were right after all, Zouche. Some things are meant to be left in darkness forever. We were never meant to come here to release it.’

‘Then why did you have to come at all?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘I think you know,’ said Dalia, turning away from Zouche and facing Rho-mu 31 as flecks of golden light simmered in her eyes. ‘To make sure it stayed entombed. Semyon is dead, but there needs to be a Guardian of the Dragon.’

‘And that’s you?’ asked Rho-mu 31.

‘Yes.’

‘No, Dalia!’ said Zouche. ‘Say that it’s not so! You?’

‘Yes,’ said Dalia. ‘It was always me, but I won’t be alone. Will I, Rho-mu 31?’

Rho-mu 31 stood tall and planted his weapon stave in the ground. He knelt before Dalia and said, ‘For as long as I remain functional I will protect you.’

‘With the power I have now, that may be a very long time, my friend.’

‘So be it,’ said Rho-mu 31.

Zouche and Rho-mu 31 carried Caxton between them as they made their way back through the twisting maze of the Dragon’s caves. Dalia led the way, guiding them unerringly along the path they had followed to get here. Their mood was subdued, for the death of Severine was heavy in their thoughts, and no one spoke as they passed through Semyon’s abandoned laboratory. Once again they trudged through the glittering tunnels that led to the dark, shadow-cloaked grabens of the Noctis Labyrinthus, before finally emerging into the chill air.

‘I think I hate this place,’ said Zouche, as Rho-mu 31 took the unconscious Caxton from him. The Protector shrugged Caxton onto his shoulder.

‘I wouldn’t blame you,’ said Dalia. ‘It’s a place of despair. It always has been and I think it’s that more than the Dragon that’s kept people away.’

‘And you’re sure you have to stay?’ asked Zouche, his eyes brimming with tears.

‘I’m sure,’ said Dalia, leaning down to embrace him. He put his arms around her and held her tightly, letting the tears fall without shame.

‘I’ll never see you again, will I?’ asked Zouche when she released him.

She shook her head. ‘No, you won’t. And you can’t ever tell anyone about me or this place. If anyone asks, tell them I died when the Kaban Machine attacked us in the tunnel.’

‘And what about Caxton?’ asked Zouche, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his robe.

Dalia choked back a sob and said, ‘Tell him… tell him I think I could have loved him. And tell him I’m sorry I never got the chance to find out.’

‘I’ll tell him that, right enough,’ nodded Zouche, turning to Rho-mu 31. ‘And you’re staying too?’

‘I am,’ agreed Rho-mu 31. ‘It seems every Guardian must have a protector.’

Zouche shook hands with Rho-mu 31 and looked over his shoulder at the lonely shape of the Cargo-5, which sat where they had left it beyond the cave mouth.

‘Ah… a thought occurs,’ he said. ‘How are we supposed to get home? Wasn’t the Five’s battery dead?’

Dalia smiled and the golden energy passed to her by Adept Semyon flashed in her eyes.

‘I think I can make sure it has enough power for you to get back to the Magma City.’

Zouche shrugged as they set off towards the abandoned Cargo-5. ‘I’m not even sure I want to know how you’ll manage that, but I’m never one to question my good fortune. Not that I’ve ever had any to question, you understand.’

The Cargo-5 exploded with a thunderous, booming detonation that echoed from the sheer sides of the Noctis Labyrinthus. The blast wave hurled them to the ground as twisted metal wreckage fell in a burning rain.

Dalia looked up, blinking away bright afterimages of the explosion.

‘What happened?’ gasped Zouche.

Dalia groaned as she saw their attacker rolling forward on its heavy-gauge track unit.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Oh, Emperor protect us, no!’

It was the Kaban Machine.

High in the Chamber of Vesta, Adept Koriel Zeth watched the images playing out over the burnished screens of her forge with a sense of utter disbelief and horror.

The main screens displayed her own forge, a city on the verge of collapse. The outer hives and manufactories were in ruins and everything she had built over the centuries had been flattened by the savage, unrelenting bombardment of the Dark Mechanicum.

Ipluvien Maximal fared no better, his promised relief pulling back in the face of unbreakable resistance from Kelbor-Hal’s freakish creations. Maximal’s outer walls were breached in a dozen places and the fighting surged from weapon shop to ore refinery to librarium as the hordes of mutated servitors and abominable war machines poured in.

Both Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma were burning, vast swathes of machinery and manufacturing capacity destroyed in barely a few hours worth of fighting. The loss of such irreplaceable technology and knowledge was like a knife in the guts, but worse than that, far worse than that, was the image on the central glass panel.

Like comets launched from the surface of Mars, the Imperial ships were fleeing for the heavens. Astartes and Army vessels jostled in the sky in their haste to depart the Red Planet.

When her surveyor systems had first registered their launch, Zeth had assumed they would arc over and swoop south towards the Magma City, but their fiery ascent had continued until it was obvious they were accelerating to escape velocity.

Confirmation, if confirmation were needed, came in the form of a terse, encrypted data squirt from the Fabricator Locum, who, it seemed, was also leaving Mars.

+++Imperial forces withdrawing from Mars+++Save what you can+++Destroy the rest+++

The human part of her screamed at this betrayal, but the dominant, analytical part of her brain could see the sense in this retreat. The Astartes had no doubt secured a great deal of the new marks of armour in preparation for the campaign against the Legions of Horus Lupercal, and to lose them all in a futile last stand made no logical sense.

Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Zeth opened up her noospheric link to Ipluvien Maximal, Princeps Cavalerio of Legio Tempestus and Lords Caturix and Verticorda of the Knights of Taranis.

‘I presume you have all seen this?’ she said as their holographic images appeared on the glass panels above her.

‘I have,’ said Cavalerio, projecting the image of the man he had been before his interment in the amniotic casket.

‘Yes,’ confirmed Maximal. ‘I cannot believe it. The knowledge that will be lost…’

Lord Caturix shook his head. ‘That it should come to this, abandoned by Terra.’

Lord Verticorda shook his head. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘The Emperor would never abandon us.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Zeth, ‘but it appears we can expect no more help from the Legions.’

‘So what are your orders, Adept Zeth?’ asked Princeps Cavalerio.

‘You heard Kane’s transmission?’

Their grim silence was all the answer she needed.

‘I won’t let Kelbor-Hal have my reactors,’ declared Maximal at last.

‘Nor will he have the Akashic reader,’ said Zeth sadly. ‘I had such high hopes for Dalia being able to make it work, but maybe it’s for the best. Perhaps no one should ever know everything. After all, when there is nothing left to discover, what is the point in life?’

‘Then there is only one order left to give,’ said Lord Verticorda.

Dalia saw the lethal machine roll towards them, crushing boulders beneath its weight, its weapon arms locking up ready to shoot. The barrels on an enormous rotary cannon whirred as they spooled up to fire once more and hissing gases vented from the plasma cannon mounted at its shoulder.

She could feel its anger towards her in the seething yellow glow of its sensor orbs, and with a swift flick of her mind, Dalia knew she wouldn’t be able to fool it again.

‘How did it find us?’ shouted Zouche.

‘It must have read our biometrics in the tunnel,’ she cried. ‘It realised its mistake eventually and it followed us here.’

‘Who cares how it found us?’ shouted Rho-mu 31, firing up his weapon stave and hauling Dalia back the way they had come. ‘Run! Get back to the cave! It won’t be able to follow us in!’

Dalia nodded, taking Zouche’s hand and sprinting for the cave mouth.

‘Do what you did before!’ cried Zouche. ‘Make it think we’re not here!’

‘I can’t,’ gasped Dalia as they ran. ‘It’s learned what I did and its mental architecture has evolved to stop me doing it again.’

Dalia looked over her shoulder and saw the metallic tentacles on its back whip up.

‘Get down!’ yelled Rho-mu 31, dragging her and Zouche to the ground.

They landed hard and rolled, dropping into a shallow trench cut by some ancient stream, as roaring sheets of whickering laser fire gouged glowing channels into the valley floor.

Zouche screamed as a sharp fragment of rock sliced his cheek.

Dalia wept bitter tears, expecting another barrage to finish them off at any second.

She flinched, curling into a tight ball of terror as a deafening, roaring blast of sawing gunfire echoed from the canyon walls. Another thunderous cascade of fire erupted and Dalia blinked in surprise as she realised the shots weren’t directed at them.

‘I don’t believe it,’ cried Rho-mu 31. Dalia looked over and saw that the glowing green of his eyes behind his bronze mask were alight with surprise.

Dalia propped herself up on one elbow and risked a glance over the torn, smoking lip of their fragile cover.

The Kaban Machine was still there, though its form was wreathed in flaring bursts of energy discharges as its void shields screamed and fought to hold their integrity.

Riding towards it were two glorious war machines in cobalt-blue armour, bearing the symbol of a wheel and lightning bolt upon their shoulder guards.

‘The Knights of Taranis!’ shouted Rho-mu 31.

Maven’s heart surged with savage, primal joy to see the enemy machine reel from the impacts of his weapons. Cronus had also struck true, and Equitos Bellum’s Manifold shone with the knowledge that they had finally found their quarry. His autoloaders thundered as they fed more shells into the cannon mounted on his arm and he felt the heat build as he unsheathed the four-metre war blade in his right fist.

The machine was just as he remembered it, squat and unlovely, a rotund engine of death and destruction hiding behind a sleeting sheen of rippling voids. Through the shimmering fields of his auspex he could read its energy signatures, and was once again struck by the cold, alien intelligence that lurked behind the yellow orbs of its sensor blisters as it ceased fire and turned towards him.

A small group of people sheltered from the machine’s fire in a chewed up ditch, a red-cloaked Protector and three others. Maven didn’t know who they were, but that this machine wanted them dead was reason enough for him to defend them.

‘Go right,’ voxed Maven to Cronus. ‘Let’s take this thing like we planned.’

Cronus was already moving, Pax Mortis loping across the rough, step-like terrain of the rocky valley, his carapace low to the ground and his weapon arms thrust out before him. Maven hauled his mount left and unleashed another rippling salvo of cannon fire towards the machine.

Once more its void shields sang with the impacts and Maven felt his mount’s exhilaration as a surge of adrenaline shot through his body. Equitos Bellum relished a fight, but the sense of striking back at their nemesis was above and beyond anything Maven had experienced.

He rode close to the ground, hard and fast for an outcrop of rock he had seen from further along the valley, feeling the heat of near misses as the enemy machine opened fire on him. His instinctual awareness of the battle was complete, his gut feel for the tactical situation flawless as he suddenly hauled back on the controls and skidded to a halt, one leg stretched out to the side at the sudden course change.

A barrage of shots hammered the outcrop, blasting it to splintered rubble and leaving a smoking crater in the aftermath of a thunderous explosion. Maven sidestepped and bounded forward, zigzagging at random across the ground, deliberately avoiding anything resembling a standard pattern evasion technique.

Whipping bursts of laser fire and sawing lines of shells sliced the air where the machine expected him to be.

Maven laughed, a wild roar of pleasure as Equitos Bellum responded to his touch, its healed limbs and wounded heart working with him against their enemy. Once again, Maven changed direction at random, urging his mount forward into the teeth of the machine’s weapons.

‘Old Stator would have my guts on a plate if he could see this,’ he hissed, fighting against decades of training to keep from using the very drills that had made him such a formidable warrior.

The machine opened fire, but once again Maven had outmanoeuvred it, his unpredictable motions and random jinks confusing whatever targeting wetware it employed. Maven watched it back away from him, its main guns swivelling in gimbal mounts as they tried to predict which way he would move.

The guns mounted on the thick dendrite tentacles swivelled, firing towards the remains of the burning Cargo-5. Cronus rode his Knight in a looping, jerking pattern of stops and starts, though Maven could see that his brother’s mount had taken several hits from the strength of his shield returns.

‘Mix it up more, Cronus!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t do anything it can predict!’

‘Shut up!’ snapped Cronus. ‘You break the rules all the time. It’s not so easy for me!’

Maven grinned, seeing the machine back away from him, spitting rock and gravel from beneath its tracks as it frantically reversed towards the wall of the canyon.

Maven let rip with another blast of cannon fire. Chunks of smashed rock fell from the cliff, as the machine swivelled on one track and his shots went wide.

‘Hell,’ said Maven. ‘It’s learning.’

Maven reversed the direction of his advance and, too late, realised his mistake.

A seething wall of laser fire hammered his frontal shields and the torso emitter blew out in a screaming wash of energy. He cried out as the discharge whiplashed through him in a howling gale of feedback.

Equitos Bellum faltered and Maven dropped his mount to one knee. Another blast struck the upper edges of his carapace armour and searing lances of pain shot through his shoulder. He tried to turn his mount to present a shielded section to the machine as more fire hammered him, and Maven felt his mount’s pain as his armour tore apart under the concentrated volley.

The armoured glass of his cockpit shattered, exploding inwards and slicing his face with razor-sharp fragments.

‘Cronus!’ yelled Maven as another impact sent a bolt of agony through his body.

Pax Mortis smashed through the flaming wreckage of the Cargo-5, both its arm weapons sheathed in fire. The enemy machine vanished in a blinding cascade of void flares, its shields buckling under the impacts.

Whatever form of reactor sat at its heart was capable of soaking up the punishment and holding. It turned its guns on Pax Mortis, and let rip with a barking roar of cannon fire that tore through the shields and the plating of Cronus’s waist mounting.

The Knight staggered, and Cronus bolted for the wall of obscuring smoke that billowed from the Cargo-5, but the machine had predicted such an obvious response, and a searing bolt of plasma slammed into the upper carapace of Pax Mortis, almost driving it to its knees.

Maven cried out as he saw his brother Knight stagger, but before the enemy machine could finish its work, Cronus surged forwards and darted into the smoke.

‘Its voids are too tough!’ shouted Cronus, his pain obvious even over the vox-link. ‘Our weapons won’t overload them!’

His comrade-in-arms had left himself dangerously exposed by coming to Maven’s aid, but their two-pronged assault had forced the enemy to dance to their tune, and they would never get a better chance to take it down.

‘Get ready!’ he replied. ‘We’ve got it where we want it!’

Faced with two enemies, the machine had backed against the cliffs of the valley, seeking to minimise the directions from which it could be attacked.

Just as Maven knew it would.

It was a standard, textbook manoeuvre.

Maven disengaged the auto-targeters and said, ‘You know the drills, but you don’t have the skills,’ and opened fire once more.

Instead of aiming for the machine, his gunfire tore into the rock walls above it, and a torrent of gigantic boulders fell in a thunderous avalanche from the cliffs, smashing into the upper vectors of the machine’s shields. Blooming explosions of light rippled from the machine, its voids screaming in protest, but still, impossibly, holding.

‘Now, Cronus!’ shouted Maven, pushing his wounded mount to its feet and charging his foe with a feral cry of battle-lust. He opened up with his cannon, hammering the machine’s upper shields. Even through the tumbling, roaring avalanche of rock and dust, the machine saw him coming and turned its guns on Equitos Bellum, just as Pax Mortis loomed from the smoke and joined its fire with that of Maven’s mount.

Already struggling to withstand the rain of debris falling from the cliff, the machine’s shield-emitters finally gave way under the concentrated fire of the two Knights.

Its void shields exploded outwards in a blinding blast wave, tearing the metallic weapon dendrites from its back and vaporising its left arm in a thunderous detonation. Smoke and sparks of jetting energy spewed from the machine’s ruptured flanks and its sensor blisters flickered madly, as though unable to comprehend how it had been hurt.

It rocked back, stunned and screaming in garbled bursts of binary that sliced over the Manifold and blew several of the augmitters inside Maven’s cockpit.

Maven rode through the billowing clouds of rock dust, seeing the spherical form of his long-sought-for enemy ahead of him. It was mortally wounded, but still had some fight left in it. Maven didn’t give it a chance and drove the full four metres of his energised war blade through its frontal section.

Its death scream shrieked in a pitiful wail of agonised binary, but Maven twisted his blade in the wound until at last its cries ceased and the light of its sensor blisters was extinguished.

Letting out a pent-up breath of battle fury and pain, Maven stepped back from the destroyed machine, feeling an overwhelming sense of closure as he stood over the shell of his defeated enemy. The pain from his psychostigmatic wounds diminished and Maven smiled as he felt Equitos Bellum’s satisfaction wash through him in a rush of approval.

The essence of what made a Knight such a fearsome war machine moved through his battered flesh to ease his suffering, filling his body and rushing along his aching limbs.

Too late, Maven felt the soul of his mount surge to the fore, the soothing balm that eased his pain wielding him as though he were the mount and it the rider. He felt the raw, ferocious heart of his machine, the terrifying power that lurked in the heart of the Manifold, take control of his limbs and turn Equitos Bellum towards the scar in the earth where the targets of the enemy machine had taken cover.

Through the blown-out cockpit glass, Maven saw a Mechanicum Protector, leading a slightly built woman with eyes that shone with a golden light towards him. A red cloak billowed at the shoulders of the Protector, who carried a weapon stave hung with the number grid symbol of Koriel Zeth. Behind them was a short, robed man who knelt beside the prone form of what looked like a tonsured menial.

Maven heard heavy footfalls as Pax Mortis moved alongside him and tried to speak to Cronus, but the elemental force of the Manifold held him tightly in its grip.

The woman approached the wounded Knight and before he knew what was happening, Equitos Bellum dropped to one knee and bowed its head to her. Without looking, he knew his battle-brother’s Knight had done likewise.

She reached out and Maven felt warmth infuse every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with newfound purpose and vitality. He felt the warmth of the woman’s touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite.

‘Machine, heal thyself,’ she said.

3.05

Night was falling across the Magma City, though darkness never really came to the glowing, orange-lit metropolis. Like a scene from the ancients’ visions of the underworld, Adept Zeth’s forge was bathed in the fires of battle as the forces of the Dark Mechanicum pounded her walls with vortex missiles and collapsed the outer bastions with graviton cannons.

The city was being torn apart with mechanistic precision and, within hours, the forces under the command of Ambassador Melgator – who watched the unfolding destruction from beneath his dark pavilion at the end of the Typhon Causeway – would have seized their prize for the Fabricator General.

The city was doomed and there was only one order left to give.

Deus Tempestus strode through the twisted, blackened remains of what had once been an armaments factory. Fires and small explosions still popped and flamed beneath the Warlord’s mighty tread, but Princeps Cavalerio paid them no mind. Such things were irrelevant to a being of his stature. Only Aeschman’s host of Tempestus skitarii following behind his battlegroups needed to concern themselves with such matters.

The full strength of Tempestus marched from the shelter of the Magma City, the cobalt-blue of their armour and the fluttering honour banners gloriously bright against the brooding skies and fire-blackened rubble they marched through.

Leading from the centre, Deus Tempestus took up position behind a tangle of twisted iron columns and girders that had once been the structure of the largest sheet metal fabrication plant in Tharsis, but which now resembled a mass of razorwire.

On Cavalerio’s right was Princeps Sharaq’s battle group, Metallus Cebrenia leading the Warhounds Astrus Lux and Raptoria into battle. Princeps Lamnos and Kasim marched their smaller engines to either side of the larger Reaver, and Cavalerio raised his volcano cannon in salute of his brave warriors.

To his immediate left towered the mighty Warlord Tharsis Hastatus, under Princeps Suzak, while further out was Princeps Mordant’s Reaver, Arcadia Fortis, with the dashing Princeps Basek’s Warhound, Vulpus Rex, in support.

Once again, Cavalerio acknowledged his warriors as they took up position in the ruins of the outer sub-hives.

‘All princeps, Manifold conference,’ he said.

One by one, the flickering images of his brother princeps appeared before Cavalerio and he was gratified to see only the hunger for battle in their faces. Each was eager to take the fight to Mortis, despite there only being one possible outcome to the battle. For a moment he wished he still fought as they did. Then, he smiled at the foolishness of such a desire, for who could not wish to be as connected to such a mighty engine as Deus Tempestus in such a complete and total manner as he was.

‘Brothers, this is the most dreadful and most glorious moment of our lives,’ he said. ‘I’m not normally given to sentiment, but if the day of our deaths doesn’t warrant a little melodrama, then I don’t know what does.’

Cavalerio saw a few wry smiles and said, ‘The credo of Tempestus is that the manner of our deaths is at least as important as the manner of our lives. Today we will show these Mortis dogs what it means to feel the wrath of our Legio. It has been an honour to fight alongside you all over the years, and it is a privilege to lead you in this last march. May the light of the Omnissiah guide you.’

His brothers solemnly acknowledged his words with binaric glows of pride, but it was left to Princeps Kasim to give fleshvoice to the feelings of the Legio.

‘The honour is ours, Stormlord,’ said Kasim.

Cavalerio smiled as he saw the gleam of the gold skull and cog medallion he had given the man after the Epsiloid Binary Cluster wars.

‘Good hunting, everyone,’ said Cavalerio, and closed the link.

Despite their blooding in the initial fighting around the Magma City, Princeps Camulos could not ignore such a blatant challenge, and Cavalerio’s auspex filled with returns as Legio Mortis marched through the smoke and fire to meet them. Swarming around each engine were thousands of Mortis skitarii, fearsome, skull-visaged warriors of terrible reputation.

The Tempestus skitarii, led by the indomitable Zem Aeschman, the scarred hero of Nemzal Reach, marched out to meet them, outnumbered at least four to one. To go into an engine fight required great courage, but to march into battle beneath such a titanic conflict demanded fearlessness only such enhanced warriors could boast.

‘Multiple engine signatures,’ said Sensori Palus, and Cavalerio acknowledged the inload, putting Aeschman’s skitarii from his mind. The gargantuan form of Aquila Ignis led the Mortis engines, a row of three twisted Warlords marching in front of it like a skirmish screen. On both flanks, two Reavers circled wide.

‘They only outnumber us by one engine,’ said Cavalerio. ‘That’s not so bad, eh?’

‘Yes, my princeps,’ said Moderati Kuyper. ‘It’s just a shame they outgun us so heavily.’

Watching the Mortis deployment, Cavalerio said, ‘They’re being cautious. None of them dare stray too far from their big brother.’

‘And who can blame them?’

‘They’re afraid of us,’ said Cavalerio. ‘They’re still thinking of what we did to them in the opening ambush and they’re scared we’ve got another trick like that up our sleeves.’

‘I wish we did, Stormlord,’ muttered Kuyper.

Cavalerio smiled in his amniotic tank, a stream of bubbles rising from his mouth.

‘Who says I haven’t?’ he asked. ‘All princeps, marching speed.’

On the far side of the Magma City, where screaming mobs of skitarii and altered Protectors threw themselves at the Vulkan Gate, a blizzard of gunfire and artillery laid waste to the attackers closest to the entrance. Before Melgator’s forces could regroup and resume their attack, the Vulkan Gate opened and beneath their azure lightning wheel standard, the Knights of Taranis rode out.

Lord Verticorda led his Knights, the noble form of Ares Lictor resplendent, the wound in its chest repaired in time for this last ride to glory. Alongside Verticorda, Lord Caturix rode the majestic Gladius Fulmen, his war engine proudly bearing the scars and ravages of battle on its burnished plates.

Behind them came the last nine Knights of the order, their armour polished and repaired such that they shone like new. This was to be their final charge and the Magma City’s artificers had ensured that they would make a fine sight as they rode out.

The Knights formed a wedge, with Verticorda and Caturix as the tip of the spear, and plunged into the mass of enemy warriors, their guns spitting death with every shot. The combined shock of the artillery strike followed by the assault of the Knights broke the front of the Dark Mechanicum line, and the Knights smashed through the reeling survivors like giants scattering children before them.

Roaring streams of turbo lasers and blitzing storms of explosive shells tore through skitarii and weaponised servitors as the Knights carved a path along the Typhon Causeway. Hundreds of their enemies were dying every second and their bodies were crushed underfoot as the Knights rode ever onwards. The Knights of Taranis slaughtered their way along the causeway’s length, Verticorda killing with methodical precision, Caturix with furious abandon.

As sudden as the attack was, Melgator’s forces rallied with commendable speed, and armoured units raced to meet the charging Knights. Heedless of their own warriors, enemy cannon opened fire on the causeway, blowing wide craters in the great road. The speed and ferocity of their charge carried the Knights clear of the bulk of the fire, but two warriors, tangled up in the debris of their carnage, were caught by the full fury of a sustained salvo of high explosives and blown to pieces.

Another Knight took a direct hit from an experimental gun recovered from the ruins of Adept Ulterimus’s tomb beneath the Zephyria Tholus. Empowered with dark energies from the Vaults of Moravec, a beam of black light punched straight through the Knight’s power field to wreath the machine in dark fire that instantly melted through its armour. Verticorda could hear its agonised screams over the Manifold and watched as its dying rider swept a host of enemy warriors to their doom as it plunged from the causeway and into the magma.

With every passing moment, the Knights of Taranis were fighting their way further and further from the Magma City, killing and crushing Adept Zeth’s enemies with consummate skill and grace. This was no undisciplined, feral charge, but the exquisite skill of noble warriors exercising their killing art in the most sublime manner imaginable.

Already they had travelled more than two kilometres from the gate, leaving a trail of dead and dying enemies in their wake. As another four hundred metres was won, another Knight died, the machine’s legs sawn off by Ulterimus’s dark weapon and its carapace pounced upon by a cackling tide of mutant skitarii.

Lord Caturix turned his guns on the swarming skitarii, clearing them from the downed Knight in a series of devastating bursts of gunfire. The Knight was already dead, and, rather than allow the enemy to scavenge from its corpse, Caturix kept firing until its reactor core was breached and it vanished in a seething wall of plasma fire.

Only five Knights remained with Verticorda and Caturix, and as devastating as their charge had proven, it was slowing. More and more enemy warriors were clogging the causeway with their bodies, and entire regiments of artillery and armour were concentrating their fire on stopping the Knights.

Verticorda and Caturix, warriors of wildly different temper yet identical courage, kept pushing onwards, their ultimate goal in sight: the black pavilion of Ambassador Melgator.

Princeps Kasim in Raptoria darted through the ruins of the Arsia sub-silos to unleash a furious barrage into one of the flanking Reavers. The towering engine’s shields soaked up the fire of the smaller war machine, turning its guns on the tumbled metallic ruins.

A storm of shrapnel and explosions tore through the collapsed silo, but Raptoria was already on the move, surging though the jumbled mass of collapsed towers and fallen masonry to fire again. Using every inch of cover and his natural affinity for moving through close and dirty terrain, Kasim kept Raptoria one step ahead of his enemy’s fire, loping randomly from cover to deliver stinging fire on the lumbering Reaver before vanishing back into the cover of the silo.

With the Warlords and Imperator closing behind them, one of the Reavers turned into the collapsed and burning silos to flush Kasim out, unwilling to leave a snapping predator in their wake, even one as hopelessly outgunned as a Warhound.

Its vast bulk smashed through steel archways that had once seen the passage of thousands of workers, trampling through machine shops, which had produced weapons and ordnance that had pacified worlds on the other side of the galaxy. It towered over the twisted wreckage of melted machines and the charred skeletons of those who had died in the complex’s collapse.

Sparks and trailing squalls of energy backwash flared from its shields as it bludgeoned its way through the factory to reach its quarry. A screaming wail of scrapcode bled from its external augmitters and its warhorn’s booming howl echoed weirdly from those walls that still stood.

Kasim broke from cover, the cobalt-blue of his engine stark against an ashen wall.

The Reaver caught sight of him and twisted its upper body to target his nimble engine. A torrent of weapons fire reduced the wall to pulverised dust and sparked from Raptoria’s shields.

No sooner had the Reaver opened fire than the vulpine form of Astrus Lux slipped from the shadows of a sagging derrick and bounded towards the Reaver’s exposed back, her weapon arms blazing. Princeps Lamnos poured his shots into where the swirling energy discharges were greatest, battering down the Reaver’s shields with a furious concentration of fire.

The Reaver immediately realised its danger and tried to turn, but Princeps Lamnos was quicker, sidestepping his engine through the tangled mess of smashed machinery and fallen structure. Fighting to keep his aim true while manoeuvring his engine over such rough terrain, Lamnos kept his fire steady for longer than was safe.

His persistence paid off as the rear quarter of the Reaver’s shields blew out in an enormous flaming bloom of light. The blaring challenge of the machine’s warhorn changed in pitch to one of pain as Raptoria vaulted a broken berm of machinery and opened fire on the Reaver at point-blank range.

Without the protection of its shields, the Reaver was horribly exposed and Kasim’s fire wreaked fearful damage on the larger engine. Like Lamnos, Kasim kept his fire steady, raking a salvo of high-energy turbo laser fire across the Reaver’s hip. The joint streamed molten gobbets of armour before explosively giving way, and Raptoria and Astrus Lux bounded away from the mortally wounded engine.

The Reaver toppled slowly, majestically, onto its side, crushing what little remained of the silo beneath its enormous weight and breaking into pieces. Raptoria pushed onwards, hugging the ground and taking advantage of the billowing cloud of ash and smoke clouds thrown up by the Reaver’s collapse.

Astrus Lux pulled back through the silo, circling around the fallen engine, but Lamnos had exposed his Warhound for too long and the Reaver’s companion had worked up a firing solution.

A withering series of missile impacts slammed into the top of Astrus Lux and pounded her into the ground, hammering her shields until they broke open with a pounding, concussive detonation. Like a wounded bird, Astrus Lux tried to crawl into cover, shieldless and with her legs shattered by the impacts.

The second Reaver was taking no chances, however, and strode into the flaming ruin of the silo, crushing Astrus Lux beneath its bulk.

First blood to Tempestus.

On the left flank of the Tempestus battlegroups, far across the cratered wasteland of the landing fields – where Deus Tempestus and Tharsis Hastatus duelled with Aquila Ignis’s skirmish screen of Warlords – Princeps Mordant pushed forwards in Arcadia Fortis. Though he commanded a Reaver, Jan Mordant matched the pace of his Warhound companion, Vulpus Rex, stride for stride.

He and Princeps Basek strode to meet the two flanking Reavers, both enemy machines twisted and hateful with bloody banners and grisly adornments hanging from their weapons. Instead of marching straight towards the enemy Reavers, Arcadia Fortis followed a wide curving course that drew his opponents away from the easy shelter of the Imperator with every step.

Whickering streams of weapons fire filled the air between the foes, both Tempestus princeps directing all their fire upon the Reaver closest to the centre of the battle line. Further out from the Magma City, there was none of the cover enjoyed by Raptoria, and Princeps Basek was forced to use all his savvy to avoid the worst of the incoming fire. The distance between the Mortis and Tempestus engines was shrinking and with every stride, the firestorm grew ever more ferocious.

Given the disparity of weight and gun strengths, it was only a matter of time until the brutal mathematics of war took their toll on the Tempestus engines. The Mortis engines knew this and their discordant horns boomed in triumph, but in war, as in all things, there are variables that can upset even the most inevitable of functions.

Both Vulpus Rex and Arcadia Fortis were commanded by men whose hearts were still those of aggressive hunters, and they were fighting to destroy as much of Mortis’s strength as possible before their ending.

The shields of the Reaver targeted by both Tempestus engines flickered out, worn down by the constant barrage and shut off before they blew out. An instant later the Warlord Tharsis Hastatus, which had been waiting for just that moment, unleashed a punishing volley from its volcano cannon. A searing beam of nuclear fire punched through the Reaver’s cockpit, and blew off its entire upper section in a spectacular explosion that hurled pieces of wreckage for over six kilometres.

The thunderous death of the Reaver had been bought by a furious concentration of fire, but that in turn had allowed the second Reaver to close virtually unmolested. Its heavy guns had brought the shields of Arcadia Fortis to breaking point and it was the work of moments to finish the job of overloading them.

A lucky strike on one of the carapace emitters blew out the relays connected to the neural network of the Tempestus engine, and the feedback agonies burned out the cerebral cortex of Princeps Mordant as surely as though he had taken a bolt-round to the head. Arcadia Fortis died with him, the mighty engine grinding to a halt, helpless and utterly at the mercy of its foes.

Basek attempted to flee from the screaming Reaver, its weakened shields and depleted ammunition load no match for such a towering foe. Vulpus Rex moved with grace and speed, but in the face of an indiscriminate barrage of missiles it had no chance of evasion. Missiles slammed into the ground, tearing huge craters and hurling chunks of debris into the air.

Her terrain-reading auspex overloaded with screaming, scrapcode interference, Vulpus Rex tumbled into a crater, one of its weapon arms snapping off and its legs buckling as it landed awkwardly. Trapped and with no escape, Princeps Basek tried to eject, but a brutal volley from the Reaver tore his floundering engine to pieces, killing him and all his crew in a mercifully swift thunder of hard rounds.

Then the sky broke open and the gathering darkness was banished as a bright sunset of atomic detonation painted the distant heavens with fire.

Adept Koriel Zeth closed her eyes at the sight of the fire in the sky, knowing exactly what it represented and feeling the human portion of her body fill with sadness. She focused the Chamber of Vesta’s viewing screens to the north and increased the magnification to maximum, knowing what she would see, but dreading it all the same.

All along Ipluvien Maximal’s reactor chain of Ulysses Fossae, a score of fiery mushroom clouds climbed skyward. A blast wave of unimaginable force flattened the landscape for hundreds of kilometres bare of life, and the following firestorm would turn the Martian desert to irradiated glass for ten thousand years.

‘Goodbye, Ipluvien,’ said Zeth, before turning her attention to the unfolding conflict around her own forge, the burnished plates showing such ferocious scenes of battle that even she could scarce believe such slaughter was happening on Mars.

The charge of the Knights of Taranis had cleaved a bloody path through the attackers on the causeway, but their numbers were dwindling fast. Another two Knights had gone down, leaving only Verticorda, Caturix and three warriors.

Every second brought them closer to Melgator’s pavilion, but she had no idea whether they would reach it alive. Even if they did, there would be no escape from the heart of the enemy army. Legio Tempestus were fighting a battle that would enter the annals of their histories as one of their most noble, were there any left alive to record it, and her own warriors had fought harder than she could ever have wished.

Kelbor-Hal’s minions would suffer greatly to take the Magma City, and unless Zeth acted now, they would take it, that was certain. And not just the Magma City, but the rest of Mars would soon be in the thrall of those loyal to the Fabricator General.

The time had come to follow Ipluvien Maximal’s noble action.

Zeth turned from the screens and walked towards the wide shaft that descended into the depths of her forge, bathing in the heat and waves of energy that rippled upwards from the magma far below.

A primitive-looking servitor swathed in a hooded robe followed her, its crudity quite at odds with the sophistication of the chamber. The anonymous cyborg creature took up position alongside Zeth as a dozen slender silver columns rose from the floor around the shaft.

Each of the columns was topped with an intricate arrangement of plugs and Zeth stepped into the middle of them. She reached out and slipped her hands into the biometric readers atop two of the columns, extruding a series of mechadendrites from the length of her spine.

These waved through the air and made contact with the remaining columns, and she began exloading a series of macroinstructions into the noospheric network of the Magma City. A glowing schematic of her forge flickered into life before her, invisible to anyone not noospherically modified.

‘I hope Kane managed to rescue at least a portion of his noospheric network from Mondus Occulum,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It would be a shame for my technology to be forgotten in this sordid civil war.’

‘Even facing destruction you are vain,’ said a voice behind her.

Zeth turned, unsurprised to see the sinuous form of Melgator’s tech-priest assassin slithering through the air behind her.

‘I had a feeling I’d be seeing you again,’ said Zeth.

‘The Cydonian Sisterhood do not forget those who insult us,’ said Remiare.

‘I’d ask how you got in here, but I have a feeling it won’t matter.’

‘No,’ agreed Remiare. ‘It will not.’

The assassin skimmed slowly over the floor of the chamber towards Zeth, drawing a pair of exquisite golden pistols from her thigh sheaths.

‘My employer wishes this city captured intact,’ said Remiare, inloading to the noospheric map floating before Zeth. ‘So you need to stop what you are doing.’

‘I’m not going to do that,’ stated Zeth.

‘I wasn’t asking,’ said Remiare, and shot Zeth twice in the chest.

Lord Commander Verticorda felt the pain of a dozen wounds through the Manifold of Ares Lictor. His shields were gone and his carapace was cracked in multiple locations. He could barely feel his left arm and the knee joint that had been healed two centuries ago by the touch of the Emperor ached with psycho-stigmatic pain.

All around him he could see the red-lit legions of his enemy surrounding him. Weapons fire spanked from his disintegrating carapace and his fear was not that he was going to die, but that a machine touched by the hand of the Omnissiah would fall into the hands of his enemies.

To his left he saw a group of dark-robed skitarii on one of the causeway’s overhanging platforms aim a battery of quad-barrelled guns. He turned his right cannon on them, letting Ares Lictor target them. He felt the thrill of acquisition course down his arm and opened fire, the hurricane of shells obliterating the platform and turning the guns and their operators into an expanding cloud of shredded meat and metal.

Alongside him, Caturix crushed and sliced into the enemy host with his cannon and laser lance, his fury carrying him forward where Verticorda lived by his preternatural skill. The other Knights that still lived were the best of the order, the most sublime warriors he had fought alongside: Yelsic, Agamon and old Stator.

Ahead, Verticorda saw the black pavilion where the architect of this confrontation watched the honourable Knights of Taranis dying for his amusement. The standard of Melgator, a golden chain upon a crimson field, flew above the pavilion and though a host of warriors and black machines stood between them, Verticorda vowed he would not be brought low while such an ignoble individual still lived.

More gunfire hammered the Knights, and Agamon was undone, the final strength of his shields torn away by the heedless sacrifice of scores of suicidal warriors rushing close and detonating explosive petards against his armour.

Old Stator died next, the preceptor clearing a path for the masters of his order with a gloriously heroic dash towards the black pavilion, his twin blades extended to either side of him as he charged. Running low, the Knight took a direct hit to the cockpit and crashed to the ground.

The last three Knights blazed through the path won by Stator’s death, and Verticorda killed and killed as he drew upon the spirits of all the lord commanders who had ridden into battle within Ares Lictor.

On one side, Caturix rode tall, though his mount was on the verge of destruction, while on the other, Yelsic, his companion from the day the Emperor first set foot on Olympus Mons, still carried the Taranis banner high.

‘The bastard’s running!’ shouted Verticorda, seeing Melgator’s golden chain banner moving.

‘What did you expect?’ retorted Caturix. ‘He’s no warrior. He’s nothing but a coward.’

‘He won’t escape us,’ vowed Yelsic.

‘No, he damn well won’t,’ agreed Caturix.

Fresh impacts slammed into Ares Lictor, and Verticorda cried out, feeling the pain of his wounds surging bright and hot within his aged frame. Even as fresh wounds appeared on his body, he felt a sustaining power flow from the Manifold to hold him together, a gestalt legacy of heroism and honour that stretched back to his mount’s birth.

The presence of Ares Lictor’s former masters poured into Verticorda, eager to accompany him in its last moments.

All he could see through the canopy window were enemies, their twisted visages daemonic in the searing glow of the magma. This truly was a ride into hell, and these were its warped denizens.

‘There he is!’ bellowed Caturix, and Verticorda saw the shield-palanquin of Melgator surrounded by a cohort of brutal, ogre-like skitarii armed with fearsome beam weapons and flame lances.

The three Knights smashed through the cordon of enemy warriors between them and Melgator’s retinue, their armour torn, trailing fire and spraying vital fluids. None would ever ride again, but with their final breath of life they would slay this last foe.

Verticorda shot down a dozen skitarii, and then felt the agony of sweeping beams of cutting light sawing through the armour of his right arm as though it was as insubstantial as smoke. He screamed in pain, his entire body spasming as the weapon arm was shorn from its mount.

Blood filled his throat and his vision greyed, but once again he felt the ghostly presences of his predecessors. Their ancient fury and fire was undimmed by the passage of years, and their will gave him the strength to carry on. Yet even with the sustaining power of the Manifold, Verticorda could feel his life slipping away from him.

Yelsic’s machine took the full brunt of a volley of flame lance fire, his carapace wreathed in crackling purple flames from a dozen hits. Concussive impacts of grenades blew out his torso section, and the shorn halves of his stricken Knight exploded as it skidded into the mass of skitarii.

‘Into them!’ cried Caturix, seeing the gap Yelsic’s death had created.

Acting on centuries of instinct, Verticorda followed Caturix into the scattered mob of skitarii, seeing the fur-robed form of Melgator whipping his shield bearers to carry him away from the rampaging Knights.

With the last of his energy, Verticorda shouted, ‘I cast the lightning of Taranis at thee!’ and together, he and Caturix opened fire. Thunderous impacts strafed the ground and blazed a devastating path through the skitarii towards Melgator.

A haze of shimmering blue light erupted around the ambassador: a personal shield, but such a device was designed to protect its bearer for short periods of time and against the weapons of an assassin, not those carried by war machines as fearsome as Knights.

In seconds the capacity of Melgator’s shield was overloaded, and the resulting explosion hurled him through the air. The ambassador didn’t even have time to hit the ground before the sustained fire of the Knights obliterated his body in a fraction of a second.

With Melgator’s destruction, Verticorda felt the presence of his mount’s former riders fade back into the Manifold. The pain of his wounds returned tenfold and he cried out as he felt yet more impacts on his armour.

A missile exploded his knee, the one the Emperor had touched, and Ares Lictor fell. The carapace slammed into the ground and the glass of his cockpit shattered into fragments. Verticorda tasted blood, but felt no pain as he sensed the Manifold open up before him.

His last living memory was hearing Caturix’s voice shouting his defiance to the end.

As Verticorda died, he was smiling, and the spirit of Ares Lictor welcomed him.

3.06

Blood and warnings filled the liquid before Cavalerio, telling him of shield ignition failures, reactor bleeds and a hundred other signs that his engine was suffering. Red droplets flecked the amniotic jelly, oozing from psychostigmatic wounds on his shoulders and torso, and bleeding from his nose.

He registered the deaths of three of his engines, but forced himself to concentrate on his own fight. Ahead of him, three Warlords advanced before the might of the Imperator, Aquila Ignis. The soaring creation had not yet deigned to open fire.

<That’s arrogance,> canted Cavalerio.

‘My princeps?’ asked Kuyper, bleeding from the side of his head where a panel had blown out next to him, taking the secondary reactor monitors with it.

‘Nothing,’ said Cavalerio. ‘You have a solution to those Warlords on the right?’

‘Yes, Stormlord,’ confirmed Kuyper. ‘All missiles locked in.’

‘Then you may fire at your discretion, Moderati Kuyper,’ ordered Cavalerio, before addressing his sensori. ‘Where’s that Reaver on our right?’

‘In the silos a kilometre north of us,’ reported Palus. ‘It’s fighting Metallus Cebrenia, but it’s the one to our left we need to worry about. Vulpus Rex and Arcadia Fortis are gone.’

‘Sharaq can handle himself,’ said Cavalerio, ‘and Tharsis Hastatus will deal with the bastard on our left.’

‘Princeps Suzak also has a Warlord to deal with,’ Kuyper reminded him.

‘He’s come through tougher fights,’ insisted Cavalerio. ‘I shouldn’t need to remind you all that we are Legio Tempestus, we fear nothing!’

His bold words invigorated the crew, and he felt the delicious shudder of release as the missile pods on his carapace surged from their launchers. At the same time, a sustained barrage of turbo lasers hammered the Warlord on the right, while repeated blasts from his volcano cannon punched the Warlord in the centre.

His enemies were giving as good as they got, and each shot Deus Tempestus unleashed was answered with two in reply, but Cavalerio had an advantage the Mortis engines did not. He was linked through the amniotic suspension to the very heart of his machine, and though the immediacy of connection allowed him only a fractional advantage, for a princeps of the Stormlord’s skill, it was the only advantage he needed.

The engine drivers of Mortis were good, for no one ever ascended to the princeps chair of a Warlord who had not proved himself a hundred times or more, but they were as fledglings compared to the skill of Indias Cavalerio.

With precise evasions and instinctual anticipation of his enemies’ thoughts and tactics, Cavalerio had avoided a weight of fire that would have seen a lesser princeps destroyed thrice over. Deus Tempestus was wounded, but she strode through the storm of enemy fire without fear and with the banner of Legio Tempestus borne proudly aloft.

‘Target’s shield strength failing,’ reported Palus. ‘The turbos have got him!’

‘Multiple missile impacts scored!’ shouted Kuyper. ‘She’s burning!’

‘Bring us about, Lacus,’ cried Cavalerio. ‘Volcano cannon on rightmost Warlord. A three-pulse volley if you please.’

‘Yes, my princeps,’ replied his steersman, and Cavalerio felt the ancient machine respond, its vast and complex manoeuvring systems reacting with the speed of a brand new engine. Cavalerio felt the heat build as the monstrously powerful cannon on his left arm powered up.

He saw the stricken Warlord slow and relished the fear its princeps must be feeling to be so achingly vulnerable. With no shields and his engine burning, his fight was over.

‘No, that won’t do you any good,’ chuckled Cavalerio as the volcano cannon fired and struck the Warlord’s shields dead on, battering the last of its protection away. The first blast was immediately followed by two more, and the Warlord’s upper carapace vanished in a thermonuclear blast as its reactor detonated.

‘Centre Warlord’s shields failing!’ shouted Palus. ‘It was too close to the explosion!’

‘All stop,’ ordered Cavalerio. ‘Reverse left step and bring us back about, Lacus. Divert all shield power to volcano cannon, I want to make this shot count!’

His crew hastened to obey his commands, and Cavalerio felt the groaning strain of metal all around him as he pushed his engine to the limits of its endurance. A moment of doubt flickered across his mind as he remembered doing the same thing to Victorix Magna, but he pushed that thought aside.

<Quickly now!> canted Cavalerio. <Before his shields have a chance to replenish!>

A flurry of impacts struck his torso and carapace, and Cavalerio grunted in pain, his flesh convulsing in sympathy with his wounded engine. He felt the damage to Deus Tempestus, but shook off the pain. If his engine was paying the price for his tactics, then so too would he.

‘Gun charged, my princeps,’ reported Kuyper. ‘Solution locked.’

Cavalerio snatched control of the weapon from his engine’s gun-servitor. ‘Firing!’

Once again the volcano cannon unleashed its deadly fire, the searing bolt of destruction enhanced with all the power Cavalerio could give it.

The enemy Warlord’s shields absorbed the first microsecond of the impact, but collapsed with an explosive detonation that tore the upper tiers of its armour away like paper in a storm. Cavalerio kept his aim steady as the fire built in his arm to a raging, searing sensation, and the enemy Warlord vanished as his fire burned through its hull and sliced it almost in two.

The crew of Deus Tempestus cheered as the Warlord broke in two at the waist, its legs left standing as its torso and upper carapace crashed to the ground in a flaming arc of molten metal.

Cavalerio let out a shudder of release as he watched the Warlord die. It had been a terrible risk altering the shield strength to empower the volcano cannon, but it had paid off and now the odds were more even.

Then the Aquilis Ignis opened fire.

Adept Zeth tried to remain standing, but the pain in her chest was too great. Her legs gave way beneath her and she slumped to her knees, blood streaming down her chest and back from where Remiare’s projectiles had pierced her armour and body.

She looked down at her breastplate, seeing the shield projector still intact on her chest, then looked up in surprise. Remiare smiled and spun the pistols to face her, relishing Zeth’s look of confusion.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why your personal shield didn’t save you,’ said the assassin as she skimmed over the ground, circling the ring of steel columns that surrounded Zeth. ‘These rounds are hand-crafted in the null-shielded forges of Adept Prenzlaur, and utilise technology similar to that found in the warp missiles used by Titans.’

‘Actually,’ said Zeth, coughing a wad of blood into her mask, ‘I was wondering how long it would take for the noospheric trip-code I’ve been broadcasting to affect you.’

Zeth saw Remiare’s surprise in her biometrics and laughed.

‘You think you are so clever, assassin, but I am a high adept of the Mechanicum! Nobody’s cleverer than me.’

Remiare cocked her head to one side, analysing the connection between her and Zeth on the noosphere.

‘No!’ she cried, seeing the exquisitely elegant code worked into the data packets passing into her augmetics, which was even now silently and secretly shutting them down.

‘Too late,’ hissed Zeth as Remiare’s magno-gravitic thrusters cut out and the assassin dropped to the floor of the chamber with a heavy thump. Remiare’s knees buckled as she landed, unused to feeling herself on the ground with such a weight of useless dead metal on the ends of her legs.

‘Right now your enhanced metabolism is trying to reboot your systems, but it won’t do you any good,’ said Zeth, using the extruded mechadendrites that were still hooked into the steel columns to haul herself to her feet. ‘It’s already too late for you.’

Zeth fought to control her breathing as her augmented nervous system assessed the damage to her body. One of Remiare’s bullets had severed her spinal cord and she could feel nothing below the waist, but her metallic limbs were more than capable of supporting her for long enough to finish what she had begun. Pain-balms and stimulant drugs flooded her body to keep her conscious and she smiled as the agony of her chest wounds faded.

It was temporary, she knew, and her body was dying even as it eased her pain.

‘I’ll kill you!’ hissed Remiare, fighting unsuccessfully to raise her pistols.

‘No you won’t,’ said Zeth, before turning to address the primitive-looking servitor. ‘Polk.’

The servitor moved to stand before the assassin, and Remiare let out a gasp of recognition as it drew back its hood.

‘You remember Polk, don’t you?’ asked Zeth. ‘You made sure my apprenta’s mind was damaged beyond repair, but even a damaged mind can be rendered into something useful. Oh, he’s a crude and ugly thing, I know, but his very crudity is what’s protecting him from the trip-code that’s affecting you.’

The servitor that had once been Kantor Polk bent down and lifted the limp form of the assassin from the ground, her struggles feeble as she tried to fight off Zeth’s debilitating code streams. Polk’s crude, piston-augmented muscles held Remiare immobile, and Zeth read her terror and incomprehension of the situation in the flaring spikes of her bio-electric field.

‘Dispose of her,’ ordered Zeth, pointing with a free hand to the shaft in the centre of the chamber that dropped through the forge to the magma beneath. ‘And hold her tight all the way down.’

Zeth turned away, focusing her attentions on the steel control columns that linked her to the vast and complex structure of the Magma City’s core systems. She looked up at the glowing schematic of her forge and with heavy heart issued the last of her macroinstructions.

Tharsis Hastatus, an engine that had marched to victory on a hundred worlds, was obliterated in a single salvo. A punishing volley from Aquila Ignis’s hellstorm cannon stripped her of her shields in an instant, and a devastating impact from its plasma annihilator reduced it to smoking, white-hot debris.

Cavalerio felt the death of his friend and comrade, Princeps Suzak, like a knife to the heart, and fought to control his anger and grief as they threatened to swamp him. The Manifold held him in its grip and his attention was firmly dragged back to the battle.

‘Situation report!’ he barked. ‘Who’s still standing?’

Palus sent out an active pulse of auspex energy to burn through the interference caused by so much powerful weapon discharge and reactor explosions. ‘I’m only getting returns from Metallus Cebrenia and Raptoria,’ he said, his voice heavy with disbelief. ‘Aeschman’s skitarii are still fighting, but they’re almost gone.’

So caught up in the furious combat was he, Cavalerio had quite forgotten that an equally bloody conflict had been raging beneath him on the ground. In an engine war of such ferocity, infantry was virtually an irrelevance, but it never paid to forget the courage of those who fought beneath the battling leviathans.

<Get our shields back to full strength. Now!> he canted, sorting through a morass of data feeds, replaying inloads from his brother princeps to piece together the battle beyond his immediate concerns.

Before his engine’s horrifying destruction, Suzak had fought like the killer he was, dispatching a Reaver and a Warlord before the Imperator had slain him. On the right flank, Princeps Sharaq and Metallus Cebrenia had, together with Princeps Kasim and Raptoria, taken down the last Reaver, which left only the Imperator, Aquila Ignis.

The Mortis engines had come expecting an easy victory, and no matter what happened next they would leave the bulk of their force burning on the Martian sands. Tempestus had earned themselves a legendary place in the history of Mars.

‘It’s firing!’ shouted Kuyper.

Cavalerio opened a Manifold link to his surviving warriors. ‘All Tempestus engines, this is the Stormlord–’

Princeps Cavalerio never got a chance to finish his order as a thunderous series of impacts smashed into his engine. Searing pain, worse than the death of his beloved Victorix Magna, surged through his body as the weakened shields collapsed under the barrage of missiles from the Imperator’s upper bastions.

Deus Tempestus’s shield emitters blew out in a cascading series of explosions, and the Stormlord’s body spasmed in its tank as the feedback blitzed through his mind, fusing his synapses with those of the Manifold.

In his last seconds of life, he saw the heroic march of Metallus Cebrenia and Raptoria as they advanced upon the red and silver monster. Their weapons arms were wreathed in fire as they advanced, heedless of the impossibility of ever hurting the Imperator, though to call it such now that its masters had turned to the cause of treachery seemed perverse.

Metallus Cebrenia was the first to die, her right leg blown off, and an almost scornful barrage of rockets finishing her off as she lay helpless in the ruins of a giant loading bay. Raptoria lasted only moments longer. Her shields were torn away by a sweeping blast of gatling cannon fire, and her speed was no protection from a volley of Apocalypse missiles that flattened an area a kilometre square.

Cavalerio felt their deaths and watched through the Manifold as Deus Tempestus sensed them too. Blood poured from his ravaged flesh and the liquid in his casket was almost opaque with it. He pushed himself to the front of the tank, feeling the fluids pouring from cracks in the glass and seeing the smoking ruin that was all that was left of his cockpit section.

Kuyper was dead, his body slumped and on fire in his moderati’s chair, while across from him, the steersman, Lacus, was little more than a mangled lump of torn flesh. Cavalerio couldn’t see his sensori, now realising that the entire upper section of the cockpit was open to the sky. The enginseer who had replaced Magos Argyre, an adept named Thunert, was still alive, only his lack of flesh saving him from the fires that swept the cockpit.

Cavalerio fought down his anguish as he saw the triumphant Aquila Ignis stride towards him, its colossal tread shaking the ground.

Its guns were silent and Cavalerio knew why, feeling the spiking pain of skitarii breaching charges detonating against his engine’s leg armour.

‘Mortis wants to capture us,’ he said. ‘I can feel them crawling inside us already.’

With what remained of his connection to the Manifold, the Stormlord linked with the enginseer’s station.

<We can’t let them take us, Thunert,> canted Cavalerio. <You know what we have to do.>

<I do,> agreed Thunert. <Though it goes against all my teachings, the alternative is worse.>

<Then do it,> ordered Cavalerio. <Disengage all reactor safeties.>

<It is already done, Stormlord.>

<May the Omnissiah forgive us,> whispered Indias Cavalerio.

Seconds later, Deus Tempestus was utterly annihilated as her plasma reactor went critical with the force of a miniature supernova.

The death of Deus Tempestus was almost the last act in the battle of the Magma City.

Almost, but not quite.

That honour was saved for the city itself.

With the destruction of Legio Tempestus and the death of the Knights of Taranis, the last real opposition to the forces of the Dark Mechanicum were gone. Legio Mortis skitarii poured into the city through the smashed ruins of the sub-hives and landing fields, killing any soldiers they came across and capturing as many of the city’s adepts as was possible at such a frantic, bloody time.

The scattered remnants of Melgator’s army rallied to the snake-headed banner of a Mechanicum warlord named Las Taol, and surged into the city through gates now virtually undefended. The slaughter was terrible, and such was the frenzy of destruction that the bulk of the Dark Mechanicum forces did not realise their peril until it was already too late.

Artillery fire continued to pound those few areas of the city that still resisted conquest. The ground rumbled and buildings shook with violent tremors, but it was no gunfire that caused these tremors.

High on Aetna’s Dam, the sluice gates of the Arsia Mons caldera locked into the open position, allowing vast, overflowing streams of lava to pour down the aqueducts and into the lagoon. Normally, this process was precisely regulated, but Adept Zeth had removed that control, and the magma lagoon began filling with lava straight from the heart of the volcano.

Far below the street level of the city, the void-protected columns that plunged deep into the bedrock of Mars to support the island of the great forge were exposed to the molten heat of the magma lagoon. The power that continually replenished the shields had been cut and the liquid rock began eating into the adamantium columns. The process began slowly at first, then accelerated as more of the inner core of each column was exposed.

A groaning crack boomed like the thunder of the gods, and the despoilers of Zeth’s city paused in their debaucheries and looked to the skies in fear. The great silver road before Zeth’s temple split apart and vast geysers of lava spouted upwards as the southern tip of the city broke free.

Towers and temples collapsed, their structures torn and twisted as the city heaved and buckled. The shriek of tortured metal and splitting rock were like the city’s death scream, and its violators echoed it as they now guessed the danger.

Glowing lava poured in mighty waterfalls from shattered aqueducts, and rivers of blazing rock oozed through the streets, consuming all in their path. Altered skitarii and warp-enhanced Protectors perished as they were swept away by the searing tides of molten lava.

Soon the city was ablaze from end to end, the magma incinerating anything flammable and melting anything that wasn’t. In moments, thousands were dead, attackers and inhabitants both, though such a death was a mercy for the denizens of the Magma City.

The Typhon Causeway cracked at its midpoint, a kilometre-long slab of rock shearing away from the city and tipping more than ten thousand men and war machines into the lava. Wrenched and torn by quakes wracking the city, the Vulkan Gate, which had guarded the entrance to the city for a millenium, fell and broke into a thousand pieces.

In the age to come, these would prove to be the only things to survive the cataclysm.

Thousands streamed from the city through the wreckage of the landing fields where Tempestus had made its last stand, but such was the overflow from the shattered aqueducts that no escape was possible. An ocean’s worth of magma spilled outward, and the heat and fumes soon overtook those few who could outrun the lava.

Only Aquila Ignis escaped total destruction, Princeps Camulos turning and marching at flank speed to avoid the tide of molten rock. Even he was not quick enough, the lava flowing around the Imperator’s mighty legs and steadily burning through its shielded plates. Aquila Ignis waded through the lava for five steps until at last its armour failed and its ankles gave way.

At last the towering engine was brought down by the fury of the planet, its immense bulk crashing to the ground, smashed to destruction on the hard rock of Mars. Its bastions crushed themselves, its cockpit decks were flattened by its unimaginable weight and only its Hellstorm cannon survived the Titan’s fall.

In time, this would be salvaged and taken to another world, but for now it had no more death to deal.

The destruction continued within the city as the lava eagerly rose up through the streets to claim what had been denied it for so long by the technological wiles of the Mechanicum. Within an hour, nothing remained alive within the Magma City, every living soul burned to ash and every structure brought low.

Three hours after Adept Koriel Zeth unleashed doom upon her forge, the Magma City finally sank beneath the great inland lake of lava. The last of its towers were cast down, Zeth’s inner forge filled with lava, and all her great works were destroyed as thoroughly as though they had never existed.

And with their destruction, all hope of lifting the Imperium into a golden age of scientific progress, not seen since humanity set forth from its birth rock, was lost forever.

Addenda

Far below the Martian plain, the last two Knights of Taranis made a cautious descent into the rocky depths of the Medusa Fossae, a trench system that straddled the border between the highlands and lowlands of Tharsis and Elysium. Both machines clambered down into the darkness while Mars above burned with war. They were each scarred with battle, yet both moved with smooth natural grace, as though fresh from a maintenance refit. Equitos Bellum led the way, with Pax Mortis guarding their rear as they sought an automated research facility of Koriel Zeth that Rho-mu 31 had assured them they would find hidden in this deep canyon. Here, the Knights and their two passengers would follow the instructions of the girl with the golden light, and await the end of hostilities to see what was left of their beloved world.

Deep in the Noctis Labyrinthus, Dalia Cythera and Rho-mu 31 took up their stewardship of the Dragon. A measure of the golden light that shone within Dalia had now passed to her Protector, and they were content in the knowledge that their friends were as far from the fighting as it was possible to be. Only much later, when Dalia dared return to the silver cavern, did she see that the book containing the grand lie of Mars had been taken.

Ten thousand years would pass before the next Guardian was drawn to the Noctis Labyrinthus, but by then the damage had been done.

Addenda ends.

THE HORUS HERESY

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

He had been circling for ten months. Ten months, and eighteen identities, most of them so authentic they had fooled Unified Biometric Verification. He’d faked out three blind trails to throw them off his scent, one into the Slovakian fiefs, one to Kaspia and the Nord Reaches, and the other a meandering route down through the Tirol to the Dolomite Shrines overlooking the Pit of Venezia. He’d overwintered in Boocuresti Hive, and crossed the Black Sea Basin by cargo spinner during the first week of ice-ebb. At Bilhorod, he had turned back on himself to lose an unwanted tail. He had spent three weeks hiding in a disused manufactory in Mesopotamia, preparing his next move.

Ten months; a little long for a blood game, but then he was playing it out carefully, synchronising his movements with global patterns, following trade routes, inter-provincial traffic and seasonal labour migrations. He was one hundred per cent certain they didn’t have an orbital grid fix for him, and he was fairly confident they didn’t even have an approximate. There’d been no one on his heels since Bilhorod.

He trekked up-country through Baluchistan, mostly on foot, sometimes stealing a lift on transports, and crossed the border into the Imperial Territory three hundred and three days after he had set out.

The top of the world had changed in ten months. An entire peak had disappeared from the blinding skyline, a gap at odds with his memories, nagging like a missing tooth. The high-altitude air smelled of pitch, molten alloys and shaved stone. Primarch Dorn’s warrior-engineers were crafting their poliorcetics, armouring the highest and most robust steeples of the Earth.

The smell of pitch, alloy and stone was the smell of approaching war. Its fragmented notes hung on the bright air of the old Himalazia.

The scenery was so white it scorched his eyes, and he was glad of his glare-goggles. A few degrees below zero, the air was like glass, and the sun like a fusion torch in the blue sky. Perfect snows coated the peaks and the ascents, painfully white, achingly empty.

He had considered the south his best option, Kath Mandau and the towering central Precinct, but as he approached he realised how much things had changed. Security, which had never been less than rigorous, had cinched up as tight as a penitent’s cilice. The coming war had trebled the guards on the gates, quadrupled the gun-nests and automated weapon blisters, and multiplied the biometric sensors a hundredfold.

Vast workcrews of migrant labourers, serving the orders of the Masonic Guilds, had gathered around the Palace: their camps, their workings, their very bodies staining the high snows green and black and red like algae growth.

Security is tighter, but there are millions more faces to watch.

He observed the labour hosts for six days, eschewing his plans for the south and turning north instead, following the high pastures and walking trails over onto the plateau, keeping the toiling hosts in view. Constant streams flowed down the snowy valleys and passes from Kunlun: columns of fresh workers, and convoys of cargo and building materials from the Xizang mines. The columns looked like rivers of slow, dark meltwater, or racing black glaciers. Where the influx streams met the worker armies, temporary cities sprouted in the shadows of the immense walls, habitent towns and canvas metropoli, accommodating the migrants, corralling their pack animals and servitors, seeing to their needs of food and water and medicine. The unloaded materials: timber, pig alloy, mule steel, ores and ballast, stacked up around the camp cities like slag heaps. Hoist cranes and magnificent derricks lifted pallets of materials up over the walls. Horns snorted and echoed around the high valleys.

Sometimes, he just sat and looked at the Palace as if it was the most wonderful thing in creation. It probably wasn’t. There were undoubtedly feats of ancient, inhuman architecture on forgotten, scattered worlds that dwarfed it, or eclipsed it in stupendous scale or awe-inspiring scope. The architecture was not the point. It was the idea of the Palace that made it the most wonderful thing. It was the inner notion, the concept that it made flesh.

The Palace was vast, beautiful, the greatest mountain range on Terra refashioned into a residence and a capital, and now, belatedly, a fortress.

The missing Himalazian peak had been levelled for building materials. The recognition of that feat made him smile. These days, the schemes of man were never modest.

Adopting rags and dirty leg armour, he spent three days labouring with the genestock ogres from Nei Monggol. Nicknamed the migou, they slogged up and down the passes, carrying sheets of zurlite and huge panniers of nephrite and Egyptian pebble. They dug embankments and earthworks with massive shovels made from the blade-bones of giant grox, and formed hammer gangs to rhythmically sink the iron stakes that would support the concertinaed spools of flay-wire.

At night, in the work camps, the massive genestock stoked their over-muscled bodies with qash, a resin derived from the venom of a Gobi Waste nematode. The substance made their veins bulge, and their eyes roll white. It made them speak in tongues.

He watched the effects, and made estimates of dosage and systemic duration.

The genestock were prepared to work with him, but they treated him with general suspicion. He tried to be just another Caucasian broadback, keen to earn a stipend and a bonus from the Masonic Guilds. His papers were in order. When he tried to purchase a little qash, however, they turned sour, fearing him to be a genewhip sent into the camps to keep the workforce clean.

They tried to kill him.

Under the pretence of a quiet sale, three genestock migou drew him apart from the main camp, and led him to a rock pasture where fire stone and cacholong spoil had been heaped up by porter gangs. They unwrapped a cloth roll with slices of brown resin in it to show him. Then one drew a punch-dagger and tried to insert it into his liver.

He sighed – a complication.

He took hold of the migou’s wrist, folded the arm around and broke it against itself with his elbow. The joint went the wrong way, and the arm went so slack, he simply peeled the punch-dagger out of the dead fingers. The genestock uttered no expression of pain. He simply blinked in surprise.

All three of them were titanic creatures, corded and slabby with unnatural, hard-cut muscle definition. It had not occurred to any of them that the Caucasian, though extremely large and well made, would offer them a moment’s problem.

One threw a punch, a blow driven with huge force but desultory effort, as if he was aggrieved that they should be put to such trouble. The punch was designed to finish matters, to put the Caucasian down, his jaw pulped, his head slack on the column of his spine.

The blow did not connect with any part of the Caucasian. Instead, it encountered the punch-dagger, which had suddenly been angled to face it. The impact shaved flesh and muscle away from bone. This produced a pain response. The genestock howled, and tried to gather in his shredded hand and forearm. The Caucasian shut him up by jabbing the punch-dagger into his heavy forehead. It cracked in through the bone like the tip of a rock-breaker’s pick.

The genestock toppled backwards, wearing the grip of the punch-dagger above his eyes like some curious tiara.

The third migou grabbed him from behind in an ursine hug. The genestock with the broken arm tried to claw at his face. It was all tiresome now. He broke free of the embrace with a shrug of his shoulders, turned and drove his right hand into the genestock’s chest. The sternum split. When the Caucasian wrenched his hand out again, it looked as if it was wearing a red glove. Most of the migou’s heart was clenched in his steaming fist.

The genestock with the broken arm, now the only one of the trio left alive, murmured in fear and started to run away across the rock pasture.

He bore the wounded genestock no especial malice, but he couldn’t let him go. With bloody fingers, he bent down, selected a small piece of fire stone, weighed it in his hand and launched it with a snap of his wrist.

It made a pokk! noise as it penetrated the back of the fleeing ogre’s head like a bullet. He fell heavily, and his hefty corpse slithered down the litter of a spoil heap on its face.

He disposed of the three bodies in a fathomless gorge, washed his hands with snow and took the roll of qash resin.

The confluence of workers gathered around the skirts of the Palace had brought, as any great body of humanity always did, lice and vermin and scavengers with it. Rad-wolves had followed the workers down off the plateau, and gathered at night, red eyes in the dark catching the flicker of the campfire rings. Thousands of war hounds patrolled the camp perimeters at night, or lingered on the escarpments before the Palace. The night was regularly interrupted by sudden gales of howling and barking, the growl and shiver of animals mauling one another as the faithful hounds drove off wolves that had become too inquisitive.

In the darkness, it was hard to tell the difference between hounds and wolves.

He had received regular physiological testing his entire life, and he had memorised all the results in forensic detail so as to best judge his limitations.

He cut the qash resin into sample measures, weighing each on a set of fine scales that he’d borrowed from a gem cutter.

The reinforcement of the Annapurna Gate was half done. Every day, the mouth of the huge gate bustled with thousands of labourers, and the towering hoist cranes swung cradles of ceramite plating, rebar and reinforced rockcrete up over the cyclopean arch. It was too intensive a task for the sentries to scan each labourer in and out individually: the labour gangs would snarl up, and the work would run slow. Instead, the entire gate zone was covered by a biometric reader field, projected by slowly rotating vanes in the eaves of the primary arch.

At dawn, he secured himself under the tarps of one of the payloads due to be taken in over the gate by hoist crane. He huddled down between sheets of mule steel and bundles of ironwood.

He had prepared a four-gram dose of qash, an overdose by migou standards. Its efficacy was such, he would be insensible less than a minute after ingesting it.

He waited for two hours until he felt the jolt of the lift crews securing the payload’s chains. He heard the steel cables of the hoist crane whining. He felt the heavy sway as the pallet he was hiding on left the ground.

He swallowed the qash.

Observation had shown him that it took the hoist crane mechanism forty-three seconds to bring a payload up to clearance height, and a further sixty-six seconds to traverse it in over the gate top. Twenty-four seconds into that second time period, the moving payload would enter the biometric reader field.

The qash did its work. He was stiff and dead twelve seconds before he entered the field. The field read nothing except a payload of inert building materials.

