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The Divine Instrument - Guy Haley

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Throne of Light’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Guy Haley

This is how the order begins, the words that will bring the Emperor's light.

'By the order of the Departmento Munitorum, Indomitus numerical 70014588, attention Tharsis Magna forge complex. Request humbly submitted to the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars for additional FOUR MILLION lasguns, mid-grade material, best pattern manufactured EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, delivery not less than twelve Terran days to Fleet Primus, Battle Group Deltaris, Luna orbit. Also to the same TWENTY MILLION standard-issue power packs, fabricated from best material, best pattern...'

The demands go on. Page after page, sent from the Imperial Palace on Terra via short-burst laser pulse, highest priority. The order is issued by the Requisitions Officio #3799151m Theta. The originating officer is an acquisitorius forty-ninth echelon member by the name of Diogenes Kefali. It is his hand that sets the machinery of the twin-headed aquila into action, but the order comes, ultimately, from the son of the Emperor himself; Roboute Guilliman, the returned and last primarch. As such, it is heeded speed.

Once, such an order would have taken long weeks to filter through the various layers of the Mechanicus, and that would have been adjudged swift by imperial standards. Not swift enough for Rohoute Guilliman. Members of the Officio Logisticarum watch closely, their commands the same: Haste! Haste! Haste! This rankles the priesthood. This is not the way things are done. It makes matters worse that their overseers are drawn from among their number; radicals who prize efficiency over worship. Divisions long present are set under strain.

The order passes to the offices of a manufactorum specialising in the production of lasweaponry. It is vast, covering an area of several hundred square miles. By the decree of its fabricator principus, the order is accepted with all due, if truncated, ceremony. It is pored over by clerks scrutum, the sections marked with special inks the machines might read. Copies are taken. The original is fed into the ever-hungry maw of the manufactory cogitators. From a dozen brass slots, punch tape emerges. Butchered brains peer out from behind glass eyes, evaluating the instructions for accuracy. More prayers are given. The tapes are taken by hands of wizened flesh and polished metal down to the endless manufactory floor, where they are fed into other machines at the head of production lines. This one makes stocks, that one firing mechanisms. Focusing arrays are assembled by the more complicated devices, much esteemed and worshipped, at the heart of the complex. Lesser saints of metal stamp out casings; cruder they are, but vital, the endless thunder of their presses a crucial part of the heavenly choir.

The machines never stop. The additional numbers of lasguns are added to the tally of millions the complex fabricates every Solar year.

The process is total. At the head of the lines, materials are delivered by trains. Plastek pellets rattle from swing tippers. Silica hisses from hoppers into holding tanks whose conveyors pull from beneath, dragging the sand towards burners, Ore is sent to roaring blast furnace towers, the exteriors forever orange with heat.

From sand, glass is made in long, glowing bars, and dull black components for electronics, From ore comes copper, titanium, iron, palladium, platinum, silver and lead, While molten, they are mixed, alloyed with each other and rarer materials. Iron becomes plasteci, becomes sheets squeezed thin by rollers which have not stood still for longer than an hour in three thousand years. Still hot, the sheets are shunted down one arm of the production line towards the metal stamps.

Other metal becomes wires. The glass is cut up and ground into lenses, for the focal arrays, sights and targeters. Plasteks become circuitt boards, fittings and gun stocks. To the ceaseless roaring of machines, components are created, piled high in wheeled hoppers, and delivered to the heads of new production lines where parts are made into subassemblies, and subassemblies brought together into more complex components.

Adapted cortexes guide the process. Much of the work is done by mono-tasked cyborgs. Servitors are fed into the beast and consumed. The machines are eternal, made to last. They are rarely offline. The servitors need replacing frequently. The flesh is weak, after all.

Faulty components are discarded. Waste material gathered up and returned to the start. At all points hymns are sung. Arachnid-legged magi stalk hither and yon, watching with inhuman senses. Guided by human and mechanical hands, parts converge, clever fingers do the harder work, each man or woman given a single screw to turn or a part to solder, repetitive tasks performed a million times. Each stage undertaken, the guns are passed on.

And so the divine instrument is born. Briefly it awakens as it is tested and fired. Power and awareness is fleeting. One shot, and the input cord is pulled out. Darkness falls on its vestigial soul.

The guns emerge, gleaming with sacred oils. Once more they are appraised, scanned for defects, looked over by critical tech-priests. Blessings are given. Every hundredth gun is taken out, its machine-spirit interrogated. If it proves impure, its entire batch will be shunted off the line and broken down for parts. Everything is done to the word of the Mechanicus' scriptures, but quickly, almost frenziedly. The manufactorum is an ant's nest disturbed.

The guns are packed into crates. The boxes are made in the plant, as are the rests and the packing foams that will hold them secure. They are taken away from the clamour and heat of the manufactorum by servo haulers, and stacked high in the cool silences of warehouses.

As new guns are delivered, those made yesterday, and the day before, are placed into standard Imperial armoured containers, which are loaded onto cargo-8s, driven to trains; the trains go to depots, to void-ports, then into space. The bureaucracy is punctilious but blind. Forms are filled in over and over again, stamps issued, dockets punched. There is no connection between the varying checks and stages now. Duties overlap. Mistakes happen. Some parts of the shipment are lost.

By the time the containers are loaded onto orbital haulers, their document pouches bulge. There is a roar of engines. The containers, bolted into place, do not move. Silence falls in airless holds.

The voyage to Terra takes days. Once there, the shipment undergoes more checking, more bureaucracy. Although this is non-religious in nature, it is hardly more efficient. From one hold to another the containers go. They are divided, doled out. For months, the weapons within them sleep, bereft of motive force, bereft of will. It is the longest period of peace any of them will know until the time of their destruction.

The day comes that the ships set sail. Guilliman's great crusade is on the move. There are soldiers of all kinds within its teeming millions. Some are new, raw conscripts raised from the multitudes of Sol. As the warp rages beyond each ship's hull, kept out by Geller fields and the will of the Emperor Himself, the troops train. The containers' seals are broken open. The crates are removed. To the sound of human laughter, and by impious handling, they are brought to a great hall, and laid out. The boxes are opened, one by one. Mile-long lines of men and women move forward one person at a time. They go to desks where they are interrogated by lowly members of the Departmento Munitorum.

