More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

The Beast Arises

1: I AM SLAUGHTER

2: PREDATOR, PREY

3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS

4: THE LAST WALL

5: THRONEWORLD

6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR

7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN

8: THE BEAST MUST DIE

9: WATCHERS IN DEATH

10: THE LAST SON OF DORN

11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

12: THE BEHEADING

Space Marine Battles

WAR OF THE FANG
A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang

THE WORLD ENGINE
An Astral Knights novel

DAMNOS
An Ultramarines collection

DAMOCLES
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare

OVERFIEND
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master

ARMAGEDDON
Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire

Legends of the Dark Millennium

ASTRA MILITARUM
An Astra Militarum collection

ULTRAMARINES
An Ultramarines collection

FARSIGHT
A Tau Empire novella

SONS OF CORAX
A Raven Guard collection

SPACE WOLVES
A Space Wolves collection

Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Prologue

Divided Unity

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Heretic’s Wake

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Lost Dreams

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Epilogue

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Carrion Throne’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

Those who are of the Inquisition

Covenant, Daemonhunter of the Ordo Malleus, disciple of the Thorian Dogma

Malika Quadin, Scholar of the Gorgonate Collegium

Vult, Daemonhunter lord of the Ordo Malleus, follower of the Amalathian Principles

Goldoran Talicto, Adherent of the Xanthite Methodology

Idris, Daemonhunter of the Ordo Malleus

Argento (deceased), Disciple of the Thorian Dogma

Those who serve

Cleander von Castellan, Rogue trader, inheritor of the von Castellan Dynasty

Viola von Castellan, Seneschal of the von Castellan Dynasty

Josef Khoriv, Drill abbot of the Scholar Progenium

Severita, Sister Repentia of the Order of the Bloody Rose

Koleg, Specialist

Enna Gyrid, Warrior acolyte, persecutor

Mylasa, Primaris psyker, disciple of the Nepenthe, Bringer of Oblivion

Kynortas, Master at arms of the Dionysia

Arabella Ghast, Void mistress of the Dionysia

Glavius-4-Rho, Magos

Those who are other

Orsino, Judge of the Adeptus Arbites

Galbus, Lexarchivist of the Adeptus Administratum

Kade Zecker, Captain-commander of the Valour’s Flame, Battle Fleet Caradryad

Yasmin Unshar, Intermediary for House Yeshar

Livilla Yeshar, Navigator, third heir apparent to the Paternova of House Yeshar

Titus Yeshar, Navigator, scion of House Yeshar

‘You have been told of the Inquisition: that shadowy organisation which defends mankind and the Emperor from the perils of heresy, possession, alien domination and rebellion.

You have been told the Inquisition is the ultimate defence against the phantoms of fear and terror which lurk in the darkness between the stars.

You have been told the Inquisition is the bright saviour in an eclipse of evil; purest and most devoted warrior of the Emperor.

You have been told the Inquisition is united in its cause to rid the galaxy of any threat, from without or within.

Everything you have been told is a lie.’

– Inquisitor Kessel, remarks in The Battle for
the Emperor’s Soul, all records sequestered

PROLOGUE

VISAGES

The daemon watched the lone warrior through stolen eyes. Walls of rock, smoothed over time by the passage of water, rose from the floor of the cave. Fingers of slime-covered crystal reached down from the roof. Water dripped from their tips, thick and pale with salts. A soft light rose from the pools of liquid caught in the ripple of the cave’s floor. Bones lay in clusters, some dry, some still clad in tatters of skin. The warrior moved through the gloom and past the pools, eyes moving steadily over the darkness beyond his sight. On his shoulder a weapon-machine pivoted and spun without cease. Crimson armour encased his chest, and a tome sat on his back, bound by locked chains. Lightning crawled down the blade in his hands, its flicker marking his hawk-like features with pale light.

The daemon watched as the warrior paused beside a luminous pool. It could see the fire of the human’s mind coiling in the realm beyond his flesh, bright with strength, threaded with the cobweb shadows of secrets. The daemon smiled, and felt its host’s lips pull back from its teeth.

‘You are Covenant,’ it said in the voice of its flesh prison.

The warrior remained still, but the weapon on his shoulder flicked around, barrel and targeting lens sweeping the dark.

‘I am glad you are here, boy,’ it said. ‘We have met before, but you would not remember.’

Covenant shifted the grip on his sword. On his shoulder the gun linked to his mind slowed its scanning, like a dog waiting for scent to come to it on the wind.

‘Of course,’ said the daemon. ‘That is a lie. I am not glad to see you. I have no soul to loathe or love you.’

Covenant took a step forwards, sword rising slightly, head turning to look to his side.

‘I am a creature that exists by theft. Everything we are, we take from you, our shapes from your nightmares, our words from your mouths, our existence from your weakness.’

The daemon paused. Its flesh shuddered in its wrapping of shadows. The fat, skin and sinew of its host would have rotted to nothing decades before, but the daemon’s presence sustained it, just as the flesh and the cold iron hammered into that flesh had held the daemon like a prison.

‘You know this, of course,’ it said. Covenant had stopped again. He was so close that the daemon could feel the life radiating from his soul. ‘You know what I am. You know that I speak to you because it is my nature, my ordained purpose in the courts of what you might call Chaos. You know I speak because I must. You know all this of me. But what do I know of you, boy? What do we know of you?’

Covenant turned slowly, and the daemon moved with him too, sliding into the space behind him. The lightning glow of Covenant’s sword caught a strata of crystal in the walls and sent a fork of reflected fire through the stone.

‘You don’t wish to know, of course.’ The daemon moved forwards, wrapping silence around itself, dragging darkness with it. It reached a hand out towards Covenant’s back. Its fingers lengthened like shadows under a setting sun. ‘But he wished to know.’ The words slid around the chamber, echoing and returning.

‘Wished… wish…’

‘Know… know… know…’

It was so close now. Just a little further, and then it could feed, it could grow strong, it could slip the bonds that held it here in this realm of mud and pity.

‘The one you call Talicto, the one who bound me here – he wished to know all I could tell him and more, and when I could give him no more he still kept me here in case I had lied, in case there was just one secret that I had not told him.’

Its fingers were almost on Covenant’s shoulder now. The man’s gaze was fixed on empty shadows.

‘And, do you know, there was one thing I did not tell him.’ The words were a wet purr as its host’s jaws distended, glass teeth growing beside its tongue as it tasted the air just behind Covenant’s neck. ‘But if you ask, I will tell you.’

Covenant whirled. The sword was a sheet of lightning as it cut through the front of the daemon’s face. It felt its host stagger, black blood pouring from its cleaved skull. The cannon on Covenant’s shoulder fired. Shells ripped into the daemon’s host body. Chunks of bone and rancid meat showered to the ground. Pain – pure, bright pain of a kind that did not exist for mortals – tore into its essence. The daemon had no true eyes. But it did not need eyes to see in the realm of the spirit. The fire of Covenant’s soul blazed as he came forwards. The daemon lashed out, blood and pus scattering from the iron nails in its limbs as its flesh split and grew. Covenant met the blow with his blade, turned it, and hacked down.

The daemon felt the left side of its body drop away, burning to ash as it fell. It staggered, its remaining flesh reshaping. It scuttled across the surface of a pool. Covenant came forwards again, shoulder cannon firing without pause. The daemon twitched aside as the rounds tore shards from the cave walls. It pulled on the tides of power that were its to command, and an arc of black lightning whipped towards Covenant.

The bolt from Covenant’s cannon caught the daemon in the centre of its remaining flesh, and ripped it apart. In the nailed and bound core of its essence, the daemon heard its stolen flesh try to scream.

It was on the floor juddering, trying to form the pulped matter of its host into a shape to fight. The shadow of Covenant fell over it. The fire of his cold rage sent a shiver through the daemon even as reality pulled it apart.

‘By the grace and power of the God-Emperor–’ began Covenant.

‘I will…’ said the daemon, forcing the words into being with the last spite of its existence. ‘I will tell you–’

‘I cast thee into the abyss,’ said Covenant, and the daemon saw the man’s soul blaze as the sword came down.

The sculpting tool scraped a ribbon of red wax from around the eye socket of the death mask. The tool paused, the polished tip poised above a half-formed fold of flesh. The sculpted face was a horror. Quills hung from its bald skull, and weeping sores blistered the sagging flesh beneath a double set of eyes. Its mouth stretched from ear to ear: a crooked grin like an axe wound filled with row upon row of needle teeth. It was vileness and abomination rendered with perfection.

‘Does it match the memory?’ Josef stepped from the dark beyond the circle of light which bathed the workbench. Tools lay on its grey stone top, each one set next to its siblings in neat rows. Dry spatters of wax marked the blades and tips of some of the tools. In the bright light the dried wax looked like congealed blood. A jet of blue flame glowed above a silver burner, shimmering slightly with the vibration of the ship’s engines.

Covenant remained silent for a moment, his gaze steady on the empty holes of the death mask’s eyes.

‘He was a scholar before Talicto gave him to the warp.’ Covenant looked up. ‘He lived his life in the histories of saints and heroes, and thought of nothing else.’

‘What was done to him happened long ago,’ said Josef, stepping closer. ‘Before you even ascended to the rank, before you could have done anything to prevent it.’

‘There is no forgiveness in time. We are responsible. Always.’

Josef raised a bushy eyebrow, and smoothed the fabric of his robe over his gut.

‘Course is set for Ero,’ said Josef. ‘Viola estimates we will be in-system several days before the conclave.’

Covenant gave a single nod, and flicked his eyes to the side of the chamber. A servitor shuffled forwards from a niche in the chamber wall and took the wax face with long brass fingers.

‘Take it to the forge,’ said Covenant. ‘I will follow within the hour. Have the crucibles of silver ready.’

The servitor bowed, gears clicking in oiled melody. Josef waited as the cyborg shuffled away.

‘Do you wish everyone to gather before we make transit?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Covenant. ‘There are plans to discuss.’

Josef turned to leave, then paused for a second, looking up at the walls. Silver faces gazed down at him, their eyes empty holes, their features set as they had been in the last moments of their lives.

‘As you command, my lord,’ said Josef, and left Covenant to the silence.

PART ONE

DIVIDED UNITY

ONE

The dust wind sang as it blew through the ranks of silent Titans. Cables rattled against armour plates, and war banners rippled and snapped in the rising gale. Beyond the dust clouds the last light of the sun was fading to an ochre bruise.

Koleg paused in the shadow of a Battle Titan and looked up. The machine towered into the billowing dust. Vast guns jutted from its shoulders and hung in place of arms. A web of chains bound it to the ground. Koleg could see red beacon lights winking high on the Titan’s carapace. The wind gusted and the chains creaked as the god-machine flexed against its bindings. Koleg lowered his gaze. The shadows of more Titans hung against the curtains of dust. Machines from three Legions had come to the muster, and now stood on the plains as the storms rolled in. Beyond the god-machines, taller than any of them, stood the Reliquary Tower. Generations of pilgrims had raised its walls, block by block, until it stood higher than the mountains that rose behind it. A statue of a robed and haloed woman capped the tower’s top, sword reaching up to the shrouded sky. The fires burning in the statue’s eyes blinked as the murk rippled across its face.

‘Halt and identify!’

Koleg turned at the sound of the voice. Ten figures closed on him, spears levelled over the top of linked tower shields. Lightning crackled around the spear tips. Eye slits glowed in closed helms. Koleg glanced at them, as his mask-visor detected the active weapons and blinked to crimson, outlining each of the warriors in amber.

Secutarii, thought Koleg, the guardian companions of the Titan Legions.

He nodded at them.

‘Identify,’ came the voice from the warrior at the centre of the shield-wall. Static growled against the wind as a speaker amplified the words. ‘You have ten seconds to comply.’

Koleg nodded again, and raised his hand, palm up. The lightning wreathing the spear tips crackled. He tapped the ring on his second finger, and a cone of light leapt from his hand. The stylised ‘I’ of the Inquisition rotated in the blue glow, glittering as its image caught the dust blowing through the projection. The lightning vanished from around the spear tips and the shield wall parted. One of the warriors stepped forward, silver weave cloak snapping in the gusting air.

‘Your pardon,’ said the secutarius. ‘You were not logged as having crossed the security cordon.’

Koleg snapped off the projection. He stood, hands in the pockets of his storm coat.

‘No,’ he said.

Koleg’s eyes twitched up. Shapes were descending through the dust-covered sky, lights blinking on tails and wing tips. His visor zoomed, picking out the silhouettes of the aircraft in glowing amber lines. A booming roar split the air as the chained Titans sounded their warhorns in greeting. Koleg felt the wind shear as the wall of sound punched through the rising gale.

Koleg watched the shuttles and gunships sweep low overhead. He clenched his jaw and his vox connection buzzed to life in his ear. He paused, listening to the ping and clatter as encryption cyphers activated.

‘This is Sentinel,’ he said. ‘The last pilgrim has arrived.’

‘We hear you,’ came the reply. ‘Join us.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said Koleg, and the vox-link clicked to silence. Above him the gunships were banking to circle above the ground at the Reliquary Tower’s base. One of the shuttles slid to a halt in mid-air, attitudinal thrusters burning orange to violet. Koleg began to walk towards the landing field, coat snapping in the wind. Dust lightning cracked in the gloom above the Titans’ backs. Arcs of white light ran down the nearest god-machine.

‘You should find cover, sir,’ called the secutarii alpha from behind him. ‘The storm’s coming.’

Koleg kept walking.

Secutarii Hoplite Alpha-34-Antimon watched the man walk into the clouds of dust. The systems in his helm cycled and tracked the man’s body heat for several seconds. The man was leaning into the wind, hands in pockets, movements purposeful but not hurried. He might have been out for a stroll rather than moving inside a vermillion-grade security cordon on a planet being used to muster a crusade-strength force. Alpha-34-Antimon did not like that; it was against the necessary order of things. The universe existed in divisions of type and authority. The nameless man in the storm coat should have been subject to the power of a greater person, and so on, until the line of authority reached the Omnissiah Incarnate himself. He should not be able to simply walk beneath sacred war engines without permission or care. He should not have been able to answer Alpha-34-Antimon’s challenge with silence.

He could, though. It was his right. He was under the protection of one of the inquisitors who were gathering in the Reliquary Tower, and that meant that he fell under no other authority.

The Inquisition was the left hand of the Emperor, a law utterly unto itself and subject to no limit or check on its authority. It stood apart, an exception to the order that bound every part of the Imperium. Its members, and by extension their servants, could do what they wanted in whatever way they wanted. If he was being honest, that lack of definition and limit bothered Alpha-34-Antimon. He had never seen an inquisitor, but he could not shed the distrust that clung to the thought of them.

In the distance the man in the storm coat was blurring behind the veil of dust. Alpha-34-Antimon turned away, and allowed his emotion-regulation implants to strip away the traces of annoyance from his thoughts.

<Unit resume patrol pattern chi-45.> The binaric command clattered across the vox-link, and the rest of the unit shifted into a diamond. He took his position amongst them, spear tilted up towards the sky. <Progress,> he signalled, and the unit walked out of the shadow of the Titan.

The wind beat against Alpha-34-Antimon’s shield. The pistons in his left arm clenched against the blows. He was not comfortable. The connection to the other secutarii units nearby was fuzzing his nerves. That was unusual. There were several hundred secutarii patrolling around the feet of the Titans. The data-link between the dispersed units passed through the god-machines, and should have been good for 21.456 kilometres in these conditions. It wasn’t though; the connection was as good as non-existent.

Alpha-34-Antimon felt a sudden surge of isolation batter his emotion-regulators.

Ball lightning flashed and rolled across the shoulders of the nearest Battle Titan. The wind was strengthening. Dust was all around the secutarii now, thick and ochre, rattling against armour plates and shields. The silhouette of another Titan emerged briefly in front of them before sinking behind the ochre veil. Static popped across Alpha-34-Antimon’s sight as his vision enhancers fought against the rushing gloom.

They had one more circuit to make before they withdrew to shelter. After that the full force of the storm would break, and nothing except the god-machines and the Sisters of Battle would remain outside.

He was forcing himself forward against the wind when something flashed in front of him: a brief fizz of brightness, and a shadow. He stopped, eye lenses whirring as they tried to focus on the rolling haze. The rest of the squad had halted with him, and he could feel their action queries queuing at the edge of the squad data-link.

<Ground level electro-discharge,> said the squad’s beta.

Alpha-34-Antimon did not reply. The flash could have been a static arc from the dust, but there had been the shadow, and for an instant he had thought it a figure standing in the dust veil, like a smudge of ink on cloth. He waited.

Nothing moved.

After eighteen seconds he signalled the rest of the squad and began to move. The data-link to the other secutarii in this area was still down. If he could not get a clear connection soon, he would have to–

<There!> the binaric cry snapped out.

And there it was again, a mass of tiny blue arcs snapping around a dark smudge in the sand storm. His eyes tried to zoom, but kept sliding off the shape as though it was not there.

<Diamond formation,> he signalled, <ready spears, fields to active.>

Light wreathed the tips of spears as the squad slid into formation. Their shields touched. The air around them shimmered. The swirling dust buffeted against the edge of impedance fields. Alpha-34-Antimon stood at the tip of the diamond, his own spear levelled at the blur of static. He could not tell how far away it was; it seemed to be both still and closing fast.

<Anomaly…>

<Anomaly…>

<Anomaly…> the sensor data blinked. He fired a priority alert signal into the data-link. It vanished into nothing.

‘Halt and identify!’ His voice roared from the speaker mounted on his chest. The wind caught the challenge and spun it away.

<Ready discharge,> he linked to the squad. The energy around the spear tips began to spiral.

A second spark-wreathed shadow appeared next to the first, then a third, then a fourth. The rational machine part of Alpha-34-Antimon had time to recognise the humanoid outlines running against the wind, and that they were not in the distance but just a few paces away.

<Fire!> he commanded. Actinic light whipped from the tips of the spears. The figures running from the storm leapt, legs bunching beneath them, strips of frayed cloth streaming behind them. Energy burned through the dust cloud, but the ragged figures were not there. Alpha-34-Antimon looked up as a figure clad in tatters leapt through the air above him. He had an instant to catch the impression of a mask of stitched cloth with torn holes for eyes. Then the attacker’s feet struck him in the chest.

His armour cracked under the force of impact. He was falling, the ragged figure descending with him. Gears in Alpha-34-Antimon’s legs screamed as they tried to keep him upright. He hit the ground. Distortion burst across his sight. The rag-swathed figure was above him, a crystal punch-blade raised to strike. Alpha-34-Antimon twisted and began to rise. The ragged figure dived sideways, rolling and stabbing back at Alpha-34-Antimon as he straightened. The punch-blade touched his impedance field in a spray of sparks. He brought his tower shield up.

Binaric screams filled Alpha-34-Antimon’s data inputs. Systems and organs in his torso were leaking blood and oil. Around him the dust wind blurred with the shadows of figures stabbing, falling, dying. His squad was dying. He could feel their data presences blinking out in his awareness.

<Attack under way, maximum threat alert,> he shouted into the data-link. Silence screamed back at him. The figure before him pivoted and backhanded its punch-blade into the shield. Alpha-34-Antimon stabbed his spear forward, but his enemy was gone, spinning wide and lashing out again and again. Lightning flared from the tower shield. Alpha-34-Antimon bunched his muscles and pistons and rammed his shield forward as the next blow fell. The figure staggered, seemed to falter, and Alpha-34-Antimon triggered the charge in his spear. He lunged.

The masked figure rolled forward as fluid and fast as water, and the punch-dagger cut through the armour of Alpha-34-Antimon’s right arm just behind his spear hand.

All sensation vanished. Silence held him. The swirl of dust around him rolled back, and he realised he must have fallen backwards onto the ground. The ochre clouds were receding down a dark tunnel.

Weak and treacherous flesh, he thought, and then those thoughts were a fading echo following him down into oblivion.

It took five minutes for the neurotoxins to finally silence his heart. The cognitive implants in his skull stopped functioning ten seconds later. By that time the rest of his squad lay beside him, their bodies already gathering shrouds of dust. Their killers had passed on, their ragged shapes blurring into the wind as they ran beneath the shadows of the chained Titans. Behind them the wind front swept in like the breath of a wrathful god.

Cleander von Castellan watched the scene slide across the viewport, and took a gulp of wine from his goblet. ‘Augment view, ship identification and ground atmospheric readouts.’

‘Compliance,’ droned one of the servitors wired into the machines which ran along the back of the viewing platform. Cleander waited, listening to the murmur of gears turning.

The dust storms of Ero moved across its face like spirals of dirty spun sugar. Clouds trailed from the main mass of each storm, reaching back across the deserts to the margins of the oceans. Beside the swirls of cloud even the city sprawls and ocean platforms seemed insignificant, small totems of mankind’s hubris in the face of nature. Star ships hung above the planet, winking with reflected light from Ero’s young, bright sun. There were hundreds, and even as Cleander watched, another constellation of vessels rose above the horizon. At this distance even the macro haulers were just pinprick glimmers against the black.

He took another drink, and let the heat of the wine spread down his throat. The smell of fire spice filled his nose. It was not a good vintage. The harmonies of alcohol, fruit and spice were poorly balanced, and the taste was as crude as it was potent. He enjoyed it though, maybe because of its unapologetic lack of refinement. It was simply what it was. With every year added to his life he found that he liked things which were straightforward more and more, and also found that they were increasingly difficult to source. The situation beyond the viewport was one example of something that was far from simple.

‘Greetings and lies to all who have eyes,’ he sang into his glass. ‘Farewells and good wishes to all who give kisses…’

Holo-projectors flickered to life beneath the viewport. Luminous green data spread across the image of the planet and high orbit. The names of the warships came first, flashing in rings around the specks of light that were each vessel: Lord Absolute, Fire Child, Blade of the Light Eternal, Last Son of the Sword, Rebuke Eternal. On and on went the titles, each as struttingly aggressive as the last.

Cleander snorted to himself. There was something crass about having to scream the nature of such vessels so bluntly, as though kilometres of armour and the ability to reduce cities to fused glass were not indication enough that these were warrior queens of the void.

Forty-seven ships of war lay in this portion of Ero’s orbit alone. Another fifty-two hung out of sight above the planet’s other hemisphere, and more would be arriving from the system edge over the coming days. That was without the macro transports and bulk haulers, which hung beside the warships in shoals. Regiments of soldiers, maniples of Titans, companies of Space Marines – all coming together to save this corner of space from cataclysm. That, at least, was what most of the commanders of those forces would say. From where Cleander sat, the view was rather different.

‘Enough fire to burn the stars from their settings,’ he muttered to himself.

‘You should be on the bridge,’ said Viola from behind him. He did not bother to turn and look, even though he had not heard her enter the observation gallery.

‘The conclave has not begun,’ he said, and took another sip of wine. ‘Koleg signalled that the last shuttle was just touching down. There’s time yet before I need to stand by the helm and look commanding.’ He frowned as his eye found the edge of one of the largest dust storms. Atmospheric data scrolled beside trace arcs highlighting wind currents and trajectories. ‘Magnify feed on the operational area,’ he said.

Another murmur of gears and a square of hololight formed over a section of the planet. The image inside the square fizzed to monochrome green and then magnified. A curve of mountains marched around a wide plateau. The edge of the storm was already pouring into the bowl formed by the highlands, filling it like water pouring into cupped hands. The image magnified further, blinking in time with the click of the projectors. Tiny shapes began to form and then grew in clarity.

The Reliquary Tower rose from the centre of the image, its lower bastions already lost beneath the leading edge of the dust clouds. Titans encircled it, their vast size made small by distance, and blurred by the folds of dust. Beyond the mountains, he could see the edge of the tent and prefab cities that the Departmento Munitorum had created for the millions of troops and stores that had come to Ero. The camps extended across the scrublands of both continents and grew in size and population with every turn of the planet. In the dry language of the Administratum it was ‘a Primary Grade Mustering – subtype Gamma’, but every man and woman who had answered its call knew what it truly was: the birth of a crusade.

‘We should launch the gunships now,’ said Viola.

Cleander glanced over his shoulder at her. His sister’s face was impassive, her eyes still and fixed on the port and holo-projection. Long, ivory hair hung down the back of her red dress coat. The silk of the cravat around her neck matched her white hair, and the gold thread of her waistcoat caught the light as she turned slightly, the stitched patterns gleaming briefly. She was two decades his junior, young by the long lives of their dynasty, but her poise and control made her seem the senior whenever the pair appeared together – at least, that was what Cleander had always thought.

‘You chose to wear your sword,’ he said nodding at the brass hilt resting beneath her left hand. Her face twitched and her left eye briefly flashed chrome. She was watching some other stream of data from one of the ship’s systems through the subtle augmetic.

‘Launching squadron out of port launch bay Juno,’ she said. Cleander saw a trio of runes flash at the side of his display as three of the Dionysia’s brood of gunships entered the orbital sphere. Viola glanced behind her to where Kynortas would be waiting dutifully in the shadows. ‘Call the household cohorts to full readiness, and set alert condition throughout the ship.’

The master of arms bowed his head and withdrew, his movements somehow silent despite the bulk of his gilded pressure armour. Cleander watched him leave. Ever steady, ever loyal Kynortas knew better than to wait for Cleander to confirm the order. Cleander von Castellan was the head of the dynasty, the master of this ship and paymaster of every one of the souls that served on her. He was the absolute lord of this domain, but Viola was the power around which that domain turned. Every line of credit, store-master, informer network and trade contact was hers.

‘So your thought was less of a thought, and more you telling me about something you had already ordered,’ he said.

Her left eye cleared, and she glanced at him. The emotion in her eyes was somewhere between contempt and frustration.

‘You should prepare,’ she said, and began to pivot on her heels.

‘The gunships need to keep above the atmosphere,’ he said. ‘Wind speed and particle density will strip them down to their engine blocks if they hold station in the storm.’ Viola paused and looked at him, eyebrow arched. ‘And of course you have already issued that order,’ he said.

He looked back at the projection and porthole, and rubbed his eyes. ‘This is getting more complicated by the day, and it’s not yet even begun. There is enough materiel here to kill a civilisation, and enough power and influence to order it done. And here we are… Any one of those ships could hammer us to gas and slag if it chose. I am reading one hundred and four near-atmosphere patrols. Our credentials have been demanded and checked fifteen times since I started talking, and you know that if any one of them failed we would find out what it’s like to be a lone ship facing a battlefleet. We are insects playing with the anger of giants.’

He took another swallow of wine, and smacked his lips. Viola frowned, eyes flicking to the goblet and then away.

‘Haven’t you had enough?’

Cleander snorted. She was right of course. What they were about to do needed a clear head. Not for the first time, he was glad that Viola was there to be what he could not be. He wondered what the fate of his family would have been if the two decades that separated them had been reversed, and she had been the elder. Would he have made the same mistakes without the weight and privilege of being the head of the family? He doubted it. The fortune of their forebears would have remained tied to the solidity of earth and stone. The Dionysia would have wandered the void at the command of another master. He would not have seen the light of weeping stars, or held the wealth of dead empires in his hands. And he would not now be preparing to do something very ill-advised.

He swallowed the last of the wine and stood, shrugging into his dress coat as he turned from the view.

‘All right,’ he breathed out, and reached down to pick up his own sword from where it leant against the side of the chair. He unwound the sword belt from the scabbard and fastened it around his waist. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the familiar weight of both weapon and coat settle. Reflexively he shifted the eyepatch over his left eye socket, and began to walk towards the door. ‘All right, let’s start this dance.’

Viola raised an eyebrow and then fell in at his side.

The sin-marked warrior looked up at the stone face of the saint, and felt tears she could not shed come to her eyes. Saint Aspira, Saviour of a Hundred Stars, towered above, arms spread as though in peace and victory, the folds of her cloak falling away from sculpted armour plates in translucent folds of marble. Golden rays haloed above the saint’s head. Each blade of metal hung on hair-thin wires, so that they seemed to float like spears of frozen sunlight. The tip of the statue’s raised sword almost touched the apex of the great dome above. Gilded eagles spiralled through painted storm clouds on that curved ceiling, lightning clasped in their claws. The saint’s eyes looked down from beneath the raised blade, unblinking in a stone face of perfect, holy serenity. Beneath that gaze the penitent warrior knelt, and bowed her head.

I am broken, Severita thought. I am a stain on existence. I should not exist. I should not be here.

Around her the space extended away to meet the columns which encircled the statue-capped tomb. Bronze candelabras rose from the tiled floor like trees, their branches blazing with flame. Black prayer pennants hung from the edge of the walkway which ran around the dome’s base. Slender figures stood on that walkway, as unmoving as statues, their crimson armour catching the stray threads of candlelight. Severita had seen those red sentinels as soon as she had entered, and had felt their eyes touch her as she had crossed to offer prayer to the Saint. She could feel the judgement of their eyes as though their gaze burned the hessian of her robe from the sleeveless bodyglove beneath, and sliced through her brand-scarred skin to open her soul to bleed onto the black mirror of the floor.

‘Sacred Master of Mankind, forgive my presence,’ she whispered, bowing her head. ‘Do not withhold punishment from this, your failed servant. Exalted mistress, who walked the path of swords and ashes, may my deeds wash clean the stain of my existence. Great saints who have shown the way, please–’

‘Severita…’ The voice was soft, but its gentle force was enough to pull her out of her deepening pool of prayer. She held her eyes closed for a second, adding the incomplete litany to the tally of her sins that looped without cease through her thoughts.

She looked up, and the cowl fell back from her head to show the henna-stained ‘X’ that divided her face into quarters. Josef looked down at her. He wore the off-white robes of a preacher, the hood thrown back from his heavy face. Green eyes glittered from beneath bushy eyebrows. Tufts of steel grey hair circled his bare scalp and ran down his cheekbones. Mountain ranges of fat and muscle shifted as he raised a hand as though in casual greeting. He looked more like a labour boss poured into vestments than he did a priest.

‘The last of them is about to arrive. We should be with Covenant,’ he said, his voice a soft rumble. He glanced up at the shrine, then bowed his head. ‘Your forgiveness for interrupting your prayers.’

‘I will add it to my chain of penance,’ she said, and rose, bowing to the statue of the saint for a long moment before she backed away and turned. Josef gave a shorter bow, but she could feel the frown on his face.

‘It is for the Emperor to burden us, not ourselves,’ he said.

‘I bear no burden that I have not earned,’ she said, coldly.

He gave a low snort but did not reply. Severita’s eyes swept the chamber, suddenly aware that the stillness she had felt during her brief devotion was not reality. Hundreds of figures moved around the chamber edge, flowing around the pillars in tight groups.

These were the inquisitors and their entourages. There was a towering man in layers of black velvet, face hidden by a checked executioner’s hood, bending to speak to a pair of twins in form-hugging leather bodygloves. Here was a woman in battered scale armour sweeping along at the head of six cloaked figures who scuttled on chrome pincers. Beside them were others, some surrounded by throngs of retainers like courtiers come to the command of their king. Except that no single power beneath the God-Emperor could command these men and women. Their power was absolute, unchecked by anything except each other, and limited only by their own choices. Covenant had said that forty-one of his peers had answered the call to conclave, and that this would be the greatest gathering of inquisitors in the Segmentum Tempestus for a century. Severita had only seen one inquisitor in her life before this moment, and that was the man who she served in penance. To stand in the presence of so many souls who stood one step below the God-Emperor was almost overwhelming.

She watched the throng for a moment, marking the way they moved, the way they watched each other in turn. Suspicion and tension danced in the spaces between groups, and flickered in their glances. Beyond them, standing in crimson-clad stillness, were the Battle Sisters of the Bloody Rose. Their faces were bare, expressions fixed beneath dark hair. Eagle tattoos and the stylised rose of the order marked their cheeks. That same rose gleamed in silver and gold on the red lacquer of their armour. Arcs of oiled machinery haloed their heads and clamped close over their ears. Tiny purity seals dotted the blunt metal, showing where each of the skull-locks had been checked and blessed. The Order of the Bloody Rose had agreed to host this conclave of inquisitors, and to guarantee the safety of all those present, but while they watched over the gathering they would not be allowed to hear what was discussed, or know the secrets that would be spoken between the servants of the Holy Ordos. Every one of the Battle Sisters within the Reliquary Tower wore skull clamps that allowed them to hear only the vox security channels. To do otherwise would have meant every Battle Sister present being put to the test, and cleansed by mind-blanking or bolt shell. The Imperium could not afford to waste such warriors. Not now. Not with the light of hell swallowing the stars in the sky above this and hundreds of other worlds.

‘This makes you uncomfortable,’ said Josef.

‘What is there to take comfort from in what we are doing?’ she said, turning to look at his wide face. His eyes were steady.

‘I did not mean what we are here to do.’ He jerked his chin at the crimson-armoured Battle Sisters.

‘Being here, them being here…’

She shook her head.

‘I am not one of them anymore. I have no illusions as to my place and duty.’

‘I never doubted that. I just thought it must hurt, and that you should not take the weight of that pain as well as all the rest.’

‘I am the worst of sinners, Khoriv. There is no limit to my penance.’

Josef raised his eyebrow, folding his hands into the wide sleeves of his robe. After a long moment he turned and began to walk with heavy steps in the direction of the high doors set in the chamber’s far wall.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘It is about to begin.’

TWO

Enna Gyrid shook the dust from her cloak as the door shut behind her. Four Dominions of the Bloody Rose stood in an arc to greet them. Helms hid their faces, above the glistening red of their armour. The muzzles of four storm bolters held her in their empty gaze. She could see fingers on triggers, tensed, held on the cusp of sending a storm of explosive rounds into the space inside the door. These were the elite of the Sisters of Battle, chosen for this duty precisely because they would not hesitate to execute anyone who came here uninvited.

Enna nodded to them, and pulled off the rebreather mask she had worn for the brief walk between the lighter to the Reliquary Tower.

She smiled.

‘Greetings. The weather outside is terrible. If you are thinking of going for a stroll, I would advise against it.’

The four Dominions’ aims did not waver. Enna could almost feel the seconds she had before they opened fire vanishing. She rubbed her eye. The ride down through Ero’s atmosphere in the lighter had been a hurtling drop from low orbit, trying to outrun the edge of the oncoming storm. They had lost that race, and the last ten minutes had been illuminated with amber warning lights, and drowned by the sound of alarms and the rattle of the fuselage. Even once they had touched down, the wind had gusted enough that the servitor crews had begun to lock the lighter’s landing feet to the landing pad before its engines had cycled down. The storm had yanked at the cloth of her layered robe as she crossed to the tower door. The silver coins stitched into the edges of her hood and robe had rung against her armour. If the journey down from orbit had put her humours out of balance, the short walk to this side entrance of a door had tilted it towards acidity.

The four Dominions tensed further, the shift in muscles under armour almost imperceptible. The vox-thief circling Enna’s ear clicked as it picked up a flurry of encoded signals between the warriors.

She sighed, and held up her hand. A cloud of hololithic light pulsed out of the ring on her right index finger. Spheres of code and flecks of enciphered data spun through the air.

‘I come in the name of Inquisitor Idris, as her herald, and as the voice proclaiming her coming and intention to enter this place.’ She held her hand in place as hidden sensors meshed with the data projection and validated her credentials. There had not really been any need to speak, but there were formalities to authority, signs and pomp and ceremony that were part of the show. And, of course, she rather enjoyed it.

The Dominions dropped their aim, but did not move aside.

‘We bid you welcome to the Shrine of Saint Aspira in the name of the Order of the Bloody Rose,’ they bowed their heads. ‘We are honoured by your presence.’

‘Not by mine,’ said Enna. The holo-projection from her ring snapped off. She tapped her vox-bead. ‘Formalities dealt with, my lady.’ She straightened, smile still in place.

The outer door opened, pistons pulling the slab of plasteel and bronze apart. Dust-laden air billowed through the opening. Enna turned as her Inquisitorial mistress stepped into the narrow chamber. In contrast to Enna’s cloak and burnished armour plates, Inquisitor Idris wore a battered brown duster coat over faded black trews, and a waistcoat of armoured leather. Brass buckles gleamed from belts and holsters. Dark hair rose in a pile above her head, silver pins glinting from amongst the curls. Rings gleamed on her fingers as she pulled the goggles down from her face. Her face was narrow, and lines cobwebbed the skin around her eyes. Enna thought she caught a sparkle of amusement in those eyes, but when Idris spoke her voice was cold iron.

‘Open the way,’ she said.

The Dominions bowed their heads again, but did not move from their place blocking the entrance passage.

‘The accords under which you may enter require you to yield your arms, inquisitor. You and your… acolyte.’

Idris’ mouth twitched, but her gaze had hardened. The moment lengthened.

‘Of course,’ she said at last, and pulled a compact autopistol and a multibarrelled hand cannon from their holsters and held them out. A Dominion stepped forward, slinging her storm bolter before taking the pistols with a bow. Enna found herself wondering how these acts of deference sat with their pride, or if the Adepta Sororitas were more successful at eliminating that flaw than she suspected they were. Idris glanced at Enna.

‘Come, Enna, let’s not be more awkward than we must be.’ The flash in her eyes was definitely there now. +Moment of truth,+ came Idris’ thought voice.

Enna kept her face impassive. There was a sharp edge to her mistress’ telepathic touch, as though she were shouting to be heard against a wind. That was to be expected. While Enna did not have a psychic gift, her mistress’’ telepathic contact had been a constant during her service. She could read the texture of the sendings like the grain of wood under her fingers. At that moment they were on the edge of something that was repressing psychic activity. Like the yielding of their weapons, it was not unexpected, just another expression of the truth about the Inquisition’s fractured unity.

The Inquisition’s members – the disparate witchhunters, daemonhunters, xenoshunters, datasecutors, chronoguardians and all the other specialisms of the protectors of mankind – from the most respected lord inquisitor to its most obscure member were all individuals, bound by no law beneath the direct will of the Emperor. All of them had a single goal: the survival of mankind in a hostile universe. How they performed that duty, and what they considered the greatest threat to humanity, was theirs to choose and execute in any manner they saw fit. The concerns of high officials, of generals commanding billions, of faith and truth, none of it mattered to an inquisitor unless they chose to make it their concern. They were the rare few, imbued with the authority of a living god. But that individual authority meant that for every soul that served as an inquisitor there was a different perception of what the path of survival was, and a different conviction of how to walk that path. Rather than unity it was a body defined by divergence. And from divergence had sometimes sprung conflict, and from conflict, violence. Her mistress had explained this to Enna several times, but this was the first time she had felt the reality of it.

Enna drew her paired power daggers, the light finding the razor edges of the coal-black blades. She spun them, caught the cross-guards and held them out. Another of the Dominions came forward and took the ivory handles. Next came the long-barrelled laspistol from her hip, and then the micro grenades hanging from her waist. Last was the fork-bladed resonance dagger strapped to her left bicep.

She watched as each piece of weaponry was settled into a metal chest, and the lid sealed with a murmur of gears. The Dominions stepped back and Enna glanced up as a cluster of lenses and cabling hinged down from the roof on an articulated arm. The lenses spun in their settings. Worms of static ran up the wires. Enna felt her skin prickle as a lattice of invisible fields swept over them. Her teeth ached, and she felt static spark off her armour. Then it was gone, and the machine folded back into the darkness of the ceiling.

Enna found that she was holding her breath. She let it go, and smiled at the Dominions.

‘Done?’ she asked.

The Sisters did not move for a second, but then they parted. Beyond them the inner door into the Reliquary Tower began to clank back into its frame.

Idris nodded and stepped between them.

+It seems that their security is not as thorough as we would have hoped.+ Idris’ thought voice was weakening as she stepped towards the opening door. Enna suppressed a smile as she thought of the few lethal trinkets on her person that the security auspices had looked straight through without blinking. +If we have circumvented the accords, then it is certain others will have. Be on your guard.+

All the more reason for us to have done the same, thought Enna, knowing that her mistress would skim the meaning from her consciousness. 

+Indeed.+

They were not here to cause trouble, but Idris was cautious when it came to involvement with her peers, and so they came with hidden arms into this place of supposed harmony. Enna could not say that she disagreed with her mistress; if it had been her decision she would have had a full company of elite infantry waiting in low orbit and have walked in with as many guns as she could carry.

The doors yawned wide and warm light washed over them as they stepped through. 

+Trust no one,+ came a final sending as the null fields closed over them.

I wouldn’t know how, smiled Enna, but if her mistress heard the thought before the veil descended, Enna could not tell.

Josef paused on the threshold of the chapel. The space beyond was empty apart from a lone figure knelt before the altar. Banners hung from the stone walls, their edges ragged, their cloth stained with soot and dried blood. Statues stood in niches beneath a vaulted ceiling. He recognised the grim face of Saint Sebastian Thor, and the armoured shape of Saint Sabbat, her features serene in white marble. He bowed briefly.

‘Watch us this day in all the battles we must face,’ he muttered, paused, and then added the worry that was itching at the back of his thoughts. ‘And if you could see your way to making sure that everything doesn’t go to hell, it would be appreciated.’ No reply came from the statues. He made the sign of the aquila and bowed again. Brief regret stabbed at the edge of his conscience as he stepped forward without kneeling to give full obeisance. The prayer was not enough, but service was more important than ritual.

“The Emperor judges us by our deeds, not our words,” a confessor had once said to him, and it was a tenet that Josef had held close throughout his life. If the Emperor judged Josef by his words then He would have found him a poor instrument. He was as ugly as a sinner’s soul, full of gut, and his words, though sometimes plentiful, tended to be as rough as his scar-pocked skin. He had been born in the sump slime of Adrianis Hive in far Mandragora, and had starved, and killed, and wept from loss before he could lift a real gun. He had grown in the dark, and lived by the flash of muzzles and the scream of chainblades. The Emperor’s truth was not even a candle to give comfort in that endless night. Then the Imperial Navy press gangs had come and pulled him up into the stars.

He had become a rating on an Imperial Navy warship. One world of iron had become another. He had sweated in the chain gangs hauling shells from cavernous magazines, and lost his hearing to the roar of macro cannons. Life had not been kind, but there was food, and for a boy from the sump the skirmishes between factions of lower deck crew were just like home. He learned he had a talent for violence, for the roaring, hacking business of bloodshed. That was noticed by others, and the God-Emperor called him to put his talent to work as an armsman.

The God-Emperor… More than anything else, more than the food and shelter, the great gift of those days was the word spoken by the preachers who roamed the decks. He learned of salvation, of mankind, of the protection of the man who was a god, and for the first time in his life he knew that there was a choice he could make that mattered, that how he lived mattered. That had been the beginning of the path that had led him here, to this side-chapel in a shrine to a dead saint, and the service of the man who knelt before a low altar, his head bowed before the light of prayer-candles.

‘Lord, it’s time,’ said Josef.

Covenant stood, raising his face to look up at the triptych of the Emperor on the altar. He had a young face, fine-boned but strong beneath a topknot of black hair. A cuirass of red lacquered armour covered his torso above the panels of a grey storm coat. The sigil of the Inquisition gleamed from the centre of his torso. The sensor pod on his left shoulder twitched, and then panned around to stare at Josef with its cluster of green lenses. A mind-interface cable led from the pod to a metal socket at the base of Covenant’s skull. Josef looked away from the lenses as they whirred and focused. The fact that it was a sensor pod rather than the sighting lens of a psycannon made it a little better, but not much; Josef had never got used to the contrast between his master’s stillness and the pod’s ceaseless movement. The lenses held on Josef and then moved to the chapel door. Covenant’s true eyes gazed at the altar, the gilding of the triptych and the light of candles reflecting in their depths.

‘Judgement,’ said Covenant softly. ‘In an ancient kingdom of Terra, judgement was said to have been the greatest blessing that a ruler could possess.’

Josef shrugged.

‘They are going to call the convocation,’ he said.

Covenant turned, the sensor pod now panning across the space behind him.

‘Is Talicto here?’

Josef nodded.

‘He came alone?’

‘As you anticipated.’

Covenant turned, looking back to the three images above the altar. Josef followed his gaze.

The Emperor in three of his divine aspects looked back at them: the warrior in burnished gold, bearing a sword of flame; the prophet in a black robe leaning on an eagle-topped staff, a closed book chained to his hands; and at the centre the judge sat upon a throne of iron, cloaked in purple, eyes blind pits, a hammer resting in his grasp.

‘The blessing of rulers, you say,’ said Josef carefully, ‘to sift truth from lies and to see justice done without flinching. Judgement… Some might say it is a soul’s greatest burden.’

Covenant looked at him, and raised a hand to rest on Josef’s shoulder. A sorrowful smile broke the mask of his face for a moment.

‘Thank you, old friend,’ he said. ‘Thank you for this, and all your past service.’

‘You are very welcome, lord,’ said Josef. ‘Now we had better go and get this done, don’t you think?’

Covenant was still for a long moment, and then he bowed his head, eyes briefly closing. He turned and walked towards the door of the chapel, his sensor pod swivelling to watch behind him. Josef paused, gaze lingering on the image of the Emperor as warrior. He muttered a prayer, and hurried after his master.

The Reliquary Tower would have been called a fortress on another world. From where it sprung from the dust and rock of Ero, it rose like a black needle. Buttresses serrated its flanks, studded with the dust-worn statues of Imperial martyrs. Weapons sat on those walls too, watching the air above and the ground below with sensor-slaved cannons and missile clusters. Battle Sisters stood on the firing platforms, sealed inside their power armour, joints locked as the wind rasped past them and the dust blurred their helm displays. The tower was theirs to guard in the name of the Emperor, and even in the face of the storm they would stand watch.

Saint Aspira had not died here, but it was here that her Sisters had brought her in death, and set her bones down on the planet that had borne her. In the centuries since her return in death, the tower had grown block by block, each of them hewn, carried and set by the pilgrims who came to Ero. Millions of men and women had laboured and died on the tower, some by misfortune, some from old age. Their lives spent, their ashes had been mixed with the mortar of the shrine as it grew. Once complete, it had been blessed by the Prioress of the Convent Sanctorum herself. There were few holier places in the segmentum, and the pilgrims had continued to come without cease. Until the warp rift had opened. Until the light of hell had stained the stars.

To Celestian Superior Helena, standing vigil at this place, at this time, was one of the most blessed moments of her life. The vox crackled with the prayers of her Sisters, their voices harmonised as they rose and fell through the Canticle of Serenity. Before her, a wide flight of basalt steps sloped down to meet the plateau surrounding the shrine. At her back the lowest level of the tower loomed like a cliff, its face moaning as the storm threaded through the gargoyles and angels watching from its walls. Her squad Sisters stood to either side of the sealed door, their heavy bolters levelled at the murk. The world before them was a blank blue, the distant Titans marked by the dim red of their idling reactors. Without their helmets’ heat-sight Helena and her squad would be blind, but anything with above air temperature body heat would burn in their sight even through the dust clouds.

‘Two minutes to storm break,’ said the blank voice of one of the shrine’s auspex-servitors over the vox.

Helena blinked and atmospheric readouts flashed across her helm display – the wind was growing in strength, propelling dust and particulates at a force that would burnish the lacquer of her armour.

‘Movement!’ shouted the Sister to her right. ‘Twenty metres, ten degrees right.’

Target runes spun into place in Helena’s helm display as she raised her bolter. A pale green smudge fluttered in the blue depths in front of her. The targeting rune locked onto it, and flickered amber. Her finger tensed on the bolter’s trigger, as for a second she wondered at what she was seeing. Nothing could be out there. Anyone approaching the shrine now would have to be moving just ahead of the storm, and anything that could do that would be producing a lot of heat.

But the pale smudge in Helena’s display was barely warmer than the air.

That fact froze her finger on the trigger of her gun for a second.

‘Thirty seconds to storm break,’ droned the servitor.

And from behind her Helena heard the doors into the shrine begin to grind open.

Her head snapped around. The doors were supposed to remain sealed. There had been no one to open them, but opening they were, and bright heat was spilling out into the dust-darkened night.

‘Fir–’ she began to shout as a spike of crystal stabbed into the neck seal of her armour and bit into her throat.

Her limbs folded, strength and sensation fleeing, as she fell backwards, her finger still frozen on the trigger of her gun. She could not move. She could not speak or scream. In her chest her heart beat and breath trickled between her lips. And with a detached coldness she realised that there would be no alarm. No one within the shrine would read her squad as down. There would be no vanishing life signs to trigger an alert.

‘Door must close in ten seconds,’ shouted an amplified voice, the words barely carrying over the roar of the wind.

Helena tried to blink and found that she could, but that was all she could do.

Above her a human shape in cool green bent down over her, braced against the wind. She blinked again, and the helm cycled to standard sight. A face of torn rags looked down at her, the crystals of its dust goggles glinting in the light from Helena’s own eyepieces as it tilted its head. It seemed to nod to her, and pressed its hand to its face and then to her faceplate. It held its hand in place for a second, and then rose, strips of rag snapping in the wind. Helena had the impression of others following it. Then they were gone, leaving Helena with the sound of her breath and the sound of the storm as it broke over the shrine with a roar and dry lightning.

Enna felt the breath stop in her throat as she looked down. She had seen more than most of humanity ever dreamed existed. Vile sights of terror and blood, things that could halt the breath in the throat with awe, places that most would not believe existed; she was moved by little, and impressed by almost nothing. But her breath still whistled as she released it.

She had stopped beside a balustrade that ran the circumference of the landing she and her mistress had emerged onto. The statue of Saint Aspira filled the space beyond, carved marble drawing the eye down to the floor beneath. She did not look at the statue. It was, after all, just a marker for a box of dry bones. She had seen dead saints, and shrines, and the places where the devoted thought divinity had touched the world, and this sanctuary of faith was no different from any others. It was not the sight of the holy place that had made her pause, but the people who moved around it. 

Figures in armour, in robes, in costumes of a dozen worlds stood like tiny painted statues. Entourages hung close to some, clad in ways that would not be out of place in a hive fighting pit, or a ceremonial parade ground. The simple pageantry of it was breathtaking. It made the hackles rise on the back of Enna’s neck.

‘Impressive,’ said Idris, coming up beside her and leaning on the black marble of the balustrade, her eyes moving over the sight beneath them. ‘So much power concentrated in one place. To meet but one person who has the power to execute worlds and judge the mightiest is extraordinary.’ She smiled and turned her back on the view, looking now at Enna. ‘There must be ten with such power just in sight. Heady stuff.’

‘Do you know them all?’ asked Enna without looking up.

‘No,’ said Idris, and chuckled. ‘Some, yes, but then only by name. We are rare creatures, Enna. You are not unusual in never having seen other inquisitors. Most here will not know each other, or know perhaps only a few by name and reputation. I have served humanity for… oh, for decades, and an encounter with one of my peers has been a blessed rarity.’

Enna looked at her mistress, eyebrow arched.

Idris shrugged, and the smile on her face twisted up on one side.

‘We don’t always play well with each other. We disagree, and we are used to getting our own way. More often than not, a meeting of our kind is riven with much politics and discord, and that is if we are lucky.’

‘You sound like you enjoy it,’ said Enna.

Idris laughed.

‘Yes… yes, I suppose I do. You never know what is going to happen, but it is rarely dull, and often momentously important.’ The humour drained from her face, and her eyes seemed to focus on somewhere far off. ‘Civilisations have been condemned to extermination, secrets consigned to oblivion, and would-be saints denounced as abominations.’ She paused and blinked, her eyes clearing as she looked around.

Enna was about to ask a question when Idris flinched, straightening, her eyes focusing on something on the other side of the chamber.

‘It can’t be…’ Idris breathed, and smiled, lips pulling in genuine pleasure. She began to stride across the landing towards a pair of figures that had just stepped from one of the small stone doors which opened off the central well of the tower.

Enna followed, eyes flickering around her as she moved, noting the position of the watching Sisters, and the other figures moving close by. The sensation she had felt looking down at the groups of inquisitors and their entourages was not awe, or fear; it was caution. Nothing her mistress had said had broken Enna’s feeling that they had both just stepped into a cage filled with apex predators.

‘Covenant,’ called Idris from in front of her.

The two figures that had emerged from the side door looked around. One was a squat, fat man in an off-white robe that hung off his bulk in ill-fitting folds. A Ministorum brand marked his forehead, and tufts of grey hair clung to the base of his crown and cheekbones beneath a shaven scalp. The other was tall, and moved with the precise grace of a trained warrior. He wore a three-quarter length military-style coat beneath a red cuirass with a high gorget. The face that turned towards them was lean, the features both fine and hard, and the eyes gleamed with cold control. A sensor pod, which must have been mind-impulse linked, pivoted on his shoulder, its clusters of lenses focusing with a melody of fine gears.

Idris stopped three paces from them, still smiling. Enna stopped a pace behind her mistress. Idris’ gaze stayed steady on the impassive face of the man who Enna knew must be Covenant. The moment stretched.

‘Hello, old friend,’ she said. ‘Still confusing mystery with aloofness I see.’

‘Josef,’ she said with a nod of greeting.

‘Inquisitor Idris,’ he replied, bowing his head.

‘Has he infected you with over-formality?’

‘Hardly,’ snorted Josef, and shook his head. ‘It has been a long time…’

‘Ten solar years, give or take. Are you trying to point out that we are all a little older and showing it, or compliment us all on still being alive?’

Josef smiled, eyes glittering, and his mouth was opening to say something.

‘We must talk,’ said Covenant.

Idris’ gaze moved up to him, and Enna saw that the humour was gone from her face.

‘Something is happening,’ she said carefully. ‘Something is going to happen here, isn’t it? At the conclave. Now.’ Covenant nodded. Idris half turned, cocking her head as an invitation to follow and walked towards the stairs leading down towards the saint’s tomb. Covenant fell in beside her. Enna moved to follow her mistress, Josef just behind Covenant.

‘I was not aware that you would be here,’ said Covenant, his voice level and emotionless.

‘Likewise,’ said Idris. ‘But I am guessing that what you are about to tell me will rather spoil the sincerity of saying that it is a pleasant surprise.’

They were at the top of the wide flight of stone steps that curved down the inside of the tomb chamber. Sisters of the Order of the Bloody Rose stood in niches every ten steps, bolters held across their chests. Candles burned beside statues of warriors, priests and saints.

‘I am here to denounce one of our order,’ said Covenant.

‘What?’ hissed Idris. ‘Who? On what grounds?’

‘Using the power of the Dark Gods, the creation and manipulation of vile cults, and the pursuit of knowledge that should not be known. On the grounds that he has used the power of the Emperor to plant the seeds of ruin in the heart of humanity. On the grounds that he has fallen, and must be brought to account for his fall.’ Covenant’s voice was low, but Enna could hear the sharp edge in the words. Cold prickled her skin. It was not just what he had said – that an inquisitor who would be here this night had fallen so far – but the feeling that she had just heard judgement, absolute and final, as though spoken by the emissary of a wrathful god.

Idris looked at him for a long moment as they descended down the steps to the floor in the shadow of the saint’s statue.

‘All right,’ she said at last, and then let out a heavy breath. ‘This is supposed to be a conclave of war, Covenant. The warp is burning in the night sky outside this tower. Worlds are being swallowed, and horror vomited into the dreams of the weak-minded. That is what we are here to stop – that is why we are here, to make war against the darkness.’

‘This is that war,’ said Covenant, stopping on the step beside Idris and turning to look at her. His eyes were dark glass glinting with reflected flame light. ‘This is that war, Idris. How can we fight and win when our own serve the Archenemy’s ends?’

Idris looked at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes for a second and shook her head.

‘You could never be argued with,’ she said. ‘I had forgotten that.’

Josef coughed, and Enna glanced at him. The preacher’s face was impassive, but she thought she saw a flash of amusement in his eyes.

‘Idris,’ said Covenant, his voice still calm, his stare unblinking. ‘Are you with me?’

‘There is, no doubt, something about this that will make me both pleased that I am, and regret that I ever came here,’ she said.

‘Are you with me?’ Covenant said again.

Idris gave a tiny shake of her head, fingers briefly rubbing at her eyes. Then she looked directly at him and nodded once.

‘Always, my friend,’ she said. ‘Always.’

Enna thought she saw a shadow of something move in the depths of Covenant’s eyes.

‘You have my thanks,’ he said.

Idris frowned.

‘You did not say who it is that you have come to condemn.’

Covenant glanced towards the space around them, at the clusters of figures talking in shadowed groups, eyes watching each other covertly. Smoke rose from the candles and braziers.

