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The Tear of Selevia – Mike Brooks

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

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The Tear of Selevia

By Mike Brooks

The emporium is rich, and not just in content. Its wares of glistening jewels and glimmering precious metals are valuable, to be sure, but it is their surroundings that give the sense of opulence. The goods are not stretched out on bare display boards of grey plastek, like cadavers on a mortuarium slab: they rest on plush cushions, like lovers in a boudoir, held in display cases carved from rich wood that would have once been scented, but which has now lost its aroma to time. Whole downhive families on this planet of Ranistat could be bought for the price of one of these pieces. The woman is finely dressed, as any customer would be, although her clothes are less extravagant than the local fashion. Her short, dark hair is shaved in a pattern that reveals the dark skin beneath, and her eyes take in the wares with a silent evaluation that appears to find them lacking in some manner.

‘May I help you, milady?’ the shopkeeper asks, for she gives the impression of someone who is searching for something specific, and that can be a most profitable sort of customer. She turns towards him and smiles, which goes some way towards lessening the impact of her unwavering gaze.

‘You have many fine pieces here,’ she says politely.

‘You are most gracious to say so,’ replies the shopkeeper humbly. His name is Marrek, and he has long ago learned the value of humility when dealing with the gentry. A shadow moves outside the shop’s door: a hulk of a man with a bionic right arm, his face scarred by burns. He came here with the woman, but did not enter. Marrek notices these things.

‘They are all new?’

‘Indeed, my lady,’ Marrek says with a smile, which fades slightly as her mouth pouts a little. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘I am… I suppose you could say that I’m running an errand,’ the woman says, with a slightly embarrassed smile, and Marrek finds himself wondering who this woman might answer to. Her age is hard for him to determine, but while she’s not old, she certainly can’t be young. And her manner! This is not someone who gives the impression of taking instruction.

‘I’m looking for a piece with history, if you understand me?’ the woman continues, and Marrek nods, because he does indeed.

‘If you would follow me, milady?’

He activates his security servitor, who will inform anyone who enters that he is temporarily indisposed – not to mention prevent them from making off with any of the goods – and leads her through a curtain into a back room. This is smaller and less brightly lit, but the sense of age and wealth is, if anything, more tangible.

‘I have some few pieces here that might serve,’ Marrek says casually, touching a button. The smooth whirr of machinery brings perhaps a dozen items of jewellery into view, rising on small plinths, or revealed by the opening of clamshell doors. The impression of secrecy is nearly as important to such a sale as the quality of the goods themselves. ‘All from one noble family or another, down on their luck and forced to sell, for a variety of reasons.’

Some rich folk like to wear the former glories of others. Perhaps they wish to claim a history that isn’t their own; perhaps they want to flaunt how they haven’t succumbed to the tragedy of their former peers; perhaps, in some cases, they even mock a rival they’ve brought low, by possessing their former property.

Marrek doesn’t care. It all makes him money.

‘This has a good air to it,’ the woman says, hooking her finger under a ruby as large as her fingernail – the centrepiece of a finely worked bracelet. She looks at Marrek. ‘I believe this might serve.’

‘Milady has excellent taste,’ Marrek says, an automatic response. It is a good piece though. Opulent, but not gaudy.

‘I assume it’s not cursed,’ the woman says, with a small chuckle to indicate that she’s joking, and is aware that it’s not a particularly good joke.

‘Oh no, milady!’ Marrek says, with a laugh of his own. ‘You’d have to go to Selevia for such a thing!’ He reaches out to pick up the bracelet and attach it around the woman’s wrist, so she can try the fit.

‘Selevia?’ the woman asks. Her tone is only mildly curious, but Marrek meets her eyes for a moment, and abruptly feels as though the temperature has dropped by a degree or two.

‘Oh, I meant nothing by the comment, milady,’ he stammers. Is she from Selevia? Has he just offended a customer, lost a potential sale? ‘There are tales of a cursed necklace from there, that’s all. Not that I believe in such superstition, of course,’ he adds hastily. ‘I’m sure it’s just a tale.’ He proffers the bracelet. ‘May I?’

‘Please do,’ she replies, and smiles again, and the misunderstanding is past.

‘So, tell me of our destination, Master Trellavyn,’ the woman says, casually scanning her cards. She is sitting at a table in the master’s lounge, with a half-full glass of amasec at her right hand and a stack of coins at her left. Danid Trellavyn is not the captain of the Emperor’s Smile – she is hardwired into the bridge, from where she controls all the ship’s processes – but he is the master: he owns the ship, and dictates where it will fly and what cargo or passengers it will take. He rarely invites outsiders into his personal lounge, but the woman opposite him is possessed of a manner that greatly intrigues him. Master Trellavyn is less taken by the man with her, a small fellow named Kantid with the personality of engine grease, but the woman made it clear that an invitation to her was automatically extended to him. Still, the man has turned out to be shocking at cards.

‘Selevia, Mamzel Dollane? It’s a newly claimed Imperial system,’ Trellavyn says, rubbing his chin as he looks at his own hand and tries to work out the probabilities of the right cards coming up. ‘I say newly claimed – a matter of a couple of centuries, nothing more.’

‘Lovely worlds they are too, as planets go,’ says Nator, his master-of-arms. ‘I wouldn’t trade my berth on the Smile for one of them, but they’re green and fertile. It was a great victory to take them from those xenos bastards. Pardon my language, mamzel,’ he adds a moment later, but the woman waves it away with a smile.

‘Please, sir, I’ve heard far worse.’ She drums her fingers on the table, and places three fifty-throne chits into the middle of the table. ‘Xenos, you said?’

‘Aye, the aeldari,’ Trellavyn replies. He casts a glance at Kantid, who makes a face and places his cards face down, folding the hand: probably a wise decision, given his run so far.

‘Aeldari?’ The woman’s eyes are wide and watchful.

‘Motherless void-scum, every one of them,’ Nator says forcefully. Trellavyn makes a decision and matches the woman’s bet. Perhaps her eagerness to hear more will distract her. ‘They’re generally pirates, picking off small freighter craft and the like – nothing the size of the Smile, you’ve no need to worry there, milady – but as the tale goes, they made quite a stand in the Selevia System: pitched battles on the planets, the lot.’

‘And the Astra Militarum rolled right over them,’ Trellavyn chuckles. ‘You’re up, Nator.’

‘Hmm? Oh, sorry.’ Nator pushes his own money in without hesitation. ‘Tell me though, mamzel, how is it that you are travelling to Selevia, yet know little of it?’

Trellavyn looks at his cards. He’s interested to hear this too, although he has better manners than to let on. One of the benefits of playing cards with Nator is that he will generally ask whatever questions he pleases, meaning that the master of the Emperor’s Smile has no need to.

‘I don’t travel the galaxy solely on my own whims, gentlemen,’ the woman replies with a smile. ‘I go where I must, sometimes at the behest of others. Besides, all too often the official accounts of a system turn out to be somewhat at odds with the experiences of those who’ve actually been there.’ Nator turns over the next card. ‘Ah. Well, in that case…’ She pushes in another three fifty-throne coins.

‘And what is your business, if I may be so bold as to ask?’ Nator enquires. Trellavyn matches the woman’s bet, but doesn’t raise her. She’s played well so far, and he’s cautious about being drawn in. Nator matches them both.

‘Master Trellavyn, did you invite me here just to have your officer interrogate me?’ the woman says lightly. She sips her drink as Nator turns over the last two cards, and Trellavyn works to conceal his eagerness. His hand is not unbeatable now, but it is certainly strong.