The divine instrument lies in its cradle, inert, inanimate, waiting for its chance to do its duty to the Machine-God. The crate lid is flung back. Dim lumen light cast from hundreds of feet overhead shines in upon the plastek and the plasteel. Hands reach in, take it out. A soldier awaits her weapon. Her name is requested.

'Marley, Kola, number #0091412 B-2, Solian Nine-Thousand-Third Infantry Regiment!' she shouts, as all the others have shouted. There is pride, fear and tiredness in her voice. Kola Marley is from Venus, the deep cloud hives, a place she never thought to leave. There is a sense of excitement throughout this fleet and all the other fleets. Humanity marches to war, more united than it has ever been since the Days of Wonder, long, long ago.

The scribe is one of one hundred in line. Each of the tables they sit behind is identical, like each of the scribes. Terra's grey pallor colours every one. They are thin, skin like paper, hairless, stem. With delicate fingers stained with ink, he beckons another adept forward. In his arms he cradles the lasgun. He has no name, only a designation, though he his no servitor. He is the first of many to hold the divine instrument.

'This is the divine instrument of the Emperor's will,' the scribe intones, for the hundred thousandth time. 'By the grace of its lens it giveth out the cleansing light. Guard it with your life, and it will guard yours. Take it, and know the eye of the Lord of Mankind is upon you.'

Tentatively, Kola accepts the gun. It is coo1, faintly oily still, a short lasrifle of the Mars-Tharsis pattern. A winged skull is stamped into its plain grey side. It feels significant in her hands.

'Five laspacks,' the adept says, the brief moment of poetry over. Heavy batteries are placed before her, slotted into loops in a munitions belt. 'Move along to the next station to collect your webbing.'

The gathering of equipment takes eighteen hours. It is an unintended test for the members of the Astra Militarum. By the end, Kola Marley is fatigued, dehydrated and hungry. The divine instrument is as heavy as her duty, but from it she draws great comfort.

The fleet is en route to Gathalamor. The voyage takes months, but is calmer than expected. Rumours in the ships speak of Guilliman's miraculous calming of the storms in the warp. The soldiers are buoyed by these whispers. They see them as proof they are doing the Emperor's work.

Discipline is hard. Rations short. Training constant. The troopers are worked until they can barely stand. Unforgiving men and women watch them. For every mistake, there is punishment. For every lapse in discipline, pain. Executions are frequent enough to become unremarkable.

Kola finds strength in the divine instrument. 'This weapon is your life,' she is told again and again. 'It is worth more than you are,' her sergeant informs her. She is made to sleep close to it, to take it apart while regimental tech-priests hiss with anger at her incompetence. She is told that it is a simple, robust weapon, chosen as suitable for the ignorant masses to wield, yet within its casing Kola finds only complication. Still, in time she learns to strip and service it. This is neve done perfectly. Suboptimal maintenance amd repeated firing stress on the range sees the divine instrument and its equivalents develop quirks of their own, diverging from uniformity even as their bearers are forced towards it, firing short or long, faster or slower, with lesser or greater power.

Kola Marley and the gun become one. She is alarmed when it is not near her. The weight of it in her hands seems more normal to her than when they are empty. The Solian 9003rd train and train, transformed by the time they reach Gathalamor from disunited civilians to a machine every bit as efficient as the divine instrument itself.

Efficient, but not ready.

The Solian 9003rd's first action is on Gathalamor, some months after the initial victory. They are chasing down traitor remnants allied with renegade catacomb gangers on the southern continent. The terrain is treacherous: deep, man-made caverns that riddle the planet's crust from inches below the surface to the very edges of its mantle, where it is too hot to venture and yet, nevertheless, the sacred dead are interred.

The lessons learned aboard the fleet are useless. Grand manoeuvre has no place down there, in the dark. The Solians are decimated. The fighting is dirty, hopeless, far from the sun; the only light is the sacred burn of lasguns. In an unnamed spur off a pilgrimage route, Kola Marley falls. She fights bravely, taking three underworld warriors with her, the last with the butt of the divine instrument, before a knife finds her guts, and ends her life.

The divine instrument lies in the dark, targeting lens staring unblinkingly at the wall. The sounds of battle move away, return, are ended by the crackle-bang of boltguns. The Sisters of Battle have come. There is cheering. The survivors are gathered. Not long after, so are the bodies, and the battlegear. The divine instrument is lifted up. A new hand holds it a different soldier. He peers at the charge lights in the side, turns the weapon over in his hands.

'This one's sound. Log it as a retrieval, serial MT 2.318159.'

Someone behind him taps the numbers into a military data-slate, then those new hands pluck out the divine instrument's power pack, and darkness comes again.

Weeks pass. The divine instrument is kept in storage. Outside, in the world beyond, Imperial rule is reimposed. Construction fleets arrive to fortify, and build up new shipyards. The cardinal world sits upon a warp nexus brought into being by the Rift, and it is important, but these things are beyond the concerns of men and women on the ground. They fight where they are told, no more.

More weeks, more dark. The divine instrument hangs by its strap from a hook. No padded crate for it now. Its casing is no longer o pristine, but scaped and dented. Bone dust cakes its seams, and has worked its way into the interior. The divine instrument's efficiency is down by three per cent. It has no one to wield it.

Then, it is brought out, dumped unceremoniously in a heap with other guns. They are of more than one pattern, and from several batches, intermingled with no concern for uniformity, purity or the sanctity of machine-spirits.

A landing field at the southern continental void port. It is hot. The atmosphere boils with the comings and goings of voidships. The remnants of the Solian 9003rd are formed up, waiting.

A man speaks, Acting-Colonel Jordoon; their original commanding officer, Colonel Candir, is dead, along with many of his men.

'We are to be assigned to Battle Group Praxis,' Jordoon was saying. 'You have fought bravely. You have fought well. Our next assignment is to be easier in recognition of this.'

The soldiers he is addressing are much reduced in number. Thirty thousand members of the regiment set down on the planet, fewer than seven thousand will depart. The people leaving are different to the ones who arrived. They are hardened to war. Their eyes are haunted, but their wills are strong. Some of the idealism has been knocked out of them, but they are perhaps of more use to the Emperor this way.