‘He is–’ began Covenant, but as he spoke a trio of figures stepped through an arch on the far side of the chamber.

The figure at the centre of the three drew Enna’s eye like the gleam of fire on a clear night. Layers of ivory armour plate moved with ponderous weight, the ache of servos purring through the air as the figure advanced across the floor. Golden eagles spread their wings across his chest and greaves. Pale eyes looked out from beneath a black hood, the rest of the face hidden by a silver breath-mask. The stylised image of a horned daemon head worked in bronze screamed from the left pauldron, the sigil of the Inquisition a splintered wound in its forehead.

‘Lord Daemonhunter Vult,’ murmured Idris, ‘and Quadin and Talicto, of course.’

Enna stared as the inquisitor lord stalked forward, his Terminator armour making him a mountain beside the pair that flanked him. On his left, a short woman in polished scale nodded and whispered, small eyes scanning the room beneath a black skull cap. A quartet of servo-skulls flitted around her, bathing the air around her head in curtains of holo-projected script.

The figure on Vult’s right moved like a shadow in the inquisitor lord’s brilliance. Black robes hung from shoulders wreathed in black fur. The flesh of his wide, bald head was pale, and his eyes sunken and shadowed. Enna noticed that he held a rosarius of finger bones in his right hand, his thumb flicking them along the cord in time with whatever thoughts moved behind his eyes.

Enna knew them both from the descriptions Idris had given her of the convenors of the conclave. The woman was Malika Quadin, apparently a noted savant. The man in black was Goldoran Talicto. Both were key allies of Vult, and their influence had apparently been crucial to drawing so many inquisitors to this conclave of war.

The three stopped in the shadow of the saint’s tomb. Behind them a procession of followers halted: Black Priests, their bald heads tattooed and branded with holy script, their hands hanging uneasy at their sides, each one masked, silver constellations picked out on their silk robes in copper thread; chubby men with pink skin, and arms glittering with the sockets for weapon implants; truth-finders with folded scalpels for hands – all of them stilled as Vult raised his left hand. A hololithic image spread above his fingers, flickering in the incense-thickened air. A horned daemon head snarled, its eyes burning with fury, fire glowing from the cracks which ran through its skull from the tri-barred ‘I’ beaten into its forehead. A living echo of the emblem on Vult’s pauldron, it was an old symbol that Enna had seen only once before.

‘What is it?’ she had asked when she had glimpsed the tattoo on Idris’ bare shoulder.

‘A symbol,’ Idris had said, ‘a reminder of a purpose we choose for ourselves.’

‘To protect mankind?’

Idris had given a tiny shake of her head.

‘To be the hammer of daemons,’ she had said.

Silence spread through the shrine chamber. Enna saw figures who had been waiting elsewhere in the tower step to the balustrades above, or onto the chamber floor. The light grew dimmer as robed Sisters doused the candles. Now only the hololithic image and the candles on the shrine of Saint Aspira lit the dark. The broken daemon’s head turned, leering at the shadows.

‘In the name of the Emperor of Mankind,’ Vult’s voice was an echoing rasp in the silence. ‘I call you all to witness, and to gather on this day and in this place, that by our unified knowledge and might we may turn back the Enemy that waits beyond. In the name of He who serves mankind eternally, I call you.’

A gong sounded far off, echoing from some deep vault of the tower, its note tingling in the air with each striking. At the side of the shrine-chamber, great iron and silver doors began to open. Red-clad Battle Sisters flanked the portal, silent and still. The space beyond was bright compared to the tomb chamber. Enna could see huge candelabras of black iron hanging on suspensors in the space between the tiled floor and the vaulted roof. This was the conclave hall for the Sisters who guarded the shrine, its space and stone tiers now given over to the conclave of the Inquisition.

Vult strode across the chamber towards the open doors, Talicto and Quadin beside him.

Covenant turned his face away, and looked at Idris. His mouth was set, his eyes hard glitters in a stone face.

‘Talicto,’ he said. ‘I am here for Talicto.’

Idris blinked, and Enna thought she saw her mistress’ skin pale. Then she smiled.

‘You really know how to cause trouble.’

Koleg pulled himself out of the access hatch and onto the landing pad surface. Mag grips in his boots and knees locked him in place. He crouched low, the wind battering him, streams of dust blurring his sight. He waited, his visor pinging as it searched for auspex fields. Nothing had found him; in this murk nothing would. The last of the servitors moved away, and Koleg began to move across the deck like a spider, one limb at a time, as though he were climbing a sheer cliff.

Servitor crew moved amongst the machines, the wind yanking at them as they maglocked their landing gear to the pads. They did not see him. Whatever awareness had been left to them was concerned with nothing but the execution of their duties of maintenance. He moved towards the cluster of gunships and lighters on the far side of the landing pad.

The curtains of dust hid the view of the Reliquary Tower lost above him. Petals of thick armour began to hinge up at the edge of the pads to shield the craft. Koleg watched as the crews withdrew through hatches into the sheltered dark beneath the pad. The wind turned the scene into a streaked picture of shadows. In moments the storm front would hit and stop every shuttle and gunship from taking to the air. For a while, that is. Somewhere, off beyond the wind, the eye of the dry-cyclone would be coming closer, and when it arrived the sky and air above the tower would clear. A good pilot, or a desperate one, could launch at that moment and burn up through the column of spinning air towards the sky above.

The wind found the exposed skin of his neck, and he felt the dust sting like the touch of needles. He observed the sensation as he crawled, noting its texture with emotionless detachment. It, just like what he did, and how he did it, held nothing for him beside cold, inert fact: details of action and reaction, as though the universe he moved through was a mechanism, his actions just the clicking of cogs, its tides of callousness of equal value with the blessings of fortune.

The wind caught his right hand as he released the mag tether on its palm and slammed it down onto the metal plating. Pain snapped up his nerves. He focused and pushed his hand down again, and felt the mag grip attach with a thump. He paused, waiting for his thoughts to settle. For an instant, when the pain had lit his nerves, he had remembered something: a hand, heavy and weighted with rings, lashing across his jaw with casual brutality. The pain had been similar, and with it shock and anger. These last two sensations had made him pause, his mind frozen by the alien touch of emotion. It was not the first time fragments of emotion had surfaced from the flattened sea of his thoughts, but whenever they did it took time for him to process them. And at this moment time was not something he had. He waited for a second, aware that he was exposed, and then began to move again.

He reached the first lighter, slid under its fuselage and began to place the krak charges in a line down its belly. He repeated the process for the gunships which sat on its sides, and then began his crawl back to the partial shelter of a loading hatch at the edge of the pad. He locked himself in place, limbs bound to the metal, just his right hand free, and keyed the detonation control ringing his left wrist. Amber status markers lit in his visor. Time blinked at the corner of his display, seconds and minutes rolling down to zero.

THREE

‘Forgive me.’ Severita said the words as her fingers struck the Battle Sister in the neck. The woman staggered, the shout caught in her crushed throat. Another human might have dropped at just that, but this was a Sister of the Adepta Sororitas, a weapon honed by battle and tempered by faith. In their universe weakness did not exist. The Sister raised her bolter, finger pulling the trigger.

Excellent response, thought a part of Severita’s mind. Her skill is a blessing.

She hit the Sister’s trigger hand. Her rigid knuckles stuck the weak point between the armour plates just behind the thumb. Bone shattered. Pain overwhelmed nerve clusters and the Sister’s finger froze on the trigger. Severita saw a flash of shock in the other woman’s eyes in the instant before she whipped an elbow into her temple. It was a cruel thing to have done, a sin against her kind, only possible for someone with years of training and experience. And for someone who knew by experience the vulnerabilities of Sororitas power armour. It was an act only possible by betrayal.

Severita stripped the bolter from the Sister’s hands as she fell. Then she bent and pulled the bolt pistol and spare clips from the pouches. Weapons and clips tucked under her shift, she paused, kneeling above the unconscious Sister for a second. Then she shook herself and rose. She began to jog through the dark.

The corridor was narrow, its walls rough stone, the curve such that the Sister she had attacked had not seen her coming until Severita was within a stride of her. Now that curve made the chance of her running into another guard a distinct possibility. She tried not to think of what she would need to do if that happened. She kept running; someone would find the unconscious Sister soon, and once that happened…

She slowed her pace as she reached a narrow flight of stairs and began to climb. She passed another two Sisters coming the other way, but their eyes marked her without word or challenge, and they passed her without hesitation or comment. They would have memorised the faces of everyone who had entered the shrine, and outcast though she was, they would not stop her; she was bound under the authority of the Inquisition, beyond their judgement or pity.

Beyond their reach for now, Severita reminded herself. Soon matters would be more complicated. At the top of the spiral stairs she found a small door, broke the lock, and squeezed herself through and out onto a narrow ledge. A gulf fell away beside her. Banner-hung walls plunged down to meet a long strip of black and white tiled floor. Statues of Sisters and saints gazed down from the dark stone walls. Benches of black wood ran in tiers to either side of the open floor, their panels snarling with eagles and thorn roses in raised relief. Above her a vaulted ceiling curved beyond a pall of incense smoke. At one end of the chamber were the high doors into the tomb of Saint Aspira; at the opposite end a pillar of red marble rose from the floor. Steps of brass led to its summit. Cages of red coals burned beside it, fuming smoke into the air. Cherub-servitors wheeled above it, scattering blessed water from silver aspergills.

Severita glanced down, pulled the door shut behind her, and began to edge along the ledge until she was the precise distance from the door that she needed to be. She lay flat, body pressed against the cold stone, her stolen weapons set on the ledge above her head. The banners and statuary jutting from the walls would hide her from anyone glancing up from the floor of the chamber, but she would risk no sound or movement until the moment came.

Slowly, silently, she began to listen and to pray.

Most high and Holy God-Emperor… the words filled her mind, just as they always did, and she thought she heard the voice of Palatine Justina, her voice still strong as she spoke the Pleas of Penance through bloody lips and broken teeth.

The sound of hundreds of whispers and footsteps filled her ears as the inquisitors and their servants took their places, half-heard secrets sliding up to her with the smoke of candles. The sound rolled on like the sound of the sea, and she waited, and the words of the unspoken prayer were her tether to the world.

Lead your servant to redemption…

She had never wanted this life, and had never chosen it. That was where the problems had begun, where her sin had begun. The Emperor demanded only that she serve. That was what was ordained. But she had wanted to choose.

Be it through pain…

She could not remember being told that her father had died, just their hard eyes as they had pulled her away from her nurse.

Be it through fire…

She had learned. She had learned devotion in long years of cold and darkness. She had learned strength from agony. She had learned that her life was service to something greater than herself.

Be it in death, may redemption be your gift to the penitent…

But a secret part of her, a splinter of sin buried deep, had wanted to make a choice, for one moment in her existence, to direct one grain of sand’s time on a path that she chose.

Far beneath where she lay – hidden in the shadows of one of the holiest places she had ever been, her hands resting on weapons of war – the doors to the chamber shut with a rumble of struck iron. The murmur of whispers and movement died, and a voice, its edges rasping with age and damage, spoke.

‘We are gathered in conclave,’ said the voice, the words echoing from the stone walls. ‘May wisdom be heard, and our judgement be true. In the name, and by the will of the Master of Mankind.’

‘By His will,’ whispered Severita, as the words rolled from hundreds of throats.

Magos Glavius-4-Rho would never admit it, but he enjoyed being an apostate in a fortress of holiness. That he and his subordinates and vassals were crucial to the existence of the Reliquary Tower only added to the pleasure of the fact. He knew it was wrong, an indulgence of redundant biological imperatives, but that did not stop him. Every system needed an imperfection if it was real – his was that he liked to record the Adepta Sororitas’ discomfort every time he referred to the shrine’s reactors and field generators as its most holy relics. The fact that the lower half of his face had been a tarnished silver skull for 30.786 years helped him in such circumstances; it meant that they could not tell he was smiling.

Hissing a mist of blessed oil in his wake, he clattered across the gantry above the stacks of sacred machinery. His lower and upper sets of visual sensors rotated in opposite directions around his skull as he moved, taking in the chamber in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.

Snakes of electro-charge ran up and down the sacred engines, and the air sang with static. Servitors moving amongst the generators bowed low as their implants registered Glavius-4-Rho’s proximity. Their simple signal-inputs blinked in his data sphere. He ignored them; his mind was moving between data feeds from the tower atmospheric sensors, and the ratio of reactor and field output. The values were all within their ordained balance, but he would not leave the machine chambers until the storm had passed and the muster was complete.

He blurted a short loop of redundant code. The Adepta Sororitas called this place a shrine, and bowed to the remains of their dead warrior in the halls above. The true holiness of the tower was not in that box of bones. It was here, singing in the dark under their feet. The tower was a miracle, a finger of stone standing taller than a mountain, unyielding against storm or attack. That miracle began in the machines: gravitic compensators held its root steady as the world shook beneath it; static baffles cloaked its stone skin against Ero’s storms; void shield nodes sheathed it against attack. Without these wonders of charge and field, the tower would be nothing but tumbled blocks and broken statuary. That was divine. That was worth awe.

A sound made him pivot his torso and focus his primary lenses behind him. He stopped. The brass callipers of his legs froze. Data from his auditory and visual sensors buzzed through his mind. A figure stood on the gantry 10.655 metres from him. It was perfectly still. Rags swathed its body and limbs. A mask of coarse fabric covered its face, holes torn for its eyes. Glavius-4-Rho could detect the smell of blood in the air, blood and dust. In the frozen second he noticed the three shards of crystal haloing its right fist, each mounted in a grip of bone and leather. A sub-implant in his head pinged an anomaly code. The figure was cold. Too cold for a living human.

An emotion began to manifest in his thoughts.

Glavius-4-Rho shunted the data to one side. This must be one of the creatures brought by the Inquisition, a rare example of life outside of his experience.

‘Identify/justify/name yourself,’ he growled, from his chest-mounted speaker.

The figure in rags tilted its head to one side, the eyes unblinking.

Glavius-4-Rho felt a tremor in his data sphere. An input had just vanished. He swung his awareness into his connection to the servitors in the generator chamber in time to see nine more inputs vanish. Task trackers read as invalid. Life signs became error tones.

Defence subroutines snapped the mechadendrites on his back into a halo above his shoulders while the organic part of his brain was still processing what was happening. Laser cutters lit with a buzz of blue heat. Nanoseconds flicked past. More and more data-links to servitors and thralls cut out. His leg joints tensed to spring him forward. An alarm signal formed in his mind and began to scream into the tower’s security system. The figure in rags was still watching him.

The alarm signal reached the security system. The first blink of red light flooded the generator chamber. Blast doors began to slam shut. The first note of a siren sounded.

Glavius-4-Rho felt the tower’s systems begin to shift from watching to waking as his limbs reached for the ragged intruder before him.

Something hit him in the back. The deadened nerves of his flesh barely registered the impact. He tried to turn towards the source of the unseen attack, but his body froze as he twisted. Then he was falling, his mechanical limbs tangling as his nerve signals scrambled. The laser cutter tips of his mechadendrites thrashed, scoring the mesh of the gantry. Error code flooded his awareness, scrolling over his sight. His body was not responding to any commands. Exotic venom was flooding his bio-components faster than his cleansing systems could counter. His flesh – the weak, pathetic residue of his humanity – had betrayed him. He was on the floor, trembling, cut off from the sacred metal of his augmetics.

The ragged figure was walking towards him, steps unhurried. Red light blinked through the air in time with the boom of the sirens.

Inside his mind he could see the alarm protocols spread through the tower’s security systems.

That is strange/inconsistent, he thought. The venom that had shut his nerve signals was selective and complex, a beautiful and spiteful blend that his bio-monitors saw unfolding through his flesh like a flower growing from a seed. But somehow the venom had allowed him to stay connected with data systems of both the generators and the tower.

The ragged figure was next to him now, bending down. Its eyes were grey, he noticed, the skin around them cobwebbed with fine wrinkles. A rag-wrapped hand reached out, the tips of the fingers bare. Glavius-4-Rho experienced a stab of panic as he tried to flinch back. The ragged figure touched the magos’ face. For a second there was nothing. Then there was pain. Needles of cold dug into his mind. He screamed into the data connections. Far above him, glow-globes blew out, and now the world was sliced between darkness and the red glare of the alert lights. The pain bored deeper. Glavius-4-Rho felt another mind threading through his consciousness, strangling his will to resist, stealing his thoughts. Ice crusted his silver face.

<Full alert. Intruders inside tower,> he shrieked into the still open link between his brain and the tower’s sacred machines of governance.

<Full alert. Intruders inside tower…>

The cold was inside him, growing, and he could feel his mind shutting down, his thoughts becoming simpler and simpler.

<Full a_ert. I_tru_ers i_side to_er…>

The grey eyes in the ragged mask were still there gazing into him.

<F_ll al_. I_t_u_…>

Soft static filled Glavius-4-Rho’s data-link. The ragged figure crouching over him tilted his head to the other side and the eyelids inside the mask fluttered for a second.

<Or_ai_ed…>

The signal cracked in the connection. The light of the alerts was a treacle-slow pulse of red, like blood in a sleeping heart. The ragged figure twitched, then went still again.

Glavius-4-Rho stood, his machine limbs skidding on the grating, his mechadendrites hanging limp down his back. The ragged figure moved to stand beside him, frost-rimed fingers still resting on the magos’ skull. Glavius-4-Rho began to walk, his steps dragging, his body hanging like a puppet from the ragged figure’s fingers. He could see, but as his eyes touched the crumpled bodies of servitors and thralls his mind did not register anything. Figures in rags stood amongst the dead, their heads turning to watch Glavius-4-Rho pass.

He stopped before the central control altar. Pure black oil burned in lamps hung from chains above it. Exposed cogs, levers and mind-impulse sockets crowded its surfaces. Glavius-4-Rho stared at it blankly. Beside him, the ragged figure closed its eyes.

Glavius-4-Rho lifted a brass and chrome arm as a pocket of memory thawed in his mind. He began to turn dials and push levers.

<Shut down of shield system ordained and sanctified,> he droned across the data-link.

Somewhere in the generator chamber, cogs began to turn. Sparking power connections pulled apart. Warning lights flicked to amber with no living eyes to see them.

Glavius-4-Rho’s hand kept moving, adjusting, balancing, connecting, as the sacred rituals dictated.

<Reactor output increased by sixty-four turns. Overload limiter override.> His hand clicked a one hundred-digit code into an ivory key pad, and then pulled a lever. <Sanctified and ordained.>

A high-pitched noise rose from the centre of the chamber, cutting against the blare of the sirens.

The ragged figure took its hand from Glavius-4-Rho’s skull. For a second the magos stood, swaying before the altar of his Machine God. Then he folded to the floor and did not rise.

Josef raised his head as the response to Vult’s words faded from the air. The daemonhunter lord stood atop the pillar at the end of the long chamber. At the base of the pillar, two Dominions of the Order of the Bloody Rose stood at attention, their eyes fixed on the distance. The devices covering their ears and circling the back of their heads looked like the jaws of huge metal pincers. Along the tiered benches eyes turned, and silence settled. Josef shifted as Vult moved his gaze slowly over the assembly.

The inquisitors sat on the highest tiers, the bound servants they had brought with them on the benches in front of them. Josef had noted Talicto’s position, and that the benches in front of him were bare. He had come to this gathering alone.

‘Arrogant old snake, aren’t you?’ Josef muttered under his breath as he watched the bald inquisitor shift the black stole that lay on his cloak.

Josef fought the instinct to scratch the skin under his chin. He was sweating, he knew. Just like he did before a breaching charge blew through a bulkhead, or when he felt the thump of boarding torpedoes ripping into a ship’s hull. He sniffed, shifted his weight and tried not to think about the moisture pricking his skin. Behind him he heard Covenant’s sensor pod whir as it focused.

Vult bowed his head for a second as though in silent prayer.

None of the twenty seated inquisitors spoke. Technically they were equals, peers beneath the authority of the Emperor, but that did not mean there were not traditions of respect and precedence that striated their ranks, just as experience lent a veteran soldier the right to speak before his greener squad mates. Even amongst equals there were always some who were more equal than others.

‘We are flesh and soul united in one purpose,’ said Vult. He looked up. ‘We are bound together not by oaths to each other, but by our duty. That duty, here and now, in this place and at this hour is the same.’ He paused, and gestured. A pair of cyber-crows flapped silently from the shadows behind him and began to wheel in a gyre above him. Cones of hololithic light unfolded from their crystal eyes. An image formed in the cylinder of air between them, flickering with the beat of their wings.

Sweeps of nebula and glimmering drifts of stars formed. Glowing runes and markers snapped into being, burning cyan and orange amongst the monochrome slice of the heavens. None of those present needed any explanation of what they were seeing. It was the Caradryad Sector. One of the motes of light was the planet on which they now sat.

‘The precipice of annihilation,’ said Vult, his own eyes fixed on the turning image. ‘Any of us who ever spared a thought to the portents of recent ages knew it would come. And here it is. And here we stand at its edge.’

A red line of light burned across the cylinder of stars, weaving as it marked the void like a brush stroke made by a dying hand. Crimson runes spread from its path, dotting the star-filled volumes. Josef’s eyes traced the flow of data as the image turned. Rendered in light and symbols it looked almost mundane, an abstract sculpture in colour and shadow. He shivered.

The Caradryad Warp Fault, a wound in reality stretching across vast distances of space, grinning wider and wider as time passed, daemonic energy and madness spilling from it to stain the void and swallow worlds. As he watched, three swirls of red bloomed into being beside the fault line, blood boils gleaming on a crooked smile. Each of them was a warp storm. Wrath, Vengeance and Justice: three churning masses of psychic energy straddling the physical realm and the realm beyond.

‘How many worlds fallen?’ said Vult. ‘How many are now nests for the neverborn? How many will fall to madness even while we sit here?’ He let the words hang, and turned his masked and hooded head to meet the eyes that watched him. ‘Too many,’ he said softly. ‘Too many. You know this. You have all seen this. You have heard systems screaming under the daemon’s lash, and seen the taint spread on worlds where the Storms of Judgement stain the night sky. War is here, a war that we must win. Admirals and generals and commanders of warriors gather on this world, but as vital as they are, make no mistake – we decide the future of this war. Here and now, we are the judges of fate, and if we fail, if we allow our weaknesses to blind us to what must be done… then we are not worthy of the power we wield.’

Josef swallowed and found that his throat was dry. A cold shiver ran over his skin. He glanced up to the ledge high above the assembly. He could feel the beat of his heart rising. Vult was stepping backwards on the platform, his heavy tread echoing on the stone pillar top. Quadin was rising from her seat, mouth opening to speak to the assembly.

‘We cannot win a war if our strength is a lie.’ Covenant’s voice rang clear in the air. Josef closed his eyes for a second. His muscles were cold with adrenaline. Faces were turning, voices rising like the first rumblings of a storm. He turned and looked behind him.

Covenant stood, his face hard, his eyes fixed on Vult. On his shoulder the sensor pod sat still. Vult shifted, but it was Quadin that spoke first, her lips curling, eyes flashing in her wide face.

‘You dare…’ she began.

‘Chaos is here,’ said Covenant. ‘It is walking amongst us.’

Josef looked to where Idris sat. She was very still, eyes closed, the fingers of her left hand resting on her forehead. The growl of whispers ebbed, pulling back to silence like the sea before a storm wave crashed down.

‘It is here, and while it is here it will undo everything we do. It is the disease within that will rot our bones even as we walk to battle.’

Uproar. Voices called out; shouts split the air; inquisitors rose to their feet.

‘…insult…’

‘Baseless…’

‘…poisonous cur…’

Snatches of shouted phrases crackled in Josef’s ears as his bionic implants dimmed the squall of noise. Covenant had not moved, his face and gaze still set with cold indifference. Josef glanced over the tiered seats. Angry faces and hard eyes looked back, but not all of the inquisitors had stood; Idris sat where she was, eyes still closed. Others too remained still, eyes fixed on Covenant or Vult, waiting, calculating. He looked at where Talicto sat alone. He had put away his bone rosary and was spinning a silver coin across the knuckles of his other hand. Josef thought he saw a smile twitch at the edge of Talicto’s lips, and something in that simple gesture sent ice coiling through his guts.

He knew, thought Josef. He knew that this was going to happen.

They had been following the path of Talicto’s corruption for three years. Tracking down the warp-tainted by-blows of his experimentation, hunting and purging the heretical cults he had created or manipulated in his quest for power. In all that time they had never confronted the inquisitor directly, and had even considered that he had not realised they were following in his wake. Seeing the smile on Talicto’s lips, Josef saw that their quarry had known, and known that this confrontation would happen here and now. More than all of the witch-breeds, daemon-touched and abominations that they had unearthed and slain on the path to this moment, that smile was the most terrifying thing Josef had seen.

‘You are Covenant.’ Vult’s voice cut through the clamour. Those who had stood turned to look at the daemonhunter lord. Angry voices fell quiet. ‘I knew your master while he lived, and have heard of your deeds.’ Vult and Covenant’s gazes were locked together. ‘You bring dark words and heavy accusation to this gathering.’

‘I bring the truth,’ said Covenant.

The growl of the assembly began to rise, but Vult held up a hand and the murmur died.

‘Then speak it,’ said Vult.

Covenant inclined his head slightly to Vult. Across the aisle Idris opened her eyes and looked up. Covenant glanced from Vult to Talicto.

‘Goldoran Talicto, in this place and witnessed by those assembled I call thee Diabolus, and say that you have consorted with the powers of the warp, have brought into being abominations, and have fostered corruption within the body of humanity. For these crimes against your duty, I say that you are not of this order, but are its most vile enemy. I say this and call you to be judged, and being judged be punished without limit or mercy.’

The formal words of denouncement rang in the silence. Talicto looked up, his smile still on his face, and gazed unconcernedly across the faces turned towards him.

‘Powerful words. Fine words, even,’ he said, voice rolling with assurance. ‘But you seem to be alone, and there are vital matters to discuss and little time to do so. I am sure we can all agree on that.’ Talicto looked up at Vult, and then around at the assembly. ‘Shall we proceed, and put this misunderstanding, no doubt well intentioned, aside?’

Idris stood. Eyes turned to her, and for a second Josef could almost feel the surprise ripple through the air.

‘I stand with Covenant. The charges he makes must be heard. Judgement must be passed.’

Vult was a still statue on the pillar above the gathering. Talicto glanced at Idris, then shrugged.

‘So be it,’ said Talicto.

And sirens began to scream.

FOUR

The Dionysia’s bridge hummed with whispers and the low click of machines. Viola von Castellan’s eyes swept down the length of the long chamber as she entered. Seen from above, the bridge was a long wedge, tapering from where it met the ship’s aft castle to a point that jutted out above the bulk of its hull. Panes of crystal ran down its walls and across its ceiling, allowing the light of the stars and the dark of the void to blend with the glow of instrument panels and the flash of data readouts. Concentric rings of trenches cut into the deck, their sides lined with machines and consoles. Servitors sat before each console, bound to their station by cables and wires linked to skull sockets. Deck officers in the red and blue of the dynasty moved along the bottom of each trench circuit. At the centre of the bridge sat the command dais. Pict screens hung above it on mechanical arms. Trumpet-tipped tubes of brass ringed it like a fence. A throne of tarnished silver sat on the dais, upholstered in crimson velvet. Banners bearing the red falcon crest of the von Castellans hung behind it in a curtain of tattered silk.

The officers paused in their duties, and came to attention as Viola and her brother strode towards the command dais. Viola could read the tension in the movement. She caught the eye of Ghast, and the old void mistress gave a tiny nod, the cogs of Ghast’s neck brace whirring. The gesture said everything that Viola needed to know. Everything was as it needed to be, but finely balanced.

Cleander grinned as he took the steps up to the command dais. Viola held back, close to the pillar of screens that rose from the deck by the secondary watch station, eyes moving between data displays and the faces of the crew.

‘I hope I am not too late,’ said Cleander. The officers laughed, the sound lifting past the low drone of the servitors. He stepped up, glanced at the silver command throne, and gave it a casual slap with his hand. ‘Really must get rid of this eyesore, thing only gets in the way.’ Another rumble of laughter rose from the officers, lower than before, comfortable. Cleander had been saying that the throne should be removed ever since he had first walked onto the bridge decades before. It would never go, though. It – like the wry jokes, easy grin and the fact that he never sat in the chair – served a purpose.

‘Mistress Ghast,’ called Cleander, as he pulled one of the rig-mounted pict screens down to level with his face. ‘Light the shields and run out the guns.’

‘Sir,’ said the void mistress, and the order rippled out. Activity buzzed down the trenches. Cleander was still grinning.

‘And gunship location and status to my station too, if you please. Rather excessive, all this, but then what is the point of being a wolf if we don’t show our teeth? Isn’t that right, Mistress Ghast?’

Ghast grinned, her machine jaw clacking.

‘Sir!’

Viola saw the crew were grinning too. Just like that, they had gone from worry to smiling confidence.

She looked back to the data flicking across the screens in front of her, and tugged a roll of parchment as it spooled through the auto-quills. The second wave of gunships was loaded. Obedience in the gun deck loader-gangs was acceptable. The discipline sweep through the lower decks had completed on schedule. Enginseers Ka-Gamma and Ka-Kappa had managed to repair the power conduits to the forward dorsal batteries. Signals from the gathering fleets were within the expected pattern. Her mind parsed these and a dozen more details of the ship and mission operations as she glanced at the screens and parchments. Her left eye flickered for a second as it performed a pattern match and scan. Everything was as it should be. She knew it would be, but she still had to check.

She did not like being removed from information, and the tension only made that discomfort worse. So she had been checking every detail and information feed for the last ten hours. She was not ashamed of it; everyone had a way of dealing with uncertainty. Cleander drank, Severita prayed, Josef cleaned weapons in the armoury, and she drowned herself in information. It was a consequence of the conditioning, she knew. The patterns of logic and recall forced onto her mind when she was a child were useful for running a trade dynasty, and had been more so in serving Covenant. But that teaching had left a mark, just as the expectations of their parents had marked her brother.

‘Gunships are skimming the cyclone,’ called an officer. ‘Thirty-three minutes until the eye of the storm is over the Reliquary Tower.’

‘Drop us down to the edge of the atmosphere,’ said Cleander from the command dais. ‘Auspex and targeting systems active. I want to see as much as we can through the storm, and if another ship so much as flinches towards us, I want a firing solution.’

‘Sir, we are being challenged by fleet elements in close orbit,’ called the signals officer.

‘Transmit our cyphers of authority, and ask them in the name of our Inquisitorial lord and master to mind their own business.’

Viola was about to look away from monitor consoles when one of the autoquill arms began to dance and parchment spewed onto the deck. She grabbed it, reading it in a blink.

‘Brother,’ she called. Cleander turned, a frown creasing his brow above his smile. A second later the strategium and signal officers began to shout too. ‘A signal from the surface has got through the storm. It is saying the Reliquary Tower is under attack.’

‘Sir, we have system monitors closing, both are signalling challenges.’

‘Re-transmit our clearance,’ he said calmly. ‘Tell them to back off.’

‘There is another ship closing on our position from the far side of the planet, engines burning hard.’

‘Identify,’ said Cleander.

‘It’s a frigate,’ said Viola, reading the flow faster than the sensor officer could relay it from the readouts. ‘Falchion class. It’s transmitting full Inquisitorial clearance. Weapon systems are locked on us.’

Cleander’s smile did not waver as he cursed.

The siren filled the assembly chamber. Severita was already rising to a firing position, the boltgun in her hands. Far beneath her the assembly was a frozen tableau of inquisitors and acolytes caught in expressions of shock. Her eyes found Talicto. Her finger tensed on the bolter’s trigger.

This was not what had been planned; she was here to enact execution at Covenant’s word, once the assembly had condemned Talicto. Her shot should have taken him like the touch of divine wrath. But she was also there to ensure that he did not escape, that if the conclave ignored Covenant’s accusation, Talicto would still die for his sins. That act, made in defiance of the other inquisitors in the chamber below, might mean her death, but Covenant had commanded, and it was her penance to obey.

Talicto was still seated, his face calm as his peers began to rise and shouts echoed against the blare of the sirens.

‘May the Emperor have mercy on your soul,’ breathed Severita, and squeezed the trigger.

The wind was a threshing wall of force battering against Koleg. The dust was so thick that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Zeroes flashed across the inside of his visor. He keyed the detonator. Fire roared through the murk, backlighting the swirling dust in rolling flashes of white. The landing pad shook and shook as a glowing column of flame rose through the shredding wind.

Koleg waited for a second, then kicked the loading hatch open beneath him. Light flashed high above. He looked up. White fire stuttered behind the clouds hiding the tower.

‘What…’ he began. Then another flash, then another, and the crack of explosions shuddering against the roar of the wind. The light curdled to orange, fire streaming into the gale. He blinked, knowing what he was seeing, but struggling to process it. Something had just blown holes through the tower’s walls. That should not have been possible. Shielded and guarded, it would have taken ship-killing weaponry to do that. In the dust storm such weapons would not be able to find their targets, let alone hit true.

Unless the shields were down… Unless the explosions had come from inside the tower…

Another explosion flashed above him, a tattered rose of wind-ripped fire.

He paused, considered his possible actions. Then he nodded once to himself, and dropped into the space beneath. There was a plan, and a quarry still to bring down, and in the focused pathways of his mind that was all that mattered.

Enna saw the muzzle flash high above her and was moving before the sound reached her ears. Shock kicked through her. Then the panic response found the pathways that had been spliced into her nerves, and fire ignited in her veins. Glands grafted in her chest dumped a cocktail of drugs into her blood. Time slowed and rippled like water, blurring at the edges as nanoseconds unfolded to aeons.

She saw the bolt-round kick free of the muzzle. Covenant was still standing where he had risen, his eyes on Talicto, the sensor pod looking up to where the shell streaked down from a ledge close to the ceiling. The fat preacher Josef was rising from his seat in front of his master, eyes moving across the crowded tiers. The rest of the chamber was an image of confusion. Inquisitors and their minions turned towards the flash. Bodies twisted instinctively away in the impossible instant between firing and impact. High on his pillar Vult seemed locked in place, a statue rather than a man. At the edge of the chamber figures in red armour were running from their niches, weapons rising, faces set.

And across the drug-frozen image the bolt-round sliced, flame drawing a burning line through the air. Concentric shockwaves radiated from it as it ran true. And Talicto was looking up at where the flash had come from, hollow eyes turning to look at a death that would find him before he would hear the roar of detonation. In that endless instant Enna thought she saw a smile on his lips.

And then he was not there.

And in the stuttered second that he vanished she saw the figures stepping from the edge of the chamber.

Dozens of figures in rags, wearing masks of fabric with torn holes for eyes, stood unmoving in the stopped-clock world of her combat drug fugue. Crystal edges glistened in their fists, and motes of dust fell from them.

Time slammed back into flow.

The bolt-round struck the seat where Talicto had been. Shrapnel and splinters of wood spun through the air. The roar of detonation tore through the chamber. Echoes sliced through the sound of sirens.

The crowds on the benches were moving. Many were fast, bodyguards, warrior-acolytes and veterans of secret wars. Some were very fast.

But, for these first instants none were faster than Enna Gyrid. She came out of her seat in a single snap of muscle. The figures in rags were sprinting forwards. Enna landed on the back of a seat two tiers lower down and jumped towards her mistress as she began rising from her seat.

Crystal shards flashed through the air. A man in a white robe on the lowest tier dropped, blood welling from his neck, eyes open and seeing nothing even as he fell. Enna landed next to her mistress and yanked her down as a crystal shard thumped into the wood just behind where she had been standing.

+Enna,+ Idris’ thought-voice filled her mind.

‘Make for the speaking pillar,’ shouted Enna in reply as she began to move along the row of benches. There was a doorway just by it that led to tunnels which ran under this level of the tower. Enna could see it, and the path down and out of the chamber, hover in the image of the tower’s plans she had memorised before they arrived. Part of her was glad she had done her work well. Another part wished she had not been right, rather than paranoid.

+No,+ Idris’ thought-voice halted her in mid-movement. She turned to look at her mistress. Idris was crouched low, hands moving in a blur as she swapped rings between her fingers, stacking them on the middle and fore fingers of her right hand. Blue worms of energy arced around the rings as they snapped together with magnetic force.

Enna paused, her thoughts catching up with her, and she realised what she had missed; Idris had spoken to her telepathically.

She swore.

‘The null-fields are down,’ she said.

+Someone must have got to the field generators,+ sent Idris, and the last ring snapped into place. +And if they have…+

A rag-clad figure dropped onto the tier above them, tattered fabric trailing in its wake. Enna spun a kick into the figure’s face that sent it sprawling. Idris stood calmly and pointed her fingers at the figure as it began to rise. Blue energy poured from her hand. Dust burned orange along the beam’s path. It hit the figure in the chest and blew its torso to ash.

+I am suddenly glad I decided to ignore the agreement on bringing weapons.+ Idris glanced towards the far end of the chamber. Enna glanced in the direction of her mistress’ gaze and smiled despite herself. A churning press of bodies filled the space before the pillar. She could see the glint of blades and the flash of energy discharge. Ragged figures were moving through the press, and bodies were falling before them, even as warriors leapt to close with them.

Enna reached up and pulled the pins from the plait running down her back. They snapped onto grooves on the back of her gauntlet. Each one was the length of a small finger, forged of adamantine and threaded with nano-toxin channels. Linked to the back of her gauntlet they made her punch deadly. It was better than nothing, but in the shrill chaos enveloping the chamber, she wished she had thought of a way to smuggle in something more substantial.

Enna’s eye caught sight of Lord Inquisitor Vult, still atop the pillar at the far end of the chamber. As she watched he crouched, the plates of his Terminator armour sliding over each other as pistons and fibre bundles tensed. He leapt and for an instant he was falling, a huge figure clad in lacquered armour. He landed. The floor shook. Splinters of stone scattered through the air. He rose, and struck a figure in rags with the back of his fist. The figure fell, his torn cloth mask red with the ruin of the face beneath. Vult waded forwards, gore flying from the white armour of his fists.

Battle Sisters were beside the lord inquisitor now, firing as they advanced. Bolt-rounds ripped into rag-clad bodies. For an instant Idris could see the wild ragged figures falling, and wondered what madness had made these assassins believe they could succeed.

+We have to find Covenant,+ sent Idris, making for the chamber’s main doors. Enna moved to follow, and had just turned when a booming rumble shook the floor. Idris slowed, her eyes locked on the great double doors leading into the tower’s core chambers.

‘What–’ began Enna, as the doors shook.

+Get down,+ sent Idris, as the doors opened. Enna looked up as a wall of ochre dust billowed through the entrance. And with it came more figures in rags with shard blades shining in their hands. The storm wind gusted, and the shroud of dust swallowed the world.

The dust poured in through the doors, curling out and up. Josef turned in time to see the ochre wall rushing forwards. Then it was over him, filling his eyes. Sound flattened and distorted.

‘With me,’ came Covenant’s voice from next to him. Josef felt his lord brush past. He followed.

A man in a mail body-glove loomed out of the swirl, mouth opening beneath a tattooed scalp. A shard of crystal ripped the man’s cheek off. His eyes rolled back as he fell. A figure in rags burst from the fog. Josef saw a long splinter of crystal in the figure’s hand. Blood and dust clotted its edge.

‘Down!’ shouted Covenant. Josef jerked aside. The figure in rags flicked his hand towards them. A shard of crystal spun from his fingers. Josef felt ice brush his skin as a wave of telekinetic force shivered past his shoulder from Covenant. The shard exploded in mid-air. The figure in rags leapt. The wave of force rammed him backwards. The hand holding the crystal blade bent back on itself with a snap of bone, and pushed into the figure’s throat. It fell to the floor. Blood washed onto the dust-covered tiles. Covenant was moving, vaulting over benches.

Josef pulled himself up and followed, breathing hard.

‘Talicto had a displacer field,’ he shouted, coughing, dust filling his mouth. ‘The cur managed to get a displacer field past the security.’

Covenant reached the floor and ran towards where the dust-wind was blowing through the main doors into the chamber. Gunfire echoed and flashed in the rolling cloud. 

‘He is still here,’ called Covenant. The sensor pod on his shoulder was spinning, lenses whirring as they cycled through filters. ‘He can’t get away until the storm passes.’

‘Koleg will have hit his shuttle,’ shouted Josef. ‘He can’t get away.’

‘He will have another way out,’ replied Covenant. A Sister of Battle staggered into sight. Her skin was powdered white, her lips red with blood. A crystal barb projected from her neck. She swayed, eyes open but not seeing. Josef started forward, but she was falling. A twitch of invisible force pulled the boltgun from her hands as she fell. Covenant caught it. The sensor pod on his shoulder pivoted as another figure in rags broke from the pall of dust. Covenant pivoted and fired. The shell ripped the figure’s head from its shoulders.

A woman in the uniform of a Chalcisorian Lancer spun from the murk. Blood matted the fabric of her left arm and she had an iron bar in her right hand. Josef could see the decorative eagle wings jutting from the iron and the torn bolts where it had been wrenched from its fitting. She raised her weapon as she saw them.

‘Hold!’ shouted Josef, and his voice must have reached her over the wind because she froze. Her mouth opened to say something.

A crystal blade whipped out of the dust and cut through the back of her neck. Her head hinged forwards. Crimson gushed out and up, clotting as it flowed in the powdered floor. Covenant fired once and a shadow fell.

Josef bent down and took the iron bar that was still gripped in her hand.

‘Emperor, see her soul safe through the night,’ he muttered, and hefted the iron bar, ‘and forgive me the liberty.’ He straightened. ‘This… Talicto didn’t do all of this to escape censure.’

Energy discharge and gunfire flashed in the powdered haze. Covenant was already moving towards where the open doors must be.

‘This is not an escape,’ called Covenant, as Josef followed him. The sensor pod on Covenant’s shoulder spun, and he fired. Rounds exploded out of sight. ‘This is a massacre.’

The dust wind howled as it flooded the Reliquary Tower. The sound of sirens blended with the scream of its fury. Sparks and fire churned in the holes blown into its upper levels, and smoke blended with dust as it coiled through the passages. The breaches were not large, barely wide enough for a human to stand upright in them, but that was invitation enough to the storm. The wind found the weaknesses in the unshielded stone and cascaded in and down. It found blast doors left unsealed beside dead Sisters, and raced on, shrouding their corpses in the earth of Ero. Unshielded, the substance of the tower began to sing. Masonry and metal vibrated to the harmonics of the wind. Floors trembled. Stained glass windows blew inwards, the image of saints and heroes scattering in rainbow fragments.

Severita was already half way down the meeting chamber wall when the storm breached the doors of the chamber. She had dropped over the side of the ledge as soon as Talicto had vanished, and was climbing down between banners and the jutting handholds of carved symbols of faith when the doors opened to the storm. The wind snapped past her. She held tight to the banner pole she had been using as a handhold. Her stolen weapons banged against her back as the gust caught them.

Beneath her the sound of screams boiled up with the ochre cloud. Her last sight in the instant after Talicto vanished had been the figures in rags stepping like ghosts from the shadows.

‘Mercy,’ she whispered, gripping the fabric of the banner and kicking off from the wall.

She fell, and for a heartbeat felt as though the wind would lift her back into the air. Then the banner’s tattered fabric snapped taut in her grasp and jerked her to a halt for an instant before it began to tear. She let go, dropping the last metres, and hit the floor. Force slammed through her. The mesh weave of her bodyglove hardened for an instant. The impact stole the air from her lungs. She rolled to a crouch. Her sense of direction was suddenly gone. Her ears were full of the snarl of the wind and the distorted echoes of cries and gunfire. Instinct told her to run, to move, to find someone else, to find something else that could ground her in the chaos.

She went still, will overriding panic, her mind filling with the words and rhythms of the Canticle of Tranquillity. It was one of the first lessons the Order had taught her. On the eighth day as a novice, an old Sister Superior called Arna had taught the words of the devotion to her and her new Sisters. On the fourteenth day they had put her in a tank and filled it slowly until the water was over her head. All the while she had spoken the words without cease, focusing on the rhythm of each syllable and breath. When the water had covered her face she had continued in her mind, blotting out the panic of drowning with the sacred verse. She had been made to repeat the devotion eighteen times. After that, they had stopped making it easy.

Crouched in the whirling cacophony and chaos, Severita felt the grace of the Emperor pull her mind to a point of calm. She had a task to complete, a step on the road of her penance, and she would not waver. She focused on details: the slight tilt of the floor beneath her, the quality of echoed gunfire, her memory of the chamber as she had seen it from above. Talicto’s displacer field had saved him from her shell, but it would not have taken him far. A displacer field was a rare but unpredictable device that protected its bearer by snapping them a short distance through the warp to avoid harm just before it occurred. Severita had no curiosity concerning the mysteries of its function; all that mattered was what it did, not how. Talicto must still be in the chamber, or very close. She would find him.

She ripped a strip from her shift and wrapped it around her mouth and nose. Her breath was still coming in shallow gasps from the impact of the fall. She drew her stolen bolt pistol, released its safety and pressed it to her forehead. The bolter still hung from her back, but for this, the smaller sister of that sacred weapon was needed.

She began to move, feeling her way along the line of tiers and seats towards where Talicto had sat.

A figure in rags rose to her side, crystal dagger slashing. She twisted inside the blow, blink-fast, gripped its shoulder with her left hand, and rammed her weight forwards. The figure staggered, but whatever it was, it was strong. A second figure appeared next to her. A crystal punch dagger stabbed at her face. She ducked, still holding onto the first attacker, pressed the muzzle of the bolt pistol into its gut, and fired once. The round exploded out of the back of its torso. Severita shoved away the bloody mess of the corpse and spun as the figure with the punch dagger came at her. She lashed a kick into its chest, knocking it back a step, and that was far enough for her to bring her pistol up and blast its masked head from its shoulders.

A shadow appeared behind her, and she whirled to meet it.

+Hold, Severita,+ the voice touched her mind, and she felt its force freeze her muscles for a second before her will shrugged off the psychic command, and she brought the bolt pistol up and fired.

A hand slammed the pistol aside, and the shot roared into the roiling fog. She did not pause, but let go of the pistol, letting it fall for an instant before she caught it with her other hand and spun to bring it up to fire at her new attacker. A fist lashed at her head. She had the impression of a slim female face and form-fitting armour. Not a mask, not rags. She paused, pistol steady, barrel level with a pair of violet eyes. The fist that had struck at her head had stopped a hand span from her cheek. Black needles glinted on armoured knuckles, the tips almost touching her skin.

‘Severita,’ called a voice that was the physical echo of the one that had spoken inside her head. A second woman in a long coat stepped into sight beside her, hair and face powdered with dust. ‘I am Inquisitor Idris, and the woman you were about to shoot is Enna Gyrid. I know your master.’

Severita looked at the violet eyes beyond the end of her barrel. The woman called Enna smiled, but the expression did not reach her eyes. She lowered her needle fist, and a second later Severita lowered her pistol.

‘Come with us,’ said Idris. ‘Covenant is still alive.’

‘How do you know?’ said Severita.

+The same way I realised who you were, Severita,+ she said without speaking. +Now come, there is not much time.+

Severita paused, biting down the anger as the witch-voice touched her mind again. Then she pulled the bolter from her shoulder, and tossed the bolt pistol to the woman called Enna.

‘Better than that fist of pins,’ she said.

Enna caught it smoothly, and gave a crooked smile.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Let’s go,’ said Idris.

‘Primary batteries, aye.’

‘Dorsal lances, aye.’

‘Target locked and set.’

Cleander heard the officers call from their stations, saw their faces turned towards him, eyes on him, waiting. Void Mistress Ghast stood just to the side of his command dais, hands folded behind her back. Cleander glanced between the displays in front of him. The void above Ero filled them, latticed with orange vector lines and spinning target mandalas. A cluster of defence monitors glowed cold blue, the position of the closing frigate a red disc.

‘Energy spike,’ shouted a sensor officer. ‘Frigate’s weapons ready to fire.’

Cleander’s eyes narrowed on the display. Taking on an Imperial Navy vessel that claimed to be bound to Inquisitorial service, in space above a world being used for a grand mustering of arms, was not advisable.

‘Fire all weapons,’ he said.

‘Fire all weapons!’ echoed Ghast.

‘Alpha battery firing!’

‘Gamma battery firing!

‘Dorsal lances firing!’

The Dionysia shook and shook. Amber lights lit on the banks of machines.

‘Struck true!’

‘Struck true!’

‘Struck true!’

The shouts of the gunnery officers rose above the buzz of alerts. Cleander looked up to the screen showing the magnified view of the frigate. Fire flashed across its collapsing shields. The frigate pushed through the caul of burning gas, arcing above the curve of Ero’s orbit towards the Dionysia’s position.

Cleander felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. This was far from the best way it could have gone. It was not even the fight they were facing, or the fact that the frigate outgunned them, or the quantity of main-force warships within uncomfortable proximity. He had faced worse odds many times over, survived them all, and counted many as victory. The problem was not the challenge; it was that he couldn’t do what he needed to win.

‘Hold above the storm’s eye,’ he said. ‘Shields to maximum. We will weather whatever they send our way.’

‘They are launching gunships,’ called Viola from behind him.

‘Heading?’ he called.

‘Towards the surface, closing on the Reliquary Tower.’

‘Talicto?’ he asked, and turned to look at Viola. She glanced up from the data screens. Her face was pale, the skin pinched on her forehead. She nodded.

‘Signals are just coming through the storm, full shield and reactor failure in the tower. They are under attack, forces unknown. He must have known we were coming for him. The frigate must have been waiting among the rest of the fleet elements.’

‘I hate it when you and Covenant are right about these things,’ he said, and turned back to the rest of the bridge. ‘Launch fighters. Tear them from the void!’

‘Fighters away, weapons hot.’

‘Fleet elements in orbit have picked up the signal,’ called Viola. ‘We have about ten minutes before something a lot bigger than those monitors comes to see what is happening.’

‘Engine output spike from the frigate!’ came a shout from the sensorium. ‘They are closing fast.’

‘Hostile auspex locked onto us – they are going to fire.’

‘Well…’ breathed Cleander. ‘This has got interesting.’

FIVE

+Covenant. Josef.+ The thought voice halted Josef. Beside him, Covenant dropped to one knee, boltgun held ready to fire, sensor pod pivoting through slow arcs. They were in a tunnel junction somewhere between the meeting chamber and the doors to the main landing pad. Passages curved away from a wide space that had been ringed with stands of candles. Now the iron stands lay toppled, the candles strewn on the powder-covered floor. They had killed five more of the rag-swathed attackers to get here. They had seen others too, figures in robes and armour crumpled on the floor, shrouds of dust already gathering over them and soaking up their blood. The main lights had failed just as they had broken clear of the hall. Darkness and dust choked the passages of the Reliquary Tower now, broken by the dim flicker of red alert lights. A part of Josef found the conditions reassuringly familiar.

Josef held the iron bar low as he looked back in the direction of Covenant’s aim. His bionic ear clicked as it filtered out the background sound of the wind. The space around them had become suddenly quiet, the sound of fighting held back beyond a veil.

‘I hear footsteps,’ he said, ‘Three sets, moving fast.’

Covenant’s sensor pod stopped moving, its main lens extending.

‘I see them.’ He raised his eye from the iron sight of his gun, but did not lower it. ‘It’s Idris.’

Three figures stepped around the curve in the passage, backlit for an instant by the red blink of the alert lights. Josef recognised Severita’s posture and fluid movement before he saw her face. The other two came into blurred sight when they were within a pace of him.

Covenant rose.

‘Talicto–’ he began.

‘The tower’s shields are down,’ said Idris, cutting him off. ‘The null fields too. That means they have control of its generatorium.’

‘The plasma reactors,’ breathed Josef. ‘He means to…’

‘He means to leave this place as molten rock, and burn every soul in it,’ snapped Idris.

‘Insane,’ said Enna.

‘Clever,’ said Josef. ‘He wipes the board clean, anyone who has the knowledge or power to oppose him gone in a single instant. But even he… The scale of this is…’

‘He will not escape,’ said Covenant. ‘He will be making for the landing pads if he has not already reached them.’

‘Landing pads?’ said Idris, reaching out to catch Covenant’s arm as he turned to move down the passage. ‘This is not about justice now, Covenant. It’s about stopping the heart being ripped out of the Inquisition in this sector.’

Covenant looked at her, the two of them silhouettes in the blink-blink of red.

‘It’s the same thing,’ he said, and shrugged his arm free of her hand. Idris took a step back, shook her head.

‘I am going to the generatorium chamber,’ she said, after a long moment.

Josef watched as she began to turn away.

‘Josef,’ said Covenant, and Josef glanced around. ‘Go with them. Severita, with me.’

Josef stepped to Idris as Severita moved past him to stand beside Covenant. Idris looked from Josef to Covenant, then jerked her head at Enna.

‘Go with them,’ she said. Enna frowned, but Josef saw a flick of Idris’ eye, and for a second fancied he could feel the subtle murmur of the thought passing between them. Enna stepped next to Covenant and Severita.

‘Emperor’s strength and speed, my friend,’ Idris said. No reply came from Covenant. Idris had turned and begun to run towards a passage opening. Josef followed her, falling into a gut-shaking jog. When he glanced over his shoulder he could see neither his lord nor Severita or Enna. They ran on down into the strobing red and black beneath the tower.

The Battle Sister stepped into sight at the opposite end of the corridor. Koleg froze where he had landed on the passage floor. The Sister was fifty metres away, stepping backwards, eyes locked on the passage out of Koleg’s sight. Koleg saw the shells rip from her bolter as she slid to her knees. There was blood on her armour, wet gloss on the red lacquer. The light of the muzzle flash lit the junction of the corridor and blazed into the space beyond. Slivers of crystal struck her greave and shattered on the ceramite. She fired again, the burst of rounds sawing out.

For a second he considered going to her aid. He dismissed the notion. He had a purpose to fulfil, and that did not require her survival. His quarry would have to come through this set of passages to reach the landing pads. Given the ferocity and surprise of the attack, he reckoned the chances of this lone Sister surviving were low. And besides, she was buying him time.

Metal plating lined the passage before him. Bolt heads studded the walls and ceiling, and mesh grating covered the floor. Besides the duct hatch in the ceiling that Koleg had just come through, the only other way out at this end of the passage was the hazard-striped doors behind him. Those doors led to the main landing pad. Anyone wanting to reach that pad, and not wanting to use the circuitous route Koleg had just used, had to come down this passage.

Koleg began to unfasten charges from his harness, laying them before him on the grating, glancing up at the Sister still kneeling in the junction fifty metres away. Her fire paused. The empty magazine clattered to the floor, and she had a fresh one in place and was shooting again before Koleg could blink.

But the pause had given something an opening. Frost flashed down the walls behind her, as an invisible force lifted her up and slammed her against the ceiling. Bolts sprayed wildly from the gun. Her armour cracked, blood bursting from her lips as her head snapped back. She fell to the floor. He saw her try to rise, but something struck her head and she slumped and was still.

Two figures in rags came around the corner. He fired. The hyper-fast burst of shells from his macrostubber almost sawed the first of the figures in two. He fired at the second, but it was fast and had ducked back as its fellow was slain. The second burst ripped into the wall behind where it had been. He unclipped a grenade, primed, and threw it in a single fluid motion. It struck the wall and rebounded around the corner.

Blinding light flashed out. Koleg’s visor blinked to black for a second. He moved forward, pistol braced in both hands as he cleared the corner. A figure in rags was rising from the floor where it had fallen. Koleg put a burst through its chest and snapped the empty ammo drum out of his gun as he stepped over the corpse. The plan and application of tactics changed in his mind, like a cog device flicking over between settings. He would not be able to cut Talicto off with a static ambush; he needed to move to meet the inquisitor as he approached. If he did not, he would be pinned down and killed just like the Sister of the Bloody Rose he had watched die back at the junction.

There were more corpses in the corridor, ten at least, limbs and bodies ripped apart by the Sister’s bolt-rounds. He moved down the corridor, steps swift and silent. A twitch of ragged fabric in a door, and he dropped to one knee. The figure that came around the door took a burst of rounds in the chest, and hinged back like a puppet with snapped strings. Koleg glanced at it and was about to move past it when he stopped.