He woke. The pallet had set down, and some of the tarps had been pulled back. Riggers and roof-gangers were beginning to unload the mule steel.

His body ached. Most of his muscles were cramping. He focused and performed some purging exercises to throw off the vestiges of the somatic rigour that the qash had induced. Death to most mortal men, near-death to a being like him; a brief, death-like fugue to allow him to slip in through the Palace biometrics.

He slid off the pallet, sore and woozy. Enormous gunboxes and shielded fighting platforms were being constructed around the upper ramparts, and thick dura-plating and adamantium were being bonded to the walls. Workers milled around on scaffolds and gantries, some suspended like mountaineers over the edge of the wall’s sheer drop. The air was filled with noises of hammering and cutting. Powered tools shrilled. Fusion torches buzzed and flickered with arctic blue light.

Phantoms fought behind his eyes, the ghost flares of fusion cutters. There was blood in his throat. He scooped up a box of rivets and a concussion mallet, and blended with the workforce.

He penetrated the outer levels of the Palace. This process took a further three days. He stopped being a masonic labourer and became a shadow, then a footman polishing brasswork, then a lamp-lighter with a spark-pole, and then a doorkeeper, wearing a livery he had purloined from a laundry room and a concealed displacer field to disguise his height and bulk.

He followed hallways that were dressed in diaspore and agate, and descended stairwells planed from solid pieces of onyx. He watched his reflection cross polished marble floors, and his shadow chase along walls carved from quartz and sardonyx. He waited in the ivory gloom of huge processionals while warbands passed by in marching time. He lingered in doorways while almost endless trains of servitors brought past trays of raw meats and hydroponic vegetables for the high table.

He became a footman again, then a carpet beater, then a beadle, and then a messenger man with an attaché box full of blank papers, hunching to disguise his build and height. Every once in a while, he stopped to get his bearings. The Palace was bigger than many cities. Its levels and byways took a lifetime to learn. From the rails of high balconies, he looked down into artificial ravines five hundred storeys deep, filled with lights and teeming with people. Some of the great domes in the Precinct, especially the Hegemon, were so vast, they contained their own miniature weather systems. Microclimate clouds drifted under painted vaults. Rain in the Hegemon was said to be a portent of good fortune.

As far as he knew, it had not rained in the Hegemon for three years.

The custodes were abroad, watching over the inner reaches of the Precinct, majestic in their ornate golden armour. Their plume crests were crimson, like sprays of arterial blood frozen in the air. The pre-Unity symbol of the lightning bolt was blazoned on their armour. They lurked in the gloomy halls and shadowed cloisters of the Palace, their Guardian spears upright, frighteningly vigilant.

They were impassive, silent, and they guarded their secrets solemnly, but in their very presence there was a truth to be unpicked.

He noted their deployment. Two custodes were watching the Southern Circuit that snaked like silver braid towards the Hegemon. Two more stood at the Jade Bailey, and another three patrolled beneath the fretted ironwork and malachite of the Congressional. A lone custodes, almost invisible, held position under the waxy emerald leaves of the Qokang Oasis, watching the outfall of the crystal-clear pleasure lake thunder down into the turbine gulf in misty cascades. Four more prowled the upper platforms of the Taxonomic Towers.

There were, however, none on the Northern Circuit, and none on the western limits of the lake, and none near the Investiary. It was so telling. They were like visible moons betraying the position of an invisible planet, bright astral bodies pushed into a certain pattern by the gravitational ministrations of an unseen star. By noting where they were, and where they weren’t, he could determine the location of his prey.

The Hall of Leng seemed most likely. From the disposition of the steadfast custodes, his prey had to be somewhere in the western hemispheric portion of the Precinct, which meant the Hall of Leng, the House of Weapons, the Great Observatory, or the private apartments adjoining the latter two, but he knew the Hall of Leng was a favourite place. When he wasn’t sequestered in secret toil in the deep, private crypts of the Palace, his prey was known to spend a great deal of time in the Hall, measuring the angles of space and time.

It was said that past and future co-mingled at that site, and had done so since primordial times, before the place had owned the name Leng, before his prey had been born, before a roof had been raised above it, or human eyes had seen it. The Hall of Leng, long-beamed and dark, was simply a domestication of one of the materium’s anomalies, a pulled thread in the fabric of time, a scab on the skin of space.

He had never felt comfortable in the Hall. It was filled with a tangible darkness, which seemed to exhale softly, like the respiration of a slumbering god, but it was a fitting place, and it would serve.

He approached the Hall from the south-west, following an ouslite walkway that had been laid along an avenue of sycamore and silver birch. He no longer wore a guise of any kind, no more fake lamp-lighters or pretender carpet-beaters, no more displacer field to mask his stature. He had unfolded the cobweb-thin falsehood out of its tiny silver box and wrapped himself in it. It felt as cold and light as snowflakes on his shoulders, back and scalp. Light ignored him, as if he no longer merited notice. It bent around him, twisted away, avoided his form and, in avoiding him, robbed him of shadows and colours too.

As inconsequential as a whisper, he walked the avenue of trees, and crossed the lawns behind the Hall. He could smell oblative incense, and hear the gentle creak and moan of the Hall’s unnatural harmonics.

His weapon was ready: a Nei Monggol punch-dagger, sharpened to a refined keenness of edge that no genestock knife grinder could have matched. The blade was laced in catastrophically lethal nematode venom distilled and refined from qash resin.

Enough to slay a demigod? He believed so. Enough to finish a blood game, certainly.

There were no locks. He had memorised the traceries of the quantum alarms, and the lumin sensors simply disdained to read his falsehood. He gripped the blade in his left hand.

The light in the outer portico seemed opaque, as if stained brown by smoke. He padded forwards across black tiles that had been worn dull by centuries of visitors. Pure meltwater dripped into a stone basin beside the inner doors. Above the doorframe, in bas relief, the architrave showed the tribulations of the first pilgrims to visit Leng.

The inner doors were heavy and older than the Palace, framed panels of ancient mountain oak, half a metre thick, worn and handmade, none of the angles quite true. He lifted the black iron latch, and pushed one of the doors open. Air hushed out at him. It smelled of cold stone.

The immense Hall was starlight-dark and midnight-silent. Every now and then, a sound breathed through the black space, a sound that was almost the gust of a Himalazian wind and almost the crush of breakers on an ocean coast, but not in fact either of those things. Small orange sparks danced under the high roof, like fireflies, like ignis fatui.

He watched them, adapting his eyes to darkness. He began to pick up the silver outlines of objects in the hall: columns, ancient statuary, and the assayers and binding apparatus set up by antiquarians of previous epochs and never removed. The devices stood like giant metal insects in the gloom, probe arms raised like mantis limbs, metal wingcases marked with arcane, abstruse symbols for settings and degrees. They were gathering dust.

He slipped between them. Somewhere ahead of him, somewhere close by, a presence lingered. It was distracted, its mind detained by other things. It had not noticed him. It had not even felt him.

He moved around a column, its cold flutes against his back, and set eyes on his prey.

In the centre of the Hall’s broad, open floor, his prey was kneeling, engrossed, turning the pages of a massive leather-bound codex. The codex was open on the stone floor like a spread-eagled bird, its spine a metre and a half long. Beautiful hands slowly turned the pages. They were sculptor’s hands, artisan’s hands.

His prey had his back to him. His prey was wearing a hooded white cloak. It would show the blood.

A common assassin might creep forwards, to steal up on his target stealthily from behind, but this prey was far too dangerous and aware for such timid techniques. Now he was in striking distance, he had no option but to pounce. After ten months, one chance was all he was going to get.

He surged forwards, his arm rising.

Halfway there, with the tip of his punch-dagger just a moment away from the centre of his prey’s broad back, a shadow came the other way to meet him.

Fluid darkness intercepted his blade. The punch-dagger was wrenched aside, and his strike was shorn of its momentum. He turned.

He could barely see his assailant. Another falsehood was defying the light. The attacker drove in at him, a shadow against a shadow. He glimpsed the long, straight blade of a spatha.

He deflected one sword-blow over-hand, and another under-hand, swinging the punch-dagger around. Each impact rang out with a sharp clang of metal on metal. Sparks flew. He backed hastily across the black tiles as the falsehooded swordsman moved against him.

Their blades clashed again. The punch-dagger afforded him no reach. The advantage was entirely with the swordsman. The clatter of metal against metal seemed atrociously sharp in the breathy silence of the Hall.

Despite the nuance of his grip, the spatha flicked the punch-dagger clean out of his hand. It embedded itself, quivering, in a nearby stone column. He went in with his bare hands, banging aside the rising sword blade with the back of his right hand and locking his fingers around the wrist of his attacker’s sword arm. He hooked his foot out to sweep the swordsman’s legs out from under him, but the swordsman leapt the sweeping calf and tried to snatch his wrist free.

He smashed his left hand in, and caught the falsehooded swordsman across the side of the head. There was enough weight in the punch to stagger the man backwards. He blundered into one of the old assaying machines, scraping its metal feet across the stone tiles and buckling one of its insectile legs.

The swordsman recovered his balance, and discovered he was no longer a swordsman. The spatha had been ripped from his hand.

The Caucasian weighed the captured sword in his right hand. He snapped it around, and put the flat of it across his adversary’s cranium, knocking him down.

The Caucasian turned from his fallen foe, the spatha in a low, defensive grip. Two more falsehooded opponents were oozing out of the Hall’s shadows to confront him.

He blocked both their blades at once, and rallied against them in a series of dazzling, turning cuts and thrusts. The percussive clash of swords rang through the gloom. More sparks shot out, bright and brief, as if the three sword blades were made of flint.

He wrong-footed one of his opponents, and clubbed him down to his knees with a blow of his spatha’s pommel. The other swordsman came at him, thrusting his blade, but he turned it aside deftly so that the stroke ran out harmlessly under his arm, and drove the heel of his left hand into the man’s face, cracking him backwards onto the floor.

He started to run as the pair of them struggled to rise again. The game was done. Escape was the only acceptable conclusion remaining to him. He ran for the doors, threw them open and sprinted through the thick gloom of the portico towards the lawns outside the Hall.

They were waiting for him. Five custodes, fully armoured, their faces hidden by their golden, hawked visors, stood in a semicircle around the mouth of the portico. They had their Guardian spears, those great, gilded hybrids of halberd and firearm, aimed at his chest.

‘Yield!’ one of them ordered.

He raised his stolen sword for the last time.

He was not the first occupant of the cell, and he would not be the last. The stone walls, floor and ceiling of the cell had been painted in a bluish-white gloss, like the skin of a glacier. Fingernails and other sharp edges had scored away the paint over the years, inscribing the walls with scraped frescoes of men and eagles, of armoured giants and lightning bolts, of ancient victories and long shadows. They were simple, elemental marks that reminded him of primordial cave paintings showing hunters and bison.

He added his own.

After a night and a day, the cell door rumbled open. Constantin entered. The master of the custodes wore a simple monastic robe of dark brown wool over a black bodyglove. He leaned his huge back against the cell wall, folded his mighty arms and regarded the prisoner on the cot.

‘Trust you, Amon,’ he said. ‘Trust you to get closer than anyone else.’

‘Amon’ was the start of his name, the earliest part of it. The second part was ‘Tauromachian’ and, together, these two words served most circumstances in which his name was used or spoken. He was Amon Tauromachian, custodes, first circle.

Violent obliteration notwithstanding, custodes lived long lives, far longer than mortal men, and they accumulated long names in those lifetimes. Following ‘Tauromachian’, which was not a family name but at least one that described the occupation of the bloodline that had provided his gene-source, there came ‘Xigaze’, the site of his organic birth, then ‘Lepron’, the house of his formative study, and then ‘Cairn Hedrossa’, the place where he was first tutored in weapon use. ‘Pyrope’, seventeen words into his nomenclature sequence, remembered his first live combat, deployed on an orbital of that name. So on, and so on, each new piece of his name honouring an action or a life landmark. Each was awarded him formally, by the masters of the first circle. ‘Leng’ would now become part of his name, the latest ultimate part, recognising his feat in the blood game.

A custodes’s name was engraved inside the chest plate of his gold armour. The name began at the collar, on the right side, just the first element exposed, and then wound like a tight, secret snake around the inside of the plate. For some custodes like Constantin, the oldest veterans, accumulated names had filled up the linings of their torso plates, and the tails of their snakes now ran out around the bellies of the plates, looping like incised belts through the abdominal decorations. Constantin Valdor’s name was nineteen hundred and thirty-two elements long.

Amon’s custodes armour and armaments had been stored in the House of Weapons during his absence. As he walked along the Southern Circuit with Constantin to reclaim them, he asked about the progress of other blood games.

‘Zerin?’

‘Apprehended before he had even crossed into the Imperial Territories. He brushed a gene-sniffer in Irkutsk.’

‘Haedo?’

‘Detected by sweeps in the Papuan Deserts four months ago. He made it as far as Cebu City by dust yacht, but we had a scoop team waiting for him.’

Amon nodded. ‘Brokur?’

Constantin smiled. ‘He got into the Hegemon in the guise of a Panpacific delegate before he was spotted. An impressive feat, one that we did not expect to be bettered.’

Amon shrugged. Blood games were a fundamental element of Palace security and a duty of the custodes. It was a matter of honour for them to play blood games out to the very best of their abilities. Using their ingenuity and comprehensive inside knowledge of the Palace and, indeed, Terra itself, the custodes volunteered to test and probe Imperial security, to expose any weakness or chink in Terran defences. They would play wolf to test the hounds. At any given time, at least half a dozen custodes were loose, operating secretly and autonomously, devising and executing methods of penetrating the great Palace.

There would be scrupulous debriefings and extensive interviews, examining Amon’s strategies and dismantling his techniques. Every scrap of information, every morsel of advantage, had to be extracted from the blood game. He had penetrated the Palace. He had got further than anyone else. He had come within striking distance.

‘I wonder if I have caused offence?’ he mentioned to Constantin. ‘I raised my hand against him.’

Constantin shook his head. He was a giant of a man, bigger even than Amon, like one of the over-scaled statues in the Investiary brought to life. ‘He forgives you. Besides, you would not have hurt him.’

‘My blow was blocked.’

‘Even if it hadn’t been, he would have stopped you.’

‘He knew I was there.’

Constantin scratched at his chin. ‘He won’t tell me how long he knew. He wanted to see how long it would take the rest of us to notice you.’

Amon paused before replying. ‘In the past, he has not seen much sense in blood games. He considered them worthless.’

‘That was the past,’ Constantin replied. ‘Things have changed since you were last among us, Amon.’

In the House of Weapons, he and Constantin armoured themselves. Amon felt the old familiarity of the handmade plate sections, the buckles and clasps and the magnetised seams. The weight settled on him reassuringly.

In arming chambers on the lower levels of the House of Weapons, servitors and slaves were ritually plating a squad of proud Astartes of the Imperial Fists, anointing them with oils and whispers as they locked each piece of armour in place. The squad was preparing for a long patrol shift on the southern ramparts.

Such was the custom of most Astartes: the ritual, the gloving, the blessing. They were beings wrought for war, their mindsets particular. Ritual aided their singularity of focus. It refined their purpose.

They were not like custodes at all. Like cousins, perhaps, like kin from the same bloodline, the custodes and the Astartes were similar but distinct. The custodes were the product of an older, formative process, a process, some said, that had been refined and simplified to produce the Astartes en masse. Generally, custodes were larger and more powerful than Astartes, but the differences were only noticeably significant in a few specific cases. No one would be foolish enough to predict the outcome of a contest between an Astartes and a custodes.

The greatest differences lay in the mind. Though custodes shared a familial bond through the circles of their order, it was nothing like the keen brotherhood that cemented the Legions of the Astartes. Custodes were far more solitary beings: sentinels, watchmen, destined to stand forever, alone.

Custodes did not surround themselves with slaves and servitors, aides and handservants. They armoured themselves, alone, pragmatically, without ceremony.

‘Dorn armours the Palace for war,’ Amon said, as more of an observation than a question. Only a custodes of the first circle would refer to a primarch so bluntly.

‘War is expected.’

‘Now it is expected,’ said Amon. ‘Before, it was not expected, never, not from ourselves.’

Constantin did not reply.

‘How did this happen?’ Amon asked.

‘It is not possible to say,’ replied the master of the custodes. ‘As one who knew the Warmaster well, I cannot believe it is overweening pride or ambition that has inspired this infamy, nor resentment. I believe–’

‘What?’ asked Amon, buckling his abdominal plates tight.

‘I believe Horus Lupercal is unsound,’ said Constantin. ‘Unsound of mind or of humour. Something has unseated his rational thought, and the good council of those around him.’

‘Are you suggesting Horus Lupercal is mad?’ asked Amon.

‘Perhaps. Mad, or sick, or both. Something has happened to him that cannot be explained by the scheme of the galaxy as we have come to understand it.’ Constantin looked out through the high windows of the House of Weapons, and studied the line of the Western Ramparts, newly reinforced and obese with additional shield plating and gun platforms. ‘We must prepare for the unthinkable. War will come to us, war from within. Sides are drawn, choices made.’

‘You make it sound matter-of-fact,’ Amon said.

‘It is,’ replied Constantin. ‘The Emperor is threatened. We are his protectors. We will stand against the threat. There is nothing else for us to speculate upon, not even the madness of those we once loved.’

Amon nodded. ‘The Palace is becoming a fortress. I approve. Dorn has done superlative work.’

‘It was ever his skill, and the skill of his Astartes. Defence and protection. At this, the Imperial Fists excel.’

‘But we remain the last line,’ said Amon.

‘We do.’

‘This will require more than strong walls and battlements.’

With their crested helmets held under their arms, they walked across the inner courts of the Palace from the House of Weapons to a tower of the Hegemon where the custodes kept their office of watch.

Custodes had gathered to greet Amon at the entrance of the tower. Heads bowed, they struck the shafts of their Guardian spears against the flagstones, a clattering murmur of welcome and approval.

Haedo stepped forwards, his features hidden by the shadows of his visor. ‘Amon Tauromachian, good that you return,’ he said, clasping Amon’s right hand.

‘You have cut deeper than any of us,’ Emankon said.

They entered the tower through high-arched rooms where the murals were so old and faded they looked like the pencil sketches and cartoons the artist had made in preparation for his work. Information streams from the vast data looms in the sub-levels of the Palace pulsed in the conduits under their feet. Cyber-drones floated under the high vaults, clusters of them moving like shoals of fish, dragged and gusted as if by the wafts of deep marine currents.

The Watchroom was bathed in violet light from the vast overhead hololithic emitters. Data freckled and danced across this smoky dome of light. The comparison/contrast programs running in the central cogitation consoles speared beams of gold and red up into the violet gloom, and roped divergent data elements in lassos of light. The global data sea and the Unified Biometric Verification System were being trawled and panned by the Watchroom’s codifier assembly, and disparate elements were being grouped together, connections made, traces followed. An anti-Unity cell in Baktria had been betrayed by some restricted treatise they had tried to access from a library in Delta Nilus. Pro-Panpacific terrorists had been eradicated in Archangelus, traced by a weapons-buy they had tried to pull off in some backwater Nordafrik shanty. Every day, a billion clues and a million secrets were analysed and examined by the custodes watch, sifted with acute, painstaking precision through the ever-shifting, fluid levels of Terra’s information sphere.

‘What is the chief matter of the hour?’ Constantin asked.

Every sixty minutes, the Watchroom prioritised a dozen of the most sensitive findings for special attention.

‘Lord Sichar,’ replied the custodian of the watch.

He had not hefted a Guardian spear in ten months. He went to the practice chambers in the subterranean levels beneath the tower, and cued up a dozen blade-limbed servitors to oppose him. The spear swung and looped in his hands, his muscles remembering the old skills and training. When the exercise ended, and the servitors were broken and dismembered on the mat around him, he called up fresh units for a second round.

How much of our lives are spent in rehearsal, he considered. The blood games, the training, all of it just pantomime coaching in preparation for the real thing.

Amon hated himself for the tiny thrill of exhilaration that he felt. The real thing was coming. No matter the infamy and outrage of it, the custodes would at last be called from rehearsal to perform the duty they had been created to perform.

To relish the imminent war was unseemly. As he closed out the second round of practice, Amon focused his mind instead on the case of Lord Sichar.

‘The matter is already under inspection, Amon,’ Constantin had told him.

‘I have been out ten months,’ Amon had replied, ‘I am rusty and idle, and eager for a proper puzzle to divert me. I ask your favour.’

Constantin had nodded. The matter of Lord Sichar had been passed to Amon Tauromachian for review.

Lord Pherom Sichar had always been a person of interest to the custodes. Hereditary lord of Hy Brasil, the most powerful of all the Sud Merican cantons, Sichar had often been vocal in his criticism of Imperial policies. His dynastic links, through bloodline and marriage, to the Navis Nobilite provided him with a considerable trade empire off Terra. Sichar was reckoned to be one of the fifty most powerful feudal lords of the colonies. Only the most careful political gamesmanship by Malcador the Sigillite had prevented Sichar’s elevation to the Council of Terra. Of greater concern was the fact that Sichar was a direct descendant of Dalmoth Kyn, one of the last tyrants to hold out against the Emperor’s forces in the dying days of the Unification Wars. It was understood that the Emperor tolerated Sichar’s rule of Hy Brasil – and his barracking and sniping in the Hegemon – in order to heal the old wounds left by the Wars of Unification and encourage ethnic settlement. Sichar was a powerful man, and an articulate, outspoken statesman. He often spoke tolerable sense, in Amon’s opinion, and his policies were pragmatic and robust.

His opposition to Imperial directives was not so fierce it required him to be placed under house arrest, like Lady Kalhoon of Lanark, or be removed from office entirely and charged with treason to the Imperial state, like Hans Gargetton, chancellor of the Atlantic Platforms, but Sichar was always to be handled with caution.

After his training session, Amon changed into a simple robe and bodyglove, and went to one of the consultation suites on the floor above the Watchroom, where a strategically stationed Sister of Silence maintained an aura of absolute discretion. He laid out all the key intelligence on the screens of a stochastic processor, and began to assess them using the noetic and retrocognitive techniques taught to all custodes.

Sichar, already under permanent surveillance by the custodes Watchroom, had become a security priority thanks to particular scrutiny of his communication patterns.

His off-world holdings were considerable. His greatest possession was Cajetan in 61 Isthmus, a colonial world rich in resources that provided him with a gateway to the lucrative mineral zones of Albedo Crucis. Sichar’s trade worth was so considerable, junior houses and minor grandees of the Sud Merican aristocracy were flocking to him, and strengthening his support base. If a seat fell open on the Council of Terra, it would be hard to deny it to Lord Sichar.

The threads of connection were vague, but their lines could be traced. Sichar was in direct and regular communication, via astropathic link, with the Governor of Cajetan, and the viceroys of Albedo Crucis II and Sempion Magnix. His correspondence with them, all of the clients he had effectively installed, was conducted in a private cipher that the custodes had not yet broken. It appeared to be a variation of Ansprak Tripattern, one of the few wartime codes used by the anti-unionists that had never been unravelled.

Further threads of connection could be traced, via diplomatic back-channels, to elements of the 1102nd and 45th Imperial Expedition Fleets, and through them to minor colonial holdings, and two service and supply fleets operating out of the Chirog Nebula. Intel suggested that the service fleets, amongst other duties, supplied materiel to the Imperial Army deployed forces on the Butan Group.

There lay the question mark. Five months previously, several sections of the Imperial Army in the Butan Group were rumoured to have declared for the Warmaster. There was a distinct possibility that Lord Sichar, through a lengthy and deliberately complex chain of correspondence, was in communication with the heretics.

Lord Sichar of Hy Brasil, in all likelihood, was trafficking intelligence between Terra and Horus Lupercal.

As it turned, the craft caught the sun across its silver fuselage and shone like a brief star in the mauve reaches of the upper atmosphere. A civilian-pattern Hawkwing, registered to Fancile et Cie, operating out of the Zeon-Ind orbital, it was just another transport coming in along the signal pulse of the Planalto Central traffic beacon.

The flying machine, an orbit-capable bird, wore a burnished metallic skin, and was a wide, elegant shape, like a giant ray or a skate, with broad, triangular wings and a slender dart of a tail. As it skimmed in towards the four high towers of the Planalto Central landing spire, its retarding burners lit with hot jets of green-yellow flame in the lazy evening light, and trailing edge spoilers lifted along the wings like bent feathers. The great towers, dust-brown against the indigo heavens, blinked out powerful white lights from their masts. Two kilometres below, the vast sprawl of urbanised Hy Brasil stretched out, a trillion lights in the dark.

As the Hawkwing adjusted for its final approach, its transponders broadcast its identity packets at the request of Planalto Administratum.

The packets informed Planalto Administratum that the craft was carrying Elod Galt, a senior negotiator for Fancile et Cie, who was visiting Hy Brasil to conduct exploratory talks with representatives of several Albedo mining congloms.

According to Unified Biometric Verification, Elod Galt’s idents were entirely in order.

Not a blood game this time, the real thing.

He would have preferred to work alone, at least to begin with, but there was a role to play. To seem the part, he needed servitors, an astropath and, most likely, a pilot and a lifeguard too. Haedo, in a simple grey bodyglove and slave-mask, doubled in the last two roles. His biometric declared him to be Zuhba, no family name, a genestock migou bought on the Gangetic bodymarket.

As Elod Galt, Amon was obliged to wear sheensilk robes that appeared wet and iridescent, like oil on water, as well as a wolf-pelt mantle, a formless hat with too many brims, and an ornamental sabre of considerable size that was nothing more than an ostentatious, theatrical prop and would be precisely useless in an actual combat situation. Most aggravating of all, he was obliged to wear another displacer field to visibly diminish and disguise his build.

His six attending servitors – one for voxcasting, one for medical duties and food tasting, one for environmental surveying, one for translation, one for recording and rubrication, and one for general service – were fine creations of polished blue steel and were, apparently, exactly the sort of suite of service units that would be expected to accompany a senior industrial negotiator.

A scallop-shell platform carried the Hawkwing down into the landing spire, down a vast flue lit by tracking lights of red and blue that lit in series. Other platforms were raising and lowering aircraft to and from the landing berths. Arriving at the designated berth-level, the platform shivered, halted and then swung sideways, delivering the cooling Hawkwing into the waiting embrace of the berth’s landing cradle. The cradle closed its digits and clamps around the craft like a carnivorous plant grasping an insect, and withdrew it into the steamy alcove of the berth, where grubby servitors, cargo shamblers and deck crewmen were waiting with hoists and blocks, and fuel umbilicals.

Haedo glanced at Amon as the internal cabin lights changed from cold white to a muted yellow standby.

‘Shall we begin?’ he asked.

Amon nodded. He looked over at the vox servitor. ‘Anything from control?’ he asked.

The servitor dipped its head and issued an apologetic tone.

‘Inform me as soon as they connect,’ Amon said.

He put on his hat. Haedo fixed his slave-mask – a screaming cockerel, for some reason of custom and protocol – to his face, and buckled on his sidearm. Interlocks clattered as the craft’s hatches linked to the berth’s air gate, and then the boarding hatch opened.

As he took the pre-arranged meetings with the agents of the mineral congloms, he thought of decomposition, of worms boring into a bloated carcass. His own worms were at work. False cowlings behind the Hawkwing’s afterburners had folded back during berthing, and the sterile compartments within had released sacks of vermicular probes. Sixteen thousand in all, each one an autonomous rope of articulated chrome no bigger than a chopstick. With every passing minute, they were crawling deeper into the fabric of Hy Brasil, spreading wider, chewing their way into data ducts and system trunking, gnawing their way into memory vaults, record banks and datastacks. Some would be found, some flushed by automated security systems, some would follow dead leads and abort when their power cells failed, but some would feast, and transmit their diet back to him.

He sat in a stateroom panelled with Kirgizian fret-screens, and feigned interest in the boasts of gross tonnage and silicate purity made by the agents of the mineral congloms. He thought about the risks. With Constantin’s permission, they had deployed into Hy Brasil to conduct covert inspection, but they still awaited authority to move, in any open way, against Lord Sichar. If they were discovered, they could claim reasonable cause, but the worms were a breach of their legal parameters. If the burgraves of Hy Brasil discovered that the custodes had entered their canton without a warrant and riddled their systems with a swarm of probe worms, there would be uproar. It was an egregious violation of Hy Brasilean sovereignty. Even now, unity was a fragile thing, like a sculpture made of glass or ice: beautiful, precise, solid, but so very easy to break. In the shadow of Horus Lupercal’s great and spreading treason, the last thing the Palace needed was a continental uprising on Terra.

‘It is a great risk,’ Haedo had said in transit from the orbital.

‘It is,’ Amon had agreed, ‘but if Pherom Sichar is what we think he is, waiting to act is a far greater risk.’

Servitors brought them refreshments. The fashion in Hy Brasil seemed to be for mannequins finished in varnished dark wood with brass articulation. They looked like naked nursery dolls: dolls with porcelain faces and hands rendered to seem utterly lifelike, yet whose bodies, beneath their clothes, were crude wood with no effort of realism at all. The servitors whirred around the stateroom, offering infusions of mint and green tea.

The stateroom, high in a tower in the Sao Paol division of the Planalto, overlooked the vast and luminous landscape of the Winter Fields. Hy Brasil drew its power from a series of vast reactors buried in the heart of the main conurbation. The reactors required monumental heat-exchange processes to keep them running within safety tolerances, and as a consequence, the surface levels of the reactor district were caked in thick sheet-ice all year round, forming a gigantic frost park thirty kilometres square in the centre of the Planalto that the hive populations used for recreation. From his vantage point, Amon could see the tiny shapes of skaters near the frozen shore, and children on the banks and ice walks with kites and slithering mechanical toys. Further out, in the yellow haze of the open fields, ice yachts skimmed silently under coloured sails, and powered rakers raced one another around the lighted masts of the speed circuit, spraying up wakes of ice spume.

Negotiations resumed. Amon checked his data-slate, which was discreetly monitoring all infeed to his vox servitor. Authority had still not been sent through from the Palace.

The next meeting took place in a monolithic tower on the far side of the Winter Fields. For amusement’s sake, proud of their frozen landscape, the agents of the congloms conveyed Elod Galt to the meeting aboard an ice yacht. Amon tried to look impressed.

Their host was waiting for them on the quay below the tower, a tall man dressed in furs.

‘I am Sichar,’ he announced, bowing to Galt.

Ptolem Sichar was the fourth brother of Lord Sichar, but used the name unqualified for effect. Lord Sichar had installed Ptolem as the chief executive officer of Cajetan Imports, the trade consortium and shipping line he had founded to service his immense mineral resources.

Ptolem Sichar had dark green eyes that suggested to Amon an overuse of sabenweed. Though a large man, with duelling scars proudly displayed on his cheek, he was no threat. His body was soft, and out of the habit of regular exercise. His mind was soft too. A few minutes’ conversation with him assured Amon that Ptolem Sichar was a superficial dolt.

His retinue was otherwise. He was flanked by the usual servitors, and a quartet of houseguards in scaled green armour. They were warriors of Hy Brasil’s military wing, a body known as the Dracos, competent and efficient soldiers. Amon was certain that the Dracos detailed to guard the ruler’s brother would be members of the specialist veteran squads.

Another figure accompanied the brother, a figure in a coal-black velvet coat and jet body plate. Ptolem introduced him as Ibn Norn, and he was one of the infamous and almost extinct Lucifer Blacks. Such was Lord Sichar’s power and wealth, he had provided every member of his blood family with a bodyguard from the ancient and elite Ischian brigade of Lucifers.

Trailed by Haedo in his cockerel mask, and his string of blue-metal servitors, Amon walked with Ptolem Sichar up the quay and into the tower. They spoke of ice sports, of the coming war, of the effect on trade. Amon was aware that the Lucifer Black was studying him closely.

As they stepped onto a grav platform to be lifted up into the upper decks of the tower, Amon realised, with absolute certainty, that Ibn Norn knew he was wearing a displacer field. He had no idea what subtle thing had given it away. The Lucifer Blacks were as famous for their perception and their razor-sharp minds as for their fighting prowess. Ibn Norn knew that Elod Galt was, at the very least, disguising something or, at the very worst, concealing a dangerous lie.

It was too late to disengage. Waiting and hoping for a confirmation from control, Amon began his meeting with Ptolem Sichar. They sat at a mahogany table on a radial platform high in the tower’s skylight levels. Sichar was easily distracted, and Amon encouraged this foible to buy time, leading the man off on discursive ruminations of such random topics as orbital viticulture, gerontological breakthroughs, genethliacal provenances and the wisdom of studying extinct religions to extract viable ethical value systems.

All the while, Amon thought of the probes, squirming through the dark recesses and cybernetic cavities of the Planalto like mealworms. He thought of the views that he and Haedo had seen en route to Hy Brasil: hive cities closing their meteoritic shields; conurbations reigniting field bulwarks and auto defences left over from the last Terran conflicts; oceanic platforms rigging for submarine function and slowly submerging into the protective bosom of the waters. The homeworld was bracing itself for the traitors’ onslaught, an event that would be, perhaps, the single greatest holocaust mankind would ever have to endure. There was too much at stake to disengage.

At a break in the meeting, Amon checked the infeed of his communication servitor. Nothing had been received from control. Using the data-slate, he also ascertained that nothing of any consequence had so far been received from the probes. In particular, no progress had been made elucidating the version of Ansprak Tripattern used in the questionable transmissions.

A bell rang, and Amon assumed it was supposed to signal them back to the table for the next round of discussions. The atmosphere had changed, however. Ptolem Sichar and his staff hung back, in quiet and solemn discussion. Certain data displays on the radial platform had been masked.

Be ready, Amon signalled to Haedo.

‘My lord Galt,’ said one of the Dracos, striding over to attend them. ‘I’m afraid there’s been an incident. We must suspend talks for the day while it is dealt with. My master expressly apologises for the delay.’

‘What manner of incident?’ Amon asked.

‘A breach of data confidence,’ the Draco replied indirectly.

‘How so?’

‘An outrage. An act that impugns this canton’s–’ The Draco cut himself short. ‘Forgive me, I’m not at liberty to discuss it. It is a sovereign matter.’

‘It sounds grave indeed,’ said Elod Galt with apparently genuine concern. ‘Should I arrange to return to my orbital?’

‘No, sir.’

They turned. Ibn Norn, the Lucifer Black, had joined them. ‘Security issues are under review across the Planalto. Transit would be an unnecessary complication, and you would be greatly inconvenienced by delays and searches. We have arranged a suite in this tower where you can relax in comfort until the present circumstances are over.’

Where you can watch us, Amon thought. Elod Galt nodded graciously.

The suite lay on the sixtieth level. Once the escort had departed, Haedo swept the rooms for surveillance devices using scanners concealed in the torso of the food-tasting servitor.

‘I would ask you to respect our integrity measures and refrain from using your vox servitor,’ Ibn Norn had remarked cordially before leaving them. The servitor’s function displays showed that vox channels were being jammed anyway.

Haedo opened the back of the rubrication servitor and initialised the compact cogito-analyser hidden behind the ribs. Using invasive programs so acutely coded that no Hy Brasilean systems would even notice them, Haedo linked the unit to the Planalto’s data-sphere.

‘The probes have been discovered in the memory cores of the Planalto Administratum,’ he reported. ‘There is…’ He scanned the data rapidly. ‘There is a palpable sense of outrage. Security across the Planalto has been raised to level amber six. The canton parliament is calling an emergency session to discuss the incident. There is furious debate in the intelligence communities as to whether the data invasion is the work of a foreign power or industrial espionage.’

‘If Sichar is guilty as charged,’ said Amon, ‘he’ll know the probable cause and the probable origin. How long will it take them to analyse and trace the vermicular probes?’

‘They were sterile and trace-free until they were launched,’ said Haedo, ‘but they would collect specific particulates during transit. A decent forensic examiner should be able to trace them back to our craft in a few hours.’

‘We are already suspected,’ Amon said.

‘Already?’

‘That Lucifer Black knows we’re not what we seem to be. I believe they are just looking for evidential confirmation before they confront us.’

‘And we still have no authority,’ said Haedo.

Amon nodded, slowly.

‘But they don’t know that,’ he said.

Haedo didn’t respond. He was studying the cogito-analyser intently.

‘What is it?’ Amon asked.

‘Parliament has initiated a system-wide purge to flush out and destroy the probes,’ Haedo replied. ‘The order was countersigned by Pherom Sichar, presiding over the parliament. But that’s not it… I’m getting feedback from the probes. Seven of them have penetrated the Planalto’s communication archive, and one has sourced Lord Sichar’s archive log for the last seven months.’

‘Translations?’

Haedo shook his head. ‘No, the code is still a wall to us. But the sender and receiver header codes on each message form are not encrypted. They’re stored in binaric. I’m running the entire list against comparative data. Wait… wait…’

Tight lines of script began to flow up the small screen of the compact device.

‘Four confirmed matches,’ Haedo whispered. ‘Four, you see? Each one is quite clearly the operative reception code for the Vengeful Spirit.’

The Lupercal’s flagship. Amon nodded. ‘That’s just cause. That’s all we need. We move.’

Strike teams summoned from the Palace could be in the heart of the Planalto in less than twenty-five minutes, but Amon judged that course to be counterproductive. An open shooting war would just make matters worse. He and Haedo had to secure the person of Sichar immediately, and then let a systematic investigation pick Sichar’s network of conspirators apart.

He took a trigger unit from the pocket of his robes and pressed it.

‘Brace for apport,’ he said. There was a loud, double-bang of over-stressed air pressure as the site-to-site teleport delivered two heavy, metal caskets into the suite directly from the Hawkwing. They appeared, fuming with vapour, in the centre of the carpet. The overpressure cracked two of the suite’s windows. Alarms, set off by the violent apport and its energy signature, started to pulse.

Haedo and Amon threw open the metal caskets. Inside each one, carefully packed, lay their golden custodes armour and the disengaged segments of their Guardian spears.

Drill teams of the Draco elite, led by Ibn Norn, burst into the holding suite less than four minutes later. The chambers were empty. A fierce wind blew in through a section of reinforced window that had been entirely cut out.

Ibn Norn glanced at the open, empty apport caskets, and the discarded clothes on the floor beside them. He saw the cockerel mask, the decorative sabre, and the wires of a displacer field hastily torn off.

He crossed to the window, and looked down into the streaming wind. The towers and street scheme of the Planalto spread out below him, far away. In the middle distance, on the shore overlooking the wide and gleaming edges of the Winter Fields, he saw Parliament House.

Ibn Norn activated his grav arrestor and leapt through the window.

Parliament House was a splendid structure built from filaments of silvered steel and pylons of a pale stone that looked like buffed ivory. Bells were ringing, urgently advising the delegates, burgraves and grandees to shelter or seek the protection of their bodyguards. Thousands of Dracos were gathering around the building’s various entrances, especially the broad main steps that led in a magnificent sweep up from the state quays of the Winter Fields.

Haedo and Amon landed on the roof of the largest quay house, disturbing ice powder that had been driven in off the fields. They killed their jump packs and surveyed the scene ahead.

‘We’ve roused them like a colony of angry ants,’ Haedo murmured.

Amon touched his arm and nodded.

A black figure flew in out of the winter sky, rebounded with agile grace off the spire of the gatehouse and landed in the midst of the milling Draco troops on the main steps.

‘Scanners!’ they heard Ibn Norn order. ‘They’re right here! Secure this precinct and find them!’

Haedo and Amon leapt down off the quay house roof and walked towards the steps side by side. Dracos bustled around them, checking handheld monitors or breaking heavier scanning equipment out of carry boxes. Voices were chattering urgently. Gun crews were setting up tripod weapons along the shore to watch the ice fields. Packs of gunships purred low overhead.

The two custodes calmly walked up the steps through the anxious soldiers. They came within three metres of the Lucifer Black. Norn was barking commands, and trying to organise a perimeter.

They entered Parliament House unopposed. The echoey main chamber was emptying. The grandees of Hy Brasil were filing off the banked seating and flowing towards the exits, under the dutiful watch of armed Dracos.

Lord Sichar was still in his seat, a canopied throne of dark wood that presided over the upper and lower houses. He was a noble-looking man in red and green robes, a little younger than Amon had imagined. Sichar’s own Lucifer Black was waiting to hurry his lord to a place of safety, but Sichar was busy signing some last documents brought to him by delegates and scribes, and conferring urgently with the master of parliamentary protocol.

‘Try not to harm his person,’ Amon instructed Haedo. ‘We need him viable for interview.’

‘We’ll probably have to kill his Lucifer,’ Haedo replied.

‘Agreed, but only if he resists. One clean shot. I don’t want a fight in here.’

Thirty metres from the canopied throne, they threw aside their falsehoods.

‘Sichar of Hy Brasil,’ Amon announced. ‘You are sanctioned by the Adeptus Custodes as an enemy of Terra. Do not attempt to resist us.’

Sichar, the delegates, the scribes and the master of protocol turned and gazed at them in astonishment. One of the scribes broke and ran for the exit in terror. The twin golden giants in their crested armour exuded nothing but ferocious menace.

The Lucifer Black seemed to reach for his weapon.

‘One excuse,’ Haedo snarled, aiming his spear in the direction of the Lucifer.

Sichar rose to his feet, retaining more composure than the underlings around him. He gazed down from his podium at the two gleaming custodes.

‘This is inexcusable,’ he began. Despite his defiance, he could not keep a tremor of fear out of his voice. No one faced the might of the custodes without faltering. ‘This is utterly inexcusable. This dishonours the sovereignty of Hy Brasil. I will demand a full apology from your master when–’

‘He’s your master too,’ declared Amon.

Sichar blinked. ‘I… What?’

‘He’s supposed to be your master too,’ Amon repeated. ‘You will accompany us now and answer to a list of issues that brand you a traitor. Step down from the podium.’

A bright flash of light burst across the main chamber, swiftly followed by another and another. For a second, Amon thought grenades had been detonated, but he revised that idea quickly. The light blooms were teleport flares.

There were suddenly seven figures standing between the custodes and their target. Six of them were Adeptus Astartes in full battle armour, instantly recognisable as huscarls of the Imperial Fists. As the teleport flares dissipated, the six Astartes took one step forwards in perfect unison and aimed their boltguns at the custodes with a clatter.

The seventh figure stood in their midst, tall and mantled in a cloak of gold thread and red velvet. His hair was white and cropped short, and his noble face seemed weathered and tired.

‘My lord,’ said Amon, bowing his head to the primarch.

‘This must stop,’ said Rogal Dorn.

Dorn stepped forwards, through the ranks of his Astartes.

‘Put up your weapons,’ he said gently.

The Imperial Fists smartly raised the boltguns to their shoulders.

‘I meant everyone,’ added Dorn, looking at the custodes.

Amon and Haedo kept their spears aimed at the canopied throne.

‘My lord, Pherom Sichar is a traitor and spy,’ replied Amon carefully. ‘He is using the networks of his extensive mercantile empire to communicate with the Warmaster and his benighted rebels. We have just cause and evidence enough to hold him and interrogate him. He will come with us.’

‘Or?’ asked Dorn with a soft, almost amused smile.

‘He will come with us, my lord,’ Amon insisted.

Dorn nodded.

‘An object lesson in determination and loyalty, eh, Archamus?’ he said.

‘Indeed, my lord,’ replied the commander of the huscarls.

‘They would fight six Astartes and a primarch in order to accomplish their duty,’ Dorn said.

‘My lord,’ Amon said, ‘please stand aside.’

‘I’m half-tempted to let you attempt to go through me,’ said Dorn. ‘I would, of course, hurt you both.’

‘You would try,’ replied Haedo. ‘My lord,’ he added.

‘Enough,’ said Dorn. ‘Archamus?’

The retinue commander stepped forwards.

‘Lord Sichar of Hy Brasil is a spy,’ he announced, quite matter-of-factly. ‘Lord Sichar of Hy Brasil has been in regular communication with Horus Lupercal, and has exchanged with the traitor a great deal of intelligence.’

‘You admit it?’ asked Amon.

‘He’s our spy,’ said Dorn. The primarch came up to Amon face to face. They were the tallest beings in the room.

‘I am fortifying Terra as best I can for the coming war,’ said Dorn. ‘That means more than walls and shields and gun platforms. That means information. Viable, solid data. Proper intelligence. Lord Sichar is as loyal as you or I, but his reputation as an opponent of Imperial policy made him a credible defector to the traitor’s camp. Horus thinks he has friends on Terra, friends and allies, who will rise up and turn to fight with him when his host arrives.’

‘I see,’ said Amon.

‘Sadly,’ said Dorn, ‘this great fuss may have compromised him. I may have to develop other spies now.’

‘My lord,’ said Amon, ‘we are custodes. We guard Terra and the Emperor as surely as you. Would it not have made sense to tell us of Lord Sichar’s involvement?’

Dorn exhaled and did not reply.

‘Do you know what a blood game is, my lord?’ asked Haedo.

‘Of course,’ replied Dorn. ‘You hounds play wolves and test the Emperor’s defences for the slightest flaw or vulnerability. I have reviewed many of your reports, and accommodated their findings into my reinforcements.’

‘Then perhaps,’ suggested Amon, ‘we could consider this a blood game? The weakness revealed being that all those who seek to serve and protect the Emperor must work with unified purpose and shared information.’

The raker sped away from the landing quay in a blizzard of ice crystals. It was a powerful, two-seater recreational model, painted cobalt-blue, with an upturned nose and hefty ice-blade. Aft of its stabiliser vanes, its ion engines burned with green fury. It lit off across the Winter Fields, making a sound like a knife being dragged across glass.

Cheth, or whatever his real name was, hadn’t even bothered to unslip the mooring lines. He’d gunned down the two wharfmen on the quay who had come to see what the commotion was about, and then leapt into the raker’s cockpit and slammed the sliding canopy.

Amon crashed down onto the quay just as the raker pulled away. The impact of his huge, armoured bulk cracked several flagstones. The mooring lines, dragged tight, were snapping with pistol-shot cracks. Amon managed to seize one of the lines before it parted, and held on as it broke. Dragged by the line, he was whipped off the edge of the quay and hit the ice on his belly, slithering and ripping along like an unseated rider pulled behind his steed. Ice chips blinded him. The vibration and friction was almost too much to bear. As the raker increased its velocity, Amon felt his armour dent and buckle. He was rolling and bouncing, spinning from side to side on the end of the trailing line. His grip was failing.

Amon let go, and slid clear in a long, wide arc across the ice. He dug in his heavy boots to try and arrest his slide, and as he slowed to a halt, he began to rise.

The raker was accelerating away across the fields. Skaters and ice yachts veered in panic to get out of its headlong path. It ploughed through the flag-lines of a speed-skate course.

Behind him, Amon heard another explosion. Another gout of flame and smoke bellied into the sky from Parliament House.

‘Amon! Amon!’ Haedo’s voice yelled over the vox.

‘Go.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In pursuit. The assassin is heading out across the ice lake. Is the primarch safe?’

‘I have confirmation from the Imperial Fists,’ Haedo replied. ‘Primarch Dorn had left Parliament House before the first bomb.’

‘Lord Sichar?’

‘Dead, along with eight members of the legislature. Amon, stand by. I’m securing a ’thopter. I’ll be en route to you in–’

‘No time,’ Amon replied. He rose and triggered his jump pack. The launch impact threw him high into the air. Climbing, he saw the raker turning ahead of him, below. It was swinging west over the Winter Fields, cutting through a yacht formation.

Lord Sichar had been murdered by his own Lucifer Black, his bodyguard, a man called Gen Cheth. Ibn Norn had introduced him to Amon. Whoever had been wearing the black armoured suit when Amon had nodded to him, his name hadn’t been Gen Cheth. Or, a darker possibility, Gen Cheth hadn’t ever been the man his closest comrades thought he was.

It seemed that the Lupercal had spies of his own. Hounds were wolves and wolves were hounds. Primarch Dorn had been obliged to compromise Lord Sichar’s position as a double-agent for Amon’s benefit. The Lucifer Black had been right there. Horus’s man had been right there. Lord Sichar’s secret had been revealed. Lord Sichar was suddenly a vulnerability to be expunged and an enemy to be punished.

The concussion bomb had seen to that. It had vaporised the centre of the Parliament chamber, and brought down the roof. Haedo and Amon had been thrown backwards through wooden partitions into the consular voting room. Amon had been first on his feet.

The assassin had run. Leaving at least one more bomb behind him, he had fled for the fields. Amon wondered why. Assassins were focused beings. Execution or suicide was the usual conclusion of their efforts. Did this man think he could escape?

Surely not. Then what was he trying to accomplish?

Amon swooped down at the racing craft. Arms across his face, he struck it like a lightning bolt, shearing the canopy clean away. Glass splinters and pieces of window strut billowed away in the rushing wind. Amon tried to hold on. The black-armoured figure struggled to maintain control of the raker one-handed while he fumbled for his weapon. The craft bucked. Amon slid, and ended up clinging to the raker’s upturned nose.

He dug his fingers into the metal skin of the fuselage, making his own handholds, and dragged himself forwards. The assassin had found his weapon. He fired at Amon over the dashboard hump, and a bolt round shrieked past the custodes’s ear. The raker began to approach maximum velocity. Amon clawed on and reached the torn-open cockpit. The assassin fired again, blasting up at the custodes looming over him. The bolt punched through Amon’s left shoulder and blood sprayed into the slipstream.

Amon punched down with his right fist. The blow crushed the black metal helmet and pulped the head inside it.

The raker veered wildly as the assassin’s corpse lolled sideways from the controls. Clinging on, Amon tried to reach in to cut the engines.

He saw what was in the pillion seat behind the driver.

Another bomb, the largest and most destructive of all. Now Amon understood. The assassin had been planning suicide all along. He had been planning to finish his work by riding the raker out into the middle of the Winter Fields and detonating the device. The bomb would take out Hy Brasil’s vast reactors, buried under the fields. The reactors would annihilate the Planalto. Terra would understand, with a sick jolt, the wrath and influence of Horus Lupercal.

Almost shaken off by the savage vibration of the uncontrolled raker, Amon could see a light-beat countdown. There was no way of telling how much longer was left on the timer.

In sheer desperation, Amon tore out his trigger unit. There was no time for complex readjustment or re-calibration, no time to punch in an alternate set of coordinates. Amon simply managed to reset the altitude, adding two kilometres. Then he hit the actuator stud and hurled the unit into the cockpit.

He leapt clear. The site-to-site teleport vanished most of the speeding raker before Amon had even hit the ice. He landed with a bone-jarring crunch, and tumbled for thirty or forty metres in a flurry of ice. A stabiliser vane and part of the raker’s tail assembly, severed by the teleport beam’s tight focus, clattered and cartwheeled past him, shedding debris, the cut edges glowing and molten.

On his back, half-conscious, Amon slid in circles and slowly, slowly, came to a halt. He looked up into the mauve Sud Merican sky.

Two kilometres above him, there was a bright flash, followed by a blinding, surging, expanding blossom of white light. Then the noise and the shockwave hit him and stamped him down into the ice.

By the walls of the Palace, in the Himalazian dusk, the loyal hound rose from the ice and shook itself. It was hurt, but most of the blood on its snout and flanks belonged to the wolf it had just driven, braying, into the dark with its throat torn open.

It plodded back towards the gates, limping, and leaving spots of blood on the snow behind it. Its breath steamed in the cold evening air.

Behind it, out in the blackness, more wolves were gathering and coming ever closer.

Dawn was still two hours from breaking when the armoured column made its way from the still-burning city and rumbled westwards, along the great causeway that once supplied the Tyrants of Kernunnos with the plundered riches of a dozen worlds. The procession stretched for more than a kilometre, winding out along the western plains like a sinuous, steel-clad dragon. Heavy tanks of the Imperial Army took the lead, their armoured hulls still scarred and smoke-stained from the bitter fighting inside the planetary capital, followed by low-slung Chimera armoured personnel carriers containing the veteran troops of the Arcturan Dragoons. It had been the Dragoons who had spearheaded the attack on the Tyrants’ capital and had fought their way first to the battered palace at the centre of the city. By virtue of blood and valour, they had earned their place in the procession and the ceremonies to follow.

The column set a slow, purposeful pace through the fire-lit darkness, following the causeway past vast landing fields now littered with the burnt-out hulls of great treasure ships. One of the landing fields was little more than a gaping crater, its insides still glowing like molten glass. A treasure ship had tried to escape the doom of Kernunnos and been caught in the opening salvoes of the orbital bombardment. The flare of its exploding reactors had engulfed the multitudes of terrified refugees fleeing along the causeway and flung smaller craft like toys into the flanks of their larger brethren, leaving a swathe of melted wreckage for kilometres in every direction.

Past the debris-strewn landing fields the terrain gave way to broad, rolling plains dominated by the sprawling agri-combines that had once provided the capital with much of its food. Now the fields of wheat, corn and salix were cratered by artillery shells and littered with the hulks of burnt-out tanks. Packs of scavengers slinked about the charred hulls, drawn by the scent of the cooked flesh within. Here and there amid the tanks lay the broken bodies of the Tyrants’ bipedal war engines, their limbs riddled by lascannon fire and their chests burst open like jagged metal flowers. Tank commanders swept the fields with their heavy stubbers as they rode past, their auspex goggles picking out the furtive figures of refugees – men, women and children – fleeing across the ruined fields away from the column.

Thirty kilometres from the city the road began to climb into smoke-wreathed foothills that lay at the foot of a low mountain range that the locals called the Elysians. From time out of mind the region had been the playground of the Tyrants and their supporters in the Senate, but six hours of constant bombardment from orbital batteries and planetside artillery had turned the hills and the mountainsides into a splintered, smouldering wasteland. The villas of the great and powerful had been incinerated, along with the villages that supported them and huge tracts of the surrounding forestland.

It was into these mountains that the Tyrants had fled, following word that the last of their much-vaunted battlefleet had been destroyed in a pitched battle near Kernunnos’s primary moon. There was a refuge deep within the Elysians, a vault bored into the heart of one of the largest peaks that had been built during the Age of Strife, when Old Night had reared up and swallowed mankind’s first interstellar civilisation. The vault had been built to protect the planetary elite from the warp-spawned horrors that had walked the land, and over the centuries its formidable construction had become legendary. It was the ultimate fastness, a citadel that could withstand the fires of Armageddon itself.

The column rumbled on through the foothills, occasionally grinding its way over fallen trees and wrecked vehicles strewn in its path. Navigating by orbital maps, the procession passed through the ruined and deserted villages, past the splintered villas and up a series of cracked and pitted roads that led towards the fortress. The mountain had been hacked and riven by searing beams and bombardment cannons, its flanks scoured clean and split by massive blasts. Deep craters in the mountain slope contained the wreckage of orbital laser batteries that had attempted to contest the arrival of the Imperial invasion fleet.

Two-thirds of the way up the mountain the road emptied out onto a broad, artificial plateau, carved like a shelf into the side of the mountain and paved over with ferrocrete. The wreckage of more than a half-dozen military ornithopters lay scattered across the landing field, surrounded by the burnt corpses of their aircrew. On the western end of the expanse, sheltered beneath a massive brow of scorched and splintered granite, stood a towering, featureless metal door.

The armoured vehicles spread across the plateau in a carefully orchestrated routine. APCs halted and lowered their rear ramps, disgorging platoons of battle-hardened Dragoons. Sergeants barked orders and shouted streams of leathery curses, and soon the troops were dragging away the bodies of the enemy and battle tanks were carefully nosing the wrecked ornithopters to the far edges of the plateau. Within thirty minutes the field was clear, and the troops had assembled by companies into two large formations to the far left and far right of the plateau. Off to the east, the great city built by the Tyrants flickered and glowed like a bed of dying embers.

Fifteen minutes before dawn there came a brassy growl of thunder from over the horizon, a steady, building drumbeat that drew nearer and nearer through the overcast sky. The heavy, leaden clouds seemed to roil over the plateau, lit from within by a rising, blue-white glow. Finally the smoke-stained overcast was rent by the rakish noses of a trio of Stormbird assault craft, their landing gear deployed like grasping talons as the pilots flared their engines and brought the huge craft down in a three-point tactical deployment, right in the midst of the waiting Imperial troops.

No sooner had the transports touched down than the heavy assault ramps lowered with a hiss of hydraulics. The crimson glow of battle-lanterns shone from the depths of the crouching Stormbirds, silhouetting the armoured giants waiting within.

Sergeants shouted along the ranks. The Arcturan Dragoons snapped to attention with a crash of hobnailed boots as the Emperor’s Wolves set foot on the blasted earth of Kernunnos.

The assault ramps on two of the transports rang with swift footfalls as grey-armoured warriors dashed out onto the plateau, their huge boltguns held at the ready. They were Space Wolves, gene-engineered supermen of the Emperor’s VI Legion and the pinnacle of the Imperium’s military might, yet their appearance was a study in contrasts between the advanced and the archaic. Servos whined beneath the overlapping plates of their Mark II Crusader-pattern power armour; helmeted heads swept left and right, scanning the landing zone with augmetic optical systems that perceived wavelengths from the infrared to the ultraviolet. Yet their broad shoulders were framed with heavy cloaks of wolf or bear skin, and strange fetishes of iron, wood or bone were affixed to their scarred breastplates. Every one of the warriors carried a sword or a battle-axe at their hip, and many boasted gruesome battle-trophies, like gilt skulls or exotic weapons slung from equipment hooks at their waists. Even the hardest veteran among the Arcturan Dragoons lowered their eyes as the Emperor’s Wolves went by.

The Space Wolves fanned out in a tight arc, advancing past the lead Stormbird and forming up by squads a few yards ahead of the transport’s assault ramp. They continued to scan the plateau for a few moments more, then the warriors raised their weapons to port arms and a silent signal was relayed to the lead ship. At precisely the appointed time, just as dawn began to stain the overcast sky to the east, Bulveye, Wolf Lord of the Space Wolves’ Thirteenth Great Company and commander of the 954th Expeditionary Fleet, descended the ramp of the lead Stormbird with his senior lieutenants and the champions of his Wolf Guard in tow.

The Wolf Lord and his chosen men were resplendent, their power armour polished to a mirror sheen and adorned with tokens of honour and courage earned in the crucible of war. Gold wolf’s head medallions glittered from their grey pauldrons, each one bearing a frayed strip of parchment inscribed with war-oaths or invocations to the Allfather. Their breastplates were decorated with medals of silver or plaques of rune-etched iron, each one representing an act of valour against humanity’s many foes. They wore their best cloaks of wolf or ice-bear hide, and at their belts hung their most prized battle-trophies: gilded fangs, cracked skulls or ivory finger bones taken from enemy champions slain in single combat. Bulveye’s armour was more ornate still: fashioned by the master-artificers on distant Mars, the edges of his pauldrons were chased in gold, and the curved surfaces were inscribed with ornate scenes of battle. Trophies from scores of hard-fought campaigns hung from his cuirass and his war-belt of adamantine plates, and a circlet of hammered gold rested upon his brow. A heavy, single-bladed battle axe was clenched in the Wolf Lord’s gauntleted hand; the steel haft was wrapped in strips of cured sealskin, and the casing of the power weapon’s field generator was etched with runes of victory and death.

His expression grim, Bulveye strode past the waiting squads of his honour guard and approached the fortress entrance. Two warriors fell into step behind him, eyeing the massive doors warily.

‘They’re late,’ Halvdan Bale-eye grumbled. Bulveye’s chief lieutenant was a grim, brooding figure even at the best of times, more at home on the battlefield than in the mead-hall. His wiry copper hair, streaked with grey, hung in two heavy braids that draped across his breastplate, and a bristling beard covered the lower part of his face. He had a nose like an axe blade, and sharp-edged cheekbones criss-crossed with dozens of old scars. His eyes were mismatched, shining from deep-set sockets beneath a craggy brow. Halvdan’s left eye socket was seamed and uneven, the bone broken by a sword stroke that had put out the eye as well. He’d survived the terrible wound and had disdained an eye-patch afterwards, using the empty socket to unnerve foes and shipmates alike during his raiding days on Fenris. Now the unblinking lens of an augmetic eye shone from its depths, its focusing elements clicking softly as the warrior surveyed the entrance and its splintered overhang. Halvdan growled deep in his throat. ‘The damned fools might have changed their minds. They could be planning treachery at this very moment.’

To that, the warrior beside Halvdan let out a derisive snort. ‘Can’t get those big doors open, more like,’ Jurgen replied. He was lean and rangy, his skin drawn taut over the bones of his face and showing the cable-like muscles cording his neck above the rim of his breastplate. His black hair, speckled with grey, was cropped short; lately he’d adopted the Terran tradition of shaving his chin, earning no small amount of jibes from his pack-mates. ‘After six hours of bombardment it’s a wonder they weren’t all buried alive.’ He gave his lord a sidelong look, his dark eyes glittering with raven-like mirth. ‘Did anybody think to bring shovels?’

Bulveye gave Jurgen a look of brotherly irritation. They were all old men by the standards of the Astartes, having been reavers and sword-brothers to Leman, King of the Rus, for many years before the Allfather had come to Fenris. When the truth of Leman’s heritage was finally revealed, every warrior in the king’s mead-hall had drawn their iron blades and clamoured to fight at his side, as sword-brothers ought. But they were all too old, the Allfather told them; not a man among them was younger than twenty years. The trials they would have to endure would very likely kill them, no matter how courageous and strong-willed they were. Yet the men of Leman’s mead-hall were mighty warriors, each man a hero in his own right, and they would not be dissuaded by thoughts of suffering or death. Leman, the king, was moved by their devotion, and could not find it in his heart to refuse them. And so his loyal thanes undertook the Trials of the Wolf, and true to the Allfather’s word, the vast majority of them died.

Out of hundreds, almost two score survived, a number that amazed even the Allfather himself. In honour of their courage, Leman – no longer king now, but Primarch of the VI Legion – formed a new company around the survivors. Ever since, the other warriors of the Legion referred to the Thirteenth as the Greybeards. The members of the company, however, called themselves the Wolf Brothers.

‘If they won’t come out, we’ll use the Stormbirds and the battle tanks to get those doors open and go in after them,’ Bulveye said grimly. ‘One way or another, the campaign ends here.’

Jurgen grinned and made to reply, but the expression on the Wolf Lord’s face made him think better of it. Bulveye had a square-jawed, sharp-nosed face that appeared stubborn and unyielding even in the best of times. Though of an age with Jurgen and Halvdan, his head was bald, and there was no hint of grey in his close-cropped blond beard. His eyes were pale blue, as sharp and deadly as glacial ice. Bulveye had sworn an oath to the primarch to bring the entirety of the Lammas subsector into compliance, and his lieutenants knew that when the Wolf Lord gave his word on a thing, he was as relentless and implacable as a winter storm.

Halvdan chuckled at Jurgen’s discomfort. The bare-chinned lieutenant shot the warrior a hard look, but before he could reply a deep rumble reverberated from the scarred mountainside and with a grating of metal and stone the huge doors of the fortress began to slide open.

A stir went through the Dragoons. Sergeants shouted down the murmurs spreading through the ranks. Clouds of dirt gusted through the widening gap between the doors, and a handful of men in tattered uniforms staggered out into the cool mountain air. Their jackets were stained with sweat and mud, and the scabbards of their dress sabres were dented and scarred. Several of the men fell to their knees, gasping in exhaustion, while others simply stared in shock at the Space Wolves and the men assembled behind them.

Moments later an officer appeared, his dress uniform no less filthy than the rest but his spirit still intact despite the ordeal he and his men had suffered. He barked a series of orders, and the men responded as best they could, straightening their jackets and forming into a rough group beside their leader. More men clambered through the gap into the open air, joining the rest, until almost a full platoon of battered soldiers stood at attention facing the Wolves. From their uniforms, Bulveye could tell they were members of the Companions, the Tyrants’ elite bodyguards. At the beginning of the campaign the Companions had been six thousand strong, a thousand fanatical defenders for each of the empire’s overlords.

The commander of the bodyguards looked over his men one last time, then gave a curt nod. Backs straight, the soldiers marched the short distance to the waiting Space Wolves, and one by one they unbuckled their sabres and laid them at the giants’ feet. When the last soldier had turned over his weapon, their commander approached the Wolf Lord and, with a hollow look in his eyes, he added his weapons to the pile. Bulveye studied the man dispassionately, taking note of the rank tabs on his uniform. ‘Where is your commanding officer, subaltern?’ the Wolf Lord asked.

The junior officer straightened, his arms stiff at his sides. ‘With his ancestors,’ the young man replied with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘He shot himself this morning, shortly after the surrender terms were accepted.’

Bulveye considered this, and nodded gravely. The subaltern lowered his eyes, turned about and rejoined his men. The young man took a deep breath, snapped an order, and the surviving Companions sank to their knees, pressing their foreheads to the ferrocrete as the surrender ceremony began.

The slaves came first, clad in torn and bloodied robes and staggering beneath the burden of heavy metal chests. Their faces were dull and dirt-stained, worn down by the twin scourges of exhaustion and starvation. One after another they approached the fearsome, armoured giants, laid the chests at their feet and pulled the lids open to reveal the wealth contained within. Raw gemstones and precious metals gleamed dully in the diffuse morning light: the ransom of six Tyrants, plundered from the length and breadth of their petty empire. It piled up around the Space Wolves like a dragon’s hoard, drawing avaricious murmurs from the soldiers of the Imperial Army. When their task was complete, the slaves knelt beside the vast treasure, their expressions vacant and uncaring.

Next came the daughters and wives of the Tyrants, a wailing procession clad in white robes of mourning, their coiffed hair undone and their pale faces smeared with ash. The youngest ones recoiled and cried out in fear as they saw the fearsome giants and the leering Dragoons; no doubt they had spent a sleepless night imagining the terrible abuses that awaited them. The women fell to their knees a few yards in front of the Wolves; some wept inconsolably, while others kept their faces expressionless, evidently resigned to their fate.

Last of all came the Tyrants themselves. They emerged from the fortress one at a time, taking short steps beneath the weight of their heavy gilt robes and jewelled chains of state. The self-styled masters of the Lammas subsector were small, pale-skinned men, their faces blotched and saggy from a lifetime of debauchery and excess. Two of the men had to be helped along by a cluster of slaves. Their eyes were glassy and unfocused; either they had chosen to face their ruin through a haze of drugs, or their spirits had simply shattered under the weight of their defeat.

A new chorus of wails rose from the women as the Tyrants approached the Space Wolves. Trembling hands grasped at the hem of their robes as the former rulers passed by their loved ones and came to stand before their foes. Slowly, haltingly, they knelt before the conquerors, and in the tradition of their people, they bared their necks and prepared to die.

Halvdan and Jurgen shared a brief look and shook their heads in disgust. Bulveye studied the Tyrants for a long moment, then stepped forwards, his axe held loosely in his right hand. He towered over the kneeling men like a vengeful god, glaring coldly at each man in turn.

‘And so we meet again,’ the Wolf Lord said, ‘just as I told you we would, seven years ago. Back then, I stood in your palace of crystal and steel and brought you glad tidings from our Allfather, the Emperor of Mankind. I bore a message of welcome, and promises of peace and order. I gave you this –’ Bulveye said, holding out his open left hand – ‘and you spat upon my palm. You scorned the gifts of my lord and sent me into the streets like a beggar, threatening to kill me if we met again.’

The Wolf Lord glowered at the Tyrants and showed them his axe. ‘Before I left, I swore to you that this day would come. Now your fleets have been broken and your armies scattered.’ Bulveye gestured eastwards. ‘Your palace of steel and crystal is no more. Your sons are dead, and your cities lie in ruins.’ His voice lowered to a throaty growl, and his lips drew back in a snarl, revealing prominent, wolf-like canines. ‘You are Tyrants no longer. You have been cast down, and I’ve seen to it that neither you nor your kind will ever rise again.’

Bulveye gestured to his lieutenants. Halvdan and Jurgen stepped forwards, their expressions grim. Groans went up from the fallen Tyrants, and their wives cried out in misery. But instead of drawing their blades, the two Space Wolves took the chains of state from the trembling men and tossed them onto the treasure-pile, then grabbed hold of their rich robes and tore them away as well.

‘Had it been left up to me, you would have never emerged from those tunnels,’ Bulveye snarled. ‘I would have turned this entire mountain into your tomb. But the Allfather in his wisdom has decided otherwise.’ The Wolf Lord gestured to the heaps of treasure. ‘This wealth belongs to the many worlds you have despoiled – planets that became battlefields thanks to your arrogance and greed. You will use this fortune to begin rebuilding what was lost, and ensure that the worlds of this subsector become prosperous and stable members of the Imperium. Each planet will soon have an Imperial governor to oversee their reconstruction, and they will send me regular reports of your efforts.’ He glared down at the naked and shivering men. ‘Do not give me reason to return here ever again.’

Slowly and deliberately, Bulveye lowered his axe. The former Tyrants and their families fell silent, unable to contemplate at first that their lives and their virtue were to be spared. The Wolf Lord turned on his heel and strode back towards the waiting Stormbird. As he picked his way through the treasure trove he gazed sternly at the kneeling slaves. ‘Get up,’ he commanded. ‘You are slaves no longer. From this day forwards, you are citizens of the Imperium, and so long as the Allfather lives, you will never bow your knee to another master.’