Jordoon pauses before he delivers his next piece of news. It will be hard for his soldiers to accept.

'We lost a lot of people here,' he says. 'We are under-strength. We cannot fight with these numbers, not if we are to remain a regiment. Because of this, we are to be reinforced.' The difficult part is coming. Jordoon struggles to keep his voice level. 'Our reinforcements 'are warriors drawn from the bone gangers of Gathalamor.'

There is anger among his soldiers. They are too disciplined to voice it, and the commissars watching over their ranks from the front of the parade ground discourage dissent, but it is there, hanging in the air like a poison.

'I know we were fighting them, but these are not our foes. They are drawn from loyal clans. They are brave. You saw how they fought yourselves.' In saying this, Jordoon cannot conceal his own bitterness. It would be wise not to hide it completely, he judges, to avoid alienating his command. It would be less wise to show too much. An officer is as much at risk from a commissar's judgement as a trooper.

He signals. A hangar opens where the indigenes are hidden. This has to be done now, and quickly. Bargains were struck with their chieftains. The recruits must be armed and accepted. It is as much a political show for those who will remain as it is for those who will be drafted.

Jordoon cannot know they are loyal, of course. The tribes beneath live in a patchwork of shifting allegiances. Jordoon does not blame them. Their lives are grim. The traitors who invaded just a new form of oppression. In circumstances like that, where survival is at stake, it matters very little who one calls master. Jordoon is unusual in this regard.

The Gathalamorians come out, blinking in the sun. Few of them have ever been above ground. The light pains them. They are pale, stunted, though — being survivors of harsh conditions — strong. Jordoon will not underestimate their worth as warriors, that was Candir's error. They are herded between the blocks of troops by Solian sergeants. The hatred coming off the original members of the regiment is palpable. The fierce underground gangers, decked in scrimshaw and stolen grave goods, are undaunted.

Jordoon beckons them forward.

'By the pacts struck between us and your clansmen, you are now inducted into the Solian Nine-Thousand-Third as extra-planetary auxiliaries. Over time, you will be fully integrated into our structure. Your customs will blend with ours. Our ways will become your ways. Together, we shall fight in the name of the Holy Emperor of Mankind, and purge the galaxy of the heretic, the traitor, the witch and the alien. Welcome. Step forward, and claim your first reward.'

The gangers are eager as they are directed to the piles of weaponry. To them, a lasgun is a symbol of great status. They sort through the piles, scratching already scratched weapons. This ritual could have been done with more decorum, but Jordoon is canny. He lets than choose. He will go on to be a celebrated general one day. For now, there are hints of his brilliance the way he welcomes his recruits. They get what they most desire. The representatives of their kinsfolk allowed to observe will report back to their clans, hastening true peace on Gathalamor. Nevertheless, the guns have no power packs, and discipline masters stand with truncheons ready in case disputes arise.

The divine instrument is taken up by a boy named Chegeng. He has no other name. The divine instrument is the finest thing he has ever seen. When he touches its casing, he feels a thrill of devotion to his distant god, faith almost extinguished flares back into life. When he picks up the gun and holds it to his chest, he is already swearing to himself to serve Terra until death. He feels like a god himself. What were meaningless children's tales of far-off places are true. It makes him giddy.

He and thousands like him are guided to empty spaces by the Solian regulars. They are formed with gentle persuasion into squares. They are ragged, out of line. The gentleness will not last. Jordoon looks out over the troopers. The numbers of his regiment have been bolstered. There are still only half as many as there were, but he sees before him a fighting force that might suffice.

Under the full glare of the unfamiliar sun, Chegeng squints. He can barely see. All that matters is the weight of the divine instrument, his prize, the Emperor's first born.

Like Kola before him, Chegeng is trained. It is different this time. His teachers are the Solians themselves. Their antipathy is strong, though most of them try their best to hide it. Some are hateful. Tempers flare. There are outbreaks of violence. Twice, Chegeng is sanctioned by the discipline masters. The third time, he attracts the attention of Commissar Demedoff.

Demedoff is a stern man. Like all the commissars, he is a graduate of the Schola Progenium, and although Terra provides hundreds of thousands of children to that organisation every year itself, Demedoff was born far from the Throneworld, as were his fellows. This policy is pursued by many regiments. It is easier to police those you have no connection with.

But now, Demedoff does have a connection with the Solians. He has fought beside them. He has watched them die. Demedoff has no such common history with Chegeng.

As he is marched into the commissar's cramped office off the main training stage in the regimental transporter, Chegeng wonders if Demedoff sees him as an enemy. It is difficult to tell. Demedoff is not much older than Chegeng, but his eyes are hard as bone rock, and perhaps a little less alive. Everything about him is sharp: the creases in his uniform, his chin, the brim of his cap. Behind him, on the hall hangs a power sword, an officer's blade. Beside it is a bolt pistol, a weapon uncommon among standard human soldiers, far more potent than the divine instrument. The room is cold. Used to the constant temperatures of the catacombs on Gathalamor, Chegeng often finds himself shivering.

Two discipline masters flank him. He could take them, he thinks, but not this flint of a man.

Demedoff stares at Chegeng for a while, over the top of his interlaced fingers.

'Do you know why you are here?' Demedoff asks, eventually. It is hard for Chegeng to understand him. His native tongue has drifted far from the standard Gothic Demedoff employs.

'Fighting,' says Chegeng. 'Fighting Corporal Wilfern.'

'Brawling, trooper,' says Demedoff. 'Fighting is what we do for the Emperor. Fighting is done with discipline. Violence among ourselves is a lack of discipline. It is brawling.'

'Then you will kill me. That is what you do, you blackcoats.'

Demedoff shakes his head. 'You will be punished, but you will live, if you have the fortitude.'

Chegeng shivers, not with cold now. He knows what this means. He is afraid of the lash.

'How many strikes?'

'One hundred. You will be an example. You will learn that the Solians are your brothers. You will fight as comrades or you will die. You Gathalamorians need to learn this.'

Chegeng speaks despite his fear. 'I am no Gathalamorian. What did that world ever do for me? I am a bone ganger, a brave of the tribes beneath.'