‘Of course not, mamzel,’ he says soothingly, and shoots Nator a glance. He’s curious, but he’s not so curious that he wants to risk this woman taking offence and abandoning the game. The Imperium is a massive and varied beast, and there are any number of things she could be doing aboard his ship, many of them entirely legitimate. He’s not convinced that her real name is Mamzel Dollane, but it’s rather more fun to try to figure her out himself, in the week or so they’ll be in the warp on the way to their destination. Besides, he has a record of her documentation and it all checks out as valid; he can provide the scans to the authorities, should he ever be questioned about who she was, and why he let her onto his ship.

‘So, Master Trellavyn,’ she says as they go through the final round of betting. ‘Have you ever had any encounters with these… aeldari?’

For a moment, he’s tempted to make something up. Something that sounds dashing and adventurous: repelling a boarding action against bloodthirsty reavers, perhaps, or taking one of their ships down with a well-placed volley from the Smile’s guns. However, he reconsiders without knowing exactly why. He tells himself that he’s not trying to impress her, and he’s certainly not flirting with her – he just finds her intriguing. Perhaps there’s something else at work though, some instinct of which he’s not even aware: the sort of subconscious perceptiveness that can make all the difference between success and failure for an independent captain who traverses the void.

The truth is best, here.

‘Once only, mamzel, and that at a great distance,’ he says soberly. ‘We caught a glimpse of one of their vessels on the ship’s sensors, a decade or so back. It was lurking a long way out in the Selevia System, near a large asteroid. We kept to our own course, and lost all sign of it shortly after. That’s the only time I’ve seen any of them, and I can’t say as I’m disappointed.’

She nods, as though that was the response she expected. The three of them turn their cards over, one at a time.

‘Well,’ Nator says happily, scooping up the pot, ‘the Emperor smiles on me today!’

‘Excuse me, goodsire?’

The woman is dressed conservatively, but well. Wetan Gurril, second under-archivist of Roka City’s reference chambers, the largest on all of Selevia Prime, looks up from the texts he’s organising. He smiles at her out of habit, although he has no wish to be interrupted. ‘Yes, mamzel?’

‘I’ve been looking into Selevia’s history,’ the woman says, ‘and I would like to ask you a few questions about it.’

‘I’m afraid my tasks are keeping me occupied at the moment,’ Wetan replies. He tries the sort of apologetic, put-upon smile that usually makes users of the archives apologise for bothering him, and go back to bothering him in a different way by disordering his system as they search for whatever it is they want.

The smile bounces off the woman, as though he has professed himself immediately willing and ready to help. She steps forward with a data-slate in her hand, and taps it to bring up a hololith of a tall, richly dressed lady. Wetan notices a flash of crimson at her right wrist, and nearly gasps in surprise when he sees the bracelet of precious stones she wears there. She is bold, to openly display such wealth!

‘This is the first governor of Selevia, is that correct?’

The hololith’s own caption is capable of telling her as much. Wetan has no time for the sort of person who looks with their mouth and not with their eyes. ‘Yes, mamzel. I’m sorry, but I really can’t–’

‘Goodsire, please,’ the woman says, laying two fingers on his forearm. ‘This will not take much of your time.’

Wetan stiffens reflexively. It’s not that he’s unused to being touched, for the data stacks are narrow: it is often impossible not to bump or jostle another person when navigating their pathways, particularly those of his colleagues who have a tendency to be engrossed in their work to the exclusion of all awareness. Nor is it the tone of her voice, which is level and pleasant, and not remotely threatening. Her expression is calm, and she is neither tall nor broad enough to be physically intimidating.

And yet…

There is something about her, when taken altogether, which suggests to Wetan Gurril that it is not in his best interests to refuse this woman. Perhaps it is simply the air of expectation about her, the apparently unwavering belief that he will do what she requests. Or perhaps it’s something else. If he, as a purely theoretical exercise, tries to imagine what will happen should he refuse her, his mind pulls back from envisaging the outcome. On some level, Wetan Gurril understands that he should keep this interaction brief, and the person standing next to him in good temper.

‘Very well,’ he says. ‘If it will not take long. How may I assist?’

‘The position of governor here is hereditary, is that true?’ the woman asks, and Wetan nods.

‘It is indeed. However, of course, our current governor is not descended from the original, Sirlene Rask. Her family died, some twenty years after her official appointment.’

‘An accident?’ the woman asks, her dark eyes intent.

‘I…’ Wetan pauses. ‘It is unclear. Governor Rask’s manse burned down, killing her and her immediate kin. There was no indication of it being an act of violence committed by enemies, and according to records from the time, the governor’s behaviour had been growing erratic for at least a year beforehand. The decisions that she made on behalf of the system still appeared sound, but accounts suggest that she was acting oddly in person. Not long before the fire, for example, she reportedly fired all of her household staff, accusing them of tormenting her with constant whispering.’

The woman nods. ‘I see. So speculation is that she may have set the fire herself?’

Wetan winces. ‘It is speculation only, mamzel, and not a rumour that is repeated in polite company, if you take my meaning. Governor Rask was well liked, and was symbolic of our system’s status as newly claimed by the Imperium. The tragedy is generally regarded as an accident, but we archivists do not know that for sure – hence I mention the other details, for the sake of completeness.’

‘What of this?’ the woman asks, pointing. The presence of her finger disrupts the hololith slightly, but the object of her enquiry is unmistakeable. She is pointing to the necklace around Governor Rask’s neck, and more specifically, to the large, oval, midnight-blue gem that serves as the centrepiece.

‘That?’ Wetan sighs. ‘Ah, that is the famous Tear of Selevia. A gem taken from the corpse of the xenos commander who led their foul and doomed resistance against the glorious forces of the Astra Militarum. It was a witch of uncommon power, according to the records. Colonel Greeves took the stone from the body and presented it to the newly appointed governor on the day of her inauguration, mounted as you see here.’ He lowers his voice slightly, despite the fact that there is no one around. ‘There is conjecture that the colonel and the governor were perhaps somewhat closer than would be entirely fitting for their respective offices, but that is baseless hearsay which, again, I mention only for the sake of completeness.’

‘The governor wore it often?’ the woman asks.

‘So much that it practically became her chain of office,’ Wetan acknowledges. ‘Hence, perhaps, the prevalence of such scurrilous rumours.’

‘And the necklace was lost in the fire?’

‘No, no it was not,’ Wetan corrects her. ‘It survived, but the next governor to be appointed – the grandfather of the Honourable Dovan Mabb, who rules today – said that he would not wear it. Indeed, he… Well, he did not go so far as to say that he considered it cursed, as such, but he obviously thought it ill-omened. It remained displayed in a crystal cabinet, a stasis one at that, and none were permitted to touch it.’

‘And where is it now?’ the woman asks. ‘Still on display?’

‘No, mamzel, the piece was stolen from the governor’s manse some ten years ago, by parties unknown,’ Wetan informs her. ‘It has not been seen since.’

She nods slowly. ‘It is a distinctive stone. I imagine, from your explanation, that many citizens of Selevia would recognise it if they saw it?’

‘Indeed, mamzel,’ Wetan agrees. He grimaces. ‘I do not wish to debase myself with speculation, but there are certainly those who think that it must be in the private collection of some notary on this planet. The sort of person’ – he waggles his eyebrows to indicate his disapproval of the degenerate elite – ‘who considers their own gratification more important than history.’

The woman smiles thinly. ‘I see. Thank you for your time, Archivist Gurril.’ She turns away, heading back the way she came.

‘You’re welcome, mamzel,’ Wetan mutters reflexively, and returns to his interrupted work.