For the first time, a hint of life returned to the beleaguered faces of the former servants, and slowly, tentatively, they started to climb to their feet. Among the nobles, one young woman let out a hysterical cry of relief and half-crawled, half-stumbled to the side of her father, who tried to cover his nakedness with trembling hands and stared hatefully at the retreating backs of the Space Wolves.

The three warriors passed through the cordon established by their waiting battle-brothers and continued on to the Stormbird’s ramp. Halvdan stole a look behind him at the fallen Tyrants and growled deep in his throat. ‘We should have killed every last one of them,’ he grumbled. ‘They won’t learn. You can be sure of that. In another ten or twenty years we’ll have to come back here and finish the job.’

But Jurgen shook his head. ‘The Lammas subsector will still be a shadow of its former self a hundred years from now, much less twenty,’ he replied. ‘We were very thorough, brother. Every city, every industrial centre, every starport will have to be rebuilt.’

‘A damned waste,’ the Wolf Lord murmured, surprising both men. ‘So much destruction. So many lives thrown away, all for the sake of six arrogant fools.’

Halvdan shrugged. ‘Such is the price of resistance. It’s ever been thus, my lord, even back in the old days on Fenris. How many petty kings did we lay low at the command of King Leman? How many villages burned, how many longboats smashed to kindling? It’s the way of things. Empires are built with broken bones and rivers of blood.’

‘Aye, that’s so,’ Bulveye agreed. ‘I don’t deny it. And the Allfather’s cause is a just one: mankind must be made whole again if we’re to reclaim what is rightfully ours. This galaxy belongs to us, and it’s our duty to reclaim it, regardless of the cost. Otherwise, everything humanity has suffered up to this point will have been for naught.’

‘And we’d be no better than all the xenos filth that came before us,’ Jurgen added. He clapped Bulveye on the shoulder. ‘It’s been a long, hard-fought campaign, my lord. You’ve broken the Tyrants and reclaimed the entirety of the Lammas subsector. Take pride in the knowledge that you’ve fulfilled your oaths to the Allfather, and be content.’

Just then, a wiry, older man wearing the dark grey tunic of a Legion bondsman descended the drop-ship’s ramp and hurried to meet the oncoming Wolf Lord. He was Johann, one of Bulveye’s own huscarls, and the Wolf Lord frowned at the tense expression on the bondsman’s face.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked quietly as Johann drew near.

‘Two ships arrived in system a few hours ago,’ the huscarl said gravely. ‘One was a courier, bearing a priority message from Leman Russ himself. We’re to conclude all operations immediately and rendezvous with the primarch at Telkara in five months’ time.’

The Wolf Lord’s eyes widened. ‘The entire company?’

Johann shook his head. ‘No, lord. The entire Legion. Orders have reached the primarch from the Allfather himself. We’re bound for Prospero.’

‘Prospero?’ Halvdan interjected. ‘That’s madness! Where did you hear such a thing?’

‘It says so in the message,’ the huscarl replied. ‘Though no reason is given. No doubt we will learn more when we reach Telkara.’

‘Five months,’ Jurgen echoed. He shook his head. ‘We’ve got warriors and ships scattered all over the subsector, hunting down the last of the Tyrants’ supporters. It could take months just to assemble everyone and see that they’re supplied for the journey.’

Bulveye nodded. Telkara was far to the galactic north, more than two sectors away. Withdrawing the company from combat and preparing them for such a trip was no small task. ‘Despatch couriers with orders for the company to marshal at Kernunnos at once,’ he said to Johann. With much of the Imperial fleet orbiting the Tyrants’ former throne world, it would be the logical place to resupply the ships of the Great Company before they made way for Telkara. The Wolf Lord paused. ‘One moment. You said two ships arrived in system. What was the other one?’

‘One of the long-range scout ships, my lord,’ Johann replied. ‘You instructed Admiral Jandine to continue probing the region along the eastern edge of the subsector.’

‘I know what I instructed Admiral Jandine,’ Bulveye snapped. ‘Did they find anything?’

‘Yes, lord,’ the huscarl said. ‘The scouts report that the warp storms continue to diminish throughout the region, opening more and more of the area to safe navigation.’ He started to say more, but hesitated.

The Wolf Lord’s eyes narrowed. ‘What else?’

‘One of the ships managed to reach a star system in the region, one previously cut off by the storms,’ he said. ‘It’s listed on our older charts, though there’s no indication that a colony was ever established there.’

‘But?’

Johann took a deep breath and plunged ahead. ‘But the scout ship detected vox transmissions at standard frequencies emanating from the fourth planet in the system,’ the huscarl reported.

Bulveye’s expression darkened. Halvdan shot a sidelong glance at Jurgen and shook his head. ‘Leave it,’ he said to the Wolf Lord. ‘It’s just one world. Let the Army have a look. We’ve got new orders, haven’t we?’

‘Halvdan is right, my lord,’ Jurgen added. ‘We’ve reclaimed every settled world in this subsector. What more can we do?’

Bulveye was silent for a moment more. ‘What more? Our duty to mankind, of course,’ he said, then focused his attention on the huscarl.

‘Tell me of this world,’ the Wolf Lord commanded.

The battle-barge Ironwolf hung like a poised blade above the green-and-ochre surface of the battered world. Light from the system’s distant yellow sun glinted coldly on the warship’s cathedral-like superstructure and highlighted the raw battle-scars along its armoured hide. The Ironwolf had seen hard fighting in the last seven years of the Great Crusade, and the great battle-barge bore its wounds proudly. She was the flagship of the 954th Expeditionary Fleet, and her honour rolls bore testament to the battles she’d fought and the wayward worlds she’d reclaimed in the name of the Emperor of Man.

Bulveye felt the leaden weight of acceleration press his armoured form against its restraining cradle as the Stormbird flared its engines and launched from one of the Ironwolf’s cavernous launch bays. The thunder of the assault ship’s massive engines deadened abruptly as the Stormbird streaked across the gleaming curve of the planet’s upper stratosphere and began a gradual descent towards the surface. A hololith installed in the bulkhead in front of the Wolf Lord’s acceleration cradle displayed the Stormbird’s trajectory, along with status icons detailing everything from the craft’s airspeed and angle of attack to its weapons’ status, fuel consumption and turbine pressure. Interfacing with the Stormbird’s onboard systems via his armour’s vox-unit, Bulveye called up the high-altitude reconnaissance images taken of the planet over the past twenty-four hours and began to study the picts with a steely, blue-eyed stare.

The planet had no name, according to the Ironwolf’s star charts; given their position, far to the galactic south, it had likely been one of the last human colonies, settled sometime in the Eighth Diaspora prior to the Age of Strife. The colonists had been very lucky, or very brave, or both, Bulveye reckoned. Few such colonies had survived the centuries of isolation that had followed; the Lammas subsector alone was strewn with the skeletal ruins of settlements that hadn’t been strong enough to endure the warp storms and the horrors they spawned.

And this world had suffered greatly, the Wolf Lord saw. Much of its landmass was barren and lifeless. Thousands of kilometres of wasteland stretched all the way to the planet’s polar ice caps, leaving perhaps a score of green and vibrant regions strung like a chain of emeralds around the world’s equator. He could see the outlines of great lakes and inland seas that had been transformed into cracked and broken plains, and broad mountain slopes scoured down to bare, unyielding stone. According to the auspex arrays aboard the Ironwolf, much of the lifeless terrain was dangerously radioactive.

Bulveye froze the pict-feed on a single image. ‘Magnify by ten,’ he murmured into his vox-bead. The pict blurred as it expanded; cogitators in the base of the hololith clattered as the enhancement algorithms refined the smear of tan, ochre and dark grey into low, rounded hills surrounding a gently sloping basin some eighty kilometres across. The grey line of a dry riverbed wound like a serpent’s track across the centre of the basin, its borders smudged in places by drifts of choking dust. A broad expanse of broken stone and jagged, black girders rose from the dust along one broad bend of the riverbank. A small city had thrived there once, hundreds of years past.

Metal and military-grade plas creaked loudly behind the Wolf Lord. ‘Must’ve been quite a war,’ Halvdan said admiringly, squinting at the pict over Bulveye’s shoulder.

Bulveye reached down and disengaged the swivel lock on his acceleration cradle so he could turn to face the interior of the transport’s forward troop compartment. A dozen Marines of his Wolf Guard filled the cramped space, locked into their own cradles along the chamber’s outer bulkheads. Their wargear had been cleaned of the grit and gore from the fighting on Kernunnos, and their armour polished to a mirror sheen. It was a small honour guard for so important a mission, but the Wolf Lord had been loath to withdraw any more warriors from vital combat duties on the Tyrants’ former throne world. Time was short, and Bulveye was resolved to make do with the men he had available. The Allfather expected no less of his Legions.

The Wolf Lord considered the hololith a moment more, then shook his head dubiously. ‘If it was a war, it was a damned strange one,’ he replied. He indicated the lifeless plains outside the ruined city. ‘No craters. No ruined vehicles. No signs of abandoned fortifications or other field positions. And the devastation extends for thousands of kilometres, into northern and southern latitudes that would have been hostile to human life under normal conditions, much less something like this.’

Halvdan’s expression darkened. ‘Psykers, then,’ he grumbled, reaching up to finger an iron charm hung from a leather cord about his thick neck. Psykers – more commonly called warlocks by the primitive folk on Fenris – had spontaneously emerged on countless human worlds just before the Age of Strife. Their unnatural powers caused widespread chaos and destruction; the most powerful psykers could warp the very fabric of reality itself. More than once during the course of the Crusade, the Expeditionary Fleets had come upon colonies that had fallen under the sway of these nightmarish beings. The Allfather had ordered the planets burnt to ash and the coordinates of the systems stricken from the star charts.

‘Perhaps,’ Bulveye allowed, ‘but if so, the people here must have found a way to stop them.’

Across the troop compartment, Jurgen shifted in his acceleration cradle to get a better view of the hololith. ‘I’ve yet to see a psyker survive an atomic blast,’ he muttered. ‘It would explain all that radiation, and the scale of the devastation. They nuked three-quarters of their own planet to wipe them out.’

‘Except that we’ve seen no indication of any military forces at all, much less atomic weapons,’ Bulveye pointed out. ‘And then there’s this.’

The Wolf Lord turned back to the hololith and transmitted a command. The pict of the ruined city dissolved into a polychromatic fog. Cogitators whirred and clicked. Moments later another image resolved from the mist.

A city appeared in the foreground, built of solid slabs of glistening white stone and fitted cunningly into the slopes of forested hills at the base of a tall, cloud-swept mountain range. Streets made from stone or some local composite connected the terraced buildings and teemed with hundreds of people and small, dome-shaped vehicles going about their daily business. There was little in the way of detail, but something about the scene suggested frenetic – almost harried – activity.

Halvdan’s augmetic eye clicked softly as he focused on the image. ‘Seems pleasant enough,’ he said.

‘Not the city,’ Bulveye said. He leaned against the restraints and jabbed a finger at a faint, dark object in the background of the image. ‘I’m talking about that.’

The Wolf Lord pointed to a thin, dark line, straight as a knife-edge and rising above the hills a long way away from the city. Halvdan scowled, peering intently at the image. ‘Well, it’s big, whatever it is,’ he said.

‘Big?’ Jurgen echoed. ‘Judging by the scale, it must be huge.’

Bulveye nodded. The image vanished, replaced by another showing a closer look at the object. It was a spire, narrower at the tips and bulging slightly in the middle, like a dart balanced precariously on the palm of a man’s hand. The surface was a matt black, so dark it seemed to swallow the light around it. Only vague irregularities in the spire’s silhouette suggested that it wasn’t perfectly smooth, but possessed hundreds of small ledges and narrow alcoves.

‘It’s more than five thousand metres high,’ the Wolf Lord declared. ‘No one on the Ironwolf can tell me how old it is, or what it’s made of. About the only thing the Iron Priests can agree on was that no human hand could possibly have made it. And there’s one like it in each of the twenty habitable zones left on the planet.’

Jurgen scowled at the strange image. ‘And you’re certain there aren’t any psykers down there?’

‘Any psyker arrogant enough to build something like that isn’t the sort to hide in the shadows,’ Bulveye countered. ‘Our recon flights intercepted a large number of civilian vox transmissions over the last few days – news broadcasts and the like. There’s no hint of psyker activity anywhere on the planet.’

‘And yet,’ Halvdan said, stroking the charm around his neck, ‘the spires are only found in close proximity to people. That can’t be a coincidence.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ Bulveye agreed. ‘Needless to say, I’ve got a number of questions for the Planetary Senate once we’ve finished with the important business of the day.’

‘I don’t like this at all,’ Jurgen grumbled. ‘And it’s not as though we’ve no more important work to do, my lord. The primarch has summoned us; why do we dally here?’ He waved a gauntleted hand at the hololith. ‘This is a minor world on the very fringe of human space. As best we can tell, there’re perhaps a hundred and twenty million people on the entire planet: there were cities on Kernunnos that were larger than that! And that’s nothing compared to what awaits us at Prospero.’

Halvdan clenched his bearded jaw, but nodded as well. ‘For once, I agree with Jurgen,’ he said. ‘Our destiny lies far to the galactic north. What is to be gained here, of all places?’

The Wolf Lord’s eyebrows rose at the question. ‘What is there to be gained? A hundred and twenty million lost souls to begin with,’ he replied. ‘Not to mention the honour of our company! The primarch sent us here to bring the worlds of the subsector into compliance – all of them – and that’s exactly what I mean to do. It will take another eight weeks at least to marshal the rest of the company at Kernunnos; in the meantime, we have a job to perform.’

Jurgen did not reply at once. Instead, he studied his lord for several long moments. ‘My lord, you and I have fought together for almost three hundred years now,’ he said. ‘I know you better than most men know their own brothers, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s more to this little expedition than simply fulfilling your duty.’

Bulveye gave his lieutenant a hard look, which Jurgen bore without remark. Finally the Wolf Lord sighed and turned back to the hololith. ‘Since when was our duty ever simple?’ he growled underneath his breath.

The Stormbird entered the planet’s atmosphere on a plume of fire and descended in a long arc over the world’s equator. Within an hour the drop-ship was swooping low over cloud-wreathed mountains and green, forested hills as they approached the sprawling city of Oneiros. The low, white structures clustered against the hills like colonies of toadstools, surrounding a concentrated metropolitan area more in keeping with a modern Imperial city. Bulveye reckoned that the tall buildings and stately amphitheatres were made for public use, given that Oneiros was also the seat of the planetary government. The Wolf Lord also noted terraced vineyards skirting a number of the smaller hills, and other lands set aside for growing crops or grazing livestock. Bulveye could see that most of the herds were small and relatively young, and that the fields were swarming with farmhands hurriedly taking in the harvest.

They had to circle the city twice to find any traces of the former starport. The huge landing fields that once serviced massive cargo shuttles or smaller tramp freighters were now grassy meadows, their precise, man-made edges still visible from the air. A white flock of beasts that could have been goats or sheep bolted for a nearby stand of trees as the huge ship passed overhead and came in for a vertical landing on the sward. The heat from the transport’s thrusters set alight broad swathes of the field’s greenish-blue grass as it touched down.

By the time the drop-ship’s assault ramp had lowered to the smouldering ground there were close to a score of the dome-shaped local vehicles approaching the Stormbird from the edge of the landing field. They stopped at a discreet distance and a number of men and women climbed out just as the first of Bulveye’s Wolf Guard rushed out into the sunlight and established a security cordon around the ship.

Bulveye reached the bottom of the ramp in enough time to witness the reaction of the locals at the sight of the towering Astartes. Fear and surprise were etched clearly on their youthful faces; the young men goggled at the size and power of the Astartes, while the women stared worriedly at the massive boltguns in the warriors’ hands.

The Wolf Lord surveyed the broad field slowly, somewhat bemused at the lack of spectators. Even on Kernunnos, a world that thought itself superior to ancient Terra and hostile to the servants of the Imperium, the starport and the roads leading to the palace had been jammed with people, all eager to see the ‘barbarians’ from beyond the stars. Had their visit to Oneiros been kept secret from the populace?

‘Stand down, brothers,’ he subvocalised over his vox-bead, and his bodyguards lowered their weapons at once. With Jurgen and Halvdan in tow, he approached the welcoming party and quickly took their measure. Not one of them had to be older than twenty-one, he thought. They dressed expensively, favouring gold ornaments on their leather doublets and jewelled beading on their flared trousers. None of them bore a weapon, but they carried themselves with confidence and a kind of supple grace that came from physical conditioning and hard training.

Without thinking, Bulveye sized them up from a predator’s standpoint, identifying who led the pack and who followed. Like all Space Wolves, Bulveye’s senses were superhumanly keen. He could smell the fear emanating from each person in the group, but also the acrid tang of challenge as well. The Wolf Lord turned to a young man in the forefront of the group and nodded his head respectfully. ‘I am Bulveye, Lord of the Thirteenth Great Company and sword-brother to Leman Russ, Primarch of the VI Legion.’

The young man was startled at being addressed so directly. He was tall and lithe for a normal human, with dark hair and a sombre, bearded face. ‘I am Andras Santanno. My father, Javren, is the Speaker of the Planetary Senate.’ Santanno’s leather doublet creaked as he sketched a deep bow. ‘Welcome to Antimon, lord.’

Bulveye studied the young man carefully. ‘Your voice is familiar,’ he said. ‘Were you the person I spoke to when we tried to contact your Senate?’

This time Andras attempted to conceal his surprise. ‘I – yes, that’s correct,’ he stammered. ‘My father – that is, the Speaker of the Senate – has been informed of your arrival. Fortunately, they’re currently in session, discussing –’ he paused, suddenly wary – ‘important business. They’ve agreed to see you, though,’ the young man added quickly. ‘I relayed to them everything that you told me, and they would like to hear more. I’ve come to take you to the Senate chambers.’

Bulveye nodded as if he expected no less, though his mind was working furiously, considering the implications of everything Andras had told him. ‘Let us go then,’ he said carefully. I have a great deal to discuss with your father and his colleagues, and I fear that time is short.’

Andras frowned slightly at Bulveye’s answer, but quickly regained his composure. He turned, gesturing towards the waiting vehicles. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Bulveye was dubious that the flimsy-looking Antimonan vehicles could hold a fully armoured Astartes, much less carry one at any decent speed, but the ground cars’ interiors could be almost entirely rearranged to suit any occasion, and were made of sterner stuff than they appeared. Soon the Wolf Lord and his men were being transported along a bewildering array of narrow, curving roads that wound among the city’s tall hills. They passed dozens of low-slung, rounded stone buildings; up close, Bulveye could not help but notice the thickness of the walls and the sturdiness of their construction; in many ways they were more like bunkers than homes. People were coming and going from each house in a steady procession, carrying in bags of supplies and leaving empty-handed. The Antimonans paid little attention to the ground cars as they sped quietly past; when they did notice, it was with furtive, almost forbidding stares.

Andras sat in the car’s front compartment, alongside the driver; Bulveye expected a stream of questions from the Antimonans, but they sat quietly for nearly the entire trip. When they spoke at all it was to one another, in a dialect of accented High Gothic that the Wolf Lord found difficult to follow. Bulveye did not mistake the tense sound of their voices, however, or the hunched, apprehensive set of their shoulders. As they rode deeper into the city, the Wolf Lord kept himself composed and outwardly calm, but his sense of unease steadily grew.

The Antimonans were preparing for something dire. That much was clear. Had the Ironwolf’s arrival in orbit caused this? Until he knew more, Bulveye resolved to keep his observations to himself. He knew that his men were doubtless forming their own impressions of the city and its inhabitants. Later, when the opportunity arose, he would take his lieutenants aside and see if their thoughts matched his. For the first time, he began to doubt the wisdom of this journey. Jurgen was right: he’d been too impetuous, haring off to an unknown world in the hope of a joyful welcome and a triumphal end to years of brutal, merciless warfare. He had been too eager to scrub the cruelties of the Lammas Campaign from his soul.

It took more than an hour for the long line of vehicles to reach the city centre, and the transition from the low structures in the hills to the towers of the city proper was jarring. Though made from the same white stone, the style of the tall structures was entirely different, built more for aesthetics and function than security. Bulveye had little doubt that the towers dated back to the earliest days of the colony.

The Senate building was a curious, spiral-like affair, with a wide, conical base and grand terraces connected by spiral ramps that climbed the outside of the structure. There were few people about, and those that were seemed to be busy with official duties; Bulveye noted that a number of the bureaucrats carried hololith slates and portable vox-units that were smaller and more sophisticated than anything available in the Imperium, which he knew would interest the Iron Priests aboard the Ironwolf. It appeared that Antimon had managed to retain at least some of the technological capabilities that existed prior to the Age of Strife. Like Andras and his fellows, the bureaucrats were startled by the size and demeanour of the Astartes – in one case, an older man took one look at Halvdan and went white as a sheet before quickly turning about and dashing into the building from where he came. The bearded lieutenant seemed not to notice, but the Wolf Lord knew better. From the surreptitious looks passing between the members of the Wolf Guard, it was clear that everyone was well aware of the strange reception and the mood of the Antimonans in general.

Andras alone led the Wolf Lord and his men inside the Senate building, through a wide, open entranceway and into an echoing foyer decorated in elegant green marble. Niches surrounding the circular chamber contained hand-chiselled statuary of remarkable quality: the first example of art or culture he’d seen anywhere in the city, Bulveye realised. The pieces were ancient, possibly made during the Age of Strife or even earlier. The figures were clothed in archaic styles of dress similar to what Andras and his fellows wore, and seemed to depict Antimonans from many walks of life: artists, scholars, scientists, statesmen and entertainers. Two figures near the entrance were particularly noteworthy: one was clearly a spacer, clad in a shipboard utility suit. The other caught the Wolf Lord’s eye because of the long-sleeved hauberk he wore, and the long, slim sword held at his side. Two sleek, almost frail-looking pistols were tucked in the warrior’s wide belt, and the man’s face was concealed by a veil-like covering made of fine mail.

Jurgen took a few steps towards the statue of the swordsman and studied it for a long moment. ‘It would appear you Antimonans knew a thing or two about warfare, once upon a time,’ he said lightly. ‘How fortunate you were able to leave such barbaric pursuits behind.’

An edge in the Space Wolf’s tone made the offhand comment sound like an accusation. Andras, who had been about to lead the delegation through the ornate doors at the opposite end of the foyer, froze in mid-step. After a moment, he replied in a cold voice. ‘The armigers were the young sons and daughters of Antimon’s noble houses, an honourable tradition that kept our planet safe for millennia. Were it not for the will of the Senate, those customs would still be practised today.’

‘Ah, I see,’ the lieutenant said, as casually as before. ‘Forgive me then, if I spoke out of turn. I didn’t realise you were a member of Antimon’s noble class.’

Andras glanced back over his shoulder at Jurgen and nodded stiffly. ‘No apologies are necessary,’ he replied. ‘The law–’ Suddenly, the young man paused, clamping his mouth shut against the rest of his response. ‘Please, come with me,’ he said quietly, and continued across the room. When the young Antimonan’s back was turned, Bulveye glanced over at Jurgen and caught the speculative look in the warrior’s dark eyes.

The young noble paused a moment before the entrance to regain his composure, then placed his hands against the ornate wooden doors and pushed them open. At once, a flood of raucous noise washed over Bulveye and his men. Judging by the sound, the entire Senate was engaged in a furious debate.

Halvdan stepped close to his lord. ‘Should I have the men ready their weapons?’ he said quietly. The warrior’s tone was half-jesting, half-hopeful. Bulveye shook his head, squared his shoulders and followed Andras into the chamber.

The interior of the Senate building was breathtaking – an immense, open space that rose for twelve storeys on graceful, vaulted arches of super-tensile steel. Glowing shafts of sunlight penetrated the lofty space through the spiral of terraces that wound around the outside of the building, allowing those on the ground floor to observe a series of historical murals laser-etched into the curved ceiling. The great space was humbling even to the Astartes in its cathedral-like grandeur. The effect was marred only by the shouted curses echoing back and forth just above their heads.

The Senate conducted its business from a semicircular balcony suspended half a storey above the floor of the chamber, accessed by a central staircase that climbed to the feet of the Speaker’s tall, wooden chair. Each senator had his own throne-like chair, carved from a rich, honey-coloured wood, but at the moment the men and women were on their feet, shaking their fists and shouting over one another as they tried to bully their opposition into surrender. Their High Gothic was even more accented and technical than what Bulveye had heard previously: he caught the words ‘lottery’ and ‘quota’, but little else before the Speaker noticed the arrival of the delegation and began shouting for silence. As soon as the senators were aware of the armoured figures in their midst, the chamber fell silent at once. Many of the older statesmen sank back into their chairs with shocked expressions and faint murmurs of surprise. Others eyed the Astartes with an equal mix of shock, distrust and outright hostility.

Bulveye had seen such expressions before, back on Kernunnos. A feeling of dread settled into his gut.

Javren Santanno, Speaker of the Senate, directed his hostile stares more towards his own peers than the wary Astartes. He was a tall, bent-shouldered man well into old age, with a beak-like nose and loose, wattle-like flesh around his scrawny neck. Like the other senators, he wore a green velvet robe over his richly appointed doublet, and a wide chain of gold links dimpled the thick fabric over his chest. A soft felt hat slouched over his bald head, emphasising the Speaker’s large, hairy ears. With a final, warning scowl aimed at his peers, the Speaker glared down at Bulveye and his warriors.

‘Let me begin this farce by stating for the record that my son, Andras, is a fool,’ Javren said in a querulous voice. ‘He’s barely twenty years and five, and despite all that he has seen of beasts such as yourselves, he is still stubbornly ignorant of the ways of the universe.’ The Speaker levelled a gnarled finger at Andras. ‘He had no authority to respond to your broadcasts, much less invite you to meet with us in this august chamber.’

Javren scanned the assembled Marines coldly, his lip curling in distaste as he took in their fur cloaks, and the gilded skulls hanging from their belts. ‘The only reason I agreed to this meeting was to make it absolutely clear that while this child may be credulous, we are most certainly not.’ The Speaker addressed Bulveye directly. ‘Judging by the weight of the baubles hanging from your chest, I assume you’re the leader of this pack of wolves. Who are you, then?’

The contempt in Javren’s voice left Bulveye speechless. For a moment the Wolf Lord was left struggling to maintain his composure. On Fenris, such sneering talk would have led to spilled wine and bared blades at the very least. Clans had fought bloody feuds for generations over lesser slights. Bulveye could sense the tension rising in his warriors as the silence stretched, and he knew that if he didn’t speak soon, Jurgen or Halvdan would take matters into their own hands.

Forcing himself to relax, Bulveye inclined his head respectfully. ‘I am Bulveye, Lord of the Thirteenth Great Company of the Imperium’s Sixth Legion–’

Javren cut the Wolf Lord off with a wave of his hand. ‘We do not need a recitation of your petty titles,’ he said. ‘Make your demands, Bulveye, and then get out.’

‘Now listen,’ Halvdan growled, taking a step towards the Speaker. The warrior’s hand drifted towards the sword at his hip.

‘If there is a misapprehension here, I believe it is on your part, honoured Speaker, not ours,’ Bulveye said quickly. There was an iron tone of command in his voice that brought Halvdan up short. The bearded lieutenant glanced back at his lord, and the look on Bulveye’s face brought the man back to the Wolf Lord’s side.

‘We are not here to make demands of you or your people,’ Bulveye said calmly. ‘Nor are we the beasts you imagine us to be. We are Astartes, servants of the Allfather, Lord of Terra and Emperor of Mankind.’ At the mention of the Allfather, Bulveye felt his resolve surging like the tide, and he raised his head and addressed the Senate as a whole. ‘We have journeyed across the stars to bring you glad tidings: the storms that divided us have subsided at last, and Terra reaches out once more to embrace all her lost children. That which was broken will soon be re-forged, and a new civilisation will arise to reclaim our rightful place as masters of the galaxy.’

Bulveye was no skald, but his voice was clear and strong, and the words were as familiar to him as the weapons at his side. Consternation warred with mistrust on the faces of the assembled senators, while Andras’s face was lit with joy. As though in battle, Bulveye sensed the tide against him start to shift; he pressed ahead without pause.

‘No doubt your oldest legends speak of the days when our people crossed the stars and found new homes upon foreign stars,’ the Wolf Lord said. ‘Much has changed since those days; I’m no storyteller, but let me share the news of all that has passed since Antimon was lost to us.’

And so he began to tell the tale, of the rise of Old Night and the collapse of galactic civilisation, of the wrack and ruin of worlds. He told the story as best he could, begging his audience’s forgiveness when the tale grew muddled and confused; so much time had passed, so much knowledge lost or distorted, that no man would ever know the truth of all that had transpired over the last few millennia.

None of the listeners chose to interrupt Bulveye, much less gainsay his story. Long was the telling of it: the Wolf Lord spoke nearly without ceasing as the afternoon progressed to evening, and one by one the shafts of light arcing above the Senate chamber went from yellow to mellow gold, from gold to dusky orange, and then went out altogether. Globes of pale light winked into being from metal sconces that ringed the senators’ balcony, plunging the statesmen into shadow.

Finally, Bulveye told the tale of the Allfather’s conquest of Terra, and the creation of the first Astartes to fill the ranks of his armies. From there he recounted the beginnings of the Great Crusade, and the reunion of the Allfather with his children, the primarchs. Bulveye concluded his epic with the first meeting between Leman Russ and the Allfather on Fenris, a tale he knew very well.

‘And so we have served him faithfully ever since, reclaiming lost worlds in the Allfather’s name,’ Bulveye said. ‘That is what brings us here today, honoured Speaker. Your people’s isolation is at an end.’

The Wolf Lord strode forwards, climbing partway up the stair towards the Speaker’s throne. The senators looked on, their expressions rapt, as Bulveye held out his left hand. ‘I greet you in the name of the Allfather,’ he said. ‘Take my hand, and be at peace. The Imperium welcomes you.’

Like the rest of the statesmen, the Speaker of the Senate had retreated to his throne over the course of Bulveye’s tale, but his rheumy stare had never wavered as the long hours passed. He did not reply to the Wolf Lord at first, and much of his face was hidden in shadow. Slowly, awkwardly, he rose from his seat and set his feet upon the stair. One step at a time he descended towards Bulveye, until perhaps a third of the staircase was all that remained between them.

Javren Santanno leaned forwards, staring down at the Wolf Lord’s open hand.

‘Lies,’ he hissed. ‘Damned lies, every word of it.’

Bulveye rocked back as though struck. Halvdan let out an outraged shout and Jurgen joined in. The senators sprang to their feet, shaking their fists and shouting, though it was unclear whom exactly they were shouting at.

Black rage gripped the Wolf Lord. No man, however exalted, called a Space Wolf a liar and lived to tell of it. Bulveye fought to maintain his self-control; better to endure a fool’s slander and hope for reason to prevail than to draw steel and bring ruin to another human world. He opened his mouth to shout for silence – when suddenly the bedlam was drowned out by the sharp crackle of thunder.

No, not thunder. After two hundred years of campaigning, Bulveye knew that sound all too well.

The senators had heard it, too. They froze, their jaws agape, and then, out in the city, came the low, mournful wail of sirens. One of the senators, an older woman, pressed her hands to her face and screamed. ‘They’re here!’ she cried. ‘Blessed Ishtar, they’ve come early! We’re not ready!’

‘Who is here?’ Jurgen snapped. He knew as well as Bulveye that the sound they heard wasn’t thunder; it was high-yield ordnance being deployed in the upper atmosphere. ‘What’s going on?’

Snarling, Bulveye keyed his vox-bead. ‘Ironwolf, this is Fenris. Do you read me?’ There was a squeal of static, and the Wolf Lord thought he heard a faint voice trying to reply, but it was too garbled to make out.

The senators were racing for the stairs, their robes flapping like the wings of panicked birds. Javren’s face was a mask of rage as he swept down the stairs towards Bulveye. ‘I see your plan now!’ he yelled. ‘You meant to distract us – maybe lure us out into the open – while your soulless cronies swept down on us! I knew you couldn’t be trusted! I knew it! Get back to your damned ship and never return, barbarian! We want no part of your Imperium, or your so-called Allfather!’

Bulveye wanted to grab the Speaker and shake the insolence out of him, but now was not the time. As the statesmen fled from the building, he turned to his men. ‘Condition Sigma,’ he snapped, and weapons sprang into the Wolf Guards’ hands. ‘We need to get to high ground and try to re-establish contact with the Ironwolf,’ he said to Halvdan and Jurgen. ‘Contact the drop-ship and tell the pilot to prep for launch. If we have to, we’ll hold here until they can extract us.’

The two lieutenants nodded curtly, and Jurgen began speaking into his vox-bead. A crowd of Antimonans rushed into the room from outside; the Wolf Guard brought up their boltguns, but Bulveye recognised them as Andras’s friends. The young men and women stopped short at the sight of the levelled weapons, their faces white with fear. Bulveye quickly scanned the room and saw Andras nearby, still right where he’d been when they had first entered the chamber.

‘What’s happening?’ Bulveye demanded of the young noble.

Andras had a stricken expression on his face, a look of shattered innocence that the Wolf Lord had seen all too often on the battlefields of Fenris. The nobleman turned to Bulveye as though in the depths of a nightmare.

‘It’s the Harrowers,’ he said fearfully. ‘They’ve returned.’

The battle in orbit lit the night sky with stuttering flashes of light and the thin, almost metallic crackle of thunder. Lines of ruby and sapphire light criss-crossed through the darkness, leaving razor-edged afterimages dancing in Bulveye’s vision. There was no way to be certain who was shooting at whom, but it was clear to the Astartes that a large number of ships were involved and that the Ironwolf was in the thick of it.

The Space Wolves ascended the spiral ramps ringing the Senate building at a full run, climbing as high as they could to improve their vox transmissions amid the surrounding hills. Jurgen, charging along beside Bulveye, let out an angry curse. ‘I can’t raise the Stormbird,’ he reported. ‘It could be atmospheric ionisation from the battle overhead or some kind of wide-spectrum jamming.’

Bulveye nodded and keyed his own vox-bead once more, hoping that the battle barge’s more powerful communications systems would be able to punch through the interference. ‘Ironwolf, this is Fenris, come in! What is your status?’

A howl of static clawed at Bulveye’s ears – and then a voice, faint but audible, replied:

‘Fenris, this is Ironwolf – we are heavily engaged by xenos warships! At least twenty, possibly thirty cruiser-sized vessels and dozens of escorts! They caught us completely by surprise – some kind of cloaking field that defeats long-range auspex sweeps–’ The transmission dissolved into another wail of static, then resolved again. ‘–reports engine damage, and we have enemy boarders on the hangar deck!’

The Wolf Lord bared his teeth as he envisioned the tactical situation unfolding high above the planet. Against such odds, there was only one feasible course of action. ‘Ironwolf, this is Fenris – break orbit and disengage at once! Repeat, break orbit and disengage–’

He was cut off by another discordant howl of static. A voice – possibly the officer on the battle-barge, but it was too faint to tell – shouted something, then the frequency broke up in jagged bursts of atonal noise.

‘Morkai’s black teeth!’ Bulveye cursed. ‘We’re definitely being jammed now.’ He skidded to a halt on the smooth ramp, and his Wolf Guard formed up around him.

‘How bad is it?’ Halvdan asked. The calm, businesslike tone of his voice belied the fierce expression on the warrior’s face.

Bulveye stared up at the battle raging overhead, his expression grim. ‘As it stands, the Ironwolf doesn’t have a chance,’ he said. ‘If they can escape orbit and get some manoeuvring room, perhaps they can break contact with the enemy and disengage–’

For a brief instant a red flash lit the night sky, throwing long shadows against the walls of the Senate building. The sight stunned the Space Marines into silence; somewhere out in the city, Bulveye heard a woman’s terrified scream. Seconds later came the rumble of the explosion, a heavy, bass drumbeat that sent tremors through the stone beneath the Wolf Lord’s feet.

The warriors looked skywards as the flare diminished. A shower of long, glittering streaks etched their way across the sky like shooting stars as debris from the explosion burnt up in Antimon’s upper atmosphere. ‘Plasma drive overload,’ Jurgen said, his expression bleak.

‘Could have been one of theirs,’ Halvdan said, peering into the darkness. ‘The Ironwolf’s a tough one. She can handle herself against a bunch of filthy aliens.’

Bulveye wanted to agree, but as he watched, the signs of weapons fire diminished swiftly in the wake of the explosion. The battle appeared to be over. He checked his vox-bead once more, just in case, but every frequency he tried was still being jammed.

The Wolf Lord took a deep breath, then turned to face his men. ‘At this point, we have to assume that the Ironwolf has been destroyed,’ he said curtly. Glancing past the warriors, he caught sight of Andras, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily after their swift climb. Bulveye hadn’t even realised the young noble had accompanied them.

‘Andras!’ Bulveye called, shouldering his way through the cordon of Wolves to stand at the young man’s side. ‘Who are these Harrowers? What do they want?’

The Antimonan’s expression was bleak. ‘We don’t know who they are. Every seven years their ships fill the skies and they…’ He took a deep, wracking breath. ‘They used to hunt us like animals. Men, women, children – the children especially. They… they seem to like the sound of children’s screams the best. They would take people by the hundreds and… and torture them. I’ve heard stories from my father, about the times before the quota, when the Harrowers would descend on the cities and take whomever they could find.’

‘When we arrived, the senators were arguing about the quota,’ Bulveye said, ‘and something about a lottery.’

Andras nodded, unable to meet the Wolf Lord’s eyes. ‘During my great-grandfather’s time, the Senate thought that an offering might appease the Harrowers and spare the bulk of our population. We gave them our criminals and outcasts, penned up like sheep for the slaughter, while the rest of our people took refuge in fortified shelters built into the hills.’ He shrugged. ‘It worked well enough. The Harrowers never stayed for more than a year, and by the time they’d exhausted their appetites on the people we gave them, they hadn’t the time or energy to root out many others.’

It was all Bulveye could do not to recoil in disgust from the young man. The idea of sacrificing human beings to such monsters disgusted and appalled him. ‘Why in the Allfather’s name didn’t you fight back?’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘We did fight them!’ Andras cried. ‘At first, the armigers fought back with every weapon they had. There was a great battle at one point – the armigers ambushed a large force of raiders and killed a score of them, including their leader,’ the young man said. ‘And in return the Harrowers returned to their starships and rained death on Antimon for seven days and seven nights. Most of the world was laid waste, and hundreds of millions died. After that, the Senate disbanded the armigers and forbade anyone to raise a hand against the raiders.’

Bulveye clenched his fists. ‘Then the Senate betrayed you one and all,’ he snarled. ‘A life not worth fighting for is no life at all.’ With an effort, he fought down the urge to berate Andras. He couldn’t be held to account for the decisions of his ancestors. ‘How long have the Harrowers plagued your world?’

Andras raised a hand and wiped angry tears from his eyes. ‘Two hundred years, or so the histories say. No one knows where they came from, or why they leave. No one taken by the Harrowers is ever seen alive again.’

Bulveye nodded thoughtfully. Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. The Harrowers had found Antimon shortly after the galaxy-wide warp storms began to subside. Evidently, this part of space remained somewhat turbulent – the Imperium had encountered a number of regions across the galaxy that still experienced cycles of warp storm activity, followed by brief periods of calm. The aliens plagued the world as long as they could and then left before the storms could rise up and trap them in the system, likely moving on to terrorise yet another planet.

‘The devils built the black spires after the bombardment, I suppose,’ Bulveye said, thinking aloud.

Andras nodded. ‘Their technology borders on sorcery,’ he said with a trace of awe in his voice. ‘They land their sky-ships on terraces built into the sides of the great spires, and venture out to hunt across the zone when the mood takes them.’

Bulveye nodded thoughtfully. He was starting to build a profile of the aliens in his head, analysing their actions and inferring what he could from them. High overhead, longer and brighter streaks of fire began to arc across the night sky, falling towards Antimon’s surface like a sheaf of burning darts. ‘What happens next?’ the Wolf Lord asked.

Andras took a deep breath. ‘The Harrowers will descend upon the spires and take up residence,’ he said. They’ll wait for perhaps a day, then send out their tribute parties the following night to take our offering.’ The young nobleman shook his head bitterly. ‘But we’re not ready. They’ve arrived early this time. We haven’t finished stocking our shelters, and we don’t have enough people to fill out the quota.’

Bulveye remembered something he’d heard earlier. ‘Does that have anything to do with the lottery that the senators were debating earlier?’

Andras stared guiltily up at the Wolf Lord and nodded. ‘Every seven years, the incidence of crime drops sharply,’ he said with bleak humour. ‘Our prisons don’t have nearly enough criminals to satisfy the aliens, so there will have to be a lottery to decide who else must become part of the tribute.’ His gaze fell to the stone surface of the ramp. ‘It’s happened before, or so my father tells me. Prominent families are already trying to offer rich bribes to buy an exemption for their children.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen now. The Senate will empty the prisons, of course, but that may be all they can manage at this point. I doubt any of the families have more than a few months’ food stocked away. When they come out of their shelters to search for more, the Harrowers will be waiting for them.’

The Wolf Lord looked skywards and watched the descent of the raiders. ‘I reckon they arrived when they did on purpose,’ he said. ‘They’ve become tired of your offerings, Andras, so they’ve arranged things to provide them some more sport.’ It wasn’t so difficult to imagine; he had heard of bloodthirsty reavers who’d done much the same thing during his own raiding days on Fenris.

Bulveye tried to imagine offering up Fenrisian villagers to the vile appetites of a band of ruthless xenos marauders, and his stomach roiled at the thought. He looked down at Andras and fought back a surge of deadly rage. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, he told himself. If anyone was to blame it was his elders. The Wolf Lord now regretted not grabbing Javren by the throat when he’d had the chance.

‘Is there a particular place where you bring your tribute to the aliens?’ Bulveye asked the young man.

Andras wiped more tears from his cheeks and nodded. ‘There is a pavilion,’ he replied, ‘about ten kilometres east of Oneiros.’ He glanced up at the Astartes, and was shaken by the look on Bulveye’s face. ‘What are you going to do?’

The Wolf Lord met the young man’s gaze. ‘These xenos think they can prey upon mankind like sheep,’ he said calmly. ‘I intend on showing them the error of their ways.’

It was early afternoon on the following day when the procession of bulbous Antimonan cargo haulers appeared on the road heading west from Oneiros and made their way down the length of the broad meadow towards the tribute site. The pavilion itself was square and largely featureless, little more than a chessboard of stone paving tiles more than fifty yards on each side and situated at the feet of a semicircle of large, wooded hills. Only the heavy iron rings fixed at intervals along the paving stones hinted at the site’s awful purpose. Further to the west, the tall, knife-like xenos spire rose ominously into the clouds, its base wreathed in tatters of curling mist.

Bulveye and his lieutenants watched from the shadows of a hillside thicket as the cargo haulers left the white-paved utility road and rumbled across the pavilion. The Antimonans wasted little time, orientating themselves across the stone expanse according to a well-drilled plan. When the last vehicle was in place, the passenger doors on the haulers popped open and large men in padded coveralls hopped out. Each one carried a kind of power stave or shock maul, which they swung about with authority once the back gates of the haulers banged open and the shackled prisoners began stumbling out. The men and women wore shapeless, faded brown tunics and breeches, and dark inmate tattoos had been branded along the sides of their necks. Each file of stunned, shambling convicts was herded to a line of iron rings and shackled there as a group. Once they were locked in, the prisoners sank down onto the stones and waited. Some stared up at the blue sky overhead, while others seemed to fold in on themselves and look at nothing at all.

Halvdan shook his head despairingly. ‘How can they just sit there, like sheep for the slaughter?’ he whispered, despite the fact that the pavilion was nearly a kilometre distant. ‘If I were down there, they’d have to beat me senseless before they hooked me to one of those rings.’

Jurgen pointed towards the far end of the pavilion. ‘Looks like those lambs agree with you, brother,’ he said grimly.

The men in the last set of haulers were struggling with a smaller group of manacled victims, who thrashed and kicked and bit at their handlers. These men and women wore a variety of clothing styles, and were obviously taken from streets and homes all over Oneiros. They struggled against their fate with an energy born of stark terror, but the lash of the handlers’ shock-sticks kept matters from spiralling out of control. Twenty minutes later the last of the weeping, pleading victims were chained to the pavilion stones, and the handlers returned to their vehicles without so much as a backwards glance.

Bulveye raised his eye from the scope of a boltgun and handed the weapon back to Jurgen. There were eight of his warriors surrounding him in the thicket, including his two lieutenants. Gone were the battle-trophies and tokens of honour they’d worn the day before; they’d stripped their armour bare and smudged the gleaming surfaces with dirt and soot to minimise any telltale glint that could give their position away. Over the course of the previous night they had put aside any pretence of civility and made themselves ready for war.

As the Harrowers had begun to descend on Antimon in their multitudes, Bulveye had left Andras and the city behind, loping through the darkness to the landing field where their Stormbird waited. The pilot of the drop-ship was ready, the craft’s thrusters charged and idling as the Space Wolves clambered aboard and began arming themselves from the Stormbird’s large weapons lockers. The Wolf Lord had ordered the drop-ship to head west, flying at treetop level to mask its movement from alien auspex arrays, and find a place to settle down within ten or twelve kilometres of the tribute site. The pilot had found a lightly wooded hollow just big enough to put the assault ship down in, and the warriors had spent the rest of the night camouflaging it with netting and scraps of broken branches shorn off by the landing. By dawn, the Wolf Lord had led his small warband to the hills around the pavilion and begun planning his ambush. With so few men and so little in the way of equipment, his options were somewhat limited.

The Wolf Lord pointed to the western end of the field beyond the pavilion. Between the paving stones of the tithe site and the woods at the base of the surrounding hills, there was plenty of room to land an entire squadron of Stormbirds. ‘They’ll likely bring their ships in over there,’ he said. ‘That’s our kill box.’

Jurgen folded his arms and nodded grudgingly. The warrior cast a sidelong glance at Halvdan, then addressed Bulveye. ‘What’s our objective here, my lord?’

Bulveye frowned thoughtfully. ‘I’d think it was obvious,’ he replied. ‘We inflict as many casualties among the enemy as possible and put them on the back foot. We want them to start worrying about the possibility of an ambush every time they leave the spire.’

‘That’s not what I mean, my lord,’ Jurgen said. ‘You saw all those ships landing last night; there must be more than a hundred at this spire alone. This isn’t a little raiding party: it’s some kind of nomadic clan or tribe.’

The Wolf Lord gave Jurgen a hard look. ‘Are you saying we’re not equal to the task?’

‘I’m saying it’s not our fight,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘These people aren’t Imperial citizens; in fact, their leader called you a liar and said that he wanted nothing to do with us. If the xenos hadn’t shown up yesterday you’d be on the Ironwolf right now, planning a campaign to conquer the planet and force it into compliance.’

Bulveye’s gaze narrowed angrily at the lieutenant’s bald declaration, but finally he nodded. ‘What you say is true, brother,’ he admitted. ‘But it changes nothing. We’re warriors of the Emperor and protectors of mankind. All mankind. If we don’t live up to that ideal, then all the blood we’ve shed during the Crusade has been for naught, and I’ll be damned before I let that happen.’ Before Jurgen could respond, he turned away from his lieutenant and waved at the assembled men. ‘We’ve only got a few hours left before nightfall. Let’s begin preparing our positions.’

The Astartes made their way down out of the hollow and moved quickly through the dense forests around the base of the hills. They took their time sizing up the killing field, drawing not only on the years of intensive training and hypno-instruction provided by the Allfather, but also from years of ambushing foes in the wild terrain of their homeworld. When they were content with their positions, the four remaining warriors were summoned from their temporary camp up in the hills to bring down the heavy weapons they’d secured from the Stormbird. While the last elements of the ambush were set in place, the Stormbird’s pilot was situated in a camouflaged position high on one of the nearby hills to warn of the aliens’ approach.

They didn’t have long to wait. An hour after sunset, with a glinting field of stars overhead and deep shadows filling the meadow about the pavilion, Bulveye’s vox-unit came to life. ‘Fenris, this is Aesir,’ the lookout called. ‘Multiple contacts approaching from the west at low altitude. Many heat traces: nearly a dozen large craft and a score of smaller ones.’

At the edge of the woods, Bulveye cocked an ear westwards. Sure enough, he could hear what sounded like gravitic engines, faint but growing stronger. They had an unearthly pitch, like a chorus of wailing souls. But the sound held no dread for him; instead, it set his blood boiling at the prospect of battle. He keyed his vox-bead. ‘Fenris copies. Relocate to point Alpha and prepare for extraction.’

‘Copy,’ the lookout answered. His job done, the pilot would retreat down the hill and head for the Stormbird, prepping the engines and making ready for a quick escape.

Bulveye checked his weapons one last time and turned to his lieutenants. Despite the near-total darkness beneath the canopy, the Wolves’ enhanced senses allowed him to see his battle-brothers clearly. ‘For Russ and the Allfather, Wolf Brothers,’ he said quietly, then led them out into the meadow.

Halvdan and Jurgen followed Bulveye across the wide field west of the tribute site. Wild grass and meadow flowers swished against their armoured legs. The two lieutenants held their boltguns in one hand and their bared blades in the other. Bulveye’s weapons were still sheathed at the moment, and he continued to stare expectantly towards the western horizon.

They crossed the kill box and approached the tribute site, making no effort to conceal their movements. It wasn’t long before the shackled victims spotted the striding giants and began to moan in fear, thinking their doom had come at last. The Space Wolves ignored the rising panic of the prisoners, however. When they were ten yards from the western edge of the pavilion they stopped and turned about, placing the tribute site at their backs.

Halvdan tested his grip on his weapons. His bale-eye glowed like an ember in the darkness. ‘I don’t see why we have to be the bait,’ he grumbled.

Jurgen grinned cruelly. ‘Obviously, Bulveye wanted the most impressive warriors he had available, to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy. Or, in your case, the ugliest.’

Before the exchange could escalate, a cluster of pale green lights appeared along the hilltops to the west, approaching swiftly. A faint chorus of cries grew louder with each passing moment, riding on the faint breeze. The Harrowers had arrived.

The Space Wolves watched as a dozen glowing lights descended upon them like a salvo of terrain-hugging missiles. Their keen night vision picked out details of the oncoming craft while they were still some distance away: they were small, sleek and rakish, with curved, blade-like stabilisers and rows of wicked barbs protruding from their undersides. Each craft carried a single rider, who appeared lithe and human-like despite the strange, articulated armour they wore. The alien jetbikes howled past the Wolves like a flock of hissing, wailing birds, sweeping by to either side of the three warriors and bearing down on the pavilion behind them. As the bikes went past, Bulveye caught a glimpse of a pale, sharply angular face etched with strange tattoos and glinting with metal implants. The rider’s eyes were black and depthless as the void itself.

Behind the swarm of jetbikes came eleven larger craft, gliding with lethal grace over the hills and sinking towards the edge of the western field. These ships were the big cousins of the strange jetbikes, with sharply raked prows, spiked hulls and razor-edged stabiliser fins. Crews of pale-skinned, armoured figures swarmed around the decks of eight of the transports; they crowded at the bow, having apparently been told of the three warriors awaiting them on the plain.

Fearless and haughty in their numbers, the large craft settled easily onto the grassy field, and their crews disembarked with contemptuous grace. From a hundred yards away, Bulveye watched the aliens congregate in loose-knit mobs; most of the raiders’ faces were concealed by tall, conical black helmets, and they held long-barrelled rifles in their gloved hands. Their leaders sported tall horsetail-like plumes of hair from their helmets, and their harnesses were decorated with glittering, web-like meshes that held trophies of bleached bone.

They advanced towards the waiting Space Wolves in a rough crescent, their rifles held across their chests, whispering to one another in a sibilant tongue that sounded like the rustle of dry snakeskin. The raiders were wary, studying the huge Astartes with disquieting intensity, but it was clear from their unhurried advance that they didn’t consider the three Wolves a serious threat.

At the centre of the advancing mob came a hunched, pale-skinned figure cased in bizarre, ornate armour, surrounded by a cadre of stitched-together creatures that paced about the leader’s heels like a pack of hounds. The hunched figure – evidently the leader of the raiding band, as near as Bulveye could tell – had half of his long, white hair shaved away, exposing a fragile scalp etched with complex scar-tattoos. The exposed ear, long and pointed like a dog’s, had been expertly flensed and perforated, until it lay against the side of the alien’s head like a kind of grisly lace. More scars lined the figure’s angular cheeks and throat; bits of metal glittered from the thin bands of scar tissue, creating a web-work that seemed to form a kind of complex symbol or pictograph that ran from temple to collarbone. The alien’s eyes were large and deep-set, and his frayed lips twitched over white teeth that had been filed to jagged points. The fingers of his left gauntlet were little more than a set of cruel blades that hung almost to his knees; they clattered and scraped against one another as the monster approached. Even from thirty yards away, Bulveye could smell the alien’s acrid scent, tainted by strange elixirs and bio-modifications. The scent prickled his skin and brought the taste of bile to his mouth.

He looked upon these monsters and felt no fear; instead, there was only a terrible eagerness – a hunger to bare his blade and dive in amongst his foes, hacking and slashing with wild abandon. It was the wolf inside him – the wild gift of Leman Russ himself, and it stirred in his breast like a living thing.

Not yet, he told the beast. Not yet.

The aliens drew closer, still whispering in their serpentine tongue. Still more strange scents washed over Bulveye and his men, making his veins shiver plucked chords. The raiders were surrounded by a miasma of pheromones, adrenal vapours and narcotic musk; it was all his enhanced physiology could do to filter the poisons before they rendered him insensate. As it was, his head swam and his knees felt weak. He heard Halvdan curse under his breath, and knew his men were struggling as well.

Bulveye turned his head away from the aliens and looked back at the huddled victims chained to the stones of the pavilion. Many were weeping; others had their heads bent in prayer. A handful were looking at him, their eyes wide and pleading.

The Wolf Lord turned back to the advancing raiders, his hands falling to his sides. He eyed the twisted creature at the centre of the mob. ‘Hear me, alien,’ he called out in a clear voice. ‘You’ve preyed on these people for centuries, so I suspect by now your people understand our tongue. I am Bulveye, axe man of the Rus and sworn brother to Leman, Primarch of the Sixth Legion. The people of this world are under my protection, monster. You tread here at your peril.’

Bulveye watched the alien leader’s dark eyes widen in amusement. His lithe form trembled with deranged mirth until his lips peeled back from his jagged teeth and he cackled with feverish glee. His grotesque bodyguards gibbered and howled along with their master, raking their talons along their scarred cheekbones and tearing at their scabrous lips.

The alien grinned at Bulveye like a sea-pike, showing his needle-pointed teeth, and spoke in a gurgling voice that bubbled up from pheromone-soaked lungs. ‘You will make a fine gift for my master,’ the xenos said in passable Low Gothic. He flexed his clashing finger-blades. ‘How he will laugh to hear your bold words as he unspools the flesh from your bones.’ A shudder of pleasure gripped the alien’s tortured frame. ‘Your suffering shall be exquisite.’

Bulveye’s icy gaze narrowed on the monster. ‘So you are not the master of this vile horde?’

The xenos gave a bark of phlegmatic laughter. ‘I am but a lowly servant of Darragh Shakkar, Archon of the Kabal of the Shrieking Heart. It is he who holds this world of beasts in his taloned hands.’

The Wolf Lord nodded slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was cold as polished iron. ‘Then you and I have nothing more to discuss.’ Bulveye’s right hand was a blur of motion as he drew the plasma pistol from his hip and shot the alien between the eyes.

The alien leader’s headless body had not yet hit the ground before the rest of the Space Wolves opened fire, unleashing a stream of bolter rounds from the surrounding woods into the mass of the assembled raiders. The xenos mob was so tightly packed that every round found a target; the mass-reactive slugs punched through the aliens’ light body armour and exploded within, ripping their limbs and bodies apart. With a crackling hiss, a pair of krak missiles streaked from the tree line and struck the sides of two of the larger transports, blowing them apart in a deadly shower of fire and red-hot shrapnel. The aliens spun about, shrieking with rage, and fired their rifles blindly into the darkness. Their weapons made a high-pitched buzzing as they fired, spitting streams of hypervelocity splinters into the trees.

Behind Bulveye, Jurgen and Halvdan raised their boltguns and added to the carnage, pumping streams of shells into the surprised raiders. The alien warriors twitched and fell in sprays of bitter blood.

Through the hail of fire came the bodyguards of the fallen alien leader, their hideous faces twisted into masks of drug-fuelled hatred as they hurled themselves at the Wolf Lord. Dozens of the xenos warriors took inspiration from the bodyguards’ wild charge, and they joined in as well.

Streams of splinter fire hissed past Bulveye or spattered against his Mechanicum-blessed armour as the aliens bore down upon him. Overhead, a flight of xenos jetbikes hissed past, raking the northern tree-line with splinter fire. In response, a frag missile streaked skywards on a plume of flame and detonated in their midst, riddling three of the bikes with shrapnel and sending them plunging to the ground.

The Wolf Lord held his ground and pulled his power axe from his belt. Triggering its energy field, he leaped forwards to meet the xenos charge with an ancient war-song on his lips. The bodyguards surrounded him on all sides, raking at him with their claws or lunging forwards to snap at him with their fangs, but each time Bulveye answered them with a fearsome sweep of his axe. He severed arms and split trunks, spilled entrails and severed heads, until the bodies began to pile up about him. The wolf surged within his breast, demanding release, but Bulveye focused on his axe-work and held the beast at bay.

Within moments Jurgen and Halvdan joined the melee, carving into the enemy mob with sweeps of their crackling power swords. Behind the aliens, more of their transport craft exploded under the missiles and concentrated bolter fire of the remaining Wolf Guard. The surviving jetbikes continued to strafe the woods, seeking revenge against the ambushers, but the darkness and the close-set trees shielded the Astartes from much of the enemy fire.

A saw-edged bayonet glanced off Bulveye’s breastplate; another jabbed at his right leg and scored a bright line across his greave. A third weapon jabbed in from the left and a little behind the Wolf Lord, stabbing into the hollow under his arm and tangling in the cables that ran there. He swung his axe in a backhanded stroke that struck the head off one raider and buried itself in the torso of the attacker who’d stabbed him from behind. To his right, he levelled his plasma pistol and fired twice, point-blank, into the press. Aliens burst apart, vaporised by intense blasts of ionised gases or set alight by secondary thermal effects.

Then, suddenly, the xenos raiders retreated from the Wolf Lord like an outgoing tide, flowing away swiftly on all sides. More splinters crashed against his chest and arms, but they were wild bursts fired by the retreating aliens. The surviving warriors were in full flight, racing back to their remaining transports under the covering fire of the remaining jetbikes.

Bulveye and his lieutenants rushed forwards with bloodied weapons held high, singing songs of vengeance and death. A splinter struck the Wolf Lord just above the knee, causing him to stumble with a spasm of sudden pain, but his advance scarcely faltered. Two of the transports rose into the air with a whine of gravitic impellers; immediately they were targeted by a pair of krak missiles. One transport was struck on the flank, showering the troop deck with flame. The vehicle rocked beneath the blow, spilling burning bodies over the starboard rail, but it managed to lurch ahead with a shriek of thrusters and come about in a long turn to the west. The second craft blew apart in a spectacular explosion, showering the field with blazing debris. Some of the burning pieces fell among the rest of the rising transports, sowing more death and destruction across their troop compartments, but the damage wasn’t enough to incapacitate them. The rakish craft swung around and disappeared swiftly into the distance, fleeing for the safety of the distant spire. Moments later, Bulveye and his men were alone, surrounded by flaming wreckage and the bodies of the dead.

The Wolf Lord summoned his men from their ambush positions. ‘Jurgen, check on the men and give me a report,’ he told his lieutenant, then turned and headed for the pavilion.

They cowered at his approach – a massive, armoured giant, silhouetted in flame and bearing a glowing, crackling power axe in one gauntleted hand. The Antimonans, prisoners and innocent victims alike, looked upon Bulveye with an equal mix of awe and pure, atavistic terror. He looked over the huddled mass of men and women and spoke in a clear, commanding voice.

‘Hear me, people of Antimon,’ the Wolf Lord said. ‘From this night forwards, you will live in fear no longer. Return to your city and tell everyone you meet of what happened tonight. Tell them that the Allfather has sent his warriors to fight on your behalf, and that we will not rest until the aliens are driven from your world forever.’

He swept his axe down in a hissing arc and sliced through the chains of the first set of prisoners. They leaped back with a shout, then held up the severed links with looks of shock and uncomprehending wonder. By the time the Wolf Lord had reached the second set of prisoners, the first men were already running eastwards as fast as their feet would take them.

Halvdan joined Bulveye in freeing the Antimonans. His power sword crackled as it split the iron rings asunder. When the last of the people had been freed and sent fleeing back to Oneiros, the lieutenant gave Bulveye a sidelong glance, his augmetic eye flat and unreadable. ‘Not a bad beginning,’ he said. ‘But we were lucky. The damned aliens have had the run of this planet for so long that they’d become complacent. And I reckon they’ll be back here in no time, looking to even the score. What do we do now?’

The Wolf Lord straightened and looked to the west. ‘We call in the Stormbird and head south, drawing any pursuit after us so the Oneirans have a good chance of getting back to their home city,’ he said. ‘Then we find a good spot in the wastelands to set up a base and wait to see just how badly these people want their planet back.’

There was a storm building out among the ruins. Bulveye could feel the static charge building in the air like a faint caress against the exposed skin of his face and hands. A breath of hot, dry wind hissed over the broken stones of the fallen city, followed by a brassy roll of thunder far off to the east that stirred the Wolf Lord from the depths of his restorative trance. Reflexively he began the series of auto-hypnotic rotes that would bring him, layer by mental layer, back to full consciousness. Within a few moments he opened his eyes and took a deep breath to fully activate his pulmonary systems. His armour’s bio-support systems finished their purification routines, leeching away the toxins excreted via the modified sweat glands along his skin and injecting metabolic stabilisers into his bloodstream. By his own estimation he’d been resting for less than an hour. It wasn’t enough, based on the amount of radiation he had been exposed to, but it would have to do. He would need to inspect the warband’s makeshift camp and ensure that everything was under cover and secured before the storm and its howling winds roared over them.

Their latest encampment was a hundred kilometres south of Oneiros’s habitable zone, in the wreckage of a small city that still bore a high level of background radiation from the xenos holocaust of two centuries before. Over the last three months they had shifted position dozens of times, never staying in one place for more than a week and keeping to radioactive regions in the hope of confounding enemy hunter-killer patrols. It was only Bulveye’s long experience as a raider himself plus the mobility afforded by their Stormbird
drop-ship that allowed the Wolves to continue their hit-and-run raids against the Harrowers and evade the furious pursuits that followed.

They struck everywhere and anywhere, operating as three-man teams in nearly every one of the planet’s habitable zones. With hundreds of years of combat experience and a lifetime stalking through the woods of their native Fenris, the Astartes sprang lightning-quick ambushes against isolated xenos raiding parties, or used missile launchers to attack low-flying transports moving between the alien spires and the Antimonan cities. They would strike fast, inflict as many casualties as possible, then fade just as quickly into the countryside, avoiding detection until the opportunity arose to strike again. Bulveye meant to draw off as many of the Harrowers as he could and disrupt their raids against the Antimonans, and judging by the intensity of the xenos response, the strategy appeared to be succeeding. The aliens now kept constant patrols searching the wastelands, some venturing as far north and south as the planetary poles, and in the last few weeks had even resorted to unleashing random orbital bombardments against some of the larger ruins in the hope of flushing out their prey.

The Astartes succeeded for no other reason than they were willing – and able – to suffer far more privation and hardship than their foes. The small store of emergency rations aboard the Stormbird had been exhausted within a month of careful rationing, but the warriors’ enhanced metabolic functions allowed them to draw nutrients from plants, animals and even inorganic materials that would kill a normal human. They camped in wild, desolate places that left them at the mercy of the worst weather that the planet could produce, and exposed themselves to levels of background radiation that would have killed a normal human within hours. More than once, an enemy hunter-killer team had caught the Wolves’ trail, but were ultimately forced to abandon their pursuit when the land became too deadly for them to travel through.

For all that, the Wolves paid a steep price for their success. The constant exposure to radiation had suppressed their natural healing abilities, and coupled with the aliens’ predilection to poison their weapons, it meant that many of the warriors were wounded to a greater or lesser degree. Of the twelve Astartes under the Wolf Lord’s command, three had succumbed to their wounds and lapsed into the Red Dream, a deep coma that freed the warrior’s body to try and cope with the gravest of injuries. Currently, Bulveye had two teams of three on extended deployments around the planet at all times, with a third team providing security for their fallen brothers while they regained their strength for another patrol.

The going had been difficult, but there were encouraging signs that they were having an impact on the balance of power across Antimon. The Harrowers still attacked the local cities, sometimes with a savagery that bordered on the bestial, but the fierce, uncoordinated attacks rarely produced significant results. More importantly, there were signs that Bulveye’s message had somehow managed to circulate among the Antimonans across the entire world. The tribute fields had fallen into disuse after the events of that first, fateful night – or at least, they were no longer used for the purpose they’d been intended. Instead, the Wolves would sometimes pass near the pavilions and find offerings of food or medicines wrapped in parcels of waterproof cloth, or simply wreaths of local flowers or bottles of wine. Sometimes the parcels would contain notes written in the local dialect, and the warriors would puzzle for hours over the strange script, trying to divine their contents. To Bulveye, the message was clear enough: the people of the battered world knew what his warband was doing on their behalf, and they were grateful.

The Wolf Lord caught sight of movement at the bottom of the low hill where he sat. Moments later, Halvdan emerged from the ruins of a small dwelling and began limping haltingly up the slope towards him. The burly warrior had been hit in the thigh by an envenomed dagger wielded by a white-haired xenos female, and the wound so far showed no signs of healing. How he continued to walk, let alone fight, in the face of such terrible pain was a wonder to Bulveye.

‘Stormbird’s on the way back,’ the lieutenant said hoarsely as he reached the top of the hill. Bulveye beckoned for the warrior to sit, and Halvdan sank to the ground with a grateful nod. The skin around his eyes was pale and lined with strain as he pulled a water flask from his belt and took a deep draught of the contents.

Bulveye nodded. ‘Both teams recovered?’

‘Aye, thank the Allfather,’ Halvdan replied. ‘Jurgen said he had casualties, though.’ The bearded warrior looked off to the east, towards the distant brown smudge of the approaching storm. He took another swallow from the flask. ‘I’ve finished taking stock of our supplies, as you requested.’

The Wolf Lord arched an eyebrow. ‘That was fast.’

Halvdan let out a grunt. ‘There wasn’t much to count,’ he said. ‘We’re down to forty rounds of boltgun ammo per man, eight grenades, twelve melta charges and two krak missiles, plus whatever else the two patrols manage to bring back with them. We don’t have a single complete medicae kit left, and armour damage varies anywhere from ten per cent to eighteen per cent per warrior. In short, we’re close to the end of our rope. We can manage another set of patrols, or perhaps one major engagement, and that will be that.’ He sighed, fixing the Wolf Lord with his baleful red eye. ‘We’re four weeks overdue at Kernunnos at this point. They’re bound to send someone to look for us. A battle group could arrive at any time.’

The Wolf Lord regarded his sword-brother. ‘What are you getting at?’ he said.

Halvdan took another drink. From the smell, it was clearly filled with Antimonan wine. The warrior shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘I don’t like these damned aliens any more than you do, lord, but I think we’ve done all we can at this point. Leman himself couldn’t have asked our brothers to fight any harder. You know that. When the Stormbird gets back, why don’t we go to ground somewhere a little more liveable and lay low until relief arrives?’

The suggestion took Bulveye aback. ‘We can’t stop now. Especially now. The tide is turning in our favour. If we don’t keep up the pressure we’ll be relinquishing the initiative to the enemy, and I guarantee they will do all they can to capitalise on it.’

‘Yes, but…’ Halvdan paused, searching for a tactful way to say what was on his mind. After a moment, he gave up and simply ploughed ahead. ‘My lord, we owe these people nothing. They rejected you out of hand. You know what that means.’

The Wolf Lord’s eyes narrowed angrily. ‘I know full well,’ he growled. ‘And if it comes down to that, I’ll do my duty, like any other servant of the Allfather. You can’t look at the wreck I’ve made of this subsector and imagine otherwise.’

Halvdan raised a placating hand. ‘Look, I’m not saying you’ve gone soft-hearted–’

‘I know exactly what you’re saying, brother,’ Bulveye said. ‘You wonder why I’m going to such effort to fight for people we will just have to turn around and conquer later.’

The Wolf Lord rose to his feet. Dust spilled from the joints of his armour and billowed away in the rising breeze. ‘We are crusaders, Halvdan. The Allfather sent us forth to save the lost worlds of humanity and bring them back into the fold. If there is a chance, however slim, that we can convince these people of our intentions and avoid repeating what we did to Kernunnos, then I’ll do whatever I must. I’ll fight to my last breath if that is what it takes.’