The cloth mask covering its head had slipped upwards, exposing a sliver of neck and chin beneath. The mask itself was similar to all the others that covered the heads of the corpses in the corridor behind him: rough hessian, crudely stitched with holes torn through the fabric for the eyes. Koleg knelt, back against the rivet-covered wall of the corridor, and carefully tugged the mask off the head of the corpse. He stopped and blinked. The face looking back at him was that of a man of middle years. Age lines gathered at the corners of his eyes. A slight weight of fat under the chin spoke of good meals. Greyed stubble covered his chin, as though he normally took a razor to it every day but this morning had forgotten. Dark hair faded to grey hung from his scalp. The man’s lips were slightly open. He had all his teeth, and between them glinted a silver coin.

Koleg stared at the coin. The cough of gunfire somewhere in the distance made him raise his eyes, but then he looked back at the corpse. Slowly he lifted the corpse’s empty left hand. Frayed strips of the same hessian as the mask crossed the palm and wove inbetween the fingers. Abrasions covered the exposed skin, as though the outer layer had been ground away, but the skin under the cloth wrappings was soft, like that of a clerk or merchant. And that was exactly as it should be, because that was who the face he was looking at belonged to: a somebody who was nobody, the face of a man who kept records that no one would ever read. It was not the face of a man who attacked a fortress guarded by the Sisters of Battle and housing a gathering of inquisitors.

Koleg glanced behind him at the torn bodies in the corridor. He wondered what faces would look back at him if he pulled off the bloody rags of their masks. A glint caught his eye as he turned, and he saw the weapon that the dead man still had clutched in his other hand. It was a shard of crystal as long as his forearm. Its edge was ragged, the substance of its rough blade threaded with cracks and shot through with milky imperfections. Drying blood marked its length, as well as the hand that still grasped it by its leather-bound base. Koleg reached out for it.

‘Don’t!’ came a shout from close by. His head and gun came up. A figure was blurring towards him down the corridor. His finger squeezed the trigger. Hard rounds breathed from the pistol barrel, but the figure jinked, kicked off the wall and slammed a hand into his arm. Bullets sparked from the metal walls. Koleg rose from his crouch, ducked under the blow that he knew would be coming next and brought his pistol up to this new enemy.

‘Be still, Koleg,’ came another voice further down the corridor. Koleg froze, pistol levelled at a woman in form-fitting armour and split-fronted black robes. Silver coins glinted from the hem of the hood, which framed a slim face. She held a bolt pistol in her left hand, and her right was poised to grab Koleg’s own empty hand. He did not lower his gun or break his gaze.

‘Master,’ he said, and heard his voice echo flat from the speaker plug of his mask. Covenant came up behind the woman, who had also not moved or broken her gaze at Koleg.

‘This is an ally, Koleg,’ said Covenant, looking down the corpse-strewn passage, and then at the unmasked figure at Koleg’s feet. ‘Her name is Enna Gyrid.’

Koleg gave a single nod, and lowered his aim. The woman called Enna bent and picked the crystal blade out of the corpse’s fingers. Koleg noticed that she was holding it by the leather grip and lifting it as though it were a snake that could strike out in an instant.

‘Venom crystal,’ said Enna, turning the blade over. ‘Highly effective, too. Curiosity can get you killed.’

Covenant’s sensor pod pivoted around, its lenses focusing on Koleg.

‘Talicto,’ said Covenant, still watching the corridor.

‘His shuttle and escort are destroyed,’ said Koleg. ‘To reach the landing pads he would have to come this way. I have been sweeping corridors – no sign.’

He looked around as Severita slid into sight at the far end of the passage. The sensor pod swivelled to her; she shook her head. Covenant remained where he was, eyes moving over the distance, bolter in hand, face fixed.

Koleg felt his fingers twitch on the casing of his gun.

‘We would have found him in the passages leading into the rest of the tower,’ said Enna, still holding the crystal blade. She glanced at Koleg. ‘If he did not get past you–’

‘He didn’t.’

‘If he didn’t,’ she continued, ‘then where can he have gone?’

The trio of Lightning fighters trailed fire from their wings as they cut the atmosphere. Viola watched the surface of Ero grow in each of the machine’s sensor clusters. The whipped peaks of the hurricane clouds blurred beneath them.

‘Targets in sight,’ came the clipped voice of the lead pilot. ‘Weapons free.’

The pilots, like those of the gunships, and the troops inside them, were vassals of the von Castellan dynasty, mercenaries bound by hundred-generation contracts. They were good, and the wealth of a rogue trader meant that they had the finest equipment.

The four enemy craft were specks on the line of the horizon. Red target icons painted them with clusters of data. Beyond them and lower in the dome of atmosphere were the three Valkyrie gunships that the Dionysia had launched first. Viola glanced at the cascade of speed and distance data. It was a chase now, pure and simple: would their gunships reach the storm’s eye first as it went over the Reliquary Tower? Would the hostile craft try to engage them or try to reach the tower themselves?

‘Gladius squadron,’ she said to the lead gunships, ‘hold pattern for surface descent. Sicaro squadron engage hostiles.’

‘Gladius confirmed, three minutes to dive.’

‘Sicaro confirmed, engaging now.’

Missiles kicked free of the fighters. White contrails sliced across the pict-feed from the lead interceptor. The trio of enemy craft scattered. Flashes of light glittered in their wake.

‘They have launched counter-measures.’

Viola saw the icons of the hostile craft arc wide.

‘Dionysia, this is Gladius, we are above the storm’s eye. Two minutes to dive.’

Fire splashed the distance in front of the fighter’s pict-feed.

‘Missiles splashed wide,’ came the voice of the lead fighter pilot. ‘Break and engage, break and engage.’ The fighter squadron split. Afterburners lit. The pict-feed from the interceptors blurred with speed. This fight was a three-way dance now: the Valkyries ready to dive into the heart of the dust storm, the enemy gunships and fighters trying to kill and outrace the first group, and the fighter squadron hunting them in turn. 

‘Storm’s eye opening above tower,’ said the Valkyrie squadron leader. ‘Commencing dive.’

The gunships looped high, twisting above the cloud tops. Beneath them a column of clear air plunged down through walls of wind and dust. They stabbed down through the opening. Lines of las-fire reached for them as an enemy fighter arced over and down into the storm’s eye after them. 

A lurch shook Viola’s view of the dogfight. She looked up. Cleander glanced at her. 

‘Our ability to hold this position is becoming questionable,’ he said, still smiling the smile that was the greatest lie he had ever learned to tell. 

‘Covenant said to hold no matter what.’

‘I know what he said,’ called Cleander. ‘I just wanted to say something out loud.’ He turned his grin to his command crew. ‘All batteries fire when charged. Mistress Ghast, slide us against the gravity well – let’s not make this easy for them.’

‘Kill one,’ came the voice of the lead interceptor from the vox. The Dionysia shook as Viola looked back to her display in time to see the storm’s eye loom wide around the fighter. Flashes of lightning lit the storm wall, and las-fire stitched the air beyond it as aircraft spun down the throat of the hurricane. A spreading splash of debris tumbled in the air ahead and beneath them as the black needle of the Reliquary Tower slid from the dust to point at the clear circle of sky.

‘We are getting signals from the tower!’ shouted an officer. Viola turned at the note in the man’s voice. He was still, hand pressed against the bionic implants in his ears. Viola reached out and keyed the controls to catch the main signal feed, but the officer was turning, face pale.

‘Total failure of security, casualties unknown, reactors are in overload.’

There was a beat of time. The deck shook again. Then Viola was opening the vox to the gunships. 

‘Gladius, Sicaro, mission parameter evacuation, repeat, evacuation.’

‘Confirmed, Dionysia,’ came the reply. Alarms blared over the bridge. Shield failure sirens added to the cacophony.

‘Taking fire!’ shouted Void Mistress Ghast. ‘Impacts on decks thirty-four through seventy-eight.’

Cleander gave a calm nod of acknowledgement and then turned to Viola.

‘That frigate,’ he said, the smile cold on the flesh of his face. ‘It isn’t just here to get Talicto out, is it?’

Viola met her brother’s gaze and shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s here to make sure that no one else gets out.’

Glavius-4-Rho woke to the sound of desecration. Alarms boomed through the generator chamber. Coolant fog laced the air. The metal deck under his body was vibrating to the roar of wounded machine spirits. Data-links meshed a second later. Warnings and alerts poured into his consciousness. What had he done? What had he been made to do? 

A hand gripped him and began to pull him upwards. He struggled, machine limbs snapping out at random.

+Do not resist, magos,+ said a voice in his thoughts. +We are here to help.+ 

‘He is alive,’ called a voice. Female, he thought, high registers of authority and control.

‘And heavy…’ growled a male voice from next to him.

‘There’re lot of dead servitors here,’ called a female voice, further off, shouting against the alarms.

His sight pulsed and swam with errors. He was on the gantry next to the primary control altar. A woman stood before him in a battered duster, curled hair piled atop a slim face, infra-goggles hung around her neck.

‘I am Inquisitor Idris,’ she said as though in reply to the still forming question of his thoughts. The alarm light flickered over her features: red-black, red-black, red-black.

The alarms…

Comprehension, memory and panic slammed into his awareness. He thrashed towards the altar.

‘Hold him up, Josef,’ shouted Idris. 

‘I’m trying!’ called the man next to him. 

‘Mistress…’ came the second female voice from further away. 

‘Magos,’ said the man called Josef. ‘Please be calm.’

His sight snapped through spectrum filters. The man called Josef was rotund, clad in an off-white preacher’s robe. He had a bionic ear of above average craftsmanship bonded to the right side of his skull. Chronological age was six to six-point-five decades, physical age problematic from current data. High mass-to-size ratio, high physical strength. Beyond him was Inquisitor Idris.

‘Reactor…’ he rasped through his voice speaker. ‘Reactor…’

‘Mistress, they are here.’

‘Thank you, Josef,’ said Idris, without looking up from Glavius-4-Rho.

He heard the one called Josef mutter something. Far off in the fog something moved, blurring with speed. Explosions flashed on the other side of the chamber.

His data filters were swarming with warnings and error data. He had failed his duty, his god, his purpose. Catastrophic projections began to form in his mind, cascading down without termination into…

+Magos Glavius-4-Rho,+ came the voice in his head, and with it a blunt calmness that snapped his head up. Idris was looking at him. +You need to shut the reactor down. You need to do it now.+

He felt calm pour through his nerve connections. Errors cleared. His limbs went still, and then he straightened.

Josef let go of him.

Glavius-4-Rho stood swaying for a second and then lurched to the altar.

His hands found the ordained controls. Shaking mechadendrites locked into sockets. The spirits of the generator howled across the interface.

A cry cut through the air. One of his sensor rings spun around his skull.

Figures in rags were charging forward through the mist. Idris pivoted, raised a hand, and blasted one of them backwards with a beam of cyan energy. It exploded into ash and burnt bone. Fragments caught another figure that had been just behind the first, ripping through its chest and arm.

Volkite technology, noted part of Glavius-4-Rho’s mind, miniaturised.

Josef stepped next to her, hefting an iron bar that looked like it had once supported a stand of candles.

Glavius-4-Rho felt the tug of the machine altar, and spun his eyes back to the movements of his limbs on dials and keys. A rumble was shaking the gantry. The ritual of calming stuttered, and the flow of data from the reactor’s spirit battered at him. Pillars of burning coolant blasted into the air across the chamber. Glavius-4-Rho staggered. Cables snapped free of sockets. The pulse of red light was a migraine stutter.

Something dropped onto the gantry near him. His gaze rotated in time to see a crystal-wreathed fist punch down towards his torso. His split awareness jammed between imminent threat and the ritual connection to the reactor controls. Conflict data flooded him.

A wrought iron bar swung down onto the ragged figure’s weapon arm. The limb folded around the metal like a rag. The figure stumbled to its knees. Josef stepped forward, the iron bar in his hands whistling as it struck the figure in the head. He was breathing hard, fat shaking as he turned.

‘Get on with it!’ he shouted.

Glavius-4-Rho tried to recall the next step in the ritual. His brass digits reached for keys. A rolling boom cut through the air a second before a blast wave ripped across the gantry. Glavius-4-Rho tumbled backwards. 

Containment reservoir breach, observed a part of his mind.

His robes caught alight. Oil fell from ripped joints as he rose. Josef was a metre away, hanging from a railing as he forced himself up. Glavius-4-Rho turned to the altar, and took a swaying step towards it.

Red lights and angry runes flashed across its surfaces. Smoke was pouring out of the tower of machinery. Cogs clattered and jammed. The spinning limiter on the altar’s top stopped.

‘Omnissiah’s tears,’ he breathed.

The altar exploded. Cogs and molten metal showered outwards. 

Lines of code shut down in his mind.

Another blast wave sheeted through the air. This time he did not fall. Damage registered in a cascade of red data.

‘Magos,’ Josef’s shout registered, but Glavius-4-Rho did not look at him.

‘Sacrilege…’ he heard himself say.

‘The reactor–’

‘There is no way of stopping it now. Core reaction will reach the end of catastrophic progression in…’ He shook his head. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He had not failed; worse, he had defiled the spirits of the machines he had guarded. It did not matter that it had been under the control of a witch; that simply underlined the betrayal of his flesh and the weakness of his soul.

He saw Josef look at Idris.

‘Go!’ said the preacher.

‘I will not survive to tell Covenant I let you die.’

Josef laughed.

‘You always were secretly the more stubborn one.’

Glavius-4-Rho felt error processes cascade through his mind as he slumped back onto the grating. Oil was running from a crack in the silver of his face. Clouds of hot gas rose to brush the vaulted ceiling above him.

‘Come on,’ shouted Josef. Glavius-4-Rho felt something tugging at him. He looked down and Josef’s hand was pulling on his burning robe. ‘We need to move. Now!’ Further down the gantry he could see Idris firing a volkite beam towards where the entrance hid behind the smoke.

‘I must remain with my… machines.’

‘You have a duty,’ growled Josef, ‘and that duty does not involve dying without purpose.’

‘I…’ began Glavius-4-Rho.

‘Move,’ shouted Josef, and yanked him. Glavius-4-Rho felt his limbs follow, and then he was running.

The wind vanished as they entered the central shrine chamber again. One second Enna could hear it roaring through the tunnels, and the next it was gone. The dust was not boiling into the breached tower, but falling in soft silence. Daylight fell from far above; rays of sunshine cut through the swirl and cast the shadow of the saint’s statue from atop her reliquary. They all slowed as they entered the space, as though something had tugged them back as they crossed the threshold. Covenant paused, his sensor pod momentarily still.

‘The storm’s eye,’ said the man called Koleg. Enna glanced at him. The alarms were echoing in the passages now, loud but somehow hollow.

‘My sisters,’ said Severita, and Enna saw the corpses around the reliquary now. They lay in the dust, armour torn, blood clotted on the crimson lacquer of their armour like monstrous growths.

‘They killed many,’ said Enna, and nodded at the rag-tangled corpses heaped on the floor.

The siren blared on. Red lights blinked in the mouths of passages.

‘And all of them are dead now,’ said Koleg.

Enna suddenly knew the feeling that was crawling up her spine. It was the same that she had felt in the Golden Hive on Athelaed, and the ancient ship her mistress had investigated off Gulta. It was the feeling of being alone in a space that until recently had roared with life and noise. It was the feeling of being the only living souls in a tomb.

‘So many,’ said Enna picking between the bodies and limbs. ‘How could they have brought so many to attack us here? She looked down at the crystal blade that she still carried from the corpse.

‘Come,’ said Covenant, and began to move forwards.

A metallic buzzing filled Enna’s ears, vibrating even over the wail of the alarms. She stopped, feeling the sound itch her teeth.

‘Wait,’ she called. Covenant paused, and turned his head towards her. ‘I can hear something. Someone is coming.’

Covenant turned as a figure of bloated armour plates stepped into the chamber. Red light beat a blood pulse rhythm behind it, casting its shadow through the falling dust. Koleg moved and dropped to one side, pistol aimed.

Vult emerged from the settling murk. Dust and blood clung to his Terminator armour. The diminutive figure of Inquisitor Quadin was a step behind him, and a clutch of figures came with them. Enna saw a cluster of Sisters of the Bloody Rose amongst them. The Battle Sisters spread into the space, firing arcs overlapping inwards and outwards. Above them the statue of Saint Aspira was a shadow in the falling dust. Vult stopped, and those with him spread into an arc. Enna saw that they had bolters, all of them carrying the sacred emblems of the Sororitas. Blood marked their casings. They seemed like ghosts, the dead emerging from the underworld. Covenant stopped, his own weapon aimed at Vult’s head.

Severita moved to his right, her bolter aimed at the lord inquisitor, eyes hard in her henna-marked face. The weapons of Vult’s ragged entourage remained levelled at them.

‘Did you have a hand in this?’ asked Covenant, his voice calm and cold.

Inquisitor Quadin’s lip curled on her blood-streaked face. Guns braced to fire. Vult raised a hand with a purr of servos and oiled metal.

‘Did you?’ he replied.

The moment stretched in the stillness between the two groups. Alarm lights blinked, the sound of the sirens seeming to stretch away in slow echoes.

‘The reactors have been compromised,’ said Covenant, at last, lowering his bolter but not taking his finger from the trigger. ‘Inquisitor Idris is attempting to secure them.’

Vult dipped his hooded and masked head, though whether in acknowledgement or thanks, Enna could not tell.

‘And if she fails, or if it is too late, then this atrocity will become annihilation.’ He turned to a Sister in the armour of a Palatine. The woman’s face radiated controlled rage.

They are facing failure, thought Enna, failure and the violation of the sanctuary. The foundation of their existence was shaking. Rage was the only response that made sense.

‘We will secure the landing platforms,’ rasped Vult. ‘The storm’s eye is overhead. Get every craft in the air before it moves on. This is an evacuation. Signal the fleet. Full quarantine measures.’ He looked at Covenant. ‘Your role in this will be subject to question.’ He paused. ‘If you survive.’

‘There are no questions that I must answer,’ said Covenant.

The ground shook before either could speak again. Cracks raced across the floor.

‘Plasma reactors are cycling into meltdown,’ shouted the Palatine.

Covenant turned and began to run; Enna followed after him, leaving Vult and the others to make for the landing pads.

‘The reactors?’ called Enna. Covenant vaulted down a flight of steps, without pausing to reply.

Josef was breathing hard as he ran up the iron steps from the machine levels. Smoke was rolling across the ceiling above them, rising from below. Heat chased them, pricking his back, as his boots thumped down and the curve of stairs reached above them. The iron bar resting over his shoulder felt heavier by the second. The magos was beside him, hobbling on his calliper-legs like an injured spider. Idris was just behind them, glancing down the way they had passed. Dead weapon servitors hung from brackets in the walls, drained of blood, their input tubes severed.

They had not even fired their weapons, he had noticed when they had taken these stairs downwards.

Beside him the magos stumbled, coughing out a stream of electronic clicks.

‘Keep moving,’ growled Josef and reached for the tech-priest, but the half machine shrugged him off.

‘The reserve power is failing,’ he said, and above them the beat of the red alarm lights stuttered. ‘The last machine spirits in this tower are dying.’

‘And we will die too if we don’t move.’

Glavius-4-Rho hesitated, then began to climb again. Above them the light stuttered again, the ruddy illumination dimming.

+Josef,+ said Idris in his mind, and he felt the taut ice in her sending. +Look back.+

He glanced down the steps.

Figures in rags were climbing the iron stairs, their movements jerking in the blood red flicker.

Idris raised her hand and sent a pulse of energy down the stairs. The beam snapped out, then died. She cursed.

Josef shrugged the bar off his shoulder. Beside him the magos climbed another step, then turned as though looking for them. His eye lenses flashed as they fastened on the figures rising up the stairs towards them. He raised his left arm. Brass leaves peeled back from the forearm as a cluster of three tubes folded out from inside his arm and began to spin.

Josef heard the tech-priest hiss something in static and machine-code. A line of burning rounds scythed through the figures climbing up the stairs. Bodies burst into flames as they fell. Rags flashed to ash, and fresh smoke blended with that already rolling over the ceiling. The magos panned his torrent of fire across the stairs for two seconds before it vanished. He let his arm drop, and hissed something else. On the steps below, a burning corpse collapsed, its skin and flesh cooking.

Josef looked at the tech-priest. It rotated its head towards him. The teeth of its silver skull made it look like it was smiling.

‘A temporary, non-repeatable capability,’ he said.

Josef blinked, then grabbed the magos’ robes and pulled him on up the stairs.

‘There are more coming,’ shouted Idris as they started to run.

‘Of course there are,’ said the magos, and buzzed static. For a second, Josef thought it was laughing.

The lights stuttered, and this time the blink of darkness lasted for several gasping steps. Behind them something roared with a voice of collapsing metal and cracking stone.

The lights blinked back on, the red light syrup-thick. Shadows moved above them, running down to meet them. He paused, shifting the grip on the bar in his hands to meet this last enemy just as he had met all the rest. He was not going to survive. Not this time. The Emperor was going to gather him to His hand at last, his service done.

‘Down,’ called a voice from above them, and the familiar flat tones of Koleg’s voice made him drop to the floor, pulling the magos down as the grenade whistled past. Fire flashed out and the air buzzed with shrapnel. Bolt-rounds flew overhead. Josef rolled over. Traces of fire stitched the red stained dark above him.

‘Moving,’ he shouted. The path of fire switched away from him an instant later, and Josef rose to his feet, tugging the magos with him as he ran up the steps. Above him he could see Covenant, Enna and Severita advancing, firing with each step. Koleg knelt at the side of the stairs further up, reloading his macrostubber pistol with detached fluidity.

‘The reactors…’ he began to gasp.

‘Get to the landing pads,’ called Covenant as he fired a burst.

‘The storm,’ called Idris, as she sprinted up level with Josef. ‘We won’t be able to take off.’

Covenant’s face twitched as he fired a last round, pulled the magazine from the boltgun, reloaded and fired again.

‘The storm’s eye is overhead,’ he said, between bursts, ‘and there should be gunships coming.’

‘You really had it all planned out,’ said Idris, still smiling.

‘Not for this,’ said Covenant. He fired one last time, then turned and sprinted up the stairs. Koleg opened up, the zip of hard rounds taking the place of the boom of bolts without a pause.

Josef kept moving, pulling the magos. His job was not to fight now; it was to move as fast as he could. He passed Koleg, and a few metres in front of him Covenant and Severita turned, raised their guns and fired. Josef looked over his shoulder. Koleg was rising from his firing crouch, and Idris was five steps behind him.

‘There are more coming,’ she called. ‘I can feel their thoughts.’

The stairs beneath them were a rolling darkness. The alarm lights faded, then flicked off. Muzzle flare bloomed. The heat rolled up through the blackness. Josef felt it folding over him. The alarm light blinked back on, red smudged to dirty brown. He saw Covenant pause in the pattern of his fire. He saw a shape move from the curtain of smoke, cinders falling from its rags. He saw Idris running just behind them, hands still trying to coax energy from the weapon rings on her right hand.

And in the slowed flicker of light he saw the burning figure in rags raise a hand and throw. The shard spun from its fingers, its edges gold and red with reflected light.

Covenant aimed and fired in a single movement. The bolt struck the rag clad figure as the shard left its fingers. Another figure, another shot, and there was blood falling as the fire rose.

Covenant moved down the steps. A shiver of raw force ripped the smoke-clogged air in front of him as he unleashed a wave of psychic power. Bodies pitched backwards, and the last slow pulse of red light flickered as it lit the scene. It was all slow, a red-soaked, stopped-clock tableau in front of Josef’s eyes.

Idris fell. The shard of crystal projected from her neck. Her eyes were wide in a face that was not the face of knowledge, or power, or a holy warrior against the dark, but just a human being at the last instant of their existence. Covenant was at her side, trying to catch her, but she was dead before she hit the iron steps.

‘Five warships closing fast,’ shouted the sensor officer. ‘Their weapons are live.’

Cleander acknowledged this with a nod.

‘Shields down across all forward and dorsal volumes!’

‘Hostile frigate will be ready to fire again in ten seconds.’

‘Hold position,’ said Cleander, his eyes not moving from the pict screen above him. ‘Throw everything we have at the frigate. Tell the warships who we are. See if you can get them to fire at our nasty little friend out there rather than us.’

His eyes held on the pict-feed from the inceptors running down the eye of the storm. A burst of las-fire raced after the distant icon of an enemy craft. Further down still, the gunships from the Dionysia were cutting speed and spiralling in around the Reliquary Tower to land.

‘Dionysia, this is Gladius squadron. We are on the target. There is activity on the landing zone. Do we proceed?’

‘This is Dionysia,’ said Viola from behind him. ‘Proceed.’

‘We have an aggressor still in play on our tails.’

A missile kicked free from the enemy interceptor as it fell on the gunships like a hawk on a field bird. Countermeasures burst from the gunships, flares burning red. The missile hit one of the glowing motes. Fire bloomed. Its expanding sphere caught one of the gunship’s wings and flipped it into a spin. Fire burst from its engines and swallowed its fuselage. Its two comrades raced past it.

‘Come on,’ Cleander muttered, then cursed himself for letting his tension show.

The image from the inceptor pivoted and Cleander saw the shape of the enemy fighter dead ahead. He felt his hand reflexively tense on a firing stud that was not his to key.

‘Lock,’ said the pilot. ‘Firing.’ Las reached across the image, and then the enemy was a ball of fire, and the image was plunging past the debris. ‘Kill,’ said the pilot, his voice flat. Cleander could see the gunships descending onto a cluster of platforms attached to the lower reach of the tower.

‘Gladius squadron,’ said Viola into the vox. ‘You have thirteen minutes until you need to be in the air and climbing. Sicaro, hold cover position and escort.’

‘There is a transmission coming from the surface,’ called another officer. ‘It bears the signal cipher of Inquisitor Lord Vult. It orders all Imperial forces to consider the space above the Reliquary Tower quarantined under his authority.’

‘Captain, the hostile frigate is breaking off, and running for open space.’

‘We are being hailed and challenged again, captain. What is our response?’

‘We are seeing engine fires on the tower’s landing pads,’ shouted a gunnery officer who was bent over the surface-directed sensors. ‘There are trans-orbital craft prepping to launch down there.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Cleander.

‘Vult,’ said Viola, and keyed the vox. ‘And whoever else is alive in the tower.

‘Gladius squadron, is Inquisitor Covenant on board?’

‘Negative,’ crackled the reply.

‘Hold until he is, Gladius,’ she said. ‘No matter who is telling you to take off, you wait.’

Cleander looked around at his sister. Tension had pinched her mouth to a thin line.

‘Well,’ he said and gave a grin. ‘At least we aren’t being fired at any more.’

The world stopped: breaths stilled in lungs, fingers frozen on triggers.

The light blinked once, and then failed for the last time. The molten glow of fire and burning gas bubbled up from the depths. The glow showed Covenant kneeling, trying to lift the corpse. Josef took a step to help him.

‘Lord,’ the voice was Severita’s. ‘You must leave her. You must come now.’ She moved past Josef, and gripped Covenant’s shoulder. He twisted free of her grip. A pulse of telekinetic force sent Severita staggering back, and for only the second time in his service Josef felt the fire within slip through the iron of his master’s will.

A burst of bright fire flared in the depths, its light cutting through the smoke. The stairs shook.

‘Lord,’ said Josef, and took a step towards Covenant. ‘If you mean to live, then we need to move.’ He paused, another deep explosion shaking the floor.

Covenant straightened. His boltgun hung loose at his side. The sensor pod on his shoulder was still, its lenses pointing at nothing. He turned, his face a black silhouette barely visible against the fire-stained smoke.

‘Follow,’ he said, and began to run up the stairs, and Josef saw the others obey – just as he did – and run from the roar of fire rising to swallow the dead.

Gunships rose from the launch pads as the storm began to swallow the tower again. Other craft rose with them: shuttles, lighters and other species of machine, their wings and hulls scraped to bare metal by the dust winds. The inceptors holding station above the tower broke from their spiral and fell in beside the flock of craft as it rose like crows from a grave.

Beneath them the stones of the tower shook. Angels and martyrs of stone tumbled from its spire, shattering as they struck the lower walls. A rose of light unfolded from its base, blinding white, buzzing as it vaporised the granite and fused the dust around it. Then the blast wave ripped outwards to meet the storm winds. Dust and earth whipped into the still air. The light flashed again, brighter, growing and blistering upwards.

The tower’s lower levels melted, stone blasting into glowing spray. High above, the statue-topped pinnacle fell down into the white inferno. In the shrine chamber, the few Sisters of the Bloody Rose who had remained were blasted to ash in an instant. They had chosen death as their penance for their failure. Only two lived, bearing the reliquary containing the hand of the Saint to one of the evacuating gunships, and then the storm covered the blaze, and the vast dust cloud glowed red.

The ragged flock of lighters and gunships soared high above. In the troop bay of a Valkyrie, Enna watched a projected image of the storm. Her eyes held on the glow beneath the cloud until it flared one last time and then was gone. She held her gaze on the grainy image for a last second, then the sensation of the shaking fuselage and the sound of the engines pulled her awareness into herself. She looked away. Soot, blood and dust painted the faces that looked back at her.

‘What now?’ she asked.

Severita looked up, eyes opening from her silent prayer. Beside her the hunched form of the magos stirred. Josef looked around at Covenant. The inquisitor’s gaze was fixed on the back hatch of the gunship, as though looking through its substance to the world vanishing behind them. He looked at her, eyes dark in a face that looked both young and aged beyond its time.

‘Retribution,’ he said.

PART TWO

HERETIC’S WAKE

SIX

Josef found Viola waiting outside the inner door to their master’s sanctum. She looked tired, dark smudges under her eyes, pupils wide from stims and cognitive enhancers. He met her gaze and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged, and turned her gaze back to the closed door.

Glow globes hung from the wood-panelled ceiling, soaking the antechamber in amber light and soft shadows. Polished granite gleamed on the walls between heavy tapestries. Angels and beasts fought across the dark red fabric, their halos stitched in gold thread, their eyes beads of jet. The door leading to Covenant’s sanctum was black iron, its surface wrought with patterns of leafless branches parting before a gilt chalice. The weight of silence pressed in on Josef as he stood, and he found himself fidgeting with the collar of his robe.

The ship was still, its engines lay cold, and the vibrations of its other systems did not reach decks this far away from the machine spaces. That put his nerves on edge, always had, as though the stillness and quiet were a threat. The current circumstances did not lessen the feeling.

The iron door opened with a murmur of releasing locks. A hunched servitor in a grey robe opened it wide, and then shuffled aside on clicking brass legs.

Viola gave Josef a long look, then stepped through. The room within was as dark as the antechamber. Candles hung in the air on suspensor discs. Their low light caught the surfaces of dark wood and sculpted black iron. Thick carpet stole the sound from their footfalls as they approached the desk. Its wood was so dark that its grain was a barely visible ripple in its substance. A workbench sat against the wall behind it. Instruments of brass and silver lay on its top: picters with telescoping magnifiers, burners, articulated arms tipped with fine pincers. Data slates and a scroll reader were stacked to one side. Behind the desk, covering the curved wall, the dead looked down. Most were cast in silver, their expressions frozen in polished detail. Some were grotesque. Some were not human at all. A few – a very few – were cast in red gold, their faces gleaming beside the silver.

One day I will be there, thought Josef, as he stopped before the desk, looking down in gold from beside the faces of slain enemies, and lost comrades.

Covenant looked up at them. His chair sat between the bare desk and the workbench. He wore grey, the cloth cut to resemble the simple robe of an Administratum scribe, but without mark or sign of rank. A brass-sheathed cable ran from the socket in his left temple to the collection of articulated limbs on the desk. His hands were steepled under his chin. On the desk the brass arms moved without cease, spinning around a lump of red wax. Spatulas and microburners cut, melted and scraped, pulling the image of a face into being in the wax.

Josef glanced at the sculpture, then up at the still eyes of his master.

‘Speak,’ said Covenant.

Viola cleared her throat.

‘My sources in the fleet elements are doing what they can,’ she said, ‘but it’s not good. Half of the ships are preparing for immediate deployment. And all of them are now crawling with agents of your peers. Some of them overt, many not. Access to the surface is going to be difficult unless you wish to go personally to oversee a mission. It will take you giving the orders personally to make them stand aside.’

‘They deny the authority of an inquisitor of the Throne?’ growled Josef.

‘They have conflicting orders from the authority of different inquisitors,’ said Viola, looking at him.

‘Vult…’ said Josef.

‘In part, yes, but not only him,’ she said. ‘At least six others survived the… incident. They are all still here, and they all have the same absolute authority. They are currently using that authority to make our lives – and each other’s lives – difficult.’

‘Of course they are,’ said Josef. He was not surprised. Of all Covenant’s servants he the most had seen how inquisitors behaved on the rare occasion their paths crossed. It was rarely easy to deal with them, especially under these circumstances. ‘They want to keep us from examining the remains of the tower,’

Viola gave a mirthless laugh.

‘Some of them want more than that,’ she said. ‘We are tracking ship movements in near-void and across the system that look very much like they are intended to prevent us breaking orbit, and if we do, to stop us reaching the system edge.’

‘They would use force?’ he asked.

‘Difficult to know,’ she said, ‘but you don’t draw a sword unless you have some idea that you might have to use it.’

‘And this containment is aimed at us?’ asked Josef.

‘Not exclusively. Some appears to be directed as much at other surviving inquisitors, but a lot of it is for us, yes.’

‘Because they believe we were responsible for what happened?’

‘Responsible, involved,’ Viola shrugged. ‘I am not sure it matters which.’

‘He denounced Talicto,’ snarled Josef, gesturing at his master. Covenant remained still, listening. On the desk the manipulators spun on fluidly, without cease.

Josef felt a ball of frustration forming in his gut. He could see what Viola was saying, and knew her evaluation was right, but it should not be right.

‘They think he was involved? He identified the enemy within before any of the rest!’

‘According to you, the moment that he denounced Talicto, the massacre began,’ said Viola, her eyes flashing with annoyance. ‘And what if we are not Talicto’s enemies, but his allies? What if what happened was misdirection – a means of putting Lord Covenant beyond suspicion while the board was swept clean of anyone who could oppose him?’

‘The attack was intended to leave no survivors,’ said Josef and shook his head. ‘We would have burned with the rest. Not a great plan.’

‘So it seems, but is that real or a carefully created illusion? From their point of view that is a real possibility.’

‘That is a wilfully perverse way of looking at things.’

‘I will take that as a compliment, Khoriv,’ she said and smiled. ‘Inquisitors are not given to trust…’ She glanced at Covenant. ‘Most of those we are dealing with here do not know each other, and have just been given a very good reason to see each other as enemies.’

Josef snorted and shook his head.

‘This is beyond belief. On the edge of war, they would go to war with each other?’

‘The war has already begun.’ Covenant’s voice was low. Viola and Josef looked at their master. ‘The others will do what they see needs to be done.’ He looked up at them, eyes dark and unblinking. ‘As will I.’

On the workbench behind him the armatures and sculpting tools became still. Josef felt his heart slow in his chest.

‘Talicto,’ said Covenant, weighing the name on his tongue. ‘He is the architect of what has happened and is happening. And he is all that matters at this moment. The conflict we see and the blood that has been spilt is what he intended. He wanted to remove any who could counter him. He failed to kill us all, but now we look at each other with doubt and do not act. Strife is as effective a way of achieving his purpose as murder. As he intended.’ He paused, took a long breath, and released it slowly. He shook his head. ‘And he has succeeded. His peers lie dead, and those of us that remain now turn on each other. He has succeeded.’ He unsteepled his fingers and placed them on the arms of his chair. ‘I will not allow him to keep that victory.’

He stood, pulling the plug of the mind impulse unit from the socket in his temple. On the workbench the articulated spider legs folded together with a soft whirr of fine cogs. The blue flames of the heat torches vanished.

‘We will not find him on Ero, or on any world in this system,’ said Covenant, stepping from behind the desk. ‘This was planned long before we came, and I will not repeat the mistake of underestimating his subtlety again. This was just another step on a path for him.’

‘And that path’s end?’ asked Josef.

‘That is what we must learn.’

‘How do we begin?’ asked Viola.

‘With what we have,’ replied Covenant. ‘The remains on the planet will be difficult to access, and may not tell us anything that is worth the effort. So look at what Talicto would have had to do to accomplish the attack.’

‘The frigate,’ said Viola, frowning more deeply. ‘The frigate that tried to confront us in orbit. It was a Navy vessel. That means that it must have made its presence known to fleet command. There will be a record, signals, orders and ident ciphers.’

‘Most likely false,’ growled Josef. He was not looking at Covenant or Viola, but at the lump of wax on the workbench beside the now silent tools. Cuts and flame had smoothed rises that caught the light, folding shadow into an unfinished face.

‘If Talicto has fled,’ Viola was saying, ‘he would also have needed a way of leaving the surface and the system, and he would have needed to bring in the force he used in the attack. There is no trace of their kind being native to this planet or system, so they came from elsewhere.’

‘And what were they?’ grunted Josef. Viola paused, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her look at him. He shrugged, and turned back to them. ‘These people in rags succeeded in coming out of a dust hurricane, penetrating a tower defended by warriors of the Sororitas, and killing at least half a dozen inquisitors and their servants. I would think we should find out what they were.’

‘A death cult?’ said Viola, and looked at Covenant. ‘One of Talicto’s warp-marked flocks like the one we found on Modus Aleph?’

‘Like everything else, they remain unknown,’ said Covenant. ‘To speculate is to invite error. We will proceed only with certainty. Viola, you and your brother will find this frigate that seems to have been acting by his will. The void is your domain. Take the Dionysia where you need, do whatever needs to be done.’

Viola bowed her head.

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Lord Covenant, you are leaving the ship?’

‘I am going to go find where this came from,’ said Covenant, drawing the crystal blade from the folds of his grey robe and turning away as he held it up to the light of the glow-globe, his eyes on the ragged glint of light running down its edge. ‘Make your preparations, Viola. We leave this place in three hours.’

Viola bowed her head again and walked towards the door. She paused before she left, and glanced at Josef. Their eyes met for a second, and she gave the slightest nod, which Josef returned. A second later the door shut behind her with a low click.

Josef took a careful step towards the desk, teeth chewing the inside of his cheek. The half-formed face of red wax looked back from the workbench beneath the silver of enemies and the gold of allies. The features were clear and well defined in places, sketched in crude gouges in others, as though it had been started several times, and then restarted. He recognised the face though.

‘She died facing the enemies of the Emperor,’ said Josef at last. ‘She would have wanted that.’

Covenant lowered the blade, but did not look around.

‘You claim to know what she wanted?’

Josef let out a long breath, then shook his head. The scar of his rating brand itched on his forehead, just as it always did at such moments.

‘Vengeance is not a worthy calling,’ said Josef.

Covenant looked around sharply. Josef met the coldness in his master’s eyes without flinching. After a second Covenant gave a slight shake of his head, and placed the blade on the desk.

‘This is not about vengeance,’ he said. ‘This is about what it has always been about – protecting humanity from those whose power makes their flaws a danger to everything that the Emperor intended and fought to protect.’ He tapped the wood beside the crystal blade. ‘That is what this is about.’

‘As you say, my lord,’ said Josef, and bowed his head. ‘I take it that you have an idea of where you will begin?’

‘We are going to see an old warrior of truth,’ said Covenant.

Josef waited, but no further response came, and after a second he bowed his head and began to move towards the door.

‘She did not die as she would have wanted,’ said Covenant. Josef turned. Covenant was still standing beside the desk, straight backed, the hard lines of his face as unmoving as the masks hanging on the dark wall above him. ‘She died as we all will,’ said Covenant softly, ‘bloody and alone.’

Josef held his master’s gaze for a long moment, and then stepped through the door.

‘Am I to be unmade?’ Glavius-4-Rho asked the question after seven hundred and three minutes of silence. The woman called Severita looked up from where she knelt before the door to his cell. As soon as the question left his vox-speaker, he wished he had left it unasked.

Weakness, he snarled at himself. The question held no merit other than to serve the instincts of his flesh. He should have remained silent.

Severita looked at him. She had been resting her forehead on the pommel of a drawn sword since they had entered the cell, and had not moved until now. The henna ‘X’ marking her face was fading on her skin. A shadow of stubble grew on her scalp. Three-point-one-two millimetres of growth, Glavius-4-Rho estimated. Dust and ash clotted the scabs of the small cuts left by the battle. Her black bodyglove, hessian shift and armour plates still bore the scorches and gouges of battle. In fact, they bore the marks of many battles, not just the latest. Glavius-4-Rho was no artisan, but he could read the damage patterns of seventy-one separate violent incidents. It was as though the gear had been maintained, but the overt damage left. Like a tally. Like scars.

‘The inquisitor’s will is that you remain here,’ she said.

‘Your statement does not negate the possibility that my life state will be judged as requiring termination.’

His full set of sensors focused on her face.

‘That will be as he wills it,’ she said.

He paused, considering what the correct move in this interaction would be. The answer was almost certainly silence.

‘Do you function as his executioner?’ he asked, after a pause. Severita met his gaze, but did not answer. After a second, she bowed her head again.

‘I have been analysing the features of your attire,’ began Glavius-4-Rho. Severita looked up again. He noticed that her pupils were black pinpricks in the green of her irises. He pressed on.

‘I have observed the equipment you bear, and the qualities of your speech and physical comportment. You are a Sister of the Order of the Bloody Rose. I had extensive opportunity to observe members of the Adepta Sororitas during my duties in the tower-building. There are notable differences – your attire is non-standard to their type – but the material and forging of the partial armour plates you wear denote that they come from the Tancula forges, made to the requirements of the Convent Sanctorum on Ophelia Seven.’ He paused, his implants and data processing rituals trying to parse the lack of expression on her face, and the fact that she had not blinked since he began speaking. He cleared his vox shunts, then continued. ‘Your principle weapon, too, was made by the smiths of Gredus. Its blade…’

‘I am not of the Sisterhood,’ said Severita, and gave a single, abrupt shake of her head.

‘But the observable data puts that possibility at less than two-point-three-one per cent.’

‘I serve the inquisitor,’ she said. He noticed her fingers flex fractionally on the hilt of her sword. ‘That is what I am.’

Silence came again. Glavius-4-Rho shifted his position. He had not been restrained, but he had not been able to effect full repairs to his systems and machine components. There was damage to the joints in his leg. The connections between his nerves and systems also needed cleansing and reconsecrating. He could not do those rituals here. That failure of devotion bothered him less than it should have, but then what did those breakdowns of duty matter now?

‘My existence should have terminated in the tower,’ he said. Severita looked up. A frown momentarily formed on her face. ‘I had a duty,’ he continued, hearing a crackle in his vox-modulation and wondering where it came from. ‘I had a duty to the spirits of the machines – I cared for their sanctity, for the knowledge that gave rise to them. The Omnissiah is a god that exists in all knowledge, and in all the devices that knowledge gives rise to. I… I failed in my ordained function. I let a part of the divinity of knowledge die. For that my existence should be unmade.’ He stopped, the stream of words cutting off, and leaving static popping from his speaker. ‘This is a matter I should not speak of. It is a thing that is not open to understanding.’

Severita was still looking at him. He waited, unsure what would come next. Part of him wondered if it would be the edge of her sword severing his neck, or another vital component.

‘The inquisitor…’ she said at last, her voice controlled but without the abruptness he had recognised before. ‘He has a use for you.’

Glavius-4-Rho cycled his optical lenses.

‘But I have failed in my function,’ he said. ‘What use could someone have for a broken tool?’

‘That is for him to say,’ she said.

Enna stared at the candle. It sat on the floor before her, its light reflected in the armour glass of the viewport to her left. The pillar behind her back was plasteel, thick, cold and unyielding. It reached above her, curving over as part of the arched window out into the void beyond. The northern arc of Ero filled half the view, the lights of warships and stars the other half. Apart from her candle, the light from the planet and the glitter of ships and stars was the only light in the gallery. It was narrow, a long span of silence stretching along this portion of the Dionysia’s spine. The viewport lay at the far end of long walls hung with trophies taken from dozens of worlds: banners of alien silk, skulls of great beasts, sculptures in iridescent stone, pictures painted by the hand of creatures that had never known the existence of mankind, on and on, wrapped in quiet shadow, looking down at the empty floor of their prison.

Enna had found the gallery by following her own feet through the ship. No one had tried to stop her; the crew that had seen her had bowed their heads respectfully, and the servitors had passed her without pause as they went about the rote tasks of their lives. The door to the gallery had been the first one that she had found barred to her. She had found a side hatch and broken its lock. The act had given her a brief twinge of pleasure, but that had vanished when she found what lay within. What had she expected? Secrets? Answers? Instead she had walked past the artefacts of vanity to the one source of light. When she had got close enough to see it was a viewport she had kept walking until she stood before it. Then she had sat, taken the candle from the pocket of her coat and lit it. That had been a while ago, and she had not moved since.

The prickling of her skin told her that she was not alone. Her stillness became readiness in a blink. Muscles relaxed and tensed in a pattern that meant she could spring from her position in an instant. The poison needles and all her other deadly trinkets had been taken after she was brought on board the ship. She had only one weapon: an officer’s dagger that she had lifted from a passing crewman without him noticing. She had not even taken it with the intent to use it. She just felt better with a weapon, and stealing it had made her feel good for the second it took. If she was facing a serious threat now, the dagger was almost a token gesture, but it was too late to wish that she had brought something more substantial. Slowly, casually, she moved her gaze from the candle to the shadowed distance of the gallery.

+I have no intention of letting you stab me, Enna.+

She came to her feet in a single snap of muscles. The stolen dagger was in her hand, blade reversed. Her eyes were wide. The voice that had spoken was in her skull, an echo without sound.

+I am sorry,+ said the thought-voice. Enna heard the echo of a feminine lilt, and something else, an impression of humour, as though the words had been said through a wry smile. +I would say that I did not mean to startle you, but that would be a lie.+

‘Show yourself!’ hissed Enna. Her skin was pricking, and she could taste metal and sugar on her tongue.

+Beginning on the right footing is important,+ said the voice in her thoughts. +Or so I am told. So I thought it best to start as we will – no doubt – go on.+

A figure slid from the shadow into the thin light. A black robe hung from it, half hiding withered limbs that trailed in the empty air beneath it. Bulging machines and cables circled its shoulders, haloing its head in an arc of chromed metal. Sparks crackled around it as it moved. The air wrinkled and shimmered above its head. Its eyes were black pearls sunk in the pale folds of its face.

It was a psyker, Enna knew, and a powerful one. She held herself poised, ready to move and slash, or throw the dagger. She could hit one of the thing’s eyes from here.

+That would be unnecessarily unpleasant for us both.+

Get out of my head, witch. Enna formed the thought and let anger shout it through her skull.

+I felt that,+ said the voice. +I actually felt that. You are strong.+

‘Whatever you are, why ever you are here, go away now.’

+That is not possible. I have been putting this off, but Covenant – in his wisdom – has put things into motion that mean I cannot leave you to stare at a candle waiting for the universe to answer.+

The psyker drifted closer. Snakes of ghost light fizzed over its robes and earthed in the deck. Its head turned slowly to look at the candle still burning on the deck at Enna’s feet.

+Even in a universe where billions die every minute, the loss of one soul still has the power to cut,+ sent the psyker.

Enna blinked. The thought voice held no trace of amusement.

+What was she called?+ asked the psyker.

‘Idris,’ she said. ‘She was my mistress.’

+She was your friend.+

Enna took a step back, and turned the dagger in her hand so that its blade was pointed at the psyker.

‘Stay out of my head,’ she growled.

A crackle of sparks crawled across the machines ringing the psyker’s skull. For a moment Enna could not help thinking that the psyker was shrugging. Or laughing. Enna cleared her mind with a whip crack of will, and then poured a skin of focused loathing into her thoughts.

+You are certainly resistant,+ sent the psyker. +Capably so. Your mind and will are well trained. You have mental defences layered over telepathically-altered thought architecture. Impressive. Your mistress knew her business.+

‘You don’t go inside my head,’ snarled Enna, and tried to turn away. Her limbs did not move.

+I already am in your head,+ sent the psyker. +But I am not digging deeply. I could go deeper, but I am not sure you would survive. And I am sorry if you don’t like this, but I have to be satisfied of a few things before I can let you get back to your candle.+

Enna gritted her teeth. She should have known it would come to this. She should have left the ship, just as she had wanted to as soon as the gunship had docked. Covenant was not her master. She should have found a way back to the planet’s surface or onto another ship. She should have found a way to track the creature that had taken the one fixed point in her universe and left her here, alone amongst strangers and enemies.

+You…’ began the psyker. +You are not alone, Enna. Not here. Not unless you wish it. Covenant just wants to be sure.+

‘What are you?’ she snarled. ‘Covenant’s pet witchling? Kept in a box until someone’s head needs ripping open, or their memories eating?’

+Yes, + sent the psyker. +Yes, that is exactly what I am.+

‘He sent you to test me,’ she growled. She forced her will into her limbs, pushing aside the thoughts that told her they could not move. Her hand holding the dagger shook. She cried out, snarling with frustration. ‘He sent you to see if I am what? An assassin? A traitor?’

+He sent me to talk to you.+

‘Why?’

+You served your mistress, and he is of a mind to take you into his service.+

‘But he has doubts?’

+He is an inquisitor,+ said the psyker, and Enna felt the force pressing into her thoughts grow in strength. Motes of light bubbled across her sight. Her hands were still trembling as she forced the weight of her thoughts against the presence in her head. +You served Inquisitor Idris for a decade. So much blood and ash, Enna…+

‘Get… out…’

+I am not stealing these thoughts. Those years are what you were thinking about before I entered this room. You are almost shouting your memories. That first operation on the Solar pilgrim route. The way that you felt after she ordered you to execute that cargo captain. You hated her so much at that moment. He was crying so much, and did not understand what had happened, or why he needed to…’

Enna could see the image of the man sitting on the floor, tears rolling down his heavy cheeks. He thought he had survived. He thought he had saved his crew. She brought her pistol up to meet his tear-filled eyes. The memory swam, and the man’s face was the shrunken head of the psyker hovering in front of her. Enna’s muscles were vibrating under her skin. Sweat was pouring off her. She tasted blood on her tongue. She spat. The wad of red phlegm burned to ash as it flew towards the psyker.

+Now, now… like I say, you are shouting these memories. If you don’t want me to hear, then stop letting them fill your mind.+

Enna felt a rage roar up from her core. She…

She stopped. The acid feeling of anger receded. She watched the blaze of emotion fall down into the pit of her mind. It belonged to someone else, another person, not her. She was detached calm, the creator and destroyer of every feature of her consciousness. Idris had taught her this way of being, she remembered, and she let that memory bring her only calm.

+Better,+ sent the psyker. +You have a lot of control when you want to.+

‘That is what you are testing isn’t it, my control?’

+Your mistress died in front of you, without warning. A decade as the persecutor and acolyte of a woman like her leaves its mark, and loss is a void that can grow to eat the soul from within.+

Enna nodded. In her mind she felt the psyker’s grip release. She shook her limbs. Spun the knife and tucked it into her sleeve.

‘I… I am in control. You can tell him that.’

+I will tell him what I have seen.+

The psyker pivoted and began to drift away.

‘Is Covenant going after him?’

+Goldoran Talicto, you mean? The villain of the hour?+ Enna felt a twitch of something that might have been grim humour in the sending. +Yes, he is going after that creature. And he will bring him down. That is a certainty. Covenant will not let it be otherwise.+

Enna bent down, picked up the candle and pinched out its flame.

‘Idris never mentioned him,’ she said, as a twist of smoke rose in the starlit gloom. ‘Covenant, I mean. I heard her talk of other inquisitors once or twice, but never him. Not his name or even anything that could be him. I don’t even know how they knew each other.’

Threads of static flicked around the psyker. The still air smelt of tallow smoke and ozone.

+Everyone has secrets,+ it sent, and pivoted away.

‘You can tell him that I will follow his will,’ said Enna.

+I was going to.+ The psyker drifted across the floor towards the distant door into the gallery. +I am Mylasa, by the way.+

‘Enna Gyrid.’

+I know.+

SEVEN

Kade Zecker watched ships come out of the night, and heard them scream. They spun, kilometre-long hulls tumbling over and over like arrows broken in mid-flight. Grey smoke oozed from their hulls, coiling against the sheet of stars. Holes dotted their skin, ringed by broken spars and torn armour plates. They did not look like the marks of weapons, or of meteor impacts. They looked like bites.

And the screams went on and on, pouring from the speakers across the bridge, blaring across every frequency, crying with pleas for help and screams of rage…

‘You will all die…’

‘Please help. If you can hear… Oh. God Emperor, help…’

‘Help… die… please…’

‘Emperor… die…

‘Please…

The bridge was still and empty. The light of the stars fell through the open viewports, glistening off…

‘Oh, God Emperor, help…

Silent corridors, air hissing in the seal of her void suit as she pushed open a hatch and saw…

‘Please help…’

The light of the stars beyond the bridge was a smear of nausea and neon…

‘Launch torpedoes,’ she said, and saw the deck officers look at her. ‘All ships, fuses set for internal detonation.’

‘Yes…’ The pause grew in the lieutenant’s voice. ‘Captain.’

‘Do it!’ she roared. ‘Burn them from the void.’

The hatch opened, and the light of her suit pierced the dark, and she saw…

‘Commander,’ said a voice close by. ‘Commander Zecker, please wake up.’

She came awake with a start. Sweat drenched the uniform she had fallen asleep in. She blinked, breathed. The dream hovered just on the edge of her senses, half remembered and fading like the echo of a distant voice.

An ensign stood at attention beside the bunk, face carefully set, eyes pointed at nothing in particular. Somewhere behind him, the blunt presence of her life-ward hovered at the edge of the cabin.

She looked up at the ensign. The man was called Luco – young, just like all the rest of her wards, young and with his edges still to be knocked off.

‘Yes,’ she croaked, the aftertaste of the sun-liquor still on her tongue. ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Apologies, commander, there is a situation.’

Cold gripped her gut. She stood, noting the empty bottle on the table beside a heap of parchment dispatches.

‘Summarise,’ she said, and began to pull a fresh uniform on. Her eye found the spinning brass and ivory of the ship’s chrono. It was just past first division. Throne, she thought, what was happening that needed her wakened halfway through the dark-watch?

‘Spit it out, Mr Luco,’ she snapped. He blinked, shifted, straightening his back.

‘We have received a signal, ma’am,’ he said, his voice trailing off.

‘A fleet order? Has the commencement been brought forward?’

‘No,’ he said, hesitated again, and continued just before she was about to shout at him. ‘It’s not from the fleet. It was directed for the attention of the captain of the Valour’s Flame alone. For you.’

‘What does it say?’ she asked, buttoning up her coat to below her chin.

‘I don’t know, ma’am. Signals have locked it to your personal cipher.’ He held out his hand. A brass and jade cylinder sat on his open palm. Commander Zecker looked at it, and suddenly felt all the details of the ensign’s presence and nervousness freeze the blurred whirring of her mind.

Luco’s hand was trembling beneath the message cylinder.

‘Who is it from?’ she asked carefully, eyes fixed on the cylinder still on his hand.

‘It…’ he began, and she heard his voice catch. She looked up at his eyes. ‘It is from an inquisitor.’

For a long moment she did not move. At the back of her mind, the dream of dead ships shimmered into focus. Then she reached out and took the cylinder.

It was not a fleet. That was too small a name for it. Ships crowded the orbits of Ero and the space close to it. Battleships hung at the centre of schools of escorts, gun towers and command bastions of armour rising from their spines, like great fortresses ripped from the earth and carried into the stars. Battlecruisers, assault barques and grand cruisers moved in battle groups that alone would have been enough to subdue planet systems. Troop and supply transports held close orbit above the planet, the space around them flickering with the firefly glimmer of shuttles and bulk lifters. Millions of troops were now held in the iron dark of the ships’ holds alongside war machines and weaponry. The planets of the Caradryad Sector and its neighbours had been drained of their populations to make this muster of strength. Hundreds of thousands of men and women who had never held a weapon before now waited to go to war beside hardened veterans.

The ships of the Adeptus Mechanicus held to their own tight clusters. Within their holds, the Red Priests of Mars moved amongst the towering forms of Titans, buzzing their prayers to the Machine God as they scattered blessed oil over the silent shells of battle automata. In radiation-soaked prayer halls, skitarii waited in silence for the first step to be taken in this holy war against the enemies of the Omnissiah.