It is several more seconds before he realises that he never introduced himself, and that neither his robes, nor the badge that identifies him as a registered archivist, display his name.

The air is thick with lho-smoke, but the plerry liquor in Jezaman Do’Ena’s glass is still tart enough to cut through the coating it’s given his tongue. He doesn’t look up when the door opens; best not to make the customer think he’s too interested.

‘Heg says ye’re looking ta sell,’ he says, his tone bored. Heg said the goods looked valuable, but Heg isn’t an expert. He’s just on the door to weed out the time-wasters. No one gets through to Jezaman’s sanctum unless Heg thinks they have something that might interest his boss.

A bracelet clatters down onto the counter in front of him, and Jezaman looks up in surprise. The woman in front of him is wearing heavy boots, thick, durable leggings stained with what is probably oil, and a sleeveless vest that looks like grox-hide. She has a red bandana tied above her left bicep and heavy bracers on each forearm, and her throat is wrapped in a studded collar. He can’t see her eyes: they’re hidden behind photo-goggles. It’s not a gang uniform – not one Jezaman knows of, anyway – but she certainly wouldn’t look out of place in some of their hang-outs.

‘Heg is correct,’ she says, her smile showing white teeth in a dark face. Jezaman eyes her for a moment longer, then inspects the bracelet.

Heg was right: it is valuable, Jezaman can tell that immediately. Finely worked, and set with good-sized rubies. The sort of piece you’re not likely to see outside of society’s finer circles.

‘Six hunnerd thrones,’ he says, finishing his cursory examination.

‘Twelve hundred,’ the woman replies, immediately. Jezaman looks up at her again, because she didn’t even have time to consider his offer. Twelve hundred might be a fairer price, if he were interested in being fair, but either she knows a lot about the going rate for fenced jewellery – including the costs of bribes, and of getting such a piece into the hands of those who could afford it, who certainly don’t come to places like Jezaman’s themselves – or there’s something else going on here.

‘Ye seem mighty certain of yeself,’ he says. ‘Ye’re looking to sell, I might be interested in buying.’ He points back and forth between her and himself. ‘We’re looking ta come ta an agreement, here. Ye don’t just get ta dictate.’

The woman smirks. ‘You don’t think we can come to an agreement at twelve hundred?’ Her accent isn’t from nearby – not the Rustside, or Torran’s Downs, or Kelvian Gulch. In fact, Jezaman’s fairly sure it’s not Selevian at all. He taps one fingernail on the counter.

‘Alright then, miss, ye explain ta me why ye think it’s worth twelve hunnerd.’

She turns away from him and looks around. This isn’t a gleaming up-spire emporium of luxury goods; this is a grimy hole in a grimy quarter of a grimy city. The goods Jezaman has collected, through various means, are arrayed with little care or attention. You want to find something, you can damn well look for it yourself.

‘Spoke to someone who called himself the Prince o’ Knives,’ the woman says conversationally. ‘Said he knows you, has done business with you before.’

‘Kavin Dorra?’ Jezaman snorts. ‘Aye, I know him. Jumped-up little grox-fondler, and far too fond of his blades. What of him?’ Knife-happy though he is, Dorra is a good source of items, so long as you don’t ask about where they came from, or mind washing off the occasional bloodstain. Jezaman isn’t bothered by either, although he uses the latter to push the price down when he can.

‘He said to never take your first offer,’ the woman says, picking a ring out and examining it. ‘He said to always double it, that’s closer to fair.’

‘Prince o’ Knives needs ta mind his own blasted business,’ Jezaman growls. ‘I don’t know ye, girl, I don’t know what trouble this piece might bring me, and I’m none too fond of ye attitude, neither. Ye can have nine hunnerd for it, and if ye’re wanting more, ye can take it out of Dorra’s hide yeself.’

‘He also told me,’ the woman says, slipping the ring onto her finger, ‘that you’ll tell me what I want to know.’

Jezaman’s eyes narrow, and one finger strays towards the rune under the counter that will call Heg in. It’ll make a mess, but it might be necessary. ‘Not likely. I’ve already said I don’t like ye attitude.’

‘He did say that you’re all bluff and bluster up front,’ the woman continues, turning back towards him, ‘but that if you get leaned on hard, you’ll give.’ She places both her hands on the counter. ‘Are you going to make me lean on you, Jezaman?’

He presses the button. It will only be a few seconds before Heg arrives. ‘And what else did he say, miss?’

The woman shrugs. ‘Most of the rest was variations on “Oh God-Emperor, no!” and a lot of screaming.’

Jezaman tries to swallow, but there’s suddenly no moisture in his throat. Kavin Dorra’s a jumped-up little grox-fondler, sure enough, but he’s got a high opinion of himself, and some very sharp blades. You don’t go around talking about him like that unless you’re a fool, or you’re completely unconcerned about how he’ll react when he finds out – perhaps because there’s not much left of him to find out.

Then again, this woman is a fool, because Heg will be here in a moment, and…

The seconds tick by for Jezaman Do’Ena, under the inscrutable gaze of those goggles, and Heg doesn’t arrive in any of them. What’s keeping the useless great lump?

‘Were you expecting someone?’ the woman asks, and Throne of Terra, she knows! She can’t be alone; she must have associates outside, associates who were able to overpower Heg without making any noise Jezaman could hear…

The woman smiles at his dawning terror. ‘I usually prefer to be more circumspect than this, but I’m on a schedule, and… What was your phrase? I’m none too fond of your attitude. Tell me about the Tear of Selevia.’

Jezaman backs up until he hits the wall. It’s nowhere near as far away from her as he’d like. ‘I’ve never seen it! I never saw it, it never came through me! I’ve already told the Rustmaster that, ye can tell him–’

‘I’m not a lackey for your local crime boss!’ the woman snaps, leaning forwards over the counter.

Jezaman blinks. ‘Ye’re not?’

‘No, I represent someone significantly worse.’ The woman shakes her head. ‘Believe me, you don’t want her here. You should be grateful you’ve got me.’ She sighs. ‘But she needs results, and I need to provide them. Let’s start again, shall we? You buy and sell stolen jewellery. The Tear of Selevia was stolen ten years ago. It’s reasonable for me to assume that you might have heard some rumours about it.’

The woman clenches her right fist, and a short, glowing, edged weapon extends out from the bracer. Jezaman recognises it: a Desoleum powerblade. It can cut through his flesh and bone as easily as he’d trail his fingers through water.

‘So why don’t you think very hard,’ the woman says, raising her arm so that the glowing field of the powerblade is reflected in her goggles, ‘and see if you can help me out without ending up like the Prince o’ Knives…’

The woman is walking down a street. She is not hurrying as such, but nor is she dawdling. The star of Selevia is below the horizon now, the lumens here are neither plentiful nor well-maintained, the pools of shadow are dark and deep, and other pedestrians are rare. This is not a place to which one goes; one merely passes through on one’s way somewhere else. The security pict-feeds don’t cover it, and the local proctors don’t patrol it.

The throb of a groundcar’s engine grows behind her. It veers towards her without warning, but she steps aside just before it would have hit her, and having missed her, it screeches to a halt some twenty yards farther on. It immediately disgorges four people, who bring the tools of their trade out with them: a length of heavy chain; a long-bladed knife; a wrench the length of an arm; a heavy-barrelled handgun.

‘Ye’ve been asking a lot of questions about a necklace,’ one of them says, aiming her gun. She’s little more than a silhouette, backlit as she is by the next, distant lumen.

The woman smiles. ‘Well, I have an inquisitive nature.’ Her hands are out of sight beneath the rain cape she wears, and she continues to walk towards them. ‘Why don’t you tell me who it is that’s so upset by my questions?’