Demedoff's eyes harden further. 'You are a member of the Solian Nine-Thousand-Third Infantry. You are a subject of the God-Emperor of Terra. You will learn this. You are bone gangers no more. The others are not your enemies.'

'Then who is? I have yet to see them, these creatures that threaten me with death. All I see are new high-borns telling me what I am.'

'I can be your enemy,' said Demedoff. 'Do not make me so. Take him away.'

Chegeng is put into confinement for three watches before his punishment. His mood shifts from fear to anger, and eventually to boredom. He wants this over with.

When they bring him out, they make him dress in his full uniform and combat gear. He is given his rifle. The machine-spirit of the divine instrument must witness his punishment; he must be chastised in front of all.

He is marched into the training stage. The huge space is full of the silent ranks of his comrades, Solian and bone ganger alike. All eyes are on him. It surprises him that there are two punishment posts set up at the front, on a platform raised so all can see. From the other side of the great hall comes Corporal Wilfern. They are marched towards each other by a pair of enforcers each. They are ceremonially divested of their weapons, stripped to the waist, transformed from soldiers of the Emperor to penitents. On the stage are both their company captains in their dress uniforms. One of the regimental priests also attends. He is highly ranked. A prelate, Chegeng thinks. He hates priests. Upon Gathalamor, they were his kind's chief oppressors. But he listens to the prayers, and he believes. That is what marks him out from those gangers who sided with the traitors.

They are made to stand while Demedoff speaks.

'Look at these men, and see shame,' he says. His voice is as sharp as his face, cutting right across the echoing space. 'Do not look at them and see a Solian and a Gathalamorian. They are the same. They are equally disobedient. They are equally guilty. They will be punished equally. Let their suffering mark an end to the discord among you.' He flings his arm out and points to the hull. 'Out there are the uncountable enemies of humanity. They are legion, terrifying in their perfidy. They thirst for your lives and your souls. Fight each other, and you hand victory to them. You have been brought together by the will of the Emperor, for the sole and holy purpose of making His wars. You forget that at your peril.'

Chegeng and Wilfern are bound simultaneously, wrists so high they are forced onto the balls of their feet. Plastek guards are pushed between their teeth. To the roll of a drum, two hooded discipline masters step forward, whips coiled in their hands. They stand to attention. Others wait at their sides, bearing the prisoners' weapons.

'Let all witness your shame, man, machine and God-Emperor,' said Demedoff. 'Begin.'

The first strike hisses in the air. It is a cold shock on his back that blooms into pain. Chegeng feels the skin tighten and rise. The next blow cuts, and blood flows. His back is soon fiery. The strikes are slow, counted out one by one. The drum rolls.

Chegeng bites down on the plastek guard. The pain is all-consuming. He locks eyes with a female Solian in the front rank. It discomfits her, but she dare not look aside. None of them dare. He thinks he sees sympathy there.

Soon his back is torn up. Vitae flicks from the whip, spattering the witnesses.

The divine instrument endures another dousing in loyal Imperial blood.

Battle Group Praxis is ordered ahead of Crusade Fleet Primus. They are heading straight, no stops, to a system in the north named Kamidar. Chegeng is told this. They are carrying home the body of woman who died in the Gathalamor campaign. The political necessity of doing so is beyond him. To Chegeng, the expenditure of lives, resources and time to salve high-born grief is another indication of how little he matters. It does not embitter him. It is simply the way the universe works.

But Battle Group Praxis' mission is delayed. The whole fleet encounters unexpected resistance. Praxis is called back towards the main body.

The cause of this resistance is not the forces of the Great Enemy, those twisted, daemon-worshipping traitors who devastated Chegeng's home, but xenos.

To the magi-biologians attached to the fleet, the enemy is known as Veridii giganticus. To the common trooper, they are orks.

The information given to the Solian 9003rd about the orks is misleading — sometimes, it appears later, deliberately so. The lessons of the Machine Cult make little sense to Chegeng, while the details in the Astra Militarum primers make the orks seem laughable, weak primitives. Few on the vessel carrying the 9003rd know any better. They are a new regiment, with new officers, and though veterans of the Gathalamor war, they know nothing of xenos.

There is one woman, however, a Naval orbital-to-ground drop pilot Chegeng encounters in the mess. She knows. She is heavily scarred. When the orks are mentioned, her eyes go distant. She warns them in a murmur, 'Always go for their heads. It's the only way to put those bastards down.'

He soon discovers what she means, They are deployed into a storm of fire, a combat drop. Their landers are slow. They lumber from the void. The 9003rd suffer, losing more of their number, though all Chegeng knows of it is the roaring, shaking tempest of atmospheric re-entry. He is terrified, but the things waiting for him are worse than he can imagine.

The ship sets down. Officers' whistles blow. The 9003rd pour out of their landing ships down broad ramps into the teeth of the enemy's fire. The guns the orks use spray bullets at a fantastic rate, high calibre. When they connect with human flesh, it is obliterated. Chegeng is confronted by monsters far bigger than he, with tusks like bayonets, and axes of crudely sharpened metal as big as access hatches. There is a brief exchange of fire, then the lines meet.

Bayonets prove little use against the creatures. Their skin is tough, waxy, like thick plastek, hard to penetrate. Every homily about the xenos' weakness is revealed as a diabolical lie. Combat is a blur. Men and women shouting, aliens roaring, guns booming. Chegeng is seen. An ork lumbers at him. It is slow. Chegeng evades its axe swing, and remembers the pilot's lesson. He brings up the divine instrument and fires it right into the monster's left eye. The las-bolt connects with a fizz of evaporating liquid. The eye's dull red gleam is replaced by a cauterised hole, and the ork topples forward. Chegeng barely gets out of the way before it hits the ground. It is night, it is dark, the planet is a mystery to him. He cannot even say what colour the soil is, or the thorny plants that cling to it. He is in shock. He is transfixed by the beast's corpse. It must weigh three times what he does, and it is one of the smaller ones. It stinks in a way the worst human habitation cannot match, and its clothes seethe with the activity of parasites.

He should be scared. And yet, the divine instrument is warm in his hands, awakened by the kill. He can feel its machine-spirit, alive, yearning to spill more blood.