And beside them – alone or in small squadrons – the ships of the Adeptus Astartes moved like lions amongst packs of wolves. Vessels from the Raven Guard and Red Seraphs had answered the Crusader call, and now waited with the rest of the host.

From his position on the bridge of the Dionysia, Cleander von Castellan could see only part of the gathered might, but even that was a greater strength of arms than he had ever seen in one place.

‘Enough,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Will even this be enough?’

His eyes moved from the pict and scanner images to the stain of light which ran across the distant void. Curdled swirls of red-threaded ochre and mottled purple rippled against the stars. A heat haze blur pulled light into streaks, and diluted empty black to muddy brown. That was what had brought this force to this place: the Caradryad Warp Fault and the three Storms of Judgement that spun along the edges of that nightmare zone. Billions had already died, and billions more still would, even if the might of the Crusade host could contain it.

If it could contain it…

Cleander knew more of what was happening to Caradryad than any of the military commanders who gathered at Ero. That was the bitter gift of serving an inquisitor; he had perspective, but that perspective bound him to his service. He could never leave the service of Covenant. What he had seen and learnt at the inquisitor’s side was a death sentence, just as the battles they were about to fight were a death sentence for all the warriors on the ships moving in the void above Ero. If the enemy did not kill them, the inquisitors would. One could not see the true face of the universe and live. Cleander felt his lips twitch in a half smile. Even he was only living on borrowed time.

‘Gunship away, and clear,’ said Void Mistress Ghast from behind him.

Cleander shook himself and blinked.

‘Very good, Mistress Ghast,’ he said. ‘Light the engines. Full speed to the system edge. Set battle conditions through the ship.’ He pulled his smile wide. ‘Some of these war-cows might think it a good idea to try and stop us, so let’s try and live up to our reputations and make it difficult for them.’

Ghast grinned by baring her chrome teeth.

‘Sir,’ she said, and then turned, voice booming from her augmetic throat. ‘Engines to three quarter output, vector to skim the orbital well, full power to shield, all stations to alert.’

Return shouts echoed above the buzz of machines, and then the ship growled to life. The view beyond the viewport moved as the Dionysia nosed down. The cliff-like hull of the Lord Imperator slid downwards. The binaric buzz of the servitors grew and swelled. He could see lights flashing across the machine trenches.

‘Multiple auspex locks,’ called the signals officer. ‘Our movements are being queried by the Lord Imperator.’

Cleander let the side of his mouth curl. 

‘Please remind them of the authority under which we do everything,’ he paused, and grinned wider. ‘Come to think of it, remind them that, furthermore, my warrant of trade lets me do as I please, and wish them hearty thanks for their concern.’

‘We have three squadrons shifting onto our projected path,’ called another officer.

‘Accelerate to attack speed,’ boomed Ghast.

Cleander watched the dagger shapes slide across their view. The ships were stacked so close around Ero’s near orbit that he could see the pinprick lights dotting their bridge castles. 

‘The gunship has docked with the Valour’s Flame,’ said Viola quietly, coming to stand next to him on the command dais. He glanced around. Her jaw was set hard above the high collar of her coat.

‘You would not prefer to wait?’

‘At least until the ship Covenant is commandeering is under way,’ she said, ‘yes, I would prefer to wait until then before we leave him here.’

‘That was not his will, and you are normally very particular about obedience.’

She did not reply.

‘Weapons active on three ships in near-space,’ came a call from the signals trench beneath the dais.

‘All right,’ said Cleander with a grin. The escorts crossing the ship’s path were growing larger. ‘Charge our guns, and give me firing locks.’

‘Is that wise?’ asked Viola.

‘We have a part to play before we cut loose on our errand,’ his smile twitched. ‘And they won’t fire.’

‘And us? You are just charging the guns for show?’

‘We have to make this look good,’ he said, then raised his voice. ‘Mistress Ghast, stand by.’

She looked at him and gave a clicking nod. His crew, just like his ship, was a tool he had forged over the years of his career in the void. Those that knew him tended to think it an expression of his character: brash, unorthodox, and existing only for his caprice. Those very few who truly knew him knew that the Dionysia was simply a tool that had been shaped by its use. And the use he put it to was as a dancer, not a fighter.

The ships were a wall of grey metal against the black.

Cleander watched them grow in his eyes. Glints of light became tall towers venting engine gas into the void. Scratches in armour magnified to metre-deep gouges. The waiting barrels of guns were black circles that could have swallowed a Titan. The clamour of the bridge rose in volume, alerts overlapping with the drone of servitors and the shouts of officers. Cleander did not listen. The sound was irrelevant. He had chosen this path and he was following it.

‘Engines to full,’ he said.

A second later the Dionysia shivered. The ships in front of them lurched closer.

‘Multiple auspex locks,’ called Ghast. ‘They are ready to fire.’

‘If they were going to, they would have.’

Collision alerts blared through the bridge.

‘All stations brace for fire-roll!’ roared Ghast.

Cleander looked at Ghast, and nodded.

‘Engine power to line thrusters. Full burn.’

The view beyond the main viewport turned over. Force thumped through the Dionysia as it corkscrewed past the first escort. Cleander braced his feet against the throne behind him, but did not shift as the hull of the Navy escort raced past. It was so close that he could have picked out one of the escort’s portholes with a pistol shot. The Dionysia kept rolling, cutting between the vessels across their path. And then they were past and levelling out to a straight burn to the black of deep space.

‘Well done, Mistress Ghast,’ said Cleander with a grin. ‘A day’s additional pay to all the command officers, an extra hour deducted from all the ratings.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Ghast, returning his grin with a clack of her metal jaw.

Cleander nodded and turned to step from the command dais. He needed to sleep before they jumped to the warp. Viola was standing at the edge of the dais. She raised an eyebrow and gave a single, small shake of her head.

‘You enjoyed that,’ she said.

‘I really did,’ he replied, and went to try to find his dreams.

Commander Kade Zecker reached the hangar deck of the Valour’s Flame just as the crimson gunship touched the deck. The hangar was clear of all personnel except a quartet of servitors waiting with fuel lines and smoking censers. The shuttle’s thrusters fired, lowering the gunship onto the deck in a wash of heat and smoke. It settled, but its engines did not die.

Ready for a quick lift-off, thought Zecker, as she watched the servitors rock in place, their lobotomised brains uncertain what to do. As though there was a threat here…

A tremble shook her hand where it rested on the hilt of her sheathed sword. She tried to stay focused, to keep the questions and terror from crowding past the years of training.

She waited, watching the gunship, the beat of her heart the rhythm of racing thoughts.

Why was the Inquisition–

The side door of the gunship slid back. Zecker tensed. Adrenaline was burning through her. Zecker’s eyes were wide and unblinking.

She had been born on the moons of Aleusis, and had grown up knowing she would take on her family’s tithe to the Imperial Navy, that war and command were her birthright and her prison. Both had come, and with them the lessons of life and war in an Imperium that was never at peace. She had grown hard in the lives she had taken, as cold and distant from the end results of war as the stars that lit her every sight that was not of armour or metal. There had been promotions, and honours. She had seen millions die in a distant blink of light, and killed close enough that she had felt her enemy’s last breath. She had visited worlds that pilgrims spent decades and fortunes to try to reach, and heard the commands of lord admirals and the sermons of high cardinals.

But she had never seen a member of the Inquisition.

A figure jumped down from the open door of the gunship, straightened, walked towards her. He was tall, his face youthful beneath a topknot of black hair. Red armour encased his torso over a grey storm coat that reminded Zecker of a command officer’s. The hilt of a sword projected from behind his back, and a weapon mounted on his left shoulder panned across the hangar as he walked towards her. Her eyes could not look away from the triple-barred ‘I’ set in gold on his armour. She was aware that there were other figures exiting the gunship but her gaze did not shift, could not shift.

‘They can see your sins and the shape of your soul,’ said a memory of her tutor when she had still been young enough to want to be scared by stories. ‘They can weigh and judge any beneath the Golden Throne, and when they come it means only death, death and suffering.’

He stopped three strides from her.

Instinct brought her to attention.

‘Commander Kade Zecker,’ she said, hearing the words come from her dry throat. ‘Captain of the Valour’s Flame, officer commanding Aegyptus squadron, Battlefleet Bakka.’ She paused, then knelt. ‘The ship and its crew stand ready for your command, lord.’

‘Rise,’ said the inquisitor. She stood, holding herself at attention, her gaze fixed on the distance. ‘I am Covenant.’

She did not know what to say, so said nothing.

‘At ease,’ he said. She relaxed her posture, but her limbs remained locked. She was aware that the other figures from the gunship had formed a loose group behind the inquisitor. She flicked her eyes at them for an instant. A man in the robes of a preacher; a shaven-headed woman in a hessian shift over an armoured bodyglove, a bolt pistol held in each hand; a spindly figure in the robes of a magos of the Mechanicus; a floating shape of black robes and wasted limbs; a dark-eyed woman in form-fitting armour and dark silk, staring back at Zecker with a mocking smile on her lips.

She looked away.

What have I done to bring this down on my ship? she thought. What do they want?

‘Have the actions specified in my signal been taken?’ asked Covenant.

‘Yes, my lord,’ she replied. ‘All signals traffic from the ship has been shut down, and keyed to my command, and my command alone. Except for your transport, no other craft or personnel have left the vessel or come on board.’

Covenant nodded, his gaze still on her. The weapon on his shoulder twitched its barrel across the space behind her.

‘My companions will need berths,’ he said, and stepped past her. ‘They will make themselves known to you if needed.’

Zecker pivoted to follow Covenant. Behind them, the gunship’s engines powered down with a fading whine.

‘Lord…’ she began, her mind spinning. She had not known what to expect, but this man and his carnival of followers was not it. The figures of whispered tale and rumour were ones of awe, splinters of majesty and power that were somewhere between mortals and the god they served. Yet here was the reality. A man with eyes like hard night, a sword at his back, and a simple symbol, worked in gold to mark that he bore the authority of the Emperor himself. He was human, not a god, or a burning saint of judgement. That was almost worse.

‘Make the ship ready to break orbit, and wake your Navigator,’ said Covenant, striding towards the hangar bay doors. Zecker keyed the command console on her wrist. The blast doors to the interior of the ship began to peel open with a hiss of pistons. ‘There are to be no communications to any external parties. Nothing to the fleet, nothing to your superiors.’

‘It will be done, lord,’ she said, and heard the catch in her voice.

Covenant glanced over his shoulder at her.

‘You have a question, commander?’ he asked.

‘No, lord…’ she began, and then felt the weak lie die on her tongue. ‘I just… I just don’t know why you are here.’

He looked ahead, and the gun on his shoulder fixed her briefly with its sight and barrel.

‘There is a place I need to go,’ he said. ‘And you are going to take me there.’

EIGHT

The Navigator enclaves hung on the edge of Helt’s atmosphere. Flattened disks of towers and domes, from a distance they looked like the bodies of sea polyps cast in steel and silver. Kilometre-long spines reached down from their underside to touch the spires rising from the planet beneath. Only time and wealth beyond imagining could have created such structures, and only power that could strangle the Imperium could claim them as their private domains.

Such was the power of the Navigators, though, reflected Cleander as he saw the enclaves grow beyond the shuttle’s canopy. Without them the flow of ships that crossed the galaxy with resources and warriors would cease. Others might rule the Imperium’s worlds, might control its industry, or command its armies, but without the Navigators there was no Imperium.

He nudged the shuttle’s controls, and they began a long arc down towards one of the enclaves. He lowered their speed, focusing on keeping the small craft’s movements large and obvious. In the narrow cabin space behind the cockpit he heard Viola rise from one of the benches, and a second later she dropped into the co-pilot’s position. Cleander kept one eye on the blinking lights of the auspex, which was telling him that they were currently being scrutinised by one hundred and three scanning and weapons targeting systems. As soon as the shuttle had touched the void the auspex had begun to blare alerts, until he had shut them down. That was what happened when you came to the Bakka system, headquarters of the Imperial Navy for all of Segmentum Tempestus. Even here, far beyond the system’s outer belts of star forts, there were countless weapons platforms and system monitors watching the approach to every moon and planet. The fact that they had the right and authority to come here did not make them welcome.

‘This is going to be delicate,’ said Viola. ‘I would advise that you let me speak first, as agreed.’

He turned his eyes to the view beyond the canopy as the upper surface of one of the enclaves grew to blank out the vista of planet and space. It had been weeks of travel to reach Bakka, the Dionysia cutting through the edge of storms in the warp. He had tried not to sleep during the passage from Ero, but the stimms had eventually stopped working, and the dreams he had been avoiding had come to claim him. The click of talons and cruel laughter had followed him into the first seconds of his waking, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath. The hours away from sleep had been only a partial relief. His skin and eyes itched, and shadows gathered at the edges of his eyes when he moved. That had not helped him absorb the quantities of information that Viola had tried to go through with him, but he had got more than the gist.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘The nature of what we are doing had somehow escaped my awareness.’

‘Your habitual flippancy would best be put aside,’ said Viola. He glanced at her. She sat stiffly in the second seat, high-collared red coat immaculate, ivory hair plaited and dotted with jade-capped pins. The iris of her left eye was silvered over as she reviewed whatever information she thought relevant in the last moments of approach to the stronghold of one of the greatest Navigator bloodlines.

‘You are probably right,’ he muttered, but she did not reply.

An indicator blinked green on the controls, and he looked around to see a tower shaped like a vast bald head loom before them. Gun turrets clustered in its eye sockets, and a rayed disk of gold gleamed on its forehead. Cleander gently fired thrusters, clipping the shuttle’s speed as it arced closer. Light spilled from between the face’s open lips as blast doors withdrew behind gilded teeth. They flew into the mouth. Bright white light washed over them and poured through the shuttle’s canopy. Cleander set the shuttle down, carefully, and powered down the engines. Behind them, the outer blast doors began to close.

A vast chamber extended away from them. The metal plating of its walls, deck and ceiling gleamed, burnished to a uniform perfection. Stab-lights suspended from the vaulted roof burned with a hard, white brilliance. It was gleaming, bright and echoingly empty.

Cleander waited for a minute until the outer doors shut with a deep thud that passed from the deck into the shuttle. Hatches irised open on the ceiling and air breathed into the hangar, fuming white with cold. After another minute the external atmosphere monitor flashed green. The auspex had blanked as soon as they had passed through the mouth-framed outer doors, but all the other systems were still working. Viola keyed the vox and external speakers.

‘The inheritor of the von Castellan dynasty is honoured to be welcomed to the domain of the Yeshar, and comes in all humility to discuss matters of mutual interest.’

The words echoed from the gleaming walls, fading, as the static continued to come from the vox.

Cleander looked at her.

‘Let’s get out,’ he said. Viola did not respond for a second, then nodded slowly.

Cleander released the shuttle’s rear hatch, and squeezed back into the narrow compartment that ran down the length of the fuselage. Koleg pulled himself from his harness as Cleander passed. The specialist wore plain black fatigues and carried a pair of pistols holstered across his chest. His eyes and face were as impassive as ever.

Cleander stepped into the bright light and moved to the front of the shuttle, blinking, his blue dress coat hanging open over the silk waistcoat beneath. Viola and Koleg followed. The air was cold, and tasted of metal.

‘Well,’ said Cleander, ‘this bodes well.’

A clank echoed through the hangar. Panels of metal slid outwards from the surface of the opposite wall and spun sideways. More panels clanked out and furled aside so that it seemed as though a fifty-metre section of the wall was pushed aside like a sheet of paper folding over and over. The space beyond was black.

Cleander glanced at Viola, but she was staring directly ahead at the space between the doors. Cleander took a breath and settled his shoulders. The wall stopped folding. A woman stepped from the dark, swathed in dark blue silk. Pearls and chips of jet dotted her embroidered bodice. Silver feathers extended from behind her back, haloing her with bright turquoise eyes. She glided towards them, the long fall of her dress hiding her steps. She stopped five paces from them, and paused, back straight, eyes bright and cold in a sharp face.

Viola inclined her head, just enough to show respect. The woman in blue returned the gesture, but not as deeply. Her eyes moved to Cleander. He smiled.

‘Welcome to the Tempest Hold of House Yeshar, scions of the von Castellan dynasty,’ she said, her voice as clear and cold as the air it moved through. ‘I am Yasmin. I speak for the Yeshar.’

‘We come to discuss a matter of mutual interest,’ said Viola. ‘And we are grateful to be received by you.’

‘You have not been received yet,’ said Yasmin. ‘Your warrant and the introductions you furnished are enough to bring you this far, but as to your business being taken further…’ She smiled with one side of her mouth. ‘That remains to be seen.’

Viola opened her mouth, but the intermediary held up a silk-gloved hand.

‘I will be frank. You are a beggar dynasty,’ said Yasmin. ‘You were great once, for a passing moment, but what do you have now? One ship left of what was once a fleet? And you still have an agreement with those by-blow creatures of House Su-Nen to pilot that craft until the death of your current Navigator. Your guide still lives and serves, or you would not be able to reach us here. You might be here to break your contract with the Su-Nen, but where is the advantage for Yeshar in that? One ship,’ she smiled more broadly, ‘that is as nothing. You could offer us a half-stake in all you found beyond the edge of night, and it would not be worth it. Aside from the amusement of the insult to House Su-Nen, what is there that you can offer us that is not – and let us again be frank – an insult to us, and an embarrassment to you?’

Cleander laughed, the sound rolling through the hangar space as it echoed from the burnished steel.

‘I like her,’ he said, turning to Viola. His sister’s face had become fixed, her eyes focused on Yasmin.

‘It seems that it is you that offers insult to us, mamzel,’ she said, her voice flat with control.

Yasmin spread her hands, still smiling.

‘I simply wish all our discussions to be open, and without misunderstanding.’

Viola smiled back, but there was nothing of warmth or humour in the gesture. Cleander always thought of her as the counterweight to his own tendencies: the careful hand that steered a course around trouble; the diplomat that maintained the peace in the star city that was a void-going ship; the balancer of the thousand facets of a dynasty that even now could call tens of thousands of souls to its service. But as he saw her smile at the intermediary, he was reminded that she was still a von Castellan.

‘Then let me be clear in return,’ said Viola, and reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out a small disc of brass. She held it on her palm and a blue hololithic cone sprang from the lens at its centre. An image of the frigate that had engaged them above Ero spun in the centre of the light. Data cascaded beside it in long ribbons. ‘This is the Truth Eternal, a vessel of a battlefleet sent into the Veiled Region twelve years ago. It was assigned to Battle Group Caradryad, but it came from here, from Bakka, from the Prion sub-fleet.’ Yasmin frowned at the projection and data, but Viola continued, her cold smile still in place. ‘Like all of the Prion sub-fleet, its Navigator came from one House, from this House. From House Yeshar.’

‘I fail to see how…’

‘The ship was part of an atrocity that led to the deaths of members of the Inquisition. A ship that is recorded as being guided by one of your Navigators…’ The holo projection of the ship dissolved to be replaced by the empty eyes of a skull set in a tri-barred ‘I’. ‘So the opportunity that we are here to offer you is the chance to give our master a reason not to condemn the line of Yeshar to being cleansed by fire, right down to your very last deformed broodling.’

Yasmin had gone very still, her eyes dancing between the projection and the three of them.

Cleander shrugged at her, and grinned. Beside him, Viola switched off the projection and put the disc back in her pocket.

‘Just so that our discussions are open, and without misunderstanding,’ she said.

Yasmin turned her head, eyes moving off to the edge of the room, as though listening to something that no one else could hear. Then she looked back at them and nodded.

‘Come with me,’ she said, and turned towards the opening at the far end of the hangar.

Cleander looked at Viola. His sister’s expression was neutral. He raised an eyebrow. She moved past him without a word, following Yasmin into the waiting dark.

‘Your honour…’

On the wall of Gothar’s Primary Conurbation, Judge Orsino, High Justice of the Veiled Stars, spat. The wad of phlegm splattered grey on the pale stone beneath her feet. The hot wind stirred her robes and set the tassels hanging from her shoulder plates flapping. Her muscles were already aching from the weight of her regalia. It had been a long time since she had been capable of fighting a running battle in full carapace armour, but the traditions of her office did not account for the venerable nature of those who had to uphold them. Swathed in robes of black and surplices of heavy gold and crimson, she bore the seven-foot sceptre of judgement without a tremble. Her lifeguards had advised against coming to the walls, and when that advice was disregarded, they had counselled that she need not make herself a target. She had ignored that advice too. In these times everyone needed to see that the rule of law still stood, that she still stood. The servo bracing, which helped her neck hold the weight of her high-crested helm, clicked as she gave a small shake of her head.

‘All to hell…’ she muttered. ‘All to hell…’

‘Your honour…’ said Galbus again from just behind her.

She could hear the edge of frustration in his voice. She could forgive him that. The man had a hard job. As a senior executor of Imperial law, her actions not only needed to be grounded in precedent, they also formed precedent. Everything she did here was an interpretation of dozens, perhaps hundreds of edicts, and by citing them she in turn was adding to the Book of Judgement that was the Emperor’s law. The responsibility of ensuring that the body of law was both followed and fed was hers; she was a judge of the Adeptus Arbites, a high official in the service of the Imperium bound only by the writ of law and the orders of her few superiors. The responsibility for both researching the word of law and cataloguing her judgements fell to Galbus. Hunched beneath purple and black robes, and weighed down by an auto-transcriber and data-siphon, he followed her everywhere, like the shadow of her oaths of duty. It was not that what the Lexarchivist had to say at this moment was unimportant, it was just that whatever he was going to tell her could wait. The reality of what she was seeing, however, could not.

The ghost-forests were burning. Even from this distance she could feel the heat of the blaze. Orange flames churned across the horizon. Smoke smudged the light of the sun as it set. Light flashed in the grey clouds as tree trunks exploded. The wind smelled of ash and the sweat-scent of burning sap.

At her feet, the conurbation’s wall plunged down from where she stood before it met the roofs of the slum. The tangle of shacks filled the space between the wall and the ghost-forest. Suspended chain-bridges linked towers of scrap metal. Fire flickered in the shadowed canyons between piles of makeshift buildings. Every few moments the sound of an explosion cracked through the air, and a plume of debris and smoke rose from between the jumble of roofs. There was a sound to anarchy, she had always thought. She heard it now rising from the slum, a low growl of sullen discontent, punctuated by gunfire.

‘Your honour, there is a matter that you must–’

‘Has Governor Ket sent troops in yet?’ she said.

‘No, your honour,’ said Galbus. ‘She is gathering them to the principle palaces of governance. Her aides say that she is concerned that moving them beyond the wall could leave them vulnerable if the situation deteriorates further. But there is another–’

‘Leaves her vulnerable more like,’ snorted Judge Orsino, ‘and the situation is going to get worse.’ In the distance a cluster of vine-hung ghost-trees vanished in a roar of superheating wood as the crown fires leapt across the canopy of pale leaves. ‘Set the execution teams on ready alert to take Governor Ket. The command edict is mine, understand? Mine alone, and make sure that Ket’s spies have no idea what is going on. She has yet to move beyond being able to absolve herself, but if she does, the Emperor’s judgement must be swift.’

‘Your will be done,’ said Galbus, and then spoke again before she could speak over him. ‘But there is a matter that you must address immediately, your honour.’

She turned and looked at him, now noticing the sweat on his face, and the twitch of his eyes. He was breathing hard.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘A message, keyed to your personal communication channel.’

She nodded once. Galbus handled all of her communications, personal or otherwise.

‘And? Out with it man. What does it say?’

‘It orders you to attend a visitation at the courthouse.’ She began to shake her head. Galbus pressed on. ‘It was enciphered with a key from your archives. I have… I have never seen it before, but it bears the notation of the Inquisition…’

She froze, eyes narrowing.

‘What else did the message say?’

‘Just one word,’ said Galbus. ‘Covenant.’

Judge Orsino closed her eyes.

‘Curse it,’ she muttered as she let out a long breath. ‘All right, prepare the lighter for immediate departure.’ Galbus nodded, and began to press keys on his chest-mounted console.

She looked up as a flight of Marauder bombers passed overhead. Heavy canisters of anti-plant hung from their wings. They curved above the edge of the ghost-forest, engines churning eddies in the smoke. She watched as the canisters fell, and the pale trunks of the ghost-trees began to dissolve into wet sludge ahead of the advancing inferno.

‘Curse it all to hell,’ she breathed again.

They waited in the enclave of the Yeshar for six days. Yasmin had led them from the hangar bay into circular corridors of white marble. The walls were bare of hangings, but crawled with relief carvings. Stories of people, places and worlds that Viola had never heard of: half equine mutants fought with muscled humans; lithe-limbed girls morphed into trees; teams of horses reared from the sea, their manes churning with the surf as the shore cracked under their hooves. Light crept from joins in the stone, so that it seemed that the sun blazed on the other side of the walls.

Squat figures in thick blue velvet passed them, hooded heads dipping to Yasmin. Viola had looked around at one of the robed figures after it had passed. It had been looking back at her, pale circles of eyes catching the light in the dark hole of its hood. She had walked on after Yasmin, footsteps echoing sharply even in the smallest spaces. Eventually the floor had begun to climb, spiralling like the inside of a sea shell. They had walked on, and come to a set of obsidian doors inlaid with arcs of silver, which had slid into the walls at Yasmin’s approach. Beyond had been a suite of rooms. Black wood furniture sat on seas of white fur. Yasmin had withdrawn, and left them in luxury-wrapped silence. 

‘Have you noticed?’ Viola had asked. Cleander had looked at her, raised an eyebrow. ‘There are no servitors that I have seen.’

Viola’s implanted chronometer said that they had been waiting for twenty hours since then. That layer of strangeness had continued, exquisite food arriving in the hands of short, heavy-muscled figures in blue and silver tabards, who had answered their requests only with nods, or with silence. 

At last Yasmin returned. Viola thought that the intermediary looked tired under the layer of composure. The visible red of capillaries had crept into the corners of her eyes, and the tips of her fingers were pale from recent stimm use. 

‘You are who you claim to be,’ said Yasmin, ‘and it seems that your… association with the Inquisition is also likely to be true.’

‘That is a relief,’ Cleander muttered, knocking back a flute of dark liquor. ‘I was worried that there had been a misunderstanding.’

‘So,’ said Viola ignoring her brother’s words. ‘What have you to tell us?’

Yasmin had frowned, and Viola thought she saw pain twitch at the edge of the woman’s mouth.

‘You need to understand something,’ said Yasmin.

‘I think what we need to understand is everything that you can tell us about the renegade frigate Truth Eternal and its movements.’

Yasmin winced, and shook her head.

‘That is something you will have…’ she said, and paused, pink tongue poised on white teeth. Viola thought the woman looked almost embarrassed about what she was about to say.

Here we go, thought Viola.

‘But there are conditions,’ said Yasmin.

Cleander snorted.

‘Of course…’ he said. ‘Of course there are conditions. Can the Navis Nobilite do anything without trying to cut a deal?’

‘Can a rogue trader ever not try to take something for nothing?’ snapped Yasmin.

‘Fair point,’ said Cleander, with a shrug.

‘What are your proposed conditions for cooperation with the Inquisition?’ asked Viola with a smile, making sure that there was acid in with the sweetness.

Yasmin shivered, but held herself poised.

‘We wish to help you, but we wish you to help us also.’

‘Oh?’ said Viola. ‘With what?’

Yasmin shook her head.

‘Your request has caused,’ she paused; considered, ‘certain matters to be discussed by the Consanguinity. There are,’ another pause, ‘familial matters involved, you understand? Complex matters that Yeshar must see resolved.’

‘Without knowing what they are, we cannot agree to anything,’ said Viola, ‘and, without you giving us what we want, then we are left with you refusing a direct request from the Inquisition.’

‘I cannot explain the matter to you,’ said Yasmin. ‘There are aspects of it that I am not privileged to know. So the first condition is that you follow me now, so that the matter can be explained.’

Cleander shook his head.

‘I don’t like it,’ he said. Viola looked at him, and caught the hardness in her brother’s eye. Be careful, her look said, these are not creatures to be trusted even a little.

Viola almost smiled at the moment of mutual understanding.

‘I don’t like it either,’ said Viola. ‘No. The answer is no. Whoever can explain this complexity, and give us what we need, can come to us.’

‘I am afraid that is not possible,’ said Yasmin. Her hands were shaking now, Viola noticed, almost vibrating like plucked harp strings.

‘Why?’

‘Because Heir Apparent Livilla has not moved from her chamber in three centuries.’ Yasmin stepped back and motioned at the door, which slid into the walls without a sound. ‘Please, follow me. She waits to speak to you.’

Enna spun as the doors to the chamber opened. The muzzles of combat shotguns looked back at her. Figures in white and blue carapace flowed through the doors, fanning out to cover every corner of the room. Her hands twitched towards her own weapons but she did not draw. Covenant remained by the shelves which covered each of the room’s towering walls. He held a leather-bound volume open in his hands. Severita stood three paces from him, still and watching. The light of a setting sun poured through the high windows, fire orange and bruised violet.

‘Absolute authority does not remove the value of courtesy.’

The woman who followed the voice was swathed in black and daubed with gold. A high, elaborately crested helm rose above a wrinkled face. A pair of bright eyes scanned the room as she strode forward, augmetic bracing clacking with each step. A golden two-headed eagle spread its wings from the top of the staff in her right hand, its claws clutching the scales of justice. The base of the staff tapped the floor with each of her steps. Authority and raw, impatient willpower radiated from her. Judge Orsino stopped in the middle of the room. Her jaw shifted as though she was chewing. The wrinkles of her face shifted into deeper patterns of age.

‘Your honour,’ said Covenant, closing the book and replacing it on the shelf.

Orsino breathed out, gave a slight shake of her head, and sighed.

‘I have a cult of witch-addled fanatics setting fires that burn across half of this world, a global riot in the making, and a governor who thinks the best way of coping with it all is to close the doors and hope it goes away,’ she paused. ‘And something tells me that none of these things are what has brought about this reunion.’

Covenant stepped away from the side of the room, his hands crossed behind his back, the grey of his unmarked robes shifting to dark red as the light of the setting sun caught them. Shotgun muzzles tracked him.

‘I need your knowledge,’ he said.

Orsino’s mouth twisted, though Enna could not tell if it was a sneer or a smile.

‘Leave us,’ said Orsino, glancing at one of the Arbites. ‘Secure this room. No one disturbs us.’ The troopers lowered their weapons and withdrew, moving like components of finely set cogwork. Only a diminutive figure in purple and black robes remained at the judge’s side, shoulders bowed under the weight of a clicking auto-scribe, which was spooling parchment onto the floor. The doors to the chamber closed, and Enna heard a series of heavy thumps as bolts slid into place. She felt herself tense. She did not like the sudden feeling that they had been confined. Orsino glanced at the robed figure.

‘Please stop scripting my words, Galbus,’ she said, ‘and disable any data-recording devices. This is not a conversation that the Adeptus Arbites will want remembered.’

She looked back at Covenant.

‘No Josef?’ she said. ‘Surely he can’t have passed to the Emperor’s grace.’

Covenant shook his head.

‘He lives. He is aboard the ship we travelled on.’

Orsino nodded.

‘Good. I always thought that the jaws of death would spit him out if they tried to chew on him.’ Her gaze moved to Enna and then to Severita, eyes glinting and clear. ‘So these two are new – tough and sly, and tough and cruel, but which one is which?’

She smiled, and then flinched. A spasm of pain pinched the wrinkles tight on her face. She waved a hand and Galbus stepped forward to take the eagle-topped staff from her. She let go of it, and reached up to the helm.

‘Help me with this, girl,’ she said. Enna hesitated, uncertain. ‘Yes, you, come here. Trust me, I am not going to use it as an opportunity to try to kill you or your master. Would have done that when I walked in, if I was feeling that angry or stupid.’ Enna bristled, then moved forward and helped unfasten the headdress from the servo bracing around the judge’s collar, pulling it from Orsino’s head. Orsino straightened. Beneath the tall helm, her hair was a cropped layer of iron grey.

‘One of the lesser-known torments of authority,’ she said, nodding at the crest, and rolling her shoulders. The augmetic bracing beneath her robes whirred with the movement. She moved to the black marble desk that sat across the largest set of windows. Enna thought the old judge was going to sit on the high backed chair behind the desk, but instead she leaned against the desk and crossed her arms. Enna almost laughed. For a second, the image of the judge leaning casually against a bar in a hive drinking hole filled her mind with perfect clarity.

‘You know what is happening?’ asked Orsino. She looking at Covenant, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Half of the worlds this side of the Veil Stars are burning. Madness and rebellion are crawling out from their holes beneath the light of the stain across the stars. I have reports that say the Techrachs on Prion dumped the output of their chem-stills into the water supply of every major settlement on the planet. They killed themselves at the same time, although less painfully than the end they imposed on their people. Vox-hailers across the world shouted that they were saving their world from the “three monarchs of night”. The astropath that interpreted the message expired while receiving it. On Helix an army of pyro-cultists has turned the city buried under the southern pole into a furnace. Five billion souls turned to ash. On Kret every first born soul vanished in a single night. No traces. No bodies. That was yesterday. There are more, from across Caradryad. I could go on…’ she paused, sighed, shook her head. ‘But of course you know this. It’s just not why you are here, is it?’

Covenant pulled the venom crystal blade from a slit in his robe, and set it carefully down on the black marble desk. The pale crystal looked like frosted glass against the dark surface. Orsino looked at it, eyes flicking along its length for a long moment.

‘Well,’ she breathed, ‘what a nasty thing. You know what it is?’

Covenant gave a small shake of his head.

‘Only what it does,’ he said.

‘Kill, that is what it does,’ said Orsino. ‘Venom crystal, lethal in all kinds of ways.’ She reached out and picked up the blade by its leather bound grip. ‘Rare too. It’s not naturally occurring – it’s grown. Not the kind of thing you just find, or that you buy from even the most subtle shadow trader.’ She flicked the blade into the air. It spun, the crystal blurring as it fell. Enna felt herself tense. The old judge caught it, and held it still in front of her eyes.

‘It’s from Iago,’ said Orsino, ‘from the catacomb warrens under the furnace cities. The water from the upper strata used to pull all kinds of things out of the tox-zones, and then trickle down to harden in the dark. Thousands of years, thousands of litres of water and poison, to make something that can take life with a single cut, or give nightmares with a scratch. All depending on where in the warrens it came from.’ She looked at the blade. The milky crystal was catching the light of the setting sun, its splintered edges sparkling red. ‘Nasty thing, as I said. Who did you get it from?’

‘A dead man,’ he said.

Orsino laughed.

‘You always were secretive,’ she said, replacing the blade on the desk. ‘I was just asking because whoever it was must be the last of their kind.’

Covenant frowned.

‘There was a cult, of course,’ said Orsino. ‘Called themselves the Renewed. Lived down there in the dark warrens of Iago, would take people from the higher stratas above and remake them.’

‘Remake?’ said Enna.

Orsino looked at her, eyes glinting.

‘Made them no longer themselves. At least, that is what the reports said. People would vanish and then turn up again, but not be themselves. Never enough of a problem to become a real problem, of course. Or so I thought. They never threatened the planet’s output. Murder and abduction are not crimes against the Imperium,’ she shrugged, ‘so I never went to prosecute them.’

‘But you remembered them,’ said Covenant.

‘I remember every little seed of darkness I come across,’ said Orsino, and smiled, but there was sadness, not pride in her eyes. ‘That’s why you came here.’

‘You said whoever this came from must have been the last of their kind,’ said Covenant. ‘Why?’

‘Because I must have been wrong in my judgement,’ said Orsino. She looked at the setting sun, and frowned. She looked at Enna, and waved her forward, dipping her head to receive the tall crested helm. Enna lowered it into place and heard the servo braces lock. Judge Orsino straightened, any illusion of being anything other than the manifest instrument of the Emperor’s justice gone as she took her staff of office from the hunched Galbus. She took a step away from the desk, and then turned to look at Covenant. ‘I must have been wrong, because a decade ago one of your peers went to Iago and purged the Renewed to the last. Not even ashes left to mark the deed.’

Covenant’s stillness had hardened.

‘Which inquisitor?’ he said.

Orsino frowned, and gave a small shake of her head.

‘Talicto,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto.’

Covenant nodded and turned away, his fingers tapping the edge of the desk as though in time with the rhythm of a secret thought.

‘We will need any records you have relating to Iago, this cult and Talicto’s action.’

‘Of course,’ said Orsino. ‘I will see that you have it before you leave.’

Covenant nodded, but his eyes were on the blade.

Orsino watched him for a long moment.

‘This is not about a Thorian matter, is it?’ she said, her voice low with control. ‘A ghost of Argento’s mistakes leading you into the dark?’

Covenant shook his head, paused and then turned away, dark eyes on the fire-lit horizon.

‘Idris is dead,’ he said, softly, and looked back at Orsino, and it seemed that the fire still clung to the darkness of his eyes. ‘Talicto killed her.’

Orsino let out a breath, and then shook her head.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘Truly. We never saw eye-to-eye, and I am not able to forgive her, but I am sorry.’ The old judge bit her lip, and shook her head again. ‘Covenant, it is not my place – God Emperor, it isn’t – but no good can come of this. I don’t know what is happening, I don’t know who or what is involved, but I do know something of serving the Inquisition. And if what I know from those times means anything, it allows me to remind you that obsession is the first step to blindness. And no matter what else, an inquisitor should never be blind.’

Covenant shot her a look, and for a second Enna thought she saw something in the dark eyes that she had not seen before, a shadow of a something, quickly veiled.

‘Thank you, your honour,’ he said, his voice as steady as ever. ‘For your knowledge, and your words.’

Orsino inclined her head, and then turned for the door. Galbus’ auto-quills clattered back into action, poised to pour words onto parchment.

‘If you wish to serve again…’ said Covenant suddenly, and Orsino stopped and look back at him. He met her gaze. ‘Then I would value your skills and wisdom.’

‘Skills and wisdom…’ she chuckled. ‘You were never a flatterer, Covenant, so I will take it as a compliment that you tried. But the answer is just as it was after he raised you to the rank. I have other duties, and another calling.’ She nodded at Enna and Severita. ‘Besides, you have others to walk this path with you.’ She walked towards the doors, which opened at her approach. ‘You know, I sometimes wonder, if I had been chosen, what it would have done to me?’ She turned on the threshold and gave Covenant a final look. ‘Most of the time I am glad I did not find out,’ she said, and was gone, her steps clicking in time with the scratch of Galbus’ quills as he hurried in her wake.

‘I leave you here,’ said Yasmin, as they stopped behind a circular door sealed by an iris of copper-plated steel. The intermediary bowed her head once and glided back down the passage and out of sight.

Cleander glanced at Viola, but his sister was steely faced, her eyes moving over the sealed door. Koleg stood behind them both. He had been permitted to keep his weapons, a fact that seemed to make him comfortable, and Cleander nervous. There was a dismissive degree of confidence in letting someone bring a selection of compact but highly effective weaponry into your presence.

That they were going to converse with an Heir Apparent of House Yeshar was also not helping his nerves. He had dealt with Navigators – it was an unfortunate necessity for a rogue trader – but he had always tried to keep such dealings at arm’s length. He never spent more time with the warp-seers than he had to, and had never met with one of the senior members of any Navigator House. Let alone one that had been confined to one location for centuries. His hand flinched towards where his own needle pistol hung in a holster under his blue dress coat.

The iris door opened with a murmur of gears. A short length of corridor waited beyond the threshold. Another copper and steel iris sealed the passage’s far end. He stepped forward, glancing at Viola, who followed. The doors shut behind them. A second later the warm light that suffused the passage vanished. Cleander tensed, hand on his pistol. Behind him he heard the soft noise of Koleg drawing a weapon. Violet light filled the passage. Grey moisture sprayed from hidden nozzles in the walls. Cleander tasted chemicals as the mist wetted his face. The sprays stopped, the violet light blinked off, and the doors before them opened.

Cleander blinked at the sudden brightness. He could see thick foliage, and sunlight. He took a breath and his nose caught the scent of earth and flowers. For an instant he hesitated, and then stepped forward. Warmth folded over him as he crossed into the space beyond the door.

A latticed dome of wrought iron arced above him, holding a clear blue sky and white puffs of clouds. Trees spread their leaves in the sunlight, and Cleander caught sight of birds taking wing from branches, their feathers sudden flickers of colour. Wrought iron paths curved away from the door, meandering between trees and crossing chuckling streams. A breath of warm wind touched Cleander’s face, and he laughed.

‘Such paradises do we make that gods do tread the earth and believe themselves still in heaven’s embrace,’ he said.

‘Or do the bowers of this mortal heaven a soul’s prison hide,’ answered a voice that came from all around them. More birds took wing at its sound. Koleg still had his pistol out, and raised its barrel. ‘I have not met someone who could quote ancient Terran verse in a long time.’ A shape moved forwards from the dappled shadows beneath the trees. Koleg’s gun rose but the shape was only a bird that hopped onto a branch within a stride of Cleander and cocked its head. Its plumage was iridescent blue. Now it was still, Cleander noticed the silvered device that sat on its head where its left eye would have been. A tiny turquoise lens gleamed in the chromed setting.

‘So you are Cleander von Castellan,’ said the omnipresent voice, and as it spoke Cleander saw the bird’s beak open as though it were singing. ‘And Viola, your noble sister, and the reason that your dynasty did not crumble beneath you sooner.’

‘To whom do we speak?’ asked Viola.

‘Looks are difficult to interpret aren’t they? I am Livilla Yeshar, Tertiary Heir Apparent of House Yeshar. Forgive my not meeting with you sooner.’

‘You know what we need, honoured mistress,’ said Viola. ‘Without wishing insult, our patience is wearing thin, and we would receive the information we have asked for and be on our way.’

‘Soothe your humours, precious one,’ said the voice of Livilla Yeshar. ‘Given what I have been told of you both, I had expected your brother to be the impatient one, but then who can know what shape a thing truly is without seeing it?’ The blue-feathered bird spread its wings and flitted to a branch further into the forest-filled dome. ‘Follow my fetch – it will lead you to me.’

Cleander advanced along the metal path. The bird went ahead, gliding and hopping to stay always just within sight. They moved under the canopy of trees. Insects buzzed in the air, and the cool shadows swirled in the breath of a wind that must have been made by artifice, but seemed and smelled as real as any breeze that Cleander had ever felt. At last the bird hopped onto a branch and did not fly away as they moved towards it. The forest opened as Cleander stepped past the bird. A swathe of meadow grass sat under the false sun, the heavy heads of flowers swaying in the air.

A column sat at the centre of the grass. Unlike everything else that Cleander had seen since coming on board the Yeshar’s orbital enclave, the chair was a blunt mass of unrefined technology. Wires snaked over and through the metal skeleton of its frame. Pumps hissed and gasped, as yellow slime spattered into crystal vials. Glass spheres spun. Bottles of viscous grey liquid hung from an iron frame above it. Tubes coiled down from the bottles to bury themselves in the flesh that occupied the chair’s embrace.

If Livilla Yeshar had ever looked human, that time was now long past. Flesh sagged in thick folds from an elongated head, hanging down to touch the wasted vestige of her torso. Robes of deep blue, stitched with silver symbols of moons hid the rest of her. A hand sat on the iron arm of the chair like a dead spider. A single cataract-clouded eye was still visible amongst the folded flesh of her face. A metal plate covered what must have been her forehead. Pus seeped from where the edge of the plate met her skin.

‘Welcome,’ said the voice that came from everywhere except the figure on the chair. Cleander looked around. Birds covered the branches of the trees, all of them watching him with one sapphire eye set in silver. The blue-feathered creature that had guided them landed on the back of the chair, and cocked its head as it had before. ‘Now that we have met properly, let us do business.’

Cleander shrugged.

‘If now is a good time.’

Livilla Yeshar laughed with the throats of a hundred birds.

‘You claim a frigate named the Truth Eternal was involved in a grave atrocity–’

‘It was there,’ said Viola, ‘and I have furnished your intermediary with sensor captures of the incident.’

‘And while I could dispute those captures as proof, I am not going to. That this act could be connected with the consanguinity of Yeshar is a matter that causes us distress. So, let us begin with facts. The Falchion frigate Truth Eternal was indeed allocated a Navigator from our consanguinity. The ship was thought by the fleet to be lost with all hands in the Veiled Region a decade ago.’ She paused, and the sapphire bird ruffled its feathers. ‘It was not lost. It was sequestered by a member of the Inquisition.’

Cleander unconsciously shifted the fit of his eye patch, but remained silent. The bird’s crystal eye was fixed on him, glittering with focus.

‘That fact was hidden from the Navy at the order of the inquisitor who took the ship. It was hidden from us at the time as well.’

‘But you knew,’ said Cleander.

‘We came to know,’ said Livilla Yeshar. ‘The inquisitor in question needed a new Navigator, and so came to us for a replacement.’

‘Which you supplied?’

‘Which we supplied, as loyal servants of the Emperor in answer to the request of His anointed representative,’ she said, her chorus voice icy.

‘Who was the inquisitor?’ asked Viola.

‘I think you know the answer to that question.’

‘Talicto,’ said Viola.

The bird shifted its grip on the back of the chair.

‘We have had no contact with the Navigator we supplied or the ship since then. We do not know where it is or have any means of finding it.’

‘But you have something?’

‘The Navigator who first guided the ship,’ said Livilla. ‘He knows where the Truth Eternal went for its first three years of service to the inquisitor. And I can put him at your disposal if we reach agreement.’

‘What do you wish from us?’ asked Viola.

‘Not from you, from your master,’ said Livilla. ‘Protection. We wish his oath of protection. We do not wish to deny him what he needs, but this is a matter that involves others of his order.’

‘You have it,’ said Cleander, without hesitation. ‘For your help, our master will bend his power and will to protect you from anything that might result.’

Viola’s face was a mask of control.

‘There is something else, isn’t there?’ she said softly. ‘If the Navigator you replaced did not die, why did they need to be replaced?’

‘Because he went insane.’ The bird on the chair flicked its wings, and pulled itself into the air.

‘Did mother send you?’ said the chained Navigator as they entered its cell. They had left Livilla Yeshar and her garden, and descended by humming elevators to another level of the enclave. The cell that Yasmin led them to was alone at the end of a long, featureless white corridor.

The face that turned towards Viola as she stepped through the door had no eyes.

No natural eyes at least, she reminded herself.

Tracks of crusted pus and dried blood marked the hollow cheeks beneath each empty socket. The man’s skin was grey and reminded Viola of the flesh of the blind mutant fish that lived in the bilge-lakes of void ships. His body and limbs were long, too long, as though his flesh were stretched dough. A metal plate had been riveted across the centre of his forehead to hide his third eye.

The cell was an ovoid, its white walls flowing from the apex of the ceiling to the carpet-filled floor, like the inside of a bird’s egg. The Navigator sat on the cell’s only piece of furniture – a long bench upholstered in black velvet. Shackles circled his wrists and led to cleats set in the walls. At a glance Viola realised that the length of each chain meant the man would barely be able to lift something to his lips.

‘It was mother, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘What are you? New guards? More surgeons? Talking companions? That went so well last time – why not give it another try?’

Yasmin, in quiet attendance at the side of the cell, leant forwards as though to talk to a child.

‘Master Titus…’ she began.

‘Master? Ha!’ snarled the chained Navigator. ‘I should have known it was you, Yasmin. Haven’t you got something useful to do, like dying?’

‘There are people here who wish to talk to you.’

‘I know,’ snapped Titus Yeshar. Then he turned his head so that the pits of his eyes pointed at where Viola and Cleander stood. He opened his mouth, and licked the air. ‘I can smell them… siblings… two flames of different colour, yet on the same wood they feed to make the smoke of their existence… and on the broken walls of fortune… what songs, oh simple night… what songs will you sing to me?’

Cleander rubbed a hand around the edge of his eyepatch.

‘The lady of birds wasn’t lying then,’ he muttered. ‘He is insane.’

‘Mother,’ said Titus Yeshar. ‘So you saw mother? How is she? Still in good feather?’

‘Talicto,’ said Viola. ‘Inquisitor Talicto.’

Titus Yeshar froze for a second and then began to shake. The chains holding his arms rattled.

‘He sits on the throne…’ he said, voice trembling. ‘The throne…’ The grey skin puckered around his eyes.

He is trying to cry, realised Viola.

Then he went still.

‘No…’ he said, and began to shake his head. ‘No, you are not from him. You cannot be from him. He sits upon the throne. A king crowned… You are other – you are the blind who walk with eyes, and see the paths that are mist over darkness.’

‘You served Inquisitor Talicto,’ said Viola.

‘The song sung at night, heard by no one, sung by no one…’

‘We need to know where you took him,’ she said.

‘Three spinners on a hill beneath a bloody tree,’ he crooned, ‘will you sing for me, oh, will you sing for me, you three…’

Viola looked at Yasmin. The intermediary shrugged.

‘The honoured scion of Yeshar is–’

‘Why?’ Titus’ voice snapped out, sharp and clear. ‘Why do you want to know of Talicto?’

‘We want to kill him,’ said Cleander. His lone-eyed stare was fixed on the Navigator. ‘Your master is a monster who stiches abominations from the warp into the minds and bodies of blameless souls, he has damned planets to mass culling by his actions, he has killed his peers and turned away from anything that might be called goodness.’ Cleander took a step forward and crouched down so that his face was just a hand span from the Navigator’s. ‘And he is the man who left you here to claw your eyes out once you were no longer of use to him.’

Titus shook his head once. Viola watched, ready for him to begin his babble again, but when he spoke his voice was edged with weariness rather than madness.

‘That… that is what inquisitors do. Discard, use, sacrifice.’ Titus Yeshar nodded. ‘But I think you know that, don’t you? I see it in the smoke of your flame…’ He shifted his hands, and the chains clinked. ‘Sing down into the well of night… this lost prince of a crownless kingdom… three spinners in the well, do they sing for me or thee? But…’ Titus gave a blurt of laughter. ‘I have no wings to fly.’ He raised his hands so that the chains pulled taut.

‘You can fly again,’ said Cleander. ‘If you can lead us to Talicto’s place of sanctuary, you can fly again.’

Yasmin stepped forward from the side of the room, mouth opening to object, but Viola spoke first.

‘The heir apparent made an agreement to help us – release him to come with us, and we will consider the agreement fulfilled. Refuse, and there is no accord.’

‘I will have to–’

‘Confirm it, but your mistress will give us her son.’ Viola looked back at the chained Navigator. He was humming to himself, the toneless tune repeating over and over again. ‘I do not think her familial feelings outweigh the value of what she is buying.’

Yasmin was silent for a moment and then turned to leave the cell. Cleander stood, and looked at Viola.

‘This may not end well,’ he said.

Behind him Titus Yeshar was stroking the links of his chains.

‘But why ask of Talicto?’ he said. ‘Why ask of him? I am just his ferryman, and I betrayed him once so that he could cross the river. Why should I betray him again? Even spite has limits. My mother has bought you off with false coin.’

Cleander was about to say something, but Viola raised a hand and spoke before him.

‘You betrayed him once?’ she said. Titus Yeshar’s hollow sockets turned to meet her eyes, and she felt his gaze dance impossibly across her face. She had to suppress the feeling that spiders were crawling across her skin.

‘Coin for coin, silver and sweet. Three lights by the grave at night…’

He grinned, but Viola was fighting to keep the sudden cold in her chest from becoming a scream in her ears. Cleander was looking at her, and she could see him make the link a second later than her. His face paled.

‘Who did you betray Talicto to?’ she asked, keeping her voice steady.

‘Places, ways, means, doors and weaknesses,’ said Titus, shoulders moving as though he was shrugging, but the movement twisting his body. ‘Just as you ask, someone has crossed that river already. Crossed the water and made it red. It was a good bargain then, and a bad one now…’

‘Who?’ said Cleander, leaning forward again. ‘Who did you betray Talicto to?’

The thought of what he was about to do gave Lexarchivist Galbus a taste of guilt as he moved through Gothar’s courthouse. The stone floor shook occasionally between his steps, and the glow of flame light from beyond the firing slits flared brighter. The planet really was starting to fall apart now. The inferno cultists had got inside the slums and city walls, and lit fires to match the blaze advancing through the ghost forests. Judge Orsino’s arbitrators had removed the planet’s and sub-sector’s governor for endangering Imperial rule and gross incompetence leading to the imperilment of the Emperor’s tithe. That had helped; the troops were moving through the slums and streets in Adeptus Arbites-supported suppression forces, but it was likely to be too little, too late. The grand conurbation was coming apart in blood and anarchy. The planet, even the sub-sector, would likely follow.

Galbus reached the outer doors of the confinement sanctuary. The arbitrators guarding them reviewed his clearance and let him through. They all knew him by sight, but they were Orsino’s best, and careful to the last. In this case, of course, that discipline would not help; he was authorised to go wherever he liked in the courthouse.

The last doors were multi-layered plasteel. Slaved heavy bolters twitched on mounts above the doors. Beyond them were cells designed to hold the most formidable and dangerous prisoners the arbitrators might detain. While order crumbled into anarchy, they had been given a new purpose: protecting what they held from those outside.

He paused in front of the guns and let the scanning beams play over him. A second later the doors opened outwards, slab edges parting. The guards inside inspected him under levelled guns.

‘I have messages from the judge for immediate transmission,’ he said. The guard waited, checking via vox that Judge Orsino had indeed sent a set of messages. They motioned Galbus forward as the outer door shut.

He had to pass through three more doors before the final door opened and he was looking at a withered figure with empty eye sockets. The astropath waited in mute stillness. It was one of the older ones. That was good; the older they were, the more capable and strong, and Galbus did not want to repeat this act of betrayal if the message did not get through.

These astropaths had been attached to the now removed governor. They were the link between this world and the wider Imperium. Separated by vast distances, there were only two ways that information moved between worlds: on ships that passed through the warp, and by the craft of the astropaths. Psykers who had been soulbound to the Emperor, astropaths could cast a message through the warp as psychic shouts of sensation and symbolism. Other astropaths could hear the message in their dreams and deconstruct their meaning. Prone to error and loss, it was all that bound the Imperium together.

‘Honoured one,’ he said, with a slight bow.

‘You have…’ the astropath wheezed, her ribs heaving as she took a breath. To Galbus she looked like she was hovering half way between life and the grave. ‘You require me to perform my function.’

‘Five messages,’ said Galbus. ‘All require vermillion level ciphering.’

He set a series of four sealed message cylinders down on the floor. The astropath picked up the first, opened it and pulled the sheet of copper from within. She began to run her fingers over the raised symbols pressed into its surface, muttering under her breath.

Galbus paused as he pulled the fifth cylinder from his robe and guilt tugged at his thoughts for a second. It was not the guilt of deception. Technically he was a factotum of the Adeptus Administratum, the Imperium’s vast bureaucracy, and only attached to the Adeptus Arbites for purpose of record keeping and facilitating correct procedure. What he was doing did not betray his position or the organisation he was a part of. That distinction would make little difference to Judge Orsino, though. Nor would the fact that he was following an imperative that served a power greater than both her and the organisation she served. The root of his guilt was personal: her trust in him weighed against an oath he had made a long time ago. The tension between them was where the kernel of guilt lived.

He set the cylinder down in front of the astropath. She picked it up, opened it, began to read and hesitated.

‘This message is marked for carmine level enciphering… and the reception… This is most unusual, Lexarchivist. I would expect Honoured Justice Orsino to give me such a message directly from her hand.’

‘These are unusual times,’ said Galbus. ‘Judge Orsino is not able to come in person, but I am here to impress on you the importance of these messages being sent swiftly.’

The astropath paused, fingers dancing over the message punched into the copper sheet. Galbus waited, trying to stop his heart from beating its way out of his chest.

‘Yes,’ said the astropath, eventually. ‘Yes, of course. It shall be done.’

‘Excellent,’ said Galbus, and left the chamber. He would have to create a reason to return later, once the messages had been sent. The astropath was just suspicious enough of his message that she might say something, or check Galbus’ explanation. He could not allow that. It would need to be something fast acting, and unlikely to raise suspicion. There were varieties of poison that would be suitable. That act, like his betrayal of Orsino’s trust, was something that he would pray on, but it would not stay his hand. A servant to an inquisitor, whether overt or hidden, could not afford the luxury of pity.

