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The Carbis Incident – Victoria Hayward

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

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The Carbis Incident

by Victoria Hayward

‘There are wonders here. Wonders that will change a person, forever.’

Extract from the journal of Haspard Gorgoin, Imperial rogue trader

It took all the control Interrogator Esme Mzinga had not to throw the crew member in front of her to the deck. Mirea Mace was difficult enough in the best of circumstances, and a month of slow void travel in the confines of a drop-ship with the neurotic trapper had been less than ideal.

‘I want to know what the inquisitor isn’t telling us,’ Mace repeated.

‘Shut up, Mace,’ Mzinga said mildly.

‘You must know,’ the pinch-faced woman replied. Mzinga sat back in her chair and coolly regarded the other woman.

‘You’re here as a hired gun, not a tactician. If and when the inquisitor wants your advice, I’m sure he’ll ask for it.’

Mace folded her arms and stared past Mzinga, ignoring the barb. The trapper’s face was pale and gaunt under the strip-lighting of the ship’s mess hall.

‘I don’t see why the Avicula couldn’t have dropped us closer,’ Mace muttered.

Mzinga ran a hand through her braided hair. ‘Because, Mace, as helpful as he was escorting us through the warp, Rex Delorno is exactly the sort of rogue trader we don’t want finding out about this operation.’

Mace didn’t reply. Mzinga leant back in her chair and stared at the bulkhead above her. Emperor’s teeth, she thought. This mission. Patience had never been one of her virtues, as the inquisitor had often pointed out. But then again, that hadn’t been why he recruited her. Just as he hadn’t recruited Mace for her personality. Although anyone who had spent most of her life in the darkness of an underhive tracking ripper jacks and miliasaurs wasn’t going to be the most relaxed travel companion. Mace might be the best marksman in the sector, but she’d been questioning their mission lately, and Mzinga was keeping close watch on her.

The mess hatch swung open, and an enormous man clambered in. He beamed, clattering over to the recaff unit.

‘You’re pleased, Samazan,’ Mzinga said.

Samazan grinned and stretched. ‘We’re finally nearing planetside. You,’ he said, pointing at Mace, ‘can finally stop acting crazy.’

Mace’s face remained masklike for a moment, before she finally cracked a smile. Mzinga breathed a sigh of relief. The jocular Guardsman was able to handle Mace in a way she couldn’t. He was also a professional – brutal, efficient, easy to work with.

‘So, interrogator,’ he said, folding himself to sit at the table. ‘Do we know what we’re going to be shooting yet?’ He slid his pot of recaff across to her. ‘My friend here has a reputation for taking out sump pigs.’

Mace rolled her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t joke if you’d seen the sump pigs on Laurencian.’

Mzinga filled her beaker. ‘Pirates, mostly. Anyone trying to loot this corner of the Domina Sector now the warp storms have receded.’ In truth, she knew little more than they did. It felt like a job for the Imperial Navy, rather than a venerable inquisitor and his retinue. It wasn’t for her to question the wisdom of Inquisitor Venicii, but she wished she knew what was in her mentor’s mind, especially of late.

Samazan rubbed his hands. ‘Music to my ears. And you say it’s a jungle climate? Shame we’re not landing.’

Mzinga nodded. ‘You can take the Guardsman off Catachan–’

‘You know that hundreds of Imperial settlers died on Carbis?’ Mace interrupted. ‘I don’t think we should be going anywhere near it.’

Mzinga stretched out her legs and sighed. ‘You’ve ensured that all of us are aware of the rumours, yes, Mace.’

‘They’re not rumours. It’s a matter of record,’ the woman retorted. ‘The warp storms flared up and cut it off from the Imperium. And they say there are things in this sector. Evil things.’ The trapper touched the prayer beads visible at her neck.

Mzinga’s vox buzzed. She unfolded her tall frame, and made her way to the forward cabin. ‘Evil things are what we deal with. If that comes as a surprise to you, perhaps you should reconsider your position as a member of an Inquisitorial retinue.’

‘You’re not listening. Something’s wrong here. He’s not–’

Mzinga spun around and gave Mace a hard stare. ‘Do you want to reconsider what you’re about to say?’

Mace dropped her gaze.

‘Good,’ Mzinga said, and continued through the ship. Whilst she understood the woman’s edginess, she wasn’t going to tolerate insubordination.

She knocked at the cabin door.

‘Enter,’ came a mechanically enhanced voice.

Inside the sparsely furnished cabin, she found Grieve, the retinue’s med-tech, working on Venicii’s life support system. The crop-haired woman nodded as Mzinga entered.

‘Grieve is making adjustments,’ Venicii stated. ‘The atmosphere on Carbis will be problematic for my systems.’

‘We’re landing?’ Mzinga raised an eyebrow. ‘My understanding was that we were simply repelling pirates.’

Venicii ignored the question. ‘Have you finished?’ he asked the med-tech.

‘I have, sir,’ Grieve said, tucking a las-knife behind her ear. ‘But I’ll need to keep a close eye on things.’

Venicii’s reply crackled through his augmetic voice box. ‘Very well. You may leave us, Medicae Grieve. I have something to show you,’ he said, turning to Mzinga as Grieve gathered her tools and left the cabin.

Mzinga took the battered book that Venicii proffered her.

‘What is this?’ she asked, turning the scarred leather covers to reveal pages of spidery script.

‘The journal of the last person to leave Carbis alive, a century ago.’

Mzinga frowned. ‘I thought everyone was stranded when the warp storms closed in.’

‘The mining settlers were. Haspard Gorgoin, the rogue trader who brought them there, escaped.’

‘How does this help us?’ Mzinga asked. She deliberately kept her tone neutral, but Venicii had known her too long. He regarded her with his piercing blue eyes for a moment. Despite the extensive augmetics that kept his frail form alive, he was still imposing.

‘Because it is the only extant document on Carbis,’ he snapped. ‘You will make a study of the notes and plan our entry point. I’ve marked our destination.’ He paused. ‘You’re frustrated, I know,’ he said. ‘Patience is not a virtue of yours, Esme, and you are wondering why we have come to this Emperor-forsaken corner of the Imperium, and if it best serves our broader mission.’

Mzinga held her face in an amiably blank expression, something she had learned from Venicii himself.

He continued. ‘You are young. You wish to be battling the xenos enemies of mankind. But you think too literally. I have been fighting all of my long life and have come to learn that it is through knowledge that we will undo them.’ Venicii allowed himself a small smile. ‘You will learn that, or you will die. Take the journal. You’ll need it to plot a course. Carbis has an unusual radiation profile and there are limited landing locations. Gorgoin’s notes should help. Take us as close as you can to the centre of the northern continent.’

‘Sir – can I ask what you hope to find?’

Something passed across Venicii’s face and he paused. ‘Remains, Esme. Of an ancient xenos race.’

Mzinga’s expression betrayed her. ‘We’re planning to make planetfall with a crew of five on a xenos world?’

Venicii gave her a sharp stare. ‘Remember your place, interrogator. I have charted more worlds than you have seen days.’

Mzinga nodded, chastened. Their relationship may have been strained of late, but Venicii remained a legend of the Inquisition – he had been dismantling xenos-worshipping covens, thwarting alien warlords, and condemning worlds beyond absolution for centuries. During Mzinga’s service to him alone he had halted an aeldari conspiracy to abduct the ruling families of the Mycrx Cluster, exterminated two hrud infestations, and returned the subjects of the colony of Aesteria to the Emperor’s light after removing the t’au agents responsible for its attempted subversion.