‘Ye’re too inquisitive,’ the other woman replies, and pulls the trigger.

She’s not aiming to kill, not outright. A shot to the belly will disable, while still leaving the victim able to answer questions, such as who they are, and who they’re working for. Indeed, that manner of wound provides an obvious pressure point to emphasise the importance of such queries.

The only trouble is, just like when she sidestepped the groundcar’s attempt to ram her, the woman is no longer in the slug’s flight path.

She hasn’t teleported, or disappeared, or anything so arcane; she simply began to dodge before her assailant had even consciously decided to fire, as though she were forewarned. She rolls, and comes up to one knee with a compact, blocky pistol in her left hand, and the glowing length of a Desoleum powerblade extending from her right wrist.

The pistol speaks once, twice, thrice, before the other woman can correct her aim and fire again. Three bolts of brilliant, blue-white energy strike home, and the air is suddenly redolent with the scent of crisped human flesh as gun-wielder, chain-swinger and wrench-hefter are incinerated before they can even scream. The last would-be attacker, a man called Taynar, who had the long-bladed knife, shields himself with his arms uselessly, and somewhat comically.

The woman rises back to her feet, keeping her gun trained on him. She doesn’t need to spend much effort to do so, for it’s a t’au pulse pistol, gyro-stabilised. Such a weapon would be worth a fortune on the Selevian black market; it would also confer a death sentence on anyone found in possession of it – at least, if the person doing the finding knew what it was – for it is outlawed xenos technology.

Taynar doesn’t know what it is. He hasn’t even heard of the t’au. All he knows is that his night has just got an awful lot worse.

‘Drop the knife,’ the woman says flatly, walking towards him. He obeys instantly. ‘Who sent you?’

He stares at her without speaking, because he knows that the death that will seek him out if he does so will be far longer and more painful – at least cumulatively – than an instant of searing, blue-white agony.

The woman sighs. ‘This is what I object to in low-level thugs. You’re all so convinced that the local power is the scariest thing in the galaxy. You have no imagination, and that ends up inconveniencing both of us.’

Another groundcar is approaching now, and Taynar’s eyes flicker towards it with desperate hope. Perhaps his master sent more people; perhaps it’s merely a passer-by who will distract this woman who’s turned the tables on him. Perhaps, and for the first time in his life he finds he’s hoping for this to be true, it’s the proctors.

The second groundcar stops, and two men get out: a big man with a bionic arm and burn scars, and a smaller man who looks like the embodiment of shiftiness. Taynar doesn’t recognise either of them. Even worse, the woman clearly does.

‘You took your time,’ she remarks.

‘You didn’t,’ the big man grunts, looking pointedly at the dead bodies. He catches sight of the gun in her hand and hisses through his teeth. ‘Emperor’s blood, Nero! Don’t tell me you’re using that damned thing again!’

‘It’s effective,’ Alyss Nero tells him. ‘Fine, you cover him then, Fell. Kantid, go over the vehicle.’

The smaller man, Avos Kantid, picks his way over the corpses and begins to inspect the groundcar’s interior. Aberfell Duscaris draws a heavy Hecuter autopistol from his shoulder rig and aims it at Taynar, who makes sure not to move even once Nero puts her own gun away. The Hecuter doesn’t have quite the punch of the bolter-flamer that Fell used to carry, but that would be rather less subtle; and besides, he lost his taste for fire after the events on Vorlese that saw him need a new face.

‘I told you they’d come for me,’ Nero says, pulling out a small container from a pocket of her rain cloak.

‘You do have precognitive abilities,’ Fell points out.

‘Not that far ahead,’ Nero corrects him. ‘Enough to avoid getting run over or shot. Most of the time.’ She steps closer to Taynar, making sure to keep out of Fell’s line of fire. She holds up the container. ‘Do you know what this is?’

Taynar looks at it, and nearly retches. The container has one small lumen active in it, which is just enough to illuminate the thin wriggling shape held behind the plasglass cover.

‘You know about Sinophian boreworms, then?’ Nero asks softly. ‘So you know what will happen if I let it get inside your body?’

Taynar is nearly hyperventilating now. He knows. He knows very well.

‘You’ve changed, Nero,’ Fell says, and he doesn’t bother to hide the disapproval in his voice.

‘You haven’t,’ Nero replies, without looking away from Taynar. ‘Which is why I’m leading this investigation.’ She turns her attention back to Taynar. ‘I suggest you tell me who you work for. Not just whoever told you to come here tonight – the one at the top. And I know you’re scared, but if you give me the name, and if I believe you, then you won’t have to worry about them taking revenge. They, on the other hand, will have a lot to worry about.’

Taynar swallows.

‘I’ll even overlook you trying to kill me,’ Nero adds. ‘After all, you weren’t driving, and you didn’t take the shot. And there’s no way you could have known that I’m an agent of the Emperor’s Inquisition, is there?’

The…

The Emperor’s…

‘He’s wet himself now,’ Fell grunts. ‘You could have led with that, and left the creature out of it.’

Taynar stammers out a name as he sinks to his knees, his legs no longer able to support him. It’s the truth, to the best of his knowledge.

‘Thank you,’ Alyss Nero says. She tucks the boreworm container back into her cloak. ‘Run along now. Keep your head down and your mouth shut for a couple of days, and you’ll be fine.’

Taynar runs. Wobbly legs notwithstanding, he runs like he’s never run before.

The private estate of Trademaster Janov Keele covers the same area of land as any one of the smaller districts of Roka City, and boasts verdant vistas that would be unthinkable on most Imperial worlds. Unlike the dirty, smog-stained streets of Selevia Prime’s capital, it is a beautiful green affair of rolling grassy hills and artfully tended woody copses.

At least until the proctors descend on it.

A dozen drop-ships land throughout the grounds, each one disgorging a ten-person unit of proctors in full carapace armour, armed with combat shotguns, shock mauls and suppression shields. Some of Keele’s personal security decide to resist this expression of the Emperor’s will, and they die for it. Potential hiding places or strongpoints are put to the torch, and so when the Aquila lander bears Alyss Nero, Aberfell Duscaris and Avos Kantid down to the surface, in the company of Arbitrator Mania Tyllun, thick plumes of dark smoke are rising up around them.

‘I hope your people aren’t being careless, arbitrator,’ Nero says tightly, as the landing ramp begins to lower. ‘This is not a time for wanton destruction.’

‘May I remind you, Interrogator Nero, that you told me the trademaster is a xenos sympathiser?’ Tyllun replies, her voice made gravelly and distorted by her helm’s vox-amplifier. ‘I respect the seal of the Inquisition, even when not borne by an inquisitor, but I see no reason to risk the safety of my forces, or give the heretic an opportunity to escape, through encouraging leniency and half-measures.’

‘And I understand that,’ Nero says, her tone polite but clipped. ‘However, we do not know exactly what manner of xenos artefacts the trademaster has collected.’

‘And why should that concern me?’ Tyllun demands.

‘Because sometimes,’ Fell growls, ‘if you do something foolish like, I dunno, set them on fire, they go bang.’ He widens his eyes to emphasise his point. ‘A lot of bang.’

‘Arbitrator Tyllun,’ Avos Kantid puts in, his tone smooth and conciliatory, ‘we do of course agree that no quarter should be shown to those who resist. However, we need to find and recover artefacts to ensure our suspicions are correct, and we need to take the trademaster alive to interrogate him about his sources, and any other deviants with whom he’s in contact. We request a precision elimination of hostile elements, rather than an…’ He sweeps a hand to encompass the raging inferno that was once a barn. ‘Indiscriminate approach. Otherwise the lady whom we serve will be most displeased.’

