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Soulfuel – Rob Sanders

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Soulfuel

Rob Sanders

Sanctus Shibboleth. Shrine world.

The tracks of the Adepta Sororitas Rhino transport thrashed through the devotional plazas and statue-lined arcades of the capital. The gothic magnificence of belfries and cathedra towered over the small column of armoured vehicles. Diligent, followed by Bel Canto and Fleur de Lys, sped through the sombre avenues of the shrine world night. Servo-skulls with psyoculus filters shrieked ahead of the Rhino column on high-speed repulsors, tracking the Battle Sisters’ witchbreed prey. While priests and choristers made their way back to their cells after last prayers, the bells of the capital rang with alarm. Terrified at the pursuit weaving through the streets, citizens took shelter in chapels and cloister houses.

Adrianna Verletz hauled herself up to the front of the Rhino. The compartment was bathed in the blood-red light of its interior. Leaning forward past Sister Laurentia, Verletz peered through the armaplas of the slit viewport. Her plate was midnight black, framed by the immaculate white of her order vestments. Her hair was cut into a harsh bob, half black and half white. While the white tresses lined the stern austerity of one half of Verletz’s face, the black framed a half marked with ink. Her skin was like a page from the Fede Imperialis – the battle prayer of the Adepta Sororitas. At the centre of the scripture, below her eye, was the larger symbol of the palatine’s order – an ebon chalice of skull and flame. While she anchored herself in the bumping compartment by one gauntlet, she held a long chain of adamantium rosary beads in the other, unconsciously worrying each one between her armoured fingertips. The transport bucked as it smashed through a line of statues.

‘Do you think Saint Jeronimus would forgive our trespasses?’ Emiliana Anatol said, coming up behind her palatine. The Sister Superior’s voice was modulated through the half-helm that covered her mouth and nose. The rest of her face was lost to the shadowy depths of her white hood.

‘I think that the saints,’ the palatine said, ‘would see fit to punish the witch and the heretics that harbour her – not those who hunt them in the Emperor’s name.’

Verletz pursed her inked lips as the head of a statue rolled across the roof of the Rhino. ‘Besides, statues can be rebuilt – faith is eternal.’

Sister Superior Anatol ducked down in the compartment. She was a full head or so taller than her palatine. Even with her head lowered, her hood touched the ceiling compartment.

‘Do you hear that?’ Anatol asked.

Verletz did. It was the most horrific sound she had ever heard, a ghastly shriek that bounced about the gargoylesque architecture of the shrine world capital. It reached through flag and stone. The palatine felt its high-pitched horror reverberate through the metal superstructure of the Rhino. She suffered it grinding upon her nerves, in her teeth, shredding its way into her very soul.

‘We’re close,’ she said. ‘The witchbreed is near.’

‘Stand by,’ Emiliana Anatol said to her Dominion squad.

Xenobia Nox was no ordinary witchbreed. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica Black Ship Divine Imperative had followed the rogue psyker across three worlds in the Maelstrom Zone. She had not been part of the Emperor’s tithe on Veritasium and Verletz had lost her on Catharchia Mundi. She would not lose her this time. Xenobia Nox’s run would end here on the Sanctus Shibboleth shrine world. The witch was soulfuel. She was promised to the Emperor to feed his voracious appetite. She would burn in the psychic fires of the Astronomican – her darkness casting a flicker of light across the benighted Imperium.

Like a banshee, the witch shrieked, the dread cacophony of her voice ripping through the city. All about the Adepta Sororitas’ Rhinos, spidery cracks started to feel their way across the ground and through the surrounding buildings.

‘Faster,’ Verletz ordered, prompting Sister Laurentia to gun the Rhino’s engine. Shredding the marble road surface, Diligent reached the end of the avenue. Sister Laurentia heaved back on the nest of levers in which she sat, throwing the armoured transport around. Swerving across a pillar-lined cloister, Diligent’s side hit the wall of the refectory house beyond. Thrashing the Rhino’s tracks, Sister Laurentia hurtled Diligent up the walkway.

‘Bel Canto, respond,’ the palatine spat into her vox-bead.

‘Clear,’ the Sister driving the black Rhino behind managed.

‘Fleur de Lys?’ Verletz said, but she could hear the thunder of collapsing masonry both across the vox channel and outside Diligent. For the longest time nobody responded. Then the palatine heard the crackle of static and coughing.

‘Fleur de Lys immobilised,’ a Battle Sister reported. ‘No casualties.’

Verletz grunted. They had been fortunate. The walls of mausolea either side of the avenue must have come down on them. ‘Disembark and follow on foot.’

‘Yes, palatine.’

Verletz could no longer hear the shriek of the psyker but its effects were everywhere to see. Pillars were cracking in half. Statues of Saint Jeronimus were toppling and the busy architecture of gothic structures was cascading down the walls of cathedra like an avalanche of stone.

Following the pack of servo-skulls, Diligent cleared the collapsing cloister before churning its way across the rubble and out onto a ceremonial plaza. Everything was a haze of dust and the cacophonous clang of devotional bells. As the beams of the transport’s lamps cut through the obscurity, the shadow of a falling structure passed through the murk. Diligent bounced on its tracks as a wall crashed down in its wake, crushing the Rhino behind. Verletz heard the scream of a Sister across the vox.

‘Bel Canto!’ the palatine called.

‘She’s gone,’ Sister Laurentia confirmed. ‘Brace!’

Suddenly, everything went dark. Verletz’s grip tightened on the compartment hand-holds and she bent her knees in expectation of a crash. She could hear the clang of a bell as a shrine tower toppled across their path. The palatine felt the torment of Diligent’s brakes shudder through the vehicle and the churning of its tracks. As the Rhino hit the tower, the impact threw the Sisters forward with the clatter of plate. After the tortured crunch of metal and the thunder of distant collapses died away, the blood-red compartment lamps flickered back on.

Verletz looked about the Rhino. Their blessed plate had largely saved them. Sister Laurentia was blinking blood from her eyes as an ugly gash across her forehead leaked down her face. Emiliana Anatol’s white hood was similarly stained red. The Dominion squad had fared little better, with bruised cheeks and Sister Bernadette’s broken nose. The palatine bit at a badly cut bottom lip, her perfect teeth tarnished by the injury. She flashed the whites of her eyes at the Sisters in the darkened compartment.

‘I want that witch,’ she told them.

The compartment was suddenly alive with the hum of the Sister Superior’s power maul. She pointed it at the door.

‘Disembark,’ Anatol barked through her half-helm, ‘and pursue on foot.’

Like lithe hunting hounds catching the scent of their prey, the Sisters of Battle tore out of the Rhino. The smoking transport was a smashed wreck. Its dozer blade was a mangled mess, while its forward hull was rent and split with the force of the impact. The destruction was nothing compared to Bel Canto, which had been turned to flattened scrap between the shattered plaza and the weight of the falling tower. Verletz didn’t want to think of the horror within its pulverised hull and the brave Sisters who had given their lives in the Emperor’s service. The Battle Sister traced the symbol of the Imperial aquila across her chest.

Within seconds, Anatol’s Dominion squad was away, their light-armoured step taking them swiftly across the ceremonial court. Verletz followed them. The Sisters were slender black shapes cutting through the haze, outlined in the brilliant white of their vestments.

As the Battle Sisters ran towards the epicentre of destruction, collapsed buildings settling and the air thick with masonry dust, Verletz could hear the slosh of promethium in the flasks of the flamers carried by the Dominion squad. While Emiliana Anatol ran with her maul in one gauntlet, she held up a Godwyn-De’az-pattern boltgun in the other, its scope and elongated barrel bouncing against her pauldron. Slipping a pair of bolt pistols from their thigh-holsters, the palatine took off after the Sisters.