Halvdan stared up at Bulveye, his expression hard, but after a moment he simply shook his head and sighed. With an effort, he forced himself back onto his feet and clapped his hand on the Wolf Lord’s shoulder.

‘The drop-ship should be back at any moment,’ he said. ‘We’d best go meet it and see if Jurgen’s brought us back any presents.’

Together, the two Astartes made their way down the hill and out into the dusty plain west of the ruined town. No sooner had they arrived than a black shape appeared on the horizon, streaking in low to mask its flight path from orbital surveyors. At once, the two Wolves could see that the drop-ship was in trouble: smoke was streaming from one of its engines, and its flight path was erratic. It was clear that the pilot was struggling desperately to keep the Stormbird straight and level at such a dangerous altitude.

Within minutes the assault craft was flaring its jets over the landing field and settling down hard on the dusty ground. Moments later the ramp opened and four Wolves – including the pilot – exited quickly with portable fire suppressors in their hands. They raced aft and doused the smoking engine. Jurgen, meanwhile, appeared at the top of the ramp and approached Bulveye and Halvdan, who were still standing a few yards distant.

‘You missed quite a trip,’ Jurgen said as he stepped up to his lord. ‘A brace of alien fighters picked us up as we were transiting the Oneiran habitable zone. They gave us quite a run before we managed to knock them down.’

‘How bad is it?’ Bulveye asked.

Jurgen’s expression turned grim. ‘You’ll have to ask the pilot about the drop-ship. Two more of our brothers have gone into the Red Dream. One of them is likely going to lose both his legs, if he survives at all.’

The Wolf Lord accepted the news with a curt nod. ‘Were the patrols successful?’

‘Yes,’ Jurgen said without hesitation. ‘Perhaps more so than we might have expected.’

‘Oh? How’s that?’

The lieutenant folded his arms. ‘Well, as we were flying back, the pilot picked up a lot of aerial activity around Oneiros. It appeared that the Harrowers were conducting a major series of raids on the city, so I decided to try and get a closer look. We infiltrated the zone and set down near the tribute field. That’s where our patrol found something interesting.’

Bulveye frowned at the news. ‘Another package?’

‘No,’ Jurgen said. ‘A message.’ He reached into a pouch at his belt and drew out a scrap of paper. ‘It was wrapped around the hilt of a dagger that was driven into a gap between the paving stones of the pavilion.’

The Wolf Lord examined the paper. To his surprise, it was written in archaic Low Gothic – less like the local dialect and more like the parent tongue that nearly every human world understood. The note contained a vox frequency, a time and a name. Andras.

Jurgen studied Bulveye’s reaction to the message. ‘What do you think it means?’ he asked.

Bulveye queried his armour’s chrono. The time mentioned on the note was just a few hours away. ‘It means that the Antimonans are ready to take the next step.’

They arrived four hours before the scheduled rendezvous time, after moving overland through the wastes and then slipping through the wooded hills until they were in position to observe the tribute field. Bulveye had no doubt that it was Andras whom he spoke to over the vox, but that didn’t mean an ambush was out of the question.

Xenos aircraft flew overhead at constant intervals while the Wolves sat and waited: transports and fighters, most bound in the direction of Oneiros. As Jurgen had reported, it appeared that the Harrowers had committed a great deal of their local strength to pillaging the city, no matter the cost. Bulveye watched the flights pass overhead and added the data to his evolving plan.

At precisely the appointed time, a trio of cloaked figures slipped from the woods bordering the road to the east of the pavilion and headed for the tribute site. The Wolves were impressed; no one had caught wind of the Antimonans until they’d broken cover. Bulveye watched them approach and crouch down at the rendezvous point, and made his decision.

‘I’m going down,’ he told his lieutenants. ‘Hold position here until I say otherwise.’ Then he rose from the shadows and made his way out onto the plain where they’d first ambushed the Harrowers some twelve weeks before.

The Antimonans saw him coming from a long way off. They watched him intently from the depths of their hoods, but made no move until he was just a few yards away. One of the figures rose smoothly and moved to join Bulveye. He could tell from the way the man moved that it was Andras.

‘Well met,’ Bulveye said quietly, extending his hand. Andras took it, clasping the Wolf Lord’s wrist in a warrior’s grip.

‘We’ve been waiting for two weeks, hoping you’d find the message,’ the young nobleman replied. ‘We’re glad you came. How are you faring?’

‘Well enough,’ Bulveye said carefully. ‘We’re grateful for the gifts your people have left for us. Has the Senate had a change of heart?’

‘The Senate is no more,’ Andras replied. ‘The raiders killed them last month.’

The news surprised Bulveye. ‘What happened?’

‘Our food stores are swiftly running out,’ Andras explained. ‘It’s the same all over Antimon. My father and the other senators decided to open negotiations with the leader of the Harrowers and try to organise some kind of settlement before our situation became untenable.’ The nobleman’s body stiffened. ‘The alien leader agreed on a meeting at the Senate building, but he did not come to talk. Instead, he and his warriors seized the senators and spent an entire week torturing them to death. Since then, the raiders have gone wild in Oneiros, filling the streets and tearing into the hill shelters with every tool and weapon at their disposal.’

‘What became of the alien leader?’ Bulveye inquired.

‘He personally took part in torturing the senators, but returned to the spire afterwards.’

The Wolf Lord nodded thoughtfully. ‘And what do you wish of us, Andras, son of Javren?’

Andras reached up and drew back his hood. A fresh scar marked the left side of his face, and livid bruises coloured his brow. ‘We want to join you,’ he replied. ‘There were always those of us in the aristocracy who secretly kept the ways of the armigers alive. When you fought the raiders here on that first night, it inspired us to take action ourselves. Lately we’ve been making attacks against the raiders inside the city and enjoyed some success, but we would be a hundred times more effective if we could fight with you and your warriors beside us!’

To Andras’s evident surprise, Bulveye shook his head. ‘Fighting aliens inside Oneiros will accomplish very little at this point.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Andras hissed. ‘How is that any different from what you have been doing these last three months?’

‘Because everything I’ve done so far has been with one objective in mind,’ Bulveye said. ‘And that is to divide the raiders and ultimately turn them against one another.’

Andras scowled at the Wolf Lord and shook his head in frustration. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘That’s because you were never a raider yourself,’ Bulveye replied. ‘I was, a very long time ago, and everything I’ve seen about the Harrowers so far tells me they aren’t much different from the reavers I dealt with back on Fenris.’

‘What does that mean?’ Andras replied.

‘It means that they’re a greedy lot, and greed makes a person treacherous,’ Bulveye explained. ‘A raiding band is only as strong as its leader, who holds the group together by dint of being harder, meaner and cleverer than the rest. He takes the best of the plunder for himself, but so long as everyone manages to get a cut, the gang stays more or less content. When the loot dries up, though, watch out. That’s when things get dangerous.’

Andras thought about that for a moment. ‘And you’ve been making it hard for the Harrowers to take many slaves.’

‘And killing as many of them as I can in the bargain,’ Bulveye said. ‘Every time a raiding party is ambushed, or a transport is shot down, the Harrowers’ leader is made to appear weak. And I guarantee that some of his lieutenants are feeling tempted to try and take control of the band themselves.’

‘So if the current leader dies, the rest will turn on each other to see who gets to be next in charge.’ Andras said.

‘Exactly,’ Bulveye agreed. ‘And now, while the majority of the Harrowers are in Oneiros, we’ve got our best chance of killing him and setting the bloody contest in motion.’

‘How do you plan on doing that?’ the nobleman asked. ‘I told you, he’s back at the spire now.’

‘All I need is a Harrower transport,’ Bulveye said. ‘The aliens think they’re safe in their floating citadels. I’m going to show them otherwise.’

Andras stared up at the Wolf Lord. ‘I can get you a transport,’ he told Bulveye. ‘But only if you let us help you attack the spire.’

Bulveye held up a hand. ‘I appreciate your courage, but we don’t need the help.’

‘Really? Do you know how to fly one of those transports?’

‘Not at the moment,’ the Wolf Lord replied. ‘Do you?’

‘Not… at the moment,’ Andras grudgingly admitted, ‘but over the last couple of centuries my people have gleaned quite a bit about the aliens’ tongue.’ The young nobleman drew himself up to his full height, which still left him at roughly chest-height next to the huge Astartes. ‘We can deliver a transport into your hands and tell you how to read its controls. All we ask is that you allow us to accompany you when you attack the spire.’

Bulveye could not help but admire the young man’s courage. ‘How fast could you accomplish this?’

‘We can strike tonight if you wish,’ Andras said confidently.

‘Is that so? All right. Tell me of your plan.’

Once Andras and Bulveye had agreed upon the plan, the Wolf Lord gathered his battle-brothers and the Antimonans led them back to Oneiros on foot. At the outskirts of the city the Wolf Lord saw first-hand the devastation wrought by the xenos occupiers. The sky above the city was orange with flames from burning buildings at the city centre, and Bulveye could see signs of activity on the hills surrounding Oneiros as the aliens besieged a great many of the white stone hill-shelters. Fliers buzzed back and forth through the night air, but Andras and his companions led the Astartes on a circuitous route down the winding streets towards a large square just a few kilometres from the Senate building. In the square sat four of the alien transports and close to forty of the raiders in an improvised field base.

Andras led the Wolves into the burnt-out shell of a municipal building and left them there while he and his compatriots went to set his plan in motion. Andras returned with eight others a short while later, this time wearing the curious scaled armour and weapons of Antimon’s warrior caste. The hexagonal links of the armour were polished to a mirror-bright sheen, and carried a faint scent of ozone that wrinkled Bulveye’s nose.

‘It’s done,’ the young nobleman said. ‘We’d been planning this for some time, but for a different purpose. The diversion had been intended to draw the Harrowers away so that other groups could leave their shelters and forage for food.’ Andras’s expression turned grim. ‘Hopefully, if our plan works, there won’t be a need for such desperate measures.’

Bulveye nodded. ‘How long?’

Andras glanced at his chrono. ‘Another twenty minutes, give or take.’

The warriors settled down to wait, checking their weapons and observing the activity in the plaza. Bulveye settled down beside Andras. ‘You asked me a number of questions before,’ he said. ‘Now I’d like to ask one of you.’

Andras looked up from the partially disassembled pistol in his lap. ‘All right,’ he said evenly. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘When we first arrived over Antimon, no one answered our hails – except for you,’ the Wolf Lord said. ‘Why did you disobey the Senate and answer our call?’

Andras didn’t reply at first. His lips compressed into a tight line and his eyes grew haunted. ‘The Harrowers took my mother and my sister when I was only four,’ he said. ‘They broke into our shelter. My father had barely enough time to hide me, but the raiders found everyone else. They spared him because he was a member of the Senate, but they… they took the others away, and he didn’t even try to stop them. My sister was only two at the time.’ The young man reached up and pinched the corners of his eyes. ‘When I was ten I crept into the attic and started practising with my great-grandfather’s blades. I swore to myself that if I ever had the chance, I was going to make the Harrowers pay for what they’d done. When your ship arrived in orbit, I thought that chance had finally come.’

Bulveye laid a hand on Andras’s shoulder. ‘It has, Andras. You have my oath on it.’

Off in the distance came the faint but unmistakeable sound of an explosion, followed by the rattle and pop of gunfire. The sounds of fighting intensified within moments, until it sounded like a full-fledged battle was underway. Andras straightened. ‘That would be the diversion,’ he said. ‘Now we wait and see what the Harrowers will do.’

Out in the plaza, the aliens had sprung into action. Within minutes, three of the transports were lifting off and rushing over the hilltops in the direction of the fighting.

Andras smiled as the transports faded from sight. ‘They always leave one back in reserve,’ he said, nodding towards the grounded craft. ‘Now all we need to do is take care of the ten warriors that are left.’

Bulveye nodded. ‘Leave that to us.’

The building they were concealed in was down a side street just off the square, about a hundred yards from the transport and its complement of raiders. Bulveye summoned his eight warriors with a curt command, and the Astartes readied their weapons. ‘Be swift, brothers,’ he told the Astartes. ‘This is not the time for stealth. Kill the bastards as quick as you can, and let’s be away.’

Without waiting for a reply, the Wolf Lord led the way into the street and set off towards the Harrowers at a dead run.

He’d barely covered fifty metres when the aliens spotted him. His enhanced hearing picked up a stream of hissed orders from the enemy officer, and the warriors quickly took cover and opened fire. Splinters hissed through the air all around Bulveye or rang off the plates of his armour. In reply, he raised his plasma pistol and let off two shots: the first struck the xenos officer as he ran from one position of concealment to another, cutting the alien nearly in two. The second blast struck a raider just as he rose from cover to take shot with his rifle, vaporising the alien’s head and shoulders.

Bolter fire rang out all around the Wolf Lord, and howls of battle-fury split the night. Once again, Bulveye felt the beast inside him stir at the sound, but still he held it back. Not yet, he thought to himself. Not yet, but soon.

Firing on the move, the Space Wolves felled one alien after another, until the last three lost their nerve and fled down a side street on the opposite side of the plaza. Wasting no time, Bulveye reached the transport and leaped aboard, his axe held ready. He landed just in time to see the transport’s pilot dive over the opposite side of the craft and flee as well.

Within a few moments the rest of Bulveye’s warband and Andras’s warriors had climbed aboard the alien craft. Right away, the Wolves’ pilot, an Astartes named Ranulf, and two Antimonans whom Andras claimed were conversant with the alien’s strange language, clustered by the transport’s controls and began to puzzle them out. A minute later Ranulf keyed a number of controls, and the craft’s powerplant activated with a rising whine. Then the pilot took hold of what looked like a control yoke and slowly, carefully, the transport rose into the air. It swung its nose ponderously to the west and began gliding gracelessly forwards.

‘Faster!’ Bulveye urged. ‘The aliens will be on us at any moment! If we don’t get to the spire before they raise the alarm we’re all done for!’

‘Aye, lord,’ Ranulf answered. ‘Everyone hang on to something!’ he said, and pulled a lever. At once, the craft surged forwards, gathering speed until the city and the twilit countryside blurred away beneath them.

As the transport sped like an arrow towards the xenos spire, Andras worked his way forwards to stand beside Bulveye. ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ he asked.

Bulveye considered his answer. ‘If we can reach the reactor chamber, then I’m sure we can bring down the spire,’ he said. ‘As to the rest…’ He shrugged. ‘It’s in the hands of the Fates now.’

‘But how can you be certain we’ll find their leader?’ the nobleman asked.

The Wolf Lord answered with a savage smile. ‘Once he realises what we intend to do, don’t worry. He’ll come to us.’

Ten minutes later they saw the alien spire. The massive structure was silhouetted against the night sky, limned in a faint blue glow cast by the citadel’s gravitic suspensors. Pale green lights flashed at intervals along the surface of the spire, and here and there a craft rose from a landing spot on the side of the structure and sped away into the night.

Suddenly, Ranulf called out from the control room. ‘My lord! The vox in here’s started hissing! I think we’re being challenged!’

Bulveye bent at the knees, placing as much of his body behind the armoured railing of the transport as he could. The rest of the Wolves followed suit. The Wolf Lord looked over at Andras. ‘I’d get down were I you,’ he said. ‘Here’s where things get interesting.’

All at once the night sky lit up with beams of energy and stitching streams of fire as the spire’s defensive batteries went into action. Energy blasts struck the prow of the transport, blasting holes through the armour plate and showering the passengers with molten shrapnel. Bulveye turned back to the control room. ‘Aim for the centre of the spire!’ he told Ranulf. ‘There have to be landing pads there for maintenance and supply!’

The transport plunged onwards through the hail of fire. Its high speed and the surprise of the spire’s gunners made it a difficult target, and it crossed the distance to the citadel in a matter of seconds. Ranulf caught sight of a suitable landing pad at the spire’s midpoint and raced towards it. Only at the last minute did he try to flare the engines back and come in for a landing.

They touched down with a bone-jarring crunch and a long, rending sound of tearing metal. Everyone was thrown forwards, piling up in the craft’s mutilated bow as the transport skidded wildly down the landing pad in a shower of sparks. Finally, friction asserted itself and the transport slowed, skidding to a stop less than a dozen metres from the far edge of the pad.

It took several moments for the warriors to extricate themselves from the bow of the transport. Jurgen and Halvdan led the way, leaping over the rail onto the landing pad with weapons at the ready. The rest of the Wolves and Andras’s warriors quickly followed, their faces concealed by armoured veils. Bulveye yelled to Ranulf as he reached the rail. ‘Make sure this bucket is ready to fly by the time we get back,’ he said, ‘otherwise it’s going to be a long walk back to Oneiros!’

The Wolf Lord leaped over the rail and landed with a clang onto the pad. Five yards away, a long, low hatchway led into the spire. Bulveye waved his battle-brothers towards the hatch. As they advanced, Andras came up beside him, closely trailed by his warriors. ‘What now?’ he asked.

Bulveye nodded at the hatch. ‘This has to be a loading hatch for carrying parts and supplies into the citadel,’ he said. ‘The passageway beyond will take us to the reactor chamber sooner or later.’ He nodded to Halvdan. ‘Melta charge! Make us a hole!’

The lieutenant nodded and fitted one of their six anti-armour charges to the hatch. Moments later there was a whoomp of superheated air, and a large, molten hole had been blown through the door’s thick plating. Without hesitation, Jurgen and two of the Space Wolves dived inside, and boltguns echoed in the space beyond. The staging area beyond was littered with wreckage from the blast; smashed containers spilled half-melted debris across the black floor and smouldering, armoured corpses attested to the force of the melta charge’s focused blast.

The Wolf Lord and the rest of the assault team charged through the breach as Halvdan pulled a small auspex unit from his belt. The Astartes keyed in a series of commands, and the unit lit up immediately. ‘I’m getting a strong energy source at about seven hundred metres,’ he said, gesturing towards the centre of the spire. ‘That’s got to be the reactor.’

‘Take point,’ Bulveye said with a curt nod. ‘Find us the shortest route to the core and stop for nothing.’

For the next twenty minutes the assault team drove their way deeper into the spire, navigating by the energy traces on Halvdan’s auspex unit. Bulveye and his Wolves moved swiftly and lethally through the access corridors of the alien citadel, orchestrating a well-rehearsed dance of death that tore through everything the Harrowers put in their path. The huge passageways were teardrop-shaped and oddly faceted, as though the entire citadel had been carved from a strange kind of crystal, and the walls hummed with stored energies. Every surface was suffused with a purplish light, picking out strange, graceful carvings on the crystalline walls but leaving much else in shadow.

The xenos defenders sealed all the hatches leading into the spire and organised hasty defences behind each of them, but each time the Wolves would use a melta charge to create a breach and then dive through firing while the defenders were still recovering from the effects of the blast. It was a time-honoured technique that the Astartes had mastered in boarding actions over the course of decades, and so long as they kept up their momentum the warriors were difficult to stop.

Bulveye knew they were getting close when they blasted their way into a large room lined with strange, pulsing controls and filled with almost fifty xenos warriors. The Wolves made their breach and broke through into a storm of hissing splinter fire. Jurgen and the two warriors who went in first were struck dozens of times, but the armour succeeded in deflecting most of the deadly needles. Without hesitating they rushed at the mass of aliens, their power swords and chainaxes held high, and in moments were locked in a savage melee.

The Wolf Lord was next through the breach, and found himself attacked from three sides by armoured raiders brandishing rifles and jagged knives. He drove back the assailants on his left with a shot from his plasma pistol, then slashed furiously at the rest with his power axe. The keen blade split rifle barrels and armoured torsos with equal ease, and the aliens fell back in disarray. Bulveye charged after them, allowing room for Halvdan and the rest to make their way into the chamber behind him.

Splinters howled through the air, and the crackle of Antimonan pistols replied in kind. Andras came up on Bulveye’s left, slashing at the aliens with his sword. Splinters raked him, but the projectiles sparked and deflected away from the noble – evidently the armiger harness incorporated a defensive force-field of some kind. The rest of the Antimonans joined in with ferocious zeal, shooting and stabbing at every Harrower they could see.

The aliens fought to the last, emptying their weapons and then using their bayonet-tipped rifles as pole-arms until they were finally cut down. One of Andras’s men lay dead among them, and every one of Bulveye’s warriors had sustained a number of minor wounds. ‘Press on,’ the Wolf Lord commanded, indicating the open archway at the far end of the chamber.

They emerged into a vast room whose ceiling rose to a peak far above their heads. Control consoles lined the walls of the octagonal chamber, and three other archways led off in different directions from the room. At the centre of the chamber, suspended in a complex network of struts and field induction matrices, rested an enormous, spindle-shaped crystal. The feeling of ambient power was thick inside the chamber; each pulse shivered along the Wolf Lord’s bones. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Halvdan, set the remaining charges. The rest of you cover the other entrances.’

‘Two had best be enough,’ the lieutenant said, limping forwards and scrutinising the crystal to determine where his charges would do the most damage.

The rest of the warriors raced forwards, fanning out around the huge reactor room to block access via the other three entrances to give time for Halvdan to do his work. Bulveye was only a few steps behind them, crossing to the opposite side of the chamber, when the Harrowers launched their counter-attack.

They struck from all three sides at once, pouring splinter fire through the openings that ricocheted dangerously around the room. The fire was so intense that the defenders had to duck away and take cover, which gave the xenos troops the opening they needed to launch their charge. Armoured warriors burst into the chamber from left and right, driving back the Antimonans and coming to grips with the warriors of Bulveye’s Wolf Guard.

Across the chamber, Bulveye saw one of Andras’s warriors lean into the third archway and open fire with both pistols. Splinter fire sparkled across his shields – then a pair of indigo energy beams struck the warrior full in the chest, collapsing the energy field and blasting the man apart. Right on the heels of the energy bolts charged a force of black-armoured warriors wielding long, powerful glaives that crackled with blue arcs of electricity. Within moments another of the armigers was dead, cut in two by the blow of one of those deadly weapons, and the two Wolves guarding the entrance had been driven back, hard-pressed by the fearsome attackers.

Into the space created by the sudden charge came a tall, lithe figure, clad in intricate, arcane armour and wreathed in a corona of swirling, indigo-hued energy. A long, curved black blade hung loosely in his right hand, and a long-barrelled pistol was ready in his left. His hair was long and black, hanging unbound past his shoulders, and his face… The sight of his face caused Bulveye’s blood to run cold.

The xenos chieftain had no face – or rather, he had a multitude of them. Ghostly, agonised human faces flickered and wailed in the place where the alien’s face ought to be. Men, women, children – each face twisted in a mask of unutterable terror and pain. From across the room, Bulveye could feel the horror radiating from the terrible holo-mask, as palpable as a knife drawn against his cheek.

The wolf inside him rose up, baring its fangs. Its rage and bloodlust filled him. Now? It seemed to ask.

Now, Bulveye answered, and he let the rage of the Wulfen fill him. The Wolf Lord raised his glowing axe and howled, a primal sound born in the primeval forests of ancient Terra itself, and then charged at his foe.

Two of the chieftain’s bodyguards leaped into the Wolf Lord’s path, their glaives held ready. He shot them both with blasts of his plasma pistol, dropping them with glowing craters blasted in their chests. A third bodyguard leaped forwards, stabbing with his glaive. The motion was almost too swift for the eye to follow, but the battle-madness had taken hold of Bulveye, and his body moved almost without conscious thought. He swept the blade aside with the flat of his axe, then brought the weapon around in a back-handed blow that sheared through the warrior’s neck. Bulveye shouldered the headless corpse aside and charged on, howling as he went.

The xenos chieftain was waiting for him, his blade still held almost casually to one side. Heedless, berserk, the Wolf Lord swung a blow that would have split a normal man in two, but the power weapon struck the dark field surrounding the alien and slowed as though cutting through wet sand. When the edge struck the chieftain it scarcely marked his intricate armour.

Bulveye might have died then if it had not been for one of his warriors. One of the Wolf Guard covering the portal, a fearsome warrior named Lars, had despatched his foe and now hurled himself at the alien chieftain as well. His axe struck the alien’s force-field and glanced harmlessly off the chieftain’s helm. In return the xenos leader lashed out with his curved blade and struck off Lars’s head.

Furious, Bulveye pressed his attack, aiming a series of swift blows at the chieftain’s arms and torso, but the chieftain became a whirling blur of deadly motion, dodging the Wolf Lord’s every stroke or parrying effortlessly with his flickering blade. The alien’s black blade struck again, and Bulveye dimly felt the point sink deep into his side. The chieftain drew his sword free and leaped lightly backwards, hissing with pleasure. The Wolf Lord let out a roar of thwarted rage and shot the nimble figure with his plasma pistol, but the bolt dissipated harmlessly against the alien’s force-field.

Before he could pursue further, a black-armoured figure crashed against Bulveye from the right. The bodyguard knocked the Wolf Lord off his feet, and the two went down in a tangle of limbs and weapons. Both struggled to pull their blades free quick enough to deal the killing blow. Out of the corner of his vision, Bulveye saw the xenos chieftain drawing nearer, his sword ready. Then suddenly he heard the sound of an Antimonan pistol at close range and a bullet punched through the bodyguard’s helm.

Bulveye hurled the alien’s body away as Andras raced past with two of his armigers to challenge the alien leader. Their pistols blazed in their hands, but the bullets seemed to vanish in the swirling void surrounding the Harrower. The chieftain’s blade flashed, but the armigers’ force-fields succeeded in deflecting the alien’s attacks. Antimonan swords sliced and thrust at the alien, but the chieftain avoided the attacks with contemptuous ease. Still, the momentary distraction was enough to allow Bulveye to recover.

The Wolf Lord leaped to his feet amid the raging melee, and found himself in a slowly tightening circle as the alien attackers drove his warriors back towards the centre of the room. Many of the Wolf Guard had surrendered themselves to the Wulfen as well, and they wrought a hellish slaughter among the enemy, but for every warrior they slew it seemed that two more took his place. In another few minutes it seemed that they would be overwhelmed.

A shout carried across the chamber from behind Bulveye. He turned to see Halvdan standing by the towering crystal, and the sliver of reason that remained to him told the Wolf Lord that the charges for the reactor had been set.

Bulveye turned back to the xenos chieftain and realised what he had to do. He lunged forwards, gathering speed as he charged towards the alien.

By this time, both of Andras’s warriors were dead, and the young nobleman was fighting the chieftain on his own. He wielded his blade with superlative skill, but the alien was far swifter and more experienced; only the Antimonan’s energy shield had saved him from certain death. Each blow against Andras’s shield sent arcs of energy crackling along the surface of his scale armour, and it was clear that it was close to failing.

The chieftain was so intent on killing Andras that he didn’t notice Bulveye’s charge until it was nearly too late. He shifted position in a blur of motion, swinging his weapon in a decapitating stroke, but the Wolf Lord surprised him by dropping his plasma pistol and seizing the alien’s sword arm at the wrist. The field’s energy sank through Bulveye’s armour like ice water, a cold so sharp it sank like a knife into his bones, but he gritted his teeth and held on nonetheless.

Surprised, the alien spat a stream of curses and tried to pull away, but Bulveye let go of his axe and clamped his right hand around the chieftain’s neck. With a roar of pure, animal fury, he picked the lithe alien off the deck, turned and hurled his body at the power crystal a few metres away. When the chieftain’s energy field struck the crystal there was an actinic flash and a concussion that knocked nearly everyone from their feet. The chieftain’s body was vaporised instantly by the blast; pieces of his shattered, smouldering armour ricocheted around the room like shrapnel from a grenade.

The next thing Bulveye heard was a strident, atonal sound that seemed to reverberate through the structure of the spire itself. Shocked from his battle-madness by the blast, he saw the last of the Harrowers fleeing from the chamber as fast as they could.

Andras stood close to the Wolf Lord, still reeling from the shock of the battle. ‘What’s happening?’ he yelled.

Bulveye grabbed his weapons off the deck. ‘That sounds like an alarm of some kind,’ he shouted. ‘The reactor must have been damaged by that energy field. We need to get back to the transport right now!’

Five of Andras’s men and two of Bulveye’s Wolf Guard lay dead, surrounded by heaps of alien bodies. Jurgen and Halvdan were already helping the survivors to grab the bodies of the fallen and carry them out as well. Together they raced back the way they’d come, ready to kill anyone who got in their way, but the alarm had sent every Harrower on the spire scrambling for their own means of escape. By the time they staggered out onto the landing pad, the skies were starting to fill with Harrower transports hastily lifting off from the doomed citadel. Alien bodies – some armoured, some not – were piled in heaps before the damaged transport, their bodies torn apart by boltgun shells or ravaged by the whirring teeth of Ranulf’s chainsword. The pilot stood with his feet planted on the landing pad before the transport’s gangway, his armour spattered with alien gore. Bulveye raised his axe in salute to Ranulf’s dogged defence, and ordered everyone onto the xenos craft.

‘How long until your charges blow?’ Bulveye asked Halvdan as they clambered aboard.

‘Another fifteen seconds, give or take,’ the lieutenant replied.

‘Morkai’s teeth!’ Bulveye cursed. ‘Ranulf, get us the hell out of here!’

With a whine of tortured impellers and a ragged scraping of metal, the crippled transport shuddered into the air and yawed dangerously to port. The craft didn’t so much take off as fall off the side of the landing pad, taking its passengers on a stomach-churning drop as the vehicle’s motors struggled to repel the force of gravity.

Ten seconds later the spire was lit from within by a series of explosions that rippled outwards from the centre of the structure. Arcs of lightning a thousand yards long whipsawed across the spire’s surface, cutting away landing pads and carving furrows in the crystal surface. Then, slowly, like a toppling tree, the massive spire began to settle towards the planet’s surface. Its tip hit the rocky ground and shattered, scattering debris in a billowing cloud of dirt that stretched for kilometres in every direction, then the spire fell onto its side and vanished in massive detonations.

The shockwave of the blast spun the transport around like a top and sent it corkscrewing through the air. For several vertiginous moments, Bulveye was certain they were going to crash, but Ranulf managed to ride out the wave and get the craft stabilised a scant hundred metres off the ground. Behind them, a rising pillar of dirt and smoke was highlighted by the first, pink rays of dawn.

‘What now?’ Andras said, leaning ashen-faced against the craft’s dented rail.

Bulveye scanned the skies, watching as dozens of Harrower ships boosted their thrusters and climbed into the sky, heading for orbit. ‘We return to Oneiros,’ he said, ‘and wait to see what the survivors do. Either they’ll start fighting amongst themselves to see who will be their next leader–’

‘Or?’

The Wolf Lord shrugged. ‘Or we’ll be having visitors in a very short amount of time.’

Throughout the morning the sky was full of vapour trails from Harrower ships boosting into the upper stratosphere. As the first of Oneiros’s citizens crept tentatively out from their shelters and gaped at the towering column of dirt and smoke staining the sky to the west, Bulveye and Andras led their warriors to the Senate building and awaited Antimon’s fate.

For the first few hours they dressed their wounds, shared out ammunition and fortified the structure as best they could. Then, as the day wore on and sounds of jubilation rose from the surrounding hills, Andras sent an armiger into the city in search of food and wine. By late afternoon a procession of joyous Oneirans began arriving with the last scrapings from their larder: preserved meats, shrivelled vegetables and sweet, cloying wine. To Bulveye’s warriors, it was a feast worthy of a primarch.

As the sun set, the warriors drank and ate and enjoyed the fellowship of battle-brothers who had faced death side by side. Bulveye observed the gathering with no small amount of pride. The Antimonans had acquitted themselves well. In centuries to come, he was sure the planet would provide the Imperium with fine soldiers for the Army, or perhaps even young aspirants to the Allfather’s Legions.

Night fell, and sharp-eyed lookouts manned the terraces outside the Senate building and searched the sky for signs of attack. Not a single flash of light was spotted, nor could the Astartes detect the faint specks of ships orbiting the planet. Bulveye took this to be a bad sign, and he and Andras spent a sleepless night preparing to make a final stand inside the Senate building.

It was just before dawn when an Astartes lookout saw the first tell-tale streaks of light in the sky. Bulveye and Andras were sitting together at the foot of the steps that led to the Speaker’s chair when the Wolf Lord’s vox bead activated.

‘Fenris, this is Stormblade. Fenris, this is Stormblade. Are you receiving, over?’

The voice sent a jolt through Bulveye. He clambered to his feet, looking skywards as though he might suddenly glimpse the Space Wolf cruiser hovering up near the ceiling. ‘Stormblade, this is Fenris! I hear you! What’s your status?’

‘Our battle group arrived in-system twenty hours ago and made a stealthy approach to the planet,’ the officer on the Stormblade answered. When we were still about eight hours away, we were engaged by a large fleet of xenos vessels, but we inflicted heavy losses and forced them to disengage an hour later. The survivors have fled towards jump points near the edge of the system.’

By this point, the rest of the Wolf Lord’s warband were on their feet, as well as Andras and his warriors. Every one had a questioning look on his face. Bulveye regarded them all with a triumphant look and cried, ‘A battle group has arrived from Kernunnos and defeated the Harrowers! Antimon is free!’

Armiger and Astartes alike broke out into cheers at the news. Andras stepped forwards and clapped Bulveye on the shoulder. ‘We owe you more than we will ever be able to repay, my friend,’ he said to the towering warrior. From this day forwards we will remember today as the day of Antimon’s deliverance.’

The Wolf Lord only shook his head. ‘There is no debt between us, brother,’ he replied. ‘Just serve the Allfather faithfully in the years to come and give your due to the Imperium, and that will be thanks enough.’

The young nobleman’s smile faltered. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

Bulveye laughed and waved his hand dismissively. ‘That’s nothing to worry about at the moment,’ he said. ‘It will be months before the Imperium can send representatives to begin integrating your world with the rest of the worlds in this subsector. For now, I expect you’ll be want to restore the Senate, which is a good first step. The Imperial governor, when he arrives, will need their support to ensure full certification of the planet. And then the real work will begin!’

Andras’s hand fell away from the Wolf Lord. He took a step back. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘We have no desire to be part of your Imperium – especially now, when we’ve only just regained our freedom!’

Bulveye felt his heart turn to lead. Jurgen and Halvdan sensed the change in their lord’s demeanour and stepped close. Andras’s trio of armigers did the same, their expressions tense.

The Wolf Lord paused, desperate for the right words to change what he feared was about to happen. ‘Andras,’ he began. ‘Listen to me. I came here because the Imperium needs this world. It needs every human world to come together and rebuild what was lost before. Believe me, the galaxy is a dangerous place. There are alien races out there that would like nothing more to see our extinction – or worse. You and your people know this better than anyone.’

He took a step closer to the young nobleman. His armigers laid their hands on the hilts of their swords. ‘We must be united in a common cause, Andras. We must. The Allfather has commanded it, and I’m honour-bound to obey. Antimon is going to be part of the Imperium, brother. One way or another.’ He held out his left hand. ‘An age of glory awaits you. All you have to do is take my hand.’

A look of anguish crossed Andras’s face. ‘How can you say this to me, after all we’ve been through? Weren’t you the one who said that a life not worth fighting for is no life at all?’ The young man’s voice trembled with anger. ‘Antimon is free, and will stay that way. Her armigers will protect her!’

Bulveye shook his head sadly. ‘The Imperium will not be denied, Andras. So I ask you one last time: will you join us?’

The young warrior’s expression turned hard and cold. Slowly, he shook his head. ‘I will fight you if I must.’

Bulveye’s empty hand sank to his side. His heart felt cold as lead. ‘Very well, brother,’ he said heavily. ‘So be it.’

The axe was an icy blur between the two warriors. Andras never saw the blow that ended his life. A half-second later boltguns roared, and the two shocked armigers fell dead as well.

Bulveye stared at the bodies of the young men for a long time, watching their blood spread in a widening stain upon the floor. Abruptly, his vox-bead crackled. ‘Fenris, this is Stormblade. The battle group is in orbit and awaiting your instructions. We have assault troops mustered and ready, and surveyors have identified targets for preliminary bombardment. What are your orders?’

The Wolf Lord tore his gaze away from the dead men at his feet. When he spoke again, his voice was like iron. ‘Stormblade, this is Fenris,’ he said. ‘This world has refused compliance. Execute crusade plan epsilon and commence combat operations at once.’

With a heavy tread, the Wolf Lord stepped over the bodies of Andras and his men, leaving bloody footprints on the steps as he climbed his way to the Speaker’s chair. The wood creaked under his weight as he sat himself upon it and rested his bloody axe across his knees. Outside, the people of Antimon were still cheering their deliverance when the first bombs began to fall.

Isolated for countless millennia in the stygian darkness of Old Night, the inhabitants of the world designated Forty-seven Sixteen had at first rejoiced to be reunited with their long-lost brothers. For over four thousand years they had thought themselves alone in the universe, and had come to regard ancient Terra as little more than a vague, half-forgotten race-memory; an allegorical myth, a fabled genesis world invented by their ancestors. They had greeted the Word Bearers envoys with open arms, gazing upon the immense, grey-armoured Astartes warriors with awe and reverence.

‘Irrevocably corrupt worshippers of a heathen deity,’ First Captain Kor Phaeron stated damningly upon his return from the meeting.

‘Is it not the duty of the crusade to embrace all the distinct strands of humanity, even its most wayward sons?’ said Sor Talgron, Captain of Thirty-fourth Company. ‘Would not the God-Emperor wish His most devoted Legion to lead these blind children to enlightenment?’

Officially, the expanding Imperium of Man was a secular one, promoting and expounding the ‘truths’ of science and reason over the ‘falsehoods’ of religion and spiritualism. The XVII Legion, however, understood the truth, though it was, at times, a heavy burden to bear. Sor Talgron knew that the time was drawing near when the acknowledgement of the Emperor’s divinity would be universally embraced. Faith would become the greatest strength of the Imperium, greater than the untold billions of soldiers that constituted the Imperial Army; greater even than the might of the Legions of Astartes. Faith would be the mortar that held all the disparate elements of mankind together.

Even the most blinded of Legions, those who most vocally denied Lorgar’s holy scripture, would in time come to understand the inherent truth in the primarch’s words. And they would be forced to beg his forgiveness for having ever cast doubt upon his words. That the Emperor denied His divine nature did little to smother the fires of devotion within the XVII Legion; only the truly divine deny their divinity, Lorgar himself had written.

‘You know the Emperor’s mind now, Talgron?’ Kor Phaeron growled. ‘If you have such insight, please enlighten us lesser mortals.’

‘I claim no such thing, First Captain,’ Sor Talgron snapped.

Sor Talgron and Kor Phaeron glared at each other with undisguised venom through the cloying incense smoke rising from dozens of hanging censers. The circular, tiered room where the war council was taking place was deep in the heart of the Fidelitas Lex, Lorgar’s flagship, and the captains of the other Grand Companies stood silently around its circumference, watching with interest from the shadows to see how this confrontation would develop. However, Erebus, the softly spoken First Chaplain of the Legion, interposed himself between Kor Phaeron and Sor Talgron, ever the mediator, moving into the centre of the sunken command pulpit and breaking their venomous glares.

‘The First Captain and I shall consult with the Urizen,’ Erebus said smoothly, ending the discussion. ‘Lorgar’s wisdom shall guide us.’

Still glowering, Sor Talgron had bowed to the First Chaplain before spinning on his heel and striding from the room along with the other dismissed captains. He waved skulking robed servants out of his path, intending to travel by Stormbird back to his own cruiser, the Dominatus Sanctus, and rejoin Thirty-fourth Company.

It had been more than a month since Sor Talgron had seen the blessed primarch of the XVII Legion, and the Urizen’s absence at the war council had been keenly felt. Tempers were fraying, and dissent was beginning to spread through the ranks; the Legion needed Lorgar to return to them.

The holy primarch had been locked within his personal shrine-chamber in self-exile for a full Terran month – ever since his audience with the Emperor of Mankind. In that time he had allowed none bar Kor Phaeron and Erebus, his closest advisors and comrades, into his presence. The entire Forty-seventh Expeditionary Fleet had sat dormant while it waited for its primarch’s orders.

Sor Talgron had snatched a momentary glimpse of his primarch as the Urizen was ushered into his private quarters upon his return from his meeting with the Emperor, and had been shocked to the core of his being by what he had seen.

Always, Lorgar had radiated a palpable aura of passion and belief, an unassailable shield of faith that was at once awesome and terrifying. Whereas it was said that the Wolf’s strength was his irrepressible ferocity, the Lion’s his relentless tenacity, and Guilliman’s his strategic and logistical brilliance, Lorgar’s strength was his unshakeable faith, his profound self-belief, his ruthless and unwavering devotion.

Though Erebus had sought to hide the Urizen from the gaze of the Legion, Sor Talgron’s eyes had locked with those of his primarch for the briefest of moments before a hatch had slammed down, blocking his vision. The depth of despair he had seen in Lorgar’s eyes had forced him to his knees. His eyes had filled with tears and his stomach had knotted painfully, his mind reeling. What could possibly have transpired upon the Emperor’s battle-barge to have so shaken the unshakeable?

He had not even reached the embarkation deck of the Fidelitas Lex when he was contacted by Erebus, requesting his return to the war chamber: the Urizen had made his decision.

As he marched back through the labyrinthine corridors of the Fidelitas Lex, Captain Sor Talgron prayed that Lorgar himself would be present, though in this he was to be disappointed.

Still, at least a decision had been made – after a month of idleness, the XVII Legion at last had purpose.

‘In his great mercy,’ Erebus said, addressing the reassembled gathering of Word Bearers captains, ‘the Urizen wishes that this long-lost strand of humanity be brought to compliance; that they be embraced into the fold of the Imperial Truth.’

Murmurs spread around the gathered captains, and Sor Talgron nodded his head in approval. Such was the way that the XVII Legion had operated since the start of the crusade. They had brought the glory of the Imperial Truth to every world that they had encountered thus far, and though their progress might not have been as swift as that of some of the other Legions, those worlds left behind by the XVII Legion were the most devout and loyal of all. Those who refused the word and those deemed unworthy were, of course, zealously crushed, ground to dust beneath the armoured heel of Lorgar’s Astartes, but those who accepted their teachings were embraced into the Imperial truth, their loyalty assured.

Sor Talgron cast a triumphant glance towards Kor Phaeron, but the First Captain did not look displeased by the proclamation, for all that he had been braying for war earlier.

‘However,’ Erebus continued, ‘it is with sadness and remorse that the Urizen has come to his decision. The Emperor is displeased with our Legion, brothers.’

Absolute silence descended over the chamber, every set of eyes focusing on the First Chaplain. Sor Talgron felt his blood run cold.

‘The Emperor, it seems, is not satisfied with the rate of our progress. The Emperor is not content with the worlds, compliant and faithful, that we have delivered to Him. In His wisdom,’ Erebus continued, his voice soft and yet with a growing edge of bitterness, ‘the Emperor has rebuked our blessed primarch, His most faithful and devoted of sons, and ordered him to hasten our crusade.’

Dark mutterings passed between the gathered captains, but Sor Talgron blocked them out, focused on the words of the First Chaplain.

‘Our blessed primarch feels that, given time, the inhabitants of Forty-seven Sixteen could be taught the error of their ignorant, heathen ways; that they would make model Imperial citizens once guided towards the light of truth by our Chaplains and warrior-brothers. However, the Emperor’s orders are clear, and the Urizen is a faithful son; he cannot refuse his father’s order, though it causes him much lamentation.’

‘And what are those orders, First Chaplain?’ said Captain Argel Tal of the Seventh Company.

‘That we do not have the time necessary to convert these ignorant heathens to the Imperial Truth,’ Erebus said, with some reluctance. ‘Their profane beliefs are deemed incompatible with the Imperium. As a result… Forty-seven Sixteen must burn.’

Sor Talgron reeled at the proclamation, shocked and horrified that an entire world that might have been brought into the Imperial Truth was condemned to death merely because of… what? The Emperor’s impatience? He immediately felt ashamed, guilt swelling up within him for even thinking such blasphemy. Once this war was done, he swore that he would attempt to atone for his errant thought through hours of penance and self-flagellation.

Nevertheless, after they had recovered from the initial shock of Lorgar’s orders, every captain of the XVII Legion, Sor Talgron included, threw themselves fully into preparations for the forthcoming war with a focus bordering on fanaticism. He was a warrior of Lorgar, Sor Talgron reminded himself; it was not for him to attempt to interpret the orders of his betters. He was a warrior first and foremost, and he fought where – and against whom – he was commanded.

Less than twenty-four hours later more than a hundred and ninety million people were dead – over ninety-eight per cent of the doomed world’s population.

The cruisers and battleships assigned to the Forty-seventh Expeditionary Fleet anchored at high orbit, and for twelve hours unleashed their payload upon the condemned, storm-wracked planet. Cyclonic torpedoes and concentrated hellfire broadsides pierced the storm clouds spanning the planet. Entire continents had disappeared in flames.

One city survived the carnage. This was the seat of the planet’s governance and the centre of its blasphemous worship. Protected within a bubble of coruscating energy was the profane palace-temple of the enemy, a structure as large as a city in itself. Unwilling to allow even a single heathen blasphemer to remain alive, for that would have been against their lord’s orders, five full companies of the XVII Legion were mobilised, striking down towards the planet’s surface to finish the job.

Sor Talgron led Thirty-fourth Company down towards Forty-seven Sixteen, the Stormbirds carrying his loyal Astartes warrior-brothers descending into the storm-wracked atmosphere. Despite the weight of the preliminary bombardment that had pre-empted the ground assault, it soon became apparent that the enemy defences were not completely neutralised; blinding arcs of energy screamed up from below, smashing several of the Stormbirds out of the air even as they entered the planet’s atmosphere, the lives of almost a hundred precious warrior-brothers lost in the blink of an eye.

Sor Talgron ordered the Stormbirds to pull off their current trajectory, and sent swift warnings to his brother captains of Fourth, Seventh, Ninth and Seventeenth Companies following in his wake, advising them to come at the dome from a different angle. Even as the vox transmissions were sent, Talgron’s Stormbird was hit, sheering away one of its wings and shorting out its controls, sending it into a fatal, spiralling dive towards the ground. Assault hatches were blown, and at nineteen and a half thousand metres Sor Talgron leapt from his granite-grey Stormbird, leading his Space Marines screaming down towards the ruined city below as their jump packs roared into life.

The ruined enemy city was spread out below as Sor Talgron’s Assault squads broke through the storm clouds, the speed of their descent enhanced by the powerful engines of their jump packs. From their altitude the curvature of the world could be seen clearly, and the shattered remains of a city pummelled into the ground by ordnance was spread out as far as the eye could see in every direction. At the centre of the shattered city was the flickering dome, a blister of energy in the fire-blackened flesh of the enemy land.

That dome was easily twenty kilometres in diameter, and rose almost a quarter of that distance above the ground. As he descended towards the city, arcs of lightning stabbing down from the clouds around him and up from the ground below, the captain of Thirty-fourth Company calmly identified a landing zone and transmitted the coordinates to his men.

They landed five kilometres from the flickering dome. The enemy city was a single grand super-structure hundreds of levels high, its grand valley-like boulevards criss-crossed with thousands of arched walkways and lined with balconies and terraces. Much of it had been blasted into oblivion, but more had survived than Sor Talgron had expected – the glassy material that everything on this world was constructed from was apparently more resilient than it appeared. Before the bombardment had begun, the city must have looked stunning, though Sor Talgron found such opulence deeply suspicious. Beauty, he felt, was to be mistrusted.

Nothing living had survived the brutal bombardment outside the shimmering dome. Those inhabitants of Forty-seven Sixteen that had been exposed to the full brunt of the barrage had been obliterated, flesh, muscle and bone instantly consumed in roaring flames, leaving only circles of ash where they had stood as evidence to their ever having existed at all. Charred bodies in their millions, those who were inside when the bombardment commenced, were strewn throughout the glass buildings of Forty-seven Sixteen. Tens of thousands of them were discovered in the profane temple-shrines dotted all over the city, their flesh melted together into obscene, congealed, fleshy lumps that were almost unrecognisable as having ever been human.

The scale of the slaughter was nothing if not impressive.

Drop-pods streamed like a deadly shower of meteors down from the battle-barges in the upper atmosphere. Scores were destroyed as they dropped through the storm, their occupants instantly slain.

At first it appeared that they faced no ground resistance. Then the first of the robotic, three-legged war constructs marched unscathed through the flickering shield-dome to meet them, lightning spitting from their blade-arms, and battle was met.

The storm-wracked world was in its final death throes. Lightning ripped across the bruised skyline. The flashing of electricity was constant, a blinding strobe that threw the battle-scarred ruins of the alien superstructure into stark relief. Sor Talgron’s primary heart was pounding, pumping over-oxygenated blood through his veins. Hyper-stimulated adrenal glands fired, fuelling his aggression and sending fresh energy shooting through his nervous system. The stink of ozone and discharging electricity was strong in his nostrils.

He pressed himself hard up against a shattered, glass-smooth spire, taking cover as another of the enemy war constructs fired a blast of harnessed lightning towards him. The crackling arc of energy slammed against the spire half a metre away, sending flickering sparks of energy dancing across its smooth surface. Mouthing a curse, Sor Talgron slammed a fresh sickle clip into his bolt pistol. Thunder rumbled deafeningly overhead, an unrelenting churning roar that made the Space Marine captain’s insides reverberate.

Another blast struck, this time catching one of his warriors, Brother Khadmon, full in the chest as he broke from cover. The Astartes warrior was hurled backwards by the force of the blast, smashing him into another spire with bone-crushing force. He slid to the ground, his armour blackened and bubbling, and Sor Talgron knew that he was dead. Khadmon continued to twitch for several minutes, as flickers of electricity danced across his corpse. His flesh had been cooked within his power armour, his innards and blood boiling; the heat generated by the lightning-weapons of the enemy was easily a match for the lascannons borne by the Devastator-Havoc squads.

Sor Talgron swore. Too many of his company brothers had already died this day, and he felt his anger and resentment building.

Apothecary Uhrlon was already moving towards the fallen warrior, risking himself as he leapt towards the dead Astartes to drag the corpse into cover.

‘Be quick, Apothecary,’ Sor Talgron shouted. ‘We can’t stay here. We have to take down those spires!’

Not for the first time, Sor Talgron prayed that this plan of Kol Badar’s was going to work. If the spires were brought down, would that cause a rent in the seemingly impenetrable shield-dome as the favoured sergeant predicted? He believed that it would, but if Kol Badar was wrong, then even more of his brothers would die before the day was out.

For a moment he watched as the Apothecary carried out the grisly duty of extracting Brother Khadmon’s precious gene-seed. The drill screeched as it penetrated Khadmon’s ceramite armour and flesh, splattering his armour with blood.

More forks of lightning struck around him. No more of his warriors were caught in the killing blasts, but it was only a matter of time before the enemy flanked their position, repositioning themselves to draw a direct bead on them. The robotic war constructs of the enemy were formidable foes. Far from unthinking, predictable automatons, they had proven to be wily and dangerous enemies, constantly adapting and refining their tactics and strategies to best defeat the invaders.

Artificial intelligence.

Such a thing was an abomination.

The Emperor Himself had decreed such research forbidden, part of the compact agreed between Terra and Mars, and to go against the word of the Emperor was heresy of the highest order. That the inhabitants of Forty-seven Sixteen could not possibly know this was of little consequence.

‘Squadron Tertius, do you read?’ said Sor Talgron, broadcasting across the vox-net.

‘Yes, captain,’ came the prompt reply, the voice muffled and devoid of emotion. ‘Orders?’

‘I need you here. We’re pinned down. The enemy are positioned upon fortified balcony positions. Distance is…’ He turned towards the Astartes sergeant nearby, Brother Arshaq.

‘One hundred and forty-two metres, elevation eighty-two degrees,’ said Sergeant Arshaq, risking a glance around the spire to get a lock on the enemy. He ducked back as several blasts of lighting stabbed towards him, striking the glassy spire with shocking force.

‘You get that, Tertius?’ said Sor Talgron across the vox.

‘Affirmative,’ confirmed Squadron Tertius. ‘On our way.’

They were positioned on one of the high flyover walkways that criss-crossed the immense, man-made valleys separating the different sections of the city’s superstructure, pinned in place by the weight of incoming fire.

Glancing down, Sor Talgron could make out thousands of granite-grey armoured battle-brothers, accompanied by scores of the Legion’s tanks, fighting hard for every inch of ground as they closed in on the shimmering shield-dome from all directions. The flash of muzzle flare from thousands of bolters was like so many flickering candles at this distance, and the roar of the weapons was drowned out by the relentless booming thunder overhead. Missiles left lingering coils of smoke in their wake as they spiralled towards the enemy, a deadly robotic army that knew nothing of fear or mercy, and gouts of retina-searing, white-hot plasma spat from overheating weapons.

The deceptively delicate-looking war constructs of the enemy stalked through the mayhem all but unscathed. Slender insectoid legs carrying them inexorably forwards, they stepped steadily through the hail of bolter fire, each of them protected by a sphere of lightning that flashed and sparked as they absorbed the incoming fire. Their return fire exacted a horrifying toll, lightning weapons slaughtering Astartes and sending Predator and Land Raider tanks flipping end over end.

Concentrated lascannon fire struck again and again at the constructs’ shields, finally overloading several of them and blasting the robotic machines apart, but the sheer weight of fire required to neutralise even a single machine was staggering.

With the practicalities of war and the difficulties of his mission occupying his mind, Sor Talgron had pushed aside any moral qualms he had regarding the validity of the war. That the humans of Forty-seven Sixteen were divergent was undeniable. Their unrepentant and wilful manufacture of thinking machines alone was enough to condemn them.

Yet for all this, the captain of Thirty-fourth Company could not help but feel pity for those whom his Legion had been sent to slaughter. A stab of resentment lanced through him, shocking him with the strength of the emotion.

Why had the Emperor not allowed the XVII Legion to even attempt to bring Forty-seven Sixteen to enlightenment?

Since landing, Sor Talgron had not seen a single living human – all they had faced so far had been their war constructs, though the gory, dismembered and obliterated remains of people were everywhere.

‘Here they come,’ said Sergeant Arshaq, drawing Sor Talgron out of his reverie.

Squadron Tertius came streaking up from below, three boxy grey shapes moving at great speed. These were new innovations from the forges of Mars, and the land speeder pilots threw their anti-grav attack vehicles from side to side, jinking to avoid incoming fire that speared towards them. They screamed underneath the flyover on which Sor Talgron and his veteran squad were taking cover, engines roaring as they zeroed in on the location that Sergeant Arshaq had provided, and as they rose in altitude and began their attack run, their weapons began to belch.

Heavy bolters spat hundreds of high-velocity explosive rounds towards the enemy constructs above, and multi-meltas screamed as they fired, sending superheated blasts into the foe, overriding their shields and rendering the robotic war machines molten.

‘Targets neutralised,’ came the word from the land speeder squadron, barrelling underneath a bridge spanning the man-made valley of glass buildings, before performing a tight loop around it and screaming overhead.

‘Good work, Tertius,’ said Sor Talgron, stepping out into the open once more.

Glowing green targeting matrices flashed before his eyes. Information feeds streamed across his irises as he focused on the target location for his next jump. Two hundred and seventy-four metres, his head-up display informed him.

In a clipped voice, he conveyed the coordinates of the leap to his warrior-brothers. Confirmations of his orders flooded in, and without ceremony, Sor Talgron broke into a run towards the low balustrade of the flyover. Placing one foot upon the railing, he launched himself out into open space.

Before the force of gravity began to drag him to the ground, his jump pack roared into life. Powerful vectored engines screamed, and he accelerated sharply into the air, flames and dirty black smoke spewing out behind him.

Warrior-brothers of Thirty-fourth Company leapt into the air behind their captain, flames roaring in their wake. Sor Talgron could see more of his Assault squads in the distance, streaking towards their targets like fireflies, trailing fire as they ascended vertical precipices and criss-crossed gaping expanses between glass structures in bounding leaps, attempting to avoid the heavy weight of incoming fire.

Targeting crosshairs appeared in the corners of his vision, drawing his attention, and he turned his head to see another group of enemy war constructs a hundred metres to his side, stepping smoothly out onto a terrace built into the side of a cliff-like section of the city’s superstructure. They lifted their lightning-rod arms in the direction of Sor Talgron and his veteran squad, and he saw the sparking build-up of power along those silver lengths.

Barking a warning, Sor Talgron threw himself into a barrelling spin, taking him off his current trajectory. A fraction of a second later, a trio of blinding streaks of lightning speared by him. Deafening, supersonic cracks of thunder accompanied these blasts, though the damping systems of his helmet made the sound bearable.

Two warriors of Talgron’s veteran Assault squad were hit, struck out of the air by forks of energy. Electricity leapt from their bodies to those nearby, shorting out life-systems and sending targeting arrays haywire.

‘Take them,’ Sor Talgron said, turning in the air towards the enemy even as those warrior-brothers that had been hit fell, smoking, down into the maelstrom of battle far below. Gunning the engines of his jump pack, anger filling him at the thought of his fallen brethren, the captain of Thirty-fourth Company angled his flight to take him down amongst the enemy machines.

There were three of the constructs, and he lifted his bolt pistol and began firing as he descended towards them, each pull of the trigger sending a mass-reactive bolt screaming towards its target. Lightning-shields flashed into existence around the enemy robots, his rounds merely stitching flashing impacts across their surface.

Blasts of lightning tore up towards the descending Word Bearers, making the air crackle and reverberate with power, and Sor Talgron saw the information feed from another of his warriors go dead.

Angry, and eager to unleash this anger on these unliving foes, Sor Talgron came in to land fast, his rapid descent bringing the glass terrace racing up towards him. The vectored engines of his jump pack swivelled towards the ground as he swung his legs out in front of him, and a fiery blast slowed his descent.

His boots skidded on the surface of the smooth terrace as he touched down, and his heavy power mace was in his hand instantly, coruscating energy wreathing its flanged head with a press of its activation stud. While the lightning fields that protected the constructs could effortlessly shrug off a direct hit from a bolt gun, Sor Talgron had learnt that they afforded less protection against blows landed in hand-to-hand combat, or shots fired at point-blank range. Closing the distance quickly was imperative.

The sight of the enemy constructs up close filled him with loathing. Abominations.

They were synthetic mockeries of humans, their very existence an offence. Perhaps he had been wrong in thinking this war unjustified, Sor Talgron pondered as gazed upon their blasphemous forms.

They stood almost as tall as a Dreadnought, though they were far less bulky than the deadly war machines of the Astartes Legions. Each of them had a human-like torso made of the same semi-transparent glassy material that formed the entire city – manufactured perhaps for its non-conductive properties – and featureless heads filled with circuitry sat upon their shoulders. In place of humanoid legs, each of the constructs was borne upon three slender multi-jointed insectoid limbs – each perhaps three metres long if extended straight. These legs gave the machines a disturbing, arachnid feel, like some twisted amalgamation of man and spider, though there was nothing organic about them.

The arms of the constructs were like those of men, except that their forearms ended in long, tapering spikes of silver instead of hands. Electricity sparked between these arms as they were brought close together.

Veins of silver ran through the bodies of the abominations, all leading to their ‘hearts’, the battery-centres of harnessed storm energy in the centre of their torsos. Electrical pulses flickered along these metallic threads, seemingly powering all of its functions: movement, thought, weapons and the lightning-fields that made them all but invulnerable to ranged fire.

The constructs moved with the jerky precision of long-legged hunting birds as they reacted to the Word Bearers’ attack. Dirty flames belched from Astartes jump packs as more of Sor Talgron’s brethren touched down around them. Bolt pistols roared, and flamers belched, bathing the robotic machines in gouts of super-heated promethium, though the worst of these attacks were, of course, deflected by the protective domes of lightning that flared around each of the constructs.

Sor Talgron leapt towards the nearest of the abominations with a roar.

The sentient stepped away from him and brought its silver lightning-rod arms together with a clap of thunder. A jagged spear of light flashed towards the captain of Thirty-fourth Company, but he had pre-empted the strike, and threw himself to the side. The crackling arc scythed by him, making the oath-papers affixed to the rim of his shoulder pad burst into flame.

He closed the distance quickly, recognising that the abomination needed time for its lightning weapon to recharge. With a sweep of his crackling mace he struck the construct’s shield, the stink of ozone rising as the two power sources came together with a deafening crack. The sphere of energy was torn apart by the blow, sparks and energy wreathing Sor Talgron’s weapon as the shield dissipated.

Stepping in close and grunting with the effort, Sor Talgron smashed his power maul into one of the construct’s insectoid legs. Though fragile looking, the slender limb was as hard as tempered plasteel, and while thousands of tiny cracks spread up and down the glassy limb, it did not shatter.

A pained, whistling sound, something akin to the musical trill of a song-bird, erupted from the war machine. It tried to back away from him, but its damaged limb buckled as soon as it placed weight upon it, and it crumpled to the floor.

Sor Talgron closed in on the fallen construct, even as it struggled frantically to right itself. Its two intact legs skittered off the smooth, glassy terrace floor, and again it emitted its pained bird-song like whistle. It flailed with its pair of lightning-rod arms, discharging electricity wildly, narrowly missing him. Sor Talgron pressed his heavy boot down upon the chest of the construct and smashed his power maul into its domed head, shattering it. Sparks spat from its ruptured cranium, and the power core located in its chest faded, the silver veins running through its transparent body turning dark and lifeless.

The shield of another of the constructs was brought down, and a melta-blast turned the torso of the machine molten, super-heated glass running like lava, dripping down its legs and onto the floor with a hiss. Spinning, Sor Talgron fired his bolt pistol at the last of the war machines, but the lightning-field sprang up before him, absorbing the power of the bolts.

Its arms came together with a deafening crack and another of Sor Talgron’s veterans was killed, lifted from his feet and hurled out into open space, his body swathed in electricity.

Brother Sergeant Arshaq launched himself at the construct from its side. He punched with his immense power fist, the blow dispelling the construct’s shield with a powerful explosion of energy.

Bolt pistols bucking in their hands, Sor Talgron and his veterans stepped towards the now unshielded construct. It reeled beneath the blows, emitting pained bird-cries, and spider-web cracks appeared upon its torso and head. Sergeant Arshaq planted another bolt into its artificial cranium as it staggered. The high explosive round found a crack and detonated within the constructs head, spraying shards of glass in all directions.

However, even in death it was a deadly foe. It floundered, staggering drunkenly, electricity leaping from the stump of its neck. Its arms flailed, and as it turned towards Sor Talgron those silver limbs came together, and a lethal fork of energy shot towards him, accompanied by a deafening crack.

He saw it coming, and managed to twist his body so that it did not strike him with the full brunt of its power, yet it still lifted him off his feet and sent him flying through the air. His vision instantly turned black as the photochromatic lenses of his helmet were melted by the intense heat. The acrid stink of liquefying wires and cables filled his helmet. He was slammed hard into a wall, cracking its glass surface with the force the impact. Spinning off the angled surface of the wall, Sor Talgron was thrown over the edge of the terrace.

He was freefalling then, arms and legs flailing wildly. Still blind, he spun in the air, groping for a handhold. His ceramite encased fingers merely scratched against glass, screeching loudly.

Abruptly his fall came to an end as he landed on a lower terrace with bone-jarring force, cracking its surface. The thirty-metre fall would likely have killed a lesser man, but Sor Talgron pushed himself unsteadily to his knees, his bones bruised but unbroken. Smoke rose from his blistering power armour and lingering sparks of electricity flickered across his body. Sor Talgron tore his damaged helmet from his head. Seeing that it had been rendered useless by the electrical blast, he hurled it away from him, his face flushed and angry.

The stink of burning flesh – his own – was strong in his nostrils, and he blinked as he was momentarily blinded by the lightning tearing apart the heavens.

While many warrior-brothers of the XVII Legion had the noble countenance of their primarch, Sor Talgron had the face of one born to fight, with broad, thick features and a nose that had been broken so many times it was nothing more than a fleshy lump smeared across his face. He scowled darkly and swore as he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, his muscles protesting.

Sergeant Arshaq, flames spewing from his jump pack, landed alongside him, followed closely by the other members of Veteran Squad Helikon.

‘Are you all right, captain?’ asked the sergeant.

Sor Talgron nodded his head.

‘The construct?’ he said.

‘Destroyed,’ confirmed Arshaq, reaching a hand out to his captain. ‘The path to the shield-dome is clear.’

Sor Talgron accepted Arshaq’s outstretched hand, allowing the veteran sergeant to help him back to his feet. The last vestiges of the electricity that had engulfed him flickered over his gauntlets and up Arshaq’s arm. Nodding his thanks, Sor Talgron turned towards the flickering shield-dome, shielding his eyes against its glare.

They were only five hundred metres from the lightning-shield now, and the air crackled with intensity, making his short-cropped black hair stand on end.

The weight of fire being directed against the immense lightning-dome from the ground was awesome. Hundreds of tanks were bombarding the flickering, curved sides of the shield at a scale that would have long ago felled city blocks. A demi-legion of Titans, immense machines of destruction crafted by the adepts of Mars that stood as tall as buildings, unleashed the full power of their weapons against the shield, yet even these, amongst the most potent weapons the Imperium of Man was able to construct, appeared to have little effect.

From within the shield-dome, more of the blasphemous enemy war constructs were marching, passing through the shield unscathed, protected within their bubbles of energy. They stalked out to meet the Word Bearers in the streets below, moving forwards in staggered lines, lightning forking from their silver arms as they brought them together. How many more of them did the enemy have, Sor Talgron wondered?

Sor Talgron was almost blinded as another searing orbital strike split the sky, lancing down through the upper atmosphere to smash against the top of the shield. Still it held, an impenetrable barrier that it seemed would not be breached, no matter the amount of ordnance thrown against it.

‘I really hope this plan of Kol Badar’s is going to work,’ said Sergeant Arshaq.

‘You and me both, my friend,’ said Sor Talgron.

His eyes settled on the immense tower-spires encased in silver that ringed the shield-dome. Each was struck time and again by lightning spearing down from the tumultuous storm clouds, and an intense humming of power reverberated from these giant rods as the power built within them. Several times a minute this harnessed energy was expelled from one of the spires in great lightning arcs that stabbed down into the streets below, striking at tanks and squads of Astartes with deafening thunderclaps, killing dozens with every strike.

Even as Sor Talgron and Squad Helikon looked on, electricity leapt from one of the silver spires in a jagged line, striking at one of the giant Warlord-class Titans blasting at the shield-dome from afar. The cataclysmic sound of the discharge hit them a fraction of a second later, the sound threatening to rupture Sor Talgron’s unprotected eardrums. The Titan’s void shields were stripped away by the force of the strike and it rocked backwards as if in pain. Another immense blast of energy forked from the silver spires, striking the Titan in its head even as it attempted to step back away from the danger, and the forty-metre-high colossus toppled, smashing down on top of a pair of Land Raider battle tanks, crushing them like paper.

Interspersed between these towering spires were smaller ones, and while those too were frequently struck by the fury of the storm, when they discharged their power, it was not towards the Astartes but rather towards the shield-dome itself. Sor Talgron had studied these spires from afar, and he believed that Kol Badar was correct in suggesting that these were what was keeping the shield intact. The lightning they absorbed forked from their silver lengths into the shield, strengthening it and keeping it solid. These were Sor Talgron’s targets, for he believed that if they were destroyed, then the shield would fall.

Located high up on the superstructure, they were hard to target from the ground, and the defensive spires surrounding them would strike down any aircraft approaching to drop its payload upon the shield-spires. It fell to his Assault squad to launch the strike.

However, less than a quarter of his jump pack-equipped warriors had made it this far – the strength of the enemy’s resistance had not been foreseen. He had only enough Assault squads remaining to take down three of the spires, and he had no idea if that would be enough to have any real effect on the shield.

Still, he was not going to back off now.

He could see grey armoured figures in the distance, fire and smoke trailing behind them, leaping towards the spires he had allocated as targets. The time to test Kol Badar’s theory had come, and again he prayed that this was going to work.

‘It has to work,’ Sor Talgron said grimly to himself. He took a deep breath, then opened up a vox-channel to his Assault squads.

‘Report,’ he said.

‘First wave, target secured,’ growled the voice of Kol Badar, his most trusted veteran sergeant, and the one who had suggested this course of action. Tactically astute and fearless in battle, Sor Talgron knew he would go far.

‘Awaiting your mark,’ said the sergeant.

‘Second target secured, captain,’ said Sergeant Bachari, in command of the second wave. ‘Melta charges locked in position.’

From his position, Sor Talgron could see the warriors of Bachari’s second wave in the distance surrounding the slender silver spire that had been designated as their target, less than fifty metres from the flickering veil. Kol Badar’s first wave would be surrounding a similar spire, fifty metres higher up the structure.

‘Sergeant Paeblen? Does Squad Lementas control the third target?’ said Sor Talgron.

‘Engaging the enemy, captain,’ came Paeblen’s voice. The sound of roaring chainswords, Astartes shouting and weapons discharging echoed in the background. There was a loud explosion, and the line abruptly descended into static white noise. A moment later, a new voice crackled across the vox.