Venicii continued, ‘I expect only traces on Carbis. It’s a primitive world. Gorgoin makes no mention of living creatures having evolved on the planet other than insects. We will complete a survey, but I expect no impediments.’

‘What of the settlers?’

‘If any survive, I’m sure they will be pleased to be welcomed into the Imperium once more.’ He picked up a data-slate. ‘I need you to use the journal to plot astrometry for our landing. The terrain will preclude landing at this site, but I want you to take us as close as possible.

Venicii turned back to his papers and Mzinga knew the audience was over. She left quietly to piece together Gorgoin’s notes.

It became apparent fairly quickly in Mzinga’s reading that Haspard Gorgoin had not been of sound mind. Or at least, that he had not left Carbis in sound mind. The record started out neatly, with astrometric information, geographic plots and bland, detailed descriptions of the landscape and climate. But halfway through, disturbing marginalia started to appear – sketches, and nonsensical notes which appeared to have been made in code. A particular image snagged Mzinga’s eye again and again. Gorgoin had been no artist, but there was something deeply wrong with the picture of a citadel she kept flicking back to. The man appeared to have lost the ability to present perspective. The steps and arches of the city warped unnaturally, their lines and curves a physical impossibility. But she focused on the task at hand. Inquisitor Venicii had wanted her to plot a safe landing, and that was what she did.

Carbis was intolerably humid, and the retinue’s equipment was struggling with the unusual planetary radiation. There was a day’s trek from their landing site through the jungle to the location Venicii wanted to investigate. It was hard going. Only Samazan seemed to be unaffected, at home beneath the thrusting trees and tangled vines. He had been bounding ahead, and shouted back to the others that he had found something. They caught him up to discover him examining a cache of equipment.

‘This must have belonged to the settlers,’ Mzinga said, after they cracked open one of the storage crates and surveyed the blasting charges, rock drills and mining lasers.

‘It hasn’t been opened until now,’ Grieve said, examining the seal.

‘Take a break,’ said Venicii. ‘I’m going to consult my papers.’

‘I’ll need to look at your rig, sir,’ said Grieve. ‘If the terrain is going to get any rougher I’ll need to make further adjustments.’

‘I’ll survey the route ahead and let you know,’ Mzinga said.

Mzinga slashed at the dense foliage. She was glad of the time to herself, although as she worked mechanically, the image from Gorgoin’s journal crept in at the edges of her consciousness. She pushed it away, and instead pulled forward the memory of her first meeting with Venicii. It hadn’t been particularly auspicious, but she cherished it. At that moment, her life had diverged. He had seen something in her, something that had been her ticket out of the gangs and off the planet. Which was just as well, given what had happened to it.

‘Interrogator Mzinga.’

She turned in surprise at the sound of Venicii’s voice, pausing mid-machete slash. Her dark skin glowed in the greenish light that filtered through the jungle canopy.

‘Inquisitor?’ she asked, wiping sweat from her forehead.

Behind her Venicii moved through the remains of the cleared plant life, sending up a sickly stink of vegetal death as he crushed vines and fleshy leaves. The inquisitor emerged into the small clearing like a furious insect, the thrashing blades of his support rig knifing into the loam as they propelled his ancient form forward.

Mzinga lowered the machete and regarded her mentor warily. He had been in a foul mood since they came planetside. As Grieve had predicted, the conditions on Carbis had been playing havoc with his non-organic components, which – for an ordo agent as venerable as Venicii – constituted the majority of his body.

He cleared his voice box with a burst of static. ‘Did you in fact read the narrative section of Gorgoin’s journal?’

‘I looked at it. But he was insane. His writings are largely incomprehensible.’ Mzinga absently used the tip of the machete blade to dislodge a parasitic wasp that was encroaching onto her forearm.

‘We deal in uncertainties. You must learn to read them. You’ll never be a savant, but you’ll never be an inquisitor either if you don’t learn more discipline.’

Mzinga felt a flicker of anger at that. She had kept the crew in check for months whilst Venicii pursued an unknown project. But she nodded, throwing her long braids over her shoulder.

‘Yes, inquisitor.’

Venicii regarded her for a few moments; then the legs of his support rig chittered to life. ‘We’re moving out in an hour.’

She turned to resume hacking.

‘Had you properly read Gorgoin’s notes, you’d know to slash upward, rather than downward.’

Mzinga rolled her broad shoulders and glanced around. ‘Can I ask why, sir?’

‘Because you’re the last interrogator I will train. And I want that to be because my active service is at an end, not because you’ve dragged a lance spider onto your head.’

Mzinga jumped and brandished her machete as a huge arachnid chittered away from a vine a few inches above her.

It was nearing dusk when they hacked their way into a clearing and saw the xenos. Mzinga felt her heart in her mouth as she halted, and threw an arm across Mace’s chest to stop her walking any further. Half a dozen pale grey figures were lounging around a gully on the opposite side of a river. Silently, Mace whipped her long-las over her shoulder and took aim. Mzinga signalled for her to pause, and gestured for Grieve, Venicii and Samazan to approach silently. The bulky Catachan moved with surprising grace, carrying a scope.

‘Humanoid and unarmed,’ he reported in a mutter. ‘Just shy of six foot. Medium build.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Ugly.’

‘Let me see.’ Venicii spoke with his voice box turned down low. There was a gentle whirr as his augmetics focused.

Mzinga stared through Samazan’s scope. However many xenos you saw, you never became fully accustomed to the horror of them. And you never should, the inquisitor had taught her. He had told her to hold that terror close. She didn’t need to try very hard to do that now – despite the heat of the jungle, a chill ran down her spine. The aliens looked like corpses walking, living bones animated by some unholy force. That’s just armour, she told herself. The configuration may be unusual, but it is just armour.

‘I don’t recognise the species,’ she said aloud.

‘Neither do I,’ said Venicii after a moment. There was a stunned silence. Venicii was one of the most respected xenos experts within the Imperium – if he didn’t recognise this species, they were in uncharted waters.

Mzinga saw the looks on the others’ faces. ‘Inquisitor Venicii, I suggest we should record some picts, then examine what we’re dealing with. Make sure we’re properly equipped.’

‘We need more information, certainly,’ Venicii agreed. ‘Mace, shoot one.’

Mace glanced askance at the inquisitor, but his expression was stony. The trapper hitched her long-las onto her shoulder and cracked off a shot. One of the xenos jerked as if pulled by a string, and ichor spattered on the ground. As soon as the sound had rung out, the others fled with inhuman speed, vanishing back into the jungle.

‘Mzinga, with me,’ Venicii barked. ‘Mace, Samazan, Grieve – provide cover.’

Mzinga followed Venicii with her autopistol drawn. Her instincts were screaming at her, but she wasn’t about to disobey her inquisitor. She pulled a rebreather over her nose and mouth with one hand. Venicii’s life support unit would protect him from xenos contamination, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. The rest of the retinue fanned out around them as they left the protection of the trees to stand in the fierce sun next to the alien corpse.

Flies were already swarming around it, and the rebreather did little to neutralise the stench. Mace had shot it through one eye, but the other stared open, milky with a white membrane. It had appeared humanoid from a distance, but close to, Mzinga could see the form of the corpse was far from familiar. She had been wrong about the armour.