There is a rough, alien shout. Another ork is coming, axe raised, tongue lolling over fangs. Chegeng gets the divine instrument up and looses a shot. It hits the ork in the chest. Its primitive flak armour takes the brunt, and the beam barely scorches the skin beneath. Chegeng backs away. The thorny shrubs snag at his ankles, and he falls onto his back. He fires three more times before the ork is on him. Every shot hits the ark's torso. The beast does not care. Its axe is poised to strike.

Commissar Demedoff appears from the flames of battle, bolt pistol pointed at Chegeng. He knows he has failed in his duty, that the commissar has come to finish him. But when the gun barks, fire flashing from its muzzle vents, the bolt hits the ork. It takes out a great divot of green flesh from the beast's shoulder, and the axe blow intended for Chegeng misses. The ork wheels around to face the new threat. Demedoff calmly stands his ground, firing into the brute. Pulverised flesh rains down.

Demedoff is in danger.

It is Chegeng who finishes the beast, scrambling up with a yell, launching himself without fear at its back. The ork is tall, but stooped. Chegeng holds his weapon over his head, aiming for the back of the neck. Miraculously, the bayonet bites, slides into the spine. When the ork falls, it nearly wrenches the divine instrument from his hands, but he holds tight.

Demedotf favours him with a nod, then is gone into the maelstrom.

Moments later, an airstrike tears out the heart of the xenos horde. Marauder bombers streak over the field, leaving behind them a wall of fire that seems to stretch all the way back up into orbit.

Within two hours, the landing site is secured.

Chegeng is sitting with his fellows on the ravaged ground. Gathalamorian and Solian are intermixed, their enmity forgotten. The thorny plants are scorched black, or half buried. Corpse details move among shell craters, piling up orks, removing humans. Pyres burn everywhere.

A murmur runs down the line. Through the haze of smoke, a group of officers is approaching. Most wear the tan of the Solians, but one is dressed in an immaculate uniform of blue.

'Up, up!' Chegeng's sergeant says. 'The general is coming. Show him your respect.'

Wearily, the remnants of Chegeng's platoon clamber to their feet. Colonel Jordoon is in conversation with the general. On a whim, the general stops in front of Chegeng.

'What is your name, soldier?' he asks.

Chegeng looks dumbly at him.

'Answer General Dvorgin,' Jordoon prompts.

'Trooper Chegeng,' Chegeng says. 'Sir.'

'May I see your weapon?' the general asks. He seems kind.

Chegeng hands over the divine instrument. It is more battered now, and caked in the mud of a new world. Dvorgin looks it over, braces it against his shoulder, and sights through the optics.

'A fine weapon, a lasgun. Nothing showy, gets the job done, and this is a nice variant. Good sights, nice weight.' He hands it back. 'The divine instruments of the Emperor. The givers of His wrathful light. Never let it go. Look after it, and it will look after you.'

Chegeng nods. 'Yes, sir.' He knows these things. He has been told them. He has seen them. Bearing the gun, he feels safer, even from xenos beasts.

Dvorgin moves on. Chegeng's platoon must stand until he is out of sight, then they are permitted to sit again. Chegeng dozes, enjoying the brief respite.

Cradled on his lap, the divine instrument waits patiently to do its duty again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including the first book in the Dawn of Fire series, Avenging Son, as well as Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, the Dark Imperium trilogy, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood and Astorath: Angel of Mercy. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

An extract from Dawn of Fire: Throne of Light.

Chapter One

CHOZTECULPO
STOP, IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR
THE HAND OF ABADDON

‘It’s bloody freezing up here,’ said Cheelche. The alien’s words were harsh in Lacrante’s vox-bead, an extension of the cold wind burning his face. She was right. It was freezing. ‘Rostov better not be much longer. I’m going to die in this drekking climate. I’ll be a lump of ice, I tell you I will.’

Lacrante looked up at the tower jutting from the crag behind him. There, Cheelche waited, sighting down her rifle from somewhere in the geometric frontage. The stonework provided a mass of ledges overlooking the town. A sniper’s dream, if it weren’t for the weather. Wind hit the mountain and rushed upwards into town, hard as fists. It snapped through the narrow streets clinging to the rock with teeth of snow that bit at Lacrante’s exposed skin. He could stand only a few moments watching the saloon before he was forced into the shelter of the doorway opposite, where he’d steal a moment to recover, then go back out again, in case he was needed.

‘For the sake of my unlaid spawn, can this take any longer?’ Cheelche grumbled.

‘They’ll be out soon,’ said Lacrante quietly. ‘It was a good contact. A transaction, that’s all. Money for information. In and out, that’s what Antoniato said.’

‘Yeah, what do you know about it, new boy? It’s never that simple,’ she grumbled. ‘Freezing.’

‘I’ve been investigatus for two years now,’ said Lacrante. He got annoyed when Cheelche patronised him, and it happened often.

‘Investigatus? Still new,’ said Cheelche. ‘New and naive. This is going to go wrong, just you wait and see. It always bloody does.’

Antoniato would have calmed her. He had a way with Cheelche that Lacrante did not. His time on Rostov’s crew hadn’t taught Lacrante the knack of jollying the sour little xenos along. Sometimes, she got on his nerves, and that wasn’t just because he’d been brought up to find all alien life despicable.

Lacrante rubbed his face, leaned out of the doorway again and peered up the steep street. He saw no one. It was unlit, narrow, grim with refuse, little more than an alleyway made of steps. All the streets were like that. The buildings were squat, made of blocky stone to a severe xenos pattern, adapted by the monks who made Azazen their home. Light spilled in tightly defined stripes from slit windows, cutting the cobbled steps into neat sections of shadow divided by the shining performances of snowflakes. A little noise emanated from the taverna Lacrante watched, but each roar of laughter and stray phrase of music was shredded by the wind, and all sense of warmth it conveyed was snatched away.

He ducked back into the door, his skin needling. Steam gushed out with every breath, carrying off his precious body heat.

Chozteculpo was a nowhere town clinging to a nowhere mountain that clung to a nowhere planet. Though in the Segmentum Solar, Azazen had been off the main warp conduits for millennia, hard to get to, right on the edge of wilderness space. In Imperial terms it hardly mattered, and by virtue of its isolation had been untouched by galactic events.