‘Brother Aecton here, captain,’ said the voice.

‘Go ahead, brother,’ said Sor Talgron.

‘Sergeant Paeblen is down, captain,’ said Brother Aecton. ‘I am taking temporary command of the third wave.’

Aecton was an experienced member of Squad Lementas, a battle-scarred veteran that Sor Talgron knew could be relied upon to keep his wits in the most nightmarish situations. As the longest-serving member of Lementas, it fell to him to take command if anything happened to his sergeant. A moment later the vox crackled, and Aecton’s voice came through once more.

‘Target secured, captain. Melta charges are in place.’

‘Good work, Brother Aecton,’ said Sor Talgron.

‘All squads: blow your charges on my mark,’ said Sor Talgron. Turning to Sergeant Arshaq, he nodded solemnly.

‘Moment of truth,’ remarked the sergeant.

Sor Talgron smiled grimly.

‘Do it,’ he said.

The melta bomb clusters placed around the base of the three silver spires detonated simultaneously. For a moment, Sor Talgron saw no real effect, and he felt certain that the ploy had failed. Then he saw one of the three targeted spires begin to shudder. As the melta charges turned its base to a superheated morass of bubbling liquid and hissing gas, the spire began to sag. With a metallic groan, accompanied by wildly discharging electricity, the kilometre-high spire collapsed and fell inwards, straight towards the shield-dome.

Even as that one spire began to fall slowly towards the lightning-dome, so too did the other two shudder and collapse, falling slowly at first and then with increasing velocity.

If the fall of the spires had any effect at all, created any breach in the shield whatsoever, then Sor Talgron felt certain that it would only be a momentary gap.

‘Now!’ roared Sor Talgron, leaping into the air, the flames of his jump pack carrying him straight towards the dome. He accelerated fast, the engines of his jump pack straining against the forces of gravity.

He could feel the power of the shield-dome intensify as he drew nearer, making his skin tingle and his eardrums reverberate painfully.

He was no more than fifty metres from the veil when the first spire struck. An explosion of light and electricity erupted, far more intense than any he had yet seen.

A moment later, the other two spires hit, creating a blinding discharge of electricity. Bolts of power leapt madly between the three silver spires, and a rent was momentarily ripped open between them, a hole sheared in the fabric of the dome.

Without pause, Sor Talgron angled towards the temporary gap, pushing the engines of his jump pack to their limits, burning rapidly through the last reserves of fuel.

Jagged arcs of lightning criss-crossed back and forth across the tear in the shield-dome as the veil began to reform its impenetrable mesh. With a shout, Sor Talgron pushed on, knowing that he was committed now; there was no turning back.

He roared through the ever-diminishing hole, and his entire body was jolted as a barbed fork of lightning passed through him, using his flesh as a conduit.

His jump pack shorted out completely, sparking and smoking, though the force of his momentum carried him through the rapidly diminishing rent in the veil. His vision was fading in and out, and he dropped like a stone, a smoking, charred body, landing heavily on a palatial balcony within the flickering dome.

Sor Talgron twitched involuntarily for a moment as the last vestiges of electricity left him, dissipating across the smooth glassy floor. Pushing himself up to one knee, smoke rising from the burnt, stinking flesh of his face, he unclipped the release clamps upon his breastplate, and his now useless, smoking jump pack dropped to the ground with heavy clunk.

‘That was… unpleasant,’ said Arshaq, pushing himself to his feet nearby. The veteran sergeant’s cream-coloured tabard was hanging off him in fire-blackened strips. Some parts of the robe were still on fire, and Arshaq casually ripped the remnants of the fabric away from him.

Only the warriors of Squad Helikon had made it through the gap. The other three of the surviving Assault squads were stuck outside the shield-dome. Sor Talgron swore.

It had taken all of the squads’ melta bombs to create even that momentary crack in the enemy’s defence – it would not be a move that his Assault squads would be able to replicate, nor was he able to contact his brother Space Marines beyond to advise them of a new course of action – evidently, the shield-dome blocked vox traffic as easily as incoming lance strikes. The all-encompassing lightning-dome they were now ensconced within obscured everything beyond.

Sor Talgron’s scorched face was stinging, but he ignored the pain, his eyes fixed in the distance.

The city within the dome had been untouched by war, and it was an awe-inspiring sight. Pristine crystal domes, glass spires and interconnected walkways that gleamed like spider-webs dipped in quicksilver sprawled before them.

But Sor Talgron paid none of these structures any mind; he was completely focused upon the looming glass structure in the distance – and upon the giant statue that towered above it.

His eyes narrowed as he glared up at the titanic statue. It stood more than a kilometre tall, a titanic silver and glass colossus in the form of a man, standing with arms raised. Lightning from the shield-dome struck the statue’s outstretched hands every few seconds, bathing it in flashes of flickering energy that coiled around its arms and torso.

Sor Talgron felt loathing rise up within him.

This was no was statue of a heroic founder or local legend; this was an effigy of the god of the people of Forty-seven Sixteen.

‘So it is true, then,’ said Arshaq, disgust in his voice. ‘These people are heathen idolators.’

‘Lorgar, give me strength,’ Sor Talgron murmured.

‘Captain,’ said Sergeant Arshaq, consulting his auspex. ‘We have multiple contacts, moving on our position. What are your orders?’

‘We go there,’ said Sor Talgron, pointing towards the statue. ‘And we kill everything we find. Those are our orders.’

Strangely, they had encountered little resistance since passing through the dome.

After the brutal battle towards the centre of the enemy superstructure, the utter absence of the enemy here was eerie.

They traversed over expansive arched walkways of delicate glass, moving warily towards the immense central spire, covering all the angles and scanning for movement.

The battle outside the sphere of lightning had been bloody in the extreme – the artificial war constructs were deadly foes, utilising weaponry unlike anything that any of the crusade fleets had encountered, as far as he understood. Yet here, within the sheltered, impenetrable dome of energy, it was peaceful – almost serene.

Through vaulted hallways and soaring cathedral-like passages they moved, footsteps echoing loudly upon the smooth glass.

‘It’s like a tomb,’ remarked Arshaq.

Sor Talgron was forced to agree. He almost wished for an enemy to appear, just to break the tension. Almost.

The Word Bearers moved warily along a wide bridge spanning two glittering crystal spires, closing steadily on the central temple structure that rose up before them like an exotic crystal flower, atop which stood the colossal statue of the enemy’s false god. Sor Talgron could not look upon the vile storm-god statue without feeling his gorge rise.

On more than one occasion they glimpsed enemy constructs stalking along bridges and walkways far below, moving towards the shield-dome and the battle raging outside, but they appeared unaware –or unconcerned– with the Astartes already within the shield.

It seemed that the entire superstructure of the enemy continent-city revolved around this strangely alien building, and all the walkways, ramparts and flyways within the veil led towards it. Undoubtedly, it was a structure of great importance, and Sor Talgron felt strongly that the last vestiges of humanity on this doomed world were hidden within.

They covered the ten kilometres to the heart of the city swiftly, moving at a fast pace that they could have maintained for days on end.

At last they drew near the central temple-building. The storm-god statue loomed above them, its arms bathed in lightning. They were just stepping out from beneath a towering archway of crystal splinters, stalking warily towards this central structure, when Sergeant Arshaq spoke.

‘Life readings,’ he warned, consulting the squad’s auspex. They were the first life signs that the device had registered since their arrival on Forty-seven Sixteen.

Sor Talgron barked an order and Squad Helikon formed a defensive perimeter around their captain. They continued to advance, drawing ever closer to the huge, cylindrical temple that rose up before them.

Gaping, triangular portals were cut into the sides of the temple. The interior was filled with blinding light – nothing within its brilliance could be discerned.

Warily, the Word Bearers advanced towards the nearest portal. Sor Talgron shielded his eyes against the bright light. There was a delicate shimmering sound emanating from within, and with a nod he ordered Squad Helikon in.

Stepping inside was like being transported to a completely different location. Sor Talgron felt the change in the air against his burnt skin. The air here was cool and vaguely fragrant, where outside it was hot and filled with the acrid stink of electricity. His gaze was immediately drawn upwards. The immense structure was formed around a vast cylindrical shaft, which disappeared into the distance overhead. This lofty expanse was filled with shimmering light that descended from above like an ethereal waterfall falling in slow motion. A strange, lilting sound accompanied this fey light, something akin to the sound of glass chimes, overlaid with the hum of energy. Hundreds of arcing balconies and gantries ringed this central shaft, and walkways criss-crossed the expanse. So focused on these disturbing wonders was Sor Talgron that he barely registered the panes of glass silently sealing the portal behind them.

Standing atop a fluted pillar of glass was an exact replica of the colossus half a kilometre overhead, though this statue was a ‘mere’ fifty metres tall. Its head was thrown back rapturously, its arms held skywards in what might have been praise or glory. Shimmering light bathed this statue in radiant brilliance.

The floor sunk away below them in a steep series of tiers – hundreds of them. And upon each tier crowded the kneeling figures of men, women and children. These were the first people that the Word Bearers had encountered since their arrival on Forty-seven Sixteen – the last of the world’s population.

All had their heads bowed to the floor in prayer, facing towards the glass idol of their profane storm-lord. Sor Talgron guessed there must have been some forty thousand people packed into the stadium-like temple, all of them murmuring in low voices and rocking from side to side, as if lost in a trance. None seemed to have noticed the appearance of Sor Talgron and Squad Helikon.

Upon a dais at the bottom of the circular tiers, a diminutive old man stood leaning upon a staff of glass and silver. He raised his head, staring up at Sor Talgron and his brethren. He did not appear surprised or shocked at their appearance; rather, he wore a mournful expression on his cracked parchment face.

‘Stay with me,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘Hold your fire, and follow my lead.’

His eyes were locked on the one who could only be the religious leader of the enemy civilisation. This was the one that Kor Phaeron had met with less than two days earlier. Flanked by the warrior-brothers of Squad Helikon, he began marching down the steep stairs towards the enemy leader.

At some unspoken command, the entire congregation of men, women and children stood, turning to face the intruders into their realm. The Word Bearers tensed, levelling weapons towards the crowd. Sor Talgron expected to see the flush of anger and resentment in their faces, but they stared at the towering Astartes forlornly and, perhaps, with a little disappointment.

‘Nobody engage,’ warned Sor Talgron.

For all that the enemy appeared to pose little threat, he knew from experience that it took but a single individual to turn the mood of a mob murderous – indeed, the Chaplains of the Legion were skilful at inciting just such emotion. Were the crowd to turn on them, the resulting massacre would be terrible. He and his brothers would reap a bloody toll, taking down hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these people, but there were only half a dozen, facing more than forty thousand. Even Astartes would eventually be dragged down by such numbers.

The warriors of XVII Legion descended the steep tiers, eyeing the crowd that parted before them warily. The people regarding them stood in absolute silence, which was, Sor Talgron thought, perhaps more disconcerting than had they been braying for blood; at least that he would have understood.

The old man regarded their approach solemnly.

‘What are we doing?’ hissed Sergeant Arshaq, using a closed vox channel so none of his squad could hear.

‘I want to see how divergent these people really are,’ said Sor Talgron, replying on the same closed channel.

He had known Arshaq for decades, both having been raised in the same temple on their grim home world of Colchis, and the captain overlooked such breaches in protocol from the sergeant, valuing his opinion. The sergeant’s silence to his answer was enough to tell him that Arshaq did not approve, but he knew him well enough to know that the sergeant would back him up, no matter what.

They descended to the bottom of the tiers, and started up the steps of the dais towards the old priest. Sor Talgron levelled his bolt pistol at the elderly man’s head.

‘Squad Helikon,’ said Sor Talgron in a low voice. ‘Establish a perimeter.’

‘Yes, captain,’ said the sergeant of Squad Helikon, nodding. With clipped commands, Arshaq directed his squad members into position. They spread apart, facing outwards, scanning the crowd for potential threats.

Talgron stepped onto the final level of the dais and came to a halt before the old priest. The elderly man came up barely to his mid-section, and though he was clearly ancient, his eyes were bright and alert. Something in his gaze made Sor Talgron vaguely uneasy. Was he a sorcerer? He dismissed the notion immediately. The old man was unnerving, but he felt no threat from him. He lowered his pistol.

‘I am Sor Talgron, Captain of Thirty-fourth Company, XVII Legion,’ he said, his voice ringing out loudly, breaking the silence.

‘Why do you bring death to my world, warmonger?’ said the old man, speaking a corrupted, archaic form of Low Gothic.

‘You will order the complete surrender of your armed forces, effective immediately, and relinquish control of the world designated Forty-seven Sixteen,’ said Sor Talgron, ignoring the old priest’s words. ‘Understand?’

‘Why do you bring death to my world?’ said the priest again, but again Sor Talgron refused to acknowledge his words.

‘You will lower the lightning-shield protecting this structure,’ he said firmly. ‘You will order your people and your infernal thinking machines to cease all hostilities. Do I make myself clear?’

The old priest sighed, and nodded his head vaguely. With a gesture, he drew Sor Talgron’s attention towards a dark glass cube that was rising smoothly from the floor. Was it some form of weapon? His pistol was in his hand instantly.

There was something forming within the solid mass of the prism, and sensing no immediate danger, Sor Talgron stepped cautiously towards it. The perfect glass cube would have come up to the chest of a regular human, but Sor Talgron was forced to bend forwards to peer at the image taking shape within.

At first the object forming within was hazy and transparent, like a ghost-image, but within several heartbeats it solidified. It was somewhat like the three-dimensional representations that he had seen produced by advanced pict-devices, but those images were always poor representations of reality. This image looked real, a solid artefact, encased in the glass cube.

It was an open book, he saw, painstakingly illuminated with ink and gold leaf. The borders were replete with impossibly intricate, coiling designs and interweaving patterns. Sor Talgron saw that stylised figures and creatures were worked into these borders, hidden amidst the twisting patterns and coiling spirals. Each of the pages was covered in dense lines of script written in a firm, austere and vaguely familiar hand.

Every warrior-brother of the XVII Legion spent several hours every day engaged in solitary illumination, but never had he seen a work such as this. The penmanship and artistry was phenomenal, far beyond anything that Sor Talgron or any warrior-brother could ever hope to achieve. It was a work of undeniable genius – something that surely no mortal hand could ever hope to match. Indeed, the only illuminated works that he had ever seen that were even vaguely comparable was those penned by the Urizen himself, and he had only been allowed fragmentary glimpses of those great works…

He leaned in closer, eyes widening. The text was written in the variation of High Gothic utilised only by the religious elite of his homeworld, Colchis.

‘What is this?’ said Sor Talgron in shock, his mind whirling.

He threw a glance towards the priest, standing nearby, but it was impossible to read the expression in the old man’s eyes. He turned back towards the book seemingly trapped within the black cube.

‘…and in faith shall the universe be united…’ he said, reading aloud a line that leapt out from the dense script. His voice faltered. He knew these words. Indeed, he had memorised this work in its entirety. He swallowed heavily.

‘…united behind the… the God-Emperor of all mankind,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, completing the hallowed line.

He looked back at the old priest in confusion and shock.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘We are the Scions of the Storm,’ said the old man, gesturing with both arms to encapsulate all the people standing around the temple dais.

‘What in Lorgar’s name is that supposed to mean?’ growled Sor Talgron.

The old priest snorted, and shuffled past Sor Talgron. He leant forwards and brushed his fingertips across the smooth surface of the cube. The pages of the book within the glass prism turned in response, flicking rapidly. Each was intricately illuminated and covered in dense script. Sliding his fingertips more slowly across the surface of the cube, the old priest made the pages turn slower, flicking slowly until he came to the densely illuminated frontispiece of the holy text.

He flashed Sor Talgron a sad smile, pointing at the page.

The captain of Thirty-fourth Company stared wide-eyed at the full-page illumination. It showed a radiant figure bedecked in wondrously detailed armour, detailed in gold leaf. The divine figure’s head was thrown back, and surrounded by a golden halo.

The God-Emperor of Mankind.

Sor Talgron’s eye was drawn to the golden armour worn by the God-Emperor, to His ornate and ancient breastplate, the breastplate He was said to have worn while leading the ancient armies of unification across the ravaged surface of old Terra… the breastplate that bore the ancient symbols of His rulership, symbols that were recognised and rightfully feared before even the commencement of Old Night, the symbols mirrored on the golden armour of the Legio Custodes, the Emperor’s personal guard.

These symbols rose in bas-relief from the Emperor’s armour; they represented the Emperor’s wrath – thunder bolts.

Understanding dawned.

The inhabitants of Forty-seven Sixteen were worshipping the Emperor.

Sor Talgron swallowed thickly, still staring at the image of the Emperor.

Scions of the Storm, the old man had called his people; sons of the storm. They were worshipping the Emperor as a god, the personification of the storms that wracked their world.

‘Now you understand,’ said the priest. He tapped a finger onto the smooth surface of the cube, and the three-dimensional image of the holy work disappeared.

‘This war should never have been sanctioned,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘Your people are not heretics.’

‘No,’ said the old priest. ‘We wished to join your Imperium – long had we thought ourselves alone in the darkness.’

‘We can stop this,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘You must lower your shield – I cannot contact my commander while it is intact.’

How many people had already died here? And for what? Sor Talgron felt hollow inside. They had committed genocide because of a misunderstanding.

The Scion smiled sadly, and stepped towards Sor Talgron. He placed a wrinkled hand upon the captain’s chest plate, over his heart.

‘Give me your word that the last of my people will live, and the shield shall be lowered,’ the old man said.

‘I swear it,’ said Sor Talgron.

The shield-dome encasing the temple-palace of the Scions flickered and disappeared, and Sor Talgron hastily patched in to the Fidelitas Lex, speaking of what he had learnt.

‘Understood, Talgron,’ came Kor Phaeron’s muffled reply. ‘The Urizen has been informed. Hold position.’

The long-range vox-channel was cut off, and for long minutes Sor Talgron and Squad Helikon stood by uneasily, waiting for fresh orders. The squad still kept their weapons upon the crowd, and Sor Talgron stared up at the statue of the Emperor above.

Long minutes passed. Now that the shield-dome was down, vox-reports began to flood in – it appeared that all fighting across Forty-seven Sixteen had ceased.

‘Teleport signature,’ reported Arshaq finally.

‘This will all be over soon, old one,’ Sor Talgron said in a respectful tone. ‘The Urizen will be pleased to have learnt that you are believers.’

A moment later, scores of coalescing shapes began to appear around the circumference of the tiered prayer-levels above, teleporting in from the Fidelitas Lex in low orbit overhead. They appeared at first as little more than vague shimmers of light, then as more solid forms as realisation was completed.

One after another, a hundred Terminator-armoured Astartes materialised, weapons trained on the human worshippers of Forty-seven Sixteen. Sor Talgron raised an eyebrow.

‘A little dramatic, brother,’ he commented, under his breath. He raised a hand in greeting to his brother-captain. The distant figure of Kor Phaeron nodded curtly in response, though he made no move to descend the tiers.

Two more shapes began to coalesce, this time on the dais alongside Sor Talgron. His eyes widened as he saw who it was that was teleporting in, and he dropped to one knee, his head bowed and his heart hammering in his chest as the teleportation was completed.

A warm hand was placed upon the crown of his head, its pressure firm, yet nurturing.

‘Rise, my son,’ said a voice spoken with quiet, understated authority that nevertheless made a shudder of unaccountable panic ripple through Sor Talgron. It was not an experience common for an Astartes.

Pushing himself to his feet, Sor Talgron lifted his gaze and looked upon the shadowed face of a demigod.

Lorgar was as magnificent and terrible to behold as ever. His scalp was completely hairless, and every inch of exposed flesh was caked in gold leaf, so that he gleamed like a statue of living metal. The sockets of his soulful, impossibly intense eyes were blackened with kohl, and Sor Talgron was, as ever, unable to hold the Urizen’s gaze for more than a fraction of second.

There was such vitality, such depth of pain, such intensity and yes, such suppressed violence in Lorgar’s eyes that surely only another primarch could hope to stare into them without breaking down weeping before this living god.

He stood a head taller than Sor Talgron, and his slender physique was encased within a magnificent suit of armour. Each overlapping plate was the colour of granite and inscribed with the intricate cuneiform of Colchis. Over this he wore an opulent robe the exact shade of congealed blood, the fabric heavy with gold stitching.

The Urizen, the Golden One, the Anointed; the primarch of the XVII Legion had many names. To those whom he deemed heretic, he was death incarnate; to his faithful, he was everything.

‘We are pleased with your success, brother-captain,’ said a smooth voice. Almost gratefully, Sor Talgron turned his gaze towards the figure that accompanied the primarch. Erebus. Who else would dare answer for the primarch?

‘Thank you, First Chaplain,’ said Sor Talgron, bowing his head respectfully.

‘This is the one?’ said Lorgar, his intense gaze fixing upon the figure of the old priest, who stood transfixed at Sor Talgron’s side. The captain of Thirty-fourth Company had all but forgotten about him. The elderly hierarch leant heavily on his staff, his eyes wide with horror. He was shaking his head slightly from side to side, moaning wordlessly.

‘This is he, my lord,’ replied Sor Talgron. ‘This is the one I believe to be the leader of this world’s cult of Emperor-worship.’

Erebus smiled, though the smile did not reach his eyes. Sor Talgron knew that look well, and his blood turned to ice.

‘I gave my word that no further harm would befall his people,’ insisted Sor Talgron. ‘Don’t make a liar of me, Erebus.’

‘You’re going soft, brother,’ said Erebus.

‘It is my belief,’ Sor Talgron said, looking towards Lorgar, ‘that a race memory of the God-Emperor lingers in the subconscious of the inhabitants of Forty-seven Sixteen. They are devout, and worship Him faithfully, albeit as a crude, elemental force. It would be an easy thing to direct them towards the Imperial Truth, my lord. I feel that had such knowledge been known beforehand, the war on Forty-seven Sixteen would have been deemed unnecessary and inappropriate.’

Erebus craned his neck to look up at the statue of the storm-god above them. He raised an eyebrow and exchanged an amused glance with his primarch before looking Sor Talgron in the eye once more.

‘You’ve done your duty, captain,’ said Erebus, stalking around behind the old priest like a wolf circling its prey. ‘And you’ve saved the lives of many of our brothers. For that, you are to be commended.’

‘There is more,’ insisted Sor Talgron. ‘I believe that they have been… picking up our signals, my lord. I saw a copy of…’

His voice faltered as the Urizen turned his gaze towards him once more, and he felt a shudder of unease beneath the power of the primarch’s gaze.

‘A copy of what, captain?’

‘The Lectitio Divinitatus, lord,’ said Sor Talgron.

‘Really?’ said Lorgar, clearly surprised.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Sor Talgron.

‘Walk with me,’ said Lorgar. Sor Talgron found himself responding instantly. Such was the power and control in the primarch’s voice that he would not have been able to resist had he any wish to.

‘Bring him,’ the Urizen said over his shoulder, and Erebus guided the old priest, gently but firmly, in their wake. Squad Helikon fell in behind them at a nod from the First Chaplain, leaving the dais empty.

The primarch stepped off the dais and strode towards the steep, tiered stairway that would take them up to the ring of Kor Phaeron’s First Company, standing motionless around the circumference of the arena above. Sor Talgron had to hurry to keep pace. Abruptly, the primarch came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs, turning to face the captain of Thirty-fourth Company, a rare, sardonic smile curling the corners of his lips.

‘It was a lifetime ago when I wrote the Lectitio Divinitatus,’ said Lorgar.

‘It is the greatest literary work ever to have been conceived,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘It is your masterpiece.’

Erebus laughed lightly at that, and Sor Talgron felt his choler rise. Lorgar broke into motion once more, taking the stairs four at a time, and he struggled to keep up. Of the thousands of people who stared open-mouthed at this golden, living god walking among them, the Urizen paid no notice.

‘Much has happened these past months,’ the primarch said. ‘My eyes have been opened.’

‘My lord?’ said Sor Talgron.

‘The Lectitio Divinitatus is nothing,’ said the primarch. There was a quiet but forceful vehemence to his voice. ‘Nothing.’

Sor Talgron could not comprehend what he was hearing, and he furrowed his brow. Was this some test of his faith and devotion?

‘I am composing a new work,’ declared Lorgar, favouring Sor Talgron with a conspiratorial glance. They were almost at the top of the tiered steps. ‘It is almost complete. It is to be my opus, Talgron, something with true meaning. It will make you forget the Lectitio Divinitatus.’

‘What is it, lord?’ said Sor Talgron, though he immediately feared he had overstepped his mark.

‘Something special,’ said the Urizen, tantalisingly.

They reached the top of the tiered amphitheatre, where they were greeted by Kor Phaeron, who dropped to one knee before his lord primarch. When he stood, his eyes were burning hot with the flames of fanaticism. He licked his lips as he stared at the old priest, who was being helped up the final stairs by an attentive and gentle Erebus.

‘My lord,’ said Sor Talgron, his mouth dry. He felt the gaze of the priest upon him, but avoided it. ‘Are we to condemn these people for… for merely being cut off from Terra?’

Stony silence greeted Sor Talgron’s words, broken finally by Kor Phaeron.

‘Ignorance is no excuse for blasphemy, brother,’ he said.

Lorgar glared at his First Captain, who backed away, dropping his gaze and visibly paling.

Then the primarch put his arm around Sor Talgron’s shoulder, and drew him away from the others. At such close proximity, he smelt of rich oils and incense. The scent was intoxicating.

‘Sometimes,’ said Lorgar, his tone one of regret, ‘sacrifices must be made.’

He turned Sor Talgron around. The priest was still looking at him, eyes filled with dread. Out of the corner of his vision, Sor Talgron saw the primarch’s almost imperceptible nod.

A knife, its blade curved like the body of a serpent, was suddenly in Erebus’s hand. Sor Talgron cried out, but Lorgar’s grip around his shoulders was crushing, and he could do nothing as the blade was plunged into the old priest’s neck.

Holding the old man upright with one hand, Erebus ripped his knife free and a fountain of blood spurted from the fatal wound. Hot arterial blood splashed across the plates of Erebus’s blessed armour, staining it dark red.

Dipping a finger into the geyser of blood, Erebus swiftly drew an eight-pointed star upon the dying man’s forehead, though the meaning of the symbol was lost on Sor Talgron. Then, the First Chaplain hurled the old man away from him, sending him crashing down the stairs that he had just helped the old man climb. The priest’s body tumbled and flopped end over end. It came to rest halfway at the foot of the stairs, a broken, lifeless marionette, blood pooling beneath it, arms and legs bent unnaturally.

Before the shocked worshippers of Forty-seven Sixteen could react, the entirety of the First Company began firing. The sound was deafening, blotting out the screams. Bolters and autocannons were swung methodically from left and right, mowing down unarmoured men, women and children indiscriminately. Heavy flamers spewed their volatile liquid fire down into the packed masses.

Ammunition was expended, and the First Company Terminators calmly reloaded, slamming fresh magazines into place, replacing drums of high-calibre rounds, threading fresh belts through arming chambers and replacing empty canisters of promethium with fresh ones. Then they simply continued firing.

‘Do you trust me, Sor Talgron?’ said Lorgar, his breath hot against the captain’s face. Shocked and horrified by the scale of the brutal massacre, Sor Talgron was unable to answer.

‘Do you trust me?’ the Urizen said, more fiercely, his voice quivering with such intensity of feeling that Sol Talgron felt that his legs would surely have given way beneath him had he not been supported.

The captain of Thirty-fourth Company turned his face towards the impassioned, golden face of his primarch, lord and mentor. He nodded his head slightly.

‘Then believe me when I say that this is necessary,’ said Lorgar, his voice full of righteous fury.

‘The Emperor, in His wisdom, has driven us to this point,’ said Lorgar. ‘This is His will. This is His mercy. The blood of these innocents is on His hands.’

The deafening roar of the slaughter slowly died. At a barked order from Kor Phaeron, the Terminators of First Company began descending the tiers, inspecting the kills and executing those who had, miraculously, survived their concentrated fire.

‘I need to know who I can trust,’ said Lorgar, his voice filled with such intensity that Sor Talgron knew fear – real fear – such that an Astartes should never know. ‘I need to know that my sons would follow me where I must go. Can I trust you, Word Bearer?’

‘Yes,’ said Sor Talgron, his throat cracked and dry.

‘Would you walk into hell itself alongside me if I asked it?’ asked Lorgar.

Sor Talgron made no immediate response. Slowly, he nodded his head.

Lorgar stared at him intently, and he felt his soul shrivel beneath the penetrating gaze. In that moment Sor Talgron felt certain that Lorgar was going to kill him then and there.

‘Please, my lord,’ gasped Sor Talgron. ‘I would follow you. I swear it. No matter what.’

The intensity suddenly left Lorgar’s face, washed away as if it had never been. How could he ever have thought the Urizen meant him harm, he thought? He almost laughed out loud, the notion was so ludicrous.

‘You asked me before what the great work I am scribing was,’ said Lorgar, his tone casual and light. ‘For now, I am calling it the Book of Lorgar.’

The primarch of the Word Bearers released his grip on Sor Talgron. Lorgar’s golden lips turned into a smile, and despite everything, Sor Talgron could not help but feel his heart lift.

Lorgar laughed softly to himself.

‘Such hubris, I know,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to read it.’

Lorgar looked him directly, his eyes flashing.

‘What do you remember of the old beliefs of Colchis, Sor Talgron?’

In silence, only truth remains.

But to find it; ah, there is the task. For, one must ask herself, what place is truly silent? Where can the absolute stillness of tranquillity be found?

The question was a common one placed to novices at the very start of their induction, and it was a rare aspirant who showed the wisdom to come even close to the correct answer.

Many would look to the stars, through the portals of the great ebon-hulled craft they found themselves aboard, and they would point to the void. Out there, they would say. In the airless dark, there is silence. No atmosphere to carry the vibrations of sound, no passage there for voice nor song nor shout nor scream. The void is silence, they would say.

And they would be corrected. For even where there is no air to breathe, there is still clamour, the… chaos, as it were. Even there, broadcast across wavelengths that unaugmented humans could not perceive, there was the riot of cosmic radiation and the constant rumble of the universe’s great stellar engines as it turned and aged. Even darkness itself had a sound, if one had the ears with which to hear it.

So then. The question again. Where is silence?

Here. Leilani Mollitas mouthed the words, her voice stilled. It is here, within me. She touched her chest with both hands, palms flat and blades of fingers extended, thumbs crossed in the shape of the great Aquila. Inside her thoughts, behind her closed eyes, beyond the rush of blood in her veins, the novice strained to listen and find the tranquillity of self; for it was only within the human heart that the absolute purity of silence could be found, the peace that only the mute could know.

A frown grew upon her pale, pleasant face. She could not reach it. Even as that thought formed in Leilani’s mind, she knew she was lost to the moment. The perfect embrace of serenity faded from her and she allowed a breath to escape her lips.

In the flat hush of the sanctum the noise of her exhalation was like the rush of a wave breaking against a shore, and she felt her cheeks colour slightly. Her eyes snapped open and she blinked, displeased with herself.

Her mentor stood a few feet away, observing her with the same perpetually watchful air that was the very meter of her character. The other woman moved her head slightly, the top-knot of purple-black hair about her otherwise shorn scalp shifting to pool on the shoulders of her golden battle-bodice. Below the flexible duty armour, reinforced red thigh-boots and studded gloves covered her limbs, with more plate metal for her sleeves and a snake-skin of dense mail as leggings. Tabards hung free from her waist and she was without weapons, her helmet or the finery of her furred combat cloak.

Amendera Kendel of the Storm Dagger cadre, Oblivion Knight and Sister of Silence, stood before her without a sound. Her amber eyes betrayed a teacher’s concern for a promising student.

Leilani smothered her startled reaction quickly. She had thought herself alone in the Black Ship’s meditation chamber, utterly unaware of the other woman’s arrival. The girl could not help but wonder how long Kendel had been there, how long she had been studying her as she tried and failed to find her inner focus. By contrast, the novice was dressed only in her mail undersuit and the lightweight hooded robe of an unvowed aspirant. Leilani raised her bare hands and began to sign, but her mistress halted her with a short shake of the head. Instead the woman held the tips of two fingers to her chin. Give voice, commanded the gesture.

The novice’s lips thinned. She longed for the day when words would no longer pass from her mouth, but as she had just demonstrated, it would not be today. At this moment, Novice-Sister Leilani Mollitas felt further away from taking the Oath of Tranquillity than she ever had before.

‘Sister Amendera,’ she began, and even her whispers rose to fill every corner of the cavernous Sanctum Aphonorium, ‘How may I be of service to you?’

Kendel’s hand fell to the crimson leather of her belt and her fingers toyed with it a moment; Leilani knew the subtle cue from her many months of service as the Oblivion Knight’s adjutant. Her mistress was framing her thoughts, marshalling them into ready formations in much the same way she commanded her Witchseeker squads. The novice wondered if Kendel had ever made an ill-considered statement in her entire life.

~You continue to be troubled.~ The Knight spoke in ThoughtMark, one of the symbolic sign languages employed by the Silent Sisterhood. Small in scale, full of delicate gestures of finger and thumb, it served to convey concepts of great subtlety or intricate nature. It was far more graceful than the large, sharp motions of BattleMark, the command language used by the Sisters to communicate on the field of conflict, far more complex and nuanced. Many of the fine inferences of Kendel’s intent could not have been translated directly into spoken Imperial Gothic. There were shades of degree in her statement that no human voice could ever have delivered, and thus Leilani felt hobbled as she replied with crude words.

‘It is so,’ she agreed. ‘The news from the outer rim is difficult for me to assimilate.’ The words tumbled out of her in a rush, echoing slightly off the curved steel walls of the meditation chamber. The novice was feeling increasingly uncomfortable speaking out loud in this hallowed place. The Aeria Gloris, as with every starship in service with the Divisio Astra Telepathica, was equipped with aphonoria, great spaces within their hulls where sound-deadening technologies rendered the closest equivalent to absolute quiet. To break that silence seemed an obscenity, a defacement; yet Sister Amendera made no move to step aside and usher Leilani into the nearby antechamber, concealed from them by ornate curtains of black and gold.

Perhaps it was some sort of test, like the question? Yes, that had to be it. Kendel had made it clear during Leilani’s duty under her command that she expected much from the young aspirant, and not for the first time the novice-sister wondered if she would be found wanting. ‘What we witnessed in the Somnus Citadel,’ she continued, ‘the… creature brought back from Isstvan aboard the starship Eisenstein.’ The girl shook her head, recalling a mutated Astartes warrior that had run riot across the Sisterhood’s lunar stronghold, the freakish aberration that had once been a loyal warrior of the Emperor. ‘These things pull at my reason, mistress, and I find it difficult to hold my mind upon the tasks at hand.’ She looked away, to the steel decking beneath her boots. ‘All this talk of traitors and heresy. Horus…’

The Warmaster’s name left her lips and it seemed louder than a gunshot. She stumbled over her thoughts and looked up once more.

Kendel nodded once. ~These reports of his rebellion are hard news. It would be a lie to say that no sister remains unaffected by the terrible duplicity that is said to be unfolding.~

‘It has robbed me of my focus,’ Leilani admitted. ‘I think of good men, of the noble Astartes we have often fought alongside, and then to conscience such monstrous deceit among their ranks…’ She shivered. ‘The Astartes and the primarchs are line kindred of the Emperor of Mankind himself, and if they are wracked by such division then…’ The novice’s throat went dry as she tried to utter the words. ‘What if such horror reaches our ranks, mistress?’

The other woman looked away. ~You would not be aware,~ she signed, ~but I met him once. The Warmaster. He was everything they say of him. And if he truly has turned his face from the rule of Terra, then it will be the war to end all wars to give him his censure.~

Leilani felt sobered by the Oblivion Knight’s direct statement. In her service to the Sisters of Silence, the novice had been exposed to many sights – psykers driven insane by their ability to touch the churning madness of the warp, human beings whose flesh and minds had been twisted beyond all recognition, things less than alive that boiled with infernal psychic power – but all these were enemies she could understand, they were foes that, although reviled, Leilani could grasp in her reason. But the traitors? What possible motive could they have? This was the greatest era of humankind, with the galaxy turning at their feet and the Great Crusade at its height; why would one so highly placed as the Warmaster Horus wish to put a match to the Emperor’s utopia, when its completion was so close at hand?

~Who can know?~ replied Sister Amendera.

The novice blushed, suddenly aware of the echo around her, realising that she had voiced those last few thoughts aloud.

The swish of the fine silk curtains hanging across the chamber entrance drew the attention of both women, as the Null Maiden Sister Thessaly Nortor entered. Her taut, scar-sharpened face was drawn in a scowl and she gave a blunt BattleMark reply, clearly having heard the novice’s last words. ~Target Warmaster. Traitor. Uprising status Flawed/In Error Condition. Insurrection will be Terminated in short order before Rebellion can Expand/Cause Collateral Damage.~

Nortor shot Leilani a hard look, a clear scolding in her eyes. The second-in-command of the Storm Dagger cadre had made no secret of her disdainful opinions of the Warmaster’s mutiny. The other woman’s breath rasped quietly through the mechanical apparatus at her neck; where Mollitas and Kendel showed bare flesh, almost three-quarters of Nortor’s throat had been replaced with a mechanical augment. Made of a polished silver-steel, her artificial implant served the function of flesh destroyed during an engagement against the Jorgalli, inside one of the xenos’s bottle-worlds. As well as her neck, much of the Null Maiden’s lungs were also synthetic proxies assembled by the Sisterhood’s biologians. On one level, Leilani was privately envious of the dour Sister Thessaly; Nortor’s larynx had been lost to the acidic bite of the bottle-world’s alien atmosphere, and she had refused to allow her augmentation to be fitted with an artificial replacement. The woman was as silent a Sister as was humanly possible.

‘We can only hope that the Warmaster sees the error of his ways,’ offered Leilani, but even as she said the words they seemed little more than weak and foolish optimism.

~He must recant.~ Nortor’s obvious annoyance calmed slightly and she switched to the more reasoned language of ThoughtMark. ~To oppose the Emperor is the height of madness. The only explanation is that the Warmaster has grown envious of his father’s greatness.~ She shook her head. ~That, or he has lost his mind.~

In the other Sister’s retort, the novice heard the echo of similar words that had chimed from elsewhere in the Sisterhood. Even as news of the rebellion spread, so too there was the talk of a different movement in motion: a growing sect of veneration for the leader of humankind. Such reverence seemed ill-fitting; Leilani balked at the use of the term ‘worship’ in connection with a being so avowed to a secular path for his people, and yet this so-called Lectitio Divinitatus was raising its head in the strangest of places. If anything, the novice found the question of this school of thought almost as hard to swallow as the concept of Horus’s perfidy; and yet, while the Emperor was no deity, it could not be denied that his magnificence was so great that granting him such exalted status was at least an understandable mistake. But it was something to be expected of common, unsophisticated tribals from the feral worlds, not the educated men and women of the Imperium.

Sister Amendera became aware of a pict-slate in her subordinate’s white-knuckled grip, and she gave her a quizzical look. In turn, Sister Thessaly bowed slightly and offered the device to her commander. Leilani could guess what the slate contained – an updated skein of mission orders from the command stratum of the Sisterhood on Luna, sent directly from the high offices of the Departmento Investigates.

The full scope and range of the Black Ships and their duties were known only to a select few among the upper tiers of the Silent Sisterhood, the lords of the great Council of Terra and the Emperor himself, but the basic tenet of their works were well recognised. The exact number and disposition of Black Ships that prowled the galaxy purposely remained an unknown; all that could be certain was that the worlds of the Imperium would witness one of them appear in their skies at a preordained time of tithing, ready to accept their cargo. The vessels did not take tribute in the form of riches or chattel – as much as they were warships, the Aeria Gloris and her sister-craft were also great asylum-barges where those revealed to show the taint of the pskyer were interred. Every world beneath the Emperor’s light was duty-bound to give up those of its populace marked with the potential – latent or not – for psychic talent; and those that were not given freely, those that escaped the net, these too were the quarry of the Black Ships and the Sisterhood.

In the dark holds of their dungeon decks, psykers of every stripe and power were corralled and tested. Many did not endure the process well, and perished under the harsh glare of the Vigilators and Prosecutors. Others, those too damaged by their own warped psyches or too dangerous to be allowed to live, would quietly be put down and the ashes of their corpses cast into suns.

The ones who were strong enough to survive and pliant enough to accede to the will of the Imperium were the lucky few. For them, further, harder testing lay ahead in the ironclad mind-halls of the City of Sight on Terra itself, the headquarters of the Divisio Astra Telepathica. There, they would take the first steps upon the road to the ritual of soul-binding and recruitment into the ranks of the astropathic choirs.

The duty of the hunt and the stewardship was a harsh one that no ordinary human could hope to accomplish; indeed, to even conceive of crewing a Black Ship with mere troopers from the Imperial Army, or even the great Astartes, would be a path to ruin. Such were the powers of some psykers that the perceptions of a mind could be twisted and re-ordered to their will. It was not uncommon for the worst of the psi-witches to cloud thoughts, to coerce and control through pure exercise of will. A normal man could be made to unlock cages and think no ill deed done, never knowing that he had freed a monster. Mindless servitors alone could not be trusted to deal with so complex an obligation. Only the Sisterhood, who brought with them the gift of Silence, had the strength to hold the witches in check. This they did through fealty to the Emperor, this they did through the very action of their beating hearts and the blood in their veins. This duty they marked with their vow never to speak.

For the Sisters of Silence were poison to witchkind. Chance mutation within the human genome, once in every million, might create a psyker; but in once in several billion would yield the precious jewel of the Pariah gene, the Untouchable. It was the cold logic of evolution that brought them forth. If the unfettered mental power of a psyker existed, then in balance there had to be those at the opposite end of the genetic spectrum – those whose minds were the absolute antithesis of the warp-touched, whose presence alone was enough to nullify the raging psi-fire. Each Sister was an Untouchable, a psychic ‘blank’ forever protected from the sorcery of the witches they hunted. Immune to psychic attack, their very aura enough to disrupt and distress their prey, there were no better warriors to fulfil this great duty.

But still, at day’s end, they were not superhuman. Trained hard to fight alongside the elite of the Emperor’s military, certainly, respected and venerated by all, undoubtedly, but still human. Still weighed down with human doubts and human fears.

Amendera Kendel considered this as she weighed the pict-slate in her hand, watching Novice-Sister Leilani and the churn of thoughts writ large across her face. She did not need the preternatural power of a telepath to read the girl’s mind. The great dread over the rebellion of Horus hung across everything like a dark cloak, blotting out the light with a haze of confusion. Every Sister aboard the ship, if she admitted it or not, found her thoughts turning to the matter of this unprecedented event in moments of introspection. In the hush of the Aeria Gloris, it was easy to find oneself drifting into reverie, for the mind to fill in the stillness with thoughts and wondering that, if left unchecked, could spiral out of control. Typically, the iron discipline of the Sisterhood and the call of their duties tempered such things; but the sheer scope of the Warmaster’s rebellion… of his heresy… It tore at reason and composure like a wild, clawed thing.

Kendel forced the thoughts away and glanced down at the pict-slate, drawing her focus back to the mission at hand. Upon it she glimpsed the seal of Celia Harroda, the Witchseeker Pursuivant, and above it a notation from the high office of Sister-Commander Jenetia Krole. She licked dry lips. Krole, mistress of the Raptor Guard and one of the Emperor’s personal battle confidantes, was the highest-ranking Sister alive. The mark of her notice upon this operation made the gravity of the situation clear, in no uncertain terms.

She removed a glove and placed her bare skin on the sensing pad, letting the slate prick her finger. A moment later the blood-lock released the cipher that untwisted the text from encoded gibberish back into readable Gothic.

The first few pages reiterated what Kendel had already been told in her earlier briefing at Evangelion Station. The Aeria Gloris had been called from its normal circuit pattern and placed under an emergency re-tasking diktat, dropping from the warp to hastily resupply at the orbital platform before making space for the Opalun Sector. The Black Ship had only just begun its tithe cruise, and as such the dungeon decks were practically empty; Kendel suspected this was an important factor in the choice of the Aeria Gloris for this task, but she had not made mention of it.

The orders were deceptively direct. One of their sister-craft, an older, larger vessel called the Validus, had failed to make three scheduled astropathic check-ins and was now officially logged as missing, status unknown. The Validus, in contrast to Kendel’s ship, was at the end of her cruise, her decks groaning with a bounty of telepaths, pyrokenes, kineticates, dreamers and mind-witches of every stripe. She should have hove to in Luna’s orbit one month ago. Sister-Senior Harroda had commanded Kendel in brisk, severe BattleMark. ~Mission/Task: seek-locate-evaluate. Determine cause of anomaly. Recover if possible.~

Those words encompassed a multitude of possibilities. Black Ships had gone missing in the past, on more than one occasion. For all their combat capability and advanced stealth technologies, the craft in service to the Astra Telepathica were not invulnerable. They largely travelled alone for good reason, but this also meant that they could fall prey to enemy craft in greater numbers or become mired if caught by stellar phenomena. She remembered the Honour Haltis, ambushed and obliterated in battle with eldar reavers; the White Sun, taken by warp storms, and all the others.

But a missing Black Ship also conjured up the very worst of possibilities: a breakout. On a vessel laden with witches, such a thing was a true horror to consider. As such, Harroda’s orders had concealed the implication that, if needed, Sister Kendel’s remit would stretch to the application of a most final end to the voyages of the Validus.

The Aeria Gloris was now only hours from the area confirmed as the last known location of the errant vessel, and with each passing moment Amendera Kendel felt her unease grow. She chided herself that the source of her concern was not simply the obvious matter of what caused the craft to go dark, but also a trivial personal disquiet. She felt slightly guilty at her outward treatment of her adjutant. Novice-Sister Leilani had allowed her anxiety over the Warmaster’s rebellion to occupy too much of her thoughts and it was affecting her meditation; but by the same token, Kendel dwelled on something that was, in all honesty, far more inconsequential.

The Validus carried the flag of the Oblivion Knight Sister Emrilia Herkaaze, and the woman was not unknown to Amendera Kendel. Far from it; they had first met in the dark iron halls of a Black Ship just like this one, both of them drawn to the notice of the Sisters of Silence as children. Each of them recruited from worlds in the Belladone Reach, Kendel and Herkaaze had shared a vague kinship throughout their aspirant trials, but as they had grown into full Sisterhood, the women’s early friendship soured. Now, years later, they were bitter rivals, each nursing antipathy for the other. She refused to draw up the reasons from her memory, instead letting them bubble and churn just below the surface of her thoughts. To dwell on such things would only dilute her focus still further.

Sister Amendera wondered if the Witchseeker Harroda was aware of their ill-feeling towards one another; she thought it likely, as little seemed to pass beneath the notice of Sister-Senior Celia’s diamond-sharp gaze unnoticed. Perhaps, in its way, this was a test for her. Ever since the incident at the Somnus Citadel and her involvement with the renegade Death Guard Garro, Kendel had become aware that she was being scrutinised by her peers. To what end, she could not be certain.

The Knight became aware of her adjutant and her second watching her intently, waiting for her to proceed. She nodded and scrolled further on through the data encoded on the pict-slate. ~This is confirmation of what we have already been told,~ she signed with her free hand. ~Records of the ship’s tithe and previous ports. Estimation of current weapons load-out and systems capacities–~

She halted abruptly. The dense data transmission sent out to them via machine-call vox had some additional matter appended, key among them a single digitised datum captured from a partial astropathic communication. The protocols associated with Black Ship signals were completely absent; normally, any communication sent from vessel to vessel would be prefixed with a number of codicils and ciphers. There were none. The message had been sent uncoded, in the clear.

Out loud.

Kendel pushed the ‘execute’ key and the slate replayed the datum. In the quiet of the Aphonorium it seemed like shouting.

A woman’s words, rough and strangely toned, as if it had been a very long time since she had used them and could not quite remember how to speak. Two words. Just two words, but they brimmed with a terror so powerful that Sister Amendera felt her hands contract into fists, and she saw Nortor and Mollitas fall breathless.

‘The voice…’ said the woman. ‘The voice…’ And then once more, as a ragged scream. ‘The voice!’

‘What does it mean?’ The novice blinked and frowned, staring at the pict-slate. ‘It must have been a sister, but she spoke the words… She spoke them aloud.’

At her side, the Null Maiden nodded slowly. Typically, Sisterhood transmissions sent to locales beyond line-of-sight were despatched not with words but in an ancient machine-readable variant of ThoughtMark known as Orsköde, a mechanical rattle of clicking that to untrained ears would resemble the sounds of turning cogwheels. For this woman, undoubtedly one of Herkaaze’s cadre, to not only eschew that but to willingly break her Oath of Tranquillity… The implications were ominous.

~The ship never exited the empyrean,~ noted Thessaly. ~We can only guess at what they might have encountered in warp space.~

Amendera felt a cold chill across her, as one might feel on a summer’s day if a shadow passed before the face of the sun. She remembered the stink of death and decay in the corridors of the Somnus Citadel, a fly-swarmed man-shape of something insectile and foul, killing and corrupting with every clawed footstep.

She did not need to guess at what horrors the warp could hold. She had already seen them, spilled out into the real world.

A maddened sea of blood-churned surf, curtains of nameless and impossible colour, great howling halls of flayed emotion; the hellish nightmare of the immaterium raged around the Aeria Gloris as the Black Ship closed the distance towards its drifting sister-vessel. The incalculable monstrosity of warp space thundered and screamed, beating at the energy bubble of the Geller field, clawing at the craft that dared to penetrate this realm of pure psychic force; even the massed numbers of Untouchables aboard were not enough to hold such energies at bay. Without the protective barrier, the Aeria Gloris would be engulfed.

The Validus floated there, the only sign of any life the dull emerald glow from the emitter coils visible about her warp motors. Power still flowed through the derelict, but the craft made no moves to turn to meet them, nor to offer communication through vox or tight-beam laser. Alive and yet dead, the Validus floated, serene against the madness.

If the two vessels had met in normal space, it would have been policy to send across a scout party on a boarding craft, allowing the Aeria Gloris to stand off and bring her cannons and torpedo launchers to bear, lest the Validus suddenly become a threat worth terminating. But here inside the screaming caverns of the empyrean such protocols could not be followed. Instead, an altogether more delicate approach was required.

With care, the shipmaster’s bridge crew brought the Aeria Gloris closer and closer until the glimmering non-matter of her Geller field brushed that of the Validus. Cogitators programmed for just such tasks passed orders, via festoons of golden commwire and mechadendrites, to servitors using scrying scopes to measure the energy spectra being broadcast from the other Black Ship. By agonising moments, they brought the vessel’s protective envelope into synchrony with its neighbour. Like two bubbles meeting on the surface of a pond, they touched one another, shifted and finally merged. Such an operation was a difficult one, but then the Black Ships were crewed by some of the finest crop of thinking serfs available to the Imperium. It would take their constant stewardship to maintain the merging of fields; a single miscalculation would collapse both, and open the starships to the ocean of insanity lapping at their keels.

And yet the Validus drifted as if upon a calm sea. Seasoned veterans among the crew serfs talked among themselves and spoke ill of such unusual circumstance. Some, those who thought themselves safe to do so beyond the sight of the Sisters, even bent at the knee and offered a prayer to Terra and the Emperor.

The warp was rage, and constant with it. But here, in this place, there was a cavity within the churn and thunder, an expanse where all seemed becalmed. If it had been the surface of a planetary ocean, then there would have been no breath of air, only glassy water from horizon to horizon. Such things were unknown by the shipmaster, and with the tradition of all sailors dating back to the times of mankind’s first voyages in craft of wood and sail, he and his men feared and cursed it.

Elsewhere, on the lower decks of the Aeria Gloris, power moved to mechanisms capable of tunnelling through the layers of space-time, and a great flare of boiling light enveloped the ship’s teleportarium stage. The women stood upon it shimmered like mirages and were gone.

The transition flash faded into the darkness and Sister Amendera gestured with her drawn sword. To her right, Leilani held a bolt pistol in one hand and an auspex in the other, her attention on the chiming reports of the sensor device.

To her left, Thessaly was already cutting order-gestures in the air, flinging the shapes towards the three Sister-Vigilators that had accompanied them. Kendel ran a finger over her forehead without conscious thought, absently tracing the red lines of the Aquila tattoo there. She took a careful breath, glancing around the low, wide corridor they had appeared in. The Knight had expected to find the chamber cold, perhaps the air inside thin from slowed life support functions and proximity to the outer hull; she had ordered the teleport servitor not to target them too deeply into the Validus’s mass, for fear that the risk of a mis-integration would grow with the distance of projection. But the air here was warm and dry, like a desert just after sunset. And more than that, there was peculiar stillness to it, as if the motes of dust around them were suspended in some sluggish fluid.

Kendel stepped forwards, letting her blade lead her, making small, experimental cuts in the air. Despite her faint discomfort, she couldn’t find anything immediately wrong. The gravity seemed normal, and she could smell… nothing.

‘Thermal blooms in that direction,’ offered Sister Leilani, her voice strangely flat. She pointed ahead, towards the end of the corridor. Ahead there were shapes piled untidily beyond the low greenish glow of the lumes in the walls, sharp-edged metal frames of tubes and wire.

~Cages,~ signed Nortor.

The Knight nodded and advanced. She had ventured no more than a few steps when a gasp of alarm made her turn about. One of the Vigilators had approached a support pillar made of iron, which extended from the deck to the ceiling above. Her hand was in a fist and she opened it to her commander. Amendera watched a rain of metal sand fall lazily from her fingers, glittering in the lume-light. The Vigilator gestured to the pillar and showed where she had touched it. The Sister’s gloves had left dents in the iron. It crumbled beneath even the lightest of touches, becoming more powder.

Kendel snapped her fingers and Sister Leilani dutifully moved to the stanchion, tracing the scanning device over its length. She frowned and repeated the action, clearly unhappy with the initial reading. ‘Odd,’ she admitted, her words dulled and distant-sounding. ‘The auspex suggests that this piece of the ship’s structure is far older than the rest of the metal in this corridor…’ Her frown deepened. ‘By the order of several million years.’

The Knight allowed herself the rarity of a faint grunt of dismissal and beckoned her troop onwards. Strange as that was, it would not do to become bogged down in such minutiae so quickly. The group moved on, towards the discarded cages, and at once Kendel understood exactly where the teleport flash had deposited them. They were at the perimeter of the Validus’s husbandry yards, where the hunting animals deployed by the ship’s prosecutor squads would be corralled.

The thought had only just occurred to her as she crossed some invisible membrane and a barrage of sensation suddenly assaulted her. There was no force-field barrier, no detectable wall to divide one section of the corridor from another; it was simply that one moment the air about her was dead and quiescent and the next it was dense with smells and sounds. Perhaps, like the warping of time around the metal stanchion, the two ends of the passageway existed in differing states.

Nortor came to her side and she saw the other Sister’s face wrinkle in faint disgust. Here, the air was thick with the coppery stink of old, spilled blood, a heavy perfume of rust that almost concealed other, earthier stenches of rotten meat and faeces. The tainted air here also carried sound differently; it was clearer, harsher on the ears. Kendel heard a scraping, a dripping, from one of the shadowed corners. She stepped over a flattened enclosure, seeing a mush of small bones, flesh and white feathers inside. Among the pieces of the dead raptor were shiny golden psiber circuits that flashed as they caught the light.

One of the Sister-Vigilators aimed her bolter in the direction of the sound and thumbed a switch on the weapon’s flank; an illuminator rod fixed to the barrel snapped on, casing a cold oval of white light before it. The scraping paused, and there at the edge of the torchlight a pair of eyes glowed. More beams stabbed out to reveal a large, pale-furred mastiff as it sniffed in the direction of the women. The snout of the enhanced canine was brown and wet, and as it panted, the glassy vials of accelerant fluids implanted in its back clinked together. To one side, Nortor snapped her fingers in a command string, but the animal ignored her. After a moment, the hound looked away and bowed its head, returning to its task. Kendel took a careful step closer and the animal was fully revealed, lapping at a wide comma of blood pooled about the head and neck of a crew serf. The top of the man’s skull was open, and in one hand he held a Sisterhood-issue stake-thrower. She studied him for a moment; he appeared to have used the weapon first to nail his legs to the deck by firing a long quarrel through each ankle, then one more through his other hand.

‘He tried to crucify himself,’ said Leilani.

The en-dog was looking up at them again, and slowly its lips drew back to show metal teeth, a low growl building in its throat. Kendel heard the fluid in the tubes bubble and hiss. She had seen the damage these animals could do firsthand when she herself had given orders to release them. The Knight threw a glance at Sister Thessaly and made an open-handed gesture.

~Flamer.~

There was a snap-hiss as the pilot lamp lit, and Nortor brought her weapon off the strap and around in one smooth action. Before the en-dog had the chance to rock forwards off its steel-clawed feet, the Sister squeezed the trigger bar and bathed the animal in a cloud of burning promethium. It died with a squeal and they left it where it fell, moving on towards a bank of access shafts.

Kendel saw her novice dally a moment around the animal’s corpse and snapped her fingers. Leilani’s head bobbed in acknowledgement, and she followed.

The light from the gun torches swept left and right around them as Kendel gave the other woman a sideways look. ~That will not be the only death we see this day,~ she signed. ~Look.~

The Vigilators moved on, and in heaps here and there, piled up against the walls or amid the smashed cages, there were dead after dead. Raptors, hounds and servitors.

But not a single Sister.

The deck plans of the Validus had been encoded into the memory tubes of Leilani’s auspex, and once the boarding party had found their bearings, it was a simple matter to orientate themselves in order to scale the Black Ship’s inner tiers towards the commandery and bridge. Sister Thessaly took a moment to send a vox message back to the Aeria Gloris, a staccato chatter of clicks that signified all was well, that the mission was proceeding as planned; but the novice could not help but wonder how anything they encountered here could be ‘as planned’.

The Validus was a death ship, a floating tomb, and if it had not been silent before, then it truly was so now. Leilani knew the emergency protocols as well as any Sister. The standing orders aboard Black Ships were rigid and unchangeable: in the event of any shipboard catastrophe of such magnitude that the command crew could not overcome it, failsafe switches would flood the dungeon decks with Life-Eater, a bio-weapon of terrible swiftness and horrific virulence. If the Sisters aboard this ship were as dead as the serfs they had found, then so were the witches. It had to be so; if it were not, then why were the boarding party still alive, why had they not been attacked the moment they teleported aboard? Moreover, she knew that whatever had killed the unfortunates they had found had been no gas or bio-weapon.

They moved deeper into the Black Ship’s interior, past long corridors of testing cells walled in with spherical shields made of psi-toxic phase-iron, across the gantries between the utility decks. Overhead, stalled carriages on angular rail channels that in other times would shuttle crew and material from tier to tier and down the city’s-length of the vessel were frozen in mid-journey, faint lights burning inside. Along the way they found more signs of curious phenomena: other places where hull metal had been turned into dust or wet slurry by means unknown, one section where the air was hazed by a smoke that hung like a frozen image until they passed through it, and chambers where the walls, floor and ceiling were painted over with a molecule-thin layer of human blood. It seemed without rhyme or reason to Leilani; perhaps it was the touch of the warp at the hand of these things.

At last, they reached the command deck, another broad corridor that branched off into smaller ancillary chambers, with the open amphitheatre of the Validus’s bridge at the far end. Lit in the yellow smoulder of the lumes were masses of bodies, piled atop one another in a disordered fashion, as if a thronging crowd had perished instantly on its feet and been left where they had fallen. Ahead of her, Sister Thessaly hesitated and held up a hand to halt the rest of the group. There was a strange murmur in the air, an ebb and flow like the sound of surf on a shore. It took a moment for the novice to realise that it was breathing.

She peered at a group of the bodies closest to her – they were crew serfs, their duty uniforms simple tan affairs with a minimum of braid and sigils – and was startled. They were not dead; none of them were. Instead, the whole mass of the crewmen lay, blank eyes seeing but not seeing as if in some form of catatonia.

Nortor prodded one of them with the tip of her boot. When there was no reaction, she reached down and took the hand of a serf. Without pause, the Silent Sister broke the man’s finger. The wet snap of bone sounded, but little else.

Sister Amendera picked her way through the bodies to peer into an open iris hatch on the far wall; Leilani followed her, recognising the doorway as the entrance to a saviour pod. There were more bodies inside, some of them strapped into the seats of the escape capsule, others lying on the floor where they had dropped. Like the serfs in the corridor, all of them were alive but insensate. The novice studied the face of one man, a bridge officer by the rank tabs on his shoulder boards. His eyes were those of a doll, glassy and infinitely empty.

‘Whatever did this destroyed their minds.’ She glanced around the corridor again. ‘All of them. All at once.’ Leilani’s throat became arid as she imagined this scene replicated all through the Validus, with every crewmember reduced to a fleshy husk, minds ruined by some catastrophic, instantaneous flash of psychic force. ‘In Terra’s name,’ she whispered, ‘what happened here?’

Further down the corridor, one of the Vigilators rapped on the steel wall to attract their attention. ~No Sisters,~ she signed.

~Onwards,~ ordered the Oblivion Knight.

The Vigilators shouldered away the bodies of fallen crew choking the entrance to the bridge proper, and the Silent Sisters entered with weapons at the ready, casting their sight into every shadowed corner on the ready for attack. A long platform that extended out over the main oval of the control pit several metres below, the bridge was designed in such a way that the Black Ship’s commanding officer could stand at the rail as if at the prow of an ocean-going vessel, and see his staff ranged out beneath him. Only the most senior crew had stations on this level, and the wide banners of flickering hololithic screens formed an arc of glassy lenses in the air above their consoles. Most of the monitors were little more than rains of static, but some still functioned, showing the process of autonomic systems inside the Black Ship’s drive core, the steady tick of life support. Leilani noticed one screen displaying a feed from an exterior camera; the blunt bow of the Aeria Gloris was visible, rendered in shadow against the churning red-purple hell of warp space. Other active screens were lined in dark crimson, trailing pennants of emergency warning glyphs. One of the Vigilators scrutinised an engineer’s panel, her long leather-clad fingers moving over the keys.

~The kill-switch was not activated,~ she signed. ~There was no release of the termination option here.~

Nortor looked up from a console by the command throne. ~Shipmaster’s log is intact.~

Kendel sheathed her sword with a grimace and gestured for Sister Thessaly to continue. The other woman tapped a string of keys on the console and a crackling hum issued out from vox grilles hidden in the steelwork.

Leilani caught sight of a man in a commander’s dark kepi, sprawled out on the deck in lee of a Y-shaped stanchion; it was this man’s voice that filled the dank air of the bridge as the data-spool rewound. Each entry was short and precise, punctuated by a clicking code indicating numerical data. The shipmaster spoke of an urgent signal that had reached them outside the normal strictures of contact protocol, a faint entreaty that the astropaths aboard the Validus had considered strangely phrased and slightly disturbing. The bonded psykers complained of their disquiet at the communiqué, and they were sickened by a peculiar resonance that clung to the signal, an echo of phasure displacement that troubled them greatly. And yet, the message was in order, bearing the ciphers that guaranteed the authority of the highest levels of the Silent Sisterhood. The novice saw her mistress scowl at this, her eyes narrowing. The briefing imparted by Sister Harroda had mentioned nothing of any message sent to the craft before its disappearance.

The shipmaster spoke of a single, simple order contained in the transmission. The Validus’s captain was commanded to bring the vessel to a halt in this region of the ever-turbulent warp and await further contact. This they had done, only to encounter the first incidents of the atemporal phenomena that the Sisters had witnessed on their passage through the lower decks. The entry ended, and after a pause Nortor triggered the next in the sequence.

~This is the last,~ she noted.

Again the voice of the shipmaster; but this time he seemed like a different man, the matter-of-fact clarity with which he had recorded his earlier logs gone. Leilani listened carefully and heard spikes of raw panic in the captain’s words fighting to overwhelm his self-control. She heard him pause and mutter, his voice rising and falling as he fretted over the fate of his ship.

There, amid the sudden and alien calm, something had begun down on the dungeon decks. Moving like a tide, radiating like a nova, inside the iron holding cells the massed psyker cargo awoke as one, burning out the neuroshackles that held them in check, the potent dampening filters pumped into their bloodstreams becoming weak and ineffective. The Validus’s astropathic choir began to scream. There was weeping and bellowing and–

Silence.

~The final entry ends here,~ signed Sister Thessaly. ~There is nothing else.~

Leilani felt sickened, as if an invisible patina of dirt was suddenly coating her flesh. The idea of rampant, uncontrolled psykers in such number was utterly abhorrent to her. It was everything the Sisterhood stood against, and it made her feel soiled to think she was in close proximity to such a thing.

Fighting down a shudder, the novice-sister found her gaze drifting up to the gantry above the bridge platform. There was a single hatch up there, a thick disc of metal set in a heavy ring of black iron; beyond it would be a narrow tunnel leading to the astropath habitat, where the ship’s tame psykers would parse messages for transmission across the interstellar deeps. Such sections of a starship were always heavily shielded, for even the smallest amount of telepathic interference could upset their delicate sensory paths; aboard a Black Ship, the matter was magnified a thousandfold.

Only the most highly trained, the most tightly controlled of the astropath kindred could ever serve aboard a vessel that was such a riot of psi-noise, and even then the life expectancy for them was a fraction of that of their fellows aboard normal ships of the line. Even their sanctorum, isolated from the rest of the craft through advanced technologies, energy fields and thick walls of psi-resistant metals, was pale shelter for them. Leilani could not help but wonder what had transpired in there after this… awakening.

She looked back to find the Oblivion Knight watching her. Sister Amendera gestured in BattleMark, having clearly come to the same conclusion. ~Investigate and evaluate.~

Grimly, the novice accepted her orders with a nod and shucked off her cloak, so that she could more easily enter the narrow conduit overhead. Removing her bolt pistol, Leilani checked the weapon and reached for the access ladder, willing her hands not to tremble.

The hatch yawned open to present her with a shallow, gloomy tunnel lit from the far end by pale blue illuminators. Without looking back, she ascended, leading with her pistol. She smelled decay in the stalled, stagnant air.

The chamber was spherical and smooth-walled, the faint light spilling from oval lumes arranged in a ring around the interior equator. The inner surface of the murky chamber glittered gently where intricate lines of microscopic text ranged around from pole to pole. Leilani felt a moment of confusion, of wrongness, and in the next second she had the reason why.

‘Gravity,’ she said aloud. ‘There’s gravity in here.’

Usually, the astropaths aboard a craft of this class would live in a null-gee bubble, cut off from the graviton generators of the rest of the ship so that they could float freely without concern for the vagaries of something so base, so mundane as walking upon their feet. But here, the nullifying field was inactive, and she sought and found a sparking control panel some distance up the curved walls where the command switches has been forcefully disabled.

It was then that she saw them, and understood. There were three astropaths in the choir of the Validus, and it appeared that, while afloat overhead, with great care they had removed their outer robes and fashioned them into nooses, fixing one end to the upper ranges of the hollow chamber and the others about their necks. Then, one of them must have destroyed the controls and allowed the pull of gravity to reclaim their bodies, and snap their necks.

The corpses of the dead psykers swayed slightly in the flow of new air that had followed Leilani up the access tunnel. In the low light, she could not make out any features upon the three; their faces were puffy, blood-streaked orbs, turned to ribbons of wet meat where they had clawed at themselves in some sort of frenzy.

When Sister Leilani returned to the bridge platform, Kendel read what the young woman had seen in the astropath chamber from the paleness of her face.

~All targets self-terminated.~ The novice-sister gave her report in BattleMark without thinking, but Kendel chose not to correct her. The sight had shaken the girl. Mollitas was far stronger than she gave herself credit for – if she had not been, the Oblivion Knight would never have chosen her as her adjutant – but she was reluctant to test her own limits and, until she did, the Oath of Tranquillity, the mark of the Aquila and true Sisterhood would be beyond her reach.

~Orders?~ Sister Thessaly stood before her commander, toying with her weapon.

The Oblivion Knight hesitated for a moment, then nodded to the senior of the Sister-Vigilators. ~Split squads,~ she signed. ~Vigilators, aft approach.~ Kendel touched her chest. ~This unit, forwards. Descend and converge.~ She brought her hands together and clasped them. In one context the symbol could mean alliance, in another collision, or even amalgam. In this, it indicated a target to be located and isolated. It was not necessary for her to outline their objective; the last words of the shipmaster had made that certain.

She switched speech. ~We will find our sisters,~ she told them. ~This is our order and our obligation.~

Nortor made the sign of the Aquila.

‘In the Emperor’s name,’ whispered Mollitas.

They emerged into an icy cavern, boots crunching on rimes of hoarfrost and snow, the access channel to the dungeon decks carpeted with a blanket of oily grey slush. It was a peculiar sight to see inside the metal halls of a starship, more suited to a winter’s day upon some distant colony world. Kendel’s breath emerged from her mouth in trails of white and she threw a questioning look to the novice. They were deep inside the Validus now, nowhere near the exterior hull where the leeching cold of space could reach them. The Knight raised a hand to her armoured collar to toggle a vox control, intending to signal the Vigilators. Were they seeing the same thing? Was this yet another of the strange spot-effects that were scattered throughout the interior of the derelict Black Ship?