‘Is it a carapace?’ she asked, kneeling to stare at the body. It was covered in bones that rose, ridged and shroud white, from the skin.

Venicii manipulated one of his motor blades to push at the sickly mottled flesh between the ossifications. ‘Possibly. Very interesting.’

‘No clothing or jewellery. That doesn’t tell us much.’

‘It doesn’t need additional protection. This exoskeleton is tough.’ He rapped on a chest that looked horribly like an external ribcage. ‘It’s lucky for us that Mace made a clear shot through the eye, into the brain.’

Mzinga probed at the side of its flat face with the heel of her knife, then pushed its lip up.

‘No obvious venom glands. Or fangs. And no retracting claws. But’ – she examined the hand – ‘there are bony spurs on the carpals that could be used in combat.’

‘It’s primitive.’ Venicii stared down at the corpse. ‘But effective. And seemingly unnecessary on a planet with no predators larger than a small canid.’

‘What is it?’ She squinted up through the sun at Venicii.

‘That might tell us.’ He was staring at something behind her, his mind already elsewhere.

She glanced around and saw a stone tablet embedded in a thicket of fleshy leaves. She reprimanded herself inwardly. She should have noticed it before, but had been transfixed by the alien. The tablet stood as tall and wide as a human, and was covered in symbols.

‘Is your archive functioning?’ she asked Venicii.

‘No. The radiation is blocking communication to the shuttle – I can only access what is stored in my onboard cogitator.’

‘I don’t recognise the script.’

‘There are some similarities to various elder languages, but the configuration is unfamiliar to me.’ Venicii moved forward, running his gloved hands over the inscription.

Mzinga glanced around. ‘I’ll take some picts and we can get back to the shuttle.’

‘Get back?’ Venicii echoed, not looking around. ‘We aren’t going back.’

Mzinga’s stomach clenched. ‘Inquisitor?’

Venicii turned, eyes burning. ‘Don’t you see? We nearly have it in our grasp.’

Mzinga stepped back. This was not the cool, clinical inquisitor she had known for years.

‘We move on,’ he said firmly.

Mzinga blinked. ‘Respectfully, inquisitor, we didn’t anticipate the xenos. We should…’ She petered out under the strength of his stare.

‘Interrogator, if I want recommendations I will ask for them. We are moving on. Leave any unnecessary equipment here. We need to move fast. Weapons only.’

Mzinga’s brows knitted. ‘Shall I at least have Grieve take samples of the alien to test for toxicity? To equip us for any further encounters?’

Venicii grimaced. ‘Fine. Quickly. She’ll have to make the analysis as we move.’

Mzinga nodded, and signalled for the others to follow as they headed deeper into the jungle.

The xenos tablets, markers, whatever they were, appeared more regularly as they travelled, rising from gnarled tree roots and half obscured by orchid-laden creepers. Mace was jittery, her gun ready in her hands. Mzinga herself had her fingers wrapped firmly around her autopistol. Grieve was taciturn as usual, and even Samazan had stopped joking. The retinue was tired and nervous, and the cloying atmosphere of the jungle was closing in. Inquisitor Venicii led the way, pausing to examine each tablet before setting off again.

Mzinga heard Grieve swear.

‘Are you all right?’ she called back.

Grieve limped round from behind a tree. ‘It’s another settler cache. A big one. Somehow I managed to walk right into it.’

Samazan kicked the seam-welded case that Grieve had knocked into. ‘You’re lucky this one is sealed. Looks like more explosives.’

Grieve rubbed her foot. ‘I feel very lucky.’

‘Come on!’ Mace hissed, coming up behind them. ‘He’s not waiting for you. We have to stay together.’

Venicii had nearly vanished in the thick foliage, and Mzinga ordered the others to catch up. She followed up the rear, and nearly crashed into the group when they suddenly halted. The others stood staring at something beyond the trees. Mzinga frowned, and brushed past Samazan to see.

They were standing at the edge of a valley which sloped into a shallow basin, and beyond was…

‘It’s massive,’ Grieve said.

‘A ruined city?’ asked Samazan.

‘No,’ crackled Venicii through his voice box. ‘A temple. The configuration is similar to others on adjacent worlds.’

‘It looks wrong,’ Mace said hollowly, and made the sign of the aquila.

She was right. The crumbled domes and arches piled on top of each other, furred with the green growth of the jungle, were jarring, startling to the eye somehow.

‘There are… disruptive geometries in the design,’ said Mzinga, her eyes watering as they tried to follow the lines of the structure but slipped away at the last moment.

‘Well spotted,’ said Venicii. Mzinga could hear his pict-recorder snapping images.

She had seen this before, in Gorgoin’s journal. He hadn’t been a poor artist; rather his subject was impossible and insane. And yet, here it was. Pillars and domes appeared to invert as the eye followed them. Staircases ran endlessly and impossibly, optical illusions that shouldn’t exist as solid objects – but here they were, defying the normal planes of expectation.

‘Samazan, how many aliens?’

‘There’s half a dozen around the perimeter. I can’t see any in the buildings from here,’ said Samazan, brow furrowing over his scope. A bead of sweat had appeared on the man’s head, the first time Mzinga had noticed him exhibit any visible sign of stress.

‘And do they appear different from the type we previously encountered?’ asked Venicii.

‘No, sir.’

‘Very well. Mace, eliminate the visible xenos.’

‘Gladly, inquisitor.’ Mace swung her gun up. A muscle clenched in her jaw as she sighted through the scope, and the silenced gun cracked out half a dozen shots.

Samazan watched the aliens drop through his scope. ‘Wait,’ he said, raising a hand and combing the buildings. ‘Seems clear,’ he reported.

‘Interrogator, follow behind. Mace, stay here and cover us.’

Mace sighed in relief at the news she wouldn’t be descending into the temple complex and took up station on a nearby rocky outcrop.

‘Grieve and Samazan, cover the rear. I need to enter the central dome.’

Mzinga made herself focus on the temple, despite her unease. ‘I suggest we enter via the east gate,’ she said, frowning. ‘Although the angles are… unreliable.’

‘That is what Gorgoin suggests,’ said Venicii.

Mzinga’s face twitched. ‘Very well,’ she said, realigning her grip on her autopistol.

Venicii’s support rig carried him easily down the sheer slope, slicing into the soft loam. The others skittered down, landing at the bottom in a spray of gravel. Mzinga’s eyes raked left and right, but there was no sign of movement.

‘We’re clear to enter.’

Venicii strode ahead, passing through distorted corbelled arches towards the central dome. Mzinga was aware of a pain in her left temple, at the strain of the shrieking discord of the place. She knew Samazan and Grieve must feel it too, but they didn’t complain. Venicii seemed unaffected, but his mind had been honed over centuries to resist the creeping horror of the xenos taint.

When they reached the central dome, Venicii began to climb its steep steps. Mzinga ordered the others to cover her, and jogged after him.

She started to climb the steps, keeping her eyes on the dark entranceway into which her mentor had disappeared. Her eyes grazed across carvings on the lintel which could have been skulls or faces, but immediate nausea told her to look away. She gritted her teeth, and took the steps two at a time. Her shirt clung to her body, but as soon as she stepped inside the dome she felt a chill. Venicii was standing in front of a plinth in the echoing space. The high, curved ceiling was vaulted with strangely organic-looking stone spines and covered in symbols like those that had appeared on the tablets. Despite the darkness and silence, the place seemed too bright and too loud. Mzinga swallowed, and stepped forward.