Things were changing. The upheaval of the Rift had forced the warp routes deeper into virgin territory, enough to open up the frontier, and the monks found themselves living in uneasy coexistence with criminals and adventurers using the world as a layover before heading out into the uncharted sectors. Though the war seemed a long way from Chozteculpo, it had become a dangerous place, especially after dark, and few people were abroad.

Lacrante looked out again, shivered, clamped his teeth tight to stop them chattering. One of the local gangly xenos stumbled past, bundled up so heavily against the wind it could have been human, if it were not so tall and misproportioned. Its head was bent against the weather, the reek of drink coming off it strong as promethium fumes. That sort was common hereabouts; you’d not find aliens on a more important Imperial world. He had no idea what the species was called. Lacrante pulled himself back into the doorway, and the being paid him no heed as it stumbled by.

The minutes dragged. His joints ached.

‘Any sign yet?’ said Cheelche.

‘You can see from up there just as well as I,’ he grumbled. His fingers were numb.

‘My left eyeball’s frozen solid. I’m sure of it. I daren’t take it off the scope. It’ll come out.’

‘Take it up with Rostov,’ Lacrante said, and switched off his vox-link, sick of Cheelche’s moaning. ‘If he ever comes out of there,’ he muttered to himself.

The saloon was hot with many bodies crammed together. A fire of dried dung burned fiercely in the centre under a conical flue of moulded clay, the smoke sucked up so hard by the wind the chimney hooted.

Rostov was playing tarot. He looked steadily into the eyes of his opponent, hand of cards curved in his gloved fingers. The man stared back, face studiously blank. Geometric tattoos in black covered the man’s face, and his hair was greased into two horns dyed green. He was dirty, skin patterned with ground-in dirt between the tattoos. The lines in his face suggested a tendency to shout and scowl. He was scum, probably a murderer, certainly a thief. Weapons were prominent on a leather vest so stiff with filth it sat up on his fat gut as he hunched over his cards. He was the sort of man it pays to be wary of, but Inquisitor Rostov did not think him so dangerous.

Rostov glanced at the cards. Playing with the tarot was a mildly blasphemous use of the Emperor’s oracle, and forbidden in most civilised places, but though Rostov found it distasteful he knew the game well enough. He had a good hand. He took a stack of gold coins, and let them drop one after another onto the stake between them.

‘Confident,’ said the man. He grinned, showing filed teeth full of decay.

Rostov let the last coin fall. It slithered down the pile. ‘Maybe I have reason to be, Ser Tapind.’

Tapind’s grin widened further and he theatrically looked away, pointing his nose into the air. ‘Ser, is it? Nice manners. We don’t have much call for those out here.’

‘Do not take my politeness for weakness,’ said Rostov. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what I came here to learn, and I will make it worth your while.’

Tapind hunched lower. ‘Not yet. I like to play. Finish the game, and I will tell you what you want.’

‘I don’t understand why we can’t just pay you,’ said the Imperial Guard veteran accompanying Rostov. He was not young, but yet not old. No grey in his brown hair, though his face carried a network of fine lines. He was well muscled. When he moved, the patched uniform he wore under his heavy fur coat strained. Behind his chair a plasma gun was propped against the wall. A heavy gun with a tendency to catastrophically overheat, it needed strength and nerve to wield.

‘Because I like to play,’ said Tapind, and gave him a dismissive look. ‘You can learn a lot about a man’s character by the way he lays a tarot hand, and I can read you, sonny. You look like a deserter, and this fellow, your boss… I ain’t never seen skin so red like that. He’s got a touch of the xenos on him, this one.’

To the people in the bar, Rostov did look strange. His hair and beard were fair, and that contrasted strikingly with the reddish cast of his skin. He looked like a man with sunburn, in a town where the sun rarely shone.

‘I fit well within the accepted categories of sanctioned human form,’ said Rostov. ‘The organisation I represent would not have it any other way.’

‘Is that so? I don’t sell information to just anybody. Gotta be careful. Game’s a good way of gauging what kind of man you are, so – play.’

Rostov shrugged. ‘As you wish, but I assure you, we will learn what we came to learn.’ He looked to his companion. ‘Take your turn, Antoniato.’

Unlike Rostov and Tapind, Antoniato had no skill in hiding his thoughts. He jingled his coins in his hand, hesitating before laying his stake. He drew another card from the deck. He frowned and dithered over which to put into play, biting at the stubbled skin beneath his lip. His fingers hovered over one card, then another, before he finally settled on a third, plucking it from the fan clenched in his fingers and laying it on the table with a soft curse.

‘The blind seer,’ said Tapind, cocking his eyebrow. ‘Interesting choice.’ By that he meant bad, and he made sure Antoniato knew it with another black-toothed grin.

‘I’m no good at this, alright?’ said Antoniato.

‘I noticed.’ Tapind took his turn quickly, his move already formulated. He put down a large bet. ‘Are you going to match me or not?’ He spoke only to Rostov, Antoniato already discounted.

‘How the Throne should I know?’ Antoniato grumbled.

Rostov stared at Tapind. ‘I’ll invoke my pass, see what you’ve got.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Tapind. He laid down his card, a golden-armed warrior brandishing a burning sword. Everyone in the faith knew that image. ‘Emperor Among Us. Ain’t no higher spread than that,’ Tapind said, as he completed the layout on the table. ‘I win. Nice to meet you, boys. Now pay up, and get out. I ain’t selling no words today. I don’t like the look of you. Cards don’t lie.’

Tapind reached for the money. Rostov gripped his wrist.

‘Let’s say I raise the stake.’

Tapind scowled. ‘With what?’

‘Prudent agreement.’

‘Never heard of it, and there is no higher card for this spread than the Emperor Among Us.’ He jerked his head at Antoniato. ‘Don’t think to shake me down. Your muscle doesn’t scare me. I’ve got powerful friends in these parts, so back off. You lost fair and square.’

Rostov released Tapind’s wrist, and dropped something from his sleeve into his hand. He held it over the table, hidden by his fingers. Curious, Tapind paused raking in his winnings.