Sprinting through the devastation, the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice hurdled broken statues. Skidding down scree, they slid across the surface of shattered masonry and weaved through demolished architecture. With their plate rattling to every thudding step and robes flowing after them, the Sisters of Battle spread out, running through clusters of dazed priests and civilians. They knew who they were looking for; what they were looking for.

‘Target sighted,’ Sister Bernadette called out across the vox. Through the clearing haze she had spotted the psyker. Dressed in the ragged remains of a pilgrim’s stolen attire, the witch smouldered with ethereal energies that streamed in her wake like the sky trail of a comet. She moved like a savage, scrabbling and sprinting through the devastation she had wrought. It had not saved her, however. The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice were mere steps behind. While robed figures pulled pilgrims from the rubble and wandered in confused prayer, the psyker raced through the ruin like a wild animal.

Xenobia Nox. Heretic. Witchbreed. Abomination.

Putting her talents to dread use, the mutant’s monstrous shriek could not only be heard but felt across the spiritual plane. It brought buildings crashing down and toppled those unfortunate enough to be in close earshot. As Verletz ran through the wreckage she was forced to pick her footing carefully. There were bodies everywhere, their clothes soaking up pools of dust-thick blood.

The Dominion squad closed on the fleeing psyker like a flock of raptor birds hunting their prey. They would not fail their mistress. Xenobia Nox would be taken and taken alive. With Sister Bernadette nearing the witch, the Battle Sisters converged upon their target. Verletz hurdled from mound to mound of rubble, then jumped through an obliterated stained-glass window and slid down the side of a crumbled wall.

‘Anatol!’ Verletz shouted, her bolt pistols held at her sides.

The Sister Superior skidded to a stop and brought up her boltgun. Aiming through the remains of the window, she blasted off a bolt. The shell shattered the plinth of a smashed statue. A second thudded into cracked marble flagstones. As the psyker darted back and forth, simultaneously attempting to escape the closing net of Battle Sisters and the Sister Superior’s aim, she disappeared behind the remnants of a wall. Blasting off two more rounds through the bottom of the wall, Anatol was rewarded with a brief shriek of pain. It was a soul-stabbing moment of horror for all who could hear it. Verletz’s heart missed a beat but, like the Dominion squad, she ran on towards their quarry.

They found the witchbreed trying to hide behind the wrecked colonnade of a demolished cloister. As Verletz walked the last few steps, the Dominion squad swiftly formed a four-point perimeter around the psyker. Unleashing crossing streams of righteous flame from their weapons, they boxed Xenobia Nox in. She was going nowhere without having the flesh burned from her bones. As the palatine got closer, she saw that at least one of Sister Superior Anatol’s bolts had found their mark: the witch had been clipped in the left knee. Unable to run, Xenobia Nox was scrabbling about the column for cover.

Verletz approached with both bolt pistols up.

‘That won’t save you, mutant,’ she seethed above the flames. Firing off bolts alternately from each pistol, the palatine blasted the column to a stump, forcing Xenobia Nox to crawl this way and that, finding a stream of flame in her path in every direction. ‘Nothing can. You were once the Master of Mankind’s and God-Emperor willing, you shall be again. He has use for you, witchbreed. Though your flesh might be wretched, your inner light burns bright. Such spiritual sustenance has been seen fit for the Master’s table. He will feast on your wayward talents and drink deep in the fires of your soul.’

As Emiliana Anatol came up behind, she handed her boltgun to one of her Dominion squad members.

‘Secure the prisoner,’ Verletz commanded, holstering her pistols. Her gauntlet returned to worrying the beads on her adamantium rosary. As a Sister provided a brief break in the streaming flame, Anatol was admitted to the fiery enclosure, chains and manacles jangling from her belt. The Sister Superior brought her power maul humming to life and pointed it at the psyker.

‘Submit,’ Anatol said, her modulated words thick with hatred.

Xenobia Nox pulled back her ragged hood. Beneath was a bald, earless head and face as pale as alabaster. Her eyes were inky black and the mutant’s mouth was full of shark-like teeth. She snapped like a feral thing, an unintelligible stream of utterance flowing from her lips. It was certainly not a language the Sisters recognised.

‘I was hoping you would say that,’ the Sister Superior said. She swung the crackling maul down, smashing the psyker onto the ground. Blood ran down the side of her horrific features but the mutant pulsed with the resilience of the warp.

The witch brought her head back up, spitting and seething like a thing possessed.

A gruel of blood and spittle dribbled from her mouth. She looked up at Anatol with a heretic’s hatred. When Xenobia Nox opened her pale lips, it was her banshee’s shriek that proceeded from them. The sound had been terrible enough from a distance. Here, in the presence of the witch herself, the Sisters of Battle suffered as they never had before.

The appalling sound passed straight through Adrianna Verletz. It reverberated through her plate. It shivered through her flesh and turned her bones to ice. The sound was abomination heard and felt. It shredded the nerves and curdled the soul. Verletz felt the rapid thud of her heart in her chest and her stomach flip. The Battle Sisters doubled over to retch, dropping their weapons to grab their heads with their gauntlets.

The banshee scream seemed to go on forever. Over the vox-bead, Verletz could hear the Sisters from Fleur de Lys confirm the terrible sound from their position and Divine Imperative requesting an ill-timed update on the pursuit. Time passed with a terrible sluggishness. Verletz closed her eyes. The psyker’s shriek was everything. It scalded her ears. It burned on her thoughts like oil on water. It scorched her soul.

When she opened her eyes again, Emiliana Anatol and the Dominion squad were on their knees. Verletz didn’t know how much time had passed but Xenobia Nox was back on her feet, starting to move. Blood dribbled from Verletz’s ears and streamed from her eyes like tears. Nearby, Sister Bernadette was suffering in a similar way, except rich red trails also leaked from her nose. She was retching blood now and holding her head with both gauntlets as though the psyker’s shriek might destroy her skull.

Blinking blood, Verletz saw that Xenobia Nox was now limping towards her – the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice unable to do anything to stop her escaping.

The witchbreed paused before Verletz and gave her the darkness of her eyes. Flaring her horrid nostrils in derision, the mutant hobbled on past the Battle Sister unchallenged.

A righteous fury built up within Adrianna Verletz. She was furious both at herself and for her Emperor. Xenobia Nox was a blot upon humanity. She needed erasing. The palatine had promised the psyker to the Master of Mankind and she wouldn’t fail him. Not even if it cost the Battle Sister her own soul.

Drifting her gauntlets down from the torment in her skull, Verletz let her armoured fingertips tap against the grips of her bolt pistols. She would not kill the psyker – no matter how tempting the prospect. Allowing her hand to reach down to her rosary beads, she snatched up the adamantium length in a fevered grip. Turning, the palatine launched the rosary around like a whip. The beads wrapped tightly about Xenobia Nox’s throat, stopping the psyker in her tracks. With a snarl on her cut lips, Verletz hauled the mutant back to her.

The witch gagged. The terrible shriek died in her constricted throat as the heretic tore at the adamantium beads. Verletz held the loathsome creature to her – crushing the psyker against her blessed black plate as she wound the remaining length of the rosary beads about Xenobia Nox’s jaw and bald head, locking her fang-filled mouth shut.

