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The Last Crucible – Noah Nguyen

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

THE LAST CRUCIBLE

by Noah Nguyen

Kataryn Moloth, inquisitor of the Ordo Militarum, was reviewing her requisition order when storm troopers tossed a sunken-eyed, hollow-cheeked wretch before her.

A proud wretch, who dared look up.

‘The insubordinate, Lady Moloth. As requested.’ Captain Duxxor’s face was a brutal slab with a knobby scar. ‘I’, the Inquisition’s unmistakable seal. All of Kataryn’s storm troopers had earned the mark.

Kataryn dismissed Duxxor. Her interview with the prisoner would hardly slow her review. Mental engrams from a lifetime of cognitive indoctrination had compartmentalised her intellect. Her mind was a mapped labyrinth.

From her peripheral vision, she examined the insubordinate. He wasn’t handsome. An ugly man, with stark eyes. Whatever world tithed him to the Astra Militarum had done their young eligibles a favour.

Yet his back was straight, and men with spines were what Kataryn needed.

‘Lieutenant Truce Corrut,’ Kataryn recited. ‘Provisional commander. Cerberus Company. Some line battalion, some Elysian regiment. Charged with insubordination following a counter-attack against standing orders.’ She spared a glance. ‘Did I miss anything?’

‘Madame inquisitor.’ Corrut clambered up. ‘I’m not a heretic. I don’t know what they told you, but I’ve kept faith with the Emperor every day of my life.’

Kataryn straightened the collar of the gambeson concealing her neck. Corrut was no liar. She knew liars. He was faithful. Having seen her rosette, observant. Hopefully, intelligent.

Kataryn thumbed her rosette’s sigil, still scanning the requisition order before her. ‘Lady Moloth will do, Corrut. I’m an inquisitor, not a spire baroness. Sit.’ She motioned to the cushioned stool beside her ornate desk. The seat was the same as hers.

Corrut sat, surveying the vaulted chamber. No doubt he expected a torturer’s cell, but these were Kataryn’s personal quarters. They tripled as a library, an arsenal, a chapel. There was no bed.

‘This matter’s related to your charge,’ Kataryn said. ‘But frankly I haven’t come to Eleutane for matters of minor insubordination. Tell me, were your charges appropriate?’

Wheels turned in the gruff soldier’s head. Perhaps he was thinking he had less to worry about than he’d feared, or that this was no trial at all. The truth was, every moment of Corrut’s miserable life had been a trial, and it all led here.

‘No,’ Corrut said.

‘The necrons butchered your Guardsmen during your counter-attack.’

Corrut’s gaze darkened. ‘I saw an opportunity and moved on it. That’s my job, milady. To take initiative. Necrons don’t make many mistakes, but they overextended themselves that day.’

He waited for a reply. Kataryn only observed.

The silence prodded him on. ‘It was a good call. If the companies on the flanks had supported Cerberus, we could have broken the enemy salient.’

Kataryn nodded. She had done exhaustive research on Eleutane’s flagging campaign before summoning Corrut. His words bore the truth. And besides this isolated blemish, his record suggested so much potential.

‘You were a provisional commander,’ she said. ‘Why weren’t you simply relieved?’

Corrut’s lips hardened. He had that look, of course. Of one who challenged foolish orders. ‘Someone wanted to make an example.’

‘It would be a good example to make if rash calls were getting soldiers killed. But you don’t think that at all, do you?’

Corrut scowled. ‘No. Someone with rank on their shoulders threw me on the pyre to save themselves. One of the other company commanders, likely. They should’ve had my back.’

‘Insightful. The truth is worse. Your case is related to all of Eleutane’s myriad setbacks and delays.’

Corrut winced. ‘Setbacks?’

‘You’ve heard. Everyone has. No ground’s been gained for months. Necrons dominate Eleutane’s lower geosphere. The marshal-adamant’s forces, despite his reputation, have made no progress.’

‘We’ve proven ourselves throughout the Urdonne Sector, milady. The marshal’s all that’s held us together since the Noctis Aeterna began.’

‘So I’m told. But by my assessment, Eleutane shouldn’t need the reinforcements en route from the Gothic Sector. Not with the kind of forces at this world’s disposal. Not without deeper, more troubling issues.’

Corrut paused. ‘Respectfully, there are deeper issues. Mid-level command’s full of idiots and careerists. I’ve dealt with the scavengers enough to know. Lady Moloth, is this an interrogation?’