‘Inquisitor?’ she said.

Venicii cradled something in his hands. ‘I have it, finally.’

Mzinga squinted at the small icon her mentor was holding.

‘It appears to be carved from volcanic stone,’ he said. ‘Very light, a high crystalline content, although I’ll need to examine it further to determine exactly what the material is.’

Mzinga looked from the relic to her mentor’s face. ‘What is it?’

‘Something I’ve been seeking for decades. It is a great and terrible thing, Mzinga. If it were to fall into the wrong hands…’

They heard a distant crack from Mace’s rifle. Then another. And another. Their presence had apparently been noted.

Mzinga readied her gun. ‘Inquisitor?’

Venicii was already stowing the relic. ‘Let’s go.’

They raced back down the steps from the temple building. Grieve and Samazan were waiting with their weapons drawn.

‘This way,’ called Venicii, leading them from the courtyard. Samazan ran ahead alongside the inquisitor with Grieve and Mzinga flanking.

They heard a further series of rifle cracks. Mace wouldn’t waste ammunition – one shot, one alien. That was a dozen xenos she had felled already. Mzinga brushed a loose braid from her face. She could hear her breath coming sharp and fast over the sound of their boots slapping on the stone pathways. Where were the xenos?

Samazan and Venicii disappeared round the corner of a walled walkway – and then the cry came, a distorted blare of sound over the vox.

Mzinga gritted her teeth and skidded around to follow them, raising her gun. Before she had registered what she was doing on a conscious level, her training took over and she found herself plugging rounds into the wall of pallid horror that was suddenly gibbering in front of her. The xenos filled the walkway, swarming over the party. They were so numerous that Samazan had to hurl them aside with his burly arms before he could hack into their eye sockets with his heavy combat blade. They were frenzied, clawing and biting, skull-faces distorted with rage, bleached-bone chitin clicking horrifically, tearing at the flesh of Samazan and Venicii with rigid bone-spurred claws. The inquisitor had drawn his inferno pistol and was incinerating xenos as they approached, but there were too many.

‘Fall back,’ blared Venicii over the vox. ‘There’s another way out.’

Samazan managed to pull the inquisitor free as Mzinga and Grieve spattered the carved walls with viscous brain matter.

Mzinga pushed her bloodied comrades out of the way, lobbed a grenade into the howling aliens, and ran as fast as she could. The shockwave floored the retinue but also quelled the onslaught momentarily.

‘We need to get into the open,’ she said, levering herself to her feet. ‘Mace can cover us from there.’

‘Shield the inquisitor,’ said Samazan, blood trickling down his face. ‘The bastards were dead set on taking him out.’

Mzinga looked at where Venicii had the relic stowed in his pack. ‘We move out,’ she said, conscious of the scrabbling sounds behind them.

Grieve looked around from behind Venicii’s back, where she had been adjusting his life support. ‘They’ve damaged your unit,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to need to repair it.’

‘Later,’ said Venicii. ‘Now, we must run.’

Samazan, Mzinga and Grieve formed a triangle around the inquisitor, with Samazan taking the lead. They heard the odd crack of Mace’s rifle, but the sound was deadened as they twisted through the walls of the city-temple.

‘According to Gorgoin’s notes, we’re about to enter an open plaza,’ Venicii said. ‘When we do, we will run north-east to the exit there.’

They rounded the corner and halted. The vast plaza was filling with xenos. They boiled from doorways in their hundreds and clattered across the square like a grey-white wave of spoiled meat.

‘We can’t wait. We must go now,’ said Venicii.

Samazan unslung his flamer with a slosh of promethium. ‘Then let’s go.’

The Catachan roared as he charged into the mass of xenos, his flamer spewing death and melting alien flesh as he stormed through their ranks. Venicii followed behind, blasting his antique inferno pistol whilst Grieve cracked off targeted shots from her laspistol.

The initial momentum Samazan had built up began to slow, and the xenos began to crowd in again. Mzinga picked off an alien just before it got to Venicii. They were all under attack, and Samazan was bleeding badly, but the most ferocious onslaught was still aimed at the inquisitor.

‘You need to leave the relic,’ she shouted.

‘No,’ Venicii crackled back, as he kicked away the charred remains of an alien.

Mzinga snarled as a xenos threw itself towards her face. She cracked her fist upwards and felt its jaw break under her hand. They were going to be overwhelmed. The only thing she could think of doing was seizing the relic and–

There was a sudden volley of shots and Grieve shouted, ‘It’s Mace. She’s clearing a path.’

They took the opening the trapper had made for them. Samazan was clearly tiring, and Mzinga pushed her way to the front to add power to their retreat. She knew from a glance that the big man was badly hurt, but still he continued to torch a path. Mzinga picked off two more xenos. Not much further, she thought, and they might just make it.

There was a sudden roar of agony on the vox. Mzinga stared around to see a trio of xenos clawing at Venicii. They had ripped through the outer structure of his support rig and were tearing into his flesh. Blood was already gushing from the stricken inquisitor. He had been covering Grieve after she stumbled, and the xenos had taken advantage of his momentary distraction. With a scream of fury, Mzinga leaped at the attackers, blasting them away from her mentor’s back in a spray of blood and ichor. Grieve was unharmed, and she and Mzinga each took one of Venicii’s arms and pulled him away. The inquisitor’s head lolled, but his pale hand gripped the relic still.

Samazan continued to fire his flamer, but his face was a shade of grey-green that Mzinga knew indicated a fatal injury. He held his firing arm over his stomach, barely holding in the glistening viscera that threatened to tumble out. She exchanged a glance with the Catachan.

‘You got any of those grenades left?’ he said with some difficulty.

Mzinga gripped his shoulder and wordlessly pressed one of the explosives into his hand.

‘Get out,’ the Catachan said, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

Mzinga and Grieve dragged Venicii away from the plaza, half running, half falling back into the cover of the jungle. As they passed into the filtered half-light beneath the canopy, there came the unmistakable howl of a plasma grenade, followed by a rush of blast-light. The sound of screaming xenos and smell of burning flesh blew past them on the winds of the explosion. Mzinga stared behind them, searching the trees for signs of pursuit, but none came.

‘That could have gone better,’ Grieve said, staring into the fire. They had made camp to treat injuries and rest, but nobody had got any sleep after the horrors of the day.

Mace scowled, and threw down her ration pack. ‘That’s all you can say?’

Grieve shrugged. ‘That’s all there is to say.’

Mace stormed off to sit by herself.

Mzinga shifted slightly to avoid sitting on a laceration, a challenge given the events of the day. ‘He was a good solider,’ she said.

‘Yes. But in our work there’s always a price to pay,’ said Grieve.

Mzinga cleared her throat. ‘Do you think it was too high today?’

Grieve looked at her hands. ‘It’s not for me to say, interrogator.’

Mzinga glanced at the woman. Her face was unreadable. She had served Inquisitor Venicii loyally for decades. But everyone had a limit. She stared past the fire’s circle of light to the foetid darkness of the night-jungle beyond. ‘How is the inquisitor?’

‘Badly hurt but conscious. We need to get him off this planet as soon as we can move him.’ Grieve slapped an insect from her arm. ‘Nothing works here. His support rig is operating on hope and a prayer as it is.’

Mzinga looked across to Venicii’s tent. ‘He’s still working?’