Verletz held her there for a moment. The silence was sweet. Like a salve for the soul, the palatine drank it in, savouring the absence of the psyker’s howl. About her, Emiliana Anatol and her Sisters Dominion got unsteadily to their feet, while through the murk of dust and darkness, the Sisters from Fleur de Lys arrived. They stared at their palatine, with her bloodshot eyes and flushed face.

In her grasp, the psyker was shaking. Her oily black eyes had flipped over white while their lids trembled. At first the Sister of Battle thought that she had choked the witchbreed, but as the creature’s lips went to work silently on some desperate curse or incantation, Verletz felt the unpleasant sensation of psychic powers at work. She had experienced a similar spiritual chill when in the presence of astropaths, sending their messages across the expanse of the void. Within moments, it was over and the mutant’s eyes rolled back over black.

With a shove of disgust, Verletz sent the mutant stumbling at the Battle Sisters.

‘Soulfuel,’ she told them. ‘For the God-Emperor’s pleasure. Take this witch back to the ship and keep her silent. I don’t want to hear another word out of her mouth.’

Verletz’s report to Shipmaster Tyacke had been brief. After her Sisters had secured the prisoner, Xenobia Nox had been transported to the Black Ship Divine Imperative. Like a mighty cathedral, the immense cruiser never failed to make an impression upon the Battle Sister. The Divine Imperative was three years into a long tour of sectors bordering the galactic core, two of which Verletz had spent aboard. The Black Ship’s hull contained thousands of cheerless Adeptus Astra Telepathica personnel and the witchbreeds they collected as part of the Emperor’s tithe. The miserable psyker-stock were destined for Ancient Terra, to feed the Master of Mankind’s insatiable appetite and stoke the spiritual fire of the Astronomican. It was a holy duty and Verletz took pride in the fact that she was doing the Emperor’s good work.

Once aboard, the witch had been taken by storm troopers of the 133rd Pontificals. Subjected to regular purity and incorruptibility tests, the storm troopers had responsibility for security aboard the Adeptus Astra Telepathica vessel. Bridled, chained and shot up with powerful tranquillisers by Sisters of the Order Hospitaller, the mutant was placed in psychically shielded containment within the mournful dungeon-decks of the Divine Imperative’s hull.

As the ship broke orbit, Verletz accompanied the prisoner and her escort down through the decks. While the upper levels were a hive of activity and the cloister decks filled with devotional observance, the containment holds were a living hell. There the occlusion fields maintained by Adeptus Astra Telepathica psykers and metaphysical machineries that Verletz barely understood disrupted the prisoners’ abilities. Beyond the draining oppression of the occluding sphere, the dangerous witchbreeds suffered the constant intrusion of klaxons and bursts of blinding strobe light within the isolating darkness of their cells. Denied rest and sanity, it was impossible for the psykers to summon their powers. Disorientated by regular movement between holding cells and supplied with food and drink laced with heavy sedatives, the witchbreeds were kept docile and pliable.

With Xenobia Nox secured in an isolation cell deep within the bowels of the Black Ship, Verletz made her way to the bridge.

Tyacke, as always in the full black robes and regalia of his dour organisation, received the details on the command deck with his usual stoic indifference. He had problems of his own. After raids by renegade Space Marines out of the Maelstrom, tithes from Sanctus Shibboleth, Veritasium and Catharchia Mundi had been below quota. The shipmaster was now hoping for better numbers from Nullhaven, where there was an Imperial Navy presence and less likelihood of raids by Maelstrom Zone pirates. Nullhaven, however, was a long haul across an area of space perilously close to the warp storm. Tyacke had been forced to hold station and wait on the debris-strewn edge of the system due to bad immaterial weather reported by the Black Ship’s Navigator. This had not improved the shipmaster’s mood, now being both off schedule and under allocation.

To make matters worse, the Divine Imperative had taken on a passenger at Veritasium. Lord Inquisitor Orsino Quant. Lords of the ordos quite often made use of Adeptus Astra Telepathica Black Ships to move between worlds and while it was agreed that Inquisitorial representatives might look over incarcerated psykers for potential recruits, the reality was that it was simply convenient.

Fortunately, Quant didn’t maintain a large retinue but still saw fit to bother Shipmaster Tyacke with his presence on the command deck. Quant was very short for an inquisitor and while hunched with furs and his ordo robes, he appeared even shorter when stood next to Verletz and her Sisters. With a beard, short and grey, and a disarming smile, Quant seemed to have an easy manner, which was more than could be said for the shipmaster. The blue twinkle of the inquisitor’s bionic eye and a furrowed brow lent him the appearance of a jeweller, squinting at everything and assessing its worth. Beyond a short staff, he forwent obvious weaponry – although Verletz did notice that his hands were crowded with ornate rings that could have such miniature devices built into them. The rumour aboard ship was that Quant had dealings with the Adeptus Astartes and had recently been tasked with monitoring redemptive Chapters formerly involved in the Badab War. Verletz had a hard time imagining the inquisitor intimidating a Space Marine.

Quant had, however, taken a keen interest in Xenobia Nox upon her incarceration on board the Divine Imperative and had pressed both Shipmaster Tyacke and Verletz for information about her. While routinely whispering to his bowing attendants, the inquisitor had been particularly interested in the strange episode the psyker experienced after the palatine had silenced her. After considerable thought, the inquisitor despatched his attendants to the astropathic blister chamber on the top deck, and returned to pacing the bridge.

Some hours later, after blessings from the preachers on the cloister deck, Verletz was recalled with some urgency. Rune-bank servitors and dark-robed officers of the command deck were animated and extra storm troopers had been stationed on the bridge. Inquisitor Quant and Tyacke stood beside a long-range augur monitoring station.

‘Shipmaster Tyacke,’ the Battle Sister said as she arrived. He did not look pleased.

‘I need you to coordinate with the Pontificals,’ Tyacke told her, without taking his eyes off the rune-screen.

‘What’s happening?’ Verletz asked.

Orsino Quant tapped a deck officer on the shoulder and pointed his stubby, ring-heavy fingers at the console rune-screen. ‘Bring it up on the lancet screens,’ he said.

As the lancet screens crackled, the light grey orb of Sanctus Shibboleth and the Maelstrom-tinged void beyond were replaced with long-range pict-captures. Plastered across the screens were two different images. The quality was poor but Verletz could make out two piratical contingents converging on the Divine Imperative from different directions.

Orsino Quant pointed with his staff up at a small flotilla of armed freighters and pirate raiders spreading out across the void.

‘Attack ships of Sargel the Sojourner,’ Quant said before jabbing the staff up at an Iconoclast-class destroyer running down on the Divine Imperative at ramming speed. ‘The Slaughterfest, cultship of the Jagged Oath and cannibal warband known as the Fleshmongers.’

‘You seem to know a lot about traitors and renegades,’ the palatine said.

‘It is my business to know,’ Quant told her icily. ‘These pirates all take their orders from the Tyrant of Badab but operate in the Maelstrom Zone upon their own fell recognisance. The Fleshmongers sacked several star forts along the Phaestra Rift, dragging the living and the dead away to the slaughter decks on butcher’s hooks. Tales of Sargel’s deviancy are told across twelve sub-sectors.’

‘They fight for this Sargel?’ Verletz asked.

‘They fight for the Tyrant,’ Quant corrected her.

Adrianna Verletz’s heart sank. While the Black Ship dare not risk a jump into the warp during such bad immaterial weather, the Red Corsairs rode the storm without fear. The monstrous Maelstrom was their home.

‘Can we send word for aid?’ Verletz asked.