That caught Kataryn off guard. Corrut had a whole-hearted earnestness. Soldiers were made to bend. Some were needles, some were nails, but malleability was necessary to shape them into the killers the Imperium needed. Corrut was as hard as a hammer.

‘No,’ Kataryn said. ‘A test, perhaps. What if I told you treachery was behind the failures here? That traitors were subverting the campaign and saw to your charges to conceal their transgressions?’

Corrut’s brow wrinkled. ‘I wouldn’t believe it. Good soldiers serve on Eleutane. Elysians, Jourans, Valhallans–’

‘Idiots and careerists,’ Kataryn said.

Corrut shrugged. ‘Every army has those.’

Kataryn respected his candour. Honesty was an inquisitor’s mandate, too. Speak truth to power. Sear it into their hearts and minds, with flame.

Kataryn reclined. ‘Projection. You’re faithful, so you imagine others are. You’d die for the Emperor. You think everyone would. But not everyone shares your virtues.’

‘I’m no fool, milady. I know how many weaklings and imbeciles man the lines. But traitors…’

Kataryn shot to her feet, her seat clattering somewhere behind her. ‘Don’t be naive. All heresy is born from lesser shortcomings. Where did you think it starts? Sensible soldiers become heretics to save themselves, or because they are fools. These are no reasons to suffer their existence.’

Corrut bowed. ‘If there are traitors on Eleutane, I would kill them with my own hands.’

‘Only because you believe there aren’t.’ Kataryn mastered the hatred in her breathing. ‘You think me paranoid, but soon you’ll see. Trust no one. Question everything.’ Her mentor’s words. Lord Rabsyn. It had been so long.

Kataryn sealed her requisition order. ‘This is to be delivered to the marshal-adamant. It places you under my direct command. I require an officer familiar with Eleutanese operations to assist my investigation. I want pelts, Corrut. You’re going to help me cull the wolves.’ A servitor plodded over from its charging nook between laden library shelves on ponderous, metallic legs. It retrieved the requisition and pounded off again, to Kataryn’s scriveners.

Corrut watched it go. ‘And my charges?’

Kataryn prowled to her armoury. More servitors gasped to life in their feeding docks. They affixed conduits to her gambeson, fitting plate segments around her, drilling them together until the armour seals hissed. ‘Your fate’s in my hands. If Eleutane is as free of treachery as you suggest, then indeed you weren’t framed. You were merely insubordinate and will be sentenced appropriately.’ Kataryn’s judgement was never a knife to the back. It was a sword through the heart.

Corrut went stone-still. Today was his trial. There existed no better measure of a man’s character than his conduct on death row.

Kataryn summoned Duxxor. Storm troopers dragged Corrut from the chamber. ‘Equip him from our armoury,’ she ordered. ‘Eleutane’s a warzone. We’ll not give him any excuses to die before we’re done.’

Eleutane was strange. From orbit, the surface appeared craggy, terrestrial. Desolate.

Below those barrens lay another world. A cavernous ocean spanned Eleutane’s subsurface. There the planet’s savages hunted leviathan troglobites lurking in the deep. Beyond that, the under-sea was a quaint fact. The tithe dominated the authorities’ attentions. Surface mining was the business of the day.

Yet whatever mysteries Eleutane’s lower geosphere concealed, the necrons hadn’t forgotten. After the Great Rift cut open the bowels of the Imperium, the ancient xenos breed moved. Hunchbacked necron emissaries proclaimed their phaeronic lord’s return to Eleutane. They crowed over hacked Imperial communications about their due. Those protestations seemed pathetic, belaboured – until they attacked.

Fighting was centered around Tona Complex, an industrial installation half burrowed into Eleutane’s raised continental shelf. Control of the nearby Well – a mile-wide hollow leading into the under-sea – was critical. The xenos seized it in days.

Kataryn had always compared the arrogant necron breed with the long-nailed mandarins and court astrologers of Old Terra. They were fragile with hubris, made spiteful by their knowledge, always complaining bitterly about their loss of empire the way human elders mourn the lost mastery of their bladders. The necron dynasties were a decaying species with a gutted husk of a culture. The only purpose remaining to them was to die out and allow humanity to seize its inheritance.

But on Eleutane, the necrons proved themselves cunning, astute and relentless. Their legions adapted to each of the Militarum’s strategies, then mirrored and mocked them. The unliving breed perverted the honest butchery of respectable warfare into an abstract science, as immune to human understanding as their esoteric techno-sorceries.