‘Yes. He had his papers out. I don’t know if he’ll survive the night, but he’s still working.’ Grieve sighed, running a hand through her hair, then wiping it on her trousers. ‘I think that was xenos-brain,’ she said with a grimace.

‘How’s Mace?’ Mzinga asked, glancing to where the woman quietly hunched, praying under a blanket.

Grieve lowered her voice. ‘Not good. She’s taken some sedatives, but not enough.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

Grieve gave Mzinga a meaningful look. ‘She was staring at that… city for longer than any of us. She had a prime view of them ripping into the inquisitor and taking Samazan apart. And she’s only a civilian. Don’t forget the monsters she’s used to hunting are a little different to ours.’

Mzinga rubbed her eyes. ‘She saved us earlier,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t rely on it happening again,’ said Grieve.

‘Noted,’ said Mzinga with a nod. She made her way towards Venicii’s tent, pausing outside. ‘Inquisitor?’ she called in a low voice.

‘Enter,’ came the response.

She pushed the fabric aside, expecting to find her mentor tucked up against the cool of the night. Instead, Venicii was fully dressed, examining a spread of documents.

‘Interrogator!’ He beamed as she entered.

‘Sir,’ she said, frowning.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing at a series of runes on one of the pages in front of him. ‘It confirms everything. We have recovered a Lapis Mirabilis.’ His face was radiant, almost feverish.

‘What’s that?’

‘Something I’ve been seeking for decades.’

Mzinga stared at the stone. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, trying to keep the unease from her voice.

Venicii sighed. ‘I am older than you can imagine, Mzinga. I have been fighting humanity’s fight all of my life. And I have not seen things get better. For all the blood spilt, lives lost, planets destroyed – are we prevailing? Are we winning? Our enemies seek to destroy everything we are, everything we stand for.’ He clenched a fist. ‘And they come in terrible numbers, with terrible weapons. They will overcome us.’

Mzinga shook her head in disbelief. ‘The Imperium will prevail.’

‘Only if we are clever. Being strong isn’t enough. We must know our enemy in order to defeat them – however foul that enemy may be, and at whatever cost to ourselves.’

Mzinga’s eyes flickered to the stone. Venicii followed her gaze.

‘The Lapis Mirabilis is part of the knowledge,’ he continued. ‘It is spoken of in whispers across this sector. This is not the only one to have been discovered in this region. It is fabled to possess regenerative powers beyond anything known to man. In essence, immortality.’

Mzinga sat very still, staring.

‘You see now why I kept this from any other soul. I barely trust myself with the burden. How could I impose it on another?’ He shook his head. ‘Ever since destroying the cabal of the Darexi Warmaster, long before your time, I have chased rumours across the galaxy. At first I simply collected them as curiosities, but then I came to believe that there was too much evidence for it to be a myth. And then, when the storms of the immaterium rendered Carbis accessible once more…’ He trailed off.

‘And what do you intend to do with it?’ Mzinga asked.

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Study it,’ he said. ‘Understand how they created it. If a xenos race has this technology, how can we fight it? And I must prevent any others from recovering it. Can you imagine the harm it might cause in the hands of a xenos aggressor?’

‘Sir, I have to ask…’ Mzinga leaned forward, not knowing how her next statement would be received. ‘You are a very… venerable inquisitor, in possession of an engine of eternal life. It could extend your fight for humanity indefinitely.’

The implication hung in the air.

‘I don’t intend to use it, interrogator, if that’s what concerns you,’ he said firmly. ‘These past months have been difficult, but there is no cause for concern. Things are clearer now – clearer than they have been in a long time. We will need to call an Inquisitorial conclave to discuss this matter.’ He sighed. ‘But now, Medicae Grieve informs me it would be prudent to rest.’

Mzinga backed out of the tent and stood alone in the darkness for a few minutes, listening to the sound of the jungle. For the first time in her Inquisitorial career, she felt uncertain. And for the first time since she had known him, Venicii seemed fallible.

Mzinga kept watch for the first half of the night, before Grieve relieved her for a few hours’ rest. It took a long while before she finally drifted into a fitful sleep. It seemed as if no time had passed before someone was shaking her awake. She started when she opened her eyes.

‘Inquisitor Venicii?’ she blurted, her mind still heavy with sleep.

Her mentor knelt in front of her. ‘Come on, interrogator. Dawn has broken and we have work to do.’

Mzinga blinked sleep out of her eyes and stared up at Venicii. Grieve stood behind him, arms folded, face drawn.

‘You were wounded,’ Mzinga said.

‘Grieve has seen to that,’ he replied, proffering a hand.

Mzinga searched his piercing blue eyes. ‘We’re returning to the shuttle?’ she asked.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It’s half a day’s walk so we should set off as soon as possible. I’ll guard the perimeter while you prepare.’

Grieve and Mzinga exchanged a glance as Venicii strode off.

‘So?’ Mzinga asked.

Grieve shook her head. ‘I don’t know, interrogator. I’ve never seen–’

There was a sudden crack of gunfire. They drew their weapons and ran towards the sound, finding Venicii standing over the corpse of one of the carapaced aliens.

‘I surprised it. I don’t think it was coming for us.’ He nudged it with a boot. ‘Pity, it would have made a good specimen. But we can’t drag it ten miles through the jungle.’

‘We could make an examination now,’ Mzinga said urgently. Her gut was telling her that something was very wrong, and that the xenos were at the core of it.

Venicii smacked the barrel of his gun thoughtfully against the palm of his hand. ‘It would allow us to make a more conclusive study. Establish a biological context for the xenos presence, contextualise the runes and settlement, and any other traces we’ve recorded.’

‘How far did you get with your sampling, Grieve?’ Mzinga asked.

‘Just the toxicity and poison work, interrogator. We didn’t have time to penetrate the carapace.’

Venicii nodded. ‘Take some further samples. Organs, tissue. But quickly. We leave within the hour.’

They watched as Grieve jogged away to pick up her kit.

‘How is Mace?’ asked Venicii.

Mzinga tore her eyes away from the corpse. ‘In shock. Grieve can’t do much here.’

Venicii nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do for her. We owe her our lives.’

Mzinga tied back her braids and rolled up her sleeves as Grieve returned with a pair of rebreathers. They fixed them over their faces and pulled on their gloves in silence. It took Grieve’s las-scalpel long minutes to penetrate the bony chestplate. Once it had been cracked open, Mzinga noticed the woman’s brow furrow as she pulled layers of xenos tissue apart. She continued, methodically slicing and probing, cutting and drilling samples as Mzinga held the cadaver open. Then Grieve suddenly stopped, and laid down her tools. She looked Mzinga in the eye and tugged her rebreather down.

Mzinga stared.

‘It’s all right,’ said Grieve, peeling her gloves off. ‘There’s nothing in there that can hurt us. It’s not an alien.’

Mzinga pulled off her rebreather. ‘What?’

Grieve rubbed her eyes. ‘It’s human. Was human,’ she corrected.

Mzinga stared down at the mass of flesh. Inside the carapace, the body was without structure, a mess of organs and tissue. ‘How can that be?’

‘Do you remember,’ Grieve said slowly, ‘what happened on Latimer?’

‘The genestealer cult?’

‘You remember we found an abominant?’

Mzinga winced. ‘Yes.’

‘It was metamorphosing when we found it. I think something similar has happened here.’

‘It’s not tyranid.’ Mzinga frowned.