Yasmin watched the rogue trader until its engine flares were a spec at the edge of sensor range. She removed the holo-monocle, and let out a breath. The trees stirred around her, leaves whispering on warm currents of air. A blue bird landed on the nearest twig, and cocked its head, fixing Yasmin with a yellow eye.

‘They are within an hour of translation to the warp,’ she said to the bird.

It flicked its feathers.

‘He told them everything…’

‘Did you think he would not, mistress?’ asked Yasmin. ‘If I may, that was the point, was it not?’

The bird shifted on its branch.

‘What if they fail, my dear? What if we have just squandered the protection that Titus’ knowledge gave us? We have kept what he knows to ourselves because it is dangerous. A war between inquisitors is not something to be caught in the middle of.’

‘Again, mistress, and with respect, you knew that when you let them take your son.’

‘I did… oh, I did. Preservation… that is what I live for. The House is all – the House must endure in blood and tradition and power. And we are caught in this dispute, and no matter which side triumphs, we must endure.’

Yasmin waited. The trees were quiet, the leaves stilled by the vanished breeze. She had always served the Yeshar. From birth she had been lavished with education, expectation and training so that she could enact the will of this dynasty of mutants. She had been born so that she could inherit this duty from her mother. In every sense, it was what she lived for. But there was something in this moment of decision that made her uncomfortable about what she was going to be asked to do. It felt like choosing a way to die.

‘Get word to my son’s other associates in the Inquisition. No matter how it is done, ensure that it is done, and that they know that the Yeshar have aided them.’

Yasmin nodded carefully.

‘How much should we tell them about this Covenant and his agents?’

The blue bird took to the wing in a blur of feathers.

‘Everything we know,’ came the reply from the air.

NINE

Enna stopped outside the outer door to the weapon chamber. The remains of fitful sleep clung to her eyes and skin. She breathed out. It had been a week since Covenant had left Gothar, and sleep had eluded her ever since. Now they were less than a day into their warp passage, and the sleep that had finally come had brought dreams rather than rest. She keyed the control to the door. Pistons thumped back into the walls. Severita barred the doorway, pistols hanging in her hands at her side. She met Enna’s gaze with blank intensity.

Enna nodded, and moved to step past. Severita raised one pistol, finger resting beside the trigger guard. Enna paused, looked at the wide circle of the gun’s muzzle, and then up to the other woman’s eyes. They were steady. Enna felt her muscles slide to readiness under her skin. For a moment she thought of saying something, but she was too tired, and too alone to care. She shook her head, looked away, and took another step towards the inner door. Severita’s finger moved to the trigger.

‘Please try to do something you will regret,’ growled Enna.

Severita raised the second pistol. Enna raised an eyebrow.

‘Now, am I to take that as a compliment or a sign that you really don’t trust me?’

‘I don’t know you,’ said Severita, her expression unflinching.

‘Well, if you want to shoot everything that you don’t know, at least it will keep you occupied for a while.’

The inner door hissed open.

‘Mistress Gyrid,’ said Josef as he stepped forward, eyes gliding over Severita’s pistols, and then back to Enna. ‘Something wrong?’

‘I want to see Covenant,’ she said, and felt a stab of pleasure at the twitch in Severita’s face at her use of the unadorned name.

‘Not now,’ said Josef, running a hand over a sweat-beaded face.

‘Let her pass.’ Covenant’s voice came from beyond the open inner door. Enna glanced into the chamber beyond. The light was low, and had the quality of candlelight, though she could see no flames. Racks of shot cannons, cutlasses, mauls, void armour and a profusion of other weaponry hung from racks on the wall. A wide space had been cleared on the floor, and scattered with fine grey ash and sand. Covenant walked towards them. He was stripped to the waist, and his feet were bare beneath pleated trews of black fabric. Sweat sheened his bare skin. Scar tissue and tattoos covered his chest, the puckered skin and ink forming the spread wings, body and heads of an aquila. Serpents writhed in its claws, and fire shadowed its feathers. A faded tattoo of a horned daemon screamed from his left shoulder, the tri-barred ‘I’ of the Inquisition clenched in its jaw. The flat blade of his inactive power sword rested on the other shoulder.

His eyes moved to Severita, and the bolt pistols lowered. Then he looked at Enna.

The silence crackled in the air.

‘You have questions,’ he said, and then turned and walked back into the centre of the room. Josef gave her a hard look and jerked his chin in Covenant’s direction. Enna hesitated for a second and then followed, Josef just behind her. The door hissed shut.

‘This is about what Orsino said about Idris,’ said Covenant. ‘You were close to her, Enna, I can tell. You are very like her, you know.’

‘She never said anything about you,’ said Enna, tasting the bitterness in her voice. ‘None of you, not Orsino, nothing.’

‘She had her reasons,’ said Josef from the side of the room.

‘She did? A decade of keeping her alive, and I find out that I never knew her.’

‘The Inquisition,’ said Josef, with a cold laugh, ‘is built on not telling the whole truth.’

‘Trust, Enna,’ said Covenant softly, ‘is a delicate thing, a dangerous thing. You are one of us. The circumstances that made it so are not ones that we would have chosen, but the fact remains – you serve me. I give you that trust without question.’

‘Why?’ snapped Enna. ‘I know why I am here, because I have nowhere else to go. But why do you let me stay? Why? For her?’

‘Yes,’ said Covenant, ‘for her.’

‘Then what did she do that you had to forgive her for? What did she do that Orsino could not forgive?’

Josef drew a breath to say something, but Covenant shot him a glance and the preacher remained silent. Covenant shifted the sword from his shoulder and gripped it with both hands. The polished blade caught the light, and the bronze daemon snarling above the cross-guard glinted. He turned and nodded at the weapon racks.

‘Choose,’ he said. Enna glanced at Josef, but the preacher’s face was impassive. She looked back at the weapons, at the oiled metal and the shapes that killing took. She stepped forward. She was wearing a black bodyglove, reinforced with plates of crimson ceramite, a good choice for a fight, though not one made deliberately. She raised her hand and ran it along the handles of heavy blades and mauls, eyes finding and assessing each one. Her hand hesitated over a set of serrated knives, but moved on. She smiled when she saw the meteor-hammer on its dust-covered stand: three metres of coiled plasteel chain, a small handle at one end, a heavy metal ball the size of child’s head at the other. She picked it up. The heavy ball clanked to the floor.

‘Well,’ muttered Josef, ‘at least this might be entertaining.’

Enna gripped the handle in her left hand and began to wind the chain around her forearm. The links clinked.

‘You shared a master,’ she said, and glanced at where Covenant waited at the centre of the room. He held his sword with relaxed stillness. She dropped a last loop of chain over her left arm, and gripped the remaining length with her right hand so that a metre of links ran from left arm to right hand. Another metre of chain remained between her right hand and the ball. ‘You and Idris, you served the same inquisitor.’

She yanked the metal ball into the air with a snap of muscle, caught its fall, and began to spin it in a circle above her. The thump-thump vibration of the chain shivered through the air. Covenant bowed his head, eyes never leaving Enna’s and raised his sword above his head.

‘Argento,’ said Covenant. ‘Our master was called Argento.’

Enna nodded and released the ball from its circle. It shot at Covenant, unravelling chain from her forearm as it flew. Covenant snapped forward and to the side, sword slicing down. Enna spun aside. The meteor hammer’s ball snapped back as she turned, twisting like a snake, and now Covenant had to step back, and Enna spun again, whipping the chain faster and faster.

‘Orsino,’ she called. ‘She said something about Thorians, about the ghosts of Argento’s mistakes.’

She snapped the meteor hammer into a reverse arc, pressing Covenant back. He was fast though, stepping back and out of reach with short, quick steps, sword held high.

‘Thorianism is a belief,’ he said. ‘A belief held by some within the Inquisition. A belief that the Emperor is not a man. He is divine. The flesh holding him is a shell. His spirit is eternal. It moves amongst us, shelters us, and searches for rebirth, so that He may walk amongst us again. So that He can save humanity.’

He seemed to step back again as the meteor hammer sang past, but then he was stepping in and Enna’s momentum was pulling her the wrong way, his cut was a lightning flash of steel, and now it was Enna’s turn to dodge. She leapt, scissoring and spinning through the air, the meteor hammer orbiting her as she landed.

‘Isn’t that what many believe?’ she asked.

‘It is,’ said Covenant, stepping back, sword low, ‘but inquisitors have power and responsibility to do more than believe. Thorians do not just believe that the Emperor will walk amongst humanity – they seek to make it come to pass.’

‘That is…’ Enna threw the ball out wide and let the full length of chain unravel from her arm. She spun it above her head, cutting a circle almost as wide as the chamber. Josef stepped quickly back against the wall. ‘That is supremely arrogant,’ said Enna.

‘Why?’ said Covenant. He was standing a finger’s width from the edge of the meteor hammer’s arc. ‘It is a belief and endeavour that inquisitors have followed for millennia. If a divine vessel of the Emperor could save mankind, don’t I have a duty to follow that belief, to find it?’

‘And Idris…’ began Enna.

Covenant moved as she spoke. The ball of the meteor hammer flew past his face and he sprang forwards. The flat of his great sword slapped the metal ball down like a hand batting an insect from the air. Enna felt the chain jerk in her hand, and her balance shook, and Covenant was cutting towards her in a wide slash that would open her from hip to shoulder.

She jumped back fast, but not far enough, and his second cut was not wide but short and fast. Instinct slammed her to the floor. The blade hissed as it passed above her. She still had the chain in her hand but the ball lay on the floor three metres away, rocking with the force of its fall.

‘Idris believed as I do,’ said Covenant, voice calm.

Enna knew that she had nowhere to go, that the next cut would be the last. She whipped the chain that she still held in her hand. The chain arced up in a wide loop and caught Covenant’s sword as it descended. He pulled back, but she was already rising, already whipping more chain to tangle his blade and arms.

She yanked, and felt his balance break.

‘Then why,’ Enna snarled as she hauled on the chain. They were face to face now, bound by chains, the sword tangled between them. ‘Then why did she never tell me about what she believed?’

Covenant seemed to stagger and then twisted. Enna felt the force of the throw whip through her and she was arcing through the air. She hit the floor, and turned the impact into a rolling throw that flipped Covenant through the air in turn. He landed and they rose together.

He met her gaze. The sword was in his hands, somehow free of entangling chain, the blade levelled at her. She flicked the chain, but Josef stepped forward.

‘I think we will call it a draw,’ he said, ‘before you kill each other.’

Covenant bowed his head briefly, and stepped back. Enna did not move.

‘You have not answered,’ she said. ‘Idris never talked of anything you have told me – why?’

Covenant was very still, then spun his sword and turned to pick up its wide sheath from a weapon rack.

‘Because she killed our master,’ he said softly.

Enna stared at him. He slid the sword back into its sheath, and turned, but his eyes went to Josef rather than her as he spoke.

‘Argento created a saint… or what he thought was a saint. He thought he was creating salvation, and it reached out in the pain of its becoming and tore his soul apart.’ He looked at her. ‘We arrived too late. We… she… did what needed to be done.’

‘She killed him?’

‘What was left of him,’ said Covenant. ‘Him, and the thing he had made, both.’

Josef let out a sigh, and rubbed a scarred and tattooed hand over his face.

‘Seeing the reality of what you believe changes the way you look at things,’ said the preacher.

Covenant nodded.

‘The perspective given to Idris and me was the same,’ he said. ‘Our responses were different. I saw what that power, even in the hands of a noble soul, can do. We cannot bend the forces of the universe to our will. She turned away from the past. I…’

‘You both tried to bury it,’ said Enna.

Covenant looked at her, but his face was as impassive as ever.

‘Is this understanding enough for you, Enna?’

She looked away and dropped the chain that she still had in her hands.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I… I am sorry. You are very different from her.’ She stepped towards the door. Somehow she felt disturbed by the conversation, as though there was a void it had opened in her that she could not see, but could only touch the edge of its precipice.

‘You are not alone,’ said Josef.

‘That’s it,’ she said as she opened the door. ‘I can’t remember a time without her. But sometimes… Sometimes it doesn’t even seem real.’

Lenoa Astropathic Relay hung at the edge of its star’s light. In form it resembled a frozen explosion of dust-pitted metal and stone. Antennae and signal arrays stabbed from its arms, hazard lights winking at their tips. Schools of warships circled it, engine lights bright glimmers against the emerald murk of the storm-touched void.

‘Take us in slowly,’ said Cleander. ‘Transmit our authorisations as soon as we are challenged.’

‘Weapons?’ asked Ghast. Cleander shook his head.

‘Ready alert throughout the ship, but keep the guns cold. They are not going to like us coming close, so let’s not give them a reason to think of us as a target.’

Ghast saluted, and moved to carry the orders out. The sounds of the bridge were subdued, the crew speaking rarely and, when they did, in low voices. Cleander knew it was because of him. The crew followed his mood more closely than they followed his orders. It had taken them longer than it should to reach the relay station. The storms had pressed close, and the Dionysia had both fought against and run with the winds of the ether as they howled from the edges of the Storms of Judgement. Now they had arrived, they would have to wait for Covenant to meet them, or move on to the next pre-agreed rendezvous. Neither the thought of waiting nor of plunging the ship back into the storm-churn did much to lift Cleander’s mood.

‘They wouldn’t fire,’ said Viola. Cleander did not turn, but kept his eye on the image of the astronomic relay.

‘Wouldn’t they? Not with most worlds within a reasonable jump from here gone dark, or screaming as they die? They are the last beacon relay this side of the Storms of Judgement. I think I would be tempted to fire on a ship arriving unannounced no matter who they claim to be.’ He shifted the patch over his left eye-socket, and felt a cold grin part his lips. ‘But that might just be my likeable personality.’

He felt Viola glance at him sharply, but ignored it. 

The murmur of the bridge filled the silence. Cleander’s mind slid back to what Titus Yeshar had told them. It couldn’t be true. Could it? Could it…? True or not, they had exhausted the ship’s two astropaths trying to get the information to Covenant. The storms had swallowed those sendings with no sign that they had been received. What did that mean? 

He had never been so tempted to break his bargain with Covenant and run.

‘What’s that?’ Viola’s voice broke the flow of his thoughts. Cleander glanced at the sensor image. Three defence monitor ships had broken from their path around the relay station.

‘Escort in?’ he ventured, but he was unconvinced even as he spoke.

‘Looks a lot like they are on an intercept course,’ she said. ‘They are being careful.’

He nodded.

‘Transmit our credentials again,’ called Cleander to Ghast. ‘Make it clear that our only intention is to hold station for a rendezvous, and then we will be on our way.’ 

A warning horn sounded.

‘Engine signature!’ shouted Ghast. ‘Large ship, light cruiser class. Close, very close. They are in our wake. Throne, they are cutting us off!’

‘Monitor craft increasing speed, guns live.’

‘Duke von Castellan, sir!’ A signals officer shouted from the signals trench beneath the command dais. ‘We have a signal, direct and clear.’

‘And?’ snapped Cleander. 

‘It’s addressed to you, sir,’ called the officer, ‘by name.’

‘Let me hear it.’

A thump of static and a trio of vox-fidelity servitors twitched straight in their seats. Their mouths opened, spit drooling from silent tongues as the vox transmission soaked into their brains. Then their tongues and vocal cords synchronised, and they spoke.

‘Duke Cleander von Castellan, by the will of the Emperor as incarnated in his holy Inquisition, you shall cut your engines and submit to the authority of His servants.’

The servitors began to repeat the words. Cleander gestured and the transmission cut out.

‘Who are they?’ asked Viola into the space left by the words. ‘And how did they know we were here?’

‘Light the guns, and pour fire into the engines,’ shouted Cleander without answering. Both questions were filling his mind, but for now they meant nothing. All that mattered was getting away. ‘Flip us over and run.’

‘We should charge the warp engines,’ said Viola.

‘You want to take that power from what, engines or guns?’ Cleander snarled. He felt Viola’s expression harden without having to see it.

‘The cruiser is almost on us,’ called Ghast, and Cleander could hear the blended shock and admiration in her voice. ‘Throne, she’s fast.’

‘Hostile targeting system lock detected,’ droned one of the lex- mechanics in the sensor system trench. 

Manoeuvre sirens screamed as the Dionysia’s thrusters fired, and the ship’s prow flipped over. The hull growled with strain. Cleander felt competing gravitic forces thump through him. Nauseating storm colours filled the forward view screens. The thrusters fired again, catching the ship’s spin. Force whip-cracked through the ship.

‘Full speed, now!’ shouted Cleander. The turn had been perfect, a thing of beauty, but until they were running, the Dionysia lay still in the void.

‘Hostile cruiser closing,’ came the cold static voice of the tech-priest. ‘Eighty-six per cent of its weapons have us at firing range.’

The Dionysia shook as its engines dug into the darkness and pushed it forward.

‘But they are not firing,’ said Viola. Cleander caught the edge in her voice, and looked at her in time to see her pale skin drain paler. And in a horrifically stretched second he reached the same realisation. ‘They are not trying to get in range of their guns,’ said Viola. ‘They…’

Columns of light split the air across the bridge. The shockwave of displaced air ripped out and punched Cleander backwards. The smell of ozone flooded his nose and mouth. Static pinched his skin. Black outlines of figures stood at the core of each growing strand of brilliance. The sound in the bridge flattened and dimmed, as though he were under water. Armsmen were moving, guns starting to rise. The glare of teleportation vanished. Shouts and alarms replaced the silence. Figures in glossy black carapace and grey ballistic cloth were spreading from their manifestation points. Ember-orange light burned in the round eyepieces of their masks. They were already amongst the machine trenches. And at the far end of the bridge, on the platform beneath the great viewport that faced the stars beyond the ship’s prow, another figure flashed into being. Webs of etheric charge wormed over the white and gold of its armour.

An armsman who was faster than the rest brought his weapon up to fire. A beam of las-fire hissed out from the barrel of one of the black-armoured figures. The armsman pitched back, head burned to ash inside his helm.

‘Hold!’ shouted Cleander. ‘Do not fire! No one move!’ The bridge became still. Even the black-armoured figures seemed to become statues in the lights of alerts blinking across consoles and machines. Cleander licked his lips, his eyes steady on the ivory and gold armoured figure. He could calculate odds. His life was a sum of badly- and well-judged chances. He wondered which one this would be, or if he would have the chance to find out.

‘If you wanted my ship,’ he said, and let the corner of his mouth hook upwards to show teeth, ‘you should have asked nicely.’

‘But it is not your ship I want, Duke von Castellan,’ said Inquisitor Lord Vult, his voice rasping as it came from the mouths of the vox servitors. ‘I want your master.’

TEN

Enna stopped on the crest of the wreckage crag. Sweat ran down her cheeks as she lifted her goggles. Sunlight hammered into her eyes. She slung her las-carbine across her back, and pulled a canister of water from her webbing. The water was cool on her dry tongue and she had to stop herself taking more than three gulps. She ran the last sip around her mouth, feeling it take on the taste of iron as it stripped the rust powder from her teeth. She wanted to spit, but you did not waste water like that. Not on this world.

This was Iago. It had taken weeks to get here, and now they found that it was a desolate wasteland, bare of life, filled only with the rustle of dust and the voice of the wind.

She squinted out at the heat haze rising from the ingot plateau. The blocks of rusting metal rose like a mountain range from the orange earth. The smallest of them were the size of battle tanks, the largest the size of drop ships. On and on they went, their flaking and streaked sides forming canyons and stepped slopes like the neglected toys of a child-god. The distant silhouettes of vast cranes and the stacks of smelting cities cut into the distant edge of the sky. There was no sun, just a white sheet of light and heat hanging above the world below.

‘There is no one here,’ she muttered, as she slotted the water canister back into its pouch and pulled her carbine from around her back. ‘This place has been dead for decades.’

‘Dying, not dead,’ said Josef, coming up the slope behind her, breath panting from his red face. ‘It’s been dying for decades, but there will still be people here.’

‘Where?’ she gestured at the baked orange landscape.

‘They will be here somewhere,’ he said. ‘People cling to ruin when it’s all they have.’

‘Temperature is rising,’ said Enna. ‘We are going to have to find some shade and rest up, if we don’t find this entrance soon.’

They had been moving over the plateau for two hours, spiralling out from the gunship in a laborious search pattern. All of them wore thin enviro-suits under their armour and gear, and glare goggles over their eyes. Enna had elected to leave her burnished plate behind, and wore a set of light flak armour in mismatched green and mottle tan taken from a forgotten store on the Valour’s Flame. They had broken into two groups: Covenant and Severita in one; Josef, Enna and the tech-priest Glavius-4-Rho in the other. Tethered together by vox signals, they crossed and re-crossed the ground, looking for a way into the world beneath.

She glanced around again as the tech-priest scaled the slope up onto the crag with fluid ease, spider limbs scuttling across the corroded metal like a lizard running to keep its feet from burning on hot sand. He halted beside her, mechadendrites briefly unfurling to fuss at the grey of his robes. For some reason he had forsaken the red of his priesthood for ragged grey.

‘Are you sure this is the location?’ asked Enna. Glavius-4-Rho shifted his position minutely.

‘I reviewed all available planetary data and the report data supplied by the officers of Judge Orsino. I am no initiate of the calculus logi or the principia axima, but I am satisfied that an entrance to the sub-strata in which the cult designated “the Renewed” were active should be within our immediate vicinity.’ He paused, hooded head clicking as it turned to survey the land around them. ‘That being said, the information supplied on the planet so far does not seem to match current reality.’

Enna did not even bother to reply; that the planet had changed had become clear as soon as the Valour’s Flame had begun to move in-system. Clouds of etheric light fizzed in the vacuum. Vox-links and speakers chattered with ghost voices even when turned off. The psyker Mylasa had said that she could feel the warp bleeding over its razor boundary with reality. And all the while, the impossible glittering clouds had drifted through the blackness, smudging the light of the stars and tinting the light of Iago’s sun a coppery orange. The crew of the ship had begun to show unease. Enna had noticed bloodshot eyes in the armsmen, and sweat beading clammy skin. Even the captain seemed to be fighting an instinct to run or collapse. Enna had seen it before. It was what happened when weaker minds touched the warp. It would have consequences, she was sure. But they had kept going, moving inwards towards the primary planet with care.

Debris floated in the void as they had drawn closer to Iago’s orbit, flakes of metal and black dust that scraped the prow of the Valour’s Flame as it pushed through the drifts. No signals had come from it, and long range scans had found no sign of industry or life: no energy bloom, no orbital defence challenges, no light sources on the planet’s surface. That was when it had become clear this was not the world they had been expecting. Iago had been a planet-wide smeltery. Ore ripped from the moons and dead planets of the system had been dragged to the city-sized metal works and fed into the crucibles and blast furnaces. Indentured generations of furnace workers had laboured in the heat and glow of molten metal. Ships had come to fill their hulls with macro-ingots pulled from the stack-plateaus. Adeptus Mechanicus emissaries had haggled and bargained with the furnace masters’ brokers in the courts of black iron palaces that rose above the forge-stacks.

That was what the reports had said, but the world they described was gone. A carcass remained in its place, its cities scorched, and its iron bones crumbling to rust.

‘This was supposed to be an active and stable system,’ said Enna. ‘No reports of rebellion, no cries for help…’

‘The degree of rust and metal degradation planet-wide should not have been possible in the time between the last communications from this world and now,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. ‘The last clear contact with the system was four years ago.’ A mechadendrite reached out from his shoulders and broke a piece of metal from a girder sticking up from the crag. The machine claws tensed and the piece of metal crumbled to brown flakes. ‘This should be the work of decades.’

‘This is a cursed place,’ said Enna, pulling her glare goggles back down and hefting her weapon. ‘Let’s get moving.’

She had just begun to pick her way down the side of the crag when Josef’s hand fell on her shoulder. She dropped to one knee by instinct, gun ready, eyes searching for a threat.

‘There,’ said Josef, pointing past her to a bare patch of ground next to a looming macro-ingot. ‘Left arc, base of that slab, two hundred metres.’

She dropped her eye to the scope of her carbine, and the patch of ground grew in her sight. She blinked; the heat haze was rippling the air. Then she saw it: a figure squatting on the ground, a shadow within a shadow. It was still, but Enna had the sudden sense that it was looking back at her down the gunsight, into her eye. She blinked, and the figure was gone.

She looked over the top of the sight, but there was no sign of it. Carefully she reached up and clicked the vox mic strapped to her throat.

‘Converge base of ingot, grid alpha-two-seven by theta-four-one,’ she said. ‘We have found something.’

The door to Iago’s underworld was a circle of pipe half choked with red earth and wreckage. Glavius-4-Rho had found the entrance after only a cursory search of the area around where they had seen the crouching figure. A tangle of wreckage framed the entrance, the remnants of sacred machines casually crushed by the weight of the macro-ingot whose side loomed against the white sky above them. Another ingot rose from the ground twenty metres away, so that it felt as though they were in a gulley gouged into a landscape of rusted iron. Strips of sun-bleached cloth hung from broken metal spars. There were hundreds of them. The magos had decided not to count how many; their presence just made the disquiet he had experienced since landing worse.

He hung back as the woman called Enna shone a stab-light into the dark.

‘Clear down to fifty metres,’ she called.

‘Go twenty metres in and hold,’ said Covenant. The inquisitor stood before the entrance tunnel, a shotgun held with relaxed care in his hands, the impulse-linked cannon rotating.

‘Severita,’ he said.

‘My lord.’

‘Stay close to Glavius-4-Rho,’ said Covenant.

The magos shifted his legs at the sound of his name. He wanted to move. Ever since he had stepped onto the surface of Iago he had not wanted to touch it for longer than necessary. This was a place of dead metal, of corrosion that had seeped into the fabric of everything he saw. He began to run damage diagnostics on his systems again. He had been running them almost continually since they had arrived. All had registered no damage to his machine components, but he knew it was there, seeping into him like rot rising through the wood of a dead tree. He very much wanted not to be here.

This is what remains for me, he thought, and pulled the fabric of his new robe closer around himself. My life will now be lived in the cursed and forgotten edges of the galaxy.

Josef stood to one side. He had unfastened a long hammer from his back, and was holding it with casual ease. 

‘Some of these are old,’ he said, looking up at the tatters of fabric hanging from the tangle of girders framing the tunnel. He reached up a hand and ran a trailing strip of rust-red cloth between his fingers. ‘But not all of them.’ He looked at Covenant. The inquisitor nodded.

‘Let’s move,’ he said, and motioned Josef forward towards the tunnel mouth.

‘What is the purpose of the attachment of these portions of material at this location?’ asked Glavius-4-Rho as he moved forward. 

‘They are tokens of offering,’ said Covenant without turning to look at Glavius-4-Rho.

‘I am not sure I comprehend…’

‘People would come here and leave… something,’ said Josef, pausing at the tunnel mouth, ‘in the hope that what lived down beneath the earth would not come for them.’

‘There was nothing about that in the reports I reviewed,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

‘There was not,’ said Covenant, and stepped into the dark circle of the opening.

‘Then how did you…’

‘Because it is what people do when they are afraid of something,’ said Josef, following his master into the tunnel. His voiced echoed down into the dark. ‘They try to buy its kindness.’

‘With what?’

Neither Covenant nor Josef replied. Enna moved up next to him; she had pulled on a set of dark-sight googles. She nodded towards the tunnel.

‘Shall we?’ she said.

They went down into the dark. Step by step, the image through dark-sight goggles became less and less clear as the scraps of light became fewer and fewer. At the head of the loose chain of people, Enna paused at the junction of a length of wide piping and a tangled cave of crushed metal. Her glands had dumped stimms into her system and her senses were stretched and singing. She could hear liquid dripping close by, tapping out a broken rhythm on a sheet of metal somewhere out of sight.

They had been descending into the warren for an hour. The tech-priest said that they were already over a hundred metres beneath the surface. The pipe they had entered by had given way to a ragged passage bored in crushed rock that had once been buildings. They had passed through half-intact rooms: a vaulted hall, its cracked ceiling still showing the flaking image of the Emperor wreathed in light above a sea of fire; a series of hab rooms, their furniture rotted to rust and sludge; a set of mechanical steps so twisted that they stuck up into the air like shattered teeth in a broken jaw. Apart from the fact of the path they walked, they had seen no sign of another soul. There were not even any vermin, just the caves formed in the dirt and debris, their fabric rotting in the dark.

Enna stayed still, holding her breath so that her ears could fill with the sound of the space around her. The blind-light attached to the fore-stock of her carbine cut into the grey green image filling her sight as she panned it across the jumble of girders and blocks of stone. The blind-light was invisible to unaugmented eyes, but with her dark-sight goggles it shone like a ray of sun.

The next member of the team was Covenant, and he was forty paces behind her, out of sight behind a bend in the tunnel. For this moment she was alone.

But she did not feel alone.

For the first time since they had gone beneath the earth she was certain that something was close by, watching her. The sound of dripping went on, echoing in the space so that it seemed to come from every direction and no direction.

She panned the blind-light over the cave again.

Her eye caught a pinprick flash, and she froze, holding the beam steady. She watched and listened. The flash came again, the telltale glint of the beam catching a falling droplet. Enna moved forwards, keeping the beam steady, letting her other senses filter the environment around her. She reached where she had seen the droplets fall, and dropped to one knee, aiming the light up at the twisted mass of girders and pipework above. The beam of blind-light shattered. Sheets and pieces of brightness scattered out. Enna blinked her eyes closed for a second, then looked again.

A finger of crystal hung amongst broken pipes and girders. It was smooth but irregular. Moisture glistened on its surface. As she looked, a bead formed at the tip. It grew, shining like a swelling pearl, and then fell. Enna watched it fall and waited for the sound of it hitting a pool of liquid on the floor. The sound did not come. She swept the blind-light’s beam down and saw the hole. It was rough-edged, a ragged wound in the rockcrete formed by collapsing and tearing ground rather than by design. Marks surrounded it, scratched down into the floor: crude birds, and jagged halos. The sound of the droplet striking water echoed through the dark, somehow louder in Enna’s ears than it had been before. She moved to the edge of the hole and shone the blind-light into its mouth. A shaft bored straight downwards. Crystals glittered on its walls. Far beneath her, the darkness stretched down and down through the rock and rust.

She looked up. Another droplet was forming on the end of the crystal stalactite. She stepped back, extending a hand to catch the drop as it fell.

‘Do not touch the tears,’ said a voice from above her. Enna snapped to the side, aiming, finger poised. The beam of the blind-light stabbed up into the metal cobweb above her. A face looked down at her, its eyes shining like a feline’s in moonlight. Enna held her aim steady, her nerves and muscles poised to send a trio of las-bolts into the face even if she died. Carefully, she swallowed three times, and heard the click in her ear that said that her throat mic had picked it up and sent the alert burst to the rest of the team.

The face amongst the girders tilted as though examining her. It was a man’s face, old and deeply wrinkled, the creases in the skin dark with grime. A matted beard covered his jaw, but the crown of his head was smooth, as though scraped clean by the edge of a new razor. She could not see the rest of his body, just an impression of a hunched form squatting amongst the iron branches of the rusted girders.

‘The Emperor’s tears are death,’ said the man, ‘and you are not yet shriven.’

‘Come down,’ said Enna. ‘Move slowly, one limb at a time. You move faster and you die.’

‘We are all dead down here,’ said the man, but he started to move, limbs unfolding to grip the girders as he climbed into view. He wore the remains of an overall, its original colour lost beneath a patina of dirt. His limbs were long and bone-thin, loose skin hanging over muscles like taut cables. Arms and legs splayed across the wrecked ceiling, he looked like a lizard or long-legged spider.

‘We are coming up behind you,’ said Josef’s voice across the vox. A second later she heard the sound of boots on the rockcrete floor, and the clicking buzz of the tech-priest’s machine limbs. She kept her aim and her focus on the man. He reached the lowest reach of a length of girder, hung for a moment and then dropped lightly to the ground, landing in a crouch. He stood slowly, as though he were a puppet being pulled to standing by a wire. His head came up last of all.

‘Raise your arms to the side, palms open and towards me,’ said Enna. The man spread his arms. ‘Turn around slowly.’

‘You are the child pilgrims from the land above,’ he said as he turned. He looked weak, and old, and half-starved, but he had moved amongst the wreckage with a careful grace. He had the look of a hermit she had once seen on the mountains of Keh: kept alive by a faith that was halfway to madness. ‘I watched you after you came from the sky. You are looking for revelation.’

The man lowered his arms, and looked directly at Enna, gaze to gaze through the pitch black. His eyes were shining coins. Ice coiled through her. Something inside her shuddered. The eyes were… She had…

‘What is this revelation?’ said Covenant as he stepped up next to her. The sound of the cannon rotating on his shoulder was a whisper.

‘I cannot tell you,’ said the man. Enna heard one of the others start forward. Covenant raised a hand. The bearded man turned his head as though looking between them each in turn. As though he could see them clearly. ‘I cannot tell you, but I can show you how it begins.’

The old man moved ahead of Enna as he led them deeper. She kept her carbine aimed at his back, the blind-light illuminating him clearly. Covenant was just behind her, the rest of the team strung out further back in the tunnel. It was narrow, barely wide enough for her to walk along with her shoulders square. The old man had to stoop, but he moved without hesitation, avoiding projections in the roof and walls without error or effort.

‘Why did you make the pilgrimage, child?’ he asked, turning his head back towards her as he moved. Something about the movement was not right, as though it were just a fraction too far for a human head to turn.

‘I…’ she began, not sure why she was answering. ‘I am following the will of my master.’

‘Don’t we all?’ he said, continuing to move ahead of her. ‘Don’t we all? The Emperor ordained all that was, and we are his people, so we all follow what he willed.’

‘Who are you?’ she found the question coming from her lips before she was aware of it. Behind her she heard the sound of Covenant following close, but no objection or reprimand came from him.

‘I am a pilgrim who came here a long time ago. Now I am the last.’

‘That is not an answer.’

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘I had a name once, but it meant nothing.’

‘You act like you were waiting for us?’

‘I was,’ said the man, and the words made Enna’s finger poise on the trigger of her gun. ‘Someone would come. Someone always comes in search of revelation.’

The man turned a corner. Enna followed and stopped. A tunnel mouth framed the man as he reached out and took a candle from a ledge. His hands moved deftly. Sparks flashed. Light blazed around him as a flame kindled. It might have been no more than candlelight, but in her dark-sight it burned like the rays of the sun.

‘This is the threshold,’ he said, and moved forward, ‘the beginning of revelation.’

Enna stepped forward, blinking the intensity of her dark-sight down as she entered the space beyond the tunnel mouth. Covenant followed her, shotgun ready, shoulder cannon sweeping the flame-diluted gloom. He raised his hands and pushed his goggles up on to his forehead, pupils widening from pinpricks. Josef came after him, hammer in hand.

The space was a cavern, vast and yawning far beyond the reach of the candle flame. The roof was a curve of water-hollowed rock, not the artificial blocks or detritus that formed the upper strata of the catacombs. This was the bedrock of Iago, raw and dark, glittering with veins of minerals. Jagged holes opened into narrow shafts up to the layers of debris and refuse above. Pale crystals ringed each opening. The ground beneath their feet was black, metallic sand. Just at the edge of sight, a wide, flat pool of black liquid shone like a mirror under the candle flame. The air had a still, chemical scent.

‘This is it,’ said the man. ‘This is the void of resurrection. You have arrived.’

And he reached down with the candle to a channel cut at the bottom of the cavern wall. A tongue of blue and orange flame leaped up above the channel and ran into the dark, circling the cavern in flame. The crystals and veins of mineral shone with reflected and shattered light. Small openings lined the wall.

Enna tore the goggles from her eyes as the light burned into her.

‘Blood of the saints,’ whispered Josef close to her. She looked up, sight still swimming with retinal burns.

A huge statue of rusted metal and crumbling rock rose at the chamber’s centre. It did not stand, but lay on its back, like a corpse on a battlefield. Twisted girders were ribs rising from the ruin of a chest made of fused supporting struts and battered sheet metal. Its splayed limbs were chewed masses of pipes, bloated by clots of corrosion. A halo of broken bars surrounded its head, and gouged eye sockets looked up at the cavern roof from a face of hacked rockcrete. Steps led up its cheek, and to a door set in its open mouth. The pool surrounded a shelf of stone, which the figure lay on. Stepping stones led across the water from three sides.

Enna let out a breath and watched it drift as pale mist on the chem-scented air. In the service of her mistress she had persecuted cults and demagogues whose beliefs had opened them to the influence of the warp. She had seen countless strands of the divergent belief that existed amongst humanity. She knew what she was looking at. It was just not what she had expected to find here.

‘What is this a representation of?’ asked Glavius-4-Rho.

‘It is the Emperor,’ said Covenant. ‘It is the Emperor in death.’

The man, who had led them down, looked at Covenant and nodded.

‘You see and understand,’ he said. ‘The slain god who cannot die, but must die.’

Enna heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her, and glanced around. Severita’s face was a mask of confusion and rage. Enna knew that look; it was the look of a fanatic in a universe that was filled with fanatics of a different breed.

The orthodoxy of the Imperial Creed was not a single set of beliefs in the divinity of the Emperor, but a commonality amongst wildly different practices. At the core of that wide spread of expression, the differences were often small – minor differences in ritual or litany – but the further out from that core one passed, the greater the differences became. From the fire-cleansing Redemptionists of Necromunda who saw sin in every soul, to the Renewers of Sutio who represented the Emperor as a great tree from which all trees and life sprung, there were as many faces to His divinity as there were stars in the heavens. At the edges of this sprawling diversity was the blurred borderland of heresy, in which belief slipped away into an abyss.

‘A resurrection cult…’ said Josef, looking at Covenant with an expression that Enna could not read. ‘The Renewed… they are a resurrection cult.’

‘You know the name of the blessed?’ said the man. ‘I knew that you did not come here as pilgrims of ignorance.’

‘What is this expression of faith that you refer to?’ asked Glavius 4-Rho, his brass spider legs shifting him forward on the black sand shore.

‘That the Emperor is immortal,’ said Josef, carefully, ‘an eternal and divine presence trapped in the physical form. That he is shackled to the world, not able to ascend to his true power. That he is a god caught between death and new life.’

‘It is a creed that is seen across many worlds, with many variations,’ added Enna, and looked at Severita’s stony face and the tension holding her weapons very still at her side. ‘And many denouncers.’

‘Heresy…’ hissed Severita, closing her eyes as a tremor ran through her. ‘The Emperor is eternal.’

‘He is the soul of all things,’ said the man, turning to walk across the sand, bare feet leaving tracks in his wake. ‘He is the doorway to new beginnings within us all.’ He stepped onto the surface of the pool and began to walk towards the statue. Covenant moved to follow. Severita paused for a moment, then breathed a prayer that stole the hard anger from her face, and followed.

Ice whipped through Enna. She did not want to move. She did not want to cross the water. For a second she froze, unable to carry on. Then the feeling was gone, and she was following the others, feet splashing on the skim of liquid as they walked across water towards the image of a dead god and the door which yawned black in his mouth.

‘Come and see revelation,’ said the man. ‘Come and see…’

‘Revelation…’ muttered Josef, behind her. ‘That has a habit of meaning answers we didn’t want to find.’

ELEVEN

Cold light flickered through the chamber as glow strips lit along the roof. Enna’s eyes adjusted to the light immediately. The walls were mirror-flat rock of storm-cloud grey, flecked with crystal. They had climbed the statue of the dead Emperor and found the stairs in his mouth that led down to this chamber beneath the lake and statue above.

The room they emerged into was roughly circular, at least six hundred metres across. While the previous cavern with the lake had a sense of a fane, this deeper chamber seemed closer to a laboratory. Row upon row of open stone sarcophagi ringed a central space, from which something that looked like a broken pillar rose to point at the vast dome above. Pipes snaked across the vaulted roof. Bunched chrome limbs hung above plasteel tables. Blades, saws and injectors tipped each of the articulated arms. Drainage grooves edged the brushed metal slabs.

Covenant stopped beside Enna, eyes moving slowly over the chamber.

‘What is this?’ breathed Josef from beside the inquisitor.

Glavius-4-Rho moved down the steps to one of the sarcophagi. Still water filled it to just beneath the brim. He extended his hand.

‘Do not touch His tears!’ hissed the old man, who had fallen to his knees on entering the chamber.

Glavius-4-Rho did not seem to register the man’s words, and dipped a sensor tipped digit into the liquid. A circular wave rolled across the water’s surface as he withdrew the hand.

‘This liquid has the same constituents as that in the pool outside. The tincture is complex, lethally toxic across a broad spectrum, and exotically psycho-active.’

‘It makes you see visions, and then it kills you,’ growled Josef.

‘It realigns the nerve and brain structure and then suspends the biological processes, is a more accurate summary. From the arrangements in this chamber I would say that they bring subjects here and immerse them, though it would be an inefficient method of execution, and the toxicity of the substance would make it a short-lived form of torture.’ The tech-priest rotated his head to look in their direction. Static clattered from his chrome skull smile. ‘Literally so,’ he added.

‘Water is the door to the realm of death and dreams,’ said Covenant softly, stepping further into the chamber, eyes looking to his right, psycannon to his left.

‘Just like the Tenth Path on Dominicus Prime…’ said Josef, looking down into the mirror surface of one of the sarcophagi. ‘The water washes the pilgrim clean, so that the warp can plant its seed.’

‘No,’ said Covenant. ‘This is something different. Talicto did not create this. He found it.’

‘There is an object in this one,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

‘Do not…’ began the hermit, coming to his feet, but Josef caught the man’s shoulder in a strong hand.

The tech-priest’s mechadendrites arched over his shoulders and plunged down into the sarcophagus. The oiled metal fizzed as they twitched ripples across the water’s surface. Then they tensed, and yanked a body from the water. Liquid splashed on the floor. Waves ran from one end of the sarcophagus to the other. The hermit moaned.

Glavius-4-Rho held the body for a second, the metal snakes of his mechadendrites coiling around it as he shifted his grip. It was human, or appeared so. Sodden rags hung from it, and a tattered fabric mask clung to its face.

‘Let them dream…’ said the hermit in a soft voice. ‘They found their path. Let them dream until he calls them.’

‘Life signs negative,’ pronounced Glavius-4-Rho, and began to peel the rags from the corpse. The smoke of the micro-laser cutter rose from the rotten fabric. His mechadendrites wound and rewound around the corpse, turning it over like an insect in a spider’s thread. Enna watched as fluted pipes extended from his throat and sucked the smoke and steam from the air.

‘Fabric is mundane,’ he said, ‘manufactured from reclaimed bio-matter. Immersion in the toxin has retarded the decomposition of both the corpse material and fibres. I noted a similar absence of micro fauna in the cavern above.’

A set of razors split the rags, and they sloughed off the pale flesh beneath.

‘Male,’ he said. ‘Judging by general parameters and age markers, perhaps no more than seventeen years old. His muscles were not well developed, nor are there any signs of muscle grafting or augmentation. That is at odds with my experience of the combat effectiveness of this variety of…’ He clicked for several seconds, and Enna wondered if literal wheels were turning in his skull as he struggled to find a suitable word.

‘Assassin,’ said Josef in a cold rumble. ‘The word you are looking for is assassin.’

Glavius-4-Rho did not respond, but turned the corpse until its bare head was just a hand span from the chrome of his own face.

‘There is something in its mouth…’ murmured the magos, eyes whirring as they focused. Pincer fingers reached between the corpse’s teeth, and then retracted. A bright circle of metal gleamed between Glavius-4-Rho’s digits. ‘A coin. Silver. Both faces stamped with the same design. That is a point of concordance with the description given by specialist/soldier Koleg of the Renewed cultist that he examined in the Reliquary Tower.’ The magos spun the coin, and then tucked it away beneath his robes. For a moment, Josef thought of Talicto running a coin over his knuckles as he listened to Covenant denounce him at the conclave.

Glavius-4-Rho had shifted his grip on the corpse. His eyes were projecting a wide beam of blue light across its face.

‘Features are unremarkable,’ he said. ‘I would have to examine other specimens to be sure but it would indicate Renewed cultists are unexceptional in terms of appearance despite their prodigious combat ability.’

‘What do you mean by unexceptional?’ asked Enna. Josef, Severita and Glavius-4-Rho looked at her, but Covenant had moved off the steps and had walked to the side of another sarcophagus. He was looking down at the mirror surface of the liquid within. Enna glanced back at the tech-priest. ‘Koleg just said that the face of the Renewed beneath the mask he removed seemed ordinary. That’s not unexceptional, that’s just unexpected. So what do you mean?’

‘I mean that these specimens of what we call the Renewed demonstrate a wide variety of physical types, none of which include the physical fitness or augmetics necessary to endure a cyclonic dust storm, overcome armoured warriors of the Adeptus Sororitas, and kill several members and servants of the Inquisition. It should not be within the physical or psychological range of these specimens.’

‘The flesh is not weak,’ said Josef.

‘I am not sure what you mean,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. ‘The point is that it is weak. These individuals have overridden that weakness. The question is how.’

‘They drown them,’ said Covenant. He did not look up from the water in the sarcophagus in front of him. ‘That is how it begins. They immerse them awake and alive. They hold them under until the water fills their lungs, and their fears drown their thoughts. Then they take them out and begin work. They cut, and siphon, and pull something back to life. It is not the same person. They are something different to what they were before. Young or old, mundane or witch, they rise anew, stronger, unburdened by doubt or memory. The coin in the mouth is a ritual symbol of transition from one state to another.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Enna. Covenant glanced at her, and raised an eyebrow for a second.

‘The idea is not new,’ he said, ‘just the expression.’

‘The Renewed…’ said Josef, and Enna saw the preacher shiver, his hand gripping the haft of his hammer. ‘The Adeptus Arbites reports said that they took all kinds from the surface and higher strata. Without their masks, they could be anyone.’

‘These devices are not within even the broadest scope of my knowledge,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. ‘Revival of the dead is a mystery of the lachrymae, but your assertion is consistent with what I can determine of these machines.’ He paused, extending a brass digit to tap a cluster of metal and crystal tubes. ‘Their spirits are unclean. I do not know what you would make by such artifice.’

‘Something closer to the divine,’ said Covenant, turning and moving to stand above the hermit. ‘That is what you believe happens here, isn’t it? The living are remade in the image of the dead Emperor.’

‘They are the children of the dead king…’

‘We have seen the results of how they believe they touch the divine. Talicto must have found them, subverted them to his control, and then declared them purged.’

Enna looked down into one of the stone tanks. Her face looked back at her from the mirror of the water’s surface. She thought of Idris, of the rag-swathed figure coming from the smoke and flames, and the shard of crystal flying true from its hand.

‘If this has been here for a decade there could be hundreds, maybe thousands of remade subjects produced by this… method,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. ‘The failure rate is likely to be high, but…’

‘I am the person that you never saw,’ muttered Josef, ‘I am the hand that knocks on the door…’ Enna and the others all looked at the preacher, who shrugged. ‘Sorry, just an old ship-rhyme.’

‘I have seen enough,’ said Covenant. ‘There is much here that needs to be considered, but that can wait until we are aboard ship and under way. Magos, make what records you can. Enna, set charges to bring the roof down. We will bury this place.’

‘You cannot go,’ said the hermit, twisting from Josef’s grip with surprising speed. Enna raised her las-carbine, but Covenant raised a hand and her trigger finger froze. ‘You cannot go,’ repeated the man, shaking his head, stick-thin limbs spread as though to block their path. ‘You have seen the way of revelation and are unshriven. You must kneel at the throne. You must ask the dead to let you pass back to the light.’

Severita twitched, as though suppressing the instinct to strike the man.

‘The throne?’ asked Josef softly. ‘The Emperor’s throne?’

The man let one arm drop and pointed with a long finger at the object at the distant centre of the room, the object Enna had presumed was a broken pillar.

‘The dead king,’ he said. ‘He awaits us.’

The throne rose from the floor on a stepped plinth of black stone. Its legs, back and arms were bone. Not the large bones of animals, but the jumbled fragments of a mass grave fused together. Shattered skulls, vertebrae, femurs, teeth and scapulae. Eagles and serpents clawed and slithered in bas-relief across its surface. Black soot filled the recesses between every feather and scale. A halo of crystal jutted from the high back, circling the space beneath like a crown waiting for an absent monarch. Except the throne was not empty.

The corpse had slumped into the embrace of the throne, like a drunk passed out after a feast. The processes of decay had been halted by the chem-laden air, but they still had stiffened the flesh, paled the skin and begun to bloat its stomach. Blood caked its heavy black robe. The fletching of three silver bolts projected from its chest, throat and left eye. High gothic script circled the visible parts of the shafts. The left hand clutched a rosary of finger bones. The head hung to one side, open lips dribbling a dried river of blood down its cheek. Its features were distorted by death, but still recognisable as those that had looked across the floor of the conclave chamber before the world tore itself apart. It was the face of Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto.

The hermit had folded to the floor at the foot of the throne, and was muttering prayers into the smooth stones.

‘It cannot be him,’ said Josef. Covenant was staring at the corpse on the throne. ‘It’s a trick,’ continued Josef, feeling the shock overcome the control he normally had over his tongue. ‘He was at the conclave. He spoke. It was him, from the pict records, from…’

‘Is that cadaver the individual that we have been hunting?’ asked Glavius-4-Rho. The magos was scanning the surroundings with slender washes of green light. ‘Its face matches the pict and scan records you have on him to within ninety-nine-point-four per cent likelihood of a positive match.’ The tech-priest cocked his head, cogs whirring. ‘I am no high initiate of the mysteries of the biologis, but that specimen is not fresh. Even allowing for the effect of the toxins in the atmosphere, and factoring in the time that I estimate since the spirits of this place’s machines were quieted, it must have been, oh… half a decade since expiration. That is strange, is it not?’

‘Thank you, Glavius-4-Rho,’ said Covenant softly, without looking around.

Josef took a step further forward, eyes returning to the silver feathers and quarrel shafts. He recognised their type as soon as he focused his mind and eyes on them. They were witch slayers, blessed silver engraved with litanies of detestation. They were weapons of the Inquisition.

‘But that makes no sense…’ breathed Josef. ‘We have been hunting him since Niamarin – that was four years ago. Even accounting for time in the warp… we saw him, at the conclave. We all saw him. We–’

‘We saw something,’ said Covenant, and Josef could sense the control in the softness of his master’s voice. ‘Did we see Talicto? Faces can be forged. Voices matched. Lives can be broken, rebuilt. Identity counterfeited. And that is what the Renewed do, is it not? Remake the living into something else?’

‘Or this could be a trick,’ said Josef. ‘This could be a counterfeit.’

‘It is possible,’ said Covenant, voice so calm that it sent ice over Josef’s skin. ‘But counterfeit or no, someone killed him, and killed him with blessed silver. A weapon intended to kill a witch.’ His finger tapped the silver crossbow bolts, and then pointed at the halo of crystals above the back of the throne. ‘That is a psy-array of some kind. Those are matrix conductive crystals. We knew Talicto was a psyker, though he hid the fact from others. His killer knew, too.’

‘The king has never risen,’ said the hermit, ‘but he speaks still.’

Covenant turned his gaze on the man, his psycannon counter-rotating at the same time to point at the corpse on the throne.

‘Speaks?’

The hermit nodded.

‘But it is not wise,’ he said. ‘The dead should not be woken. It is not for the unshriven.’

‘When does he speak?’ asked Covenant. The hermit began to shake his head, and stepped away. Covenant took a step and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. Their eyes met. ‘Show me,’ he said, his voice low.

The hermit nodded, and turned to the throne. Josef noticed that the man was shaking. He took a step closer to the throne, eyes fixed on the floor. He looked back, and Covenant’s gaze met his. With trembling steps he climbed until he was kneeling just before the enthroned corpse. Slowly – lips twitching with babbled prayers – he reached up and placed a finger on the throne.

‘I am going to die,’ said a voice that came from the air all around them.

Josef felt cold prickle over his skin. The lights dimmed and stuttered. Pale light glowed in the crystal halo above Talicto’s corpse.

‘I am going to die,’ said the voice, ‘and I will die, and see my work undone.’

The hermit’s hand fell from the throne, and he scrambled back whimpering, shaking.

‘The dead will not let you pass now…’ he moaned. ‘Not now that the dead king speaks.’

‘Witchcraft…’ hissed Severita.

Covenant mounted the steps to the throne.

‘Lord…’ began Josef, the cold of the psychic manifestation clinging to his skin.

‘Truth,’ said Covenant. He reached the top of the steps and paused, looking down at the yellow skin and shrivelled eyes of Talicto. ‘We need truth, even if it comes from the grave.’ Covenant reached out, and Josef could feel the pressure wave of building psychic power as his master touched the throne.

Cold light flickered through the crystal halo above the throne. The sound of machines spinning to wakefulness keened in the distance. The light spread down the cables linked to the throne and plinth, and a high buzz rose through the floor and into the air, before sound flattened into silence across the chamber. Josef felt the hairs rise on his skin. The breath left his lungs as though he had been struck and his eyes watered as he tried to focus. Covenant was a frozen figure, the tip of his gauntleted finger touching the blazing halo of crystals above the throne. The throne shone. Threads of red light ran through the cracks in the bones. The corpse of Talicto twitched, and then burst into flames. The hermit wailed, and scampered away towards the entrance to the chamber. Josef did not move to catch him. He could not. His eyes were locked on what was manifesting before him. Black smoke poured from the corpse’s mouth. Its eyes were boiling in its sockets. Then both fire and lightning vanished.

Pitch darkness enclosed Josef. He was suddenly aware of the air dragging in and out of his lungs and the hammering of his heart.

‘Hubris…’ the word echoed through the air, seeming to come from all around. ‘An excess of pride that dooms the bearer to a fatal level of confidence.’

Josef recognised the voice from the few pict- and audio-captures they had obtained over the years, and from that last moment of the conclave on Ero before the massacre began.

‘We all believe that we are immune to it,’ said the voice of Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto. ‘We all believe that we will not fall victim to the blindness that comes from being certain that we are right, and that we know more than others.’

Form and shape flickered through the dark, like glowing mist teased into false solidity. The pale light flowed over the floor, into the sarcophagi, and across the metal slabs. Human figures lay on the slabs, sketched in ghostlight, held in place by silver shackles. The image blurred for a second and then sharpened. And Josef saw the figure on the throne move. An image of Talicto, spun from shadow and pale radiance, rose from where his corpse remained slumped between the throne’s arms. His form was translucent, a gauze of mist and light. Darkness filled the pits of his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. The long robes hanging from his shoulders swayed as he took a step down to the floor. For a second Josef thought that the image was going to stop and turn to talk to Covenant, or them, but it moved onwards, eyes focused on empty space. The links of a rosary of human finger bones clacked through Talicto’s left hand.

‘But we are not immune to pride,’ said the ghost image, ‘nor its poison.’

The ghost image shimmered as Talicto stepped from the plinth onto the floor. Other figures came into focus at the circumference of the space around the throne. They all wore tattered rags, but their faces were unmasked. There were men and women, young and old – their faces those of scribes, of forge workers, of soldiers and servants, of the tide of humanity that moved in the background but was never seen for itself. Josef flinched aside as a translucent figure appeared next to him, but the ghost figure’s presence was as insubstantial as a warm breath on a winter’s night.

Talicto paused and turned full circle. As the shadows of the inquisitor’s eyes passed over Josef it was as though he were really there, meeting his gaze before moving on. Covenant stepped from the plinth, psycannon rotating to stay aimed at the corpse on the throne. Severita shifted, sword drawn and poised, eyes locked on the image of Talicto.

‘I am talking to you,’ he said. ‘Whoever you are that has been hunting me in the shadows. If you have come this far it is either because I have permitted it, or I have made an error and am dead. I will not say that either possibility is likely, but perhaps from where you stand it looks different.’

Talicto smiled, and the shadows rearranged into something that was both human and utterly terrifying.

‘I know you,’ said the voice of Talicto. ‘I know you are there. I have known you are there for some time now. It took me time to notice your presence, I will grant you that, but I saw your shadow at my back. I felt you watching. And since I have noticed that you three were there, I have taken care to watch you even as you watch me. The Triumvirate… the sorceress, the wanderer and the high priest. Three scions of the Horusian legacy, three shadows searching for salvation. Yes, I know you.’