Imperial casualties mounted. Fighting grew tougher until friendly lines receded to Tona’s most favourable positions, where they held firm.

Now necrons controlled the under-sea. After exterminating the indigenous abhumans below, enigmatic vessels forged from unidentifiable alloys began routinely piercing Eleutane’s surface, extracting at liberty whatever secrets they had come for. They passed through Eleutane’s uncontested airspace at will. It was shameful. It made Kataryn physically ill.

None of this information was difficult to come by. Crusade records were detailed and plentiful. The scrupulous marshal-adamant kept his forces disciplined, for he demanded much of them. It was those unrelenting expectations that allowed his hosts to secure the sector from dozens of threats during the darkest hours of the Noctis Aeterna.

He was an inspiration, and he’d carried this burden alone long enough. Imperium Sanctus had finally reached the sector under siege. Eleutane’s purification was at hand. Kataryn would uncover the treachery subverting the world’s war effort. She would excise it.

She already had a working theory. First she had to backtrack from Corrut’s charges.

Three Valkyries carried Kataryn’s forces to Smelter Third-Apex: a wide, low-lying ore refinery within Tona. As they descended, an echelon of crescent-shaped xenos flyers slashed across the grey slate of Eleutane’s sky. Imperial interceptors trailed in hopeless pursuit, but when the necron formation disappeared into the Well, they broke off their chase, dispersing.

Kataryn and her cohorts disembarked. Her Valkyries, engines howling, drifted back into the sky. They were to enter atmospheric orbit, and await further instructions.

‘This way.’ Corrut took point. Kataryn and her storm troopers followed. Corrut’s undecided fate hadn’t cowed him. Rather, he seemed dead set on using whatever time he had left to see the real culprits behind his failed counter-attack punished. His determination was single-minded, worthy of respect regardless of his doubts about Eleutane’s traitors.

A wide trench wormed through a grove of solar collection arrays into the loading bay of a ruined building. The ceilings soared overhead. Glass from shattered skylights crunched underfoot. Corrut had fought here, Kataryn recalled from his transcripts. He had more acts of bravery to his name than most. None of that prevented his eventual charges, of course. But all the better.

Guardsmen idled on low gantries or within cold, slag-scarred crucibles lining the building. Most paid no attention. A witless few jeered, mocking Kataryn’s storm troopers, possibly confusing them for regimental grenadiers. Toy soldiers, they called, hooted, whistled. Glory boys.

Then they picked up the thrum of Kataryn’s power armour, the whiff of smouldering incense from the censer chained to her vambrace. They glimpsed her cowled eyes and the Inquisitorial sigils seared into her troopers’ armaplas breastplates.

They averted their gazes. The silence was a dirge.

Inquisitorial Tempestus Scions were above the ridicule of peons. Duxxor once referred to Militarum regulars as ‘padding’. The thought brought a thin smile to Kataryn’s lips – yet these Guardsmen were restless. For any unit, inaction was the seed of heresy. She had to finish her investigation as soon as possible, before Eleutane’s situation worsened.

Kataryn passed Duxxor a coded hand-signal. He filed off with her storm troopers, servo-skulls bobbing in trace. They would report when they were ready.

Kataryn and Corrut found Argus Company’s command point in the officium overlooking Third-Apex’s yawning innards. Argus was the flanking unit which Corrut claimed had abandoned him. He burst into the command point as if clearing the room.

When Kataryn entered, the command staff straightened. Some trooper whispered a question; his peers hushed him. They monitored a handful of quiet vox-channels. Easy to coordinate doing nothing.

A sharp adjutant jogged to a senior officer in a leather greatcoat. A commissar – hard to mistake the hats. Or the sneers.

‘Commissar Lainsted, lady inquisitor.’ He marched over and offered a decorous bow. ‘I was anticipating your arrival. Always an honour to serve the most holy Ordo Militarum.’

Kataryn wrinkled her nose. The command point reeked of cleaning solvent. ‘My regards. Bring me Captain Halsay.’

Lainsted blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Halsay, sir.’ Corrut craned his head around, as if Halsay might be hiding somewhere between vox-hubs and stacked field rations. ‘He’s a fat coward. Hard to miss. Lady Moloth has questions for him.’

‘Captain Halsay is dead, Lady Moloth,’ Lainsted said.