‘No. But I think the reforming process was similar. Here, it looks like the chemical components of the bone in the body have broken down and reformed on the surface. The organs remain largely unchanged. But this,’ she said, tapping the carapace, ‘used to be inside this man. It was his skeleton.’

‘And now he’s wearing it,’ Mzinga spat.

‘It would have been excruciating,’ Grieve said bluntly.

‘What caused it? Are we at risk?’

The med-tech ran a hand through her bleached crop. ‘I can’t be sure, but it wasn’t caused by a biological agent. For something to happen at a cellular level like this…’ She stared ahead. ‘There’s the unusual planetary radiation, but I can’t see how that alone could do this. Do you have any idea what we’re dealing with?’

Mzinga stared at the carcass. ‘Something Inquisitor Venicii needs to know about.’

They found him with Mace at the campsite. The woman appeared calmer, and was methodically cleaning her gun.

‘Are we ready to leave?’ Venicii asked, rising as they approached. Then he saw their faces. ‘What’s wrong?’

Mzinga swallowed. ‘We haven’t been dealing with xenos, inquisitor. The creatures on this planet are human.’

‘Impossible.’

‘I would stake my reputation on it, sir,’ said Grieve. ‘They started out like us.’

Venicii stared between both women, realisation dawning. ‘The settlers,’ he whispered.

‘What?’ Grieve frowned.

‘You said it yourself, Grieve, they started out like us. Where else did all of these… inhabitants come from?’ he said grimly. ‘We need to report this immediately.’

‘We are going to become them.’ Mace was rocking, wide-eyed, cradling her gun. ‘We’re going to lose our minds and then our faces.’

Venicii gripped her shoulder firmly. ‘Have faith, Mace. We are departing this place.’

She stared up at him, eyes frantic.

Grieve quietly punched a shot of sedative into the woman’s arm, and she relaxed a little.

‘Sorry, Mace, but we can’t carry you,’ Grieve said curtly. ‘Come on. We’re leaving.’

As the others packed up, Mzinga drew Venicii to one side. ‘Inquisitor Venicii, are you still keeping the relic on your person?’

His eyes involuntarily flew to his pack. ‘That answered your question, I suppose.’ He smiled tightly.

Mzinga took a few deep breaths. ‘Have you considered that it may be affecting you?’

Venicii frowned. ‘I’ve taken the usual precautions, Interrogator Mzinga. It isn’t emitting any psychic resonance or substance. There is no explosive charge. It has no form of communications link, so cannot be controlled remotely.’

Mzinga nodded. ‘Yes. But you’ve made a miraculous recovery. And you told me that the relic is rumoured to have astonishing regenerative properties…’ She trailed off.

Venicii’s jaw worked as he considered this.

Mzinga’s hand slipped towards her pistol holster. Please don’t make me do this, she thought.

Venicii sighed. ‘Of course you’re right. We can’t be too careful.’ He produced the relic from his pack. ‘Will you seal it in a vac-flask? Then both of us may be sure my integrity is intact.’

‘Yes, inquisitor.’ Mzinga breathed in deeply, relief flooding through her body. She let go of her holster and took the relic from his hands. Now they could concentrate on getting off the planet alive.

The trek back through the jungle was hard. A storm was massing somewhere, and the unbearable humidity had increased. The change in pressure had also aggravated a breed of small biting fly, which swarmed thickly around them.

‘I hate this planet,’ stated Grieve matter-of-factly.

Mzinga laughed bitterly. ‘Give me a hive any day.’

Inquisitor Venicii set the pace, slashing ahead through the jungle. As the others tired, he seemed to gain more energy. Mzinga took the rearguard, watching her mentor storming through the dense undergrowth. Something wasn’t right, she knew it in her bones. Could the relic have affected his mind? She felt Grieve’s unease too. Venicii had been a dead man walking, he shouldn’t have survived the night, yet here he was, acting as if he were decades younger. There would be time to confront him when they got off the planet. She knew her duty, although she didn’t relish it.

They marched in silence until they reached the creek where they’d first found and shot one of the xenos-human creatures. Venicii was up ahead, examining the remains, which had already largely been devoured by insects. Mzinga saw with alarm that the inquisitor had removed his support rig and placed it by his side.

‘Inquisitor, can I check–’

She broke off in shock as he turned to face her. The Gorran Venicii who regarded her now was not the Gorran Venicii she had known. It wasn’t the Gorran Venicii anyone had known for a hundred years. His white hair had become sandy, his broad jaw firm. Although still scarred, his face was that of a man in middle age, not a venerable veteran inquisitor.

Mzinga stepped back, aghast.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Inquisitor… your face.’

He stooped over the water and stared for a moment, brow creased. ‘I know that something is different, but I’m finding it hard to–’ He clutched his stomach and let out a cry of pain.

‘Sir?’

‘It’s happening. It’s happening.’ Venicii turned an anguished face to her, then howled, and toppled into the water, agony contorting his face.

Without hesitating, Mzinga dived in after him.

She dragged the unconscious inquisitor back to land. Away from the humidity of the forest, the blistering sun dried her clothes almost instantly as she lay him on the pebbled shore. Grieve was immediately at her side, grim-faced, checking Venicii’s breathing and heart rate.

‘He’s alive, but I don’t need to tell you that something’s wrong.’

‘He’s becoming them,’ Mace stated calmly from behind her.

Mzinga squinted round. ‘Make yourself useful and rig up a tent.’

Mace looked at her expressionlessly, then moved to the kit pack. Her sudden calm was worse than the hysteria had been. And Mzinga was afraid that the unhinged trapper was speaking the truth.

‘I’m going to administer a painkiller but I don’t know what else to do,’ Grieve said, before shooting Mzinga a sideways look. ‘Do you think she’s right?’ she said quietly.

‘We can’t assume anything,’ said Mzinga curtly.

Grieve nodded, and moved off.

Mzinga reached her hand inside Venicii’s jacket, and withdrew the vac-flask. The relic glinted inside. She stared at it, hatred boiling inside her. She was going to end this now.

She pulled the mag-locked inferno pistol from Venicii’s belt. She set the vac-flask on a rock and stood a couple of yards away – then raised the pistol and fired. There was a hiss as the air in the beam’s path boiled, and the membrane of the vac-flask immediately melted away. She squeezed the trigger harder, brow furrowed, teeth bared in anger. The flask had melted completely, and the rocks around it started to droop, glowing red with superheat. Mzinga was forced back a few paces due to the temperature, but she could see that the accursed relic was still there.

She was vaguely aware that Venicii was stirring. She broke off her fire and swore, throwing the gun to the ground, turning in frustration. Mace and Grieve were watching her.

‘That pistol’s an antique,’ Venicii said weakly from where he lay. ‘You should be more careful.’

‘I should be more careful?’ Mzinga snapped, glaring round at him. ‘You knew. You knew that it would rejuvenate you.’ She crouched next to the prone inquisitor.

‘I did not seek this, interrogator. I was careless, yes. Too eager to return the prize to my conclave. But I think it will do much worse than this,’ he said grimly. ‘I want to be sure. I will examine my papers one last time, if I may.’

Mzinga nodded, feeling cold dread fall on her with the weight of his words.

It took everything Venicii had to pore over his transcriptions, cross-referencing the picts he had taken of the runes. Eventually he sat back, passing a hand across his face. He kept it there as he spoke.

‘I have made a terrible mistake.’

Mzinga watched him.

‘I have misinterpreted a key sigil. Had I been more patient…’ His voice faded away.