Josef’s mouth was dry as he watched the image of Talicto pause.

‘You are powerful but misguided,’ he said. ‘Just as there are those of our Ordos who believe that we can only triumph through ignorance while calling it purity, so are you three harnessed to just as large a lie. The warp is a weapon that must be wielded, a poison that must be studied for it to be unmade. I have devoted my service to the Emperor to do just that. I have turned the daemons of Chaos on each other. I have paid for knowledge that could destroy or save billions. I have mastered powers that would make me a heretic in the eyes of our peers.’ Talicto shook his head, and closed his eyes for a second. When they opened again Josef felt a jolt of shock at the expression on the image of the gaunt face. There was weariness and rage in his face, and when he spoke the words shook with anger. ‘But through all that I have done, I have never had the arrogance to believe the warp is anything but a tool.’

The shadow of Talicto shivered.

‘The warp is fire. It is the deep ocean. It is the wind, and the slow grinding of stone. Believe that you are stronger than it and it will break you, drown you, burn you to ashes, and fling you to the sky.’ He paused, glancing at the bone rosary in his hand, still for the moment as though waiting for fresh prayers to count. ‘Yet you do not see that, do you? You do not see the limit of what you are playing with, nor the lie of what you believe.’

Silence formed and ticked over in seconds. Josef could barely breathe. Of all the things that he had imagined as they had tracked down the abominations and cults created by Talicto, he had never seen the man as anything but a shadow cast by his acts. But here was the shadow and it was not a monster. It was a man, looking for the words to match his emotions.

‘The warp is not salvation, you fools,’ said Talicto’s voice at last, and the words were low. ‘You look on the legend of Horus and see an opportunity wasted. You think that you can make a dark messiah to enslave the warp to save mankind…’ A dry crackling noise filled the air in place of the voice.

Laughter, Josef realised. Cold and mirthless laughter.

‘To save mankind… Not to help it triumph. Not to buy us a few more grains of time as the last fall, but to save it…’ Talicto gave a single shake of his head. ‘You would feed humanity its own heart to save it from starvation.

‘I have opposed you since I first deduced your presence. If you thought I did not see your hand in the subversion of my own work, you are wrong. You infiltrated my cells on Dominicus Prime. You stole my research material from the Kerros’ spire. Perhaps it was you that engineered that idealistic youth Covenant to dog my efforts.’

Josef looked at Covenant, but his master was a statue, his face a mask.

‘You want what I know, what I have acquired and learned, and you think it best to steal it rather than to ask. In that, at least, you have some wisdom. I do not know your faces, but I will see you destroyed. Even if I am gone to the judgement of the Emperor already, I will destroy you. You deserve that. If only for your hubris, you deserve that.’

The shade-image of Talicto began to fade. The last expression on its face before it vanished was a grim, knowing smile.

TWELVE

‘Commander, we have a message from the astropathic chamber,’ said Ensign Luco, in the voice he used when he wanted only her to hear bad news. Kade Zecker turned her gaze from the view of Iago. The planet hung against the green bruise of space, its surface pale white streaked with orange and black. 

She rubbed her temple, but the ache hung there, behind her eyes. She nodded to the young officer to continue.

‘The astropaths say they have felt something,’ said Luco softly, ‘a ripple in the warp that could be a vessel emerging.’

‘When?’

‘They can’t be certain. If it was a ship it could have translated days ago or in the last hour. The only seer that could talk kept on hissing about etheric distortion.’

Kade winced as the pain in her skull swelled briefly. 

‘Only one could talk?’ she asked.

Luco nodded.

‘They have been getting worse ever since we made passage from Ero. There is something… We are too close to the storm’s edge.’

‘What about the inquisitor’s witch?’ she asked, thinking of the floating thing of rags, withered limbs and chrome. ‘Does she have anything to say?’

‘I have not seen her,’ said Luco, and shivered. ‘She remains in her quarters, I believe and I… I did not wish to disturb… her.’

Zecker nodded slowly. Ships were tumbling out of the night in her head, and the beam of a stab-light was moving up through silent dark air. It had been eight watches since she had slept. A large dose of grey market sedative had done nothing but move the colours around the ceiling of her quarters. She was riding an even larger dose of stimm to try to keep her sharp, but she was sure that she was going to miss something soon.

‘Commander?’ said Luco. She looked back at him. ‘The astropaths report…’

She nodded.

‘Put the sensor watch on alert. Maintain battle readiness.’

‘As you command.’ He hesitated. ‘The inquisitor…’

‘I will inform him once he has returned from the surface.’

‘Aye, commander.’ Luco threw a salute and left Kade to the swirl of pain and unwelcome thoughts filling her skull.

‘What does this mean?’ asked Josef, eyes still locked unbelieving on the throne. Light was still flickering and flowing through the air like sparks cascading from a fire.

Covenant looked as though he was going to say something when the air crackled again. The throne shone brighter. Ropes of light shivered through the air. Josef felt a wave of heat break across his face as a fresh vision unfolded from the throne. Where before the psychic echo had been ethereal but clear, now it was edged with blurred colour, like a moving image smeared in blood and heat.

‘You will not leave!’ The shout echoed around the chamber, as the thunder of the broken vision faded. Josef’s head jerked around. He saw the hermit standing on the steps before the distant door out of the chamber. The thin man was pointing at them, voice vibrating with terror and anger. ‘You have disturbed the sleep of the dead king. You cannot leave. His children wake!’

On his throne, the corpse of Talicto writhed as cords of psychic force arced through the flesh. The rosary of finger bones began to clack in its dead fingers. The crystal halo above its head was blazing. A high keening note was rising through the air. The bone throne was glowing. White flame burst through Talicto’s corpse and stabbed towards the ceiling. Covenant stumbled back from where he had been standing. The air shimmered. The last lights blew in a shower of sparks. Pale flame-light poured shadow into the chamber.

‘They wake,’ screamed the hermit as he ran from the chamber. ‘They wake!’

Covenant stepped towards the throne, the great sword sliding from the sheath on his back with a thunderclap of activation.

He swung, and the lightning-sheathed edge met bone and crystal, and cut the throne in two.

For a second the chamber was still, its substance swallowed in darkness that seemed to run out beyond the edge of existence. The only light was the blue glow of Covenant’s and Severita’s swords.

The sound of water lapping on stone clapped in the dark like a slow pulse.

And then, the Renewed rose from the black water of their creation.

‘Ship at ten thousand increments, one hundred and eight by seventy-two, closing fast.’ The shout jerked Commander Zecker’s head around. The memories of dreams fled.

‘All weapons ready to fire,’ called Zecker. ‘Get me a sensor read, and firing solutions.’

‘Who the hell is it? How did it get that close?’ breathed Luco from beside her.

‘It is broadcasting a signal,’ called an officer, and Kade Zecker heard the catch of confusion in the man’s voice. ‘It is using a cypher that matches the one given to us by the inquisitor.’

‘Confirm that,’ snapped Kade. Her hands were vibrating at her sides. Something was screaming inside her skull to fire now, to spill flame and life into the void.

‘It matches – the ship identifies itself as the Dionysia, under the command of Duke von Castellan.’

‘A rogue trader…’ breathed Luco through his teeth.

‘It’s launching shuttle craft.’

‘Heading towards us?’ asked Kade.

‘Towards the planet’s surface.’

She paused for a second. Cold thoughts ticked through the passing seconds.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘Bring us between them and the planet. Weapons lock all targets.’

The Valour’s Flame shifted with a rumble of engines.

‘They are holding course.’

‘Ready to fire on my command,’ said Zecker.

‘Commander!’ shouted another officer an instant before the hull shook. Fire swallowed the stars beyond the viewports. Klaxons shouted into the shaking air.

‘Shields inactive across thirty per cent of the hull,’ boomed the voice of a tech-priest.

‘Second ship closing from ten by two hundred and five. We are bracketed.’

‘Throne,’ hissed Luco, his eyes scanning the sensor screens faster than the officer could call it out. ‘It’s a Dauntless!’

Severita spun through the dark of the underworld, bolt pistol firing. Her sword drew red ruin from limbs. The Canticle of Purgation sang through her, in her every breath and every muscle. The drowned dead stood before Severita’s eyes. Their rags were bleached grey, hanging from their flesh like seaweed wrapped around corpses pulled from the ocean. Her eyes saw and her hand moved to strike down what she saw. Bolts struck ragged figures while they pulled themselves from the water. Torsos ripped apart. Limbs and blood fell into the dark water of the lake. Some hit the ground and rose. Their movements were jerky, like sleepers struggling into the waking world. But they were still fast.

‘This is an eventuality that I was not configured for,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

The grey-robed tech-priest was a pace behind her, slashing out with his mechadendrites at anything that came close. Blood covered the tips of tools and data spikes. Josef was on the other side of the tech-priest, swinging his hammer in wide arcs. Bones and bodies broke as the great iron head slammed into rag-clad figures and lifted them off their feet.

Beyond him, Covenant advanced towards them from the throne dais. Dozens of ragged figures crowded up the steps to meet him. Witch-light crackled around his skull. A figure lunged at Covenant, and fell in a flash of lightning and steel.

Another pulled itself onto the lip of a sarcophagus three paces from Severita, crouched and leapt at her. She pivoted and shot in a single movement, the silent prayer flowing through her as her finger pulled the trigger. The bolt pistol’s muzzle was just beside the figure’s head as it fired. Skull fragments and pulped meat exploded out. Severita felt one of the bone shards cut into her cheek. She ducked as another figure came at her, hands reaching for her eyes. She spun, and kicked the figure in the side of the torso. She felt ribs break under her heel as the force of impact shuddered up her leg. She spun back, her movements locked into a rhythm whose notes were death, and whose music was a devotion to the living god she served. The figure staggered, and lurched forward as she fired.

Severita saw a blow slam to stillness a foot from the inquisitor. The crystal blade glowed from red to white hot in the attacker’s hand. The man’s face twisted, blood-stained sweat pouring from his skin. Covenant stepped forward, psycannon firing again, cutting and cutting with the smooth ferocity of a reaper set before the corn.

Beside her she heard Glavius-4-Rho’s speaker grunt static as a crystal shard struck his chrome cheek and shattered. The tech-priest juddered back, and the attacker lunged after him with a second blade. Lightning wreathed Severita’s narrow-bladed sword as she back-handed it into the figure’s neck. Blood burned to smoke in the sword’s field, as she spun it in a wide arc.

‘Keep behind me!’ she shouted to Glavius-4-Rho, as ragged figures churned the space around them.

‘To the door,’ shouted Josef, pulling the head of his hammer from the mashed ruin of a corpse. The preacher was splattered with blood. It matted black in his hair and clung to his face in beads. He drove forward, muscles surging as he hammered a path towards the light of the door.

Covenant was a pace from the trio of Glavius-4-Rho, Josef and Severita. The Renewed came at them in a ragged tide, moving with the broken speed of people half awake. Some had crystal blades, but some came with just their hands, fingers reaching like claws. Severita and Covenant ran through the press, not pausing as they slaughtered a path. They were almost at the steps that led to the doorway out of the chamber when the tide of ragged figures hesitated. A keening cry rose through the air. The nearest figures shivered beneath their sodden rags. Severita shot three as they stood still. Then they leapt forward, their previous slowness shed like a skin. A figure landed on the steps before them. Witch-light flickered in the torn eyeholes of its mask. Tears of frost fell from its limbs.

Covenant’s impulse-linked cannon fired. A bubble of blue flame formed around the figure, and shattered as the psycannon shell cut through the air and ripped the witch’s legs apart. The figure on the steps fell. Severita pivoted and hacked through two others before they had a chance to recover. Close beside her she could hear the grunting slam as Josef’s hammer rose and fell.

Covenant stepped over the torn corpse of the witch. The man’s hand lashed up at him. Crystal shards wreathed the bloody fist, their points ragged glints of light, the blow snake-strike fast. Severita saw the blow and knew even as she leapt towards Covenant that it would land, and the crystal points would punch through fabric and flesh, and end her master’s life.

Enna rose from the dark behind Covenant. Severita saw the las-carbine come up in her hand.

Severita had never thought of herself as fast. Speed was just a consequence of devotion, of a will, body and spirit balanced and moving towards a single end. But even though she did not think of her speed, she had rarely met another human who had reactions to match hers. But Enna was faster than any warrior she had seen.

The crystal blades reached through the slowed beat of time. Covenant was pulling back, aware of the danger now, but moving too late. Enna fired. The burst of las-bolts struck the Renewed in the head and blew its skull apart. The crystal-studded fist dropped.

Severita looked at Enna. The acolyte’s face was pale, features set as she hosed las-fire into the Renewed swarming out of the dark.

‘Run,’ said Covenant. A ragged halo of cold light had formed around his head. Severita saw his face for an instant, eyes flashing, shadows drawn across his features in a mask of cold rage. ‘Run now!’

The wave of telekinetic force ripped out from him. Splinters of stone showered up from the shattered floor. Limbs snapped as ragged figures flipped into the air. Covenant charged. His sword scythed through torsos. Lightning and burning blood flared in its wake, and Covenant was cutting again as he moved. The psycannon on his shoulder reversed, and fired at a figure lunging towards his back, and then they were all running, sprinting for the door, and the path back to the light. Away from revelation.

They ran through the underworld of Iago. On and on they climbed, breath sawing from their throats. Muscles burning, but unable to rest. Swift feet followed them in silence. Enna paused and pivoted back to fire down the tunnel behind them. She counted the seconds as the charge in her las-carbine drained. Bolts of light shredded the dark. She was not sure if any of the Renewed still followed them, but if they did she was not going to let them close enough to find out for certain.

‘Moving!’ she shouted, and stopped firing. The charge indicator on her carbine shone amber as she ran up the tunnel, passing Covenant where he had turned to cover her. Severita turned as Enna passed her, and Covenant began to run. Enna felt the drug cocktail in her veins buzzing at the edge of her senses as it supressed fatigue. She caught up with the labouring figure of Josef, and the tech-priest, and saw a circle of daylight in the distance.

‘Almost there,’ grunted Josef.

Enna nodded and was about to turn to cover Covenant and Severita as they passed.

‘There is someone there!’ panted Glavius-4-Rho, suddenly coming to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, sensors swaying, cogs clicking in the exposed cavities of his skull.

Enna twisted to look back down the tunnel past Covenant, but it was dark and silent.

‘Outside the tunnel mouth,’ hissed Glavius-4-Rho.

Enna felt cold and stillness spread through her. Covenant was level with her but he slowed, and she sensed the tension spread through them all.

‘Could the Renewed have reached the surface before us?’ she asked.

‘How many?’ asked Josef.

‘I can’t tell,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

‘Lor–’ Josef began to say.

‘Covenant…’ the word rolled down the tunnel, echoing, rolling with the crackle of amplification. ‘We must speak. I do not wish blood, so do not provoke me to shed yours.’

Enna focused on the tunnel mouth beyond the barrel of her gun. She recognised the voice. She thought of the corpse of Talicto in the underworld they had just fled; she thought of his words, and the silver quarrels that had pinned him to his throne of bone. Killed by another inquisitor…

‘Lord, that is…’ began Josef.

Covenant glanced at the preacher for a second, and then began to walk slowly towards the circle of daylight beyond the tunnel mouth.

‘No one raises a weapon or fires a shot,’ he said as he moved. ‘If there is going to be a fight, the first blow will be mine.’

The heat and light fell on Enna like a hammer blow as she stepped from the tunnel mouth. Covenant and the others halted in the glare of Iago’s monochrome sky. The hum of charged energy weapons greeted them. Ten figures in graphite grey armour stood in an arc around the tunnel mouth. Mirrored visors hid their faces, and power packs buzzed on their backs. Augmetic bracing ran across their shoulders and down their arms. Enna took in the heavy weapons in their hands, heat fuming from their charge coils. Behind them stood a figure in gold and pearl-white Terminator plate, and beside him the figures of Viola and Cleander von Castellan. Sweat was running down the rogue trader’s face to stain the collar of his heavy naval coat. Viola’s face was a pinched mask of controlled rage.

Covenant looked at the figure, and then turned his head slowly, eyes moving across the mirror-masked troopers. The psycannon followed his gaze, then moved back to Vult as he looked at the von Castellans.

‘He caught us cold, my lord,’ said Cleander. ‘I… I am sorry.’

Covenant gave a small nod. Then he turned his gaze on Vult.

‘Do you mean this as an expression of peaceful intent?’

‘I intend to talk with you,’ said Vult.

‘To talk…’ said Covenant, nodding and looking away as though considering the words. The psycannon stayed steady on Vult. ‘To talk… What is there for us to talk about?’

‘Unity,’ said Vult, and the word rasped from the silver breath mask beneath his hood. ‘Unity of purpose.’

‘A strange way to begin such a conversation.’

‘Prudence,’ said Vult. ‘After all that has happened, how can I not be careful?’

‘And how can I not presume that you are an enemy?’

‘If I was,’ said Vult, ‘then I could have killed you without you ever realising I was here. I could have had your shuttle burned from the sky, or shot you before you stepped into the light. I could have killed your servants and destroyed everything that you have ever touched. I did none of those things.’

‘But you are here,’ replied Covenant, ‘and I did not invite you.’

Vult paused, then inclined his head as though conceding the point. He gestured and the arc of troopers stepped back, readiness in their relaxed stances. Enna felt the sense of threat pressing on her nerves reduce, but not vanish.

‘I do not know you as well as I ought to,’ said Vult. ‘That is my failing. Your deeds, though, of them I do know something. You are a fine servant of the Emperor. Relentless, unflinching in action, focused in intent. Your master would have been proud.’ Enna saw a muscle twitch in the still mask of Covenant’s face. ‘You did not know that I knew him?’ said Vult, and Enna saw that the inquisitor lord had noticed the same tick. ‘I knew Argento, not as well as I should have, but I knew him. You are very like he was when he was young, Covenant.’

‘He is dead,’ said Covenant. ‘His influence on me died with him.’

Vult nodded.

‘My intention was only to show you that I am not as much of a stranger to you as you believe. I knew Argento had died, but not how.’

‘A new-born saint killed him,’ said Covenant. Vult breathed out, and looked up at the rust-rotted face of the macro-ingot rising above them.

‘His belief in the Thorian ideal… I told him that it would be his undoing.’ He shook his head, and the gesture, so natural in a normal human, rippled monstrously through the Terminator plate. ‘The belief in holy salvation, in avatars of divinity… what is it, but an enabler of discord, and a justification for fanatics?’

‘What is any belief?’ asked Covenant. ‘The difference is whether it is true.’

The two inquisitors held each other’s gaze.

‘Is this why you came here,’ said Covenant, ‘to argue belief and doctrine? Is that what your principles lead you to, words and debate over matters that defy reconciliation? Words strangling action until humanity is gasping for air.’

Vult shook his head.

‘Believe it or not, but I am here as more of a friend than an enemy. And my principles do not stop me from putting aside my difference of opinion. In fact, they demand that I am here, that I find a way to make the Emperor’s domain strong, that I try to find a way of saving you.’

‘Saving me… or judging me?’

‘There are matters that have to be addressed,’ said Vult. ‘There are others, several others, who wish you dragged back to the ashes of Aspira’s shrine in chains, others still who do not wish you even that dignity.’

‘I am not a dog that comes and barks at their whims. Their anger and your suspicion are fire that gives smoke but no heat.’

‘This is where the cult that committed the attack came from, a resurrection cult, and you of the Thorian view. You accuse a figure renowned amongst our Ordo of heresy, you survive a massacre that follows, and then flee before facing any question… Please give me another suspicion, other than that you brought about the deaths of your peers.’

‘They and you can believe as you like,’ said Covenant and gave the smallest of gestures.

‘Do not shrug at me, boy! Do not dare!’ Vult’s voice roared out, snarling with rage and amplification. Enna felt cold snap down her spine. ‘Chaos is here. It is eating our bones, and those who can act sleep in ashes, or fight each other. We are failing. Mankind is dying. Do not dare to dismiss that as though it is nothing to do with you.’

Vult’s armour growled as servos flexed beneath the plates. Enna could almost feel the anger radiating from him in burning waves. Then, like a shutter closing over a lamp, the force of his anger was gone. Enna almost blinked with the change, and Idris’ voice spoke from memory.

‘What makes an inquisitor is willpower,’ she had said. ‘The will to face the truth of the universe, and act. In some that strength of will is like stone, unyielding and immovable; in others it is like a river, without shape but with the power to level mountains; and in a few it is like a sword, its edge sheathed until it cuts.’

‘In truth there is no choice,’ said Vult, his voice a controlled rasp. ‘I have your ship, and the ship that brought you here. If we do not reach an understanding, then here you remain.’

Josef snorted, but Covenant smiled. Enna felt a shiver of shock. Covenant raised an eyebrow, glanced around Enna, Severita and Josef, then back to Vult. The smile was still on his lips. He shrugged.

‘And what of you? What do these crows of judgement say of you? A daemonhunter who hides his face like an occultist of old, an ally of Talicto, the convener of the conclave that became a massacre – for all your reputation, do you stand here as judge, or as a man wanting allies and finding few?’

Enna felt her heartbeat rising to fill the seconds of silence. Her drug glands itched in her throat. Her nerves sang with readiness. The hot air shimmered against the migraine brightness of the sky.

Vult raised a hand. Enna slowly drew a breath. The weight of the gun in her hands filled her. The first three shots she would take hung in her mind, waiting for her to let them free. The daemonhunter lord reached up to his face, and released the silver rebreather. The face that looked at them was worn thin with age. Skin the colour and texture of dry parchment hung from sharp bones. Beads of polished jet dotted his chin and right cheek, the stones bonded with the withering flesh. Pale blue eyes moved in deep sockets. Scabs clustered on his lips, and Enna could tell that he was forcing himself not to show that without the mask he could barely breathe. There was strength in his face: ferocious, terrifying strength.

‘You see me clearly, inquisitor,’ he said, sucking breaths between each word.

Covenant nodded, and Enna thought she saw something other than cold control in the gesture.

‘And…’ hissed Vult, struggling for breath, ‘I see you. You were not part of the atrocity on Ero. You are a fanatic. You are young, but you are… you are also right.’ Vult reached up and secured his mask. Enna though she saw the Terminator armour flex as he took a breath. ‘What did you find here on Iago?’ he asked, his voice again an amplified rasp.

‘I think you know,’ said Covenant.

‘Evidence that Talicto has been dead for years,’ said Vult.

Enna blinked, stunned.

‘Did you kill him?’ asked Covenant.

Vult shook his head.

‘It was a guess, but if you look at what has happened from a certain point of view, it is obvious.’

‘What point of view would that be?’

‘There is a story, Covenant, a story from the far past, that once there were inquisitors who looked at the greatest of heresies, and thought to save mankind through damnation.’

‘The Horusians…’ said Covenant.

Vult looked up at the flat brightness of the sky. ‘We should be gone from here,’ he muttered, and gestured at the dark grey-armoured troopers. ‘Bring the gunships in and signal the ships to be ready to break orbit as soon as we are aboard. Transfer crew to Inquisitor Covenant’s craft to cover his losses.’

‘Lord Vult,’ said Covenant, still not moving, ‘we have no agreement.’

‘But we do,’ said Vult. ‘We agree in a way that only our kind can – not in why something matters, but in what must be done. You were right, Covenant. A serpent has wakened amongst us, and it must be destroyed or it will destroy what we seek to protect.’

‘They remain hidden,’ said Covenant. ‘You cannot kill shadows.’

‘But you can,’ said Vult, and the rasp of his voice seemed almost a laugh. He gestured at Viola and Cleander. ‘And your servants have given us the means to find them.’

‘That is not an answer,’ asked Covenant.

Vult shrugged. Enna almost laughed.

‘No, but it might be part of one,’ said Vult. The first gunship came in low above the macro-ingot, and slammed to a halt in mid-air, thrusters peeling metal dust from the metal cliffs as it descended towards them. ‘So, Inquisitor Covenant, do we have an accord?’

PART THREE

LOST DREAMS

THIRTEEN

Josef leaned on the rail of the gantry and watched as the lord inquisitor’s retinue moved across the main hangar bay of the Valour’s Flame. Commander Zecker’s destroyer had been chosen as a place of conference. Although it was seconded to Covenant’s command, it held more of an air of neutrality than either the Dionysia or the warship which had brought Vult. The lord daemonhunter had arrived in a black-hulled gunship that had disgorged a procession of figures into the light.

A cluster of pale-faced men and women formed a loose vanguard. All of them wore dark grey uniforms with simple rank insignia in silver, and their eyes moved coldly over every detail of their surroundings. None of them bore weapons, but Josef could spot killers when he saw them. Black-robed clerics followed them, swords sheathed over their backs, tattooed symbols marking their shaven scalps. Their skin had an unhealthy sheen, and red veins threaded the whites of their eyes. These were the vaunted Black Priests, recruited from the Ecclesiarchy to serve the Ordo Malleus as exorcists, investigators and purifiers. Josef had encountered them before, and never found the experience pleasant; they were like carrion crows drawn to the bones of atrocities. Every now and then one of them would pull a vial of oil and blood from their robes, and watch the two liquids swirl as they shook them. Josef had no idea why they did it, but he was sure that he did not want to. Almost two decades serving at Covenant’s side, and seeing the ways of the warp and the power of Chaos, made him value ignorance.

Last of all came Vult, encased in his pearl and gold armour, following his vassals like a king. Covenant, Severita, Enna and Viola waited in a loose circle. He watched as the distance between the two groups narrowed.

He coughed, winced and wiped his hand across his mouth.

He closed his eyes for a second. Fatigue swirled the colours behind his eyelids. Iago… Iago had not been good.

+You need to rest, old man,+ Mylasa’s voice whispered in his thoughts. Josef felt his lips twitch as he instinctively made to speak a reply. He stopped and framed the words into a clear thought.

Rest? If I wanted rest, girl, I would have made sure I was dead by now.

+Still…+ said the psyker’s voice, then changed texture. +Are you joining Covenant for this council?+

For my sins.

+You don’t like it, do you? Making an alliance with Vult?+

Like or don’t like, it’s happening.

+You are less than your normal gruff but welcoming self.+

Josef grunted aloud and shifted his hand position on the observation rail. Below him, Vult’s party had halted, and words that he could not hear clearly drifted up to him.

He should have gone somewhere else to find peace, he thought. Perhaps he should have gone to the chapel to pray, but prayer did not always lead to peace. He had learnt that long before he took the robes of office.

I am fine, he thought.

+A lie a day…+

He smiled.

Time, lady, just time. It has a habit of running away and then circling back to remind you what’s changed.

He heard her chuckle in his skull.

+Is this melancholy something you have been working on, or more of a spontaneous development?+

Another smile.

Memories, memories I had not thought of in a long while, that’s all. You know, of all the things I have seen – things that a soul should not have to know are real – it’s not the horrors that I would like to forget. It’s all the mistakes that you didn’t realise were being made.

+I can help you with that…+

He laughed out loud, and saw some of Vult’s grey-clad followers look up at him.

This… this reminds me of what happened before, with Idris and Argento. When we heard what the old man was doing. It felt… just like this.

+I remember,+ said Mylasa. +But we are not going to confront an old friend this time.+

It’s going to get difficult, he thought.

+If Viola and Cleander do have information that will lead us to who was really behind the attack, the chances of it becoming energetic are high. I can’t disagree. But at least we have gained allies rather than enemies.+

Have we?

+You do not trust Vult?+

I think he is an inquisitor – an old inquisitor too. They don’t start simple, and age does not improve them.

The vibration running through the ship changed note. Josef knew it meant that the warp engines had begun to power up. They were closing on the edge of the Iago system, and once they reached it all three ships, the Valour’s Flame, the Dionysia and Vult’s Sixth Hammer, would be plunging into the storm-wracked warp. Where they were bound, and if they would go together, would be decided in the next few hours.

It’s not what’s going to be done, it’s just a feeling, a feeling that this will always happen. That moments like this just keep coming around.

+You are a wise man, Josef.+

Another chuckle drew a cough from his throat.

I am a survivor. Living despite doing everything that should kill you teaches some things.

A brief sensation like a sigh of air on skin touched his mind, and Josef knew that the feeling was a direct transmission from Mylasa’s mind, a sign to help his understanding in this silent conversation. Others might find such a connection with a psyker unsettling, but to Josef it was merely disconcerting. He had been a priest of the Ecclesiarchy but even then he had known that to hate the witch blindly was foolish – was not the Emperor a psyker?

Viola has doubts too, and if we are not sure of Vult, then why is he?

+That is his matter, Khoriv. And I respect his judgement enough to not second guess it.+

But this…thought Josef. If I didn’t know better I would say that it was driven by something other than judgement. That makes me worried, Mylasa.

+Every human decision is emotion, even the decision to put emotion aside.+

I thought I knew him.

+None of us know him, not really.+

He heard a space open in the flow of interconnected thoughts, and had a feeling of standing in front of someone who had turned their face to look at something in the distance.

Why am I here?

He looked at his hands resting on the rail. Tattoos covered both but the left was also a mass of scar tissue. Ink had changed the twists of skin and pits into the mouths and eyes of dragons. The colours were faded, the red fire pouring from the creatures’ mouths diluted by time.

I am here because the Emperor wills it. That’s the way it’s always been. Covenant, Cleander, even Idris in the old days. I am here because they need me… His thought trailed off. He took a breath. There was a taste of iron in his mouth. One day… He felt his mouth open and close. One day I won’t be here for them.

He pushed himself away from the rail and made for the doors that led from the bridge to the rest of the command quarters.

+Josef…?+ sent Mylasa, and he felt the puzzlement in the thought voice. +What is the matter? What did you…?+

Thank you, lady, he thought, letting calm and strength fill the words in his head. I would sleep while you can.

+I don’t sleep, Khoriv.+

‘Something tells me neither will I,’ he muttered.

The two inquisitors met not in a grand stateroom, but in an empty magazine close to the bilge levels. Dust and rust clung to the heads of rivets covering the slab walls, and the open space beneath the reinforced roof had only been home to empty containers and slowly rusting machinery for a long time. A gang of servitors had cleared the detritus to the side, leaving an open circle of stained metal. Armsmen had cleared the decks and companionways around the chamber, but there were few creatures in this forgotten reach of the Valour’s Flame.

Viola knew that its isolation and the fact that its walls and doors were metres thick was why it had been chosen, of course, but something about it seemed wrong. What was going to be discussed was not something that should happen amidst dust and the smell of metal rot. She glanced over to where Cleander stood beside the chained figure of Navigator Titus Yeshar. The spindle-limbed mutant was swaying, long fingers moving in the air as though plucking invisible harp strings.

Then again, she thought, perhaps rot and shadows was only appropriate.

She glanced over to the door as Koleg and one of Vult’s black priests walked in through the chamber’s wide blast doors. The priest bowed towards Vult, who stood on the opposite side of the circle of open floor. Koleg looked the other way, towards Covenant, and gave a nod.

‘Seal the doors,’ said Vult. A second later, the blast doors began to grind closed. Silence followed the low boom as they met.

Vult and Covenant’s entourages looked at each other across the open space. Viola could feel the strained formality of the moment stretch. She kept her eyes on Vult. She did not trust him. You could not trust someone that clever, but he had kept his word. No one and nothing on board the Dionysia had been harmed after Cleander had yielded the ship. Neither had he asked them for any information, though he seemed to have plenty of his own.

‘Inquisitor Covenant,’ said Vult. ‘I am gratified that we have reached this point in our mutual understanding. Long may it endure and deepen.’ Covenant gave a single nod in acknowledgement. ‘In the interest of trust,’ continued Vult, ‘let us exchange what we know. Much has passed from my factotums to yours, but I would hear from you how you see the path that led here.’

Covenant bowed his head briefly and raised an open palm in acknowledgement, but his face remained impassive. Then he began to speak. The account was a long one, and Viola knew each beat of it in detail, though she had never heard Covenant render it himself. Sketched in his cold and clipped words, Viola’s mind walked again through their uncovering of a school of proscribed knowledge on Niamarin, from there to Kaul and the inescapable conclusion that another inquisitor was behind the abomination they found there. From those early days of the hunt came Agern, the Sons of Illumination, Dominicus Prime, and all the rest of the last few years. At last the details of what Covenant had found in the sepulchre of the Renewed on Iago rose and passed. Though she had not been there, Viola found that, for an instant, she could see Talicto dead on his throne of bones amidst the water-filled sarcophagi.

‘He was a good man once,’ said Vult after Covenant had finished.

‘Aren’t they all?’ said Covenant.

‘No,’ said Vult, the rasp of his voice hardening to an edge. ‘Sometimes they are not.’ Covenant remained silent. The lord daemonhunter seemed to shiver inside his armour. ‘If we accept what you witnessed as true, then Talicto was killed by other inquisitors, a group he referred to as the Triumvirate. He would have fought hard. He was tenacious.’

‘Didn’t do him much good in the end…’ growled Josef.

‘Indeed, Khoriv Josef,’ said Vult, meeting Josef’s eyes where he stood behind Covenant. ‘Indeed. His killers succeeded, and then subsumed whatever they wanted from his operations and turned them to their own ends. The presence of the so-called Renewed on Ero makes that clear. They became tools of new masters.’

‘The question really is why would they bother?’ said Cleander.

‘Because Talicto had what they wanted, knowledge and tools that they could use,’ said Viola. Her brother glanced over his shoulder at her, raised an eyebrow and then looked away. At the end of his chains, Titus Yeshar pressed his hands over his ears.

‘Hush… hush… hush…’ hissed the Navigator.

‘This Triumvirate could then use his identity and agents to shield their own activities,’ continued Viola, ignoring both her brother’s look and the Navigator’s words. ‘If any one of their endeavours was discovered, then the thread of guilt and judgement would lead only back to a man that wasn’t there.’

‘It worked,’ said Covenant. ‘It worked.’

‘What are they trying to do?’ asked Cleander, shaking his head. Viola felt her gaze harden on him. He had been morose and irritable ever since they had gone to the Yeshar. ‘I mean, everything has a purpose, and you don’t do something like this for nothing.’

‘That is the question,’ said Vult. ‘That is the question that we must answer before they realise we are searching for the answers.’

‘But there are some obvious possibilities,’ said Covenant, looking at Cleander briefly.

‘Indeed,’ said Vult. ‘The acquiring of knowledge, occult research, and the use of cults could have many motives for those of the Horusian conviction.’

‘Which is?’ said Josef.

‘At its simplest, Horusianism says that to defeat the horror of Chaos it must be enslaved. Its adherents seek a soul or souls that can possess all its power, but who are not enslaved by it. They seek living gods that can destroy gods in turn. While those of the Thorian belief seek the Emperor reborn, the Horusians seek a darker messiah to do what he could not. That is what those who have followed this path before have believed, but it is a doctrine that has been expressed in many ways.’

‘Madness,’ said Josef. ‘Vile madness.’

‘Only from our point of view,’ said Vult. ‘From theirs it is the path to salvation, the true and only way to save everything from the dark.’

‘How can any believe that? How can inquisitors know the truth of Chaos, and think it can save us?’

‘Was not the Emperor a man who possessed transcendent power? Was that power not rooted in the substance of the warp? Is it not a tragedy that those souls who fall to the warp do not have the strength to be the master, not the slave?’

‘You speak heresy,’ said Josef.

The air became charged, storm-taut, balanced before a lightning strike.

‘You forget yourself, preacher,’ said Vult, his voice low and dangerous. ‘Your master values your council, and I see why. But I answer to none beneath the Golden Throne, and I have fought this war for long enough to understand that there are truths even in the lies of enemies and the delusions of the damned. It is madness, you are right. There are no messiahs of any kind coming to save mankind. There is only humanity, and it must save itself.’

‘You are right,’ said Covenant, and Viola looked at her master. There was something dangerous in the mildness of his voice. ‘I do value Josef’s council, and I also say that you speak heresy.’

The black and grey figures behind Vult were suddenly alert with readiness and tension.

‘Do you wish this dispute?’ said Vult. ‘Now? Facing what we face?’

Covenant inclined his head, and the tension seemed to release a fraction.

‘The enemy exists and must be faced,’ said Covenant. ‘That is what we agree on.’

‘How can we face an enemy we cannot see?’ asked Cleander.

‘Mistress von Castellan,’ said Vult, gesturing to Viola. She felt the gaze of everyone in the room shift to her. She let out the air she had been holding in her lungs, and stepped forwards. It had taken her seventeen hours of unbroken focus and mental application to prepare for this moment. Now that it was here she felt more nervous than she would have guessed. It was not the scrutiny. It was the possibility that she might have made a mistake.

The decisions that Vult and Covenant were about to make would be based on what she was about to say. In a sense the whole of the endeavour rested on her abilities, and the thoroughness of her work.

She had parsed every piece of information that both Vult and Covenant had on Talicto, both old and knew. To that she had added what they had learned from the Navigator. To that she had added information that might relate to Talicto. To this whole she had applied layers of reason-filters and logic schema. Finally she had woven in the element that separated her analysis from that of a machine; she had used simple instinct.

It was a task that others might have expected a team of lexmechanics, savants and data-smiths to perform. Viola had completed the analysis alone, locked in her library, holo-data glittering around, her blood and nerves singing with cerebral enhancers.

She tried to avoid pride; it was part of the discipline that she had learned alongside the cognitive skills that let her run the operations of a trade dynasty. When she had finished the analysis and prepared the findings, she had allowed herself a single smile. Now, faced with the assembly, part of her wanted to go back and punch herself in her own, smiling face.

‘The enemy that we will call the Triumvirate are an unknown both in strength, true number and resource,’ she said, ‘but we can make certain inferences from what we know, or have observed.’

She reached into the pocket of her waistcoat and keyed the holo-wand. A tracked servo-skull rolled to the centre of the floor. The skull tilted back, and projected a cylinder of blue light into the air above. Symbol-clusters and data webs rotated in the hololith.

‘This arrangement is factored to high levels of uncertainty, but it is the best that we can do. Lord Inquisitor Vult’s aid and information has reduced the level of uncertainty, but this is still… essentially guesswork.’

Vult nodded.

‘We understand, mistress. The work you have done is exemplary given the circumstances. Please proceed.’

Viola keyed another control and the view of the projection spun and zoomed close on a constellation of data.

‘The area that offers the most potential is the methodology that the Triumvirate have applied in relation to Talicto. They did not simply destroy. They subsumed his resources. The Renewed became a resource that they deployed on Ero, and it seems likely that a number of Talicto’s other projects were similarly taken over.’

‘You suggest that the learned and great inquisitors can find these heretics by looking at what the Triumvirate stole from Talicto?’ said one of the grey-uniformed figures who stood behind Vult. It was the first time any of his entourage had spoken since the doors had closed. Viola met the pale woman’s stare with her own.

‘I am suggesting that the Triumvirate may be making similar use of Talicto’s other resources. Locate those resources, and we may find them, or find something that leads us closer. Talicto was secretive and clever, but he had to use and trust others. That may have proven his undoing, but it also may be a gift to us.’

She looked to Cleander. Her brother jerked the chains holding Titus Yeshar, and the Navigator took a stumbling step forward.

‘Before betraying his master, this Navigator guided a ship in Talicto’s service across the sector, and beyond. Luckily, he is as willing to share what he knows with us as he was with the Triumvirate.’

‘Willing…’ muttered Cleander. ‘If you had to listen to him you might choose a different word.’

Viola ignored him, and clicked the wand to send amber runes scattering across the projected starfield.

‘Of the places that Talicto travelled to, most can be discounted because his presence there was fleeting. Of those that he visited several times, many were sites for esoteric projects that we are already aware of. Some seem likely to be similar locations. That leaves a few at which he had a prolonged presence, or that he journeyed to many times. These are those locations.’

Another click of the wand and the data projection dissolved into an image of the Caradryad sector and its margins. Three red icons blinked amid the star clusters and swirl of the Storms of Judgement.

‘Of those few, I believe that this is the most promising location for our immediate attention.’

The image zoomed on a single rune, which became a bright sphere of data on the trailing edge of a chain of stars.

‘What is there?’ asked Covenant.

‘A void facility of some kind,’ said Viola. ‘The details are… less than complete, but the Navigator calls it the Archive. It seems to be where he stored the results of his other endeavours.’

Titus Yeshar rocked back and forth.

‘And you think that the Triumvirate will have kept using it?’ said Enna in a flat voice. Viola looked at her. There was something sharp and intense in Enna’s words, despite their lack of tone.

‘Talicto valued it, and used it as a refuge,’ replied Viola. ‘I think it plausible that the Triumvirate would have done the same once it was theirs, and it is…’

She paused for a second, loath to say why she had decided to recommend starting with the Archive.

Vult looked at her.

‘Yes, Mistress Viola?’ he asked. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘It would be in character for the Triumvirate to use it.’

‘An idiotic inference,’ snorted one of Vult’s grey-clad underlings. ‘We know nothing of the Triumvirate. The fact that you feel that you can ascribe them character undermines your whole analysis.’

‘We know they are thieves,’ said Viola, coldly, ‘and that they like to keep what they steal.’

Vult nodded before his acolyte could reply.

‘A most reasonable intuition,’ he said. ‘The Yeshar Navigator can take us to this Archive?’

Viola nodded.

‘Then we go,’ said Vult.

‘Agreed,’ said Covenant, stepping forward so that he was looking up into the holo projection from beneath, cold light bright on his unblinking eyes.

‘Just one question,’ said Cleander, meeting the looks of the room with a frown. ‘If you found us, honoured Lord Vult, and these unknown foes are supposed to be very clever and dangerous people, might they know what we have been doing? Might they know we are coming?’

FOURTEEN

Ghosts followed the Valour’s Flame as it tore back into the embrace of reality. Clawing forms of pale energy scrabbled at its hull, their mist-thin shapes dissolving even as they clung on to the metal, shrieking as they faded. Another craft followed, and then another; each of them punched their way through the skin of space in a whirl of lightning and light. The second to arrive was the Dionysia, a stiletto beside the dagger of the Valour’s Flame; the last was the light cruiser Sixth Hammer. The light of the Storms of Judgement touched the hulls of all three ships as they lay in the asteroid-dotted void. Drifts of dust hung before the ships, glowing as though each mote was a fading ember of a fire. Colours danced between its vast folds like the flash of lightning in a thunderhead. Except that there were no storm clouds in the vacuum of the void.

On the bridge of the Valour’s Flame, Kade Zecker fought to keep the scream from her lips. Sweat beaded her skin, and she could feel it running down her back. The passage and transit back to reality had been bad enough, but there had been a face looking at her when the blast shields had peeled open from the bridge’s ports: a face looking back at her from the blackness of space. It had been a face that
she knew.

‘Translation…’ she said, the word rasping out of her dry mouth as much from habit as will. ‘Translation complete. All stations confirm status.’

‘Tough passage,’ said Josef’s voice from behind her. She glanced at him.

The preacher had remained on the Valour’s Flame after the inquisitors had concluded their parlay. She had not been told why, but she had a good idea.

She did not like outsiders on her bridge at the best of times, and she had tried to treat him with cold formality at first. But he had moved amongst crew like he was one of them, exchanging easy words with an armsmen, nodding respectfully to the watch lieutenant, putting the station officers at ease with a joke and a compliment on their detail. Within a few days he had become part of the fabric of things, woven in like a clever patch to an old jacket. Eventually even Zecker had stopped thinking about him being there to the point that she had not realised that he stood five paces behind her.

‘They are all tough passages now,’ she said, listening as the station officers called out readiness. She nodded at the looming dust cloud beyond the viewport. ‘Space should not look like that,’ she said. ‘That is where the light of this Serpent Spine star cluster should be. Fleet charts make no mention of a… dust cloud shrouding it. If it is dust…’

She blinked; bubbles of light fizzed at the edge of her eyes. She felt bile rising in her throat. The image of the ghost ships rose with the taste, and for a second she remembered again the bridge of the deserted ship.

Red, still wet, and the eyes…

‘I just… what… what is happening to this place? What is happening to this sector?’

‘The Serpent Spine is there though?’ said Josef.

She nodded.

‘Yes, it’s there… in there.’

‘Then take us in, captain,’ he said, his voice low and firm.

She nodded and called out commands. The Valour’s Flame began to slide towards the charted location of their target.

‘Close the shutters,’ she said, as the folds of colour closed over them. The layers of plasteel descended, and she shivered as a flash of impossible light lit the narrowing view of the void.

‘Captain,’ called an officer. ‘We are receiving signals from the direction of our travel.’

‘Directed at us?’ she asked.

‘No, they are broad sweep signals blanketing a large part of the comm-spectrum.’

‘What do they say?’

‘They are jumbled, but there are parts in clear.’

‘Put them on speaker.’

A second later the vox speakers crackled with static. Chirrups and pops of distortion filled the bridge, rising and falling without rhythm.

‘Help us…’ the voice came from the static, and Kade felt the words rip through her, as others came, shouting, sobbing, speaking with the dead numbness of despair.

‘Turn back…’

‘Dead…

‘There is no light….

‘Turn back…’

She felt her muscles begin to shake. How could they be here? How could her dreams have followed her here? She blinked, the images that followed her into sleep filling her head with the sight of silent corridors on silent ships.

But what if this is the dream still? she thought. What if I have never awoken?

‘Captain,’ said Josef’s voice, calm and strong. She shivered, feeling the breath rasping between her teeth. ‘Captain, shut the transmissions off.’

She breathed, then nodded.

‘Shut off the vox speakers,’ she called. ‘Now.’

She looked around at the preacher.

‘I…’ she began. ‘Thank you.’

‘Like you said, they are all tough passages now.’

‘Did the… inquisitors send you to watch me?’

‘To watch you all, in fact,’ he replied, kindly. ‘This is not something most are suited for, captain. You have done well. But inquisitors like to be careful.’

‘Are you staying with us for the operation?’ she asked, surprised at the question, and the fact that she wanted the answer to be yes. There was something calming about the preacher’s presence, something that she had not realised she needed.

Josef shook his head.

‘My place for this is with my master, but someone will be here with you.’

‘To watch?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Do they trust anyone?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘not really.’

She looked away from him to the crew moving to their tasks, and above them the blast shields closed over the curdled space beyond. For a moment she thought of telling him about her dreams, and how they followed her after sleep.

He will understand, she thought, and she wanted so badly to tell someone: to confess. She opened her mouth.

‘Is there something wrong, Captain Zecker?’

She closed her mouth, and shook her head.

‘No, nothing. I would just like… I would just like this to be over.’

She looked around at him. He gave her a grim smile and a small nod.

‘Hold course, captain,’ said Josef from behind her. ‘Hold course.’

The asteroid turned slowly in the diffuse light of the dust cloud. Cold light washed its face, brushed the summits of crags with silver and poured shadow into craters. The three ships hung in the void around it, their prows sword points levelled above a still corpse. The stars of the Caradryad sector burned with a strange light, close but filmed with a haze, like the lights of a distant city seen through smog. An arc of other stars crossed the murky dark, burning brighter than any others. These were the stars of the Serpent Spine that coiled across the border of the sector. At turns lawless, forgotten and desolate, they marked a vast tract of space that formed the shoreline between the land of Imperial dominion and the sea of lawlessness.

Viola watched data overlay the image as the asteroid rolled over. It was one of a drift that sat in the deep emptiness between the stars of the Serpent Spine. Tens of thousands of mountain-sized lumps of ice and mineral sat in the drift. To find one rock amongst them would have been an impossible task without knowing where it was. Even with a guide, it had taken them longer than Viola would have liked to find it.

‘How long until the Archive is visible?’ asked Covenant from behind her. Glavius-4-Rho and Cleander stood with him. Beside them, Lord Inquisitor Vult stood as a ghost image of holo-light.

She was about to answer when a door onto the command dais hissed open.

‘Your pardon for my lateness, my lords,’ came Josef’s voice from the back of the command deck. Viola tuned to see the preacher walk onto the deck, still red-faced from the journey from the shuttle bay.

‘All well on the Valour’s Ashes?’ asked Cleander.

‘Valour’s Flame,’ growled Josef, and then shook his head. ‘All of the crew are frayed. The warp storms are scratching at their souls. If we did not need the fire power, I would have said we should not have brought them.’

‘They will keep it together?’ asked Cleander. ‘That captain was looking a little like she was down to the last thread holding her up from the drop.’

‘They will serve,’ said Josef, ‘and Mylasa is on board with them.’

‘Reassuring, I’m sure,’ said Cleander.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Viola. They looked at her, and she redirected their gaze up to the pict screen. Covenant and Vult had not shifted their gaze when Josef entered. ‘The Archive is coming into visual,’ she said, as targeting symbols flowed across the image on the screen.

‘There it is…’ breathed Cleander.

The asteroid turned slowly on the screen. It was the size of a mountain range uprooted from a planet’s crust, grey and jagged. As it turned, the mottled light of the warp storms drained the shadows from the face that had been turned away from the Dionysia. A complex of buildings clung to the vast lump of rock. Rust-pitted towers and grey iron bastions caught the starlight with serrated edges. Transepts branched across the asteroid’s surface and reached into the vacuum.

‘The Archive…’ said Cleander. ‘That’s a city’s worth of metal and stone. Do we still think that Talicto built all of this in the decade before he died?’

‘What does the Navigator that served him say about this place?’ asked Josef. 

‘Nothing useful,’ said Cleander, shifting the eye patch over his left eye. ‘“Archive of all the grave’s leavings, all the things lost, all the pages never written waiting…” Just be glad that he held it together enough to lead us here. It does seem very… quiet, though.’

‘I can confirm there are no significant energy emissions from the complex bonded to the asteroid,’ said Glavius-4-Rho, his presence a cloud of binaric flowing through a screen set to the side of the main display. The magos had wired himself into the Dionysia’s main sensor cluster. A silent argument with the Dionysia’s tech-priests via data-links had been needed to allow that, but the grey-robed magos had prevailed. Since then, he had been sifting and compiling information from the ship’s auspex and sensor arrays. ‘If there were living personnel within the structure, there would need to be active bio-life sustainers at the least. There would be heat. There would be the sacred music of wave field interference. I have watched, and I see none of these signs.’

‘It is basically dead and cold,’ said Cleander, pulling his coat around him as though he was feeling a chill.

‘There will be something left,’ said Josef. ‘If the Triumvirate came here there will be something to lead us further.’ The old preacher looked at Covenant. ‘We go in.’

‘Someone could be there,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. Everyone turned to look at him.

‘You said that you saw no energy emissions,’ said Viola.

‘I said that I saw no significant energy emissions, and nothing consistent with the expected life-sustaining systems for a facility of this size. But I have found something.’ The magos shifted forward from his data-cradle, cables trailing from him to the consoles and sensor instruments. ‘There is a very weak heat marker coming from this location.’ The holo-display of the asteroid rotated and zoomed until it was focused on a tiny section of the grounded ship that formed the facility’s core. ‘It is deep in the main superstructure, and the emanation is small enough that it could be nothing more than a still-functioning power sump.’

‘There is only one way to find out,’ said Covenant.

‘I concur,’ said the holo-image of Vult. ‘There will be something here. I have consulted the Emperor’s tarot. Two of my priests have also made readings. They are all the same: the silver door stands above the crone, the high priest and the pilgrim – all inverted above the lightning tower. We are come to a threshold. We must step through.’

Covenant nodded, and looked at Glavius-4-Rho.

‘We will proceed with a light infiltration. I will lead it.’

Vult’s image flickered.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘The Sixth Hammer will stand by to reinforce if necessary. The Valour’s Flame can cover the outer sphere in case something is out there watching us.’

‘Agreed,’ said Covenant, and then looked around at Viola. ‘Mistress Viola, you have coordination control, and will remain on the Dionysia. Do you agree, Inquisitor Lord Vult?’

The image of Vult nodded.

‘Good,’ said Covenant, ‘we launch in an hour.’

Viola watched as Covenant walked from the bridge. The image of Vult hung in the cone of holo-light for a second, his eyes glittering points between mask and hood. Then she disconnected the signal link and the daemonhunter lord was gone.

‘Does anyone else not like the sound of this?’ said Cleander, drily. No one answered. ‘Good. Just me, then.’

Koleg’s boots mag-locked to the deck with a thump as he stepped from the gunship ramp. The stab-light mounted on his visor sliced into the enclosing dark, catching the edges of machinery. Cool, metal-scented air filled the space between his mouth and the crystal visor separating him from the cold void. He held his macro-stubber level in his right hand, a short-range auspex in the other.

Enna moved past him, her own shoulder-mounted stab-lights pushing further into the dark. Like him, she wore an enclosed rebreather. The beam glittered off the burnished steel of her carapace armour. Lions’ heads snarled from her greaves. Twin daggers sat at the base of her back, and she held an overcharged las-carbine. Glavius-4-Rho came last from the open mouth of the Valkyrie’s assault compartment. The tech-priest moved with slow purpose, like a reptile starved of heat.

‘First waypoint reached,’ said Koleg, glancing at the auspex readout. ‘Zero power readouts, zero movement. Atmosphere absent. Moving to first ingress point to complex.’

‘Confirmed,’ said Viola’s voice, sharp and echoing over the vox. ‘Your pict-feed and location beacon are holding steady.’

Koleg moved past Enna. The acolyte was tight to the side of a metal crate, the barrel of her carbine level and steady. His visor stab-light caught the wing and half-stripped fuselage of an Avenger strike fighter, its cabling hanging weightless from open panels like entrails floating in water. Bolts, tools and globules of oil hung in the space before him as he moved across the hangar bay floor. Motes of heavy dust winked in the light.

‘Does not look like anyone has been here for a long time,’ said Enna. ‘No one alive, at least.’

Koleg did not answer. Auspex scans had identified over a dozen incursion points on the asteroid base. The hangar bay that Koleg now moved through had been judged the best for a principle point of entry. It was set close to the main mass of the Archive structure and so was the most likely to give swift access to the target location.

Koleg’s beam of light hit the hangar bay wall and slid along the dull metal until it came to a blast door. Yellow and black hazard stripes covered its panels. Koleg found the door control panel and dropped next to it. Enna moved up to the other side of the door. Her movement was smooth and controlled, he noted, but there was an insistence to it, an edge of impatience in her actions. She was superbly trained, but used to working alone.

‘Second waypoint reached,’ he said into the vox, then clicked the direct channel. ‘Magos, please perform your function.’

‘A moment of patience,’ replied Glavius-4-Rho. Koleg looked around for the magos, who should have been a few paces behind him. The light of the tech-priest’s eye lenses gleamed from the darkness further along the hangar bay wall.

‘The access panel required to open the blast door to the rest of the asteroid facility is where I am standing,’ stated Koleg. He found many servants of the Machine God simple for him to understand. Glavius-4-Rho was not one of that number. ‘Where you are located is not where you need to be.’

‘Not if I just wish to open a door,’ replied the tech-priest, and Koleg saw a flash of blue sparks flare next to Glavius-4-Rho. ‘But if I wish to do something more…’ Koleg heard something buzz, and then a weight slammed through him, jerking his gun down and pushing him to his knees. The walls vibrated. Machine parts fell to the deck. ‘If I wish that, then I am exactly where I need to be.’

Glow strips lit. Blocks of machines began to hum. Plumes of grey-white fog jetted from the floor and ceiling. The atmosphere rune on Koleg’s auspex began to blink from blue to amber as it sniffed breathable air.

‘And by my hand there is light, and there is life…’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

‘What have you–’ began Enna.

‘After reviewing the auspex scans and projections for this facility I concluded that the only way for there to be no energy output or residual trace indicators was if it was shut down rather than having failed. In the case of spiritual disruption to a complex manifestation of machine divinity there are usually traces of energy – machines sipping the last of energy reserves, and reactor decay markers. If there are none, it is not because they have been disrupted or decayed, but because they have been silenced. I theorised that a revival could be triggered once I was in contact with the flow of spirits.’

‘Why did you not mention it before?’ asked Enna.

‘I wished to spare your unenlightened minds the burden of disappointment if my theorem proved false.’ Glavius-4-Rho moved past Koleg, his gait now free of its previous sluggishness. ‘Ah…’ he said, extending a brass digit. ‘The door opens, as you desired.’

Koleg looked back at the blast doors as they began to peel open.