Kataryn winced. ‘Was that reported?’

‘To the Commissariat, yes. It might not have reached the regular chain of command. Our vox-lines are unreliable at best.’

Kataryn considered his words. ‘You executed him.’

Corrut’s face went a shade closer to Eleutane’s sky, his mood inching in the same direction. ‘What’d you shoot him for? Being wide?’

Lainsted looked at him. ‘You. You’re the brevet officer who buried Cerberus Company.’

‘He’s seconded to my retinue,’ Kataryn snapped. ‘If Halsay’s dead, who’s in charge?’

Lainsted arched his brow. ‘I am, milady. We have no brevet officers here. Although perhaps that’s for the best. To answer your question, lieutenant – I summarily executed Halsay for seeking to support your unsanctioned advance. Perhaps you’d have preferred Lady Moloth do the deed?’

Corrut’s coarse hands balled into clubs. Kataryn understood. Lainsted was a waste, with the sneer of a psychopath and the composure of a war hero. Medals too, no doubt. Ranks and ranks of them.

But Corrut couldn’t overstep himself. Kataryn had brought him to test his prudence, among other things. He must go as far as he needed to – and not an inch further. He must prove his judgement. His restraint.

Corrut glowered. ‘You wanted a traitor, Lady Moloth. I give you a vulture. One of many, gnawing on the gristle of good men.’

Lainsted scoffed. ‘Moments ago you called Halsay a coward.’

‘Before I met the real coward,’ Corrut said. ‘You got my company killed.’

Lainsted raised his chin. He really was a scavenger. A command-point type. He knew how to destroy his enemies – especially the ones with aquilas on their shoulders.

‘Lady Moloth,’ Lainsted began, ‘this man has been charged with insubordination. Ordinarily I would simply discharge my duty, but considering his company…’

He unclipped the holster at his waist. He wasn’t subtle. He wore his contempt like a medal. Shined, polished. Good for parade and nothing else.

‘Bold,’ Kataryn said. ‘How certain are you Corrut is guilty?’

‘The schola progenium purified my judgement, milady. I have served with honours for forty solar years.’ Medals. Ranks and ranks of them.

Kataryn nodded. ‘Can I count on your assistance?’

Lainsted clutched his bolt pistol, smirking. ‘Of course, mi–’

‘Put that back,’ Kataryn said. Duxxor stood in the doorway. She acknowledged his brief report in coded sign.

All normal. Excellent, even. Argus Company was a model unit. If all of the marshal-adamant’s forces were in such condition, it was a shame they hadn’t fought in the Indomitus Crusade. Then again, if they never attacked, they would have hardly been an asset.

They’d amend that today. ‘Corrut,’ Kataryn said. ‘You’re in command of Argus effective immediately. The commissar will assist your transition in every way possible.’

Lainsted choked. Corrut nodded.

‘We’re attacking the necrons,’ Kataryn said. ‘My forces will act as a supporting element.’

Lainsted interrupted. ‘Milady, offensive operations require heavy coordination. This could upset a delicate balance.’

Kataryn returned a dead stare. ‘That’s the point.’

The commissar went parchment pale. The war hero was gone, somewhere.

Kataryn was satisfied with the poetry of this coming engagement. Lainsted claimed Corrut was responsible for his company’s failure; Corrut claimed the opposite. The Emperor would show Kataryn the truth to their accusations. The necrons, too, in their own way.

It was a trial, as all moments are. A trial by battle.

And a third force stood on trial. The real traitor of Eleutane, whose identity Kataryn suspected this attack would finally confirm. If she was wrong, she would hold herself to the same ruthless standard she held all traitors and failures. But Kataryn Moloth was never wrong.

The Ordo Militarum hunted traitors in the Imperial war machine. To that end Kataryn had butchered and bled in more warzones than the Astra Militarum’s saltiest veterans. In the Tenebrum Stars Crusade, serving under Lord Inquisitor Rabsyn, Kataryn’s under-equipped Imperial task force battled foes as numberless as the stars…

Heretic legions. Worthless mallets breaking against the anvil of faith…

The guileful Asuryani, whose prescient, balletic strikes the Imperials endured with the masochistic patience of flagellants…

And last, most galling, the flagrant apostate renegades from within the crusade’s finest Mortavian regiments.