‘I’ve sent word for reinforcements, but it will take time,’ the inquisitor said gravely. He tapped the deck officer on the shoulder. The lancet screens returned for forward orientation. On them Verletz could see Adeptus Ministorum monitors from the shrine world streaking ahead to meet the pirate threat. ‘The system ships and Shipmaster Tyacke here will do what they can. I will remain on the bridge and contact our reinforcements. Shipmaster Tyacke and I need you to take charge on the containment decks. You have your Sisters and the ship’s security forces. The enemy might simply be out for blood. They might be after the ship. They might want our cargo. We can’t let that happen.’

‘Agreed,’ said Verletz. She had run down Xenobia Nox and the witchbreeds in the hold for her God-Emperor. They belonged to the Master of Mankind. Verletz went to leave. ‘Besides… they are not ours to give away.’

Verletz didn’t have long to make preparations. Assembling her Sisters of Battle and the Pontificals on the cloister deck, she made a brief address. Standing in archways, before tapestries and altars, the Emperor’s servants cut a figure as solemn as the surrounding architecture. She had no words of glory for them. Life aboard a Black Ship was about service to the Emperor. It was grim work, not helped by their dungeon-like surroundings. The transported psykers and the measures taken to contain them created a perpetual aura of despair. Only the most resolute of the Emperor’s servants could endure such perpetual torment in his name and she told those gathered on the deck as much. She told them that many across the Imperium prided themselves on serving the Master of Mankind. Theirs, however, was a special service. Soulfuel gathered by their efforts and transported by their holy vessel went directly to the Emperor. Such labour reached far across the Imperium as the guiding light of the Astronomican. It was as close to the God-Emperor as any might hope to come.

Verletz asked Preacher Langella to conduct a blessing of the women and men pledging themselves to the defence of the Divine Imperative and of the weapons to be employed in such a venture. While Lieutenant Nugent and his Pontificals stood by in their black carapace and robes, their helm optics burning blue in the gloom of the cloister, their weaponry was blessed: hellguns and volleyguns, laid out on the deck with their battery backpacks. Slipping the packs on and priming the cabling on their rifles, they filed out to take their positions across the containment deck. They had their orders. They knew their duty.

The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice knelt one by one before the preacher in their midnight plate and immaculate white vestments as Langella scattered them with blessed water. For her Battle Sisters, Verletz had ordered the armoury to outfit them with the heaviest weapons available: heavy flamers, bolters and multi-meltas. Against the renegade Space Marines of the Tyrant of Badab, they would need weaponry that could punch through the plate of an Adeptus Astartes warrior. Their belts weighed down with extra grenades and spare magazines for their bolt pistols, the Sisters left the deck under the eye of Sisters Superior Desiree and Anatol.

While Emiliana Anatol’s breathing through the grille of her half-helm set a rhythm for orderly exit, Nastasia Desiree stopped Sisters to straighten their vestments and untangle belt feeds. From between the curtains of her grey bob, Desiree gave them the hardness of her eyes and the deep lines of her unsmiling face. As the last of the Sisters reported to their hold-points and gauntlets, Anatol and Desiree turned to their palatine.

‘The traitors try to rush us,’ Verletz said. ‘Overwhelm us. Overpower us. They will fail. You will ensure it. This is holy ground – blessed by good works carried out in the Emperor’s name. Traitors and renegades have no place here. Our blessed bolts and flame shall be the price of entry. Drive them back – and if you cannot, make them pay for every trespassing step. Let your plate be a wall forever standing and the flesh within an inviolable covenant, never broken. For what lies within these walls is only the Emperor’s to enjoy. It is a holy pact that neither you nor I can break. Fail not yourselves, your Sisterhood or the Master of Mankind.’

‘Yes, palatine,’ the pair answered.

As they did so, Verletz heard the thunder of the Black Ship’s batteries as laser cannons rolled back on their rails in a broadside. That the palatine could hear gunfire from both starboard and port batteries was not a good sign. While the Black Ship’s powerful armament gave a good account of itself, enemy flotillas must have been closing in from both sides. A violent shudder passed through the Divine Imperative’s superstructure, and the Battle Sister stumbled forward. The Black Ship’s formidable shielding might be able to stand up to the broadsides of raiders and cultships but it would not be able to stop boarding torpedoes or suicidal ship-to-ship collisions at ramming speed.

‘It has started,’ she said to the Sisters. ‘Take your stations. Go.’

The Sisters Superior jogged away, their plate clattering rhythmically as they went. Verletz had despatched Anatol to watch over Xenobia Nox with the last of her Sisters Dominion. The palatine’s orders were clear. Even if the renegades of Lufgt Huron were to reach the dangerous psyker, the Emperor’s soulfuel was to be denied them. Emiliana Anatol had orders to brain the witch with her power maul before she could be liberated. It was a grave duty and Verletz had entrusted it to the towering Anatol. Verletz and Sister Superior Desiree, however, were to coordinate the defence of the containment decks, the Sisters Retributor fighting to make sure it didn’t come to that.

Klaxons erupted across the cloister deck.

As the palatine jogged across, Langella draped the chains of his incense-streaming censers on a hook and grabbed the heavy blade of his Eviscerator chainsword.

‘Preacher,’ Verletz said. ‘With me.’

Darkness. Smoke. Thunder. Bloody havoc spread down through the decks.

Transhuman maniacs, the renegade Space Marines of the Tyrant were known for their merciless application of force. Bred for such boarding actions, the monsters swarmed various hangars and spread out from boarding torpedoes embedded in the Black Ship’s side. Their twisted minds were feverish and fearless, their warped bulk encased in desecrated plate. Like torrents of madness, their unstoppable advance swept through the decks and holds of the Divine Imperative. Adeptus Astra Telepathica crew and black-robed adepts died in their droves. They had number and determination, stoically holding sections and mobbing the advancing heralds of the Tyrant. They were nothing, however, before barbed chainblades and the flesh-mulching bark of renegade boltguns.

On the containment decks, Verletz pledged to do better – for her Battle Sisters and her God-Emperor. Patching through to different holds and dungeon-decks, the palatine coordinated a bloody defence. Creed-thumping priests, silent storm troopers and Battle Sisters acting with cool resolve, carried through the insanity by their training and their faith. The renegades hit them from starboard and port, from every hangar, hatch and torpedo-rent breach. Bulkheads were locked off, corridors filled with smoke and the fat beams of hellguns warmed the air. Preachers buried eviscerating blades in crimson-plated monsters, while the labyrinthine passageways of the containment holds rang with the sharp crack of Godwyn-De’az-pattern boltguns, delivering absolution and death to the Tyrant’s heretics. The palatine’s forces were spread thin across the sections and it was all they could do to deny the Red Corsairs easy entry to the containment holds.

Outside, Verletz could hear the excruciating sound of hulls scraping alongside one another, and could feel the knock and tremble of enemy vessels making contact with the Black Ship. The Divine Imperative’s formidable gunfire had done what it could. The closing pirate flotillas had run the gauntlet of the cruiser’s broadsides, individual raiders and cultships turned into shattered derelicts of glowing scrap. As the mayhem on the Black Ship’s decks testified, small pirate raiders laden with cultists and renegade Space Marine shock troops had successfully boarded the Black Ship and flooded the fat cruiser with armoured killers. Verletz had led a small contingent of Battle Sisters and storm troopers towards one of the Black Ship’s security hangars – a place where witchbreeds were admitted to the ship and processed. Now renegade Space Marines were trying to overrun the hangar and punch their way through to the containment sections.