Tyllun’s expression cannot be seen, but if the slight nod of her helmet comes across as grudging, it is at least agreement. She speaks again in a low voice over her personal vox, relaying orders. Kantid exchanges a glance with Fell, two professionals satisfied with the outcome, but Alyss Nero’s gaze is fixed on the towers of Keele’s manse, which sits atop a slight rise in the ground.

She is so close, now. So close.

They advance over gravel paths through well-manicured lawns, behind a screen of dark-armoured proctors. Nero maintains her vigilance, but she never gets the swell of nausea that accompanies her precognition, and which might warn her of a sudden attack or trap. Even when the manse’s main doors are knocked in through concerted application of two man-portable assault rams, there is no danger.

Inside, standing in the lavishly decorated entrance hall, and well back from the ruin of his doors, is the man Nero instantly recognises as Trademaster Keele. His head is shaved on either side, the remainder of his hair slicked back, and the narrow beard dangling from his chin reaches his stomach. He regards them with eyes in which hatred and contempt war with fear and resignation. Men of authority always seek more of it, to lessen their chances of being brought low, but no one in the Imperium will ever have the authority to ignore the Inquisition, for they speak with the Emperor’s voice.

‘Trademaster Keele,’ Nero says, walking forward. ‘You are a collector of proscribed xenos artefacts, and a collaborator with heretics and criminals. You will–’

Nausea, twisting her stomach.

Nero flings herself to one side just as Keele raises his hand sharply, and something flies out of his sleeve. It misses her, just, and is snatched out of the air by Fell’s bionic hand, which crushes it.

Two dozen gun barrels snap up, ready to fire.

‘Wait! Don’t shoot!’ Nero shouts, putting herself between Keele and the guns. She turns back to the trademaster, in whose expression hatred and fear are now rather more obviously present. ‘A last spiteful move? You take one agent of the Inquisition with you, and are then gunned down before you can be interrogated fully?’ She snorts. ‘If you intended to take your own life, you should have done it before we walked in through your door. Seize him!’ she snaps, and four proctors hurry forward with magnacles. Keele doesn’t resist, but the glare he shoots her has little venom. He already knows that he has lost.

‘Thrashtail,’ Fell murmurs, coming forward and opening his hand to show her the squashed remains of the illegal, bioengineered weapon-creature. ‘That right there is enough to condemn him. What kind of person throws one of these at an Inquisitorial agent?’

‘Someone with so much to hide that he has no hope left, merely spite,’ Nero replies. Her stomach is tight, but with excitement and anticipation, not the nausea of her precognition. She turns to the proctors. ‘I want this manse taken apart, but carefully. Watch for traps, or anything that might be set to destroy the contents of a room, a cabinet, a chest. If you find something you do not immediately recognise, summon one of us.’ She snorts a laugh. ‘I don’t wish to sound like a character from a cheap holo-drama, but please believe me when I say that carelessness could lead to a fate worse than death.’

The proctors acknowledge her instructions. Nero thinks they’ll listen. They’ll be brutish intellects for the most part, broken down in training and put back together as tools to do the Imperium’s will without much in the way of individuality, but that’s not to say they’ll be without fear. They might not flinch from death in combat with the alien, should it be necessary, but they’ll be wary of xenos trickery.

As they should be.

‘Nero. We’ve found it.’

Kantid’s voice comes over her comm-bead, and Alyss Nero turns away from the small sphere of engraved metal she’s been studying. It doesn’t match up with anything she’s heard of in terms of alien artefacts, but there is so much they don’t know about the xenos, both those now extinct and those who still plague humanity. ‘Don’t touch it yet,’ she orders the three proctors who have accompanied her, as she hurries out of the door and down a corridor.

Janov Keele has a large personal collection of valuables, which he clearly liked to show off to privileged guests. Some are nothing more than human – old artwork, or a finger bone alleged to have belonged to a saint – while others are definitely alien in origin. Keele would have been damned many times over, even had he not tried to kill her.

But as Nero arrives alongside Avos Kantid, she sees the crowning glory of the collection.

The Tear of Selevia is not done justice by a hololithic image. It is a gem of surpassing beauty, midnight blue in colour, and with the faintest hint of swirling depths that should be impossible in a gem that size. The necklace in which it is set is masterfully worked, but no one would look twice at it compared to the jewel itself.

‘That is what I think it is, isn’t it?’ Kantid says in a low voice.

‘A spirit stone,’ Nero murmurs. And not just any spirit stone: judging by accounts, the spirit stone of a dead aeldari witch. Somewhere – somehow – in there, so far as Nero understands it, is the spirit of a powerful xenos psyker, slain by a warrior of the Imperium. And Governor Rask wore this around her neck for twenty years? No wonder her sanity appeared to fray.

‘Bring the stasis casket,’ Nero orders a nearby proctor. The first Governor Mabb might or might not have known the Tear’s true nature, but by accident or design, he’d hit upon the best way to store it. The proctor nods and turns to go, slipping past the approaching, bulky shape of Fell as she does so.

‘Look what I’ve found,’ Fell says, extending the hand of his bionic arm. Nero looks into his palm and sees several chunks of dark-grey crystal.

She narrows her eyes. ‘Are those…?’

‘Salludo shards,’ Fell confirms with a nod. He might be ex-Astra Militarum, and he might never have developed the intuition and initiative to ever have a prospect of becoming an inquisitor himself, but he’s observant, and far from unintelligent. ‘I thought the trail had gone cold on these.’

‘It had,’ Nero agrees, a smile tugging at her lips. They’ve achieved even greater success than she’d envisaged. Surely, surely she has one hand on her own rosette. ‘Oh, well done, Fell. This is excellent. Now we have an entirely new topic to discuss with Trademaster Keele.’

Fell nods, then steps closer to her and lowers his voice. Once upon a time, when she was not long out of the scholam, Alyss Nero might have been intimidated by someone this size standing this close to her. Those days are long gone. She’s seen aeldari death-dancers, killers who can walk through shadows, and all manner of horrors besides.

‘Are you still intent on going through with this?’ Fell asks quietly.

‘I am,’ Nero tells him. This is a cold, hard certainty in her core.

‘The boss won’t like it.’

Nero looks up at him. ‘You let me worry about Ngiri.’

The Emperor’s Smile hangs in the void. Selevia Prime is a pale, distant dot. Beyond it lies its star. Somewhere far beyond that, on the other side of the system’s orbital plane, are Selevia Secundus – a gas giant, with three moons that are nearly planet-sized in their own right – and Selevia Tertius, an icy, rocky world. There’s nothing out this way, apart from a few asteroids.

Danid Trellavyn clenches his fists and relaxes them, again and again. He tells himself that it’s a way to dispel the tension in his body, but it’s not doing anything.

He should have known that Mamzel Dollane was trouble. He should have found himself a cargo more quickly, and left Selevia sooner. This time she used a different name, and showed him an insignia that made his blood turn to ice.

She’s not an inquisitor, and she doesn’t claim to be. Still, it’s clear who she works for, and she previously mentioned going places at the behest of others. That would be an inquisitor, Trellavyn suspects, and he has no intention of being tracked down to ask why he’s refused to help their subordinate.

All the same, what he’s been asked to do goes against every instinct he has, and most of his morality.

‘Anything?’ he asks the auspex officer, who shakes her head.

‘No, master, we’re alone.’

‘Comms?’ he calls.

‘Nothing, master, just background noise and… Wait.’