The Tenebrum Stars were the first chapter in Kataryn’s long, brutal career. Like Lord Rabsyn himself, that crusade utterly tried Kataryn. Although the Mortavian heresy eventually claimed the lord inquisitor’s life, Kataryn learned much from him before his fall.

Laxity breeds dissent. Tolerance is the seed of heresy. But most importantly – all must be doubted, questioned. Punished. Better to purify with flame than allow a single, hidden sin to fester into a fouler blight.

Kataryn judged herself by that creed, and all her servants. Duxxor, Corrut, Lainsted. Let war be their crucible.

The Well was their objective. Inquisitorial storm troopers advanced alongside Elysian regulars in ragged columns, each element covering the other’s movements. They met no resistance until crushed necrodermis revenants thought destroyed rattled and rose from the crisp earth, juddering off blankets of dust, glaring with baleful eyes. Gauss lightning crackled and seared from the rising legion into the heart of Kataryn’s advance, stripping cover away in helical blizzards of oxidised metal.

Attrition was the necrons’ strength; the Elysians’ was mobility. Unexpected enfilades of melta and las-fire confused the aliens’ witless defence. Some warriors, overwhelmed by the crude, honest firepower, exploded in bursts of brass shrapnel and nether-light. Others recoiled, as if shaking off a dream, then staggered onward, implacable and enduring.

Greater devilries converged. Spider-legged machines, scuttling through the refinery’s shelled structure, firing from the rafters or within fissuring, emptied gas reservoirs. Macabre xenos arks floated through the rear, closer to the Well’s eerie horizon, redeploying warriors or salvaging the husks of their fallen.

Corrut requested air support. Kataryn’s Valkyries obliged. Pillars of fire painted the ashen horizon in fiery palettes. The Elysians pushed forward, as tireless as the necrons, spurred on by blazing fervour instead of cold, mechanical compulsion.

Until they were cut off. Bronze skeletons of adaptive metal shambled in from every direction. Kataryn readied her power axe and gilded bolt pistol, saying nothing. The Emperor preferred actions over words. Her weapons were her prayers.

Speechless Elysians watched Kataryn carve her way forward, then fell into her wake, the sledgehammer behind her sword stroke. Her expectations were singular: kill for the God-Emperor. She demanded the same of herself.

Corrut led from the rear – effectively. From three vox-casters he summoned reinforcements. Sceptical commanders denied his requests until he mentioned her name. Lady Moloth. Yes, the inquisitor. You want to explain where you were hiding after this? Thought not. Copy. The Emperor protects.

Corrut got what he asked for. Fire support slotted flawlessly into the fight, dispersing the greatest xenos eyesores. A tide of Valhallans surged into combat and – body by broken body – gave the necrons a bitter serving of human tenacity. Jouran Dragoons howled through the complex in mechanised columns, breaking through to Argus Company, weapons soon chanting alongside the Elysians’.

This breakthrough did not come without cost. People died. More than even Kataryn would have preferred, satisfied though she was to see the display of utter loyalty that the body count signified. Yet as the emergent Imperial offensive anointed Tona Complex with sacrifice, the necrons gave ground.

It was a tactical conceit. Not a rout. Monoliths glided ominously backwards, towards the Well. Ghost arks drifted in reverse. Xenos revenants backstepped in a phantasmagoric, high-knees march. It all looked ridiculous until the necrons’ grotesque firepower swept the battlefield in conscientious geometries, stoppering the Imperial advance again and again.

At the Well’s brim, the tidal crash of water beneath the planet’s surface roared up the hollow, unceasing. With it wafted up the under-sea’s salt aroma, clarifying the reek of chemical flame raging across Tona. Necron skimmers, eerie and graceful, sailed over the Well’s edge into the abyss. Their uncanny retreat changed nothing. Victory was at hand. Some version of it.

Prismatic beams engulfed Corrut’s position. Troops fell, scorched and foam-mouthed, twitching on the ground. Synaptic disintegrators, Kataryn realised. Deathmarks. The transcendental mind commanding the necrons had dissected the Imperial advance, found Argus Company at its center. They sought to eliminate them.

Tainted subatomic energy blistered from afar, pinning them. The migraine-bright rays fried synapses and melted brain matter. With bio-modded vision, Kataryn isolated the deathmarks’ position. They were behind cover, near the Well’s edge. Dirty light drooled from the lucent globes in their skulls, flickering with algebraic intelligence.

Kataryn mounted their cover to find Corrut. He was on the ground, caked with dust, crawling backwards. Lainsted stood over him, bolt pistol raised.