‘I’m not talking about cards,’ said Rostov. ‘I’m talking about you making a sensible choice. Prudent agreement.’

He laid a small ivory amulet down on the wood with a click. It bore an Imperial barred ‘I’ overset with a skull, in the forehead of which a small ruby flashed. Tapind blinked at it in shock.

‘You recognise this seal, yes? Now will you talk to me?’ said Rostov calmly.

Tapind’s expression turned scared. ‘You’re an inquisitor. Holy Throne of Terra! What the hell do you want with me?’

The dreadful word cut through the hubbub of the taverna. Suddenly, a dozen pair of eyes were on the gaming table. Antoniato tensed, flipped aside his furs, one hand going to his holstered laspistol, the other resting on the bulbous nose of the plasma gun.

‘What are you doing all the way out here?’ Tapind asked his question, but stood rapidly, ready to leave without an answer. ‘I’m not talking to you. It’s a death sentence on me. I knew there was something off about you.’

‘It’s a death sentence if you don’t,’ said Antoniato, taking his turn to grin.

Tapind shoved away from the table, money forgotten. ‘Stay away from me.’

‘If you speak to me, the rewards will be great,’ said Rostov.

‘Not great enough. All the wealth of Terra is useless to a dead man.’

‘Then you have a dilemma, because leaving will not prevent your death.’

Rostov’s words proved prophetic. There was the wheezing bark of an energy weapon by the door. A yellow flash lit up the saloon. Half of Tapind’s face disintegrated and splashed over the wall. Blood soaked into plaster.

There were two attackers: a squat human in a filthy heatsuit, and a rangy, humanoid xenos with a tall cap and flat face on its thin, cylindrical head. They didn’t have time for a second shot. Antoniato had his pistol in his hand and was firing before Rostov had turned in his seat. The crack of the lasgun beam in the air was loud in the confined space. The xenos assailant was flung against the wall, leaving a stripe of copper-green blood as he slid to the floor. The human loosed off four poorly aimed energy blasts as he fumbled for the door handle. Antoniato threw himself under the table and returned fire. Throughout, Rostov stayed seated, calm with the coherent light of death flicking around him.

The man fired again, got his fingers on the latch, then fled into the night. A blast of freezing air pushed the fire in the taverna hearth flat before the door slammed and the flames jerked up to attention.

Antoniato surged up off the floor, sending the table crashing down. Coins bounced everywhere. He fired again. His laspistol left a guttering hole in the taverna door, but the man was away.

‘Lacrante!’ Antoniato shouted into a handheld vox-caster. ‘Contact’s down! One assassin, human, xenos-weapon armed, heading your way.’

‘In pursuit,’ Lacrante responded.

Antoniato switched his aim from patron to patron. Hands were raised. A man shifted in his seat. ‘Nobody move!’ he shouted.

Rostov remained serene. With deliberate movements he collected his seal from the floor and stood from his chair as if he had just finished a meal in a fine restaurant. ‘Cheelche, keep your eyes on the target, but you are not to shoot,’ said Rostov into the vox-thief at his neck. ‘I want this one alive.’

Rostov stopped by the body of the alien assassin, searched it briefly, lifted up a talisman hung about its neck. An eight-pointed compass wheel etched into a spread-fingered hand: the mark of the thrice-damned Warmaster Abaddon’s chief servant.

‘Damn it. Now we’re back to square one,’ said Antoniato.

‘The killer knows something,’ Rostov said, and got to his feet. He pointed to the money lying on the floor. ‘Keep it, for your trouble,’ he told the bartender.

With Antoniato covering him, the inquisitor opened the door and stepped out into the night.

‘Lacrante! Contact’s down!’

The saloon door burst open and a human male staggered out, nearly lost his footing on the thin snow coating the steps, stumbled into the far wall, then ran into the dark, the charge lights on the weapon in his hand glowing bright in the gloom.

‘One assassin, human, xenos-weapon armed, heading your way.’

‘In pursuit,’ said Lacrante, and set off at a sprint up the alley steps. He keyed his vox back on.

‘What are you mammals up to down there?’ Cheelche voxed.

‘Didn’t you see him go out? Single target!’

‘You try seeing anything when your eye is literally frozen and your scope’s hazy with frost.’

‘Just cover the door,’ Lacrante said. ‘Don’t let anybody follow me.’

She said something he didn’t hear. Lacrante raced around a corner into the full force of the winter. Freezing air tore the heat from his body. He was a fit man, Lacrante, but a combination of his heavy clothes, the altitude, the steepness of the streets and the cold had him puffing like a lho addict in the last days of life.

Fortunately for him, the fugitive was no better acclimatised to the environment. The man skidded on the snow compacting on the stone, and Lacrante gained ground unseen. He wasn’t noticed until a couple huddled against the cold stepped out in front of Lacrante from a side alley.

‘Get out of the damned way!’ he shouted, almost crashing into them. One of the two fell, and Lacrante was forced to hop over their legs to avoid being entangled. They shouted after him as he slipped and bounced off the wall. He was lucky not to get a bullet between the shoulder blades in that place. He trusted to the Emperor to shield him.

When the shouts cut through the wind, the man looked behind. Spotting Lacrante, he ran faster.

‘Throne,’ Lacrante cursed. He pulled his laspistol and let off a shot, but the slippery cobbles made his aim lousy. Tiles exploded on the low eaves overhanging the street.

His quarry ran like Horus and his devils were on his heels.

They were getting higher, following the twisting alleys towards the town’s centre. Lacrante kicked over piles of frozen refuse as he caromed off the wall, and he half-fell, half-ran on. The man took another corner. Lacrante followed, and he burst out onto Chozteculpo’s via principia, Merchant’s Row. It was hardly worthy of the name, being only a little wider than the rest and not very long, but it was lit by barrels of burning animal oils, and vendors stood by stalls of wares and food stands where coals roasted skewered examples of the smaller local wildlife. There were more people there, enough to make a crowd, and that slowed his target down.

The man shoved his way through the throng. He glanced back. Lacrante had a glimpse of a pale face behind goggles. Sweat-steam puffed up around his heatsuit seals at his throat.