His heart lurches. To his left, he sees Alyss Nero look towards them. She’s on his ship’s bridge. How could he stop her?

‘What?’ he asks, praying that it’s a ghost signal – some garbled, long-lost vox that’s been drifting through the blackness of space since broadcast.

‘We’re being hailed, master,’ the comms officer says firmly, definitely. He doesn’t have the fear in his voice that’s clawing at Trellavyn’s stomach, but then the comms officer doesn’t know who they’re waiting for.

‘Play it,’ Nero orders. The comms officer looks at Trellavyn, who flaps a hand to indicate that he should oblige.

A voice slides over the bridge’s speakers. It is smooth, but smooth in the manner of ice over a deep lake, and is about as warm and welcoming. It enunciates the syllables clearly and perfectly, perhaps more so than most humans Danid Trellavyn has ever met, but it’s immediately obvious that this language was never intended to pass through these vocal cords.

‘–ill not repeat myself again. Name yourself.’

Master Trellavyn opens his mouth, but Alyss Nero raises her hand and he pauses without a word having passed his lips. She clicks her fingers; the vox-officer is perceptive enough to open the channel in return.

‘My name is Alyssana Nero. To whom do I speak?’

‘That is no business of yours. Your vessel carries something of ours. We will have it from you.’

‘You will,’ Nero says, without hesitation. ‘In return, I ask for information.’

‘You are in no position to bargain.’

Trellavyn’s eyes stray towards the sensor read-outs. There is something there: flickering and unsteady, as though the auspexes can’t get a proper read on it, but it’s there. The graceful, swept-back shape of an aeldari vessel, far closer than he’s seen one before, and far closer than he’d like. He swallows. They really are in no position to bargain. Trellavyn isn’t familiar with the different types of aeldari craft, but he has to believe that this is a warship of a sort, and the Emperor’s Smile is a merchant trader with few guns.

‘I am always in a position to bargain,’ Nero replies. ‘The question is, are you in a position to listen? You could shoot this ship out from under me, but it would take you a long time to find what you wish afterwards. Perhaps that means nothing to you, long-lived as you are, but you have no guarantee that I would not succeed in destroying it before I died. I think I know what this object means to you, and I think you wish to avoid that, above all else.’

‘That would be a grave mistake.’

‘A human who makes mistakes? I’m sure you’re used to the notion.’ Nero sighs. ‘Help me to avoid making a mistake, by giving me what I want. Information, in exchange for your property.’

Some sliver of emotion slides into the voice. Perhaps it’s humour? If so, it is barbed.

‘What information do you wish?’

‘I can discuss that in person,’ Nero replies. ‘Send whatever serves you as a shuttle. The docking bay of this ship will be open to you. Come with another, if you wish. I will have one companion. Send any more, and I will destroy that which you seek.’

There is a pause, during which Danid Trellavyn contemplates refusing to allow his ship to be boarded by xenos, and comes up against not only the symbol of the Inquisition, but also the weapons of the ship out there in the void.

‘Very well, Alyssana Nero. We shall see if you are as treacherous as most of your kind.’

The docking bay is empty of shuttles, at least until the aeldari vessel passes through the ion field that keeps the atmosphere inside, and sets down. It’s a construction of sweeping curves and sharp points, as though it is a weapon in and of itself. The ramp descends, and two of the xenos walk down it.

They’re each over six feet tall, and willow-thin. Nero knows that both will be stronger than her: they’re probably stronger than Fell, for all the fact that he’s twice as wide as either of them. Their armour is dark grey with flashes of midnight blue, and their helms are crested with high tails of what is either hair, or thin, hairlike fabric. Both have long blades scabbarded on their left hip, and a holstered pistol on their right. Their eye-lenses are reflective, and give them an insectoid look. Nero prefers that to being able to see their faces. This is not the first time she’s encountered an aeldari, but it is the first time she has approached one as anything other than an enemy.

The one in front pauses, perhaps ten feet from where she and Fell stand, and speaks.

‘Show us the stone.’

Nero brings the stasis casket out from behind her back. It is a small thing, resembling a cage such as that which might contain a tiny avian.

Aeldari are hard to read, especially with their helms on, but Nero detects a slight shift in their stances. This is indeed what they came for. Understandable, since they were apparently able to sense it in the first place.

One of them reaches out.

Nero draws her pulse pistol and aims it at the stone. Its energy bolts will do nothing with the casket active, but that’s why she’s got a finger on the controls.

The aeldari freeze. One of them hisses.

‘Just so we are clear,’ Nero says. ‘I could destroy this before you can reach me.’

She holds the blank gaze of their helmets for a second or two, then lowers her pistol and pushes the casket. The anti-gravity motors in its base keep it a steady four feet off the ground as it glides through the air towards the xenos. The one in front plucks it out of the air, almost hungrily.

‘We could have had a stand-off about whether you got the stone first, or I got my information first,’ Nero tells them. Her mouth is dry with a mixture of apprehension and eagerness. ‘You may see this as a gesture of goodwill – just like bringing the stone here in the first place, away from the defences of our worlds.’

‘Your worlds?’ the aeldari at the back retorts, the edges of its words slicing through the air.

Nero shrugs. ‘I speak in practicalities, not abstracts. Had you the ability to retake the stone before now then I believe you would have done so, but Selevia Prime is fortified by the Imperium, and so you dared not.’

The frontmost xenos looks away from the spirit stone to fix the gaze of its helm on her once more. ‘Your price was information, but you have already discarded your asset.’

‘Our people have warred before,’ Nero replies. ‘They will again. One needs no great foresight to know that. But we need not always stand in conflict. On occasion, as now, we may be able to assist each other. Perhaps we should take those opportunities, because there are certainly those who would gladly see both our peoples burn.’

The aeldari regards her for a few long seconds. Then it speaks.

‘Your words are not wisdom. But neither are they utter foolishness. Speak your question. I may answer, or I may not.’

Nero composes herself. Breathes. This could be her first proper lead on a mess of rumours and half-truths that she and her mistress have been encountering for the best part of a decade. Inquisitor Ngiri would never have turned to the aeldari for answers, but Alyss Nero has. Now she will find out if that choice was worth it.

‘I need to know about something called, in my tongue, the Pillar of Dreams.’

The aeldari do not move, but Nero’s ears can just make out soft sibilant sounds coming from behind their masks. Are they conversing quietly in their own language?

‘You know its location?’ the rearmost one asks, after a few seconds.

Nero shakes her head. ‘Not exactly, but I have been hearing rumours about it. I know it is important in some way, and I have some leads on it, but I need to know what it is.’

‘Dangerous,’ says the one at the front. ‘Very dangerous.’

‘But what does it look like?’ Nero demands. ‘What does it do? The writings I’ve found link it to your people in some manner, but nothing gives me a description!’ She grinds her teeth in frustration. The aeldari may be able to sense spirit stones, and Emperor knows what else, but Nero has to rely on her eyes.

She forces herself to be patient. She hopes the xenos will think her reckless and overambitious. She hopes they will give her the information she needs to find this artefact – perhaps with the intention of then taking it from her, but she will be ready for any such betrayal.

‘It was not created by us,’ the frontmost xenos says firmly. ‘It is a twisted thing, which flays the minds of those that would use it.’

Nero frowns. ‘So it should be destroyed?’

‘Most certainly.’

Nero suppresses her smile. She’ll be the judge of that, once she’s determined the Pillar’s actual function, rather than what these creatures want her to think. ‘I will ask you one more time. What is it?’

Once more the aeldari exchange those soft sounds. Then the rearmost steps forward and raises its hands.