The worm had some excuse, no doubt. To kill Corrut, to prove his ruthlessness. As if that was ever the point.

Kataryn booted Lainsted in the chest. Writhing in the dust, Lainsted’s arrogance guttered out. It was a marvellous sight.

‘With me,’ Kataryn told Corrut, mustering her storm troopers.

They charged. Covered by the Elysians, they closed the gap, dragging the deathmarks into a melee. Duxxor blasted one in its eye until the globe cracked and its jaw liquefied. Kataryn cleft another’s black skeleton into black bones. She crushed the scarabs skittering underfoot which dared recover the fallen abominations. Scrap, all of them. Kataryn was grateful their breed lacked respiratory systems, grateful she needn’t share Eleutane’s precious oxygen with such contemptible creations.

A final deathmark met Kataryn’s violent gaze. Its vocalisers crackled: a warped parody of speech, heavy with interference.

Kataryn fired, but it was already gone. A field of tessellated light shimmered away from the shadow where it stood.

Thunder clapped from the Well. A colossal blade sliced from the abyss, into Eleutane’s bleary sky, a shockwave ripping through the air behind it. Xenos forces around the Well teleported to the ship in glimmers of sick light. Perhaps the necrons were finally broken by the Imperial drive. More likely, irritated.

Atmosphere distorted around the scythe-like leviathan, and it vanished.

Cheers rose across the front’s impressive mileage, even as the charnel smoke of incinerated organic matter and ignited industrial waste rose into the choking atmosphere. But this was not a victory – not in the slightest. The necrons’ retreat had been scornful and considered. The outcome, preordained.

This tarot had been read long ago. The necrons had taken whatever they came for on Eleutane. They’d had no more reason to stay.

Eleutane was purified. All xenos vessels in-system had left, just like the surface vessel. In Tona Complex, crusading troops broke cover, embracing and weeping, unconcerned. Contrails from Imperial flyers streaked across the Well’s hollow. Troop haulers descended to the under-sea for the first time in years.

Kataryn ignored all this. The swift victory and acceptable losses – some fifteen thousand in two hours, nothing that could not be replaced – had revealed her traitor. The marshal-adamant had carried his lone burden of command for so long, he hadn’t seen it. But she did.

Argus Company consolidated at First-Zenith, a smoking cargo pier hanging over the Well’s abyss. Corrut celebrated with his new comrades, their visors raised, helmet straps dangling brazenly aside.

They froze when Kataryn arrived. Nobody saluted, but Kataryn wouldn’t have returned the meaningless gesture either way. She safeguarded the Militarum’s loyalty. She was not slave to its protocols.

‘Gentlemen. Glorious work. Lieutenant Corrut, where’s the commissar?’

Corrut gestured in Lainsted’s direction. The commissar brooded alone down the pier, under a broken crane, monitoring vox-chatter. Damage assessments, requests for medical evacuation. Nothing unusual.

‘I’ve reported today’s events to the Commissariat,’ Lainsted said as she approached. ‘I’m due for recall. Perhaps you wanted to know.’

‘Not at all.’ Kataryn raised her bolt pistol and shot Lainsted through the head. He toppled, brainless, knocking the vox-caster receiver from its hook.

Kataryn righted it and returned the way she’d come, to Corrut and his jarred soldiers. ‘Lieutenant, we’re due to debrief with the marshal-adamant.’

Corrut babbled, half speechless. Then: ‘Why?’

‘It’s procedural,’ Kataryn said. ‘And I promised to brief him on the results of my enquiry.’

Corrut peered at the lump of Lainsted by the vox-caster.

Kataryn didn’t need to explain that. Corrut understood. Her standards were high. For commissars, they were even higher. Lainsted considered himself above error and got what he deserved.

Corrut hardened. ‘He was a fool, in the end. But only that.’

Kataryn stepped closer. ‘He was a commissar. Only children and idiots are merely fools.’

Corrut’s gaze flickered. ‘And me?’

Kataryn weighed him under her gaze. She adjusted her cowl, an executioner in all but name. ‘You’re no insubordinate. And certainly no traitor.’

That was their next target.

Marshal-Adamant Gavrioza, lord commander of the Urdonne Sector, named Protector of the Faithful by the Third Agrippine Episcopaliate.

To his troops, he was legend.

To the Church, he was a saint.