Just as the palatine thought their predicament couldn’t get any worse, she and her Sisters were thrown forward across the deck. Verletz steadied herself. There was a lull in the gunfire being exchanged ahead as both Battle Sisters and renegades were thrown from their aim by the impact.

‘Another raider?’ Sister Desiree asked.

‘Too big,’ Verletz replied. Whatever had slammed into the Black Ship was bigger than a Corsairs raiding ship. The palatine changed the channel on her vox-bead. ‘Inquisitor, what’s happening?’

‘We’ve been chased into an ambush,’ Inquisitor Quant told her. In the background, Verletz could hear the shipmaster roaring orders across the command deck. ‘Straight into the embrace of a third vessel. The Tyrant’s Claw.’

‘You know this vessel?’

‘Aye,’ Quant returned grimly. ‘I know it. It belonged to the Astral Claws but now it’s a flagship raider for the Red Corsairs. Lufgt Huron’s Third Captain will be in command – Nassial Voightek. Voightek is credited with destroying the gene-stocks of the Marines Errant on Vilamus. They call him the First Among Equals.’

By the time the Battle Sisters arrived at the hangar deck, the renegades had breached the integrity field maintaining atmospheric pressure and were landing their barbaric attack craft inside the ship. Adeptus Astra Telepathica deck crew and enginseers were sealing the blast door to the hangar. The noise coming from the other side of the door suggested the Red Corsairs were butchering any Imperial security forces unlucky enough to have been in the hangar beyond.

‘Open it!’ Verletz commanded. A single blast door was not going to stop the Tyrant’s monsters; they had to be purged from the ship. As the security bulkhead shuddered open, Sister Desiree and Lieutenant Nugent led the way through the anchored landers and cargo pallets with their forces. Outside, Verletz could see Red Corsairs fast-paced raiders, armed freighters and battle-scarred system ships in the void, all bearing the perverse sign of the Tyrant, running alongside the Black Ship. A small swarm of modified landers and cargo lighters were surging in towards the open hangar. They landed with wild abandon, skidding to a stop across the deck – their engines roaring. Smashing aside Adeptus Astra Telepathica security transports as they sparked to a halt, the crafts’ bay doors began to open.

Already, Nugent’s Pontificals were assuming cover and lancing the battered, blood-red craft with supercharged beams from their hellguns. Verletz wasn’t about to wait for the renegades to establish a hold point. Running straight for the smoke-streaming attack craft, the palatine heard the boots of Sisters Retributor pounding across the deck behind. Snapping a pair of grenades from her belt, Verletz slid to a stop before the opening bay door of a modified cargo lighter. Inside she could see hordes of cultist soldiers – primed with their barbaric weapons, all bearing the cult scarification of vicious claw marks across their faces. As they howled at the sight of Verletz, the Sister of Battle tossed the grenades into the compartment.

As the cultists tried to climb out through the bay door, the grenades detonated, turning the interior into a thunderous bloodbath. Running towards a second lighter with two more grenades, Verletz found that the crazed troops within had cut the hydraulics and forced the bay door down with a crash. Rolling the grenades across the deck, however, the palatine blasted the charging cultists to a storm of shrapnel-mauled flesh.

Within the attack craft, striding through the meatshield of cultists, Verletz saw towering armoured forms. Nightmares in filthy red plate, bearing sigils that ached with the corruptive powers of the Maelstrom. For the Battle Sisters it was like being bathed in the malevolence of some unholy relic. Adepts and deck crew, meanwhile, were driven to distraction in the fearful presence of the traitors.

Bolt blasts stuttered from the interior of the attack craft, the expert aim of renegade Adeptus Astartes tearing Pontificals and their cover apart.

‘Send them back to oblivion!’ Verletz ordered, prompting Sisters of the Ebon Chalice to launch fiery streams into the attack craft from their heavy flamers. As Red Corsairs staggered from the inferno, writhed in flame, Verletz drew her pistols and blasted at the Chaos Space Marines, sending bolts through the sides of warped helms.

With more attack ships coming in to land, Lieutenant Nugent and his Pontificals seared a storm of las-beams into opening compartments. Those heretics that had escaped being cut to pieces ran at the Black Ship’s security forces like rabid animals. Running up the sides of cargo piles, the cultists leapt at the black-robed soldiers with wicked blades and improvised metal claws. Beating them back with the butts of their hellguns, the Pontificals turned their weapons back on the heretics and burned holes straight through chests and bellies. The charge had moved the storm troopers out into open ground again, however, a fact not lost on the emerging Red Corsairs, whose cursed bolts took helms from shoulders and blasted robed Pontificals back over the cargo.

Under Sister Superior Desiree’s instruction, Retributors moved up with heavy bolters and multi-meltas. With superheated blasts of energy, the Sisters obliterated plate and corrupted flesh to nothingness. Heavy bolt-rounds chewed through roaring renegades as they answered in kind with their belt-fed boltguns.

Suddenly a filthy red gauntlet grabbed Verletz by her vestments. Several renegade Space Marines advanced along the blasted remains of an attack ship to set upon the palatine. As Battle Sisters immediately ran to her rescue, two of the Red Corsairs put them down with savage blasts from their boltguns.

Verletz felt herself hauled up by the towering traitor. His plate wore the faded glory of an officer, while his helmless head was pallid, warped and withered. His lips were lined with hooks, while a tongue like a skinned snake writhed from the opening. It reached out for Verletz but the Battle Sister smacked it aside with disgust, the fingers of her gauntlet desperately going to work on slamming another magazine into the breach of a bolt pistol. With a grunt, the renegade smashed the palatine into the scorched side of an attack craft, knocking her senseless. The bolt pistol fell from her grip.

Nastasia Desiree came at the Red Corsairs, flanked by two Sisters Retributor armed with heavy boltguns. As the first renegade was blown back, his chest a mess of bloody impacts, the second took aim over the officer’s pauldron and blew the two Sisters away from their master. They could not save him from Sister Desiree, however, who swung for the Red Corsair as he aimed his bolt pistol at her. Smashing the heretic’s weapon to pieces with the short, falchion-like blade of her power sword, Desiree positioned herself for a back slash. The renegade looked down at his gauntlet, his tongue thrashing about. Black blood slurped to the deck where the Sister Superior had taken off a couple of digits. Launching himself forward, the renegade stamped the sole of his boot against Desiree’s chest, crunching her breastplate and sending the Battle Sister sliding across the deck.

‘Sargel, I presume,’ Adrianna Verletz said, coming back to her senses, her voice thick with disgust.

Sargel smashed the palatine back into the attack ship’s hull once more before tossing her across the platform. Sailing across several pallets of cargo, Verletz hit the side of an Adeptus Astra Telepathica security transport with merciless force.

Pushing herself up off the floor, she grimaced. The impact had stove in the side of her plate and broken several ribs. As Sargel the Sojourner strode across the deck towards Verletz, intent on finishing her off, the Red Corsair suddenly noticed the pin of a krak grenade that she was holding in the fingers of her gauntlet. He looked down to see the primed grenade she had mag-locked to his belt, but was too late to save himself. The renegade exploded, his plate and the decking shattered by the sharp detonation.

Pieces of him and his armour flew across the hangar, slapping against the side of orbital transports. Close enough to lose an arm and half his face, Sargel’s Red Corsairs compatriot was blasted off his feet.

Verletz cast her gaze across the hangar. Attack ships were still crashing to a stop, disgorging cultist mobs and heretic Space Marines. The enemy were trying desperately to push beyond the hangar, but the disciplined fire of the 133rd Pontificals held them back. Lighting up the hangar, converging streams of energy turned Red Corsairs into smouldering silhouettes. As they crashed to their knees, Preacher Langella swept forth with his Eviscerator blade, taking helms off shoulders with barbed sweeps of the weapon and stabbing it into armoured chests.