The space beyond was still dark, lit by distant flashes of stuttering electrical light. Koleg paused and released his suit’s helmet. The air was cold. The scent of machine oil and spilled fuel edged into its blank taste. In the settling light the hangar bay was a jumble of machinery and debris. The hanging motes of grey dust began to swirl. Scorch marks dotted the decking. Of the dozen craft that Koleg could see, half were wrecks, their chewed remains held in place by their docking cradles. To his eye they looked like they had taken hits from medium-yield weaponry. There were no bodies, though.

‘This is Koleg,’ he said into the main vox-channel. ‘We have breathable air. Gravity in place. Light and systems are activating, but partial.’

‘Thank you for the confirmation,’ said Viola in his ear. ‘We saw the system activation. Looks like half the structure is waking up. Did you trip an alarm?’

‘No,’ replied Koleg, glancing at Glavius-4-Rho. ‘We found the activation rune.’

He crouched beside the edge of the open blast door. His eye caught the glint of a shell casing rocking on the deck where it had dropped when the gravity had cut back in.

‘Be advised that we are seeing signs of significant engagement.’

‘We are seeing it from your pict-feeds,’ asked Viola. ‘Is there any indication of how long ago the action occurred?’

‘Hard to say,’ cut in Enna. ‘Not recent, but it looks as though the whole place was shut down either during the fight, or not long after.’

‘Understood,’ said Viola. ‘Proceed to waypoint three and hold. The principles are inbound.’

‘Confirmed,’ said Koleg. ‘Proceeding now.’

He flicked a hand signal to Enna, which she returned, and they rose to move through the open blast doors.

The space beyond was still. Light fell from the hangar behind them as their weapons and stab-light beams pushed into the gloom-filled passage beyond. More shell casings sat on the deck, gleaming in the stab-light, rocking with the energy of their fall. A glow globe pulsed in the distance, the rhythm a stuttering blink of yellow.

‘Hold firm,’ said Koleg. Enna dropped to one knee beside the door. Koleg moved forward, pistol ready.

Light flashed above. Koleg’s pistol snapped up. The light vanished. Koleg froze his beam holding steady on the space above them. The lights snapped back, flickered, then burned steady.

‘Tears of Terra…’ breathed Enna.

Bones hung from the passage roof. Skulls, long bones, ribs and vertebrae hung in jumbled strings, threaded together in slaughter pit necklaces. Koleg recognised the horned skulls of herd beasts, the talons of predators and human finger bones. Some were yellow with age, stripped of flesh and polished smooth. Dried skin and sinew clung to others, as though they had been hacked from a bleeding carcass and hung while still wet and dripping.

The walls of the passage were bare, the metal covered with a layer of thawing frost. The strings of bones vanished into the fog of returning atmosphere. Granules of dust billowed on the air currents. Koleg dropped to one knee. Enna took a position on the opposite side of the corridor.

‘We are at the third waypoint,’ said Koleg. With practiced care he holstered his pistol and unslung the grenade launcher from his back. He checked the load, and clicked the safety off.

‘Strike group on target in eighty seconds,’ said Viola. The sphere of holo-light in front of her flickered as the second gunship holding the rest of Covenant’s incursion team cut towards the asteroid base. The positions of the cruiser Sixth Hammer and the destroyer Valour’s Flame were marked by green clusters of runes. Thanks to Inquisitor Vult’s agreement that central control of the operation should lie with Viola, tactical signals and information from the two warships now formed the view that filled her eyes.

‘Valour’s Flame, close to three thousand,’ she said, and heard the echo of her voice crackle across the vox-feed an instant later. Images moved across the circle of pict-screens suspended around the command dais. These were the feeds from the assault boats, from the void suits of the principle team and from the team leaders of the twenty-five reserve assault teams. They were a mix of the Dionysia’s complement of household mercenaries and troops that Vult kept in his service. Most of those seemed to be former Tempestus Scions, and veterans from elite regiments. All of them had so far responded to commands with clipped efficiency.

Her eyes itched with the awareness enhancers she had dosed herself with. Her mind was fizzing with observed details, all of it just under her consciousness. There were other, easier ways of doing this. She could have delegated components of the mission planning and oversight. She could have let servitors or machines compose a summary view for her. She could have done all these and more, but she had chosen not to for a simple reason; she enjoyed the control.

She switched her gaze to the feeds from Covenant’s team. The view from Cleander’s suit showed Titus Yeshar’s face on the opposite side of the crew compartment in the gunship carrying Covenant. The Navigator was lolling in his harness, pacified by the drugs pumping into him from the collar around his neck. Titus had not wanted to go onto the base he had led them to. Covenant had insisted, though. That was one reason Cleander was in the strike force rather than with her on the Dionysia; the insane Navigator seemed to hear and heed her brother and herself, but not anyone else. So if the Navigator went, so did Cleander.

She watched the two gunships of Vult and Covenant’s principle team converge on the target hangar bay. A second later she saw the image feeds from their suits judder as the gunship settled into the station’s gravity field.

‘We are in,’ said Cleander’s voice. She saw his view rise as he released himself from his mag-harness.

‘Acknowledged,’ she replied, then switched vox-channels. ‘All forces, principle team is on target.’

‘Three spinners sit on a hill…’ Cleander jerked the chain, and the Navigator staggered and then began to shamble after him. Sounds muttered from Titus Yeshar’s lips. ‘The wanderer, walks and sings the songs that none can hear…’

‘Come on,’ said Cleander. Covenant was already moving away down the bone-hung corridor, Severita and Josef flanking him. Koleg and Enna were somewhere ahead, the magos behind, curt reports fizzing back over the vox. Cleander was wishing a number of things, chief amongst them that he had stayed on the Dionysia, another that he had left his sword behind. The harness did not fit well over the void suit, and it kept banging his left knee. More than anything else, though, he wished that the Navigator would be quiet.

‘The seer sits on her throne of shadows…’

‘What is he saying?’ asked a synthesised voice from behind Cleander. He glanced over his shoulder and into the chrome skull plate of Glavius-4-Rho.

‘He’s saying nothing that needs to be listened to,’ said Cleander, and turned away.

‘I say what is there to be seen,’ hissed the Navigator, his hands patting the injector collar ringing his neck. ‘You said you would set me free, but the chains clink just the same.’ 

Cleander grunted, and shifted his grip on his needler. He tried not to look at the bones hanging from the ceiling. It was not that he had not seen worse – in fact he had seen far worse – but the jumble of bones hanging like wind-chimes in still air made his skin itch. 

‘Not here,’ said the Navigator. Cleander stopped, and looked at Titus. The Navigator looked back at him, face open and calm. ‘The high priest is not here… only the shadow… only the witch…’

‘What did you say?’

‘This is the ground of the dead,’ said Titus Yeshar, with a levelness that sent cold running down Cleander’s spine. The Navigator smiled, brought a chained hand up, and tapped the metal aperture bonded to his forehead. ‘I see,’ he said, inhaling slowly. ‘Where there was one, now there are three, smiling at me…’

The vox spat static.

‘This is Koleg. We have reached the objective location.’

Koleg and Enna had moved ahead of the rest of the cadre, ghosting down the silent corridors towards the section of the facility where Glavius-4-Rho had found the heat trace.

‘Cov… Kol…’ Viola’s voice chopped in and out across the vox. Cleander winced as static growled in his ear.

‘Of these waters I drink, drink and forget…’ The Navigator’s posture slumped again, his chin dipping, spit drooling from his bared teeth. The vials in the injector collar twitched as drugs were fed into his system.

‘What is it?’ asked Covenant’s voice.

‘The objective seems to be inside a sealable enclave,’ said Koleg. ‘Heavy blast doors and multi-layered security. The entrances have been breached, though. Significant signs of conflict. Whoever was here before us fought to get in, and those inside fought hard to keep them out.’

‘The water runs swift under the bow…’ sang Titus Yeshar, his head lolling down against the drug collar. Cleander tugged the chain and the Navigator shuffled closer. ‘A coin, a coin for your eyes…’

‘Hold position,’ said Covenant into the vox. ‘We are coming.’

‘A coin from your tongue…’

Covenant turned to Glavius-4-Rho and Cleander. ‘Stay here and watch the way out.’

‘Love to,’ muttered Cleander as he watched Covenant, Severita and Josef move down the passage. Beside him the chained Navigator folded to the floor and began talking to his hands. Glavius-4-Rho unfurled sensor discs from the tips of his mechadendrites. Above them, the bones stirred in the cold air.

FIFTEEN

Grey dust settled like slow-falling snow across the chamber as Josef entered. Flat walls reached up to a high, domed ceiling, and reinforcing pillars as thick as a Titan’s leg rose from the floor in three evenly spaced rows. The entrance was a pair of wide blast doors that led to passages broad enough for a trio of battle tanks to drive down them abreast. It had been a long time since the chamber had held anything as mundane or comforting as cargo. Clusters of dim glow-globes dangled from iron chains. Spirals of caged shelves circled the support pillars. More strings of bones hung from the ceiling. Mounds of skulls stacked one on another dotted the floor between rows of shelves. Soft shapes hung in fluid-filled jars, some smaller than a fingertip, some the size of a bull grox, their bloated substance pressing against the glass.

Stone slabs sat on circular plinths, their flat faces cut with grooves that led to drainage holes around their edge. Josef noted the tarnished silver of shackles and chains hanging from cleats in the sides of the slabs. The smell of chemicals, dust and dried paper rose to his nose as he stepped further from the door. His boots left finger-deep prints in the settling layer of dust. Brass casings slid and clinked beneath his feet. A section of towering bookcase stood in soot-blackened ruin.

Enna and Koleg were further in, just at the edge of sight before they would have become lost in the maze of bookcases. Both of them were hunkered down, weapons ready.

Covenant had paused further in, his head and psycannon moving slowly over the stillness. Josef squinted. The chamber was quiet. He was about to take a step when he saw a cold glimmer in the distance – a wink of light deeper in the chamber.

‘Do you see that?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Covenant, sliding his sword free from the scabbard on his back and stepping forwards. Severita’s narrow blade was already in her hand, but Josef could detect the shift in focus as she slid closer to Covenant. Josef moved with them, eyes scanning the bookcases. Some of the books had been chained to the shelves, but the others must have been nudged out of their places after the gravity shut off, because they now lay in a confused jumble. One of the nearest volumes lay open, its foxed pages creased and folded. Spiderwebs of ink and symbols marched across the yellow parchment. Josef heard a whisper breathe across his shoulders, and flinched. The symbols of the parchment clung to his sight until he blinked.

‘All the sins of knowledge…’ he muttered as he passed a stack of wax tablets strewn on the marble floor. Thick clumps of dust swirled through the air as he moved.

‘Still no bodies,’ said Enna over the vox. ‘A lot of brass and bullet holes around here…’

Josef did not reply.

Enna and Koleg were ahead, leap-frogging each other’s position as they moved down the gulley between bookshelves, just on the edge of sight.

‘I see light,’ snapped Koleg’s voice. ‘Looks like flame, low level. There is noise too, mechanical, rhythmic.’

‘Advance to clear line of sight and hold firm,’ said Covenant. Josef glanced at his master, and thought he saw the muscles harden in his face.

‘In position,’ said Koleg.

‘In position,’ echoed Enna. ‘I can see the light.’

‘So what is it?’ asked Josef.

‘It is a candle,’ said Enna.

‘Enna, Koleg, your visual feed is intermittent.’ Viola watched bubbles of distortion pop across the images on two of the screens. The others showed grainy views of passages, ship spaces and chambers. Covenant’s team were progressing, and she was getting clean signals from most of them, but interference had begun to chop in and out of the pict and vox.

‘Mistress,’ called Void Mistress Ghast. ‘We are seeing anomalies across multiple sensor spectrums.’

She looked at the direct feeds from the sensor arrays. Amber runes spun across the ghost image of the asteroid base. Energy emission warnings spiked red, vanished and blinked to green. Heat emissions drifted in squalls of numerals. Her mind drank it in, looking for a pattern she failed to find.

‘Are our sensors functioning?’ she called.

‘Perfectly, mistress,’ replied Ghast.

‘Launch the reserves. All ships to full alert.’

‘Lord Vult,’ she said into the vox.

‘I hear you, mistress,’ said Vult. ‘I am observing the same sensor anomalies.’

‘We have lost the main vox connections to the facility. I am ordering the reserves in.’

‘Wait, mistress,’ said Vult. ‘Hold the reserves.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because it is not the right moment. That is an order, Mistress Viola.’

The curse formed on Viola’s lips as the vox-link cut.

‘Hold the reinforcements.’ She shook her head and swore. Vult’s quick agreement to let Covenant lead the initial incursion suddenly did not seem surprising. It seemed damning. ‘And cover the Sixth Hammer with our sensors. I want to know where it is and what it is doing at all times.’

‘The lord inquisitor’s ship?’ asked Ghast.

‘Yes,’ snarled Viola. ‘The lord-bastard-inquisitor’s ship.’

+Viola,+ Mylasa’s thought-voice snapped into Viola’s mind.

Viola flinched and caught herself.

‘Do not do that!’ she snapped. Ghast glanced at her. Viola shook her head at the void mistress, and forced her words to form only in thought. Mylasa was still aboard the Valour’s Flame, the lone member of Covenant’s entourage on the ship.

Do not do that, she thought. There is a developi–

+I am hearing something,+ said Mylasa’s thought-voice. + It’s coming from the asteroid station. It’s in the warp. It’s–+

What is it? Viola put all her control into the thought, and was pleased to feel Mylasa’s telepathic words fade.

+It is a song, Viola.+ Fear bled from the sending, controlled but undeniable. Viola felt the hairs rise on her skin. Distortion was popping and bubbling on the screens and readouts across the bridge. Static breathed from the vox-links.

Singing?

+Wailing, singing, weeping. Viola, it is… it is the voices of the dead, and they are calling out to us…+

The ghosts hovered in front of Kade Zecker’s eyes, shimmering just beyond reach, pushing inbetween every blink.

The floor of the bridge was skin; wet beads of blood rolled across its surface, gleaming under the beam of her stab-light. She took a step and felt the floor sag softly under her tread. A gasp of breath puffed into the stale air. She raised the stab-light beam…

‘Commander…’ She blinked. Luco was looking at her. The bridge of the Valour’s Flame was as it had been. The memory image of the wreck’s bridge had collapsed just as the beam of light had reached for the source of the gasp. That was not here though – that was a memory… it was not here… it could not be here…

‘Commander?’

‘Yes.’

Blink.

The servitors sat in their cradles, the control machines clicking and humming just as they always did.

‘The auspex is returning high levels of distortion,’ said Luco. ‘The tech-priests are requesting permission to shut it down and consecrate the system.’

‘Yes… I mean… no, that will leave us blind to anything approaching. Our orders were…’

Blink.

Darkness surrounded her, cut by the rising beam of her stab-light. Her own breath fell in a mist of frost. The beam of light touched a…

‘…say that we are as good as blind as it is,’ said Ensign Luco. The ensign was frowning. His features looked older than they should, she thought: deep folds under the eyes and in the hollows of the cheeks. None of them had been getting much sleep since they had moved into the Iago system. That is, if you did not count the dreams.

‘Commander? Is something amiss?’

Blink.

The beam of the stab-light rose up a wall of smooth flesh, and touched a face. A face set in a living wall, its mouth open. She felt her finger freeze on the trigger of her shot pistol. It opened its eyes.

‘Commander!’

Ensign Luco was standing in front of her, his eyes fixed on the pistol she had drawn. She looked at the weapon. Why had she drawn it? The rest of the bridge murmured around her in the voices of machine systems and quiet orders. There was something wrong, something that did not fit, or that she felt did not fit…

‘No,’ she said, holstering the pistol. ‘No, there’s nothing wrong. Tell the tech-priests to get on with re-consecrating the auspex.’ She paused, her gaze dropping to the deck of the bridge. She swayed slightly. ‘I don’t like the idea of being blind out here.’

Enna stopped in mid stride, gaze caught by something on the floor nearby, winking in the dim light. The others were moving past her, their attention elsewhere.

She blinked. Her eyes felt wrong.

Slow…

Thoughts started but were not finding an end…

The gun in her hands was heavy.

After all this way, all this way, and… and… and…

What was…

Sweat was beading her skin inside the crystal dome of her suit.

She felt… like… she had…

A coin sat on the floor amidst the fallen books and settling dust. It was silver, bright as a beam of light pouring down into her eyes from above.

Where am I?

She blinked. She was not scared. There would be an answer to what she was doing here, but she could not remember it. The memory was there though; it was just out of reach. No need to panic.

The coin glinted amidst the dust on the floor. It was so clean, so bright. She could see the shape of a chalice pressed into its surface, but then she blinked and saw that it was not a chalice, but two faces looking at each other.

She wanted to bend down and pick up it up.

Where am I? How have I got here?

Covenant was saying something nearby…

Covenant…

Who was Covenant?

Enna…

Who was Enna?

The coin was shining like a fallen moon amidst the dust, like a reflection in water.

I have been here before.

Her hand went out, and reached down for the coin.

‘Eight seconds to auspex system darkness,’ droned the voice of the servitor across the bridge of the Valour’s Flame. Kade Zecker listened and tried to stop visibly shivering. Her skin felt clammy, as though she were standing in sweltering heat. She loosened the collar of her uniform. The fabric of her shirt was soaking. She could feel Ensign Luco watching her, could almost see the worry in his eyes.

What was wrong with her? Ever since they had come here, she had felt… wrong…

‘Five seconds to auspex system darkness,’ droned the servitor.

Two tech-adepts were moving between the instrument stations, slowly swinging censers as they moved, black smoke drifting in their wake.

She really wanted to leave here, to break position and make best speed away from the asteroid station, and go…

‘Three seconds,’ said the servitor. The chief enginseer stood beside the primary auspex controls, his brass hand resting on a switch. Purity seals hung from the switch, binaric lettering crawling unintelligibly across the strips of parchment.

‘Two seconds.’

The enginseer bowed his head, servos clicking with tension along his arm.

Kade felt her eyelids twitch, as though trying to shut themselves against a blinding flash of light. She shivered, unable to stop it this time.

‘Auspex system function shut down.’

The enginseer pulled the switch.

‘Praise the machine, all is ordained and governed in its function,’ called the enginseer.

Blocks of machinery sparked and went silent. Screens went dark across the bridge. Parchment stopped pooling from auto scribes. A note in the concert of noise that hummed through the bridge vanished. The enginseer stepped back from the auspex control, head still bowed while he waited for the ordained time to pass before he could re-consecrate the system.

Kade looked around at Luco.

‘Are the gun-teams and boarding crews at full readiness?’ she asked, hearing the dryness in her throat as she spoke.

‘As you instructed, commander,’ said Luco. She glanced at him, hearing the hesitation in his voice.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked.

‘No, ma’am,’ he said, hesitated again, and then carried on. ‘It’s just that with the auspex down we can’t see anything to shoot, and there was nothing there before, so I was just… You have just asked for the gun team and boarding crew readiness… just a second ago.’

She rubbed her forehead. The pain was bright and sharp.

‘I don’t like not being able to see…’

‘The sacred count has passed,’ called the enginseer, and then began a droning chant of binaric. Servitor assistants moved around him, pouring oil from steel vials onto the console top, and pinning fresh purity seals to its casing while their master’s hands moved over each switch and dial in turn.

Kade bit her lip, and felt another spasm of shivering pass through her.

‘The machine has been silent,’ called the enginseer, and then repeated the call in binaric. ‘The machine has been purified. The machine shall awaken.’

‘Auspex system active in eight seconds,’ called a servitor. Signals officers waited above the rows of servitors, staring blankly at dark sensor screens.

Kade felt her right arm shake. She looked at her hand. The fingers were opening and closing, gripping the air of their own accord.

‘Five seconds.’

She stared at her hand.

‘Three seconds.

The fingers were gripping the fabric of her uniform, pinching and moving as though the hand was trying to understand what it was touching.

‘Two seconds.’

As though it was not her hand at all.

‘Auspex system activating. The machine wakes. The machine sees.’

The enginseer pushed the lever. Screens flickered with static and then with scrolling code. Cables and consoles hummed.

Then the alarms began to sound.

The Navigator’s cry made Cleander turn. The chain holding Titus Yeshar yanked tight in his hands. The Navigator was scrabbling on all fours back towards the way they had come. Glavius-4-Rho pivoted his head to look at them.

‘No, no… It was not I!’ babbled Titus, yanking the chain. ‘I paid the coin! I am permitted to cross into the kingdom! They are here! Let me pass! Let me leave!’

Cleander pulled the chain, but the scrawny Navigator pulled back hard, and three links of chain jerked through Cleander’s grip.

‘Do you require help?’ said Glavius-4-Rho. Cleander was sure there was an edge of puzzlement in the words that carried even through the priest’s synthetically flattened voice. He ignored the question, and moved up next to the Navigator, winding the chain around his fist as he went so that the man could not move further away. Titus Yeshar turned and tried to punch him, fists flailing.

‘We cannot be here,’ moaned the Navigator. ‘We cannot. The three… the three… three spinners under the tree…’

Cleander noticed that blood was running from under the metal iris covering the Navigator’s third eye.

‘Titus,’ he said. The Navigator twisted, wrapping the chain around the neck of his suit. ‘Titus!’ The man went still, and looked up at Cleander with hollow sockets.

‘It is waking,’ said the Navigator, his voice low.

‘What is waking?’

‘The guardian of the door,’ said Titus. ‘We were not permitted to cross. We must flee. There are three, you see. The witch walks, and you do not see.’

‘I am struggling to divine a meaning in what he is saying,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. Cleander ignored him.

‘Covenant,’ he said into his vox-mic. The word hissed and echoed back at him from his ear piece.

‘We have crossed the threshold,’ said Titus.

‘Covenant! Viola!’ he shouted, holding the key to his vox-mic down. ‘Anyone! Any Throne-cursed corpse that can hear…’

‘We have crossed the threshold,’ whimpered Titus Yeshar.

‘I am registering total signal blackout,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. Focusing discs around the magos’ eyes whirred wide. ‘I am detecting multi-sensor band interference. That… cannot be correct…’

Cleander threw the end of the chain at Glavius-4-Rho, and ran in the direction Covenant had gone. Titus began to scramble away before Glavius-4-Rho caught the chain and hauled back on it.

‘What…?’ he began.

‘You wanted to help,’ shouted Cleander. ‘Try and keep him alive, and make sure that we can get back out.’

‘I do not… How do I perform those functions?’ called the magos. ‘How?’

‘Use your initiative,’ shouted Cleander and ran faster, coat whipping behind him, gun in hand. Up by the ceiling, the bones began to clink against each other.

‘We have lost communication with all units in the asteroid station!’ called Ghast. ‘And it looks like the Valour’s Flame has shut down all their sensor arrays.’

‘Show me a realspace view, multi-spectrum filter,’ snapped Viola at a signal servitor, ‘and get me links to the Valour’s Flame and Sixth Hammer.’

One of the large pict-screens above her flashed to an image of the void. For a second, Viola thought that she was seeing more sensor distortion. Flows of diffuse colour flickered across the vacuum between the Dionysia and the asteroid station. Lights flashed in the black: tiny pinpricks of pink, red and green. The whole image flexed, as though the volume of empty space it showed was fabric snapping in the wind.

‘We have a vox-link to the Sixth Hammer!’ called Ghast.

‘Connect us,’ shouted Viola.

‘Mistress von Castellan,’ Vult’s voice crackled through the air.

‘Lord, I believe that the contingency that we planned for is now in force.’

‘Has there been a clear communication from Inquisitor Covenant?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But if we wait to receive one, then it may be too late.’

‘What is your reasoning?’

She fought an instinct to shout in frustration. She won.

‘I think the reasons are obvious, my lord,’ she said carefully.

The vox-link crackled and popped for a long moment.

‘I concur,’ said Vult. ‘The hammer falls.’

‘Connection lost!’ called Ghast.

‘The Sixth Hammer is breaking position and moving towards the asteroid station at maximum speed,’ called an officer.

+Viola, the warp is moving,+ Mylasa’s voice was a shout in her skull, sudden and painful with its force.

Viola had just opened her mouth to swear, when a call came from one of the deck officers.

‘The astropath is screaming – we are sending in a team to restrain him.’

‘How?’ said Viola, speaking the word rather than holding it in her head. Data was flowing in torrents from the consoles around her. Sensors were failing, cutting back in, and dumping ghost readouts into tactical displays.

+It is spiralling,+ sent Mylasa. +The dead song is so loud… It’s bleeding through the veil…+

‘What about the station, Mylasa?’ said Viola.

+The warp is still – it’s the centre of the spiral… they…+ The note of fatigue and panic in the sending shivered through Viola, and for a second she shared a shadow of Mylasa’s struggle as she cast her mind into the warp. +They won’t feel it yet… They are at the eye of the storm.+

On the screen showing the external view, the void flickered. Threads of lightning flashed impossibly across the dark. The swirls of colour curdled and thickened, clumping into clouds.

+Viola, I cannot keep this connection open. There is another problem. Commander Zecker–+

Mylasa’s voice vanished. Viola staggered as the telepathic link broke. Copper seasoned the spit in her mouth.

‘Signal the Valour’s Flame to hold position,’ called Viola. ‘I don’t care if you have to use flags or a lamp, but get them to hold.’

‘Targeting system errors…’

‘Riots reported on decks thirty-six through forty…’

‘We have lost visual of the facility…’

‘Error…’

‘We have lost…’

‘Reports of…’

‘…screaming…’

‘…screaming…’

‘…screaming…’

Josef froze as he stepped around the corner of the bookcase. Tall shelves encircled an open space of dust-covered marble. Openings between the shelves led off into the maze of cases that filled the chamber. Four more empty stone plinths sat on the floor at the cardinal compass points. Eighteen glass cabinets with brass frames sat in a ring within them. Horned skulls, black glass mirrors, carved pebbles and jars of liquid sat inside each case, untouched by the dust that was settling over the rest of the scene.

A candle sat on a suspensor disc bobbing in mid-air. It was as thick as an arm, like those used to measure vigils in a cathedral. A book sat open on an iron lectern beside it. Inked diagrams, words and symbols spidered across the yellow pages. Josef paused with Covenant and looked around. Eight corridors of shelves led away from the open space around the lectern and book. The newly-returned atmosphere still had a chemical, sanitised taste, but underneath it a musk of dust and parchment and smoke was rising.

Covenant and Severita held back. Enna had moved to the side but was looking towards the object at the centre of the circle, the object that drew all eyes to it, and had stopped Josef in mid stride.

‘What was generating the heat trace the magos picked up?’ asked Koleg, pointing the barrel of his pistol at the candle. ‘Not that, surely? I am getting nothing on the thermal spectrum.’

No one answered. The flame was still burning high on the column of wax, noted Josef. It had not been lit more than a few hours ago.

‘We should go,’ he said.

‘No,’ said a high clear voice from the echoing dark. Gun muzzles and heads came up. Josef did not move. He could not. The echoes of the one word exploded in his head. Ice poured through his muscles and blood. He knew that voice. Even from just one word, he knew that voice. ‘You should not have come here at all, Khoriv,’ said Inquisitor Idris, as she stepped from the shadows.

SIXTEEN

Idris’ footsteps clicked on the stone floor as she stepped forward. Josef stared at her. A banded body-glove covered her torso. Layers of red fur and black velvet hung from her shoulders and waist, spilling to the ground. She held an ivory and steel cane in her left hand, a jet sphere capping its top. Rings crowded her fingers. Her hair hung in a mane around her thin face. She gave a sad smile as she looked at them.

‘I mean it,’ she said, her gaze steady on Covenant. ‘You were not supposed to come here. Not now. You have been faster, and found more, than I anticipated. It forced me to improvise this situation. My mistake, but you were always quick, even if you sometimes reached the wrong conclusions. There are things we should talk about, though.’

The silence and stillness stretched.

Josef was still staring at Idris, searching her face. So familiar, but so wrong just by being there.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Koleg shift position minutely to look to where Enna had been.

Enna… where was Enna? He could not see her.

‘You are not her,’ said Covenant to Idris.

‘Because I could be just as false as the simulacra of Talicto at the conclave, or because you would rather not believe it of me?’

‘Because Idris died.’

‘Then why are we talking?’ she said and took a step forwards. Her cane clacked on the stone floor. ‘Why are you not shooting?’

Covenant did not move, but Severita shifted forwards, sword held ready.

‘Don’t interrupt, my dear,’ said Idris to Severita, cold smile still in place. ‘He wants to talk, even though he is not saying anything.’ She looked back at Covenant. ‘You want to know, don’t you? You have always cared about the truth, Covenant.’

‘Ero… why would…’ Josef heard the words and then realised that they had come from his mouth, forced up from the place where his confusion and shock boiled just under his control.

‘The trouble with the Inquisition, Khoriv, is that we have power, but we are blinded by vision. We have a habit of getting in the way of salvation. And that could not be allowed to happen, not here, not now. The game board needed to be cleared.’

‘The massacre failed though,’ said Josef. ‘Not everyone died.’

‘And what do those survivors do now, but quarrel and watch each other?’ said Idris. ‘You think that failure?’

‘We are here,’ growled Josef.

‘So you are, and the reason you are here is for answers.’ She looked at Covenant again. ‘And the reason I am giving them to you is because you have a choice to make.’

‘Unknown ship at the edge of sensor range!’ Viola heard the shout and turned towards the sensor officers. ‘Falchion class, sensor signatures match the hostile craft encountered at Ero. It’s the Truth Eternal.’

‘Its weapons are hot,’ called another officer. ‘It’s making for the asteroid. Fast.’

So someone had been out there in the dust, thought Viola. For a second she wondered if had been waiting for them. Or if whoever had been on the asteroid facility had shut the station’s power down, and sent the ship out to hide. That made sense; if they had not been expected, whoever was on the station would not have had time to get off, but they had tried to turn the situation into a trap. It looked like it was going to work too.

In the sphere of the holo-projection the asteroid was a flickering mass. The dagger shape of Vult’s light cruiser, the Sixth Hammer, was cutting towards it, flickering in and out of definition as the sensor readings struggled to hold true. On the far side of the asteroid, the Valour’s Flame was a flickering marker lying across the path of the incoming enemy ship. But the Valour’s Flame was neither moving nor firing.

‘Come on, commander,’ hissed Viola to the blurring image of the Valour’s Flame. ‘What are you doing?’ The snatch of panicked thought from Mylasa, before it had broken off, came back to her. There was a problem with Commander Zecker.

‘Get us to within gun and teleport range,’ she said, just as the holo-projection collapsed in a squall of static.

Cleander skidded around the side of the bookcase and stopped. Another canyon of shelves opened in front of him. He was sweating inside his void suit. Breath was heaving from his lungs. It felt like he had been running for hours, even though it was only seconds since he had left the Navigator and Glavius-4-Rho. In that brief time, he had taken three turns down different corridors between the shelves. All of them should have taken him closer to where Covenant and the rest had gone, but he had not found them. He could hear distant voices that seemed close, but they moved, and something told him that if he were to follow them he would get no closer. It felt wrong. No, it was wrong.

‘Stupid, stupid idea,’ he muttered to himself, unsure even as he spoke if he meant his own choice to run after Covenant, or the whole mission to the asteroid station. Both were good candidates for things that should have been abandoned well before they started.

He pulled a grenade from the harness on his thigh.

He was here now, though, and he was not going to let this unravel. He was not going to die here, and he was not going to let the idiotic collection of rogues that served Covenant die here with him.

He fumbled with the grenade, swearing silently at the heavy fingers of the void suit’s gauntlets. He tucked his needle pistol under his arm, took the grenade in both hands and clicked the arming stud.

It had been the tone of Titus Yeshar’s voice that had flipped a switch inside him and sent him running into the stacks of half-burned books; the Navigator had been babbling portentous nonsense ever since they had taken him off his familial void-manse at Bakka. He had been reluctant to bring them to the asteroid station, had resisted coming on board. But that was to be expected. Talicto had been a monster, and Titus Yeshar knew that better than most. You didn’t go willingly into the lair of a monster, even a dead one, unless you had no choice. Cleander understood that point from experience. But there had been something else in the Navigator’s sing-song mutterings.

Terror.

Pure primal terror.

Cleander looked at the bookcase that lay across the direction in which he was certain Covenant must be. It was a cliff of charred wood and iron. He hefted the grenade.

The light of the lamps hanging from the ceiling and shelves vanished. A diffuse twilight slid over his sight. The still-falling dust and ash was pale snow. Distances stretched to shadows. Far off, silent lightning flashed above the walls of the shelves.

The sound of scratching and creaking wood came from behind him. Cleander froze, the grenade a dead weight in his hand, aware that his pistol was still under his arm. His skin prickled. The air suddenly felt hot on his bare face, as though he had just opened the door of a furnace. The dust and ash were the only things moving in his sight. The creaking scratch came again, closer, soft and subtle. He let out his breath slowly. The falling flecks of ash stirred in front of his face.

Stupid, he thought. Really very, very stupid.

He spun, catching the needle pistol as it fell from under his arm and bringing the barrel up.

Servitors wired into the scanning consoles were babbling across the bridge of the Valour’s Flame. Bridge officers were shouting.

‘Unknown ship!’

‘Where did it come from?’

‘It has weapons active and locked on.’

‘Frigate, Falchion class!’

‘It’s closing!’

Kade Zecker was breathing hard, pain bright in her skull, her skin cold and crawling with panic.

‘What are your orders, commander?’ That was Luco’s voice. She recognised it, but it was coming from far away, and her fingers, her skin, her body did not feel like her own.

She tried to speak, but pain ripped through her skull, and memories were pouring into her, images of horror and despair, burning away the present as they burst into being.

+Commander, listen to me, you need to liste–+

But the ghost ship was tumbling out of the void towards her, its hull chewed and bleeding, and she could see the horror at its heart, and hear the voices calling in the still air.

‘Please help. If you can hear… Oh. God-Emperor, help…’

‘Commander?’ The shout filled her ears, and the world stopped. ‘Hostile ship is closing. What are your orders?’

Blink.

She sat on a white chair in a bare, black room. Its walls were square and flat, and without any sign of a hatch door or window. She looked behind her.

‘I am sorry,’ said a voice. Kade’s head snapped back around. A woman sat opposite her. Red hair fell in a long cascade over her right shoulder. Her eyes were dark, her mouth set in a thin line. She looked young, but also not. The folds of her green, silk dress rustled as she shifted in her seat. ‘You did not leave me with many options.’

‘Where am I?’ asked Kade.

‘Physically you are still just where you were, on the bridge of the Valour’s Flame, with your pistol in your hand, about to shoot your ensign in the face.’

‘I am–’ began Zecker.

‘Mentally, well… let’s just say you are in a small space of quiet, which I have hollowed out in your thoughts.’

‘I don’t–’

‘Spiritually? Well… that is a question that I am not qualified to judge.’

‘I was… just there…’ Kade shivered, feeling for a second two memories twirling together in her mind: the bridge of the wreck and the bridge of the Valour’s Flame.

‘Though from experience I would say that you are in a position of peril,’ said the red-headed woman.

‘You are the psyker, the thing that the inquisitor brought and left on my ship to watch us.’

‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘That’s me. Though I look slightly different out of the flesh.’

‘What is happening?’

‘You are about to manifest a dormant psychic power,’ said Mylasa. ‘And unless I can help, you are going to destroy us all.’

‘I should not have killed the saint, Covenant,’ said Idris. ‘Our master was right. Mankind needs a saviour. It will not save itself. The Imperium’s strength is just a lie it tells itself. Argento was right to try to create that saviour, and we were wrong to stop him. The only thing he was truly guilty of was being too narrow in his vision.’

‘And for that you have killed our peers, taken up the weapons of the enemy, and damned yourself.’

‘What do we exist for, old friend? What do inquisitors really exist for? All of those thousands like us, stretching back to the creation of our order – what was their purpose? The purpose of the Inquisition is to save humanity. Not to protect the Imperium. Not to be limited by nobility, or what is considered possible. If mankind survives, we have succeeded. Anything else is a bargain made with extinction.’

‘You are not saving anything. If you are truly Idris, then you are destroying all the good you have done.’

Is it her? thought Josef, still unable to look away.

‘You don’t believe that,’ said Idris to Covenant. ‘I know you. You didn’t believe it before, and you don’t believe it now.’

‘I believe that the Emperor will rise again, but what do you believe? Horusian… Talicto called you that before he died.’

‘The warp is always there, Covenant. We fight it, but we fight ourselves. Its strength is our strength. It cannot be defeated, but it can be mastered. It must be mastered.’

It can’t be her, thought Josef, and in his mind he saw Idris as she had been in those earlier times. So clever, so sharp, so focused…

‘Impossible, foolish, vile,’ said Covenant.

‘Argento didn’t think so… and neither did you. What is the Emperor’s power, but the warp given shape and purpose? The miracles of saints and the dreams of a divine saviour, they are just a strand of the warp’s potential. All saints are witches, Covenant. All angels are daemons.’

It could be her, thought Josef. His eyes could find no sign that the face was false, and the words… not what they meant, but how they fell from her lips, their force… It could be…

‘And you want me to agree with you?’

‘I am giving you the choice. When I said that I was not expecting you to be at the conclave on Ero, I was not lying. I had to improvise to keep you alive. I did not want you to come here, but I do want you to agree with me. We made the wrong choice before. You know that. That failure made you a penitent looking for absolution, but it made me–’

‘An abomination,’ said Covenant.

‘It made me see what I needed to sacrifice, if I was to be what an inquisitor should be.’

Covenant tilted his head, gaze fixed.

‘Is that so?’

‘This is not theory. It’s not blind faith in the future. We are going to do what is needed, even if no one else will. This is our time, Covenant. All the auguries and disasters, all the blood and horror in this place. It is what we have been waiting for. The salvation we all fight for will be born in these bloody stars. We will make certain of it.’

A cold smile twitched on Covenant’s lips.

‘And you say that I am the one who became a fanatic.’

Idris gave a small shake of her head.

‘You need to choose. You need to choose, now, on which side you want to be. I saved you from Ero because I hoped there would be a right time to bring you in, but you have come here before I was ready, and so some rather unpleasant things are going to happen. You have to trust me if you want to live, Covenant, and you have to trust me now.’

‘Was it you that killed Talicto?’ asked Covenant, still unmoving. ‘Or one of the other of the Triumvirate?’

‘Triumvirate?’ she gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Such an overly dramatic title. Talicto coined it himself. The man was always two parts a fool. But, yes, it was me that executed him in the end. He was past redemption by that time. Power without a guiding vision cannot be tolerated.’

‘And that power…’ Covenant shifted his gaze to the book on the lectern. ‘In your hands, that power is pure?’

Idris released a slow breath between her teeth. Josef remembered the gesture from arguments long ago, the sign that her patience was moving towards anger.

‘Time is running out, Covenant. We can go from here as friends and comrades, just as we were before. You have been looking for salvation all these years you have been fighting. You can have it. You can help save mankind. You once believed that we could do that, now you truly can.’

‘You are right,’ said Covenant. Josef’s head snapped around, his mind rebelling against what he had just heard. ‘Time is running out.’

Covenant looked at her, and then turned to look at Josef.

‘It’s not her,’ he said. And the psycannon on his shoulder spun towards Idris. Koleg’s pistol roared. Severita sprang forwards, lightning bright on her blade.

SEVENTEEN

Covenant’s psycannon never fired. A las-bolt came out of the dark and tore the weapon from its mounting. Covenant jerked back. Sparks of feedback whipped up the cables of his mind-interface link as the gun was destroyed. He staggered, blood on his lips. Josef bellowed in rage and stepped forwards. Koleg’s pistol roared a tongue of micro-rounds at Idris.

Severita had been moving forwards when the las-bolt struck her master. She pivoted. At the edge of her sight she saw the air around Idris erupt with explosions as Koleg’s burst of rounds flashed to sparks. She saw Enna Gyrid, crouched at the corner of a bookshelf, her las-carbine aimed level at Covenant’s reeling form. Enna’s face had a cold, blank expression behind the sight of her gun.

Severita leapt. Enna jerked her gun up, even as Severita’s sword arced down.

Time slowed as death balanced on the edge of the next instant.

Severita’s blow struck. The gun exploded in Enna’s hands as the power field sliced through its casing. She reeled, but caught her fall and spun its momentum into a blow that thumped into Severita’s gut. Severita’s breath gasped from her lungs as she cannoned backwards. She tried to roll to her feet, but another kick caught her solar plexus with enough force and precision to steal the remaining air from her lungs. Enna was above her, blank-eyed, a pistol already held in her charred hands. There was no trace of pain or emotion on Enna’s face. Severita realised that no matter how fast she moved, she would not beat the bullet that was about to come from the barrel.

At last, she thought.

A wave of force picked Enna up and slammed her into the air like a thrown doll. Severita leapt to her feet.

Covenant was just metres away, ghost-light and frost haloing his head. She caught his eye for an instant and then he was moving, advancing on Idris, sword rising. Cold lightning crackled around Idris’ skull. The air shimmering between the inquisitors was like churning water as psychic power poured from them in raw waves. Covenant cut and cut, light flashing as his sword struck the shells of psychic power enclosing Idris. Blood was flowing from his nose. Idris’ face was set, her eyes dark holes of night. Light was distorting around her, twisting, sucking in, as though inhaled into her shadow.

‘Don’t do this, Covenant,’ she said. ‘There are things you do not understand. This does not have to be death for you.’

Gunfire ripped the air as Koleg blazed at Idris. The micro-rounds melted as they met the darkening halo around her. Covenant attacked without cease, his blade and footwork never faltering as bullets poured past him. Severita sprinted to his side, firing as she moved. Explosions blossomed around Idris. Severita saw the inquisitor falter, and lunged the point of her sword at Idris’ throat. Idris turned and looked at Severita. Force slammed through her bones. She felt razor edges rip at the inside of her flesh. She froze, unable to move. A high wailing noise was filling her skull.

Idris gave a tiny shake of her head. Blood-stained sweat was pouring from her skin.

‘I can give you no more time to consider it,’ she said to Covenant.

Severita felt the ash-laden air spiral against her frozen skin. A tiny dust devil was rising from the floor beside her. She saw Covenant’s eyes flick to it as he swung another blow.

‘You have given us time enough,’ he said.

Columns of lightning flashed into being around them. Blinding light and the smell of ozone flooded the air. Figures stood in the flashes of light, figures in black armour and mirror visors. And with them, clad in gold and ivory, was Inquisitor Lord Vult.

Idris turned, and the roiling aura of power around her flickered for an instant as she saw the daemonhunter lord.

‘Idris,’ he said. ‘You are called to judgement.’

Covenant scythed his sword around, lightning dragging in a smear from its edge. Idris jerked back, the cloak of etheric energy twisting and billowing as it tried to catch the blow. A bubble of blue flame formed and shattered as the sword cut through the shimmering barrier and ripped her legs apart in a detonation of light. Idris fell. A shriek echoed through the churning air.

Covenant stepped forwards, blade low. The remains of the psycannon on his shoulder twitched. His face was covered with blood.

‘Covenant, step back from her,’ called Vult as he came forwards, his tread shaking the stone floor.

Idris was scrabbling on the ground, blood bright on her lips, red soaking the tangle of her layered robes. Covenant looked down at her, and raised the sword.

‘Covenant, step back!’ shouted Vult. ‘This place is at the centre of an etheric cyclone. Do not–’

‘You will not have revelation,’ rasped Idris, her voice still somehow calm. ‘You are a false pilgrim, old friend.’

Her right hand slammed into the red-washed floor beneath her. Witch-fire wreathed the bloody fingers. Covenant’s cut severed her right arm above the elbow, but it was too late.

Forks of lightning sprang into the air. Covenant staggered back. Black tears opened above them. Dust and ash were falling upwards from the floor. Burning winds burst outwards. Idris was gone. Howling shreds of colour and shadow darted through the spreading blackness. Severita felt nausea fill her throat as the skin of reality split and the realm beyond poured through the wound.

‘A psyker?’ said Kade. Around her the blank black world was utterly still. This must be a dream, she thought.

‘No, it is not a dream,’ said Mylasa. ‘I wish it were. At this instant you are perhaps a few heartbeats away from destroying everything and everyone on your ship. Here we have time, more time than we do out there, but not much more.’

‘This can’t be true. How could I–’

‘Because you have been touched by something that it is beyond your spirit to control,’ said Mylasa. ‘Covenant did not know that before he took your ship, but… we should have realised. I should have realised. There are signs. There are always signs. I should have noticed.’

‘Noticed what?’

Mylasa looked down at the pearl-white nails of her right hand.

‘The dreams, Kade. The dreams that were half memory, half waking. The way that you are sometimes just a beat off from the rhythm of time. The way that you are afraid and angry all at the same time, and don’t know why. Those are all signs of the fact that your mind has cracks, and the warp has found them, and is trying to pull them wider.’

‘The warp? But I don’t understand. I know the warp – it is…’

‘It is the nightmare realm that you travel through and never see its true nature, Kade. Things… move within it.’

‘Those are just stories. It’s just a way of crossing the void.’

‘No. No, it’s not. The warp is power, and corruption, and temptation and hate. It is a sea filled with monsters that want nothing more than to pull the skin off reality and eat it while it screams. Those powers might be called gods, the smallest part of their strength daemons, and the whole might be called Chaos. This is the truth. The truth that you are not allowed to know.’

‘I have never–’

‘Yes, you have, Kade. I have seen it tucked away in your memory like a tumour. You have seen Chaos, and being here, right now, so close to what is happening, has finally brought it to the surface of your soul.’

‘This…’ she said, blinking, feeling as though she should feel tears on her cheeks even though there were none. ‘This place… it’s like drowning. I close my eyes and I see. I see.’

‘That is our fault. Reality here was a fraying shroud, and now something terrible is happening, and the warp is screaming.’ She paused. ‘As I said, I should have realised sooner.’

‘Why don’t you just kill me?’

Mylasa laughed.

‘Good question. And the answer is that I do not have the time, and I don’t have the strength. Emergents like you… well, you are strong, getting stronger by the nanosecond. So the best option I have is to try to help you keep a lid on it.’

Kade heard something behind her that might have been the hiss of a breath leaving a mouth. She turned to look.

‘Look at me, Kade,’ said the woman softly.

The commander felt the tug of instinct to look in the direction of the sound.

‘Look at me. Yes, that’s it, just at me. Good.’ The young woman smiled encouragingly.

Kade swallowed. They were there again, the ghost ships, the silent corridors, the soft…

The woman’s eyes were steady on her, the pupils wide and black.

‘There were three,’ said Kade, and she could hear tears and pain and anger in the words. ‘We found them off the edge of a system in the Shanoian Margin–’

‘Kade, stop. You have to stop.’

‘We had been pushed off our patrol course by storms. They were wrecks more than ships, heavily damaged, tumbling on momentum. At first we could not get a vox return from them, but… but then we did–’

‘Shut it out, Kade. Don’t go back there. It’s their way in. Shut the–’

‘There were voices. Lots of voices. They were all over the signal spectrum, they were… they were screaming. We launched an away party to the nearest one. I led it. I wanted to…’

It had been so quiet. She had never felt or heard quiet like that on a void ship before.

‘Kade, please, I can’t hold you here much longer. You need to turn–’

‘Nothing,’ she shook her head. ‘Nothing and no one. Not even any bodies or blood. There was air still trapped in the hull, but no one trying to breathe it. We found no one, no one screaming… Until we reached the bridge.’

The face set in the smooth wall of soft skin, its eyes open.

‘Oh… God Emperor, help… us…’ it said, and the floor and walls and ceiling moved as it breathed.

Blackness, sudden and swift as a falling curtain, and the blackness around her was an image of the bridge of her ship, but an image that was moving with broken-clock slowness. Heat was flashing across the metal deck in cherry-red waves.

‘Help us… Please help us…’

+Kade…+

She felt bile rise in her throat. The pain in her skull was a hammer. She just needed… she just needed…

In Kade’s eyes the ghost ship was weeping flame and debris, corpses stumbling from its wounds.

+Kade, stop.+ The voice calling her was a distant shout. +You must stop, you must listen… you will listen…+

‘We need you… let us…’

She wanted to stop it, wanted to sleep in silence, to tear the ghosts from her head, to be able to let go.

‘Let go… please help us…

+Kade!+

An inferno enveloped Kade. Pale ropes of heat spun around her, as a crack within her soul split wide, and the terror which had been following her flowed out. She lifted into the air. The deck beneath her glowed red. Ensign Luco jerked back, his uniform, hair and skin flaring as it ignited. The servitors in cradles close to her began to burn, flesh cooking even as they tried to execute their functions. The troopers in red carapace fired. Las-bolts converged on the avatar of fire rising into the air above them. They spun away like stones thrown into a tornado. The crew on the rest of the bridge were running cowering from the heat, their clothes smoking, their lungs filling with burning air. Rounds cooked off in the breeches of their shot-cannons.

In her cocoon of blind emotion, Kade roared, and the fire of the warp roared with her. Emotion filled her and poured into the world. Every scrap of fear she had ever felt, every wish she had cherished and seen denied, every moment when hate had been more powerful than reason: all of it rose into her, blinding bright, painted in colours of blood and fire.

She was a child again, being pushed by her nurse through high doors to meet a woman in a blue and silver uniform that looked at her with cold eyes.

‘Greet your mother, Kade,’ the nurse had said.

A wave of force ripped out from her. Plates tore from the command deck and spun into the air. The human bridge crew were cowering and running.

She was a lieutenant feeling her hands shake on the hilt of her sword as the corridor in front of her filled with smoke and screams, and a deck ganger came out of it, swinging a piston-wrench, and she was thrusting her sword forward, screaming a cry of fear and rage as she stabbed and hacked, and felt the blade bite into muscle and bone, and somehow she was still alive and still screaming.

One of the armsmen on the bridge levelled his shotcannon around the side of a bank of controls. His finger squeezed the trigger at the same moment that his body was slammed into the floor. Armour and bones broke. Telekinetic force yanked him up into the air, crushing his body like a ripe fruit squeezed in a fist.

She was standing before Admiral Glate, hearing the applause of the fleet officers as the new commander pins gleamed on her collar. Warm pride radiated from the smile that she could not keep from her face.

Waves of heat and pressure gripped the bridge’s deck and support pillars. Metal creaked. Kade’s mind flickered between images, her senses flooded.

Beyond the bounds of the bridge she saw with eyes that pierced the metal and flesh. She saw the minds of its thousands of crew as glimmers of candle flame in the dark sea of souls. The commands of the officers high on the cruiser’s spine turned in their minds like half-formed cogs. The sweat of ratings on the lower decks hung in the air, the molecules within each drop buzzing like insects caught in a bottle. She could change them, she realised; she could take the next instant of reality and remake it. All she needed to do was breathe in, to draw the cords of existence to her. It was all in her power to decide.

This… thought Kade, this is what it must be to be divine.

‘Kade.’ The woman in green was standing before her, fire-streaked grey clouds boiling behind her. The poise of her slim features was marred by ash, and by wounds which wept black blood onto the silk of her robe. ‘Kade, please listen.’

Kade felt a wave of confusion crash through her. The woman in green raised her hands as a blizzard of cinders lashed her. Somewhere beyond the world that she was seeing, metal sheared and melted.

‘You must listen,’ said the woman, forcing herself forward. ‘I am not here to fight you. I cannot fight you. But I can help you.’

Kade trembled. Confusion boiled through her. The woman in green flinched as though struck. Cracks opened across her skin. She was…

On the bridge of the Valour’s Flame, two spheres of light exploded against each other. Ropes of burning ectoplasm fell to the torn and burning deck.

‘This is your ship, Kade,’ said the woman. ‘These are your crew. Look at them. They trust you. Look at them. Listen to me. You can choose–’

‘I…’ began Kade. ‘I can see… I can see it all.’

‘Something is happening to the Valour’s Flame,’ said Ghast from beside Viola. ‘Throne of Terra, it is…’

Almost all sensor data had failed across the bridge screens. The displays were now little more than crude indications of rough positions of ships and objects. Every other scrap of information was being sweated from the systems by the crew and shouted out as it happened. She looked at the open view beyond the ports. She had ordered the blast shields dropped as soon as the sensors went down. Basic optical enhancement seemed to be the least affected by the phenomena, and so crew were now pressing their eyes to the viewpieces of lens and mirror systems. Given what was happening in the void around the asteroid station, Viola would rather they saw nothing.

The Valour’s Flame rolled over, twisting like a fish on a hook. Pale light glowed through its hull, cracking armour and pouring molten slag into the vacuum. Strands of blue-green light spidered and flashed through the dark around the stricken ship, blinking like lightning. Swirls of colour spun and burst. Depth and distance flexed. A funnel of lightning and violet light was yawning before it. Even looking at the image of it on a pict-screen made Viola taste blood and bitter fruit.

A jolt ran through the deck. Viola swayed, and caught her balance.

‘What was that?’ she called.

‘Gravity fluctuation,’ buzzed one of the tech-priests in the machine pit below the command dais. ‘We are within the orbit of a planet-sized gravity field.’

‘Source?’

‘Unknown,’ said the tech-priest, voice buzzing with panic. ‘Unable to calculate.’

‘We are moving,’ called Ghast. The ship lurched again.

‘Full power to thrusters,’ called Viola. ‘Hold our position.’

‘Reactor output eight-seven-point-five.’

‘Throne!’ swore Ghast from the edge of the command dais. Viola looked around. Ghast was staring up at the space beyond the open viewports. Viola looked up. And felt the deck fall from beneath her, even as it lurched beneath her feet. The light cruiser Sixth Hammer filled the view, suddenly and impossibly close as distances collapsed. She could see the muzzles of their guns, and the lights dotting their turret towers. Beyond the two ships, the fabric of space was cracking. The whirl of indigo light was opening wide. Lightning crackled within its spiral.

‘Evasive action!’ shouted Viola. The ship’s thrusters fired. The servitors monitoring the engine and reactor outputs howled. Viola felt her stomach rise up her throat as the Dionysia flipped over. The hull creaked and shivered. Ghast was shouting orders, crew clinging onto their consoles or trying to run across the deck. Viola looked up at the turning image through the viewport, and had time to see the bulk of the Sixth Hammer try to turn out of the vortex that had hold of it. It twisted, kilometres of armour and metal shearing and bending like a tree flexing in a gale. It fired its guns, roaring defiance with a full broadside. Plasma, las and macro-shells streamed into the void, kissed the warp-saturated dark, and broke into a shattered kaleidoscope of colour and fire. The vortex seemed to open wider. Vast faces leered in the dark. Jaws of fire reached to scrap the cruiser’s hull, caressing, tearing, clutching it and dragging it into the depths of the nether realm. Then it was as though the Sixth Hammer had never been. And the vortex opened wide to greet the Dionysia.

‘Engines full burn!’ shouted Ghast.

Viola felt the ship kick. The hull wailed as the pull of the vortex dragged at it. Viola gritted her teeth, swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

‘Get us clear and then come about, full burn,’ she called. Some of the crew looked at her, and she could see the terror in their eyes. Even Ghast was looking pale. ‘We have to reach the asteroid facility. Get us through the warp break, and fast.’

Ghast saluted without hesitation, and turned, her shouts of command battering against the screams of ship and crew.

‘Mistress Viola,’ called an ensign from deeper into the bridge. Viola glanced at the woman. She looked young, perhaps no more than twenty years, the pallor of her skin still not leached of vigour by life in the void. For a terrible instant Viola realised that she could not remember the ensign’s name.

‘Yes?’ she called.

‘Remaining sensors have just detected an ordnance lock,’ said the ensign. ‘The hostile frigate has just fired a torpedo payload at the asteroid.’

Space beyond the viewports spun over as the Dionysia rolled again and shot back towards the direction of the warp rifts and the asteroid station beyond. Viola realised she was still swearing as the prow cut into the glowing curtains of warp-light.

EIGHTEEN

A shape bubbled out of the air beside Severita. Boils erupted across wet flesh, splitting and gushing pus. A mouth of ripped meat opened to cry. Severita fired her bolt pistol into it. The shells punched into the mass of flesh and exploded. Meat and filth sprayed out, burning as it fell. The rest of the daemon’s form jerked forward, blood and smoking warp-stuff spilling from its shredded head. She stepped back and to the side, firing into the daemon’s mouth. The ritual movements, learned so long ago, unfolded through her as she swerved away from a jet of bile, pulled a bronze-plated magazine from her belt and slammed it into her bolt pistol. She pulled the trigger an instant after the firing mechanism slammed forwards.