But a motion from Nortor made her hesitate. The other Sister nodded towards tall columns of dirty ice clustering in one corner. There was movement behind them and breath, white in the air.

‘Who is there?’ The novice-sister gave voice to the question. ‘Show yourself.’

Kendel felt a weak, familiar pressure at the back of her skull. It was like the sense of heaviness in the sky before a storm, or the very faintest of echoes. She was drawing her eagle-head sword when a figure suddenly bolted from between the ice pillars, half-running, half-skidding towards them.

A man in a frost-caked overall came at her, an iron manacle and length of broken chain clattering about one ankle. She saw a leering grin and eyes wide, showing too much white. Haloes of vapour formed around his hands and she felt the already-low temperature drop still further. He was conjuring snow out of the air, grabbing it and moulding it into blades of ice.

Kendel knew the kind well: a cryokene. She held up a hand to halt Nortor from placing a bolt shell through his breastbone as a matter of course, and let the psyker come on towards her, his bare feet slapping at the frozen deck plates.

In the man’s eyes she saw the moment, as she had so many times before with her other quarries, when understanding hit him. In mid-run, the psyker pushed into the edge, the faint, ghostly periphery where Kendel’s Pariah gene began to exert its influence upon him. He entered the invisible zone about her where the Sister’s Untouchable nature created a pool of nothingness in the shadow-space of the warp. Some of Amendera’s kindred were stronger in this than others, and in some the great gift of Silence manifested itself in different ways; for the Oblivion Knight it was an unseen sphere that extended beyond her flesh, dampening the power of any psyker with increasing severity the closer they came.

The cryokene stumbled, the ice storm he had been creating from thin air suddenly evaporating in his clawed hands, the ice shattering. Kendel met his gaze with a warning glare and shook her head in mute censure.

The psyker bounced on the balls of his feet; even an animal would have had the sense to react to such a barrier, to be cowed and back off. But if reason had ever been in this man, it was long gone now. Undeterred, he screamed and threw himself at her, scratching at her eyes.

The Pariah effect, as potent as it was, could only protect against the sorcery of telepathic contact and other witch ploys. Against physical attack, against shot or blade or claw, it was no shield; but for those, the Sisters of Silence had their years of training in the schola bellus of Luna. Almost as an off-hand motion, Kendel creased the cryokene’s scalp with the heavy brass crown on the pommel of her weapon. It connected with a dull crack and he went back to the deck on his haunches, sliding on the thin ice.

‘Can you not see what we are?’ called Sister Leilani. ‘In our silence, you cannot harm us.’

‘You cannot hear!’ he shouted, his voice a sudden, atonal bark of sound. ‘If I cannot hear, you must not!’ He scrambled back to his feet, and again he threw himself towards Kendel. ‘You must not hear!’

He was insane, that was not in doubt. Perhaps, whatever release of energy had killed the minds of the crew serfs and servitors had only scrambled the wits of this one, and in the disorder that followed he had found his escape from the Black Ship’s cells. Not that it mattered. There would be nothing to glean from this witch.

The Oblivion Knight stepped into his attack, with her hand-and-a-half sword still held in a reversed grip. Turning, she brought the blade up to meet the cryokene’s throat and took him there, decapitating his body with a lean stroke that let the victim’s momentum do the work for her. Crimson fluid gouted briefly into the air, spattering across the grubby snow. Specks of blood dotted Kendel’s golden cuirass, but the arterial spray was sporadic and quickly stilled.

She stepped over the corpse and walked on through the ice and snow as the last gushes of red pooled on the cold deck, a thin wisp of steam rising from the length of her sword blade.

~What did he mean?~ Sister Thessaly matched her pace, signing carefully. ~He spoke of hearing something. Perhaps there is a connection with the last words of communication from this ship?~

Kendel held the tips of two fingers to her chin, and Nortor nodded in slow agreement.

‘Give voice,’ murmured Sister Leilani. ‘But to what?’

The further they progressed, the stronger the sense became of a new, strange denseness in the atmosphere, a thickening of the air that brought with it a greasy, metallic tang that Leilani could not clear from her throat, no matter how many times she sipped water from the dispenser nozzle in her portcullis-shaped gorget. She knew that the Oblivion Knight and the Null Maiden sensed it as well; their moods became wary and sullen as they passed through the outer sections of the holding areas, the cells where the less dangerous denizens of the dungeon decks were typically held. The novice chanced a look in through the locked doors of cells she chose at random; inside each there were odd, wet pastes of matter that might have been bodies, if flesh were wax and pressed to a flame. The air was unnaturally still, cloying to the point that it took on the properties of a membrane. Leilani felt the ghost-touch of it on her bare face, like the gossamer caress of spider webs.

Ahead, ever at the lead, Thessaly Nortor’s boot scraped to a halt and the novice froze, ready for the next maddened psyker or freakish phenomenon to rear its ugly head. Instead, the Null Maiden turned towards the other two women and made the sign for Sister.

They came across her in the middle of the chamber; she sat cross-legged on the dark iron deck plates, her head bowed in concentration and her sword drawn, both hands clasped around the slim hilt. Leilani was aware of a peculiar calm that seemed to radiate from the woman’s body, an absence of emotion or energy. A silence, for want of a better word.

Her mouth was moving but no sound emerged; still, the novice had only to read a word or two and she knew what litany was being unspoken. Without realising it, Leilani said the words aloud. ‘We are Seekers and we shall find our Prey. We are Warriors and woe to those we Oppose…’ She trailed off, her cheeks colouring.

A frown formed on Sister Amendera’s face and Leilani looked again at the distaff Sister. The other woman had a top-knot of rust-red hair that hung loosely, lank and sweat-soaked, over her bald skull. There was a line of livid pink puckering down the left side of the Sister’s face and neck from her cheekbone, pointing like an arrow towards the lightning-bolt symbols etched on her shoulder plates. She bore the same rank as Kendel, and it was with that realisation that Leilani recognised the woman.

With a dry gasp, Sister Emrilia Herkaaze of the White Talons cadre opened her eyes, her battle meditation broken, and looked up at her. The woman’s left eye, framed by the scarring, was an intricate augmentation of blue glass and golden clockwork. She gave Leilani a cold, evaluating once-over.

Herkaaze ignored the offer of Nortor’s open hand and got to her feet, shrugging off stiffness. The Oblivion Knight turned her glare towards Kendel; the lower half of the woman’s face was concealed behind a half-mask resembling barred gates, but the novice could tell her mouth was twisting in a sneer.

~I knew that someone would come,~ signed the other Knight, ~but I never would have expected it to be you.~

Kendel’s expression cooled. ~The mission fell to us. The Storm Daggers go where they are sent.~

The tension between the two Knights was strong, and Leilani could not help but think back to the rumours she had heard about Kendel and Herkaaze’s thorny rivalry. One story, told to her by another of the novices, said that the women had once fought with a fire-witch on Sheol Trinus; Herkaaze, unwilling to fall back before a powerful enemy and regroup, had been struck by burning debris and later turned the blame to Kendel for refusing to support her. Leilani had not believed the tale at the time, but now looking at Sister Emrilia’s old wounds, she wondered if there might have been some truth in it.

Herkaaze caught her staring and pushed closer to the novice. ~Seen enough, speaker?~ She asked, her augmetic eye glittering. Leilani looked at the deck, cowed.

~I sense witchkind,~ noted Sister Thessaly. ~Close at hand.~

The scarred Knight nodded but did not address the other woman, instead focusing her intent back on her former comrade. ~Are you all there is? You three?~

Sister Amendera shook her head. ~A lance of Sister-Vigilators attend us. I sent them by a secondary path, via the aft decks–~

Herkaaze made a derisive noise in the back of her throat. ~You sent them to their deaths, then.~

At this, Nortor clasped her fist into her palm, tapping out an interrogative tone-message through the signal-generating touchpads on the knuckles of her glove. Leilani heard the short-range signal echo through the vox in her wargear. They waited for a moment for the standard ‘all-clear’ reply from the other team, but there was only the hiss of static. Nortor paled slightly and shook her head.

~Horrors are loose aboard this ship. I lost many Sisters of my own to the witches who ran free in the madness.~ Herkaaze nodded to herself. ~We killed as many as we could.~

Anger flared on Kendel’s face and she grabbed the other Knight’s arm. She did not sign, but her question was clear.

With exaggerated care, Sister Emrilia peeled the other woman’s hand from her grip. ~There was no time to send a full warning. We had to come here, to build the wall. Else all would have been lost.~

‘The wall?’ Herkaaze winced at the sound of her voice, but Leilani ignored it. ‘I do not understand.’

Nortor folded her arms across her armoured breasts, fists to elbows. The sign meant wall but also bastion and enclosure.

‘What happened here?’ asked the novice.

~Answer her,~ demanded Kendel.

Herkaaze shot the young woman an acid look, and finally nodded. She began to sign in ThoughtMark, quickly and sharply; the motions were so swift, so animated that to an unschooled observer they would have resembled the training kata of some dance-like martial art.

Sister Emrilia gathered up the threads of events left unwoven by the curious warning detected by Evangelion Station and the logs of the Validus’s shipmaster.

After the Black Ship had hove to and in turn been becalmed in this odd void-within-a-void, from all about the craft probing psychic impulses forced their way into the vessel. At first, some of the crew-serfs claimed to see ghosts stalking the corridors; such sightings were not uncommon on ships where the raw agony of caged telepaths left psychic stains upon the bulkheads, but these were no ordinary wraiths.

These ghosts moved in concert, intent on tasks that seemed more military than otherworldly. And soon, the rioting erupted across the dungeon decks. Many of the psykers killed themselves or died when the pulses of psi-force lashed their cells. Too late, Herkaaze admitted, she and her Sisters had realised that the probing attacks were not random, but targeted at the most powerful psykers aboard the Validus. Each impulse blew open cells and holding cordons – but when granted their sudden freedom the captured witches did not flee. Stranger still, they moved deeper into the dark prison spaces, seeking each other. A troop of Sister-Prosecutors dared to venture in and witness what sorcery the mutants were creating; those women died, but not before passing on reports of what they saw.

In her studies, Leilani had read many of the great texts in the towering stacks of the libraria in the Somnus Citadel, from the earliest volumes of the Psykana Occultis to the Voiceless Judgements of Melaena Verdthand. In these tomes of psychic research and lore, the young sister-in-waiting had learned much of the witch. She believed that faith in sword and bolter and silence were but one half of a sister’s armoury, that knowledge of their quarry carried equal weight. In this, she had read much of the strangest extremes of psyker-kind; and so even as Kendel and Nortor watched Herkaaze’s terse report with growing disbelief, the novice found herself nodding, knowing that such freakish things were indeed possible.

The grim-faced woman continued. ~The very worst and the very strongest of the Validus’s tithe of witchkind shambled together and became an amalgam.~ Sister Emrilia was very careful to use the sign-gesture for that word, bringing her hands together and clasping them. An amalgam, in the manner of fusion or joining.

Leilani felt her blood run cold. ‘This I have read of,’ she broke in. ‘A group-mind, the spontaneous formation of a shared telepathic consciousness. On Ancient Terra, in the Age of Strife, the nation-state of the Jermani had a word for it. Gestalt.’

Sister Amendera took a warning step towards the other Knight. ~The Life-Eater,~ Kendel snapped her hands back and forth. ~Why was it not used?~

Herkaaze eyed her. ~Malfunction,~ she replied, ~Sabotage/Outside influence. Cause unknown.~

The four of them stood for a long moment, weighing the import of what had been described. Whatever the instigating force, whatever the impetus was that had created this freakish confluence of minds, the question now at hand was how to deal with it; how to kill it, Leilani corrected herself, for such a radical mutation would not be allowed to live in the Emperor’s secular, ordered galaxy.

The scarred woman returned to her explanation, and this time she seemed less angry, more morose at the thought of what orders she had been forced to give. Knowing full well that the squads of Witchseekers, Vigilators and Prosecutors aboard the Validus could not hope to defeat a monster fuelled by the power of witches raised to such geometric heights, Sister Emrilia did the only thing that she could.

Her last order to her Sisters was to deploy about the dungeon decks, each of the warriors to find and take a space where they could kneel and recite the creed, a place where they could draw within and bring forth the gift of silence from themselves. There were some among the common citizenry who called the Sisterhood the ‘Daughters of the Gates’, partially in respect to the half, three-quarter or full helmets they wore, fashioned in designs after the portcullises of archaic castles, but the name also came in respect to their mission – to stand as the barrier between the rampant insanity of unchained witches and the safety of the Imperium. In echo of this, Herkaaze gave the command to encircle the group-mind aboard the Validus and hold it in place. Each Sister of Silence, her Pariah’s mark burning cold in the minds of the psyker freaks, was one bulwark in a ring the witches could not cross. However, by the same token, no Sister could step away. It was an impasse.

~But now you are here,~ Sister Emrilia signed, switching back to ThoughtMark once again, ~and you can take my place while I move in and kill it.~

Kendel’s lips thinned. Her former comrade had not changed at all since Sheol; if anything, the beating she took on that desolate sphere had not humbled her, but instead hardened her intractable manner. Here they stood, Knight and Knight, their ranking equal and unquestioned, yet still Herkaaze spoke to her as if she were addressing an inferior.

~We are not here as your reinforcements,~ Kendel gestured. ~We are here to rescue you.~

The other woman glared at her, the old scar tissue on her cheek darkening. Like the eye she had replaced, it would have been a simple matter for the Sisterhood’s chirurgeons to have patched and regrown the damaged flesh on Emrilia’s face, to have made her seamless and whole again; but instead she wore the disfigurement visible to the world, as if it were some sort of badge of honour. Amendera’s lip twisted; such a gesture was something she might have expected of an Astartes, but not a Sister.

~We cannot break the line.~ Herkaaze’s body language was severe and accusatory. ~One severed link and that horror will be freed to prey upon the galaxy. This is the only option. I go in and I kill it.~

~We,~ corrected Kendel, drawing in all of them in one flick of her hand. ~We will kill it.~

Nortor was nodding. ~Mollitas can take the Knight’s place here, in the ring. We three will venture deeper.~

Kendel glanced at the novice-sister and shook her head. For all her book-learning and potential, Sister Leilani was not ready for this challenge. She had too many doubts, too much churning inside her thoughts to find the serenity needed to truly bring forth the silence. The Oblivion Knight indicated that the Null Maiden would take Herkaaze’s place there and kneel on the deck.

For a moment, an instant so slight that one who did not know Thessaly Nortor would not have seen it, Kendel’s second wavered; then she bowed and drew her sword, falling into the meditative stance. Before she bowed her head she drew her flamer and handed it to Mollitas without statement or ceremony.

Leilani took it with a nod, drawing herself up, digging deep for her courage. Sister Thessaly closed her eyes and began to mouth the words of the creed.

In the next second Herkaaze was stepping to stand in front of the other Knight. ~No support required.~ Her BattleMark was sharp and angry. ~Stand down.~

~In the past you censured me for failing to aid you. Now you will do the same when I make that offer freely?~ Kendel signed the words and watched the other Knight’s scarring turn crimson, the old wound showing Herkaaze’s anger like a beacon.

There was a moment when Sister Emrilia seemed on the edge of actually uttering her rebuke out loud; but then she turned away. ~Come, then. But this is my vessel and command here is mine.~ Herkaaze did not wait for Kendel to acknowledge her, and walked on, towards the far hatch.

~Confirmed.~ Sister Amendera made the cross-fingered gesture at her chest and looked up to find her adjutant watching her intently.

Inside Herkaaze’s wall there was madness; madness and phantoms.

The ghosts attacked them in a horde, coming out of the decking and the ceiling, falling out of shadows and from behind support pillars. They were shimmering and wailing, the noise of them at the furthest end of the spectrum from the Sisters.

Bolt shells and pulses of fire from the flamer moved through them, and swords were of little use. The wraiths closed and faded even as they screamed, evaporating like morning dew as their energies collided with the limits of the Pariah effect; but there were some that were flesh and blood, hidden in the morass like a dagger wrapped in a cloak. They were crewmen of the Validus, drained of mind like those on the upper decks, but unlike those poor fools, these were rendered into the bloody realms of psychosis. Concealed in the crush of their spectral doubles, they laid into Kendel, Herkaaze and Mollitas with clubs fashioned from broken pieces of metal or severed limbs.

Corralled inside the invisible barrier, the forces that had twisted the psyches of these serfs had turned upon themselves. Their minds like rabid animals trapped in a snare, they were gnawing upon their own reason, all trace of what made them men gone now. Inside those thought-hollowed skulls, there could be nothing but darkness and void. By chance Kendel matched gazes with a man in a shipfitter’s tunic and she knew without doubt that he, like all of them, was ruined inside. It made her angry: these poor fools were not even the enemy, just the overspill of the witchery left to fester here in the bowels of the Validus.

Still, she did not allow this emotion to prevent her from giving the mindless ones their due despatch. Her sword moved in flashing arcs, opening bodies to the air and sending aerosols of crimson to spatter across the walls.

The two Oblivion Knights fought as mirrors of one another, the ingrained training of the Sisterhood’s blade schola rising to the fore without the need to frame it in conscious thought. Behind them, Sister Leilani spent fire upon the foe in grunting chugs of exhaust from the flamer’s bell-shaped mouth. They died as they were cut down or turned to shrieking torches. The bodies of the unreal became motes of dust in the still, stale air of the corridor, while the bodies of the real carpeted the decking.

Then there came the moment’s pause, the three of them panting hard. Kendel watched Herkaaze clean her blade on the jacket of a dead serf and she wondered if the White Talon warrior had thought of these poor creatures in the same manner as she had. Amendera doubted it; Sister Emrilia had always been one for a singular worldview of black and white, good and bad. She did not have any room for shades of grey; that, if Kendel was honest with herself, was at the heart of the disputes they had shared more than any other matter.

Nearby, Sister Leilani returned Thessaly’s flamer to its strap across her shoulder and blew out a shuddering breath. ‘Throne’s sake,’ she husked. ‘They swarmed upon us as soldier ants would those invading their mounds. I dread to think what force compelled them.’

Herkaaze gave the novice another disapproving look, as if she were trying to glare the younger woman into silence. Mollitas did not seem to notice, too caught up in the train of her own thoughts. The Knight saw her face grow pale as some terrible notion came upon her.

‘Mistress,’ she began, with a wary tone. ‘What if this…’ Leilani indicated the walls of the Black Ship. ‘If all this is the framework of some gambit by the rebel Astartes?’ Suddenly, words began to fall from her lips in a cascade. ‘It is known that some of their Legions have been said to engage with witchery, and–’

The hard report of brass upon steel sounded, silencing the novice, and Kendel turned to see where Herkaaze had rapped the pommel of her sword against the deck. ~Must she speak so often?~ demanded the other Knight.

~Do you fear she may be right?~ Kendel signed the question back in reply.

Herkaaze did not even bother to grace her with an answer, and moved on. She pointed with her drawn blade, the tip aiming at a great oval hatch up ahead. The metallic stink of psyker spoor was strongest there, the echo of it throbbing at the base of Amendera’s temples. Emrilia walked on towards the massive door, never looking back.

Beyond the hatch was a chamber that ended in a smouldering molecular furnace. It was this sight that would be the last for the most powerful and unruly of the psyker-kind processed aboard the ship. Executed here, on the iron deck, then cast into the open maw of the machine, their bodies would be reduced to ash; it was believed that no psychic could reconstitute themselves after such a killing.

Perhaps, then, it was fitting that they found the group mind here, the men and women that were its component parts huddled together in a crowd, some standing, others on the floor or lying against the walls in an unearthly accumulation. Unlike the mind-dead on the other tiers, these ones seemed on the surface to be animate and alive; in some ways that made the sight of them all the more horrible.

‘They have no faces,’ said Leilani. In fact, she was only half-correct. The hundredfold members of this unnatural psychic amalgam each had the suggestion of eyes, nose, a mouth, but they were in a constant flux, never settling to become anything like a human aspect. Instead, they were sketches, half-finished approximations of what a person might look like, all of them the same. One moment, long of nose and narrow of eye, then fatter about the cheeks and with a tiny moue of a mouth. Bone beneath their skins made ticking, popping sounds as the structure of their skulls was warped and altered, second by second, over and over again.

All of them turned to stare at the Sisters and cocked their heads in quizzical fashion. The novice grabbed for the flamer at her shoulder and flicked her gaze down at the volume meter: half-full. Her fingers found the trigger bar and the weapon’s emitter bell hissed in readiness.

~This is it,~ signed Herkaaze. ~This is the Voice.~

They advanced across the chamber and the pieces of the gestalt closest to them retreated, propelled back by the proximity of the Untouchables’ psi-toxic presence. The three women moved in a tight triangle, each watching an angle of attack.

But unlike the cryokene, unlike the en-dog, these shifting faces betrayed no clear intention, no emotion that could be read and predicted. They simply observed, with expressionless stares, the glimmer of intellect and intent broken into shards that barely registered in a hundred pairs of eyes.

Leilani began to wonder how such a thing could be killed; the weapons the Sisters carried with them were not enough to terminate so many at once. And if they began a cull piecemeal, how would the group-mind react?

The swaying, blank figures all took an abrupt breath, their faces shifting into a hatchet-browed aspect and solidifying.

‘Far enough.’ The rasping and atonal words were spoken by groups of them in a dislocated chorus that made her skin crawl; each syllable was uttered by a different cluster of voices in unearthly harmony. ‘Stay your weapons–’

Leilani saw the expression on Herkaaze’s face twist into one of fury, incensed at the temerity of the demand. The Oblivion Knight surged forwards with a snarl, and the cluster of psykers nearest to her recoiled as she came at them. Sister Amendera reached out to hold her back, but she was not quick enough. Her sword still warm from earlier kills, Herkaaze struck out and carved into a woman in a prisoner’s shipsuit, the brand of a telekinetic on her forehead. The cut that ended her was a downwards slash that opened the woman’s torso, and without pause the scarred Knight extended and severed the hand of another psyker, this one a male. He fell to the floor, one arm ending in a red stump jetting fluid.

The other psykers moved with sudden speed, and Leilani recalled the flocking motion of arboreal birds on her home world. The disparate pieces of the group-mind moved like water, flowing away from the attacker, leaving the dead and injured among their number where they fell. Leilani realised she was already seeing them as a single entity, no longer thinking of the psykers as discrete people within a larger whole.

Cut off from the horde, the man with the missing hand suddenly screamed and there was cracking anew from the bones of his face as his flesh attempted to reset itself. Abandoned by his kind, he began to resemble the crazed remnant they had encountered outside. Herkaaze silenced him by opening his throat with her blade-tip.

‘Stay your weapons!’ This time it was a shout, every member of the gestalt bellowing as loudly as their lungs would allow. The sound was so strong in the low-ceilinged furnace chamber that it gave the Sisters pause.

Leilani experienced a moment of confusion. Any handful of the psykers present in the chamber would have been more than a match for two Oblivion Knights and a novice-sister, and as one in this strange meta-concert, they doubtless wielded enough power to kill them all in an instant, crushing them by bringing down the deck above, by burning off all air in the chamber by pyrokene firestorm or any one of a dozen methods.

Why then were they still alive? ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

The answer from a myriad of throats made her blood chill. ‘Leilani Mollitas. Emrilia Herkaaze. Amendera Kendel. I have been waiting for you.’

‘They know our names…’ The novice’s words seemed tiny in comparison to the voice of the crowd.

~Witchery!~ Herkaaze signed furiously. ~They have plundered our thoughts!~

~Impossible,~ Kendel replied silently. ~No telepath can penetrate the bastion of our minds. We are Untouchable.~

‘I know who you are,’ echoed the chorus, ‘and I must speak with you.’ The faces of the assembled mass moved and altered again, melting and flowing in meter to the mood of the words.

With each utterance, Leilani felt the ebb and drag of psychic force shifting about her like an ocean of clear oil. The presence of the group-mind rebounded around them in captured echoes. The novice gripped the flamer tightly, and struggled to keep herself from shaking. First, in the things she had read in the libraria, then in the living, breathing madness she had witnessed in the transformed Astartes on Luna, and now here, before her in this ship… Every half-truth and myth Leilani had heard about the powers that lurked within the empyrean were made true.

~Whatever dark corner of the warp spawned you, creature, you will not manifest here.~ Kendel sheathed her blade and in its stead drew her bolter to the ready.

Laughter pealed around the crowd. ‘This is not the face of Chaos. What you see here is only a message and the messenger.’

~What message?~ Kendel demanded her answer with savage jabs of motion.

‘A message,’ repeated the voices. ‘Once before a message came and it was too late to change the pattern of things. You were there, Amendera Kendel. You saw this.’

Leilani saw the Knight nod slowly, making the sign for an Astartes. ‘Garro…’ whispered the novice.

‘A new message. A warning.’ The breathy choir paused. ‘For the ears of the Emperor of Mankind. Darkness comes, Sisters. The great eye opens and Horus rises. The history of tomorrow is known to me.’

Kendel exchanged glances with her subordinate. Precognition was a known and documented psionic effect, although extremely rare and difficult to interpret. Leilani could imagine her mistress turning the words over in her mind; if this confluence of psychic had power enough to pierce the veil, perhaps… perhaps they might have some insight into the skeins of events yet to occur.

Herkaaze spat noisily on the deck and brandished her sword. ~Destroy this monstrosity!~ she signed. ~It is some ploy, either of the witches’ origin or even the turncoat Warmaster himself! We cannot ferry this abhorrence into the Emperor’s divine presence. It must be killed!~ She advanced with her blade raised high, head sweeping back and forth like a hunting hawk looking for her next prey.

Members of the group-mind broke apart from the main pack as she came at them, forming into smaller flocks that retreated from her along the ashen-stained walls. ‘I am not your enemy!’ came the multiple cry. ‘The storm is about to break, but the course of things can be changed!’

Herkaaze’s only answer was to lunge and strike down another psyker.

‘Millennia of endless warfare can be prevented!’ Panic and desperation entered the voice of the chorus. ‘Believe me!’

From out of nowhere, a cluster of figures rushed towards Leilani and she raised the flamer, ready to immolate them in a heartbeat; but their flowing, waxen faces turned to her, imploring as they altered, begging her to hear them out. ‘What do you want?’ she screamed out the question again.

In turn, they howled back at her. ‘I am only the portal, the messenger and the message. Across the madness of the warp, where time and space become unravelled and the tapestry of events falls apart. I call to you from then.’ Hands grabbed at her robes. ‘I warn you from your tomorrows. Your now is my past. I am living in the hell I wish you to uncreate, centuries gone and the fires still raging.’

Amendera Kendel had once believed that the universe could do nothing to shock her; the horrors that she had witnessed in service to the Silent Sisterhood, the years that matured her from a callow novice to an Oblivion Knight of rank and stature, these things had shown her much, from the glories of the human heart to the very depths of monstrosity that nature could create. But she had lost that arrogance, truly lost it when word had come of the Heresy, when she had looked into the eyes of a creature cut from the raw matter of corruption. She had known then that there was more that moved upon the face of the universe than could be encompassed in her judgement.

And here, now, she found herself challenged again. It would be easy for her to take the path Emrilia followed, to decry and shout for death. To question and wonder, even for a moment, that was beyond Herkaaze’s insight. There had been moments when Kendel had thought she too had become reactionary and hidebound – and this was one more reason why she selected the girl Leilani as her adjutant. At times, she saw the mirror of herself in the novice-sister, keeping her close so that she might reinforce that dormant sense of wonder.

But to comprehend this… A voice, speaking not from the here and now but a time yet to happen. A future? Try as she might, Sister Amendera could not find it in herself to deny that such a thing, as incredible as it seemed, was not possible. It was the warp, after all; and in the warp, all things were malleable. Emotion, distance, thought, reality. If dimensions such as these were distorted here, then why not time itself?

‘This place and this instant,’ cried the psykers. ‘I am here as you are, peering in from my unfuture to the shifting sands of the past.’ All together, they moved their hands to their faces, the tips of two fingers to their chins. ‘To give voice.’

Herkaaze was frozen, kneading the hilt of her sword, turning in place, daring the witchkin to come within reach of a cut. She did not see the cluster grouping around Sister Leilani, entreating the girl with open hands and upturned faces. Kendel moved towards the girl, unsure of how to proceed.

‘You know me,’ they told the novice, flesh shifting again, bones crackling. ‘Look. See.’

There was something new in the chanted words, a cadence and pitch that seemed at once eerily familiar to Kendel, but unknown as well. Older, somehow. Her breath was struck from her lips as the group-mind’s aspect altered once again, the sketch of a face thickening, becoming firm and definite. A cold sensation crawled along the base of the Knight’s spine.

‘You know me,’ they said, and each one of them was the mirror of Leilani Mollitas.

The novice screamed in fright at the faces surrounding her. They were some strange mimicking of her own plain features, but lined and aged by years and hardship. She looked and saw dozens of elder sketches of herself, renderings of what she might be should she live a hundred years. The timbre of the voices echoed in her memories, and she was suddenly thinking of her mother. The similarity was uncanny and it terrified her. She could not deny it: the voices were hers. The flamer dropped from her nerveless fingers to the deck, and she stumbled back a few steps.

‘How… can this be?’

The chorus inhaled together and replied. ‘I have done terrible things to get to this place,’ said the voice. ‘Pacts and accords that have scarred my soul.’

‘We are Untouchable,’ Leilani husked. ‘They say we have no souls.’

‘We have,’ came the reply. ‘Else I would have had nothing to burn, no coin to pay my way here.’ She became aware of the Oblivion Knights either side of her, each watching with expressions of horror and wonderment. The voice pealed like a bell. ‘That price I… you paid willingly. Now trust me. Take me to him, and we will be able to reorder a galaxy yet unsullied by–’

There came a sound; not quite a howl, not a gasp or a cry but some strangled merging of all three. It burst from Herkaaze’s mouth in a flash of spittle and rage. Her revulsion was so towering that she could not hold in the exhalation. Her free hand flew about her face in a wild dance.

~Traitor bitch!~ she signed, almost too fast for the eye to follow. ~If this insanity is to be believed, then you have consorted with mind-witches! You have betrayed your oath to the Throne of Terra and the Lord Emperor!~

Leilani tried to find the words to explain, but her thoughts were confused. It was not her, but some other possible incarnation of the woman she would become who had done this deed; and yet the novice shuddered as she looked wildly around at the psykers who wore her face. If such a thing had been done, what was the magnitude of these sinister pacts her elder self mentioned? Treating with witchkind was the least among them; in order to make this bridge across the warp, sorcery of the darkest stripe would be needed. Her Pariah gene, burned from her DNA. Her literal self, subsumed into a mass-mind for the sole purpose of punching a hole into the past. What magnitude of event could have been so great to have made that choice seem a reasonable one?

The novice felt conflicted. Sickened by the scope of such mad sacrifice, it was all she could do not to retch, but even as she was revolted, Leilani found a kernel of understanding. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I would do such a thing. If that was required of me, if the cost was so high, yes. I would do this deed.’

She turned her gaze inwards, and touched the tranquillity inside herself, newly revealed beneath a light of new self-knowledge. In Leilani’s silence, only the truth of who she was remained.

It was this thought that followed her into darkness, as the tip of Herkaaze’s sword carved through her spine and erupted from the chest plate of her battle-bodice.

Kendel barely held in the scream, her mouth gaping open but the utterance smothered by the force of her sacred oath.

Sister Leilani’s eyes rolled back and she coughed out a great tide of blood, her body collapsing as Herkaaze drew back her blade from where she had stabbed the girl in the back. The novice-sister fell in a clatter of armour and flesh against the corroded decking. Crimson spread around her in a rippling halo.

The Knight brought up her bolter and aimed it at the other woman, the weapon trembling in her grip. She felt wetness on her cheeks. Why? Kendel mouthed the words, her other hand tight in a mailed fist. She wanted to shout the question, but her voice would not come.

~How can you ask that?~ Herkaaze gave her a defiant glare, daring her to shoot. ~I have stopped this monstrosity before it started. Strangled the horror in its crib.~

Around them the psykers were whispering, then mumbling, then speaking and finally screaming. They clawed and howled at each other, tearing the flesh of their faces into rags. Their cries were just one word, repeated until the chamber resonated with the sound.

‘No. No no no no no no no no no–’

The air trembled and the deck groaned with it. Kendel ducked as one of the psykers, a pyrokene, suddenly erupted into flames and caught a cluster of his fellow prisoners alight. Elsewhere, a tornado of force flashed where a psychokinetic lost control of herself. As if they were untrained hounds whose leashes were suddenly cut, the witches were running wild. Mollitas’s death tore them down, and the Oblivion Knight saw the group-mind fracturing, self-destructing.

Clipped by the psi-fires, pieces of the metal ceiling broke away and crashed to the ground. Plumes of gas and drifts of meat-smoke stinging her nostrils, Kendel saw Herkaaze disappear behind a cascade of tumbling pipes and spun away to avoid a gout of flame. The Validus trembled and moaned again; she thought of the calmed void outside in warp space. How long would it last now, with the witches in disarray?

She took two steps and hesitated, half-turning, remembering Leilani’s corpse there on the deck, but all around her steel and iron was turning into rains of gritty powder. Kendel thought she heard the echoing report of a bolter firing from deeper into the chamber; the Knight ignored it and fled, cutting down a pair of ferals who tried to block her path. Into the corridor beyond, she felt her boots slip and become mired as the deck softened beneath her steps. All over the walls, tendrils of decay snaked out, aging everything they touched. Time itself was digging its fangs into the hull of the Validus, the freakish effects no longer confined to locations here and there throughout the vessel.

Kendel’s tapped out the emergency all-channel recall on her glove, searching the smoky gloom for any sign of Sister Thessaly or the White Talons who were still on the ship. Her vox crackled but no reply codes came. She reached beneath her combat cloak and her fingers touched her teleport recall beacon. The Oblivion Knight gripped the slim golden rod in her hand, her thumb hesitating over the activation stud. Why did Nortor fail to answer her? Where were the others? What mad hell had this death ship come from?

Kendel spat and glared at the rod’s winking indicator; then the deck beneath her gave way, and she knew nothing else.

Light cut into her eyes and she coughed.

Blinking owlishly, Amendera Kendel became aware of a restraint harness around her and the thin whisper of liquids enveloping her body. She tried to focus, staring at a shimmering shape on a dark wall. After a while it resolved into a reflection, and she orientated her perceptions. She lay suspended in a bath of pale pink fluids, her body for the most part naked except for places where metal devices were joined with puckered, inflamed skin. A narthecia tank, a great cocktail of medicines and liquids that mended burned flesh or torn skin. The Knight had often seen the like in the medicae decks of the Aeria Gloris, but in all her service she had never found herself in one of them. The fluids resisted her attempts to move, pulling on her. She could shift a little, and then only her head and neck, raised above the enamelled steel walls of the tank.

The chamber was dim, lit only by the glow of a single lume set low and the red laser-optics of a hunchbacked servitor. It moved slowly just to her right, orbiting between two sculpted consoles that chimed in time with her heartbeat and breathing.

Kendel glanced down at her hand and saw a line of burn scarring across the palm that had held the teleport beacon. Not dead, then. The sight seemed to be the final confirmation for her. She drew in a breath and found it hard to hold it; her lungs ached.

‘Awake.’

The word fell from the shadows beyond the far end of the tank. Kendel blinked and threw a look at the servitor, but the machine-helot did not appear to notice. The Knight pushed again at the restraints holding her in place, but they were of dense plastiform and immovable.

‘Don’t.’ The voice was harsh and broken. ‘You will reopen the wounds you have spent so long healing.’ Parts of the shadows detached from the dark and moved.

Kendel saw a figure, a woman, a Sister. The shapeless coils of a robe, the lume-light touching a shorn scalp and the cascade of a top-knot beyond it. At once she was shocked; even in shadows, Kendel could see this was no unavowed novice but a ranked Sister of Silence. For a Sister to speak aloud was anathema.

The woman seemed to sense her amazement. When she spoke again, there was a cruelty in her words. ‘We are alone here, you and I. The servitor cannot report. None will know that I have given voice.’ In the dimness, the Sister touched two fingers to her chin. ‘You are aboard the Aeria Gloris,’ she continued. ‘That errant harpy Nortor came to your rescue as you lay insensate. The teleport recovered you.’ The figure shook its head once. ‘The Null Maiden did not survive the translation.’

A sharp tension twisted in Kendel’s chest. She had known Thessaly Nortor for many years, and her loss cut deeply.

‘Some of the White Talons escaped in saviour pods.’ Kendel heard a low, wry chuckle. ‘We were the lucky ones. Treated to such a show.’ The Sister spread her hands. ‘The Validus, consumed by a wash of psychic fury, eaten alive by rabid time. The vessel torn to shreds, the warp about it churned into a maelstrom. Ah.’ She shivered. ‘It is such a delicacy to say these things without gesture.’

In defiance, Kendel moved her right hand just enough that the other woman could read the signs. ~You sully your oath. You break the silence.~

‘He will forgive me.’ The woman stepped closer, and Emrilia Herkaaze’s face revealed itself. ‘It was He who guided me to the pods when you left me to die. He who guided my blade when I executed your errant novice. He, who saved me when you abandoned me on Sheol Trinus.’

The Knight snarled with fury and pulled at her restraints, the pink fluid splashing around her. Thin whorls of new blood issued out through the liquid from ruptured sutures. Disgust filled her at the towering injustice of it, that this callous and narrow-hearted woman should live and poor Leilani perish.

Herkaaze came close and halted, bowing her head. ‘Whatever it was that we witnessed in there, I killed it as I said I would. Your novice, she had some connection to the monstrosity, that is not disputed.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps there was some truth to the ravings of the voice. If it was indeed a messenger from our unbound future, then her death here annulled that skein of time. Those events will not unfold.’ The other Knight nodded to herself. ‘In a way, I saved her from herself. She died unsullied, with the seed of corruption still dormant inside. And so the order of the universe is preserved.’

~The message,~ signed Kendel, wincing in pain. ~You killed the messenger. Whatever truth there was for us to learn goes unheard! She spoke of wars we could prevent, a great burning!~

Sister Emrilia shook her head. ‘No one will believe you if you make mention of that. Give voice to it and you will destroy your reputation, for I will decry you. At best, you will ruin yourself. At worst, you will split the Sisterhood.’ She glared at the other woman, clearly relishing the feel of words on her tongue. ‘Do you wish that, Amendera?’

~You are a blind fool. Arrogant and superior.~ Kendel turned her head away. ~You and every one of your stripe are a cancer on the Imperium.~

‘I see better than you,’ she replied, walking back towards the shadows. ‘My eyes are open to the truth. Only one so divine as the God-Emperor has the right to tamper with the weave of history.’

At the utterance of the word ‘god’, Kendel turned back, a questioning look on her face; but the other woman was still walking, speaking almost to herself.

‘If there is to be war, it is because He wishes it. I am the vessel for His voice, sister, and all who are mute before His glory will not rise with me.’

Herkaaze vanished into the darkness and Kendel closed her eyes. Inside she sought out silence, but it remained lost to her.

In a storm of kaleidoscopic violence, reality was torn apart. From the seething warp-point burst forth a starship, slab-sided and bristling with weapon systems. Within moments of the warp rift opening, the Spear of Truth had smashed into realspace, and almost immediately its launch bays were opening, shafts of red light spilling from the yawning maws of its hangars.

The battle-barge spewed forth a swarm of unmanned probes that darted out from the warship’s armoured hull in all directions, turning and weaving a complex pattern like bees around their hive, their scanners seeking any sign of immediate threat. A few minutes later, patrol craft erupted from their mechanical wombs on white-hot plasma jets. They formed up into three squadrons, one fore, one aft and the other circling the battle-barge amidships. Thus protected, the Spear of Truth began the long process of slowing its immense speed.

On the bridge of the Spear of Truth, Chapter Commander Astelan was geared and armed ready for battle, as were the rest of his crew, heedful of the standing orders for vessels to be ready to fight immediately. Such orders were not merely dogma. Despite her guns and patrol craft, the Spear of Truth, like all starships, was most vulnerable dropping out of warp space. Just as a man requires time to orientate himself upon recovering consciousness, so too did the battle-barge and its inhabitants need to adjust to realspace.

Astelan was clad in his power armour, as were his three companions, Galedan, Astoric and Melian, each a captain of the companies carried aboard the battle-barge. Their armour was shadow-black, broken only by the red winged-sword insignia of the Legion upon their left shoulder pad and their company markings on the right. The dull grey of exposed piping and cables broke through from under the overlapping ceramite chestplates, coiling under the arms to the backpacks that supplied power to the suits.

Though painstakingly maintained, each showed small but tell-tale signs of wear and tear – spots of corrosion, repaired battle damage and makeshift replacement parts. Astelan had heard that newer versions of armour had been developed, with reinforced joints and fewer weak spots, but it had been more than four years since his Chapter had been in contact for a substantial resupply.

Around the massive figures of the four Astartes were several dozen functionaries clad in simple robes or white coats. Most stood at workstations, while some were on hand with dataslabs to record any orders given by their commanders. The only sounds were the thrumming of logic machines, the chitter of readouts, the tread of boots on mesh decking and the murmurs of the technicians. All were well practised; there was no need for idle chatter, only clipped reports from the bridge crew.

‘Local scan negative for planetary bodies.’

At Astelan’s waist hung a power sword and his holstered bolt pistol. They had been in his possession since he was promoted to sergeant, only fourteen years ago, and they were as much a badge of office for him as the insignia inscribed upon his chest plastron. He tapped his fingers against the hilt of the sword as he waited for the sensor screen to re-establish itself.

‘Local scan negative for artificial bodies.’

‘Wide sensor array operational.’

The seconds ticked by slowly, as the Spear of Truth metaphorically shook away its dizziness and regained its sight and hearing.

‘Tactical display coming online.’

The mood of concentration did not lighten at the news, for although the Spear of Truth was now no longer swathed in a sensorial limbo, it would take a while before the data being relayed back to the ship was collated and analysed.

‘Local comm-web established.’

A few more minutes passed until a technician spoke again.

‘Localised scanning complete,’ he said. ‘Zero threats detected.’

Though there were no obvious sighs of relief or relaxation, the tension aboard the bridge dissipated somewhat. Alertness turned to focused activity; caution to curiosity.

Astelan looked up at the huge digital display that rendered all of the incoming data into an understandable image. It was crude at the moment, little more than a wire-frame schematic of the system and its major planetary bodies, and would take several days for the picture to be completed as the surveyor probes raced through the system sending back their findings.

Over the coming hours, eighteen more vessels broke from warp at various points around the star system’s outer reaches, each spawning its own small brood of escorts and augury devices. Seven more battle-barges, three fleet carriers and eight light cruiser-class warships descended upon the silent worlds orbiting the deep-red orb at the system’s centre. Invisible, tight-beam laser communications criss-crossed the void seeking the whereabouts and conditions of the other fleet members.

After several hours, contact was fully re-established. The fleet correlated their courses and calculated velocity descents for rendezvous, inbound towards the core worlds.

The Dark Angels began their exploration of system DX-619 in earnest.

Astelan was patient. It would be at least seven more days before the fleet had decelerated to something approaching orbit-navigable speed, and he was determined to use that time to gather as much information as possible about this uncharted stretch of the galaxy.

A radio signature, faint or perhaps even non-existent, had brought the Dark Angels here; the merest chattering murmur against the background radiation of the universe. It would most likely be nothing, a cosmic anomaly caused by an irregularity in the star’s emissions or a millennia-old echo of a civilisation long since turned to dust by the passing of an age. Such had been the case for ninety-five per cent of the systems the task force had investigated over the last five years. Almost all were deserted, for even at the height of mankind’s spread across the stars they were scattered thinly, pockets of humanity amongst the impossible vastness of interstellar space.

In the early years the forces of the Great Crusade had met with huge success, bringing the Imperial Truth to hundreds of worlds in the relatively densely populated systems around Terra. Here, in the yawning chasm between spiral arms, such colonies had always been sparse, and through the isolation of the Age of Strife it was possible that none at all had survived.

With every warp jump, Astelan always readied himself for action, for unexpected discovery, but with every jump he also hardened his expectations with the overwhelming probabilities involved in finding these far-flung outposts of humanity.

It was thus understandable that Astelan watched the data monitors in a less-than-expectant mood. As the fleet gradually converged, he subconsciously processed the scan results scrolling across dozens of screens that filled the walls of the bridge. Technicians fussed over control dials and comm-units, cursing as connections were lost, grinning to their colleagues when unexpected feedback results were received.

Astelan ignored them all, focusing entirely on one part of the main screen – the radio signature intercept relay. It was on that small wavering graph line that Astelan heaped his thoughts. It was a dull white line against the black of the screen, barely moving, showing nothing more than the static background hum of the universe’s birth.

Four days, he told himself. Four days for a positive contact. Four days before he ordered the fleet to turn around and head outsystem for another jump. It would be a waste of time to decelerate for longer, with the attendant need to accelerate again ready for warp jump, and so he gave his hopes four days to manifest.

Already resigned to disappointment by recent experience, Astelan tore his eyes away from the radio relay and gave a nod to his second-in-command, Galedan. The captain accepted control of the bridge with a nod of his own and took the Chapter commander’s place as Astelan turned and left.

‘Commander requested on the bridge.’

Galedan’s voice sounded metallic through the comm-grille of Astelan’s quarters, and its flat, precise tone gave no sense of the captain’s mood. Astelan was sat at his small desk, garbed in an open-fronted robe, poring over weapons manifests. There was no need to respond. Galedan would have been more specific if the Chapter commander’s presence was urgently needed, and the lack of a general alarm reassured Astelan that this was probably nothing more than some routine logging or scan result requiring his authorisation.

He placed the manifests neatly into the desk’s drawer and stood. A glance out of the small port showed the DX-619 star, much closer now. The dark shape of a planet could be clearly seen intruding upon the edge of the orb. That was nothing new, either. They had been closing on the world for three days now and they would reach it in two more. It was just a small shadow at the moment, like any other ball of rock they had encountered.

With a resigned weariness, Astelan made his way along the metal and plascrete innards of the ship to the bridge.

As the heavy double doors hissed open, Astelan was confronted by a scene of intense activity. The technicians were gathered in small clusters of fours and fives around certain instruments, and seemed to be checking each other’s calculations and findings.

Galedan turned, and Astelan saw a glimmer in his companion’s eyes and an expectant look. Unlike the Chapter commander, Galedan was in his armour, as befitted the bridge commander. Servos creaked as the captain gestured towards the main panel.

Astelan’s eyes immediately fixed on the radio relay as he strode into the room. He stopped in his tracks only three paces in. There was a spike on the small line. It was not particularly tall, but it was a definite abnormality. Regaining his composure, Astelan stepped up beside Galedan. The captain turned an inquiring look at one of the chief technicians and received a wordless nod in reply.

‘Report,’ said Astelan.

‘Confirmed artificial radio signature, commander,’ Galedan replied, unable to keep the hint of a smile from his lips.

Astelan turned his attention to the chief technician, a lanky man with thinning hair and grey stubble.

‘Automated? Location?’ said Astelan. A couple of times before they had come across old beacons or communications satellites miraculously still functioning centuries after those that had launched them had perished.

‘Fourth planet, definitely fluctuating, very likely to be non-automated,’ the technician reassured him.

‘Sound general alarm,’ ordered Astelan. It was a wise precaution, but Astelan did it as much to alert the crew that something was happening as he did out of military prudence. ‘Signal the rest of the fleet with our findings. Rendezvous adjustment to point sigma-absolute. Please convey an invitation to Chapter Commander Belath to join me as soon as possible.’

Further scanning revealed that the planet’s inhabitants had the capability to communicate by radio, and technicians soon confirmed that the inhabitants were human and spoke a dialect of the Terran language. The news that the fleet had indeed discovered an isolated human world brought Belath to the Spear of Truth for a meeting between the two Chapter commanders.

With the fleet at general quarters once more, Astelan stood in one of the Spear of Truth’s docking bays clad in his armour, awaiting the arrival of Belath. Accompanying Astelan were his three on-board company commanders and an honour guard from the First Company.

Around them the hangar was full of drop-pods, the immense shapes of Castellan-class bombers and Harbinger assault craft, as well as the hawk-like forms of five Deathbird interceptors. Racks of bombs and missiles, crates of ammunition and stacks of power packs filled much of the remaining space.

A dull clang above the Chapter commander signalled the arrival of Belath’s transport. In the ceiling, gears ground into action and a breeze wafted upwards as the inner lock doors opened and the air inside the hangar was drawn up into the void above. Hydraulics wheezing, the heavy lift brought down the sleek, eagle-prowed craft, lights strobing an orange warning to those below and throwing dancing shadows around the assembled Space Marines.

As the lift descended, Astelan considered how little he knew of his visitor. This was the first opportunity that he had been granted to meet his fellow Chapter commander face-to-face. He had exchanged comm contacts with Belath but only on a very formal basis. Belath’s fleet and Chapter had joined Astelan’s only two weeks earlier in the Calcabrina system. Astelan had been informed by Belath that the Dark Angels’ primarch, the Lion, had sent Belath to add his forces to the expedition.

Astelan knew nothing of Belath, but these days that was not surprising. The massive influx of warriors into the Legion following the rediscovery of Caliban meant that there were many commanders who had never met each other, tossed together on task forces and in warzones all across the galaxy.

That one such Chapter commander had been despatched to assist Astelan was curious for the simple fact that there had been little enough for Astelan’s Chapter to do and additional forces were unlikely to change that.

‘The Lion probably wants Belath to gain some experience alongside the veterans before sending him off on his own,’ said Galedan, guessing his commander’s thoughts by way of their long history together.

Astelan merely grunted a non-committal reply and kept his gaze upon the shuttle as the lift thudded to the hangar floor. With a hiss, the beak-like prow of the ship opened up to form a boarding ramp, and a lone power-armoured figure strode down.

To Astelan, Belath looked incredibly young, perhaps only thirty or thirty-five years old. Given that the Legion’s strength had increased by almost twenty thousand in the last few years, it was no shock to see that relatively junior Astartes were occupying command positions. After contact with Caliban many company officers had been promoted to Chapter commanders over the new recruits, and it was this that had seen Astelan’s own rapid rise to prominence. It had since been decided not to split the existing Terran veterans too much across the new Calibanite Chapters and so it was inevitable that some of the more recent additions would be commanded by all but untested warriors.

Belath had the pale skin and dark hair that was common to many Calibanites, though his eyes were a deep blue rather than the usual brown or grey. His hair was cropped exceptionally short, in stark contrast to Astelan’s long braids, and Belath’s expression was of tight-lipped solemnity.

The arrival stopped in front of Astelan and held a fist to his chest in salute. As Astelan nodded in greeting, he noticed something that caught his eye.

‘What’s that?’ Astelan asked, pointing to a heraldic symbol on Belath’s right shoulder plate, where normally a Space Marine’s organisational and rank markings would be painted. It was decorated with a quartered shield, white and blue, emblazoned with a sword held in the grip of a taloned foot.

‘That is the symbol of my order,’ replied Belath, somewhat taken aback. ‘The Order of the Raven’s Wing.’

Astelan turned an inquiring look to Galedan.

‘One of the knightly orders,’ the captain said. ‘A Calibanite rank badge.’

‘And that?’ said Astelan, redirecting his accusing finger to Belath’s other shoulder pad, which was painted a dark green beneath the Dark Angels symbol.

‘The glorious Lion El’Jonson has decreed that Calibanite warriors are to wear the green of our home world’s forests,’ said Belath with no small hint of defiance. ‘It is to act as a remembrance of the battles fought to tame Caliban under the leadership of the Lion.’

Astelan merely nodded without comment. The two Chapter commanders stood gauging each other in silence for several heartbeats before Astelan spoke again.

‘Welcome aboard the Spear of Truth,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance.’

Belath hesitated, and then broke into a disarming smile and shook Astelan’s hand.

‘It is my honour and privilege,’ the young Chapter commander said.

Followed by his entourage, Astelan led Belath from the docking bay into the dorsal concourse that ran the length of the Spear of Truth. As they headed towards a nearby conveyor, they passed open archways through which Astelan’s Space Marines could be seen readying for battle. Squad upon squad of power-armoured warriors ran through weapons or maintenance drills under the stern eyes of their sergeants. Banners were carefully taken down from their honoured positions on the walls of the chambers, paint carefully applied to dents and scratches on armour and solemn oaths renewed before the symbols of the Legion.

‘My Chapter is also ready to fight,’ assured Belath as the group stopped before the mesh door of the conveyor.

One of the honour guards stepped forwards and pushed a broad plate on the wall. The conveyor door slid aside for the pair to enter. Astelan dismissed the escort as he stepped inside. The conveyor was a cube some ten feet by every dimension, lined with thick plascrete walls. Astelan turned two dials as Galedan, Astoric and Melian followed the two Chapter commanders.

‘Are they ready not to fight?’ asked Astelan as the door slammed shut.

The conveyor jolted into action, rapidly rising up through the decks of the battle-barge.

‘I do not understand,’ said Belath, raising his voice so that it could be heard over the clatter of chains and gears.

With a shudder the conveyor halted for a moment and then continued, now heading horizontally towards the prow of the battle-barge. Astelan considered his reply for a moment before speaking.

‘We exist to bring the Emperor’s peace to the galaxy,’ said Astelan finally. ‘While we may bring war to millions, we should not crave it.’

‘We were created to fight,’ countered Belath.

‘Yes, and we are also charged with the responsibility of choosing who we fight against,’ said Astelan. ‘When we go to war, we must do so in the sure and utter knowledge that it is right. From this comes our wholehearted dedication to victory. We must be a terrible foe, and must do terrible things, in order that others will learn from our enemies’ follies. Once unleashed, out anger cannot, and should not, be stayed. Relentless on the attack, intractable in defence, these are the hallmarks of the Astartes. Yet, it is perhaps all too easy to stir ourselves to angry war for small reason. You must remember that a world crushed beneath our heel may be resentful, and requires garrisons and resources to guard it. A world that comes freely to accept the wisdom of the Emperor must be embraced as a brother for they will add strength and not detract it.’

‘We are perfected in body and mind to be the sword of the Lion,’ said Belath. ‘Where he directs, our blade falls. It is not our part to judge the punished, merely to administer the punishment. Let diplomats and bureaucrats argue the reasons and let us be dedicated to the annihilation of our enemies.’

As if to punctuate the young Chapter commander’s remarks, the conveyor suddenly halted and a bell rang somewhere above it. Galedan opened the door and the three captains stepped out into the corridor beyond. Belath made to take a pace but Astelan laid a hand upon his arm and held him back, turning Belath to face him.

‘You command more than a thousand of the finest warriors in the galaxy, as do I,’ said Astelan. ‘The Emperor has placed in me that power, but with it must come the judgement to wield it wisely. I do not know what you learnt about war in the Order of the Raven’s Wing, but it is bloody and costly and only a fool desires it.’

‘The Lion has chosen me to lead this Chapter,’ said Belath, gently but insistently prising his arm from Astelan’s grip. ‘I have my orders from the primarch and I will not hesitate to carry them out.’

Without offering a reply Astelan strode from the conveyor and turned left along the corridor. A great double door of carved wood stood out incongruously from the plascrete walls and metal decking. The carvings were of an angular, abstract design. Astelan ran his gauntleted fingers over the lines and curves, tracing them.

‘I fashioned these doors myself,’ the Chapter commander said, looking at Belath. ‘For many hours I laboured, copying designs from memory seen on the long halls I grew up in upon the Sibran Steppes of Terra. There is a tale in these patterns, for those who know how to read it.’

‘What tale?’ said Belath, his anger replaced by intrigue.

‘Later,’ replied Astelan reluctantly as he opened the doors. ‘We have a campaign to plan.’

‘Later then,’ said Belath, stepping past Astelan into the room beyond.

Inside was the operations room of the Spear of Truth. The walls were filled with banks of blank screens and comm-units, faced by long benches as yet vacant. The thrum of latent power filled the air, waiting to turn the quiet chamber into the epicentre of a military action that could conquer worlds.

Belath gave the equipment no second glance, having similar facilities upon his own vessel, and instead strode to a huge glass-topped oval tablet at the centre of the chamber. Astelan followed him with the others and directed Astoric to activate the hololith.

The glass flickered into life, a dull grey at first but warming up to a bright green. As the captain deftly manipulated the controls, a glowing three-dimensional sphere rose up from the table, slowly rotating. The press of more buttons illuminated small patches on the surface of the globe, and flickering lights sprang up in a haphazard maze around them.

‘This is the system’s fourth world,’ announced Astelan. ‘We are currently standing out some seven hundred thousand kilometres from low orbit on the standard ecliptic plane. No visual data is yet available, but I have highlighted sources of energy spikes and radio interference. Most likely they are urbanised areas.’

‘Populated?’ asked Belath with considerable excitement.

‘Yes, populated,’ said Astelan with a smile. ‘You seem to have joined us just in time. Five years we have been out in this wilderness with barely a glimmer of life to be seen. I hope you realise how fortunate you are.’

‘Certainly,’ said Belath. He took a deep breath and then turned to face Astelan, his fist held formally against his chest. ‘With your permission I would like to lead the assault.’

Astoric and Galedan both laughed, but were quickly silenced by a look from Astelan.

‘While your enthusiasm is commendable, it is a bit early to be talking of assaults,’ the Chapter commander told his young peer.

‘Do you plan to make contact?’ asked Belath, his eyes fixed on the hololithic representation of the world.

‘I have not yet decided,’ said Astelan. ‘It is a delicate situation.’

‘As far as we can determine, the inhabitants are as yet unaware of our presence,’ said Galedan, staring at the flickering three-dimensional image as if it was the world itself. ‘Contact would reveal us and we would lose the element of surprise.’

Astelan nodded in agreement.

‘It’s a mess of communications,’ he admitted. ‘I do not know how we would make contact, or with whom. There appear to be no planet-wide official frequencies. It seems that we have several states and governments to deal with.’

Belath looked up at this, his face thoughtful.

‘That could prove to be an advantage,’ he said. ‘We could introduce ourselves to one nation and deal directly with them – use them as a partner to reveal ourselves to the remaining populace.’

‘But with whom would we initially ally ourselves?’ said Astelan with a shake of his head. ‘We have no means of determining which power bloc is dominant, if any. Such an intercession could provoke conflict between the states, even civil war.’

‘We need more information before we can proceed,’ said Astoric. He glanced at the others before continuing. ‘Local knowledge.’

‘Communications techs are analysing everything that’s incoming,’ said Astelan. ‘We can unravel more through studying the comms-feed.’

‘Why not just go and take a look?’ said Belath. ‘Better still, we should capture some of the inhabitants for questioning.’

‘We’ll need somewhere isolated,’ said Galedan, peering at the hololith. He nodded in satisfaction and indicated an area on the southern continent. ‘This area seems sparsely populated. There’s scattered urban centres, but plenty of open space for us to land undetected.’

Astoric turned his attention to data streaming past the image of the planet.

‘It will be nightfall over that part of the planet in just under three ship hours,’ the captain said. ‘One moon will be in recession, the other dark.’

‘I will lead a short sortie to the surface to establish a ground base and gather more information,’ announced Astelan. ‘We’ll drop tonight with a reconnaissance force and see what we can find.’

‘Is that wise, commander?’ asked Galedan. ‘It would be more prudent if I or one of the other captains led the mission, you are too valuable to risk until we know more.’

Astelan fixed them all in turn with a fierce stare.

‘It’s been three years since I last set foot planetside,’ he growled. ‘I’m bloody well going to step onto this one first!’

As Astelan had wished it, so he was the first to step from the assault ramp of the huge Harbinger drop- transport. The drop-ship could be more likened to a small fortress than a transport, silhouetted against the cloudy sky. The outline of the drop-ship was broken by eight armoured turrets armed with lascannons. Smaller automated defences swivelled back and forth; rocket multi-launchers and anti-personnel heavy bolters peered towards the horizon with unliving eyes.

The whine of anti-grav engines caused Astelan to step aside from the ramp. Ten jetbikes swept past in pairs, their riders clad in stripped-down armour. A few metres from the drop-ship their engines erupted into piercing howls and the reconnaissance squadron fanned out swiftly. Soon the flicker of their jets disappeared into the darkness. Following closely behind, heralded by the deeper thrum of their engines, two land speeders shot from the bowels of the Harbinger, their heavy weapons ready to provide support to the bikers.

Squads of Astartes pounded down the ramps, the drop-ship trembling with the weight of dozens of booted feet upon plasteel. Squad by squad the company assembled under their captain before being dispersed to positions around the site.

Astelan cast his gaze left and right, taking in his surrounds, the landscape digitally projected onto his eyes by his helmet’s auto-senses so that the dark was almost as bright as day. According to Astoric there was a medium-sized conurbation three kilometres away. The dropsite was located in a patchwork of fields separated by chest-high walls and ditches. Here and there were dotted clusters of plain buildings. To the west was a thick forest, beyond which lay the town. The fields rose up onto steep-sided hills to the north, but the rest of the terrain was open and flat. It was these long fields of fire that had contributed towards Astelan’s decision to land at this point.

It was here that Astelan hoped to make contact with the planet’s inhabitants.

Having been present at three other first-contact situations, he knew that the next minutes and hours would be vital. Scans had shown no orbital craft, even basic communication satellites, so the shock of visitors arriving from space might well be considerable. Astelan had chosen this relatively small backwater to acclimatise to the world and to act as a gentle introduction to the natives – it was unwise to drop armoured warriors into the heart of a planet’s major cities unless widespread panic was the desired result.

That the world did not have space-capable craft was surprising but not unknown. So much knowledge had been lost during the long centuries of darkness, many worlds had even returned to cruel barbarism and superstition. At the moment, the world was neither friendly nor enemy, simply an intriguing enigma that Astelan wished to swiftly unravel.

Astelan set up his command post some five hundred metres from the Harbinger inside an abandoned farmstead. It was a set of simple cubic constructions of plascrete, of a pattern laid down by the standard template data seen all across the galaxy during mankind’s expansion to the stars. As other units moved to similar positions in buildings and along walls surrounding the dropsite, Astelan idly mused whether other standard template construct materiel would be found. It was not a particular concern of his, but the Mechanicum of Mars would be interested.

The sound of a distant detonation tore Astelan from his thoughts and he dashed outside, ducking his considerable frame beneath the low lintel of the doorway. Amongst the trees a pall of smoke rose into the air. He saw flashes of flame and a few moments later came the crash of more explosions.

His comm-piece crackled inside his helmet and Astelan gave the sub-vocal command that activated the pickup. It was Sergeant Argeon, the leader of the recon sweep.

‘It looks like our small town is, in fact, a military installation, commander,’ the sergeant reported blithely. ‘I don’t think they were expecting visitors.’

Astelan swore loudly. The jetbikes were almost three kilometres distant, several minutes from supporting units. Before he could make any further analysis, the keen auto-senses of his armour attracted his attention.

It was the unmistakeable whine of approaching jets.

The defence arrays on the Harbinger also detected the incoming craft and a hail of missiles streaked skywards upon trails of fire, screaming to the west. Explosions blistered in the low clouds that hung over the whole sky, but there was no way of telling if any had hit their targets.

No more than a minute later the answer came. Small black shapes appeared, a long chain of them drifting downwards towards the Harbinger. They erupted in blossoms of incendiary destruction around the drop ship and upon its hull, splashing some form of burning fuel in their wake. Evidently at least one aircraft had survived.

As the Chapter commander processed this new development, Argeon’s voice was in Astelan’s ear again.

‘They are readying for an attack on our position,’ the sergeant said. ‘What are your orders?’

‘Pull back a kilometre and establish a new cordon,’ Astelan replied. Jetbikes were for scouting, not for mounting a resistant defence.

‘Acknowledged, commander,’ said Argeon.

The tactical display showed that Sergeant Cayvan was moving his three squads forwards on his own initiative, securing the boundary of the woods. Astelan left the experienced sergeant to his own devices, confident that he knew what he was doing.

‘Withdrawal pattern, commander?’ asked Sergeant Jak in the comm-piece.

‘Not until we know what their aerial capability is,’ said Astelan. There was little sense in piling the troops back onto the burning Harbinger until Astelan knew whether the enemy had the means to shoot down the transport.

A different tone signalled a message incoming from orbit.

‘I have coordinates for orbital barrage confirmed.’ It was Belath, his tone quiet and assured.

‘Negative,’ responded Astelan. ‘They might not have orbital craft but we have no idea if they have ground-based defences capable of striking back. Do not give away your position.’

‘I understand,’ said Belath. ‘I am dispensing craft for atmospheric dominance.’

‘Yes, cover the landing zone and put your companies on their ships in preparation for landing,’ Astelan said.

‘They already are, Astelan,’ replied Belath with a note of umbrage.

‘Stand ready for my word then,’ said Astelan.

By now the Harbinger was ablaze along half its length. Its surviving turrets were firing a near-continuous stream of anti-air rockets into the clouds. Their approach all but masked by the din, more unseen jets screeched overhead and a short while later the ground was rocked by massive explosions.

The heavy bombs tore huge craters in the grassy mud and sent plumes of stones and dirt high into the air. Several scored direct hits on the landing craft, tearing out great chunks of plasteel armour and rockcrete superstructure.

More thunderous detonations swiftly followed, the explosions much smaller than those of the bombs though more accurate and numerous. It appeared that artillery was also being brought to bear on the drop zone.

The rattle of small-arms fire drifted from the woods, interspersed with the heavier cracks of bolter rounds. Cayvan’s squads were being engaged by their new enemy. Astelan swore again. He had so little information with which to construct a suitable strategy. The enemy had unknown numbers, unknown positions and unknown capabilities.

In the face of his own ignorance, the Chapter commander fell back on the principal strategy of the Astartes – attack and dominate.

‘Cayvan, hold position,’ Astelan barked quickly over the comm-net. ‘Sergeant Argeon, I want the locations of those artillery pieces relayed to Chapter Commander Belath. Jak, deploy your Devastators onto the hills and provide cover fire. Move the rest of your squads north and support Cayvan. Melian, stand ready to reinforce either flank.’

His warriors thus set into motion, Astelan ducked back inside the farmhouse. It was empty inside but for a few broken pieces of furniture and discarded rags. Sergeant Gemenoth had erected a tactical display unit in the centre of the main room. It was a simple vertical glass plate and projector, linked into the comm-net of the Dark Angels’ battle-barge in geostationary orbit thousands of kilometres above them.

The screen showed the rough topography of the surrounding area, and the locations of Astelan’s squads were marked out by symbols that juddered across the artificial battlefield. Astelan tried to match the fragmented display and the gunfire and explosions outside with the reports buzzing over his helmet’s comm-link. It was no good; he still felt he had no clear picture of what was happening.

‘Squads two and three, form up on my position,’ he told his guards as he moved back outside.

The Dark Angels closed in on Astelan as another salvo of shells tore at the ground around the farmstead, showering them with clods of earth, shrapnel and pieces of stone clattering upon their armour. As Astelan vaulted over the low wall encompassing the group of buildings, he cast his gaze to the woods.

There was still a considerable amount of firing and detonations tore at the treetops. There seemed little threat from other directions so it was towards the forest that he led his men.

Another barrage landed around the Dark Angels as they jogged towards the treeline. Astelan felt the shockwave buffet him, while battle-brothers Rathis and Kherios were thrown from their feet by the impacts. Astelan stopped and turned with concern but the two Astartes pushed back to their feet and retrieved their bolters, their armour pitted and scored but not breached. Assured that neither was injured, Astelan continued towards the trees at a brisk pace, slipping his power sword from its sheath and unholstering his bolt pistol.

The trees were closely packed, the thick canopy of foliage swathing the woods in darkness. A few ferns broke through the leaf mould but the woods were otherwise free of undergrowth. The ground was soft underfoot and the heavy Astartes sank into the mulch, their boots leaving deep prints in the rotting leaves.

Muzzle flashes and the roar of bolters drew them to the left, and barely a hundred metres under the trees, Astelan saw the first of Cayvan’s squads. The Astartes were standing just beneath the lip of a long, low ridge, trading fire with an enemy as yet out of Astelan’s view. Bullets kicked up sprays of mud and pattered from the Dark Angels’ armoured suits.

Astelan reached the squad, and their sergeant turned to address him.

‘Sergeant Riyan is flanking to the north, Chapter commander,’ the Astartes said. ‘He believes several hundred attackers, maybe up to a thousand, are trying to push through to the landing site.’

‘Then we must push back,’ said Astelan.

He waved for the squad to follow him and stepped over the ridge. Astelan saw immediately that the enemy were using the trees and undulating ground for cover, darting into view, firing their crude automatic rifles and then ducking back out of sight.

As soon as he strode over the ridge, the intensity of fire rose sharply. The flare of gunfire seemed concentrated to his right as the fusillade tore bark from trees and slashed through low-hanging branches. He felt impacts across his chest and right shoulder but paid them no heed.

Behind him the squad advanced in two sections, one laying down a storm of bolter fire while the other advanced. The foremost Astartes then took up position and unleashed their own weapons while the rest of the squad moved up past them. The explosive-tipped bolts tore chunks out of the trees and ripped apart any enemy soldier unfortunate enough to be hit.