‘Sir?’

He sighed. ‘The relic we recovered, the item which I have been seeking for many years, is not at all miraculous or regenerative.’

Mzinga frowned. ‘But it healed you, and made you younger.’

‘A side effect of its primary purpose. The crystalline fabric of the relic focuses the planet’s radiation to reshape those nearby.’

‘But why?’

‘I would speculate that this planet is an ancient factory, Interrogator Mzinga. A munitions factory, producing thralls for a species unknown, for a conflict no longer remembered.’

‘So the settlers were mutated by chance?’

‘I believe so. And I, by greed.’ Venicii dropped his hand from his face.

Mzinga started. The inquisitor’s skin had become pallid, shot through with black veins, and his eyes were clouded with a milky membrane.

Wordlessly, she drew her autopistol and aimed it at his head.

Venicii swallowed with some difficulty. ‘Don’t you wish to find a cure for your mentor? Some antidote for one who has saved your life countless times?’ It was strange to hear his voice coming from this terrible visage.

‘No,’ Mzinga said, feeling certainty rise up within her. ‘I wish to put a bullet in your skull.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Inquisitor Gorran Venicii is already dead. He died the moment he let his guard drop. The moment he forgot his duty.’

Venicii looked at her for a moment, the expression of his distorting face difficult to read. Then he nodded.

‘Good.’

Something that Mzinga took to be a smile crossed his lips. He scrabbled in his papers, and Mzinga silently thumbed her weapon’s hammer.

‘Don’t worry, interrogator,’ Venicii said without looking at her. ‘I merely wanted to give you this.’ He dropped something into Mzinga’s hand.

She stared down at it.

‘You are ready. You were, are, willing to do what must be done in service to the God-Emperor, no matter the cost. You will take up His fight now.’

Mzinga’s fingers closed around the object. Her heart swelled with pride and pain. She had never imagined it would happen this way.

‘And now, Inquisitor Mzinga, there is one last thing I can do.’

Mzinga regarded him cautiously.

‘We cannot leave the relic or temple intact. I would rather that those things which were once settlers were destroyed along with myself.’

‘Agreed.’

‘You cannot fly the shuttle nearby, so someone will need to destroy them in person. I would like to die before I lose my faculties, so, we have a willing volunteer. We also have several tons of mining explosives already in the jungle which should serve to annihilate the buildings and degenerated settlers.’

‘And what of the relic?’

‘I believe it works by magnifying the harmonics of Carbis’ radiation. So it will not function off-planet.’ He paused. ‘Your efforts with my inferno pistol will have weakened the crystalline structure, albeit invisibly, but a hand weapon cannot destroy such a thing. Several tons of fyceline, however, will.’

Mzinga nodded. ‘We have to hurry. We don’t know how long you have.’

‘Agreed. My energy has returned, but this could herald another phase in the mutative process.’

They found Mace sitting cross-legged outside the tent, nursing her long-las. Grieve lay a few yards away, drooling on the ground.

‘I heard everything,’ Mace said, looking up at them both. She seemed unbothered by Venicii’s appearance.

‘What have you done to Grieve?’ asked Mzinga.

‘She tried to sedate me again, but I turned the dose on her instead. She doesn’t understand.’ She looked up at Venicii. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘I won’t be returning,’ the former inquisitor said.

‘I know. The Emperor wills it,’ she said, standing. ‘I will shoot the xenos-humans, and if you become one, I will shoot you. And then I will find peace,’ she added tonelessly.

Venicii shrugged. ‘Then so be it.’ He turned to Mzinga. ‘Wait until it’s done. You must be sure.’ He looked down at the unconscious med-tech. ‘Give Grieve my regards. I am pleased she didn’t need to see me this way. Serve with honour, Inquisitor Mzinga.’

With that, Venicii turned on his heel and disappeared into the jungle with Mace drifting behind him like a ghost. Mzinga watched them leave, then lifted Grieve over her broad shoulders and carried her back to the shuttle.

She sat in the pilot’s seat for a few moments, staring blankly at the object Venicii had given her. She pushed it open, and a mechanism shimmered a hologram above it. The Inquisitorial seal, the badge of authority endowing her with the power to destroy worlds. She snapped it closed.

Explosions rippled out like white blossom over the jungle as Mzinga held the shuttle stationary in the lower atmosphere. She cleared her throat, then spoke into her vox-recorder.

‘Let it be recorded that Inquisitor Gorran Venicii died in the service of the Emperor on the planet Carbis, Domina Sector. He discovered the dangerous regenerative technology of an unknown xenos species. The technology was subsequently destroyed, the inquisitor giving his life in the process of doing so, alongside two members of his retinue. This matter will be brought to the attention of the Inquisitorial Grandmaster of the Domina Sector. This report has been filed by Interrogator Esme Mzinga, appointed in the field to the rank of inquisitor.’

She thumbed off the vox-recorder and sat back. On the co-pilot’s seat beside her were Venicii’s papers, with Gorgoin’s journal atop them. She watched the fire below for a few moments longer. Then she sighed deeply. The galaxy was full of horrors, and it was her duty to confront them. Everything in her life had been leading up to this moment. She was the last Inquisitor Gorran Venicii would ever train, and she swore to herself that she would be the strongest. She would not make his mistakes.

Inquisitor Mzinga left orbit, the planet burning behind her.

About the Author

Victoria Hayward is a trained historitor who spent her youth serving as an acolyte in a Games Workshop store. She writes about black holes and the palaces of despots in her day job as a science communicator and her favourite corners of the 40K universe are those occupied by the Inquisition - which is all of it. She resides in Nottingham where she keeps birds and practises printmaking.

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.

‘Squad Antiocles, engage,’ he said. He smashed a charging daemon into fragments, yanked another back the instant before it gutted a mortal soldier, and stamped its skull flat, while switching again to his company vox-net. ‘All units, fall back to the Penitent’s Arch. Take the mortals with you.’

His assault squad fell from the sky on burning jets, kicking daemons down and shooting them with their plasma and bolt pistols. A roar of promethium from a flamer blasted three bloodletters to ash.

‘Fall back! Fall back!’ Messinius commanded, his words beating time with his blows. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles to cover. Devastators maintain overhead fire.’

Squad Antiocles drove the enemy back. Tactical Space Marines were retreating from the parapet, dragging human soldiers with them. An Ultramarine walked backwards past him, firing his bolter one-handed, a wounded member of the Palatine Guard draped over his right shoulder.

‘Fall back! Fall back!’ Messinius roared. He grabbed a human by the arm and yanked him hard away from the monster trying to slay him, almost throwing him across the square. He pivoted and punched, slamming the man’s opponent in the face with a crackling bang that catapulted its broken corpse over the wall edge. ‘Fall back!’

Mortal soldiers broke and ran while Squad Antiocles held off the foe. Telling to begin with, in moments the assault squad’s momentum was broken, and again more bloodletters were leaping over the edge of the rampart. The Space Marines fired in retreat, covering each other in pairs as they crossed the square diagonally to the Penitent’s Arch. The mortals were getting the idea, running between the Adeptus Astartes and mostly staying out of their fire corridor. With the fight now concentrated around Squad Antiocles, the Devastators were more effective, blasting down the daemons before they could bring their weight of numbers to bear upon Antiocles. Sporadic bursts of fire from the retreating Tactical Marines added to the effect, and for a short period the number of daemons entering the square did not increase.