Nastasia Desiree, back on her feet, was ordering her Sisters Retributor back. Engulfing heretic mobs in walls of flame and hammering the armoured advance of Red Corsairs back with their heavy weapons, the Sisters backed through the hangar. While their defence was resolute, more attack ships arrived every minute, bolstering the numbers of the corrupt besiegers. It was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.

Picking her bolt pistol back up off the deck, Verletz saw a small mob of cultists swamp Lieutenant Nugent. Despite dropping three of the heretics in quick succession with point-blank blasts of his hellgun, the storm trooper officer went down under the weight of the assault. Hacking into his carapace with their cruel blades and hooking into his flesh with their metal claws, the cultists dragged him down into their madness. Blasting bolt after bolt into the mob from the recovered pistol, Verletz blew limbs from joints, and craters in the heretics’ chests. As the deck bucked beneath her, throwing her forward, the final bolt missed its mark and sparked off the hull of a landing Red Corsairs attack ship.

The palatine locked gazes with Sister Superior Desiree. The deck rumbled again and again. The Divine Imperative was being fired upon repeatedly, but this time the Black Ship wasn’t being mauled with cannon fire or lance streams.

‘Inquisitor?’ Verletz said over the vox, clutching her side. Over the channel she could hear the havoc on the bridge. ‘Inquisitor?’

‘The Slaughterfest,’ the inquisitor managed back down the vox. ‘She’s launched boarding torpedoes – port side aft.’

‘Palatine,’ Shipmaster Tyacke interrupted. ‘The ship is surrounded on all sides. The boarding actions seem concentrated on the lower decks.’

‘What the shipmaster means to say, Sister,’ Quant said, ‘is that they seem focused on the containment holds. We believe that they are intent on acquiring our precious cargo.’

Verletz’s inked lips curled into a snarl. She was not going to let that happen.

‘Preacher!’ she called across the gunfire of the hangar. ‘Take charge here.’

Preacher Langella acknowledged the palatine by pointing the gore-dripping chainblade of his Eviscerator at her. About him, Pontificals laid down a withering stream of supercharged las-beams at the arriving attack ships, cutting storming cultists to shreds. The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice meanwhile turned their multi-meltas upon the enemy arrivals, transforming heretics into a haze of liquefied flesh and Red Corsairs into mounds of smouldering slag. Where the fighting was up close it was bloody and merciless. The Tyrant’s heretic mobs swarmed isolated Pontificals and tore them limb from limb, while the Chaos Space Marines smashed both Sisters and storm troopers into the deck with superhuman strength.

‘Sister Superior,’ Verletz called to Nastasia Desiree as she turned to leave. ‘Bring two squads – with me.’

Verletz dared not take too many Battle Sisters from the hangar defence. Sargel the Sojourner might have been dead but his followers kept coming and their feverish madness continued to unfold on the hangar deck. As Verletz, Desiree and the Battle Sisters jogged through the containment decks and down through the levels, the lamps bathing them in emergency red, storm trooper sentinels and Sisters on the station volunteered to accompany them. The palatine refused them all. The containment decks, with their cells and captive psykers, had to be secured. Besides, with Red Corsairs coming at them from every direction, it would not be long before such sentry points turned into gauntlets and bottlenecks for swarming cultists and the armoured renegades who loomed over them.

‘Pattern de-Lys,’ Desiree ordered as the Battle Sisters made their way portwards. Leaning their shoulders into heavy bolters, multi-meltas and heavy flamers, the Sisters Retributor filed at speed along the passageways. Adrianna Verletz reloaded her pistols while the Sister Superior led the way with her short, crackling blade. In aft sections, the Sisters could hear the shriek of chainswords, the crash of Adeptus Astartes bolt pistols and the whoosh of hellguns.

‘Security forces,’ Verletz called across the vox. ‘Report contacts.’

The palatine waited but all she could hear was the incessant sear of las-beams across the channels. As Desiree opened a bulkhead, debris from the corridor flew past them. Verletz felt the tug of the void as escaping air howled about them.

‘We have a hull breach,’ Desiree told her as the Sisters fell to a crouching halt. Beyond, venting pipes had their steam stolen by the purging atmosphere screaming by. It seemed not enough to endanger the ship, but still made Verletz feel lightheaded. Electrics showered sparks. The deck superstructure was mangled and in place of the corridor end hull section was the crumpled nose cone of a boarding torpedo. It was splattered red with paint and rust, its battered exterior decorated with fell sigils and skull symbols scratched into the surface.

‘Be ready,’ Sister Superior Desiree said to her Sisters as she advanced. With a suddenness that made the heart miss a beat, a renegade Space Marine launched himself at them. His gore-encrusted chainsword roared to a thrashing blur. The sound of the idling weapon had been hidden in the howl of escaping air. Wielded with blinding reflexes and power-armoured strength, the barbed weapon cleaved straight down through Nastasia Desiree, the chainsword cutting through the Sister Superior from the shoulder to the hip. One half of the Battle Sister sloughed messily away from the other, clattering to the floor in shredded plate.

The Red Corsair responsible for the butchery came forth through the bloody haze. His plate was a mottled pattern of old blood and the darkness of flaking red paint. Skulls clinked where they dangled on chains from his belt. His suit was covered in needle spikes and hooks fused to the plate, while symbols of ruinous reverence had been unceremoniously covered with the Tyrant’s mark. Two more renegade Space Marines rounded the corner and aimed fat bolt pistols down the corridor. Before the Retributors knew it, the Red Corsairs had blasted two of their Sisters back through their number.

‘Let them feel the Emperor’s judgement,’ Verletz ordered.

Heavy bolt-rounds from several weapons tore through the first of the Red Corsairs that had fired upon them. Recoiling from the impacts, the renegade’s desecrated plate was rapidly turned into a mangled mess. The second caught the sub-atomic stream vomited forth from a multi-melta and turned into a liquefied splatter of flesh and ceramite that became one with the corridor wall.

As the chainsword-wielding heretic swung for Verletz, the palatine ducked and rolled across her pauldron. Sparks showered about her as the chainsword chewed through the wall. As she rolled back to her footing, she clutched Nastasia Desiree’s power sword in her gauntlet. Rearing up, she brought the crackling weapon back to life and buried it in the renegade’s power pack. The foetid power systems of the Red Corsair’s suit began to die. He swung the thrashing blade of his chainsword back at Verletz but without power to his suit, the attack was clumsy and desperate. As the turn carried him round, the palatine’s bolt pistols had cleared their holsters. Hammering the Fleshmonger back with round after round, Verletz blasted bolts through the renegade’s heretic hearts.

A sudden impact threw the palatine forward towards the toppling Red Corsair. Another boarding torpedo had struck the Divine Imperative. Beyond, Verletz could hear the crash of the Black Ship’s gunnery. While the vessel was crippled, she was still giving a good account of herself against the closing enemy.

‘Back!’ the palatine commanded. Her voice was almost lost in the whoosh of flame unleashed by Sisters Retributor as she retreated through their number. ‘Back!’

The mangled compartment beyond was flooded with the spiked shapes of renegade Space Marines. Boarding torpedoes launched from the Slaughterfest were bringing only more. As Red Corsairs stomped forward, their chainswords shrieking, Verletz sent alternating blasts from her pistols at the enemy – backing towards her Battle Sisters.