‘Stop him!’ shouted Lacrante. ‘Stop, in the name of the Emperor!’

Heads swung round to look. Lacrante’s call to action had the opposite of the desired effect. Not wishing to get involved, the crowd parted, and the man went free. He let off a shot behind him. Some sort of low-yield plasma weapon. Lacrante ducked. A fizzing yellow ball sliced the air over his head and scattered the crowd. His target man was now racing down a long corridor of people, but clear enough to run meant clear enough for a shot.

Lacrante dropped to his knee, ripped off his glove, steadied his gun on his forearm and aimed at the receding fugitive, his finger resting on the trigger. Cold metal burned him.

‘Emperor guide my hand,’ he whispered, and squeezed.

A flash of red chased the man, connected with his leg, and sent him crashing down into a portable grill. Embers and meat skewers skittered across the road. He tried to push himself up and screamed as he put his hand on a hot coal. He was still trying to rise when Lacrante came up behind him and rested his gun against the man’s head.

‘Don’t move,’ Lacrante said. The man moaned, his injured leg ramrod straight, his burned hand cradled against his chest. The crowd looked uneasily on. Hostile eyes peered out from behind heated goggles and the gaps between scarves and hats.

Planets like Azazen were hostile in the extreme to all but the lightest touch of Imperial authority. There were a lot of people giving him ugly looks, and several of the local xenos in evidence. They in particular had good reason to hate men like Lacrante. Hands moved towards weapons.

‘This is an Imperial matter,’ he said as firmly as he could. He was so cold he could barely speak. ‘Get back. Be about your business.’

The assassin spoke through gritted teeth. ‘That’s not going to work. You’ve made a mistake. There’s no governor here. No law. Not even yours.’

Lacrante switched his gun from face to face, jerking it by way of emphasis. Most of the bystanders moved off, shooting looks varying from fearful to aggressive. Three of them did not.

‘Shit,’ Lacrante said.

The assassin hissed, a reptilian noise of commingled amusement and pain. ‘You could take one for sure, maybe two if you’re good enough, but not three. You’re dead.’

‘Shut up,’ said Lacrante. The snow was coming thicker and stung his eyes. He raised his voice. ‘You three, withdraw. I have no quarrel with you.’

‘Maybe we have one with you,’ said one man. He wore an oiled poncho over a heatsuit, and moved it aside, revealing a long-barrelled slug pistol at his belt. The others showed their own weapons. One drew a laspistol. The other unslung a rifle of non-human make from his back.

‘Let’s see how good you are, outlander,’ said the leader. He spat, an obvious distraction to cover his draw, but his hand barely brushed his gun before Lacrante had drilled a hole through his chest. It was a good shot, and fast, Lacrante swung his gun around to take the second, expecting to die at the hands of the third.

He did not. Lacrante’s shot passed over the second man when he was dropped by a high-angle las-fusil beam. The third was warned of his own demise by the whooping roar of a plasma gun discharging, not that it did him any good. The stream hit him as he turned, and he lit up from within like a lantern, sunfire burning in his mouth and eyes. He opened his mouth to scream but released only his own vaporised lungs. In a second he was reduced to a carbonised mess in the snow.

The prisoner made to crawl off. Lacrante pinned him to the ice with his boot.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said. ‘You’re done. I’m not alone.’

His vox-bead crackled. ‘Miss me?’ said Cheelche.

‘Yes,’ said Lacrante. ‘Nice shot. Thank you.’

‘Maybe you won’t be such a dumb Terran ape and run off on your own in future, eh?’

Rostov and Antoniato were coming down the street. Rostov spooked people, and Lacrante thought him being a witch was only the half of it. There was something that hung over him, a presentiment of doom, or the sense the Emperor Himself was watching you through his eyes. His presence cleared the street; even the vendors withdrew, leaving their grills to gutter in the wind. Antoniato was laughing, his sun gun spewing steam into the frigid night.

‘“Stop in the name of the Emperor?” Is that the best you’ve got, Lacrante?’

‘It seemed appropriate,’ said Lacrante, and holstered his gun.

‘You have him,’ Rostov said. His boots crunched to a stop on the snow, and he looked down at their captured prey. ‘I am pleased.’

‘This is an inquisitor,’ said Antoniato to the man. ‘You know what one of those is, right?’ He shouldered his plasma rifle and together he and Lacrante hauled the prisoner up. He jabbered in an impenetrable dialect.

‘He was speaking Gothic just fine a moment ago,’ said Lacrante.

‘Remind him how to communicate,’ Rostov said.

Antoniato punched the man in the face. He swore. Rostov fixed the prisoner with his uncompromising gaze.

‘Who are you working for?’

The man spat blood. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘Don’t play stupid,’ said Antoniato.

Rostov ran a finger around the man’s neck, until he snagged a cord and hooked it out, pulling up a bronze amulet. Like the xenos in the bar, he too wore the eight-pointed wheel of Chaos stamped into an open hand. Rostov looked at it with intense disdain.

‘Where is the Hand of Abaddon? You wear his sigil. Tapind knew something, you silenced him. Who gave you the kill order? That will do for a start.’

The prisoner hissed some local curse. Antoniato pressed his knee into the man’s wounded leg. The prisoner grunted.

‘Show my master respect,’ Antoniato said.

The man bared his teeth. ‘Why? I am a servant of the Warmaster, the true lord of mankind. I have no care for your evil god. You will never break me.’

‘The power of the false gods is as nothing compared to the power of the Emperor.’ Rostov yanked the amulet, snapping the cord, and tossed the symbol into the snow. ‘They will not help you. The eye of the Emperor is upon you, and He sees all. You will tell me everything and die painlessly, or you will beg for mercy before I am done, and I will still know every thought you have ever had.’

The man stared defiantly back. Rostov regarded him a moment, then looked from Antoniato to Lacrante.

‘Take him to the ship. We are finished with Chozteculpo. Cheelche, time to go.’

‘Got you, Leonid. I’m coming down.’

Antoniato and Lacrante dragged the assassin away. Rostov remained a moment, surveying the untidy pile of streets leading up the mountain, like a man who feels another’s stare upon his neck and searches for the watcher.

Seeing nothing, he turned and left.

In moments, the snow had covered their tracks.

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