The bolt shell that roared out was silver and held a vial of thrice-blessed water at its core. It struck the daemon, detonated, and reduced its expanding flesh to burning slime. She spun as she sheathed her sword and drew her second bolt pistol.

Covenant was a smudged shape beyond a curtain of light that blurred the chamber as the warp-wind blew. His two-handed sword was cutting, hacking through daemons as they clawed their way into being. His face was set, eyes flashing. A humanoid figure of wobbling flesh and rotting fat staggered towards him and swung a cleaver of rusted iron. Covenant stepped to the side of the blow, and sliced the creature from crown to groin.

From the blasphemy of the Fallen, Our Emperor, deliver us.

Severita heard the silent beat of her prayer rise as she cut to Covenant’s side. She spun and turned, and ducked and fired. It was not about speed, it was about focus. Voices screamed in her mind. Fear and madness ate into her thoughts. But the thread of prayer led her true, blinding her eyes to horror and stopping her ears to the cries that told her she should despair, that she could rise to glory, that she was a maggot in the flesh of mankind.

From the begetting of daemons, Our Emperor, deliver us.

A claw caught her shoulder from behind and ripped through her shoulder guard. She put her left hand under her right arm and fired a burst without looking. The claw jerked back just before it would have cut into her flesh. She heard a hiss like water boiling on hot metal.

From the curse of the mutant, Our Emperor, deliver us.

The air was burning and bubbling with multi-coloured flame. High hooting cries echoed up. The cries and explosions blended into a cacophony that sounded almost alive – that sounded like laughter. Thick fumes and serpent-coils of smoke hazed the air above. And, as Severita took a step closer to Covenant, she looked up. The vaulted metal of the chamber was no longer there. Cruel stars burned where it should have been, glinting with malevolence in a sea of darkness that pulled the eye on, and on, and on, without comfort or end.

That thou wouldst bring them only death.

The thread of prayer inside Severita’s soul quieted to a whisper. Her movement slowed. She was aware at once that it should not, but her limbs were obeying a call that was not her own. A daemon leapt out of empty air at her. Its body formed in an instant, and she had time only to lurch drunkenly to the side. It was a beauty of abomination, clean-limbed and smooth-skinned. Even the needle teeth in its smile sparkled with joy. Severita tried to hear the chord of her prayer, but it was faint, the pressure of the present like the surge of an ocean tide picking up a pebble. The claw that extended towards her face seemed lazy, a caress of razor edge chitin.

That thou shouldst…

The bolt-round punched through the daemon’s torso and out of its back. Lightning flashed as the silver and fire unmade the mock substance of its flesh and cooked the daemon’s blood to smoke.

Covenant halted. The sensor pod spun over his shoulder as his gaze met Severita’s eyes.

‘Thou shouldst spare none,’ he said, and then turned, sword slicing up to split a horned head from chin to crown. Cold rage poured into Severita, slicing away the ghosts of sensations pulling her will apart.

‘That thou shouldst pardon none,’ she called. ‘We beseech thee, destroy them!’ And her pistols spoke as she shrieked her prayer into the faces of the daemons as they came in a tide of lies and claws.

The world was burning as Cleander ran through it. Heaps of blazing books fell as shelves collapsed. Scraps of charring paper spun on the wind. The air he was gulping felt like it was burning too. He spun around another corner. The voices chased him, cackling in the noise of flame eating wood and words alike. They were the voices of his father, still spitting bile on his deathbed, of his great-grandmother, looking down at him with disappointment as he stumbled over his formal greeting. They were the voice of Covenant, stripping away the fortune he had made and the life he had lived. They were his own voice, rasping with old age and disease, telling him to stop, to listen to what the fire said, telling him that he did not need to serve anyone but himself and that he could have and do whatever he wanted for eternity.

He kept running, hearing claws and howls follow him as the warp hissed promises to his soul.

‘Keep going, keep going,’ he gasped to himself. He had to be close. He had to be. He had only two grenades left. His needler was gone. That just left his sword, the sword that he had brought as much from habit as foresight.

The fires clawed past him. A cabinet of glass jars to his right exploded as the flames swallowed it. Burning fluid showered out. Chunks of pale flesh from whatever the jars had held charred as they fell, then began to swell, fusing into a blackened and sizzling lump. Wings sprouted and caught in mid-air. Chitin spread across its back, abdomens ballooning. The sound of its wings was the rattle of air in a starved man’s throat. It flew at him, bloating as it blurred through the flames. He turned, hand falling to the hilt of the sword, the stupid sword that he should have left on the ship. The creature was already the size of a dog. Its wings battered into the burning shelves. He tugged the sword free and sliced at the thing. The tip caught a wing as it jinked aside.

Bad cut, said a voice in his head, sloppy even under the circumstances. He almost laughed at the ridiculousness of that thought.

A stinger was growing at the end of the thing’s bulging mass. It buzzed upwards, wings stretching. Multifaceted eyes gleamed like cut emeralds in the flame light. He shifted the grip on his sword. It was double-edged and the haft was a hand-and-a-half in length. A lion’s head roared in polished steel from the heavy pommel and an abrupt phrase in High Gothic ran the span of the cross guard on both faces. Never broken, never cowed, it read. He had always struggled with it as a motto. It was no power sword, or alien relic. It did not have a name. It was just a length of steel, forged by hammer and fire, and sharpened to an edge. But ever since his ancestor had first drawn it in the forgotten Age of Apostasy, it had been a killing blade.

The creature buzzed towards him. The sound of its wings was deafening. Its stingers stabbed at him. He hacked at it, once, twice, three times. It recoiled, wings and body growing bigger. Its mouthparts clicked, fluid dribbling from rings of teeth. It dived. Cleander stepped back, spun the sword and cut up into its thorax. Pus, maggots and polluted blood gushed out as the skin parted. The fluid covered Cleander’s gauntlets. The vulcanised rubber began to dissolve. He swore, moving backwards, shaking the heavy gloves free.

‘Useless things anyway,’ he gasped.

The daemon-creature was thrashing, wings beating against the burning bookcases as its body vented fluid. It jerked forward. Cleander stamped his boot into a cluster of eyes. It gurgled and clicked. He gripped his sword with both hands and hacked down into the meat of its body, then again and again, twitching aside as its blood sprayed and sizzled. Its substance began to collapse into slime and mist. You could not kill a daemon, but if you turned its body into pulp then its toehold in reality would break, and it would dissolve back into the warp. To Cleander that distinction had always seemed overly technical; when you were facing one, you shot and hacked at it until it was gone or you were dead.

After more blows than he wanted to count he stepped back, choking heavy breaths, gagging at the reek of rot and sulphur. He looked in the direction he had been going. Flashes of white and red lightning rose over the tops of the bookcases. That had to be it. He was almost there.

Something landed on the burning shelves above and behind him. A clicking buzz rose against the cackle of the fire. Another of the insectoid creatures sat on the top of the stacks. Cooking fat hissed as the flames lapped over its body. It was larger than the one he had just chopped to slime. Seven wings flickered above it, folding and refolding as its mandibles and legs twitched and rubbed together.

‘Oh, come on…’ he said. The daemon hissed and pulled itself into the air. Cleander turned and ran. He could hear the click of insects in the back of his skull, and the crash of splintering wood as the creature slammed into shelves behind him.

Two grenades: one frag, the other he was not really sure how to describe. He really should have brought more. This one would have to count. He pulled the grenade free from his waist and armed it in a single movement. It was heavy for its size. It was rare, and he did not really understand how it worked. In fact, he doubted that anyone else between here and the Throne of Terra had any idea. The civilisation that had made it was long dead and buried in the gas clouds of the Van Reilac Belt. The tomb he had opened had held three. One he had tried, just to see what it did, and the other he had given to Ianthe. This was the last, perhaps the last token that its makers had ever existed. He had carried it for almost two decades and never had to use it. Even in the near-disaster of the Panetha Varn infiltration he had not needed it. Now he was going to throw it away in a desperate bid to stay alive. Somehow he had always thought it would have a greater purpose than that.

The creature buzzed low, legs dragging on the floor. The beat of its wings churned cinders into the air. He twisted the top of the grenade, once, then again. Frost spread instantly over his fingers. Cold bit into his hands. The winged daemon opened a multi-layered mouth. He threw the grenade. It spun through the air. Wisps of icy light unfolded from it as it tumbled. He gripped his sword, ready to strike.

Stupid idea, really, Cleander, he thought.

The grenade hit the creature on the head, bounced off. It fell to the floor as the creature swept over it, hissing and clicking.

Done, thought Cleander. Done at last. He tensed to swing the sword. The grenade detonated. Shards of white light expanded from beneath the creature, passing through flesh and solidifying into a jagged crown of crystal. The daemon’s wings beat as it tried to pull its bulk out of the razor edges. Black blood and steaming gut fluid gushed out. Its flesh began to dissolve into oily foam. It shrieked, the sound booming and clattering, and Cleander felt his bones and blood shake. It made him want to clamp his hands over his ears, to weep.

He stepped in and hacked the sword down into the thing’s head. Emerald eyes and chitin plates shattered. It gave one last cry, and slumped to stillness. Cleander let out a long breath.

He turned, and forced his legs to run towards where the flash and roar of some other unfolding horror must mean that Covenant was close. As he pulled the last grenade from his belt, he reflected that it would be much simpler if he had never been born.

The world beyond Koleg’s guns was a sea of flesh and luminous fog. The bookcases and cabinets of the Archive were ghost images on the edge of sight. Pain flared behind his eyes as thoughts hit dead ends in his skull. He fired a long burst. The macro-stubber gave a stuttering roar. Micro rounds sliced into flesh, and fur, and blubber. He felt the ammunition cylinder click empty, but he was already pulling the short stock grenade launcher up from where it hung on a strap at his back. He squeezed the launcher’s trigger, and the phosphor-grenade thumped into the floor just ahead of the closing horde. White-hot flame spread in a glowing cloud and reached up to the ceiling; shelves of books and scrolls ignited. Some of the daemons came through the blaze, bounding and cackling, spinning in the inferno like children playing in a spray of water.

‘Where is Covenant?’ shouted Josef from just behind his right shoulder. The preacher’s voice was heavy with effort. Koleg did not answer. In the last minutes the world had vanished behind curtains of etheric light and congealing flesh. He and Josef were shoulder to shoulder, an island in the rising sea of daemons, an island that existed as long as they could fight. That would not be long now. Koleg knew they were going to die. He knew it very clearly. That knowledge did not feature in his thoughts with any greater weight than the dwindling ammo count for his pistol, or the fact that they had survived the initial onslaught only because the daemons were still weak.

He had fought daemons before, many times. That was the nature of his work for Covenant. He had seen them slaughter, and he had been permitted some knowledge of their nature. They were creatures of the warp. In the realm of psychic energy only their own paradoxical laws bound them. When they crossed into reality, their essence unravelled with every instant they remained, like a fish thrashing on the shore, or a human only able to remain beneath the surface of an ocean as long as the air in their lungs lasted. The daemons that were pouring into the chamber were weak because they had little to feed on. But the warp was roaring through the tatters of reality, and with every second that passed the daemons were getting stronger, bolder, larger.

A dazzling blur of sensations filled Koleg’s eyes. Blues, pinks and yellows twirled kaleidoscopic patterns. Whispers cut through his ears, and pain ran down his nerves. He felt his gun drop, and heard the saw-blade sound of the rounds chewing into the floor. He bit down on his tongue and the flare of pain cleared his sight. He could hear Josef praying, the words strong with defiance but shaking with force of will.

Daemons did not exist to be perceived; they existed to warp those who saw them, to twist emotions, to turn their minds against them. Except that he did not have the base material for them to work with. The chirurgeons and bio-alchemists had taken that from him when he had volunteered. That was an advantage, but it did not stop their presence pulling apart his perceptions. For the others the fight was wider, and deeper. All it would take was for their will to slip, and they would die just as surely as if they had misread the thrust of a claw. And the daemons only needed them to slip once.

‘Where is…’ began Josef.

A strobing pulse of energy flickered from out of sight, and sliced through the press of half-formed daemon bodies. A break opened in the churning mass. Koleg saw the opening.

‘With me!’ he shouted, and ran for the gap. Josef came with him. Boots and machine limbs clanged on the deck. He fired as he moved, not aiming, scything with the stream of bullets. He could see the source of the beam now.

Lord Inquisitor Vult stood amongst his four grey-armoured warriors. One of them was firing pulses of energy into the press of daemons to cut a path. The trooper’s silver visor snapped up towards Koleg as he ran into the space cut by the trooper. The pulse of fire from the warrior’s gun stuttered for an instant. It was enough. Rotting figures stepped from the dark, coiling into being with a gasp of fluid-filled lungs. One of Vult’s grey warriors fell, armour powdering to rust, flesh rotting as a starvation-thin creature embraced him. The other figures juddered forwards.

The three remaining warriors slid into a triangular formation around their master. The pistons on their shoulders locked, coolant vents on their backpacks opened. The barrels of their energy weapons glowed.

‘Hold them back,’ commanded Vult, and bowed his head.

The trio of warriors fired. Ringed beams of energy lanced from their weapons and broadened into wide cones of blinding light. Daemon flesh shrivelled. Unholy blood cooked to ash. The warriors cut their fire sideways, moving with perfect unity. But the daemons were growing in strength as insanity poured across the barrier between worlds. One of the beams struck a creature with a long skull and the face of a flayed wolf. It staggered. Burned flesh ripped from it and curled to smoke. It shivered and walked forward into the blaze of the beam. Muscle rippled and remade itself even as it burned. Blood seeped from the daemon’s lolling jaws. It was two paces from the trio of warriors. It was larger than when Koleg had first seen it, taller, its bulk swelling, the heat of its presence a shimmer in the air around it. It held a wide-headed axe of pitted bronze. The edge of the axe was wet, its sharpness dripping with the blood it was yet to shed. Its jaws opened wide as it raised the weapon.

‘Down!’ shouted Vult. The three warriors ceased fire and dropped to their knees. A flat wave of fire exploded from the inquisitor lord. Its edge hit the daemons and sliced through. Bodies burst apart, immolating, thrashing as they tried to cling to reality. Vult glowed with heat. White light clung to the bulk of his Terminator armour. Beads of flame flickered in the recesses of the angel’s wings and daemon skulls. He was still for a second. A shiver ran through him, servos buzzing. He stepped forward. The thin circle of fire vanished. A wide circle of clear space had opened around and before him. Smoking liquid pooled on the floor clear to the nearest wall of shelves.

‘Move,’ he said, voice dry with fatigue. Shapes were spinning into being at the edge of the burning circle. The grey-armoured troopers rose, piston bracings releasing as they moved. Vult began to run towards the edge of the thrown circle. Heat-cracked tiles shattered under his stride. His trio of troopers moved with him. At the edge of the fire-carved space, the air was already rippling with boiling eyes and claws. Vult raised the gilded gun in his right hand and fired. Heavy shells thumped through the air and burst into showers of white sparks and bright, hard light. The warp-thickened shadows screamed as the silver light pushed them back.

Covenant broke from the smoke and whirl of madness. Lightning was blazing around his sword. Tears and burns marked his armour, blood and soot his face. Severita was with him, spinning her sword to slice half-formed limbs reaching at them.

The gun in Vult’s hand silenced as he looked at Covenant.

‘If you knew of this…’ he rasped.

‘Then I would not have come here to die,’ said Covenant, taking a hand from the hilt of his sword, drawing a bolt pistol and firing a cluster of shells at a creature of bubbling flesh.

‘Would you not die for your beliefs?’ said Vult.

The two held each other’s gaze for an instant. Even in Koleg’s emotionally-truncated world, he felt the weight of the moment: the balance.

‘I did not know,’ shouted Covenant. The etheric wind was rising to a gale. Chunks of burning books and splintered wood were floating into the air. Beyond the gunfire, a shape was looming up and up, darker than night.

Vult did not reply, but turned back to the deepening wall of living shadows and fired a fresh stream of star-bright rounds into the dark.

‘Go,’ he said, pausing for a second. ‘Go now, get to one of the ships. There can be no victory if someone does not live to know the truth.’

‘Lord Vult…’ began Covenant.

‘You were right,’ rasped Vult. His bodyguards had locked into position again, pistons bracing, heat vents flaring down their backs. ‘In the conclave on Ero, you were right. If we lose this fight, then victory has no meaning.’

‘We…’ called Covenant.

‘Go!’ roared Vult.

‘Do we withdraw, sir?’ asked Koleg.

‘Yes,’ said Covenant.

Koleg was already up and moving. Plasma bloomed in the dark, in the direction of a gap between the shelves. He blinked just at the moment of detonation, the flash outlining the veins in his eyelids. He opened his eyes and sent bursts of rounds into the space either side of the explosion. Folds of half-etheric flesh ripped apart. Covenant and Severita were moving past him and Josef, running towards the space opened by the dimming sphere of plasma.

A movement snagged the edge of his sight, and he looked down at where a heap of ash and burning parchments had fallen off a blazing shelf. A face looked up at him, darkened with ash, and a figure stumbled towards him. Glowing cinders fell from her. He could see cloth and flesh through the holes burned through her armour. Her weapon had gone, but she had one hand clutched tight and pressed to her chest. Her eyes met his.

‘Koleg…’ she said. Behind her, the blaze of burning pages and scrolls was growing writhing limbs and grinning faces.

He brought his gun up.

‘Koleg, please,’ said Enna Gyrid.

Koleg pulled the trigger.

Josef saw Enna stumble from the smoke and fire, and saw Koleg aim and fire.

‘Alive!’ hissed Covenant from bloody lips. ‘I want her alive.’ The burst of micro-rounds skimmed past Enna and sliced into the creatures solidifying in the flames behind her. The mass of limbs and mouths thrashed.

Enna stumbled forwards, her face pale beneath the soot and blood. Josef stepped forwards and swung his hammer. Snatching the direction of his hammer blow, he swept Enna’s legs out from under her. He rammed his weight into her as she fell, and she hit the floor with bone-cracking force. She gasped as her lungs emptied. He had seen her fight, had seen how fast and how deadly she was, but he had been a killer and then a teacher of killers for all the years of his long life, and in that moment none of her skill mattered because the rage that shook through him was a storm-surge. He raised the hammer, felt his muscles bunch, heard the killing call cackling in his ears as the fire drowned his eyes in the instant of the hammer’s rise.

‘Alive, Khoriv!’ Covenant’s voice was a steel lash through the air. Enna’s eyes were looking up at him, dark, and full of a fear that somehow he knew was not for the fall of the hammer.

‘You…’ he gasped. ‘You will be judged. You and your mistress.’

‘I can’t…’ began Enna.

‘Make sure she survives,’ said Covenant.

‘Yes…’ Josef nodded, air sawing from his chest. He could taste the blood in each breath. His eyes were swimming with smudges of light. His head felt like something was burrowing inside it. He looked around. Wind, ash, flame and light howled through the air around them. Shadows waiting for shape flowed closer, sharks circling prey in red-marked water. The opening in the walls of shelves they had been making for seemed distant, the two dozen paces between it and them an infinity.

The cliff of burning shelves to his right dissolved into a cloud of fire and shrapnel. He flinched back. Shelves to either side of the explosion began to collapse with a roar of splintering wood and cracking iron. Fragments burned, some falling upwards, some towards the floor.

Cleander von Castellan came out of the smoke and debris. His face was a mask of pain. The patch over his left eye was lost, the empty socket beneath filled with clotting blood from a gash on his forehead. Black, crusting slime caked his sword.

‘I hope the plan is that we are leaving,’ said Cleander.

‘Kade.’ The voice came out of the blank white infinity that held her. ‘Kade, I know you can hear me.’

Kade Zecker did not open her eyes. She did not move. Nothing moved. She would not let anything move. She would not see anything.

‘Kade, please let me go, let them go.’

She tried to shut out the voice. She knew she could, but to do that she would have to open her eyes. And she would not open her eyes.

‘You can save them, Kade – you are their captain. This is your ship. All you have to do is let them go.’

She blinked and the fire poured back in from outside. She saw.

The bridge of the Valour’s Flame was a frozen tableau around her. The deck was twisted and glowing with heat. Torn metal plates and rivets hung on the edge of a burning shockwave. Her crew were still figures: caught in the act of running, turning away, staring in shock and terror. And then, before she could stop it, her sight was racing out through the bones of her ship and into the darkness beyond, and the stars were motes spinning in the black froth of infinity, and the fire poured and pulled her on, and the dark and light and spinning infinities were folding and folding, until there was no space, no light, no darkness, no time, and the fire was a branching pattern drawn in arcs through dimensions that humans could not see, and–

She closed her eyes. Her scream echoed inside her skull.

‘Kade,’ said the voice. ‘You need to listen to me.’

‘Silence! Silence! Silence! Silence! Silence!’

Rage flared, red against the white. Kade felt truths unfold inside her as the emotion reached somewhere she could not see and pulled them into her.

‘Mylasa…’ she snarled, and knew that the words did not come from her lips but carried all the spite and anger at what was happening to her, at what she was. ‘Mylasa is not even your name. That was never your name. You are a thief of dreams, a parasite. You do not even remember who you really are. Do you want to know who you were? Do you want to know what you could have been? Do you want to remember?’

In the white she saw the image of the woman in green, but where before she had been serene and calm, now she was bruised and bloody, her dress scorched to tatters, her hands shaking with effort and pain.

‘I am sorry,’ said Mylasa. ‘I am so sorry, Kade, but please.’

Kade snarled and the image of Mylasa staggered. Wounds opened on her skin. Fresh blood slicked her skin.

‘Please…’ said Mylasa. ‘You have a choice. You have a choice, Kade. Just–’

Kade opened her eyes.

She looked.

A coldness crept into her, as though a part of her that was stronger than she had dreamed had slid into the space vacated by her fear, as though she had touched and connected to something as vast as an ocean, dark as the abyss between stars, and that burned without light or heat.

She felt the flow of time that she was holding back surround her, felt it tug against her mind.

‘I am going to die,’ she said.

Mylasa began to shake her head, but Kade spoke first.

‘I am going to die here. In five seconds I am going to die. My body is going to be annihilated as my connection to what you call the warp overwhelms my capacity to control it. The… things that you call daemons will come for the echo of my dreams as I expire. They will pull the carcass of my being apart.’

‘Kade…’

‘No, Mylasa, it is a certainty,’ she said, and part of her was listening to herself speak as well as speaking. ‘I have seen it. Time is a flat plain, Mylasa. Life is the line we draw across it. I have died already. We have all died already.’

‘Oh, God Emperor…’ said Mylasa. ‘You are not just an emergent, you are an Alpha Plus. You are–’

‘Names… numbers… What I am is not a code or a measurement. I am not Kade Zecker. I am what we might all be one day. But now is too soon for me, and now will not last.’

‘God–’

‘No,’ said Kade’s voice, and she could feel the next words and thoughts forming in a mind that was not really hers anymore, but was something greater and more terrible than she had ever dreamed. She paused, and felt a thought form in the totality of her mind. She saw the ship that she had called home. She saw the atoms spinning in the flesh of the dying and the living. She saw the threads of consequence and possibility.

‘You need to listen, Mylasa. It is no random chance that this has happened to me. The seeds of transcendence are growing in humanity, and in this place and time the universe is aligning to see them flower. There will be others. The Storms of Judgement, the dreams of terror, the prayers of the desperate, they are… they are like ripples in water, ripples that are merging, ripples that will become a wave to drown all.’

‘What are you?’ asked Mylasa.

Kade Zecker smiled to herself, allowing an instant of halted time to pass so that the charred lips of her flesh could move.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for trying to help me, Mylasa. Remember me.’

And she let go of her last thought. Time crashed back into motion. The fire spreading through the deck of the Valour’s Flame sucked backwards through the air. Metal plates, rivets and debris spun back into place, fusing and straightening. Blood siphoned back into wounds as skin closed. Life kindled in stilled hearts, as the fallen crew members gasped air into lungs. Some looked up at where Kade Zecker hung in the air above, glowing white, a smile on her lips as the atoms of her flesh became ash, and then vanished in a thunderclap of light.

Josef staggered towards where Cleander stood beside the breach he had blown in the long wall of bookcases. Covenant and Severita were already up and running towards the opening. Koleg had switched from pistol to his compact grenade launcher, and was pumping explosives and phosphor back into the space they had just left. Everything was sound and movement, and the taste of rot and crushed flowers.

‘God Emperor…’ he began, but the words of prayer were vanishing into a hurricane force of sensations pulling his thoughts apart.

‘Faster would be better,’ called Cleander, hacking at something congealing in the smoke. ‘I have run all the way here and I am keen to run back where I just came from.’

‘Ready to move,’ shouted Koleg. Covenant and Severita reached the breach, turned and began to fire in concert.

‘Moving,’ called Koleg, and ran.

‘Up! Move!’ Josef yanked Enna to her feet and shoved her after them. They ran. A long head with a grin of iron teeth loomed to the right of his path. He swung his hammer into its snout, saw it drop back. The wind pulled at him, but then he felt the force of the wind and pressure in his skull shift, as though something had drawn it off.

Josef glanced behind him as he ran.

And saw what had bought them the small easing in the storm.

Vult and his guards were firing up at a shadow which curled above them. The shadow was billowing into the space above, folding into a shape. Cracks of red fire ran through it. Molten claws spread, dripping white hot metal. Red eyes opened in a vast vulpine skull. The beams of the troopers’ guns struck it and bored into its substance. It moved forward, jaws lolling open in a brass-toothed grin. The air reeked of hot metal and hacked meat. Vult raised his power fist. Cords of blue fire snaked over his armour. For an instant he was a statue, effort screaming from his stillness. A bolt of blinding light hammered out from Vult. It struck the daemon and ripped through its shadow-form. Shreds of fire fell as the creature recoiled, the edges of its body smudging to a black haze. Vult held still, light pouring from him, his armour glowing. Howling mouths opened on the daemon’s iron skin. Yellow heat and red anger poured out.

Josef felt the light of Vult’s psychic projection fill his eyes. In that brief glimpse he saw something that he knew he would carry with him into prayer and nightmare: a man standing before the dark; the light of his will, the light of his soul a lance stabbed into the hungering maw that would swallow it. It was beautiful, and terrible – an image of the truth of all that the Ordo Malleus was, and should be. It was enough to break minds, and turn those who saw it into martyrs.

The daemon recoiled, cloven hooves shaking the air and floor.

‘Khoriv,’ called Cleander. ‘Khoriv, you fat bastard, stop staring and run.’

Josef tore his eyes away, and ran through the breach in the blazing shelves and into the twilight beyond. The others were in front of him, firing and hacking to clear their path of the lesser creatures which had shrunk back from the presence of the greater of their kin. He did not look back. He didn’t want to. He didn’t need to. He knew what was happening without needing to see it.

Thirty paces into the rows of shelves, a rolling peal of thunder shivered through the air, trembling with triumph, shaking with fury.

NINETEEN

‘We can’t do it,’ said Ghast. Viola looked at the void mistress. Ghast’s round face looked gouged by shadow in the red glow of the alert lights. Alarms blared throughout the bridge without cease. The Dionysia shook and shook more violently with every second it plunged deeper into the ruined space around the asteroid station. Ghast glanced around as another flurry of damage data spewed from the mouths of the servitors in the machine trenches beneath the command platform. ‘We can’t outrun torpedoes, mistress.’

Viola met the veteran void sailor’s gaze, and knew that the woman was right. At best guess, there were between two and three pairs of torpedoes running through the void to the asteroid station. The enemy frigate had fired the torpedoes just before it had made a sliding roll and powered away from the rift that was swallowing the station.

‘Well,’ said Viola, and felt a strange kick of joy in her gut. ‘We are going to see if we can.’ She grinned, the feeling of the expression on her face another surprise. ‘Get us more speed.’

‘Aye, Mistress von Castellan,’ said Ghast, and turned to begin a fresh litany of shouts.

‘And start bringing the warp engines online,’ added Viola.

She felt rather than saw Ghast look around at her. Viola did not look back at her. She was looking forward beyond the viewport, down the length of the Dionysia to where its prow cut through the billowing clouds of light and lightning. The data clattering from the command systems and scrolling across the pict-screens was forgotten. The compulsion for information and control hacked and stamped into her brain was still there, but for this moment seemed lessened, unimportant. She was reasonably sure that she and the ship were going to end here, torn apart and broken on the clashing boundary between the warp and the real. And she did not care. She was herself. Not a dutiful scion of her line, not a functionary shaped by training and obligation. Just what she always had been, and wanted to be.

‘Well,’ she said, feeling the grin on her face. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Only one of the first pair of torpedoes hit its target. The other ran through a sheet of twisting space and vanished before it could run its course. Its remaining twin cut through the last kilometres of warp-violated space and struck the edge of the station clinging to the asteroid. The warhead was a mass of plasma wrapped around a reactor core, and swallowed a five hundred metre section in a sphere of light.

The asteroid’s spin slowed, turning its gouged face as molten rock and metal scattered into space. Ghostly claws and faces opened in the darkness, shouting and laughing.

Within the station, waves of burning gas roared through the passages and chambers near the impact. Halls hung with dusted tapestries were incinerated, vanishing in the flame’s roar. The rock heaved with shockwaves. Long trunks of tunnel connecting parts of the station on the surface ripped free like lines of torn stitching.

In the main passage leading back to the hangar, Severita felt the impact as a shiver beneath her feet, but did not pause.

‘Ordnance strike,’ called Koleg from behind her.

Above her, the bones hanging from the ceiling clattered together.

‘Keep moving!’ shouted Josef, from the back of the group. ‘If whoever is shooting at the station gets lucky then we might die, but if the daemons catch us we certainly will.’

‘They are not following,’ said Koleg. Severita looked back, and saw that Koleg was right.

‘Is that meant to reassure us?’ called Cleander.

The bones above them were clinking together faster, the dry sound rolling down the wide passage.

‘No,’ said Koleg.

Josef was half dragging, half pushing Enna in front of him. The acolyte’s hands were empty. She looked naked, somehow, without a weapon. Severita’s gaze lingered for a second. She could see the rage in Josef’s face as he pushed Enna before him. She had never seen anything like it in the preacher. Even in the face of the most vile horror and heresy, his anger was always righteous. But in Josef’s wide eyes and set jaw she saw something else; his rage was not pure. It was pain, the shock of betrayal. It was very personal.

Severita found that she wished she felt some of that anger towards Enna. But she did not. Idris’ heresy and deception, Enna’s complicity, it was not enough to produce anger. In a sense it was inevitable. In an unredeemed universe, what more could you expect?

‘The probability of reaching the hangar is low,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. The magos was dragging the catatonic form of the insane Navigator on the end of a chain. Gears ground under his robes as he pulled the dead weight along. Glavius-4-Rho had been waiting in the mouth of the passage out of the chamber. The daemons had formed a hissing wall at the corridor’s threshold, but had not gone into it.

The corridor rocked and twisted. Severita caught her balance.

‘That was closer,’ said Koleg.

‘The hangar is near,’ shouted Cleander.

The bones above them were swinging together, clacking, clacking.

Covenant paused, halfway into a run. He looked up. The sound of the bones was getting louder, rising above the rumble passing through the floor. Cold light was beginning to ooze from the sigils cut into the bones.

‘The reason why the neverborn did not chase us down here…’ said Cleander.

The bones hanging from the ceiling went suddenly still, frozen to pict-frame stillness. Quiet hung in the dark.

‘Run now,’ said Covenant.

Severita’s muscles bunched.

A river of red flame rushed across the ceiling. The hanging bones fell, and spun together. Wet muscle formed from fire and twined around the skeletons of monstrous creatures. A thing with the body of a flayed simian and the skull of a rotting goat landed on the floor in front of Severita as she sprang forwards. Her shoulder hit it in the chest. Something cracked with the sound of a gunshot and she surged on, twisting to fire a bolt-round into it as it clawed at her.

Abominations crowded the passage: misshapen things with the limbs of beasts and men, their warp-spun flesh sizzling with heat. A spider formed of human legs skittered at Covenant as the inquisitor sprinted ahead of Severita. He swerved aside, pulling his shotgun from his back. The spider-creature’s body split. Rows of needle teeth lined the bleeding wound of a mouth. Covenant fired. The solid shotgun shell ripped the creature in two. It jigged, bare feet slapping on the floor. Covenant stepped forward, firing and racking the gun as he moved. A thing of back-slung legs and serrated jaws bounded over the bloody remains. Frost flashed in the air around Covenant, and a wall of telekinetic force punched the thing back. It shrieked in the voice of a burning murder of crows. Severita put a bolt in what remained of it before it could rise. She fell into place beside Covenant, sheathed one pistol, and drew her sword in a blur of movement. She only had a few shells left in her own weapons.

Behind her she could hear Cleander swearing as he dodged and hacked. Koleg’s macro-stubber and grenade harness were long spent, and he was back to back with the tech-priest. Clusters of bones fell from the ceiling, assembling into nightmares as they fell. Josef was close to Koleg, his right hand gripping Enna’s arm. His hammer was across his back. He punched his left fist into a thing built of jackal skulls and human spines. The gauntlet covering his hand came back red, and he roared a prayer of rage into the thing’s faces as it fell.

The last of their ammunition burned and roared out. Covenant was shoving forwards, waves of telekinetic force ripping formless creatures into the air. Bones broke. Wet meat ripped to mist. Five paces of blood-slicked decking cleared in front of them, and then the tide of horror swept back.

Severita ducked as a barbed limb swung at her. She came up under the blow and sliced the limb from the creature’s main mass. Another beat of rhythm and she was weaving past it, spinning back, cutting, sliding past another blow from a clawed paw, and razoring the edge of the sword’s power field across a wobbling block of meat and teeth. She could kill like this for hours. In the convent sanctorum, she had once sung the sword-prayer for a full cycle of the sun without rest or pause. But she could do the same here, and still it would not be enough. For every killing cut there would be another creature spun from the warp.

The tunnel shook around them again. Cracks spidered through the walls. Covenant’s face was set. Sweat was dripping from his brow and freezing as he rammed through the press of creatures with his mind. They had slowed, every pace bought with effort.

She heard a cry from behind her, and turned to look as she made her next cut. Cleander was on the ground. Blood was dark on his coat, bloody hand still clutching his sword, red teeth locked in a bitten off scream. Koleg stepped over him, lashing a boot into a dog-skulled thing. It recoiled, and then snapped back, jaws wide.

A sound that was not a sound for human ears tore through the air.

Severita felt it drag across her senses. The smell of burning oil, the touch of feathers and claws, and the colour of fresh blood blotted out the prayer in her mind. The creatures staggered as though struck. They juddered in place, flesh cooking and limbs thrashing as the force holding them together unwound. Smoke and flame screamed from mouths. Their flesh powdered to black charcoal. It was over in the span of two heartbeats, and the sound and sensations vanished. Severita twisted to look back to where the sound had come from.

Enna knelt on the deck. She must have shaken free of Josef, because he too was turning to look at her from a pace further away. She was coughing, choking on the black blood coming from her mouth.

For a second it seemed as if the only sound was the plink of cooling metal, and the sigh of settling ashes.

Enna looked up. Haemorrhages blotted the whites of her eyes.

‘Not much…’ she rasped. ‘Not much time…’

And as though in answer, a hooting cry echoed down the passage from where they had just come.

‘Someone…’ gasped Cleander, ‘someone, by all that is holy on Terra, help me up.’

‘We are between the station and the rest of the salvoes,’ called Ghast.

‘Good,’ replied Viola. ‘Target them with everything we have, and roll to take damage across the keel line.’

She heard the answer, but she was not listening. The action she had just ordered would not save them or anyone still on the Archive facility. Their guns were not enough to bring down the torpedo salvoes, and the Dionysia was not built to absorb that kind of punishment.

She felt the deck lurch under her feet. Gravity was fluctuating across the ship. Servitors were screaming damage code. The asteroid was so close that its turning face blotted out the view of space beyond. Spirals of lightning danced over the station.

‘Do you have vox-reach into the station?’ she shouted.

‘We are not hearing anything, mistress.’

‘Ordnance impact in three minutes.’

‘Launch the recovery wing,’ she said, turning away from the displays and looking up at the looming shape beyond the crystal iris of the viewport. The space between the Dionysia and the asteroid was under three kilometres, narrow enough for a gunship to cross in minutes. But no gunship was coming from the asteroid, and a few minutes would see her and her ship dead.

‘Mistress…’

‘Launch them.’

The warp was surging around them, bleaching reality into blank madness. The only way for them to survive now was if the torpedo impact did not damage their warp engines. They could activate them and plunge wholly into the ether. Then they would just need to survive the wrath of the storm that waited for them in that other realm.

‘Impact in two…’

‘Mistress, a gunship has launched from the station.’

‘Vox?’

‘Intermittent connection, but we have a transponder lock. It’s Lord Covenant’s craft.’

‘Get our squadron around it and bring it in. Flush full power to warp engines. Prepare to translate on my command.’

‘Torpedo impact in one minute. Four warheads still active in the void. Impact will cripple us if we don’t–’

‘Warp fluctuations rising.’

‘Ready for warp translation.’

In front of her, the asteroid began to glow. The cobwebs of lightning grew. Motes of light popped into being, spinning wildly in the vacuum. She felt her eyes begin to water. The asteroid shimmered, and then folded like a sheet of parchment crushed in a fist. Depth and distance sheered. Viola vomited, her mind struggling and then failing to process what her eyes were seeing. The crew were screaming. 

‘Torpedo impact in thirty seconds!’ called a voice.

‘The Lord Covenant’s gunship and escort are closing.’

‘It’s not going to make it in time.’

She wiped yellow bile from her chin.

‘Ten seconds to impact!’

‘Ship emerging from the other side of the asteroid. It’s a warship. Its weapons are armed.’

‘What is–’ began Viola.

‘It’s firing!’

Viola felt cold reality close over her. It was going to end here. All of the steps of her life had led her to this point, and now they would stop. She looked away from the flow of ship data. At least it would mean leaving that behind.

‘Mistress, the ship!’ shouted Ghast. Viola’s head jerked around. Ghast was grinning, a wild, wide grin. ‘The ship… it’s the Valour’s Flame.’

Her eyes found the pict screen in time to see a sheet of fire reach out from the warship to meet the torpedoes. The explosion was close enough that debris and flame touched the Dionysia’s hull.

Viola punched her fist into her palm. She looked at Ghast.

‘Signal them to raise Gellar Fields and prepare to follow us.’

‘They acknowledge, and confirm that their warp engines are already primed.’

‘Covenant’s gunship?’

‘On board.’

‘Light the warp engines.’

A buzzing sensation rose through the frame of the ship. A shiver ran across her skin. Outside the void boiled with impossible colour as space folded around them. Purple lightning caged the Dionysia and the Valour’s Flame, flaring as the two ships pulled themselves across the barrier of reality and into the depths of the warp.

On the rattling floor of the gunship, Enna looked up as the rear hatch opened. The eyes of Severita, Koleg and Josef looked down at her from set faces. There was no kindness in them. Glavius-4-Rho shuffled down the ramp, Cleander supported by his mechadendrites, dragging Titus Yeshar behind him. Amber lights were flashing in the hangar beyond the hatch. She recognised the taut feeling across her skin that meant the ship was within the warp, riding its tides in the bubble of its Gellar field.

They had made it. They had survived. She had survived.

Shards of thoughts and memories shifted in her skull, images and facts rising and then sinking back into dark water. Through it all a thread of terror ran cold and sharp.

Who am I? Every answer that sprang into the light felt like a lie spoken by a friend.

She felt the silver coin still in her hand.

What am I?

The answer hissed at her in the half-memories of her gun rising to shoot Covenant, and the image of Idris, alive and standing in a radiance of white light and shadow.

Renewed…

You are… Renewed…

Twin sets of memories swirled and merged in her skull: her life as an acolyte, her loyalty, her service, and with those, eating the chances of the life she remembered being true, were memories of drowning, of rag masks, of rising from the dark of death with new life.

But that is not true, she thought. I am not that. I am…

You are Renewed.

‘What do we do with her?’ asked Cleander, his voice falling like a metal hammer onto iron.

‘She is one of them,’ said Josef. ‘One of the Renewed. Her mind must have been resculpted.’

‘To what purpose?’ asked Koleg, tilting his head as he stared at her ‘To watch? To kill?’

Covenant stood from where he had sat, and turned towards the hatch. Red and orange light blinked across his face as he paused at the top of the ramp.

‘Keep her alive. We have matters to attend to before we take the next step. Confine her until then.’ He began down the ramp after the retreating form of Glavius-4-Rho.

‘And then?’ asked Josef.

‘She goes to Mylasa,’ said Covenant without pausing. ‘And we will have answers.’

EPILOGUE

TRUTHS

Covenant paused. From where he stood at the side of the chamber, Josef saw his eye linger on the flickering projection of Vult. The daemon manifesting above him blurred and pixelated. In the trench ringing the centre of the amphitheatre, the choir of psykers swayed and shivered as they moaned their chants. The protective nets of circuitry glowed as the image of Vult’s last moments tugged at the skin of reality. Artefacts lay on obsidian benches beside Covenant: the crystal venom-dagger, a rag mask of the Renewed, the coin taken from one of the cultist’s mouths. Each object had played its part in the tale Covenant had told his assembled peers. They had listened in silence as he had outlined the trail he had followed after the massacre at Ero. Some of the assembly had been at Ero and survived, but most were newly arrived, drawn to the sector and the conclave that Covenant had called after the incursion of the warp and the death of so many of their fellow inquisitors. They had come to hear what this young inquisitor had to say, and – though no one had said it aloud – to judge him.

‘Lord Inquisitor Vult, blessed in the sight of the God-Emperor of us all, fell against the daemons summoned by the heretic Talicto’s art,’ said Covenant. ‘His sacrifice ensured that we could bring the knowledge of what we found here.’

The holo-projected image folded out of existence.

‘And you are certain that you discovered and removed the full extent of this… corruption?’

It was Malika Quadin that spoke. The last of Vult’s close associates had sat utterly still while Covenant talked; now she leaned forward in her high-backed chair, the pearls hanging from her diadem swaying as she raised her chin.

There are three of them. The witch, the wanderer, and the priest.

The eyes of the rest of the assembly followed her. Josef spun the silver coin they had taken from Enna through his fingers.

This is our time, Covenant. All the auguries and disasters, all the blood and horror in this place. It is what we have been waiting for.

Covenant looked up, and Josef saw his dark eyes moving over the circles of seats. On his shoulder the mind-linked sensor pod turned in a slow circle.

From here we trust no one, he had said, aboard the Dionysia. No one.

‘Yes,’ said Covenant. ‘It began with Talicto. It ended with him.’

The sensor pod swivelled to point at Malika Quadin as Covenant returned her stare.

‘Then you have done the Emperor’s service, Inquisitor Covenant,’ she said. ‘There are… deliberations that have to be made, and our comrades mourned, but I – and I will be bold, and say that I speak for those assembled here – thank you for what you have done.’

Covenant gave a short nod.

‘Truth is its own reward,’ he said, and walked from the centre of the amphitheatre. Josef remained in place a moment after his master had passed, then followed. On his back, he felt the cold gaze of watching eyes.

The sculpting tools clicked to stillness. Beneath their tips the face of Inquisitor Idris stared up at Viola. The creases under the left eye were still glistening as the red wax hardened. Covenant sat at his desk, fingers steepled under his chin, facing away from both the workbench and the sculpture sitting at its centre.

‘It might not have been her,’ said Viola carefully. ‘She could have died in the tower just as we thought. Talicto might have faked his own death. This talk of a Triumvirate of Horusians could just be misdirection.’

Covenant did not move. Behind him the fingers of mind-linked sculpting tools folded into themselves with a whisper of tiny gears.

‘It could be,’ he said.

Viola glanced at where Josef stood at her side. The preacher was looking at the silver and gold faces covering the walls of Covenant’s sanctuary. He seemed older, though she could not say why.

‘Enna,’ he said, not looking at either Covenant or Viola. ‘If it was not Idris, then explain how Enna is one of the Renewed.’

‘Enna could have been–’ began Viola.

‘It was Idris,’ said Josef, his voice hard. ‘It was her, from the beginning. She did not die in the tower. The death we saw was… an illusion for our benefit.’

‘How can you be certain?’ snapped Viola. ‘The data from everything we found is far from conclusive.’

‘It fits,’ said Josef, and now he sounded tired, as though the harshness of a moment before had exhausted him. ‘She… It fits.’

‘And now?’ asked Viola. ‘You said she triggered the warp vortex in Talicto’s archive. Could she have survived?’

‘Too dangerous to assume she is dead this time,’ said Josef. ‘The dead seem to find the grave a weak prison of late.’

‘Thank you both for your council,’ said Covenant. He disconnected the mind interface cable from the base of his skull and stood. ‘Gather everyone in an hour. There are things that must be done before we begin.’

Viola bowed her head and made for the door. Josef moved to follow and then turned and jerked his chin at the sculpture on the workbench.

‘Do you wish it taken to the forge?’ asked Josef.

Covenant looked at the sculpture of Idris, eyes holding still for a long moment, and then he shook his head.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn and Tallarn: Ironclad, the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus. For The Horusian Wars, he has written ‘The Absolution of Swords’, ‘The Purity of Ignorance’ and ‘Maiden of the Dream’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from The Carrion Throne.

Say nothing, listen with utmost care,’ he said. ‘You understand me. You are in danger – you know this. You can see the tools against the far wall. But do not look at them. Look at me.’

The speaker held the man’s staring eyes with his own, which were deep grey and did not blink.

‘I brought you here following testimony from those who know you,’ he said. ‘They came to me, and I am bound to listen. Their words have been recorded. You can see them on the tabletop, those volumes there. No, do not look at them either. Look at me. You are afraid. If you let it turn your mind, it will be the end of you, so I will ask you to remember that you are a human being, a master of your passions. When I ask you a question, you will need to answer it, and if you do not speak the truth, I will know. The truth is all I desire. You have one chance left, so hold on to it. Hold on to it. Clutch it. Never deviate from it. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

The man before him tried to do as he was bid. He tried to hold his interrogator’s gaze, to keep his hands from shaking uncontrollably, and that was difficult. He looked ill, he stank. Two days in a cell, listening to the screams filtering up from the levels below, would do that to you.

He couldn’t reply. His scab-latticed lips twitched, but the words would not come. He shivered, twitching, fingers flexing, unable to do what was asked of him.

His interrogator waited. He was used to waiting. He had overseen a thousand sessions on a hundred worlds, so giving this one a little more time would serve well enough. He sat back in his fine orlwood chair, pressed his hands together and rested his chin on the apex of his armoured fingers.

‘Do you understand me?’ he asked again.

The man before him tried to answer again. His face was ashen, just like all lowborn faces on Terra – Throneworld-grey, the pallor of a life lived under the unbroken curtain of tox-clouds.

‘I…’ he tried. ‘I…’

The questioner waited. A thick robe hung from his armoured shoulders, lined with silver death’s heads at the hem. His hair was slicked back from a hard-cut face, waxed to a high sheen. His nose was hooked, his jawline sharp. Something faintly reptilian lingered over those features, something dry, patient and unbreaking.

Over his chest lay the only formal badge of his office – a skull-form rosette of the Ordo Hereticus, fashioned from iron and pinned to the trim of the cloak. It was a little thing, a trifle, barely larger than the heart stone jewel of an amulet, but in that rosette lay dread, hard-earned over lifetimes.

The bound man could not drag his gaze away from it, try as he might. It was that, more than the instruments which hung in their shackles on the rust-flecked wall, more than the odour of old blood which rose from the steel floor, more than the scratch-marked synthleather bonds, that held him tightly in his metal chair.

The inquisitor leaned forwards, letting polished gauntlets drop to his lap. He reached down to the belt at his waist and withdrew a long-barrelled revolver. The grip was inlaid ivory, the chamber adorned with a rippling serpent motif. He idly swung the cylinder out, observed the rounds nestled within, then clicked the chamber back into place. He pressed the tip of the muzzle against his subject’s temple, observing a minute flinch as the cool steel rested against warm flesh.

‘I do not wish to use this,’ the inquisitor told him, softly. ‘I do not wish to visit any further harm upon you. Why should I? The Emperor’s realm, infinite as it is, requires service. You are young, you are in passable health. You can serve, if you live. One more pair of hands. Such is the greatest glory of the Imperium – the toil of uncountable pairs of hands.’

The man was shaking now, a thin line of drool gathering at the corner of his mouth.

‘And I would not waste my ammunition, by choice,’ the inquisitor went on. ‘One bullet alone is worth more than you will ever accumulate. The shells are manufactured on Luna by expert hands, adept at uncovering and preserving the things of another age, and they know the value of their art. This is Sanguine, and none but two of its kind were ever made. The twin, Saturnine, has been lost for a thousand years, and has most likely been un-made. And so, consider – would I prefer to use it on you, and cause this priceless thing some small harm, or would I rather that you lived and told me all you know, and allowed me to put it back in its holster?’

The man didn’t try to look at the gun. He couldn’t meet the gaze of the inquisitor, and so stared in panic at the rosette, blinking away tears, trying to control his shivering.

‘I… told you…’ he started.

The inquisitor nodded, encouragingly. ‘Yes, you did. You told me of the False Angel. I thought then that we might get to the truth, so I let you talk. Then your fear made you dumb, and we were forced to start again. Perhaps everything you have told me was a lie. See now, I am used to those. In my every waking hour I hear a lie from a different pair of lips. Lies are to me like teardrops – transparent and short-lived. If you lie to me again, I will perceive it, and Sanguine will serve you. So speak. Speak now.’

The man seemed to crumple then, as if a long-maintained conflict within him had broken. He slumped in his bonds, and his bloodshot eyes drifted away from the rosette.

‘I made an… error,’ he murmured, haltingly. ‘You know it. You knew from the start. A mistake.’ He looked up, briefly defiant. ‘A mistake! See, how was I to know? They spoke of the things that priests speak of. I was confused, in my mind.’ Once the words started to come, they spilled out fast, one after another, propelled by fear. ‘It is hard, you know? To live, to… carry on living. And then someone comes and tells you that there’s another way. There’ll be rations – better than we have now. More hab-units, given to those that need them. And they’ll stop the killings, down in the underhive. They’ll send arbitrators down there, and they’ll stop the ones that hunt us. You know that we’re hunted? Of course you do. They find the bodies all the time, and no one does anything – they never have. So I listened to that, and I knew it was wrong, somehow, and that our only protector dwells on the Throne, but he’s here, the Angel, now, and he listens, and I go to listen to what his preachers tell us. And if they gave us instructions to store supplies or carry weapons, then I did it because I wanted to believe. And I did. Throne save me, but I did.’

‘Slower,’ warned the inquisitor, dragging the muzzle of his revolver down the man’s cheek and placing it closer to his lips. ‘Order your thoughts. I have seen the results of your work. I have seen corpses with terrible things done to them. I have seen blood on the walls, smeared in mockery of holy sigils. These are not the work of cutpurses. They are the work of heresy.’

‘No!’ The eyes went wide again with terrible fear. ‘You have it wrong!’

‘Most strange, how many who come here say that.’

‘It is true, lord, true. I know nothing of these… crimes, only that he told us we must arm against the dark, for no one else–’

‘Does anything. But now someone is doing something. I am doing something. I would like to do more. I would like to root this out.’

‘Yes, yes, you must root it out.’

‘Where do you meet?’

‘Malliax.’

‘You have told me this already. You know what I need. The place. The place where you went to hear these things.’

‘I do not…’ The fear returned. ‘I do not know the name. I cannot take you there.’

The inquisitor’s grey eyes narrowed by a fraction. His finger, finely armoured in dark lacquered plate, slipped away from the trigger, but he kept the barrel pressed against the man’s chin. For a long time the two of them looked at one another, one desperate, the other pensive.

‘See, now I believe you,’ the inquisitor said at last, withdrawing the gun and slipping the safety catch on.

The man took a sucked-in breath – until then, he had hardly dared to. He started to sweat again, and his trembling grew worse.

‘It’s true!’ he blurted, his voice cracking from fear. ‘It is true – I can’t take you there.’

The inquisitor sat back. ‘I know it,’ he said, easing the pistol back into its soft real-leather holster. ‘You are not foolish enough to lie to me. I could break you apart, here, now, and you could tell me no more than you have already.’ He flickered a dry smile. ‘Consider yourself fortunate you met me this day, rather than when I was a younger man. Then, I would have rendered you down to your elements to seek what you hide, just to be sure. Not now. I know when there is nothing left to find.’

The man did not relax. A different fear entered his eyes, one of new cruelty – a deception, one of the thousand that the agents of the Holy Inquisition knew and practised. There was no way out for him now – once a mortal man entered the black fortresses, that was the end. All knew that. Everyone.

‘I would tell you,’ he stammered, breaking down into tears, ‘if I could.’

The inquisitor rose from his chair, and his robes whispered around his ornate boots. Fine ceramite armour pieces slid across his body as he moved, each one as black as obsidian, each one edged with a vein of silver. His movements were precise, feline, barely audible despite the power feeds coiled tight inside every segment.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said.

‘Please,’ sobbed the man, slack in his bonds. ‘I would tell you.’

The inquisitor reached for the table on which the testimony parchment had been piled, and pressed a command bead. He looked over the scrolls absently – heaps of yellowed, scaly hides bearing the blood-brown scrawl of scholarly transcription, each one sealed with his own personal sigil of authority.

‘That is all I asked you,’ the inquisitor said, almost to himself. ‘You are free to go. You have done me some service, and you should reflect on that, when you are able, with pride. It is through loyal souls that we are able to do our work.’

The man stared at his interrogator, open-mouthed. Lingering suspicion played across his ravaged features.

The inquisitor glanced over towards him. ‘We’re not monsters. You have nothing more to tell me. If you recall more, you’ll come to me, I’m sure.’

The man began to believe. His eyes started to dart around – at his bonds, at the tools, at the barred door beyond. ‘Do you mean…?’

The inquisitor turned away, moved towards the door. As he approached it, thick iron bars slid from their housings and the armoured portal cracked open. A dull red light bled from the far side, snaking over the dark stone flags of the interrogation room. For a moment, the inquisitor was silhouetted by it, a spectral figure, gaunt and featureless.

‘All we wish for is the truth,’ he said.

Then he moved out into the long corridor beyond. The air was sterile, recycled down through the levels of the Inquisitorial fortress by old, wheezing machines. Black webs of damp caked the flagstones, and the filmy suspensor lumens flickered. An augmetic-encrusted servo-skull hovered down to the inquisitor’s shoulder, bobbing erratically and trailing a thin spinal tail behind it.

‘Hereticus-minoris,’ it clicked. ‘Phylum tertius. Tut, tut.’

At the end of the corridor, a man waited. He wore the thick-slabbed armour of a storm trooper captain, dun-grey, battle-weathered. His face was similarly seasoned, with a shadow of stubble over a blocked chin. His black hair was cropped close to the scalp, exposing tattooed barcodes and ordo battle-honours.

He bowed. ‘Lord Crowl,’ he said.

‘Something keeps him from talking, Revus,’ the inquisitor said. ‘A greater fear? Maybe loyalty. In either case, it is of interest.’

‘Will you break him?’

‘We learn more by letting him go. Assign a watch, mark his movements until you gain the location. I want him alive until then.’

‘It will be done. And afterwards?’

The inquisitor was already moving, his boots clicking softly on the stone as he made his way towards the next cell. ‘Termination,’ he said. ‘I’ll oversee, so keep it contained – I want to see where this leads.’

‘As you will it.’

The inquisitor hesitated before entering the next cell. The sound of panicked weeping could already be made out through the observation grille in the thick door. ‘But I did not ask you, Revus – how is your sergeant, Hegain? Recovered fully?’

‘Almost. Thank you for asking.’

‘Give him my congratulations.’

‘He will be honoured to have them.’

The servo-skull bobbed impatiently. ‘Numeroso. Dally not.’

The inquisitor shot the thing a brief, irritated look, then reached for the armour-lock on the cell door. As he did so, he summoned a ghost-schematic of the next subject’s file, which hovered for a second in an ocular overlay. Reading it, his lips tightened a fraction.

‘I will need my instruments for this one,’ Inquisitor Erasmus Crowl told Revus, then went inside.

Click here to buy The Carrion Throne.

For James French

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2017.
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Cover illustration by K.D. Stanton.

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