‘Fall back through the containment decks,’ Verletz ordered. Her Sisters and the Black Ship’s security forces could not hold back the weight of three attacking forces simultaneously. Not in the exterior sections, anyway. Verletz needed the advantage of the narrow corridors and security bulkheads of the dungeon-decks.

The containment decks swiftly became a nightmare of thundering flame and bolt streams that tore up the darkness of the decking. The Pontificals did their best to hold strongpoints and security stations, turning besieging giants in blood-red plate into a nimbus of light with their hellguns. Flooding the tight corridors with rabid cultists, the Red Corsairs pushed on into the lightless dungeon-decks. While their heretic meatshield soaked up the worst the storm troopers had to offer, the renegade Space Marines cleaved through cultists and security forces alike with chainblades and axes.

The Sisters Retributor gave the Red Corsairs more reason to fear them, turning corridors and antechambers into fiery hell storms and shooting galleries for the long range of their barking heavy bolters. The Sisters of the Ebon Chalice allowed the Emperor’s peace into their hearts. Through gritted teeth, they fought hard and met the enemy and their ends with absolute duty. With the canticles of faith on bloodied lips and smoke streaming from the burning barrels of their weapons, they obliterated heretics and monstrous traitors.

One by one, Adrianna Verletz’s Sisters died about her, swallowed by the sea of murderous cultists flooding through the containment decks. They were blasted apart by the relentless onslaught of cursed bolts and cut down in the barbed blur of raging chainswords. In the smoke, the bloody havoc and confusion, however, the Red Corsairs were in their element. While the initial attack and ambush had been well coordinated, in the heat of battle the renegade contingents and their commanders began exchanging fire with each other. Sargel the Sojourner’s deviants fought spiked Fleshmongers, while the Red Corsairs of Nassial Voightek – the First Among Equals – flooded the Divine Imperative with his own armoured hordes.

With Verletz and her Sisters tactically retreating, the Tyrant’s traitors fought for the right to pursue and annihilate them. Each armoured monster wanted the dark honour for himself and savagely unleashed bolt-fire into mobs of opposing cultists.

As territorial savagery gave way to a competitive desire to see the Tyrant’s work done, the Battle Sisters holding the containment decks were butchered. Warped flesh, predatory instincts and superhuman endurance proved unstoppable, with each doomed Sister buying a precious few seconds with her death.

As heavy bolters chuntered to a stop and the flasks of multi-meltas and heavy flamers ran dry about her, the palatine found herself in the darkened bowels of the ship. Behind her lay the maximum-security dungeon in which Xenobia Nox was kept bridled and contained. Up the smoke-choked length of the corridor, she could see the silhouettes of Red Corsairs advancing, stepping over the mauled bodies of Battle Sisters.

‘Fall back to the cell!’ Verletz called to the Retributor next to her, only for a burst of bolt rounds to cut the Sister in half.

As the few remaining Battle Sisters retreated, abandoning their empty weapons, the palatine sent the last of her bolts at the Red Corsairs and watched them spark uselessly off their plate. The pistol clunked empty. Verletz snarled. She had nothing left to throw at the heretic. Slowing to a stop – bolt-rounds crashing down the corridor at her. She voxed Quant.

‘Inquisitor,’ she called.

‘Sister?’ the inquisitor replied over the crackling channel. The bridge of the crippled vessel was ominously quiet in the background.

‘I need you to do something for me.’

‘Yes,’ the inquisitor said.

‘Tell Shipmaster Tyacke to shut down the psychic shielding on the containment decks.’

‘But, palatine…’

Verletz held a gauntlet up in front of her face to protect herself from the sparks showering off the bolt-mauled wall.

‘We can talk or we can do, inquisitor,’ Verletz said. ‘We can do the Emperor’s good work with whatever tools we have at our disposal.’

‘Do it,’ she heard Orsino Quant command, silencing Shipmaster Tyacke’s protests. ‘Have the adepts shut down the occluding sphere. The prisoners are to be unleashed.’

As Verletz backed towards the dungeon door of Xenobia Nox’s cell, she saw the spiky outline of Fleshmongers and the armoured deviants of Sargel the Sojourner part to admit more heavily armed Red Corsairs. Their dark red plate was cracked and cratered by countless piratical engagements. Their pauldrons were studded and their helmets horned. Through them advanced their monstrous leader – shaking the deck with his captain’s plate. Nassial Voightek – the First Among Equals – had silenced the renegade infighting on the containment decks. Voightek’s rank, his bloodline and the superior number of his Corsairs had decided the day. As he advanced, Verletz saw that he held a pair of lightning claws at his sides, the wicked tips of which crackled with dark energies. Half of his face was missing, having been replaced with baroque bionics and the searing red lens of an optic. He gave Verletz a wolfish half smile.

Verletz blinked. She suddenly felt as though some great, doom-laden weight had been lifted from her heart. Reaching out for the bolt-ravaged wall, she felt the tremble of generators die through the superstructure. The hull’s occluding sphere was collapsing.

‘You can end this bloodshed,’ Nassial Voightek roared up the corridor. ‘Hand over the witchbreed called Xenobia Nox and her mutant kindred.’

Verletz’s suspicions were confirmed. The Red Corsairs had somehow found out that a Black Ship was in the system, and that the rogue psyker was imprisoned aboard it. The Battle Sister felt bile rise up the back of her throat. The rogue psyker had betrayed their position to the Tyrant’s followers on the shrine world. As she had silenced Xenobia Nox on Sanctus Shibboleth and held the mutant to her, the witch had used her powers to send a psychic message to any and all who might help her. She had advertised the position of the Divine Imperative with its precious cargo of dangerous psykers in the hope that she might be liberated in a piratical attack.

She thought of Xenobia Nox – her mouth bridled shut and her limbs in chains within the deep, dark hold of the Black Ship. She would be barely conscious and unaware of the horror she had wrought. What the psyker had known, however, was that service to the Tyrant of Badab would be preferential to being soulfuel for the Emperor of Mankind.

Verletz looked up at the monstrous First Among Equals. Xenobia Nox would be Nassial Voightek’s gift to the Tyrant of Badab, a glorious psychic weapon to be wielded by the piratical warlord.

‘You come to plunder our cargo?’ Verletz called up the corridor.

‘I do,’ Nassial Voightek rumbled back.

‘You are welcome to it,’ the palatine said, backing through the dungeon door to Xenobia Nox’s cell suite. The mournful cries of incarcerated psykers rose from the surrounding cells. All over the containment decks, mutants were experiencing a re-awakening of their powers. Without the dampening effects of the occluding sphere, the witchbreeds were free to draw upon the warp for their dread talents.

Havoc unfolded in the corridor. Cell doors were suddenly blasted off their thick hinges, hitting Red Corsairs and smashing them into the walls. Some witches vented their fury in the form of ethereal streams, while others pulled the renegades in two with telekinetic force. Warpflame blazed from cells and rolled up the corridor, engulfing Red Corsairs. Within moments the Chaos Space Marines were being mobbed by rogue psykers, running and screaming at them, their wretched forms visible in the light of destruction.

What had she done? Across the vox channels Verletz heard the horror she had unleashed. Unbound psykers, full of fury and hate, lashing out at anyone and everyone in the vicinity. With full command of their mutant powers, the degenerative witchbreeds visited their psychic vengeance not only on the Red Corsairs who barred their way but also on the surviving Adeptus Astra Telepathica adepts and Pontificals fighting their way through the ship. Verletz heard them die. She heard the witches take savage, unthinking revenge upon their gaolers – obliterating anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the containment hold with them. Verletz told herself that the sacrifice was necessary and that such servants were giving their lives for their Emperor, but the justification felt hollow in her chest.