‘It is a column of what might appear to you to be stone, which stands a little taller than myself, wider at the top and the bottom…’

Alyss Nero listens with growing excitement. These aeldari clearly have an agenda with regard to the Pillar of Dreams, but sentient beings with an agenda can be predicted, and what can be predicted can be manipulated. Inquisitor Ngiri taught her that, but Nero’s mentor has become more reactive and puritanical as she’s aged.

Perhaps it’s time for a new approach…

About the Author

Mike Brooks is a science fiction and fantasy author who lives in Nottingham, UK. His work for Black Library includes the Warhammer 40,000 novel Rites of Passage, the Necromunda novel Road to Redemption and the novella Wanted: Dead, and various short stories. When not writing, he plays guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him.

An extract from Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son.

‘I was there at the Siege of Terra,’ Vitrian Messinius would say in his later years.

‘I was there…’ he would add to himself, his words never meant for ears but his own. ‘I was there the day the Imperium died.’

But that was yet to come.

‘To the walls! To the walls! The enemy is coming!’ Captain Messinius, as he was then, led his Space Marines across the Penitent’s Square high up on the Lion’s Gate. ‘Another attack! Repel them! Send them back to the warp!’

Thousands of red-skinned monsters born of fear and sin scaled the outer ramparts, fury and murder incarnate. The mortals they faced quailed. It took the heart of a Space Marine to stand against them without fear, and the Angels of Death were in short supply.

‘Another attack, move, move! To the walls!’

They came in the days after the Avenging Son returned, emerging from nothing, eight legions strong, bringing the bulk of their numbers to bear against the chief entrance to the Imperial Palace. A decapitation strike like no other, and it came perilously close to success.

Messinius’ Space Marines ran to the parapet edging the Penitent’s Square. On many worlds, the square would have been a plaza fit to adorn the centre of any great city. Not on Terra. On the immensity of the Lion’s Gate, it was nothing, one of hundreds of similarly huge spaces. The word ‘gate’ did not suit the scale of the cityscape. The Lion’s Gate’s bulk marched up into the sky, step by titanic step, until it rose far higher than the mountains it had supplanted. The gate had been built by the Emperor Himself, they said. Myths detailed the improbable supernatural feats required to raise it. They were lies, all of them, and belittled the true effort needed to build such an edifice. Though the Lion’s Gate was made to His design and by His command, the soaring monument had been constructed by mortals, with mortal hands and mortal tools. Messinius wished that had been remembered. For men to build this was far more impressive than any godly act of creation. If men could remember that, he believed, then perhaps they would remember their own strength.

The uncanny may not have built the gate, but it threatened to bring it down. Messinius looked over the rampart lip, down to the lower levels thousands of feet below and the spread of the Anterior Barbican.

Upon the stepped fortifications of the Lion’s Gate was armour of every colour and the blood of every loyal primarch. Dozens of regiments stood alongside them. Aircraft filled the sky. Guns boomed from every quarter. In the churning redness on the great roads, processional ways so huge they were akin to prairies cast in rockcrete, were flashes of gold where the Emperor’s Custodian Guard battled. The might of the Imperium was gathered there, in the palace where He dwelt.

There seemed moments on that day when it might not be enough.

The outer ramparts were carpeted in red bodies that writhed and heaved, obscuring the great statues adorning the defences and covering over the guns, an invasive cancer consuming reality. The enemy were legion. There were too many foes to defeat by plan and ruse. Only guns, and will, would see the day won, but the defenders were so pitifully few.

Messinius called a wordless halt, clenched fist raised, seeking the best place to deploy his mixed company, veterans all of the Terran Crusade. Gunships and fighters sped overhead, unleashing deadly light and streams of bombs into the packed daemonic masses. There were innumerable cannons crammed onto the gate, and they all fired, rippling the structure with false earthquakes. Soon the many ships and orbital defences of Terra would add their guns, targeting the very world they were meant to guard, but the attack had come so suddenly; as yet they had had no time to react.

The noise was horrendous. Messinius’ audio dampers were at maximum and still the roar of ordnance stung his ears. Those humans that survived today would be rendered deaf. But he would have welcomed more guns, and louder still, for all the defensive fury of the assailed palace could not drown out the hideous noise of the daemons – their sighing hisses, a billion serpents strong, and chittering, screaming wails. It was not only heard but sensed within the soul, the realms of spirit and of matter were so intertwined. Messinius’ being would be forever stained by it.

Tactical information scrolled down his helmplate, near environs only. He had little strategic overview of the situation. The vox-channels were choked with a hellish screaming that made communication impossible. The noosphere was disrupted by etheric backwash spilling from the immaterial rifts the daemons poured through. Messinius was used to operating on his own. Small-scale, surgical actions were the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but in a battle of this scale, a lack of central coordination would lead inevitably to defeat. This was not like the first Siege, where his kind had fought in Legions.

He called up a company-wide vox-cast and spoke to his warriors. They were not his Chapter-kin, but they would listen. The primarch himself had commanded that they do so.

‘Reinforce the mortals,’ he said. ‘Their morale is wavering. Position yourselves every fifty yards. Cover the whole of the south-facing front. Let them see you.’ He directed his warriors by chopping at the air with his left hand. His right, bearing an inactive power fist, hung heavily at his side. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles, back forty yards, single firing line. Prepare to engage enemy breakthroughs only on my mark. Devastators, split to demi-squads and take up high ground, sergeant and sub-squad prime’s discretion as to positioning and target. Remember our objective, heavy infliction of casualties. We kill as many as we can, we retreat, then hold at the Penitent’s Arch until further notice. Command squad, with me.’

Command squad was too grand a title for the mismatched crew Messinius had gathered around himself. His own officers were light years away, if they still lived.

‘Doveskamor, Tidominus,’ he said to the two Aurora Marines with him. ‘Take the left.’

‘Yes, captain,’ they voxed, and jogged away, their green armour glinting orange in the hell-light of the invasion.

The rest of his scratch squad was comprised of a communications specialist from the Death Spectres, an Omega Marine with a penchant for plasma weaponry, and a Raptor holding an ancient standard he’d taken from a dusty display.

‘Why did you take that, Brother Kryvesh?’ Messinius asked, as they moved forward.

‘The palace is full of such relics,’ said the Raptor. ‘It seems only right to put them to use. No one else wanted it.’

Messinius stared at him.

‘What? If the gate falls, we’ll have more to worry about than my minor indiscretion. It’ll be good for morale.’

The squads were splitting to join the standard humans. Such was the noise many of the men on the wall had not noticed their arrival, and a ripple of surprise went along the line as they appeared at their sides. Messinius was glad to see they seemed more firm when they turned their eyes back outwards.

‘Anzigus,’ he said to the Death Spectre. ‘Hold back, facilitate communication within the company. Maximum signal gain. This interference will only get worse. See if you can get us patched in to wider theatre command. I’ll take a hardline if you can find one.’

‘Yes, captain,’ said Anzigus. He bowed a helm that was bulbous with additional equipment. He already had the access flap of the bulky vox-unit on his arm open. He withdrew, the aerials on his power plant extending. He headed towards a systems nexus on the far wall of the plaza, where soaring buttresses pushed back against the immense weight bearing down upon them.

Messinius watched him go. He knew next to nothing about Anzigus. He spoke little, and when he did, his voice was funereal. His Chapter was mysterious, but the same lack of familiarity held true for many of these warriors, thrown together by miraculous events. Over their years lost wandering in the warp, Messinius had come to see some as friends as well as comrades, others he hardly knew, and none he knew so well as his own Chapter brothers. But they would stand together. They were Space Marines. They had fought by the returned primarch’s side, and in that they shared a bond. They would not stint in their duty now.