Messinius tarried a moment, rounding up more of the humans who were either too embattled or deaf to his orders to get out. He reached three still firing over the parapet’s edge and pulled them away. A daemon reared over the parapet and he crushed its skull, but a second leapt up and cleaved hard into his fist, and power fled the weapon. Messinius pumped three bolts into its neck, decapitating it. He moved back.

His power fist was ruined. The daemon’s cut had sliced right through the ceramite, breaking the power field generator and most of the weapon’s strength-boosting apparatus, making it a dead weight. He said a quick thanks to the machine’s departed spirit and smashed the top of his bolt pistol against the quick seal release, at the same time disengaging the power feeds by way of neural link. The clamps holding the power fist to his upper arm came loose and it slid to the floor with a clang, leaving his right arm clad in his standard ceramite gauntlet. A century together. A fine weapon. He had no time to mourn it.

‘Fall back!’ he shouted. ‘Fall back to the Penitent’s Arch!’

He slammed a fresh clip into his bolt pistol. Squad Antiocles were being pushed back. The Devastators walked their fire closer in to the combat. A heavy bolter blasted half a dozen daemons into stinking meat. A missile blew, lifting more into the air. Messinius fell back himself now, leaving it to the last moment before ordering the Assault Marines to leap from the fray. Their jets ignited, driving back the daemons with washes of flame, and they lifted up over his head, leaving four of their brothers dead on the ground. Devastator fire hammered down from above. Anti-personnel weapons set into casemates and swivel turrets on the walls joined in, but the daemons mounted higher and higher in a wave of red that flooded over the parapet.

‘Run!’ he shouted at the straggling human soldiery. ‘Run and survive! Your service is not yet done!’

The Penitent’s Arch led from the square onto a wall walk that curved around to another layer of defences. His Space Marines were already making a firing line across the entrance. A gate could be extended across the arch, sealing the walk from the square, but Messinius refrained from requesting it be closed, as the humans were still streaming past the Adeptus Astartes. Kryvesh waved the banner, whirling it through the air to attract the terrified mortals. The Space Marines fired constantly into the mass of daemons sprinting after them, exhausting their ammunition supplies. Shattered false bodies tumbled down, shot from the front and above, yet still they came, overtaking and dismembering the last warriors fleeing away from the parapet.

Squad Antiocles roared through the arch, landing behind their brethren. Messinius passed between them. For a moment he surveyed the tide of coming fury. Endless red-skinned monsters filling the square like a lake of spilled blood, washing over a score of brightly armoured Space Marine corpses left behind in the retreat. Several hundred humans lay alongside them.

He opened a vox-channel to Gate Command.

‘Wall batteries three-seven-three through three-seven-six, target sector nine five eighty-three, Penitent’s Square, western edge. Five-minute bombardment.’

‘On whose order?’

‘Captain Vitrian Messinius, White Consuls Chapter, Tenth Company. I have the primarch’s authority.’ As he dealt with gunnery control, he was also datapulsing a request for resupply, and checking through layered data screeds.

‘Voice print and signum ident match. Transponder codes valid. We obey.’

The far side of the square erupted in a wall of flame. Heavy cannon shells detonated in a string along the rampart. High-energy beams sliced into the square, turning stone and metal instantly to superheated gas. The approaching daemons were annihilated. A few bolt-rounds cracked off as the last daemons nearing the Space Marine line were put down.

‘Company, cease fire. Conserve ammunition.’ Nobody heard him. Nobody could. He re-sent the order via vox-script. The boltguns cut out.

Penitent’s Square was a cauldron of fire so intense he could feel the heat through his battleplate’s ceramite. The ground shook under his feet and he considered the possibility that the wall would give way. The noise was so all-consuming the idea of speech lost relevance. For five minutes the Lion’s Gate tore madly at its own hide, ripping out chunks of itself in a bid to scrape free the parasites infesting its fabric, then, as suddenly as it had begun, the bombardment ceased.

Where the Penitent’s Square had been, a twisted mass of black metal and shattered stone remained. So formidable were the defences of the Lion’s Gate that the structure beneath had not been penetrated, but it was like this, in small bursts of destruction, that they could lose this war.

Messinius accessed the gate’s noosphere. No daemons had as yet rounded the projecting Penitent’s Spur to come up against their new position. When the attack came again, which it would, it would come from the front.

An ammunition train raced down the walkway from the fortress interior and came to a squealing stop fifty yards away. Medicae personnel jumped down. A Space Marine Apothecary came with them. Human peons rushed about with heavy sack bags full of bolter magazines, passing them out to the transhumans. Spent magazines clattered to the floor. New ones were slammed home. Messinius contacted his squad leaders, taking a quick census of his surviving men, not trusting the digits that read ‘Company Casualties 23%’ blinking in the upper right of his visual field.

Through the smoke given off by burning metal on the far side of the ruined square, he saw movement. Auspex returns tripped his armour’s machine-spirit, and it blinked warnings in his helm.

<threat detected.>

‘They’re coming again,’ he said.

‘My lord?’ A soft voice, one that did not belong in that moment. He ignored it.

‘Engage at fifty-yard range. Make every shot count.’

The ammunition train was hurriedly relieved of their allotted supplies, and sped off, bearing the worst-wounded, to aid whichever beleaguered unit needed it next.

‘Stand ready.’

‘My lord?’ The voice became more insistent.

The voidships in orbit were beginning to fire. Their targeting systems were perturbed by the boiling warp energy and the vortex in constant motion over the Imperial Palace, and many shots went wide, crashing down into the Anterior Barbican, a few falling as far out as Magnifican.

Red monsters bounded towards them, as numerous as before, as if their efforts to thin them had been for naught.

‘Fire,’ he said coldly.

‘My lord, your duty rotation begins in half an hour. You told me to wake you.’

This time he heard. Bolters boomed. Messinius froze them with a thought, and with another he shut down the hypnomat entirely.

Vitrian Messinius awoke groggily.

‘My lord,’ his servant said. Selwin, he was called. ‘You are returned from your recollections?’

‘I am awake, Selwin, yes,’ Messinius said irritably. His mouth was dry. He wanted to be left alone.

‘Shall I?’ Selwin gestured to the hypnomat.

Messinius nodded and rubbed his face. It felt numb. Selwin flicked a number of toggles on the hypnomat and it powered down, the steady glow of its innards fading to nothing and winking out, taking the immediacy of Messinius’ memories with it.

‘The wall again?’ Selwin asked.

The hypnomat’s primary use was to instil knowledge without active learning on the subject’s part, but it could reawaken memories to be lived again. Full immersion in the hypnomat required cooperation from Messinius’ catalepsean node, and coming out of the half-sleep was never as easy as true waking. Reliving past events dulled his wits. Messinius reminded himself to be guarded. He forgot sometimes that he was not on Sabatine any more. The local saying ‘This is Terra’ encompassed a multitude of sins. Spying was among them.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Personal debriefing.’ He shook his head and unplugged the hypnomat’s input cables from the neural ports set into his arms and neck. ‘Nothing new learned.’

Selwin nodded, then hesitantly said, ‘If I may be so bold as to ask, why do it, my lord, if you expect to learn nothing?’

‘Because I can always be wrong,’ Messinius said. He pointed at the hypnomat. It was a bulky machine set on a trolley, but not too big for an unaltered man to move. ‘Take that away. Inform my armourer I will be with him in a few minutes.’

Selwin bowed. ‘Already done, my lord.’

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