As they closed in, Astelan could make out his foes more clearly. They were dark-skinned and dressed in drab blue overalls. They looked more like farmhands or factory workers than soldiers, but they held their ground as the Astartes approached and their fire was both accurate and determined.

Glancing around, Astelan saw the bulky shapes of other Astartes moving in from the left and the right, pressing forwards alongside their Chapter commander.

A bullet struck Astelan’s helmet, its impact knocking his head back. Dizzied by the hit he fell to one knee. Static blurred the vision in his right eye as his helmet’s auto-senses attempted to recalibrate themselves.

Astelan could see indistinct shapes along a low ridge just to his right. Though half-blinded, he raised his pistol by instinct and fired off eight shots, the whole magazine, in the direction of the enemy. Two soldiers were torn apart by the bolts and the rest ducked for cover. Several seconds passed and still the vision in his right eye was fuzzy.

With a grunt, the Chapter commander stepped sideways and stood with his back to a tree. Shells were now erupting around him, blasting apart foliage and bark, and bullets whined and splintered close by. Unperturbed, Astelan stowed his weapons and then twisted the helmet free, which came away from the neck guard with a hiss of escaping gases. He hooked the helmet to the belt band of his armour.

Tasting blood, he reached up to his right cheek. There was blood on the fingertips of his gauntlet. Astelan had no idea how deep the wound was, but registered no discomfort, so he assumed it was superficial. His enhanced blood would have clotted the wound already. He calmly reloaded his bolt pistol and drew his sword again.

Astelan resumed his advance, cracking off single shots as heads and limbs moved into sight from behind the trees. At close quarters the fighting was becoming chaotic. Rounds zipped and screamed past every few seconds, though none struck him. The artillery fire was slackening, perhaps for fear of hitting their own soldiers or perhaps from some action by the Astartes. Still, a few shells were detonating close at hand, spraying Astelan with charred leaves and baked mud.

A new sound entered his consciousness: the throbbing bass note of an autocannon. The sound was reassuring, and Astelan looked to his right and saw an Astartes laying down a curtain of fire with the heavy weapon, his legs braced wide apart, a torrent of shell casings clattering off his backpack.

This proved too much for the enemy and their fire quickly diminished as fighters were driven into cover by the autocannon’s fearsome torrent of fire. In the lull, the Astartes charged forwards, bolters coughing, battle cries ringing from the trees.

It seemed that Riyan’s flanking manoeuvre had been successful, for the enemy were streaming away from their positions, heading back westwards, while more Astartes moved in from the north. Tongues of fire licked out through the trees from flamers, while bright lances of multilaser fire strobed with deadly effect along the foxholes and shell scrapes the enemy had dug into the ground.

The retreat turned into a rout before the fury of the Dark Angels. Some of the soldiers threw down their weapons in their flight, their panicked shouts drowned out intermittently by the crack of exploding bolter rounds, the hiss and boom of frag missiles and the distinctive snap of lascannons.

‘Hold pursuit,’ Astelan ordered. ‘Find me a dozen wounded for prisoners.’

‘Armour! Armour! Armour!’ Riyan suddenly shouted over the comm. ‘Tracked fighting vehicles approaching our position from the north and west.’

There was the sound of an explosion close at hand and the line buzzed with static. Another voice cut in.

‘This is Brother Nikolan,’ the Astartes said. ‘Armour has large-calibre weapons. Sergeant Riyan is seriously wounded.’

‘Jak, move up to Riyan’s position and take command,’ snapped Astelan.

The sergeant gave an affirmative and headed off northwards at a run. Astelan waved for the remaining Astartes to follow him to the north-west.

Within a few minutes, the growl of combustion engines drifted through the trees. Denied his auto-senses, Astelan relied on the reports of his battle-brothers to identify the tanks’ positions in the darkness. Exhaust plumes lit up like fireworks on their helmet displays and a steady stream of co-ordinates was passed across the comm-net.

The stench of oil-based fuel wafted from the west, and Astelan peered into the gloom. A moment later he saw the glaring blossom of a muzzle flash highlighting a tank less than two hundred metres away, its bulk concealed behind an outcrop of rock. The shell exploded just behind the Chapter commander and he heard cries from wounded Astartes as grit and dirt showered down onto him.

Now that he knew where it was, Astelan could make out the tank’s shape a little better. It was compact, its turret seemingly oversized for its hull, with a short-barrelled cannon. Secondary weapons opened fire with flashes, and more bullets screamed past. The turret adjusted slightly and the main gun angled down towards the Dark Angels’ position.

‘Disperse!’ bellowed Astelan, sprinting to his right. His power armour took him across the ground in huge leaps, covering half a dozen metres with every pace.

The explosion smashed apart a tree trunk just metres from where the squad had been stood. Brother Andubis was flung sideways by the detonation, smashed head-first against another tree. He sat up and raised his arm to show that he was not badly injured.

As the squad regrouped, Brother Alexian took up a firing position with his lascannon. He shouldered the anti-tank weapon like an immense sniper rifle, peering along its sight towards the hull-down tank. A beam of blinding energy spat forwards as he pressed the firing stud, smashing into the tank just above the turret ring. Flames sprang up immediately, and in their light Astelan saw helmeted figures popping the hatches and scrambling free. Two cleared the wreck before the ammunition inside ignited, blowing apart the vehicle in a spectacular detonation that sent fire and shrapnel high into the air. The light of the explosion revealed scores of soldiers were now moving back into position to attack, bolstered by their armoured support. The Astartes levelled their weapons and began to fire once more.

Over the din of bolter rounds and the burning tank, Astelan recognised a loud roar overhead: the tell-tale engines of a Castellan bomber. Explosions rippled through the blasted trees barely a hundred metres from the Astartes’ positions, tearing apart scores of enemy. The rapid barking of heavy bolter fire heralded a strafing run that cut down dozens more. Satisfied with his work, the pilot banked his craft back towards the landing zone.

Astelan sent the order for the rest of the force to fall back by squads and secure the perimeter of the landing zone once more. Though the enemy attempted a counter-attack, the swift intervention of Castellans and Deathbirds pouring missiles and fire into the woods soon convinced the opposing soldiers to allow the Astartes to pull back in peace.

Back at the landing site, Astelan saw that though the enemy had suffered horrendously, the Dark Angels were not without their losses too, mostly from bombs, artillery strikes and tank guns.

Clusters of wounded Astartes sat or lay around the force’s three Apothecaries, who stapled wounds, cauterised gashes and did what else they could to patch up the injured warriors until they could receive proper treatment back aboard ship. Most were back on their feet and ready to fight within minutes. Three would never fight again.

Astelan watched with grim resignation as Vandrillis, his Chief Apothecary, moved from one dead Astartes to the next. He disengaged the cables of the Astartes’s backpack and pulled it aside. Vandrillis then used his reductor, a complex array of blades mounted on his forearm, to cut through the back armour plate to expose the flesh below.

The shiny, hard shell of the battle-brother’s black carapace was slick with blood. Vandrillis drilled down into the flesh of the dead Astartes and then punched the reductor deep into the exposed spine. With a twist and a yank, he tore free the lower progenoid, an egg-shaped gland that stored the Astartes’s gene-seed so that it could be recovered and implanted into a new recruit. Vandrillis placed the precious organ into a vacu-flask and continued his bloody work on the Astartes’s neck.

Though it was a reminder of the fate of every Astartes, to die in battle, it was also reassuring. Every warrior carried within him the primarch’s gene-seed and with it the means to create more Astartes. To know that even in death the Legion would be strengthened was a thought that allowed the Astartes to fight without fear, to make the noblest sacrifice without hesitation.

Astelan knew that his fate would not be on the end of a reductor, for his progenoids had matured over two decades ago and had been removed in the relative safety of a shipboard medical bay. He had made his contribution to future generations of Dark Angels and could fight now safe in the knowledge that others would be able to follow.

Turning away from the grisly scene, Astelan signalled for Gemenoth to bring him the long-range comm-array; with his helmet damaged it was the only way for Astelan to contact the fleet. He punched the frequency of Belath’s battle-barge into the readout.

‘Signal received, this is Belath,’ the Chapter commander answered. ‘What is your situation?’

‘Get us off this rock,’ Astelan replied.

The withdrawal of Astelan’s landing force was to last for the rest of the night, during which the local forces tried three more times to attack the drop-zone. Under heavy air cover, three more Harbingers were brought down from Belath’s fleet and the Dark Angels were able to collapse back to their transports under the covering fire of the heavy weapons and armoured support that the reconnaissance force had lacked.

Astelan was the last to leave, staring balefully at the ravaged drop-zone as the ramp closed in front of him. All he had wanted was to secure some locals for intelligence, and now he had overseen a significant battle. In the dim light of dawn he looked at the ravaged forests and crater-pocked field that had been the battleground. This did not bode well for a peaceful introduction to the Enlightenment of the Emperor.

He was not surprised to find Belath aboard the Spear of Truth’s operations room, awaiting his arrival.

‘We must move fast and regain the initiative,’ said Belath. ‘We have lost the element of surprise and even now the armed forces of the world will be at full readiness. The more time we give them, the harder the battles ahead.’

‘What are you proposing?’ asked Astelan, his gaze directed towards the glowing orb above the hololith.

‘While you were sparring with the locals, I conducted more analysis of the transmissions data,’ said Belath, leaning with his fists on the edge of the glass tablet, his eyes fixed on Astelan. ‘The locals refer to the world as Byzanthis. There are six continents, each in essence a separate nation-state. We strike at each state simultaneously, dropping from orbit into their capitals. We disable their governments and military command within hours, and isolate power and transport networks in a matter of days.’

‘Divide and conquer?’ said Astelan, finally meeting the stare of Belath.

Before Belath could answer, the door hissed open and Galedan strode in.

‘You should listen to this,’ he said, crossing to the comms centre. As he dialled in a frequency a tinny voice crackled from the speakers.

‘–ed. Unwarranted attack on the sovereign territory of Confederate Vanz will not be tolerated,’ the voice was saying. ‘Byzanthis Committee of Nations has convened to decide a response. Confederate Vanz will not stand alone. Aggressor strangers will be resisted. Unwarran–’

‘It’s a looped message on a broad range of frequencies,’ said Galedan, switching off the unit.

‘We can reply?’ asked Astelan.

‘Of course,’ said Galedan.

‘This is a distraction,’ said Belath. ‘We need to strike now!’

‘We have a means to make peaceful contact,’ said Astelan. ‘Why choose to ignore it?’

‘There is little sense of a planetary nationhood,’ Belath argued. ‘Two states are currently at war, the others have all fought against one another on and off over the past centuries. Crush each state individually and the world falls.’

‘There is a global council, this Committee of Nations,’ said Astelan. ‘The situation is easily retrieved through them.’

‘Diplomats and ambassadors for the most part,’ countered Belath. ‘You have not heard what I have heard. The Committee of Nations is considered weak and ineffective. They have no real power or control.’

‘Then we will give them that power,’ said Astelan. ‘We shall make amends for the inadvertent conflict and communicate with the council. The state governments will be forced to treat with us through the Committee of Nations, and from that we will forge a common fate for the whole planet.’

‘And if they refuse?’ said Belath, straightening. ‘We simply give them more time to swell their armies. Not only will more delays give these forces time to build their strength, they will spread propaganda about their supposed victory over us.’

‘It does not strike me as right that we give these people no chance for a peaceful solution,’ argued Astelan. ‘What would history think of us? What would Caliban be now if the Emperor had come with a closed fist rather than an open hand?’

‘Caliban is different,’ said Belath.

‘Because it is your world?’ said Astelan, pacing towards Belath.

‘Because we have the Lion,’ said Belath confidently. ‘The Emperor had no choice but to treat with us. Any invasion would have been costly and counter-productive.’

‘And so because no primarch dwells here, we should offer them no choice?’ snarled Astelan, stepping right in front of Belath, who stood his ground. ‘Their blood, their lives, are worth less because of a chance of fate?’

‘It was not chance that brought the Lion to Caliban,’ said Belath with quiet assurance. ‘Destiny brought our leader to us.’

Astelan did not speak for a moment and stepped back, rubbing the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

‘I will contact the Committee of Nations and explain our peaceful intentions,’ Astelan said finally. ‘Galedan, make preparations.’

The captain left the room, casting a wary glance at Belath as he walked past.

‘I cannot consent to this course of action,’ said Belath as soon as the door had hissed shut. He raised a placating hand before Astelan could respond. ‘It is clear we cannot agree on this. We must send word to the primarch for guidance, so that his orders might be understood by us.’

Astelan laughed but there was no mirth in tone.

‘We are Chapter commanders of the Dark Angels,’ he said scornfully. ‘We cannot run to the Lion or the Emperor every occasion that we face difficulty. We are leaders of an Astartes Legion. We must act, not vacillate. If you wish to cry off to Caliban, then you are free to leave. I am staying here and contacting the council.’

‘This is a war of reconquest,’ spat Belath. ‘What we are building is more important than the lives of a few men, larger than the sacrifice of thousands, even millions. You are soft, and I wonder what the Lion will make of your lack of courage.’

With a wordless shout Astelan seized Belath by the edges of his breastplate and charged him into the wall, plascrete cracking under the impact.

‘Your lack of respect will not be tolerated,’ snarled Astelan.

‘Nor yours,’ replied Belath calmly, his blue eyes piercing in their intensity.

‘I fought for the Emperor and he chose me to be the tip of his spear,’ said Astelan, his tone low and measured. ‘My Chapter has fought on a dozen worlds against foes the like of which you have no comprehension. We have earnt battle honours given to us by the Emperor of Mankind, and I have earnt his respect and praise.’

‘I too have my honours,’ replied Belath with no sign of trepidation. ‘I was the first of my order to be chosen by the Astartes, I am the first to be made Chapter commander. I have been raised on traditions far older than your Legion, Terran. Many generations of my forefathers fought for the Order of the Raven’s Wing and their blood flows in my veins. You may look down in dismay at the heritage of Caliban, but it is your home now. Its people will be your people. It is the world of the Lion, and his traditions shall be the traditions of the Dark Angels. It is by his judgement that I mark my worth, not by yours.’

Astelan released his grip and sighed.

‘I say not these things to insult your heritage, nor as a threat, but as a warning,’ the Chapter commander said quietly. ‘Be ready for battle at all times, but do not rush heedlessly towards it. It is not just the lives of those below that you condemn, but some of your own. Your battle-brothers will shed their blood in this cause, and some will lay their lives upon its altar for you. Do you not owe it to them to make sure that what you do is righteous and unavoidable?’

Belath turned away and walked towards the door. He stooped just short of it and turned.

‘It was your mistake that has precipitated this situation,’ he declared. ‘I cannot forgive that but I shall allow you the chance to redeem yourself. You have seniority and I would not have it known that I abandoned a battle-brother.’

With that he opened the door and strode out, leaving Astelan with his dark thoughts.

Astelan cast his gaze upwards in frustration, his fists clenched. He was sat at the main comms panel of the operations room, with Galedan, Belath and a horde of technicians on hand. He had spent the greater part of the last two days dealing with various Byzanthisian functionaries in his attempts to organise a delegation; two days spent talking to bureaucrats and politicians had left his patience very thin. Now he was finally talking to somebody who had the power to convene the Committee of Nations.

‘There was no premeditated attack,’ he repeated, forcing himself to remain calm. ‘I only acted to defend my men.’

There was a pause while his message was transmitted. A few seconds passed before the response came from the planet below.

‘What assurances do you give that you do not “defend” yourselves again?’ the voice of Secretary Maoilon hissed from the speakers. ‘You expect to land troops at a military base and not consider it provocation?’

‘Our choice of landing site was an error that I deeply regret,’ said Astelan, and never had he felt the truth of his own words so strongly. ‘I will attend a meeting of your committee and explain everything. All of your questions are best answered face-to-face.’

Again there was a pause filled with static.

‘You alone will come?’ asked Maoilon. ‘Unarmed?’

‘I and my fellow commander,’ said Astelan. ‘Two of us. Unarmed. Transmit the location of the chambers and a time suitable for the meeting.’

‘Treachery will be dealt with harshly,’ said Maoilon.

‘There will be no treachery,’ said Astelan and then he signalled for the radio link to be cut. He swivelled in his chair to face Galedan. ‘Organise whatever needs to be organised. Belath and I will teleport in.’

‘We should have squads ready to follow us,’ said Belath. ‘They will be able to deploy within moments onto our location should the locals attack us.’

Astelan considered arguing, but from the expression on Belath’s face he had already made his decision.

‘Do what you will as precaution, but you will accompany me unarmed,’ said Astelan.

‘Agreed,’ said Belath.

Crackling energy swathed Astelan, bathing the Chapter commander and his squad in an actinic glare as the teleporter activated. Astelan felt the usual jarring dislocation and a burning sensation throughout his whole body. In milliseconds the transition was over, but just like the Spear of Truth emerging from the warp, Astelan needed a moment to gather his wits.

He blinked rapidly to clear his fogged vision and found himself in a wide circular hall built from white marble, or some similar local stone. It was a circular amphitheatre in layout, with rows of seats ranged around the low central platform on which he was stood. Five sets of steps led up to tall, narrow double doors spaced evenly around the hall’s circumference. Halfway between each set of doors were windows of the same proportion through which Astelan glimpsed a deep-blue sky.

The hall was filled with people, some dressed in strangely cut suits, others in bright robes or simple smocks. There were all manner of different skin colours and features, jewellery and headdresses, but the hundreds packed into the auditorium had one thing in common: the absolute terror written upon their faces.

Most were wide-eyed and open-mouthed, some were visibly shaking and sweating and others were on their feet or cramming themselves into the backs of their chairs in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and their new arrivals.

A few moments later more teleporter energy crackled across the floor to Astelan’s left, and where there had been empty air now stood Belath. He was dressed, as was Astelan, in simple robes of black. At his right ear Belath wore a comm-piece and Astelan could see that it was on open transmission; the Chapter commander’s troops in orbit would hear everything said.

Astelan raised his arms out and held his palms up to show that he held no weapon.

‘I am Chapter Commander Astelan of the Dark Angels Legion.’ Astelan’s voice boomed out and rebounded from the walls and ceiling, carrying easily to every part of the broad chamber. ‘I am here as the representative of the Emperor of Mankind. Who here has authority to speak with me?’

The assembled delegates glanced nervously at each other until an elderly man limped forwards, a walking cane in his right hand. He was bald but for a few wisps of hair and a thin beard that hung to his chest. His skin was like dried leather and a cataract scarred his left eye. The remaining good eye regarded Astelan with a mixture of apprehension and awe.

The elderly man hobbled forwards to stand in front of the giant Astartes. Astelan was almost two feet taller than the man who stood before him, and his broad body could have contained his frail frame ten times over. The man stood regarding the newcomer with his good eye, and Astelan returned his stare with a steady gaze.

‘I am Chairman Paldrath Grane,’ said the man. His voice was strong and unwavering, utterly at odds with his physical condition. ‘I speak for the Committee of Nations, but others will speak for their own.’

‘Your world is but one of many thousands spread across the stars,’ Astelan said, speaking slowly and clearly. ‘The ancient empire of man was shattered, but a new power has arisen. From ancient Terra the Emperor of Mankind now builds a new galaxy upon the remnants of the old. Humanity unites under his leadership and benefits from his protection.’

‘Of ancient Terra, we know not,’ said Grane. ‘Old worlds, old star empires, this we recall in our most prized histories. You come with war and offer peace. What right has your Emperor to rule Byzanthis?’

‘By his own power and destiny has he been chosen to lead us,’ said Astelan. ‘Prosperity, technology and peace will be yours if you embrace the Emperor’s Enlightenment.’

‘And if we refuse?’ This was from an equally ancient man sat in the front row of seats just to Astelan’s left. The Chairman turned with a scowl, which was returned in kind.

‘Identify yourself,’ said Belath, stepping forwards.

‘President Kinloth of Confederate Vanz,’ the man replied. Though old, he was more sturdily built than Grane, with a full head of short grey hair and a close-cropped beard. His eyes were sunken and ringed with dark lines and his teeth much stained. ‘It was my army you attacked four days ago.’

‘A misunderstanding, it was not our intent to fight but to make peaceful contact,’ said Astelan.

‘And what peace you bring to families of two thousand, seven hundred and eighty men killed?’ demanded Kinloth. ‘What peace you bring to one thousand, six hundred and fifteen more that lie in hospitals?’

‘The peace of the knowledge that no more need die here,’ said Belath.

‘They will be remembered for their sacrifices and gloried by the Emperor’s servants,’ said Astelan quickly, hiding his annoyance. ‘None fall in the Emperor’s service and go neither unheeded nor unremarked, nor their families unrewarded.’

‘If what you say is true, Confederate Vanz will welcome your Emperor when he arrives,’ Kinloth said. His eyes had lit up at the mention of reward and it was clear he saw some personal gain in the unfolding events.

‘Lashkar Kerupt will not welcome your Emperor,’ said another dignitary, a short middle-aged woman in a flowing silken red dress embroidered with butterfly designs. Her dark hair was bound into a tight knot, and her face was painted with yellow and her lips with black. She stood and turned to address those behind her.

‘Listen to me!’ she cried out. ‘Strangers come with hand offering peace while holding gun behind backs. Our astro-stations detect strangers’ ships above our cities. Warships intent on destroying. Strangers come to kill or enslave our world. We must take hostages to guarantee freedom.’

Astelan darted a glance towards Belath at the mention of ships in orbit above the world’s cities, but the Chapter commander gave no acknowledgement.

‘Seize them!’ cried the woman and the doors were flung open. From entrances all around the hall black-unformed soldiers burst into the room, stubby carbines in their hands.

‘Wait!’ Astelan shouted, both a warning to the soldiers and a command to Belath.

‘Protect your commanders!’ snapped Belath, his eyes regarding Astelan with cold hostility.

No more than two seconds after his command, the air around the pair snapped with energy. Bulky figures shimmered into view encircling the pair; ten massively armoured Terminators raised their combi-bolters and opened fire. The initial salvo was devastating, tearing holes in chests, ripping off limbs and decapitating by the score. Such desultory return fire as existed pinged harmlessly from the inches-thick ceramite-and-adamantium bonded shells of the warriors’ armour.

‘Withdraw,’ said Astelan as bullets skipped from the tiled floor and plucked at his robe.

Facing foes coming at them from every direction, the Terminators formed a defensive ring and began to walk towards one of the doorways. Hysterical shouting and panicked shrieks mixed with the deafening crash of combi-bolters. The delegates clawed and kicked at each other as they streamed away from the Astartes. Some snatched up weapons from fallen soldiers but were blasted apart in turn. Stepping over blasted and blistered bodies, the Astartes retreated up the steps, through the doorway and into the room beyond.

They were in some form of small antechamber, filled with soldiers. As the Astartes entered, the soldiers turned and fled without firing a shot. Two Terminators moved forwards to secure the other doorway, and for the moment Astelan found himself in a centre of calm.

‘They detected your ships!’ he bellowed at Belath. ‘I told you not to move without my command!’

‘I have made no move as yet,’ Belath replied calmly. ‘Drop forces stand by to respond to my command. I await your consent.’

Astelan opened his mouth but said nothing, unable to give voice to the mixture of rage and incredulity that was boiling up inside.

‘Should I strike now or shall we withdraw again?’ Belath asked, his voice barely heard by Astelan through the thundering of his heartbeat in his ears.

‘What?’ Astelan said.

‘Shall I order the attack or shall we teleport back to orbit?’ Belath said. ‘All of their leaders are here. Those who wish to surrender can do so now. Those that wish to fight will face the consequences of their decisions.’

‘This is how you wanted it to happen, isn’t it?’ said Astelan.

‘I had no idea the natives were capable of detecting a vessel in low orbit,’ said Belath. ‘However, we cannot rectify that and should act as necessary to preserve our troops and foster victory. To delay further would be a grave error.’

Astelan took a few paces back and forth, his brow creased in a frown as he considered what to do. Eyes narrowed with anger, he turned his glare upon Belath.

‘Do it!’ Astelan snapped. ‘Order the assault!’

Belath nodded, showing no signs of emotion. He turned away and whispered something into his comm-piece.

‘It is done,’ Belath said, turning his attention back to Astelan. ‘What of the council?’

‘I fear there is little to be salvaged here,’ said Astelan.

The two of them pushed past the Terminators guarding the door back to the main chamber, whose weapons had been silent for more a minute. The council hall was a scene of utter ruin. The marble was slicked with blood, chairs smashed and bodies, of soldier and delegate, were piled up around the doors. Some still moved, groaning from their wounds. Slumped at the bottom of a flight of steps was Grane, a fist-sized hole in his lower back. Astelan crossed the chamber to gaze down at the decrepit Chairman. There was no sign of life.

A thunderous rumble shook the floor and Astelan looked up sharply. Another followed swiftly after, shaking the entire hall and sending dust and shards of stone showering down from the ceiling above.

‘It has begun,’ said Belath, gesturing towards a high window. Astelan followed his pointing finger and gazed outside.

As he walked towards the window Astelan could see fire raining down from the heavens as the ship lying in space above unleashed its bombardment. The city stretched for kilometres in every direction around the hill upon which the council chambers sat. Avenues of high buildings radiated outwards and long terraces of houses clung upon steep hills in the distance. Plasma warheads detonated upon the boulevards and bombardment cannon shells obliterated parks and tenements.

After several minutes the devastating torrent of fury abated. Astelan looked upwards and saw the dark shadows of drop-ships growing in size. On fiery tails drop-pods screamed downwards, slamming into the roofs of buildings and smashing into cracked and burning streets. Their doors opened like armoured petals and the Astartes within disembarked with bolter and flamer. Astelan could hear nothing from here but could imagine the crack of bolter and the screams of the dying.

The wrath of the Dark Angels had been set free.

Belath stepped up to the window and gazed out, the fires reflected in his eyes. He turned his head and looked at Astelan.

‘The cities will be under our control within hours,’ he said. ‘The world, in a few days.’

‘The blood of all who die is on your hands,’ said Astelan. ‘I will not let this go unpunished.’

Belath smiled at that moment, and it was a hard, emotionless expression that chilled Astelan to see it.

‘You do not decide guilt or punishment,’ said the young Chapter commander. ‘My astropaths already send word to Caliban of what occurs here. You will soon learn the consequences of disobedience, Terran.’

Midnight services had once been crowded at the Church of the Lightning Stone. Fear of the darkness had drawn people in search of sanctuary in a way the daylight could not. For as long as anyone could remember, the dark had been a time of blood, a time when raiders attacked, monstrous engines descended on wings of fire and the violence of the warlike thunder giants was fiercest.

Uriah Olathaire remembered seeing an army of those giants as it marched to battle, when he had been little more than a child. Though seven decades had passed since then, Uriah could picture them as though it were yesterday: towering brutes who carried swords of caged lightning and were clad in plumed helmets and burnished plate the colour of a winter sunset.

But most of all, he remembered the terrible magnificence of their awesome, unstoppable power.

Nations and rulers had been swept away in the dreadful wars these giants made, entire armies drowned in blood as they clashed in battles the likes of which had not been seen since the earliest ages of the world.

Now the fighting was over, the grand architect of this last world war emerging from the host of toppled despots, ethnarchs and tyrants to stand triumphant on a world made barren by conflict.

An end to war should have been a wondrous thing, but the thought gave Uriah no comfort as he shuffled along the nave of his empty church. He carried a flickering taper, the small flame wavering in the cold wind sighing through the cracks in the stonework and the ancient timbers of the great doors to the narthex.

Yes, the midnight service had once been popular, but few now dared come to his church, such was the ridicule and scorn heaped upon them. Changed days from the beginning of the war, when fearful people had sought comfort in his promises of a benign divinity watching over them.

He held his gnarled claw of a hand around the fragile flame as he made his way towards the altar, fearful that this last illumination would be snuffed out if his concentration slipped even a little bit. Lightning flashed outside, imparting a momentary electric glow to the stained-glass windows of the church. Uriah wondered if any of his last remaining parishioners would brave the storm to pray and sing with him.

The cold slipped invisibly into his bones like an unwelcome guest and he felt something singular about this night, as though something of great import were happening, but he couldn’t grasp it. He shook off the sensation as he reached the altar and ascended the five steps.

At the centre of the altar sat a broken timepiece of tarnished bronze with a cracked glass face, and a thick, leather-bound book surrounded by six unlit candles. Uriah carefully applied the taper to each candle, gradually bringing forth a welcome light to the church.

Aside from the magnificence of the ceiling, the interior of his church was relatively plain and in no way exceptional: a long nave flanked by simple timber pews and which was crossed by a transept that led to a curtained-off chancel. Upper cloisters could be reached via stairs in the north and south transepts, and a wide narthex provided a gallery prior to a visitor entering the church itself.

As the light grew, Uriah smiled with grim humour as the light shone upon the ebony face of the bronze timepiece. Though the glass face was cracked, the delicate hands were unscathed, fashioned from gold with inlaid mother-of-pearl. The clock’s internal mechanisms were visible through a glass window near its base, toothed cogs that never turned and copper pendulums that never swung.

Uriah had travelled the globe extensively as a feckless youth, and had stolen the clock from an eccentric craftsman who lived in a silver palace in the mountains of Europa. The palace had been filled with thousands of bizarre timepieces, but it was gone now, destroyed in one of the many battles that swept across the continent as grand armies fought without care for the wondrous things lost in their violent spasms of war.

Uriah suspected the clock was perhaps the last of its kind, much like his church.

As he had fled the palace of time, the craftsman had cursed Uriah from a high window, screaming that the clock was counting down to doomsday and would chime when the last days of mankind’s existence were at hand. Uriah had laughed off the man’s ravings and presented the clock to his bemused father as a gift. But after the blood and fire of Gaduaré, Uriah had retrieved the clock from the ruins of his family home and brought it to the church.

The clock had made no sound since that day, yet Uriah still dreaded hearing its chimes.

He blew out the taper and placed it in a shallow bowl at the front of the altar and sighed, resting his hand on the soft leather of the book’s cover. As always, the presence of the book was a comfort and Uriah wondered what was keeping the few faithful that remained in the town below from his doors this night. True, his church stood at the summit of a high, flat-topped mountain that was difficult to climb, but that never usually stopped his dwindling congregation from coming.

In ages past, the mountain had been the tallest peak upon a storm-lashed island shrouded in mists and linked to the mainland by a sleek bridge of silver, but ancient, apocalyptic wars had boiled away many of the oceans, and the island was now simply a rocky promontory jutting from a land that was said to have once ruled the world.

In truth, the church’s very isolation was likely all that had allowed it to weather the storm of so-called reason sweeping the globe at the behest of its new master.

Uriah ran a hand over his hairless scalp, feeling the dry, mottled texture of his skin and the long scar that ran from behind his ear to the nape of his neck. He turned towards the doors of his church as he heard noises from outside, the tramp of feet and the sound of voices.

‘About time,’ he said, looking back at the clock and its immobile hands.

It was two minutes to midnight.

The grand doors of the narthex opened wide and a cold wind eagerly slipped inside, whipping over the neat rows of pews and disturbing the dusty silk and velvet banners that hung from the upper cloisters. The ever-present rain fell in soaking sheets beyond the doors and a crack of lightning blistered the night sky alongside a peal of thunder.

Uriah squinted and pulled his silk chasuble around him to keep the cold from his arthritic bones. A hooded figure was silhouetted in the doorway to the narthex, tall and swathed in a long cloak of scarlet. Uriah could see the orange glow of burning brands carried by a host of shadowy figures who stood behind him in the rain. He squinted at these figures, but his aged eyes could make out no detail beyond firelight glittering on metal.

Displaced mercenaries looking for plunder?

Or something else entirely…

The hooded figure stepped into the church and turned to shut the doors behind him. His movements were unhurried and respectful, the doors closed softly and with care.

‘Welcome to the Church of the Lightning Stone,’ said Uriah, as the stranger turned towards him. ‘I was about to begin the midnight service. Would you and your friends wish to join me?’

‘No,’ said the man, pulling back his hood to reveal a stern, but not unkind face – a remarkably unremarkable face that seemed at odds with his martial bearing. ‘They would not.’

The man’s skin was leathery and tanned from a life spent outdoors, his hair dark and pulled back into a short scalp-lock.

‘That is a shame,’ said Uriah. ‘My midnight service is considered quite popular in these parts. Are you sure they won’t come in?’

‘I’m sure,’ repeated the man. ‘They are quite content without.’

‘Without what?’ quipped Uriah, and the man smiled.

‘It is rare to find a man like you with a sense of humour. I have found that most of your kind are dour and leaden-hearted men.’

‘My kind?’

‘Priests,’ said the man, almost spitting the word as though its very syllables were a poison to him.

‘Then I fear you have met only the wrong kind,’ said Uriah.

‘Is there a right kind?’

‘Of course,’ said Uriah. ‘Though given the times we live in, it would be hard for any servant of the divine to be of good cheer.’

‘Very true,’ said the man as he moved slowly down the aisle, running his hands over the timber of each pew as he passed. Uriah walked stiffly from the altar to approach the man, feeling his pulse quicken as he sensed a tangible threat lurking just beneath the newcomer’s placid exterior, like a rabid dog on a slowly fraying rope.

This was a man of violence, and though Uriah felt no threat from him, he knew there was something dangerous about him. Uriah fixed a smile and extended his hand, saying, ‘I am Uriah Olathaire, last priest of the Church of the Lightning Stone. Might I have your name?’

The man smiled and shook his hand. A moment of sublime recognition threatened to surface within Uriah’s mind, but it was gone before he could grasp it.

‘My name is not important,’ said the man. ‘But if you wish to call me something, you may call me Revelation.’

‘An unusual name for one who professes a dislike of priests.’

‘Perhaps, but one that suits my purposes for the time being.’

‘And what purpose might that be?’ asked Uriah.

‘I wish to talk to you,’ said Revelation. ‘I wish to learn what keeps you here when the world is abandoning beliefs in gods and divinity in the face of the advances of science and reason.’

The man looked up, past the banners to the incredible ceiling of the church, and Uriah felt the unease that crawled over his flesh recede as the man’s features softened at the sight of the images painted there.

‘The great fresco of Isandula.’ said Uriah. ‘A divine work, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘It is quite magnificent,’ agreed the man, ‘but divine? I don’t think so.’

‘Then you have not looked closely enough,’ answered Uriah, looking up and feeling his heartbeat quicken as it always did when he saw the wondrous fresco completed over a thousand years ago, by the legendary Isandula Verona. ‘Open your heart to its beauty and you will feel the spirit of god move within you.’

The ceiling was entirely covered in a series of wide panels, each one depicting a different scene; nude figures disporting in a magical garden; an explosion of stars; a battle between a golden knight and a silver dragon; and myriad other scenes of a similarly fantastical nature.

Despite the passage of centuries and the fitful lighting, the vibrancy of hues, the fictive architecture, the muscular anatomy of the figures, the dynamic motion, the luminous colouration and the haunting expressions of the subjects were as awe-inspiring as they had been on the day Isandula had set down her brush and allowed herself to die.

‘And the whole world came running when the fresco was revealed,’ quoted Revelation, his gaze lingering on the panel depicting the knight and the dragon. ‘And the sight of it was enough to reduce all who saw it to stunned silence.’

‘You have read your Vastari,’ said Uriah.

‘I have,’ agreed Revelation, only reluctantly tearing his gaze from the ceiling. ‘His works are often given to hyperbole, but in this case he was, if anything, understating the impact.’

‘You are a student of art?’ asked Uriah.

‘I have studied a great many things in my life,’ said Revelation. ‘Art is but one of them.’

Uriah pointed to the central image of the fresco, that of a wondrous being of light surrounded by a halo of golden machinery.

‘Then you cannot argue that this is not a work truly inspired by a higher power.’

‘Of course I can,’ said Revelation. ‘This is a sublime work whether any higher power exists or not. It does not prove the existence of anything. No gods ever created art.’

‘In an earlier age, some might have considered such a sentiment blasphemy.’

‘Blasphemy,’ said Revelation with a wry smile, ‘is a victimless crime.’

Despite himself, Uriah laughed. ‘Touché, but surely only an artist moved by the divine could create such beauty?’

‘I disagree,’ said Revelation. ‘Tell me, Uriah, have you seen the great cliff sculptures of the Mariana Canyon?’

‘No,’ said Uriah, ‘though I have heard they are incredibly beautiful.’

‘They are indeed. Thousand-metre-high representations of their kings, carved in stone that no weapon can mark or drill can cut. They are at least as incredible as this fresco, somehow worked into a cliff that had not seen sunlight in ten thousand years, yet a godless people carved them in a forgotten age. True art needs no divine explanation, it is just art.’

‘You have your opinion,’ said Uriah politely. ‘I have mine.’

‘Isandula was a genius and a magnificent artist, that much is beyond question,’ continued Revelation, ‘but she also had to make a living, and even magnificent artists must take commissions where they are to be found. I have no doubt this undertaking paid very well, for the churches of her time were obscenely wealthy organisations, but had she been asked to paint a ceiling for a palace of secular governance, might she not have painted something just as wondrous?’

‘It’s possible, but we shall never know.’

‘No, we won’t,’ agreed Revelation, moving past Uriah towards the altar. ‘And I am tempted to believe there is an element of jealousy whenever people invoke the divine to explain away such wonderful creations.’

‘Jealousy?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Revelation. ‘They cannot believe another human being can produce such sublime works of art when they cannot. Therefore some deity reached into the artist’s brain and inspired it.’

‘That is a very cynical view of humanity,’ said Uriah.

‘Elements of it, yes,’ said Revelation.

Uriah shrugged and said, ‘This has been an interesting discussion, but you must excuse me, friend Revelation. I have to prepare for my congregation.’

‘No one is coming,’ said Revelation. ‘It is just you and I.’

Uriah sighed. ‘Why are you really here?’

‘This is the last church on Terra,’ said Revelation. ‘History will soon be done with places like this and I want a memory of it before it’s gone.’

‘I knew this was going to be an unusual evening,’ said Uriah.

Uriah and Revelation repaired to the vestry and sat opposite one another at a grand mahogany desk carved with intertwining serpents. The chair creaked under the weight of his guest as Uriah reached into the desk and removed a tall bottle of dusty blue glass and a pair of pewter tumblers.

He poured dark red wine for the pair of them and sat back in his chair.

‘Your good health,’ said Uriah, raising his tumbler.

‘And yours,’ replied Revelation.

Uriah’s guest took a sip of the wine and nodded his head appreciatively.

‘This is very good wine. It’s old.’

‘You have a fine appreciation of wine, Revelation,’ said Uriah. ‘My father gave it to me on my fifteenth birthday and said I should drink it on my wedding night.’

‘And you never married?’

‘Never found anyone willing to put up with me. I was a devilish rogue back then.’

‘A devilish rogue who became a priest,’ said Revelation. ‘That sounds like a tale.’

‘It is,’ said Uriah, ‘But some wounds run deep and it does no good to reopen them.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Revelation, taking another drink of wine.

Uriah regarded his visitor over the top of his tumbler. Now that Revelation had sat down, he had removed his scarlet cloak and draped it over the back of his chair. His guest wore utilitarian clothes, identical to those worn by virtually every inhabitant of Terra, save that his were immaculately clean. He wore a silver ring on his right index finger, which bore a seal of some kind, but Uriah couldn’t make out what device was worked upon it.

‘Tell me, Revelation, what did you mean when you said this place would soon be gone?’

‘Exactly what I said,’ replied Revelation. ‘Even perched all the way up here, you must surely have heard of the Emperor and his crusade to stamp out all forms of religion and belief in the supernatural. Soon his forces will come here and tear this place down.’

‘I know,’ said Uriah sadly. ‘But it makes no difference to me. I believe what I believe and no amount of hectoring from some warmongering despot will alter my beliefs.’

‘That is an obstinate point of view,’ said Revelation.

‘It is faith,’ pointed out Uriah.

‘Faith,’ snorted Revelation. ‘A willing belief in the unbelievable without proof…’

‘What makes faith so powerful is that it requires no proof. Belief is enough.’

Revelation laughed. ‘I see now why the Emperor wants rid of it then. You call faith powerful, I call it dangerous. Think of what people in the grip of faith have done in the past, all the atrocities committed down the centuries by people of faith. Politics has slain its thousands, yes, but religion has slain its millions.’

Uriah finished his wine and said, ‘Have you come here just to provoke me? I am no longer a violent man, but I do take kindly to being insulted in my own home. If this is all you are here for, then I wish you to go now.’

Revelation placed his tumbler back down on the desk and held up his hands.

‘You are right, of course,’ he said. ‘I am being discourteous, and I apologise. I came here to learn of this place, not to antagonise its guardian.’

Uriah nodded graciously. ‘I accept your apology, Revelation. You wish to see the church?’

‘I do.’

‘Then come with me,’ said Uriah, rising painfully from behind his desk, ‘and I will show you the Lightning Stone.’

Uriah led Revelation from the vestry back into the nave of the church, once again looking up at the beautiful fresco on the ceiling. Shards of firelight danced beyond the stained glass of the windows, and Uriah knew that a sizeable group of men waited beyond the walls of his church.

Who was this Revelation and why was he so interested in his church?

Was he one of the Emperor’s warlords, here to earn his master’s favour by demolishing the last church on Terra? Perhaps he was a mercenary chief who sought to earn the new master of Terra’s gratitude by destroying icons of a faith that had endured since the earliest days of mankind’s struggle towards civilisation?

Either way, Uriah needed to know more of this Revelation, to keep him talking and learn what he could of his motives.

‘This way,’ said Uriah, shuffling towards the chancel, an area behind the altar that was curtained off from the rest of the church by a rich emerald drape the size of a theatre curtain. He pulled a silken cord and the drape slid aside to reveal a high, vaulted chamber of pale stone in which stood a tall megalith that rose from the centre of a circular pit in the ground.

The stone was napped like flint and had a distinct, glassy and metallic texture to its surface. The mighty stone was around six metres tall and tapered towards the top, such that it resembled an enormous speartip. The stone reared up from the ground, the tiled floor of the pit laid around it. Patches of wiry, rust-coloured bracken clustered at its base.

‘The Lightning Stone,’ said Uriah proudly, descending a set of stairs built into the ceramic-tiled walls of the pit to place a hand on the stone. He smiled, feeling the moist warmth of it.

Revelation followed Uriah into the pit, his gaze travelling the length of the stone as he circled it appreciatively. He too reached out to touch it and said, ‘So this is a holy stone?’

‘It is, yes,’ said Uriah.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean? Why what?’

‘I mean why is it holy? Was it deposited on the ground by your god? Was a holy man martyred here, or did a young girl receive some revelation while praying at its base?’

‘Nothing like that,’ said Uriah, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. ‘Thousands of years ago, a local holy man who was deaf and blind was walking in the hills hereabouts when a sudden storm came in over the western ocean. He hurried back down to the village below, but it was a long way and the storm broke before he could reach safety. The holy man took shelter from the storm in the lee of the stone and at the height of the storm it was struck by a bolt of lightning from the heavens. He was lifted up and saw the stone wreathed in a blue fire in which he saw the face of the Creator and heard His voice.’

‘Didn’t you say this holy man was deaf and blind?’ said Revelation.

‘He was, but the power of god cured him of his afflictions,’ said Uriah. ‘He immediately ran back to the village and told the people there of the miracle.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘The holy man returned to the Lightning Stone and instructed the townspeople to build a church around it. The story of his healing soon spread and within a few years, thousands were crossing the silver bridge to visit the shrine, for a spring had begun to flow from the base of the stone and its waters were said to be imbued with healing properties.’

‘Healing properties?’ asked Revelation. ‘It could cure diseases? Mend broken limbs?’

‘So the church records say,’ said Uriah. ‘This bathing chamber was built around the stone and people came from across the lands to bathe in the sacred waters while they still flowed.’

‘I knew of a similar place far to the east of this land,’ said Revelation. ‘A young girl claimed to have seen a holy vision of a woman, a holy woman that bore a conspicuous similarity to a religious order of which her aunt was a member. Bathing houses were set up there too, but the men that ran the site were afraid the output of their holy spring would be insufficient, so they only changed the water in the pools twice a day. Hundreds of dying and diseased pilgrims passed through the same water every day, so you can imagine what a horrible slop it was at the end: threads of blood, sloughed-off skin, scabs, bits of cloth and bandage, an abominable soup of ills. The miracle was that anyone emerged alive from this human slime at all, let alone was cured of anything.’

Revelation reached out to touch the stone once more, and Uriah saw him close his eyes as he laid his palm flat on the glistening stone.

‘Haematite from a banded ironstone formation,’ said Revelation. ‘Exposed by a landslip most likely. That would explain the lightning strike. And I have heard of lightning curing people of blindness and deafness, but mostly in those whose suffering was a result of hysterical complaints brought on by earlier traumas rather than any physiological effect.’

‘Are you trying to debunk the miracle this church was founded upon?’ snapped Uriah. ‘There is a malicious streak to you, if you would seek to destroy another’s faith.’

Revelation came around the Lightning Stone and shook his head. ‘I am not being malicious; I am explaining to you how such a thing could have happened without the intervention of any godly power.’

Revelation tapped a finger to the side of his head and said, ‘You think that the way you perceive the world is the way it actually is, but you cannot perceive the external world directly, none of us can. Instead, we know only our ideas or interpretations of objects in the world. The human brain is a marvellously evolved organ, my friend, and it is especially good at constructing images of faces and voices from limited information.’

‘What has that to do with anything?’ asked Uriah.

‘Imagine your holy man sheltering from the storm in the cover of this great stone when the lightning bolt hit, the fire and the noise, the pounding surge of elemental energy pouring through him. Isn’t it possible that an already-religious man might, in such desperate circumstances, perceive sights and sounds of a divine nature? After all, humans do it all the time. When you wake with dread in the dead of night, is that darkness in the corner not an intruder instead of just a simple shadow, the creak of a floorboard the tread of a murderer instead of the house settling in the cold night?’

‘So you’re saying that he imagined it all?’

‘Something like that,’ agreed Revelation. ‘I don’t mean to suggest he did so consciously or deliberately, but given the origins and evolution of religions in the human species, it seems a far more likely and convincing explanation. Don’t you agree?’

‘No,’ said Uriah. ‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t?’ said Revelation. ‘You strike me as a not unintelligent man, Uriah Olathaire. Why can you not concede at least the possibility of such an explanation?’

‘Because I too have seen a vision of my god and heard His voice. Nothing can compare with knowing personally and completely that the divine exists.’

‘Ah, personal experience,’ said Revelation. ‘An experience utterly convincing to you and which cannot be proved or disproved. Tell me, where did you receive this vision?’

‘On a battlefield in the lands of the Franc,’ said Uriah. ‘Many years ago.’

‘The Franc were long ago brought to Unity,’ said Revelation. The last battle was fought nearly half a century ago. You must have been a young man back then.’

‘I was,’ agreed Uriah. ‘Young and foolish.’

‘Hardly a prime candidate for divine attention,’ said Revelation. ‘But then I’ve found that many of the men who appear in the pages of your holy books are far from ideal role models, so perhaps it’s not surprising at all.’

Uriah fought down his anger at Revelation’s mocking tone, turning away from the Lightning Stone and climbing from the pit. He made his way back towards the candlelit altar, taking a few seconds to calm his breathing and slow his racing heartbeat. He lifted the leather-bound book from beside the candle and took a seat on one of the pews facing the altar.

He heard Revelation’s footsteps and said, ‘You come in an adversarial mood, Revelation. You say you wish to learn of me and this church? Well come, let us joust with words, thrust and parry one another’s certainties with argument and counter-argument. Say what you will and we will spar all night if you desire. But come sunrise, you will leave and never return.’

Revelation descended the steps of the altar, pausing to admire the doomsday clock. He saw the book in Uriah’s hands and folded his arms.

‘That is my intention. I have other matters to attend to, but I have this night to talk with you,’ said Revelation, pointing to the book Uriah clutched to his thin chest. ‘And if I am adversarial, it is because it infuriates me to see the blinkered wilfulness of those who live their lives enslaved to such fantastical notions as are contained in that book and others like it – that damnable piece of thunder in your hands.’

‘So now you mock my holy book too?’

‘Why not?’ said Revelation. ‘That book is nine centuries worth of agglomerated texts assembled, rewritten, translated and twisted to fit the needs of hundreds of mostly anonymous and unknown authors. What basis is that to take guidance for your life?’

‘It is the holy word of my god,’ said Uriah. ‘It speaks to everyone who reads it.’

Revelation laughed and tapped his forehead. ‘If a man claimed his dead grandfather was speaking to him he’d be locked up in an asylum, but if he were to claim the voice of god was speaking to him, his fellow clerics might well make him into a saint. Clearly there is safety in numbers when it comes to hearing voices, eh?’

‘This is my faith you are talking about,’ said Uriah. ‘Show some damned respect!’

‘Why should I?’ said Revelation. ‘Why does your faith require special treatment? Is it not robust enough to stand some questioning? No one else on this world enjoys such protection from scrutiny, so why should you and your faith be singled out for special treatment?’

‘I have seen god,’ hissed Uriah. ‘I saw His face and heard His words in my soul…’

‘If you have had such an experience, you may believe it was real, but do not expect me or anyone else to give it credence, Uriah,’ said Revelation. ‘Just because you believe a thing to be true does not make it so.’

‘I saw what I saw and I heard what I heard that day,’ said Uriah, his fingers clenching tightly on the book as long-buried memories swam to the surface. ‘I know it was real.’

‘And where in Franc did this miraculous vision take place?’

Uriah hesitated, reluctant to give voice to the name that would unlock the box in which he had shut the memories of his past life. He took a breath. ‘On the killing field of Gaduaré.’

‘You were at Gaduaré,’ said Revelation, and Uriah couldn’t tell if Revelation’s words were a question or simply an acknowledgement. For the briefest second, it sounded as though Revelation already knew.

‘Aye,’ said Uriah. ‘I was.’

‘Will you tell me what happened?’

‘I’ll tell you of it,’ whispered Uriah. ‘But first I’ll need another drink.’

Once again, Uriah and Revelation returned to the vestry. Uriah reached into a different drawer and removed a bottle, identical to the first, except that this bottle was half-empty. Revelation sat, and Uriah noticed the chair protested once more at his weight, though the man was not especially bulky.

Uriah shook his head as Revelation held out the pewter tumbler and said, ‘No, this is the good stuff. You don’t drink it from a tumbler, you drink it from a glass.’

He opened a walnut cabinet behind his desk and lifted out two cut crystal copitas and deposited them on the desktop amid the clutter of papers and scrolls. He uncorked the bottle and a wonderful peaty aroma filled the room, redolent with the memories of high pastures, fresh, tumbling brooks and dark, shadow-filled woods.

‘The water of life,’ said Uriah, pouring two generous measures and sitting opposite Revelation. The liquid was heavy and amber, the crystal of the glass refracting slivers of gold and yellow through it.

‘Finally,’ said Revelation, lifting his glass to take a drink. ‘A spirit I can believe in.’

Uriah said, ‘No, not yet, let the vapours build. It intensifies the flavour. Swirl it a little. See the little slicks on the side of the glass? They’re called tears, and since they’re long and descending slowly we know the drink is strong and full-bodied.’

‘Can I drink it now?’

‘Patience,’ said Uriah. ‘Carefully nose the drink, yes? Feel how the aromas leap out at you and stimulate your senses. Allow yourself to react to the moment, let the scents awaken the memories of their origin.’

Uriah closed his eyes as he swirled the golden liquid around the glass below his nose, letting the fragrances of a lost time wash over him. He could smell the mellow richness of the alcohol, his memory alight with sensations he had never experienced: running through a wild wood of thorns and heather at sunset, the smoke from a fire in a wooden hall with a woven roof of reeds and which was hung with shields. And above all, he sensed a legacy of pride and tradition encapsulated in each element of the drink.

He smiled as he was taken back to his youth. ‘Now drink,’ he said. ‘A generous sip. Swirl the drink over your tongue, cheeks and palate for a few seconds before you let it slide down as you swallow.’

Uriah sipped his drink and revelled in the silky smoothness of its warmth. The drink was powerful and tasted of toasted oak and sweet honey.

‘Ah, that’s a flavour I’ve not had in a long time,’ said Revelation, and Uriah opened his eyes to see a contented smile on his visitor’s face. ‘I didn’t think any remained.’

Revelation’s features had relaxed and Uriah saw his cheeks glow with a rosy health. For no reason he could identify, Uriah felt less hostile to Revelation now, as if they had shared a moment of sensation that only two connoisseurs could appreciate.

‘It’s an old bottle,’ explained Uriah. ‘One I was able to rescue from the ruin of my parents’ home.’

‘You make a habit of keeping old alcohol around,’ said Revelation.

‘A throwback to my wild youth,’ said Uriah. ‘I was fond of drink a little too much, if you take my meaning.’

‘I do. I have seen many great individuals brought low by such an addiction.’

Uriah took another sip, a smaller one this time, and savoured the heady flavours before continuing. ‘You said you wanted to know of Gaduaré?’

‘If you are ready and willing to tell me of it, yes.’

Uriah sighed. ‘Willing, yes. Ready… Well, I suppose we will find out, eh?’

‘Gaduaré was a bloody day,’ said Revelation. ‘It was hard on all who were there.’

Uriah shook his head. ‘My eyes are not what they once were, but I can still tell that you are too young to know of Gaduaré. You would not even have been born when that battle was fought.’

‘Trust me,’ said Revelation. ‘I know of Gaduaré.’

The tone of Revelation’s words sent a shiver down Uriah’s spine and, as their eyes met, he saw such a weight of knowledge and history that he felt suddenly humbled and ashamed for arguing with Revelation.

The man put down his glass and the moment passed.

‘I should tell you a little of myself first,’ said Uriah. ‘Who I was back then and how I came to find god on the battlefield of Gaduaré. If you’ve a mind to hear it, that is…’

‘Of course. Tell what you feel you need to tell.’

Uriah sipped his drink and said, ‘I was born in the town below this church, nearly eighty years ago, the youngest son of the local lord. My clan had come through the final years of Old Night with much of their wealth intact and they owned all the land around these parts, from this mountain down to the mainland bridge. I wish I could say I was treated badly as a child, you know, to give some reason for why I turned out the way I did, but I can’t. I was indulged, and became something of a spoiled brat, given to drinking, carousing and bouts of petulance.’

Uriah sighed. ‘Looking back, I realise what a shit I was, but of course it’s the lot of old men to look at themselves as youngsters and realise too late all the mistakes they made and regrets they carry. Anyway, I decided in my adolescent fires of rebellion that I was going to travel the world and see whatever free corners of it remained in the wake of the Emperor’s conquests. So much of the world had been brought under his sway, but I was determined to find one last patch of land that wasn’t yet under the heel of his thunderbolt and lightning armies.’

‘You make it sound like the Emperor was a tyrant,’ said Revelation. ‘He ended the wars that were destroying the planet and defeated dozens of tyrants and despots. Without his armies, mankind would have descended into anarchy and destroyed itself within a generation.’

‘Aye, and maybe we’d have been better off that way,’ said Uriah, taking another sip of his drink. ‘Maybe the universe decided we’d had our chance and our time was up.’

‘Nonsense. The universe cares not a whit for our actions or us. Our fate is wrought by our own hands.’

‘A philosophical point we’ll no doubt return to, but I was telling you of my youth…’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Revelation. ‘Continue.’

‘Thank you. Well, after I announced my intention to travel the world, my father was good enough to grant me a generous stipend and a retinue of soldiers to protect me on my journeys. I left that very day and crossed the silver bridge four days later, travelling across a land recovering from war and which was growing fat on labours decreed by the Emperor. Hammers beat out plates of armour, blackened factories churned out weapons and entire towns of seamstresses created new uniforms for his armies.

‘I crossed to Europa and caroused my way across the continent, seeing the eagle-stamped banner everywhere I went. In every town and city, I saw people giving thanks to the Emperor and his mighty thunder giants, though it all seemed hollow, like they were going through the motions because they were too afraid not to. I’d seen an army of the Emperor’s giants once when I was a child, but this was the first time I had seen them in the wake of conquest.’

Uriah’s breath caught in his throat as he remembered the warrior’s face, leaning down to regard him as though he had been less than an insect. ‘I was drunk and whoring my way down the Tali peninsula when I came upon a garrison of the Emperor’s super-soldiers at a ruined clifftop fortress and my romantic, rebellious soul couldn’t help but try and bait them. Having seen them in battle, I shudder now to think of the hideous danger I was in. I shouted at them, calling them freaks and servants of a bloodthirsty, tyrannical monster whose only thought was the enslavement of mankind to his own towering ego. I paraphrased the works of Seytwn and Galliemus, though how I remembered the old masters when I was so drunk, I’ll never know. I thought I was being so clever, and then one of the giants broke ranks and approached me. Like I said, I was monumentally drunk and filled with that sense of invincibility that only drunks and fools know. The warrior was a hulking figure, more massive than any human being should ever be. His brutish frame was encased in heavy powered armour that enclosed his chest and arms, and which I thought was ridiculously exaggerated.’

‘In previous wars, most warriors preferred to grapple with one another in close combat rather than use long-range weapons,’ said Revelation. ‘The power of a warrior’s chest and arms were of paramount importance in such feats of arms.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Uriah. ‘Well, anyway, he came over and lifted me out of my chair, spilling my drink and upsetting me greatly. I kicked at his armour and beat my fists bloody against his chest, but he just laughed at me. I screamed at him to let me go and he did just that, telling me to shut my mouth before tossing me off the cliff and into the sea. By the time I’d climbed back to the village, they were gone and I was left with a hatred as strong as any I’d known. Stupid really, I was asking for it and it was only a matter of time until someone put me in my place.’

‘So where did you go after Tali?’ asked Revelation.

‘Here and there,’ said Uriah. ‘I’ve forgotten a lot of those years, I was drunk a lot of the time. I know I took a sand-skimmer across the Mediterranean dust bowl and traversed the wastelands of the Nordafrik Conclaves that Shang Khal reduced to ashen desert. All I found were settlements that paid homage to the Emperor, so I carried onwards far into the east to see the ruins of Ursh and the fallen bastions of Narthan Durme. But even there, in places so far away as to be the most desolate and remote corners of the world, I still found those who gave thanks to the Emperor and his gene-engineered warriors. I couldn’t understand it. Didn’t these people see that they’d just exchanged one tyrant for another?’

‘Humanity was heading for species doom,’ said Revelation, sitting forwards in his chair. ‘I keep telling you that without Unity and the Emperor there would be no human race. I can’t believe you don’t see that.’

‘Oh, I see it all right, but back then I was young and full of the fires of youth that see any form of control as oppression. Though they don’t appreciate it, it’s the function of youth to push at the boundaries of the previous generation, to poke and prod and establish their own rules. I was no different from any other youth. Well, perhaps a little.’

‘So you’d travelled the world and hadn’t found any corner of it that hadn’t sworn allegiance to the Emperor… Where did you go next?’

Uriah refilled their glasses before continuing. ‘I returned home for a spell, bearing gifts I’d mostly stolen along the way, then set off again, but this time I went as a soldier of fortune instead of a tourist. I’d heard there were rumours of unrest in the land of the Franc, and fancied I could earn myself renown. The Franc were a fractious people before Unity and did not take kindly to invaders, even ones posing as benign. When I reached the continent, I heard of Havuleq D’agross and the Battle of Avelroi and rode straight for the town.’

‘Avelroi,’ said Revelation, shaking his head. ‘A town poisoned by the bitterness of a madman whose meagre talents fell far short of his ambition.’

‘I know that now, but the way I heard it at the time, Havuleq found himself wrongly accused of the brutal murder of the woman the Emperor had appointed as his governor. He was set to be shot by a firing squad when his brothers and friends attacked the Army units tasked with his execution. The soldiers were torn to pieces, but some of the townsfolk got themselves killed in the fighting, including the local arbiter’s son, and the mood of the people turned ugly. For all his other faults, and there were many, Havuleq was a speaker of rare skill and he fanned the flames of the townsfolk’s ire at the Emperor’s rule. Within the hour, a hastily formed militia had stormed the Army barracks and slain all the soldiers within.’

‘You know, of course, that Havuleq did assault and murder that woman?’

Uriah nodded sadly. ‘I learned that later, yes, when it was too late to do anything about it.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘By the time I reached Avelroi, full of piss and vinegar for the coming fight, Havuleq had rallied a number of the local townships to his cause and had amassed quite an army.’

Uriah smiled as the details of his early time in Avelroi returned, clearer than they had been for decades. ‘It was a magnificent sight, Revelation, the icons of the Emperor had been torn down and the city was like something from a dream. Colourful bunting hung from every window and marching bands played in the streets every day as Havuleq marched his soldiers up and down. Of course, we should have been training, but we were buoyed up with courage and our own sense of righteous purpose. More and more of the surrounding towns were rising up against their Army garrisons, and within the space of a few months around forty thousand men were ready to fight.

‘It was everything I’d dreamed of,’ said Uriah. ‘It was a glorious rebellion, courageous and heroic in the grand tradition of the freedom fighters of old. We were to be the spark that would light the fuse of history that would see this planetary autocrat tumbled from his self-appointed rulership of the world. Then we heard that the thunderbolt and lightning army was marching from the east and we set off in grand procession to meet it in battle. It was a joyous day as Havuleq led us from Avelroi, I’ll never forget it: the laughter, the kisses from the girls and the spirit of shared brotherhood that filled us as we marched out to battle.

‘It took us a week to reach Gaduaré, a line of high hills directly in the path of our enemies. I had read my share of the ancient stories of battle and knew this was a good place to make our stand. We occupied the high ground and both our flanks were anchored on strong positions. On the left were the ruins of the Gaduaré Bastion, on the right a desolate marsh through which nothing could pass.’

‘It was madness to oppose the Emperor’s armies,’ said Revelation. ‘You must have known you could not defeat them. These were warriors bred for battle, whose every waking moment was spent in combat training.’

Uriah nodded. ‘I think we knew that as soon as our enemy came into sight,’ he said, his features darkening at the memory, ‘but we were so caught up in the mood of optimism. By now our army was fifty thousand strong, and we faced less than a tenth of that number. It was hard not to feel like we could win the day, especially with Havuleq riding up and down and firing our blood. His brother tried to calm him, but it was already too late and we charged from the hillside like mad, glorious fools, screaming war cries and waving swords, pistols and rifles above our heads. I was in the sixth rank and we’d covered nearly a kilometre by the time we got anywhere near the ranks of the giants. They hadn’t moved since we’d set off, but as we got close, they shouldered their guns and opened fire.’

Uriah paused and took a long gulp of his drink. His hand was shaking and he carefully and deliberately set his glass down on the desk as he continued.

‘I’ll never forget the noise,’ he said. ‘It was like a thunderstorm had suddenly sprung into existence, and our first five ranks were completely cut down, dead to a man without even the time to scream. The enemy’s bolts tore limbs from bodies or simply burst men apart like wet sacks. I turned to shout something, I forget what exactly, when I felt a searing pain in the back of my head and I fell over the remains of a man who’d had his entire left side blown off. It looked like he’d exploded from the inside out.

‘I rolled onto my knees and felt the back of my head. It was sticky and matted with blood and I realised I’d been hit. A ricochet or a fragment. Anything larger and I’d have lost my head. I could feel the blood running from me and looked up in time to see our enemies fire again. That’s when I started to hear screams. Our charge had ground to a halt, men and women milling around in confusion and fear as they suddenly understood the reality of what Havuleq had begun.

‘The thunder warriors put up their guns and marched towards us, unsheathing swords with serrated edges and motorised blades. The noise, oh god, I’ll never forget the noise they made. A roar like something out of a nightmare. We were already beaten, their first volley had broken us, and I saw Havuleq lying dead in the middle of the field. The lower half of his body had been blown clean off and I saw the same terror I was feeling on every face around me. People were begging for mercy, throwing down their weapons and trying to surrender, but the armoured warriors didn’t stop. They marched right up to us and hacked into us without mercy. We were cut apart and brutalised with such economy of force that I couldn’t believe so many people could die in so short a time. This wasn’t war, at least not as I’d read about it, where men of honour fought in glorious duels, this was mechanised butchery.

‘I’m not ashamed to say I ran. I ran, soiled and bleeding, for safety. I ran like all the daemons of legend were after me and all the time I was hearing the awful sound of people dying, the wet sound of flesh splitting open and the stench of voided bowels and opened bellies. I can’t remember anything much of my flight, just random flashes of dead bodies and screams of pain. I ran until I couldn’t run any more, and then I crawled through the mud until I lost consciousness. When I woke, which I was surprised I did at all, I saw it was dark. Pyres had been lit and the victory chants of the thunder warriors drifted over the killing field.

‘Havuleq’s army had been destroyed. Not routed or put to flight. Destroyed. In less than an hour, fifty thousand men and women had been killed. I think I knew even then that I was the only survivor. I wept beneath the moonlight and as I lay there bleeding to death in agony, I thought of how pointless my life had been. The heartbreak and ruin I’d visited upon others in my reckless pursuit of hedonism and self-interest. I wept for my family and myself and that was when I realised I wasn’t alone.’

‘Who was with you?’ asked Revelation.

‘The power of the divine,’ said Uriah. ‘I looked up and saw a golden face above me, a face of such radiance and perfection that my tears were no longer shed for pain, but for beauty. Light surrounded this figure and I averted my eyes for fear I’d be blinded. I’d been in pain, but now that pain was gone and I knew I was seeing the face of the divine. I couldn’t describe that face to you, not with all the poetic images in the world at my disposal, but it was the most exquisite thing I had ever seen.

‘I felt myself lifted up and I thought that this was the end for me. And then the face spoke to me, and I knew I was destined to live.’

‘What did this face say to you?’ asked Revelation.

Uriah smiled. ‘He said, “Why do you deny me? Accept me and you will know that I am the only truth and the only way.”’

‘Did you reply?’

‘I couldn’t,’ said Uriah. ‘To utter any words would have been base. In any case, my tongue was quite stilled by the awesome vision of god.’

‘What made you think it was god? Did you not hear what I said earlier about the brain’s ability to perceive what it wants to? You were a dying man on a battlefield, surrounded by your dead comrades and you were having an epiphany of the futility of the life you had led. Surely you can think of another explanation for this vision, Uriah, a more likely explanation that does not require the supernatural?’

‘I need no other explanation,’ said Uriah, firmly. ‘You may be wise in many things, Revelation, but you cannot know what goes on in my own mind. I heard the voice of god and saw His face. He bore me up and set me into a deep slumber, and when I awoke, my wounds were healed.’

Uriah turned his head so that Revelation could see the long scar on the back of his neck. ‘A piece of bone shrapnel had been embedded in my skull, barely a centimetre from severing my spinal cord. I was alone on the battlefield and I decided to return to the land of my birth, but when I returned I found my family home in ruins. The townsfolk told me that Scandian raiders from the north had heard of my family’s wealth and come south in search of plunder. They killed my brother then violated my mother and sister in front of my father to force him to tell them where he hid his treasures. They couldn’t know my father had a weak heart and he died before they could learn his secrets. I found my home in ruins and my family little more than bleached cadavers.’

‘I am sorry to hear of your loss,’ said Revelation. ‘If it is any consolation, the Scandians would not accept Unity and were wiped out three decades ago.’

‘I know, but I do not revel in death any more,’ said Uriah. ‘The men who killed my family will have been judged by god and that is justice enough for me.’

‘That is noble of you,’ said Revelation, real admiration in his voice.

‘I took a few keepsakes from the ruins and made my way to the nearest settlement, thinking I’d get blind drunk and then try to figure out what to do with my life. I was halfway there when I saw the Church of the Lightning Stone and knew I had found my purpose in life. I had spent my life until that point living only for myself, but when I saw the spire of the church I knew that god had a purpose for me. I should have died at Gaduaré, but I was saved for a reason.’

‘And what reason was that?’

‘To serve god,’ said Uriah. ‘To bring His word to the people.’

‘And that’s what you’ve been doing here?’

Uriah nodded. ‘It’s what I’ve been trying to do, but the Emperor’s promulgators traverse the globe with his message of reason and the refutation of gods and the supernatural. I assume that is why you are here and why none of my congregation has come to the church tonight.’

‘You are correct,’ said Revelation. ‘In a manner of speaking. I have come to try and convince you of the error of your ways, to learn of you and to show you that there is no need for any divine powers to guide humanity. This is the last church on Terra and it falls to me to offer you this chance to embrace the new way willingly.’

‘Or?’

Revelation shook his head. ‘There is no “or”, Uriah. Come, let us go back out into the church as we talk, I want to instruct you of all that belief in gods has done for humanity down the ages, the bloodshed, the horror and the persecution. I will tell you of this and you will see how damaging such belief is.’

‘And then what? You’ll be on your way?’

‘We both know that’s not what’s going to happen, don’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said Uriah, draining the last of his drink. ‘We do.’

‘Let me tell you a story that happened many thousands of years ago,’ said Revelation.