Messinius chose a spot on the wall, directing his other veterans to left and right. Kryvesh he sent to the mortal officer’s side. He looked down again, out past the enemy and over the outer palace. Spires stretched away in every direction. Smoke rose from all over the landscape. Some of it was new, the work of the daemon horde, but Terra had been burning for weeks. The Astronomican had failed. The galaxy was split in two. Behind them in the sky turned the great palace gyre, its deep eye marking out the throne room of the Emperor Himself.

‘Sir!’ A member of the Palatine Guard shouted over the din. He pointed downwards, to the left. Messinius followed his wavering finger. Three hundred feet below, daemons were climbing. They came upwards in a triangle tipped by a brute with a double rack of horns. It clambered hand over hand, far faster than should be possible, flying upwards, as if it touched the side of the towering gate only as a concession to reality. A Space Marine with claw locks could not have climbed that fast.

‘Soldiers of the Imperium! The enemy is upon us!’

He looked to the mortals. Their faces were blanched with fear. Their weapons shook. Their bravery was commendable nonetheless. Not one of them attempted to run, though a wave of terror preceded the unnatural things clambering up towards them.

‘We shall not turn away from our duty, no matter how fearful the foe, or how dire our fates may be,’ he said. ‘Behind us is the Sanctum of the Emperor Himself. As He has watched over you, now it is your turn to stand in guardianship over Him.’

The creatures were drawing closer. Through a sliding, magnified window on his display, Messinius looked into the yellow and cunning eyes of their leader. A long tongue lolled permanently from the thing’s mouth, licking at the wall, tasting the terror of the beings it protected.

Boltgun actions clicked. His men leaned over the parapet, towering over the mortals as the Lion’s Gate towered over the Ultimate Wall. A wealth of targeting data was exchanged, warrior to warrior, as each chose a unique mark. No bolt would be wasted in the opening fusillade. They could hear the creatures’ individual shrieks and growls, all wordless, but their meaning was clear: blood, blood, blood. Blood and skulls.

Messinius sneered at them. He ignited his power fist with a swift jerk. He always preferred the visceral thrill of manual activation. Motors came to full life. Lightning crackled around it. He aimed downwards with his bolt pistol. A reticule danced over diabolical faces, each a copy of all the others. These things were not real. They were not alive. They were projections of a false god. The Librarian Atramo had named them maladies. A spiritual sickness wearing ersatz flesh.

He reminded himself to be wary. Contempt was as thick as any armour, but these things were deadly, for all their unreality.

He knew. He had fought the Neverborn many times before.

‘While He lives,’ Messinius shouted, boosting his voxmitter gain to maximal, ‘we stand!’

‘For He of Terra!’ the humans shouted, their battle cry loud enough to be heard over the booming of guns.

‘For He of Terra,’ said Messinius. ‘Fire!’ he shouted.

The Space Marines fired first. Boltguns spoke, spitting spikes of rocket flare into the foe. Bolts slammed into daemon bodies, bursting them apart. Black viscera exploded away. Black ichor showered those coming after. The daemons’ false souls screamed back whence they came, though their bones and offal tumbled down like those of any truly living foe.

Las-beams speared next, and the space between the wall top and the scaling party filled with violence. The daemons were unnaturally resilient, protected from death by the energies of the warp, and though many were felled, others weathered the fire, and clambered up still, unharmed and uncaring of their dead. Messinius no longer needed his helm’s magnification to see into the daemon champion’s eyes. It stared at him, its smile a promise of death. The terror that preceded them was replaced by the urge to violence, and that gripped them all, foe and friend. The baseline humans began to lose their discipline. A man turned and shot his comrade, and was shot down in turn. Kryvesh banged the foot of his borrowed banner and called them back into line. Elsewhere, his warriors sang; not their Chapter warsongs, but battle hymns known to all. Wavering human voices joined them. The feelings of violence abated, just enough.

Then the things were over the parapet and on them. Messinius saw Tidominus carried down by a group of daemons, his unit signum replaced by a mortis rune in his helm. The enemy champion was racing at him. Messinius emptied his bolt pistol into its face, blowing half of it away into a fine mist of daemonic ichor. Still it leapt, hurling itself twenty feet over the parapet. Messinius fell back, keeping the creature in sight, targeting skating over his helmplate as the machine-spirit tried to maintain a target lock. Threat indicators trilled, shifting up their priority spectrum.

The daemon held up its enormous gnarled hands. Smoke whirled in the space between, coalescing into a two-handed sword almost as tall as Messinius. By the time its hoofed feet cracked the paving slabs of the square, the creature’s weapon was solid. Vapour streaming from its ruined face, it pointed the broadsword at Messinius and hissed a wordless challenge.

‘Accepted,’ said Messinius, and moved in to attack.

The creature was fast, and punishingly strong. Messinius parried its first strike with an outward push of his palm, fingers spread. Energy crackled. The boom generated by the meeting of human technology and the sorceries of the warp was loud enough to out-compete the guns, but though the impact sent pain lancing up Messinius’ arm, the daemon was not staggered, and pressed in a follow-up attack, swinging the massive sword around its head as if it weighed nothing.

Messinius countered more aggressively this time, punching in to the strike. Another thunderous detonation. Disruption fields shattered matter, but the daemon was not wholly real, and the effect upon it was lesser than it would be upon a natural foe. Nevertheless, this time it was thrown backwards by the blow. Smoke poured from the edge of its blade. It licked black blood from its arm and snarled. Messinius was ready when it leapt: opening his fist, ignoring the sword as it clashed against his pauldron and sheared off a peeling of ceramite, he grabbed the beast about its middle.

The Bloodletters of Khorne were rangy things, all bone and ropey muscle, no space within them for organs. The false god of war had no need for them to eat or breathe, or to give the semblance of being able to do so. They were made only to kill, and to strike fear in the hearts of those they faced. Their waists were solid, and slender, and easily encompassed by Messinius’ power fist. It squirmed in his grip, throwing Messinius’ arm about. Servo motors in his joints locked, supplementary muscle fibres strained, but the White Consul stood firm.

‘Tell your master he is not welcome on Terra,’ he said. His words were calm, a deliberate defiance of the waves of rage pulsing off the daemon.

He closed his hand.

The daemon’s midriff exploded. The top half fell down, still hissing and thrashing. Its sword clanged off the paving and broke into shards, brittle now it was separated from its wielder. They were pieces of the same thing, sword and beast. Apart, the weapon could not survive long.

Messinius cast down the lower portion of the daemon. There were dozens of the things atop the wall, battling with his warriors and the human soldiery. In the second he paused he saw Doveskamor hacked down as he stood over the body of his brother, pieces of armour bouncing across the ground. He saw a group of Palatine Sentinels corner a daemon with their bayonets. He saw a dozen humans cut down by eldritch swords.

Where the humans kept their distance, their ranged weapons took a toll upon the Neverborn. Where the daemons got among them, they triumphed more often than not, even against his Space Marines. Support fire rained down sporadically from above, its usefulness restricted by the difficulty of picking targets from the swirling melee. At the western edge of the line, the heavy weapons were more telling, knocking daemons off the wall before they crested the parapet and preventing them from circling around the back of the Imperial forces. Only his equipment allowed Messinius to see this. Without the helm feeds of his warriors and the limited access he had to the Lion Gate’s auspectoria, he would have been blind, lost in the immediate clash of arms and sprays of blood. He would have remained where he was, fighting. He would not have seen that there were more groups of daemons pouring upwards. He would not have given his order, and then he would have died.

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