To Kataryn, he was a severe man with a chinstrap beard in kempt fatigues, many times repaired. He waited near the axis of her earlier advance. A front-line leader, but nothing like her. They were both obsessive, yes. But Gavrioza was forbearing. Kataryn was pitiless.

She entered his unimpressive command bunker alongside Corrut, her storm troopers trailing. Hololithic tables cramped the low-ceilinged shelter. Dusky light bled into the bunker through fractures in the rockcrete. Wargear hung from a cross beside the rack where Gavrioza must have slept, beside stacks of folded maps.

Kataryn nodded to the veterans posted behind the marshal. ‘Are they necessary?’

‘As necessary as yours, I imagine,’ Gavrioza said. ‘Consider it a formality.’

Kataryn seated herself opposite him, leaving Duxxor and Corrut standing. The ugly lieutenant obviously held the marshal-adamant in reverence bordering veneration. If Gavrioza knew who Corrut was, it didn’t show. His eyes searched Kataryn’s face beneath her raised cowl. He was an analyst to the bone.

Gavrioza packed resin into an ornamented pipe, licking his thumb. ‘So you led the recent drive. Something to do with your enquiries, I presume. I can’t see how.’

‘Call it investigative discretion.’

‘Hell of an investigation you’ve got then.’ Gavrioza didn’t light his pipe. As if he’d packed his real words within, and smoking would let them out too soon. ‘Turn anything up?’

Kataryn nodded. ‘More than I expected. I didn’t know how much your people loved you, for instance. They’ll do anything for you.’

‘It’s my job to be the commander who deserves that.’ Gavrioza toyed with a palm-sized micro-brazier. ‘Officers bear responsibility for their troops’ welfare.’

‘And to wage wars.’

‘Wars are a tough business, Lady Moloth. Anyone who says otherwise wants to sell you something.’ Gavrioza’s eyes twinkled. ‘But you’re not here for that. You mentioned elusive traitors within my crusade. With Eleutane taken, it seems you lack basis for further investigation.’

Kataryn smiled opaquely. ‘It does seem that way. But the matter’s been resolved.’

Gavrioza raised his pipe. ‘That so? And how went the enquiries?’

Kataryn steepled her fingers, not removing her eyes from the marshal. ‘No traitors.’

Gavrioza grimaced. He was wary. ‘None, is it?’

‘None.’ Kataryn raised her finger. ‘In the ranks.’

Gavrioza turned. ‘Guards, arrest Lady Moloth.’

Kataryn dropped her finger. A signal to Duxxor.

Before Gavrioza’s veterans could move, a volley of hellgun fire punched them to the walls. The veterans collapsed, their breastplates split and helmets burst, their guts steaming on the bunker wall in a shapeless, savage mural.

Gavrioza reached for his laspistol. Kataryn fired first. This close, the bolt didn’t even detonate. It speared through Gavrioza’s midriff, lodging into the floor unexploded.

Gavrioza groaned. Kataryn slapped his exquisite pistol aside and rose. She wrapped her fist around his throat, squeezing until something crunched. She dropped him. The marshal-adamant, face purple, gaped at the venous blood puddling from his belly, trying to scoop it back in.

The bunker door slammed open. More guards and adjutants. They went pale at the sight of the scene inside.

‘Apologies, milady.’ They stumbled back over each other, fighting to leave.

Kataryn nodded to Duxxor. His storm troopers flowed into the corridor. Frightened pleas echoed, punctuated by the liquid discharge of hellgun fire.

Then a laspistol squealed to life behind Kataryn. Corrut was aiming Gavrioza’s weapon at her.

‘You…’ he quavered.

‘I killed a traitor.’

Corrut glanced at the door. ‘And them?’

‘Don’t be naive. The marshal-adamant was beloved. If his armies learn the first thing the Imperium did after re-establishing contact was excise him, revolt will follow. We can’t afford that.’

Corrut’s tortured features smoothed. ‘You’ll expunge his record.’

‘No. The Imperium needs Gavrioza’s legacy and sainthood. It’s the fool himself we can do without.’

‘You’re a vulture,’ Corrut whispered. ‘Like Lainsted. Gavrioza was a good man.’

Kataryn glanced down. The marshal-adamant was still. He had carried his burden for so long. Treachery.

She stared at Corrut. Duxxor could be back with a word. Or a blink, to activate her augmetic beacon.