They walked along the north transept of the church, coming to a set of spiral stairs that led to the upper cloisters. Revelation followed after Uriah, talking as he climbed. ‘It is a story of how a herd of gene-bred livestock caused the death of over nine hundred people.’

‘Did they stampede?’ asked Uriah.

‘No, it was a handful of half-starved creatures that escaped from their paddocks outside Xozer, a once-great city of the Nordafrik Conclaves.’

They reached the top of the stairs and began walking along the cloister, its confined walls dark and cold. Dust lay thick on the stone-flagged floor and a handful of thick candles that Uriah could not remember lighting guttered in iron sconces.

‘Xozer? I’ve been there,’ said Uriah. ‘At least I saw what my guide told me were its ruins.’

‘Quite possibly. Anyway, these hungry animals walked through a building holy to one of the many cults that called Xozer home. This cult, which was known as the Xozerites, believed that gene-bred meat was an affront to their god and they blamed a rival sect known as the Upashtar for the defilement. The Xozerites went on a rampage, stabbing and clubbing any Upashtar they could find. Of course, the Upashtar retaliated and rioting spread throughout the city and left close to a thousand people dead.’

‘Is there a point to that story?’ said Uriah, when Revelation did not continue.

‘Absolutely, it tells a universal tale and typifies religious behaviour that has been recurring since the beginning of human history.’

‘A slightly far-fetched example, Revelation. One freakish story cannot serve as a proof that belief in the divine is a bad thing. Such belief is the bedrock of moral order. It gives people the character they need to get through life. Without guidance from above, the world would descend into anarchy.’

‘Sadly, millions once held that view, Uriah, but that old truism just isn’t true. The record of human experience shows that where religion is strong, it causes cruelty. Intense beliefs produce intense hostility. Only when faith loses its force can a society hope to become humane.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Uriah, stopping by one of the arches in the cloister and looking down onto the nave. Dust swirled across the floor, blown by the storm winds chasing around the lonely church. ‘My holy book gives instruction on how to live a good life. It has lessons humanity needs.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Revelation. ‘I have read your holy book and much of it is bloody and vengeful. Would you live your life literally by its commandments, or do you view the people who populate its pages as exemplars of proper behaviour? Either way, I suspect the morals espoused would be horrifying to most people.’

Uriah shook his head. ‘You’re missing the point, Revelation. Much of the text is not meant to be taken literally, it is symbolic or allegorical.’

Revelation snapped his fingers. ‘That’s exactly my point. You pick and choose which bits of your book to take literally and which to read as symbolic, and that choosing is a matter of personal decision, not divinity. Trust me, in ages past, a frightening number of people took their holy books absolutely literally, causing untold misery and death because they truly believed the words they read. The history of religion is a horror story, Uriah, and if you doubt it, just look at what humanity has done in the name of their gods over the millennia.

‘Thousands of years ago, a bloody theocracy that venerated a feathered-serpent god rose in the Mayan jungles. To appease this vile god, its priests drowned maidens in sacred wells and cut out the hearts of children. They believed this serpent god had an earthly counterpart and the temple builders drove the first pile through a maiden’s body to pacify this non-existent creature.’

Uriah turned to Revelation in horror and said, ‘You can’t seriously compare my religion to such heathen barbarism?’

‘Can’t I?’ countered Revelation. ‘In the name of your religion, a holy man launched a war with the battle cry of “Deus Vult”, which means “god wills it” in one of the ancient tongues of Old Earth. His warriors were charged with destroying enemies in a far-off kingdom, but first they fell upon those in their own lands who opposed the war. Thousands were dragged from their homes and hacked to death or burned alive. Then, satisfied their homeland was secure, the zealous legions plundered their way thousands of miles to the holy city they were to liberate. Upon reaching it, they killed every inhabitant to “purify” the symbolic city of taint. I remember one of their leaders saying that he rode in blood up to the knees and even to his horse’s bridle, by the just and marvellous judgement of god.’

‘That is ancient history,’ said Uriah. ‘You cannot vouchsafe the truth of events so lost in the mists of time.’

‘If it were one event, I might agree with you,’ replied Revelation, ‘but just a hundred or so years later, another holy man declared war on a sect of his own church. His warriors laid siege to the sect’s stronghold in ancient Franc, and when the city fell his generals asked their leader how they might tell the faithful from the traitor among the captives. This man, who followed your god, ordered the warriors to “Kill them all. God will know His own”. Nearly twenty thousand men, women and children were slaughtered.

‘Worst of all, the hunt for any that had escaped the siege led to the establishment of an organisation known as the Inquisition, a dreadful, monstrous plague of hysteria that gave its agents free rein to stretch, burn, pierce and break their victims on fiendish pain machines to force them to confess to disbelief and identify fellow transgressors. Later, with most of their enemies hunted down and killed, the Inquisition shifted its focus to wychcraft, and priests tortured untold thousands of women into confessing that they engaged in unnatural acts with daemons. They were then burned or hanged for their confessions and this hysteria raged for three centuries in a dozen nations, a madness that saw whole towns exterminated and over a hundred thousand dead.’

‘You pick the most extreme examples from the past, Revelation,’ said Uriah, struggling to maintain his composure in the face of such tales of murder and bloodshed. ‘Times have moved on and humanity no longer behaves in such ways to one another.’

‘If you believe that then you have been shut away in this draughty church for far too long, Uriah,’ said Revelation. ‘You must have heard of Cardinal Tang, a mass-murdering ethnarch who practised a crude form of eugenics. His bloody pogroms and death camps saw millions dead in the Yndonesic Bloc. He died less than thirty years ago after seeking to return the world to a pre-technological age, emulating the Inquisition’s burning of scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who contradicted the church’s view on cosmology.’

Uriah could stand no more and walked towards the stairs at the far end of the cloister that led down into the narthex. ‘You fixate on the blood and death, Revelation. You forget all the good that can be achieved through faith.’

‘If you think religion is a force for good, Uriah, then you’re not seeing the superstitious savagery that pervades the history of our world,’ said Revelation. ‘It’s true that just before the descent of Old Night, religion gradually lost its power over life, but like the worst kind of poison, it lingered and fostered division amongst the people of the world that endured. Without belief in gods, divisions blur with passing ages; new generations adapt to new times, mingle, intermarry and forget ancient wounds. It is only belief in gods and divine entities that keep them alien to one another, and anything that divides people breeds inhumanity. Religion is the canker in mankind’s heart that serves such an ugly purpose.’

‘Enough!’ snapped Uriah. ‘I have heard enough. Yes, people have done terrible things to one another in the name of their gods, but they have done terrible things to one another without the recourse to their beliefs. An acceptance of gods and an afterlife is a vital part of what makes us who we are. If you take that away from humanity, what do you suggest takes its place? In my many years as a priest I have ministered to many dying people, and the emotional benefits of religion’s power to console them and those left behind cannot be underestimated.’

‘There is a flaw in your logic, Uriah,’ said Revelation. ‘Religion’s power to console gives it absolutely no more credence or validity. It might very well be a comfort to a dying man to believe that he will go to some bountiful paradise of endless joy, but even if he dies with a wonderful smile on his face, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things as far as the truth of the matter is concerned.’

‘Maybe not, but when my time comes, I will die with my god’s name on my lips.’

‘Are you afraid to die, Uriah?’ asked Revelation.

‘No.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly,’ said Uriah. ‘I have my share of sins, but I have spent my life in the service of my god and I believe that I have served Him faithfully and well.’

‘So why is it then, when you go to these people who are dying and clinging to their beliefs that they don’t welcome the end of their life? Surely the gathered family and friends should be of good cheer and should celebrate their relative’s passing? After all, if eternal paradise awaits on the other side, why are they not filled with gleeful anticipation? Could it be that, in their heart of hearts, they don’t really believe it?’

Uriah turned away and made his way down the narthex stairs, his anger and frustration giving him force of pace that quite outweighed the stiffness in his limbs. A cold wind blew in from the outer doors and he could hear the mutter of voices and the scrape of metal on metal from outside. The narthex of the Church of the Lightning Stone was an austere place, stone walls with niches in which sat statues of various saints that had passed this way in the thousands of years the church had stood. A swaying candelabra, empty of candles, hung from the roof, but it had been many years since Uriah had been able to climb the stepladder in the store room to replace them.

He pushed open the door to the church and walked stiffly down the nave towards the altar. Four of the six candles he had lit there had gone out and the fifth guttered and died in the wind that entered with him.

The lone candle burned beside the clock and Uriah made his way towards it as he heard Revelation enter the church behind him. Uriah reached the altar and lowered himself to a kneeling position with some difficulty.

He bowed his head before the altar and clasped his hands together.

‘The Lord of Mankind is the Light and the Way, and all His actions are for the benefit of mankind, which is His people. So it is taught in the holy words of our order, and above all things, god will protect…’

‘There’s no one there to hear you,’ said Revelation from behind him.

‘I don’t care what you say any more. You have come here to do what you feel you need to do and I’ll not buttress your ego and self-righteousness by playing along any longer. So just end this charade.’

‘As you wish,’ said Revelation. ‘No more games.’

A golden light built behind Uriah and he saw his shadow thrown out onto the graven surface of the altar. The pearlescent hands of the clock shimmered in the reflected light and the ebony face gleamed. Where once the church had been gloomy and filled with shadows, it was now a place of light.

Uriah pulled himself to his feet and turned to see a wondrous figure standing before him, towering and magnificent, clad in golden armour fashioned with love and the greatest skill, every plate embossed with thunderbolts and eagles.

Gone was Revelation, and in his place was a towering warrior of exquisite splendour, an exemplar of all that was regal and inspirational in humanity. The armour bulked his form out beyond measure and Uriah felt tears spilling from his eyes as he realised he had seen this breathtakingly, achingly perfect face once before.

On the killing fields of Gaduaré.

‘You…’ breathed Uriah, stumbling back and collapsing onto his haunches. Pain shot through his hip and pelvis, but he barely felt it.

‘Now do you understand the futility of what you do here?’ said the golden giant.

Long dark hair spilled around the warrior’s face, a face that Uriah could only see through the hazy lens of memory. He could see the unremarkable features of Revelation subsumed into the warrior’s countenance, itself so worthy of devotion that it took all Uriah’s self-control not to drop to his knees and offer what remained of his life to its glorification.

‘You…’ repeated Uriah, the pain in his bones no match for the pain in his heart. ‘You are the… the… Emperor…’

‘I am, and it is time to go, Uriah,’ said the Emperor.

Uriah looked around at his now gleaming and brightly lit church. ‘Go? Go where? There is nowhere else for me in this godless world of yours.’

‘Of course there is,’ replied the Emperor. ‘Embrace the new way and be part of something incredible. A world and a time where we stand on the brink of achieving everything we ever dreamed.’

Uriah nodded dumbly and felt a firm hand gently take his arm and lift him to his feet once more. Strength flowed from the Emperor’s grip and Uriah felt the aches and ailments that had plagued him for decades fade until they were little more than evil memories.

He looked up at Isandula Verona’s magnificent fresco, and the breath caught in his throat. Colours once dulled by the darkness now blazed with life and the ceiling seemed to burst with life and vitality as the Emperor’s light gave it fresh animation and vibrancy. The skin of the painted figures shone with vitality, and the livid blues and lusty reds radiated potency.

‘Verona’s work was never meant for darkness,’ said the Emperor. ‘Only in the light can it achieve its full potential. Humanity is the same, and only when the suffocating shadows of a religion that teaches us not to question is gone from this world will we see its true brilliance.’

Uriah only reluctantly tore his eyes from the impossibly beautiful fresco and cast his gaze around his church. The stained-glass windows shone with new life and the intricate, subtle architecture of the interior gleamed with the skill of its builders.

‘I will miss this place,’ said Uriah.

‘In time I will build an Imperium of such grandeur and magnificence that this will seem like a pauper’s hovel,’ said the Emperor. ‘Now, let us be on our way.’

Uriah allowed himself to be guided down the nave, his heart heavy with the knowledge that the course of his life had been altered by, at best, a misunderstanding, at worst, a lie. As he followed the Emperor towards the narthex doors, he looked up at the ceiling once more, recalling the sermons he had delivered here, the people who had hung on his every word and the good that had flowed from this place and into the world.

He smiled suddenly as he realised that it didn’t matter whether his life and faith had been based on a falsehood. He had believed what he had seen and he had come to this place with a heart open and emptied by grief. That openness had allowed the spirit of his god to enter his soul and filled the emptiness within him with love.

What makes faith so powerful is that it requires no proof. Belief is enough.

He had devoted his life to his god, and even with the understanding of how his fate had been manipulated by random chance, he found no resentment in his heart. He had spread a doctrine of love and forgiveness from his pulpit and no amount of clever words would make him regret that.

The door to the narthex was still open and, as they passed through its cold embrace, the Emperor pushed open the main doors of the church. Howling wind and sheets of rain blew inwards and Uriah clasped his robes tightly to his body, feeling the night’s cold stab into his body like a thousand shards of ice.

He looked over his shoulder towards the altar of his church, seeing the lone candle beside the doomsday clock snuffed out by the gale. Once again, his church was swathed in darkness and he sighed to see this last illumination extinguished. The wind blew the internal doors shut and Uriah followed the Emperor out into the darkness.

Rain soaked him instantly and a crash of lightning lit the heavens with an actinic blue glow. Hundreds of warriors stood in ordered ranks before the church, brutal giants in pugnacious armour he had last seen on the battlefield of Gaduaré.

They stood immobile beneath the downpour, the rain beating against the burnished plates of bronze in an unrelenting tattoo and causing their scarlet helmet plumes to hang limply at their shoulders. There had been some refinements, saw Uriah, the armour now all-enclosing and each warrior sealed from the elements by an interlocking series of artfully designed plates.

Huge backpacks vented excess heat in steaming plumes like breath, and each of the warriors carried a burning torch that hissed and fizzed in the downpour. Huge guns were slung over their shoulders and Uriah shivered as he remembered the murderous volley, like the thunder at the end of the world, that had felled so many of his comrades.

The Emperor put a long cloak about Uriah’s shoulders as a group of armoured warriors stepped towards the church with flame lances raised. Uriah wanted to protest, to speak out against what they were about to do, but the words died in his throat as he realised they would have no effect.

Tears streamed down his face along with the rain as torrents of flame erupted from the warriors’ weapons and licked over the roof and walls of the church. Other warriors fired grenades that smashed through the stained-glass windows of the church and percussive booms thudded from inside as the hungry flames took hold of the roof.

Thick smoke billowed from the windows, the rain doing nothing to dampen the destructive ambition of the flames, and Uriah wept to think of the wondrous fresco and the thousands of years of history that was being destroyed.

He turned to look up at the Emperor, the warrior’s face lit by the fires of destruction.

‘How can you do this?’ demanded Uriah. ‘You say you stand for reason and the advancement of understanding, but here you are destroying a repository of knowledge!’

The Emperor looked down at him and said, ‘Some things are best left forgotten.’

‘Then I hope you have foreseen the consequences of a world bereft of religion.’

‘I have,’ replied the Emperor. ‘It is my dream. An Imperium of Man that exists without recourse to gods and the supernatural. A united galaxy with Terra at its heart.’

‘A united galaxy?’ said Uriah, averting his gaze from his blazing church as he finally grasped the scale of the Emperor’s ambition.

‘Indeed. Now that Unity has been achieved on Terra, it is time to reclaim humanity’s lost empire among the stars.’

‘With you at its head, I presume?’ said Uriah.

‘Of course. Nothing of such grand scale can be achieved without a singular vision at its heart, least of all the reconquest of the galaxy.’

‘You are a madman,’ said Uriah. ‘And you are arrogant if you believe you can subjugate the stars with warriors such as these. They are powerful to be sure, but even they are not capable of such a thing.’

‘You are right,’ agreed the Emperor. ‘I will not conquer the galaxy with these men, for they are but men. These are the precursors to the warriors I am forging in my gene-labs, warriors with the strength and power and vision to bestride the battlefields of the stars and bring them to compliance. These warriors shall be my generals and they will lead my great crusade to the furthest corners of the galaxy.’

‘Didn’t you just tell me of the bloody slaughters perpetrated by crusaders?’ said Uriah. ‘Doesn’t that make you no better than the holy men you were telling me about?’

‘The difference is I know I am right,’ said the Emperor.

‘Spoken like a true autocrat.’

The Emperor shook his head. ‘You misunderstand, Uriah. I have seen the narrow survival path that is all that stands between humanity and extinction, and this is the way it must begin.’

Uriah looked back at the church, the gleeful flames reaching high into the darkness.

‘It is a dangerous road you travel,’ said Uriah. ‘To deny humanity a thing will only make them crave it all the more. And if you succeed in this grand vision of yours? What then? Beware that your subjects do not begin to see you as a god.’

Uriah looked into the Emperor’s face as he spoke, now seeing past the glamours and the magnificence to the heart of an individual who had lived a thousand lives and walked the Earth for longer than could be imagined. He saw the ruthless ambition and the molten core of violence at the Emperor’s heart. In that instant, Uriah knew he wanted nothing to do with anything this man had to offer, no matter how noble or lofty his ambitions might be.

‘I hope in the name of all that is holy you are right,’ said Uriah, ‘but I dread the future you are forging for humanity.’

‘I wish only the best for my people,’ promised the Emperor.

‘I think you do, but I will not be a part of it,’ said Uriah, casting off the Emperor’s cloak and walking back towards his church with his head held high. The rain beat down on him, but he welcomed it as a baptismal.

He heard footsteps approaching him, but he heard the Emperor say, ‘No. Leave him.’

The outer doors of the church stood open and Uriah walked into the narthex, feeling the heat of the flames as they billowed around him. The statues were on fire and the doors to the nave were gone, blown off their hinges by the blasts of grenades.

Uriah marched into the blazing heat of the church, seeing a wall of flame devouring the pews and silken hangings with insatiable hunger. Smoke filled the air and the fresco above him was almost obscured by the roiling blackness.

He looked at the clock face on the altar and smiled as the flames closed in around him.

The warriors remained outside the church until it collapsed, the roof timbers crashing down into the building in a tremendous flurry of flying sparks and wreckage. They stayed until the first rays of sunlight crested the mountains and the rain finally extinguished the last of the flames.

The ruins of the last church on Terra smouldered in the chill morning air as the Emperor turned away and said, ‘Come, we have a galaxy to conquer.’

As the Emperor and his warriors marched down the hillside, the only sound to be heard was the soft chiming of an old and broken clock.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ said Dreagher, breaking the long silence, and the relaxing of tension from the other War Hounds was audible even without Astartes senses. Khârn looked around the loose square of warriors and saw sneaking relief in their expressions. Someone had finally come out and said it.

‘You need not do it.’ Dreagher could not quite bring himself to step between Khârn and the doors, but his voice was steady. ‘You should not do it.’

But other signs gave the lie to the composure in Dreagher’s voice. Khârn watched his fellow captain’s respiration move at just below combat-preparation speed, watched the veins in his face and shorn scalp tick at an elevated rate, took in the motions of his eyes, the subtle shifts of his shoulders as his body went through the muscle-loosening routines that had been part of their deep conditioning. Dreagher’s skin carried the scent of scouring-gel but underneath it, coming off his skin, was the scent of adrenaline and the inhuman essences that the Astartes body made for itself when the danger instincts rang.

They were all keyed up; Khârn’s own metabolism was escalated too. He could hardly have helped it. The air cyclers had not yet been able to carry away the tang of blood that had washed through the anteroom the last time the double doors had opened.

As Khârn worked his palate and tongue, processing and tasting the air, he realised something else: the rest of the ship had fallen as silent as the anteroom they stood in. The anteroom’s semicircular outer wall opened through to the barrack-decks, and normally the broad colonnade was alive with sounds. Voices, the clank of boots and the softer tread of the menials and technomats, the distant sound of shots from the ranges, the almost subsonic buzz of the new power weapons, all gone now. The decks were as silent as the great chamber beyond the steel-grey double doors at Dreagher’s back. The strangeness of that silence tautened his nerves and muscles further still.

Khârn ignored his body, letting it do what it will. He kept his eyes cold.

‘Eighth Company makes me the ranking captain aboard, now,’ he told them. ‘My rank, my oath and my Emperor. Together they close the matter. In case anyone is insolent enough to think there’s even a matter to close.’

‘No,’ came a voice from beside him. Jareg, the Master Shellsmith from the artillery echelon. ‘The matter to close is that we must find a way to, to…’ Jareg motioned wordlessly towards the doors, face twisted in distress.

‘We… don’t know how this will end,’ said Horzt, commander of the Ninth Company’s Stormbird squadron. Khârn watched the man’s hands form fists, shaking to match the shake in his voice. ‘And so we have to plan for the worst. One of us here, now, may need to command the Legion yet, and–’

He broke off. In the space beyond the doors a voice, deeper than a tank-rumble, mightier than a cannon-blast, was roaring in anger. If there were words to it, they were blurred and muffled by the slabs of metal in the way, but still the War Hounds fell silent. They had shouted oaths and orders and obscenities over the clamour of gun, grenade and chainaxe, over the scream of Stormbird jets, over the keen and bellow of a dozen different xenos, but Khârn was the only one who dared to speak now over that distant, muted voice.

‘Enough,’ he said, and his voice was flat. ‘I’m not stupid enough to deny what we all think and know. You all owe Horzt a salute for being the only one to find enough Astartes guts in his belly to say it. The Emperor has brought us our lord and commander. The heartspring of our own bloodline. That is who is with us now. Our general. The one of whom we are echoes. Do you remember that? Do you?’ Khârn looked from one to the next, and the War Hounds stared back at him. Good. He would have struck any of them who hadn’t met his eyes. On the other side of the scarred grey plate of the doors, the distant voice roared again.

‘Now, this,’ he went on, ‘this thing we are doing here, this is right. It is not for any Lord Commander, it is not for any high-helmed, gilt-edged custodian, it is not for anyone–’ his shout stiffened their backs, widened their eyes ‘–to come between the War Hounds and their primarch and live. Only for the Emperor himself will we stand aside, and the Emperor has shown his wisdom. He has taken this duty and he has laid it on our shoulders.’

He looked at Dreagher again. Like Khârn, the man was dressed in white, bands of blue glittering across the high-collared tunic, boots and gauntlets a dark ceremonial blue rather than functional shipboard grey. The Emperor’s lightning-bolt emblem gleamed at his collar and shoulder. His dress matched Khârn’s own: the formal garments with which the War Hounds symbolised they were about their most solemn business. It was obvious why. Dreagher wanted to go in Khârn’s place. Wanted to go in and die.

‘We have our primarch now,’ Khârn told them, and even now he felt a little shiver at the words. All these years since they had launched outwards from Terra, watching as one mighty creation after another emerged from unreclaimed space to take their places in the ranks. Khârn had heard how the Salamanders had waited in orbit around the burning moon, waited for the Emperor’s word that the one he had found there was indeed their sire. He remembered the first sight of chilly-eyed Perturabo walking at the Emperor’s shoulder the day they took ship for Nove Shendak, and the change in the Iron Warriors when they knew who was to command them. Every Legion still with that empty place at its head felt the same longing, sharper with every voyage, every campaign. Would this next star be the one where their blood-sire lived? Would this ship, this communiqué, bring the news that their father-commander had been found, out there in the dark? And then that electric day when the word had come to the mustering docks at Vueron, the news that their own primarch had been found, their lord, their alpha, their…

And it had come to this.

‘We have our primarch now,’ he repeated, ‘and he will lead his Legion in whatever manner he chooses. We are his just as we are the Emperor’s. What we wish or plan no longer matters. The commander of the War Hounds will meet the primarch of the War Hounds, and what happens will be as the primarch wills it. So be it. No more talk.’

Besides, he thought as Dreagher saluted and silently walked to the doors, I don’t suppose it will be long before he works his way down to you. He was surprised at the thought, but surprised also at the lack of emotion that came with it. For all that the War Hounds were a hot-blooded Legion, Khârn found his thoughts flat and colourless. He took a moment to wonder if this were how others felt, the enemies who had advanced to their doom under War Hound chainaxes, or the condemned men of the auxilia in the days before the Emperor had banned the Legion from decimating allies who disgraced them on the field.

Dreagher worked the key controls and the doors swung silently outwards. Beyond them, oddly prosaic, a plain set of broad steps went down into shadows. Another roar, wordless and deep-throated, came echoing up from the gloom.

Khârn shook the thoughts away, walked forwards, and let the darkness fold over him as Dreagher swung the doors closed at his back.

Khârn came down the broad, shallow steps into the great space that had been built into the ship as Angron’s triumphal hall. He had been in it many times but it was a different space now, even with most of it lost in the dark. It felt different. Khârn registered that sensation, of walking into a strange space unfamiliar to him, and wondered if any room that held a primarch could feel the same again. He walked three slow, measured paces onto the smooth stone chamber floor, and pushed his enhanced vision through its darkness adjustments – the primarch had shattered most of the lights, or torn them from their mountings. Here and there the survivors cast glow-pools that did little more than texture the darkness around them. Some of the glows showed dark spatters and puddles across the floor, but Khârn did not bother to look closely. Even if the smell of it were not drowning his senses, he had seen the aftermath of death too many times not to know it.

He felt the urge to look around him for his brothers. Gheer, the Legion Master, who had come in here first when the Emperor had told the War Hounds they must take this duty upon themselves and then taken ship to meet the Thirty-seventh Fleet at Aldebaran. Kunnar, the First Company Champion, who had donned his formal cape, taken up his axe-staff and walked down the steps after the noises coming through the doors had convinced them that Gheer was long dead. Anchez, who had captained the assault echelon, had walked down next. He had joked with Khârn and Hyazn as the doors had been opened for him, despite the blood they could already smell on the air. The man had never known what fear was. Hyazn had been next, and two of the banner-bearers from his personal command coterie had insisted on marching down the steps into the dark with him. They had meant to block the primarch’s fury for long enough that Hyazn could speak with him. It hadn’t worked. Vanche, the master-at-arms to old Gheer, had insisted on being next, even though the next to inherit the Legion’s command, and so the duty of taking up embassy to their lord, should have been Shinnargen of the Second Company. The point was moot now. Shinnargen had met his end in here an hour after Vanche.

I am, primarch, the servant of your will, thought Khârn, and I would never dare to pronounce you the servant of mine. But still, my newfound lord, if you would make your peace with your Legion while there are still any in your Legion to draw breath…

He exhaled, and took another step into the room. For a moment he thought he could hear movement, the padding of feet, a rush of air that felt like breath before everything splintered and whirled and he crashed into a pillared wall to land hard on his back, gasping in pain.

By the time the gasp had entered his lungs, reflex had taken over and he was up on one knee, turning to put his broken right arm and shoulder to the wall and holding and tensing his left arm ready to ward as he scanned for motion, eyes sifting the gloom, pushing into infrared to see the hulking shape hurtling forwards to fill his vision–

Will overrode reflex, and with an iron effort Khârn forced his hand towards his side. Then he was skittering on his back across the floor, breath hammered out of his lungs and cracked clavicle flaring. Unthinkingly he drew his knees to his chest, turned the skidding tumble into a backwards roll. Training, determination and Astartes neural wiring let him shunt the pain to the back of his mind as he came up into a combat crouch.

Then will took over again, and Khârn made himself stand upright and placed his hands by his sides. He looked back and found the spot where he had rested a moment ago, but the floor was empty, no shape or heat-trace.

Was this how it was for the others? He caught himself wondering, and stopped thinking about it when the lapse in concentration started him swaying on the spot. He focused, half-heard movement closing in behind him and opened his mouth to speak, and a moment later was jerked up from the floor, the back of his head and neck in the grip of a hand that felt bigger and harder than a Dreadnaught’s rubble-claw. Will, will over instinct: Khârn stopped himself from kicking backwards, trying to wrench free.

‘Another one? Another one like the rest?’ The voice in his ear was a rasp, a rumble, words like handfuls of hot gravel. ‘Warrior made, warrior garbed, uhh…’ For a moment the grip on the back of Khârn’s neck juddered and his body shook like a Stormbird hitting atmosphere, then the animal growl from behind him became a roar.

‘Fight!’

He was being carried forwards one-handed in long blurring strides across the width of the hall.

‘Fight me!’ With the words, a slam into the wall hard enough to leave Khârn’s wits red-tinged and reeling.

‘Fight me!’ Another slam and the red was shot through with black. His limbs felt sluggish and only half there. The voice was bellowing, drowning his hearing, pouring into his head and trampling his jangled thoughts.

‘Fiiight!’ Another steel-hard grip closed about his broken arm and for a brief moment Khârn whirled through the air. Another impact and his back was to the wall, his feet dangling, broken shoulder incandescent with pain as one of the great hands pinned him against the dark marble.

It took a moment for things to clear. Astartes biochemistry stabilised his pain and his cognition, glanded stress-hormones slammed into his system and Khârn looked at his primarch’s face with clear eyes.

Wiry, copper-red hair curled away from a high brow, pale eyes sat deep behind cheekbones that angled down like axe-strokes to an aquiline nose and a broad, thin-lipped mouth.

It was the face of a general to follow unto death, the face of a teacher at whose feet the wise would fight to sit, the face of a king made for the adoration of worlds: the face of a primarch.

And rage made it the face of a beast. Rage pushed and distorted the features like a tumour breaking out from the skull beneath. It made the eyes into yellow, empty pits, debased the proud lines of brow and jaw, peeled the lips back from the teeth.

And yet it was a face so maddeningly familiar, the face of the sire whose template had made the War Hounds themselves. Khârn could see his brethren in the bronze skin, the set of the eyes, the lines of jaw and skull. Pinned there and staring, the thought that flicked into his mind was of the Legion’s battles against the capering xenos whose masks wove faces out of light, taunting them with distorted mockeries of themselves.

The primarch’s grip tensed, and Khârn wondered if he had heard the thought – didn’t they say some of their sires had that trick? Slowly Angron’s other hand rose up before Khârn’s face. Even in this light he could see the crackling shell of quick-clotting blood coating the fingers. The hand made a trembling fist before his face that seemed to hang there for an age before it slowly opened to make a stiff-fingered claw. Khârn could tell how the claw would strike: a finger in each eye, powerful enough to punch through the back of the socket and into his brain, the thumb under his jaw to crush his throat, the whole hand then ready to clench and rip away the front of his skull or pull his head from his neck. Astartes bone was powerfully made – did the primarch have the power for that in just one of his hands? Khârn thought he did.

But the hand did not strike. Instead Angron leaned forwards, the snarling gargoyle-mask of his face closing, closing, until his mouth was by Khârn’s ear.

‘Why?’ And his whisper was like the grate of tank-treads on stone. ‘I can see what you’re made for. You’re made to spill blood, just as I am. You’re not born normal men, any more than I was.’ A long, savage growl. ‘So why? Why no triumph rope? Why no weapon in your hand? Why do you all walk down here so meek? Don’t you know whose blood I really – eh?’

They were close enough that he had felt Khârn’s smile against his cheek, and now he pulled back to see it. Angron’s eyes squeezed shut for a moment, then flashed open again as he twitched Khârn away from the wall and slammed him back again. It seemed to Khârn that he could feel the fingers of the hand that held him thrumming with checked violence.

‘What’s this? Showing your teeth?’ Another slam against the wall. ‘Why are you smiling?’ By the end of the question the voice was once again at that shattering roar, and even Khârn’s hearing, more resilient than human, rang for whole seconds before it cleared. And in those few seconds, he realised that the question had not been rhetorical. Angron was waiting for an answer.

‘I am…’ His voice, when he found it, was hoarse and brittle. ‘I am proud of my Legion brothers.’ He swallowed to try and soothe his dry throat so that he could speak again, but before he could take another breath he was pulled from the wall and dropped. Angron’s kick lofted him into the air in a long curve that fetched him up against a cold, torn corpse. When Khârn dragged in a breath it was full of the reek of blood and offal. There was no way to tell whose the body had been.

Bare feet thumped along the stone floor, counterpointing growling heaves of breath as Angron closed the distance. He leapt and landed in a crouch beside Khârn as he tried to make his body move. The grip clamped around him again, around his jaw and face this time, and he was dragged half-upright to stare into the primarch’s eyes again.

‘Proud.’ Angron’s lips worked as though he were chewing on the word. ‘Your brothers. No warriors. None of you will fight. Why… are… you…’ He was shaping his words with difficulty, and one hand had risen to clutch at his head. “How, uh, how can, nnn…’ And then he lifted Khârn by the front of his tunic and slammed him back down. The ragged remains on the floor gave a bloody squelch as Khârn’s back came down across them.

‘No pride!’ roared Angron, in a voice that Khârn thought dizzily could finish the job of bone-breaking that his fists had started. ‘No pride in brothers who stand there with their wits slack! Dull-eyed as a steer on a slaughter-chute! None of you fight! My brothers, my brothers and sisters, oh…’ The grip on Khârn’s tunic lifted, and he blinked his vision clear and looked up. Angron was not looking at him any more. The primarch had sunk back onto his haunches, one great hand over his eyes. His voice was still a powerful rumble, but barely formed and harsh with accent. Khârn had to concentrate to make out the words. ‘My poor warriors,’ Angron was murmuring, ‘my lost ones.’

And then he dropped his hand and looked into Khârn’s eyes. The fury was still in his stare, but it had been banked like a furnace, glowing a dull vermilion rather than roaring crimson.

‘Your brothers,’ he said in a drained voice, ‘are not like my brothers, whoever you are.’

Whoever you are. It took a moment for the words to sink in, and the next thought was, He doesn’t know. How can he not know? Still flat on the floor, Khârn took a shuddering breath.

‘My name is Khârn. I am a warrior–’

‘No!’ Angron’s fist shattered the floor beside Khârn’s head. Stone chips stung his skin. ‘No warrior! No!’

‘–of the Legiones Astartes, the great league of battle-brothers in service to our–’

‘No! Dead!’ screamed Angron, his head back, muscles corded in his neck. ‘Uhhh, my warriors are dead, my brothers, my sisters–’

‘–beloved Emperor,’ said Khârn, fighting to keep his voice cool and level, facing down the urge to gabble and plead, ‘humanity’s master, our commander and general, by whose–’

At the mention of the Emperor Angron had begun to shudder and now he threw his head back again, baying like a beast up into the dark, shocking Khârn into silence. Then, snake-fast, his hand closed around Khârn’s ankle and with a single wrench of his body he threw him spinning through the air.

There was no time to twist in the air or curl. Khârn managed to get his arms around his head before he crashed into a chamber wall and dropped limp to the floor. Through the red-grey mist in his head he could hear Angron’s voice, still filling the chamber with deafening, wordless howls. Within his own body he could feel twitching and roiling as his implanted organs worked on his system: somewhere in there Angron had damaged something badly. Something for the Apothecarion to study, he thought. If they’re up to the challenge of identifying which scraps are mine after all this, he found himself adding, and the grim little mental chuckle from that thought was what gave him the strength to push himself, groaning, up onto his elbows and knees.

Angron’s foot landed like a forge-hammer between his shoulder blades and flattened him back to the floor, cracked sternum sending out ripping bursts of pain, feeling the fused shell of his ribcage creaking as he fought for breath.

‘You don’t injure easily, do you, you meek little paperskins?’ came Angron’s voice from above him, the words bitten out in curt growls. ‘Who makes warriors who won’t make war? Your murdering bastard commander, that’s who.’

More shifts in him as Khârn’s metabolism noted the dwindling breath in his lungs and changed its pace to use its oxygen more efficiently. He felt the tickle of pressure as his third lung shifted to higher functioning to take up the shortfall, and a warm sensation in his abdomen as his oolitic kidney worked on the heightened toxins in his blood.

‘Sends his cowardly little paperskins to die for him, oh yes, I know his sort.’ Angron’s words were running together into an almost continuous growl. ‘Hands that’ve never felt the heat of blood. Skin that’s never parted. Brain-pan that’s never been kissed by the Butcher’s Nails. Tongue that’s never… huh.’

The weight had shifted on Khârn’s back. Angron didn’t have the leverage to keep the crushing pressure with his foot, and his other foot had started to come up off the floor. Then suddenly the pressure was gone, and Khârn whooped for air with all three lungs as Angron kicked him over onto his back.

‘You’re not dying the way I’ve seen men and women die.’ Angron stood over Khârn for a moment, head high like a ceremonial statue, then began to circle where he lay, back bent and head thrust forward, a great hunting cat scenting prey. ‘You take wounds the way… hnnn…’ He dug the fingers of one hand into scalp for a moment, and Khârn could see his fingers tracing the lines of deep, runnelled scars. ‘…the way I do. Your blood crisps itself like mine, it… smells…’ His hands balled into fists, and Khârn saw the tension roll up the forearms, into the shoulders, into the neck and finally once again pulling the primarch’s features into the rage-mask. Slowly, clumsily, Khârn managed to sit up and onto one knee, braced for a new strike, but Angron kept circling him.

‘You carry yourselves like men used to iron in their hands, not air. If I were killing you on the hot dust, I’d know your names, because you’d have paid me the proper salute and we’d have turned the rope together.’ Around and around him the padding footsteps. Khârn could feel the primarch’s gaze on him like heavy chain draped over his shoulders. ‘Does it bother you, dying to one who will never know your names?’

Did it bother him, Khârn wondered? But of course that wasn’t the question. He was an emissary, here to deliver a message, not to debate.

‘We are your Legion, Primarch Angron. We are your instrument and yours to command. The deaths of our enemies are yours to command, and so are our own.’

Not a punch or a kick or a grip, this time, but a ringing, open-handed clout to the side of his head that pitched him sideways.

‘Mock me again and I’ll crumble your skull in my fingers before your mouth has finished the words.’ Angron’s voice was shaking with a precarious restraint that was more frightening than a bellow. ‘My warriors. My brothers and sisters. Oh my brave ones, my brothers, my…’ For several seconds Angron simply paced, his jaw opening and working soundlessly, his head twisting from side to side. ‘Gone they are, gone without me, I…’

Angron’s fists began to move. He beat them against his thighs and chest, brought one fist and then the other around in long looping motions to smash into his mouth and cheeks. In the new quiet of the chamber the sounds of his flesh splitting and his grunting breaths seemed magnified, textured. Khârn watched, unable to speak, as Angron dropped to his knees, fists doubled in front of his face, muscles locked taut and body shaking.

There was a silence. Finally, Khârn broke it.

‘We are your Legion. Made from your blood and genes, crafted in your image. We have fought our way from the world where you, my lord, were conceived. We have spilt blood and burned worlds, we have shattered empires and hounded species into oblivion. Searching for you.’

Just let me speak, lord, he thought as he felt the strength coming back into his voice. Just let me bring our petition to you and then my mission is fulfilled and I am content. Do as you will.

‘We do not fight you because you are our primarch. Not just our commander, but our blood-sire, our fountainhead. No matter what, I will not raise a hand to you. Nor will any of my battle-brothers. We are ambassadors to you now. We are here for our Legion and our… our Emperor.’ Khârn tensed, but this time Angron did not respond to the word. ‘We are coming before you to plead with you to take up the rightful place that was set for you at your creation.’

He began moving, wanting to shuffle closer to where Angron knelt and hunched and shook, but even now the violence that the primarch exuded like heat made him pause. Khârn took an unsteady breath. Pain from his wounds kept sawing at the bottom of his consciousness, nagging at him. He squeezed shut his eyes for a moment, pushed himself through the battlefield exercises that had been hypnoconditioned into him on the mountainsides of Bodt, smothered the pain with will.

That gave him a moment to think, and with the respite he brought his mind to bear on this task the way he would a battlefield, a fortification, an enemy’s swordwork. He thought about his own mission, about the reports he had heard from the Emperor’s own flagship before and after the disastrous visit to the planet’s surface, about the primarch’s own words. There had been battle down there, they all knew that. Khârn felt a flicker of envy. The rebels now lying as corpses down there had already had the glory of their primarch, their primarch, leading them in–

Understanding came in a flash, given a weird focus by the pain.

‘I envy them,’ he said quietly. ‘Those ones who fought with you. I wish I had known them. They followed you to battle. That is all any of my brothers and I ask of you, sire. The chance to fight with you as they did.’

Slowly the primarch’s hands lowered from his face. He was kneeling with his back to the nearest unbroken light, looming over Khârn in silhouette, but Khârn’s vision took in enough infrared to let him see the bitter little smile on the giant face.

‘You? No nails, no rope. Hope you’ve got a good head for mockery, Khârn of the so-called Legion. We’d have had sport with you in the camps. Jochura would have been merciless. Sharp-tongued, that boy was.’ The smile lost a trace of its bitterness. ‘I’d watch him bait the others. In the cells at first and then after, when we were roaming. He’d mock, they’d laugh, and he and the one he mocked would laugh harder than all the rest of them. It… was… good. Good to watch. Jochura always swore he would die laughing at his killer.’ The smile vanished and Angron’s mouth took a brutal downwards twist. ‘I told him… told him… uuh,’ and Khârn felt the impact up into his body as the great fists smashed into the floor again. He made to speak but the words were cut off as Angron’s arm shot out, quicker than sight, and then his hand was locked around Khârn’s neck and jaw, dragging him in.

‘I don’t know how they died!’ Angron’s shout was so loud that the words seemed to fuzz into white noise in Khârn’s ears. The hand shook him like a sack. ‘We swore! Swore!’ Khârn was being yanked backwards and forwards, and Angron’s other hand beat the floor in time. Amid all the clamour a sharp new scent imprinted itself on his senses, and Khârn realised it was the primarch’s blood, freshly shed. Angron had battered his hands bloody against the stone.

‘We swore an oath,’ Angron went on, his voice dropping to a groan like wrenching steel. ‘On the road to Desh’ea I had each of them cut a new scar for my rope, and I cut theirs. And we swore an oath that by the end of all of our lives we’d cut the high-riders a scar that would bleed for a hundred years!’ Despite himself, Khârn’s hands came up as Angron’s grip tightened around his neck and he fought the urge to try and grapple free. ‘A wound their great-grandwhelps would still cry from! A wound to haunt any of them who dared look on the hot dust again!’ Angron’s grip shifted, and air flooded back into Khârn’s lungs. He hung half-kneeling with one of the primarch’s hands pressed into each side of his head. ‘All this,’ Angron said softly, ‘and even my sworn oath wasn’t enough.’ He parted his hands and let Khârn crumple to the floor. ‘Because I don’t even know how they died.’

When Khârn opened his eyes Angron was sitting cross-legged a little way from his feet, elbows on knees, head thrust out in front of his shoulders, watching him. He could no longer smell the primarch’s blood as fresh as he had – had he lost consciousness for a time? Or had he just lain disorientated in the gloom? Or did Angron’s blood clot and seal even faster than his own? He thought it probably did. He took a breath, torso flickering with pain, and pushed himself up on his elbows.

‘And so how do you meet death, paperskin?’ The coolness in Angron’s voice was startling after the raving daemon that had battered and flung him like a puppet. ‘Do you make your salutes when you’re on the dust? Declaim your lineage like the high-riders? Declaim your kills like us? Tell me what you do while you’re waiting for the iron in your hand to warm up to blood-heat.’

‘We–’ Khârn began, but the unbecoming sprawl was cramping his chest. He pushed himself the rest of the way up and knelt, sitting back on his heels, keeping his breathing steady and composing himself through the pain. Even slumped over as he was, Angron was taller than Khârn by half a head.

‘The oath of moment,’ he said. ‘Our last act before we embark for combat. Each of us prepares our vow to our brothers in the Legion. What we will do for our, our Emperor,’ Angron snarled at the word, ‘our Legion and ourselves. We witness the oaths. Some Legions write them and then decorate themselves with the written oaths.’

‘Did you take one of these oaths before you came in to see me?’ Angron asked.

‘No, primarch,’ replied Khârn, slightly wrongfooted by the question. ‘I did not come in here to fight you. I say again, not one in the Legion will raise a hand to you. Oaths of moment are for battle.’

‘No challenge,’ rumbled the looming shape. ‘You do not ask their names when you walk the dust, and you don’t give yours. No salutes and no showing of ropes. This is how they fight who say they are my blood-cousins?’

‘This is how we fight, sire. We exist to make the Emperor’s enemies extinct. We’ve no need of anything that does not serve that end. And we rarely fight enemies who have names worth knowing, let alone saluting. What the rope is, forgive me, primarch, I do not know.’

‘How do you show your warriorship, then?’ The puzzlement in the primarch’s voice seemed genuine, but when Khârn hesitated over his answer, Angron lunged forwards and punched him over onto his back.

‘Answer me! You little grave-grubber, you sit there and smirk at me again like some high-rid… uhhh…’ The primarch had sprung to his feet and now he picked Khârn up by the throat, yanked him into the air and dropped him flat on his back again. By the time Khârn had shakily pushed himself back up, Angron had walked away to stand under one of the lights. He turned to make sure Khârn was watching, then turned and spread his arms.

The primarch’s torso was bare, packed with inhuman musculature on the Emperor’s design, broad, heavy and angular to accommodate the thickened bones and the strange organs and tissues that Astartes legend said the Emperor had grown from his own flesh and blood, modified twenty different ways for his children. Khârn found himself wondering for a moment if Angron had grown up with the slightest idea of what he truly was, before he realised what the primarch was showing him.

A ridge of scar tissue began at the base of Angron’s spine. It travelled up his backbone, then veered to the left and around his body, riding over his hip and curv ing around to his front. Angron began to turn in place underneath the light and Khârn saw how the scar seemed to expand and thin again, ploughing and gouging the skin, in some places vanishing entirely where the primarch’s healing powers had overcome it. The scar looped around and around Angron’s body, spiralling up over his belly, around his ribs, towards his chest. A little past the right of his sternum, it abruptly stopped.

‘The Triumph Rope,’ Angron said. His hand moved to indicate the upper lengths of the scar, where it was smoother, more continuous, less ugly. There were no healed patches in its upper reaches. Khârn jumped as Angron thumped a fist against his chest with a report like a gun.

‘Red twists! Nothing but red on my rope, Khârn! Of all of us, I was the only one. No black twists.’ Angron was shaking with rage again, and Khârn bowed his head. His thoughts were bleak: I’ve started this now, and I wish to finish it, but primarch, I don’t know how many more of your rages I can withstand. Then Angron’s hands had gripped his shoulders, cruelly grating the bones in the broken one, and the muscles in Khârn’s neck and jaw locked rigid as he worked to stop himself crying out.

‘I can’t go back!’ came Angron’s voice through the pain, and the note in his voice was not fury now but an anguish far greater than the pain of Khârn’s injuries. ‘I can’t go back to Desh’ea. I can’t pick up the soil to make a black twist.’ Angron flung Khârn away and dropped to his knees. ‘I can’t… uhh… I need to wear my failure and I can’t. Your Emperor! Your Emperor! I couldn’t fight with them and now I can’t commemorate them!’

‘Sire, I, we…’ Khârn could feel little stings and blooms of heat inside his abdomen as his healing systems worked on wounds inside him. ‘Your Legion wants to learn your ways. You are our primarch. But we haven’t learned them yet. I don’t know…’

‘No. Grave-grub Khârn doesn’t know. No Triumph Rope on Khârn.’ Khârn kept his eyes on the floor but the sneer was all too audible in Angron’s voice. ‘For every battle you live through, a cut to lengthen the rope. For a triumph, let it scar clean. A red twist. For a defeat you survive, work some dust from where you fought into the cut to scar it dark. A black twist. Nothing but red on me, Khârn,’ said Angron, spreading his arms again, ‘but I don’t deserve it.’

‘I understand you, sire,’ Khârn answered, and he found that he did. ‘Your brothers, your brothers and sisters,’ he corrected himself, ‘they were defeated.’

‘They died, Khârn,’ said Angron. ‘They all died. We swore to each other that we’d stand together against the high-riders’ armies. The cliffs of Desh’ea would see the end of it. No more twists in the rope. For any of us.’ His voice had softened to a whisper, heavy with grief. ‘I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be drawing breath. But I am. And I can’t even pick up the dust from Desh’ea to make a black twist to remember them by. Why did your Emperor do this to me, Khârn?’

There was silence after the question. Angron, still standing, had let his head fall forwards and was digging his knuckles into his forehead and face. The lights made strange shadows across his skull, lumpy with metal and scars.

Khârn got to his feet. He swayed, but his balance held.

‘It isn’t my place to know, sire, what the Emperor said to you. But we–’ Angron wheeled, and Khârn flinched. The primarch’s eyes were alight, and his teeth were bare, but it wasn’t a snarl now, it was a broad, vicious grin.

‘Didn’t say much to me, no he did not. Think I let him? Think I did?’ Angron was in motion again, prowling to and fro under the light, his head snaking from side to side. ‘I knew what was happening. I’d stood there and seen the high-riders’ killers coming up for my brothers and sisters at Desh’ea, I knew, I knew. Ahhh!’ His hands shot out and blurred as they clawed the air in front of him. ‘Had his own brothers, didn’t he, his kin-guard. All gold-plated, fancying themselves high-riders even though their feet were in the dirt like mine. Pointing their little blades at me!’ Angron spun, leapt, hurtled at Khârn and slammed him backwards with an open palm. ‘They drew weapons on me! Me! They… they…’ Angron threw his head back, palms pressed to the sides of his skull as though sheer physical pressure could keep his boiling thoughts on track. For a moment he was frozen like that, and then he wrenched his body forwards and drove his fist into the stone by Khârn’s head. Stinging grains of rock flew out from the impact.

‘Killed one, though,’ spat Angron, rearing up and starting to prowl again. ‘Couldn’t put my hands on that Emperor of yours. Ahh, his voice in my ears, worse than the Butcher’s Nails…’ Angron’s fingers swiped and rubbed across the metal in his skull. His gaze was transfixing Khârn again. ‘Took one apart though. One of those gold-wrapped bastards. No stomach for it, your Emperor, paper-skinned like you. Pushed me back, into that… place… the place he took me from Desh’ea…’ The shadows over Angron’s face seemed to deepen at the recollection and his body hunched and folded inwards.

‘Teleport,’ said Khârn, understanding. ‘He teleported you. First to his own ship, and then to here.’

‘Something you understand, maybe.’ Angron was still moving, further away now, harder for Khârn to pick out except as a smoke-warm shape in infrared. He had his head back and his arms out, as though he were addressing an audience in a high gallery. ‘My sisters and brothers and I, owned by the high-riders, floating over us with their crow-cloaks. Their maggot-eyes buzzing around us while we drew each others’ blood instead of theirs.’ He growled, punching and clawing the air above his head. ‘And you, Khârn, owned by the Emperor who draws your blood and puts his gold-shiny puppets into the fights he won’t…’

Khârn was shaking his head, and Angron had seen him.

‘Well now,’ his voice rumbled out of the shadow, and all the menace was back in it. The sound reminded Khârn how weak he was, how wounded, how unarmed. ‘Khârn calls me liar. Khârn thinks he will question his primarch for the sake of his Emperor.’ Once again Angron came out of the darkness in a leap, landing in front of Khârn with one hand cocked back for a pulverising punch.

‘Admit it, Khârn,’ he snarled. ‘Why won’t you say it?’ The cocked fist shook but did not swing. Angron pushed his face forwards as though he were about to bite Khârn’s flesh. ‘Say it! Say it!’

‘I saw him once,’ was what Khârn said instead. ‘I saw him on Nove Shendak. World Eight-Two-Seventeen. A world of worms. Giant creatures, intelligent. Hateful. Their weapons were filaments, metal feathers that they embedded in themselves to conduct energies out of their bodies. I remember we saw the surface roil with the filaments before the worms broke out of it almost at our feet. Thick as a man, longer than you, sire, are tall. Three mouths in their faces, a dozen teeth in their mouths. They spoke through the mud in sonic screams and witch-whispers.

‘We had found three systems under their thrall, burned them out of their colony nests and chased them home. But on their cradle-world we found humans. Humans lost to humanity for who knows how long, crawling on the land while the worms slithered in the marsh seas. Hunting the humans, farming them. Killing them.’

Angron’s eyes were still narrowed and his fist still raised, but he no longer shook. Khârn’s eyes had half-closed. He remembered how the War Hounds’ blue and white armour glimmered in the worm-world’s twilight, remembered the endless, nerve-sapping sucking sounds as the lunar tides dragged the mud oceans to and fro across the jagged stone continents.

‘The Iron Warriors were with us too, and Perturabo landed with the assault pioneers after our lances scoured our drop-zone bare and dry. He worked out how to dredge and shape the ground. The earth there, well, there barely was earth. Just muddy slops, full of trace toxins, the bedrock deep enough that a man’d drown if he planted his feet on it.’

‘How did you stop them?’ demanded Angron. ‘If you couldn’t stand on the ground?’

‘Sentries with high-powered lasguns, sire, devices to read the movements of the mud to hear them moving through it towards us, explosives we seeded around the earthworks and allowed to sink to where the worms burrowed.

‘Perturabo’s earthworks were a miracle. He built trenches and dykes, penned in the mud seas and drained them, drove the worms back, reclaimed land these wretched humans could build on. And when the worms came out to fight us, they met the Emperor and his War Hounds.’

‘You’re speaking of yourself,’ said Angron. ‘Yourselves.’ Khârn nodded.

‘The War Hounds. XII Legion Astartes. Made in your image, as your warriors, primarch. He saw us fight in the Cephic hive-sprawls and named us for the white hounds the Yeshk warriors in the north used. He did us an honour with the name, primarch. We are proud of it, and we hope you will be too.’

Angron gave a growl, but he did not speak. The hand that had been a fist had opened again.

‘The southern anchor of Perturabo’s earthworks was a rock, the closest thing that place had to a mountain, the only one the sludge tides hadn’t been able to wear down. When the worms saw the Mechanicum begin to change the world’s face they mustered to break us under the peak.

‘They buried themselves in the sludge beyond our range and came forwards under it to meet us.’ Khârn’s voice was speeding up as his memory filled with the sharp reek of the poisoned ground and the warning cries from the Imperial Army artillerists as the mud ocean heaved. Angron had backed away, his head pushed forwards and his eyes were full of concentration.

‘They first came in a wave,’ Khârn said. ‘They had skulked around the fringes of the earthworks, carried off some of the crews working the pumps and dredgers. We had not fought a decisive action against them for months. But now Gheer and Perturabo had read the patterns of their attacks and placed us for the counter-assault. We formed up among Perturabo’s aqueduct walls, only half-built they were and still blocked half the sky. We took our oaths of moment and primed our bolters.’

‘Bolters?’

‘A firearm. A powerful one. The weapon of the Astartes.’

‘Ehh. Get on with it. The worms came for the earthworks.’ Angron was staring over Khârn’s head, yanking his hands back and forth, shuffling his feet. It was a moment before Khârn realised the Primarch was playing the defence out in his mind, ordering the lines, mapping out the ground. ‘So they came up like chaer-dogs at a spike-line? Stupid to rush a shield wall. Tell me what you did.’ Khârn closed his eyes, focusing past his injured body to run the conditioned routines that ordered his memories.

‘The first line of them broke the mud with their jaws and filaments,’ he said, ‘and they came at us behind a wall of their power-arcs. The mud steamed in front of them and where the arcs converged they shattered rock. They sent a rolling bombardment ahead of them. We worked to break it with thudd guns, dropping shells behind their blast-front, and we broke up the rock in front of them with grenades. We thought we had their measure when the counter-bombardment made their front lines shiver, but they were simply filling up our attention, measuring where our own line was wavering. When their blasts dropped away they came in force to the weak points. Drove wedges into our front. To flank and envelop we’d have had to go out onto the mud where we could barely walk, and where the mud was shallow enough for us to try it, they had second and third lines ready to drag the flankers under or cook them in their armour. To break the assaults we had to get them onto rock, where we could manoeuvre better than they. Perturabo had built traps into his earthworks. False outer walls, double emplacements, killing zones along the drainage canals.’ Angron nodded approvingly, looking up and down the dark chamber as though he could see the great rough walls, lit by orange bolter-flare and the blue-white power-arcs of the worms.

‘But still we had to bring them inside our lines to break them. Hold them back and then fall to second positions, one formation at a time, through the Army lines to where we were waiting to drop the axe. There were a lot of worms, primarch.’ Khârn grinned. His wounds throbbed as the vividness of the memory prompted his metabolism to begin glanding combat stimms. ‘Our axes weren’t dry for a month.’ In answer Angron growled again, making a quick double motion of his arm as though swinging a blade forwards and backwards at something below his own height. Barely thinking about it, Khârn’s warrior brain filed away the Primarch’s footing and balance, his arm and shoulder motions, noted where a riposte might land home. Then, still in his combat stance, Angron pinned Khârn with his gaze again.

‘The Emperor. You talk about fighting down there in the mud but you don’t talk about the Emperor. High-rode, did he? Hung above you, did he?’ Angron’s voice was rising, turning ugly and ragged. ‘Laughed at you, did he? Called your blood-spills, did he? Admit it, Khârn!’ In a blur he crossed the distance and knocked Khârn to one knee with a looping, glancing arm-sweep.

‘The Emperor,’ Khârn said, and couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the memory. ‘The Emperor was a golden storm descending onto Nove Shendak’s filth. When the worms were in amongst us he came down from the peak and it was as if he had brought a fragment of the sun down for us in amends for the sun we couldn’t see through those filthy fogs. He shone out over the battle lines like a beacon. His custodians were like living banners, the troopers rallied to them, but he…’ Khârn closed his eyes, looking for the words.

‘Imagine, sire, did they fight in your home with grenades? Explosive weapons, small enough to hold in the hand and throw?’

‘High-rider weapons,’ snarled Angron. ‘Not fit for a warrior on the hot dust.’

‘But imagine, primarch, some,’ he searched for the word Angron had used, ‘some paperskin who takes a grenade and simply grips it in his fist until it explodes. Imagine how it would destroy the hand, shatter the arm, ruin the body! Wherever the Emperor met one of their columns head on it shattered like that. He didn’t repel them, sire. Didn’t defeat them. He ruined them. Assault after assault, not even Perturabo when he came down to the lines for the final–’

‘You’ve said that name already,’ boomed Angron from behind him. ‘Who is he?’

‘Forgive me, sire. Another primarch. One of the first we found. I was new to the War Hounds when the message went through the fleets, and I almost didn’t understand what it meant. Not until I saw the Iron Warriors and how they reacted. The very air seemed to change around them. They and we and the Ultramarines, we were travelling together. We envied them. They had found their blood-sire and their general. Now we have found ours.’

‘Another. Another one.’ Khârn risked a look around and up. Angron was standing still, hands pressed to his face again, teeth grinding as he concentrated. ‘Another one of me?’

‘Not like you, primarch. A brother to you. Made for conquest and kingship as you are. The Iron Warriors, they’re his Legion now.’

‘Brave fighters?’

‘Brave enough,’ Khârn answered, ‘with a wall to sit on or a trench to stand in.’

‘Walls.’ Angron growled the word. ‘Walls can be broken.’

‘So we tell them, sire. Perhaps you can–’

‘Walls,’ Angron cut him off. ‘When we first broke out of the caves and walked on stone, not dust, we were nearly trapped within walls. We had the weapons we’d drawn one another’s blood with and they were ready for a change of flavour. The high-riders laughed, the way they always laughed as they looked down on us on the dust, and they called out taunts the way they goaded us when we fought.’ Angron whipped his fists through the air as though he were batting at insects. ‘Sent their voices through the maggot-eyes they watched us with. Voices, voices. “Oh, do oblige, wonderful Angron!”’ Angron’s voice was suddenly, eerily imitating a higher, softly accented, singsong voice. ‘“We wagered you’d take a wound from a dozen enemies, surely a single wound, won’t you oblige and bleed for us?”’ His tone shifted and he imitated another. ‘“My son is watching with me, Angron, what’s wrong with you? Fight harder, give him something to cheer!” The eyes, the voices. The Butcher’s Nails in my head… hot… smoke… in my thoughts…’ A wolfish look stole over Angron’s face. ‘It was good to fight without the eyes and the voices. They tried to trap us but we wouldn’t stop for them. Every line they formed we rushed before they were in formation. They were everywhere but we were fast.’

Angron was suiting actions to words, loping back and forth, smashing and lunging and ripping at imaginary enemies.

‘Jochura with his laugh and his chains. Cromach, he fought with a brazier-glaive. Hah! I gave him the first black twist in his rope, and he and I burned the watchtowers at Hozzean together. Klester riding her shriekspear through the air, you should have seen her, Khârn, so fast, and ohh…’ Angron was clutching at the metal tracery poking out through his mane. ‘Fast we moved, fast, not hanging between walls, entrapment is death, fast, trust and discipline… Never rest, always forwards, hunger for the enemy, that’s what they taught us… Uhh, my brothers and sisters, oh, if we had known how it would end, we didn’t know!’ Angron fell to his knees and howled. ‘All that valour! The eaters of cities, they called us! All the mountain fastnesses, burning like beacons! All the Great Coast painted in blood! We devoured Hozzean with flames! Meahor! Ull-Chaim!’ Weeping and roaring, he leapt to his feet, oblivious to Khârn looking on. ‘We broke them at the river before Ull-Chaim! Hung half a thousand high-riders and kin-guard from the vine bridges! The princelings’ heads floating on the river, down to the lowlands as our heralds! The silver lace from their skulls, ahh, ripped from their skulls, wrapped on my fists!’

The furnace rage was back. Khârn thought to shuffle away, and dismissed the idea. He would not hide from Angron any more than he would fight him. And Angron would find him anywhere in this room anyway. And no sooner had he finished that thought than he had been wrenched from the ground by each arm and swung over the primarch’s head to be slammed into the floor. Stone cracked under him.

‘They paid! They paid! We made them pay!’ Angron kicked Khârn across the floor, bellowing. ‘Paid for my brothers and sisters! Who will pay?’

Dizzy, fainting, Khârn felt himself picked up and slammed down again, kicked again, grabbed by the neck.

‘Pay, War Hound! Pay! Fight me!’ Something – fist? Foot? – crashed into his chest and Khârn sprawled on the floor, choking. ‘Get up and fight!’

The end of it, then, Khârn thought. Well, I carried my embassy as well as a War Hound could. He tried to rise and couldn’t, so he lay full-length on his back and spoke weakly into the air.

‘You are my primarch and my general, Lord Angron. I swore that I would seek you out and follow you, and I will not fight you. And if I must die, then yours is the hand I will die by. I am Khârn and I am loyal to your will.’

While he waited, he faded from consciousness then jerked back as his system shifted itself to rouse him and the pain of his injuries sharpened. He could not see or hear Angron, but he could feel the stone floor underneath him and the cool air in his lungs. When it came, Angron’s voice was frighteningly close, almost by his ear.

‘You are warriors, Khârn,’ the primarch said. ‘I know warriors when I see them.’ Khârn tried to answer but pain rippled through his neck and chest when he tried to speak.

‘This… Emperor,’ Angron said, palpably struggling to keep his voice level. ‘He is the one you swore to?’

‘We swore to each other,’ Khârn managed to get out, ‘in his name and on his banner.’ His breath took a long time to come. ‘That we would not… raise a hand against you.’

Angron said nothing for a time. Khârn’s consciousness had begun to flicker again by the time he spoke.

‘Such devotion… from such warriors…’ His voice tailed off, faded and returned. His hands were pressed to his head again. ‘A man who can… a man… to whom… your oaths… for him you would…’

Minutes passed. Angron’s voice came again.

‘This room. I can leave it?’ It took Khârn a moment to work out how to answer.

‘This is the flagship of the War Hounds. Our greatest vessel. It is the instrument of your will and yours to command, primarch, as are we.’

For a long time there was no answer, just quiet and dark, and just as Khârn was starting to feel his consciousness go again he felt himself lifted, slowly and gently now, and carried through the dark.

They had looked at one another when the booming knock came on the doors, unsure of what to do, but only for a moment. Then Dreagher worked the openers, and when the locks clanked and the portals groaned open he was there. The War Hounds gasped and moved back as the giant shadow on the steps grew, advanced, came into the light. With his right hand the primarch supported Khârn, battered and hanging barely conscious.

Angron stood, wary, wound tight as a bowstring, his free hand opening and closing. His breath rumbled in his throat. For long minutes each War Hound in turn blanched under the primarch’s gaze, until Khârn managed to lift his head and speak.

‘Salute your primarch, War Hounds. Salute he who shed blood on the hot dust and made the high-riders pay for their arrogance. Salute your blood-sire and the general of the XII. Salute the one whose soldiers were named the Eaters of Cities. Salute him, Astartes!’

And the War Hounds answered him. Hands and voices lifted in salute and axe-heads were crashed against the floor. Gathering around Angron, he towering silently at their centre, they shouted and saluted again, and again, and Khârn found the strength and voice to stagger to join the circle and add his shouts to theirs.

‘Primarch,’ said Angron. His voice was a murmur, but it cut the War Hounds’ voices straight to silence. ‘I am a general again.’

‘Primarch!’ shouted Dreagher in response, ‘General! Your warriors were the eaters of cities, lord, but with you to command us the War Hounds will be the eaters of worlds!’

For a moment Angron swayed, his eyes and fists closed. But then he looked at Dreagher, from there to Khârn. And he smiled.

‘World Eaters,’ he said, slowly, tasting the sounds. ‘World Eaters. So you shall be, then, little brothers. You’ll learn to cut the rope. We shall bleed, and be brothers.’ This time they all met his eyes. Slowly, one of Angron’s great fists came up to return their salutes.

‘Come with me, then, World Eaters. Come down into my chamber and we will speak.’ Angron turned on his heel and walked back into his chamber.

Silently, supporting Khârn in their midst, the World Eaters followed their primarch down into that darkness that stank of blood.

About the Authors

Dan Abnett is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The Unremembered Empire, Know No Fear and Prospero Burns, the last two of which were both New York Times bestsellers. He has written almost fifty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies. He scripted Macragge’s Honour, the first Horus Heresy graphic novel, as well as numerous audio dramas and short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer universes. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.

Mitchel Scanlon is a full-time novelist and comics writer. His previous credits for the Black Library include the Horus Heresy novel Descent of Angels, Fifteen Hours, the background book The Loathsome Ratmen, and the comics series Tales of Hellbrandt Grimm.

Ben Counter is one of Black Library’s most popular Warhammer 40,000 authors, with two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles he has written the World Engine and Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris and a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.

Graham McNeill has written more Horus Heresy novels than any other Black Library author! His canon of work includes Vengeful Spirit and his New York Times bestsellers A Thousand Sons and the novella The Reflection Crack’d, which featured in The Primarchs anthology. Graham’s Ultramarines series, featuring Captain Uriel Ventris, is now six novels long, and has close links to his Iron Warriors stories, the novel Storm of Iron being a perennial favourite with Black Library fans. He has also written a Mars trilogy, featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus. For Warhammer, he has written the Time of Legends trilogy The Legend of Sigmar, the second volume of which won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Originally hailing from Scotland, Graham now lives and works in Nottingham.

Mike Lee’s credits for Black Library include the Horus Heresy novel Fallen Angels, the Time of Legends trilogy The Rise of Nagash and the Space Marine Battles novella Traitor’s Gorge. Together with Dan Abnett, he wrote the five-volume Malus Darkblade series. An avid wargamer and devoted fan of pulp adventure, Mike lives in the United States.

Anthony Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy novella The Purge, audio drama Khârn: The Eightfold Path and short stories ‘Scions of the Storm’ and ‘Dark Heart’. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, he has written the Space Marine Battles novel Khârn: Eater of Worlds, alongside the audio drama Chosen of Khorne, also featuring Khârn. He has also penned the Word Bearers trilogy and many short stories. Hailing from Australia, he is currently settled on the west coast of the United States.

James Swallow is best known for being the author of the Horus Heresy novels Fear to Tread and Nemesis, which both reached the New York Times bestseller lists, The Flight of the Eisenstein and a series of audio dramas featuring the character Nathaniel Garro. For Warhammer 40,000, he is best known for his four Blood Angels novels, the audio drama Heart of Rage, and his two Sisters of Battle novels. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy.

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Deliverance Lost, as well as the novellas Corax: Soulforge, Ravenlord and The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs. He is particularly well-known for his Dark Angels stories, including the Legacy of Caliban series, and the ever-popular novel Angels of Darkness. His Warhammer 40,000 repertoire further includes the Path of the Eldar series, the Horus Heresy audio dramas Raven’s Flight and Honour to the Dead, and a multiplicity of short stories. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the Time of Legends trilogy, The Sundering, and much more besides. He lives and works in Nottingham.

Matthew Farrer is the author of the novella ‘The Inheritor King’, which appears in Sabbat Crusade. He also wrote the Warhammer 40,000 novels Crossfire, Legacy and Blind, along with numerous short stories, including ‘The Headstone and Hammerstone Kings’ for Sabbat Worlds and the Horus Heresy tales ‘After Desh’ea’ and ‘Vorax’. He lives and works in Australia.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Descent of Angels first published in Great Britain in 2007.
Legion first published in Great Britain in 2008.
Battle for the Abyss first published in Great Britain in 2008.
Mechanicum first published in Great Britain in 2008.
Tales of Heresy first published in Great Britain in 2009.
This edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.

All cover illustrations by Neil Roberts.

Horus Heresy Collection Volume Two © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. Horus Heresy Collection Volume Two, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78251-992-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.