As Verletz backed into Xenobia Nox’s cell, the two remaining Sisters Retributor put the weight of their plate against the thick metal door. The palatine grunted. The cell did not close from the inside. Emiliana Anatol stood with two of her Dominion squad. While they held their flamers on the door, the Sister Superior had the witch up out of her chair. Anatol held the psyker to her, the Sister Superior’s power maul braced across the prisoner’s chest. Chemically subdued and bathed in the nullifying field of the Black Ship’s psychic shielding, Nox had been barely conscious since arriving on board. As the field had collapsed, however, she had become a wild thing, tearing and scratching at the Sister Superior, the muscles of her face contorting within the bridle that caged her head and braced her mouth shut.

Verletz didn’t know how long they stood there in the miserable environs of the cell. Outside the door and across the containment decks hell had broken loose. All the Sister could hear was the screaming of unbound psykers, the roar of powers unleashed, and the crash of boltguns.

As the Sisters Retributor put their ears to the cold metal, the cell door imploded. Smashing both Battle Sisters and the buckled door into the cell with an armoured kick, Nassial Voightek ducked in through the opening. His pauldron still flickered with warpflame and had been crushed by the impact of some telekinetic force, while his plate was criss-crossed with the scorched marks of ethereal energies.

‘Burn, heretic,’ Verletz spat as the Sisters Dominion stepped forth and blazed streams of flame at the Red Corsairs captain. Holding up his outstretched lightning claw like a shield, Nassial Voightek deflected the worst of the inferno. With a sneer on his half-face, Voightek moved with superhuman reflexes, lopping the head off one Sister and stabbing the second through the chest with his crackling claws. As her head bounced across the cell floor, flamers stuttered to a stop. Voightek ripped his claw from the torso of the second Sister, allowing her to crash to the ground. He pointed at Adrianna Verletz with a blade of his claw, its point sizzling with dark energies.

‘Hand over the witch,’ the Red Corsairs captain snarled.

Sister Superior Anatol had moved the shaft of the power maul across Xenobia Nox’s throat ready to crush it at her palatine’s command. Verletz held still, giving the renegade warlord a steely gaze.

‘She’s promised to another, heretic,’ she hissed. ‘Your former master – the Emperor of Mankind.’

The mere mention of the God-Emperor’s name seemed to enrage the Chaos Space Marine.

‘That name means nothing to me now,’ Nassial Voightek said. ‘There is but one master – the Master of the Maelstrom, the Blood Reaver, Huron Blackheart – the Tyrant of Badab.’

While the Red Corsair made his master’s announcements, Verletz made her move. Next to her, Emiliana Anatol struggled with the psyker. Xenobia Nox fought both to get free and to prise the witch’s bridle off her head. Verletz suspected that the dangerous psyker had no more intention of becoming the Tyrant’s slave than soulfuel for the Emperor. As Verletz reached for the release pin on the bridle, she hoped that she was right.

The head-cage fell aside. The banshee shrieked. All became agony.

In such close proximity to the witch, both the palatine and her Sister Superior recoiled in horror, trying to cover their ears. It couldn’t help them, however, as the soul shredding sound of the witch’s wail brooked no physical barrier. Both Battle Sisters crashed down to their knees. Emiliana Anatol fell to the deck and dropped her power maul.

Xenobia Nox loomed over them like a storm unleashed. Even Voightek was affected, the Red Corsair stumbling as he reached out for the psyker with a crackling claw. Gore ran from a nostril, an ear and an eye on the captain’s half-face. His teeth were stained red and the fell workings of his baroque bionics steamed with the blood and oil streaming down them.

Verletz breathed deep. She summoned her strength and that of her master. She had unleashed the witch upon them. She knew of the horror to come and had managed to steel herself against it. Her faith would protect her. At least for the brief moment it took to prise the power maul from the Sister Superior’s gauntlet.

Thumbing the power weapon to full power, she brought up the crackling baton with all her might. Smashing up through the workings of the Red Corsair’s face, the palatine rose to her feet. Nassial Voightek reeled. His half-face streaming with blood and screwed up in the spirit-scorching agony of the witch’s shriek, the captain looked up at her.

‘Because my faith is my shield,’ the Battle Sister mouthed, before bringing the crackling power maul down on the renegade’s skull, splattering her plate and the cell walls with gore.

As Adrianna Verletz stood there, a renegade Space Marine at her feet and her soul about to shatter like a piece of crystal, she felt blood run down her cheeks from her eyes. Her ears felt wet with leaking gore and red globs sprayed against her breastplate from her nose. She turned to face the horrific mutant. Xenobia Nox’s mouth was open wide, row upon row of shark-like teeth on display. The psyker shrieked her banshee cry at the palatine, while the unbearable madness of the sound bounced through the corridors of the Divine Imperative.

With a grunt, Verletz took a resolute step towards the psyker and thrust the handle of the power maul at her. Cracking the witch straight in the throat, the palatine listened as the shriek turned into an ugly crunch, followed by a gag and a hiss. With the banshee screech gone from the air, Verletz felt the streaming tears of blood slow. In the silence of the dungeon cell, the Battle Sister felt her spiritual agony subside.

Xenobia Nox staggered back, clutching her throat. ‘Let’s not take any chances…’ said Verletz, knocking the psyker out and dumping her back in the chair.

As Verletz locked the chair manacles about the unconscious psyker’s wrists and ankles, she could hear the exchange of bolt fire in the corridors beyond. Re-securing the witch’s bridle about the mutant’s ugly features, the palatine turned to find Orsino Quant in the doorway. He was flanked by two towering Adeptus Astartes captains, the reinforcements the inquisitor had spoken of. The first loomed over Quant and the Battle Sister in blue-and-white plate, the second in yellow. Verletz recognised them as members of the Lamenters and the Marines Errant, two Space Marine Chapters that the inquisitor would have worked with in the Maelstrom Zone. The Marines Errant had lost nearly all their gene-stocks to an attack by the Red Corsairs on Vilamus. The Lamenters, meanwhile, were still prosecuting a 100-year penitent crusade for their part in the Badab War. Verletz assumed that neither Chapter needed much persuading to engage with the Tyrant’s renegades.

Inquisitor Quant stood there, the sound of bolt fire and the deaths of traitor Space Marines rolling up the corridor behind. He looked down grimly at the dead Battle Sisters on the cell floor.

‘I’ve reinstated power to the psychic shielding. The occluding sphere is re-established,’ the inquisitor told her. Verletz nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry for the loss of your Sisters, palatine. They fought with faith and honour. You should be proud.’

‘And yet I am but sorry,’ Verletz said, looking down at Emiliana Anatol.

‘You still have your prize,’ the inquisitor said, nodding at the unconscious psyker.

‘She would have made a tyrant’s prize,’ Verletz said finally. ‘To the Emperor, his due. To me, she is just… soulfuel.’

About the Author

Rob Sanders is the author of the novel Cybernetica and The Serpent Beneath, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the The Beast Arises novels Predator, Prey and Shadow of Ullanor, the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius and Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many Quick Reads for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.

The Red Corsairs move to seize the Hollow Worlds of Lastrati, and the Space Wolves muster to oppose them. But what does Huron Blackheart want with these mysterious planets, and can the sons of Russ thwart his evil plans?

A Black Library Publication

Published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Soulfuel © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Soulfuel, 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: 978-1-78572-727-6

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