Kataryn lowered her cowl. ‘A good man. Fine. But wars like Eleutane’s do not stagnate without problems at the top. Who do you think gave the orders to stand firm all these years? Why do you think this crusade dragged on as long as it did?’

‘We needed reinforcements.’

‘So Gavrioza told his regimental commanders. But this war ended long ago. The necrons, Corrut, won.’

He gritted his jaw. ‘We won. Today. Because of him.’

Kataryn functioned Gavrioza’s micro-brazier – a burning chalice – and dangled her rosette over the steady flame. Heat seeped in until it glowed. ‘Gavrioza forged you into impeccable warriors. The slag is gone. You were purest steel. But a war machine which doesn’t fight is useless. Your lives were too precious for the marshal-adamant. He would not spend you.’

Kataryn tossed the micro-brazier down, brandishing her candescent rosette. ‘You think I don’t value life. You think me callous. I am, Corrut. I am hateful and sick. But the necrons took what they came for. How many lives will their victory cost us before the end? How many millions? And Eleutane’s inbound reinforcements’ – Kataryn spat – ‘think of the wars which shall be lost without them. To protect his soldiers, Gavrioza condemned entire sectors to the ashes of oblivion. That is the work of a traitor.’

‘He did his best,’ Corrut said. ‘For us. Nobody’s perfect. Not commissars, not generals. Not you.’

‘But you are,’ Kataryn said. ‘You’re perfect.’

Corrut chuckled. ‘Let me guess. My trial’s complete? And I’m innocent?’

‘I didn’t test your innocence today. I tested your judgement. Your record showed competence and potential, so I summoned you. Everything you’ve done has proven your mettle. You will make a worthy acolyte, Corrut.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘You think so? Then you decide. Weigh my actions. Pull that trigger, if you find me wanting. Let us be judged by the same creed. Punished for the same failings.’

Corrut’s jaw grew firm. He would do what he thought he had to. Kataryn had been there herself.

Hand shaking, he lowered the laspistol.

Kataryn smiled. ‘Good.’

She punched the pistol from his grasp and seized his jaw. She clapped him against the wall. Corrut thrashed against the warm rockcrete. He was big. But big men are not stronger than the cable musculature of power armour.

Kataryn pushed her rosette into his cheek. The contact seared. She released him, flailing, to the floor.

Corrut dropped, cupping a hand over his burnt face. ‘I’. When he glared up, the rage in his expression could have boiled blood. The hatred was divine. For one aching moment, Kataryn envied him. She remembered her moment, too. What it had been like.

Kataryn crouched, armour servos whirring gently. She met Corrut’s glare. ‘You’re mine. Do you know what that means?’

Fury filled Corrut’s stark gaze. ‘My life is yours.’

‘No. This was never about control.’ Kataryn folded down the gambeson collar concealing her neck. There, on her pale flesh, stood the ridges of a scar. A distorted ‘I’, like Corrut’s, forced upon Kataryn Moloth by the deceased Lord Inquisitor Rabsyn. That was a long time ago. Before Rabsyn deigned to spare the Mortavian traitors instead of culling them. Before Kataryn executed him for heresy and avenged that lost man who had taught her the truth: forgiveness was nothing but a sin.

‘Prove yourself, and one day you shall wear a rosette like mine,’ Kataryn said. ‘When that day comes – if ever I overstep my bounds – you know what I expect.’

Corrut’s gaze warmed. ‘Judgement.’

Kataryn nodded. ‘Trust no one.’

‘Question… everything.’

Satisfied, Kataryn left. Corrut’s final epiphany was his, and his alone.

Hellguns still barked throughout the bunker. Dead soldiers littered the corridors. Adjutants, sentries. Kataryn did not pity them. Her judgement was absolute. If ever she overstepped her bounds, her acolytes would keep her in check. Corrut was one of many.

‘Lady Moloth.’ Duxxor ambled closer, picking his way over corpses. ‘The prospect?’

‘He extracts with us.’

‘And our gear, milady?’

‘Let him keep it. He’ll need it.’ This was far from Corrut’s last crucible. The Emperor’s trials never ended. Neither did hers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Noah Nguyen is a writer who lives with his wife in Vietnam. Stories he’s penned about the grim darkness of the far future include ‘Vova’s Climb’ and ‘The Last Crucible’ – and in the Mortal Realms, ‘The Huntress of Ghur’. In his spare time, Noah enjoys drinking coffee, studying foreign languages, and secretly propagating heresy.

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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